I reviewed Charles Townshend’s Desert Hell for The National.
Filed under: National
8 April 2011 • 12:13 pm 0
The British Invasion of Mesopotamia
11 March 2011 • 1:16 am 0
The Taliban Shuffle
Originally appeared in The National.
There are writers, and I am one of them, who believe that no book can be serious if it cannot also make you laugh. Permanent sobriety is no more trustworthy than permanent buffoonery. Why trust an author to tell you what’s grave and terrible when that same author seems to think everything is grave and terrible? Some critics may object that there is no comedy in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. These are exactly the people one can safely disregard.
Filed under: National, Afghanistan, books, Pakistan
14 January 2011 • 1:48 am 0
The Kidnapping of Ajmal Khan
Originally appeared in The National.
The last known person to see Ajmal Khan, the vice-chancellor of Islamia College University, was a newspaper hawker a block away from Khan’s home. The scene the man witnessed was a familiar one in Peshawar. Around nine in the morning on September 7, 2010, Khan left his house in a late-model Toyota. His driveway’s iron gates, decorated with ornamental metal grape-leaves, had barely closed when a white car cut him off. The hawker watched as assailants commandeered the car, shoved the chauffeur aside and sandwiched Khan between them in the back seat before driving off. The hawker then walked to the Khan’s gate, knocked, and informed the family: “Ajmal Khan has been kidnapped.”
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Filed under: National
4 December 2010 • 1:52 am 0
The Last Lingua Franca
I review Nicholas Ostler’s The Last Lingua Franca in The Wall Street Journal.
Filed under: Wall Street Journal
19 November 2010 • 8:47 pm 0
On the incompetence of the ANC
This weekend in the Wall Street Journal, I review R.W. Johnson’s political history of post-Apartheid South Africa.
Filed under: Wall Street Journal, Africa, books, South Africa
5 November 2010 • 8:42 pm 0
Ice Kingdom
I reviewed a new book about Saudi Arabia (and efforts to tow icebergs from Antarctica to Jeddah) for The National.
Filed under: National, books, Middle East
10 September 2010 • 1:56 am 0
Pork Politics
Originally appeared in The National.
The roads of Mi’ilya, an Arab town in the Western Galilee, snake their way up a steady incline, and the houses all have at least one window that looks out onto another village nearby. Most of those villages are hostile, in one way or another. The 2,800 residents of Mi’ilya are almost all Roman Catholic Arabs, though in the last few years a small number of Muslims have taken up residence, arousing some suspicion among Catholics who fear for the ethno-religious character of the town. The village’s closest neighbours are Jewish settlers. Just a few kilometres to the north, across the Lebanese border, Hizbollah reigns in a series of old and tightly clustered hill villages, the sites of rocket attacks against Israeli communities, including Mi’ilya, for the past five years. From the village’s highest vantage point, near the local church, one gets a showstopping panorama of enmity: Jews who hate Catholics, who dodge Shiite rockets that land near Sunnis.
Filed under: National
13 August 2010 • 6:09 am 0
A revolution silenced
I review Afsaneh Moqadam’s Death to the Dictator in The National.
