News and views from the Blavatnik School of Government community 
The military campaign for the liberation of the Islamic State’s stronghold city of Mosul, the capital city of Nineveh province, has begun today. After twenty-eight months of controlling the second-largest city of Iraq, ISIS’s chapter in Iraq will be brought almost to an end. Yet as the most diversified and […]
This Sunday Colombians will vote to approve the peace agreement between the National Government and the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC). The day of the signing, probably the country’s most important day in its modern history, followed the announcement of a definitive ceasefire made by President Juan Manuel Santos […]
It was already feeling like a long day when I sat down with Ahmed for a cup of Iraqi sweet tea. He had come from the nearby Kurdish department of foreign relations, but I had come north from Sulaymaniyah, about a 3-hour drive away, in mid-day temperatures hovering around 46C. […]
I am Franco-Belgian. Tonight, March 22nd 2016, I am #BruxellesAttacks #IkBenBelge, when on November 13th 2015 I was #JeSuisParis and on January 7th 2015 #JeSuisCharlie. My heart and thoughts go out to the victims – 33 deaths and over 200 injured – and their families, to the Belgians, to my […]
Earlier this week, a group of influential Malaysians signed a “Declaration” calling for Prime Minister Najib Razak to be removed and for institutional reforms. This is a major escalation in the effort to remove Najib, and an extraordinary development in Malaysian politics. Najib has faced months of exposés, investigations, and […]
Each time a terror attack carried out by Muslim militants wrecks a Western country, Muslims from across the world take to electronic and social media to condemn the horrific act, dissociate themselves from the perpetrators and defend Islam as a religion of peace. Despite these condemnations, moderate Muslims have neither […]
“For us, the future is lost. There is no hope.” That’s what Ali Ahmad told BBC interviewers who were trying to find out what life was like under the current war in Yemen. Ali comes from Taiz, a governorate that has for months been under siege by the militias of […]
Two years after Edward Snowden leaked thousands of classified files detailing the West’s surveillance programmes, another whistleblower has revealed more secret documents, this time detailing the US drone strike operations against Islamist terrorists in East Africa, the Arabian peninsula and Afghanistan. Published by The Intercept website as The Drone Papers, […]
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