16th March 2016
Beirut, Lebanon
It has been five years since the Syria conflict began. Five years of barrel bombs, mass executions and disappearances. Five years of people being forced from their homes because they fear for their lives. And for many of those who fled to Lebanon, what they expected to be a temporary move has become a painful […]
Read more on Five years of War in Syria: how international support for Lebanon is changing | Reply
29th July 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
“How do you define an extremist?”. I once asked this question of a wise friend of mine, who was always critical of imprecise language used by journalists to describe people who held different views. “An extremist”, he said, “is someone incapable of seeing the good in the other. He must therefore dedicate himself to attacking […]
Read more on Remember the kidnapped in Syria | Reply (1)
17th January 2014
Beirut, Lebanon
One of the great frustrations of diplomacy is that results are hard to quantify. If, for example, a new government is at last formed in Lebanon, we will be hard pressed to say to what extent our encouragement, the hours on the road, in planes and in meetings, contributed. So when a project with direct, […]
Read more on An Idea Worth Shouting About | Reply (2)
15th March 2013
Beirut, Lebanon
Today marks the second anniversary of the Syrian uprising. Lebanon now hosts almost 400,000 registered Syrian refugees, but the real number of Syrians here is over 1m. Imagine the impact of 15m refugees in the UK. Lebanon, lashed to Syria by history and geography, has responded with extraordinary generosity. With camps avoided for political reasons, […]
Read more on Syrian uprising two years on | Reply (4)
10th October 2012
Beirut, Lebanon
Eisenhower said that if you can’t fix a problem, you should make it bigger. Lebanon is trying to fix a big problem – preventing the violence from Syria tipping it into instability. So far, it is doing well, and as I’ve argued, should not be fatalist about external factors (mindsoupblog). But for a country that […]
Read more on Five Questions | Reply
