Margaret MacMillan examines the role of civilians as supporters and victims of conflict.
Read it here
Tag: war
Misery as Strategy: The Human Cost of Conflict
ICG’s Caroline Flintoft
Read it here
Reporting on Yemen
A Yemeni reporter for the Washington Post talks about a war that is not too close for comfort:
Increasingly, Sanaa is turning into a ghost town. The universities, once bustling with students, have closed. So, too, have many businesses. People are packing their belongings into their pickup trucks and sedans and driving to far-away villages, hoping to avoid the air raids that have turned the mountains surrounding Sanaa into fiery-orange volcanoes.
The campaign, with a coalition of Arab nations, is an effort to dislodge Houthi rebels sweeping through Yemen.
The evenings are what alarm me most. That’s when the bombings intensify.
With Sanaa increasingly deprived of electricity, the lack of lighting creates an eerie darkness that is punctuated by the flashes — and explosions that quickly follow — that briefly illuminate my home town.
I’m also increasingly away from my wife. I’ve moved her family into our home because of the air raids. To make room, I’ve been staying at my father’s house, which is across town. I think that the family is safer this way, but all I want is to be home with my wife.
I spend my evenings trying to sleep, but often I can’t. I think about how I’ll report on the following day’s events. Will the Houthis capture the southern port city of Aden? I then inevitably ponder my own mortality. Will my family be killed in the attacks? Will I wake in the morning?
Links for January 22nd
Automatically posted links for January 22nd:
- Defusing the Gaza Time Bomb – Rob Malley op-ed on Gaza
- L’Iran soupçonné de traficde matière radioactive – Uzbek catch shipment of Cesium 137 on train, Iran suspected
- THE ANNAPOLIS OPENING HAS CLOSED – Former Israel negotiator with Syria explains why another opportunity for new peace track has gone
- BibliOdyssey: Arabic Machine Manuscript – Beautiful images of ancient books on science
- La base de l?Africom sera installée au Maroc – Algeria’s Liberte says AFRICOM base will be in southern Morocco
- Internal Memo Takes on Obama?s Approach to Middle East – Jewish organizations uneasy about Obama?
- Guys, I’m afraid we haven’t got a clue … – The first of three extracts from Jonathan Steele’s new book on how Britain went to war in Iraq utterly unprepared
- ei: Where does it end? – Abunimah on the siege of Gaza