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Michael Petrou

Senior writer Michael Petrou has covered conflict across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. He is the author of ’Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War’, which was shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Award, and ’Is This Your First War? Travels Through the Post-9/11 Islamic World’, which won it. He has a DPhil from the University of Oxford.

One of South Africa’s most notorious unsolved political murders revisted

James Myburgh investigates the 1977 murders of Afrikaner politician Robert Smit and his wife, Jeanne-Cora, including suspicions...

IDF Arabic poetry slam

Bloodshed at sea, and a wave of global anger

Israel’s flotilla strike may mark the end of its relationship with Turkey

’The conflict does not end here’

Bangkok may have cracked down, but the bitter divisions remain

Israel’s secret and cozy relationship with apartheid South Africa

This book will make a splash. Glenn Frankel, former Southern Africa and Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post, discusses...

The British approach to counter-insurgency

A British colonel studying at the U.S. Army War College has written about British counter-insurgency since 1945: "Since 1945 the...

What I’m reading

For pleasure, Rust and Bone by Craig Davidson (gripping; occasionally jarring) and Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, an elegant and book...

Yes, Mr. Sarkozy, that’s the kind of man I think you are

Last September, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was asked if he would release an Iranian agent convicted of murdering a former...

Five hanged in Tehran

I was out of the office when this atrocity took place. I’d be remiss, however, not to bring it to your attention even a week...

Terrorism watch in North Africa

The long-running dispute between Morocco and the Polisario Front over sovereignty of Western Sahara is usually ignored by the rest...