The International Crisis Group, which until recently only covered Algeria out of the entire Middle East, has been rapidly expanding recently with reports on Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq. It’s now Syria’s turn to receive the ICG treatment, with not one but two reports — one on domestic policy and the other on foreign policy.

Throughout the farce that passed for Arab diplomacy as the war in Iraq loomed closer, Western press accounts of half-hearted attempts by Arab leaders to delay or avoid a war often made the news, but they were generally treated with the contempt they deserved. Hence, apart from the occasional sneer at the ridiculousness of Arab [...]

Today’s New York Times reports that a survey of intelligence about the last few weeks of Saddam Hussein’s regime shows that the Iraqis did not believe the US would really go through with a full-scale invasion.
The study, a rough-draft history of the war from the perspective of Iraqi leaders, offers a scathing history of [...]