Charles Lister

Two weeks ago, ISIS launched its biggest attack in Syria and Iraq since its territorial defeat nearly three years ago, in March 2019. According to the Syrian Democratic Forces, as many as 300 ISIS militants launched an assault on al-Sina Prison in Hasakeh city late on January 20. Two suicide…

Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan two months ago, the international community has tentatively engaged with the new ‘government’ in Kabul, seeking to explore what kind of relations are possible with a Taliban-run entity. Until now, this phase of exploratory dialogue has resulted in very…

Nine months after the arrival of President Joe Biden into the White House, a new American foreign policy “philosophy” for the Middle East is beginning to emerge. Several previous administrations have sought to “pivot away” from the Middle East, but in doing so, they have disengaged too quickly and…

On August 31, President Joe Biden addressed the American public and the world at large, and remarked that having withdrawn troops the night before, we had ended the war in Afghanistan. The decision to disengage he said, was “the best decision for America” and going forward, US foreign policy would…

In policymaking circles in Washington DC, it has become common to hear the claim that twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, the war on terrorism is finally coming to an end. For some, this is because the United States is withdrawing from “forever wars” like in Afghanistan and reducing its…

More than 100 days have now passed since President Joe Biden entered the White House and so far, all key aspects of US policy in Syria have remained almost precisely the same as they were in President Trump’s final year in office. Although much of Washington DC’s policy attention is focused on…

In two months’, time, Syria’s crisis will turn ten years old – a grim milestone for what has been the most deadly and destructive civil conflict in recent history. When tens of thousands of Syrians took peacefully to the streets and called for political reforms, few could have imagined the scale of…