The Hated and the Dead

J.R. Jayewardene served as prime minister and then president of Sri Lanka between 1977 and 1989. Sri Lankan history, politics and society is dominated by tensions between two ethnic groups. Ethnic divisions are intrinsic to countless countries, including many covered on this podcast before. The key question the Sri Lankan experience raises though is this: in stoking ethnic tensions

The Houthis, a Yemeni political and military organisation, have made headlines across the World since they began blocking the Red Sea nearly six months ago. But despite their association in people's minds with Gaza, and Iran's "Axis of Resistance", their true motives are poorly understood.This is the second half of a two-part conversation seeking to explain the

The Houthis, a Yemeni political and military organisation, have made headlines across the World since they began blocking the Red Sea nearly six months ago. But despite their association with Gaza, and Iran's "Axis of Resistance", their origins in the turbulent Yemeni politics of the 1990s and 2000s are not widely understood. This is the first half of a two-part conv

Jens Stoltenberg has been Secretary General of NATO since 2014, and prior to that served twice as Prime Minister of Norway. Looking at him is interesting because, at least in the early part of his premiership, many commentators, buoyed by the end of the Cold War and the third wave of democratisation, genuinely believed that the world was converging on Norwegian attitudes towards de

John Magufuli was the President of Tanzania between 2015 and 2021. He was the sixth in a long line of presidents drawn from the same political party, the CCM, which has ruled Tanzania since its independence in 1961. CCM presidents came and went, standing down after two terms in office, just as American presidents do. But in the 2000s, the CCM started to lose popularity in Tanzania.

Mary Lou McDonald has been the Leader of the Opposition to the Irish Government since 2020. She is also the leader of centre-left political party Sinn Fein, currently the second largest party in the Irish parliament (Dail). Since 2000, Sinn Fein has gone from being an extra-parliamentary party to being the most popular party in the Irish Republic, on course to win the next general

Nayib Bukele has been the President of El Salvador since 2019. He has transformed the country from the nation with the world's highest murder rate to that with the world's highest incarceration rate, having arrested more than 70,000 people (1% of the population) in less than two years. His programme presents complicated trade offs and moral dilemmas; how much of your free

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist militant group and political party, established in 1985. Hezbollah has a reputation as one of the Middle East’s great agitators, having engaged Israel in conflict twice, once in the 1980s and again in 2006. Their financing by and allegiance to the Iranian ayatollah, the West’s bogeyman in the region, underpins this image.But simply viewing

Kim Yo Jong is the younger sister of the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. Since Jong Un’s accession to power in 2011, he has placed his sister into positions of increasing importance domestically and increasing prominence internationally.The question is: is Jong Un following the advice of Michael Corleone, keeping his friends close but his enemies closer? Or is there g

Hafiz al-Assad was the President of Syria between 1970 and 2000. Father of present Syrian leader Bashar, Hafiz inherited a country in disarray, beset by political and religious division at home, and subject to interference from regional powers. Displaying extraordinary brutality, Hafiz imposed order on Syria’s diverse population and also turned his country into an important decis