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In this week's UpFront, we talk to the former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who still maintains the NATO-led air campaign against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was a 'model intervention'.
In the Reality Check, Mehdi Hasan explains how, although the refugee crisis in Europe may be overwhelming, the scale of the catastrophe is much worse in Africa.
And in the Arena, we debate the future of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq, and whether it would further destabilise the already war-torn country.
In this week's UpFront, we talk to the former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who still maintains the NATO-led air campaign against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was a 'model intervention'.
In the Reality Check, Mehdi Hasan explains how, although the refugee crisis in Europe may be overwhelming, the scale of the catastrophe is much worse in Africa.
And in the Arena, we debate the future of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq, and whether it would further destabilise the already war-torn country.
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Who is Mehdi Hasan?Mehdi Raza Hasan (born 1979) is a British political journalist, broadcaster and author. In 2013, Hassan took part in a debate at the Oxford Union to consider whether Islam is a peaceful religion. Hassan vouched for Islam as a religion of peace, citing political and cultural reasons for violence in Muslim majority countries, as opposed to holding the religion of Islam responsible. In the vote on the motion, the house affirmed with Hassan and the other proposers that Islam is a religion of peace with 286 votes in favor and 168 votes against.
Who is Gaddafi?Muammar Gaddafi (1942-20 October 2011) was a Libyan revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He governed Libya as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977, and then as the "Brotherly Leader" of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. He was initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism but later came to rule under his own Third International Theory. A highly divisive figure, Gaddafi dominated Libya's politics for four decades and was the subject of a pervasive cult of personality. He was decorated with various awards and praised for his anti-imperialist stance, support for Arab, and then African, unity and for significant improvements that his government brought to the Libyan people's quality of life.
What is Libya?Libya is a sovereign state in North Africa, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south and Algeria and Tunisia to the west. The country is made of three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the fourth largest country in Africa, and is the 16th largest country in the world. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world.
What is ISIS?The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, Daesh, and other names) is a Salafi jihadist terrorist organisation. It is a former unrecognised proto-state that follows a fundamentalist, Salafi doctrine of Sunni Islam. ISIS gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive, followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre.
