The Abraham Accords
Will they transform the Middle East?
African studies
Gary Sick, Discredited but Honored
The so-called "October Surprise" plot that briefly enthralled the American public twenty years ago is one of the most influential political conspiracy theories in U.S. history. As the story goes,...
Op-eds
Sudan’s Elections: What Now?
With all but the cynically duplicitous, willfully blind, or invincibly ignorant acknowledging that the elections in Sudan last week were more of a farce than a demonstration of the Sudanese peopl...
Op-eds
The Battle for Libya: Implications for Africa
As battle lines crisscross between the rebels marching west to overthrow him and loyal military units taking the offensive against rebel-held towns in the eastern Libya, Colonel Muammar al-Qadhaf...
Op-eds
Somali Piracy Hits America: Some Questions in Need of Answers
The murder earlier this week by their captors of four United States citizens aboard the SV Quest, a yacht hijacked last Friday off the coast of Oman, brought home to America the increasing toll o...
Op-eds
Moroccan Exceptionalism?
I recently spent nearly two weeks in North Africa, arriving just before popular demonstrations drove Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power and leaving just after the protesters occupi...
Op-eds
Somalia in Need of New Approach Two Decades after State Collapse
Last week marked the twentieth anniversary of the night when Mohamed Siyad Barre, president of the last entity that could plausibly be described as the government of Somalia, fled Mogadishu in hi...
Op-eds
Côte d’Ivoire Crisis: Some Lessons to Be Learned
In my review last week of Africa's likely top flash points for 2011, I expressed my concern that The year that was supposed to be Côte d'Ivoire's "ann...
Op-eds
Abyei: The Abscess Threatening the Sudan
If all goes as planned, exactly one month from today, on January 9, 2011, voters in the ten states of southern Sudan as well as southerners living in the northern part of the country and abroad w...
Op-eds
Behind Iran’s Foiled Gambian Gambit
His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya Abdul-Azziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh, President of the Republic of The Gambia, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Chief Custodian of the Sacre...
Op-eds
Somalia’s New Prime Minister: Not Quite What the Doctor Ordered
Just when it seems things can get no worse for Somalia's dubiously legitimate, utterly ineffective, and wholly self-serving "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG), the embattled clique pull...
Op-eds
A Subtle, But Significant, Shift in U.S. Somali Policy Opens the Door to Realism
Last Friday, speaking in New York to reporters one day after attending a major meeting on Somalia chaired by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the margins of the 65th session the Un...
Op-eds
When Crime Does Pay
In my annual survey of African "hot spots" back in January, I noted that "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) seems to be stirring again as well as getting more involved in illicit trafficking...
Op-eds
Nigeria at the Crossroads, Again
Focused on the final stretch of the midterm elections at home, policymakers and pundits in the United States have hardly evinced any interest in concerning themselves with electoral politics abro...
Op-eds
Ballots and Bullets: The Tale of the Two Somalias
Last week, Somalis marked the fiftieth anniversary of their achievement of independence from colonial rule. The contrasting manner in which two parts of the onetime Somali Democratic Republic obs...
Op-eds
Turkey’s Return to Africa
In the end, neither the superabundant expressions of support voiced by donor nations for the ramshackle “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG) of Somalia nor that regime’s corr...
Op-eds
Kid Kabila and Congo’s Joyless Jubilee
Last week, the United Nations Security Council rescheduled for mid-May a planned fact-finding mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Officially, the trip was cancelled because of the...
Op-eds
Sudan’s Elections and the Country’s Endgame
With opposition parties likely to boycott critical parts of the Sudanese elections scheduled to begin on Sunday, not only are the polls unlikely to deliver anything close to the “democratic...
Op-eds
Shi’a in Senegal: Iran’s Growing Reach into Africa
As the Iranian regime celebrated its 31st birthday last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first ordered and then boasted that the nuclear plant at Natanz had successfully enriched uranium to 19...
Op-eds
Return of the Somali Pirates
By Dr. Peter Pham After maintaining a relatively low profile since the end of the monsoon season two months ago, Somali pirates literally shot their way back into the headlines...