U.S. Engagement of Africa in the National Interest
Earlier this year, citing an array of new initiatives including the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and the President's Emergency Plan for...
Darfur
Somalia Still Sinking as Eritrea Entertains Enemies
September has not been a good month in the sometime Somali capital of Mogadishu, even by the relative standards of a failed state that has not had an effective central government in the sixteen y...
Op-eds
The War on Terrorism in Africa: Assessment and Prospects
The end of one year and the beginning of another is a good time both to take stock of where we have been and to look ahead at the paths we are likely to take and the battles which we will have to...
Op-eds
Bad Faith Actor
In the pantheon of United Nations causes, Africa by many measures occupies a preeminent role. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has described “the African challenge” as “the highest...
Op-eds
Be Wise on Kosovo
Over the past few months a number of Western leaders, including senior United States figures, have lent their support to separating the province of Kosovo from the Republic of Serbia, based on th...
Op-eds
Winds of War Blow Along Ethiopia-Eritrea Border
Two months ago in this column space, I warned that "a little-known border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia is rapidly escalating and threatens to not only the peace of the neighborhood,...
Op-eds
Nice Work: The Taxpayer is Being Stung So This Lord Can Live in Admiralty House
Co-Authored by James Forsyth Mark Malloch-Brown, the minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, was the most prestigious recruit to Gordon Brown’s ministry of all the talents....
Op-eds
Jihadi Regime
As Americans debate whhich presidential candidate is best to confront the jihadists or at least preempt their offensives worldwide, the latter almost seized a key African country for the forthcom...
Op-eds
Holy War and Anti War: An Axis against Nature
The oddest of all factional relationships is the open alliance between the Jihadists and the so-called "antiwar" neo-Left movement in the West. The jumble of causes thrown together is mind-bendin...
Op-eds
South Sudan: Simmering Below the Surface
Last Friday, seven Nigerian soldiers were laid to rest with full military honors in Abuja. The seven peacekeepers – along with one comrade each from Botswana, Mali, and Senegal – were...
Op-eds
Symbolism and Realpolitik
Amid the complex dynamics of the Horn of Africa, the most significant national interest at stake for the United States is preventing Al-Qaeda (or any other like-minded international terrori...
Op-eds
Troubled Paradise: The Mixed Success of the African Union’s Intervention in the Comoros
Located at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel off the east coast of the Africa, the Comoros Islands – Ngazidja (Grande Comore), Mwali (Mohéli), Nzwani (Anjouan), and Mahor&ea...
Op-eds
Securing Africa
On February 6, 2007, President George W. Bush launched a major evolution in American military posture when he formally announced that he had directed the Pentagon to establish a new unified...
Op-eds
Khartoum’s Partners in Beijing
Last week, some 200 baton-wielding policemen prevented Mia Farrow and members "Dream for Darfur" group from holding a rally near the site of Cambodia's "killing fields" to urge the People�...
Op-eds
What’s at Stake in Sudan’s Abyei
In this column space three months ago, I warned that the tensions were so heightened that the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the decades of civil war between the Arab-domin...
Op-eds
Achieving the Impossible
President Barack Obama's response to the spread of unrest across the Middle East has been an unpredictable combination of neutrality (Tunisia), reluctant involvement (Egypt), and force...
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
Khartoum’s Denouement
On November 26, the South Sudan Referendum Commission extended by one week the time which southerners, both inside Sudan and abroad, have to register to vote in the self-determination plebiscite,...
Op-eds
Democracy in The Middle East?
Since the end of the Ottoman Empire, through the many conflicts of the 20th century, the Middle East and North Africa have undergone two countervailing trends: the rise of authoritarian regimes a...
Op-eds
Raped Under UN Auspices
Can United Nations peace keeping deliver peace? It sure failed this summer in an eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where armed groups went on a spree of gang rape just 20...