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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
By Dr. J. Peter Pham After a weekend marked by leaks to the Washi...
By Dr. J. Last Friday, the United States government gave the go-ahead to a long-delayed arms sale to Taiwan. The $6.5 billion defense package announced by the Defense Security Cooperatio...
Analyzing the veritable "surge" last summer in attacks launched by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), I suggested in this column space that both the rhetoric of the group and the threat it a...
By mid-2007, when the fighting in Somalia was routinely described as an "Iraq-style insurgency," victory seemed likely for the extremist Islamic Courts Union. But rifts within the insurgency that were simmering last year may now have reached a boiling point, providing a strategic opportunity for Somalia's transitional federal government (TFG) and its Ethiopian allies.
As the contributors to The National Interest symposium in the current issue note, there is an emergent consensus among foreign policy analysts of all political persuasions that “going it alone” interventionism is no longer a viable option for the United States, if it ever was before. Two general solutions are now frequently bandied about in Washington policy circles and both are flawed. The first is the creation, advocated Ivo Daalder, Robert Kagan, G. John Ikenberry and others of a “concert of democracies” to “legitimately” bypass gridlock in the United Nations Security Council. The second is the opening à la Baker-Hamilton of diplomatic dialogue with the rulers of regional spoilers like Iran and Syria. Both address some of the weaknesses with the current modus operandi, but they fail to grapple with the fundamental defect of the contemporary international system: its dogmatic adherence to a post-Westphalia formal equality of states and consequent lack of a forum reflecting the realities of global power.
All eyes are on China and its growing involvement in Africa, but India’s expanding relations with African countries have gone largely unnoticed. China’s intentions create anxiety; Ind...
As this column has chronicled over the past year and a half, United States policy toward the remnants of the former state of Somalia has evolved into a sort of dramatic farce played out in the fo...
In my testimony last week before the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the United States House of Representatives, I noted that the creation of the n...
Last week the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1769, which authorizes a force of up to 26,000 peacekeepers to restore security to the Darfur region of Sudan where fou...
Early last month, President George W. Bush named Army General William E. "Kip" Ward to be the first commander of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM). If confirmed by the Senate – hea...