Niger Delta

July 12, 2012 | Emanuele Ottolenghi The Jewish Chronicle |

UN Places Iran on Arms-Control Panel

As things go in the arms trade, there are not many countries in the world that misbehave more than Iran. The country is under a UN-imposed arms embargo — it cannot buy and it should not sel...

November 30, 2011 | Emanuele Ottolenghi |

The Big Business Behind Iran’s Proliferation

In preparing to expand sanctions on Iran this week, the governments of the European Union face a critical choice. They can carry on with their current strategy of relying chiefly on pinpoint desi...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

Criminal Networks in West Africa: An Emerging Security Challenge

On April 30, Sidi Ould Sidna, a.k.a. Abou Jendel, an al-Qaeda-linked militant who was escaped earlier in the month from the courthouse in Nouakchott, Mauritania, where he was being tried for the...

September 16, 2010 | World Defense Review

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...

November 3, 2009 | World Defense review

Climate Change and Security in Africa

By Dr. J. Peter Pham For much of Africa's post-independence history, "African unity" was more an aspiration than a reality. Consequently, even when, as I...

July 10, 2008 | World Defense Review

Global Ripples from the Niger Delta

  On June 19, militants affiliated with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) launched their most audacious attack to date on the West African country's p...

March 6, 2008 |

Why AFRICOM is Critical for Our Security Interests


This week I thought it useful to update readers on developments with some of the stories that have been previously reported in this column.

July 4, 2007 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

Cabinda: The “Forgotten Conflict” America Can’t Afford to Forget

Because of the sense of urgency repeatedly communicated by this column as well as the parallel efforts of other "Africa hands," the precarious situation of Nigeria – which I have described...

July 4, 2007 |

The Moral Hazard of Kosovo’s Independence

Last week's summit between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin resulted in no "grand bargain" that could pave the way for the birth of an independent Kosovo. The mo...

June 13, 2007 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

Nigeria: Flailing State

On the final day of their summit last week at the German Baltic seaside resort of Heiligendamm, as they are nowadays wont to do, the leaders of the G8 received a select delegation of their Africa...

May 16, 2007 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

Vulnerability of Nigerian Oil Infrastructure Threatens U.S. Interests

Last Friday, oil prices climbed toward $67.00 a barrel as supply disruptions in Nigeria compounded concerns about insufficient gasoline inventory levels in the United States; which have been decl...

May 2, 2007 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

Nigeria Teeters Back from the Brink — For Now

Two weeks ago in this column space I observed that free, fair, and credible elections in Nigeria "would lead to the inauguration of a legitimate political order;[which] would not only consolidate...

April 25, 2007 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

New Fronts Call for New Capacities

As a longtime advocate for the creation of a unified regional combatant command for Africa; an idea for which, in a column published in this very space last year, I argued "the time is now"; I wa...

April 23, 2007 |

Nigeria: Crisis of Legitimacy

Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Monday that Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, the candidate of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), the winner in last...

April 18, 2007 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

Decision Time in Nigeria

Over the course of the last year, this column has regularly chronicled developments in Nigeria; including Islamist activism in the north, evidence of growing connections to international terroris...

March 1, 2007 |

The Battle for Nigeria

WITH AROUND 36 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves-the largest in Africa and the eighth largest in the world-Nigeria is America's fifth-largest supplier of oil. In 2006, the United...

January 31, 2007 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

The Return of the “Nigerian Taliban”

While the attention of most Africa security analysts and policymakers has been focused recently on the campaign to root out the militant Islamists of Somalia's Islamic Courts Union, evidence...

December 22, 2006 |

Nigeria’s Electoral Intrigue

It barely registers on inside-the-Beltway policy discussions, but few countries are as vital to the strategic interests of the United States as Nigeria. With some 35.9 billion barrels of proven p...

December 21, 2006 | World Defense Review

The Next Sudanese Conflict

Almost all of the attention which policymakers in the West have given to Sudan over the course of the last year has been rightly focused on what even the United Nations describes as "the world&#0...

December 7, 2006 | World Defense Review

The Time Is Now for a U.S. Africa Command

The last major overhaul of the United States military – the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (PL 99-433) – created nine unified combatant commands &n...