Qatar’s growing footprint in Africa
Qatar has spent the summer of 2025 expanding its financial and political involvement in the African continent. On August 26, Qatari royal Sheikh Mansour bin Jabor bin Jassim al Thani visited Mozambique...
Zambia
US Treasury Department designates Islamic State facilitators across Africa
Yesterday, the US Treasury Department sanctioned three Islamic State facilitators based in Zambia, Uganda, and South Africa. The three have operated as part of a coordinated network that moves money between...
Op-eds
Iran’s Raisi joins long list of political leaders involved in mysterious crashes
It isn't expected that presidents should go missing or be involved in crashes. However, historically, a number of important political and military leaders have met their end in crashes.
Op-eds
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is bringing new risks to Europe
China’s grand vision of the world-changing BRI may have not been realised, but something else is emerging in its wake — a powerful lever to bend authoritarian-leaning countries toward Chinese interests
Op-eds
Tightening the Belt or End of the Road? China’s BRI at 10
Memos
Kleptocrats in democracy’s clothing: Beijing and Moscow talk anti-corruption at the UN
Redefining terms like anti-corruption, human rights, democracy, and integrity — even when self-evidently disingenuous — provides China the cover to mimic the mechanisms of good governance while blunting...
Op-eds
Cash, corruption, crumbling dams — that’s China’s Belt and Road Initiative, 10 years in
As the celebrations for the BRI’s 10th anniversary kick off, attending countries would do well to ask whether their citizens have anything to gain from 'win-win' cooperation with China, Elaine Dezenski writes.
Op-eds
The news from UNGA
Everything you didn’t want to know
Op-eds
Weaponizing technology
How Russia and China manipulate the media and more
Op-eds
Did China help rig the South Korean election?
One of the probable goals of the manipulation, for the CCP at least, is to nurture a political constellation in South Korea that is more likely to eventually move to expel US forces from the peninsula, changing the strategic calculus in the whole Indo-Pacific. This could be a problem for India.
Op-eds
Below the Belt and Road
Corruption and Illicit Dealings in China’s Global Infrastructure
Monographs
Yep: Robert Mugabe, UN Leader for Tourism
Surely even the United Nations would hesitate over celebrating Zimbabwe’s longtime despot, Robert Mugabe, as a “leader” of any kind? That’s why, in my...
Op-eds
Zimbabwe’s Runoff Rip-off
Three months ago, Zimbabweans went to the polls and by a clear majority repudiated the nearly three-decade misrule of the Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in general and t...
Op-eds
Enabling Mugabe to Cling On
Last Friday was the twenty-eighth anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, although the country's long-suffering people of the country might be forgiven for not exactly marking the occas...
Op-eds
Zimbabwe Zigzags Onto Another Rough Patch
The ongoing stand-off in Zimbabwe between incumbent President Robert Mugabe and the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, shows how much the political landscape can shift back and forth in t...
Op-eds
Mr. Bush Goes to Africa
Next week, President Bush, accompanied by his wife, Laura, will embark on a five-country tour across the African continent, with stops planned in Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia. Whil...
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
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
Danger Zone to be Broadcast Internationally and in the US on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio
July 21, 2009 (Washington, D.C.) -- Danger Zone, FDD's popular and respected radio show about terrorism, democracy and international security issues, now in its 5th year, wi...
Press Releases
War and Democracy
For many centuries, it was taken for granted that no modern country could move from dictatorship to democracy without considerable violence. The first wave of democratic revolution–the last...