Insurgencies Archive

At some point, the brutal and parasitic Kim family dictatorship in North Korea must end, but it is impossible to tell whether it will happen sooner or later. Many predictions that the regime would fall have proven false, but it simply cannot last forever. Whether by internal conflict or by provoking a war with South Korea and the United States, the Kim regime eventually will go. Stressing that “Korean unification is a Korean affair,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in is convinced that whenever reunification comes, it should be under the leadership of the democratic and economically vigorous south, rather than […]

Earlier this month, the United States suspended security assistance to Pakistan, following through on a threat from President Donald Trump. The move was meant to signify Washington’s frustration with what it describes as Islamabad’s refusal to crack down on sanctuaries used by terrorists that target American soldiers across the border in Afghanistan. Current tensions in U.S.-Pakistan relations—which flow from the aid freeze and from the Trump administration’s new Afghanistan strategy, and which have spawned increasingly angry rhetoric on both sides—all boil down to a fundamental dispute over this sanctuary issue. It’s a dispute unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. That’s […]

Earlier this month, the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s affiliate in Egypt released a 22-minute video showing the execution of a man it identified as a Hamas collaborator. The video, characteristic of the group’s macabre propaganda, put the spotlight on the budding conflict between the Islamic State and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza since 2007. That conflict has its roots in the changing dynamics on the ground between Hamas and Egypt’s government. Despite years of acrimony, Hamas and Egypt have forged an increasingly cooperative relationship in the past year, driven by the desperate situations both sides are facing. […]

It seems that everyone wants to send soldiers to the Sahel these days. Last week, the Italian Parliament approved plans to send nearly 500 troops to fight migrant-traffickers in Niger. British Prime Minister Theresa May offered to send transport helicopters to support French forces fighting terrorists in Mali. While the Italian and British deployments may be limited, they will add to an increasingly complex patchwork of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency operations across the Sahel. Once a geopolitical backwater where France called the shots, the region has become an unwieldy mash-up of crisis-management missions. United Nations peacekeepers patrol Mali, where French troops […]

UVIRA, Democratic Republic of Congo—When the rebels attacked, some of them arrived on motorized wooden boats, toting rocket-propelled grenades. Others streamed down the lush hills that surround this city, perched on the northern shore of Lake Tanganyika, East Africa’s second-largest lake. Civilians fled in their wake. Members of the group, called the National People’s Coalition for the Sovereignty of Congo, had one simple aim, according to Alemasi Musoshi, a 26-year-old rebel who took part in the attack on Uvira last September. “All we ask is for Kabila to leave power,” he says. Congo’s embattled president, Joseph Kabila, has managed, despite […]

For well over a year, information coming out of the Republic of Congo’s southeastern Pool region, though limited, has pointed to a brutal armed conflict with grave humanitarian consequences. In its crackdown on the Ntsiloulou rebel group, also known as the “Ninjas,” the government of President Denis Sassou Nguesso has been accused of carrying out torture, mass evictions, arbitrary arrests and even aerial bombardments against civilians. Grisly violence has also been attributed to the rebels, including attacks on rail lines connecting the region to the rest of the country. The conflict in Pool started immediately after Sassou Nguesso was named […]

Afghanistan has some of the richest mineral deposits in the world, but extracting them has proven difficult amid years of instability and war. There were modest signs of improvement in 2017, most notably the Afghan government’s ability to manage and report its earnings from mining royalties and taxes, which it couldn’t do much at all a few years ago. But challenges remain to attract more meaningful foreign investment and capitalize on the country’s resources. The Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum reported earning approximately $86 million in revenues in 2017, $19 million more than it reported earning in 2016. Yet […]

John Ondawame greatly admired the independence struggle in East Timor, especially its ability to win active support from people in Europe, the United States and Australia. But the exiled former fighter, activist and spokesman for West Papuans also longed for the world to take notice of the plight of his people and to see the shared contours of the two conflicts—two ethnically distinct regions of Indonesia longing to break free. Ondawame did not live to see his dream of West Papua’s independence fulfilled; he died in 2014. But it is more difficult than ever for the Indonesian government to keep […]

HONG KONG—There are few winners from the crisis in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, where thousands of ethnic Rohingyas have lost their lives in an ongoing military crackdown and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced. But one exception is China, whose diplomats have skillfully exploited the turmoil to advance Beijing’s interests. In August, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, an insurgent group claiming to represent Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, attacked a series of security installations, provoking a murderous reaction from the military. Doctors Without Borders reported that at least 6,700 Rohingyas were killed in the first month of violence, while over […]

The protests that have sprung up in cities across Iran over the past week have taken many observers by surprise. It was no secret that the underwhelming and unevenly distributed economic gains from the lifting of international sanctions after the 2015 nuclear deal had led to widespread discontent. But there was no catalyzing event to explain the public demonstrations on display this week, which are rare in Iran. For now, the protests raise more questions than they answer, beginning with what the protesters want and who—if anyone—is organizing and leading them. The first spontaneous demonstrations focused on economic grievances. But […]