Insurgencies Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. It was a turbulent home stretch for Mali’s presidential campaign, which formally ended Friday. Though voting was still two days away, the credibility of the results had already been called into question. That’s because some members of the opposition spent the past week taking issue with the voters’ roll, reportedly raising objections after the election commission published an online version that differed from the version that had been vetted by international monitors. Officials from the election commission attributed the […]

When Cameroon’s 85-year-old president, Paul Biya, announced on Twitter earlier this month that he would be running for a seventh consecutive term in October, it was a chance for the world to marvel anew at his remarkable longevity. Biya came to power 36 years ago, taking over for Ahmadou Ahidjo, Cameroon’s first president. Though the transfer was amicable, the two men were soon engaged in a power struggle that forced Ahidjo into exile. He would later be sentenced in absentia to life in prison for allegedly plotting against Biya, and he never returned, dying in Senegal in 1989. The Ahidjo […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, discuss the Helsinki summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and its fallout. For the Report, Raphael Tsavkko Garcia talks with Robbie about the dream of an independent Basque state in northern Spain after the formal disbanding of the violent Basque separatist group ETA earlier this year. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Not for the first time, those hoping that a public appearance by Congolese President Joseph Kabila would shed light on his political future were left disappointed this week. On Thursday, Kabila delivered his state-of-the-nation address to lawmakers, vowing to stick to the current timeline of holding long-delayed elections in December. But he did not say whether he would be a presidential candidate, opting instead to keep the country in suspense. “It’s what the Congolese people have come to expect […]

The dissolution of the Basque separatist group, ETA, came as little surprise. It had ceased to pose a security threat, and its legacy of violence had alienated would-be supporters. Enthusiasm for Basque nationalism remains rife, however. As pro-independence voices become more emboldened, Madrid may be hard-pressed to keep them quiet. BILBAO, Spain—In Spain’s northern Basque region, residents often joke that “everything is ETA.” What they mean is that all kinds of seemingly benign behavior—wearing traditional clothing, speaking the Basque language or even sporting tattoos of certain Basque symbols—can expose them to accusations of belonging to the Basque separatist group, whose […]

Last week, Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, split, with several parliamentarians and former allies of President Muhammadu Buhari breaking away to form the Reformed-All Progressives Congress, or R-APC. “The APC has run a rudderless, inept and incompetent government that has failed to deliver good governance to the Nigerian people,” the national chairman of the new rival faction, Buba Galadima, a former Buhari confidant, declared. In a sense, the schism merely formalized tensions within the APC that go back years. On one level, it reflects some northern Nigerian politicians’ impatience with waiting their turn for the presidency and with […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.It’s been a rough few weeks for the G5 Sahel Joint Force, a counterterrorism initiative involving five West African countries that launched its first deployments last November. A series of recent setbacks have exposed indiscipline within the force’s ranks, the severity of the security challenges it faces and a lack of political will to ensure it succeeds. First, the U.N. mission in Mali, where the G5 Sahel is headquartered, reported last week that Malian members of the force “summarily and/or […]

NOUMEA, NEW CALEDONIA—In early May, French President Emmanuel Macron touched down in the tropical archipelago of New Caledonia following a two-day visit to Australia, the islands’ closest major neighbor, some 750 miles west across the South Pacific. Macron was more than 10,000 miles from the Elysee Palace in Paris. Famed for its diving sites along an expansive barrier reef, New Caledonia is a French overseas territory that has enjoyed a special, semi-autonomous status for the past two decades, with certain powers gradually being transferred from France to local officials. Yet Paris retains control over critical governance areas such as foreign […]

In the end, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan easily defeated his electoral challengers last week, winning re-election outright in the first round of voting on June 24. By taking nearly 53 percent of the vote, he even narrowly bested his performance in the 2014 presidential elections, when Erdogan was seeking the newly empowered office of the presidency after more than a decade as Turkey’s prime minister. Perhaps even more impressive, his electoral alliance—made up of his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the hard-right Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP—managed to win a majority in Parliament, defying many predictions as […]