Insurgencies Archive

In 1821, Gen. Francisco de Paula Santander told a congress full of statesmen, “Guns will give you your independence, but laws will help you keep it.” Santander was addressing representatives of Gran Colombia, the political state that once covered most of northern South America, including what is today Colombia and Venezuela. Ten years later, Gran Colombia split up, and Colombia and Venezuela set off on separate paths. But both countries disregarded Santander’s statement, as their histories have been marked by a string of armed conflicts that eroded laws and justice. Still, after decades spent fighting militias and rebel movements while […]

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—Lirfa Dashe, a lieutenant in the Nigerian army, was due to get married this month. Instead he is buried in the cemetery of Mai Malari barracks, alongside other soldiers killed in the seemingly endless conflict against the jihadist insurgency of Boko Haram. At the entrance to the cemetery, located in this city in northeastern Nigeria, is a cenotaph with the names of the fallen inscribed on plaques. There are 1,307 names etched so far, stretching back to 2013. Mai Malari, the home of the army’s Seventh Division, is just one of several sites where soldiers killed in the northeastern […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Criticism of Saudi Arabia is easy to come by these days. As the kingdom has struggled to get its story straight on the killing earlier this month of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Riyadh has encountered a chorus of condemnation from Berlin, Brussels, London, Ottawa and many voices in Washington. Even U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to turn on his Saudi allies this week, referring to their shifting statements on the murder as “the worst cover-up ever.” From Africa, however, the […]

In one fell swoop last Thursday, a gunman eliminated two of the most powerful officials in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province and critically injured a third. The Taliban quickly claimed credit for the attack, which killed Gen. Abdul Raziq, who held the title of provincial police commander but was in reality a prominent 39-year-old warlord in an official uniform. In the past decade, the Taliban’s insurgency has grown to cover all corners of the country, swarming the non-Pashtun northern crescent and pushing to reclaim southern Afghanistan. The Taliban has made gains in Helmand and Uruzgan provinces, with advances more recently into neighboring […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. A year ago, when Joao Lourenco took over as Angola’s president, tensions between his country and the Democratic Republic of Congo were already unusually high. In a Q&A with WPR at the time, Alex Vines, head of the Africa program at Chatham House, described how Luanda’s patience with Congolese President Joseph Kabila had been exhausted by Kabila’s handling of Congo’s political crisis. The situation has changed somewhat since then. Today, Congo is much closer to holding long-awaited elections—they are […]

Violence erupted outside the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa last month, leaving at least 23 dead as ethnic Oromo nationalists targeted members of minority groups. The perpetrators were reportedly emboldened by the return of the previously exiled Oromo Liberation Front, after it was granted amnesty by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The clashes are a setback to Abiy’s new administration, as he charts a conciliatory path in the ethnically divided country. In an interview with WPR, Terrence Lyons, a professor of conflict resolution at George Mason University, discusses last month’s violence and the prospects for Abiy’s reform efforts. World Politics Review: […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss rising tensions and the risk of conflict between the U.S. and China. For the Report, Emmanuel Freudenthal talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about why the situation in Cameroon’s Anglophone region is a greater threat to President Paul Biya’s grip on power than the country’s presidential election this Sunday. 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 […]

A little more than a year after the launch of its new South Asia strategy, the Trump administration—without officially announcing a change in approach—appears to have refocused much of its efforts in Afghanistan around a long-elusive peace process. Gen. John Nicholson, the departing top military commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, backed up the Afghan government’s extended cease-fire with the Taliban during the Eid al-Fitr holiday in June, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently appointed former Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad as a new special envoy tasked with leading reconciliation efforts. But despite that summer cease-fire and some preliminary […]

On Sept. 26, in a tense, crowded courtroom in Guatemala City, a three-judge panel ruled unanimously that genocide and crimes against humanity occurred in the Maya-Ixil region of northern Guatemala in 1982 and 1983, at the height of the country’s civil war. But in a split 2-1 vote, the court determined that the defendant, retired Gen. Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, did not bear criminal responsibility for the crimes and acquitted him on all charges. Ixil witnesses who testified during the trial described the court’s ruling as “bittersweet” and vowed to continue their fight for justice. This was the second acquittal […]

Cameroonian President Paul Biya is expected to coast to re-election on Oct. 7. But two ongoing conflicts have undermined what he has long pitched as his greatest strength: his ability to maintain peace in an otherwise unstable region. The coming years could be among the most challenging of his decades-long reign. In the grainy cellphone footage, Cameroonian soldiers march two women down a sandy road. One of the women wears a pink t-shirt, large silver earrings and a bright blue headwrap. Her head upright, she carries a baby on her back. The other woman has an outfit of green patterned […]

Last month, Turkey and Russia, largely on opposites sides of the Syrian civil war, struck an 11th-hour deal to prevent a military assault by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces on the last remaining rebel stronghold of Idlib in northwestern Syria. While the agreement, which was reached in the Russian Black Sea resort town of Sochi, won’t end the Syrian conflict, it buys some time to attempt to find a sustainable resolution in Idlib, where there are some 30,000 rebel fighters, perhaps a third of them al-Qaida-linked extremists. But if all things fail, Russian President Vladimir Putin has crafted the agreement in […]