Insurgencies Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was forced from power in a military coup Tuesday, upending the political situation in Mali and, with the country at the epicenter of a fight against a growing Islamist insurgency, raising alarms about regional security. The coup unfolded rapidly as mutinying soldiers seized weapons from a garrison outside the capital, Bamako, then descended on the city, capturing Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse. Within hours, Keita appeared on state television to dissolve the government and announce his resignation. […]

The news came unexpectedly last week, sending shockwaves across the country. Colombia’s powerful former president, Alvaro Uribe, was ordered by its Supreme Court to be put under house arrest. Colombians were in disbelief. It’s impossible to overstate the magnitude of Uribe’s role in the country’s politics over the past two decades. To some, he is a hero who saved the nation; to others, a murderous villain who trampled human rights. But everyone agrees, Uribe was and still is an outsized political force in Colombia. He seemed untouchable. Now, his detention creates two major tests for Colombia and its institutions. First, […]

Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is testing and revealing the limits of state authority. Simultaneously elevated and enfeebled, the nation-state has been the principal organizing unit behind the global crisis response. But often, it has lacked the legitimacy and authority it needs to manage the pandemic in the territories it purports to govern. In disputed territories and conflict zones, on remote isles in archipelagos, in favelas and urban settlements, citizens may look to the state for protection. But there at the margins, where the world’s most vulnerable populations often live, communities are instead enduring the pandemic without help from, […]