Somalia's semiautonomous Jubbaland region has become a proxy battleground in a Kenya-Somalia maritime dispute that is rooted in a disagreement over which direction the border between the two countries extends into the Indian Ocean. A 62,000-square-mile triangle of the Indian Ocean is driving a wedge in the Horn of Africa. For years, Kenya and Somalia have been at odds over the pie-shaped slice of the sea, to which each lays a claim and which is believed to contain sizable oil and gas deposits. But tensions between the two have been rising in recent months and are magnifying a standoff between [...]
The Islamic State’s deadly assault on one of the last remaining Sikh temples in Afghanistan this week was a grim reminder of how much more devastation lies ahead as the U.S. drawdown continues. Wednesday’s attack by gunmen affiliated with the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, reportedly killed more than 25 people and wounded scores gathered for services at the temple in Kabul. It appeared to be the latest effort by the Islamic State to leverage existing ethnic and religious enmity in order to gain a bigger foothold in Afghanistan, amid widening [...]
Africa’s Sahel region, the long stretch of scrubland that extends from Mauritania to Sudan, has emerged as a critical global hotspot in recent years, as national governments struggle to contain growing insecurity, rampant criminality and waves of violent extremism. But efforts to stabilize this transcontinental belt just south of the Sahara have largely overlooked one critical driver of tensions: the centuries-old but increasingly violent disputes between nomadic herding and sedentary farming communities. A recent influx of weapons has given these conflicts new and deadly force, with grave implications for international security. The scale of the recent violence stemming from herder-farmer [...]
