North Africa Archive

It may take years to unravel the tangled web surrounding “Project Opus,” the bungled 2019 mercenary operation to prop up Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar, which allegedly included efforts to deploy a special hit squad to Libya. Few observers tracking the burgeoning global market for privatized armies, however, were likely surprised by reports last week that U.N. investigators suspect the involvement of former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince. The recently leaked U.N. report makes only glancing mention of Prince’s alleged ties to the operation, but it marks the second time since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that Prince’s company, Hong Kong-based Frontier […]

As Tunisia marked the 10th anniversary of the removal of dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14, people poured into the streets, defying a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. While every January brings some form of popular protest around the revolution’s anniversary, things are different this year. Last month’s milestone serves as a grim reminder of what democracy has not brought: jobs, social justice and an end to endemic corruption. And this year, the country is in the midst of twin crises: an economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic and a deep political divide due to increasing polarization. Tunisians, often […]

GRANADA, Spain—In the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco, the coronavirus pandemic isn’t the only crisis that 2020 will be known for. Over the course of the year, more than 23,000 migrants arrived in the Spanish archipelago by boat from Africa—8,000 of them in November alone—while some 500 died attempting the journey. The images of thousands of migrants stranded on beaches with no place to go evoked inevitable comparisons to another crisis, in 2006, when a total of 34,000 people landed on the archipelago in small wooden boats known as cayucos. African migrants are being pushed toward this dangerous […]