Briefing Archive

Is the long-predicted decline of Political Islam about to occur? Several French scholars, such as Gilles Keppel and Olivier Roy, have been making this argument since the early 1990s. The only trouble was a subsequent string of Islamist electoral victories that seemed to undermine their thesis. But in light of Islamist losses in recent elections in Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Bahrain, talk of the decline of Political Islam is reemerging. Influential Washington Post journalist David Ignatius recently wrote of a region-wide, anti-Islamist backlash whose central theme, according to a specialist he cited from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace […]

The ceremony last Feb. 12 at the commercial seaport in Mombasa, Kenya, was a surprising one. When the Ukrainian-owned merchant ship Faina sailed into port, five months after its capture by Somali pirates and a week after its release, the Kenyan government rolled out the red carpet. Civilian officials and military officers lined the pier, and armed guards patrolled, as Faina’s weary seafarers debarked. There were speeches and reluctant testimonies by Faina’s senior crew before the strange gathering came to a halting end. Hundreds of vessels had been seized by Somali pirates over the previous decade, and their releases had […]

WARDAK, Afghanistan — The new Afghanistan strategy is supposed to be all about winning hearts and minds. But this small combat outpost high in the Hindu Kush mountains seems to be mostly about fighting. The outpost, manned by Delta Rifle Company* of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, has been mortared or rocketed seven times in the last two days. They also got involved in a major firefight between the Taliban, Afghan security forces and private security contractors protecting the supply trucks heading up the main road towards Kabul. To be fair, overall violence levels in Wardak province have dropped […]

Critics of the Group of Eight (G-8) tend to focus on economic issues in challenging the format’s continued relevance. Citing the decreasing share of the economic resources and clout at the group’s disposal, commentators often advocate replacing it with a G-14, a G-20, or some other, more inclusive body. Such a focus, however, neglects another important aspect of the work conducted by the G-8: Since the 1980s, the group’s annual meetings have given rise to important international security initiatives, which have been sustained and further developed over time. The G-8 structure has also proven sufficiently flexible to incorporate additional partners […]

MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its conclusions last week, and though debate continues on a number of issues, the findings already produced some surprises. In particular, the inclusion of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on the list of those recommended to be barred from Liberian politics for the next 30 years turned the most heads, both here and abroad. Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state, is the darling of the international development community. Many see her as a rare ray of hope in a country, and region, where violence and corruption have for too […]

PALERMO, Italy — It’s a balmy morning in the Sicilian capital, and a dozen African men are lounging in the shade at the Missione di Speranza e Carita, a Church-run shelter that’s home to more than 500 immigrants. Though they are all recent arrivals to Italy, only some of the men have proper documents. They are waiting to speak with Brother Dario, a Catholic Friar and mission administrator, for help in finding employment. In addition to meals and a bed, the shelter provides vocational training to as many of its residents as it can handle. These days, however, accommodating new […]

WARDAK, Afghanistan — The most surprising thing, initially, is how difficult and time-consuming even the most basic tasks are — like getting around between coalition camps, for instance. I had left Forward Operating Base Airborne — where I am based with U.S. Army units from the 10th Mountain Division and a French army training team — for a short trip to a nearby combat outpost, only a few miles away. The objective had been to take water, food, and building materials to the new outpost. The trip, which had promised to be relatively easy and painless, ended up consuming the […]

The news from Latin America has been mostly bad of late, with drug-fueled violence, radical populism, and, more recently, the coup in Honduras grabbing the headlines. Amid this turmoil, however, Latin America has also experienced a quieter and far more positive trend. In countries like Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile, the region has seen the emergence of governments that are ideologically moderate, economically and socially responsible, and keen for mutually beneficial cooperation with Washington. There has been much talk recently about a “lurch to the left” in Latin America. These governments, by contrast, represent the rise of the center. […]

For those in the West eager to uncover another Tiananmen-like crackdown by Chinese authorities last week in the Xinjiang provincial capital of Urumqi, the true story disappoints, even as it points to a potentially far-more-destabilizing social phenomenon: the emergence of race riots inside allegedly homogenous China. Note that President Hu Jintao’s embarrassingly rushed departure from the G-8 meeting in Italy was not provoked by Sunday’s riots by angry Uighurs, but rather by Tuesday’s even uglier revenge riots by even angrier — and better-armed — Han Chinese. The makings of this unrest should strike us Americans as painfully familiar. The influx […]

When I taught American foreign policy, I always began my lectures on Vietnam by showing the class Lesson No. 9 from “The Fog of War,” Errol Morris’ penetrating documentary about former Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara. The lesson? In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil. Undoubtedly, that contradictory logic has justified some of the United States’ most ferocious acts abroad. The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the bombing of North Vietnam, are two extreme examples. Immediately after the clip ended, I would survey the 40-odd college students’ faces looking up at me […]

Sources inside Iran say that the opposition movement that returned to the streets yesterday is no longer driven by electoral loyalties, but by a rejection of the “election coup” that concentrated power in a small and radical faction of the Iranian political elite. While the causes of popular discontent are relatively easy to trace, explaining the struggle within the establishment is less straightforward. Two interpretations have emerged as the dominant narratives. The first focuses on the tug-of-war between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the chairman of the Expediency Council and Assembly of Experts. Both men are historical […]

WASHINGTON — For more than a week, the State Department has stopped short of defining the military ouster of Honduras President Manuel Zelaya as a “coup.” The reluctance is fueling a political and legal debate over the definition of “coup,” and whether the de facto Honduran government is legal. It has also fueled lingering suspicions that the U.S. might have been involved in the coup, given its longstanding ties to the Honduran military and the increasing criticism Zelaya has leveled at the United States in recent years. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has gone as far as to accuse the “Yankee […]

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has won another five-year term in office, signaling voters’ rejection of opposition campaigns that promised tough government and promoted nationalism and big business interests. A craving for stability and success in holding regional terrorist threats at bay, coupled with a comparatively sound economy, was behind the victory. The election, widely viewed as free and fair, was also considered a major step forward for the democratic process in the world’s largest Muslim country. “My first step will be recovering the economy,” the 59-year-old president told reporters. Pre-electoral polls had forecast that Yudhoyono, or SBY as he […]

Vice President Joe Biden lived up to his “talks before he thinks” reputation once again, when he told an interviewer that the United States would not stop Israel if it decided to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. “Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else,” Biden said on a weekend talk show. Political analysts decided this was another Bidenism, which President Barack Obama would soon have to correct. Sure enough, a couple of days later the president, during his visit to Moscow, […]

The ethnic rioting that has rocked China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang over the past few days has badly poisoned the already tense relations between the region’s Uighurs — Muslims who make up a plurality of Xinjiang’s residents — and the Han Chinese. It could also complicate China’s increasingly important ties with its neighbors in ex-Soviet Central Asia. The Chinese presence in Central Asia has grown in recent years, especially in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Trade between China and Kyrgyzstan — much of it exports of cheap Chinese manufactured goods — tripled between 2004 and 2006 (the last year for which […]

NEW DELHI — While India’s immediate military aim is to build a potent strike force against Pakistan, it also harbors long-term plans to field a credible deterrent against China. This reflects the fact that although military efforts to counter Pakistan, such as the strengthened deployment along India’s western frontiers, are usually given precedence, the perceived threat from China remains very much on the radar. A case in point is India’s recent decision to buttress its military presence in the Northeast frontiers by basing its latest “air dominance” Russian Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters there. The move is meant to check China’s buildup […]

It was a question worth killing over, in the minds of some Somali Islamic extremists. In May, Ahmed Omar Hashi, a reporter for Mogadishu’s Radio Shabelle asked Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki to explain his country’s support for al-Shabab, the hardline Somali Islamic group. Afwerki explained that Eritrea only wanted to enable “Somali nationalists” in their efforts at “ensuring Somali unity, sovereignty and independence.” Just days prior to the interview, which took place in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, al-Shabab had launched a major assault on the Western-backed Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu. The attack came as moderate Islamist Sharif Sheikh […]