Briefing Archive

The so-called Islamic State received some modest good news recently from Somalia, in what has otherwise been a dismal stretch of losses for the jihadi group. In October, a small militant faction aligned with the Islamic State took and held Qandala, a port town in northern Somalia, for more than a month before withdrawing. It was the first time a group linked to the Islamic State has occupied a town in Somalia. Talk of the Islamic State dominated much of the debate on counterterrorism issues during the U.S. presidential campaign. Yet as concerning as the Islamic State’s Qandala operation is, […]

In early November, barely a month after the ruling Georgian Dream party’s commanding victory in parliamentary elections, Georgia’s defense minister, Levan Izoria, outlined an ambitious defense reform program that captured immediate headlines for reintroducing conscription. The former defense minister, Tina Khidasheli, had officially abolished conscription in late June, just a few months before the elections and only weeks before she officially departed her post. Although Khidasheli’s political coalition allies attacked her for dissolving the draft, conscription is widely seen as unpopular in Georgia, which likely explains why Izoria waited until after the elections to reintroduce it. Obscured by the focus […]

On Jan. 7, opposition leader Nana Akufo-Addo took office as the president of Ghana, a month after defeating incumbent President John Mahama in a smooth presidential election that again boosted Ghana’s democratic reputation. December’s vote represented an exception at a time of electoral and political turmoil in other parts of Africa, most recently in nearby Gambia. Akufo-Addo’s successful campaign had many features, but the most notable was his populist message. It now remains to be seen whether “the farmer who struggles to feed his family,” “the mother of the sick child,” and those “who . . . are forced to […]

The harrowing image last month of a Turkish police officer standing over the Russian ambassador he just shot, while blaming Moscow for the devastation in Syria, captures a key foreign policy challenge for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump: How can he attempt to stabilize the Middle East by bringing conflicts to a close, rather than letting Russia and Iran lead the region into further cycles of repression and violence under the rubric of fighting terrorism? Trump’s current defense priority—“to crush and destroy” the so-called Islamic State—plays right into Russian and Iranian machinations, with their selective definitions of terrorism and scorched-earth tactics. […]

The governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in Central America’s so-called Northern Triangle have been under considerable domestic and international pressure to address rampant corruption since high-ranking officials were exposed in 2015. How did they fare in 2016? Guatemala’s track record has been the best, thanks in large part to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG, which was created in 2006 by a joint agreement between the Guatemalan government and the United Nations. It has not only investigated and prosecuted sensitive cases, including the high-profile and bizarre killing of Rodrigo Rosenberg, who had arranged for his […]

STOCKHOLM, Sweden—For decades, Swedes have taken pride in providing a safe haven to the world’s huddled masses. Their country took in 163,000 refugees in 2015 alone. That equaled about 1.6 percent of Sweden’s population, an intake of refugees far higher than most of Europe, both in absolute terms and per capita. But times have changed. Unlike new arrivals who were often previously awarded permanent residency, the vast majority of asylum-seekers who have arrived since November 2015 are only eligible for a temporary permit to stay in Sweden. The government stated at the time of this policy shift that it aimed […]

The fall of rebel-held eastern Aleppo in Syria last month was a stunning personal blow for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government had openly backed Syrian rebel groups after the civil war began in 2011. Losing the rebels’ self-styled “capital of the revolution” to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies is an insurmountable setback for years of Turkish regime-change efforts in Syria. But there is a silver lining for Turkey. After Aleppo, Ankara can focus all its diplomatic, military and political efforts on pursuing its more immediate national security interests in northern Syria: fighting the so-called Islamic State […]