Briefing Archive

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—Not long before the New Year, I paid a visit to an Islamic teacher, known as a marabout, who lives in an unfinished house here on the outskirts of Burkina Faso’s capital. I had first spoken with him earlier in 2020, after he was displaced from his home near the northern city of Djibo, in Soum province, near the border with Mali—a part of the country that has become a major frontline in the campaign against violent jihadist organizations. The marabout belongs to the Fulani ethnic group, often the target of persecution despite being one of the largest […]

In early December, amid rising tensions between Australia and China, Prime Minister Scott Morrison posted a statement on the Chinese social media platform WeChat to voice his outrage at an incendiary tweet from a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson. Within a day, WeChat, which routinely polices sensitive content on its platform, had blocked Morrison’s post, ostensibly for violating the company’s policies. It was not the only instance of a foreign official being censored on a Chinese social media platform. The most prominent offenders are WeChat—the largest social media site in China, with over 1 billion active users—and Weibo, a microblogging platform […]

BANGUI, Central African Republic—On the evening of Dec. 27, poll workers here in the capital of the Central African Republic were busy tabulating votes from presidential and legislative elections that were held that day. Many worked in dark classrooms without electricity, using their cellphone lights to check ballots. Then, an explosion rang out, forcing them to briefly stop their work. Was it artillery fire? A grenade? In a city traumatized by seven years of violent conflict, and more recently by a surging rebel coalition threatening to advance on Bangui, many residents were not immediately sure what to expect. The cause […]

If the events in Washington, D.C., yesterday demonstrate one thing, it is this: Words have power. Donald Trump used them to incite a mob, and that mob then attacked the U.S. Capitol building to disrupt the congressional certification of the presidential election results taking place there. That incitement by Trump—and the speakers who preceded and followed him at a rally of his supporters earlier yesterday—was not even veiled. It followed months now of similar incitement, a concerted campaign of lies and fabulations that sought to replace the reality of Trump’s defeat with feverish fantasies of stolen victory. As those fantasies […]

After a long delay, Cambodia finally began producing oil from its offshore fields in the Gulf of Thailand last week. The Cambodian government’s partner in the oil venture, Singapore-based KrisEnergy Ltd., plans to ramp up production at new wells, with peak extraction expected to hit around 7,500 barrels per day by mid-February. Cambodia has known about its offshore deposits for more than a decade, and major oil firms like Chevron had previously invested in exploration efforts off the country’s coast. But some investors were scared off by low global oil prices, and the Cambodian government initially had trouble securing a […]

As COVID-19 spread around the world last spring, El Salvador joined the dozens of countries that were appealing for urgent humanitarian assistance. Hundreds of millions of dollars rapidly flowed into El Salvador’s coffers from bilateral donors, private lenders and international financial institutions, including a $389 million loan from the International Monetary Fund that was approved in April. Flush with borrowed money and facing an unprecedented public health and economic crisis, the Salvadoran legislature approved a $2 billion emergency fund to combat the pandemic—equivalent to nearly 8 percent of the country’s GDP. But the sudden inflow of cash has also created […]

As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office later this month, many U.S. allies and partners are eyeing an opportunity for better relations with Washington. But Turkey, under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will face an uphill battle to settle its ongoing disputes with the United States, not to mention its other NATO allies. There are three major impediments to a reset in Turkey’s ties with the West. First, the U.S. remains at loggerheads with Turkey over Erdogan’s decision to purchase an advanced missile defense system from Russia. Second, the European Union is considering tough sanctions against Ankara […]

VIENNA—As the clock ticks down to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration this month, hopes are high that he will rejoin and preserve key arms control agreements that were abandoned or neglected by the outgoing president, Donald Trump. If Biden can successfully reverse course, it will go a long way to restoring America’s credibility, given that Trump has “bankrupted the United States’ word in the world,” as Biden put it in Foreign Affairs last March. “On nonproliferation and nuclear security, the United States cannot be a credible voice while it is abandoning the deals it negotiated,” he wrote. But how straightforward […]

The U.S.S. Nimitz was leaving the Middle East, until it wasn’t. The Pentagon’s abrupt reversal of its move late last week to send the aircraft carrier home is the latest sign of an ominous standoff with Iran in the last, chaotic days of Donald Trump’s presidency. A year ago, Trump ordered the brazen drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iran’s top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Fears that it would start a full-fledged war dissipated after Iran made a calculated show of retaliation, firing a barrage of ballistic missiles at bases in Iraq housing U.S. troops. There were no […]