In-Depth Archive

VARANASI, India—On a recent morning, Hindu pilgrims in white robes scurried through the dusty stone alleyways of this city on the Ganges River. They moved back-and-forth between various temples and the ghats, or piers, on the riverbank, and occasionally one or more of them would wade into the sacred waters, which are said to cleanse the soul. As the sunlight faded, a traditional folk band featuring tabla drums and a harmonium struck up a song as students and families sat on the steps to take in the early evening breeze. It was, in many ways, a fairly ordinary scene for […]

KASSERINE, Tunisia—The blast that claimed the life of Cherifa Hilali was likely meant for a soldier, not a civilian. One day in May 2016, Hilali, 40, was out picking rosemary on Mount Semmama, an area near the border with Algeria where Islamist extremists routinely battle Tunisian security forces, when a land mine detonated. The explosion killed her and another woman and left a third woman injured. “They were walking through a trail normally used by the military,” Hilali’s husband, Makki Hilali, told me when I met him in February. Rising up from fields of olive trees and cacti, Mount Semmama […]

CUCUTA, Colombia—Blood seeped from Juan Carlos Parra’s head as he slumped in a white plastic chair just a few steps from the border with Venezuela. His floral button-down shirt, which he had removed as he fought with a member of the Venezuelan National Guard, sat rumpled in his lap, soaked a deep red. Moments earlier, Carlos, 24, had been struck with a projectile launched by Venezuelan forces on the other side of the border. Two medics from the Colombian Civil Defense dressed in orange helmets and jumpsuits gathered around him and tried to stitch up the wound. Around them, chaos […]

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—Since protests swept 42-year-old Abiy Ahmed into power as Ethiopia’s prime minister a year ago, the country has undertaken a dramatic series of changes. Abiy has ended Ethiopia’s two-decade conflict with its neighbor Eritrea, introduced ambitious reforms designed to lessen repression, and vowed to organize Ethiopia’s first free and fair elections. Taken together, these developments from Africa’s youngest head of state amount to an attempted revolution from within Ethiopia’s long-ruling coalition. As Ethiopia remakes itself at home under Abiy, it is also forging a new set of ties with wealthy Middle Eastern nations across the Red Sea, breaking […]

The recent opening of new checkpoints between northern and southern Cyprus represented a rare piece of good news in the long, frustrating push for Cyprus reunification. Yet while the status quo can sometimes seem immutable, the incentives to keep trying for a resolution are only growing more powerful. FAMAGUSTA, Cyprus—On a Monday morning last November, cars began queuing at checkpoints marking the buffer zone between the north and south of this long-divided island. For the first time in eight years, the authorities had agreed to create two new crossings—at the village of Dherynia, in the east, and in Lefke, a […]