1

Few nations have seen their dreams and hopes dashed as quickly and ruthlessly as South Sudan. A mere two years after thousands thronged the streets of the capital, Juba, to celebrate independence from Sudan’s autocratic rule, the country descended into a brutal civil war. The fallout between President Salva Kiir and Vice President-turned-rebel Riek Machar, and the subsequent fighting, exerted a terrible toll. Between 2013 and 2018, up to 400,000 people were killed and 4 million—a third of the country’s population—displaced, amid numerous reports of ethnic-based atrocities like rape and massacres. The world’s youngest country is now approaching its 10-year […]

Juan Guaido, center, with other opposition party members at a press conference in Caracas, Venezuela, Dec. 7, 2020 (AP photo by Ariana Cubillos).

The emergence of a dynamic young leader galvanized the Venezuelan opposition two years ago. Juan Guaido united disparate opposition parties and won recognition as the country’s legitimate president from Donald Trump’s administration and dozens of other governments. His colleagues and the U.S. officials who backed him insisted that a campaign of “maximum pressure”—entailing biting sanctions, international isolation and even veiled threats of military action—would force an end to President Nicolas Maduro’s “usurpation” of power and restore democracy to Venezuela. That was a miscalculation. Maduro, who cleaned up in elections last December that the opposition called a sham, looks more entrenched […]

A Houthi supporter holds up his rifle during a demonstration against the United States over its decision to designate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, in Sanaa, Yemen, Jan. 25, 2021 (AP photo by Hani Mohammed).

For U.S. officials who worked under former President Barack Obama, many of whom are now beginning or contemplating jobs in Joe Biden’s administration, the war in Yemen casts a long shadow. What started on their watch as a primarily internal power struggle has since metastasized into a messy and multilayered conflict. It is the world’s most dire humanitarian crisis, involving alleged violations of international law—many of them perpetrated with American-made arms—and has become a potential trigger for a region-wide conflagration. For much of Biden’s foreign policy team, then, Yemen represents both unfinished business and, potentially, a small but significant piece […]

People sit under campaign election posters of President Paul Biya, in Yaounde, Cameroon, Oct. 5. 2018 (AP photo by Sunday Alamba).

When at least 53 people died in Cameroon in late January after a bus collided with a fuel-laden truck—one of the worst road accidents in the country’s history—few observers would have expected that reactions to the tragedy would include ethnic slurs, mainly on Facebook. They were directed toward members of the Bamileke community, from which most of the victims appeared to originate. Cameroon has long prided itself on the relative harmony between the country’s approximately 250 ethnic groups, none of which dominates nationally—a diversity that many Cameroonians consider to be a safeguard against communal violence. But Cameroon now has to […]

Director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, left, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attend a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 25, 2020 (AP photo by Vahid Salemi).

In the four decades since Iran’s Islamic Revolution, relations between Tehran and Washington have seen deep enmity offset by brief periods of rapprochement and tactical cooperation. As a new U.S. administration settles into office and asserts its intent to, in President Joe Biden’s words, “offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy,” one of those periods may be on the horizon again. The Obama administration pursued diplomatic engagement with the Islamic Republic, holding direct as well as multilateral talks that culminated in the 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. Under […]