Africa

In his latest article for Metro U.N., Karl Kaiser, Senior Associate with the Belfer Center's Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, shares his view on the impact of increased migration and refugee movements on Europe.

National self-determination, the principle that US President Woodrow Wilson put on the international agenda in 1918, is generally defined as the right of a people to form its own state. The independence referendums in Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia are the latest examples showing why that principle is so often difficult to apply.

Marriage markets and inflationary brideprice are a powerful driver of participation in violence and drive recruitment into armed groups.

Terrorism experts have long known that poverty is a factor in tempting young men to join radical terrorist groups, but what about bride prices?

"What explains the Islamic State's disappointing record in Africa? Perhaps its leaders underestimated the historical ties between many African jihadi organizations and al Qaeda. Almost certainly they underestimated many African jihadi leaders' desire for autonomy, a trait that sat uneasily with the Islamic State's vision of centralized control through a caliphate. But the Islamic State also failed to back up its rhetorical appeals for loyalty with material support."

"Despite being on different sides of the Syrian civil war, Putin has managed to bring Riyadh into its diplomatic orbit through cooperation on oil policy, given how both Saudi-led OPEC states and Russia need substantially higher prices for government budgets to break even."

"...[I]s it really necessary to distort the facts so much to gain public attention? We should not need to suggest that nearly every Liberian woman was raped to care about the actual, dire situation facing many Liberian women."

"What happens when, after another dozen major attacks, the chain of their barbarism outpaces the chain of our human solidarity? When is the permissible moment to start asking if we can muster as much wisdom and realism to fight terror as we do to harness emotions of solidarity? The recent increasing pace and widening geographic scope of terror suggest we are dealing with a qualitatively new kinds of terrorists — but the policy responses of governments and the emotional responses of entire societies suggest we have no idea how to respond to quell this monster."

"Using migration as an instrument of state-level coercion is nothing new. Since the 1951 Refugee Convention came into force, there have been at least 75 attempts by state and nonstate actors to use displaced people as means to political, military, and economic ends. Coercers' demands have ranged from the simple provision of financial aid to requests for full-scale invasion and assistance in effecting regime change."