Africa

95 Items

The ghost town of Kayaköy (Livisi) in southwestern Anatolia

Wikimedia CC/William Neuheisel

Analysis & Opinions - Political Violence @ a Glance

Why Do Mass Expulsions Still Happen?

| Jan. 30, 2023

Meghan Garrity details the history of mass expulsions since the centennial of the signing of the Lausanne Convention—a treaty codifying the compulsory “population exchange” between Greece and Turkey. An estimated 1.5 million people were forcibly expelled from their homes: over one million Greek Orthodox Christians from the Ottoman Empire and 500,000 Muslims from Greece.

Saudi Arabia’s Moment in the Sun

AP/Donna Fenn Heintzen

Analysis & Opinions - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Saudi Arabia’s Moment in the Sun

| May 07, 2019

As part of a high profile tour of China in February, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) has overseen a range of multi-billion dollar pledges and MOUs with Beijing. This partly reflects Riyadh’s desire to diversify sources for investments and technology following the mass withdrawal of major Western business leaders from the Future Investment Initiative in October 2018, after the murder of Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. Yet cooperation with China on renewable energy, if successful, would realize a significant first step towards Saudi Arabia’s lofty ambitions for solar and wind power.

An Al-Shabab insurgent in Somalia's northern Puntland region

Open source from an Al-Shabab film

Analysis & Opinions - War on the Rocks

The Saga of Mukhtar Robow and Somalia's Fractious Politics

| Jan. 30, 2019

The authors write that much has changed for Mukhtar "Abu Mansur" Robow, a key founding member of the Somali jihadist organization al-Shabaab, over the past decade. In November 2008, al-Shabaab was sweeping across southern and central Somalia toward the capital city of Mogadishu. Robow led the jihadists not only in their fight against the Somali government and allied international forces but also in their enactment of territorial governance and implementation of a harsh form of Islamic law. Ten years later, in October 2018, Robow, who once condemned democracy as "unbelief," announced his candidacy for the presidency of Somalia’s South West State.

Protesters hold a Catalan flag as they gather outside National Police Headquarters in Barcelona

AP

Analysis & Opinions - Project Syndicate

The Who, Where, and When of Secession

| Sep. 29, 2017

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.