Radical Movements Archive

A group of Tuareg rebels in northern Mali, whose rebellion against the central government sparked a coup and eventually a French intervention, announced yesterday that they were backing out of a June 2013 peace agreement with the Malian government. The move is a step backward for the efforts to stitch Mali back together again. But as Kamissa Camara wrote in WPR earlier this month, the agreement put on hold yesterday was problematic to begin with: Mali’s central government has signed a series of peace agreements with Tuareg rebels over the years, but they have only served short-term purposes. The latest […]

Fighting between rebels and security forces erupted in the southern Philippines Monday after heavily armed Muslim rebels landed in coastal districts with plans to declare an independent state. As Reuters reported, security officials say the rebels are part of a rogue faction of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that was angry over claims the government had not fully implemented an existing peace agreement. In an email interview, Steven Rood, Philippines country representative of the Asia Foundation, said the incident in Zamboanga City is not likely to destabilize the peace deal signed last year with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front […]

This month, the March 23 (M23) rebel movement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced it would agree to a cease-fire only if the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), another armed group active in the DRC, were “neutralized.” In an email interview, Christoph Vogel, a Mercator Fellow in International Affairs researching armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, explained the FDLR’s current strength and the regional cooperation necessary to disarm it. WPR: What is the current profile of the FDLR in terms of its rough location, size and ability to pose a military threat? […]

In India, violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims over the weekend reportedly killed at least 30 people. Officials say the riots in the northern Indian province of Uttar Pradesh were a reaction to a video clip allegedly showing the lynching of two young people. “India is one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world, so it’s always had difficulty in keeping the peace between its various religious groups,” Ajay Verghese, assistant professor of politics at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, wrote Trend Lines in an email interview. “But what happened in Uttar Pradesh really fits the […]

In the decades after its independence in October 1960, Nigeria periodically found itself at a series of crossroads. The 1960s were characterized by a devastating civil war and internal tensions that nearly drove the country apart; the 1970s saw a burgeoning oil and gas industry as well as governance achievements—notably efforts to develop a national identity and the adoption of a new constitutional framework that ushered in a government with an executive president at its center and, ultimately, a handover to civilian rule, albeit a short-lived one, in 1979. Indeed, in a large and complex country with a population consisting […]

The extent of history-altering decisions often isn’t evident until after the fact. Who could have guessed, for instance, that George H.W. Bush’s decision to oppose Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 would lead the United States into a global war with al-Qaida and a second, even costlier conflict in Iraq? On rare occasions, though, the importance of a decision is apparent even before it is made with finality—the big picture clearly lurking behind the closer, more immediate one. Deciding whether to attack Syria’s Assad regime for the large-scale use of chemical weapons against civilians is just such a choice, […]