Colombians re-elected President Juan Manuel Santos for a second term on June 15, in what is being described as a referendum on his government’s peace negotiations to end the half-century-long guerrilla war with the FARC. The election was close until the very end, with pre-election polls predicting differing results. In the end, Santos won a little more than 50 percent of the votes while his challenger, former Finance Minister Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, gained a little over 45 percent, providing a close yet nonetheless decisive mandate for the incumbent president to continue with the peace process. With this in mind, some [...]
Two separate terrorist attacks rocked the international airport in Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi, last week, killing dozens. On Sunday, the Pakistani military launched a long-delayed ground assault into its tribal regions in an effort to root out the militants that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif now calls a threat to “the sovereignty of the motherland.” Pakistan has for years been locked in conflict with the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the TTP, a homegrown Pakistani group with links to the Afghan Taliban. But the Pakistani military’s initial statements on its operations in the tribal areas this week emphasized that among [...]
The news from Iraq was nothing short of stunning: A group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) managed to take control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, adding to a growing expanse of territory on both sides of the border between Iraq and Syria now under the control of the ultra-extremist Sunni militant organization. As shocking as the sudden conquest was the impact it had on the population. Within hours of the Iraqi military’s retreat and the ensuing hoisting of the Islamists’ flag, half a million residents of Mosul started streaming out of the city in what [...]
