War & Conflict Archive

Afghanistan may not rank in the top tier of U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy priorities, given the host of pressing crises in the United States. But Afghanistan’s fate hinges in large part on how the Biden team decides to approach the country’s conflict and its tenuous, still-nascent peace process. Biden will be compelled to make critical decisions on Afghanistan during his first months in office that will affect the country’s conflict—and relationship with the U.S.—for years to come. Over the past year, the outgoing U.S. administration attempted to set a peace process in motion by signing a political agreement with […]

In November, as the Ethiopian government escalated its military campaign against the northern Tigray region, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed quietly ordered a drawdown of Ethiopian peacekeepers from neighboring Somalia. The scale of the move is still unconfirmed, but as many as 3,000 Ethiopian troops were reportedly redeployed to fight against the regional ruling party in Tigray, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF. Around 200 to 300 ethnic Tigrayan soldiers in Somalia were also disarmed, and some may have even been purged from the ranks. The Ethiopian troops’ departure injects additional uncertainty into Somalia’s already precarious security situation, as it […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. United Nations peacekeepers helped the Central African Republic’s armed forces beat back a rebel attack on the capital, Bangui, on Wednesday, marking a dramatic escalation in a conflict that erupted ahead of last month’s presidential election and now threatens to spiral into a regional crisis. A Rwandan peacekeeper was killed during the attacks on two army brigades on the outskirts of Bangui, according to U.N. officials, and several […]

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—Not long before the New Year, I paid a visit to an Islamic teacher, known as a marabout, who lives in an unfinished house here on the outskirts of Burkina Faso’s capital. I had first spoken with him earlier in 2020, after he was displaced from his home near the northern city of Djibo, in Soum province, near the border with Mali—a part of the country that has become a major frontline in the campaign against violent jihadist organizations. The marabout belongs to the Fulani ethnic group, often the target of persecution despite being one of the largest […]

BANGUI, Central African Republic—On the evening of Dec. 27, poll workers here in the capital of the Central African Republic were busy tabulating votes from presidential and legislative elections that were held that day. Many worked in dark classrooms without electricity, using their cellphone lights to check ballots. Then, an explosion rang out, forcing them to briefly stop their work. Was it artillery fire? A grenade? In a city traumatized by seven years of violent conflict, and more recently by a surging rebel coalition threatening to advance on Bangui, many residents were not immediately sure what to expect. The cause […]

More than 340 schoolboys were abducted from their boarding school in northwestern Nigeria last month, apparently by armed criminal gangs affiliated with the extremist group Boko Haram. Though the boys were freed and reunited with their families a week later, the incident was a worrying sign that Boko Haram is expanding beyond its traditional base in northeastern Nigeria. According to Bulama Bukarti, a Nigerian analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and a non-resident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Boko Haram’s resurgence suggests the need for a more holistic, transnational approach to countering […]

Nigeria’s ongoing battle with the violent extremist group Boko Haram took a worrying turn last month, when more than 300 young schoolboys were abducted from their boarding school in Katsina state, in northwestern Nigeria. Thankfully, the students were freed and reunited with their families a week later. But the attack carried chilling echoes of another mass abduction from 2014, when 276 female students were kidnapped from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok. More than 100 of those girls are still missing. While Boko Haram has taken credit for last month’s raid, experts and Nigerian officials say the true […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Richard Gowan is filling in for Stewart M. Patrick, who will return next week. What lies in store for the United Nations Security Council in 2021? People unfamiliar with the council’s inner workings might be surprised to learn how much of it is routine, as diplomats update mandates for ongoing peace operations and sanctions regimes on a pre-set schedule. But unforeseen wars and crises always force their way onto the agenda. Addressing incoming diplomats of the council’s temporary members at an event in Brussels in December 2019, I warned that they must expect to address at […]

The U.S.S. Nimitz was leaving the Middle East, until it wasn’t. The Pentagon’s abrupt reversal of its move late last week to send the aircraft carrier home is the latest sign of an ominous standoff with Iran in the last, chaotic days of Donald Trump’s presidency. A year ago, Trump ordered the brazen drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iran’s top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Fears that it would start a full-fledged war dissipated after Iran made a calculated show of retaliation, firing a barrage of ballistic missiles at bases in Iraq housing U.S. troops. There were no […]