Last November, the governments of France and Comoros agreed to resolve a months-long diplomatic spat over migration that had severely strained their relationship. Azali Assoumani, the president of Comoros, sparked the standoff last April when his government stopped accepting its deported citizens from Mayotte, a nearby French overseas territory that is also claimed by Comoros. This led France to retaliate by suspending visas to all Comorian nationals. According to Simon Massey, a senior lecturer in international relations at Coventry University, the dispute provided Assoumani with an opportunity to galvanize the electorate and build support for a referendum on constitutional revisions [...]
In a special year-end episode of Trend Lines, we look back on 2018 through three of our most popular Report interviews. They take us from the frontlines of the war against Boko Haram in West Africa, to life under a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, to Facebook, the new hub for the black-market trade in antiquities from the Middle East. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview article every [...]
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi rules with brutal authority, but Egypt's political and economic future look anything but secure. CAIRO—To the many Egyptians who took to the streets in January 2011 to bring down former President Hosni Mubarak, Cairo is full of reminders of the country's post-revolution failures. Tahrir Square is once again a bleak traffic-laden roundabout; just next to it, the Egyptian Museum is associated with torture by the military after activists were detained and interrogated there following a protest in March 2011. Nearby, the downtown area of Maspero is notorious for the massacre of Coptic Christians. To the east, Rabaa [...]
