Middle East & North Africa Archive

When crowds of protesters from Tunis to Cairo ignited what would become the Arab Spring in January 2011, it caught the government of then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy off guard. François Hollande, already campaigning to replace Sarkozy as president, saw an opening in Sarkozy’s initial hesitation and quickly promised to distinguish himself from his opponent’s “silence,” “incoherence” and “contradictory” diplomacy to restore French influence in the region. The demonstrations and uprisings in the Arab world allowed Hollande to draw attention away from the global financial crisis, where Sarkozy had staked his electoral argument for continuity, and toward North Africa, where France […]

African Islamist terrorist organizations have made headlines in recent weeks, with media outlets paying closer attention to terrorist networks operating on the continent after the Libyan government blamed the local Salafist jihadi group Ansar al-Sharia for the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Meanwhile, in response to plans for external military intervention in Mali, where Islamist guerrillas have seized control of the north of the country, one of the main Islamist commanders said that no matter the affiliation, all of the continent’s militant groups “have the same ambition, the application of Shariah.” “Whenever there’s an attack on […]