Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Africa Watch, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about the African continent. Subscribe to receive it by email every Friday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. For the first time since the inaugural event in 1973, the Franco-Africa Summit—rebranded as the New Africa-France Summit, or as some referred to it on Twitter and other social media platforms, #AfricaFranceRemix—did not feature a single African head of state or government, or ministerial delegation. Instead, the [...]
On Sunday, for the fifth time since the U.S. invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqis voted in elections. Initial results suggest that the big winner was nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political formation once again emerged with the most seats in parliament. Parties aligned with pro-Iranian militias were the big losers, seeing their vote totals plummet. But with turnout at a record low 41 percent of registered voters, the election is being seen as an expression of Iraqis’ disillusionment with the state of the country’s electoral politics. The elections were the culmination of a political process triggered by [...]
Senior U.S. officials recently met face-to-face with counterparts from the Taliban for the first time since the hard-line Islamist group took control of Afghanistan in August. The talks, which the State Department described as “candid and professional,” took place in Qatar, which has played an important role as a diplomatic mediator between the U.S. and the Taliban in recent years. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to discuss Qatar’s history as a facilitator of sensitive negotiations, and what [...]
