Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. With Turkey’s parliament approving a bill this week to greenlight a military deployment in Libya, the chaos that followed the 2011 ouster of long-time Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi threatens to deepen further. Turkish legislators voted overwhelmingly to make good on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s promise to intervene in Libya on behalf of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, known as the Government of National Accord, or GNA. Although Erdogan must still determine the exact size and scope of the Turkish military mission, [...]
2020 dawns with the multilateral system in crisis. The next 12 months will determine whether the world is capable of controlling nuclear proliferation, arresting runaway climate change and restoring faith in the United Nations. Some pivotal events will shape success or failure in the coming year. Preserving the Nuclear Regime. Of the several potential catastrophic risks confronting humanity, the specter of nuclear war remains the most terrifying. Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the world has escaped the horror of nuclear weapons. Much of the credit, beyond deterrence and plain dumb luck, goes to the Treaty on [...]
ISTANBUL—A German woman suspected of supporting the Islamic State was repatriated from Syria along with her three children last month, in the first case of an adult European ISIS member brought home through official channels. On Nov. 22, the family was released from the overcrowded detention camp in northern Syria where they’d lived for almost a year and transferred to the Iraqi city of Erbil, where they boarded a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. The mother, known only as Laura H., had her passport confiscated upon arrival. She cannot leave Germany, as she is being investigated for belonging to a terrorist [...]
