In-Depth Archive

Perched on a hill above the tiny village of Carrizal in northern Colombia, the camp that was supposed to be housing 300 guerrilla fighters is nothing more than a wooden shack surrounded by a muddy field. Two weeks after the Dec. 31 deadline for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym, FARC, to demobilize, the only guerillas in sight are the 11 men that make up the camp’s construction crew. “There is no water. There is no electricity. There are no houses. None of the necessary things that the guerrillas need to arrive at those points […]

In November, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus warned that a growing gap between the super rich and the rest of the world’s population is a “ticking time bomb” that will lead to exploitation of the poor, immigrants and minorities. There is good evidence that time is running out to keep that bomb from going off. Economic fragility in the eurozone has fueled the rise of populist and nationalist parties in European elections since 2008. The refugee crisis confronting Europe compounded the swing. A wave of populist wins in 2016, from Brexit and Italy’s rejection of constitutional reform to the election of […]

The emergence of a brash and little-known 31-year-old as the public face of a dynamic new style of leadership in Saudi Arabia has caught international attention over the past two years. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, whose rise began in 2015, has promoted his so-called Saudi Vision 2030 initiative as an instrument of economic transformation in an era of plummeting oil prices. Against the backdrop of emergency spending cuts in 2015 that stove off financial ruin, the project aims to balance the Saudi budget by 2020, wean the country off of energy subsidies, and reduce the role […]

Since late 2016, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has been consumed by a blasphemy case against the Christian and ethnically Chinese governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok. After mounting pressure from hard-line Islamists who staged mass demonstrations against him, Ahok—who is a candidate for the Feb. 15 gubernatorial election in Jakarta—is now on trial for a statement that he uttered in mid-October that was deemed insulting to the Quran. His case has sparked fears about the growing voice of radical Islam in Indonesia and the threat it could pose to the country’s reputation for […]