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Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on Tuareg politics in northern Mali. Part I examined the factors shaping internal political development among Mali’s Tuareg community. Part II examines the factors shaping external relations among Mali’s Tuareg, the Malian government and France. French forces are drawing down in Mali, with Paris claiming that much of their work fighting Islamists and terrorists in the Sahara desert is done and can now be left to the Malian army and its regional allies. An African Union force will be securing much of the territory regained from Islamist extremists until a […]

One year from now, one of the great pageants of democracy will unfold in India, as hundreds of millions of citizens of the world’s largest democracy go to the polls to choose a new parliament. India’s May 2014 general election will focus, as it always has, on the need to fight poverty, reduce inequality and foster economic growth. And yet, more than ever before, the issue of corruption will play a pre-eminent role in guiding the voters’ decision. That’s because the Indian people are gradually but decisively coming to believe that endemic corruption is one of the greatest obstacles in […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on Tuareg politics in northern Mali. Part I examines the factors shaping internal political development among Mali’s Tuareg community. Part II will examine the factors shaping external relations among Mali’s Tuareg, the Malian government and France. The crisis in Mali put the Malian Tuareg community at the center of international security concerns. But for all the attention that the “desert warriors” behind the armed uprising in northern Mali have received, little effort has been made so far to develop an understanding of the internal politics of the Tuareg community and […]

Africa has never been central to America’s global security strategy. From Washington’s vantage, the continent has always been less important than Europe, the Pacific Rim, the Middle East or Latin America. The official approach has normally been one of relative indifference with a bit of aid when things got really bad. In the past year, though, several factors have increased the attention being paid to Africa by American policymakers and military leaders. For starters, the past 10 years have seen significant economic and political progress. While Africa remains the world’s poorest continent, its economy is flourishing, potentially providing an opportunity […]

In late-April, the Obama administration blacklisted two Lebanese money exchanges for allegedly facilitating Hezbollah’s use of narcotics trafficking profits to fund terrorist activities. In an email interview, Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of the forthcoming “Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God,” explained the broad range of Hezbollah’s illicit activities and the growing savvy of its criminal network. WPR: What are Hezbollah’s main illicit business activities, and where is it most active? Matthew Levitt: Hezbollah is engaged in an amazingly broad array […]

At the end of last year, visiting Kenya under the auspices of a Stimson Center development and transnational security project in East Africa, I met Baraka, a 2.5-ton black rhinoceros that, despite being completely blind, is truly lucky. Baraka, whose name means “blessings” in Swahili, lives in a 100-acre safeguarded part of Kenya’s Sweetwaters National Park on the foothills of Mount Kenya. There he mingles with visitors, whom he allows to both pet and feed him. Though rhinos are a naturally aggressive species, Baraka seems to think he has no natural enemies. Perhaps he would feel differently if he knew […]