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Since the Arab uprisings erupted two and a half years ago, the global jihadi movement has metastasized to a variety of new locales across the Arab world, most recently in Syria, Libya, Sinai and Tunisia. While these upheavals surprised many in the region, al-Qaida had predicted such events unfolding in a 20-year strategic plan (2000-2020) that came to light in 2005. That blueprint has gone according to plan so far, albeit more because of outside and structural forces than the efforts of jihadis themselves. As a result, the movement was well-positioned to take advantage of the new developments. In his […]

Until today, last week’s G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, looked to be a bust. Although the group, whose members represent 90 percent of the world’s economy, is not supposed to have a traditional military security agenda, the impending U.S. military strike against Syria ensured that the Syrian issue would dominate deliberations. Despite efforts by U.S. President Barack Obama to convince the other leaders in attendance of the need to respond to the Syrian government’s Aug. 21 use of chemical weapons with military force, the group remained sharply divided on the issue. China and Russia but also Brazil, India and […]

The West’s perception of Myanmar’s problems is often limited to the image of Aung San Suu Kyi’s struggle for political opening against the country’s ruling military junta. But Myanmar, or Burma as it is still known by many in the West, is ethnically and religiously complex, and the inability to reconcile those many differences led to decades of civil war with multiple ethnic insurgencies. While outright hostilities have for the most part ebbed, the grievances that have historically driven these conflicts are by no means resolved. As Myanmar now emerges from isolation, the challenges facing it are numerous and can […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part investigative series on U.S. and French counterterrorism efforts in Niger. Part I examined Niger’s emergence as a target of terrorist groups active in the Sahel region. Part II examines the growing U.S. security presence in Niger, and the nascent tensions with France over how best to counter terror and bolster Niger’s security. Though much has been made of Niger’s recent ascendance as a key U.S. ally in the Sahel region, the country had already begun to distinguish itself as a useful counterterrorism ally in Department of Defense circles as early as […]

In Brazil, organized crime is a difficult subject to tackle. This is at least in part because the dynamics of organized crime and violence in Brazil have been changing dramatically in recent years. Historically, violence and crime have been synonymous with Rio de Janeiro’s favelas: marginal parts of the city where poor migrants settled, building their own homes piece by piece and outside the relative safety of urban services and regulation. Beginning in the early 1990s, images, stories and local and international headlines of poor, gun-toting young black men, often shirtless but otherwise wearing soccer jerseys, were ubiquitous. The favela-covered […]

In the decades after its independence in October 1960, Nigeria periodically found itself at a series of crossroads. The 1960s were characterized by a devastating civil war and internal tensions that nearly drove the country apart; the 1970s saw a burgeoning oil and gas industry as well as governance achievements—notably efforts to develop a national identity and the adoption of a new constitutional framework that ushered in a government with an executive president at its center and, ultimately, a handover to civilian rule, albeit a short-lived one, in 1979. Indeed, in a large and complex country with a population consisting […]

The United Nations reported last week that the number of refugees from Syria has now surpassed 2 million, even while more than twice that many people are internally displaced. Combined, the numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) mean that the intensifying conflict has forced one-third of the Syrian population from their homes. Those who have managed to escape Syria altogether have largely fled to Lebanon and Jordan, and in such large numbers that they now amount to nearly 20 percent of the population in those countries, according to Bessma Momani, an associate professor at University of Waterloo and […]

Can Barack Obama ever trust the United Nations Security Council again? And will the Security Council, and the U.N. more broadly, trust the U.S. president? Last week, Obama vented his frustration with diplomacy over Syria at a press conference during the G-20 summit in Russia. Asked why he had called for military action in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s resort to the use of chemical weapons, Obama claimed the alternatives “would be some resolutions that were being proffered in the United Nations and the usual hocus-pocus.” This was a sour if pithy turn of phrase from a president who […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part investigative series on U.S. and French counterterrorism efforts in Niger. Part I examines Niger’s emergence as a target of terrorist groups active in the Sahel region. Part II will examine the growing U.S. security presence in Niger, and the nascent tensions with France over how best to counter terror and bolster Niger’s security. Until May 23, Niger, a desperately poor, landlocked country of 17 million that shares long borders with volatile states including Mali, Algeria, Libya and Nigeria, had been spared from the violence that has plagued its neighbors over the […]

Last month, a Turkish parliamentary committee charged with drafting a new Turkish constitution agreed to articles to expand opportunities for women and protect homosexuals from discrimination. In an email interview, Dr. Aslan Amani, a political scientist specializing in democratic theory, explained the recent trajectory of and future priorities for Turkey’s constitution writing process.* WPR: What is the current state of Turkey’s efforts to replace the constitution written under military rule in 1980? Aslan Amani: So far, the Constitution Consensus Committee has made the most progress on the sections dealing with fundamental rights and freedoms. However, the commission members remain polarized […]

President Barack Obama apparently failed to change any minds on Syria when the leaders attending the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, met for a working dinner Thursday night. Instead, according to Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, the divisions over Syria “were confirmed” at the dinner. One of the problems facing the Obama team is that there remains widespread skepticism about the veracity of U.S. intelligence claims. Even as lab results from Britain’s Porton Down laboratory seem to confirm that sarin gas was used in the attack on three Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21, Russia, along with some other countries, […]

In its public rhetoric, the Chinese government has long recognized the need for reforms, but for a number of reasons it has often struggled to implement many of these changes. These include overarching ideological resistance, factional disagreements within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government, lobbying and disruption from vested interest groups, poor policy implementation and pressure from popular opinion. Beijing’s list of promised reforms is considerable. From the host of commitments agreed as part of China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), to Wen Jiabao’s repeated allusions to political change, to Xi Jinping’s intimations of broad-based […]

Last month, Tanzania imported 591 military transport vehicles from India in an effort to improve the transport capabilities of the Tanzania People’s Defense Force. In an email interview, Laxman Kumar Behera, a research fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi specializing in the Indian defense industry, explained the dynamics of India’s defense exports. The views expressed are the author’s own. WPR: What are the main countries to which India exports defense products, and what does it sell them? Laxman Kumar Behera: The Indian defense industry mainly exports to Asian and African countries, though it also […]

Among the harshest critics of President Barack Obama’s push for military intervention in Syria are skeptics who question the very foundation of the claim that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on Aug. 21, the day intelligence agencies in several countries say Syrian forces carried out a massive nerve gas attack. The critics declare themselves unpersuaded by the evidence made public so far and say it simply does not make sense from a tactical and strategic vantage point for Assad to have used the internationally proscribed weaponry. If chemical agents were used, they argue, it makes more sense for […]

On Aug. 6, an appeals court in Chile suspended another electricity megaproject, marking the latest in a series of power-generation setbacks for the increasingly energy-starved nation. That same week, Rene Muga, general manager of the Chilean Electric Power Association, told an energy conference that power consumption in Chile will double by 2025, further calling into question how the country will respond to this increasingly critical need. Chile has struggled to meet rising electricity demand in the face of growing environmental concerns, and the suspension of the 740-megawatt, $1.4 billion Punta Alcalde thermoelectric plant raises questions about the long-term economic implications […]

Over the weekend, President Barack Obama called for a vote on a proposed United States military strike against Syria, with the administration releasing a draft authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) that served as a starting point for congressional discussion this week. Lawmakers are working to amend the broad language of that draft, with new draft language proposed by the Senate that uses narrower language than in the administration’s draft and places some limits on the authorization to use force. Speaking with Trend Lines on Tuesday, John Bellinger III, an expert in national security law, said the president […]

The extent of history-altering decisions often isn’t evident until after the fact. Who could have guessed, for instance, that George H.W. Bush’s decision to oppose Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 would lead the United States into a global war with al-Qaida and a second, even costlier conflict in Iraq? On rare occasions, though, the importance of a decision is apparent even before it is made with finality—the big picture clearly lurking behind the closer, more immediate one. Deciding whether to attack Syria’s Assad regime for the large-scale use of chemical weapons against civilians is just such a choice, […]