Strategic Thinking on East Africa

The Horn of Africa region is central to the world’s maritime trade. It’s also beginning to fall apart. BY ALEX DE WAAL Back in 2002, Meles Zenawi, then prime minister of Ethiopia, drafted a foreign policy and national security white paper for his country. Before finalizing it, he confided to me a “nightmare scenario” — […]

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Foreign Policy BY PAUL MCLEARY Not content to build new military airstrips on a string of artificial islands in the South China Sea, Beijing is branching out even further, having just secured basing rights next door to Washington’s most important drone base in Africa. The eastern African nation of Djibouti has long been a critical component […]

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International Crisis Group By Abdul Khalif & Cedric Barnes | @CedricHoA This year, the armed Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab has notched up a series of bloody successes against both Somali targets and the African Union peace-enforcement mission AMISOM. Meanwhile, the international community has been busy cajoling principals of the Somali federal and state governments into […]

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From International Business Times BY MORGAN WINSOR @MORGANWINSOR General view of a tourist village in Obock, Djibouti on Feb. 10, 2008. PHOTO: JOSE CENDON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Skiffs sit on April 12, 2015, on a beach in Obock, a small port town in northern Djibouti where China is expected to soon begin building its first oversea military outpost. PHOTO: TONY […]

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From The International Crisis Group Magnus Taylor, The Africa Report | 25 Jan 2016 In the Horn, where cash-strapped regimes often teeter on the brink of financial survival and alliances are made and broken with bewildering regularity, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has found willing partners as Saudi-Iranian tensions escalate. In the commercial melting pot […]

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The U.S. Air Force recently “neutralized” 69 enemy combatants — and has taken meticulous steps to cover its tracks This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch. On October 7th, at an “undisclosed location” somewhere in “Southwest Asia,” men wearing different types of camouflage and dun-colored boots gathered before a black backdrop adorned with Arabic script. They were […]

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By Mary HarperAfrica editor, BBC World Service News, Addis Ababa Image copyrightEthiopian Railway Corporation “We decided to open the railway early because of the drought, the worst in decades,” says Getachew Betru, chief executive of the Ethiopian Railways Corporation (ERC). It is a Saturday, but this thoughtful, intelligent man is busy working. Except for the […]

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By Yemane Negash, Reporter Recent reports show that Eritrea is officially involved in the Yemeni crisis allowing the Saudi-led Arab coalition to use its Assab port, airspace and territorial waters in fighting the Houthi rebels. A high official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia, who wants to remain anonymous, told The Reporter that […]

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Europe’s Refugee Crisis The European Union (E.U.) is struggling to respond to the recent surge of refugees from Syria, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Albania, Iraq, Pakistan, Eritrea, Serbia, Ukraine and Nigeria. [1] War, poverty and repressive conditions are the three biggest drivers of migration for the people risking their lives to flee the inhospitable conditions at home. […]

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  The UN’s Security Council is set to extend the mandate of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea (SEMG) for a year and will not lift the sanctions on Eritrea for at least another year, according to draft resolution that has been circulated. SEMG Report Summarized In a 93-page SEMG report that the Sanctions […]

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