Western states have reflexively diagnosed the continuing violence and lawlessness in Mali's fragmented north to the ills of global jihad, willfully ignoring the region's deep links to the transnational criminal racket that sustains both the criminalized state and its criminals.
Clarion calls on social media for action in Africa have once again become an excuse to flex military muscle, as the rhetoric of 'humanitarian' interventions is increasingly outfitted with the tactics of the war on terror.
The international community has a responsibility to end the bloodletting in South Sudan. And neither of its factional leaders, with blood on their hands, can be part of its future.
Military responses to Boko Haram have proved ineffective, as the latest atrocities in Nigeria highlight. An alternative focused on good governance, policing and socio-economic development, supported by the international community, would be much more likely to succeed.
New documents reveal the blinding pace of US military operations in Africa as the Pentagon prepares for future wars.
Torture is routine practice in South Africa's police stations and prisons. A lineage of impunity, traced from apartheid, has meant de facto immunity for perpetrators. With South Africa celebrating its 'Human Rights Day' this weekend, the shocking reality behind its prison walls must be a central f
In a world of supposed cutbacks, the US military continues to quietly move into Africa in a distinctly below-the-radar fashion. The Pentagon’s newest tactic: refight the colonial wars in partnership with the French.
Crises in Francophone Africa, as in Mali and the Central African Republic, cannot be solved by military action by the former colonial power. Root causes must be tackled, engaging civil-society actors, with the African Union playing a leading role in partnership with the European Union.
Political instability and administrative weakness have been permanent features of the Central African Republic since independence. What has happened in recent weeks is tragic but is neither genocide nor a full-blown sectarian conflict. This can still be avoided if the international forces behave i
The spiral of violence in South Sudan is not simply an ethnic conflict of Dinka on Nuer. Politics, as well as oil, is at issue and a political settlement is required.
Film: Struggling for the right to decent housing and against the criminalisation of poverty, South African shack dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo face severe police repression. Here S'bu Zikode outlines the lethal consequences of police militarisation and the ANC's political capture of the
While the world stops for Nelson Mandela’s departure from it, his iconic status is unquestioned. Yet there is a more complicated underlying narrative to tell.
