Africa Center Commentary & Analysis

Advancing the New US-Morocco Strategic Partnership

On the occasion of the meeting between His Majesty King Mohammed VI and President Barack Obama, the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center hosted “Advancing the New US-Morocco Strategic Partnership Event,” a discussion with His Excellency Salaheddine Mezouar, minister of foreign affairs and cooperation of the Kingdom of Morocco, and other members of the Royal Delegation.

Africa Center Hosts Leslie Lefkow of Human Rights Watch

The Atlantic Council’s Africa Center hosted a roundtable discussion with Leslie Lefkow, deputy director of the Africa division at the Human Rights Watch. Lefkow presented the findings of the recently released HRW report, They Want a Confession: Torture and Ill-Treatment in Ethiopia’s Maekelawi Police Station.

Poaching Peace and Security

By J. Peter Pham

Last week, former rebels loyal to the opposition Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) announced that they were abandoning the twenty-one year old peace accord with the government of the southern African country after army troops overran a remote jungle base. The military action followed a spate of attacks on arms depots as well as civilian buses […]

Kenya Working Group Hosts Raila Odinga

The Atlantic Council’s Africa Center hosted a meeting of the Kenya Working Group with the Right Honourable Raila Odinga, former prime minister of the Republic of Kenya. Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham welcomed participants and introduced the discussion, which was moderated by Joel Barkan, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies […]

No Hollywood Ending to Piracy off Somalia

By J. Peter Pham

The Tom Hanks movie “Captain Phillips,” which opens Friday, will focus attention — again — on piracy off the coast of Somalia. The movie, in which (spoiler alert) the bad guys get caught, unfortunately might lead you to think that this is a problem that’s been solved. After all, since the April 2009 seizure of the cargo […]

Cut-Rate Counterterrorism

By Bronwyn Bruton and Paul D. Williams

As the attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall and the failed Oct. 4 raid by Navy SEALs in Somalia have reminded the world, the fight against terrorism in East Africa is far from over. It’s a fight that has been ongoing for two decades, but since 2001, the United States has outsourced much of the effort […]

Back to Somalia?

By J. Peter Pham

This past weekend, twenty years to the day after the conclusion of the Battle of Mogadishu, the deadly firefight dramatized in Black Hawk Down that left eighteen US military personnel dead and some six dozen others wounded (Pakistani and Malaysian units with the United Nations peacekeeping force also suffered casualties as they tried to relieve […]

Briefing by Gérard Prunier on Sudan and South Sudan

The Atlantic Council’s Africa Center hosted a briefing by Senior Fellow Gérard Prunier on the internal political dynamics in Sudan and South Sudan, especially those driving recent conflicts within and between the two countries, and how those will likely play themselves out in the near- and intermediate-term.

Al Shabab Mainly a Local Problem in Somalia

By Bronwyn Bruton

With Al Qaeda on the back foot in the Middle East, Africa is widely regarded as the next frontier in the war on terrorism and the next source of terrorism in the United States. But across Africa — in Addis Ababa, Kampala, Lagos and Nairobi — Christians and Muslims cheerfully rub shoulders. And Islamist militant […]

Why Nairobi

By Bronwyn Bruton

The attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall is a vicious development in the war on terrorism: It signals the evolution of an unpopular splinter faction of a radical Somali group into a truly transnational terrorist organization. It also marks a major failure for the United States’ counterterrorism strategy in Somalia.