South & Central Africa

IntelBrief: Unmanned Peacekeeping: Are Drones The New Blue Helmets?

By Amy Calfas

Bottom Line Up Front • On December 2, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) announced it will deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), popularly known as “drones,” to monitor rebel groups along the Congolese-Rwandan border.

French Seek Permanent EU Defense Fund

By Hugh Carnegy, Financial Times

In an effort to put its allies on the spot, President François Hollande is poised to demand, at a Brussels summit on Thursday, that the EU sets up a permanent fund to finance operations such as France’s intervention in the Central African Republic.

Is France Replacing the US as the World’s Policeman?

By Emily Cadei, OZY

With French troops on the ground in Mali and now the Central African Republic, French President Francois Hollande’s enthusiastic support for the aborted U.S. strikes in Syria and French diplomats’ tough line on negotiations with Iran

Pham Remembers Mandela on Fox News

Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham spoke with Fox News on the passing of former South African President and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.

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 […]

Crisis in the Sahel: Trafficking

By Rudolph Atallah

Organized crime—especially various forms of smuggling and narco-trafficking—is the lifeblood of the vast under-governed expanse of the Sahara. It is within this largely decentralized and politically corrupt milieu that terrorists and criminals work together to access weapons and money to sustain their symbiotic operations.