Yesterday, Heritage’s 2012 Index of Economic Freedom was released, and Africa features prominently. With an average score gain of 0.2 points, reflecting a net gain of economic freedom in 22 countries, sub-Saharan Africa is once again the most improved region. While scores of Western nations have seen their ratings plummet (including the United States), Africa has made noticeable progress. The small island nation of Mauritius (#8) is the first African country to break into the top 10 rankings. Botswana (#33), Rwanda (#59) and Cape Verde (#66) have also made substantial …
Although Libya has rid itself of the Muammar Qadhafi regime, it faces an uncertain future endangered by radical Islamist factions, warring militia commanders, tribal rivalries, a lack of democratic traditions, and a civil society ravaged by decades of authoritarian rule. Last week, two militias clashed violently in a turf war in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Catherine Herridge, the chief intelligence correspondent for Fox News, noted the rise of Libyan Islamists in an article earlier last week. She cited a recent report by Kronos, LLC, that assessed the prominent role in …
Since South Sudan gained independence last January, the world’s newest country has many challenges to face. The government in Juba must quickly and efficiently address some of the most basic issues that many in the West take for granted, such as roads, clean water, and electricity. In short, it must deliver on the hopes promised by independence. While the international community has lavished attention on South Sudan, it has largely ignored a set of brewing internal crises in the north. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, has suffered a loss of influence …
A screen grab made on October 21, 2010 in Kano from a video allegedly released by the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram in northern Nigeria reportedly shows two alleged sect members standing against a background of a Google Earth shot of the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi with the triangular city prison visible. Boko Haram ‘spokesman’ claims responsibility for the attack on the UN building in Abuja that killed 18 on August 26, 2011. It’s about time Congress started paying more attention to terrorism in Nigeria. This morning, Congressman Patrick …
Libya’s interim government gradually is taking shape. On Monday the Transitional National Council (TNC) announced that it had elected a new Prime Minister, Abdurraheem el-Keib, who will serve until elections in June for a national assembly that will write a new constitution. El-Keib, a dual Libyan-American citizen, is a U.S.-educated engineering professor who taught for many years at the University of Alabama before joining the TNC earlier this year. El-Keib is a technocrat who emerged as a choice acceptable to both Islamists and secular factions and is the scion of …
Following a devastating suicide blast earlier in the week in Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu, leaders from the regional terror group al Shabaab issued a statement declaring that the perpetrator of the attack was American Abdisalan Hussein Ali. In an audio tape released by al Shabaab, and purported to be of Abdisalan Ali, the speaker exhorts the virtues of jihad and calls on his Western brothers to join the fight: “My brothers and sisters, do jihad in America, do jihad in Canada, do jihad in England, anywhere in Europe, in …
The Al-Nahda (“Renaissance”) Party, a long-banned Islamist movement that was legalized after the ouster of Tunisia’s autocratic President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January, is emerging as the big winner in Sunday’s elections. Although the final results have not yet been announced, Al-Nahda has reportedly won 27 out of the 62 seats, over 40 percent of the seats filled so far, in the 217-member constituent assembly. The landmark election—the first genuinely free election to be held in Tunisia since it gained independence in 1956—will determine the members of the assembly …
Russia is bemoaning the passing of Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, an old friend and client of the Soviet Union and a reliable customer for Russian arms sales. But Qadhafi belongs to the 20th century. In the 21st, Russia has new interests in Africa, and the Libyan strongman’s passing will not derail them for long. Russia is creating a new economic platform that will allow cross-investment between its members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). The Wall Street Journal reports that exchanges from Brazil, Russia, India, Hong Kong, and …
That indigenous forces backed by Western military power could overthrow an odious unpopular regime backed by a second-rate military ought to come as no surprise. That was, after all, exactly what the Bush Administration did in Afghanistan. In fact, operationally, the fall of Kabul looks a lot like the fall of Tripoli. As we now know, toppling the Taliban was not the last chapter in U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, nor was it a precedent for the “future way of war” (in and out with a minimal footprint) as it was …
Next month, Tunisians will go to the polls for the first time since former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country last January. Voters will determine the members of the National Constituent Assembly, which will be tasked with re-writing the constitution and determining the selection process of the next president and prime minister. One of the likely winners of the election is the Hizb Al-Nahda (translation: Renaissance Party) Islamist movement, which was once banned under the Ben Ali regime but is now a frontrunner in the upcoming election. …
