Last night’s debate between President Obama and Governor Romney was supposed to focus on foreign policy. It turned into a wide-ranging conversation on everything from the Middle East to American teachers. Heritage Foundation experts were live blogging analysis throughout the night. Below are some highlights from their reactions. Join us …
Last week, President Obama joked to guests at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner in New York about the upcoming foreign policy debate: “Spoiler Alert: We got [Osama] bin Laden.” While this is indeed the highlight of the Administration’s foreign policy endeavors, President Obama’s failure to take a comprehensive approach to …
The murder of America’s ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three U.S. diplomats shines a gruesome light on the region’s power vacuum and the attempt by Islamist militants to exploit it. Following the fall of the Muammar Qadhafi regime last year, well-armed Tuareg rebels, who were once loyal to the …
The ongoing crisis in Mali, a poor, landlocked country in northern Africa, continues to sow devastation and displacement. Mali’s current troubles began in earnest following the 2011 fall of Libyan tyrant Muammar Qadhafi. Armed mercenary fighters from Mali in Qadhafi’s employ, mostly ethnic Tuaregs (Berber nomadic tribes), returned to northern …
Just as we thought the situation in Mali couldn’t get worse, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Tuareg group that historically sought to liberate northern Mali, and Ansar al-Din, an Islamic group seeking impose Sharia law, have formed a union and declared northern Mali their own. …
Last year, the fall of the Qadhafi regime spurred a domino-like effect across Africa’s Sahel region. When approximately 2,000 well-armed Tuareg rebels loyal to the former dictator left Libya and returned to Mali, they escalated the destabilization of the country’s north. At the same time the Malian military, reportedly frustrated …
