Deep inside the tropical forest of Gabon, 500 miles from the coast, China is going where no other investors dare. A Chinese consortium, led by the China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation, has won the contract to develop Gabon’s massive Belinga iron ore deposit. In return for purchasing the entire output, Chinese operators will build not only the extractive infrastructure at Belinga but a hydro-electric dam to power it, a railway to the coast, and a deepwater port north of the capital, Libreville, for exporting the ore.
Force Won’t Bring Peace to Somalia
The sudden defeat of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) by the Ethiopian army and their U.S. backers proved easier then expected. A reported 15,000 Ethiopian troops and U.S. aerial bombardment succeeded in installing the Transitional Federal Government, two years after its formation in neighboring Kenya.
The Future of Political Islam in Somalia
The United States, fearing a new Taliban had come to power in Somalia, recently did what many expected it would do: invade Somalia. Not directly though. In the final weeks of 2006, Ethiopian forces that were trained, financed, and outfitted by the United States pounded Somalia’s capital and port cities with air attacks, routing the poorly equipped militias of the Islamic leadership.
The Making of Another Iraq
A new front in the Âglobal war on terror has emerged with its center in war-torn Somalia. The target of the new front, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), both brought back normalcy to seemingly untamable southern Somalia and anxiously legislated morality to the point of social suffocation. According to the U.S. State Department, its greatest sin was its purported link to al-Qaida.
A New Frontier of Jihadi Islam?
Somalia today is very much like Afghanistan was in 1996. In the wake of years of civil war, chaotic rule by warlords, and the death and displacement of countless Muslims, a ragtag Islamic militia has moved in to take control of much of Somalia.
The War Between Ethiopia and Eritrea
Key Points
During the 30-year war against the Ethiopian military dictatorship, the EPLF and TPLF guerrilla movements worked closely together and achieved victory in 1991 as the firmest of friends.
Despite claims to the contrary, Ethiopia and Eritrea have been fighting not over a border but over rival hegemonic claims in the Horn of Africa and over “national pride” and “territorial integrity.”
Its neighbors see Eritrea as having deliberately chosen an aggressive foreign policy as a central element in its nation building strategy; Eritrea fears the threat of Ethiopian regional dominance.
Even by the shocking standards of recent African conflicts, the May 1998-June 2000 war in the Horn of Africa is truly appalling. As many as 100,000 people have been killed in the intermittent, but savage fighting; up to one million people have been driven into exile or internal displacement; hundreds of millions of dollars have been diverted from development into arms procurement.
U.S. Policy Regarding Burma
UN Peacekeeping: An Uncertain Future
Greening the Bretton Woods Institutions
Cold War Military Relics: Why Congress Funds Them
In July 1999, as the fiscal year 2000 military budget was winding its way through Congress, the Pentagon and Texas-based arms maker Lockheed Martin were dealt a blow to the solar plexus.