Last week's Yemen peace talks in Switzerland have ended without making much progress, in part due to the fact that the ceasefire that was to accompany those talks never actually took hold. Saudi-Yemeni government forces today advanced closer to Yemen's capital, Sanaa, than they've been since the Houthis captured the city last fall, in spite … Continue reading Yemen: the ceasefire that wasn’t, but progress at peace talks

Earlier today, this hit lefty Twitter: https://twitter.com/ppppolls/status/677871578281984002 HAHAHAHA, Jesus, what a bunch of blockheads, am I right? People immediately started having fun with this tidbit of information, and I'm sure there are 1500 word thinkpieces being typed up even now. Yours truly got in on the act, wondering what would happen to all the Disney … Continue reading Maybe the problem is your poll, not the people who answered it

To be honest, I'm not sure why I keep doing these national day posts, except that I did that one for the UAE, and then I felt like it wouldn't be fair not to do the same thing for Bahrain, and now I'm kind of locked into a vicious cycle. Anyway, like Bahrain National Day, … Continue reading Happy Qatar National Day!

The escalating violence in Burundi escalated a little faster last week, when 100 people were killed in clashes in Bujumbura between Friday and Saturday. The US State Department took the step of issuing a warning cautioning US citizens to avoid traveling to Burundi if possible, which suggests that Washington, at least, thinks that the situation … Continue reading Burundi is going from bad to worse

For the past couple of weeks, the Ethiopian government has been killing dozens of people, many of them students and farmers, protesting a plan to expand the country's capital, Addis Ababa, into surrounding rural areas of the country's Oromia region. The Oromo, who inhabit Oromia and are the largest of Ethiopia's almost innumerable (seriously, there … Continue reading The unfolding humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia

On Sunday and Monday, voters in the Central African Republic, which has been in a state of civil war for the better part of three years, voted on a constitutional referendum intended to try to bring about an end to the fighting. Preliminary results suggest that the referendum passed overwhelmingly. There were a few outbreaks … Continue reading What’s coming next in the Central African Republic?

Representatives from both of Libya's dueling governments showed up in Shirkat, Morocco, today to sign an agreement to implement a national unity government. Here are the details: Under the deal, a nine-member presidential council will form a government with the current, eastern-based House of Representatives as the main legislative [body] and a State Council as … Continue reading All over but the actual hard work

Brookings' Bruce Reidel asks an important question: Are the Saudis finally getting serious about the anti-ISIS fight? Obviously it's still early, but so far? No: At least two nations said they were taken by surprise by the Saudi announcement that they were part of a 34 nation coalition. Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry said he … Continue reading SATSQ, Saudi anti-terror coalition edition

Yemen's seven-day ceasefire looks at the moment like it's going to last a couple of days at most: A ceasefire between Yemen's Houthi group and a Saudi-led alliance was in danger of collapse on Wednesday, each side accusing the other of violating the truce, as peace talks went into a second day in Switzerland. Brigadier … Continue reading Well, it had a good run

Nigeria is struggling to deal with Boko Haram, the jihadi insurgent organization that was the world's deadliest terror group in 2014 and hasn't really let up this year. President Muhammadu Buhari's plans to have defeated Boko Haram by the end of the year are totally kaput, the multi-national coalition that was supposed to contain and … Continue reading Nigeria can’t deal with one Islamist insurgency, and now it’s got to deal with a second one