Publications & Tools

USIP’s top program staff visited the Institute’s Kabul office in early May to meet with key leaders and discuss the transition in Afghanistan in 2014, a week before the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago May 20-21. USIP’s Shahmahmood Miakhel, country director in Kabul, Andrew Wilder, director of Afghanistan and Pakistan programs and Scott Smith, deputy director of Afghanistan programs, met with Maj. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the deputy chief of staff for operations for ISAF in Afghanistan. The group discussed the myriad issues that Afghanistan, ISAF and the international community face as the 2014 transition looms

So-called capacity building, the transfer of knowledge and skills, has become a key approach to addressing stabilization and reconstruction in post-conflict and post-crisis environments. But we should also think of capacity building as the approach to preventing conflict: “preventive capacity building.” In an environment of austerity and fiscal responsibility, strengthening the capacity of fragile states in order to assist in the development of their ability to manage conflict makes more sense than ever.

The fledgling new governments in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco are now facing persistent challenges from a different kind of unrest - labor strikes. In all three countries, hundreds of strikes have repeatedly disrupted government services and private industries since the Arab uprisings erupted in January 2011.

Violence once again has flared up between Sudanese and South Sudanese forces in an oil-rich region on their disputed border. Jon Temin, director of USIP's Sudan programs, discusses what's behind the renewed fighting and what is at stake for the region and international community.

Syrian forces continued to pound cities across the nation, despite a United Nations-brokered peace plan that was to end violence in the 13-month anti-government uprising. According to the U.N. plan, Syrian forces were to pull back from cities by April 10, and a ceasefire would go in effect on April 12.