Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
(Washington, D.C.) – A day after the United States’ deadliest-ever mass shooting, His Holiness the Dalai Lama led a Washington audience in a silent prayer for peace—but said prayers will be ineffective without “serious action” to erode religious and other communal divisions.
Hena Khan, the author of best-selling children’s books, thought Muhammad Ali’s funeral on Friday was going to be a turning point for American Muslims. “Ali spent his life trying to show the real Islam—battling Islamophobia even as he battled Parkinson’s disease. That’s what was highlighted after he died,” she told me this weekend. “It was nice to feel proud—and to see people saying ‘Allahu Akbar’ interpreted in a positive way.”
Omar attended Friday's memorial service and she told CNN it reflected Ali's faiths and beliefs. And you really felt his presence just in the diversity that was on the stage and in the audience. It provided a glimpse into what we could be both as a country but as a global community and that journey came through faith. His wife said that he could have turned to violence, he could have turned to other means but his faith, Islam, didn't allow him to. And so - and her quote was very powerful. "It'...
Understanding what motivates women to radicalize can not only help the military recognize a threat when they see it, it also can help with prevention, experts say.
The Obama administration has granted American forces in Afghanistan new authorities to assist Afghan troops, a U.S. official said Thursday. The move signals a return to broader military might against the Taliban and pulls the United States back deeper into the country’s ongoing war.
Zimbabwe is one of nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa, currently under targeted United States sanctions, and a hearing in Washington on Wednesday, sought to explore their effectiveness or necessity. Honorable Princeton Lyman of the United States Institute of Peace and also Senior Adviser to the president, cautioned against sanctions in all cases saying often it’s harder to lift them than impose them, and that they are best used in combination with other strategies.
India's biggest hurdle at the upcoming Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Meeting on June 9 will be to overcome China's two-faced policy of opposing India's application to join the group on the one hand and on the other violating NSG terms by supplying banned nuclear materials to Pakistan.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need in Syria, many of them trapped in towns under siege. That's why the U.S., Russia and some other countries issued an ultimatum of sorts. They gave the warring sides until today, June 1, to start allowing aid convoys to reach besieged towns. Otherwise, the U.N. would start airdropping food. A few aid convoys did reach some towns today, but as NPR's Michele Kelemen reports, they brought only limited relief to starving residents.
The standoff can still be resolved peacefully, according to Muhammad Fraser-Rahim, Africa programs officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. “The government has the situation contained, but at the same time the protests have spread outside of Nairobi,” he said by phone. “If there is an increase and intensification of the protests for another six months, Kenya is going to face a very difficult situation.”
The lessons from the 2011 breakdown of ties are fresh enough on both sides to want to avoid that. The US government, most of all, will keep reminding everyone of the constraints ‘nuclear Pakistan’ imposes on realistic policy choices. And yet, ‘interesting’ times lie ahead.