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.
The most interesting revelation during the confirmation hearings of Army Lt. Gen. John Nicholson, who was nominated as the next commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was the revelation by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) that Nicholson's great-great-uncle was British Lt. Gen. John Nicholson, who had participated in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839 to 1842) and been held captive in Ghazni.
Ambassador Princeton Lyman, a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace and the former U.S. special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, says a lot can be learned from the ongoing conflict.
The United States and Russia have announced plans for a cessation of hostilities in Syria, which have resulted in at least a quarter of a million deaths since 2011.
Candace Rondeaux reviews Jeffrey E. Stern’s new book about a sui generis school that defies the odds and norms in today’s Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's budget revenue increased almost 22 percent in 2015, a report by the United States Institute for Peace said, an encouraging turnaround for a cash-strapped government that remains heavily reliant on foreign aid.
Today on Straight Talk Africa, tension remains high in Uganda following last week’s presidential election in which long serving President Yoweri Museveni was declared the winner. Guest host Esther Githui-Ewart and her guests Elizabeth Murray, Rushdi Nackerdien and Milton Allimadi discuss the election results.
Tehran was awash with color this week as the election season began. It’s an enviably short campaign—the vote is tomorrow—and will determine the makeup of both the two-hundred-and-ninety-seat Majlis, or parliament, and, more important, the eighty-eight-member Assembly of Experts, which is like the College of Cardinals in that its members choose the country’s Supreme Leader.
A powerful setback for hard-liners in Iran’s parliamentary elections may present President Hassan Rouhani with a golden chance to speed up his country’s reopening to the world and remake an economy long weakened by Western sanctions.
Iranians revel in political humor. Over the weekend, as election results began to show that long-entrenched hard-liners were losing, a new joke circulated in Tehran: Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had called Secretary of State John Kerry with an offer: “John, we have just succeeded in defeating our hard-liners. Let us know if you want advice on how to beat Mr. Trump.”
More than 30 million Iranians voted Friday in parliamentary elections. It is the first national ballot since the completion of a nuclear deal that led to the removal of most international sanctions. The elections are seen as pivotal – a referendum on president Rouhani’s reform agenda, support of the nuclear deal, and opening up more to the west. Preliminary results show reformists and moderates making significant gains.