Foreign Policy
Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - 06:32
In a nod to the growing threat Islamist militant groups pose in Africa, the Pentagon is planning to spend about $200 million on operations targeting the Islamic State in North Africa — thousands of miles from the group’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria — while also making a new push against al Qaeda-linked forces elsewhere on the continent.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - 07:16
Last week, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos came to Washington to tout the dual-barreled successes of peace talks with the rebel group FARC and Plan Colombia, an aid program that began in 2000 when the government had control of only a third of its country.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016 - 07:09
All the gains under Plan Colombia — as the U.S.-Colombia partnership has come to be known — now hang in the balance as a result of President Santos’s surprising decision three years ago to launch yet another peace process with the FARC, a $600 million-a-year narco-terrorist enterprise that has waged war on Colombian society for five decades.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016 - 06:20
The commander of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said he is drawing up a variety of proposals for accelerating the fight against the terrorist group — some of which may require more U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq.
Friday, January 29, 2016 - 06:57
Witnesses and humanitarian organizations accused government security forces of entering opposition neighborhoods and shooting civilians in the back of their heads. Burundian officials said the civilians were likely killed by rebels and claimed security forces took aim only at the attackers. As many as 87 people — mainly Tutsis — lay dead, many in the streets and some with their hands still tied behind their backs. And by nightfall, many of the corpses had disappeared, their whereabouts remaining a mystery for more than a month.
Friday, January 29, 2016 - 06:52
American involvement in the long Afghan war was supposed to come to a close by the end of the year, but an array of top Pentagon officials spent Thursday making clear that U.S. troops will be fighting — and potentially dying — there for years to come.
Thursday, January 28, 2016 - 07:33
Administration officials acknowledged that sticking to the plan to leave Afghanistan the way it left Iraq in 2011 would be disastrous for U.S. interests.
Friday, January 22, 2016 - 06:43
Willy Nyamitwe, a top advisor to Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, is in Washington this week to rally U.S. support after reports Rwanda is arming Burundian refugees and pressuring them to join opposition rebel groups.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - 06:46
Secretary of State John Kerry has tapped one of Congress’s longest serving overseers of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to become the State Department’s new gatekeeper of arms sales to foreign countries. The hiring of Bill Monahan, which has not previously been reported, removes the veteran staffer from the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he has been knee-deep in scrutinizing the Pentagon’s conduct of the twin conflicts as well as the U.S. military’s coordination with governments in Europe and South Asia.
Friday, January 15, 2016 - 06:49
The U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, took a veiled swipe Thursday at U.S. and Saudi air operations in Afghanistan and Yemen, denouncing “so-called ‘surgical strikes’” that hit medical facilities last year as “assaults on our common humanity.”