The New York Times

Egypt’s interior minister, who played a central role in the military-backed government’s far-reaching and ruthless crackdown on political dissent, was removed from his post on Thursday in a cabinet shake-up announced by the president’s office.

This is no longer an American war, regardless of how many United States Special Operations forces continue to sweep the mountains for insurgents or how many American warplanes fire missiles into remote desert camps. That war, by most accounts, has been lost. In the face of endless violence, the Taliban have not been killed off. The nation is not pacified, the political future remains deeply uncertain and the death toll has never been higher. For the central government in Kabul, the real fight is to persuade the population, not to kill insurgents. And the police, local and national, are the only ones who can win it.

More than a year after South Sudan’s leaders plunged their country into a nasty civil war, the nation has become something of a test of diplomacy between the United States and China, raising the question: Can Washington and Beijing turn their mutual interests in South Sudan into a shared strategy to stop the bloodshed?

Former CIA station chief in Islamabad, Robert Grenier, writes that “ultimate victory in the fight against violent extremism inspired by Islam will require wisdom and patience of an unaccustomed sort.”