America steps up bombing the Houthis but lacks a clear strategy
WHEN America started bombing the Houthis on March 15th, your correspondent messaged a diplomat: was this déjà vu or something...
Talks over the Chagos Islands show the rising clout of Mauritius
In a tatty office in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, Olivier Bancoult points to the tricolour flag on the wall. It is t...
Syrians are still surprisingly upbeat
Presenting his new government on March 29th, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, called it “a declaration of our shar...
Khartoum changes hands, heralding a new phase in Sudan’s civil war
It was not the heroic final stand their leader had perhaps envisioned. On March 15th Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo had called on his...
Khartoum changes hands, marking a new phase in Sudan’s civil war
Nearly two years after being forced to fall back to Port Sudan on the coast, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under General Ab...
Israel courts the Middle East’s minorities
The prize for Israel sounds tempting. After the Hamas attack on October 7th 2023 Palestinian labourers from the occupied terr...
Nigeria’s president pushes the limits of his power
After a Nigerian firm called Heirs Energies paid $1.1bn in 2021 to acquire an oil field in the Niger Delta, its boss found th...
The war in Gaza has unsettled the Jewish diaspora
Nailed to the entrance of the Gun For Hire shooting range in Woodland Park, New Jersey, is a large mezuzah, the prayer-scroll...
A faster rollout of malaria vaccines would save many lives
WHEN PAULINE OTIENO’S second child caught malaria, a decade ago, it meant an anxious, feverish week in hospital. When her thi...
America’s strikes on the Houthis could whip up a regional tempest
America and its allies have repeatedly gone after the Houthis, Yemeni rebels backed by Iran, since they started attacking shi...