Author: Colin Thomas-Jensen

I watched the humanitarian crisis unfold in Darfur while I was at the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2003 to 2005, and the Sudanese government’s attitude toward relief was no less manipulative of humanitarian assistance than it was during the more than 20-year war with southern Sudan. The government’s war strategy to destroy the livelihoods of Darfur’s non-Arab peoples—a strategy that has been well documented by Physicians for Human Rights, among others—has left nearly three million people almost wholly dependent on humanitarian assistance for their survival. As the government-backed Janjaweed rampaged through Darfur in 2003 and 2004, they destroyed ...

The Sudanese government’s decision earlier this month to expel relief agencies from Darfur and other vulnerable hotspots in northern Sudan is not the first time that President Bashir’s government has deliberately withheld food and medical care from those who need it most. Far from it. As my colleague John Prendergast noted in a recent op-ed, the same regime caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people during the war in southern Sudan by manipulating and blocking humanitarian assistance. The Sudanese army’s strategy to depopulate the oil fields in Western Upper Nile from 1999 to 2001 demonstrates just how little ...

If the Obama administration is looking for examples of how not to fight terrorism and help rebuild failed states, it should take close look at the Bush administration’s disastrous policies in Somalia. It was so driven by short-term counter-terrorism objectives and targeted military strikes against alleged al-Qaeda targets inside Somalia that some within the U.S. intelligence community jokingly refer to Bush-era policy as ‘whac-a-mole.’ With a change in administration and a number of new developments inside Somalia—most significantly the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces and the election of a moderate Islamist as president—now is the time for the United States to ...

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) released a statement on the arrest of Laurent Nkunda, and, as usual, he hits all the right notes: I welcome the arrest of Laurent Nkunda and the commitment demonstrated by the Congolese and Rwandan militaries to work together to disarm illegal armed groups in eastern Congo. I hope this cooperation will continue and Nkunda’s removal will prove to be a decisive step toward lasting peace and stability for the region. Nonetheless, capitalizing on this breakthrough will require sustained political will to dismantle Nkunda’s army and develop a comprehensive approach to disarming the rebel Forces Démocratiques pour ...

In a recent article, some Congo analysts I respect are echoing the concerns we expressed here regarding the potential for the situation in Congo to deteriorate even further as the Rwandan and Congolese armies launch a ‘15-day’ military operation against the FDLR in eastern Congo. According to Guillaume Lacaille of the International Crisis Group: “The more Rwanda stays in the DRC, the higher the risk of political instability in North Kivu and if a military operation against the FDLR is launched quickly, without more preparation to protect the population, there will be high civilian casualties.” Gerard Prunier, a long-time observer ...

Here’s another one for the “we hope the Obama administration takes a more nuanced approach to foreign policy” file. A coalition of organizations recently released a set of policy recommendations on how the United States can better address the crisis in Chad. Their recommendations largely echo what Enough has long been arguing—that although the violence in eastern Chad is in part a spillover from neighboring Darfur, Chad is mired in its own unique political crisis, and the international community needs to be much smarter in developing a practical roadmap toward lasting stability in Chad. My colleagues Omer Ismail and Maggie ...

In a dramatic reversal of fortune for one of Central Africa’s most powerful warlords, Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda was arrested by Rwandan authorities last night along the Congo-Rwanda border. When my colleague Rebecca and I met with Nkunda in the town of Rwanguba on Thanksgiving Day, he seemed on top of the world. His rebel movement, the National Congress for the Defense of People, or CNDP, had routed the Congolese army, embarrassed UN peacekeepers, consolidated control of a large swath of North Kivu province, and threatened the regional capital of Goma. Nkunda shrugged off allegations that his lieutenant, Bosco ...

Thursday, August 7, is the ten-year anniversary of the al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. For the better part of ten years, the U.S. government has worked closely with intelligence agencies in Ethiopia and Kenya to track the movements of three al-Qaeda operatives alleged to be responsible for planning the operation, which killed more than 250 people and wounded thousands more. The suspects have frequently taken refuge in Somalia, exploiting the porous borders and ungoverned spaces of the world’s number one failed state. One of those suspects, the alleged leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa Fazul Abdullah ...

To anyone tracking the international community's muddled efforts to broker peace in Darfur, last week's decision to appoint a new mediator, Burkina Faso's Foreign Minister Djibril Bassole, is welcome news. But it is only a small first step in building a peace process that can end more than five years of genocide and bloody conflict. The joint United Nations/African Union mediation has ground to a halt in recent months, and the Government of Sudan, its militia proxies, and several rebel factions remain convinced that military victory in Darfur is possible. Mr. Bassole is an experienced mediator--he helped broker a 2007 ...

This month's U.S. airstrike in Somalia was a rare military success in a region where U.S. counter-terrorism policy is failing spectacularly. The missile attack that killed Aden Hashi Ayro, a vicious Somali militia leader with ties to al Qaeda, is reminiscent of the 2006 operation that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq. Just as it did with al-Zarqawi, the Bush administration is touting Ayro's killing as a major victory in the war on terror, but as in Iraq the death of a single leader will do little to either slow the spread of extremism in Somalia or reduce ...