International Crisis Group

This year, the armed Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab has notched up a series of bloody successes against both Somali targets and the African Union peace-enforcement mission AMISOM. Meanwhile, the international community has been busy cajoling principals of the Somali federal and state governments into agreeing on the means by which to hold new elections due in August. Despite four years of “post-transitional” government and a level of international engagement and foreign military presence not seen since the early 1990s, Somali politics remain dysfunctional and prone to violent disagreement – exactly the conditions in which Al-Shabaab thrives.

FULL BLOG POST (Via Crisis Group)

Photo: AFP PHOTO/Mohamed DAHIR

SOURCE: Crisis Group

The center of Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, is unrecognizable to anyone who saw it during the country’s two most recent wars against Russia. The First Chechen War, which began in 1994, was a war of nationalist resistance—Chechnya had declared independence from Russia when the Soviet Union disintegrated—and ended two years later, after a Russian bombing campaign killed thousands of civilians and left the city in ruins. The Second Chechen War, which the Russians launched in 1999, in an effort to curb not only Chechen separatism but the threat of militant Islam, wound down a decade later, with special operations carried out deep in the craggy, wooded hills of the Caucasus. These days, the rubble is gone. The city’s skyline is punctuated by the glass towers of Grozny-City, a collection of skyscrapers that house offices, luxury apartments, and a five-star hotel. Grozny is quiet and bland, with well-paved boulevards running through its center; there is still a faint air of menace—men in black uniforms stand with automatic rifles on many street corners—but the city’s flashier attractions, like a man-made lake with a light show, seem whimsical and family-friendly.

FULL ARTICLE (Via The New Yorker)

Photo: Flickr/Christiaan Triebert

SOURCE: The New Yorker

Tajikistan, Central Asia’s poorest state, is under dangerous pressure both internally and externally. President Emomali Rahmon’s 23-year rule is marred by violence, lack of accountability, corruption and mass migration. Remittances and drug trafficking are key sources of income. Controls on religion and political opposition, including a ban on the moderate Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), foster resentment. Security along the 1,400-km border with Afghanistan is inconsistent at best, and increasing instability in northern Afghanistan, where Central Asian militants are allied with the Taliban, poses a threat to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alike.

FULL REPORT (Via Crisis Group)

Photo: STR/AFP

Source: Crisis Group