Current Analysis A Grim New Phase in Yemen’s Migration History “Yemen’s conflict is getting so bad that some Yemenis are fleeing to Somalia,” read a recent headline at the Vice News website. The article mentions [https://news.vice.com/article/yemens-conflict-is-getting-so-bad-that-some-yemenis-are-fleeing-to-somalia?utm_source=vicenewstwitter] that 32 Yemenis, Marina de Regt • 3 min read
Current Analysis Seven Places You Didn't Know Were Part of the Middle East 1) Guantánamo George R. Trumbull • 4 min read
MER Article The China-Africa Axis in Relation to Other Regional Axes China and Africa grosso modo are often seen as standing at two ends of the spectrum of developing countries, the former having acquired enormous industrial capacity in short order, and the latter not. In this view, a great potential for exchange exists between the two: manufactures and infrastructur Engseng Ho • 11 min read
Current Analysis Manhunting in Africa The penultimate scene in the recently released film Captain Phillips, about the 2009 seizure of the US-flagged cargo ship Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates, depicts the methodical precision with which a Navy SEAL Team 6 unit identified and then captured or killed the pirates during their doomed attem Steve Niva • 5 min read
Current Analysis Reverse the Exodus from Eritrea Last week, soldiers in one of Africa’s most closed and repressive nations -- Eritrea -- occupied the country’s Ministry of Information and issued demands. The pattern was a familiar one. News spread quickly that a coup was underway. But feisty little Eritrea, which got its independence from Ethiopi Dan Connell • 3 min read
MER Article Escaping Eritrea Said Ibrahim, 21, orphaned and blind, was making a living as a singer in Adi Quala bars when a member of Eritrea’s national security force claimed one of his songs had “political” content and detained him at the Adi Abieto prison. After a month Said was released, but he was stripped of his monthly d Dan Connell • 22 min read
MER Article A Modern-Day Pirate's Port of Call Not far from Fort Jesus, the sixteenth-century fort erected by the Portuguese to mark their violent entry into the world of Indian Ocean commerce, is a small office near the old port of Mombasa. Scattered inside are copies of Seatrade and other maritime trade magazines. An old desktop computer displ Jatin Dua • 7 min read
MER Article On Piracy and the Afterlives of Failed States Until the resurgence of naval predation in the late 2000s, pirates were confined to the realm of the fantastic -- novels, films and stage productions. Since Western states last worried about pirates in the eighteenth century, the intrinsic, man-bites-dog interest of contemporary pirates for the popu George R. Trumbull • 14 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Fall 2010) On July 6, the impish economic historian Niall Ferguson took the podium at the Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual seminar series for the rich and powerful on how to remain rich and powerful. Ferguson, as is his wont, began by tweaking the perpetual American reluctance to admit that the United States is The Editors • 4 min read
Current Analysis There and Back Again in Somalia When 2006 dawned in Somalia, the war-torn Horn of Africa nation had been without a functioning central government for 15 years. The main claimant to the title, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) formed in 2004, was unable to extend its authority beyond a small portion of the countryside. An uneasy Ken Menkhaus • 18 min read
MER Article He Didn't Do It For Them Michela Wrong, I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation (New York: Harper Collins, 2005). When I first encountered Eritrea in 1976, I was deeply impressed with the movement heading up the former Italian colony’s 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia. During those Dan Connell • 11 min read
Current Analysis War Clouds Over Somalia After two months out of the media spotlight, the war-ravaged country of Somalia is once again the subject of speculation about the next theater of George W. Bush's "war on terrorism." In comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 19, CIA director George Tenet Dan Connell • 6 min read
