Month: February 2015

• Guest Post: After this month’s postponement, giving Nigeria a credible election

  February 17, 2015

  Nigeria

  This is a guest post by Christopher O’Connor, Assistant Program Officer for Nigeria at the National Endowment for Democracy. The views expressed are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Endowment of Democracy. To the dismay of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) and a sizable portion of the electorate, Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission… Read.

• Can Regional Effort Uproot Boko Haram in Time for Nigeria Elections?

  February 14, 2015

  Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria

  (Originally published in World Politics Review on February 13, 2015) Last weekend, Nigeria’s electoral commission announced that, contrary to statements made just days prior by the chief of defense staff and the chief of army staff, the country’s security forces could not guarantee the safe conduct of presidential and parliamentary elections originally scheduled for Feb. 14 and 28. The… Read.

• PRISM Africa Issue Released

  February 11, 2015

  African Union, AFRICOM, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Security Cooperation

  My former boss, who was cool enough to give me the long leash required to do the TSCTP Study when I was at the Center for Complex Operations, just released PRISM Volume 5, Number 2. This issue is the journal’s first African security-focused one, and includes the following articles: The Tswalu Dialog by Michael Miklaucic On the State of Peace… Read.

• South Sudan’s warring parties agree to agree on a peace agreement

  February 5, 2015

  South Sudan

  (Originally published in The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog on February 5, 2015) Since the beginning of the year, two developments have revived hope that South Sudan’s civil war, which began in December 2013, may soon come to an end. First, the country’s main political party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), whose split precipitated… Read.