Algeria

Despite not really being in the news, Algeria still appears in the Western media intermittently. As the Maghreb’s last dictatorship, the recent wave of regime change and democratization has passed...

When did the Arab Spring end? Some analysts place it in March 2011—the start of the “Arab Winter” or the week when “the empire struck back,” in the words of...

Entering this week, the political situation in Egypt already was tenuous, to put it mildly. The composition of a constituent assembly to write a new constitution was still contested and...

As the violence continues in Syria, the prevailing assumption is that the regime of Bashar al-Assad is on its last legs. Even if it is not dislodged by overt Western...

A reminder of how human history, including the portion of it involving political and public affairs, sometimes hinges on otherwise minor twists and turns is the coup d’etat two weeks...

It is easy to be skeptical about the latest news on the Afghan-negotiation front: a “preliminary agreement” for the Taliban to open an office in Qatar. This is, after all,...

Results of the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections—in which the Muslim Brotherhood came in first, followed by a Salafist party—have stimulated still more of what has been a common...

As the Libyan opposition closes in on Tripoli, the Algerian regime worries it could be next. The largest country in Africa with much more oil and gas than Libya, Algeria...

The triumphal news of Bin Laden’s killing yesterday has also called into question—if not shattered—much of the conventional wisdom about al-Qaeda’s leader and the movement he founded. First, the assumption...

While debate raged on about where the primary 9/11 suspects would be tried—with the attorney general finally acceding to the will of the Congressional majority that they should be tried...

Much is being made about the role that social networking and other technologies played in the mass protests which forced Tunisia’s President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country,...

The irony about American diplomacy is that while official statements from the U.S. government are often met with skepticism, the famously leaked secret diplomatic cables from American overseas embassies have...