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By Michael Weinstein As the coalition of Western donor powers, the United Nations, the African Union, and regional African states, such as Kenya, Djibouti, Uganda and Burundi, see it, the narrative of Somalia’s contemporary political history pits the country’s new and expanded Transitional Federal Government (TFG) against an armed “insurgency” composed of “spoilers,” “extremists,” or “terrorists” operating under the banner of “radical Islamism.”

By Omer Ismail and Maggie Fick As the rainy season comes to an end in Chad, the recent détente between Chadian and Sudanese governments will not last. "Rebellion season" is on the horizon. Violence in the volatile East is again on the rise, and civilians are once again at grave risk. A high-ranking official in the Chadian government recently told us: "We know the rebels are just across the border [in Sudan]. They are coming as soon as the roads are accessible, but we are ready for them, because we monitor their moves." Indeed, flooded roads along the Chad-Sudan border are becoming passable once more; treacherous armed bandits known as zaraguinas are menacing Darfurian refugees and internally displaced Chadians; and tensions are escalating between pastoralists and farmers competing for land. The upsurge in violence has forced aid agencies to suspend assistance to tens of thousands of civilians.

By Bronwyn Bruton The clock has run out on the current international engagement in Somalia, and the United States faces a dearth of realistic policy options. The ability of the United States, the United Nations (UN) and the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) to influence political events in Somalia is almost wholly dependant on the presence of Ethiopian military forces. It was the Ethiopian invasion that ended the promising reign of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) over Somalia’s unruly capital city, Mogadishu; and the Ethiopian army, albeit with some assistance from the small African Union peacekeeping mission, is the coercive force that has allowed the unpopular Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to remain in power. But the TFG cannot retain power without the support of Ethiopian troops.

by Greg Sanders

Flickr photo by mafic used under a Creative Commons license. 

While participants won’t often say so, civil conflict is often driven by profit motives rather than any larger ideals.  Control of a country’s key resources is often either a direct goal of warring parties or a secondary goal that gives them the income to pursue their main interests.  So what happens when prices of a country’s export rise on the world market?  Does the increased profitability mean wars will be fought more viciously and with better funding?  Alternately, does the chance to make a decent income through conventional work calm things down?

Slate has an article on just that question, prompted by a new paper by economists Oeindrila Dube and Juan Vargas.  The answer seems to depend on how labor intensive the good is.  The paper specifically studied Colombia and found that goods which provide a lot of jobs, like raising coffee beans, tend to diminish conflict when prices go up.  “The researchers estimate that an additional 500 deaths may have resulted from the increased conflict that came from lower coffee prices.” By comparison, capital intensive goods which provide high paying jobs but in limited numbers, such as oil, tend to drive conflict when prices rise.

By Roland Henwood The African National Congress (ANC) recalled the President of the Republic of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, on September 27, 2008. This is a very unusual step in the politics of South Africa (and of Africa) where sitting presidents are seldom removed from office, and more rarely in a peaceful way. What makes this all the more intriguing is that President Mbeki was a mere eight or nine months away from the end of his term in office. Although the effect of this decision was immediate, the consequences will probably have long term ramifications for the politics of South Africa and possibly for the southern African region. Two questions to be reflected on are why he was removed as president at this late stage and what the consequences of this will be.

By John Makumbe The agreement signed between the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the two formations of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on September 15 2008 has proved to be defective in several ways. Only a few days after the signing ceremony in Harare, the three parties to the agreement held several meetings seeking to allocate the 31 portfolio ministries among themselves. The principals of the three parties failed to agree on the allocation of the ministries, with Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party insisting on holding on to such key ministries as defense, finance, foreign affairs, lands and agriculture, local government, and home affairs. The President of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, felt that apart from the defense portfolio, all the other ministries should be allocated to the two MDC formations, especially given the damage that Mugabe and ZANU-PF have wreaked on these ministries over the years. In typical ZANU-PF style, Mugabe would have none of that argument, contending that the two MDC formations had no experience of running such important line ministries. The result of all that squabbling was a deadlock and a delay in the implementation of the signed agreement, now expected to be implemented during the first week of October 2008.

By Abdoulaye W. Dukulé For the first time in almost a decade, Côte d’Ivoire faces the possibility of reaching a peaceful resolution of a civil crisis that has wracked this once stable country. From the Parisian suburb of Linas-Marcoussis, where they first met at the outbreak of the war, to Pretoria, Accra, and Lomé, Ivorian negotiators ended their long search for peaceful resolution in Ouagadougou, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire’s northern neighbor Burkina Faso. The Ouagadougou Peace Accord, signed between the Ivorian rebels led by Guillaume Soro and the embattled government of Laurent Gbagbo, may have opened the way to peace for the first time since the outbreak of violence. If no new major crisis develops and if all technical issues are resolved on time, Ivorians could head to the polls on November 30, 2008, to elect a new president, holding the first free and multiparty democratic elections since independence in 1960.  The opportunity is laced with challenges, including the disarmament and demobilization of former rebels and government militias, the delivery of voting cards to millions of disenfranchised Ivorians, and the capacity of the government of President Laurent Gbagbo to manage and conduct a free and fair electoral process in a peaceful environment.

Do you ever think about the future?  Chances are you probably do as a reader of GSI’s blog.  In that case, have you ever thought that you have the solution to some looming global catastrophe?  If

A deal struck a few months ago between Bluewater Wind and Delmarva Power

I don’t know if it was planned to coincide with the eve of the Large Hadron Collider’s maiden launch or if it was pure coincidence, but last Tuesday CSIS hosted Judy Estrin for a discussion on her recent book, Closing the Innovation Gap, about the poor state of science and technology research and development in this country and how to fix it. Judy Estrin boasts a very successful career as both a scientist and a businesswoman; starting as a researcher at Stanford working with Vint Cerf, the father of the internet, she eventually landed herself in Fortune Magazine’s 50 most powerful women in American business on multiple occasions. Along the way she founded three successful technology companies and currently sits on the board of The Walt Disney Company and FedEx Corporation. Her credentials are truly astounding, but what makes her really special, in her opinion, is that she has no experience in Washington. She admittedly is not a policy wonk, so one can only imagine the anxiety she must have felt entering CSIS, home of some of the most influential and experienced minds in Washington -- like Daniel entering the lion’s den is probably a good guess.

Judy Estrin is also an unabashed idealist. She says that as a scientist she must be. She believes that solutions to our current problems are out there if we’re willing to devote time to search for them and to be patient enough to