Despite the ouster of the Islamist militia last month, stability in Somalia remains elusive. Its leaders must decide whether to reconcile or return to warlordism.

A top U.S. State Department official says Washington wants the alliance to beat back the Taliban’s resurgence.

With Iran’s economy struggling and the conservative camp split, President Ahmadinejad may find himself increasingly marginalized on foreign policy matters. 

Anthony H. Cordesman, a leading strategic analyst of the Iraqi war, says the Bush administration’s latest strategy on Iraq makes victory there “possible” but “the problem is it also isn’t probable.”

President Bush’s plan to secure Baghdad faces a number of obstacles: a war-weary American public, a resistant Iraqi government, and an entrenched sectarian dispute.

Steven A. Cook, a leading Middle East expert, says the current U.S. effort to make progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks is inevitably linked to the U.S. desire to get Arab support for the shaky government in Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s latest round of Mideast diplomacy hopes to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Yet little evidence exists to support the idea that either party to the conflict currently shares that hope.

A Congressional Research Service report on Afghanistan’s political transition. The report notes that while the insurgency led by remnants of the former Taliban regime escalated in 2006, after several years in which it appeared the Taliban were mostly defeated. Taliban fighters have been conducting large-scale attacks on coalition and Afghan security forces in several southern provinces, possibly assisted by popular frustration with slow reconstruction, official corruption, and the failure to extend Afghan government authority into rural areas and provinces. In addition, narcotics trafficking is resisting counter-measures, and independent militias remain throughout the country, although many have been disarmed.

With a new team of Iraq advisers emerging, President Bush looks set to call for a “surge” of more U.S. forces to Iraq. Some critics, including newly empowered congressional Democrats, think the emphasis should be on redeployment from Iraq.

Partial text of a report from the left-leaning Global Policy Forum on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The report considers what it calls a ‘failed policy’ in detail, with special emphasis on the U.S. Coalition’s responsibilities under international law. It also considers political and economic issues in Iraq and argues for a speedy withdrawal of Coalition forces

A breakdown of coalition fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan in the six months through December 2006.

This report on Open Democracy and written by Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, England, argues that without a change of NATO strategy, the prospect for Afghanistan in 2007 is escalating violence.

This article from Anthony H. Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies is based on a trip to Afghanistan in November 2006. It argues that the rise in threat activity in Afghanistan is serious, but must be kept in context, and that the challenges to be overcome are still far less serious than in Iraq. Cordesman adds that the US and NATO scored important victories in 2006, and that while the Bush Administration is already considering major increases in military and economic aid and limited increases in US forces, it is also the case that NATO commanders understand the problems and weaknesses in current NATO forces and rules of engagement, and are seeking to overcome them.

primeGerald Steinberg, a consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Security Council, who specializes in Middle East diplomatic and security issues, says that sections in the Baker-Hamilton report urging stepped up diplomacy in the region, including an Israeli-Syrian negotiation for peace and a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian issues, seem out of place today.

Abdel Raouf El Reedy, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States and a Mideast expert, says Arab leaders need to engage Iran to find a solution to the crisis in Lebanon.

In this report the US Institute for Peace (USIP) details proceedings at its Sudan Peace Forum in December 2006 in which Dr Chester Crocker and Dr Francis Deng co-chaired a discussion of overlapping crises in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic. The meeting was prompted by recent comments of the United Nations Under Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, who warned that the crises in Darfur, Chad, and CAR are "intimately linked" and could lead to a "dangerous regional crisis."

This article from Roland Paris, associate professor of international and public affairs in the University of Ottawa and argues that NATO’s efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are set to fail. To avoid this, additional NATO troops are required, efforts to build an Afghan army should be accelerated, and corruption in the Afghan government, especially the police, needs to be tackled. Paris also argues that the policy of destroying opium crops is playing into the hands of insurgents, adding that more reconstruction aid is needed in Afghanistan, and that the flow of insurgent fighters from Pakistan also needs to be contained.  

A report from USIP focussing on the October 2006 attack on an Islamic madrassa in Chinagai, a border village in the Bajour province of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and its wider implications. The attack, which killed 82 people, was one of many recent military incursions into the tribal areas. Pakistani officials later claimed that the targets were al Qaeda and pro-Taliban elements. But, the attack occurred even as negotiations for a peace deal—along the lines of an earlier deal in the neighbouring province of North Waziristan—were ongoing between the government of Pakistan, tribal leaders, and local militants in the area. The timing of the attack and the alleged involvement of US military and intelligence assets in the strike caused considerable suspicion throughout the tribal areas and beyond. This report considers the broader questions raised by the attack regarding the stability of the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Pakistan's policies toward these areas, the effects of tribal militancy upon international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, and the longevity of the United States and Pakistani relationship.

The "July War" showcased Hizballah's evolution into an adaptive, skillful, cohesive fighting force capable of registering some measure of success on the battlefield against a much larger and better equipped enemy, says this report from the Washington Institute.