Lee Seymour, of the German Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, argues that events in Darfur may weaken the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and lead to a collapse of Sudan's tenuous peace settlement.

This report argues that Angola deserves priority attention in the formulation of U.S. foreign, national security, and economic policies, particularly in the design of policy toward Africa. This report is also available in Portuguese.

Amid a widening scandal over links between his government and paramilitary violence, President Alvaro Uribe proposes a new anti-drug strategy that favors development over military force.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has issued a report on how to engage Hamas after the agreement with Fatah in Saudi Arabia (PDF).

The new secretary-general of the United Nations should make genocide prevention a centerpiece of his reform agenda, concludes a new Council Special Report. "Ban Ki-moon should take the General Assembly's endorsement of the responsibility to protect as a mandate and mission statement for the UN and build a reform program that is designed to implement it."

Gary G. Sick says an “emerging strategy” is developing that brings the United States, Israel, and Sunni Arab states in an informal alliance against Iran.

This report from Eurasianet, part of the Open Society Institute, argues that lingering acrimony in Afghan-Pakistani relations could create a diplomatic opening for Iran to increase its economic and political influence in Kabul. The report says that Afghan-Pakistani tension is rooted in the revived Taliban insurgency: despite repeated denials by Islamabad, the prevailing sentiment in Kabul is that Pakistan is providing critical assistance to the Taliban. Afghan media now openly depict Islamabad as striving to undermine President Hamid Karzai’s administration. Afghan officials evidently believe that Pakistan seeks to recover political leverage in Afghanistan that it lost after the Taliban regime was driven from Kabul in 2001.

The Brookings Institution says that ‘with each passing day, Iraq sinks deeper into the abyss of civil war.’ It considers how the United States could stop the slide into all-out war, and what actions the US should take if it becomes clear that Iraq cannot be saved from such a conflict. The report considers the history of civil wars in the recent past, and draws a set of lessons regarding how civil wars can affect the interests of other countries, even distant ones like the United States, and then used those lessons to fashion a set of recommendations for how Washington might begin to develop a new strategy for an Iraq caught up in all-out civil war.

This report presents a full picture of what is going on in the Horn of Africa and suggests what the United States needs to do to address the multiple challenges to stability.

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."

The Palestinian Authority is about to get a new government. The move could spell good news for the region, and might just strengthen Washington’s quest to build a coalition to contain Iranian designs.   

Excerpts from a speech made by the Israeli writer David Grossman in Tel Aviv on the 11th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

This USIP special report deals with the question of how to resolve the Pakistan-Afghanistan stalemate.

At the Weinberg Founders Conference 2006, Philip Zelikow, counselor to the State Department, discusses "Building Security in the Broader Middle East".

The president of the American Council on Germany sees a "definite improvement" in U.S.-German relations since Angela Merkel became chancellor five months ago. Ahead of Merkel's second visit to Washington this year, William Drozdiak says that a key issue for Merkel and President Bush is what to do about Iran's nuclear program.

This briefing paper by Professor Paul Rogers of the Oxford Research Group (ORG) provides an analysis of the likely nature of US or Israeli military action that would be intended to disable Iran's nuclear capabilities. It outlines both the immediate consequences in terms of loss of human life, facilities and infrastructure, and also the likely Iranian responses, which the report says would be extensive. An attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure would signal the start of a protracted military confrontation that would probably grow to involve Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, as well as the USA and Iran, says ORG. The report concludes that a military response to the current crisis in relations with Iran is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further.