Foreign Policy

Just months before the first U.S. troops are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan, the country's north, once its safest part, is now under threat from the Taliban.

Cold clasps the loess plains that curve toward the great Oxus. It has whitewashed with snow the saw-tooth jaws of the Hindu Kush. It has eaten raw the fingers of street vendors and stunted the emerald sprouts of winter wheat, barely visible against the dun monochrome of the dormant northern desert. Afghan friends tell me this has been the coldest winter here in a decade.

It has also been the most violent.

In Ingushetia, people have reason to fear Russia's shadowy security forces as much or more than the Islamist militants. Indeed, it has become one of the most unstable spots in the North Caucasus.

What appears to be a religious war or an independence struggle in the Caucasus is, in reality, deep-seated ethinic conflict and hatred.

A new level of viciousness by Islamist insurgents pervades Russia's bloody southern republics in the North Caucasus.

The families of suspected Islamist guerrillas in the North Caucasus have always faced harassment from Russian security forces. Now a shadowy vigilante group has started targeting them as well.

Though media attention is scarce, a guerrilla war taking place across the North Caucasus has ramped up. Killings are commonplace as Russia fights to retain control over the Islamist insurgency.

Yemeni President Saleh has stayed in power by impressing on international donors that only he could keep al Qaeda at bay. But their surge has benefited him, bringing in billions of dollars in aid.

As revolutions pervade North Africa, armed forces take different approaches to containing the protests. Tunisia's military championed its revolution, while government forces in Egypt and Yemen are unlikely to do the same.

Mohamed Bouazizi's suicide ignited an uprising of unemployed youth in Tunisia, then across North Africa.

Can Barack Obama really defeat Central Africa's worst guerrilla warlord?

Nepal’s former Maoist insurgents from the People's Liberation Army pass their time in camps where revolutionary ideology is thriving. Are they integrating or preparing for the next fight?

As the January 2011 referendum on secession for South Sudan approaches, a new survey gives insight into the thoughts of Darfuri refugees.