Conflict

Sri Lanka is a byword for beauty and tragedy. Even the wholesale devastation of the Asian tsunami was not enough to halt a 25-year civil war between an ethnic Sinhalese-dominated government and a notorious separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers. But...

For much of the world Cambodia brings to mind the horrors of the Khmer Rouge's killing fields. And because progress is assumed to have taken place in the three decades since, the world tends to overlook the state of affairs there today.

But contemporary Cambodia continues to...

The war between Russia and Georgia caught most of the world by surprise but it is a conflict that has long been brewing – and one that is part of a larger drama. The bigger context is Russia's attempt to regain the influence it enjoyed during the years of...

The poorest nation in the Arab world struggles with high population growth, 40% unemployment and a persistent flow of refugees from Somalia. In the next decade, its 22 million citizens will compete for increasingly scarce water supplies, as aquifers are drilled, pumped and drained unsustainably.

This is...

In almost three decades of rule, Robert Mugabe's evolution from liberator to tyrant led Zimbabwe from democratic independence and its status as South Africa's breadbasket to a one-party state with an inflation rate over 231 million percent. Mugabe met early electoral wins by the opposition party Movement for Democratic...

Dost Mohammad Fahim Khairy, an Afghan who left his country in a time of great turmoil and was resettled in the United States refugee program, makes his first journey home to Afghanistan since he left on Sept. 15, 2001. A reporting team, comprised of lead reporter Jessica Wanke, reporter...

In April 2008 Nepal turned a corner. More than 60 percent of eligible voters turned out for elections to choose a new government tasked with abolishing the monarchy and forging a stable republic after a decade-long insurgency that claimed over 13,000 lives. Despite pre-election violence and intimidation, international observers...

Two rounds of civil war have engulfed Sudan for the last half century, killing two million people and displacing four million others. A fragile peace agreement signed in 2005 that gave autonomy to the south for six years is currently keeping Khartoum from attacking again, but many predict that...

Chevron is accused of having dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic waste in Ecuador’s Amazonian rainforest, and local residents are determined to hold them accountable.

All year, a string of car bombs, assassinations and the encampment of anti-government protesters in downtown Beirut had elevated fears that Lebanon's deepening political crisis could ignite an all-out war. Then a fierce clash erupted May 20 that pitted the national army against a surprising foe: a little-known militant...

Repressed and mismanaged by a cadre of generals since 1962, Burma erupted last September in the country's largest pro-democracy demonstrations in two decades. But when government troops opened fire into crowds of monks and students and detained thousands in nighttime raids, fear sent people into hiding and swept defiance...

In December 2006, Ethiopia toppled Somalia's Islamic government, opening up another active front in the War on Terror. The Bush administration provided the invading troops with intelligence and diplomatic support, in an attempt to capture or kill three senior al-Qaeda operatives thought to be living under the protection of...