Posts by: Alex DeWaal
South Sudan has approximately a decade to enjoy substantial oil revenues, with oil production potentially returning to 300,000 barrels per day during 2013. During this period, it must establish sound internal governance and the basis for a productive economy in the long term. The U.S., determined not to see South Sudan become a failed state, is assisting. The country has the advantages of some of the world’s best agricultural land, a globalized population, and a tremendous reservoir of goodwill.
Continue Reading →On CNN‘s website, Alex de Waal argues that Sudan and South Sudan’s long term needs are being held hostage to short term calculations.
Eighteen months after the secession of South Sudan, its future is still tied to its northern neighbor and former mother country. In 2013, Sudan and South Sudan will rise or fall [...]
Continue Reading →So what does Mali tell us about the measurement of state fragility? I suspect it tells us something that practitioners of political crisis management have known for a while, which is that these indices don’t tell us anything useful.
Continue Reading →Overview
This memorandum outlines the African Union (AU) peace initiative for Libya during 2011, arguing that the proposal was unfairly derided and dismissed by the western powers. The African approach was based on a realistic appreciation of the perils of civil war in Libya and the shortcomings of forcible regime change. A combination of NATO [...]
Continue Reading →This essay appears on the website of The New York Times, December 11, 2012
MALI faces a deep crisis that demands a political strategy toward a long-term settlement. What’s on offer today, namely sending a multinational force to reoccupy the Malian Sahara and fight terrorists, while negotiating deals with the cannier rebel leaders, promises [...]
Continue Reading →In the months following his death on 20 August, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been eulogized and demonized in equal measure. But his policies, and the transformational paradigm on which they were based, have rarely been elucidated. While alive, Meles was equally indifferent to praise and blame. To those who acclaimed Ethiopia’s remarkable economic growth, he would ask, do they understand that his policies completely contradicted the neo-liberal Washington Consensus? To those who condemned his measures against the political opposition and civil society organizations, he demanded to know how they would define democracy and seek a feasible path to it, in a political economy dominated by patronage and rent seeking?
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