Reports from Southern Sudan’s capital, Juba, are that preparations are already well under way for festivities planned for July 9 to celebrate the independence of Africa’s newest nation. (Five months ago, the South overwhelmingly voted for a referendum to break away and form its own nation.) But those celebrations may be short-lived thanks to recent…

The signs are ominous, and strangely familiar: communal warfare raging in the politically volatile Muslim Northern regions, with supporters of the ruling party stabbed, hacked or shot; churches, mosques and homes burned; and hundreds believed dead and tens of thousands more displaced. That’s the scene so far in parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation,…

Here’s the scene: An illegitimate leader thumbs his nose at the international community and sends his security forces and armed supporters into the streets to gun down mostly unarmed opponents, who are demonstrating on behalf of democratic rule. Tribal and regional fault lines give way. Allegations of widespread human rights abuses grow as tens of…

Because of my looks, my religion and my name, I have frequently been mistaken for Arab during my travels throughout the Middle East. It has been a mentally liberating sensation — to leave the racial politics of the United States (in reality, this is simply the process of exchanging the ethnic politics of one land…

Since the days of the pharaohs, observers of Egypt have been hard-pressed to explain why the combination of grinding poverty, explosive population growth, high-level government corruption and repression of political freedom had not reached critical mass and led to an open revolt. No one is asking that now, as mass demonstrations continue to call for…