The tiny ministate of 2.9 million citizens just due north from the western shore of the Gulf, joined on the Arabian Peninsula by a narrow border with Saudi Arabia. Yet its role in the region’s diplomacy is stunning for a country of its size. As an August 31 deadline approached for the United States and…
“My four children are now all safe,” Suneeta told CNN on August 28, as they were being air-evacuated from Kabul. Suneeta did not want her name or her children’s names published because of understandable safety concerns. Her husband had worked with U.S. troops prior to his disappearance in Afghanistan eight years ago. His fate remains…
The scene: a platform at the base of the steps to the Lincoln Memorial on the northernmost end of the National Mall. The speaker: African-American Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., America’s most prominent civil rights leader at the time and for generations to come. A quarter of a million people gathered in D.C. shortly after…
The situation in the strategically important South/Central Asian country of Afghanistan is crucial in the foreign policies of the U.S. and its NATO partners in the days ahead. In Afghanistan itself, August 19 would normally be a day of celebration: independence from British control on that date in 1919. That’s hardly the case in 2021.…
By Alan Heil Who would have thought two years ago that this East African country of 128 million residents would be the scene of a deadly civil war in 2021? Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. His country had ended a decades-long war with its neighbor to the north…
As the Associated Press put it in a dispatch from Beirut on August 4: “United in grief and anger, families of the victims and several thousand Lebanese gathered at the port as the country marked the first anniversary of the horrific explosion of 2020. “That blast killed at least 214 people and devastated entire neighborhoods…
By Alan Heil On August 3, the Biden administration announced it would begin distributing vaccines to 65 nations, many in Africa. Official global deaths so far have reportedly reached at least 4,255,657, a vast undercount by most estimates. VOA’s Hayde Adams interviewed U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs Akuna Cook about the…
By Alan Heil Please forgive these midsummer musings. When the Heils moved to their retirement community in the mountains of northern Maryland in 2018, we were awed by the beauty of the surrounding forestland. On a trail encircling our community, we noted 30 weathered one-holed birdhouses, modestly constructed with all the same dimensions. But there…
By Alan Heil In rapid succession, new developments to the south are potentially threatening U.S. security. Among them, crises in Haiti and Cuba. According to Politico, the Pentagon has made it clear it has no appetite for new U.S. military engagements nearby, yet experts and former officials are calling on President to devote more resources…
By Alan Heil The small Caribbean state of Haiti is once again plagued by seemingly unresolvable deadly turmoil. Located at the western end of the island of Hispaniola 400 miles south of Florida, this tiny country of 11 million people once again finds itself in the most horrific crisis this year in the Western hemisphere.…