By the time a clash in the central Sahel reaches a wire service, it has already been given its name: a jihadist attack, or ethnic violence between Fulani herders and settled farmers, with the dead counted under one heading or the other. What rarely travels with the dispatch is the thing underneath it: a rainy season th…
We are told that world politics is a chess game. Grandmasters move pieces across a board, sacrificing pawns to protect kings, calculating six moves ahead. It is rational. It is elegant. It is, above all, knowable. This is a lie. After walking through the resource wars of Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, Ukraine, Russia and …
Note: All personal names have been anonymised unless the individual has a verifiable public presence and wishes to be visible. I choose to run risks; I will not make that choice for others. He was 21 and already battling high blood pressure. His doctors confirmed it. His exemption papers were in order. But that didn’t …