Central Africa

The connection among rising prices, hunger, and violent civic unrest seems intuitively logical. But there was more to Tunisia's food protests than the logic of the pocketbook. The psychological element -- a sense of injustice that arises between seeing food prices rise and pouring a Molotov cocktail -- is more important.

Washington’s approach to rebuilding economies devastated by conflicts and natural disasters is flawed. It assumes that strong economies cannot emerge in poor countries when it should be encouraging U.S.-style entrepreneurism and allow the U.S. military to help.

Although the war in Congo officially ended in 2003, two million people have died since. One of the reasons is that the international community's peacekeeping efforts there have not focused on the local grievances in eastern Congo, especially those over land, that are fueling much of the broader tensions. Until they do, the nation's security and that of the wider Great Lakes region will remain uncertain.

Seven years after more than 500,000 Tutsi were massacred in Rwanda, the world still cannot explain why. Mahmood Mamdani's When Victims Become Killers is a rich history of Hutu and Tutsi identity, but how it applies to the genocide is unclear.