Category: NEPF’s Long Read

  • Solider with his back turned to the camera standing in the Sudan desert with a riffle over his shoulder standing into the distance.

    Sudan’s Civil War: Local Drivers and External Influence

    The fall of El-Fashir on October 26, 2025 marked a turning point in Sudan’s civil war waged since April 2023. After an eighteen-month siege, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized the last major stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Darfur and immediately carried out mass killings against unarmed civilians, including the reported execution […]
    Amad Mohamed and Adair O’Brien/
    December 2, 2025
  • Baghdad, Iraq. 10th Jan, 2020. Anti-government demonstrators wave a huge Iraqi national flag during a demonstration in Tahrir square, against the breach of Iraqi sovereignty by the US and Iran. Credit: Ameer Al Mohammedaw/dpa/Alamy Live News.

    How Iraq became Iran’s cash cow

    With the October 2021 Iraqi Parliamentary elections recording the lowest ever voter turnout in post-2003 Iraq, there is little doubt that Iraq’s yet-to-be-announced next government already faces a legitimacy crisis. Amid the problems that Iraq faces in overcoming its domestic challenges, there is a massive driver of its cyclical political system in neighbouring Iran of […]
    Bamo Nouri/
    May 22, 2024
  • Looking south: Central Asia and Afghanistan

    After nearly two decades, the current manifestation of conflict in Afghanistan may be coming to an end. The United States and representatives of the Taliban signed an agreement in February 2020 that ostensibly sets the terms for the US military departure from Afghanistan. In principle, it also creates conditions for the reconciliation negotiations between the […]
    Roger Kangas, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies USA/
    May 22, 2024