Heads of State and Government

The Nigeria Security Tracker shows a significant fall in Boko Haram activity over the past year. Following peaks in 2014 and 2015, the levels of violence associated with Boko Haram have returned to the level of 2011. The self-proclaimed Islamic State apparently demoted Abubakar Shekau from his leadership position of the organization’s West African province. Shekau ostensibly accepted the demotion—he did not revoke his allegiance—and returned to the imam title he formerly used. The Nigerian military has repeatedly claimed that it has killed or seriously wounded Shekau, most recently after an August 23 airstrike. However, on September 24, Shekau posted a twenty-seven minute video on YouTube in which he repeated familiar themes in Arabic, Hausa, and English. (In the video he looks robust.) For example, he denounced the Nigerian national anthem and pledge of allegiance as putting the state before Allah. He denounced Western education as luring Africans away from the study of the Koran. He repeated that he would release the kidnapped Chibok school girls only in exchange for Boko Haram ‘brothers’ in captivity. New were particularly crude denunciations of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari who he portrays as in cahoots with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and UN Secretary-General Ban Kai Moon. Despite the Nigerian military’s dismissal of the video, it seems clear that Shekau is back as a media presence after a long hiatus. It remains to be seen whether it presages a new round of Boko Haram violence. Shekau so threatened, with specific reference to Maiduguri, Kaduna, and Kano.

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from September 17, 2016 to September 23, 2016. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker. var divElement = document.getElementById(’viz1474901621264’); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName(’object’)[0]; vizElement.style.width=’100%’;vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+’px’; var scriptElement = document.createElement(’script’); scriptElement.src = ’https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js’; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); September 17: Gunmen kidnapped four landlords in Kosofe, Lagos. September 18: Boko Haram killed eight in Chibok, Borno. September 19: Boko Haram killed six in Maiduguri, Borno. September 19: Boko Haram killed four in Odukpani, Cross River September 20: A battle between Nigerian soldiers and Boko Haram in Abadam, Borno resulted in the deaths of "many" militants (estimated at twenty) and, according to Boko Haram, forty soldiers were killed as well. September 21: A suicide bomber killed himself and three others in Djakana, Cameroon. Boko Haram is suspected. September 22: A battle between Nigerian soldiers and Boko Haram resulted in the deaths of fifteen militants and two soldiers in Abadam, Borno. September 23: The Niger Delta Avengers blew up a pipeline in Bonny, Rivers.

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from September 10, 2016 to September 16, 2016. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker. var divElement = document.getElementById(’viz1474293680219’); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName(’object’)[0]; vizElement.style.width=’100%’;vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+’px’; var scriptElement = document.createElement(’script’); scriptElement.src = ’https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js’; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); (Last week, September 9: the Multinational Joint Task Force killed four Boko Haram insurgents in Borno, estimated to be in Gwoza LGA) September 10: Boko Haram killed one person in Dikwa, Borno. September 11: Nigerian troops shot a suicide bomber, whose suicide vest then detonated, killing her and injuring others in Dikwa, Borno. September 12: Nigerien soldiers killed thirty Boko Haram insurgents and lost five soldiers in Toumour, Niger. September 14: Nigerian soldiers killed four Boko Haram insurgents in Geidam, Yobe. September 14: Soldiers killed seven cattle rustlers in Zurmi, Zamfara. September 14: Nigerien and Chadian soldiers killed thirty-eight Boko Haram insurgents in Toumour, Niger. September 14: Armed robbers killed ten people in Katsina-Ala, Benue.

Nigeria is famous for the delight in display taken by the governing class and the rich. Hence, native dress for women and men is made of rich fabrics and bedecked with jewelry, residences often have gold-plated taps, and, at one point, the Hummer appeared to be the vehicle of choice. President Muhammadu Buhari, by contrast, values simplicity: plain dress, a private house appropriate to a retired military officer who never made money on the side, and a modest private vehicle. Most Nigerians are poor, and the current economic downturn is exacerbating poverty. There is little doubt that the president’s personal simplicity contributes to his continued popularity on the “street” and adds credibility to his anti-corruption campaign. When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently visited Nigeria, President Buhari took the opportunity to challenge the lavish display of wealth. In public remarks when he received Zuckerberg, the president said, “In our culture, we are not used to seeing successful people appear like you. We are not used to seeing successful people jogging and sweating on the streets. We are more used to seeing successful people in air-conditioned places. We are happy you are well-off and simple enough to always share.” Anthropologists will argue that Nigeria’s culture of display has deep roots. But, its over-the-top quality really dates only from the coming of the oil boom and the end of the Biafra war, both in 1970. It was the unimaginable wealth generated by oil, and the lack of institutions to channel it productively, that fed conspicuous consumption. Meanwhile, most Nigerians live simply because of their poverty.

The following text is the entirety of John Campbell’s speech delivered at Winning the Peace in Northeast Nigeria, hosted by the Congressional Nigerian Caucus and the American University of Nigeria, Yola, in Washington, D.C., September 12, 2016. We are talking about two, distinct issues, though they are directly related: First, strategies for peace building in northern Nigeria, and, second, the delivery of humanitarian relief to respond to a famine, which may be the largest we have ever seen. The first—peace building—must be long term in development and implementation, but if successful, the consequences can be profound. By reducing the appeal of violent extremism, peace building strategies can help inoculate a society at the grass roots against movements like Boko Haram. And, Boko Haram is, among other things, a grass-roots movement. And it is Boko Haram’s wanton destructiveness, and the response to it by the security services, that has led to the current famine in northern Nigeria. We cannot measure with accuracy the number of victims involved. In August, UN Assistant Secretary-General Toby Lanzer warned that the UN has yet to have any meaningful contact with some two million people in the region, “and we can’t assess their situation. We can only estimate that it’s awful.” With Nigeria in a recession and without speedy outside help, “we will see, I think, a famine unlike any we have ever seen anywhere.” And those two million not yet observed are in addition to the estimated 2,150,000 internally displaced person’s (IDP) that have received some official notice. An estimated one million refugees from Boko Haram are crowded into Maiduguri. As elsewhere, only a small percentage are living in camps; most have been taken in by kith and kin or are on the street. In the much smaller town of Bama, there are twenty-four thousand. According to Doctors Without Borders, fifteen thousand are children. About thirty per day are dying mostly from diarrhea and malnutrition. In the section of the camp called “Camp Nursing,” of the children screened, two-thirds were emaciated while 39 percent had a severe form of malnutrition. Altogether, we really don’t know how many IDP’s or potential famine victims we are talking about. A conservative Chatham House estimate is that fifteen thousand have died as a result of fighting between Boko Haram and the security services, and the World Food Programme estimates that there are 2,400,000 internally displaced, and 4,500,000 face food insecurity. Other observers argue that these figures are much too low. Nevertheless, Chatham House is a useful benchmark. With respect to strategies for peace-building, has the American University of Nigeria Adamawa Peace Initiative (API) worked? It might be argued that it is too soon to claim success, but I find it compelling that no participant in the initiative has left to join a violent extremist movement. And there is plenty of anecdotal evidence the initiative has significantly lowered the temperature in Yola. Why has it enjoyed apparent success, at least up to now? Let’s start with the framework. The API is built on close ties with community leaders. They play a crucial role in identifying the youth most at risk. Crucial is its interfaith approach. Many of us here may not understand how rare it has been in Nigeria’s northeast to have a bishop and an imam on the same panel as we do tonight. With respect to API, Muslim and Christian clergy and community leaders have been involved since the beginning. And every activity includes women. Of great importance, and reflecting its local focus, the initiative provides what its recipients want—not necessarily what the outside experts think would be good for them. Hence, young males want sports. So there is peace through sports. Teams made up of Christians and Muslims play other teams made up of Christians and Muslims—not Christians vs. Muslims. Women want to be able to earn a living. So there is ‘Waste to Wealth’ and ‘Creating with Threads,’ turning plastic bags into products that can be sold, using left-over scraps of cloth to make items such as place mats that can also be sold. There is a thirst for literacy, so there are reading programs, targeted at young women and males enrolled in Islamic schools, among other vulnerable groups. There is a thirst for IT training. So, it is provided, as circumstances permit. And so forth. The API has a number of stakeholders. But, I submit the American University of Nigeria has played a crucial role. The vision of its founder, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, was that of an American University with a focus on science and technical skills. He recalled the benefit he himself had received from such teaching by Peace Corps volunteers in the early years of Nigeria’s independence. Indeed, when you go through the gates, you are in an American institution. There are books on the shelves, IT is everywhere, and dorms are not over-crowded. AUN’s vocation is to be a development university–to take the knowledge, skills, and solutions from the university to the larger community. So, the university, American in standards and curriculum notwithstanding, never has been an ivory tower, cut off from its environment. As part of this vocation, all students must work in a community development project. Initially there was some student and faculty resistance—Adamawa and Yola are desperately poor, and there is that old adage about bailing out the ocean. But, apparently between 2011 and 2013, student opinion turned strongly in favor. Thanks, at least in part, to strong university leadership. So, the university was well placed to coordinate and lead the establishment of the API in conjunction with local leaders. The university assumed a similar role with respect to food distribution to the wave after wave of internally displaced who descended on Yola and Adamawa—eventually, more than 300,000. As elsewhere, only a small percentage went into camps. By 2014, the population of Yola, normally 400,000, had doubled. Even though many IDP’s have tried to return home, there remain at least 150,000 in Yola, still being fed. As with strategies to counter violent extremism, humanitarian relief was an interfaith effort, and it was dependent on close ties with local leadership. The funding was raised locally – in a very poor part of Nigeria that has, in effect, been part of a war zone. There were also a few, small contributions from aid agencies. And the American University of Nigeria played a crucial coordinating role. Some 300,000 were fed, mostly vulnerable women and children. But the funding, has now run out, and it is hard to see where more can come from locally. Without outside assistance, it is hard for me to see how the feeding can continue. But without it, more children will starve. The famine in northeast Nigeria is more than any country can face on its own. To me, the inescapable conclusion is that the international community needs to become much more involved. Thank you.

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from September 3, 2016 to September 9, 2016. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker. var divElement = document.getElementById(’viz1473693680616’); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName(’object’)[0]; vizElement.style.width=’100%’;vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+’px’; var scriptElement = document.createElement(’script’); scriptElement.src = ’https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js’; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); (Last week, September 2: Boko Haram killed five in Toumour, Niger) September 5: Nigerian soldiers killed five oil militants in Ohaji/Egbema, Imo. September 6: Pirates killed four Marine Policemen in Akuku-Toru, Rivers. September 6: Police killed four kidnappers in Ikwerre, Rivers. September 8: Nigerian soldiers killed two cultists in Ohaji/Egbema, Imo. September 8: Herdsmen killed two in Jema’a, Kaduna.

The Group of Twenty (G20) summit in Hangzhou brought big news: U.S.-China ratification of the Paris climate agreement, heralded as an important sign of “climate change cooperation.” The world’s two largest carbon emitters called upon other Paris signatories to join them in bringing the global agreement into effect. India remains the third largest carbon emitter globally, although its per capita emissions are much lower than those of the United States or China, so many eyes have been watching to see what New Delhi does next. But New Delhi’s next steps now look a little less clear. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met President Barack Obama in Washington this past June, one line in the joint statement referred to the U.S. commitment to bring the Paris accord into effect this year, and that India “similarly has begun its processes to work toward this shared objective.” Yet the G20 summit produced instead talk of a “linkage” that India has made between membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and accession to the Paris accord. What does the NSG have to do with Paris? Back in June, the NSG plenary meeting in Seoul, which considered membership for India, did not result in a decision. It was the group’s first formal plenary discussion of the matter, and China held back its approval, stating that Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty accession should be a requirement. Many in India were disappointed with the non-decision outcome, criticizing the government for acting too hastily, or having failed to do sufficient diplomatic spadework before making a public bid for NSG membership. I wrote at the time that contrary to some public critique, Seoul had not been a “fiasco,” and that a membership process for a forty-eight nation organization that works by consensus could hardly be expected to happen instantly. If anything, India’s overt push for membership had demonstrated decisive leadership, and the United States and India should continue their efforts toward formal inclusion for India in the group. For its part, the United States continues to affirm its strong support for Indian membership. In the wake of the June NSG disappointment, India’s Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement that contained this sentence: “Our application has acquired an immediacy in view of India’s INDC [intended nationally determined contributions] envisaging 40% non-fossil power generation capacity by 2030. An early positive decision by the NSG would have allowed us to move forward on the Paris Agreement.” Since the NSG had issued an exemption to India back in 2008, a major step in the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement and one that opened up the possibility of civil nuclear commerce with India for any NSG participating government, it was not clear why the lack of NSG membership would hurt India’s ability to ramp up its civil nuclear power sector. But even if it did, according to one calculation by Business Standard reporter Nitin Sethi, it is not clear that the percentage of civil nuclear energy in India’s non-fossil power capacity commitments (16 GW, or 3.91 percent of its clean energy capacity commitments) would make or break its Paris commitments. Most of India’s new clean energy capacity will come from solar and wind. With this muddle as the backdrop, the news from Hangzhou that India would not be ready to ratify the Paris agreement by the end of 2016 spurred a series of fresh news reports. India’s G20 sherpa, Dr. Arvind Panagariya, went on the record stating that India was “not quite ready yet in terms of domestic actions” to ratify by the end of 2016. Some press accounts  took as fact that India had created a new diplomatic linkage between receiving NSG membership and moving ahead with Paris commitment ratification. If this is a bargaining tactic, it’s hard to see how it would be persuasive, for ratification of the Paris accord is not a “give” in exchange for something else but rather a step toward collective action to solve a global problem. If this linkage proves to be real, India loses some of the goodwill gained by its leadership last year in Paris. Count me confused on this one. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa   Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa) 

Agence France Press (AFP) is carrying a report of fighting between the Boko Haram factions led respectively by Abubakar Shekau and Abu Musab al-Barnawi. The fighting took place in villages near Lake Chad: Yewle, Arafa, and Zuwa. The number killed appears to have ranged from three to “several” to “unspecified.” Nevertheless, the report has an unusual degree of specificity that lends it credibility, though the Nigerian military declined to comment when contacted by AFP. Based on eye-witness reports, the al-Barnawi faction seems to have been the aggressor. There has long been evidence of violence within Boko Haram, though with few details. Over the years, there have been repeated reports that Shekau has killed rivals and dissidents. Ansaru, a previous splinter group, has gradually been killed off and disappeared. There has been speculation that Shekau murdered its leadership. It is unclear whether the al-Barnawi faction, now anointed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State, is new, or whether it is a resurrected Ansaru. It is also unclear what Shekau’s relationship is with the Islamic State, though he apparently has not revoked his March 2015 oath of allegiance to it. The issue between the two factions appears to be much the same as it was when Ansaru was active: for the al-Barnawi faction, Shekau is killing too many Muslims for superficial reasons. AFP reports that villagers where the conflict took place have fled, presumably adding to Nigeria’s population of internally displaced.

I was struck by a recent headline in the South China Morning Post heralding Xi Jinping’s political gains at home from his diplomacy abroad. If the assessment is correct, it would suggest that a series of foreign policy travails has only served to heighten Xi’s popularity; by almost any objective calculation, it has been a challenging summer for Xi and his foreign policy team. First, and most significantly, in July, a tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China and for the Philippines in the latter’s case regarding territorial claims in the South China Sea. Certainly China’s pre-established non-compliance with the ruling limits the efficacy of the decision. Nonetheless, as legal scholar Tara Davenport argues, the award has a number of additional important ramifications, including: pushing China to clarify its policies, providing private actors such as oil companies with a legal decision on which to base their investment decisions, and serving as a “focal point” that can be used by other claimants to pressure China to adjust its behavior. China even tried to round up countries in its own version of a “coalition of the willing”—but we all know how that ends. Second, Hong Kong voters turned out in record numbers to vote in the Legislative Council elections over the first weekend in September. The results swept into office several young democrats, who have been pushing for greater political autonomy—even independence—from Beijing. One of them, 23-year old Nathan Law, received the second highest number of votes in the Hong Kong island constituency. With their victories, the democrats retain enough seats to veto any efforts by the pro-Beijing government to effect constitutional change. Third, China suffered a few high-profile setbacks in its going global strategy for Chinese state-owned energy companies. Australia rejected a bid by China’s State Grid Corp. to buy a majority stake in Australia’s electric grid—Ausgrid. And in the United Kingdom, newly-elected Prime Minister Theresa May put a temporary hold on the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant, in which China has a one-third stake. Previous Prime Minister David Cameron had hailed the plant as a “historic deal.” In both cases, Chinese officials or official media stated that further Chinese investment could well be harmed by these setbacks. Fourth, China’s G20 moment was hijacked by the confusion surrounding President Obama’s path off his airplane. Did China deliberately snub President Obama by not providing a red carpet descent off his plane? Was the United States simply being difficult? Did a Chinese official really yell, “This is our country!” at a U.S. official? Inquiring minds apparently wanted to know more about this event than about international efforts to combat global corruption or to reform international financial institutions. And finally, China failed to deliver on its Olympic promise, earning just over half the gold medals of the United States and one fewer than the United Kingdom. No one outside China really cares how many medals China wins; people care how athletes from their own country fare, about athletes with compelling personal stories, and about athletes that transcend nationality like Usain Bolt. However, the Chinese media made such a fuss about the fact that the number of gold medals didn’t matter that of course, everyone understood that it really did matter. It is possible, but unlikely, that some of these hits to China’s soft power will prompt Beijing to consider how its policies at home and its diplomacy abroad may contribute negatively to its international image. In the Orwellian world of China, however, it is likely that none of this actually matters and some of it never happened. China won’t abide by the South China Sea ruling, it will continue to crush democracy in Hong Kong, there will be other energy deals to be had, the G20 in Hangzhou was a “great success,” and no one cares about winning medals at the Olympics. And if the South China Morning Post has it right, through it all, Xi can win at home by losing abroad.

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from August 27, 2016 to September 2, 2016. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker. var divElement = document.getElementById(’viz1473173895914’); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName(’object’)[0]; vizElement.style.width=’100%’;vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+’px’; var scriptElement = document.createElement(’script’); scriptElement.src = ’https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js’; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); August 27: A Boko Haram landmine killed four Chadian soldiers in Kaiga Kindji, Chad. August 27: Nigerian troops killed five Niger Delta militants in Rivers (exact location unknown). August 27: The Joint Task Force killed six kidnappers in Ahoada East, Rivers. August 28: Nigerian soldiers killed twenty cattle rustlers in Maru, Zamfara. August 28: Two soldiers and five Niger Delta militants were killed in a gun duel in Ikwerre, Rivers. August 30: Niger Delta militants attacked a pipeline in Ughelli South, Delta. September 1: Niger Delta militants blew up a pipeline in Ohaji/Egbema, Imo. September 2: Gunmen kidnapped fourteen oil workers in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni, Rivers.

After nearly nine months, Brazil’s impeachment drama is over. The process ended on a curiously subdued note: the Senate’s questioning of Dilma Rousseff on Monday was a staid affair, and Tuesday’s speeches were calculatedly calm and measured. By the time the Senate began to vote today, Rousseff’s removal was a foregone conclusion. But the civilized, even boring, proceedings obscured an important objective of this week’s debates: shaping the historical narrative that will guide each side’s supporters over Michel Temer administration’s next twenty-eight months in office. On the Senate floor, Rousseff and her defenders stuck tenaciously and defiantly to script: the fiscal pretext for impeachment was weak and no previous president had been held responsible for the same errors; the economic crisis was not her doing but the result of international circumstances she could not control; and she herself never personally benefitted from the corruption that took place during her presidency. Rousseff was impressive, showing all of the qualities that led President Lula to choose her as his successor: attention to detail, intense message discipline, and an unwillingness to cede any ground. Most important to the Workers’ Party (PT) narrative, she returned over and over to the theme that when they lost at the polls in 2014, “sectors of the economic and political elite” began conspiring against her. By her account, the impeachment battle had its origins in Rousseff’s principled refusal to bargain with the former Chamber of Deputies President Eduardo Cunha, who is deeply enmeshed in his own bribery scandal but has yet to be removed by Congress. Rousseff was supported from the wings by twenty former ministers, her predecessor and mentor Lula, a number of PT bigwigs, and the starpower of crooner Chico Buarque. The opposition, meanwhile, hammered home the depth of the economic, political, and moral crises Brazil faces. They honed in on the narrow text of the impeachment petition—premised on arcane minutia about unauthorized spending and improper loans to the government by state banks—but also sought to show that the transgressions for which she could have been impeached were much broader. They repeatedly reminded Rousseff of the bait-and-switch between the lofty promises made during her 2014 campaign and the austere policies that were actually implemented during her second term, made grand statements about the usurpation of legislative functions by her administration, and noted that almost all of the costs of her fiscal maneuvers were borne by taxpayers. They repeated the now well-trod line that if Rousseff was not complacent with corruption she must be incompetent, and noted that while Rousseff was not personally enriched by corruption, her presidential campaign was financed by ill-gotten means. Most important to their long-time narrative about the legitimacy of impeachment, they noted that all three branches of government were represented at the Senate trial, and that by her very presence, Rousseff was acknowledging the legitimacy of the impeachment process. What sort of golpe is this, they asked, in which the defendant has the right to self-defense? They were supported from the wings by a handful of youthful leaders from the street protest movement. Whatever the arguments, what best explains the impeachment vote is exhaustion. It has been a turbulent three years since the first street protests erupted in July 2013, and many Brazilians simply want the political crisis to go away. In a poll published by Istoé magazine over the weekend, nearly two-thirds of Brazilians said that if they were senators, they would vote to see Rousseff go. That doesn’t mean that Temer is beloved: when asked who should govern Brazil, more than a third (35 percent) of those polled spontaneously responded that they would choose neither Temer nor Dilma. There is also a solid core of opposition, with 30 percent opining against Dilma’s impeachment. But by and large, Dilma had lost much of the public support she had when elected two years ago, and the Petrobras scandal appears to have greatly diminished her mentor Lula, whose ratings continue to decline as police and prosecutors close in on his family’s questionable dealings. What comes next for Brazil? This blog has repeatedly noted the importance of legitimacy to Brazil’s impeachment process. The PT narrative of golpismo by neoliberal forces on the right was artfully deployed by Rousseff and is likely to be a core message of the PT in coming years. This drumbeat will keep Temer and his coalition on the defensive, while turning attention away from the Rousseff administration’s own failures and the PT’s involvement in the corruption scandal. Temer has been playing a complicated game since he became interim president in May. On the one hand, he has been trying to keep the rowdy impeachment coalition in check, promising whatever he could offer to wavering supporters. On the other, he and Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles have been trying to convince investors that the economic team has a coherent plan for recovery that will come together when the political stars align. These dueling priorities were especially evident in the renegotiation of state debts, where investors’ cautious support for an emergency renegotiation lapsed into disappointment as Temer made repeated concessions to state governors in exchange for political support. Temer’s Janus-faced approach may also have reached a natural limit: the PSDB and the DEM parties in late August threatened to withhold support if Temer moved forward on planned wage increases for the judicial branch, which might have earned him short-term political support from some sectors, but would have cascading effects throughout the civil service and a brutal impact on the rapidly deteriorating fiscal results. Now that he is confirmed in the presidency, Temer will be under pressure to commit to the fiscal reforms that were impossible while he was a temporary stand-in. The challenge is significant, in at least three regards. First, the left’s criticism of the new government’s “neoliberalism” will limit what Temer can realistically achieve on the fiscal front. Temer seems to be aiming for a constitutional cap on spending that will promise hard choices about spending in the future while providing his administration some credibility gains in the present. But even this middle of the road solution will be politically difficult, requiring changes to constitutionally guaranteed health and education budgets. The second major reform would be to social security, reducing special privileges for some professions and raising the minimum retirement age, in an effort to cut one of the largest areas of government expenditure and expand on reforms undertaken by Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula. So far, the details of these reform proposals are nebulous, but they are likely to become more concrete by November, and the opposition will pillory Temer for even the slightest proposed change in social spending. The second major challenge is that the timetable for reform is remarkably short. All political oxygen between now and the end of October will be sucked up by the 2016 municipal elections, and then again during much of 2018 by the presidential election. These two contests will be the most wide-open elections of the post-1985 democratic era, in light of new restrictions on corporate contributions, the effects of the corruption scandal, the weakening of the two most important parties in the Brazilian party system (the PT and the PSDB), and the widespread “throw the bums out” sentiment expressed by voters. The field for the presidential race will begin to form by late 2017. As a consequence, the reform calendar is essentially restricted to fourteen months between November 2016 and late 2017. Considering that many less controversial constitutional reforms have taken much longer, and that so many different political actors will be angling for advantage as they look ahead to 2018, Temer will have a tough slog. The third major constraint is the ongoing Lava Jato investigation, and political scandals that keep popping up around it. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Temer’s coalition is held together at its core by a pragmatic and ideologically malleable center—“Centrão”—that is unsympathetic to the Lava Jato investigation and the increasing power of prosecutors and judges. I wrote recently about recent moves to dilute accountability reforms in Brazil, with support from actors across the political spectrum. These pressures seem likely to build, if only because so many different political forces are under threat. Temer has already been forced by public pressure to dismiss three ministers caught up in various scandals, he himself has been mentioned by witnesses in the Lava Jato investigations, and he is still the subject of an electoral court case investigating the financing of the 2014 Rousseff-Temer ticket. Meanwhile, disgraced former Chamber President Eduardo Cunha has not gone away, and the mid-September vote on his removal will be a bellwether of how well legislators have understood the lessons of voter anger. Concurrently, the progress of a plea bargain by Marcelo Odebrecht, scion of the construction fortune, has already led to allegations of illegal donations to candidates across the political spectrum, from the PT through Temer’s PMDB to the PSDB. It is symptomatic that despite the low-legitimacy moment, Temer has not dared to suggest a political reform that might change some of the perverse incentives that have led to the campaign finance abuses that fueled the Petrobras scandal. There is little prospect that Lava Jato or any of the many other parallel investigations will go away any time soon. The upshot is that the prospects for constitutional reform under Temer are limited. As is so often the case in Brazil, much change will therefore have to be incremental and will take place within the government bureaucracy, rather than through Congress. The shifts underway at Petrobras and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) are good illustrations of where things may be headed, with reprioritization of strategic objectives, asset sales, and general belt-tightening taking place far from the legislative melee. Meanwhile, Temer will be engaged in a mission to build his statesman credentials, including a trip to the G20 meeting in China today, followed by a big speech on Brazil’s independence day, September 7, and then the UN General Assembly. All along the way, expect him to be trailed by challenges to his legitimacy, in the form of celebrity protests, catcalls, and street demonstrations. A new political battle has just begun, to define Brazil’s trajectory after thirteen years of PT rule.

The Colombian peace process began in 2012, and by June 2016, appeared to have reached preliminary agreement on a deal that would result in the cessation of hostilities, ending a war that has killed more than a quarter of a million Colombians. Yet somewhat surprisingly, while the deal was initially celebrated as a milestone, recent polling suggests that a declining share of Colombians would actually support it: 39 percent in August, down from 56 percent in July. The reasons for opposition are multiple, including belief that some abuses by the FARC are too atrocious to merit amnesty, annoyance at the possibility that FARC representatives may be given congressional seats, fear that state capacity to effectively implement the accords is too weak in previously contested regions of the country, opposition to land restitution programs, and resentment at the possibility that government forces may be judged by the same tribunal that judges FARC members. Domestic political considerations also play a role, including the long-standing feud between President Juan Manuel Santos and his conservative predecessor, Álvaro Uribe; and declining support for Santos, which may drag down support for the deal. But surely the Santos government was aware of most of these challenges? And why on earth pledge to have the deal ratified by the public, if doing so would subject it to all sorts of criticism and the possibility of defeat? The answer may lie in the three intertwined strategic explanations: First, academics point to the importance of strategic calculations in ending civil wars: reaching peace depends on what sort of incentives dissident groups have to resort to violence rather than committing to peace. Oftentimes the situation must get so bad that opposing sides have little choice but to reach agreement, painful though that may be. But even once both sides are committed to negotiating, structuring the post-conflict incentives is often a case of the pragmatic and artful bending of each side’s desired outcomes toward a core of commonly acceptable, if seldom entirely desirable, compromises. By all accounts, the FARC’s leadership is near exhaustion, but they had some advantages, including the ability to hold on indefinitely in impenetrable terrain and cause murderous violence at will. The big challenge was to ensure that they saw benefits to negotiating an end to the conflict, which implied government concessions that would bring them to the table. Second, achieving the peace is a game with many players, in which the negotiators may not have unconditional support at home. Even in a two-sided conflict, each side’s negotiators must go home to their constituents and explain the deal, often to second-guessing armchair negotiators who have no reason to reflect on how many late nights and what sorts of complex concessions went into each element of the treaty, and who may be more focused on the war than on the peace (suffice it to note, by way of example, that even as the United States’ Civil War wound down, Abraham Lincoln was unable to push forward his amnesty resolution for the South because of homegrown opposition in the North). Third, the logic behind ending the violence is quite different from the logic of maintaining the peace: there is an inherent tension between the types of commitments that both sides need to make in order to end aggression and the long-term conditions that would maintain the peace. All sides to the conflict need to be able to offer some sort of credible guarantee that they have abjured violence: the winning side has to offer some credible assurance that it won’t simply use the peace to obliterate the losers, while the disadvantaged side needs to offer good reasons why it won’t try to improve its bargaining position through violence once the winning side begins to make concessions for the long-term. In committing to public ratification of any peace deal, the Santos government added a broad range of voters to the mix of implicit parties to the negotiations, in ways that may increase the legitimacy of the peace, enhance the transparency of the process, and lock in the treaty politically. Santos also scored an important victory in the constitutional court’s decision that the plebiscite should face an up or down vote, rather than a messy set of votes on each point of the agreement. Although it adds to the difficulties of the peace agreement, the fact that the deal was always subject to public ratification may also have provided a strategic advantage to Colombian government negotiators. From the negotiating table in Havana, Colombian negotiators could point south at Uribe and other hardliners, warning their FARC counterparts that there were limits to what they plausibly concede. The prospect of democratic ratification, in other words, may have shrunk the possible range of options the Colombian government could agree to, but by narrowing the negotiating space, it may also have made the government’s commitment to its bargaining position more credible. Going forward, the most complex challenge will be to finalize the negotiations with the FARC even as the plebiscite campaign is simultaneously underway. Already “Yes” and “No” supporters are locked in rhetorical battle over how to frame the issues in the public eye. The silver lining is that the need to obtain democratic approval may have enabled the Santos government to obtain a better deal from the FARC than might have otherwise been possible. Whether that deal will prove acceptable to voters, of course, is the big question that will dominate Colombian politics for the remainder of the year.

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from August 6, 2016 to August 12, 2016. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker. var divElement = document.getElementById(’viz1471290258049’); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName(’object’)[0]; vizElement.style.width=’100%’;vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+’px’; var scriptElement = document.createElement(’script’); scriptElement.src = ’https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js’; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement); August 6: 2 Chinese men were kidnapped in Nasarawa, Nasarawa. August 7: A clash between Nigerian troops and armed bandits in Bosso, Niger led to the deaths of eleven soldiers and eight bandits. August 8: Gunmen suspected to be Niger Delta Avengers killed three soldiers in Nembe, Bayelsa. August 10: Militants, suspected to be part of a new group called Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate, blew up a pipeline in Isoko South, Delta. August 11: Gunmen assassinated a university lecturer in Gboko, Benue. August 12: Sectarian violence led to the deaths of 7 in Ideato North, Imo.