Articles by Elena María Labrado Calera

March 25, 2024: The opposition Bassirou Diomaye Faye takes over the Presidency of Senegal. Imprisoned until 10 days before the vote and unknown to most voters just a few months before, he surprises and defeats the prime minister, Amadou Ba, backed by the entire state apparatus and the outgoing president, Macky Sall. This document seeks to explore the main reasons for this electoral result, with its internal and external context, in a region where new and young African leaders who have achieved power thanks to coups d'état lead. Faye has in common with them his novelty (although his mentor, Ousmane Sonko, is a great opposition figure in Senegal), youth and part of an ideology to put into practice. There are numerous and diverse eyes on Faye, reaching the former metropolis: France, whose influence is declining in the area. [Keep reading…]

The dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over the sovereignty of the Essequibo territory dates back almost two centuries. It has had comings and goings, but it remains unresolved to this day. However, tension began to rise in 2015 and has escalated in the last six months. A review of the economic, political, internal and external aspects of this dispute can help to better understand the underlying current that flows under the current discord around the Essequibo. Recovering a past around which there is consensus, which coheres, to try to solve the problems of the present is seen as a strategy of dubious effectiveness at the outset. However, it seems to be the path chosen by Venezuela, immersed as it has been for years in one of the most difficult times in its recent history and with a regime in low times. (Continues…) Dear reader, this [Keep reading…]

The relative stability that Cameroon had enjoyed years ago has been deteriorating in recent times, following a path parallel to that of the rest of the region in which it is located, near the Sahel, the Lake Chad basin, in West Africa and in the Gulf of Guinea. A growing regional destabilization whose underlying factors coincide with those observed in Cameroon. Among them, a serious identity conflict between Anglophones and a Francophone State in the southwest, the growing threat of jihadist groups in the north, intercommunity fights and the dramatic effects on the population of adverse weather, which leaves cyclical waves of internally displaced people. , who are joined by those fleeing different conflicts and refugees from neighboring countries. Great governance challenges that a nonagenarian president, with more than 40 years in office, and a [Keep reading…]

The elaborate and bloody attack led by Hamas on October 7 against Israeli territory marks a before and after not only in Israel, and in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, but beyond, in the region. And it does so for various reasons, among them, the rupture of security and defense paradigms in Israel, the exposure of a failure of intelligence and political leadership and the shock that it has caused in the configuration of the possible new relations between the countries in the area, and with the United States. For all this, and several other reasons, there is no fear of describing the Hamas offensive as an unprecedented action. (Continue…) Dear reader, this article is exclusively for paying users. If you want to access the full text, you can subscribe to Ejercitos Magazine taking advantage of our offer for new subscribers through the following link.

The coup d'état in Niger has set in motion a series of dynamics that have placed various actors in the region on a collision course. With internal motivations, but with ramifications that go beyond Niger's own and even regional borders, we find ourselves facing a multidimensional conflict with its initial phase underway. Military boards, civilian governments, regional and international powers, with troops on the ground, including Wagner mercenaries, jihadist groups, criminal gangs and a punished population whose preferences are difficult to see beyond their own ethnicity or community. and who, on many occasions, are forced to move due to violence or lack of resources. Actors, with their agendas that already interacted and clashed before, will have to do so in a new and more complex - if possible - scenario, marked by the military coup in [Keep reading…]

The general elections of February 25 in Nigeria have highlighted the enormous challenges that the country faces regarding its future. The elections have produced a new president, the ruling party Bola Tinubu, a new vice president and a new Parliament. Tinubu is the president with the least support at the polls in memory. An election in whose transparency and cleanliness perhaps too much hope had been placed at the beginning and which, in the end, have revealed, and deepened, the deep cracks in the country. Some faults through which the different violence that shakes it today and that has increased in recent times flows. (Continue…) Dear reader, this article is exclusively for paying users. If you want to access the full text, you can subscribe to Ejercitos Magazine taking advantage of our offer for new subscribers through the following link.

On April 15, violence breaks out in the streets of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. The growing tension accumulated during the previous months between the two generals in command of the African country leads to combats that, as the days go by, spread throughout Sudan. On the one hand, the number 1 of the military government, the general of the Sudanese Armed Forces Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and, on the other, the top leader of the powerful Rapid Support Forces militia, also general Mohamed Hamda Dagalo “Hemeti” . A confrontation with the potential to become a regional conflict with intervention in addition to global powers, because both generals have great external support. (Continue…) Dear reader, this article is exclusively for paying users. If you want to access the full text, you can subscribe to Ejercitos Magazine taking advantage of our offer for new subscribers through the following link.

A new international military stabilization force begins its deployment in the troubled east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Led by the regional power, Kenya, and sponsored by the peace talks in Nairobi and Luanda, under the protection of the African Union, troops from various countries are pursuing on the ground several rebel groups causing a rise in violence in that country. area in recent months. But there are many vectors of conflict that interact in Congolese territory, some already historic. And all this hinders the chances of success of the stabilization mission. At the moment, the local population receives the foreign soldiers oscillating between skepticism and hostility. (Continue…) Dear reader, this article is exclusively for paying users. If you want to access the full text, you can subscribe to Ejercitos Magazine taking advantage of our offer for new subscribers through the following link.

Drones: cheap and effective. This has been demonstrated in various operational scenarios and battlefields. Ukraine is just the latest, so far, to be added to the list. Initially designed for surveillance and image collection for Intelligence, they have later been armed to launch attacks. The good performance in the Ukrainian conflict of the Shahed-136 drones sent by Iran to Russia has been followed very closely, and not without some concern, throughout the Middle East. Region in which more than one country sees itself as the possible future, or present, target of Iranian UAVs, either directly or indirectly, through its allies in the area. All this has led to a deepening of new alliances, for example, between Israel and some monarchies of the Persian Gulf, which add to the [Keep reading…]