The Age of Suspended Democracies
Why Elections No Longer Guarantee Sovereignty By Samira El-Khalil There was a time when election day represented the culmination of politics. Polling stations opened before…
Samira El-Khalil
Samira El-Khalil, North Africa correspondent at Phoenix24. Expert in political violence, disinformation, and post-colonial governance in the Sahel and Maghreb
The Security That Never Arrived: Russia’s New Sahel Bargain
Bamako | July 2026 The Sahel did not expel empire so much as alter the language through which dependence is negotiated. Mali, Burkina Faso and…
North Africa’s Crisis of Truth Is Becoming a Crisis of Power
When public trust fragments, authority no longer needs to persuade everyone. It only needs to dominate the uncertainty. Tunis, June 2026 North Africa is not…
The Republic of Rumors: Disinformation and the Collapse of Trust Across North Africa
When institutions lose credibility, rumors stop being noise and start becoming power. Tunis, Tunisia | June 2026 There is a moment in the life of…
The Memory War: How North Africa Became a Battlefield of Narratives
Empires leave echoes long after they leave flags. Tunis, May 2026. North Africa is often described through the language of instability, migration and security crises,…
Data Routes and Desert Empires: The Silent Rewiring of the Sahel
Power no longer arrives only by convoy. Tunis, May 2026. The Sahel has often been described as a corridor, as if geography were merely a passage…
Gold, Ghosts and Algorithms: The New Colonial War for the Sahel
The empire now speaks through proxies. Bamako, April 2026. The Sahel is not collapsing in silence. It is being rewritten by men who speak of…
Europe’s Migration Deals Are Quietly Rewriting North Africa
The border now lives inside fragile states. Tunis, April 2026. Europe no longer needs to move its border south with a flag or a soldier. It…
When Trauma Governs: Narrative Warfare from Tripoli to Bamako
In fragile states, memory rarely stays in the past. Tunis, April 2026. From Tripoli to Bamako, power often appears in familiar forms: uniforms, decrees, armed…
Borders of Trauma: Migration, Disinformation, and Power in North Africa
Europe keeps calling it migration. North Africa knows it is memory. Tunis, April 2026 The Mediterranean is still being narrated in Brussels as a border…