Egypt rejects IMF loan;
Zawahiri's brother wants a salafist Egypt;
Chechen jihadists flock to Syria

With U.S. troops out of Iraq and leaving Afghanistan, the last thing the American people want to hear about is the potential for another war. But the growing conflict in Mali is not a new war; it is another front in the same struggle against violent extremism America has been waging since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Until recently, most Americans had never heard of the west African country of Mali. They may have heard of the Malian city of Timbuktu, but even then only as a byword used to describe the middle of nowhere. However, an Islamist insurgency has thrust Mali into the forefront of the national security debate, and highlighted the continuing complexities of the struggle against violent extremism.

It has been heralded as a humanitarian gesture and a sign of Arab leadership, but Qatar’s decision last week to double its $2.5 billion aid package to Egypt is also a telling indicator of the true economic state of affairs in post-revolutionary Egypt.

The next president must discard two longstanding but problematic pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East and chart a new course that reflects both regional realities and the dynamic changes that are underway there.

For decades, presidents have sought to maintain regional stability by propping up pro-Western autocrats and to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the first step toward addressing broader regional issues.

As the world evolves, presenting new challenges to U.S. national security, the patterns of U.S. foreign aid should evolve with it.

Nowhere is this truer than in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous and historically most influential state, which is gradually transforming itself from a Western-leaning secular autocracy into an increasingly Islamic state that's run by the anti-Western (specifically, anti-American) Muslim Brotherhood.

For all their ideological fervor, revolutions in practice tend to be fairly predictable affairs. More often than not, when the initial groundswell of popular discontent recedes, the best-organized and most ideologically cohesive political factions assume power and proceed to run the show according to their own preferences.

In the sixteen months since the ouster of its long-serving strongman, Hosni Mubarak, one question has stood at the heart of the turbulent political debate taking place in Egypt: who will ultimately end up in charge?

Taiwan places hopes in Myanmar reform movement;