The end of Operation Barkhane in the Sahel in 2022 raises many questions about French foreign policy in Africa. Yet the government has stifled public debate by insisting on the urgency of other wars in the world. As for the Members of Parliament, they never demanded an inquiry into the setbacks of France’s biggest overseas military operation since the Algerian war. Clearly, lessons were not learned. This article reviews the arguments and the political, military, historical and cultural reasons that led the Elysée to conceal, or even deny, a failure that also resulted in a loss of influence in its Francophone ‘preserve’ and among European Union partners who had overestimated the former colonial power’s ability to solve crises south of the Sahara. Blaming others, conspiracy theories and complaints about a lack of resources or the restrictions of international mandates to fight a global war on terror’ were part of the rhetorical weapons used to counter criticism, while some claimed that the end of Operation Barkhane was only a political defeat but not a military one.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s religious rhetoric and policies stand in sharp contrast to his predecessors during the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front (EPRDF) period, who carefully and deliberately kept the political discourse free of any religious references. Many were taken by surprise by his pronounced Pentecostal faith. This surprise is arguably a reflection of how scholars and observers have ignored developments within Ethiopia’s Protestant community – and religious dynamics in general – that Abiy is a product of. This paper examines how religious developments within Ethiopia’s Protestant community produced and shaped Abiy as a Pentecostal politician. The paper also seeks to understand some of the main characteristics of the prime minister’s religious ideas and the possible impacts they may have had on his political decisions. My discussion centres on two major aspects. Countering the claims that Abiy aims to ‘Pentecostalize’ Ethiopian politics, I examine what possible implications he might have for Ethiopia’s secular framework and demonstrate how he uses religion in an inclusive way, viewing it as a resource to bring prosperity to Ethiopia. Secondly, to understand the actual content of the prime minister’s religious worldview, I analyse the affective affinities between the so-called prosperity gospel and positive thinking teachings.

This article opens with a mystery: why was Zizang 子臧 assassinated in the seventh century bce, and why was his assassination justified in the Zuozhuan by his fondness of snipe-feather caps? It is well established that feathers were a common item of clothing in early and medieval China, used to confer status, to flaunt wealth, to embellish rituals. This article argues that there may also have been accompanying beliefs surrounding their use; beliefs that feathers might bestow upon the wearer certain imagined characteristics of the birds from which they came. It uses case studies of soldiers and their relationship to brown-eared pheasants, dancers and their relationship to long-tailed pheasants, and immortals and their relationship to cranes and egrets. Finally, it returns to Zizang's snipe-feather cap, and suggests reasons for his fate.

The Thamudic D script is only partially deciphered. This article attempts to advance our understanding of the script by identifying all the Thamudic D glyphs and their phonemic values with varying degrees of certainty. It also discusses the major writing formulae associated with this script type and offers a few notes on the language it inscribes.

On the basis of textual scrutiny and intertextual comparisons, this study highlights that Vādidevasūri's attribution of a quotation to the Cārvāka/Lokāyata philosopher Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa in the Syādvādaratnākara is, in fact, part of a broader passage sourced from Arcaṭa's Hetubinduṭīkā and, consequently, its expungement from the corpus of source material attributed to the Cārvāka/Lokāyata authors is suggested.

This article, the third in a series, focuses on the “living” preverbs used in the verbal system of contemporary Pashto. The verbs treated here belong to the “compound verbs with preverb” class or to the “mixed verbs with preverb” class: verbs that replace the wə́- of the simple verbs with another preverb. This class of verbs represents a closed set, and a complete list of these verbs can be investigated systematically and exhaustively. This subject is as yet unexamined and its implications for the interpretation of contemporary Pashto verbal morphology are particularly stimulating.

The extant literature on diamond industries in Africa has predominantly focused on men, with few attempts to examine the industry from a gendered lens. I trace women and highlight their gendered roles in the diamond-mining industry in colonial Ghana (Gold Coast). Relying on archival, oral, and visual sources, this article highlights women’s involvement in Ghana’s diamond industry in different capacities—as discoverers, washers, licensed prospectors, and dealers. Ultimately, I argue that the dominance men have enjoyed in studies about diamond mining in Ghana (and Africa generally) reproduces the colonial archive but can be overcome through creative and innovative research.