Hilary Matfess

Hilary Matfess writes about how war, authoritarian politics, and everyday life intersect across Africa, with a particular focus on the long afterlives of conflict rather than single events. At Foreign Affairs she covers the political dynamics of civil wars and peace deals, examining how power-sharing, security arrangements, and local grievances actually work on the ground. Her wider body of work draws on social-science research and field-based reporting to challenge simple narratives about extremism, state failure, and women’s roles in these crises.

Civil wars, peace deals, and contested sovereignty

Matfess’s Foreign Affairs pieces are anchored in the politics of ongoing wars, rather than treating cease-fires or agreements as neat endpoints. In writing on the conflict in Ethiopia, for example, she tracks how the formal end of large-scale fighting leaves unresolved questions of territorial control, security sector authority, and political representation. She dissects how federal, regional, and non-state armed actors bargain over sovereignty, and how these negotiations shape whether violence tapers off or shifts into new forms.

Across this work she is less interested in diplomatic set pieces than in the institutional details that follow: the integration or sidelining of militias, the fate of local administrators, and the gap between formal accords and the behavior of security forces. She often highlights the risks of “peace on paper,” showing how partial settlements and exclusionary political bargains can entrench future instability. This makes her coverage distinct from more event-driven conflict reporting that stops at who signed what and when.

Insurgency, counterinsurgency, and governance in Africa

Beyond the Horn of Africa, Matfess has an extensive record of writing on insurgent movements and counterinsurgency campaigns across the continent, especially in Nigeria and the wider Lake Chad Basin. She has covered armed groups such as Boko Haram and allied jihadist factions, treating them not just as security threats but as political actors embedded in local economies, social hierarchies, and state neglect. Her articles map how these organizations recruit, govern, and adapt when confronted with military pressure.

Her analysis of counterinsurgency stresses governance failures and abusive security practices as central drivers of conflict, not just background conditions. She details how indiscriminate campaigns, mass arrests, and corruption within security institutions undermine public trust and create openings for insurgent groups. Rather than focusing on battlefield gains or losses alone, she traces how state behavior toward civilians, detainees, and defectors shapes the durability of armed movements.

Matfess regularly connects specific insurgencies to wider regional trends, comparing how different governments respond to jihadist violence and what that means for democratic institutions. She also writes for policy-oriented outlets and opinion sections that cover African politics and security, carrying this governance-centered approach across platforms. The continuity of these themes makes her a go-to analyst on how insurgency and state policy interact in contemporary African conflicts.

Gender, civilians, and the social fabric of war

Gender is a consistent thread in Matfess’s work, not as a standalone topic but as a way of understanding how wars are experienced and sustained. She has written extensively on women’s roles in and around violent movements, including as coerced spouses, economic actors, informants, and, in some cases, combatants. Rather than treating women only as victims or as security risks, she situates their choices in the context of social pressure, survival strategies, and state responses.

Her coverage often scrutinizes programs designed for reintegration, disarmament, or “de-radicalization,” asking who is included, who is left out, and how these policies resonate with the communities they target. She pays particular attention to the stigma and legal precarity faced by women and children returning from areas under insurgent control, and how that stigma can undermine both justice and stability. This focus brings a granular, community-level perspective to stories that are frequently framed in purely military or ideological terms.

In pieces that blend gender and governance, Matfess explores how conflict reshapes household economies, access to education, and local power structures. She is attentive to how international aid, humanitarian programming, and donor-driven gender agendas interact with local norms, sometimes producing unintended consequences. This gives her work a layered view of the social costs of war that sits alongside, rather than beneath, high politics.

Analytical style and use of research

Matfess writes as both an analyst and a researcher, and that dual identity shapes the form her journalism takes. Her Foreign Affairs essays and other commentary tend to be long-form, with clear arguments supported by historical background, comparative cases, and citations to academic and policy research. She frequently uses specific localities, individual experiences, or policy episodes as entry points into broader structural arguments about authoritarianism, security forces, and international engagement.

She favors plain, direct language and avoids sensational framing, even when covering atrocities or major military campaigns. Her pieces foreground cause-and-effect: tracing how political decisions cascade into battlefield realities and civilian suffering, rather than simply cataloguing incidents of violence. She often closes analyses by sketching the trade-offs facing policymakers—what different choices would imply for conflict trajectories and governance—without collapsing into advocacy or simple prescriptions.

Across outlets, Matfess’s work is distinguished by its insistence on connecting elite bargaining, institutional design, and everyday realities. Whether she is writing about a peace deal in Ethiopia, a counterinsurgency campaign in Nigeria, or the lives of women emerging from extremist-held territories, she treats politics, security, and social life as parts of the same story rather than separate beats.