Fears are growing in the Maghreb countries about Syria’s release of prisoners, because some of those freed might be militants from the region who will want to return home. Ivory Coast joins a growing list of countries, including Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, and Senegal, that have severed military ties with France, their former colonial ruler. The small island nation of the Seychelles off the east coast of Africa has become the unlikely setting of a great-power rivalry.