After years of failed military efforts, the path forward has to include some kind of accommodation with the militants.
Since at least 2017, when Mali’s government organised a peace forum called the Conference of National Understanding, prominent voices in the country and the wider Sahel region have explored the possibility of dialogue with jihadists.
Three Anti-Stock Theft Unit officers were injured on Monday after suspected Al-Shabaab militants attacked Mandera’s Elram base.
Elram is about 10kms to the Somalia border.
Taiwan may be 10,000km from East Africa, but whatever happens there could still hurt you. This is why a brawl between China and the US over Washington’s dalliance with Taipei could bring the region new worries.
Algeria is interested in joining the BRICS, the economic bloc of developing countries which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The appeal was publicly made by the northern African leader, Abdelmadjid Tebboune during a TV interview broadcast on Sunday, July 31.
The United States has ordered non-emergency personnel and their families to leave Mali due to a heightened risk of attacks, the State Department said.
The US did not mention a specific threat to its employees, but said there was an increased danger of violence affecting Westerners in a country that has been plagued by jihadist attacks for years.
Adapting Sahelian force structures to lighter, more mobile, and integrated units will better support the population-centric COIN practices needed to reverse the escalating trajectory of violent extremist attacks.
In a different context, the deadly attack on the 7 Guards Battalion of the Nigerian Army Presidential Guards Brigade on the evening of Friday, July 22nd would have set alarm bells ringing in the upper echelons of Nigerian intelligence. Among the many puzzles raised by the attack, which reportedly left three soldiers wounded and eight dead, is the question of how the assailants got wind of the elite unit’s coordinates. Are there insiders within the Nigerian armed forces feeding intelligence to the gunmen and bandits who have laid siege on the Nigerian state as some politicians and military experts have suggested?
US secretary of state will visit Pretoria, Kinshasa and Kigali weeks after Russia’s Lavrov visited the continent.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel next month to South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, the Department of State announced on Friday, as Washington ramps up diplomacy in Africa to counter a Russian charm offensive.
Russian, French and American leaders are crisscrossing Africa to win support for their positions on the war in Ukraine, waging what some say is the most intense competition for influence on the continent since the Cold War.
Countries in the Sahel need to collaborate to stem the tide of weapons flowing through Niger.
Arms and ammunition seizures by security forces in Niger’s Agadez and Tahoua regions between January 2021 and February 2022 helped dismantle trafficking networks in the country. This is positive, but what do the seizures say about the extent of the problem? Is arms trafficking from Libya to countries in the south on the rise again?