Africa

In the latest in a series of military coups in West Africa, a group of army officers in Burkina Faso has overthrown the government of President Roch Kabore. In a televised address on Burkina Faso’s state broadcaster on Monday, the group—which has dubbed itself “the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration,” or MPSR—said that it had deposed Kabore, suspended the constitution, closed the country’s borders and dissolved the government and the legislature. The group affirmed that Kabore remains safe and in good condition.

When historians look back and try to explain how France lost its historical position as the dominant outside actor in West Africa, the oft-repeated line that Ernest Hemingway used to describe how one of his fictional characters went bankrupt will undoubtedly come to mind: gradually, then suddenly.

Since 2017, the Djugu territory of Ituri province in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been convulsed by conflict. In November 2021, rising community tensions resulted in four attacks of unprecedented violence in Tché, Drodro, Paroisse, Luko, and Ivo.

Months of tension and protests in Burkina Faso culminated in a military takeover on January 24. This political crisis comes as conflict continues in the country, causing violence and displacement and leaving many people struggling to find food, water, shelter, and medical care. Humanitarian organizations have also been hit by the violence, making it extremely challenging to provide much-needed aid.

Every expert on transnational jihadism knew that eradicating the Islamic State’s self-declared “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq would not lead to the end of this brutal, malignant movement. Since it had become as much an ideology and a brand as an actual organization, holding physical territory and establishing a proto-state were important but not vital for the Islamic State, at least in the near term. In response to its battlefield defeats in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has been dispersing, keeping its brand alive with hopes that someday it can take another shot at creating a state.

Abstract: With the explosive growth of banditry in northwestern Nigeria in recent years, there has been growing speculation among Nigerian and international observers that these criminal insurgents are receiving support from or otherwise converging with jihadis based in the country’s northeast. However, a lack of open-source data on the inner workings of both banditry and Nigeria’s jihadi insurgencies have precluded detailed analysis of this potential “crime-terror nexus.” Drawing on the authors’ extensive fieldwork across Nigeria’s northern conflict zones in 2021 and early 2022, including exclusive interviews with both bandits and jihadi defectors, this article provides the first in-depth examination of the links between Nigeria’s bandits and jihadi organizations. While there are many reasons to expect that Nigeria’s bandits and jihadis would cooperate and that jihadis would recruit bandits to their cause, the authors show how this has not been the case. The authors argue that Nigeria’s bandits are too fractious and too powerful for jihadis to easily coopt them and that the bandits’ lack of ambitious political objectives—and the significant differences in the modus operandi of bandits and jihadis—means that jihadism holds little intrinsic appeal for them. However, jihadi groups have taken advantage of instability in the northwest enabled by the bandits to establish small enclaves in the region that they are likely to sustain as long as they can maintain a modus vivendi with local bandit gangs.

The Sahel region aptly dubbed the land of opportunities, spans a large area covering 3,053,200 km2. The countries found in the greater region include Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Algeria, Cameroon, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. However, the countries that form the G5 Sahel are Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger.

Uncertainty continues to surround the whereabouts of President Roch Kaboré after the Burkinabe leader was deposed in a coup over the weekend. A former prime minister and one-time president of the National Assembly, Kaboré had been in power since 2015, the second civilian to hold the country’s highest office following the collapse of Blaise Compaore’s twenty-seven-year dictatorship and his flight into exile in October 2014. But now, even as the overall situation in the country remains fluid, it seems safe to say that the military is back in the saddle in Burkina Faso. The Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (MPSR)-led takeover makes the poor West African country the fourth in the region to fall under the military’s jackboots in less than two years. Mali reopened the floodgates in August 2020 (again in May 2021), with Chad and Guinea following suit in April and September 2021, respectively.

UN official says the body is investigating the incident involving CAR troops and ‘other security personnel’.

The United Nations is investigating the alleged killing of dozens of people in the Central African Republic last week by CAR forces and mercenaries with the Russian private military company Wagner.

At least 46 villagers were killed within a week after bandits launched a punitive expedition against two Kebbi villages.

On January 14, a band of heavily armed men stormed Dankade town in Danko Wasagu Local Government Area of Kebbi State, killing at least 17 residents and abducting many more in a punitive expedition.