Africa

For decades, the centre of gravity of jihadist militancy swung between South Asia and the Middle East.

In the early 1990s, Arab volunteers who had been fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan returned home to battle governments they declared un-Islamic. Later that decade, as those rebellions petered out, many fighters retreated to Afghanistan, then under Taliban control. After the 9/11 attacks and the U.S.-backed ouster of the Taliban, foreign militants who weren’t killed or captured mostly hid in the Pakistani tribal areas or scattered. Then came the 2003 U.S. Iraq war, which breathed new life into global jihadism. Thousands of militants travelled to fight U.S. soldiers in the heart of the Arab world. That rebellion was also beaten back, in part by a U.S.-sponsored tribal revolt tapping local anger at jihadists’ brutality. The descent of the 2011 Arab uprisings into chaos created new opportunity for militants, paving the way for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, its expansion elsewhere and the growth of local al-Qaeda branches.

Central African Republic’s army and its allies have driven back a rebel group that seized towns around the country amid contested elections in December, but rights groups and residents told The New Humanitarian they committed a string of abuses in the process.

“I cannot file a complaint – against whom would I file it?” said a 32-year-old truck driver who was shot at in December from a checkpoint allegedly controlled by Russian mercenaries and Central African soldiers outside the northeastern town of Grimari.

Forty-one-year-old Enoch Obemeasor is more alert this week on his daily two-hour commute from his home in Tafa village, Niger state, to the Nigerian capital for his printing business.

Niger state authorities on Monday said Boko Haram militants attacked the town of Kaure, abducted women, sent thousands fleeing, and hoisted their flag.

Obemeasor said the security threat means it’s not safe to drive at night.

The Chairman of the Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, announced the readiness of the security committees to gather former rebel forces in the cantonment sites as provided in the Juba peace agreement.

Under the peace agreement signed between the Sudanese government and the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF)’s factions on October 3, 2020, the assembling of forces should have taken place two months after the signing of the agreement, but the step was delayed for months, due to lack of funding.

Kenya on Thursday rescheduled its planned closure of refugee camps to June next year, following discussions with the UN Refugee Agency to stagger the shut-down.

As such Kakuma and Dadaab Refugee camps will be closed down by June next year, allowing refugees time to leave gradually rather than in masses.

The attack in Yattakou village also left one person severely wounded and displaced residents, local governor says.

A local official in northern Burkina Faso has said at least 18 people were killed and one seriously wounded in an attack this week that also caused “massive displacement”.

Salfo Kabore, governor of Seno province located in conflict-hit Burkina Faso’s Sahel region, said unidentified gunmen carried out the attack on Monday in Yattakou village.

Why We Wrote This

What costs are acceptable to pay for peace? A handful of local negotiations with insurgents in the Sahel puts a spotlight on a debate about whether to talk with militants.

The Sahel is awash in jihadi insurgencies. From Nigeria to Mali, the stakes are high. About a million people have been displaced by conflict in Burkina Faso alone, where hundreds of people have died.

For months, human traffickers beat and drugged Blessing, hauling the 27-year-old from one gold mine encampment to the next, where each night she was forced to sleep with dozens of men for less than $2 a person.

The madam who lured Blessing to the landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso with promises of a hair salon job, threatened to kill her if she tried to run away.