Africa

Even if violent attacks are now mostly concentrated around the border of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, the unstable area subject to terrorism covers a huge area — equivalent to half of Europe or the United States — and is spread over five countries…. Because it involves such a huge territory, and because Europeans simply do not have the air support and intelligence capabilities of the United States, American support in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel is critical.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey is starting deployment of troops to Libya in support of the embattled United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) and in line with agreements relating to maritime border demarcation and enhanced security cooperation.

La secrétaire générale adjointe aux Affaires politiques de l’ONU, Rosemary DiCarlo, a exprimé mercredi lors d’un entretien avec le président nigérien Mahamadou Issoufou à Niamey les préoccupations de son institution devant la détérioration de la situation sécuritaire au Niger et dans la région, a-t-on appris jeudi de source officielle.

Les experts et les ministres de « l’Initiative d’Accra » ont réaffirmé leur détermination à combattre le trafic de cigarettes qui est devenu une importante source de financement du terrorisme et d’autres réseaux criminels en Afrique de l’Ouest.

Turkey has intervened in Libya’s internecine civil war in an effort to prop up the increasingly beleaguered Government of National Accord (GNA).

For the last five years, the international community has tried a range of different approaches to mediating the Libyan civil war. All have failed. Most nations and observers not actively fueling the war with weapons, money, training, and mercenaries now see that halting these destructive flows is critical to bringing the rival militia factions to the negotiating table. The Berlin conference slated for February 2020 has the creation of an effective arms embargo as its stated primary goal. However, merely meeting this challenge will not be enough to stem the violence or solve the conflict. Once militias are cut off from external sources of military support, the core economic issues that gave rise to the conflict will still remain. Only a new approach empowering Libyan economic reformers, while reworking the Libyan economic system’s role as a driver of conflict, can fix the dysfunction. To achieve this, international actors need to facilitate and support the establishment of a Libyan-requested, Libyan-led International Financial Commission vested with the requisite authorities to completely restructure the economy.

Italian intelligence has named the Nigerian mafia “the most structured and dynamic” of any foreign crime entity operating in Italy, according to the Washington Post…. What distinguishes the Nigerian crime networks is their severe brutality…