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?
Demonstrators have accused international forces of failing to deter armed groups responsible for a wave of deadly attacks.
At least 15 people, including three U.N. peacekeepers, have been killed and 60 others injured in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in an escalation of dayslong protests against the United Nations in a mineral-rich region that has been ravaged by incessant deadly violence.
Al-Qaeda jihadists are tightening the screws on Mali’s military junta, extending their attacks to the south of the country and hitting a key garrison town on the outskirts of the capital.
Raids last week displayed coordination and operational complexity at a range that is unprecedented in the country’s decade-long jihadist campaign, say analysts.
France could deliver drones and more sophisticated weapons to Benin to help it tackle a worsening Islamist insurgency that is threatening the region, President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday.
Macron made the pledge during a joint press conference with Benin’s President Patrice Talon on the second leg of his three-nation tour of Cameroon, Benin and Guinea-Bissau.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s four-country Africa swing attracted a great deal of attention in Western media outlets, which framed his trip as a diplomatic campaign intended to prove that the West’s efforts to isolate Russia have obvious limits. In Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo, Lavrov sought to deflect responsibility for the serious food and fuel disruptions resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and position Moscow as a champion of state sovereignty and independence. It’s an audacious claim from a country currently engaged in a campaign to annex part of its neighbor. Meanwhile, the world waits for Russia to lift its blockade on Ukrainian grain and allow ships to pass through the Black Sea.