Tag: Central Africa

Remember ISIS?

That bunch a barbarous bastards that everybody had an opinion about just a few months ago….remember them?

The pandemic and no the protests have kept my attention elsewhere…so many things happening and so little time and space……..

Using Open Source info I have updated my files….but they are expanding into the Sahel (rapidly)……a quick reference if the term floored you….

Sahel region, Africa

FRANCE 24’s Wassim Nasr, the author of the article entitled “The End of the Sahel Exception”, talks about why the Sahel was the only area in the world where the two groups al-Qaeda and IS were not fighting each other for a long time, until a few weeks ago.

https://www.france24.com/en/20200604-africa-s-sahel-region-becomes-latest-battleground-for-jihadist-groups

Yep ISIS is expanding in Africa…..

There had been hints about the intentions of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, to develop a Central Africa Province (ISCAP) in a speech by the late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in August 2018. However, it was not until April 2019 that an attack in Beni, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was claimed as the work of ISCAP by ISIS-run media outlets. Later that month, Baghdadi formally acknowledged it as an ISIS ‘wilayah’ (meaning ‘province’ and referred to as ‘wilayat’ in the plural) in a video message. 

In addition to attacks in the DRC, in June 2019 ISIS started to attribute attacks in Mozambique to ISCAP. The media campaign around ISCAP has been extremely active – in February 2020 a graphic was released comparing the number of attacks conducted in each of the Islamic State’s wilayat, with ISCAP ‘scoring’ the highest number for the month. However, the picture on the ground is very different to what ISIS portrays. The wilayah in fact consists of two armed groups operating in different countries, with only loose connections. Both groups are driven by complex motives, which are predominantly shaped by their local surroundings.

https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2020/06/csdp-isis-militants-africa

Could Africa become the next caliphate?

They have lost most of their punch in the Middle East and they are expanding into the Sahel…..is it possible this is the new home of the caliphate?

In 2018, when the Islamic State began losing its “territorial caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, ISIS’s leadership knew that the organization would have to depend on external “provinces” (called wilayat) to keep its global project thriving. The provinces would launch attacks and remain loyal to ISIS, and ISIS could claim that that the “caliphate” might no longer be expanding, but it was remaining. With setbacks in Afghanistan and the Philippines, Africa emerged as the only continent where ISIS could operate like it did in Syria and Iraq during its heyday. So long as ISIS thrives in Africa, the dream of the global caliphate remains alive. 

Not only can ISIS conduct sophisticated attacks in Africa, it also can occupy territories and overpower armies. Moreover, with rapidly increasing populations, historical narratives about reviving pre-colonial Islamic states, and challenges resulting from weak governance and security forces’ abuses, ISIS finds fertile ground on the continent. While foreign policy often focuses on geopolitical competition in Africa, especially between the United States and China, the emergence of the Islamic State as a power player on the continent – on top of al Qaeda’s presence there since as early as Osama bin Laden’s 1990s stay in Sudan – means the Islamic State will be a force that governments, armies, aid organizations, multinational corporations, and, of course, civilians will inevitably have to confront.

ISIS in Africa: The Caliphate’s Next Frontier

Let us not forget about al-Qaeda…..French claims to have killed the emir of North Africa…..

France said on Friday that its military has killed al-Qaeda’s North Africa chief Abdelmalek Droukdel, a key fighter who its forces had been hunting for more than seven years, during an operation in Mali.

“On June 3, French army forces, with the support of their local partners, killed the emir of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and several of his closest collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali,” French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly wrote on Twitter.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/france-army-killed-al-qaeda-abdelmalek-droukdel-200606033045666.html

Did not know that AQ had gone this far South?

Let me help…..

Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), to give its full name in English, has its roots in the bitter Algerian civil war of the early 1990s, but has since evolved to take on a more international Islamist agenda.

Its reach has also expanded across the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert, attracting members from Mauritania, Morocco, Niger and Senegal as well as from within Mali where, in alliance with other Islamists, it is fighting French troops on the ground.

During the Mali crisis, its fighters have dramatically increased their profile, allowing them to further their aim of spreading Islamic law and jihad across West Africa.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17308138

These groups are still very active….they did not take time off for a virus…..I feel we will be hearing more fromm these groups in the coming months.

Plus there is a worry about the armies of the Sahel countries may be making matters worse…..

The Sahel has seen years of conflict with Islamic militants, who first emerged in northern Mali in 2012 before sweeping into the centre of the country, and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed in the conflict to date and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

Worries from allies such as the United Nations and former colonial power France about the conduct of Sahel soldiers are not new. But reports of abuses have increased significantly over the past few months.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/sahel-armies-accused-of-disappearances-and-killings-raising-alarm/ar-BB156emB

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

US In The Sahel

The Sahel?  That is Africa in case you were dashing for the Google button.

Image result for sahel

For years now the US has been in the region assisting local governments in their efforts to fight the specter of growing terrorism.

What got me thinking about our involvement in the Sahel was the announcement of a special envoy….

The United States has created a special envoy for Africa’s Sahel region, a State Department spokesman said on Friday, to counter rising violence from groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State which are expanding their foothold.

Envoy Peter Pham, started his new role earlier this week, the spokesman said. He has been serving as U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa since November 2018.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sahel/u-s-creates-new-envoy-position-to-counter-rising-terrorism-in-sahel-idUSKBN20T2ZJ

But are US troops necessary?

A Review of the necessity for US troops in the region is on-going…..

Facing skepticism from members of Congress about plans to alter force posture in Africa, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told members of the House Armed Services Committee that he remains committed to keeping U.S. forces on the continent.

“There are no plans to completely withdraw all forces from Africa,” Esper said Wednesday.

As part of a broader review of the force structure for the combatant commands, Esper has been considering moving forces out of U.S. Africa Command’s area of operations. Reports emerged at the end of 2019 that the department was looking at removing several hundred forces from Niger, Chad and Mali.

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/02/26/heres-what-espers-africom-review-has-decided-so-far/

Why do we continue to fight and die in this region?  I mean our so-called NATO allies are there as well then why not let them handle the hard lift in Africa?

For Washington’s foreign policy establishment, no nation is too unimportant to be considered vital to America’s security. No territory is too insignificant for the United States to dominate. No spot on earth is too distant to station an American soldier. How else to judge the hysterical criticism of the Trump administration’s proposed military drawdown in Africa?

Despite the fiscal crisis, strategic overreach, endless war, and political division, “the Blob,” as Washington’s foreign policy community is known, refuses to consider a world where Uncle Sam does not treat every region and nation as his personal sphere of interest. Washington is determined to protect more than a score of rich allies in Europe, multiple wealthy clients in Asia, and a gaggle of Middle Eastern nations.

Roughly seven thousand American personnel are stationed across Africa, primarily in Djibouti, Niger, and Somalia. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is considering rebalancing U.S. defense resources, shifting toward containment—not that he has used that word—of China and Russia. To advance that process, last fall the Pentagon asked each regional command for its resource needs. Explained Esper: “We’ve begun a review process where I’m looking at every theater, understanding what the requirements are that we set out for, making sure we’re as efficient as possible with our forces.”

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/skeptics/americas-africa-enigma-why-us-troops-are-taking-unnecessary-risks-126031

Personally I say end this deployment of US troops…..we already have enough war in other spots why make a new one?

As the United States sensibly backs its military out of Afghanistan and considers drawing down the remaining 5,000 American troops in Iraq, it is time to review the expanded U.S. military presence in West and East Africa (~7,000 troops), particularly counterterror operations. Such a review was announced by Secretary of Defense Mike Esper in December 2019.

Our African deployments were practically invisible until October 2017, when four American soldiers died in an ambush in Niger. Suddenly Americans — including at least one U.S. Senator — realized that the U.S. military was in Africa getting the U.S. into deeper and deeper trouble.

It is time to pull back these forces. They reflect a militarization of U.S. foreign policy that has accelerated since 2001. Claims to the contrary, the military does not do these operations particularly well and there is growing evidence that they are counterproductive, generating more terrorists than they eliminate and exacerbating instability. They do nothing to counter Chinese or Russian influence in Africa, despite claims that they do. The threat they target is not a vital U.S. interest. In sum, by militarizing U.S. engagement in Africa, security assistance, training, and operations are harming U.S. security interests.

The U.S. military should end its counterterror operations in Africa

Time to end at least one armed conflict….I am sure that we will find another to replace the profits for the M-IC.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ever Heard Of South Sudan?

South Sudan is the newest independent country…it is a country located in Central Africa…..

A little history and geography of this new country…..

Egypt attempted to colonize the region of southern Sudan by establishing the province of Equatoria in the 1870s. Islamic Mahdist revolutionaries overran the region in 1885, but in 1898 a British force was able to overthrow the Mahdist regime. An Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was established the following year with Equatoria being the southernmost of its eight provinces. The isolated region was largely left to itself over the following decades, but Christian missionaries converted much of the population and facilitated the spread of English. When Sudan gained its independence in 1956, it was with the understanding that the southerners would be able to participate fully in the political system. When the Arab Khartoum government reneged on its promises, a mutiny began that led to two prolonged periods of conflict (1955-1972 and 1983-2005) in which perhaps 2.5 million people died – mostly civilians – due to starvation and drought. Ongoing peace talks finally resulted in a Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in January 2005. As part of this agreement, the south was granted a six-year period of autonomy to be followed by a referendum on final status. The result of this referendum, held in January 2011, was a vote of 98% in favor of secession.
Since independence on 9 July 2011, South Sudan has struggled with good governance and nation building and has attempted to control opposition forces operating in its territory. Economic conditions have deteriorated since January 2012 when the government decided to shut down oil production following bilateral disagreements with Sudan. In December 2013, conflict between government and opposition forces killed tens of thousands and led to a dire humanitarian crisis with millions of South Sudanese displaced and food insecure. The warring parties signed a peace agreement in August 2015 that created a transitional government of national unity in April 2016. However, in July 2016, fighting broke out in Juba between the two principal signatories, plunging the country back into conflict.
That illustrates the this region knows conflict…..they know full well what it means…..but there is good news about the conflict killing many South Sudanese….
On 27 June 2018, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and former First Vice President Riek Machar, the principal adversaries in South Sudan’s civil war, signed a Declaration of Agreement in Khartoum. The declaration does not resolve major points of contention between the two leaders, deferring them to talks which are ongoing in the Sudanese capital. Moreover, nearly five years of mediation and a 2015 peace deal have failed to end South Sudan’s brutal civil war. Circumspection as to whether the Khartoum negotiations can do so is thus warranted. But for now, those talks offer the only hope, however slim, of a breakthrough. The African Union’s Peace and Security Council, and the leaders of Algeria, Chad, Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda, who have been involved in past rounds of negotiations, should use their meetings on 30 June in Nouakchott, Mauritania to lend the Khartoum talks cautious support, while laying out clearly what they expect from next steps and the measures they would take against parties obstructing progress.
I brought this to my readers attention for I want to predict here and now that in the next decade the country of South Sudan will disappear….possibly re-absorbed by Sudan…..and this will not end the fighting or the dying…..just change the nature of who does what.

Then There Is South Sudan

The newest country to enter the UN was the country if South Sudan……a little history of world’s newest independent nation…..

Egypt attempted to colonize the region of southern Sudan by establishing the province of Equatoria in the 1870s. Islamic Mahdist revolutionaries overran the region in 1885, but in 1898 a British force was able to overthrow the Mahdist regime. An Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was established the following year with Equatoria being the southernmost of its eight provinces. The isolated region was largely left to itself over the following decades, but Christian missionaries converted much of the population and facilitated the spread of English. When Sudan gained its independence in 1956, it was with the understanding that the southerners would be able to participate fully in the political system. When the Arab Khartoum government reneged on its promises, a mutiny began that led to two prolonged periods of conflict (1955-1972 and 1983-2005) in which perhaps 2.5 million people died – mostly civilians – due to starvation and drought. Ongoing peace talks finally resulted in a Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in January 2005. As part of this agreement, the south was granted a six-year period of autonomy to be followed by a referendum on final status. The result of this referendum, held in January 2011, was a vote of 98% in favor of secession.
Since independence on 9 July 2011, South Sudan has struggled with good governance and nation building and has attempted to control opposition forces operating in its territory. Economic conditions have deteriorated since January 2012 when the government decided to shut down oil production following bilateral disagreements with Sudan. In December 2013, conflict between government and opposition forces killed tens of thousands and led to a dire humanitarian crisis with millions of South Sudanese displaced and food insecure. The warring parties signed a peace agreement in August 2015 that created a transitional government of national unity in April 2016. However, in July 2016, fighting broke out in Juba between the two principal signatories, plunging the country back into conflict.
Now you have a grip on the situation in South Sudan….there is a war going on within the borders ans no one cares especially the West……they give it a bit of lip service but that is as far as it goes…..

The accounts are horrific. A young girl strangled and gang-raped. Children burned alive as government soldiers blocked the door of their hut and set it aflame. These are some of the atrocities revealed in 14 reports, seen by the AP, that have not yet been released by the independent body charged with monitoring a failed cease-fire imposed in December in South Sudan, where civil war is now well into its fifth year, has killed tens of thousands, and has created Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The reports should have been released last month at a meeting led by the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission but South Sudan’s government did not attend, preventing the accounts of abuses from being made public because there was not a quorum.

The unpublished reports describe violations by both government and opposition forces but most of the accounts blame the former. One report describes a disabled woman who, unable to flee the fighting, was thrown into a burning house by government soldiers. The US, South Sudan’s largest aid donor, has increased pressure on the Juba government amid widespread allegations that its officials are profiting from the conflict instead of working to end it. Last week the UN Security Council adopted a US-sponsored resolution that warns of an arms embargo and sanctions against six high-ranking officials if the fighting doesn’t stop. The US and others, however, insist that the East African regional bloc, along with the African Union, should take the lead in finding peace and holding perpetrators of abuses accountable.

I have said on many occasions….”No one cares about Africa”……

American War Dead

WE Americans continue to die in defense of our country.  We have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and the list goes on.  It is a sad occasion when I have to write another post about more Americans dying in wars of no interests.

Yesterday here on IST we reported of yet another American killed in Iraq and it is out sad duty to report today that 3 more Americans have been killed but this time it is in West Africa……

US officials say three US Army special operations commandos were killed Wednesday and two others were wounded when they came under fire in southwest Niger. The officials say the two wounded were taken to Niamey, the capital, and are in stable condition, the AP reports. The officials say the commandos, who were Green Berets, were likely attacked by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb militants. In a statement, US Africa Command said the American forces were on a joint patrol with Nigerien Armed Forces troops north of Niamey, near the Mali border, when they came under hostile fire.

Africa Command said the US forces are in Niger to provide training and security assistance to the Nigerien Armed Forces in their efforts against violent extremists. The White House says President Trump was notified about the attack Wednesday night as he flew aboard Air Force One from Las Vegas to Washington. The military says the two wounded soldiers will soon be transported to Germany for medical treatment, CNN reports.

These deaths made the cable news shows (show me surprised)……

At the time of this writing the names of the dead and wounded have not been released….

Our deepest sympathies go out to the families.

Did We Really Care?

In 1994 the world watched a genocide and did NOTHING.

Beginning on April 6, 1994, Hutus began slaughtering the Tutsis in the African country of Rwanda. As the brutal killings continued, the world stood idly by and just watched the slaughter. Lasting 100 days, the Rwanda genocide left approximately 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers dead.  Think about it 800,000 dead in just 100 days……not even the Nazis were capable of that……..

At 8:30 p.m. on April 6, 1994, President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda was returning from a summit in Tanzania when a surface-to-air missile shot his plane out of the sky over Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali. All on board were killed in the crash.

Since 1973, President Habyarimana, a Hutu, had run a totalitarian regime in Rwanda, which had excluded all Tutsis from participating. That changed on August 3, 1993 when Habyarimana signed the Arusha Accords, which weakened the Hutu hold on Rwanda and allowed Tutsis to participate in the government. This greatly upset Hutu extremists.

Although it has never been determined who was truly responsible for the assassination, Hutu extremists profited the most from Habyarimana’s death. Within 24 hours after the crash, Hutu extremists had taken over the government, blamed the Tutsis for the assassination, and begun the slaughter.

While this was happening what was the rest of the world doing?  basically, ignoring the 800 lb gorilla in the room……..declassified documents tell part of the tale…….

Newly declassified cables from 1994 show that with Rwanda poised on the brink of genocide, world leaders were anxious to get UN peacekeeping forces out of the country as quickly as possible, reports the New York Times. They did so, and an estimated 800,000 people were massacred in 100 days. “It’s clear, in hindsight, that the pullout of peacekeeping was the green light for genocide,” says Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. It obtained the 300 cables along with the Holocaust Museum and was highlighting them this week at a conference in the Hague on what world leaders did, and did not, do to stop the killing. (You can access the full trove here.)

The cables show that Bill Clinton’s White House—still stung from the “Black Hawk Down” disaster in Somalia only months earlier—pushed to remove the vast majority of the peacekeepers. One of the cables is from UN ambassador Madeleine Albright instructing the State Department to take that position. Albright recalls that she had been swayed by African criticism that a withdrawal would be a mistake, but she failed to convince the White House. “I was an instructed ambassador, not the secretary of state, but I do wish I had argued harder,” Albright tells the Times. The Security Council voted on April 21, 1994, to reduce the force from 2,100 troops to 270, and the Canadian leader of the force wrote that those who remained were “standing knee-deep in mutilated bodies.” Still classified are internal White House emails, which would shed further light on US decision-making.

We did NOTHING!  I realize that the central part of Africa holds little interests for us in the west…….but I recall someone after the holocaust saying that the world would never allow such a act again……idle words like so many of our other promises and statements.

We seem to be prepared to blame our prez and his staff for an incident in the recent past…..but if we hold them responsible for the inaction then I say lets hold ALL of them responsible…..for Beirut…..from Iraq…….ALL of them….unless all this is just what i think….a political game where No life is important just the outcome of an election.

And if that is the case then we are a PATHETIC LOT!