Joe DeCapua | May 24

VOA - A new assessment has been released on efforts to end LRA rebel attacks in central and east Africa. The Enough Project says despite the deployment of U.S. advisers, current operations lack resources and troops.

Enough Project field researcher Kasper Agger spent several weeks in the region affected by LRA attacks. He said in the first three months of this year, there were more than 50 attacks, 9 deaths, 90 abductions and the continued displacement of nearly 450,000 civilians. Agger, who’s based in Kampala, Uganda, titled his report Mission in the Balance.

“I wanted to give it that title to stress that despite progress on the ground we are still far from seeing an end to the LRA. So I wanted to stress some kind of urgency,” he said.

The Enough Project is an advocacy group working to end genocide and crimes against humanity.

Stephanie Nebehay | Geneva | May 24

Reuters - The last three countries where polio is still paralyzing children -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria -- said on Thursday that they have enlisted Muslim women and religious leaders to allay fears of vaccination and wipe out the disease.

Polio cases are at an all-time low worldwide, following its eradication in India last year, raising hopes but also fears about a threat of resurgence especially in sub-Saharan Africa unless remaining reservoirs of polio virus are stamped out.

Aris Roussinos | May 24

The Independent - The villagers of Angolo were gathered around the crater, mournfully staring at the bomb when we arrived. For over a month, the Russian-made cluster bomb has sat in the centre of this quiet farming village in Sudan's restive Nuba Mountains, its clutch of unexploded submunitions spilling from its belly into the red African soil. A makeshift attempt at cordoning off the scattered bomblets with a low circle of stones had little visible effect, with cattle and barefoot children moving unhindered through the long grass.

"Where is the West, where is the UN?" cried an elderly man, leaning against his spear as he gestured at the bomb. "How are we to clear this from our village? We need experts, and help from the outside world."

But South Kordofan's Nuba tribesmen have little hope of outside intervention. The UN's mandate to operate in Sudan's war-torn rebel provinces is heavily constrained by the government in Khartoum, and since South Sudan's declaration of independence in July 2011, little overt assistance is coming from their former allies a few dozen miles across the border.

Martin Vogl | Bamako | May 21

USA TODAY - Demonstrators attacked the interim president at his office Monday, knocking him unconscious, a witness and a presidential collaborator said.

Dioncounda Traore was brought to the Point G Hospital, said Sekou Yattara, a medical student there.

Yattara said Traore had suffered an injury to the head. The interim leader was not conscious when he was brought in, Yattara said.

A close collaborator of Traore said that he learned from the president's body guard that the president was injured when protesters broke into his office which is in a building next to the presidential palace. Traore had not been using offices in the palace itself as that building was ransacked during a coup in March.

Abdi Guled & Slobodon Lekic | Mogadishu | May 15

AP - European Union naval forces and attack helicopters conducted their first onshore raid on a suspected pirate lair in Somalia Tuesday. A pirate said the strike destroyed a supply center and set back their operations.

No deaths were reported in Tuesday morning's attack on Handulle village, about 18 kilometers (11 miles) north of Haradheere town, a key pirate lair.

Associated Press photographer, Ben Curtis, has documented the conditions in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa where as many as one million children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition. here's just one of his heartbreaking photos. Click through to the Boston Globe for more.

Aid agencies in the region say they need $200 million to avert disaster - the equivalent of only three and a half hours of US military spending.

Meanwhile, regime change by military intervention in Syria, which would end with US and NATO forces embroilled in yet another civil war and have an estimated cost of some $40 billion, is being disguised as a liberal and humanitarian thing to do by the DC "serious people".

Tiemoko Diallo & Adama Diarra | Bamako | May 5

MSNBC - Malian fighters from the Ansar Dine Islamist group attacked and burned the tomb of one of the town's saints, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, residents and a regional official said on Saturday.

The militants broke off doors, windows and wooden gates from the grave and burned them, they said, in the first reported attack on a shrine in Mali.

El Hadj Baba Haidara, an elected member of parliament from Timbuktu told Reuters some young people were discussing how to react despite being unarmed.

"There is a risk the people may revolt because this is something that affects their dignity. This tomb is sacred, it is too difficult to bear," Haidara said.

Ansar Dine, along with Tuareg rebels and other armed groups, swept through northern Mali in March and April, seizing the northern half of the country and its ancient towns of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal after the government collapsed in a March 22 coup.

While the rebel MNLA has declared an independent state in the north, al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine - led by veteran Tuareg leader Iyad Ag Ghaly - has rejected that idea and said the group's objective was to impose Islamic law in Mali.

Ibrahim Mshelizza & Mike Oboh | Maiduguri/Abuja | May 3

Reuters - Gunmen set off explosives and fired on a cattle market in remote northeastern Nigeria overnight, killing at least 56 people, a nurse who received bodies in the local hospital said on Thursday.

The police commissioner put the number of dead at 34.

It was not clear who was behind the attack on Wednesday night in the town of Potiskum, in Yobe state, which has been an occasional target for militant Islamist sect Boko Haram.

"I have counted 56 bodies at the morgue and I am sure that the death toll could rise in view of the serious nature of injuries sustained," the nurse at Potiskum hospital, who gave his name as Babangida, said.

"The Potiskum mortuary is made up of a room and a parlor and I counted the 56 in the parlor only. I didn't go into the inner room."

Police Commissioner Moses Namiri said security forces had confirmed 34 killed and that Islamist sect Boko Haram was suspected to be behind the attack.

Bamako, Mali | May 1

Al Jazeera - Several people reported killed in fight between coup troops and those loyal to ousted president at national broadcaster.

Fighting has broken out in Mali's capital, with troops who took part in last month's military coup and the guard of the newly installed president exchanging shots, witnesses said.

Several people have been killed in a gunfight on Monday between the coup troops and the presidential guard loyal to ousted leader Amadou Toumani Toure at the national TV and radio station, employees said.

NYT - In Vast Jungle, U.S. Troops Aid in Search for Kony

No one knows exactly where Mr. Kony is, but here in Obo, at a remote forward operating post in the Central African Republic, Green Berets pore over maps and interview villagers, hopeful for a clue.

Their biggest challenge, they say, is Mr. Kony’s turf, a vast expanse the size of California in the middle of Africa that is so rugged it renders much of the American gadgetry useless. Picture towering trees that blot out the sun, endless miles of elephant grass, and swirling brown rivers that coil like intestines and are infested with crocodiles; one of them recently ate a Ugandan member of the force.

WaPo - Kony hunt proving difficult for U.S. troops -

Six months after President Obama ordered 100 elite troops to help capture the messianic warlord Joseph Kony, U.S. military commanders said Sunday that they have been unable to pick up his trail but believe he is hiding in this country’s dense jungle, relying on Stone Age tactics to dodge his pursuers’ high-tech surveillance tools.
..
Kony’s methods have proven effective against the U.S. military’s satellites, sensors and other forms of surveillance. Commanders warn that it could take years to find him.
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Another complication is the remoteness of the region, where even dirt roads are scarce and it can take weeks for word of an encounter with the LRA to reach authorities. The Green Berets said they were bracing for nonstop rains in a few weeks, which will turn the ground into mud soup and make it difficult to reach Obo by road.

“All these little nuances we didn’t imagine when we first got here are now rearing their head,” Capt. Greg said.

Kano, Nigeria | April 29

BBC - At least 16 people have been killed in a gun and bomb attack at a university in Nigeria's northern city of Kano, Nigerian Red Cross officials say.

Six others were in a serious condition following the attack at Bayero University campus where Christian worshippers were holding a service.

Police are searching for the gunmen.

Nima Khorrami Assl | Apr 30

Gulf News - Ever since the fall of the Somalia’s pro-US president, Mohammad Siad Barre, in 1991, the country has been in a state of chaos and disorder. In the absence of a central authority, tribal conflicts, warlordism, and a resurgent militancy in the form of Al Shabab have come to dominate and define the political reality of Somalia.

Economic stagnation and lawlessness, moreover, have given rise to one of the oldest profession’s in human history, thereby turning a dangerous majority of the bright yet hopeless Somali youths into the world’s most prominent pirates. And as if this is not depressing enough, an unfortunate geography combined with a lack of state-planning have brought food insecurity and malnutrition to the proud inhabitants of this ancient land.
That Somalia has not received a single piece of positive coverage over the past 20 years, therefore, ought not to be surprising. After all, this is the “most comprehensively failed state” where human suffering starts at birth. However, Somalia’s fortune might be about to change. This anticipated alternation, in turn, is not because Al Shabab’s power and influence is ebbing. Nor is it due to the approaching expiration of the Transitional Federal Institutions mandate which some claim will help to support a more inclusive political process. Rather, it is in the renewed international interest in Somalia as an oil producing nation that one can trace a fast-changing geostrategic role for Somalia; one that will no longer be confined to counter-terrorism and anti-piracy efforts.

After British Prime Minister, David Cameron, hosted an international conference on Somalia on February 23, The Observer revealed that London has been in a “secret high-stakes dash for oil in Somalia” in return for British humanitarian aid and security assistance. The revelation and British Foreign Minister William Hague’s comments during his visit to Somalia, where he talked about “the beginnings of an opportunity to rebuild the country”, cast a question mark over London’s, and indeed the entire western world’s humanitarian endeavours with some commentators going as far as dubbing the summit as ‘aid for oil’.

Juba | Apr 28

AFP - China has agreed to loan South Sudan eight billion dollars for infrastructure development, Juba government spokesman Barnaba Mariel Benjamin said Saturday.

"It will fund roads, bridges, hydropower, agriculture and telecommunications projects... within the next two years", he said, giving details of a visit this week to China by South Sudan's President Salva Kiir.

"Details (of the projects) will be defined by the ministers of the two countries and by the Chinese firms in charge of the work," the spokesman said.

China is the largest purchaser of oil from South Sudan and is also a longstanding business partner of Sudan from which it also buys oil.

As a result of independence the south took with it about 75 percent of the formerly united Sudan's oil production worth billions of dollars.

win win win for China

Apr 27

BBC - The Eritrean government has dismissed persistent rumours that President Isaias Afewerki is dead.

"Isaias Afewerki is in robust health," Information Minister Ali Abdu told the BBC.

He blamed the rumours, which began about a week ago, on groups wishing to destabilise the country.

Mr Isaias has led Eritrea since it gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 - facing criticism for failing to implement democratic reforms.

Rumours on various opposition websites and on social media note that the president has not appeared on television for nearly a month, which they believe is unusual.

But Mr Ali said such concerns were "nonsense".

"I always see him every day - I saw him today at 9 o'clock," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

"Isaias Afewerki is in robust health - you can put this in capital letters."

He added that Mr Isaias was not going to go television just to "respond to this cheap propaganda".

Owen Bowcott | The Hague | Apr 26

The Guardian - Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, has been found to have "aided and abetted" war crimes by a United Nations-backed tribunal in The Hague.

After four years of hearings at the special court for Sierra Leone, the disgraced one-time guerrilla leader was found to have provided sustained support for rebels during their reign of terror in the neighbouring west African state.

He was also said to have participated in the planning of certain attacks, including the assault on Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.

The judge said Taylor would be sentenced on 30 May after a hearing on 16 May.

Regular readers will know that it's a pet hate of mine that the Very Serious Persons of the international relations expert clique are perfectly willing to countenance vast sums of money for military interventions in pursuit of neoliberal Right To Protect (R2P) adventures but won't speak up at all for civil aid to prevent far more deaths. The $2 billion the US spent on military intervention in Libya or a military intervention in Syria which would come at a cost of around $40 billion are even at best wasted opportunity costs compared with what could be done to save lives for far less in dollar terms.

WASHINGTON - April 23 - A huge gap in funding for aid projects aimed at preventing the deepening food crisis in the Sahel is threatening to leave millions of people hungry in the coming months, a coalition of aid agencies has warned today.

Action Against Hunger, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision are aiming to provide emergency assistance to nearly 6 million people across the region but say they have so far been able to secure funding for less than a third of this essential work. Nearly US$250 million is needed by all four agencies, but only $52 million has been raised so far.

Unfortunately, reaching for the military hammer has become the default setting of U.S. foreign policy, despite the costs per saved life, even in the best of cases, being 10 or 100 times higher than less glamorous development aid to provide safe water, mitigate famines or prevent the millions of deaths to diseases like malaria. To put these aid agencies' $200 million financial shortfall in depressing perspective: that's the cost of only 100 troops in Afghanistan for a year, just three and a half hours of FY2012 US military spending, or the cost to EA Inc. of developing the "Star Wars: The Old Republic" game.

Tom A. Peter | Bentiu / Rubkona, South Sudan | April 23

CSM - Sudanese military planes reportedly bombed villages in South Sudan today, both escalating weeks of fighting on the border and ending hopes that Sudan would remove its troops from a contested region.

Initial reports indicate that the towns of Bentiu and Rubkona in South Sudan's Unity state were the targets of the bombardment. The bombing came on the heels of the pullout of South Sudanese forces from the oil-rich Heglig area at the center of recent fighting at the request of the United Nations.

David Lewis | Bamako | Apr 22

Reuters - About 200 soldiers claiming to be government loyalists have moved back into northern Mali saying they will fight to take it back from Tuareg-led separatist and Islamist rebels that routed the army across the region three weeks ago.

The troop movement just inside Mali's eastern border with Niger came as witnesses said gunmen in rebel-held Timbuktu, near the northwestern border with Mauritania, opened fire to disperse residents protesting against the occupation of their town.

It was the first reported sign of local resistance to rebels in Mali's remote north, which experts say has become a safe haven for al Qaeda cells and smugglers.

Politicians and the military junta that ousted the president last month are not known to have drawn up a plan yet to wrest back control of the desert zone.

But a Reuters witness saw as many as 200 soldiers and dozens of vehicles under the command of Colonel El Hadj Gamou appear in the town of Lebezanga, near the border with Niger.

Gamou, a Tuareg, for weeks led Bamako's efforts to repel rebels before saying earlier this month he had joined the rebel ranks, only to reappear in Niger last week to announce he was in fact ready to lead a counter-attack with 500 men.

Two military officers in the border region said forces under Gamou pushed on Saturday some 40 km (20 miles) further north towards Gao, which is in the hands of separatist MNLA rebels and Islamist rebels who want to impose sharia (Islamic law).

"We have set up an advanced post at Ouatagouna. This is the Malian army retaking its territory," an officer who only gave his name as Captain Ag Meylou told Reuters by telephone.

It was not clear under whose orders Gamou was operating. His men received food and communications equipment coming from Niger but it was not clear who had provided it, the witness said.

Kelly Gilblom | Nairobi | Apr 21

Reuters -
A row between Kenya and Somalia over their maritime border may deter multinational oil companies from exploring for oil and gas offshore east Africa, and a Somali official warned that the argument could escalate.

The two coastal nations disagree over the location of their boundary line in the Indian Ocean. At stake are their legal claims to sell rights for exploration and collect revenue from any discovery.

Kenya recently identified eight new offshore exploration blocks available for licensing, and all but one of them are located in the contested area.

"The issue between Somalia and Kenya is not a dispute; it is a territorial argument that came after oil and gas companies became interested in the region," Abdullahi Haji, Somalia's minister of foreign affairs, told Reuters in Mogadishu.

Consultants involved in border demarcation said the two countries won't have a legitimate boundary until they sign a treaty that delimits the border, but that is unlikely to happen until Somalia has a stable government.

Heya says the maritime border between the two countries should run horizontally east from the point at which the two countries touch on land. The practice in east Africa has been for boundaries to run along the line of latitude, Heya said.

"For the time being, this is where we believe the border should be," he said, referring to the horizontal east-west maritime border.

Somali officials say the onshore border continues into the ocean diagonally southeast and that a horizontal border would be unfair.

If the Somalia-Kenya border was continuous from land into the ocean, making it lie diagonally from the northwest to the southeast, Kenya would be left with a small triangle in the Indian Ocean over which it could claim mineral rights.

Linus Atarah | Helsinki | Apr 20

IPS - When war-torn Somalia was also ravaged by a drought-induced famine last year, which killed tens of thousands and displaced over a million people, international media was quick to blame the Islamist Al-Shabaab for blocking humanitarian assistance from reaching its zone of control in southern Somalia.

But according to Ken Menkhaus, professor of Political Science at Davidson College in North Carolina, the United States’ counter-terrorism laws played an equally central role in obstructing assistance from reaching famine victims in desperate need of aid.

In a twist of tragic irony, "suspension of food aid into southern Somalia was the only thing that the U.S. government and Al-Shabaab could agree on, to the detriment of (millions) of Somalis," Menkhaus told IPS.

Brussels | Apr 18

International Crisis Group - Sudan and South Sudan are teetering on the brink of all-out war from which neither would benefit. Increasingly angry rhetoric, support for each other’s rebels, poor command and control, and brinkmanship, risk escalating limited and contained conflict into a full-scale confrontation between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA). Diplomatic pressure to cease hostilities and return to negotiations must be exerted on both governments by the region and the United Nations (UN) Security Council, as well as such partners as the U.S., China and key Gulf states. The immediate priority needs to be a ceasefire and security deal between North and South, as well as in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. But equally important, for the longer-term, are solutions to unresolved post-referendum issues, unimplemented provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) (that ended the civil war in 2005), and domestic reforms in both countries.

A game of “chicken” appears to be underway, in which both sides embark on risky strategies in the hope that the other will blink first. If neither does, the outcome will be disastrous for both.

Alan Boswell | Heglig, Disputed Sudan | April 16

McClatchy - Nine months after Sudan split into two nations in search of a peace brokered by the United States, it is now clear that the two sides are at war.

Diplomats discussing the armed conflict talk of skirmishes and dustups, but a visit to this border region shows that what is taking place here is no accidental exchange of fire by troops confused about where the border lies. Instead, what’s happening is a headlong mobilization involving not just thousands of Sudan’s and South Sudan’s best forces and heaviest equipment, but heavily armed rebels from the distant Darfur region fighting alongside the South Sudanese troops.

Chris Collins & Amadu Uri Djalo | Bissau, Guinea-Bissau | Apr 16

McClatchy - The crisis in this tiny West African country worsened Monday after the military group that overthrew the government last week suspended the constitution, dissolved Parliament and sealed off Guinea-Bissau’s borders. Union workers went on strike, bringing the country to a standstill.

“You’ve got a situation where there is a stalemate,” said a Western nongovernmental-organization worker who knows the country well and who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of concerns for his security. “Nothing is functioning.”

The military beefed up its presence in downtown Bissau, the capital, after a small group of protesters who opposed the coup clashed with soldiers Sunday, sending 20 protesters to the hospital, a diplomat said. Text messages swirling around the capital suggested plans for new protests, but none materialized Monday.

Meanwhile, banks, shops and government agencies closed in this country of 1.6 million in which almost seven out of 10 people live on less than $2 a day. A 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew has been imposed in the capital.

Some residents were fleeing Bissau after a Lisbon-based association of Portuguese-speaking countries called for a U.N.-mandated military intervention. Portugal announced that it was sending two warships and a military plane to Guinea-Bissau to evacuate its citizens, though coup leaders here apparently saw it as a threat, prompting them to close the country’s seaport, airport and borders.

Finlay Young | Apr 15

The Independent - In the 1990s, Liberia was torn apart by a civil war in which child soldiers fought for the guerrilla leader Charles Taylor. As an international court delivers its verdict on Taylor, Finlay Young meets the former fighters back in Africa – now grown up, but not regretful of their past.

Apr 12

BBC -

Soldiers have taken over parts of the capital of the West African state of Guinea-Bissau, reports say.

Heavy gunfire has been heard and soldiers are in control of main roads in the city, Bissau, according to eyewitnesses.

There are also reports of fighting near the residence of outgoing Prime Minister Carlos Gomes.

Mr Gomes came first in an inconclusive presidential election last month, but failed to win outright.

Troops are also reported to have taken control of the national radio station and the ruling party's headquarters.

The whereabouts of Mr Gomes and the interim President, Raimundo Pereira, are currently unknown, reports say.

** Coup attempt in G.Bissau, attack on PM's residence

A military source told AFP: "We are actively seeking Carlos Gomes Junior. Regardless of where he is hiding, we will track him down before dawn."