US Condemns Burundi Violence, Calls for Election Delay
The United States strongly condemned a grenade attack in the Burundi capital and called on President Pierre Nkurunziza to postpone legislative elections to avoid further unrest and violence. Weeks of unrest in Bujumbura continued Friday, when demonstrations against Nkurunziza saw two protesters shot dead and two others wounded in a separate grenade attack. “The United States strongly condemns the May 29 grenade attack in Bujumbura, and the continued violence in Burundi,” US State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement. AFP on Yahoo News
Burundi Government Considers East African Recommendation to Postpone Elections
East African Community (EAC) leaders met in Tanzania on Sunday and called on Burundi’s government to use the time before the delayed elections to create an environment conducive for the polls. “The summit, concerned at the impasse in Burundi, strongly calls for a long postponement of the elections not less than a month and a half,” the EAC said in a statement read out by its secretary general Richard Sezibera. Heads of states from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa attended the meeting in Dar es Salaam. Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Nyamitwe represented Burundi and East African Community minister Valentine Rugwabiza represented Rwanda. Deutsche Welle
Election Official Flees Crisis-hit Burundi
A second top Burundian election official has reportedly fled to Rwanda in another blow to Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza’s controversial bid to stand for a third term in office. Sources told the AFP news agency that the election commission’s vice president, Spes Caritas Ndironkeye, jetted out of the crisis-hit central African nation on late Friday, leaving behind a resignation letter and preparations for next week’s parliamentary elections in disarray. An electoral commission source said Ndironkeye “left without saying goodbye, without saying where she was going,” according to AFP. A second member of the five-person commission, Illuminata Ndabahagamye, is also thought to have fled, sources said. “She fled the country with her daughter,” a relative of Ndironkeye who did not wish to be identified told the Reuters news agency. Al Jazeera
Burundi: Peace Sacrificed?
Despite the failed coup attempt on 13 May, popular mobilisation against outgoing President Pierre Nkurunziza’s third term has not abated, and confrontation between the government and the “Halte au troisième mandat” (Stop the Third Mandate) street movement is intensifying. Over 90,000 Burundians have fled and a cholera outbreak has been declared in the most populous place of refuge in western Tanzania. As international pressure on the president continues to fall on deaf ears and the government reiterates its intent to hold municipal and legislative polls on 5 June, and the presidential election on 26 June, all elements of an open conflict have fallen into place. Delayed elections are not sufficient to avoid a rapid escalation of violence, a political and security climate conducive to free and peaceful elections must be restored. The East African Community (EAC) summit on 31 May in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania is the perfect opportunity to reflect on, and react to, this reality. International Crisis Group
IS Seizes Control of Airport in Libya’s Sirte: Tripoli Govt
The Islamic State jihadist group has seized control of the airport in the city of Sirte after forces of a Tripoli-based Libyan government withdrew, a spokesman said Friday. Mohamed al-Shami, whose government is not recognised by the international community, said its forces pulled out late Thursday from the airport which had “fallen into the hands of the IS organisation”. He said the forces had pulled out of the airport, which is also a military base called Gardabiya, to redeploy “as part of an operation to secure” areas to the east and west of Sirte. It was the first time that IS in Libya has recorded such a military gain. AFP on Yahoo News
Western Officials Alarmed as ISIS Expands Territory in Libya
The branch of the Islamic State that controls Surt has expanded its territory and pushed back the militia from the neighboring city of Misurata, militia leaders acknowledged Sunday. In the group’s latest attack, a suicide bomber killed at least four fighters on Sunday at a checkpoint west of Misurata on the coastal road to Tripoli, according to local officials and Libyan news reports. The continued expansion inside Libya of the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has alarmed Western officials because of its proximity to Europe, across the Mediterranean. Four years after the removal of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the near collapse of the Libyan government has left no central authority to check the group’s advance or even partner with Western military efforts against it. The New York Times
IS Claims Libya Suicide Attack, Declares War on Key Militia
The Islamic State group on Sunday declared “war” on the powerful Fajr Libya militia alliance that controls Tripoli and claimed a suicide bombing that killed five of its fighters. The dawn blast in northwest Libya is the latest in a series of attacks by IS in the politically divided North African country, where the jihadists have exploited chaos to gain a growing foothold. “A car suicide bomber blew himself up near a checkpoint at an entrance of Dafniya,” between the town of Zliten and Libya’s third city Misrata, said a spokesman for Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn). The attack killed five fighters and wounded seven others, he added. AFP on Yahoo News
U.S. Signals Willingness to Expand Military Cooperation with Nigeria
As Nigeria swore in Muhammadu Buhari as the new president on Friday, the Obama administration signaled that it was prepared to expand military cooperation in the fight against Boko Haram. Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the American delegation at the inauguration, discussed cooperation against Boko Haram in a short meeting on Friday with Mr. Buhari. “Something we can do quickly is to send advisers,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under the department’s protocol for briefing reporters. “It could be related to intelligence; it could be something very simple, related to things like logistics.” “We certainly hope to be able to do more,” the official added. The New York Times
At Least 30 Killed in Nigerian City after Day of Violence
A suicide bomb blast outside a mosque and rocket-propelled grenades that exploded into homes as people slept have killed at least 30 people in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, residents and officials said. The explosion killed people who were prostrating themselves for afternoon prayers outside the mosque, including traders from the nearby crowded marketplace in the largest city in Nigeria’s troubled north-east, survivors said. Ali Bakomi, a trader, said the bomber was pushing a wheelbarrow and pretending to be an itinerant trader when he joined them. Borno state governor Kashim Shettima visited the scene where one wall was reduced to rubble and another was splattered with blood. Officials told him the bomber killed himself and 16 other people. The Guardian
Nigeria: Oil & Gas Policy Agenda for the Incoming Government
The Oil & Gas agenda of the incoming government should be anchored on boosting the benefits of Nigeria’s hydrocarbon resources to its citizens by maximising the benefits accruable to every strata and region of the country. A caveat here is that the actualisation of the suggestions below should be tethered on (A.) Transparency, (B.) Accountability, (C.) Policy Stability and (D.) Identified Focus as its four cardinal pillars. To expand on these; the twin evils of opacity and unaccountability gave rise to the corruption that, like cancer, is destroying the essence and future of the industry and infecting the wider Nigerian society. Leadership.ng
2,600 Reportedly Killed in 18 Months Since Overthrow of Mohamed Morsi
At least 2,600 people have been killed in violence in the 18 months after the military overthrew Egypt’s president in 2013, nearly half of them supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the head of a state-sanctioned rights body has said. Mohammed Fayeq, head of the National Council for Human Rights, said on Sunday that the dead included 700 policemen and 550 civilians who were killed in the period between 30 June 2013 and 31 December 2014. The council is a nominally independent group sanctioned by the government. It has no judicial or law enforcement powers. The military overthrew Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely-elected president, amid massive protests demanding his resignation. In the following months, his supporters held regular demonstrations that set off deadly clashes with police and rival protesters. The Guardian
U.S. Egyptian-American Released, Flies Back to US
An Egyptian-American who had been sentenced to life in prison in Egypt and had been on a hunger strike for more than a year before being freed has arrived back in the United States. Mohammed Soltan, the son of a prominent member of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, arrived at Dulles International Airport on Saturday night in a wheelchair, . The newspaper said Soltan was greeted with tears, hugs and calls of “welcome home.” Soltan had been convicted of financing an anti-government sit-in and spreading “false news,” one of thousands imprisoned after the 2013 military overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. The 27-year-old Ohio State University graduate and former Barack Obama campaigner had been on a hunger strike over his detention of more than a year, and his family said his health was deteriorating. AP on ABC News
Egypt Deploys Scholars to Teach Moderate Islam, but Skepticism Abounds
In his battle against militant Islam, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is relying not just on bomber planes and soldiers but on white-turbaned clerics from Al-Azhar, Egypt’s 1,000-year-old center for Islamic learning. He wants clerics to counter radicalism in the classroom. In a televised speech in January at an Al-Azhar conference center in Cairo, Sisi called for “a religious revolution” in Islam. Radicalized thinking, he told the audience of Islamic scholars, had become “a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.” That had to change – and the scholars had a leading role to play, in schools, mosques and on the airwaves. Reuters on Yahoo News
International Effort Rescues over 5,000 Mediterranean Migrants
The corpses of 17 migrants were brought ashore in Sicily aboard an Italian naval vessel on Sunday along with 454 survivors as efforts intensified to rescue people fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. More than 5,000 migrants trying to reach Europe have been saved from boats in distress in the Mediterranean since Friday and operations are in progress to rescue 500 more, European Union authorities said on Sunday. In some of the most intense Mediterranean traffic of the year, migrants who left Libya in 25 boats were picked up by ships from Italy, Britain, Malta and Belgium, assisted by planes from Iceland and Finland, the EU’s border control agency Frontex said. Naval and merchant vessels involved in rescue operations also came from countries including Germany, Ireland and Denmark. Reuters
AQIM Islamists Claim Two Attacks Against UN in Mali: Mauritanian Agency
Al-Qaeda’s North Africa arm has claimed responsibility for two attacks against the United Nation’s MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in Mali this week, the Mauritanian Al-Akhbar news agency reported Sunday. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said it was behind a “rocket attack on a MINUSMA base” in northern Mali on Tuesday and a landmine explosion Thursday targeting a UN convoy in the restive north, according to Al-Akhbar, citing AQIM spokesman Abderrahmane Al-Azawadi. The Al-Akhbar agency regularly carries jihadist statements. MINUSMA on Tuesday said a Bangladeshi peacekeeper had been shot dead and another wounded in “an incident”. AFP on Yahoo News
The Girls of the Lord’s Resistance Army
These are lines from a poem written by Betty Ejang, a former child soldier with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Thanks to the infamous KONY 2012 campaign you probably now know that the LRA abducted more than 30,000 children from their Ugandan homes in a conflict that spanned two decades. You will have heard how these boys and girls – some as young as six – were beaten, raped and forced to loot and kill. A childhood interrupted, a childhood lost. But having worked with more than 40 female former child soldiers since 2011, I can tell you that is not the whole story. More than a quarter – approximately 8,000 – of these abductees were young girls like Betty. Contrary to the popularised image of the child soldier as a teenage boy gripping a Kalashnikov, female abductees also fought in the conflict, sometimes running into battle with their babies strapped to their backs. allAfrica
How a Reviled African Ruler Survived a Coup Hatched in The United States
Every other Saturday evening, the coup-plotters excused themselves from their wives and kids to join a conference call. The half-dozen dissidents – all middle-aged men, most with military experience – dialed in from their suburban homes scattered across the South and Midwest. There were operational details to discuss, logistical hurdles to overcome. How would they smuggle rifles and night-vision goggles to Gambia, the tiny West African country from which they were exiled? Was their $221,000 budget enough to topple the brutal strongman who had ruled Gambia for two decades? In the predawn hours of Dec. 30, according to court documents and interviews with people involved in the operation, the U.S.-based conspirators teamed with other dissidents to assault the Gambian presidential palace. They expected to find it lightly guarded. Instead, they ran into an ambush. Four people were killed. Those who survived fled the country. The Washington Post
France and Morocco Strengthen Counterterrorism Cooperation
France and Morocco have vowed to strengthen counterterrorism cooperation, four months after they resumed judicial cooperation following a year-long diplomatic rift. After meeting with French president Francois Hollande on Friday, Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkilane said: “We had a difficult year of course, now it’s behind us, and (relations) are resuming as if nothing had happened.” French authorities say counterterrorism and the fight against radicalization were at the top of the agenda for the meeting. Both countries are deeply concerned by the large numbers of citizens leaving to fight with the ISIS. Morocco suspended judicial cooperation in February 2014 after French police attempted to arrest the visiting head of Moroccan intelligence. Cooperation resumed in January. AFP on Al Arabiya
Ex-Tanzanian PM Lowassa Launches Presidential Bid
Former Tanzanian prime minister Edward Lowassa, seen as frontrunner to become the East African nation’s next leader, has launched his campaign for the ruling party’s presidential nomination. The Chama Cha Mapinduzi party has ruled since independence in 1961 and the fractious opposition is not expected to challenge its position in a parliamentary and presidential vote on Oct. 25. “I have decided to run for president to tackle poverty,” Lowassa told hundreds of supporters at a stadium in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on Saturday. President Jakaya Kikwete has overseen rapid economic growth averaging 7 percent over the past decade in Tanzania, but his administration has been criticized for failing to deliver on promises of tackling poverty. VOA
Mauritius President Steps Down
Mauritius president Kailash Purryag announced Friday he was stepping down from his position as ceremonial figurehead of the Indian Ocean island nation. The decision, which was widely expected, paves the way for the new government to appoint the country’s first female head of state — internationally-renowned scientist and biologist Ameenah Gurib-Fakim. A statement from the presidency said Purryag’s resignation was in accordance with an earlier agreement with Prime Minister Sir Anerood Jugnauth, who was elected in December last year. Purryag has served as president since July 2012, when he was appointed by the island’s previous Labour party government of former premier Navin Ramgoolam. AFP on Yahoo News
Fifa Crisis: South Africa ‘admits $10m Football Payout’
South Africa did pay $10m (£6.5m) to a football body led by Jack Warner, a figure at the centre of Fifa corruption allegations, local media say. Danny Jordaan, head of South Africa’s FA, is quoted as confirming that the amount was deducted from a Fifa payment to the country in 2008. A subsequent letter requested that money to be sent, instead, to the Caribbean Football Union, reports say. South African officials deny it was a bribe to secure the 2010 World Cup. But US prosecutors insist South Africa made an illegal payment after the government promised $10m to Mr Warner – then a Fifa vice-president – in exchange for the “Rainbow Nation” becoming the first African country to host the World Cup. Fifa chose South Africa as host ahead of Morocco. BBC
Chinese Counterfeits Leave Ghanaian Textiles Hanging by a Thread
As a tailor, Afia Addy is a connoisseur of wax-printed fabric. “The Chinese ones, the colors are brighter,” she says from her stall at a pop-up clothing boutique in the heart of Accra, Ghana’s capital. She points to a cropped blazer in a brown and ochre wax print. “When you compare, Ghanaian ones look a bit dull.” Wax-printed fabric, a source of national pride that has come to represent African fashion worldwide, plays a vital role in weddings, funerals, and traditional events throughout Ghana. Any special occasion involves a trip to market to pick the fabric before taking it to a tailor, like Ms. Addy, to create a custom-made outfit. But over the past decade, the country’s textile industry has collapsed. CS Monitor
Renew the Africa Trade Pact
[…] The Senate recently passed a simple 10-year extension — which would certainly be better than nothing. But the measure now awaits approval in the House, and that’s far from assured. Attention is bound to focus elsewhere. The Africa deal has provided U.S. jobs and millions more consumers for American goods. The criteria that countries must satisfy in order to participate have promoted democracy and market economics. The agreement has also helped counter China’s growing influence. Since the deal was first done, sub-Saharan Africa’s record of growth has been good: 6.3 percent a year, more than double the rate of the previous decade and two percentage points higher than the global average. This year, the region is forecast to grow by 4.5 percent, outpacing Asia’s projected 4.3 percent. Bloomberg View