Security on Obama’s Agenda for East Africa Trip
With President Obama travelling to Kenya and Ethiopia this week, the Africa Center’s Dr. Ben Nickels, Chair of Transnational Threats and Counterterrorism, reviews some of the key issues that merit watching: What are the top security priorities that should be on the agenda during President Obama’s visit to Kenya and Ethiopia? The trip should provide President Obama an opportunity to discuss developments in Somalia and next steps for the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), to which both Kenya and Ethiopia have become key contributors. Border security is another good candidate for the agenda. It brings together diverse concerns, from drug smuggling and weapons trafficking to cattle rustling and cross-border trade in ways that are important for the United States, Kenya, and Ethiopia. The visit also provides the occasion to reinforce messages about the relationship between governance, accountability, and efficiency on the one hand and successful defense and security outcomes on the other. Kenya and Ethiopia have resorted at times to repression of political deliberation and dissent in the name of security and this should not be passed over in silence when the discussions take place. Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Shebab, Security Overshadow Obama Kenya Visit
US President Barack Obama will visit Kenya this weekend, his first visit as head of state to the country where his father was born. Questions of security will overshadow the trip as the Kenyan government tries to show the world that it has security under control… despite recent deadly attacks by the al-Shebab armed group. RFI
Kenyatta Dismisses Gay Rights Iissue Ahead of Obama Visit
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday dismissed gay rights as a “non-issue” ahead of US President Barack Obama’s visit later this week. Kenyatta also said Deputy President William Ruto, who is still on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague accused of crimes against humanity, would also meet the US leader. “That is a non-issue to the people of this country, and it is definitely not on our agenda at all,” Kenyatta said in response to a question about gay rights. “We as a country, as a continent, are faced with much more serious issues which we would want to engage the US and all our partners with.” News 24
As Burundians Vote in Presidential Election, Many Are Afraid to Pick a Side
After months of unrest and a night of explosions and gunfire, Burundians went to the polls on Tuesday in a presidential election whose results are not in doubt but whose consequences could prove deeply destabilizing. President Pierre Nkurunziza is seeking a third term in office in defiance of international condemnation and opposition at home. Every major opposition party in this impoverished African nation has boycotted the election. At several polling places around Bujumbura, the capital, turnout was low on Tuesday, with voters often outnumbered by campaign workers and the police. Many people who chose not to vote expressed deep skepticism about a process they deemed little more than political theater. Several explosions rocked the city overnight, and sporadic shooting could be heard just hours before the polls opened. At least two police officers and one civilian were killed, according to the government. The New York Times
US Rubbishes Controversial Burundi Election
The United States has said Burundi’s elections Tuesday lack credibility and by pressing ahead, the government “risks its legitimacy.” The voting “will further discredit the government,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said, after polling went ahead despite opposition protests that President Pierre Nkurunziza’s candidacy was unconstitutional. The voting took place amid gunfire and grenade blasts, and at least two people were reported killed. Opposition and civil society groups have denounced Nkurunziza’s candidacy as a breach of the constitution and of a 2006 peace deal that ended a dozen years of civil war. “The government’s insistence on going forward with presidential elections on Tuesday risks its legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens and of the international community,” Kirby said. The East African
As Burundi Votes, Neighbors Fear for Regional Stability
To vote or not to vote in an election in which there is no serious challenger to the incumbent president? That was the question facing Burundi’s 3.8 million voters when polling stations opened early on Tuesday morning. Overnight violence which left three people dead – two policemen and an opposition official – marred the start of the election in which President Pierre Nkurunziza is seeking to win a third consecutive term in office. The opposition says the constitution allows for only two terms. Nkurunziza’s supporters say that since he was chosen by lawmakers – and not elected – for his first term in 2005, he is entitled to run again. Deutcshe Welle
Voices From Burundi
Few voters apparently went to the polls in Burundi on Tuesday in a presidential election that is widely expected to give President Pierre Nkurunziza a controversial third term. Since his announcement on April 25 that he would run again, in defiance of international pressure and opposition at home, Burundians have held protests, edured curfews, experienced a local news media blackout and witnessed a failed coup attempt. Nearly 70 people have died and hundreds have been injured, and more than 170,000 people have fled since April to neighboring countries. Before the vote Tuesday, and prior to legislative elections in June, The New York Times asked Burundians how the upheaval has affected them. Following is a selection of experiences, edited and condensed for clarity. The New York Times
Nigeria’s Chibok Abductions: Buhari ‘Ready to Negotiate’
Nigeria’s new president has said he is willing to negotiate with Boko Haram leaders for the release of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped last year. Muhammadu Buhari told CNN it would depend on the credibility of those saying they represented the Islamist militant group. “Our main objective as a government is to secure these girls safe and safe,” he said during a visit to the US. A previous prisoner-swap attempt for the girls’ release ended in failure. BBC
Buhari to VOA: Joint Anti-Boko Haram Force Operational Soon
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari says a regional joint task force to fight the militant group Boko Haram will be up and running by the end of this month. Buhari told VOA in an interview Tuesday that Nigeria will lead the task force and that troops from several of Nigeria’s neighbors could be deployed in operations against the militants. Buhari, who hails from northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram is most active, said there has been progress in the fight, but he refused to predict imminent victory. VOA
Nigerians Fleeing Violence Go Deep Into Cameroon
A refugee camp deep inside Cameroon is receiving around a hundred people each day who are fleeing Islamist violence in Nigeria, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday. Families are leaving unstable and dangerous zones on the Nigeria-Cameroon border “and seeking shelter some 100km inland at the Minawao camp,” run by UNHCR and its partners, spokesperson Leo Dobbs said. Most of the new arrivals had initially stayed close to the border after fleeing clashes between Boko Haram jihadists and Nigerian troops in the hope they could return home quickly, Dobbs added. News 24
Nigeria’s Buhari Says Will Name Cabinet in September
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari will not appoint his cabinet until September, more than three months after taking office, he wrote in an article, explaining that he needed time to root out corruption before naming his ministers. Buhari won March elections and became president on May 29, after campaigning against corruption and pledging to quash an insurgency by Boko Haram Islamists, but critics have asked why Africa’s biggest economy still has no cabinet ministers. “Nigeria must first put new rules of conduct and good governance in place,” Buhari wrote in the Washington Post on Monday, confirming speculation that the cabinet would not be appointed before September. Reuters
World Bank to Spend up to $2.1 Billion to Rebuild Nigeria’s Northeast
Nigeria’s presidency said on Tuesday that the World Bank had pledged to spend up to $2.1 billion to rebuild the northeast of the country that has been devastated by Boko Haram militants. The Islamist group has been waging a six year insurgency with the aim of carving out a caliphate in the north of Africa’s biggest economy. The statement came after President Muhammadu Buhari met with representatives of the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Health Organization during his trip to Washington. A spokeswoman for the World Bank could not immediately comment. Reuters on Yahoo News
Nigeria’s Dire Finances Show it Cannot Grease the Economy with Fickle Oil Alone
Twenty-three of Nigeria’s 36 states have not paid their civil servants for months, while spending on capital projects has been frozen, in some cases since last year. In south-western Osun state, the situation is so bad that trade unions sought food and cash donations for workers before the Ramadan month of fasting. This cash crunch is partly the result of how Africa’s most populous nation functions politically: proceeds from oil, company taxes and import duties are paid into a central pool and every state sends a representative to the capital each month to collect a share. Because Nigeria’s economy is so dependent on oil, which accounts for around 80% of government revenues, this method of distributing income means that global oil prices can have dire consequences for Nigerians. The Guardian
AU Troops ‘Gun Down Unarmed Civilians’ in Somalia
At least 24 civilians have been killed and 22 others injured in the southern Somali town of Marka after troops from the African Union opened fire on unarmed residents, local residents and a health worker have told Al Jazeera. The soldiers driving armoured vehicles went to a sports grounds then opened fire on boys playing football there killing nine and wounding eight, Haji Muse Mohamud, an elder in the town, told Al Jazeera by phone on Tuesday from the coastal town in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region. “They then went to the nearby houses where they dragged people out and shot dead seventeen people. They also left 14 people badly injured,” Mohamud said. Mohamud also alleged that the soldiers, who are part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), “raped two women”. Al Jazeera
War Crimes and Rwandan Realities
Gen. Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, the head of the Rwandan intelligence services who is now free on bail in London pending an extradition hearing in October, is an exemplar of the tightly knit group of diaspora Tutsis that ousted Rwanda’s Hutu-dominated government and rose to power during the 1994 genocide. Once a victim of human rights abuses, he now stands accused as a perpetrator. He is also a hostage – not of any justice system, but of an increasingly lone and erratic dictator, President Paul Kagame, who uses and abuses his inner circle as he grows more desperate to stay in power. General Karake was arrested on June 20 at Heathrow airport on charges brought by a Spanish investigative judge, who accuses him of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed between 1990 and 2002 in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In particular, he is suspected of ordering the killing, in 1997, of three Spanish nationals working for the relief organization Medicos del mundo.
The Reckless Plot to Overthrow Africa’s Most Absurd Dictator
After the coup failed, the raids began. On New Year’s Day this year, FBI agents descended on a blue split-level house in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the dead of night, near Austin, Texas, they searched a million-dollar lakeside villa. Agents interrogated an activist at his house in the working-class town of Jonesboro, Georgia. At a rundown townhouse development in Lexington, Kentucky, they found the wife of a US soldier, with a refrigerator full of her husband’s favourite Gambian delicacies – dishes prepared for a triumphant homecoming and repurposed for mourning. When the employees of Songhai Development, an Austin building firm, arrived at work on Monday 5 January, they discovered the FBI had visited their offices over the weekend and seized all the company’s computers. The company’s owner, Cherno Njie, was spending the holidays in west Africa. The Guardian
‘31,000 Ex-Rebel Combatants Demobilised So Far': Darfur DDR Commission
The Sudanese Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration Commission (SDDRC) in Darfur has announced that 31,000 of the first batch of 45,000 ex-rebel combatants have been re-integrated in the society. Gen. Salah El Tayeb, SDDRC commissioner-general told reporters in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, on Sunday that about 165,000 ex-fighters in total are to be demobilised and re-integrated under the Darfur peace agreements. Dabanga
Central African Republic Risks Becoming ‘Case Study of a Failed State’, Says Report
Aid dependency, weak governance and protracted conflict mean that Central African Republic is in danger of becoming “the case study of a failed state”, a report warns. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) urges the international community to move beyond humanitarian aid to resolve the country’s conflict. Fighting has engulfed CAR since early 2013, when mostly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in the capital, Bangui, sparking reprisal attacks from Christian militias. In a report released on Tuesday, Too Soon to Turn Away: Security, Governance and Humanitarian Need in the Central African Republic, the IRC say the international community must “focus on diplomacy, peacekeeping, and humanitarian and development assistance” in its efforts to resolve the conflict. The Guardian
Uganda Signs Defence Pact with Ethiopia
Uganda and the Republic of Ethiopia have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen defence ties. The signing was done by Uganda’s Defence Minister, Crispus Kiyonga and his counterpart, Siraj Fegessa, at Mbuya Army Headquarters in Kampala on Tuesday. The signing was also witnessed by Gen Katumba Wamala (UPDF chief), Rosette Byengoma (defence permanent secretary), Maj Gen. James Mugira (managing director of Luweero Defence Industries) and Ethiopian Ambassador to Uganda, Degefe Bula among others. Kiyonga said the MoU is aimed at strengthening the cooperation of the two countries in defence matters to enforce peace and stability in the region. New Vision
Mali Troops Destroy Jihadist Camps Near I.Coast Border: Military
Malian troops destroyed two jihadist camps and arrested 15 suspected militants in the latest operation combatting radical Islamist groups near the southern border with Ivory Coast, military sources said. “During new military operations in the area, we arrested 15 new jihadists and destroyed a new sanctuary of theirs in the region of Sikasso, on the border with Ivory Coast,” a military officer told AFP. Among the jihadists was a radical preacher who “came from Ivory Coast in order to build a mosque in a Malian village where he could impose his law”, said the same source on condition of anonymity. AFP on Yahoo News
Dozens killed in Tribal Clashes in Biggest City in Southern Libya
Dozens have been killed in clashes between two tribes in the biggest city in southern Libya, officials said on Tuesday as a security vacuum grew in a remote corner of the oil producer. A power struggle between two governments fighting for control in the north of the desert nation has hit the poor south hard, hampering supplies of anything from fuel and food to central bank money as flights to Tripoli are halted. Fighters from two tribes, the Tuareg and Tebu, have exploited a security vacuum to vie for control in a vast area long neglected. Clashes broke out four days ago in a suburb of Sabha, said the city’s mayor, Hamed Rafa al-Khayali. A Tebu official said the clashes had started after a Tebu was killed at a checkpoint. Al Arabiya
Why Libya’s Coastguard Struggles With Migrant Tide
A few weeks ago, a sailor in Libya’s coastguard scooped up Luchiya Mhreteab and her two small children after the boat taking them to Italy sank off Libya’s northern tip. Mhreteab, 30, had fled Eritrea and is pregnant. She and her five-year-old daughter Dina and three-year-old son Yosan now live on a mat in the courtyard of a Libyan detention centre. They eat rice and vegetables three times a day, Mhreteab explained, her ripped black abaya stretched across her growing stomach. “I don’t know what to do next.” DefenceWeb
South Sudanese Rebel Leader Relieves Senior Army Commanders
South Sudan’s former vice president, Riek Machar and current leader of the armed opposition faction of the ruling Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO), has issued orders relieving senior military commanders amid rumours of a rift within the rebel group. In the orders on Tuesday, 21 July, Machar relieved Major General James Koang Chuol Ranley from his position as commander of Special Division (I) and reappointed him to more senior position as chief of general staff for operations, replacing Major General Peter Gatdet Yaka, who was also earlier relieved from the position in a separate order on the same day. Sudan Tribune
IOM: Ethiopians Kidnapped for Ransom in Yemen
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports an extortion racket is flourishing in war-torn Yemen. The IOM says traffickers, armed groups and others are kidnapping vulnerable Ethiopian migrants on their way to Saudi Arabia and holding them for ransom. The IOM has helped nearly 3,500 Ethiopian migrants stranded by the conflict in Yemen return home. From extensive interviews with returnees, the IOM has pieced together a disturbing picture of traffickers preying upon vulnerable migrants en route to Saudi Arabia in search of work. IOM spokesman Joel Millman said some of the cases documented by aid workers are frightening. VOA
Regional Diplomacy Pays off as Africa Hosts Global Summits
Kenya has withdrawn its bid to host the United Nation’s Security Council Summit scheduled for 2017 – 2018 in favour of Ethiopia as concerted diplomacy to reposition Africa pays off in the form of international meetings being held in the continent. Nairobi is returning the favour after Ethiopia stepped down from hosting the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (Ticad) Summit next year, the first ever in Africa, which will now be held in Kenya. “Although we had bid to host the UN Security Council and we had so far received support from 70 countries, we opted to leave it in favour of Ethiopia because the Ticad Summit is nearer than the UN Summit,” said Kenya’s Foreign Affairs and International Trade Cabinet Secretary, Amina Mohamed. The East African
Former Chad Dictator’s Trial in Senegal Adjourned until September
The trial in Senegal of Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré has been adjourned until September so that court-appointed lawyers can prepare his defence against charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture. The Extraordinary African Chambers, a special international criminal tribunal set up in Senegal by the African Union, is trying the former leader of Chad, in an unprecedented case of one African country holding the ruler of another responsible for crimes. The presiding judge of the court, Gberdao Gustave Kam of Burkina Faso, said on Tuesday that there were no lawyers present for Habré, so the court appointed three Senegalese lawyers. He adjourned proceedings until 7 September so they can draw up a defence, and noted they would have a duty to defend him even against his will. The Guardian
Following the Money: Could Financial Investigators Help Stop War in Africa?
Over the past 30 years, more than 2.5 million people have died in the various conflicts that have decimated Sudan. Brutal Janjaweed militias, responsible for many of the worst atrocities committed in Darfur, have been equipped by, supported by, and integrated into the Sudanese government’s state security apparatus. As such, the Janjaweed get financial benefits from the government, and are shielded from prosecution for any crimes committed on duty by Sudan’s 2010 National Security Act. International aid organizations have faced expulsion from the country for their work, the United Nations has been accused of covering up the extent of the problem, and Western government efforts have had a limited impact. Now, a new initiative is hoping to finally have an impact on conflict in Africa by hitting the warlords and corrupt officials where it really hurts – their bank balance. VICE
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