Suchergebnisse

The MENA population is highly educated. Over 53 percent of MENA respondents who are ages 25 and older hold a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to the White population at 38.6 percent and just below the Asian population at 56.8 percent.

The military coup in Gabon this summer marked the eighth such revolt in Africa since 2020, a shocking number that is raising questions about the role and impact of US military training in these countries.While each coup has many local dynamics and political actors, a Responsible Statecraft article by Nick Turse found that since 2008, at least 15 U.S.-trained officers have been involved in coups in West Africa and the Sahel.Evidence suggests that Washington's counter-terrorism, military first, strategy in West Africa and the Sahel is actually weakening African states and failing to serve African or American interests on the continent. Isn't it time for a serious reassessment of U.S. military assistance in Africa and a change in policy that shows civilians that the U.S. can make their lives better?(Video production by Khody Akhavi)

Among the many diplomatic risks for the United States amid the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, further alienating the Global South — including Africa — is high on the list.It is difficult to generalize about African public opinion, especially given the absence of continent-wide polling data regarding the present violence. Yet after African governments' initially divided reactions to the round of conflict that began with Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, there are now numerous indications that most African governments, key African political factions, and substantial portions of African publics are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and appalled at the current Israeli military campaign in Gaza.Many African governments have historically supported an independent Palestine. In recent decades, however, Israel has increased its diplomatic presence on the continent, although not always in a linear fashion. Mauritania, for example, recognized Israel in 1999 before suspending ties in 2009. Amid the current crisis, however, African governments have virtually all been opposed to Israel's bombardment and invasion of Gaza.For example, on October 23, a Jordanian resolution calling for an "immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities" passed in the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 120 for, 14 against, and 44 abstentions. Thirty-five African states (counting North African states) voted for the resolution, including Morocco and Sudan, which are signatories to the Abraham Accords that normalized their relations with Israel in late 2020. No African state voted against the resolution, although some did not vote, while a handful of others, such as Cameroon and Ethiopia, abstained. Support for such resolutions went directly against American wishes.At the diplomatic level, the African Union continues to support a two-state solution and, on October 15, joined the Arab League in a statement calling for peace and decrying "collective punishment" — a reference to the high civilian toll resulting from Israel's heavy bombing campaign.Meanwhile, at least two African countries have recalled their diplomats from Israel: South Africa and Chad. South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC), even before coming to power in 1994, was a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause and, in particular, the Palestine Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat, whom the ANC's Nelson Mandela called an "outstanding freedom fighter." On November 6, Pretoria summoned its ambassador back from Israel, citing civilian deaths in Gaza and what Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor called "collective punishment" of Gazans by Israel and what her government has also framed as "genocide."Two days earlier, Chad had recalled its chargé d'affaires from Tel Aviv, calling for a "ceasefire leading to a durable solution of the Palestinian question." Chad's move was particularly significant because it only recently upgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel and opened an embassy just this past February.Some African countries that initially appeared highly supportive of Israel immediately after Hamas's October 7 attack have since taken more nuanced stances as the death toll from Israel's response mounted: Kenya, for example, initially made a strong statement of "solidarity" with Israel, but has since backed calls for de-escalation. Despite their UNGA votes, African governments have been somewhat more cautious when it comes to allowing mass pro-Palestinian mobilizations on their own soil. The caution reflects at least two factors: such demonstrations could be used by their domestic political opposition, and some governments hope to quietly maintain their ties with Israel.In North Africa, pro-Palestinian protests have been stronger than in sub-Saharan Africa, with even Morocco — a signatory to the Abraham Accords and a partner of increasing importance for Israel — permitting huge protests. In sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, even the governments of some Muslim-majority countries have been reluctant to allow protests to proceed: on October 28, for example, Senegal denied permission for the National Alliance for the Palestinian Cause in Senegal to hold a rally, although a protest did eventually go forward in Dakar. South Africa, meanwhile, has unsurprisingly seen some of the largest protests south of the Sahara, given the historical solidarities mentioned above, as well as the presence of the Economic Freedom Fighters, an outspoken party to the left of the ANC. Another significant protest theater is Nigeria, both among Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.Expressions of condemnation of Israeli policy in different parts of the African continent come against the backdrop of a largely failed push by the United States to cajole African governments into taking sides on the Ukraine war. Before and after the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington in December 2022, Biden administration officials have found even longstanding allies, such as Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, unwilling to break completely with Russia.Given the massive financial, diplomatic, and military support that Washington is currently giving to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and the Israel Defense Forces, lining up African governments against Russia — or on other globally relevant conflicts — may become an even tougher sell.In the Global South, the idea of a "rules-based international order" rings increasingly hollow for many governments and their publics as Western governments (with few exceptions, such as Ireland) offer virtually unqualified support to the Israel's military offensive. Those actions are in clear violation of international laws against collective punishment, the targeting of civilians, the targeting of journalists, and the cutting off of food, water, and electricity, according to major Western-based international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and major media freedom groups such as Reporters Without Borders.In The Continent, an influential South African magazine, one prominent commentator accuses the U.S. (and Germany, among others) of deep hypocrisy when it comes to Palestine — for example, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier's public apology in Tanzania earlier this month over genocidal-level colonial repression landed awkwardly for some Africans. One Kenyan writer laments that the United Nations is toothless, the U.S. government seems "blasé" about Palestinian deaths, and "Western media…appears to have become a mouthpiece for US and Israeli propaganda."Meanwhile, amid both the Ukraine war and the crisis in Gaza, some Africans feel that the continent's own conflicts and tragedies (in Sudan, Ethiopia, and beyond) have been ignored, a dynamic that veteran observers have warned about as well. Washington may thus find it increasingly difficult to convince Africans that the United States represents a particular set of universal values.In Africa, the situation of Palestine evokes numerous solidarities: ethnic, religious, political, and more. Those solidarities are growing amid the present conflict, undoing some of Israel's diplomatic gains and posing long-term challenges to Washington's own diplomatic clout.

In the 1960s, newly independent African governments asserted sovereignty over their metal and mineral resources, in a reversal of their prior colonial exploitation by European mining corporations. In this excerpt from his new book Disrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus – published today, with the first three chapters available as free downloads – Ben Radley shows how transnational corporations have once again become the dominant force assuming ownership and management of industrial mining projects, and this time around across a far greater number of African countries than during the colonial period. Radley argues this latest reversal has taken place through a three-stage process spearheaded by the World Bank: first, blame the African state; second, liberalize and privatize; and third, criminalize African miners. Recent mining code revisions in several countries have been heralded by some as marking a new era of resource nationalism. Yet the new codes remain a far cry from the earlier period of resource sovereignty.
The post The three-stage process through which African resource sovereignty was ceded to foreign mining corporations appeared first on ROAPE.

A team of seven African presidents led an initiative in mid-June 2023 to attempt to make peace in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. For most observers, this intervention raised interesting questions: How can states from a continent ravaged by wars and conflicts have the courage, credibility, and conviction to intervene in a European conflict? Moreover, how can countries without power and leverage intervene in a conflict in which other more powerful actors have failed? What did they expect to achieve from this intervention? This article suggests that the African team sought to invoke the dire economic consequences occasioned by the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Africa to exert moral leverage on the disputing parties to end the war. Combined with the desperate economic situation, the African leaders found strength in their neutrality to make a case for a peaceful approach to a conflict that has had global ramifications. The initiative did not seek to mediate the conflict; rather, it was a modest diplomatic plea for peace in the face of a deteriorating situation.
Author information





Gilbert Khadiagala



Gilbert Khadiagala ist Jan-Smuts-Professor für Internationale Beziehungen an der Witwatersrand-Universität und Gastprofessor an der HSFK. // Gilbert Khadiagala is Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations at Witwatersrand University and visiting professor at PRIF.

|



Der Beitrag An African Peace Initiative in the Russia-Ukraine War? erschien zuerst auf PRIF BLOG.

Systemic racism utilizes various modes of segregation to discriminate and exploit African Americans in order to reinforce a racially hierarchical political economy in the United States of America. Ending institutional racism should be at the top of the agenda for the government.

On September 25, Mali's military government announced it will delay elections that were slated for February 2024. The authorities cited technical reasons for the postponement and did not name a replacement date.

Viewed against the backdrop of the junta's actions since taking power in 2020, the delay appears the latest in a series of maneuvers by the junta to extend its rule, even as the junta has failed egregiously in its promises to restore security. The United States has little influence over what happens in Bamako, but by taking a clear and public stand against open-ended military rule in Mali and other countries in the region, Washington can enhance its credibility in the long term.

A recent wave of coups in the Sahel and elsewhere in Africa has involved officers who show no serious willingness to hand power back to civilians. Military officers have now seized power in Mali (2020), Chad (2021), Burkina Faso (2022), and Niger (2023). Add to this the coups in Guinea (2021) and Sudan (2021) and one has a "coup belt" that evokes the dark days of the Cold War. Amid much talk of "coup contagion," each putsch has had its own, primarily domestic causes — but what has been contagious is coup-makers' playbooks.

Mali's Colonel Assimi Goita and associates have been key movers in elaborating this playbook, extending their "transition" time and again. Goita and company came to power in August 2020, appointed a civilian-led transition, overthrew their own civilian appointees in May 2021's "coup within a coup," defied sanctions from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), compromised on a transition for 2024, and have now begun to tamper with that timetable.

Mali's colonels have repeatedly exposed the weak hand of regional and Western diplomats. ECOWAS first sought to impose an 18-month timetable in August 2020 — meaning the February 2024 elections should have already occurred in February 2022. What happens in Mali has serious ramifications for how officers in the other countries — some of whom are in close contact with Mali's junta — will approach their own transition timetables.

The U.S. has few good options in Mali or elsewhere in the region. In Washington, there are concerns that criticizing and antagonizing juntas would diminish whatever influence the U.S. may command in the Sahel. Washington also prefers to take the region's countries and their coups case by case, frowning on those in Mali and Burkina Faso while showing a significantly more ambivalent and even lenient attitude towards those in Chad and Niger.

And certainly there are diplomatic costs to criticism, as France has learned in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, where its soldiers and diplomats are effectively unwelcome.

Yet U.S. "influence" in the region is overstated — what is there to preserve? After 20 years of military training programs, the U.S. has no significant and enduring counterterrorism accomplishments to report. On the political side, if the U.S. has avoided the backlash that has greeted France, it has also not been able to convince soldiers to return to barracks, or even to temper the overreach of some of its favored civilian leaders (the decision by Senegalese President Macky Sall not to seek a third term in 2024 is one bright spot in the region, and may reflect behind-the-scenes international pressure, but Sall continues to crack down severely on the opposition).

Given that U.S. influence has not appreciably bent the curve of the region when it comes either to endemic insecurity or the militarization of politics, it would be better for the U.S. to be consistent, vocal, and clear when it comes to denouncing coups and distorted transition timetables. As of September 30, for example, there was no statement by the U.S. on the Malian junta's delay of the elections. Nor has the U.S. clarified, more than two months after the coup in Niger, whether it considers that takeover to be a coup in legal terms — a decision that would trigger a suspension of much assistance to Niger.

As one analyst recently commented, allowing ambiguity to fester when it comes to the U.S. stance on Niger is a recipe for exacerbating conspiracy theorizing about whether the U.S. and other Western powers actually support the coups in the region.

Speaking out at key moments would elicit rebukes from Bamako and Niamey, but it would also send vital signals to the actual people of the Sahel. The region's populations are Washington's most important audience at this point, because it is more important to shape positive perceptions of the U.S. over the long term than it is to tiptoe around generals and colonels who rule capitals by force.

Over the long term, moreover, it is in the U.S. interest to give moral support to genuine grassroots democratic culture in the region, which has been a serious force in Sahelian history time and again. At the moment, the U.S. should not materially support civilian organizations that seek to challenge the juntas politically, because doing so could pose profound risks to such civilians (of being arrested and/or tarred with the charge of being Western puppets) and could create unnecessary credibility risks for the U.S. itself.

But by being blunt and forthright that military rule is unacceptable, the U.S. can help set the expectation that norms, and not crass and misguided efforts at realpolitik, will guide Washington's and others' policies towards the Sahel.
Publicly criticizing and privately pressuring the region's military rulers does not mean that Washington will be loathed as much as Paris is. Washington does not have Paris's colonial baggage, and French officials, from President Emmanuel Macron down to individual ambassadors, have been particularly imperious and insensitive to Sahelian concerns, squandering numerous easy opportunities to appear flexible and humble.The U.S. can be a more friendly critic, clarifying that it disapproves of juntas' choices but leaving the door open to conversation

The men gathered in a graveyard in the dead of night. They wore body armor, boots and carried semi-automatic weapons. Their target lay a mile away, the official residence of the president of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh — a U.S.-trained military officer who seized power in 1994. Those in the cemetery planned to oust him, but within hours, they were either dead or on the run.


One of those killed, the ring-leader and former head of Gambia's Presidential Guard, Lamin Sanneh, had previously earned a master's degree at the Pentagon's National Defense University in Washington, D.C.


Some of the plotters were eventually convicted in the United States "for their roles in planning and executing an unsuccessful coup attempt to overthrow the government of The Gambia on December 30, 2014." Four pled guilty on counts related to the Neutrality Act — a federal law that prohibits Americans from waging war against friendly nations. A fifth was sentenced in March 2017 for buying and exporting weapons used in the failed coup, which pitted two generations of U.S.-trained mutineers against each other.


The State Department doesn't know about any of this — or doesn't want to. A simple Google search reveals this information, but when Responsible Statecraft asked if Yahya Jammeh or Lamin Sanneh had received U.S. training, a State Department spokesperson responded: "We do not have the ability to provide records for these historical cases at this time." When asked about other trainees in other nations that have experienced military uprisings, the response was the same.


Responsible Statecraft has found that at least 15 U.S.-supported officers have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. The list includes military personnel from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, 2021); Mauritania (2008); and Niger (2023). At least five leaders of the most recent coup in Niger, received U.S. training, according to a U.S. official. They, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as governors, according to the State Department.


The total number of U.S.-trained mutineers across Africa since 9/11 may be far higher than is known, but the State Department, which tracks data on U.S. trainees, is either unwilling or unable to provide it. Responsible Statecraft identified more than 20 other African military personnel involved in coups who may have received U.S. training or assistance, but when asked, the State Department said it lacks the "ability" to provide information that it possesses.


"If we are training individuals who are executing undemocratic coups, we need to be asking more questions about how and why that happens," said Elizabeth Shackelford, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and lead author of the newly-released report, "Less is More: A New Strategy for U.S. Security Assistance to Africa." "If we aren't even trying to get to the bottom of that, we are part of the problem. This shouldn't just be on our radar — it should be something we intentionally track."


Shackleford and her colleagues say that the U.S. penchant for pouring money into abusive African militaries instead of making long-term investments in bolstering democratic institutions, good governance, and the rule of law, has undermined wider American aims.


In addition to training military mutineers in Africa, other U.S. security assistance efforts during the war on terror have also foundered and failed. Ukrainian troops trained by the U.S. and its allies stumbled during a long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces, raising questions about the utility of the instruction.


In 2021, an Afghan army created, trained, and armed by the United States over 20 years dissolved in the face of a Taliban offensive. In 2015, a $500 million Pentagon effort to train and equip Syrian rebels, slated to produce 15,000 troops, yielded just a few dozen before being scrapped. A year earlier, an Iraqi army built, trained, and funded — to the tune of at least $25 billion — by the U.S. was routed by the rag-tag forces of the Islamic State.


"U.S. policy in Africa has for too long prioritized short-term security to the detriment of long-term stability by prioritizing the provision of military and security assistance," Shackelford writes in the new Chicago Council report. "Partnerships and military assistance with illiberal, undemocratic countries have delivered little, if any, sustainable security improvements, and in many cases have prompted further instability and violence by building the capacity of abusive security forces."

For the Arab Gulf kingdoms, the Horn of Africa is a strategic perimeter. They want to minimize political threats — some are hostile to Islamists, all want to suppress democracy movements. Anticipating a post-carbon and food insecure world, the Gulf States want to possess rich farmlands. Each has its own vision of African client states that will do their bidding. This is a recipe for proxy wars, state fragmentation and autocracy in northeast Africa.For the Horn of Africa, today's crises are existential. War, dictatorship and famine are causing state collapse. The African Union is compromised, its peace and security system unravelling. The United Nations is retreating from peacemaking, increasingly reduced to a bare-bones humanitarian provider.The dangers were illuminated by the surprise New Year's Day deal between Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia, and Muse Bihi, president of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, a breakaway region of northwest Somalia. Ethiopia has been renowned for careful diplomacy, including championing the inviolability of existing boundaries. After fighting wars with Somalia in the 1960s and '70s, Ethiopia had learned to be circumspect and consultative in its dealings with Mogadishu.Last week, Ethiopia upended that tradition. It promised to recognize Somaliland as an independent sovereign state, in return for Somaliland leasing it a 12-mile stretch of land, including a seaport, that will allow Ethiopia to establish a naval base. This in turn unleashed strong words from Somalia — which had not been informed ahead of time. The AU called for Ethiopia to treat Somalia with respect. Fears of new conflicts were stirred. Unsaid in public is that the UAE is widely suspected to be the patron of the deal.For the United States, crises in the Horn of Africa are a sidebar to the ongoing Israel-Gaza war and the confrontation with Iran. Gunboat diplomacy in the Red Sea — the warships deployed under Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect shipping from attacks from the Houthis in Yemen — is the priority.The narrow strip of water carries 12 percent of world seaborne trade. For sailors, the Red Sea is "a sea on the way to somewhere else," its shores at best an inconvenience, at worst a security threat.There's a global consensus on keeping the shipping lanes open. If the Red Sea shuts down — as happened following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war— the knock-on effects on trade between Europe and Asia would be economically severe. The EU-run Operation Atalanta runs an anti-piracy flotilla involving warships from 13 European nations, (including the UK, which provided the flagship until Brexit), working with ships from Ukraine, India, Korea and Colombia.After a few years the flotilla commanders concluded that the solution to piracy lay onshore, in the form of diplomacy to resolve Somalia's conflicts and economic assistance to provide livelihoods to impoverished fishermen. That was a step in the right direction.Saudi Arabia chairs a Red Sea Forum that includes eight littoral states (all except Israel), to tackle piracy, smuggling and marine resources — not political issues.Six years ago, Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa who chairs the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for the Horn of Africa, introduced the term "Red Sea Arena." The idea was to create a diplomatic forum that would include not just the littoral states, but all the other countries with vital interests in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden or with political and commercial links across the narrow strip of water.The former AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra explained: "The Red Sea has historically been a bridge rather than a divide, with the peoples on the two shores sharing culture, trade, and social relations." Egypt has millennia-old interests in the Nile Valley and both shores of the Red Sea. Ethiopia has a vital interest in access to the sea. The UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Turkey all have historic or current interests.Regional and global power struggles are played out in the Red Sea Arena. Seven nations including the U.S., China, Turkey and the UAE have naval bases there. Others, including Iran and Russia, have warships in the vicinity and are actively seeking bases. The port of Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba is Israel's strategic back door, as the Houthi attacks on shipping have dramatically shown.The plan for a standing conference of Red Sea Arena states built on proposals contained in the World Peace Foundation report to the AU, "African Politics, African Peace" — for which Mbeki and veteran UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi co-authored the preface. The idea was that Middle Eastern states should sign on to the principles of the AU's peace and security architecture and establish joint mechanisms for cooperation.The AU failed to act on these proposals. Nor were they raised at the UN Security Council.Instead, Arabian Gulf states are increasingly assertive in the Horn, and they're bringing an aggressive form of transactional politics, including funding proxies to fight wars. The U.S. — whose security umbrella sheltered the Red Sea for decades — seems uninterested.Saudi Arabia has long seen the African shore of the Red Sea as part of its security perimeter. Qatar and Turkey sought influence in Sudan and Somalia, especially among the Islamists. Israel has discreetly sought a determining role in the region.But the key actor is the UAE. A small, rich state, it uses proxies to project power, and supports separatists in disregard of international norms. Abu Dhabi's clients include key players in Libya and Chad, and it is positioning itself as kingmaker in the Horn. The UAE supports and arms Ethiopia. It already controls many ports in the region — including, it is suspected, the proposed Ethiopian port and naval base in the land leased from Somaliland. But Abu Dhabi has yet to clarify its strategic goals for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.The UAE has long had a free pass in Washington. Only recently has the U.S. begun to criticize Abu Dhabi's adventurism in Sudan, calling out its arming of the murderous Rapid Support Forces there.The last decade has been a rollercoaster of hope and horror for the peoples of the Red Sea Arena. Popular uprisings in Yemen, Ethiopia and Sudan all descended into lethal brews of autocracy, war, atrocity, and famine, with local conflicts escalating into proxy wars. Guided by the short-term imperative of staying in power — and by the ambitions of cash-rich foreign sponsors — today's leaders are too often short-sighted and transactional.Under UN and AU guidance, a raft of peace agreements was crafted to serve as the threshold for democracy. Today a peace pact, such as the threadbare "Permanent Cessation of Hostilities" that ended Ethiopia's war in Tigray, may be no more than a truce. The principle of the primacy of politics — that served Africa's peace agenda well — has come to mean short-term transactionalism rather than a commitment to democracy, good governance, and inclusivity.A key African norm was "sovereignty as responsibility," developed by the Sudanese/South Sudanese lawyer and diplomat Francis Deng. Today we have its antithesis, decried as "neo-sovereigntism" by the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe.Today's regression means that Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki is being rehabilitated. For 30 years, Isaias has ruled an iron fist, with no constitution let alone political parties or an open media, hoping that the tide of global liberalism would recede. He looks to be proven correct.Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, known as "Hemedti," commander of the Rapid Support Forces, the insurgent paramilitaries notorious for their human rights abuses, is touring Africa in a Royal Jet airplane (an Emirati airline). He arrived in Addis Ababa last week where he met Prime Minister Abiy. Extending protocol to Emirati-backed disrupters is the new normal in the region.To the extent that it functions at all, the AU is becoming the face of illiberal multilateralism, veering away from its founding principles. The UN's practice of deferring to its regional partners leaves it eviscerated. The InterGovernmental Authority on Development — the eight-member northeast African bloc — is now deeply divided and approaching paralysis.With the Horn of Africa and Yemen slipping far down the priority list in Western foreign ministries, America and Europe are sending mid-ranking diplomats into the snake pit, woefully under-armed for the perils they encounter. Too easily intimidated by swaggering local despots, perhaps swayed by zombie "Pan Africanist" slogans that challenge their right to talk about human rights, they have left their countries irrelevant in the face of ruthless Gulf power-broking.Recent developments could not have been anticipated in detail. But American diplomats saw the broader challenge some years ago. In 2020, a bipartisan "senior study group" on the Red Sea convened by the United States Institute of Peace, prioritized a broad diplomatic strategy for the Red Sea Arena. The USIP report warned that conflicts in the region could threaten U.S. national security and proposed a high-level envoy with a broad mandate.The Biden administration quickly appointed a special envoy for the Horn of Africa, but the Africa Bureau at the State Department soon downgraded the position. The cost of this strategic neglect is becoming clear today.There's still a chance for a diplomatic forum that promotes collective security. Washington has lost its best opportunities to take a lead — any U.S. initiative today will arouse deep suspicions among others. Middle Eastern powers don't, as a rule, propose collective action, and the Gulf states are divided. The Europeans will follow, not lead.The onus of leadership then falls on Africa and on the United Nations. Acting together, they can create a consensus that brings on board America, Europe, China, and Russia in a forum framed by the agenda of a stable and cooperative Red Sea Arena.

The Islamic State documents at least 36 clashes between its men and Shabaab, al-Qaeda's East African wing, between March and December 2023.
The post Islamic State describes intense campaign against Shabaab in northern Somalia first appeared on FDD's Long War Journal.

Internet shutdowns are now commonplace in some African states, particularly those under authoritarian rule or impacted by instability and insecurity. Explanations for these – usually state-imposed – disruptions generally focus on a government's repressive intent, and desire to restrict or …

Criticism of the ICC on the grounds of anti-African bias or neo-colonialism is simplistic. It overstates the power of the ICC and underestimates the ability of African states to manipulate the Court for their own ends.
The post Why international justice must go local: the ICC in Africa first appeared on Africa Research Institute.
The post Why international justice must go local: the ICC in Africa appeared first on Africa Research Institute.

On 26 July, Niger's presidential guard launched a coup against President Mohamed Bazoum, announcing their seizure of power in a televised broadcast. As the dust of the coup begins to settle, Niger — and the international community — stand at a crossroads. The military junta's success in maintaining power is far from guaranteed and has been widely condemned. Several states and supranational organisations, including the US, France, the EU, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the African Union (AU) have threatened the military junta with sanctions if it does not reinstate President Bazoum, and have even considered military intervention. However, the Sahel's track record of successful coups suggests that Niger is likely to see further democratic backsliding, ...

A Miami school sent parents permission slips for a read-aloud event involving a book "by an African American." The school district said it was complying with a state law that requires consent for extracurriculars, not specifically Black history.

The Sahel region has been at the heart of African peace and security concerns for over a decade. While the ongoing conflict in Mali is an epicentre of insecurity in the region, no state has been untouched by jihadist insurgencies …