Category Archives: Conflict and arms

Obama didn’t deliver for Africa – can Biden prove that black lives matter everywhere? | Vava Tampa

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There is reason to hope the president-elect will pivot from long-standing US policy of backing continent’s strongman leaders

How different is the Biden-Harris administration’s Africa policy going to be from Donald Trump’s, or even Barack Obama’s? Many African people, as well as the continent’s strongman leaders, are now gingerly asking – is Biden going to be Obama 2.0, or Trump-lite?

For the sake of black lives mattering everywhere in these turbulent times, I hope Biden will chart a bold new course, diametrically away from not only Trump but also Obama’s Africa policy.

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As Ethiopia’s army declares daily victories, its people are being plunged into violence

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Abiy Ahmed’s war against Tigrayan rebels endangers a fragile union whose collapse would destabilise the Horn of Africa

Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed has promised military victory in Tigray. He says he will capture the capital, Mekelle, and the leadership of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which he calls a criminal junta. If he succeeds, it will be a pyrrhic victory – prospects for peace, democracy and protection from famine in Ethiopia will be set back a generation.

There are artillery barrages, airstrikes, armoured assaults. The Ethiopian army announces a Tigrayan town captured every other day and this week it plans to surround Mekelle. But there’s something missing. We’re not seeing pictures of prisoners of war, recovered military equipment, or newly-captured towns with local people welcoming their liberators. Perhaps the TPLF evacuated the towns and retreated to the mountains. Or maybe there are things that Ethiopian TV doesn’t want the world to see.

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Dozens of Sudanese migrants held in Cairo after protests

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The killing of a 12-year-old boy sparked calls for justice and action to counter human rights violations of black African refugees in Egypt

Dozens of Sudanese refugees and migrants have been arrested after protests over the murder of a young boy in Cairo.

Amnesty International said about 70 people, including children, were arrested by Egyptian security forces after what it said were two peaceful protests on 29 October.

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Ethiopia’s PM says airstrikes launched against targets in restive Tigray region

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Fears of civil conflict escalate as Abiy Ahmed says operation will continue until ‘junta made accountable by law’

Ethiopia’s air force has carried out strikes in the restive Tigray region, the country’s prime minister has said, in another escalation of a crisis that observers fear could plunge the country into a bitter and bloody civil conflict.

The prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, said the strikes in multiple locations “completely destroyed rockets and other heavy weapons” belonging to the well-armed regional government and made it impossible for a retaliatory attack.

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Ethiopia’s PM threatens restive province as crisis escalates

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Fears of civil conflict as air raids and artillery battles reported in standoff between TPLF and federal government

The prime minister of Ethiopia has issued a new threat to leaders of the restive province of Tigray, warning that there was “no place for criminal elements” in the east African country.

“The proud Ethiopian people of Tigray [and] other citizens cannot be taken hostage by fugitives from justice forever. We shall extract these criminal elements [from Tigray and] relaunch our country on a path to sustainable prosperity for all,” Abiy Ahmed said in a statement on social media.

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‘We have a right to be at the table’: four pioneering female peacekeepers

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Twenty years after a landmark UN resolution, leading figures share insight on women’s vital role in mediating conflict

In October 2000, the UN security council adopted resolution 1325 – the first resolution that acknowledged women’s unique experience of conflict and their vital role in peace negotiations and peacebuilding. Twenty years on, we speak to four women helping keep the peace around the world.

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Turkey and UAE openly flouting UN arms embargo to fuel war in Libya

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Guardian joint investigation finds both sides send military cargo planes to region, in blatant violation of agreement to end conflict

Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are carrying out regular and increasingly blatant violations of the UN arms embargo on Libya, fuelling a proxy war that is evading political solutions, a joint investigation by the Guardian has found.

Flight data and satellite images show both nations using large-scale military cargo planes to funnel in goods and fighters to forces or proxies inside Libya, routinely violating the 2011 UN arms embargo despite political promises to abstain.

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DRC protesters demand justice over unprosecuted rapes and murders

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Women lead protests against conflict violence in Democratic Republic of the Congo, amid calls for action on hundreds of civil war crimes

Women led thousands of people in demonstrations in four cities across the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday, demanding justice for historic murders and rapes committed in the east of the country.

Organisers said police beat protesters in Kisangani, one of the cities, as they marked a decade since the UN documented hundreds of crimes in DRC between 1993 and 2003 that have not been prosecuted.

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US warns Afghan women of increased risk of extremist attack

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Message from the US embassy comes during long-postponed direct talks between the government and the Taliban

The United States has warned women in Afghanistan that they are at increased risk of attack by extremist groups.

The US embassy in Kabul warned on Thursday that “extremist organisations continue to plan attacks against a variety of targets […], including a heightened risk of attacks targeting female government and civilian workers, including teachers, human rights activists, office workers, and government employees.”

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How did a ‘cocktail of violence’ engulf Mozambique’s gemstone El Dorado?

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Clashes between Isis-linked militants, government troops and mercenaries have displaced 200,000 in mineral-rich Cabo Delgado

For decades a forgotten corner of Mozambique, Cabo Delgado has now become the country’s El Dorado, promising billions in natural gas and gemstones but delivering its population only violence and displacement.

An insurgency in the province now threatens to become further entrenched – 50,000 people have fled their homes since March and Mozambique’s neighbours are currently debating sending in regional forces to help defeat militants who seized a strategic port in the town of Mocímboa da Praia last month.

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‘I had to kill so many people’: the battle to protect children in conflicts

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25,000 grave violations were committed against children in conflict in 2019, says the UN, which hopes to highlight issue with new international day

When Islamic State fighters rolled into Mosul, Iraq, they made promises.

“When they arrived they promised us salvation, a better life, but within months our schools were closed and we were living in fear, prisoners in our own city,” says Usama Salem, 11.

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Syria deadliest place to be an aid worker, amid global 30% rise in attacks – report

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Ability to carry out humanitarian work in most dangerous conflict-hit regions threatened by local NGO staff being caught in crossfire

There has been a sharp rise in the number of aid staff killed in the first six months of this year with Syria at the top of the list of the deadliest places to be a humanitarian worker.

A total of 74 fatalities have been recorded globally since January, a 30% rise on the same period last year. Syria accounted for more than a quarter of the deaths.

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‘Coronavirus ruined everything’: the long wait for new limbs in Kurdistan

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Decades of war have resulted in a high demand for prosthetics – and patients are anxious to visit clinics as they finally reopen

Concentration is etched on Hussein’s face as he walks along a scuffed yellow line painted on the floor of the clinic’s rehabilitation room. He’s getting a feel for his new prosthetic.

Hussein lost his left leg below the knee in 1987 when he stepped on a landmine while fishing at Lake Dukan, around 100km (62 miles) east of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Mines and other unexploded remnants of successive wars litter the landscape, causing new injuries every year. More than half the clinic’s 15,100 patients are amputees. Roughly 4,600 of them lost limbs as a result of conflict – 2,500 of these to landmines.

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Protests predicted to surge globally as Covid-19 drives unrest

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New analysis finds economic shock of pandemic coupled with existing grievances makes widespread public uprisings ‘inevitable’

The economic impact of coronavirus is a “tinderbox” that will drive civil unrest and instability in developing countries in the second half of 2020, according to new analysis.

Highest risk countries facing a “perfect storm”, where protests driven by the pandemic’s economic fallout are likely to inflame existing grievances, include Nigeria, Iran, Bangladesh, Algeria and Ethiopia, the analysis said.

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‘A drastic loss’: Satellite imagery reveals Mali’s farmers forced off land by militias

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Attacks by Islamist groups and rising ethnic tension in the Mopti region have led to life-threatening disruption to farming practices

A surge in fighting in central Mali has forced hundreds of villagers from farmland they depend on and could leave them without enough food to survive this year, according to a study of satellite imagery by the UN’s World Food Programme.

More than half the number of violent attacks by armed groups against Mali civilians last year were recorded in the Mopti region, largely targeting people who survive on land or livestock.

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Darfur protesters call for action to end attacks on civilians by armed militias

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The peaceful sit-in taking place in Nertiti county is demanding an end to the violence and punishment for the perpetrators

Thousands of people have joined a sit-down protest in front of local authority buildings in Central Darfur demanding action against the armed groups that patrol the region.

A large number of women have joined the first peaceful demonstration – now in its second week – in Nertiti county since war erupted in 2003.

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‘There hasn’t been rehabilitation’: Afghanistan struggles with fate of ‘Daesh wives’

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The Afghan government is facing hard decisions over the futures of hundreds of detained radicalised women and their children

The “Daesh wives” from the Afghan branch of Islamic State look very young. Most are already mothers.

Hundreds of them have fled combat, airstrikes and near-starvation in eastern Afghanistan where the faction of Isis known as Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK) has been under fierce bombardment from Afghan and US special forces, as well as involved in violent clashes with rival militants the Taliban.

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Forcibly displaced now account for 1% of humanity – UN report

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Almost 80 million people are refugees or internally displaced, with the number doubling in the past decade

The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes has doubled over the past decade to almost 80 million, according to the UN refugee agency.

A 9 million rise in the number of those forced to flee in 2019, fuelled by conflict in Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso, means that one in every 97 people around the world – about 1% of all humanity – is now displaced, according to numbers in UNHCR’s annual report, published on Thursday.

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Militant crackdown in Sahel leads to hundreds of civilian deaths – report

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Amnesty records 200 state killings and forced disappearances in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, state members of internationally-backed G5 group

Hundreds of civilians have been killed by their own governments in Africa’s Sahel region since countries pledged a surge against militant groups at a regional meeting held by France in January.

Amnesty International said on Wednesday that it had documented 200 cases of unlawful state killings and forced disappearances in February and March in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which are members of the internationally backed G5 force set up to fight militants in the Sahel.

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Halt plan to withdraw Sudan peacekeepers, UN urged

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Civil groups fear replacing 26,000 troops with a ‘political mission’ will threaten fragile security situation in Darfur

Activists in Sudan are urging the UN and African Union not to go ahead with plans to withdraw 26,000 peacekeepers from Darfur this year, claiming the move will put lives at risk.

The peacekeepers from the AU-UN hybrid operation in Darfur (Unamid), which has a mandate to protect civilians by force if necessary, will leave in October under plans expected to be agreed by the UN security council, although it is understood the UK and Germany want to delay troop withdrawal.

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