Kenya’s former first lady Lucy Kibaki dies in London
Kenya’s controversial former first lady, Lucy Kibaki, has died in a London hospital of an undisclosed illness.
She gained notoriety for slapping a cameraman in 2005 when she stormed the offices of a private media group in anger at the way a story about her had been reported.
In a tribute to Mrs Kibaki, President Uhuru Kenyatta praised her for her role in fighting HIV/Aids in Kenya. Mr Kenyatta succeeded her husband Mwai Kikabi, who governed from 2002 to 2013. Mrs Kibaki, who was born in 1940, had withdrawn from public life during the latter part of her husband’s rule.
She was last seen at a public function was in August 2010, when she seemed excited about the adoption of a new constitution, dancing to a famous gospel song, Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper reports.
Mr Kenyatta said she had been unwell for the last month, receiving treatment in both Kenya and the UK.
Mrs Kibaki trained as a teacher, leaving her job not long after her marriage in 1962 to raise her four children.
“Her Excellency will be remembered for her immense contribution in the development of country,” Mr Kenyatta said in a statement.
According to the Daily Nation, she organised the First International Aids Run in 2003.
But correspondents say she also provoked condemnation when she said unmarried young people had “no business” using condoms, calling on students to abstain from sex in order to avoid infection with HIV.
US President George W. Bush (R), First Lady Laura Bush (2nd-L), President Mwai Kibaki (2nd-R) of Kenya, and his wife Lucy Kibaki (L) pose for a photo.
‘Disturbing the peace’
Mrs Kibaki was the most controversial of Kenya’s first ladies, crossing swords with politicians, diplomats, journalists and policemen she believed had not treated her with sufficient respect.
Just months after her husband became president, she is reported to have shut down a bar inside State House that was a watering hole for ministers and close allies of Mr Kibaki.
In 2005, she stormed into the house of her neighbour, the World Bank’s then-country director Makhtar Diop, in a tracksuit at midnight and demanded he turn his music down at a private party to mark the end of his posting in Kenya.
She also went to the local police station in shorts to demand that Mr Diop and his guests be arrested for disturbing the peace. Later, she burst into the offices of the influential Nation Media Group with her bodyguards and demanded that the reporter who had written about her confrontation with Mr Diop be arrested.
She slapped cameraman Clifford Derrick who was filming her and refused to leave the offices until 0530 the next day. He tried to sue for assault, but the case was thrown out of court. In 2007, Mrs Kibaki was filmed by Nation TV slapping an official during an independence day celebration at State House. Security officials seized the video images and erased the slapping incident, before returning them.
South Sudan takes tentative step forward as former rebel leader becomes VP
South Sudan’s new Vice President Riek Machar, center-left, walked with President Salva Kiir, center-right, after being sworn in at the presidential palace in Juba.
Juba, South Sudan — Peace doves that had remained in their cages for more than a week were released Tuesday, as South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar set foot in Juba for the first time in more than two years. Mr. Machar was then whisked to meet President Salva Kiir – until recently his opponent in the country’s bitter civil war – and was inaugurated as first vice president.
Machar’s return is crucial for ending the conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced 2.3 million since it began in 2013, just two and a half years after South Sudan gained independence in 2011. He had been expected in Juba last Monday, but disputes over the number of troops he was traveling with and the types of weapons they were allowed to carry delayed his arrival.
The eight-day wait tested the patience of many, and is a fraught beginning to this new chapter in South Sudan’s history.
For South Sudanese, the daily delays were a stressful teaser. Some doubted Machar would return at all. For the international community, they represented the intransigence of both sides, calling into question the millions of dollars and years of diplomacy spent trying to achieve peace.
“What is surprising for me is not that the implementation of the peace process has stalled, but that anyone is surprised that it has stalled. There is very little good faith on the two sides and certainly very little trust in each other” said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, in an interview on the organization’s website.
Five years ago, the international community was eager to assist the newly independent South Sudan. But today, diplomats have become fed up with both sides.
South Sudan is experiencing a crippling economic crisis, and one of the first tasks of the unity government will be negotiating a financial rescue package from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Diplomats talk of a “new normal” in relationships to the government, where donors scale back financial assistance and offer aid only with conditions, such as increasing funding to health and education services.
Some say that the current peace deal doesn’t address the drivers of the conflict.
“Forming a government with the same actors responsible for the collapse of the economy and atrocities holds open the possibility that grand corruption will return to its pre-war patterns,” says John Prendergast, founding director of the Enough Project.
Indeed, the task for Kiir and Machar will be to manage not only their fraught relationship, but the extremists in each of their camps who have an interest in stopping the deal. Yet on Tuesday, those partisans did not make an appearance.
Instead, President Kiir apologized to the people of South Sudan and the international community.
“We acknowledge there are unresolved indues related to the [peace] agreement, but I promise we will resolve those issues amicably,” Kiir said, looking out from under his signature cowboy hat.
The cowboy hat has become a staple of Kiir’s wardrobe, after he first received it as a gift from President George W. Bush. In 2005, Mr. Bush was instrumental in securing the independence of South Sudan.
Perhaps a signal that the support of the international community is more important than individual grudges, Machar made a notable fashion choice as he arrived in Juba.
Like Kiir, he sported what appeared to be an American cowboy hat — perhaps an ode to the international support that South Sudan needs now more than ever.
S.Africa’s ANC opens treason case against leftist leader Malema
The move follows an interview Malema gave to Al-Jazeera television Sunday in which he said that if the government used violence to suppress protest “we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun”.
Cape Town (AFP) – South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has brought a case of treason against opposition leader Julius Malema after he threatened a violent overthrow of the government, the party’s spokesman said Monday.
The move follows an interview Malema gave to Al-Jazeera television Sunday in which he said that if the government used violence to suppress protest “we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun”.
ANC national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa announced on Twitter that the party had gone to police to lay a charge of treason against Malema, leader of the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
“The ANC has just opened a case of high treason against EFF and its leader Julius Malema in his personal capacity with Hillbrow police station,” Kodwa confirmed to News24.
Earlier, the ANC released a statement saying Malema’s remarks “are a call to violence, inflammatory, treasonable and seditious”.
In the interview, Malema said: “We will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through a barrel of a gun”.
The EFF has been demanding the ouster of President Jacob Zuma for several months, accusing him of corruption.
EFF deputies regularly disrupt parliamentary sessions, sometimes shouting anti-Zuma slogans.
Last year, EFF MPs were expelled from the assembly by security guards after fights broke out.
“We are a very peaceful organisation, we fight our battles through peaceful means, through the courts, through parliament, through mass mobilisation, we do that peacefully,” Malema told Al-Jazeera.
“But at times the government has attempted to respond to such with violence, they beat us up in parliament… They sent soldiers to places like Alexandra (township) where people are protesting.”
The EFF leader, 35, was expelled from the ruling ANC in 2012 when he was head of the party’s youth wing.
He founded the radical leftist EFF a year later which entered parliament with 25 deputies after May 2014 elections, becoming the third largest party.
Tutsi general and wife, daughter killed in Burundi attack
General Athanase Kararuza had been recently named as advisor to Vice President Gaston Sindimwo, also a Tutsi. Under the constitution, the vice president must always be from a different ethic group and a different party than the head of state.
Nairobi (AFP) – A Tutsi general and security advisor to Burundi’s vice president was killed Monday in an attack by heavily-armed men, along with his wife and daughter, a security source said.
It was the latest bloodshed to hit a country which has been engulfed by a political crisis which erupted in April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term in office, which he won in July.
The resulting violence has left at least 500 people dead, while more than a quarter of a million others have fled the country, prompting the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor to announce Monday she was opening a preliminary probe into the crisis.
The latest attack took place in the capital Bujumbura as General Athanase Kararuza was dropping his daughter off at school in the northeastern Ghosha district, the high-ranking security source said.
He had been recently named as advisor to Vice President Gaston Sindimwo, also a Tutsi. Under the constitution, the vice president must always be from a different ethic group and a different party than the head of state.
Kararuza also served as deputy commander of the African Union-led peacekeeping force in Central African Republic from December 2013 until late last year.
“They attacked him with rockets and grenades, his security detail tried to respond but unfortunately General Kararuza and his wife were killed,” the source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“His daughter succumbed to her injuries in hospital although the doctors did everything to save her.”
Several other security sources and the main spokesman at the presidency confirmed the attack and death of Kararuza, who served in the former Tutsi-dominated army.
Shortly after the attack, the ICC chief prosecutor confirmed she was opening a preliminary probe into the violence in Burundi.
– Deep divisions –
“Those who killed my colleague General Kararuza and (perpetrated) other similar attacks are trying to sow divisions in the army and the police,” presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe wrote on Twitter.
Under an Arusha peace deal which paved the way for the end of the 1993-2006 civil war that pitted the then Tutsi-dominated army against Hutu rebels, killing an estimated 300,00 people, there was to be strict parity between the two ethnic groups.
The agreement stipulated that the army and police were to be reformed with equal numbers of the two ethnic groups in a country where Hutus make up 85 percent of the population.
The current crisis has created profound divisions within the police and the army, posing a serious threat to the fragile power-sharing agreement established under the Arusha accords.
Over the past year, numerous politicians, civil society leaders and army officers have been killed or narrowly escaped attacks since the start of the crisis.
Such attacks are never claimed, with both sides systematically denying any responsibility.
South Africa’s Julius Malema warns Zuma government
Malema is the commander-in-chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters, an opposition party he founded in 2013 after being expelled from the ANC, where he had served as president of the Youth League.
South African politician Julius Malema says the opposition “will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun” if the ruling African National Congress (ANC) continues to respond violently to peaceful protests.
Malema is the commander-in-chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters, an opposition party he founded in 2013 after being expelled from the ANC, where he had served as president of the Youth League.
The exchange, in Sunday’s episode of Talk To Al Jazeera, began when Jonah Hull asked Malema how far he was willing to go in his “war” against President Jacob Zuma and reminded him of his 2014 threat to make the entire Gauteng province ungovernable.
“We have the capability to mobilise our people and fight physically,” said Malema.
“That’s not befitting of a government in waiting, is it?” Hull asked.
“We know for a fact that Gauteng ANC rigged elections here,” replied Malema.
“We know for a fact that they lost Johannesburg and they lost Gauteng. But we still accepted it. But they must know that we are not going to do that this year. We are not going to accept.
“Part of the revolutionary duty is to fight and we are not ashamed if the need arises for us to take up arms and fight. We will fight. This regime must respond peacefully to our demands and must respond constitutionally to our demands.
“And if they are going to respond violently – like they did in the township of Alexandra, just outside Johannesburg, when people said these results do not reflect the outcome of our votes, they sent the army to go and intimidate our people. We are not going to stand back. Zuma is not going to use the army to intimidate us. We are not scared of the army. We are not scared to fight. We will fight.”
Hull asked Malema to clarify this: “When you say you are willing to take up arms, that’s what you mean?”
“Literally,” Malema said.
“Against the government?” Hull asked.
“Yeah, literally. I mean it literally. We are not scared. We are not going to have a government that disrespects us,” Malema said
“We are a very peaceful organisation and we fight our battles through peaceful means, through the courts, through parliament, through mass moblisation.
“We do that peacefully. But at times, government gets tempted to respond to such with violence. They beat us up in parliament and they send soliders to places like Alexandra where people are protesting. We will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun.”
Earlier, Malema had denied that Zuma was his primary concern.
“We are not waged in a war against Zuma and the ANC. We are waging a war against white monopoly capital. Zuma is not our enemy. The ANC is not our enemy. They are standing in our way to crushing white monopoly capital, which has stolen our land, which controls the wealth of our country. “As we are in the process of crushing the white monopoly capital, there will be some of those irritations that we have to deal with. Zuma represents such an irritation; the ANC represents such an irritation.”
South Africa is holding municipal elections in August.
The Worst Dictatorship You’ve Never Heard Of
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh. Part of the reason Jammeh’s government is so jittery is that it weathered a coup attempt less than two years ago. In December 2014, an unlikely band of diaspora members — including two U.S. Army veterans and a Minnesota businessman — staged an assault on the presidential palace while Jammeh was outside the country.
Since taking power in a bloodless coup in 1994, Yahya Jammeh has presided over the worst dictatorship you’ve never heard of. The eccentric Gambian president, who performs ritual exorcisms and claims to heal everything from AIDS to infertility with herbal remedies, rules his tiny West African nation through a mix of superstition and fear. State-sanctioned torture, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary executions — these are just a few of the favored tactics employed by his notorious security and intelligence services.
Elsewhere in Africa, rights advocates have increasingly lamented a plague of “third-termism” as more and more leaders move to scrap constitutional limits in order to remain in power. But in Gambia, Jammeh will probably cruise to a fifth five-year term in elections scheduled for December. That is, of course, unless the unprecedented wave of protests that began last week boil over into a full-fledged popular revolt.
Tensions have been slowly building in Gambia for years, not least because of the repressive security environment, widespread corruption, chronic food shortages, and terribly mismanaged economy. (Gambia ranks dead last in West Africa in terms of GDP per capita, the only country to experience a decline since 1994.) But Jammeh has mostly succeeded in keeping discontent in check, in part because of Gambia’s Indemnity Law — signed by the president in 2001 — occasioned by an incident the previous year in which security forces opened fire on a group of student protesters. In total, 14 people were murdered in broad daylight. The new law gave the president sweeping powers to prevent security forces from being prosecuted for quelling “unlawful assembly.”
On April 14, however, long-simmering frustrations inevitably boiled over. Scores of Gambians bravely took to the streets that day to demand electoral reforms before the December elections. Unsurprisingly, Jammeh’s riot police cut the demonstration short, roughing up protesters and firing tear gas to disperse the crowds that had gathered in a seaside suburb of the capital, Banjul.
The regime’s initial response to the protests was actually quite subdued when compared with similar events in Gambia’s past. But citizens mobilized again two days later, on April 16, staging the largest and most sustained act of public defiance against Jammeh since he seized power more than two decades ago. This time, the agitated police responded more forcefully, spraying demonstrators with live ammunition and assaulting people in the streets. In total, 55 people were reportedly arrested; many of them were brutalized in detention.
Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh arrives at the Elysee palace to participate in the Elysee summit for peace and safety in Africa, on December 6, 2013 in Paris. AFP PHOTO/ ALAIN JOCARD (Photo credit should read ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/Getty Images)
Most shockingly, Solo Sandeng, the leader of the youth wing of Gambia’s main opposition movement, the United Democratic Party (UDP), was allegedly tortured to death while in state custody. After news of Sandeng’s death broke, the UDP once again rallied, marching peacefully through the capital to demand answers. And once again, riot police rushed to the scene, arresting Ousainou Darboe, secretary-general of the UDP, and other senior members of the party. According to a UDP news release issued on the evening of April 16, over two dozen party members were reportedly detained and three people were killed, including Sandeng. Many of them have been charged with “unlawful assembly,” among other crimes, but the party has said it will organize more demonstrations in the coming days.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the African Union, and the U.S. State Department all condemned the Gambian government’s severe response to the peaceful protests, the latter urging the government to exercise “restraint” and “calm.” But if the UDP goes ahead with its plan for more protests, there is a risk that Jammeh’s paranoid government will respond with additional deadly force. In fact, the president has already threatened that “protesters will not be spared” and blamed Western countries for instigating the unrest.
It is for this reason that the United States should move beyond rhetoric and sanction Jammeh’s regime for its clear record of abuse. It should impose travel restrictions on individuals implicated in grave human rights abuses and freeze the U.S. assets of Jammeh, his immediate family, and members of his inner circle. Jammeh’s lavish $3.5 million mansion in Potomac, Maryland would certainly be a good place to start.
Part of the reason Jammeh’s government is so jittery is that it weathered a coup attempt less than two years ago. In December 2014, an unlikely band of diaspora members — including two U.S. Army veterans and a Minnesota businessman — staged an assault on the presidential palace while Jammeh was outside the country. The putsch failed and the regime responded with fury, sentencing eight alleged coup plotters to death and indiscriminately jailing scores of Gambians suspected of being associated with them, some as old as 84 and as young as 14.
The crackdown drew harsh rebukes from rights activists, but it was later revealed that the United States may have indirectly tipped off the Gambian government that a coup was in the works. According to the Washington Post, the FBI had been monitoring some of the plotters’ communications, and the State Department later informed another West African nation that one of them had left the United States in the hopes it would intercept him. Despite Jammeh’s egregious rights record, the U.S. government has largely refrained from speaking out against him over the years. (The Gambian leader was welcomed to the White House as recently as August 2014, when he attended the first-ever U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.)
According to people present at this protest, a daylight demonstration in Serrekunda, Banjul, was peaceful with participants holding signs calling for electoral reforms. The protest was dispersed by police who arrested several people, including the following UDP members: Solo Sandeng, Fatoumata Jawara (Female Youth President), Fatou Camara, (Constituency Women’s Leader), Nokoi Njie (2nd Vice President of the Women’s Wing) and Lang Marong (Deputy Campaign Manager).They were taken to Mile 2 Prison and later to the National Intelligence Agency for interrogation.
But in truth, the tide had begun to turn against Jammeh months before the attempted coup, when he signed a harsh anti-gay law as part of an overhaul of the country’s penal code. The European Union responded by suspending $186 million in aid while the United States made Gambia ineligible for the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a trade preference program that provides duty-free treatment to U.S. imports from sub-Saharan Africa, making it the only nation besides Swaziland and South Sudan to lose eligibility because of its dismal human rights record.International isolation has made Jammeh only more vulnerable at home. Before last week’s protests, Gambia’s notoriously fractious political opposition had begun to piece together a unified front, with top decision makers from different political parties putting forward a common agenda: namely, unseating Jammeh at the polls in December.
But even if the opposition works together, it will be fighting an uphill battle against Jammeh’s ruthless political machine. So blatant was the government’s intimidation of the opposition during the last election in 2011 that the Economic Community of West African States refused to send observers — an unprecedented move for the regional bloc. That is why it’s crucial that international donors, namely the United States, both invest in Gambia’s newly unified pro-democracy movement and signal to Jammeh that his government’s brutal and ongoing crimes will no longer be tolerated.
Ethiopian Army Locates Abducted Children In South Sudan: Report
FILE: A young woman and a child displaced by fighting in South Sudan wait to be registered in the Kule 1 and 2 camps for internally displaced people at the Pagak border crossing in Gambela, Ethiopia.
International Business Times |
Ethiopia’s army has encircled an area in neighboring South Sudan where it believes more than 100 abducted Ethiopian children are being held by armed militants. A government official in Ethiopia’s western Gambela region told local media late Wednesday the children would soon be rescued and reunited with their families. The Ethiopian children may have been kidnapped to be serve as workers.
There are also efforts to bring back the more than 2,000 cattle stolen by the armed group, according to Ethiopia’s government-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate. The Ethiopian government has blamed members of South Sudan’s Murle tribe for the cross-border raid in Gambela last Friday, which left 208 people dead and dozens injured in 13 kebeles, or neighborhoods.
Cross-border raids are not unusual in the Horn of Africa country’s Gambela region, which is situated on the border with South Sudan. Ethnic communities in both nations have frequently clashed over land, livestock and resources such as grazing rights and water. The Murle tribe has been accused of stealing cattle as well as children to raise as their own during previous raids. Those targeted in the raid Friday were members of the Nuer ethnic group, who live in both Ethiopia and South Sudan, BBC News said.
The Gambela region and a neighboring province host more than 284,000 South Sudanese refugees who fled deadly conflict in their country. The gunmen responsible for the raid Friday are not believed to have links with the South Sudanese military or the nation’s rebels, who fought the government in the capital of Juba in a civil war that ended with a peace accord signed last year, as Reuters reported.
Ethiopia’s communications minister, Getachew Reda, said his government had good relations with South Sudan and was calling on its neighboring country to help bring an end to the danger.
“We have to neutralize the threat, hold whoever perpetrated these heinous crimes to account,” Reda told CNN by phone Tuesday from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. “People have been displaced from their villages.”
Boko Haram still a threat months after ‘technical victory’
MAROUA, Cameroon (AP) — Here on the front line against Boko Haram, no one boasts of having “technically” won the war.
More than four months after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari made such a claim, the extremists still crisscross international borders, avoiding direct confrontations with U.S.-backed African forces while refocusing on soft targets like marketplaces and mosques with little to no protection.
The group may be gone from major cities, but in the countryside it poses a constant threat. And for the hundreds of thousands of refugees and impoverished villagers surrounded by fighting in the isolated northern reaches of Cameroon, terror and hunger form daily challenges to their survival.
“All of you who are attempting to fight this terror, the United States stands with you,” said Samantha Power, America’s U.N. ambassador, making a rare visit by any foreign dignitary, let alone a U.S. Cabinet member, to this parched, dusty landscape dotted by thatched-roofed huts and meandering goats and donkeys.
Underscoring the insecurity, Power traveled with a large contingent of U.S. and Cameroonian special forces. A Cameroonian helicopter monitored overhead.
But in a tragic accident, an armored jeep in Power’s motorcade stuck a 7-year-old boy who darted onto the road, killing him instantly. She traveled back to the scene of the incident several hours later to offer her condolences to his parents and “our grief and heartbreak.”
Power’s larger goal of pairing military efforts with greater development of West Africa’s impoverished, Boko Haram-ravaged regions is daunting. They’ve suffered generations of neglect.
In Maroua, an enclave some 800 miles from the Cameroonian capital sandwiched between Chad and Nigeria, shortages of water, schools and investment are chronic.
Activists, opposition politicians and Muslim clerics say the extremists will draw Maroua’s disaffected youth to their ranks as long as economic opportunities are limited and security forces continue committing indiscriminate atrocities while trying to stamp out the insurgency.
Military force must be part of the counter-terror effort, Power told reporters.
“They have guns. The have suicide vests. They have armored vehicles,” she said.
But Power said targeting civilians is self-defeating because doing so only creates more potential recruits, echoing counterinsurgency lessons the United States learned the hard way in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Excessive military force is a problem that appears ubiquitous in the region.
In its flagship Human Rights Report released last week, the State Department chided Nigerian forces for killings, torture, rape, arbitrary detention, prisoner abuse and destruction of property while countering Boko Haram.
One Nigerian state government recently acknowledged burying hundreds of minority Shiite Muslims in a mass grave after they were killed in army raids.
Pushed from population centers by Nigeria’s military since Buhari’s election last year, Boko Haram is changing its tactics.
It launched 159 suicide bombings last year, more than half in Nigeria, increasingly using girls to set off the explosives. The consequence has increased suspicion even on children
And buoyed by its alliance with the Islamic State, Boko Haram is employing increasingly slick messaging — as evidenced in some recent videos. As of now, however, U.S. officials aren’t sure about how deep the operational links between the two groups run.
The war against Boko Haram has killed perhaps 20,000 people in this decade, and possibly far more. Some 2.4 million are displaced throughout the region. More than 60 percent of these are children. Millions more face dire food shortages.
Boko Haram, which espouses an extreme form of conservative Islam, also has kidnapped and raped hundreds of girls. These include more than 200 they still hold two years after seizing them from their school in the town of Chibok, drawing worldwide condemnation.
Power met with one such child at the Minawao refugee camp, which currently houses almost 60,000 people. It was designed to host 20,000. Less than 50 miles away, Boko Haram’s fighters hide in the wilderness.
“She has nothing to be ashamed of. She is brave and strong and beautiful,” Power said of the 14-year-old girl, who painfully recounted the terrible choice she was given between death and forced marriage. Her name was withheld because she is a child victim.
In the small city of Mokolo, Haulatu Usman, a 28-year-old widow, recounted to Power how she was able to flee with her five children from Nigeria when Boko Haram fighters entered her village, guns ablazing. She doesn’t imagine ever returning.
“They’re around but we don’t see them,” she said of Boko Haram.
Some security gains are evident, even if no one cited anything like Buhari’s assessment from December that “technically we have won the war” because Boko Haram can no longer launch conventional attacks or confront African military forces directly.
With the help of some 200 U.S. special forces in Cameroon, West African nations are at long last enhancing their intelligence sharing, military coordination and counterterrorism planning. But Boko Haram has been on the run before and regained strength.
Midjiwaya Bakari, Maroua’s governor, said security gains in his region have led to a dramatic decrease in suicide bombings over the last three months. The drop, he said, has been replaced by an uptick in another deadly threat posed by Boko Haram: roadside bombs.
South Sudan rebel chief’s return delayed
Juba (AFP) – South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar’s highly-anticipated return to the capital Juba, to take up the role of vice president, was delayed on Monday, his spokesman said, citing “logistical reasons”.
“We are committed to the peace agreement, but there have been logistical issues and the first vice president, Riek Machar, will come tomorrow,” spokesman William Ezekiel said.
Machar’s return to Juba and swearing-in as President Salva Kiir’s deputy will mark an important step in a floundering August 2015 deal to end the country’s civil war.
The agreement is seen as the best hope yet for ending more than two years of fighting that have left the world’s youngest nation in chaos and pushed it to the brink of famine.
Machar previously served as Kiir’s deputy until he was fired just months before the start of war in December 2013.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in a conflict marked by numerous atrocities, with more than two million forced from their homes and nearly six million in need of emergency food aid.
The war broke out in December 2013 when Kiir accused Machar of planning a coup, claims he denied, triggering a cycle of retaliatory killings that divided the desperately poor country along ethnic lines.
The rebel leader was expected to arrive in Juba Monday from his tribal stronghold of Pagak in the east of the country, but despite the latest hitch spokesman Ezekiel said the rebels remain committed to peace.
“We are here to implement all the peace agreement. We have been missing deadlines but we will fulfil in the end,” he said.
– Red carpet no-show –
The red carpet had been rolled out at Juba’s airport on Monday morning, the sentries lined up and the dignitaries were assembling when Machar’s no-show was announced, disappointing many for whom his arrival marks a major tangible step towards peace.
Overnight, posters welcoming Machar, some reading “Reconciling, uniting the nation,” had been torn down, said Ezekiel.
Machar’s arrival will be a milestone in the peace process but experts warn that implementing the deal will be a long and arduous task.
“It will allow the formation of the transitional government, the most significant step in the implementation of the peace agreement,” said Casie Copeland from the International Crisis Group think tank, while warning warned that the conflict would likely continue.
Several militias, driven by local agendas or revenge, do not obey either Machar’s or Kiir’s commands.
Tensions are high ahead of Machar’s return. A 1,370-strong armed rebel force arrived in Juba this month as part of the peace deal, while the government says all but 3,420 of its troops have withdrawn from the city.
The opposing forces are based in camps scattered in and around the capital, while other forces are not allowed within a 25 kilometre (15 mile) radius of Juba.
The army has denied opposition claims that it has secretly returned truckloads of its troops to the capital.
The UN has 11,000 peacekeeping troops in South Sudan, many of them guarding the 185,000 civilians who have spent the past 28 months inside UN bases, too afraid to leave in case they are attacked.
Both the government and rebel forces have been accused of perpetrating ethnic massacres, recruiting and killing children and carrying out widespread rape, torture and forced displacement of populations to “cleanse” areas of their opponents.
– ‘Armed to the teeth’ –
“Both sides are armed to the teeth… should fighting break out this time in Juba, we should expect prolonged battles in the city,” Jacob Akol, a veteran South Sudanese journalist Jacob Akol, wrote in an editorial for the Gurtong peace project.
Machar — who last year said it was not possible to have peace while Kiir remained in power — is now due to arrive Tuesday and is expected to be swiftly sworn in at the presidential palace.
African Union representative Alpha Oumar Konare, a former president of Mali, and Festus Mogae, a former Botswanan president who heads the international ceasefire monitoring team, are expected at the ceremony.
Mogae, who is typically upbeat about developments in the fractured nation, has already warned that the “formation of a new government will not in itself be a panacea”.
Gambia opposition leader arrested as fresh protest erupts
Lawyer Ousainou Darboe, party leader and Secretary General of the opposition United Democratic Party, UDP
Banjul (Gambia) (AFP) – The leader of the Gambia’s main political opposition was arrested Saturday following a second round of demonstrations in the country, with supporters demanding answers over the death in custody of a senior party figure.
United Democratic Party (UDP) chief Ousainou Darboe, a human rights lawyer, was hauled away by police with three other party leaders after beginning a protest march from his residence just outside the capital of Banjul.
Gambian security forces armed with assault rifles fired tear gas at the protesters, according to eyewitnesses.
“Ousainou Darboe and other senior executive members were arrested by the security agents who dispersed the crowd after firing tear gas on them,” witness Modou Ceesay told AFP. “Several people were beaten,” he added.
Around 150 supporters had joined Darboe to call for justice in the case of UDP organising secretary Solo Sandeng, who died in custody on Thursday, according to his party and the Amnesty International rights group.
Sandeng had led a protest which ended with Gambian security forces beating and arresting dozens for making a public call for electoral reform and the resignation of strongman President Yahya Jammeh.
The opposition leader gave a defiant speech at a press conference prior to his arrest calling for the release of his detained colleagues and the return of Sandeng’s body.
“These people have done nothing wrong. They have exercised their constitutional right and that constitutional right we are now going to exercise,” Darboe said.
“We are going out there to ask for Solo’s body to be given to us. We are going to ask for Madam Fatoumata Jawara and the rest to be released.”
Jawara is president of the UDP youth wing and one of two women believed to be in a coma in detention.
“We are not going to allow anyone to trample on our rights on the pretext you want to maintain security and stability in this country,” Darboe told journalists.
– ‘Another crackdown’ expected –
Amnesty International west Africa researcher Sabrina Mahtani told AFP that Sandang had “died shortly after his arrest for participating in what we’ve been told by eyewitnesses was a peaceful protest.”
The circumstances of Sandeng’s death were “as yet unknown”, Mahtani added, calling on the authorities to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation and to release any other UDP members still being held.
Gambia’s information minister did not respond to a call for comment.
President Jammeh was out of the country when both protests took place, but was expected to address the nation upon his return, expected later on Saturday.
A military officer and former wrestler, he has ruled the tiny west African country with an iron fist since he seized power in a coup in 1994, and is regularly accused of sanctioning a catalogue of human rights abuses.
Amnesty’s Mahtani said further repressive measures against opposition activity were likely in the run-up to a presidential election in December widely expected to return Jammeh to power for a fifth term.
“We are concerned with the election period coming up that there will be a further crackdown on fundamental human rights,” she said.
A US State department report released this week accused the Gambia of torture, arbitrary arrest, incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance of citizens, as well as routine harassment of critics.
The UDP has recently filed a lawsuit against the state for keeping the chairman of the electoral commission in power long after his mandate expired, alleging he was also a Jammeh ally in a supposedly neutral position.
The Independent Electoral Commission last year submitted a bill to parliament, later enacted into law, which opposition parties viewed as placing harsh restrictions on their ability to field candidates in elections.
