French President Emmanuel Macron told his country military leaders to consider all options as it seeks to review its operations against Islamist militants in West Africa.

Macron’s first public remarks since 13 French soldiers died during a combat mission in Mali included an earnest plea for his international allies to do more.

France, a former colonial power, is the only Western country with a significant military presence waging counter-insurgency operations in Mali and the wider Sahel region south of the Sahara desert.

What happened?

The 13 French soldiers were killed in Mali on Monday when two helicopters collided in the dark after being called in to provide air support during a combat mission to track down a band of Islamic State fighters.

Islamic State said on Thursday that its West African branch had caused the collision, but it did not provide any evidence for the claim.

The French government has faced criticism at home that its troops are bogged down, while critical voices in the region have increasingly scorned Paris for failing to restore stability and anti-French sentiment has grown.

Thirty eight French troops have been killed in the West African Sahel since France sent troops to Mali in 2013.

Macron’s reaction

Macron invited those seeking to understand the cost of France’s mission in the Sahel should witness a ceremony to honour the dead soldiers. The country will be mourning its heaviest single loss of troops for nearly four decades.

“France is acting in the Sahel on everyone’s behalf,” an emotional Macron told a news conference with NATO General-Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

“Our mission there is important. Nevertheless, the situation we face compels me today to examine all our strategic options.”

France’s options

Macron said he had told his government and top military leaders to look hard at France’s operations in the region, adding, “I told them all options are open”.

He gave no indication what those options were. However, French officials have ruled out withdrawing its 4,500-strong force from the region, fearing this could lead to even more chaos.

As France mourns the dead commandos, Macron wants to incorporate more European allies into operations and to ensure local troops are better trained and equipped.

French officials have also bemoaned the fact peace accords agreed in Mali in 2015 have still not been implemented and that the political will power to implement them is missing.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told lawmakers there was a need for more political action in Mali and a common desire to defeat terrorism, adding that was also the case for neighbouring Burkina Faso.

An unwinnable war?

Despite French troops, 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Mali and thousands of pan-regional forces, Islamist militants have strengthened their foothold across the arid Sahel region, making large swathes of territory ungovernable and stoking ethnic violence, especially in Mali and Burkina Faso.

On Wednesday, France’s top general acknowledged France would never achieve a total victory over al Qaeda- and Islamic State-affiliated militants.

Macron’s government denies it is bogged down in an intractable conflict. But Monday’s deaths have provoked renewed public comparisons with the United States’ drawn-out military involvement in Afghanistan.

France has complained to European allies that it is bearing the brunt of a counter-terrorism operation that benefits all Europe. It hopes to persuade them quickly to send special forces to the region to back up local troops, Le Drian said.

REUTERS

Zimbabwe is on the brink of man-made starvation and the number of people needing help is “shocking” for a country not in conflict, a United Nations special expert on the right to food said Thursday.

Hilal Elver said she found stunted and underweight children, mothers too hungry to breastfeed their babies and medicine shortages in hospitals during her 10-day visit to the economically shattered country.

She said the southern African nation is among the four most food insecure states in the world. The others — Yemen, South Sudan and Somalia — have been ravaged by war. Zimbabwe’s food crisis has the potential to spark fighting, the U.N. expert said.

“I urgently call on the government, all political parties and the international community to come together to put an end to this spiraling crisis before it morphs into a full-blown conflict,” she said.

The consequences of hunger have been dire, Elver said. School dropouts, early marriage, domestic violence, prostitution and sexual exploitation are on the rise.

She blamed widespread corruption, mismanagement, natural disasters, droughts and sanctions for the crisis. Zimbabwe is facing its worst economic difficulties in more than a decade.

More than 60% of the population of 16 million is now considered food insecure. “It comes from (a) dysfunctional system,” the U.N. expert said.

About 5.5 million people in rural areas face food insecurity. In urban areas, about 2.2 million people lack access to basic public services, including health and safe water, according to figures by U.N agencies and the government. Electricity is cut up to 19 hours a day.

“These are shocking figures and the crisis continues to worsen,” Elver said. Where food items are available most people have no money to buy, she said.

Critics blame the administration of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who has struggled to fulfil promises of prosperity since taking power in 2017 after the forced resignation of longtime leader Robert Mugabe.

Mnangagwa blames recurrent droughts and sanctions imposed by the United States for the crisis. The U.S. says the sanctions target entities and individuals, including Mnangagwa, over rights abuses, not the country at large.

AP

The spokesman of the Gabonese presidency, Ike Ngouoni, has been detained in the capital Libreville in what is believed to be an anti-corruption investigation, his lawyers told the AFP news agency on Monday.

Mr. Ngouoni, along with over a dozen others have been detained since last Thursday “without any reason,” said lawyer, Anges Kévin Nzigou.

The lawyer further disclosed that his clients were all questioned about the financing of the “republican tour” led a few months ago by Brice Laccruche Alihanga, then cabinet director of the presidency.

The wave of arrests in progress is neither a witch hunt nor a settling of accounts. The fight against impunity has no agenda or timetable, it is permanent.

Despite his efforts, it was in early November that he was sacked from the presidency. He was subsequently appointed to the post of minister in charge of the follow-up of the “Strategy of the human investments and the objectives of sustainable development”.

Another lawyer for the detained presidential spokesperson, Boris Rosenthal, insists that “there is a political vendetta” in the current process, a claim the Prime Minister refutes.

“The wave of arrests in progress is neither a witch hunt nor a settling of accounts,” said Gabonese Prime Minister Julien Nkoghe Bekale on Monday on Twitter. “The fight against impunity has no agenda or timetable, it is permanent.”

The Central Africa oil producer has in the past few months been rocked by a timber scandal that also led to the firing of top government officials including the vice president.

Source: Africa News

Residents in DR Congo’s volatile city of Beni set fire to the local town hall and accused US peacekeepers of inaction after eight civilians were killed overnight in a militant attack, an AFP reporter said.

Army spokesman Colonel Mak Hazukai confirmed the latest casualties in the city, near the Ugandan border, telling AFP that “the enemy entered the Boikene quarter and killed eight civilians.”

Incensed locals then partly burnt the town hall and then moved towards the camp of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) on the outskirts of Beni, accusing it of inaction.   

There have been a string of rallies against local forces and UN peacekeepers in Beni for failing to stop attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia.

Nearly 70 civilians have been massacred in the Beni region since military action against the ADF began at the start of November.

A protester died in police firing on Saturday. Two policemen were killed the same day by angry demonstrators, the UN Okapi radio said.

The ADF began as an Islamist rebellion hostile to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. They fell back into eastern DRC in 1995 and have recruited people of different nationalities, but appear to have halted raids inside Uganda.

MONUSCO on Saturday said the Congolese army had launched the offensive unilaterally.

“MONUSCO cannot engage in operations in a war zone without being asked and without strict coordination with the national army,” it said in a tweet, adding that uncoordinated action could lead to friendly fire.

(AFP)

Seven crew aboard a supply ship for the oil industry in Equatorial Guinea were kidnapped when “pirates” attacked their vessel, the oil and gas ministry said in a statement.The 15-member crew comprised nationals from South Africa, the Philippines, Serbia, and Cameroon.

The US oil giant ExxonMobil reported the supply ship Warden, which it was chartering from the oil services firm Swire, was attacked on Wednesday in the country’s territorial waters, it said.“Eight hid and seven were kidnapped,” the statement said.

The vessel had left the oilfield of Zafiro, 12 nautical miles off the coast, and was heading to Luba, a port town on the southern island of Bioko, when it was attacked.The statement gave no details about the kidnappers or their motives.Equatorial Guinea is located on the southern rim of the Gulf of Guinea, one of the world’s hotspots for maritime piracy.In the first nine months of this year, the region accounted for 82 percent of crew kidnappings around the world, according to the International Maritime Bureau, an organization monitoring crimes at sea.

In 2018, attacks doubled over the previous year.Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea sometimes divert ships for several days, long enough to plunder the cargo and demand huge ransoms before freeing the crew.On Nov. 4, four sailors were kidnapped and a guard was shot and wounded when suspected pirates stormed an oil tanker off the coast of Togo.

Two days earlier, pirates attacked a Norwegian-owned ship waiting to berth at the port of Cotonou in Benin, taking eight crew and the captain.In August, Russian, Chinese and Ukrainian seamen were seized in attacks on merchant ships off Cameroon’s port of Douala.

The countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea, an arc that stretches some 6,000 kilometers from Angola to Liberia in the north, have limited surveillance and maritime defense capabilities.They have been trying for several years to bolster their means of intervention and improve regional collaboration with US and French help. 

Source: AFP

Heavy rains lashing East Africa have caused dozens of deaths, with 29 buried by landslides in Kenya, and 10 people drowned in a river in Tanzania, officials said Saturday.

The landslides and floods come amid weeks of destructive rains and flooding across the wider East African region.

At least 29 people were killed in Kenya when their homes were swept away in landslides during ferocious overnight rainstorms.

Their homes were hit in the early hours of Saturday amid torrential rains in the Pokot region, 350 kilometers northwest of the capital, Nairobi.

“We are saddened to confirm that 12 people from Tapach and Parua in Pokot South, and 17 from Tamkal in Pokot Central lost their lives,” Kenya’s Interior Minister Fred Matiang’i said in a statement.

“Our profound sympathies go to the families and friends of those who have been affected.”

Army and police helicopters have been sent, Matiang’i said, with efforts delayed because roads had been cut and bridges closed after streams turned into raging torrents.

Two children were pulled out alive from the smashed wreckage of their mud-covered homes, and rescue efforts to dig bodies out of the dirt continued.

“Massive landslides reported in various areas of West Pokot County following heavy downpour,” Kenya Red Cross said in a message, adding its emergency response teams had deployed to help.

Extreme weather

In Tanzania, at least 10 people drowned when they were swept away by a torrential river in the far west, in the Sengerema district of Mwanza.

“We think there is a possibility to find more bodies,” said Tanzanian Red Cross official Revocatus Kayanda, part of the team who recovered the victims.

Violent downpours have also displaced tens of thousands in Somalia, submerged whole towns in South Sudan, and killed dozens in flash floods and landslides in Ethiopia.

Close to a million people in South Sudan alone are affected with growing fears of disease and starvation.

Floods hit East Africa regularly, but scientists say that it has been exacerbated by a powerful climate phenomenon in the Indian Ocean, stronger than any seen in years.

The extreme weather is blamed on the Indian Ocean Dipole — a climate system defined by the difference in sea surface temperature between the western and eastern areas of the ocean.

The ocean off East Africa is currently far warmer than usual, resulting in higher evaporation and consequent rain over the continent.

(Source: AFP)

Wildlife conservationists who have played an important role in protecting wildlife in Africa were honoured by the Duke of Cambridge in London on Thursday (November 21).

The Prince William Award for Conservation in Africa was awarded to Carlos Lopes Pereira from Mozambique, where the number of protected species like elephants and rhinos has been dwindling.

Prince William explained that, “the species that we are struggling to keep alive in the system is the protected species like the elephant, rhino. We almost lost all rhinos. We have few rhinos in the country, in the south. Elephants – we had a disastrous situation between 2010, 2014. We lost almost 60 percent of our elephant population. But we have, I think and I hope we’ll keep it for a long time stabilised on the protected species.”

Zambia’s Benson Kanyembo took home the Wildlife Ranger award, while Senegal’s Tomas Diagne was honoured for his work in conserving African turtles and tortoises.

“When I started my work, I started as a junior person who never thought they would be recognised, and it has sent a different message. Everyone, those who feel like they’re left out, now they are working hard. They know people are looking at them. One day they’ll be recognised. So it’s a big morale booster to all the rangers, not only in Africa, all Zambia. The whole Africa, everyone is appreciating,” Benson said after receiving the award.

Two finalists – Jeneria Lekilelei from Kenya and Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka from Uganda — also won grants in recognition of their work to protect lions and mountain gorillas respectively.

The annual event has been held for the past seven years.

REUTERS

Twenty-four Malian soldiers and 17 jihadists fighters were killed Monday in clashes in the east of the country, the army said, as security in the west African nation deteriorates further.

Mali and Niger forces were carrying out a joint operation when a patrol was attacked by “terrorists” near the northeastern town of Tabankort, the army said on social media.

According to the military the total toll was “24 dead, 29 injured and material damage” while 17 of the jihadists were killed and a hundred more suspects captured.

The prisoners are in the hands of Niger soldiers, the statement said.

In an earlier statement, which gave a lower death toll, the army said French and Niger forces took part in a counterattack.

The authorities have not named the assailants or identified which group they belonged to. From strongholds in Mali, groups with al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) group links have been able to fan out across the Sahel, destabilising parts of Niger and Burkina Faso.

Violence across the Sahel border regions

Northern Mali fell into the hands of jihadists in 2012 before the militants were forced out by a French-led military intervention.

Since then however, the border regions of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have become the theatre of repeated clashes with jihadist fighters.

Mali’s army has been struggling to contain the Islamist insurgency despite help from France, African neighbours and the UN. 

Monday’s action was another heavy loss for the army, which lost a hundred soldiers in two jihadist attacks in a month in the autumn.

The West African country is still reeling from an attack on an army post that killed 54 in early November – one of the deadliest strikes against its military in recent memory, which underscored the increasing reach and sophistication of armed jihadist groups active in the wider region.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

Four people were kidnapped after thousands of displaced civilians fled their homes during an attack on a church compound in South Sudan last Thursday.

Homes of civilians were torched and property destroyed by unknown assailants in Rimenze, in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria region.

“Up to now people are still sleeping in the bush, because there is no security. Even they had come to the church and there is no security in the church. There is no information about the government tackling the security here’‘, said Reverend Father Peter Babetimo of the Rimenze Catholic Church.

Charles Jacob Mbaro is one of Rimenze’s internally displaced persons.

“They removed grass, set my tukul (hut) on fire. Then they entered my neighbour’s tukul, looted their bicycle, motorbike and some money about 30,000 South Sudanese pounds (300 US dollars) then they left”, Mbaro said.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) dispatched a joint assessment mission to the area. The team arrived on Thursday.

“We really have not been able to attribute it to anyone but still civilians should enjoy their security and we will take this and advocate with the state authorities – to have at least a police post in Rimenze, so that we are able to detect some of the incidents that affect the civilians in this area”, said Human rights officer, Antonina Okuta.

Rimenze has been used as a battlefield in the fight between the government and armed rebel groups since 2016.

The formation of South Sudan’s unity government, which was extended for 100 days on November 12, has left civilians frustrated. They are unsure of whether it is safe to return to the camp for displaced persons.

AP

Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta rejected any gay agenda to be tabled in a global population conference to be held in Nairobi next week.

Kenya will host the population conference “but will not accept practices that are at conflict with our cultures,” President Uhuru Kenyatta has said.

Kenyatta reiterated Kenya’s stand to protect cultural norms by not allowing any practices that will be seen devaluing traditions of various local communities.

It is understood that the President was referring to the push by reproductive health activists for legal abortion and homosexual rights during the conference.

“We will welcome the visitors Nairobi. We will be there and we will listen. But will be firm in rejecting what we do not agree with,” he said.

“We have a stand,” he said, adding that “But on things that do not conform with our cultures and religion, we will firmly reject,” he told the gathering attended by UNFPA country director Ademola Olajide and western diplomats.

President Kenyatta has been quoted many times rejecting total inclusion of homosexuals in the constitution.

Kenya’s High Court on May 24, 2019 upheld laws criminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults.

Several Africa states have made it illegal to practise homosexuality though some have changed tune.

In January, Angola issued a revised penal code that no longer punished so-called “vices against nature.” Other African countries that have revoked anti-homosexuality laws through penal code reform in recent years include Seychelles, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, and Lesotho. Botswana’s High Court is scheduled to hear a case in June, on the constitutionality of laws that make same-sex intimacy a crime.

But 33 countries in Africa still have laws on the books that outlaw consensual same-sex relations. One of them, Chad, criminalized same-sex relations for the first time in 2017.

Source: Africa News