US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte leaves April 11 for Sudan, where the State Department says the Khartoum government can expect new sanctions if there is no movement on a long-delayed expansion of international peacekeeping in Darfur. But State… Read moreNegroponte to Sudan: no ultimatum on Darfur
Here’s a glimmer of hope from Eritrea—and how does it square the widespread reports that the Eritrean regime is backing the Islamist insurgents in Somalia? An April 8 report on SomaliNet states: “The Eritrean government has with immediate effect banned… Read moreEritrea bans female genital mutilation
Forces from the separatist Somali state of Somaliland and neighboring autonomous Puntland clashed April 9 over a disputed strip of land along their shared border in the Sanag region. “Puntland forces attacked the town of Dahar around 8:00 this morning,”… Read morePuntland clashes with Somaliland
Three months after the White House successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea over that country’s nuclear test, the Bush administration “allowed” Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from Pyongyang in what appears to… Read moreNYT: US “allowed” North Korea arms sale to Ethiopia
A new report claims the CIA and FBI operate secret prisons in Ethiopia to interrogate terror suspects. According to the Associated Press, which worked with Human Rights Watch in the investigation, the US has interrogated hundreds of suspects from over… Read moreSecret CIA prisons in Ethiopia?
Speaking to reporters after winning Mauritania’s first “free elections,” Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdalahi pledged to “transform” the nation and “build a country that conforms to the norms of justice and economic development.” In implicit reference to the early-’90s violence, in… Read moreMauritania: democratic transition …except for slaves
South African and foreign intelligence agencies have been monitoring an alleged Islamist militant training camp at Greenbushes, Port Elizabeth, according to local press reports. One magazine has even published a report on the alleged training camp. The report—including photographs of… Read moreAl-Qaeda in South Africa?
European Union election observers won’t be sent to Nigeria’s delta region during next month’s landmark elections due to the ongoing attacks and kidnappings which have prompted thousands of foreigners to flee the oil heartland in the past year. “We are… Read moreNigeria: petro-violence bars EU observers
Muslim pupils at a secondary school in northeastern Nigeria’s Gombe state beat a teacher to death March 21 after accusing her of desecrating the Koran, police and witnesses said. Oluwatoyin Olusase, a Christian, was apparently overseeing an “Islamic Religious Knowledge”… Read moreMore sectarian violence in Nigeria
Gunmen kidnapped two Chinese men and a Nigerian man working for a local company in the southeastern state of Anambra March 17. The Chinese were the first foreigners kidnapped outside of the country’s oil heartland in the southern Niger Delta…. Read moreChinese workers kidnapped in Nigeria
It is endless, and it comes (tellingly) from the both the right and the left. The latest entry is from Columbia University scholar Mahmood Mamdani, writing in the March 8 London Review of Books—who probably fancies himself on the left…. Read moreMore denial on Darfur —this time from the “left”
From Reuters, March 8: More than a million Muslim pilgrims packed Senegal’s remote northeastern city of Touba on Thursday as members of the powerful Mouride brotherhood flocked to “Africa’s Mecca” from across the world. Huge crowds moved shoulder to shoulder… Read moreSenegal: million pilgrims honor Sufi saint
