Revelations by Human Rights Watch May 26 that Darfur’s Janjaweed have overrun villages in Chad. The rapidly shifting alliances are dizzying here. On the face of it, this is simple: Chad’s government has backed the Darfur guerillas and this is… Read moreHRW: Janjaweed raid Chad
A front-page story in today’s New York Times paints an even more desperate picture of the deteriorating situation in Darfur than usual. Lydia Polgreen reports from Tina, a village that was overrun April 19 and the residents forced to flee… Read moreDarfur: rebel alliance splits
Nine bombs exploded across Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa May 12, killing four people and wounding dozens. (AP, May 13) The Oromi separatists deny involvement. But Ethiopia has no shortage of ethnic separatist struggles, as we have noted. And also no… Read moreRebels or government behind Ethiopia terror blasts?
We can already anticipate the blame-the-victim chorus that will be raised by the oil companies, Nigeria’s rulers and the global media. But when resource hyper-exploitation co-exists with dire poverty, such incidents are absolutely inevitable. From the Lagos Vanguard, May 13,… Read moreNigeria: 200 dead in pipeline blast
The April 30 march in Washington, organized by the Save Darfur Coalition, brought out some heroes of the left, like George Clooney, but also some that the hard left loves to hate, like Elie Wiesel and Samantha Power. While policy-makers… Read moreDarfur: glimmer of hope?
With Darfur in the headlines, if not the minds of our policymakers, it is generally forgotten that armed attacks, forced deportations and even slavery continue against Black African peoples throughout the Sahel. On Tuesday, May 9, at 7:30 PM, the… Read moreMauritanian anti-slavery activist to speak in NYC
We wonder how he feels to be briefly on the Reuters wire April 30? Eritrea’s last native Jew tends graves, remembers 58-year-old Sami Cohen has fond memories of friends, parents and families in the Horn of Africa. Now there’s little… Read moreEritrea’s Jews: down to one
From Newsday, April 23: LAGOS – A militant group that has been attacking Nigeria’s oil pipelines and helping to drive up world oil prices added a new tactic last week by detonating a car bomb in a major oil city… Read moreNiger Delta insurgents escalate tactics
Still hailing the cartoon protests as heroic anti-imperialism? From AP, Feb. 21: Christian and Muslim mobs rampaged through two Nigerian cities Tuesday, killing at least 24 people in violence that followed deadly protests against caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed during… Read moreNigeria: more religious violence
The Niger Delta, in Nigeria’s south, has long been beset by ethnic struggles over distribution of the region’s oil wealth. Now the north, where Muslim-Christian tensions have long simmered, is boiling over—ostensibly over the cartoon controversy, but one wonders what… Read moreNorthern Nigeria explodes
A new adittion to the alphabet soup of armed rebel groups in Africa’s most oil-rich region: the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). From the BBC, Feb. 17: A Nigerian militant commander in the oil-rich southern Niger… Read moreNiger Delta militia warns of “total war”
From Africa News Dimension, Feb. 15: Around 10,000 Eritrean-Americans marched from the White House to the Department of State in Washington , DC to urge the U.S. government to ensure the enforcement of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission’s (EEBC) “final and… Read moreEritreans march in DC for border demarcation
