The international community has been attempting to restore peace to West Africa, long torn by multiple inter-related ethnic and civil conflicts. Now, just as Liberia is hailed as a success story—with the country’s first post-war president, and Africa’s first woman… Read moreIvory Coast violence: new “great game” for West Africa?
Royal Dutch Shell has shut down a tenth of Nigeria’s oil production, after armed militants kidnapped four foreign oil workers and blew up a major pipeline Jan. 11. The incidents followed attacks on pipelines owned by the Nigerian state-owned oil… Read moreNigeria: headed for civil war?
More than 3,500 Congolese soldiers, supported by 600 UN troops and helicopter gunships, launched attacks Dec. 24 on guerillas operating in the eastern Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sixteen government troops and some 35 guerillas are reported… Read moreUN troops, Congolese forces battle Uganda rebels
From AP, Dec. 23: PARIS — A French military tribunal opened an investigation Friday into allegations that French peacekeepers facilitated attacks on ethnic minority Tutsis during the 1994 genocide of more than half a million Rwandans, judicial officials said. A… Read moreFrench role in Rwanda genocide probed
From Reuters, Dec. 19: The World Court in The Hague found on Monday that Uganda violated the sovereignty of the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and was responsible for human rights abuses there during a 1998-2003 war. The court added… Read moreWorld Court: Uganda guilty in Congo war
The patrician wonks at the Council on Foreign Relations raise the alarm in a January report that Africa will be increasingly strategic to global energy security in the coming century—and that China is beating the US to the punch in… Read moreDarfur: pawn in US-China oil war?
The December issue of The Broken Rifle, newsletter of the War Resisters International, which supports conscientious objectors from military service around the world, offers this report from a strategically-placed country not often in the news: Eritrea. We noted in our… Read moreConscientious objection in Eritrea
The case of Chad’s former president Hissène HabrĂ©, now fighting a Belgian extradition request on atrocity charges, will be handed over to African Union leaders to decide next month, Senegal’s government announced. Senegal’s Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio said Nov…. Read moreAfrican Union to decide in Chad war crimes case
Police and troops in Kampala, capital of Uganda, are reported to be firing live and plastic bullets in running battles with protesters angered by the arrest on treason charges last night of the president’s main political rival, Kizza Besigye. The… Read moreUprising in Uganda
How are we to read this one? Is the US conniving with the Sudan regime while trying to appear not to be? Or is the US gearing up for unilateral intervention in Sudan, and trying to make the UN appear… Read moreBolton bars UN testimony on Darfur
The Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, a militia group from Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta region, has seized a pumping station in protest of the arrest of its leader. More than 100 armed men in boats stormed the Idama flow-station, sources… Read moreNiger Delta: Ijaw militia seizes Chevron installation
Juan Gonzalez of the NY Daily News Sept. 6 calls out FEMA for promoting the newsworthy Rev. Pat Robertson’s private charity for Katrina disaster-relief donations—and recalls the group’s links to the sleazy African diamonds trade, unearthed by a law enforcement… Read moreFEMA promotes Pat Robertson’s charity —despite Congo diamond scandal
