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
From Reuters, Feb. 14: Militias in Somalia are looting shipments of aid for drought victims and forcing aid drivers to pay bribes, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Attacks by Somali pirates in recent months have caused aid agencies to… Read moreProtein wars in Somalia
At least 16 people were injured Jan. 20 as Ethiopian police cracked down on opposition protests in the capital, Addis Ababa, on the second and final day of celebrations marking Timkat, the Epiphany festival of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Demonstrators… Read moreEthiopia: police attack Epiphany processions
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?
