UN experts’ reports differ over Darfur arms violations
A seismic diplomatic row is rumbling at United Nations headquarters in New York over the circulation of a damning report by former UN experts pointing to the supply...
Small bands of the Lord’s Resistance Army are going into eastern Congo and employing new methods to terrorise local people
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters have left Central African Republic for Garamba, in Orientale Province in north-eastern Congo-Kinshasa. They are now concentrating on theft and looting rather than...
Threats, rivalries and renewed ethnic tensions befoul the air as the international court’s suspects try to close down the case
The two declared presidential candidates facing charges of crimes against humanity at the Hague are determined to ward them off. An unexpected cabinet reshuffle at the end of...
Khartoum mobilises against South Sudan and breaks off all negotiations
The seizure of the oil town of Heglig by South Sudan’s armed forces on 10 April ratchets up Juba’s confrontation with Khartoum’s National Congress Party (NCP) regime, which...
Vol 53 No 8 |
- SOMALIA
- TURKEY
Turkey is underscoring its engagement in Somalia through development projects in Somaliland and Puntland. It sees the projects as proving to the United States and European Union the...
Regardless of the recent defeats of Al Haraka al Shabaab al Mujahideen, senior African Union Mission in Somalia commanders privately admit that the next phase of military operations is fraught with potential difficulties. Since forcing Al Shabaab out of Mogadishu in August, five years after Amisom first came to Somalia, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force’s 5,500-strong contingent is slowly moving out to assume control of new territory beyond the capital. Any bolder moves to occupy territory further afield, however, depend on leaving currently-occupied zones to Transitional Federal Government (TFG) soldiers and police, whose competence and reliability are in some doubt. Amisom commanders also worry because communications are scant and coordination absent with the Ethiopian forces to the south. Now that the Kenyan forces have been re-hatted as Amisom, links with them should improve.
Lack of trust in the TFG forces who have to take over the Ugandan and Burundian positions when Amisom moves out of Mogadishu is making Amisom tread...
Uganda’s political and military elite is content with a long conflict in Somalia, while its Ethiopian and Kenyan allies prefer as short an involvement as possible.
The outgoing head of Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, Richard Alderman, has spoken out about the shortcomings of the British criminal justice system in relation to corporate...
The former Chief Executive Officer of troubled Air Tanzania Corporation Limited, David Mattaka, and two others appeared in court on 21 March to answer charges of abuse of...
A fast-growing economy, grand hydropower schemes and one of Africa’s biggest armies all reinforce Ethiopia’s regional dominance
Leaders from China, India, Europe, Japan, Turkey, the United States and across Africa are expected at what the government plans as a show of Ethiopia’s regional leadership. The...