ADF

ADF STAFF Senegalese authorities in February seized 805 kilograms of cocaine in waters about 530 kilometers off the coast of Dakar from a Gambian fishing boat. The seizure resulted in seven arrests. The Gambian vessel was intercepted by Senegalese officers through collaboration with the Atlantic Analysis and Operations Center, the French Air Force and the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. According to Gambian newspaper The Point, the arrests and seizure were made after a seven-month investigation into an Albanian drug trafficking organization based in Spain that has access to a large maritime infrastructure in Brazil. From there, vessels loaded with cocaine sail to the…

ADF STAFF Kibsa Ouedraogo is chief of Noaka, a community in north-central Burkina Faso that is surrounded by artisanal gold mines that have become magnets for terrorists. “The terrorists hear that this site or that one is thriving with gold, and then they target those sites — they can kill everyone or they take control and take taxes,” Kibsa told Financial Times. “To me, it’s not about religion — it’s a kind of mafia.” Kibsa’s story has become a common one among communities in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The region is peppered with gold mines — both official and…

ADF STAFF Shouting and gunfire filled the air on an August night in the central Malian farming village of Bujo. Mostly unarmed, Bujo’s residents had to flee to survive the sudden attack. By morning, 17 villagers were dead. Terrorists torched their homes, stole their livestock and looted their stores. Survivors buried victims in a communal graveyard, then walked 15 kilometers to the town of Bandiagara. The terrorist attack was one of more than a dozen assaults that killed at least 100 people and displaced tens of thousands in central Mali in August. “We are really completely lost,” Wilas Bujo, a farmer…

ADF STAFF In response to brutal attacks against civilians by militia members, some of Sudan’s pro-democracy groups who once protested the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have rallied to support it. In the six months since fighting erupted between the SAF and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the militia controlled by a general known as Hemedti has been accused of a host of atrocities including rape, summary executions and burning entire communities to the ground. Now some groups are taking sides and making clear who they blame for the atrocities. “We believe that this war was caused by a conflict of…

ADF STAFF More than 100 Malian Armed Forces (FAMA) vehicles deployed in a slow-moving convoy from the city of Gao on October 2. Their ultimate destination: the town of Kidal, a Tuareg stronghold in the north that has been controlled by a coalition of former rebels since 2013. The two sides renewed hostilities in August after the collapse of the 2015 Algiers peace accord, which had not been fully implemented but granted some regional autonomy to Tuareg groups. Fighting and rhetoric have since escalated. “The process of irreversible occupation of Malian lands, which is part of Mali’s unity, continues and…

ADF STAFF The Nigeria Customs Service in mid-July seized 31 weapons, including pump action rifles, various pistols and 442 rounds of ammunition, at two ports in Lagos. The weapons were hidden in plastic drums and sacks of charcoal. The bust, which resulted in two arrests, was made as authorities decried the proliferation of illegal weapons into the city, as the weapons are often used in crimes such as drug trafficking, armed robbery, kidnapping, murder and sexual and gender-based violence. “Most worrisome in all these [crimes] is a noticeable trend that indicates an increasing local expertise in the [manufacture] of various…

ADF STAFF Since the death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash in August, some of its mercenaries have moved on to other organizations, while the Russian Ministry of Defense and Prigozhin’s 25-year-old son, Pavel, both claim control over the organization. “The process of fragmentation began immediately after Prigozhin’s death,” analyst Anton Mardasov, an expert with the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and Middle East Institute, wrote recently for Al-Monitor. Since arriving in Africa in 2017, Wagner has spread pro-Russian propaganda and committed countless human rights violations while smuggling out gold, diamonds and timber — most recently…

ADF STAFF Ethiopia’s historic city of Gondar was the scene of a fresh round of fighting between an ethnic Amhara militia and government forces. The battle near a world heritage site threatens to plunge Ethiopia back into conflict less than a year after a peace agreement was signed to end the war in Tigray. “Fears of another war that could match or even eclipse what happened in Tigray are not misplaced if a solution is not found,” Yohannes Gedamu, a political scientist and author of a book about Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism, wrote in an essay for The Conversation. “The impact…

ADF STAFF The tiny Agaléga islands of Mauritius remain untouched by tourism and industry. Its roughly 300 residents mainly live off coconuts and fish, as they have for generations. The pair of islands are about 1,000 kilometers north of the country’s main island in a part of the southwestern Indian Ocean that is home to some of the world’s most important shipping lanes. Until 2021, the islands had only one dock for fishing boats and a small airfield, but that has changed. India recently built a major airstrip and jetty on Agaléga’s larger northern island. According to Indian news channel…

ADF STAFF When he took the podium at the United Nations General Assembly meeting on September 20, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Felix Tshisekedi called for an expedited withdrawal of the U.N. mission, known as MONUSCO. “It is time for our country to take full control of its destiny and become the main actor in its own stability,” he said. But experts say moving up the timetable by a year — the end of 2023 instead of the end of 2024 — is short-sighted for a number of reasons. “They are going to be replaced by regional forces,…