ADF

ADF STAFF Armed men drove Dawoud Adam Ishak from his home in Sudan’s Darfur region. “They came at night when we were sleeping,” Ishak told Voice of America. “So, we woke up and fled.” Ishak joined more than 100,000 Sudanese who have crossed the border into Chad since fighting broke out on April 15 between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The fighting that started in Khartoum has since extended to the Darfur region, where the RSF has its base. Brutal attacks across West Darfur and North Darfur have burned villages, killed thousands, and…

ADF STAFF Months after a peace deal was signed in Ethiopia, prisoners of war continue to languish behind bars. Some who have been released from detention facilities say they were being held in squalid conditions. New reporting by Al Jazeera found that Tigrayan fighters and civilians are still imprisoned. Complicating matters is a policy adopted near the outbreak of war where the Ethiopian government rounded up thousands of ethnic Tigrayan Soldiers serving in the Ethiopian National Defense Force and detained them. Some are still unaccounted for. “We haven’t been able to gather information on issues such as detention without charges…

ADF STAFF Faced with unrelenting extremist violence and a hostile host government, the United Nations mission in Mali (MINUSMA) announced it will end its mission by the end of the year. In a unanimous vote on June 30, the U.N. Security Council moved to begin the withdrawal of the U.N.’s 15,000-person mission immediately and transfer its tasks to the Malian transitional government by December 31. The move follows a request in June by Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop for U.N. peacekeepers to leave the country. The announcement was met with concern by observers who fear worsening conditions in the country…

ADF STAFF Fabrice Kighoma was dismayed last December when he heard that the United Nations renewed the mandate for its peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). “For me, personally, this is bad news and it hurts me a lot,” the Congolese activist based in Goma told online magazine International Politics and Society Journal. The mission, known as MONUSCO, is unpopular with some Congolese civilians and officials who blame it for failing to pacify the DRC’s violence-plagued eastern provinces. On June 19, MONUSCO and the DRC jointly announced the mission’s withdrawal when its mandate expires in December…

ADF STAFF Al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya’s Northeastern and Coastal regions over two weeks in June killed 23 people, including security officers. Although the terror group hoped the attacks would compel Kenya to pull troops from Somalia, Kenya has vowed to continue the fight and strengthen its border security. The attacks prompted Aden Duale, Kenyan cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Defense, to call a security meeting attended by security heads, local leaders and residents on June 20. Duale vowed to “completely crush” the terrorist group. “This will be the administration that will bring an end to terror attacks. Both in our…

ADF STAFF Residents of Dofinega, a village in central Burkina Faso, heard the rumble of approaching motorcycles in January. The motorcycles carried 40 gunmen wearing fatigues and turbans. A local woman anonymously told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that six gunmen gathered her brothers and some children in a nearby field. Her brothers were forced to lay on their stomachs. “People begged, asking not to be killed, but the terrorists refused,” the woman said. “They executed them in front of us. They shot them in the head.” The children were spared, but three of the woman’s brothers were among 17 men…

ADF STAFF Bodies lie scattered across El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur in Sudan. According to reports from the Darfur Bar Association, the dead lie in their homes, in public buildings and in the streets — where the bodies are sometimes piled into makeshift barricades. All are victims of rampaging fighters from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). West Darfur Gov. Khamees Abakar was captured and executed. RSF Gen. Abdelrahman Juma, one of those who kidnapped Abakar, is now in control of the region. The region’s Masalit ethnic group recently reported that the carnage in West Darfur has left 5,000…

ADF STAFF Multinational collaboration was on full display at the 2023 African Lion joint military training exercise from May 31 to June 14, 2023. A joint chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) explosive ordnance disposal training event in Tamale, Ghana, exemplified the spirit of African Lion, underscoring the principle of “Stronger Together.” Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) personnel learned to respond in a CBRN environment and shared firefighting techniques with their U.S. military counterparts. GAF Sgt. Richard Darkwa, an explosive ordnance disposal technician, praised the exchange of knowledge. “The coordination has been very good because they are free for us to…

ADF STAFF Fatima Abdallah is among more than 100,000 Sudanese who have fled to Chad since fighting broke out on April 15. “We will not go back,” she told Al-Jazeera. “We will stay in Chad because here there is a government.” Chad closed its 1,400-kilometer border with Sudan soon after fighting erupted between Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and his rival, known as Hemedti, who leads the Rapid Support Forces. A continuous flow of people escaping Sudan is overwhelming hospitals and international aid systems in border communities such as Adré. The current wave of displaced…

ADF STAFF About 100 armed men on motorcycles killed 18 civilians in Kaobagou, Benin, near the tri-border area with Togo and Burkina Faso in early May. Survivors said that 15 victims had their throats slit, a homemade bomb was attached to one of the bodies and 12 villagers were missing. All the victims were young men. It was the 10th incident involving violent extremist groups or sparked by inter-community tensions in Kaobagou since February 3, the Netherlands Institute for International Relations Clingendael reported. Kaobagou is an administrative division under the jurisdiction of the commune of Kérou. “Did we really need…