ADF

ADF STAFF The decades-old dispute over Western Sahara is causing rivals Morocco and Algeria to edge closer to conflict. The disagreement reignited when a cease-fire collapsed in November 2020 between Morocco and the Sahrawi independence movement known as the Polisario Front. Polisario leader Brahim Ghali says they are at war. His group, backed by Algeria, has threatened to launch attacks against “air, land and sea targets” in Morocco. “The Sahrawi people has made up its mind and taken the sovereign decision to escalate its just war of liberation with all legitimate means — first and foremost the armed struggle,” Ghali…

ADF STAFF After two decades that saw steep drops in military coups, observers are worried they may be on the rise again in Africa. This year in Sudan, Mali and Guinea, heads of state were removed from power, not at the ballot box, but at the barrel of a gun. This is a reversal of long-term declines in coup-making on the continent. The continent recorded 22 successful coups in the 1980s and 16 in the 1990s before domestic demands for good governance and international pressure led to a drop in coup-making. There were only eight successful coups between 2000 and…

ADF STAFF Somali authorities have vowed to crack down on foreign vessels fishing illegally in the country’s waters and protect the livelihoods of 70,000 people who work in its fisheries sector. The government’s announcement was made in late October, weeks after Somalia’s territorial areas in the Indian Ocean were increased by the International Court of Justice. The ruling reduced areas of the ocean that previously belonged to Kenya. After years of declining pirate attacks in Somalia, fishing fleets, mostly from Iran and Yemen but increasingly from China, have made illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing a major challenge that costs…

ADF STAFF The fight against a violent Islamist insurgency in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado region is beginning to stabilize, thanks to the help of regional and Western forces and advisors. Now the coastal country in Southern Africa is making plans for a self-sufficient future. On November 10, President Filipe Nyusi announced a restructuring of the country’s defense and security forces with a counterterrorism emphasis. The Mozambique Armed Defense Forces (FADM) will launch a special force of elite Soldiers and police to combat extremists known locally as Ansar al-Sunna. “The new force is meant to replace the foreign troops once they return…

ADF STAFF In mid-November, members of Russia’s Kremlin-backed Wagner Group attacked two mining sites in the Central African Republic (CAR) town of Kouki, killing 19 artisanal miners. Wagner troops also set fire to homes and shops, burning some residents alive. Wagner claimed the dead were members of rebel groups fighting the government, according to the CAR’s Corbeau News Centrafrique. Villagers contradicted that claim. Rebel forces left the village a year ago, they said. The dead were artisanal miners and Chadian citizens. Similar stories abound throughout the CAR, where Wagner Group mercenaries have spent the past four years supporting President Faustin-Archange…

ADF STAFF Alagie Sarr remembers when fishermen in the coastal Gambian town of Gunjur could spend a few hours on the water and come back with a robust catch. Those days are over. Due to overfishing by foreign industrial vessels, a proliferation of fishmeal factories and a perceived lack of governmental oversight, Gambian fishermen say they are now forced to fish much farther from shore, a time-consuming, fuel-draining effort that often results in increasingly smaller catches. “When you want a catch, you sail 50-100 kilometers at sea,” Sarr told Gambian newspaper Foryaa. “If you want a good catch, you must…

ADF STAFF Ethiopia’s military conflict with its regional state of Tigray has been expanding beyond the mountainous northern province for months. More recently, the number of groups opposing the federal government has expanded as well. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has been at the center of the struggle since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered an offensive into Tigray a year ago. Now the TPLF is not alone. In July 2021, as its forces advanced into neighboring states, the TPLF struck a military alliance with a separatist faction of its former ethnic rivals from Ethiopia’s largest and most populous…

ADF STAFF Kenya is building a DNA database of its marine species, such as sharks, rays, crustaceans and mollusks, to conserve its aquatic resources in the face of widespread illegal fishing. The exercise involves harvesting species and cataloging them to help the government prosecute illegal fishing cases, Tanzanian newspaper The East African reported. Since the program started this year, Kenya has produced bar codes for about 115 species, 15 of which are commercially caught. “Kenya has more than 6,000 commercial species and for years we could not claim any illegally harvested fish originated from the country,” Thomas Mkare, a senior…

ADF STAFF The African Union has had a regional peacekeeping mission in Somalia for nearly as long as the country has been plagued by an Islamist extremist insurgency. Established in 2007, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is tasked with supporting the fledgling government, implementing a national security strategy and training Somali security forces until they can defend the country. Fourteen years later, the terror group al-Shabaab remains capable of launching attacks and is firmly entrenched in certain regions of the country. AMISOM’s mandate from the United Nations Security Council is set to expire at year’s end, and there…

ADF STAFF Weeks after a military coup in Sudan, street protests continue to rage, and outside mediators are trying to negotiate a return to stability. Questions remain about what led to the coup and what the future holds for the country of 44 million. Roots of the Coup The October 25 coup happened less than a month before civilian leaders were due to take control of the Sovereignty Council, the joint military-civilian power-sharing structure put in place after the ouster of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Under the agreement, the chairmanship of the Sovereignty Council was to pass to civilian control…