ADF

Graphic videos of a massacre in villages surrounding the western Burkina Faso town of Solenzo spread rapidly on social media in March. Dozens of lifeless bodies — most of them women, children and elderly — were scattered on the ground with their heads covered, their hands and feet bound. Armed with assault rifles and blood-stained bladed weapons, the perpetrators wore uniforms and T-shirts that identified them as a mix of Burkinabe security forces, local self-defense groups and the government-backed militia known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP). Many took photos and videos on smartphones as they…

Across the northern reaches of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo, there is relative peace compared to the dire situation in neighboring Burkina Faso, where terrorist groups have taken control of much of the country. Unlike its neighbors, Ghana has not suffered a terrorist attack. But just south of its border with Burkina Faso, thriving illicit trade markets help support the insurgent groups financially and provide opportunities to recruit fighters. Affiliated with al-Qaida, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) is the most active terror group in the area and casts a wide net in recruiting men and boys to fight in Burkina…

Sudan’s 2-year-old war began as a fight for supremacy between the leaders of the national Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF), but it has evolved into a proxy struggle between two Persian Gulf nations looking to expand their influence in Africa. On the SAF’s side is Saudi Arabia, whose relationship with Sudan goes back to the 1950s. Saudi leaders have cultivated a relationship with SAF leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who also is Sudan’s de facto leader. Al-Burhan visited Saudi Arabia in March to discuss strengthening relations between the two countries. The United Arab Emirates…

Burkina Faso’s ruling military junta in mid-March announced it was recruiting 14,000 soldiers to fight rebels affiliated with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group (IS). The fighters are civilian defense volunteers known as VDPs. The new soldiers will be involved in rapid response operations. They receive about 14 days of civic and military training before being armed and sent to the front lines of the nation’s counterinsurgency efforts. “More than 14,000 soldiers of all types and thousands of (civilian defense force volunteers) have been recruited, trained, and equipped,” Prime Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a report by The Defense…

Chinese companies are involved in one-third of Africa’s 231 commercial ports, a significantly larger presence and influence than anywhere else in the world, including Asia, according to a recent report. China’s involvement raises concerns about the amount of debt African nations incur, their lack of sovereignty over their national assets and fears that they could be pulled into larger geostrategic rivalries. In “Mapping China’s Strategic Port Development in Africa,” Africa Center for Strategic Studies Research Associate Paul Nantulya writes that various state-owned companies act as “builders, financiers, or operators” in 78 ports in 32 African nations. Nearly half of those…

ADF STAFF Somalia’s al-Shabaab and Yemen’s Ansar Allah rebels have struck an alliance that threatens to destabilize more of the Red Sea region along with parts of the Horn of Africa. At the heart of the alliance is a simple equation: Al-Shabaab has money and needs weapons to fight the Somali government. The Ansar Allah rebels, known as the Houthis, have weapons and need money to operate in parts of northwestern Yemen where they are the de facto government. The two groups have formed an alliance despite their different religious and political positions. Al-Shabaab members follow Sunni Islam and are…

Djibouti’s position at the southern end of the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandeb Strait has made it vital to international and regional counterterrorism efforts aimed at disrupting al-Shabaab in Somalia and Houthi rebels in Yemen. Djibouti is an island of stability and calm in a region marked by instability. It is also the home of the Djibouti Code of Conduct, adopted in 2009 to support regional and national capacity to counter the threat of piracy and armed robbery against ships in the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. With the recent attacks by Houthi rebels on transiting Red Sea…

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has announced plans to activate its standby force as terrorism from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger continues to spread. On the sidelines of a March 11 ECOWAS meeting, Nigerian Defense Minister Mohammed Badaru Abubakar said the plan is to mobilize 5,000 ECOWAS Standby Force (ESF) troops and other resources across the region, which is a hotbed of terrorist violence. The ESF will combat terrorism, banditry, violent extremism, cross-border crimes and political instability. It was not clear when or where the ESF will be deployed first. “The activation of this force underscores our…

For most people in the volatile Tigray region, the two-year war fought against Ethiopian federal forces with support from the Eritrean Army didn’t really end with the Pretoria peace agreement in November 2022. “What was left of the Pretoria Agreement’s security framework is rapidly collapsing, with former comrades-in-arms now clashing, civilians again fleeing in fear, and Addis Ababa’s authority in the region becoming increasingly tenuous,” columnist Hafed Al-Ghwell wrote in a March 29 opinion piece for the Arab News daily newspaper. The instability has observers fearing that Ethiopia’s northern neighbor will increase its involvement militarily. “Neighboring Eritrea is watching these…

Speaking to the United Nations Security Council in February, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Thérèse Kaykwamba Wagner, said more than 4,000 people were killed in 48 hours when Rwanda-backed M23 rebels overran the city of Goma. “Goma has been taken hostage by the war,” she said, noting that Rwanda’s presence in her country is no longer up for debate. Independent U.N. experts have documented that between 3,000 and 4,000 Rwandan troops are in eastern DRC to support the M23. Wagner characterized the latest violent conflict in eastern DRC as a “political project spearheaded by Rwanda”…