ADF

Projecting Force to Protect a Country MONUSCO’s Force Commander Says Technology Helps Peacekeepers Overcome Challenges in the DRC, but Improvements Are Needed PHOTOS BY MONUSCO Since 2016, Lt. Gen. Derrick Mbuyiselo Mgwebi of South Africa has served as force commander of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world. Mgwebi has more than 35 years of military experience and has held multiple senior posts for the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), including his current position as chief of joint operations. Previously, he served as the SANDF director of…

U.N. Police and Soldiers Can Enhance Peacekeeping With Off-the-Shelf Tools ADF STAFF As the summer heat baked the Central African Republic (CAR), tensions between ex-Séléka and Anti-Balaka forces boiled near the town of Kaga-Bandoro in August 2016. Clashes continued in September, killing four and displacing more than 3,000 people in nearby Ndomété. By October, the region was a powder keg. Peacekeepers dismantled illegal checkpoints around Kaga-Bandoro, angering ex-Séléka forces, who had used them as a source of income. Security began to deteriorate, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) staffers became targets of violence. By October 11, about 2,000 Muslims demonstrated peacefully, denouncing…

Surveillance Technology Helps Secure Border Zones ADF STAFF As Tunisia emerges from the most tumultuous period in its history, one thing has become clear: It must secure its borders. This fact was illustrated during a bloody attack in March 2016 in which dozens of ISIS-aligned fighters entered the country from Libya, overran the border town of Ben Guerdan, and opened fire on police and Army buildings. After a gunbattle that lasted hours, more than 50 people lay dead, including 36 militants. The incident grew even more disturbing when the attackers were identified, and most were found to be Tunisians. Some of…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE There is reason for hope in Senegal’s Casamance region. New houses dot a landscape once dominated by abandoned ruins full of bullet holes, though the specter of a 35-year conflict still haunts its villages. Separatist rebels of the Mouvement des Forces Democratiques de Casamance (MFDC) began fighting for independence more than three decades ago but have long ceased once-frequent attacks on the Senegalese Army. As residents return to previously unsafe areas, many are asking when a conflict that is technically ongoing, if all but invisible, officially will end. “I fled to [regional capital] Ziguinchor in 1991 and came…

Enlisting the Support of Citizens, and Rewarding Them, Can Pay Off in the Fight Against Terrorism ADF STAFF As Somalia’s national elections took place in February 2017, government and African Union forces took action to head off violence aimed at spoiling a peaceful transfer of power. Officials moved the election, in which members of Parliament voted for president, from a police academy in Mogadishu to an aircraft hangar at Aden Adde International Airport. Security measures included a ban on flights to and from the airport, a traffic shutdown and a no-fly zone over the city, the BBC reported. Even so,…

Pirates are attacking ships in Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea, and coastal nations will have to work together to stop them. ADF STAFF In February 2016, 14 Nigerian and Ghanaian pirates hijacked the Maximus, a Panama-flagged oil tanker, about 100 kilometers off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire. Eighteen crew members, representing six countries, were aboard. The pirates planned to sell the ship’s 4,700 tons of diesel fuel on the black market. The pirates even changed the ship’s name to Elvis 3 to avoid being tracked. The navies of several countries in the region, including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo,…

New laws and tactics are needed to catch extremists online ADF STAFF In July 2017, as Iraqi forces were pushing ISIS out of the city of Mosul, authorities found a 16-year-old girl hiding in a tunnel. She had run away from her home in Germany a year earlier to join the extremist group. She had gotten her plane ticket by posing as her mother. Pictures of the sad, frightened-looking girl, surrounded by her smiling captors, were published and posted on the internet all over the world. The girl had been raised in a Protestant family but had shown little interest…

Facebook struggles to control a black market in Libya. ADF STAFF With nearly 2 billion active accounts, Facebook has something for almost everyone. That includes black market rocket launchers and anti-aircraft missiles. Such weapons are offered on Facebook in Libya, where dictator Moammar Gadhafi accumulated more than $30 billion in arms before he was overthrown in 2011. After he was killed, officials, rebels and looters found weapons stashes all over the country, not only in military depots, but also buried in the Sahara desert. The weapons have spread throughout the continent on the black market. A 2014 United Nations report…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS African players will have a better chance to play for European clubs now that the Africa Cup of Nations will take place in the summer, say leading agents. The tournament, held every two years, is being moved to June and July from January and February. Previously, Premier League clubs were among those who faced losing players midseason for weeks as they went to play for their home nations. “It’ll make my job easier as an agent. Clubs use it as an excuse not to sign African players,” said Papa Agyemang. “They will become more attractive because…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE “I haven’t once spoken my mother tongue Kilokele in the 62 years I’ve lived in Kinshasa,” says Charles Tongohala. “None of my nine children speak it.” Tongohala’s native tongue is one of 450 spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the sprawling nation of 71 million people whose languages — almost all of them spoken, not written — account for 9 percent of the world’s 5,000 languages. He was a boy when he moved to the capital from a northeastern village that is home to the Lokele fisher people, who live along the banks of the giant…