ADF

Ghana’s military is bolstering its presence in the north, where people are moving south due to the rising threat of terrorist attacks originating in Burkina Faso. Ghana’s military recently deployed 400 troops to the northern town of Bawku due to bitter, ongoing ethnic violence between the Kusasi and Mamprusi communities. Burkinabe terror groups, including Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, known as JNIM, and those linked to the Islamic State group, have fueled the fighting in recent years by smuggling weapons into the area through illicit networks. Baffour Agyeman-Duah, a governance expert with the John A. Kufuor Foundation, warned that northern Ghanaian conflicts could…

Operating out of intricate cave complexes in the mountains of northern Puntland, the Islamic State in Somalia (ISSOM) has for years launched attacks on security forces and civilians. The area has emerged as a hub for generating and distributing cash for Islamic State group (IS) affiliates across Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. However, the terrorist group has suffered significant battlefield setbacks this year, and its reputation often is overstated, according to researcher Stig Jarle Hansen, professor of international relations at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Writing for The Conversation, Hansen noted that the group never has captured…

Outrage swept through South Sudan when video of a gang-rape began circulating on social media in June. The victim, a 16-year-old girl, was a member of a gang in the capital, Juba. The perpetrators were members of a rival gang exacting revenge. Few were as disturbed by the incident as Alaak Akuei, a former gang member who works to counter the rising tide of gang violence. “I was very disappointed,” he told the newspaper The Guardian. “These boys, we are working with them, we know some of them, but they are not listening. But we have to be strong, because…

In 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Global Security Initiative (GSI) to establish his country as a facilitator for improving global security. Critics noted how the same man had used his power to author a comprehensive national security plan that expanded state repression across nearly all aspects of Chinese society. “The GSI marks a significant shift in Chinese foreign policy,” political scientist Sheena Chestnut Greitens wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that year. “[It] seeks to revise global security governance to make it more compatible with the regime security interests of the Chinese Communist Party.” Today, observers are pointing out…

Burkina Faso media overflows these days with the amazing achievements of junta leader Capt. Ibrahim Traoré: the country has repaid its foreign debt, built new low-cost housing, and he discovered a new source of oil. The reality is quite different. Burkina Faso’s foreign debt still exists and sits at $5.6 billion or 21.5% of the country’s gross domestic product. Online videos showing low-cost housing under construction are actually from Algeria. And the “oil” coming out of the ground is actually footage of a broken sewer pipe in the state of Minnesota in the United States. In short, the day-to-day reality…

Acting Defense Minister of Zambia Brenda Tambatamba led a procession of Soldiers to stand before an array of aircraft on the sun-soaked tarmac of Lusaka Air Base for the opening ceremony of Exercise Blue Lugwasho. Replete with a brass band and a fighter jet flyover, the pageantry was a fitting way to mark the return of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) “Blue” exercises after a COVID-19 pandemic-induced hiatus since 2019. Nearly 1,000 Air Force troops from across the regional bloc took part in Blue Lugwasho, a humanitarian and disaster response exercise, from September 8 to 26. Angola, Botswana, Lesotho,…

As terrorism-related violence in the Sahel increasingly moves toward coastal West Africa, an economic bloc of West African countries announced plans to activate a 260,000-strong counterterrorism force with an annual $2.5 billion budget. Omar Touray, president of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) Commission, announced on August 25 that the rapid deployment force will provide logistics to frontline states. “This bold initiative has become necessary given the asymmetric security dynamics in our region,” Touray said in a report by Nigerian online newspaper The Cable. “We are conscious of the fact that this requires the necessary financial resources and…

A collection of East African government officials, community leaders, and marine experts and conservationists have committed to strengthen the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which costs the region an estimated $415 million annually. The agreement, which seeks to improve regional collaboration against illegal fishing, was reached during a roundtable discussion organized by The Jahazi Project in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. The project, named after the traditional Swahili dhow, is a marine conservation initiative run by Ascending Africa, headquartered in Dar-es-Salaam. Michael Mallya, spokesperson for The Jahazi Project, noted that Tanzania alone loses an estimated $142.8 million annually to illegal fishing, while…

The Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin terror group has increased attacks on Malian urban centers, cities and military outposts in its efforts to further destabilize the country and impose a strict form of Islamic law. Civilians frequently are caught in the crosshairs of the group’s terror campaign, which threatens the entire Sahel region. In late August, the terror group, also known as JNIM, gained control of a military base in the town of Farabougou, near the Wagadou Forest in the south-central Ségou region. The forest on the Mauritanian border is a known JNIM base. About a week later, JNIM captured Farabougou. An…

Across the Sahel, the buzz of a motorcycle engine has become a sound that inspires fear. Motorcycles have become the vehicle of choice for terrorists across the region, allowing them to move quickly, strike suddenly, and avoid capture by the local authorities. “Motorbikes have been a near-constant presence in Sahelian armed groups’ battlefield operations, with swarms of motorbikes allowing tens, or even hundreds of fighters to rapidly descend on a target location,” researchers with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) wrote in a 2023 report on motorbike use among Sahel terror groups. The appeal of motorbikes is simple,…