ADF

Authorities in semiautonomous Puntland State are warning that collaborations between Somali pirate groups and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen represent a major threat to maritime security in the Horn of Africa. The growing relationship between the Houthis and Somalia’s al-Qaida affiliate, al-Shabaab, includes ties to piracy and has resulted in pirate groups using more sophisticated weaponry and technology acquired from the Houthis. Mohamed Musa Abulle, deputy director of intelligence for the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF), said that some Somali pirate groups have acquired state-of-the-art GPS satellite devices and weapons from Houthi militants and people aligned with the rebel…

One year into his retirement, a Colombian military drone specialist noticed a WhatsApp message: “Any veterans interested in working? We’re looking for reservists from any force.” The job was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to a man who claimed to be a former air force colonel. On a follow-up call, however, the veteran learned that he would undergo a few months of training in Dubai before deploying to Africa to conduct tactical reconnaissance. He declined the offer after a friend in UAE warned him that the job likely was in one of the worst war zones in the…

Somali fisherman Sadiq Mohammed Abdulle returned to shore with empty nets in a village near Mogadishu. The waters there once teemed with yellowfin tuna, shark, mackerel, snapper and grouper, but increasing instances of illegal fishing by foreign industrial trawlers has decimated the area’s fish stocks. “There’s a lot of big fishermen with big vessels that take all the fish,” Abdulle told Al Jazeera. “They are well-equipped. We have nothing. We don’t have proper equipment to catch the fish.” Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing costs Somalia $300 million annually. Much of the scourge is driven by Chinese vessels. China commands…

Mozambique’s leadership is weighing creating a national defense fund to finance its military at a time when the government has cut back on direct defense spending. One potential model for a Mozambican national defense fund is Turkey, which created its Defense Industry Support Fund in 2021 to supplement its military and defense sector. The government allocates a percentage of taxes to the fund. In 2024, the Turkish government proposed a system of levies on credit cards and other aspects of the economy intended to add $2 billion to the fund, which also receives income from the sale of military drones.…

Botswana recently joined a growing list of African countries whose citizens have been tricked into fighting for Russia in its war on Ukraine. The Ministry of International Relations said on December 15 that it has launched an investigation into reports of two young men who were taken to Ukraine to fight for the Russian Army. Batswana authorities are working through diplomatic channels to find the men and bring them home. “The ministry wishes to inform the public that it has received reports concerning two male Batswana youth, aged 19 and 20 years, who allegedly fell victim and succumbed to a…

Battles between rival terror groups in the Lake Chad basin are causing residents to flee and stirring panic in surrounding communities and countries. Local residents and security experts say Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) are fighting more for control of the region and its critical trade corridors than for ideological reasons. A bloody clash between the groups in early November on a Lake Chad island community in Borno State, Nigeria, exemplified the rivalry’s growing intensity. Security analyst Zagazola Makama told Nigeria’s Tell magazine that Boko Haram executed a coordinated nighttime assault, overrunning ISWAP camps, seizing…

Among the civilians fleeing violence in Mali, many tell stories about “the white men” — the mercenary fighters working for Russia’s Africa Corps who continue to rape and kill civilians with impunity. The family of a 14-year-old girl who sought refuge in Mauritania told the Associated Press (AP) at the border crossing that Russian fighters had entered the family’s tent, beheaded the girl’s uncle, forced everyone else to leave, then raped her. The girl turned up days later with her remaining family at the Mauritanian border critically ill from the attack. “We were so scared that we were not even…

Nigeria is getting closer to adopting a new disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) program that aims to rehabilitate former combatants and reconnect them with society. The new program’s framework was developed with a focus on victims, communities and survivors of terrorism. During a late November workshop in Abuja, Maj. Gen. Adamu Laka, national coordinator of the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), described the proposed policy, meant to end recurring cycles of conflict and rebuild trust among affected populations, as “one of Nigeria’s most people-centered peacebuilding tools in recent years,” the state-run News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported. The updated framework is…

Nigerian authorities killed more than 200 bandits in early January during an attack on a camp in central Kogi State. The region has become a new focal point in the government’s campaign to rein in three security threats: banditry, Islamic terrorism and separatist campaigns. The action in Kogi State demonstrates how banditry has begun to spread into the heart of the country, bringing with it mass kidnappings and school attacks that have inflamed public opinion in the past. In November, a criminal gang abducted more than 300 students and teachers from a boarding school in Papiri in Niger State. The…

February 18 will mark one year since Zambia was hit by one of the worst environmental disasters in its history. But for activists like Nsama Kearns, the fight to fix the damage is only getting started. At least 51 million liters of toxic waste poured from a Chinese-owned copper mine into the Mwambashi stream that day, and officials reported signs of pollution more than 100 kilometers downstream on the Kafue, Zambia’s longest river and a primary source of drinking water for much of the country. Independent experts hired by the government shared their findings of the spill’s impact at a…