ADF

ADF STAFF Thousands of United Nations peacekeepers have maintained a consistent presence in the restive eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for more than 23 years. Unable to solve the deeply rooted violence that necessitated the mission, known as MONUSCO, the blue helmets are pulling out now. Mission chief Bintou Keita announced on January 13 that 2,000 peacekeepers will withdraw as part of the first phase of ending the mission. “We have a ceiling of 13,500 troops authorized by the Security Council,” she said during a joint news conference with government officials. “As of April 30,…

ADF STAFF Illegal gold mining is a growing problem in Nigeria that is benefiting terrorist groups, causing violence and increasing pollution. Residents of mining areas blame Chinese nationals who set up and oversee mining and refining operations. Tension continues to rise around these pit mines. Locals accuse Chinese miners of collaborating with extremist militants, corrupting government officials, destroying farmlands and polluting water with mercury and lead. Omololu Afilaka, the traditional ruler of Atorin-Ijesha in Osun State, said his people are being “conquered” by Chinese miners. “Before the Chinese came, we had artisanal miners. They could only bite as much as…

ADF STAFF For more than nine months, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of Sudan have controlled large parts of the capital, Khartoum. In that time, witnesses say the militia’s fighters have plundered the city and terrorized residents even as their leader pledges to work toward peace. “They don’t have any [political] goal here,” Nidal Asma, a young woman living in Khartoum, told Al Jazeera. “They love to attack, loot and destroy. It’s revenge.” Al Jazeera changed Asma’s name to protect her identity. Residents of Khartoum say the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, are…

ADF STAFF As the civil war in Sudan raged into its ninth month, the Sudanese Armed Forces faced allegations of targeting civilians based on ethnicity. A 24-year-old man using the pseudonym Osman Arbab told Al Jazeera that he and his younger brother were on a bus outside the northeastern town of Atbara when military intelligence stopped the bus and asked if any passengers were from Darfur, in western Sudan, or Kordofan, in the south. The cities are considered strongholds of the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The Arbabs are Kordorfan natives but had not lived…

ADF STAFF South African troops working with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been deployed to the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since December, raising concerns among some South African military observers. The decision to deploy the troops was reached at an SADC summit in May 2023. The SADC force, known as the SADC Mission in DRC (SAMIDRC), includes troops from Malawi and Tanzania. The troops are tasked with countering more than 120 rebel groups, including the notoriously violent M23, which in late 2023 launched deadly new attacks near the Rwanda border. It controls several roads…

ADF STAFF Drug confiscations at Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa Bole International Airport have more than doubled over the past year, an indication of Ethiopia’s growing role as a hub of drugs moving from South America to Europe and southern Asia. The Ethiopia Customs Commission says that drug trafficking into Ethiopia grew by 254% while trafficking out of Ethiopia grew by 163% over the past 11 months. The value of the trafficked materials, which included cocaine, heroin and other drugs, more than doubled from about $80 million to nearly $190 million between July 2022 and July 2023. “Smugglers are working hard to…

ADF STAFF About 75% of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with many of them hiding their positions at sea by turning off their automatic identification systems (AIS). The practice, known as “going dark,” mostly is concentrated in West and North Africa and South Asia, according to a new report by Nature magazine. Researchers determined this by using artificial intelligence, collecting AIS data and analyzing 2 million gigabytes of satellite data from the European Space Agency between 2017 and 2021. Global Fishing Watch spearheaded the Nature study. “These previously invisible vessels radically changed our knowledge about the…

ADF STAFF Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023 emerged as the region with the highest number of terrorist attacks worldwide, a new report finds. The International Institute for Strategic Studies’ (IISS) Armed Conflict Survey 2023 tracked the political, military and humanitarian dimensions of armed conflicts globally from May 2022 to June 2023. During that period, continental fatalities due to terrorist violence increased by 48%, and the number of violent incidents increased by 22% over the previous time frame. “The situation and conflict landscape has gotten significantly worse in the last decade and a half,” Benjamin Petrini, IISS research fellow for conflict, security…

ADF STAFF What began as Ethiopia’s aspiration to regain access to the Red Sea turned into a threat of force against its coastal neighbors in late 2023 and is now fueling fears of war. Last year, critics in the Horn of Africa region denounced Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s thinly veiled statements as intimidation. He has called his landlocked country’s borders a “geographic prison” and referred to the Red Sea as Ethiopia’s “natural boundary.” He has urged Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia to negotiate port access in order “to ensure lasting peace.” “We want to get a port by peaceful means,…

ADF STAFF Days after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of Sudan’s second-largest city, the militia’s leader launched a diplomatic tour of East African countries in an attempt, observers say, to portray himself as a viable leader. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo visited Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda on a tour that echoed a similar trip his rival, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had made a few weeks before as both men tried to rally regional players to their side of the conflict. Hemedti also visited Ghana and South Africa. “Hemedti desperately needs people to feel that the RSF…