Media Review for July 13, 2012

By Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Updated: 07/13/2012

Please note: The following news items are presented here for informational purposes. The views expressed within them are those of the authors and/or individuals quoted, not those of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the National Defense University, or the Department of Defense.

Today’s News

UN troops shell rebel positions in DR Congo
UN and Democratic Republic of Congo government troops have bombarded rebel positions in the country’s strife-torn eastern region of North-Kivu. Three helicopters belonging to the United Nations DR Congo mission – MONUSCO – and two gunships of the DR Congo army (FARDC) were seen and explosions were heard around the villages of Nkokwe and Bukima, where rebels from the M23 group are thought to have some positions. Al Jazeera

‘We will take Goma if killings continue’, says M23
The breakaway rebel militia, M23 have said they will march on Goma if the killing of civilians does not stop immediately. “If people of a given tribe are being killed and yet the Monusco peacekeepers cannot protect them, M23 will take over Goma,” the M23 political coordinator, Bishop Jean Marie Runiga, said Wednesday at a press conference in Bunagana in DR Congo. “We are capable of capturing even more ground,” Bishop Runiga added. The East African

Military intervention in Mali ‘probable’, France says
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius Thursday said it was likely that force will be used to end the unrest in Mali, where al Qaeda-linked militants control a vast swath of land in the north. Fabius noted that intervention would be African-led. France 24

Revealed: proof that al-Qaeda’s men are operating in northern Mali [video]
When is al-Qaeda really al-Qaeda? That’s a question often asked by security pundits when it comes to the group’s central African franchise, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. Rather like the shifting sands of its Saharan stomping ground, AQIM has often been seen as rather hard to pin down: for every hardcore jihadi, there are also smugglers, bandits, and Tuareg separatist guerrillas operating under the AQIM banner, which acts as a useful flag of convenience for any outfit wanting to scare its rivals. It’s often also argued that the AQIM threat has been exaggerated by states like Mauritania and Algeria to help get Western military funding, and respected think tanks like the International Crisis Group have even produced papers asking whether the whole phenomena is “fact or fiction”. The Telegraph

Al-Qaida-Linked Group Infiltrates Timbuktu
Renee Montagne talks to Human Rights Watch Senior Researcher Corinne Dufka in Mali, about the conquest of the north of the country by Islamist forces and their destruction of Sufi Islam shrines in the ancient city of Timbuktu. NPR [Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approx. 9:00 a.m. ET]

Mali seeks ICC probe into ‘atrocities’ in occupied north
Mali plans to ask the International Criminal Court to probe atrocities committed by armed groups occupying the north who are accused by rights bodies of rapes, executions and using child soldiers. Angola Press

Al-Qaida Arm In Yemen Flexes Its Muscles In Nigeria
An unusual terrorism case started in Nigeria late last week. Prosecutors in the capital city of Abuja accused two local men of being members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. They were charged with accepting thousands of dollars from the group to recruit potential terrorists inside Nigeria and then send them to Yemen. Olaniyi Lawal, 31, and Luqman Babatunde, 30, have pleaded not guilty. NPR

Sudan: Forgotten Darfur – Old Tactics and New Players
Amid claims of declining violence and wider regional transformations, the Darfur conflict has all but vanished from the international agenda since 2010. Virtually unnoticed by the international community, the conflict has moved into a new phase, in which the Government of Sudan has shifted away from using Arab proxy militias only to rely on newly formed (and newly armed) non-Arab proxies. African Argument on allAfrica

Big Men, African Conflicts and Informal Power – A Review by Richard Mallett, ODI
Taking up the call made by a number of recent contributions to the peace- and state-building literatures to ‘see what’s there’ (as opposed to seeing ‘what’s missing’ or ‘what should be there’), this interesting and thought-provoking volume, edited by Mats Utas of the Nordic Africa Institute, directs its attention towards the ‘actually existing’ realities of Africa’s (post-)conflict spaces. More specifically, the ten chapters on offer carefully dissect the way in which power and profit are organised and pursued in African landscapes of violence and insecurity, with a special focus on the roles played by informal networks and what the various authors refer to as Big Men. These are the ‘nodes in networks’ (p. 1). African Argument

Exiled Rwandan says Kagame hunted him, others
A prominent Rwandan exile accuses the president of being a dictator, imprisoning political opponents and destabilizing East Africa, adding in an interview Thursday that he believes the leader, who he once served, has hunted him and other dissidents around the world. AP on U.S.News & World Report

Why aid money has returned to Malawi
Aid donors, such as the US Millennium Challenge Corporation, have reinstated aid projects that had been suspended because of authoritarian policies of Malawi’s previous leader. CS Monitor

A South African Take on the U.S. Race
outh Africans feel a “special relationship” with the Democratic Party for its history of support for the anti-apartheid movement, as well as for the fact that President Obama’s “commitment to democracy in Africa has made him an ally to the majority of Africans, who feel that democracy in a way is a precondition to the solution of our problems,” says South African scholar Moeletsi Mbeki. In contrast, Mbeki says, Republicans, “in terms of South Africa, don’t have a good record,” citing in particular former president Ronald Reagan’s avoidance of strong sanctions against the apartheid regime. If Africans could vote in the upcoming elections, Obama would win “by a landslide,” says Mbeki. Council on Foreign Relations

Could the next U.S. free trade agreement be with Tunisia?
House Rules Committee chairman David Dreier (R-CA) announced last week during a visit to Tunis that he intends to head an initiative to propose a free trade agreement between the United States and Tunisia, which experienced a popular uprising in 2010 and held democratic elections in October. Foreign Policy

Libya’s Jibril in election landslide over Islamists
The moderate National Forces Alliance of wartime prime minister Mahmoud Jibril scored a landslide victory over rival Islamist parties in Libya’s first free national election in a generation, partial tallies showed on Thursday. Counts from across the North African country attested to a resounding defeat for the political wing of Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood, bucking a trend of success for Islamist groups in other Arab Spring countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. Reuters

US Office of Naval Research technology hunts down more than 600 suspect boats off West Africa
A new sensor and software suite sponsored by the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) recently returned from West Africa after helping partner nations track and identify target vessels of interest as part of an international maritime security operation. Researchers deployed the system, called “Rough Rhino,” aboard U.S. aircraft, ships and partner nation ships operating in waters off the coast of Senegal and Cape Verde. Sailors and Coast Guardsmen could access and control the sensors both afloat and ashore, as well as share information in a real-time common operating picture, the ONR announced on Tuesday. DefenceWeb

Peace, but little else in rural Somalia
he main problem here last year was Al Shabaab, Somalia’s resident Al Qaeda affiliate. Now it’s everything else. “The main problems here are lack of water, medicine, education and food,” said Ali Mansour, an elder in the coastal town of Buur Gaabo. “We don’t take baths or wash our clothes. We live here like animals. Our children are all fishermen, not students.” Since a local militia, backed by the Kenyan army, chased Al Shabaab militants from this part of southern Somalia in October, fear has subsided and security has improved. But little else has changed. Globalpost

Ethiopian blogger Eskinder Nega jailed for 18 years
A prominent Ethiopian journalist and blogger has been sentenced to 18 years in jail for violating Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism legislation. Eskinder Nega and 23 others were found guilty last month. They were accused of links with US-based opposition group Ginbot Seven, which Ethiopia considers a terrorist organisation. Opposition member Andualem Arage was given a life sentence by the court, AFP news agency reports. BBC

Nigeria: Dozens Killed in Tanker Fire
A truck carrying fuel veered off the road into a ditch, caught fire and exploded in the southern Niger Delta region on Thursday, above, killing at least 95 people who had rushed to the scene to scoop fuel that had spilled, said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for the emergency management agency. The New York Times

For Sale: Secondhand African presidential jets
Whilst Africa’s two newest presidents have clearly read the memo about global austerity, others have not. The Africa Report

New York jewelers admit sale of 1 ton of illegal ivory
Two New York jewelers pleaded guilty on Thursday to selling roughly 1 ton of illegal ivory worth more than $2 million, including elephant tusks apparently poached to satisfy a spike in customer demand, authorities said. [...] The number of elephants killed by poaching has doubled in the last decade. Today eight out of every 10 elephant deaths is the result of poaching, compared with four out of 10 deaths six years ago, the prosecutor’s office said. Reuters

Tanzania: Africa Center Co-Sponsors U.S. Africom Academic Symposium
The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, based in Washington, D.C., co-hosted the 5th U.S. Africa Command Academic Symposium in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, July 9-12, 2012. The event, conducted in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, was also attended by General Carter F. Ham, commander of U.S. AFRICOM, and by Ambassador Alfonso E. Lenhardt, U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania. US Africom on allAfrica

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This entry was written by Africa Center for Strategic Studies, posted on July 13, 2012 at 7:23 am, filed under Media Review and tagged . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.