Tag Archives: AFRICOM

Logistical Details and (Competing?) Accounts of the Droukdel Strike

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On June 3, the emir of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelmalek Droukdel, was apparently killed in northern Mali. I have written here about his presumed death, and I gave some background on his career here. In this post I want to discuss some of the emerging conversation about how he was tracked and (again, presumably) killed.

The original announcement of Droukdel’s death, an announcement made on June 5, came from French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly, who said merely, “On June 3, the French Armed Forces, with the support of their partners, neutralized the emir of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelmalek Droukdal and many of his close collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali.”

Press coverage of the operation placed the strike’s location at “the Ourdjane wadi (river bed), two kilometers south of the village of Talhandak, in the immense desert expanse of the great Malian north. Situated 80 kilometers east of Tessalit as the crow flies and 20 kilometers south of the Algerian border, the wadi was the site of ‘a meeting’ between leaders of AQIM, according to a local source interviewed by AFP.”

Details are emerging about the American role, which may have been substantial. In a June 8 statement, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said, “As a partner in this French-led mission, and as an example of our continued cooperation and partnership to counter a common threat, U.S. Africa Command provided intelligence and Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance support” for the operation.

The American role may have gone beyond intelligence and surveillance, however. Le Figaro‘s Georges Malbrunot, in a Twitter thread starting here, cites an anonymous diplomat without giving his/her nationality. According to this source, the U.S. identified Droukdel’s voice and located him when Droukdel placed a phone call, and then turned that information over to the French. According to the same source, an American drone fired the first shots at Droukdel’s convoy, lighting the way for French helicopters that then destroyed the convoy. French commandos then collected DNA samples, which were matched (in Paris) with DNA samples from Droukdel’s family collected by the Algerian authorities. (It’s kind of wild to me that Droukdel would talk on the phone – one would have assumed he would know better.)

Malbrunot refers to a convoy – but was there only one vehicle on the ground?

Malbrunot uses the first image as well; perhaps there was only one vehicle, or perhaps the vehicles in the convoy were spread out and the others are simply not visible in that first image. Another question I have is whether these images contradict the idea that the convoy was destroyed from the air.

The role of Algeria has also been a subject of intense discussion. Geoff Porter, who travels frequently to Algeria and has deep connections there, included in his analysis the following blunt sentences:

It is likely that Algeria always knew where Droukdel was and it is equally likely that Algeria allowed Droukdel to travel south from northeastern Algeria across the border into Mali. (This appears to be an extension of a strategy that Algeria embraced in the 2009-2011 timeframe – namely, solving Algeria’s terrorism problem by allowing terrorists to leave the country. You don’t have to quit jihad, but you can’t jihad here.) It was more convenient and more valuable for Algeria to allow France to eliminate Droukdel once he had quit Algerian territory: Algeria accrues ample diplomatic capital in Paris and Washington by delivering Droukdel, but it avoids both having to undertake the mission itself or permit a foreign military to operate within Algerian territory (VERBOTEN!) . It’s a win-win for Algiers: Droukdel is gone, Algerian sovereignty remains uncompromised, and Operation Barkhane and AFRICOM can chalk up an HVT [High Value Target] kill.

The paragraph is unsourced, or to put it differently, Porter is the source. I have long found his analysis extremely compelling and reliable, but obviously these are major claims and various major implications follow from them – your mileage may vary.

Relatedly, the French scholar Jean-Pierre Filiu offers a series of questions about Droukdel’s seeming ability to traverse Algerian territory, Algerian official silence on his death, and what this may reveal about other jihadists’ relationships with Algeria:

Algerian officials’ silence regarding Droukdel’s death rekindles questions about the protection enjoyed by the Malian Iyad ag Ghali, the Sahel’s most powerful jihadist, leader since 2017 of the coalition “Group for Supporting Islam and Muslims,” itself affiliated to al-Qaida. In a very well-document July 2018 investigation, Le Monde revealed that ag Ghali had sometimes sheltered in Algerian territory,  whether with his family in Tin Zaouatine, or in a hospital in Tamanrasset (where he had, for that matter, escaped a Western attempt at “neutralization”). Such facilities, which are necessarily impossible to admit, relate to a non-aggression pact and have effectively allowed for protecting the Algerian Sahara from jihadist attacks. More broadly, the Algerian authorities, who had failed in 2012 to sponsor an accord between ag Ghali and Bamako, are counting this time on a successful mediation in northern Mali, even if it means legitimizing the jihadist groups.

These, too, are very strong claims about Algeria’s role in all this. I have heard similar perspectives in Bamako, but verifying this is – at least for me – difficult. And the implications sort of boggle the mind, if you play it all out. If you start to assume that the Algerians protect ag Ghali and that France knows that and that France is pursuing a counterterrorism mission in northern Mali that is effectively bounded by rules set by Algeria, and and and…The train of thought can take you to some very dark places, actually, which is maybe why I personally don’t often follow it (or perhaps that’s a cop-out on my part).

Finally, it is striking, or perhaps not so striking, that the key actors discussed in the coverage are all non-Malian: that is, the Malian state appears to have played no appreciable role in the strike, and neither did the vaunted G5 Sahel Joint Force. I have not even read any references so far as to whether the Coordination of Azawad Movements (French acronym CMA), the de facto authority in the Kidal Region (where the strike occurred) had any role whatsoever in the raid. When the chips are down and a “high value target” is at stake, it appears clear that Paris (and Washington) regard Bamako as a junior partner.

Problematic Framings from the NYT and WSJ on Terrorism and Counterterrorism in West Africa

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Recently, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal wrote articles with remarkably similar headlines:

  • NYT: “Where Terrorism Is Rising in Africa and the U.S. Is Leaving”
  • WSJ: “In West Africa, Violent Extremism Spreads as U.S. Trims Military Footprint”

The words “and” and “as” are doing a lot of work in these headlines – more work than should be asked of these poor conjunctions. I know, I know, you’re never supposed to ascribe intentionality to anyone, but it looks to me as though the headline writers wanted to (a) lead readers to think that “as” means “because,” but also (b) preserve plausible deniability for when people call them on their bullshit.

In any case, Nathaniel Powell took the words right out of mouth:

There’s a lot going on with these articles, but one thing that’s clearly going on is that some American journalists went to an annual U.S. military training exercise called Flintlock. The exercise rotates among Sahelian countries, and this year the main portion of Flintlock was held in Burkina Faso. The WSJ, to their credit, is more upfront about the ways that Flintlock informed their reporting; the WSJ article leads with a description of Flintlock. The NYT is less clear about this, not mentioning Flintlock until the ninth paragraph of their story.  The NYT buries the context and presents the article as a savvy description of long-term trends – rather than, say, a readout of a few days in Burkina Faso and a handful of interviews with Nigerian special forces officers, the head of US Special Operations Command Africa, and a few think tankers and NGOers. (The NYT and the WSJ, I should add, interviewed a lot of the same people, including the Nigerian special forces colonel who gets a prominent role in both articles.)

Some of the quotes from think tankers, moreover, implicitly contradict the framing of the NYT article. Here are Jean-Hervé Jezequel and Alice Friend, both of whom I respect a ton, quoted in the NYT:

Military analysts and human rights groups cited three main reasons for the spiraling violence in Burkina Faso and its neighbors: French-led counterterrorism operations in Mali have pushed the problem south, into Burkina Faso. Armed Islamic militants have effectively exploited grievances among local populations. Abuses by security forces have fueled jihadist recruiting.

“These are a series of small rural insurgencies that are spreading,” said Jean-Hervé Jezequel, director of the International Crisis Group’s Sahel project in Dakar, Senegal.

[…]

Military officials and independent analysts stressed that American and other Western military aid may at best buy time for African allies to address poverty, lack of education, government corruption and other grievances that extremist groups seek to exploit.

“There are no fully military solutions here, just holding actions,” said Alice Hunt Friend, a former top Pentagon official for Africa and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

So the analysts themselves are saying (a) any real or imagined U.S. drawdown is not a top-tier cause of spreading militancy, and (b) you can’t solve all this with more guns and training.

Another well-informed response to the NYT came from Peter Dörrie:

In other words, the NYT has really confused some issues regarding causality. The situation in the Sahel is bad. The situation in Burkina Faso is very bad. But the view of the world where American military deployments are the only thing standing in the way of rising jihadist tides is just fundamentally wrong. That worldview is, moreover, politically convenient for politicians, bureaucrats, and military officers in Washington, Stuttgart, Niamey, and beyond. The NYT could’ve done more here to question such narratives.

Thoughts on the 2019 AFRICOM Posture Statement

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Last week, AFRICOM’s commander, General Thomas Waldhauser, presented the command’s posture statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Alexis Arieff and Jason Warner had good threads highlighting important points of the document:

I have a few points to add:

  1. I have no insight into how the document was put together, but it felt as though within the statement you could feel three voices wrestling with one another for control: one voice that sees terrorism as the main concern in Africa, another focused on Russia and China, and a third that looks ahead to a grim future of dense, restless, and disease-prone populations. In other words, the document’s zigging and zagging between “Violent Extremist Organizations,” “Great Power Competition,” and “stability” talk did not feel coherent to me, but rather seemed to reflect layers of editing and insertion by constituencies with different priorities and attitudes. The sections on “Great Power Competition” felt the most grafted-on; I wonder whether AFRICOM would have preferred to just talk about terrorism and (in)stability. It was interesting to note that sometimes “Great Power Competition” and mentions of Russia and China fell out of the document for pages at a time, especially in the middle of the statement. It was also interesting to see moments where “Great Power Competition” was conspicuously downplayed (see p. 12, for example, with the “five objectives”). Some of this, I think, must reflect an uncertainty within various U.S. government agencies and offices about whether all the talk of “Great Power Competition” is headed and what the relationship between that and the “War on Terror” (or whatever one is supposed to call it now) is going to be. In other words, some sections might be spliced in just to make various bosses happy.
  2. I was struck by the frequent moments when the document put forth ideological rather than clinical statements on jihadist groups’ histories, characters, and intentions. On p. 7, for example, the document says, “VEOs [Violent Extremist Organizations] cultivate and encourage an environment of distrust, despair, and hopelessness to undermine governments, allowing for the expansion of their radical ideology.” A sentence like this makes me throw up my hands. The persistent and sometimes explicit suggestion, in U.S. policy circles, that jihadists are essentially nihilists misses a lot about what they say, what they do, and what their strategies are or may be. This kind of language from AFRICOM is so crude as to verge on being plain wrong; I’ve tried to show, including in some recent writing, that there is a lot more *politics* going on with jihadists than just “let’s undermine the government.”
  3. The overall crudeness of the document is striking. Maybe this is just inevitable in policy documents, but I don’t think it has to be. Take this sentence from p. 10: “Despite the challenges on the continent, Africans are eager and receptive to work with the U.S. to advance common strategic interests.” Do U.S. policymakers and generals have to talk this way? It just sounds silly. There were also several more specific passages that seemed to me absurdly rosy, especially the brief mention of Burkina Faso on p. 28. The section on Cameroon (pp. 31-32) also reads a bit strangely given that this news broke the day after Waldhauser testified. Couldn’t AFRICOM be a bit more forthcoming and blunt about challenges, frictions, and things that are going badly?
  4. The names of many operations remain ridiculous. “Exercise Lightning Handshake” was my favorite.

Finally, it’s worth noting that some euphemisms – including “advise, assist, and accompany” may be wearing thin as the public gets more information:

 

Africa Blog Roundup: Colonialism, Ghana’s Elections, Ethnicity in Northern Mali, and More

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Via Chris Blattman, a new paper that argues, “In the light of plausible counter-factuals, colonialism probably had a uniformly negative effect on development in Africa.”

Via Michael Nelson, George Ayittey on elections in Ghana.

Gregory Mann: “Foreign Correspondents and False Notes”:

Local color and snide observations aside, anyone who can keep shining light on the intertwined dangers of an undisciplined army and the bugbear of ethnic militias—as the author of “the West’s Latest Afghanistan” does, and as Tamasin Ford and Bonnie Allen have done—is making a contribution.

So is it the editors who are ginning up and cashing in bad analogies at will? Who wants us to believe that Mali is like Afghanistan?

Andrew Lebovich: “Northern Mali: The Politics of Ethnicity and Locality.”

The Moor Next Door rounds up recent articles on Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Tunisia, and the Sahel region.

Lesley Warner highlights key points from General Carter Ham’s recent remarks on counterterrorism in Africa.

Owen Barder: “DFID Transparency Policy Is a Game-Changer.”

Loomnie flags a nice quote on the idea of “Africa rising”:

I wonder if we should perhaps think of sub-Saharan Africa as a collection not so much of jointly emerging markets, but of diverging ones.

Roving Bandit: “Mapping Rebel Groups in the Congo.”

Vote for the name of the US State Department’s blog.

AQIM: Western-Sahelian Cooperation Deepening

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In recent days General Carter Ham of the United States’ Africa Command (AFRICOM) and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe have both visited Mauritania, signaling a positive Western response to Mauritania’s recent offensives against al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) as well as a continuation of the trend toward deeper cooperation between Western and Sahelian governments on counterterrorism. Mauritania, which has undertaken the most aggressive military campaign of the three Sahelian countries most affected by AQIM (the others are Mali and Niger), is receiving the lion’s share of the attention right now, but visits by top Western officials come as the entire region is asking for outside help.

AFP reports on Gen. Ham’s trip:

“I congratulated him for the success of the Mauritanian army in its fight against AQIM, in collaboration with Mali and other countries in the region,” Ham said after a meeting with President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz in Nouakchott.

The general, who has been in the capital since Sunday, also welcomed the Mauritanian peoples’ rejection of the north African Al-Qaeda branch, and committed to work to “advance security co-operation between America and Mauritania.”

ANI (Ar) reports on Juppe’s trip to Nouakchott, which spanned Sunday and Monday. Juppe met with Abdel Aziz and affirmed French “solidarity” with Mauritania on counterterrorism. CBS adds that Juppe combined praise for Mauritania with pressure on other goverments:

Juppe told reporters on his visit to Nouakchott that Mauritania has “led an exemplary fight.” He said France wishes other nations in the Sahel “would be more engaged.”

Juppe and Abdel Aziz also discussed the crisis in Libya, an issue with broad political significance in the Sahel as well as direct significance – in terms of potential movement of Libyan weapons to AQIM – for counterterrorism.

Mauritania’s government is not the only one in the region exploring a deeper partnership with the West. Niger’s President Mamadou Issoufou recently visited France (Fr), and the crisis in Libya and security issues were major themes in his meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy. Mali, though Western powers have sometimes seen its government as less willing to engage fully in counterterrorism, has partnered with Mauritania in recent efforts against AQIM. Malian-Mauritanian relations have recovered substantially from the low they hit in February 2010 when Mauritania recalled its ambassador from Mali in protest over the latter’s engagement in negotiations with AQIM.

Mauritania, Mali, and Niger may not be on exactly the same page when it comes to AQIM, but they are moving toward greater cooperation. Regional cooperation may in turn facilitate deeper partnerships with the West. The existence of such partnerships is not new – all three countries have participated in US training exercises and counterterrorism programs for years, and all three are planning to attend a summit in Algeria this September where US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to attend – but the degree of cooperation seems to be increasing. That could have diverse implications for Sahelian counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel: on the one hand, stronger partnerships with the West could enhance local military capacity; on the other hand, perceptions of ever stronger political ties to the West could generate local political opposition. For now, though, the Mauritanian military’s star seems to be rising, both overseas and within the region.

General Carter Ham Becomes New Head of US AFRICOM

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General William Ward, the founding commander of AFRICOM, has stepped down at a ceremony in Stuttgart, Germany after about three years in his post. VOA reports on his departure and profiles his successor, General Carter Ham:

The new commander of Africa Command, General Carter Ham, said he intends to maintain the approach General Ward established. “The longer I serve, the more I believe relationships with our partners are what really matters and really enables us to achieve our objectives.  I believe we are most successful when we help find African solutions to African security challenges.  And I know we will face many challenges.  Some of those we can see very clearly today, while others will emerge in unexpected ways and in unexpected places,” he said.

General Ham has been the commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe for the past two-and-a-half years, and has had a variety of command and Pentagon assignments.

Most recently, he co-led the defense department’s analysis of the potential impact of allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the U.S. military.  That process led to the approval of a law that is expected to lift the ban this year, once the military services have conducted a planned training program.

The military leadership, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has emphasized continuity amidst transition, though AFRICOM’s staff and the entire Pentagon are clearly watching events in North Africa carefully and assessing the impact those events might have on AFRICOM’s future. AFRICOM has responsibility for any US military activities in Libya.

AFRICOM’s press release is here.

 

Saturday Africa Links: Flintlock 10, Hizbul Islam Split, Nile Controversies

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Christian Science Monitor discusses AFRICOM’s Flintlock 10 training exercise in the Sahel:

At one time, a military exercise like Operation Flintlock – which is now in its fifth year – would have set African opinion-page columns aflame and set a fair number of African politicians pounding on tables with their shoes. Some African nations worried that the newly announced but vaguely defined Africa Command (AFRICOM) of the US Army would herald a new colonial presence in Africa, complete with permanent military bases and political interference.

But today, AFRICOM’s military exercises often pass with little notice, and increasingly with the support of African leaders. In part, this is because African leaders now see a common threat: armed violent groups such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which have carried out a series of murders and kidnappings from Mauritania to Algeria to Niger and threaten to topple any government that dares confront them.

AQIM might have brought a change in attitudes. Or maybe the passage of time has softened criticism. More on Flintlock 10 here and here.

Speaking of AQIM, they’ve abducted another Frenchman in northern Niger.

One of Somalia’s two main Islamist rebel groups, Hizbul Islam, is facing a schism:

An influential splinter group has officially cut it ties with the Somalia’s militant, Hizbul Islam, vowing to wage war against rival Islamist group.

Abdiaziz Hassan Abdi, a spokesman for the Ras Kamboni faction, says senior faction members including Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Islam ‘Madobe have decided to formally walk out of Hizbul Islam.

I’ll try and write a full post on this next week. I would love to hear any insights from readers.

The UN to hold a conference on Somalia. Meanwhile, IRIN updates us on the economic effects of the pirates’ departure from Harardheere. (Can we standardize the spelling of this town? Is it Haradhere, Harardhere, Harardheere, or Xharadhere, or something else?)

Vincent Ogbulafor, chairman of Nigeria’s ruling People’s Democratic Party, will resign next month.

The AP profiles Juba, South Sudan.

US Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Food shortages in Burkina Faso affect livestock as well as people, producing a cycle of loss.

Controversy continues around a water-sharing agreement in Nile Basin countries. More here, and below is a video from Al Jazeera English:

Flintlock 10 Update

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The US-run Flintlock 10 training exercise, which aims among other goals to increase counterterrorism capacity in the Sahel, began some ten days ago. A few articles, several of them from US AFRICOM, update us on how the exercise is going:

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso (AFRICOM):

The tactical portion of Flintlock 10 will consist of small-unit combined training and activities involving U.S. and partner nation militaries throughout the region. The exercise will also include Medical and Veterinary Civic Action Programs that will be conducted to provide the populations in rural areas health information and medical care.

[…]

An important objective of this exercise is to promote the interoperability of the militaries of partner nations. Future operations in the region will involve the combined multinational militaries of several different nations. The interoperability of African nations will be critical to successful African peacekeeping operations and provide regional stability in the greater security efforts on the continent.

[…]

True interoperability is more than just compatible systems and procedures; it’s also developing a cadre of professionals who know how to work with each other.

Mali (AFP):

A U.S. Special Forces instructor leans toward a steering wheel, showing some 50 Malian soldiers gathered around an army pickup how a passenger should take control of a car if the driver is killed in an ambush.

The elite Malian troops look on, perplexed. “But what can we do if we don’t know how to drive?” asks Sgt. Amadou, echoing many of his colleagues’ concern.

There are a few laughs, but the Malians are not joking; most of their unit does not know how. The lack of ability to perform such a basic task illustrates part of the huge knowledge gap the U.S. military is seeking to bridge in Africa as it trains local armies to better face the region’s mounting threats.

Mali (AFRICOM):

U.S. Army jumpmasters assigned to Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara conducted a Basic Airborne Refresher course May 7, 2010 for African paratroopers as part of the Flintlock 10 special operations exercise in an effort to improve capacity building of African forces for future airborne missions.

Airborne soldiers from Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso took part in the training aimed at adherence to standards and attention to detail for safe airborne operations.

The training focused on airborne tasks such as pre-jump (proper exit, check body position and count), demonstration of modified parachute landing falls (front right, front left, rear right and rear left), and mock door training (static line control).

Emphasizing the importance of safety, through the aid of interpreters, the jumpmasters trained the parachutists according to standards of the U.S. Airborne School.

According to U.S. Army Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Pair, JSOTF-TS jumpmaster, the paratroopers from the African armies brought a level of experience and expertise to the refresher training.

The results, taking the AFP and AFRICOM reports together, sound mixed. I suppose that is why the US military approaches this as a long-term project, and will likely conduct more Flintlock exercises in the future.

Flintlock has multiple goals – increasing coordination, enhancing peacekeeping capacity, strengthening counterterrorism efforts – but counterterrorism appears to be the centerpiece of the operation. I was intrigued, then, to see AFP cite a figure of 400 active militants in AQIM. I am not a military strategist, but 400 militants seems like enough men to pull off a number of kidnapping operations and hit-and-run attacks on army outposts in the desert. It does not seem like enough men to engage a Sahelian army (let alone the US army) in a pitched battle. I am wondering then whether military training will really boost the capacity of Sahelian armies to deal with AQIM. Aren’t the real needs in intelligence – finding and arresting militants, breaking up cells, negotiating hostage releases, etc?

Flintlock 10

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On May 2, the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) began a training exercise in the Sahara called Flintlock 10 (French) that will last until May 23. The exercise forms part of the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) and is the latest in a series of Flintlock missions that began in 2005 with the US military’s “biggest exercise in Africa since World War Two.” This year’s training involves 600 American special forces personnel, around 400 African soldiers, and some 150 Europeans. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso houses the mission’s command center, but Burkinabe and American officials carefully stated that this does not mean AFRICOM will be moving its headquarters to Burkina Faso.

Still, the contours of the mission will have a political impact on the region, particularly in that they do not square perfectly with the outlines of other regional counterterrorism partnerships.

In addition to Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad are the main participants in Flintlock 10. The BBC calls attention to the “sidelining” of Algeria under this arrangement:

Just last month, Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger launched a joint military command headquarters in the south of Algeria to co-ordinate their efforts.

Critics point out that these initiatives have led to little action as yet and that one of Flintlock’s major limitations is that it only involves Algeria, the regional military heavyweight, in a limited way, our correspondent adds.

It seems to me the American military should proceed carefully here in political terms. If Flintlock facilitates cooperation between Sahelian militaries, that could boost their capacity to deal with AQIM. But it is a problem that the participants in cooperative projects keep changing. The Algiers summit on AQIM in March included Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, and Algeria. But then only Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger participated in the recent establishment of a regional command. And while countries like Burkina Faso, Chad, and Senegal are sometimes in, sometimes out, Morocco seems to be always out, despite its ties to the US. Finally, alongside the regional dynamics are bilateral relationships – tension between Mali and Mauritania over ransom payments to AQIM, extradition agreements between Mauritania and Niger, etc. With the situation so much in flux, American decisions about whom to include and exclude could inadvertently offend one or more governments in the region, thereby undermining some of the military gains the mission makes.

AFRICOM press release here, and below is an official video of last year’s Flintlock.

Saturday Links: AFRICOM, Africa Women and War, Somaliland Election Agreement

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The Guardian discusses women’s roles in Africa’s wars.

On a more upbeat note, VOA profiles a nonprofit that works with female entrepreneurs in Mauritania.

International Crisis Group expresses concern about Nigeria’s 2011 elections.

General Kip Ward discusses AFRICOM.

IPS reports on the drive toward universal primary education in Senegal.

An end to the electoral crisis in Somaliland?

A six-point agreement was signed on Thursday by Somaliland President Dahir Riyale, on behalf of the ruling UDUB party, and Mr. Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo and Mr. Faisal Ali Warabe, on behalf of Kulmiye and UCID opposition parties, respectively[…]

The six-point agreement includes a clause prohibiting the Riyale administration from “a term extension without consulting” opposition parties. Another clause calls for international experts to be sent to Hargeisa to complete the computerized voter-registration system.

The presidential election, scheduled for September 29 but cancelled, will be held exactly one month after the international experts say they can complete the voter-registration system, according to the new agreement.

A clause that strengthens the opposition’s political cards calls for the Somaliland election commission to be replaced. It was the election commission, pressured by the Riyale administration, that cancelled September’s presidential election, thereafter deepening the political crisis and sparking deadly riots in Hargeisa.

It is the first time foreign diplomats have mediated among Somaliland’s political rivals, with [UK Deputy Ambassador to Ethiopia John] Marshal signing as a witness on behalf of the international community.

President Riyale, who was elected in 2003, has managed to stay in power by two term-extensions approved by the House of Guurti. His closest challenger, Mr. Silanyo, lost the 2003 presidential election to Riyale with less than 90 votes.

What are you reading?