by DAVID AXE

The latest from resident cartoonist Jonathan Hughes. Background here. Comics archives here.

Guinea troops. Zim Telegraph photo.

by DAVID AXE

The emerging U.S. military strategy for Africa stresses partnership over direct intervention. In other words, we team up with African armies, boost their training and equipment, then let them handle their continent’s security problems themselves. It’s a proxy approach.

There’s at least on big potential pitfall. In Africa, as in Latin America, armies can be major destabilizing elements within their own governments. In Guinea, Army officers have backed coup leaders striving for military government. Just last week, the Guinean government arrested army Colonel Moussa Keita for backing an exiled coup leader.

I asked Major General William Garrett, commander of U.S. Army Africa, how his force avoids inadvertently boosting the wrong people. “AFRICOM and U.S. Army Africa focus and apply resources based on policy guidance from the U.S. government,” Garrett said:

Currently, the top five priorities for U.S. government engagement in Africa are: supporting strong and stable democracies and good governance; fostering sustained economic growth and development; strengthening public health; preventing, mitigating, and resolving armed conflict; and helping to address transnational challenges.

When applying resources, AFRICOM and U.S. Army Africa work shoulder-to-shoulder with our military and non-military partners as part of a larger U.S. and international effort. This comprehensive approach is the best way to prevent the challenges that you mention in your question.

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Sudan-backed rebel. U.N. photo.

by DAVID AXE

Things are looking up for Chad and Sudan, whose shared border — in and around Darfur — has been a seething conflict zone for seven years. This year, the two countries agreed to jointly patrol the border to tamp down on allegedly government-backed rebel groups that threaten both governments. Sudan will take the lead in the joint force for the first six months.

With relations improving, Chadian president Idriss Deby is slated to visit Khartoum this week, for the first time in six years. Darfur and border security will surely dominate the agenda.

Some Chadians are skeptical that the two countries can build lasting ties. “People say this is a way for Deby to trap Sudan,” our correspondent Mahamat Tahir Issa says. In other words, the diplomatic gestures could be cover for continuing state-sponsored rebel attacks.

On a related note, Chad is chafing under the continued presence of a large U.N. peacekeeping force. Rumor has it Chad wants the U.N. blue berets out within six months. Deby could be serious about the U.N. departure, or his apparent displeasure could be a negotiating tactic.

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by DAVID AXE

Kenyan veep Steven Musyoka was in Washington, D.C. this week for the annual National Prayer Breakfast, which bizarrely functions as a sort of informal diplomatic confab for developing countries. Musyoka took the opportunity to “raise the red flag” with regards to Kenya’s neighbor Somalia. “As a result of what is going on in Afghanistan, some of these extremists are leaving for Somalia … this is a wake-up call,” Musyoka said. “Unless the rest of world looks at Somalia as a peace challenge, it may be too late.”

Not coincidentally, Kenya is reinforcing its border with Somalia amid reports that Somali extremist group Al Shabab is concentrating in the border region. The two sides apparently traded gunfire two weeks ago. “The exchange of the fire between the two sides was in action for 10 to 15 minutes, and I have not witnessed any casualties between the two sides, but what I can confirm is that it was a combat between the Al-Shabab and the Kenyan military force,” an eyewitness named Mohamoud Ali told War Is Boring Somalia correspondent Mohamed Omar Hussein.

January was one of the bloodiest months in years for Somalia. The U.N. said more than 250 civilians died in fighting.

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Chadian soldier. Photo by David Axe.

by DAVID AXE

The Chadian interior minister toured the country’s restive east last week, just a couple weeks after Chad and Sudan signed a peace deal meant to tamp down on bandits and rebel groups that criss-cross the border. Chad had accused Sudan of sponsoring rebels targeting Chad. Sudan had accused Chad of harboring rebels targeting Sudan. And ’round and ’round we went.

It remains to be seen whether the recent treaty will make any difference. To be sure, all previous efforts at locking down the border have failed. Our Chad correspondent Tahir Issa Mahamat recalls when Chad gave the Sudanese rebel group JEM 40 gun-armed pickup trucks to help the group chase down anti-Chad rebels hiding out in Sudan. But “JEM kept quiet” because of impending peace talks with Khartoum, Mahamat says.

But Interior Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir isn’t taking any chances. On his eastern tour, he ordered Chadian paramilitary police to shoot bandits on sight, Mahamat reports.

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Pirates. NATO photo.

by DAVID AXE

The Sea King helicopter from the Canadian frigate Fredericton hovered right in front of the fishing boat with the six Somali men aboard. It was January 28 on the Gulf of Aden. Just weeks prior Somali pirates had seized four ships right under the noses of the international naval fleet that had assembled to prevent hijackings.

The men attempted to flee in their boat, but the chopper blocked the way. Fredericton dispatched a boarding team in a small boat. A chopper from the American warship Farragut escorted the boarding team. As the American helo neared the skiff, the flight crew saw the Somalis down below throwing boxes into the sea. It’s a standard pirate tactic to dispose of any evidence before getting boarded.

“As we approached the skiff, the group of six men onboard immediately raised their hands and followed our directions,” the Canadian boarding officer said. “They were all of Somali descent and they did not have any equipment onboard that would identify them as legitimate merchants or fishermen.”

Without evidence, there was nothing the navy could do but let the men go. Canadian Commander Steve Waddell, commanding officer of Fredericton, tried to look on the bright side. “In this particular case, though there was not enough evidence to detain the individuals, I do believe that we were able to prevent them from carrying out an attack on another vessel.”

But rest assured: these pirates will be back.

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Kenyan sea officer. Photo by David Axe

by DAVID AXE

Just four months after the world’s navies all but declared victory in their war on Somali pirates, hijackings have spiked. In the span of just one week in early January, sea bandits seized four large commercial vessels off the Somali coast. Captured vessels can be ransomed for several million dollars apiece.

Piracy’s dramatic resurgence has accelerated a profound change of heart among the shipping companies whose vessels ply East African waters. No longer content to entrust their safety to naval forces, shippers are mulling the wide adoption of seaborne private soldiers — in a word, mercenaries, either sailing aboard targeted ships or riding shotgun in their own armed escort vessels. Mercenaries are a potentially more effective, but politically risky, short-term solution to an escalating crisis.

There was just one hijacking in the Gulf of Aden between July and September last year, compared to 17 during the same period in 2008. That led NATO Commodore Steve Chick to label the piracy decline “a fact” last September. At the time Chick, a British navy officer, led one of several international flotillas assigned to interdict pirates.

But the lull in hijackings was deceptive, as the January attacks proved. There are around 40 warships from more than a dozen nations in the region. But they must patrol some 2 million square miles of ocean teeming with thousands of commercial vessels and perhaps hundreds of bandits, many disguised as fishermen. The window of opportunity for responding to a pirate attack is just a few minutes; the chances are slim that a warship will be close enough to help before pirates gain control of the targeted vessel.

The January hijackings underscored this reality and perhaps represented a tipping point for shipping companies. “Initially ship owners seemed to concur that they would do what they’ve always done and have navies patrol the region,” Claude Berube, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, told World Politics Review. “I think we’re on the cusp of the next threshold, in which privately owned escort vessels are more acceptable.”

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

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by DAVID AXE

The latest from resident cartoonist Jonathan Hughes. Background here. Comics archives here.

A.U. tanks in Somalia. Photo via Somali Weyn.

by DAVID AXE

A spokesman for the Somali Islamic group Al Shabab told reporters his forces have been bolstered by fighters from Yemen. “We have received fighters from the Arabian Peninsula — I mean in Yemen — to bolster our fighters on the ground,” Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage said. “There is not any other alternative for us [but] to do [this] … [A]s the saying goes, ‘one good turn deserves another.”

Rage is referring to reports that Al Shabab might send Somali fighters to Yemen to help Al Qaeda in its battle with U.S. and Yemeni forces.

Rage said there can be no peace or stability in Somalia until the African Union troops from Burundi and Uganda, pictured, pull out. Rage called for the overthrow of “the apostate government” led by President Sheikh Shariff Sheikh Ahmed.

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A Chadian Mi-24 Hind at the Abeche airport on June 19, 2008. Photo by David Axe.

by DAVID AXE

For years Chad and Sudan have accused each other of harboring rebel groups seeking to undermine each. Chad says its attackers are based in Sudan. Sudan says its attackers are based in Chad. Periodically one government will send troops across the border in pursuit of rebels, stoking tensions that have resulted in the two nations breaking off diplomatic ties on several occasions.

Now, after months of deliberation, Chad and Sudan have signed a peace deal. Our Chad correspondent, Mahamat Tahir Issa, says the deal calls for both countries to end all support for rebel groups, and to form a joint force for chasing all rebels in the border zone. How do Chadians feel about the treaty? “People here never believe the two presidents, because many agreements were closed” in the past. “But nobody has respected [them] and the agreements … failed.”

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Zimbabwe. Photo by Isaac Flanagan.

by DAVID AXE

A coalition government formed early last year is seen by many Zimbabweans as the last hope for a country that has long teetered on the edge of open conflict. In February 2009, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party agreed to form a fragile unity government with the Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), the party of long-time autocrat, President Robert Mugabe.

The two parties’ power-sharing deal, brokered by the Southern African Development Corporation, was meant to head off potential widespread violence following disputed presidential and parliamentary elections in March 2008. The election, in which Mugabe finished second and Zanu-PF lost control of parliament, led to a violent crackdown, with Mugabe and his supporters essentially suspending the democratic process in order to retain power.

Zimbabweans’ desire for change was fueled by years of disastrous governance resulting in some of the worst conditions found in Africa, outside of an active war zone. “The annual inflation rate is over 165,000 percent, the world’s highest,” International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, reported around the time of the 2008 election. “Unemployment is over 85 percent, poverty over 90 percent, and foreign reserves almost depleted. Over 4 million people are in desperate need of food. HIV/AIDS and malnutrition kill thousands every month.”

Astoundingly, things got even worse after the election. Failing water and sanitation systems sparked a cholera outbreak that killed more than 4,000 people in late 2008 and early 2009. Inflation reached 90 sextillion percent and forced Zimbabweans to abandon their national currency in favor of U.S. dollars and South African rands. A subsequent shortage of dollars sparked rioting by underpaid soldiers. University of Zimbabwe professor John Makumbe called the rioting “the beginning of the end” for Mugabe’s regime.

But the 85-year-old strongman held onto power with the help of his security forces, the majority of whom didn’t riot. And the subsequent political compromise between Zanu-PF and the MDC has helped to at least temporarily mollify Mugabe’s opponents.

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

“250 Seconds In Rwanda” from King Adz on Vimeo.

by DAVID AXE

“A decade and a half after the genocide that decimated Rwanda, the country appears quite peaceful; prosperous, even,” Adam Stone reports for The Independent.

Stone, a British filmmaker known by his handle “King Adz,” visited the East African country to understand the role music played in the genocide, and in Rwanda’s subsequent recovery:

In 1994, Africa’s worst genocide was conducted to songs exhorting the Hutu majority of this small African country to murder 800,000 of their Tutsi neighbors. Today, the sound of peaceful music – traditional and gospel, hip-hop and reggae – has returned to the streets and fields of Rwanda.

The post-war musical renaissance was shepherded by Dicken Marshall, a Briton who built a state-of-the-art recording studio in Kigali as means of raising money for a local charity.

(Video: Adam Stone)