Category: Key Issues

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has sent his top military officials and a governor to reactivate old militias and create new ones to combat terrorism on the central African state’s northern border with Nigeria. The militias are, for the first time, to tell people about what the government says is a new strategy by the Islamic State in West Africa Province, or ISWAP, to attract supporters away from rival Boko Haram through gifts of food and money, and attacking only military positions, unlike Boko Haram, which attacked schools and other civilian targets.

About 30 people, most of them youths, sing in Mora that Boko Haram is a capricious terrorist group. The singers call for caution in all villages on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria, where, they say, jihadist groups have relaunched activity.

Abdoul Oumar is coordinator of nine militia groups fighting Boko Haram terrorism in Mora, a town on the border with Nigeria’s Borno state. Nigeria says Borno is an epicenter of the jihadist group.

Oumar saif the number of jihadists infiltrating villages in Mora within the past three months is increasing.

Oumar said militias that were discouraged by the lack of flashlights, motorcycles, telephones, bows and arrows, and guns to fight terrorists will now be able to resume work. He said besides moving through the bush and hills to inform the military of suspicious activities, militias are now expected to teach people not to accept gifts from unknown visitors.

Oumar spoke Saturday, after receiving food, flashlights, motorcycles and an undisclosed amount of money from Cameroon’s President Paul Biya. He said the militias expect more food and financial assistance from the state.

Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of the Far North region, on the Nigerian border, led a delegation that included senior military officials to Mora. Bakari said Biya wants militias to be reactivated to stop terrorist incursions.

Bakari said since May, when Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was declared killed, the Islamic State in West Africa Province, or ISWAP, has been very active along the Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad border. Bakari said Cameroon’s militias should denounce jihadist groups and educate people to reject their teachings. He said if militias collaborate with government troops and state officials, the jihadists’ new modus operandi will be short-lived.

Bakari promised more government support but did not say when the support would be given. He promised to visit all border towns to reactivate militias.

In January, Cameroon’s military said many militias complained of lack of government support and stopped helping government troops. Bakari said militias thought Boko Haram had been defeated.

Joseph Beti Assomo is Cameroon’s minister of defense.

He said the war Cameroon launched against Boko Haram in 2014 is now taking a new dimension with jihadists disguising themselves as charity groups. He said he is inviting all civilians along Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria to denounce strangers preaching peace and reconciliation. He said jihadists in general are infiltrating into villages pretending to be peacemakers and recruiting followers.

Assomo said it is not known how many jihadist groups are operating along the border. He said the jihadists have reduced attacks on civilians and only target military installations and government officials. He said there may be other new jihadist groups created after the death of Shekaou, but did not name any of the jihadist besides ISWAP.

The Cameroon military says that since May, more than nine jihadist attacks have been reported on its troops’ positions. At least 25 troops and 13 civilians have been killed since May.

Boko Haram terrorists have been fighting to establish an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria’s northeast. The fighting extended to Cameroon, Niger and Chad in 2013.

30,000 people have been killed and 1.8 million displaced according to the United Nations.

Assomo said civilians should report all strangers in their towns and villages to the military.

Source: Voice of America

Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi on Sunday authorized U.S. special forces to help the Congolese army fight the Allied Democratic Forces, an armed group linked to the Islamic State.

The ADF, which the United States has deemed a terrorist group, is considered the deadliest of scores of armed militias that roam the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Catholic Church in the country says the ADF has killed about 6,000 civilians since 2013, while a respected U.S.-based monitor, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), blames it for more than 1,200 deaths in the Beni area alone since 2017.

“President Felix Tshisekedi authorized the deployment of American anti-terrorism experts in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” said a statement from the presidency.

The U.S. forces will boost the Congolese army’s fight against ADF in the national parks of Virunga and Garamba, it added.

The mission will last several weeks and is specifically directed against the ADF.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Hammer, who presented the team to Tshisekedi, said that their presence was part of a partnership agreed between the two countries in 2019, according to the presidency’s statement.

In March, the U.S. State Department said the ADF is notorious across the region for its “brutal violence against Congolese citizens and regional military forces.” The U.S. has sanctioned alleged leader Seka Musa Baluku and said IS has acknowledged the ADF as an affiliate since 2019.

Congolese authorities’ crackdown against ADF has included a “state of siege” in which members of the security forces have replaced top officials in North Kivu and neighboring Ituri province.

Source: Voice of America

Two years after vaulting to power as a nerdy, conservative outsider, Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, tests another paradox: Can he save the Arab Spring’s only democracy through arguably undemocratic means?

There is no immediate answer, more than halfway through a 30-day suspension of parliament that Saied ordered last month — and later hinted at extending — after seizing emergency powers amid Tunisia’s many crises.

Since then, the 63-year-old president has moved swiftly to crack down on alleged corruption, lifting parliamentary immunity and arresting officials tied to the phosphate industry, but also targeting lawmakers critical of him. He enlisted the army, which so far appears to support him, for a major COVID-19 vaccination drive to fight a galloping pandemic.

But Saied has yet to replace the government he ousted in late July or offer a comprehensive plan for emerging from the political and economic turmoil gripping the North African country.

Some hoped he might set milestones Friday, which marked an important date for Tunisian women’s rights. But instead of making a keynote speech, he visited female artisans.

As many Tunisians and some hardline Arab governments root him on, rivals decry a coup. Rights groups and pundits worry about shrinking freedoms and a restrained response thus far from Western governments — although a U.S. delegation visiting Tunis on Friday urged Saied to “urgently” appoint a new prime minister and swiftly restore the country’s parliamentary democracy.

“The question is: What will Saied do now?” said Brahim Oumansour, a North Africa analyst for the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, a Paris-based research organization.

“Will he really carry through the big reforms he promised Tunisians, and keep these new powers temporarily to deal with the crisis? Or will he keep them long term?”

Unlikely candidate

A constitutional scholar with no political party backing him and a penchant for long-windedness, Saied seemed an unlikely presidential candidate in 2019, as he bucked Tunisia’s establishment politics.

He waged a shoestring campaign on the streets and online.

Seemingly stiff and austere, he earned nicknames like RoboCop and Robespierre, after the French revolutionary, yet rocketed to victory, capturing nearly three-quarters of the runoff vote.

Saied’s clean image also earned him the backing of young voters fed up with growing corruption — and despite his conservative stances in areas like homosexuality and gender equality in inheritance.

But he clashed with the country’s gridlocked parliament and its most powerful member, the moderate Islamist Ennahdha party that has been a major player in post-revolution Tunisia.

“His conservative stances could have facilitated dialogue with Ennahdha,” analyst Oumansour said, comparing Saied unfavorably with his experienced predecessor, Beji Caid Essebsi. “It could have helped him reach a consensual outcome to better steer the country, but he chose to feed divisions within parliament to reinforce his powers.”

Popular for now

For now, many ordinary Tunisians see Saied as a savior, not a spoiler. Instead of getting better, life has gotten harder since the euphoric revolutionary days a decade ago, which touched off the wider Arab Spring revolt.

The coronavirus pandemic — driving Tunisia’s death rate to the highest in the Middle East and Africa — deepened poverty, unemployment and the country’s fiscal crisis. Many blamed the government’s shambolic pandemic response on bickering parties, starting with Ennahdha. Saied’s power grab followed anti-government demonstrations and attacks on Ennahdha offices.

“Kais Saied has opened the door on the unknown … and a breath of fresh air,” Tunisian writer Emna Belhaj Yahia opined in France’s Le Monde newspaper, describing Tunisians as asphyxiated by their myriad woes. “Only this possibility can explain their joy.”

“I think the president has a bit of a grace period when it comes to the streets,” Fadil Aliriza, editor in chief for Tunisian news website Meshkal, said in a recent forum hosted by London policy research group Chatham House.

But unless Saied brings other political and social actors on board, Aliriza added, “his political capital may diminish very quickly.”

The president already has dismissed Ennahdha’s call for a national dialogue, which helped Tunisia emerge from an earlier crisis, saying at least when it came to the Islamist party, no discussion was possible with “cancerous cells.”

Critics say sidelining Ennahdha, representing a still sizable chunk of Tunisian voters, does not bode well for democracy.

Tougher response?

Rights groups also are alarmed at the closure of news channel Al-Jazeera’s Tunis office a day after Saied’s power move. And while a number of Western governments, including former colonial power France, have called for restoring democracy and the rule of law, analysts urge a sharper response.

The United States and European nations need to “take tougher lines, even if behind the scenes,” said the International Crisis Group research organization, to commit Saied to a detailed road map by October for getting democracy back on track.

Others suggest conditioning Tunisia’s receipt of International Monetary Fund assistance, now under negotiation, to adhering to democracy markers like rule of law and accountability.

Yet Western concerns about maintaining stability and security in the Arab world have traditionally outweighed pro-democracy rhetoric, analyst Oumansour noted.

“Western leaders have a key role to play to support Tunisia,” he added. “For the moment, Tunisia is a democracy that’s succeeded, despite its fragility and uncertainty.”

Source: Voice of America

Early results Saturday in Zambia’s presidential election showed opposition candidate Hakainde Hichilema leading, according to the electoral commission.

Results from 31 of Zambia’s 156 precincts showed Hichilema leading President Edgar Lungu in the vote count, 449,699 to 266,202. The commission said it planned to announce final results by Monday.

In a statement Saturday, Lungu said Thursday’s presidential and parliamentary elections were “not free and fair.” He said polling agents were attacked and chased from polling stations in several provinces, “rendering the whole exercise a nullity.”

Lungu, who ordered troops to help suppress the violence after a party chairman and another man were killed in North-Western province, said his Patriotic Front party was contemplating its next course of action.

Lungu, 64, has been president since 2015. Hichilema is a businessman who has criticized Lungu’s management of the country’s battered economy.

Zambia recently defaulted on $12 billion in debt it owes to creditors, raising concerns among citizens and investors.

Source: Voice of America

LUSAKA, ZAMBIA – Zambia’s electoral commission called on candidates to be patient Friday as election workers tallied general election results in 10 provinces.

Observers reported a massive turnout Thursday at polling stations across the country, including the capital, Lusaka.

Zambia election officials promised they would announce the results within 72 hours after the last citizen voted.

Electoral commission spokesperson Patricia Luhanga said the commission was pleased with the large turnout.

“The numbers we’ve seen are quite unprecedented,” she said. “And for us as a commission, this gives us a sense of pride. Because we look at the total number of registered voters that is slightly above 7 million and we look at the queues that we have experienced on poll day. We have nothing but a sense of pride.”

Zambians voted to choose a new president, parliament and local representatives in an election that analysts said was a test for one of Africa’s pillars of democracy.

President Edgar Lungu, 64, faced his fiercest competition from a familiar challenger, Hakainde Hichilema, 59, one of 15 opposition candidates.

Analysts predicted a tight race to determine the country’s political future, and a second round could result if no candidate receives more than 50% of the ballots cast.

Officials said they would give regular updates to keep the country informed about the tabulation.

But social media tools such as WhatsApp, a crucial form of communication in the provinces, have been curbed. The government has not commented on outages on the internet.

‘Unblock the internet’

Opposition presidential candidate Hichilema accused the ruling party on Twitter of orchestrating the social media disruptions. He said he wanted telecom regulators to “unblock the internet so citizens can follow the electoral process and continue with their lives unhindered.”

Clashes between supporters of the governing Patriotic Front (PF) and partisans of the main opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) alliance left two people dead in one constituency in Lusaka earlier this month.

But officials of the African Union Poll Observer Mission said representatives of political parties at the polling stations they visited had no problems and were pleased with how the elections were administered.

Former Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma, who led the AU observers, told VOA he was pleased with how Zambians behaved during voting.

Koroma commended the patience and decorum of the large crowds at the polling stations he visited. He also praised the professionalism of the electoral commission staff at the polling stations as well as the police there to maintain the peace.

“Personally, I have been impressed with what I have seen so far,” Koroma told VOA. “Even at 6 a.m., you have long queues lined up. It shows a lot of enthusiasm and excitement on the part of the Zambians to exercise their civil responsibility. It’s very impressive.”

Before election day, Koroma met with many candidates, including Lungu, Hichilema and others.

“We have cautioned them, even those that have concerns, that … we will address the concerns,” he said. “It is all part of building the democratic process, [and] we will continue to engage.”

Source: Voice of America