West African sahel region sinks into turmoil

Suddenly, France, Algeria (two countries who have their own long story of conflict as colonizer and colony), Mali, and al-Qaeda affiliates are involved in a rapidly escalating conflict in Western Africa.

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Arena of the rapidly escalating conflict in NW Africa

Centered in Mali, which has been covered at least twice in this blog, Islamist groups (Ansar Dine and Islamic Maghreb), have been inching south closer and closer to Bamoko, the capital city the past several months. What had been a shearing off of the northern half of the country last July by a mixture of Tuareg tribes and Islamists was followed rather rapidly by a entrenchment of those positions by the Islamist group(s) - increasingly we hear more of Islamist extremists rather than Tuaregs, more on that later - and an encroachment towards towns and cities further to the south.

The UN had in July 2012 authorized a collection of West African military forces to gather and take back the desert regions of Northern Mali, but had left a, shall we say, very leisurely pace to be set - actually no specific timetable, but the fall of 2013 has been mentioned - before serious actions would be undertaken. See http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2012/sc10698.doc.htm for the text of resolution 2056

French Intervention

France, led by its Socialist President Hollande, did not see a luxury of time, and at the end of 2012, began gathering military assets together in Southern Mali to fend off the Islamists.

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French fighter aircraft, and attack helicopters came in first, but are now being buttressed by up to 2500 ground troops.

Last week, French warplanes attacked Islamist forces around the town of Diabaly, causing Islamist forces to run for cover. While fleeing exposed positions, the Islamists did not leave the town, rather mixed with the local population, and ended up being accused of using locals as human shields.

Now, french troops are being flown in, from an original 800 to 2500. And on-the-ground fighting is underway in Diabaly as of Wednesday, January 16.

French ground troops on the move towards Diabaly (on what appears to be an unusually modern and well maintained paved road ...)

One more thing

In one further step of escalation, however, in retaliation for last weeks attacks from French warplanes, Islamists seized employees of a natural gas drilling operation in Algeria. As NBC news reports, "A number of Americans have been seized by militants at a gas field in Algeria, U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday, in what he described as a terrorist incident. The militant group that claimed responsibility said it was in revenge for Algeria's support of France's operation against al-Qaeda-linked Malian rebels groups far to the southeast. It said it was holding 41 foreigners, including seven Americans."

A natural gas facility in Algeria, similar to that where Islamists have taken hostages

Note that the natural gas facility is a long way from the Mali border, but very close to Libya. It is a reminder that Libya continues to fester after the 2011 removal of Gaddafi, a country where the 2012 killing of the US ambassador Chris Stevens on September 11 was only reluctantly acknowledged as a terrorist attack, and the overthrow itself widely recognized as having swamped the region with plenty of arms for all persuasions.

A bit of history:

The rebel takeover of northern Mali began soon after the fall of Gaddafi in Libya in October 2011, when Tuareg fighters from northern Mali, who had been fighting alongside Gaddafi’s forces, returned home with weapons from Libyan arsenals.

They joined with Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militants who had moved to the lightly policed region from Algeria, and the two groups easily drove out the weakened Malian Army in late March and early April last year. The Islamists then turned on the Tuaregs, routing them and consolidating control in the region in May and June. So, the liberation of Awazad, which had been the Tuareg's longtime cry for self governance, has been silenced, as has peace in this region for years to come.

Islamists triumphant in Mali. Local residents must now fear for their hands and heads - removable items if they commit specific offenses under Sharia law.

The Tuaregs, long neglected within their own lands and with many justifiable points as to their resistance to broader Malian governance, nevertheless chose sides badly by linking themselves with Islamists.

Questions remain

US President Bush was excoriated for his decision to take on Saddam Hussein in 2003 - the world heard from all quarters: the US was out of control, did not seek adequate consensus, did not focus on coalition building ..., etc. The ouster of Libya's Gaddafi, in contrast, was trumpeted by US President Obama as the "smart" way to lead change, and that from behind. The action had UN consensus, plus the Arab League was on board - passing the new Global Test, as it was put. However, eager to move on after Gaddafi was killed, little effort was made to contain or shape the aftermath, The result, increasingly apparent from the Mali crisis, is that unsecured weaponry flowed across the region. One could describe the Libyan action with consequences still unfolding, as not at all following the script advanced by Western politicians. (And are we close to seeing this situation play out again in Syria where chemical and advanced weaponry may yet end up in Hezbollah hands or elsewhere ...)

Did French President Hollande collect the approval of the UN, or build a consensus before intervening in a matter of weeks? No, and apparently the Western world is not outraged or concerned. Is he the new cowboy of the world? Or once again, is the Western media selective and arbitrary in its formulations.

The highly technological West continues to favor aerial attacks, cruise missiles, and drones (the new US favorite)as weapons of choice - minimal damage or exposure to conflict for its own forces, but with clear limitations on the scouring out of an enemy, or at the very least, the securing of abandoned or hidden weapon caches.

What was derided as a needlessly provocative phrase, the "war on terror" was replaced by the Obama administration in 2009 with the phrase "overseas military contingencies." Apparently, three years later, the phrase "war on terror" is back, only it is US Secretary of Defense Panetta using the term, not the former president/cowboy from Texas.

Finally, the long history of neglect for the peoples of northern Mali, followed by the armed insurgence of the Tuaregs and their own dalliance with Islamists leading to their demise can be found at the following link. It is a detailed and doleful story that brings us to today's headlines.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/95252/mali-a-timeline-of-northern-conflict

Timbuktu's ancient Islamic shrines come down

There are relatively few artifacts across much of the continent of Africa that indicate its past - the pyramids of Egypt, and some Coptic churches in Ethiopia come to mind. This week, from reports by the BBC, we read that one of the less familiar, but still "world heritage" class artifacts - Timbuktu's ancient Islamic shrines - are now being taken apart by Islamic extremists.

"Islamists in control of northern Mali began earlier this year to pull down shrines that they consider idolatrous. "Not a single mausoleum will remain in Timbuktu," Abou Dardar, a leader of the Islamist group Ansar Dine, told AFP news agency. Tourist official Sane Chirfi said four mausoleums had been razed on Sunday. One resident told AFP that the Islamists were destroying the shrines with pickaxes."

Timbuktu was a center of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th centuries. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) added three mosques and 16 cemeteries and mausoleums to its world heritage list in 1988 . The structures played a major role in spreading Islam in West Africa.

Timbuktu, an ancient centre in Africa's dry Sahel

The most famous Djinguereber Mosque was built in 1327, and had been in the process of being restored and preserved since 2006. In July this year, two tombs on the site were destroyed by the Ansar Dine extremists.

Most of these structures are built entirely of local, organic material - mud (adobe like), stones, and wood. Amazingly well preserved in the dry climate, but unable to withstand picks and axes.

A loss within a greater setback

Covered once before in this blog, the presence of the Ansar Dine extremists in Timbuktu stems from a spiraling of events in 2011-2012 when the Mali government lost control the northern half of the country to an alliance of the Toureg people and the Ansar Dine.

The government itself lost its legitimacy when a group of officers took over in April 2012, forcing the civilian government to flee from the capitol of Bamoko. After negotiations led by the UN and Western countries such as France and the US, the coup officers, led by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo handed back power to civilians, but retain influence in the Malian capital, where tensions remain high between their supporters and opponents.

The coup in Bamako led to the fall of north Mali into the hands of armed Islamic group (the most prominent being Ansar Dine) linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The group applies strict Islamic sharia law including summary executions, stonings, amputations and beatings as punishments.

Much is ahead

Last month a United Nations Security Council resolution paved the way for an international military intervention in Mali. With the Mali army and troops from the Economic Community Of West African States (Ecowas) fighting on the ground and the US and the EU providing logistical support and training.

The coup leader, Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, remains in the army, and leads the Junta, which considers itself to have retained power but is overseeing a one year interim power sharing arrangement with new civilian leaders - an election is scheduled within the year.

Interim Mali President Dioncounda Traoré, currently leading the country after pressure from the UN and the West led to the ceding of power by Captain Sanogo.

So much is going on. Elections for a return to pre-coup civilian leadership, the loss of half the country (the size of France alone), and preparations for the deployment of a 3,300-strong West African force to retake the northern half back from Islamic and Toureg control.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and the African Union have been tasked to submit a detailed and costed plan for the military offensive. Again, from the BBC, "No-one is under any illusion that the restoration of government authority over northern Mali will be easy. Reports of jihadist fighters from Sudan and Western Sahara arriving to reinforce the radical Islamist rebels controlling northern Mali will add new urgency to international debates over military intervention to help the government restore its authority and reunite the country."

The Touregs call northern Mali, Azawad, and show their flag here.

However, Azawad, whatever the Toureg's vision of their land was at one point, is now a place oppressed by harsh Islamic law.

This image shows the geographic and climatic separateness between the more humid and vegetated southern Mali, and the arid Sahel with its different peoples and cultures.

Not a rosy picture ahead for Mali for 2013.

And it is Christmas ...

Once again, so far from this West African region full of sorrow and grief, Christmas 2012 seems a world apart, yet with peace so elusive in so many parts of the globe. Teatree's own personal favorite song (from an innocent early time when he learned verses 1,2,6,7), composed in 1863 by the American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow himself wrote the poem soon after he had lost his wife in an accidental fire, and his oldest son lay severely wounded from a battle in the then-raging US civil war:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and mild and sweet The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Uganda's role in regional peacekeeping forces to end

Friday, November 2, the Uganda government announced it was going to withdraw its military forces from various regional UN-authorized peacekeeping efforts across Africa. The announcement is not a good omen for the efforts involved, most noticeably the sizable force considered the backbone of UN efforts to establish a legitimate government in Somalia.

The reason

The BBC notes that the UN infuriated the government of Uganda when it published an experts' report last month accusing Uganda of arming Congolese rebels. The report said Rwanda and Uganda were both supplying weapons to the M23 rebels in the DR Congo. This long running conflict has forced some 500,000 from their homes since April, 2012.

This M23 group - led by Bosco "Terminator" Ntaganda - who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on war crimes charges - is merely the latest ascendance of constantly shifting and coalescing rebel groups in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The region has never been brought under control of any government since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Bosco Ntaganda, operations leader of the latest ascendant rebel group, the M23, in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo

Rwanda's current leader, Paul Kagame(a Tutu) and Uganda, under the leadership of Yoweri Museveni, opposed the Hutu-led government and militias that slaughtered nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus during that three month period in 1994, and during the past two decades Rwanda has continued to back armed groups in the east of DR Congo as a way to fight Hutu rebels who fled there after the genocide.

The troubled eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with Rwanda and Uganda neighboring.

M23 rebels moving to a position

The BBC article continues by quoting, Mr Mukasa, Uganda's Security Minister, told a news conference: "If our efforts are going to be misinterpreted and we are going to be maligned, we want to be in a good relationship with our neighbours. "Let's stop all these initiatives. We will concentrate on ourselves. Whoever wants to cause us trouble, they will find us at our home."

Uganda Security Minister, Wilson Mukasa

Places where Uganda troops are stationed.

The BBC notes that operations in Somalia, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo will be affected. Uganda provides the largest contingent to the UN-backed African Union mission in Somalia (Amisom) (7500 of the force's 16500 total). The Amisom force has helped the Somali government gain ground against Islamist militias. Analysts say a rapid withdrawal of Ugandan troops could threaten those gains.

Over 7500 Ugandan troops serving under the UN flag in Somalia

Ugandan troops are deployed in smaller numbers to an international mission to CAR and DR Congo to hunt down the remaining elements of the Lord's Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony.

Ugandan troops deployed to search for the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, in both Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo

African conflicts across the midsection of the continent

The Horn of Africa - Somalia is the center of this large region of conflict - Islamists (Al Shabaab) and famine, piracy - with Ethiopian, Kenyan, Burundian, and Ugandan soldiers comprising the UN peacekeeping force establishing security in what is known as the prime example of a failed state.

Sudan/South Sudan - the continuing battle of Islamist Sudan vs the black African South Sudan - the current point of conflict is over oil resources along the two country's border.

Mali/Nigeria - both battling Islamists with Al Qaeda sympathies, along with corruption in their own government.

Rwanda/Democratic Republic of Congo - the longest, deadliest, and most under-reported conflict on the continent.

Troubles, troubles, everywhere.

South Sudan, Congo and Mali

Three African countries are in the news this week - none of the reasons are particularly inspiring.

South Sudan - now one year old (July 9, 2011 independence day) is embroiled in a tense, violent confrontation with its parent nation, the Republic of Sudan. After repeated clashes along an undefined and oil-rich border, and arguments and accusations regarding payments for oil shipped north through the Republic of Sudan, South Sudan suspended oil shipments altogether in the past few months. Now South Sudan is struggling without 95% of its revenues from producing oil, and the Republic of Sudan is without 75% of its revenues based on shipping South Sudanese oil. For a while, there were concerns that a full scale war was about to erupt between the two, but that possibility has receded for the time being.

South Sudan, with a lot of oil, and Republic of Sudan owning the only pipeline out to the world market. The two countries haven't solved their issues yet.

In the past week, however, international relief agencies have noted an increasingly dire situation with much of South Sudan's population. Without the government's ability to purchase food internationally (grain), pockets of food shortages are erupting. In the northern Republic of Sudan, significant protests among Khartoum residents have also occurred due to lack of government services.

Both leaders walking together. Republic of Sudan's Bashir wanted for genocide by the International Criminal Court situated in The Hague, Netherlands; South Sudan's Salva Kiir in a cowboy hat.

So, not much of a year to point back to, the question is not only whether South Sudan's 8.2 million population has kept its firm resolve to move forward together, but if they can.

South Sudanese girls overlooking Juba, South Sudan's largest city, and temporary capitol.

Republic of the Congo

Not to be confused with its much larger and [in]famous neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, this French-speaking West African country has a population of 4 million and its capitol city is Brazzaville.

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Republic of the Congo and its larger neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Interestingly, (from Wikipedia) "the Republic of the Congo's sparse population is concentrated in the southwestern portion of the country, leaving the vast areas of tropical jungle in the north virtually uninhabited. Thus, Congo is one of the most urbanized countries in Africa, with 70% of its total population living in a few urban areas, namely in Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire, or one of the small cities or villages lining the 534-kilometre (332 mi) railway which connects the two [main] cities."

The railroad along which 70% of Congo's population lives ...

The impoverished country (wealthy in mineral resources and timber - unable to exploit them for the good of the whole ...)made the news this week when a former warlord, Thomas Lubanga was sentenced to 14 years in prison for using child soldiers during 2002-2003 when the country was engulfed in a civil war - a local conflict within the wider DR Congo war, which left an estimated five million people dead - mostly from hunger and disease.

Thomas Lubanga in the International Criminal Court sentencing proceedings this past week.

In March, Lubanga became the first person to be convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it was set up 10 years ago. Lubanga led the Union of Congolese Patriots, an ethnic militia active in the war that is estimated to have killed 60,000 people. Conflicts continue in the two Congolese countries, ripples still occurring nearly two decades later after the Rwandan genocide unleashed violence throughout Central Africa.

Mali

Mali - now divided between rebels and a tenuous government in the south. The rebels themselves (ethnic Tuaregs and those with a predominately Islamist perspective) have joined forces to create an Islamist state.

The new Islamic state - Azawad - apparently considers ancient Muslim shrines as anathema, and its new leaders have duplicated action taken by the Taliban in Afghanistan when that movement took control of the country in the late 1990s. In the case of the Taliban, its forces destroyed a massive world-heritage Buddha image carved into a mountainside. In the case of the "Islamists of Ansar Dine," they too are destroying world-heritage status religious shrines.

This Buddha image was heavily damaged with direct shelling by the Taliban 13-14 years ago.

Ancient Muslim shrines in Timbuktu are the latest relics deemed offensive to the the Northern Mali's new leaders, supported by Al Qaeda, who have apparently gained the upper hand over the Tuaregs, according to the New York Times.

Strange and sad stories from Africa.