Global defense news, analysis and opinion

Sudan’s Bloody Tribal Clashes Threaten Fragile Transition

An upsurge in bloody tribal clashes in Sudan has killed at least 59 people and wounded over 100 this month, heaping more pressure on the country’s fragile transitional government. More than a year since the fall of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who ruled over ethnically diverse regions with an iron fist, the joint civilian-military administration has struggled to steady a politically and economically unstable Sudan. In the latest inter-ethnic violence, 30 people were killed in clashes on May 7 between the Arab Rizeigat tribe and the Falata, who trace their roots to western Africa, sparked by a dispute over livestock. Three days later, three people died, 79 were wounded and several homes were burnt down in violence between members of the Bani Amer and Nuba tribes in the eastern city of Kassala, near Sudan’s border with Eritrea. This was followed by yet more lethal confrontations that left 26 people dead and 19 injured on May 13 in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan province. Tribal grievances spilling over into bloodshed have been a mainstay of Sudan’s numerous ethnic conflicts since independence from British and Egyptian rule in 1956. Sudan’s most notorious violence shook the Dafur region in 2003 when Bashir’s …

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Coronavirus Fails to Halt Conflict in DR Congo’s Powder-Keg East

Coronavirus has swiftly gained status as the world’s No. 1 threat but in eastern DR Congo, one of Africa’s most volatile regions, militia killings and ethnic violence are an older and — for now — far greater source of dread. Some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) distant from the capital Kinshasa, this beautiful region bordering Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi has been a notorious flashpoint since the Congo Wars of the 1990s. “The COVID-19 crisis must not make us forget the atrocities which are taking place in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” 2018 Nobel peace laureate Denis Mukwege said on Tuesday. In the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, “civilians are being massacred,” he said. “In South Kivu, Rwandan and Burundian armies are battling armed groups in the high plateaus of Minembwe, destroying everything in their wake,” Mukwege said. “And in Tanganyika, the Zambians who had until now had good neighborly relations with DR Congo… recently invaded our territory.” Mukwege co-won the coveted prize for his treatment in helping women raped by armed rebels in South Kivu. The Kivu Security Tracker, an NGO which documents bloodshed in the two Kivu provinces, said March was one of the least violent months it …

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Trump to Withdraw US From ‘Open Skies’ Treaty

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he plans to withdraw the United States from the Open Skies Treaty with Russia, the third arms control pact Trump has abrogated since coming to office. The U.S. leader said Moscow had not stuck to its commitments under the 18-year-old pact, which was designed to improve military transparency and confidence between the superpowers. “Russia did not adhere to the treaty,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “So until they adhere, we will pull out.” The New York Times reported that Trump plans to inform Moscow of the move on Friday, and that it could be a prelude to Washington also withdrawing from the New START Treaty, which limits the number of nuclear missiles the United States and Russia can deploy. The Open Skies agreement between Russia, the United States, and 32 other countries, mostly members of the NATO alliance, permits one country’s military to conduct a certain number of surveillance flights over another each year on short notice. The aircraft can survey the territory below, collecting information and pictures of military installations and activities. The idea is that the more rival militaries know about each other, the less the chance of conflict between them. But the sides also use the …

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Texas Navy Base Locked Down in Shooting Incident

A U.S. Navy base in Texas went on lockdown Thursday after shots were fired by an unidentified person, but no injuries were reported, the Navy said. Security forces at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, where both U.S. and foreign military personnel undergo flight training, responded to an “active shooter” at about 6:15 am local time, said Fifi Kieschnick, a spokesperson for the base. “The shooter has been neutralized,” she said. One service member originally reported as injured “is okay,” she said, but the base remained on lockdown two hours after the incident. It came five months after a Saudi air force student with al-Qaeda ties opened fire at a U.S. Navy air base in Florida, killing three U.S. sailors and injuring eight others. On Monday, U.S. law enforcement officials said the Florida shooter had radicalized at least five years ago and planned to undertake an attack before he arrived in the United States for military training. Since then tougher rules have been set to prevent the thousands of foreign military trainees in the United States each year from accessing firearms, and to conduct more thorough background checks on them.

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Worried Togo Finds Itself on Front Line of Sahel’s Jihadist War

In a makeshift bunker of sacks of rice beneath a tree, heavily-armed Togolese soldiers keep watch over villagers coming and going on foot or bike across the border with Burkina Faso. Just a dried-out river bed separates the two West African countries. In surrounding fields, peasant farmers are bent silhouettes, watering the sorghum and maize seeds sown before the arrival of the first rains. Soon, clouds will chase away the fine dust of the harmattan, the desert wind that each year sweeps off the Sahara southwards to the coast and chokes the air. Nothing dramatic, or so it would seem, ever happens at Yemboate, in Togo’s far north. Yet less than 30 kilometers (19 miles) away, over the border in eastern Burkina Faso, jihadists and militia groups have imposed their own brutal law. Those policemen, doctors, and teachers who have not fled are being hunted down and butchered. “When I was small, we spent our time swimming in the river,” says farmer Abdoulaye Mossi, leaning on his bike with a hoe, speaking to AFP before the coronavirus pandemic. The arid channel separates his peaceful village of cob huts from a Burkinabe village on the other side. “Fear rules today,” the farmer says. But fear does …

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Three Aid Workers Killed as South Sudan Clashes Leave ‘Many’ Dead

South Sudan’s U.N. peacekeeping mission said Wednesday it was investigating reports that “many people” had died in a surge of intercommunal violence that killed three aid workers and left several missing. Clashes between members of the Murle and Lou Nuer communities broke out over the weekend in the northeastern town of Pieri, where peacekeepers have been interviewing survivors, the U.N. mission said in a statement. “The team is investigating reports that many people were killed, injured and lost their homes,” the statement said, adding that “many” huts were burnt to the ground. “However, it is difficult to verify the number of casualties given conflicting reports and claims,” it said. Moses Majok Gatluak, a member of the Lou Nuer group and former local official in the area, told AFP that 211 people were killed and 300 injured, but that toll could not be independently verified. He said the Murle had attacked Lou Nuer villages. The attack comes after a strike by the Lou Nuer against the Murle earlier this year — part of a decades-old pendulum swing of violence and revenge by the two cattle-rustling communities. The fighting often leaves hundreds dead, with one attack in 2009 killing up to 750, according to the …

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Afghan Taliban Leader Says Committed to Deal With US

The leader of the Taliban said Wednesday that militants were committed to a landmark deal with the U.S., despite being accused of carrying out thousands of attacks in Afghanistan since it was signed. In a rare message released ahead of the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan next week, Haibatullah Akhundzada urged Washington “not to waste” the opportunity offered by the deal to end America’s longest war. “The Islamic Emirate is committed to the agreement… and urges the other side to honor its own commitments and not allow this critical opportunity to go waste,” Akhundzada said in a statement, using the name the Taliban called Afghanistan when they were in power. After months of negotiations, the Taliban and U.S. signed a deal in February which stipulates Washington will withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by next year in return for security guarantees. “I urge American officials to not afford anyone the opportunity to obstruct, delay and ultimately derail this internationally recognised bilateral agreement,” the reclusive leader said. Akhundzada hails from the Taliban’s traditional bastion of Kandahar, and was appointed head of the group after a U.S. drone strike killed his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in 2016. Mansour had succeeded Mullah …

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30 Years After Unity Dream, Fragmented Yemen Faces Reality

Thirty years after unification, Yemen is on the verge of fragmentation as a result of armed conflicts, regional rivalries, and foreign interference.

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Two Soldiers, Five Volunteers Killed in Burkina Attack

Two Burkina Faso soldiers and five civilian defense volunteers have been killed during an ambush on a military patrol in the restive north of the country, security sources said Tuesday. The attack occurred on Monday as soldiers from the military detachment in Banh in Loroum province were carrying out a patrol in the area, the sources said. “Two soldiers were killed along with five civilians,” a security source told AFP. Another security source said the civilian casualties were “defense volunteers who were with the military unit during the patrol,” adding two soldiers also died. The source said four others in the patrol were wounded, without giving further details. Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist alliance GSIM claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming to have killed “nine soldiers” in an ambush and taken weapons and vehicles, in a text sent to AFP late Tuesday. The Mali-based GSIM (Group to Support Islam and Muslims) comprises several different jihadist groups in the Sahel. On May 11, jihadists killed eight Burkinabe soldiers during an attack close to the Niger border in Yagha province, security sources said at the time. Burkina Faso is part of a regional effort to battle an Islamist insurgency, along with neighboring Mali and Niger, Mauritania and Chad. However, …

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Eight Afghan Soldiers Die Fighting off Taliban Attack in Kunduz

Eight Afghan soldiers were killed on Tuesday while repelling a fierce Taliban attack on Kunduz, a strategic city in northern Afghanistan that had briefly fallen to the militants twice in the past, officials said. Taliban fighters attacked several government posts on the outskirts of the city at around 1:00 am, a defense ministry statement said, triggering heavy fighting. “With the support of air force their attack was repelled,” it said, adding the fighting lasted for several hours. Defense Minister Assadullah Khalid, who visited Kunduz later on Tuesday, said the Taliban had “suffered big losses.” “Unfortunately, we have also lost eight brave soldiers,” he told reporters. Three civilians were also killed and 55 others wounded in the overall violence that rocked the city, Kunduz provincial health director Ehsanullah Afzali said. An airstrike also hit and partially damaged a clinic in the nearby district of Chardara but there were no reports of casualties, he added. “Taliban wounded fighters were also treated in that clinic,” Afzali told AFP. Both the Taliban and Afghan forces have clashed repeatedly in rural areas in recent months, but an attempt to enter a city as large as Kunduz is seen as a serious escalation. The latest violence follows a declaration …

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