Vox: How Islamist militant groups are gaining strength in Africa

Islamist terrorist groups have found a new home and it's not in the Middle East -- it's in Africa. Specifically, the Sahel, a band of territory in West Africa between the Sahara desert and the savannah.

Since the early 2000s, Islamist extremist groups have increasingly strengthened their base here -- training fighters, raising money, and launching a massive number of attacks.

Some are linked to al-Qaeda and other Islamic State. This is throwing these already weak countries into crises and making the region one of the most dangerous in the world. 

The Guardian: A eureka moment for the planet: we’re finally planting trees again

China plans to plant forests the size of Ireland. Latin American countries have pledged to restore 20m hectares of degraded forest and African countries more than 100m hectares. India is to plant 13m hectares, and on a single day last year 1.5 million people planted 66m trees in Madhya Pradesh alone. [...]

We are seeing a great global attempt to plant and restore forest land but paradoxically we are still losing tree cover. The rate of global deforestation has slowed by more than half in 25 years but tree loss jumped 50% in 2016, and 2017 is likely to have been worse.

The greatest threat to trees used to be loggers and the expansion of farming. These are still a threat, but human-caused deforestation and degradation make forests more fire-prone, and disease, droughts linked to climate change and harmful beetles are likely to kill trees in greater numbers. [...]

We must keep planting trees but think differently. Mass, state-sponsored tree-planting has a reputation for being expensive and badly managed. When forests are planted on an industrial scale, up to 20% of the trees may die within a few years. It costs around £720 a hectare to plant a forest, so it would cost around £250bn to plant the 350m hectares that countries have signed up to. That money is just not available to developing countries.

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statista: Most Coup Attempts In Recent Years Have Failed

In July 2016, a faction of the Turkish armed forces attempted to carry out a coup d'état against state institutions and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the country's president. Like the majority of coup attempts in recent years, it ended in failure, though it remains one of the highest-profile incidents in recent memory. Some notable coups did succeed over the past decade including Egypt in 2011 (and again in 2013) as well as Mali and Guinea-Bissau in 2012.

This month's coup in Zimbabwe joins the success list. It all started on 14 November when elements of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces sized control of key areas in the country's capital of Harare. By 19 November, ZANU-PF removed President Robert Mugabe as the country's leader, replacing him with Emmerson Mnangagwa. Impeachment proceedings were initiated when Mugabe failed to resign the presidency by a 20 November deadline. After a joint session of Parliament and Senate to discuss his impeachment on 21 November, Mugabe sent a letter of resignation before Mnangagwa was sworn in as president three days later.

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Al Jazeera: Election delay sends 'bad signal' for Mali stability

Last week's decision by Mali's government to postpone regional and municipal council elections, amid concerns over security, sends a bad signal for the prospect of long-term stability in the West African country, analysts say.

The territorial, administrative and municipal council elections, planned for December 17, were postponed to April 2018 to give the government "more time to organise absolutely inclusive elections", Tieman Hubert Coulibaly, Mali's minister of territorial administration, said in a statement last Sunday.  [...]

But Marie-Joelle Zahar, a professor at the Universite de Montreal and co-author of a recent report on peacebuilding in Mali, said that holding the elections would have been the clearest indication that the state can implement the 2015 peace agreement, aimed at bringing stability and security to the conflict-ridden north. [...]

The government signed the transitional agreement with two separate coalitions of opposition groups: the Coordination of Azawad Movements, composed largely of armed groups from northern Mali, and the Platform, which includes Touareg and Arab movements. [...]

An armed uprising in northern Mali in 2012 displaced tens of thousands of people, and the area was gripped by instability as armed opposition movements clashed with state forces and pushed them out of several areas.

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BBC4 Thinking Allowed: GDP, Mali music

GDP - Laurie Taylor talks to Lorenzo Fioramonti, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Pretoria, and author of a new book which exposes the flaws of an economic system which values this statistic, above all others, as a measure of prosperity and growth. They're joined by Douglas McWilliams, Deputy Chairman of the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Also, Mali music - Caspar Melville, Lecturer in Global Creative and Cultural Industries at SOAS, discussed his study into the ways in which Eurocentric copyright is impacting on African musical traditions.

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The Atlantic: Why Was Chad Included in the New Travel Ban?

Chad’s inclusion on the list of countries deemed security risks to the U.S. is additionally difficult to explain given its role over the past 15 years as a key counterterrorism ally. In April, U.S. forces participated in annual counterterrorism exercises with their counterparts from around the world in Chad. Chad’s inclusion in the list was met with astonishment in the country, and not only because this close counterterrorism partnership: The country has mostly managed to avoid the kinds of terrorist attacks that have afflicted its immediate neighbors like Nigeria and Mali.

“Chad sits in a very tough neighborhood,” Lauren P. Blanchard, a specialist in African affairs at the Congressional Research Service, told me. The country is a relative oasis of stability. It hosts French and U.S. forces, is engaged in fighting al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali, was critical in pushing back Boko Haram in Nigeria, and plays host to the Multinational Joint Task Force, the regional military effort to fight Boko Haram. [...]

The U.S. State Department, in its most recent country terrorism report from 2016, acknowledged Chad’s financial challenges in providing “external counterterrorism assistance in Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria,” but noted that Chad “engaged in major external military operations in … neighboring countries,” as part of the Lake Chad Basin Multinational Joint Task Force, which includes Benin, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria. Chad, the State Department reported added, was also contributing to the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali. Additionally, the report pointed out that terrorist incidents in the country had fallen due both to “proactive security force presence” and a split within Boko Haram. [...]

Terrorism aside, Chad certainly has its problems. These include an authoritarian government under President Idris Déby, politicization of the armed forces, and widespread poverty despite the country’s oil wealth. But the country—and the wider region—remains a key focus of Western counterterrorism efforts. Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who until recently was commander of American Special Operations Forces in Africa, called the Lake Chad Basin, which encompasses Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, “ground zero” of the war on extremism in Africa. Blanchard told me “Chad is very important in figuring out movement between ISIS elements in Libya and Nigeria—they have to go through Chad or Niger.”

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Al Jazeera: Macron's Francafrique

President Macron, born long after French colonies became independent, displays an ostensible modernism, and - at least on the surface - attacks the obsolete political apparatuses, which, according to him, harm the vitality of the French society. As a result, perhaps too naively, many Africans expected him to change the old "Francafrique" - France's relations with its former colonies in Africa - for the better. [...]

After independence, several countries did choose to leave the franc zone: Tunisia in 1958, Morocco in 1960, Guinea in 1959, Algeria in 1964, Madagascar and Mauritania in 1973. But a total of 14 countries, 12 of which are former French colonies, decided to continue using CFA franc as their official currency. [...]

The CFA franc is guaranteed by the French Treasury. It had a fixed exchange rate to French franc until 1999, and now - to the euro under agreements that force the countries of the franc zone to deposit 50 percent of their reserves in foreign currency to the French Treasury. [...]

From Serval to Barkhane, French military operations in Africa are allegedly aiming "to fight terrorism" and more specifically to "return to Mali its sovereignty over Timbuktu and Kidal". But, of course, another objective of these military operations - if not the primary one - is to protect French economic and geostrategic interests in the region, such as exploitation of Nigerien uranium and Malian gold. Also, it is well known that France is behind the creation of the G5 Sahel (an institutional framework for regional cooperation in development and security policies, incorporating Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad). The G5 helps France seal its military's influence in the region and President Macron seems to be committed to maintaining the current unfair status quo.

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Politico: Merkel may be leading, but who’s following?

Internationally, Berlin has increased its engagement — in Mali, the Mediterranean and elsewhere — stepping up where others have stepped down. Perhaps ironically, the nation responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century has — for many — become the defender of global progress in the 21st. [...]

Take the never-ending eurozone crisis. Merkel’s dictum — “if the euro fails, Europe fails” — has remained Berlin’s tautological reply to a perpetual crisis in Greece and beyond. She certainly deserves credit for defending the euro; not every call for reforms is objectionable. But Berlin’s single-minded insistence on austerity and structural reforms is as one-sided as it is self-referential.

“Germans tend to view economics as part of moral philosophy,” former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti liked to quip. The consequences for Europe, however, have been anything but amusing. The German obsession with the thrifty “Swabian housewife” has condemned a Continent in dire need of investment to years of economic stagnation.

Irrespective of its intentions, Berlin’s leadership in managing the crisis has not united the European Union but only deepened its fault lines. Even as southern member countries struggle with record unemployment and waves of populist unrest, Germany is booming. [...]

But there is a difference between political leadership and dogmatic isolation. In the two years since Merkel’s optimistic “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do it”), Berlin has not only failed to bring about a common European response to the challenges of migration; it has stopped pretending to try. [...]

Merkel’s view is, in fact, shared by her fellow citizens, whose appetite for global leadership remains limited. Berlin’s de facto dominance in Europe notwithstanding, Germans are as reluctant as ever to embrace a prominent international role. According to recent polls, only 42 percent support increasing the country’s minute defense budget, 41 percent favor a more robust engagement abroad, and only 38 percent would like to take a stronger military stance against the Islamic State.

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Quartz: Despite the rhetoric, Macron isn’t about to loosen France’s paternalistic grip in Africa

Unlike any other French leader Macron has openly expressed remorse for aspects of France’s colonial past. His election rhetoric suggested that he viewed France’s neo-colonial dominance with some embarrassment, preferring to loosen France’s hold on its former colonies. [...]

France also propped up francophile leaders, in particular Senegal’s Leopold Sédar Senghor and Cote d’Ivoire’s Felix Houphouet-Boigny. Both saw themselves as the guardians of a paternalistic order that kept Francophone Africa under French tutelage. [...]

During Francois Mitterrand’s term in office (1981 – 1995) 60,000 French troops were stationed in Francophone Africa. They supported several unsavoury governments, including the Hutu regime presided over by Juvenal Habyarimana in Rwanda, which went on to murder 800,000 Tutsis and some Hutus in the 1994 genocide. French soldiers did little to stop the bloodbath. [...]

Chirac was the last of the paternalistic, Gaullist French leaders. After his presidency, France became unapologetically mercantilist: it remains in Francophone Africa to protect its nationals, to guard its assets and to counter Chinese competition for natural resources and markets. [...]

But, nearly 60 years after African independence, France and Francophone Africa remain entangled beyond separation. French companies still have a quasi-monopoly over the most strategic areas in Francophone economies. Examples include electricity, telecommunications, infrastructure, airports and harbours. France’s continued influence on Francophone African foreign policy is apparent in Africa’s policy alignments.

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