Month: May 2021

West African leaders suspended Mali from their regional bloc Sunday over what they said amounted to a coup last week, Ghana’s foreign minister said after an emergency meeting to address the political crisis in Mali.The 15-nation bloc, the Economic Community of West African States, “is worried about the security implications for West Africa because of the continued insecurity brought about by the political upheavals in that country,” Ghana Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said.  At the end of their summit, the heads of state of the ECOWAS member nations demanded that Malian authorities immediately release former transitional President Bah N’Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, who are being kept under house arrest.  In their statement, the leaders condemned the arrests by Mali’s military, which they said violated mediation steps agreed to last September, a month after a coup led by the same man who has now again taken power in Mali, Col. Assimi Goita.  ECOWAS also called for a new civilian prime minister to be nominated immediately and a new inclusive government to be formed as well as a transition of power leading to February 2022 elections. A monitoring mechanism will be put in place to assure this, they added.   In addition, the statement said, the head of the transition government, the vice president and the prime minister should not under any circumstances be candidates in the planned February 27 presidential election.  ECOWAS urged all international partners, including the African Union, the United Nations and the European Union, to continue to support the successful implementation of the transition in Mali.  The heads of state expressed “strong and deep concerns over the present crisis in Mali, which is coming halfway to the end of the agreed transition period, in the context of the security challenges related to incessant terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic with its dire socio-economic impacts,” the statement said.  Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo opened the summit Sunday in Accra, saying ECOWAS must “remain resolute in supporting the people of Mali to find a peaceful solution, and restore democracy and stability in the country.”  Mali’s constitutional court on Friday named Goita as the West African nation’s government leader days after he seized power by deposing the president and prime minister and forced their resignations.  Their arrests last Monday by the military took place hours after a new cabinet was named that left out two major military leaders. The court said Friday that Goita would take the responsibilities of the interim president “to lead the transition process to its conclusion.”The deposed interim president and prime minister had been appointed following the August 2020 coup led by Goita. That coup, against then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, led to mediations by ECOWAS and Nigeria’s former leader, Goodluck Jonathan. The transitional government was set up with Goita as transitional vice president. Elections were to be held in February and March 2022.  After taking power, Goita assured that the elections would still be held, though it wasn’t clear what part the military would play in the government.  The international community, including the African Union, has condemned the power grab. The U.N. Security Council has said the resignations of N’Daw and Ouane were coerced. The U.S. has already pulled its security force support and other bodies, including the EU and France, are threatening sanctions.  Goita has justified his actions by saying there was discord within the transitional government and that he wasn’t consulted, per the transitional charter, when the new cabinet was chosen.  Akufo-Addo said Sunday that ECOWAS was committed “to the peaceful transition in Mali, with the basic goal of restoring democratic government, and working for the stability of Mali and of our region.”  He acknowledged that a May 14 dissolution of the government by the transitional prime minister was worrying and the reappointment of the new, broad-based government on May 24 hours before the arrests “generated considerable tension between various groups, particularly the military, as the former ministers for defense and security were not reappointed.”Goita attended the summit after being named transitional president by the court. Presidents Umaro Sissoco Embalo of Guinea Bissau, Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast, Adama Barrow of The Gambia and Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria were also in attendance, along with presidents from Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo and Liberia.  The heads of state called for the immediate implementation of all the decisions made Sunday. Jonathan is expected to return to Mali within the week to “engage stakeholders on these decisions.”
 
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An armed gang abducted students from an Islamic school in the north-central Nigerian state of Niger on Sunday, police and state government officials said.Armed groups carrying out kidnapping for ransom are blamed for a series of raids on schools and universities in northern Nigeria in recent months, abducting more than 700 students for ransom since December.A spokesman for Niger’s state police said in a statement that gunmen on motorcycles attacked the town of Tegina, in the Rafi local government area of the state, around 3 p.m. (1400 GMT) Sunday.He said the attackers were “shooting indiscriminately and abducted a yet to be ascertained number of children at Salihu Tanko Islamic school.”The school’s owner, Abubakar Tegina, told Reuters in a phone interview that he witnessed the attack.”I personally saw between 20 and 25 motorcycles with heavily armed people. They entered the school and went away with about 150 or more of the students,” said Tegina, who lives about 150 meters from the school.Tegina said there are around 300 pupils between the ages of 7 and 15. He said pupils live at home and only attend classes at the site.Most students kidnapped in recent months have been taken from boarding schools.One person was shot dead during the attack and a second person was seriously injured, the state governor’s spokeswoman said.She said 11 of the children taken were released by the gunmen because they were “too small and couldn’t walk.” A group of bus passengers were also abducted, she said.Sunday’s attack in Niger state took place the day after the release of the remaining 14 students of a group abducted last month from a university in neighboring Kaduna state.
 
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A military convoy struck a roadside bomb in the northwest of the conflict-wracked Central African Republic, leaving two police officers and three Russian paramilitaries dead, the government said Sunday.Tensions have been high in the country of 4.7 million since a December presidential election, although a recent surge in violence is just the latest in a civil war that has lasted since the ouster of President Francois Bozize in 2013.”Three Russian allies and two Central African police officers were killed,” government spokesman Ange Maxime Kazagui told AFP, while U.N. sources said the attack Thursday also wounded five members of the Central African security forces.They said the convoy was blown up on the road between Berberati and Bouar, more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the capital Bangui.A Russian helicopter was sent to the scene to recover the victims’ bodies and the wounded, the sources said.Moscow, which wields significant influence in the poor African nation, has since 2018 maintained a large contingent of “instructors” to train the Central African army.They were joined in December by hundreds more Russian paramilitaries, along with Rwandan troops, who were key in helping President Faustin Archange Touadera’s army to thwart a rebellion.Bangui referred to the Russian “military” in a bilateral defense accord, before Moscow corrected it by referring to them as “instructors.”Numerous witnesses and NGOs say the instructors are in fact paramilitaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy private military company that is actively participating in the fight against CAR rebels, alongside Rwandan special forces and U.N. peacekeepers.On Friday, the U.N. said 11 people were killed in less than a month by mines in the country, mainly in the northwest where some of the last bastions of rebel groups are located.The presence of roadside bombs and mines is a rather new phenomenon in the country, despite years of conflict.  Most of the territory of the perennially unstable former French colony is divided among numerous armed bands. 
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The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor on Sunday urged Sudan’s transitional government to hand over suspects wanted for war crimes and genocide in the Darfur conflict, the Sudanese official news agency reported. ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda arrived in Sudan’s western Darfur region on Saturday to meet with authorities and affected communities in the region, the court said. Bensouda said she was inspired by “the resilience and courage” of the Darfur people. FILE – The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Fatou Bensouda gives a press conference in Sudan’s capital Khartoum on October 20, 2020, at the conclusion of her five-day visit to the country.Among those wanted by the international court is former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been in jail in Khartoum since his ouster in April 2019 and is facing several trials in Sudanese courts related to his three decades of authoritarian rule. The conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region broke out when rebels from the territory’s ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. Al-Bashir’s government responded with a campaign of aerial bombings and raids by militias known as Janjaweed, who stand accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes. The ICC charged al-Bashir with war crimes and genocide for allegedly masterminding the campaign of attacks in Darfur. Sudanese prosecutors started last year their own investigation into the Darfur conflict. Also indicted by the court are two other senior figures from al-Bashir’s rule: Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein, interior and defense minister during much of the conflict, and Ahmed Haroun, a senior security chief at the time and later the leader of al-Bashir’s ruling party. Both Hussein and Haroun have been under arrest in Khartoum since the Sudanese military, under pressure from protesters, ousted al-Bashir in April 2019. The court also indicted rebel leader Abdulla Banda, whose whereabouts is unknown, and Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb, who was charged last week with crimes against humanity and war crimes. Bensouda and her team met Saturday with Darfur’s Gov. Mini Arko Minawi, who said the prosecutor’s main concern is to hand over those wanted by the court as soon as possible, and speed up the transfer of Haroun since his case is related to that of Kushayb. In a Sunday meeting with officials in North Darfur province, the ICC prosecutor said they would continue demanding the government hand over all those wanted by the court, SUNA reported. Sudan’s transitional government, which has promised democratic reforms and is led by a mix of civilian and military leaders, has previously said that war crime suspects including al-Bashir would be tried before the ICC, but the trial venue is a matter for negotiations with The Hague-based court.  
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The World Health Organization is asking for 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine for African countries to administer second doses to those who have received their first shot.  After three weeks of declining rates of COVID-19 infections in Africa, the World Health Organization is reporting an increase in cases.  It says its latest figures of more than 4.7 million cases, including 128,000 deaths indicate a 17% rise over the previous week.   WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti says she is concerned, but that it is too soon to tell whether Africa is on the cusp of a third wave.       “While it is too soon to say if Africa is seeing a resurgence, however, we are seeing increases in a number of countries, we are monitoring the situation very closely.  And we see that we are balancing on a knife’s edge,” she said. “So this makes the rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines all the more important.”     Moeti says South Africa accounts for nearly one-third of the 65,000 new cases reported by WHO.  She says she fears new variants of the virus circulating in South Africa may be spreading into neighboring countries.  She notes Namibia and Zambia are among 11 African countries experiencing more cases.   So far, 28 million COVID-19 doses of different vaccines have been administered in Africa, a continent of 1.4 billion people.  Moeti says Africa needs at least 20 million second doses of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine by mid-July to give everyone who has received the first dose full immunity.   “Africa needs vaccines now.  Any pause in our vaccination campaigns will lead to lost lives and lost hope,” she said.  “Another 200 million doses are needed so that the continent can vaccinate 10% of its population by September this year.”    Moeti appeals to countries that have vaccinated their high-risk groups to share their excess doses with Africa.  She notes France is the first country to donate tens of thousands of doses to Africa from its domestic supply.     WHO says the European Union has pledged more than 100 million doses for low-income countries and the United States has promised to share 80 million doses with lower-income countries.  Other wealthy countries have said they will follow suit.   
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West African leaders will meet in Ghana on Sunday to discuss a response to Mali’s second coup in nine months, with the new president Colonel Assimi Goita attending.The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) invited Goita to come to Ghana’s capital Accra for “consultations” ahead of an extraordinary summit on Sunday devoted to Mali, according to a letter from the 15-nation bloc seen by AFP.He flew to Accra on Saturday, military and airport sources said.In a statement on Facebook, the office of the Mali presidency said Goita would “take part alongside his counterparts in the sub-region.”He had served as vice president since leading a coup last August that ousted the democratically elected president, with the roles of president and prime minister held by civilians after pressure from ECOWAS, which has served as a mediator.However, on Monday, soldiers detained transitional president Bah Ndaw and prime minister Moctar Ouane, releasing them on Thursday while saying that they had resigned.The twin arrests triggered a diplomatic uproar and marked the second apparent coup within a year in the Sahel country.Mali’s constitutional court completed Goita’s rise to full power on Friday by naming him transitional president.With the junta going back on its previous commitment to civilian political leaders, doubts have been raised about its other pledges, including holding elections in early 2020.The junta said this week it would continue to respect that timetable but added that it could be subject to change.The constitutional court said Goita would “exercise the functions of transitional president to lead the transition process to its conclusion.”Sanctions threatECOWAS, which issued sanctions against Mali after the August coup before lifting them when the transitional government was put in place, will meet from 2:00 pm (1400 GMT) in Accra on Sunday.The 15-nation bloc has warned of reimposing sanctions on the country, as has the United States and former colonial power France.French leader Emmanuel Macron, during a visit to Rwanda and South Africa, said Saturday that he told West African leaders they could not back a country “where there is no longer democratic legitimacy or transition.”Ndaw and Ouane’s detention came hours after a government reshuffle that would have replaced the defense and security ministers, both of whom were army officers involved in the August putsch.On Friday, Goita said the army had had little choice but to intervene.”We had to choose between disorder and cohesion within the defense and security forces and we chose cohesion,” he said.Goita added that he wants to name a prime minister from the opposition M5 movement within days.M5 spearheaded protests against former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in 2020 that built up pressure ahead of his ouster, but it was excluded from key posts in the army-dominated post-coup administration.A rapprochement with the group might serve to soften domestic and foreign criticism of the military.Mali is regularly ranked among the world’s poorest countries. The previous ECOWAS sanctions were felt hard by the country, which is reeling from numerous crises including a grinding jihadist insurgency.
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Saudi Arabia is requiring all pilgrims for the scaled-back, annual Hajj in July to be vaccinated against COVID-19. In Tanzania, where vaccinations have still not begun, Muslims hoping to go to Mecca are urging authorities to start jabbing. Charles Kombe reports from Dar es Salaam.
Camera: Rajabu Hassan       Producer: Robert Raffaele
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