Tag: africa

American & Foreigners Reportedly In Custody After Deadly Coup Attempt, Shootout In Congo 

Military leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DR Congo) said they have put down an attempted coup in a dramatic Sunday incident which included a large shootout erupting in the capital of Kinshasa.

At least three men have been reported killed, with two being police officers which engaged a team of armed attackers. The third deceased is said to be one of the gunman. A government spokesman has stated “The armed men attacked the Kinshasa residence of Vital Kamerhe, a federal legislator and a candidate for speaker of the National Assembly of DR Congo, but were stopped by his guards.”

“The Honorable Vital Kamerhe and his family are safe and sound,” the spokesman announced on X. The attempted assassination failed, with the “situation under control” – according to the military, but the whole murky incident is raising eyebrows in the West as the army says it has detained some suspects who hold US and Canadian passports.

The army has further said most of those behind the attempted coup were mostly foreigners and also identified Congolese citizens based abroad, according to initial reports. “There is no link between these people and the local army or members of security forces in Kinshasa,” an Al Jazeera correspondent has said based on official sources.

However, some initial conflicting reports indicated Congolese soldiers may have been involved, but there’s a widely circulating video to have emerged showing opposition leader Christian Malanga apparently taking credit. Malanga says in the video, “Felix, you’re out. We are coming for you” – in reference to President Felix Tshisekedi. The ‘rebels’ are said to be part of the Malanga-aligned “New Zaire Movement”.

Throughout the day there’s been a heavy military presence patrolling streets around the scene of the attack in the aftermath. The US Embassy in the capital has issued an emergency security alert to all Americans to maintain caution and vigilance on “reports of gunfire”. Various embassies, including Japan, are warning their nationals not to go outside of their homes or to shelter in place.

Keep reading

Reuters Revealed The Reason Why Niger Asked American Troops To Leave The Country

All the media hype about the reasons why this happened (ex: “Russian influence”) and the expected consequences (ex: “an upsurge in terrorism”) distract from the fact that this was entirely avoidable and only occurred because the US inexplicitly disrespected Niger despite having lost its leverage over it last summer.

Reuters cited an unnamed US official to report on Thursday that Russian troops are based in the same Nigerien military facility as American ones, which Secretary of Defense Austin later confirmed. Other outlets reported the same citing their own sources, and it’s unclear whether the same individual spoke to them too. In any case, what’s most interesting about their report is the remainder of what they said was revealed to them about the larger context within which this latest development is taking place.

According to them, “Niger’s move to ask for the removal of U.S. troops came after a meeting in Niamey in mid-March, when senior U.S. officials raised concerns including the expected arrival of Russia forces and reports of Iran seeking raw materials in the country, including uranium. While the U.S. message to Nigerien officials was not an ultimatum, the official said, it was made clear U.S. forces could not be on a base with Russian forces. ‘They did not take that well,’ the official said.”

In other words, the American military delegation arrogantly told their hosts that they don’t want Russian troops in close proximity to theirs, which prompted them to subsequently request their withdrawal. Niger wanted to cut the costs and time required for receiving Russian advisors, hence why it sought to base them in a separate hanger at the same facility as US troops outside the capital instead of building a new base. This pragmatic move was within Niger’s sovereign rights as a UN-recognized state.

Keep reading

US To ‘Temporarily’ Withdraw Special Forces Troops From Chad

The US will withdraw 75 US Army Special Forces personnel from Chad in the coming days, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing US officials. The Pentagon later said the move was “temporary” as the US is looking to sign a new deal to continue its military presence in the country.

The news comes after Chad’s government sent a letter to the US threatening to scrap the agreement that justifies the US military presence in the country. US officials said they are hoping to resume talks on military cooperation after Chad’s elections on May 6.

The Green Berets are based at a military base in Chad’s capital, Ndjamena. The US officials said that a handful of US troops who work at the embassy or in other advisory roles will stay in Chad.

The withdrawal comes after the US said that it agreed to a request from the government in neighboring Niger to pull troops out. However, a top US military official said on Wednesday that the US hasn’t made a final decision to leave Niger or Chad.

Keep reading

Pennsylvania National Guard Members Deploy to Africa

U.S. Soldiers from the Pennsylvania National Guard’s 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team recently deployed to Africa to support Special Operations Command Africa.

Task Force Iroquois teams include nine Soldiers going to Somalia in the Horn of Africa and five going to Benin in West Africa.

“Over our time together, we’ve formed a cohesive team that works hard to complete the mission and looks out for one another,” said Lt. Col. Mark Kurzawa, Horn of Africa Forward Logistical Element officer-in-charge.

Since January, task force members have participated in 14 drill days, 14 days of annual training, and an eight-day pre-deployment site survey in Germany and Africa. They have also completed maintenance, culinary, finance, unit movement, hazardous materials, and vehicle recovery courses based on their roles.

“The important thing to know about this mission is it’s being executed for the first time,” said Kurzawa. “We’ve had no previous unit to give us guidance.”

Usually in a deployment, there is a larger unit and a culminating training exercise to validate the unit’s training. However, in this case, the Soldiers are validated on individual tasks because they will be going out in small teams in outstation locations and doing skills specific to their military occupational specialty.

Keep reading

Nigeria’s digital prison has been built and the gates are closing

The digital ID, whose launch is supported by the Central Bank of Nigeria (“CBN”) and the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (“NIBSS”), will have payments and social service delivery functions and will facilitate access to other services including travel, health insurance information, microloans, agriculture, food stamps, transport and energy subsidies, just to mention a few, with payment and financial services being powered by a central bank pre-paid/debit/credit card scheme dubbed AfriGo.

Among other features, the digital ID card will have a machine-readable zone in line with the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (“ICAO’s”) standards for biometric passports, a QR code that will contain the holder’s National Identification Number (“NIN”), and the possibility for face and fingerprints biometric authentication as the primary medium for identity verification through the data on the card chip, Biometric Update said.

Effectively, Nigeria’s new digital ID is linked to a person’s central bank account.  Nigeria already has a CBDC, the eNaira, which was launched in October 2021.  One of the reasons the eNaira was needed, it is claimed, was to increase financial inclusion by allowing those with a mobile phone but without a bank account to have access to the CBDC through their smartphones.

Smartphones are also linked to people’s digital IDs; the process has been far from voluntary.  In December 2023, companies offering telecommunications services in Nigeria were given a fresh order from the federal government to entirely block all phone Subscriber Identity Module (“SIM”) cards not linked to the biometrics-backed NIN by 28 February 2024.

Since April 2022, an order for the partial block of over 70 million SIM cards not linked to the owner’s digital ID has been in place. However, it is a one-way barring as only outgoing calls are not supported on such SIM cards. From 28 February 2024 therefore, all categories of SIM cards whose owners have not done the NIN linkage will be fully deprived of access to all call and data services, Biometric Update said.

For Nigeria, the totalitarian system of control – the perimeters of the electronic prison which will be used to restrict and control every aspect of people’s lives and the entire population – is now in place.

Keep reading

Psychoactive drug made from HUMAN BONES that has seen addicts digging up GRAVES to get high leads to Sierra Leone declaring a national emergency – as ‘zombie’ narcotic sweeps through West Africa, killing a dozens a month

Sierra Leone has declared a national emergency over a psychoactive drug made from human bones.

The country has witnessed a sharp spike in abuse of the drug, kush, forcing police officers to guard cemeteries in the capital of Freetown, to stop young men from digging up skeletons to get high. 

Kush is a drug made from a variety of substances, including toxic chemicals, herbs, cannabis, disinfenctant but one of its main ingredients is ground-up human bone, as they contain traces of sulphur, which allegedly can enhance the drugs effect. 

In a nationwide broadcast yesterday, Sierra Leone’s President Bio said: ‘Our country is currently faced with an existential threat due to the ravaging impact of drugs and substance abuse, particularly the devastating synthetic drug kush.’

Although there is no official death toll linked to kush abuse, one doctor from Freetown, told the BBC ‘in recent months’ hundreds of young men had died from organ failure caused by the drug. 

Keep reading

Niger Finds Itself Trapped in America’s Foreign Policy Roach Motel

Does even one American in hundred, make that one in a thousand, possibly one in a million, feel we must be involved militarily in Niger? I doubt it. But the U.S. military, from Commander In Chief Joe Biden on down, certainly do. He’s got 1,000 troops in Niger. The new Niger government wants them out.

US presence in Niger goes back to 2013. Authorized by President Obama, it has continued under both Trump and Biden. In 2015, 4 US troops were killed in an ambush. It made no dent in Obama’s foreign policy acquiescing in every cockamamie intervention the military demands.

Last July, a military group, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP), seized power from a US friendly government. The new sheriff in town is demanding the US leave. When the US visited Niger recently to plead Uncle Sam’s case, they insulted Niger’s sovereignty by telling the CNSP to stop cozying up to Russia and Iran. The CNSP’s response? “Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism.”

Keep reading

Scientists Make A Great Step Forward in the ‘Where After Africa?’ Question

A growing body of evidence indicates that our ancestors left Africa between approximately 70 to 60 thousand years ago. Yet, it wasn’t until around 45,000 years ago that they spread across Eurasia. The mystery of where these early humans resided in the intervening period has long puzzled scientists. By integrating genetic evidence with paleoecological models, researchers have pinpointed the Persian Plateau as a crucial hub during the initial phases of Eurasian colonization.

Exploring the Dawn of Populating the World

All present day non-African human populations are the result of subdivisions that took place after their ancestors left Africa at least 60,000 years ago.

“How long did it take for these separations to take place? Almost 20,000 years, during which they were all part of a single population. Where did they live for all this time? We don’t know, yet.”

This is a conversation that could have taken place one year ago. Now it is possible to give clearer answers to these questions thanks to the study recently published in  Nature Communications led by the researchers from the University of Padova, in collaboration with the University of Bologna (Department of Cultural Heritage), the Griffith University of Brisbane, the Max Planck Institute of Jena and the University of Turin.

The ancestors of all present-day Eurasians, Americans and Oceanians, moved Out of Africa between 70 and 60 thousand years ago. After reaching Eurasia these early settlers idled for some millennia as a homogeneous population, in a presumably localized area, before expanding their range across the whole continent and beyond.

This event set the basis for the genetic divergence between present day Europeans and East Asians and can be dated to around 45 thousand years ago. On the one hand, the dynamics that led to the broader colonization of Eurasia have been already reconstructed by some of the authors in a previous publication in 2022, and occurred through a series of chronologically, genetically and culturally distinct expansions.

On the other hand, the geographic area where the ancestors of all non Africans lived after the Out of Africa, and that acted as a “Hub” for the subsequent movements of Homo sapiens has been the matter of a long standing debate, with most of West Asia, North Africa, South Asia or even South East Asia having been listed as potentially suitable locations.

Keep reading

SQUEEZED BY AFRICAN COUPS, BIDEN COZIES UP TO THE WORLD’S WORST DICTATOR

U.S. COMMANDOS HAVE shown a special interest in strengthening ties with one of the most corrupt, abusive, and repressive regimes on the planet. The delivery of aid by Special Operations forces to the coastal African nation of Equatorial Guinea last month followed pilgrimages to the country’s pariah president by top U.S. officials.

The move came amid shifting West African geopolitics. A Pentagon report last year mentioned Equatorial Guinea as the potential site of a future Chinese military base. At the same time, U.S. relations with longtime allies in Central and West Africa have frayed, often in the aftermath of coups d’état by American-trained military officers.

The aid to Equatorial Guinea appears to be the latest facet of a U.S. charm offensive to woo the country’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, a tyrant now in his sixth decade in power, as the U.S. has lost influence in the African Sahel.

Keep reading

AFRICAN ‘FAIRY CIRCLES’ THAT ONCE BAFFLED SCIENTISTS POINT TO MYSTERIOUS ‘SWARM INTELLIGENCE’ IN PLANTS

For centuries, the grassy plains of the Namib Desert have been dotted with mysterious barren rings known as “fairy circles.” Local folklore warned that these strange patterns were the footprints of the gods, or a sign of a subterranean dragon poisoning the earth above.

However, modern science has a different explanation for these enigmatic bare patches; one that has sparked heated debate among researchers.

A new study published in the journal Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics presents compelling evidence against the long-standing “termite hypothesis” that has dominated discussions around fairy circle origins. This hypothesis, championed by biologist Norbert Jürgens, proposed that the circles form when subterranean termites consume the roots of newly sprouted grasses, creating distinctive circular patches in the dry grasslands on the edge of the Namib Desert. 

However, an international team led by researchers Stephan Getzin and Hezi Yizhaq offers a systematic rebuttal, drawing from extensive fieldwork and analysis across multiple regions of the Namib Desert over several years, which led to intriguing findings.

Jürgens and his team had previously cited various studies as proof that termites of the species Psammotermes allocerus were the culprits behind fairy circle formation. But Getzin’s team wasn’t convinced by the evidence.

“Our review shows that there is no single study to date that has demonstrated with systematic field evidence that the green germinating grasses within the fairy circles would be killed by root herbivory of sand termites,” states the new paper.

Getzin and Yizhaq excavated and measured around 500 grass individuals across southern, central and northern Namib sites from 2020-2022. Crucially, the roots of dead grasses inside fairy circles were undamaged and often longer than those of living grasses outside the circles.

“If termite herbivory were the cause, the roots of the dying grasses should be shorter… and show signs of biomass consumption,” the authors write in the paper. Oddly, the roots were as long, and some significantly longer, which tells the researchers that something else killed those plants, not termites.

Keep reading