Kenya’s terror woes; Al-Qaeda disciples; normalizing Ebola, and more

IMB: Gulf of Guinea led the world for piracy in 2018 (Maritime Executive)
The IMB Piracy Reporting Centre has released its global piracy report for 2018, and it warns that the maritime industry experienced a net increase in attacks year-over-year. In particular, the agency recorded a “marked rise in attacks against ships and crews around West Africa.” Worldwide, the IMB recorded 201 incidents of maritime piracy and armed robbery in 2018, up from 180 in 2017. The Gulf of Guinea is particularly dangerous for seafarers: reports of attacks in waters between the Ivory Coast and the Congo more than doubled in 2018, and these incidents accounted for the overwhelming majority of serious acts of piracy worldwide. The Gulf of Guinea accounted for all six hijackings, 13 of the 18 ships fired upon, 130 of the 141 hostages held, and 78 of 83 seafarers kidnapped for ransom worldwide. In a worrisome trend, this violence accelerated in the last quarter of the year. 41 kidnappings were recorded off Nigeria between October and December, more than half the annual total. Some of these attacks occurred up to 100 nm offshore, well outside of the territorial waters of West African states.

America’s new policy in Africa is an attempt to contain Chinese and Russian influence (Ismail Einashe, The National)
To many, Trump’s new economic and security strategy looks like a desperate scramble to regain power in a region where much of the goodwill traditionally extended to the US has evaporated

Abiy’s Ethiopia pardons 13,000 accused of treason or terrorism (VOA)
Ethiopia has pardoned more than 13,000 people in the past six months who had been charged with or convicted of treason or terrorism, state-affiliated media said on Tuesday.
The previous government had said around 30,000 people including students, opposition leaders, journalists and bloggers were in detention following widespread protests that broke out in 2015.

Ebola has gotten so bad, it’s normal (Laurie Garrett, Foreign Policy)
early 600 people have contracted Ebola since last August in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, making the ongoing outbreak the second largest in the 43-year history of humanity’s battle with the deadly virus. And there is a genuine threat that this Congo health crisis-the 10th the African nation has faced-could become essentially permanent in the war-torn region bordering South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, making a terrible transition from being epidemic to endemic. Despite having a tool kit at its disposal that is unrivaled-including a vaccine, new diagnostics, experimental treatments, and a strong body of knowledge regarding how to battle the hemorrhage-causing virus-the small army of international health responders and humanitarian workers in Congo is playing whack-a-mole against a microbe that keeps popping up unexpectedly and proving impossible to control. This is not because of any special attributes of the classic strain of Ebola-the same genetic strain that has been successfully tackled many times before-but because of humans and their behaviors in a quarter-century-old war zone.

In eastern Burkina Faso, local grievances help militancy take root (IRIN)
It is part of one of the most important nature reserves in West Africa, home to endangered lions, cheetahs, and elephants, attracting tourists from around the world. But in the forests of eastern Burkina Faso - a landlocked former French colony of roughly 17 million people - a new type of visitor can now be found: Islamist militants. The militants, whose affiliation remains unclear, are gaining ground by tapping into long-standing social grievances linked to poverty, poor social services, and the conservation of protected parks, local analysts and officials say. Since early last year, they have launched a string of deadly attacks on government officials, soldiers, and residents, turning the sparsely populated eastern region into the latest front of Burkina Faso’s three-year struggle against violent extremists.

Rwanda’s Khashoggi: Who killed the exiled spy chief? (Michela Wrong, Guardian)
Dissident Patrick Karegeya had fled to South Africa, but was murdered in a well-planned attack. […] This week, five years after Karegeya’s murder, an inquest into what happened at the Michelangelo hotel will finally open in a high court in Randburg, a north-west suburb of Johannesburg. State prosecutor Yusuf Baba has told magistrate Jeremiah Matopa he intends calling at least 30 witnesses. Hearings are expected to stretch into February. Karegeya’s grieving family, friends and colleagues hope the inquest will, at the very least, result in arrest warrants for the killers - suspected to be a team who fled back to Rwanda. Since none of the suspects are believed to be resident in South Africa, that would require official requests for their extradition. The key issue, though, is whether the inquest will address the possibility of a political motive and state collusion in the assassination. “This is South Africa’s Khashoggi,” a member of the South African judiciary told me. “And by rights, it should receive the same kind of press coverage and raise the same kind of questions.” The murder of the Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey last October prompted worldwide condemnation - but there was only a brief spasm of conscience among allies and trading partners of the Saudi monarchy before business as usual largely resumed.

Legacy of Benghazi: Marine force stays ready for quick Africa deployment (Martin Egnash, Stars and Stripes)
The U.S. Marines here sprint the Spanish hills daily, charging past palm trees and through lush fields in a regimen built all around being ready for the absolute worst in some of the world’s most dangerous places. If a sudden crisis happens in Africa, they’re likely the first to go. It’s an important mission, said Sgt. Joseph Czajkowski, a joint fires observer with the Marine Corps’ ultra-ready task force in southern Europe. “If coalition forces get into a tight bind in Africa, we would be able to support them. Or an aircraft goes down, we can go get them,” Czajkowski said. “The more support for this region, the better.” The task force was developed in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attacks on U.S. diplomatic buildings in Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens. It was a wake-up call for U.S. Africa Command, which lacked its own forces at the ready to send in an emergency. Enter Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Africa, a rotational unit based in Moron and Sigonella, Italy, which was established in 2013.

Ethiopia allows almost 1 million refugees to leave camps, go to work (VOA)
Ethiopia passed a law Thursday giving almost 1 million refugees the right to work and live outside of camps, in a move praised for providing them with more dignity and reducing reliance on foreign aid. Home to Africa’s second largest refugee population after Uganda, Ethiopia hosts more than 900,000 people who have fled conflict, drought and persecution in neighboring countries such as South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea. The refugees - many of whom sought refuge decades ago and have children born in Ethiopia - are largely confined to one of about 20 camps across country. Most are not permitted to work. “We are happy to inform that the new refugee proclamation has been enacted by the House of Peoples’ Representatives of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia,” Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA) said.

Zimbabwe in ‘total internet shutdown’ amid violent crackdown (Farai Mutsaka, AP)
Zimbabwe on Friday faced a “total internet shutdown,” a media group said, after a days-long violent crackdown on people protesting a dramatic fuel price increase. Badly injured people streamed into a hospital in the capital after alleged assaults by security forces. “Our country is going through one of the most trying periods in its history,” the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference said in a sweeping statement lamenting the government’s “intolerant handling of dissent” and its failure to halt economic collapse. Media group MISA-Zimbabwe shared a text message from the country’s largest telecom company, Econet, calling the government’s internet order “beyond our reasonable control.” The High Court will hear a challenge to the shutdown on Monday, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said.

Burundi to change its capital city (The East African)
The Burundian parliament has voted to move the country’s capital from Bujumbura back to the ancient capital of Gitega. The vote took place on Wednesday and the leader of parliament said the move would take place over three years. The first to move will be the upper house of parliament, the Senate - starting on Friday. President Pierre Nkurunziza, who has to sign off the change, promised in 2007 to move the capital, saying Gitega was geographically more centrally placed in Burundi, AFP reports. Opposition accuse Nkurunziza of attempting a symbolic restoration as Bujumbura is today considered an opposition stronghold where the president spends less and less time.

The changing face of terrorism in East Africa (The Monitor)
Religious and political leaders in Tanzania contend that heavy-handed policing, including extrajudicial killings, risks driving young people into the militants’ arms and fuelling intercommunal tensions.
Also, Zanzibar’s protracted crisis, involving successive contested elections, is believed to have pushed youth toward militancy, as traditional leaders, who for years pursued reform peacefully, lose credibility.

Latest attack may deal new blow to Kenya’s global terror ranking (Business Daily)
Kenya’s hope of improving its ranking on the global terrorism index (GTI) may have been dealt a blow after last Tuesday’s attack on Dusit business complex that claimed 21 lives.
According to the Global Terrorism Index by the Australian-based Institute for Economics and Peace, a report that measures the impact of terrorism, Kenya took a nosedive from the 22nd most exposed country in 2017 to the 19th most exposed in 2018. Even then, countries in the Middle East still top the ranking as the prevalence of such attacks is higher relative to other parts of the world.
The GTI ranks 163 countries based on four weighted indicators during a given year. The four factors counted in each country’s yearly score are; total number of terrorist incidents with a weight of one; the total number of fatalities caused by terrorists with a weight of three; the total number of injuries caused by terrorists given a weight of 0.5; and a measure of the total property damage from terrorist incidents given a weight of zero to three depending on severity.