France blocks invasion of Chad; Kenya's deepening terror problem; no U.S. visas for Ghanians, and more

The security message comes weeks after the terrorist group al-Shabaab killed 21 people at the luxury hotel and office complex in Nairobi. The al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group said it carried the attack in retaliation for Trump’s decision to declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Since then, Kenyan security officials have intensified their fight against terrorism, arresting suspects including 17 youngsters later released who were found staying in a two-bedroom house in Kwale county along the Kenyan coast. Hotel managers, public bus operators, and managers of shopping centers were also ordered to step up security in their establishments.

Insecurity throws Nigeria’s election preparations into disarray (Reuters)
Muhammad Suleiman thought it was safe to go home after the army drove Islamist insurgents from his town in northeastern Nigeria three years ago. In December, the militants struck again. Suleiman fled into the bush, leaving his voter card behind with most of his other belongings. The 28-year-old carpenter now fears he will not be able to take part in Nigeria’s presidential election on Feb. 16. Though authorities say they will set up polling booths in the camp where Suleiman has taken shelter in the city of Maiduguri, in the state of Borno, only those with voter cards will be allowed to cast ballots. “I want to vote,” he said. “We have to live here, so hopefully we can vote here.”

US Says airstrike in Somalia kills 13 Al-Shabab extremists (AP)
The United States military says it has killed 13 members of the al-Shabab extremist group with an airstrike 30 miles (48 kilometers) outside Somalia’s capital. A U.S. Africa Command statement says Friday’s strike occurred near Gandarshe in Lower Shabelle region. The statement says the al-Qaida-linked fighters have used Gandarshe as a staging area for bombings in the capital, Mogadishu. A half-dozen U.S. airstrikes in December killed 62 al-Shabab fighters near Gandarshe as theywere preparing to attack a Somali military base. This is the 10th U.S. airstrike this year in Somalia. It carried out nearly 50 strikes last year in the Horn of Africa nation against al-Shabab, the deadliest Islamic extremist group in Africa. A strike on Thursday killed 24 al-Shabab fighters in neighboring Hiran region.

Al-Shabab battles IS in Northeastern Somalia (VOA)
The al-Shabab militant group has scaled up its attacks against pro-Islamic State fighters in the northeastern mountainous Somali region of Bari, experts say. Intelligence and security officials say al-Shabab has seized two locations from pro-IS militants this week. One of the two areas is called El-Miraale, a water point that has been the focal point of clashes. The second village seized by al-Shabab is called Shebaab, south of the town of Qandala according to sources. Pro-IS militants have now retreated further into the highlands, but experts say the fighting is not over. Abdi Hassan Hussein is the former intelligence chief of Puntland. He has been monitoring the latest clashes between the two sides. “They are fighting over the control of the mountains, which has been a base for Daesh,” he said, using another term for Islamic State.

Kenya bomber’s journey offers cautionary tale of intelligence failures (Reuters)
The bomber who blew himself up outside a Nairobi hotel this month, launching an attack that killed 21 people, was already so well-known to Kenyan police that they had emblazoned his face across billboards under the slogan “WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE”. Mahir Khalid Riziki was barely 20 when he joined a radical Islamist cell that assassinated police in his home town of Mombasa, officers said. His mosque in the coastal Kenyan city funnelled recruits to the Somalia-based Islamist group al Shabaab, which claimed the Jan. 15 attack in Nairobi. Riziki, who was 25 when he died, fled after a deadly police raid on the mosque in 2014. His years as a fugitive shed light on the difficulties of tracking militant suspects across East Africa at a time when al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab is seeking to broaden its pool of recruits and carry out more attacks in other nations.

Home-grown terror a worsening threat for Kenya (Duncan E. Omondi Gumba and Mohamed Daghar, ISS)
The six attackers and 12 suspects in court for the 15 January terror attack on Nairobi’s dusitD2 hotel complex are mostly Kenyans. This was also the case in the 2015 attack on the Garissa University campus. By contrast, those who attacked the Westgate Mall in 2013 were largely foreigners. These three incidents suggest a trend of home-grown terrorists acting against their own country.
The latest attack – claimed by extremist group al-Shabaab – shows that not only is the terror threat far from over, but it is increasingly a local problem, with logistical support from Somalia. Most of the 18 who appeared in court were from counties like Isiolo, Nyeri, Kiambu, Mombasa and Machakos – hundreds of kilometres from the Somali border. This means al-Shabaab’s influence and cells may have penetrated many parts of Kenya.

Transformation euphoria in the Horn of Africa (Abukar Arman, LSE)
The political transformation in the Horn of Africa is arguably the most counterintuitive development in the 21st century so far.

Millions displaced in Ethiopia: A forgotten crisis (Euronews)
Reforms adopted by Ethiopia’s new Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed have challenged the status quo - politically and economically. They come as inter-ethnic violence is intensifying throughout the country. Today almost three million people have been internally displaced. Two-thirds of them have fled the conflict; the others, drought, and floods. Nearly eight million people are in need of emergency food assistance. Qoloji is the biggest camp for internally displaced people in the Somali regional state, in the east of Ethiopia. The camp hosts 80,000 people, mostly from the Somali ethnic community and from the nearby Ethiopian Oromia region. New families arrive every day, but many of them have been here for over a year

Number of IDP in Mali has tripled in a year - U.N. (ANN)
United Nations says, the number of Internally Displaced People in Mali has tripled over the course of a year as a result of growing insecurity at the border with Burkina Faso. Half of those internally displaced 120,000 people are based in Mopti region. The UN says people are escaping worsening inter-communal violence and armed conflict. Most have fled the south-eastern border with Burkina Faso and sought refuge in other parts of the region. Armed conflict is also spreading from the north to central Mali and along the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger.

US imposes visa restrictions on Ghanian nationals (VOA)
The United States imposed visa restrictions on Ghanaian nationals Thursday, making it more difficult for citizens of the West African country to visit the United States. The Trump administration levied the sanctions, accusing Ghana of not repatriating Ghanaians deported from the U.S.“Ghana has failed to live up to its obligations under international law to accept the return of its nationals ordered removed from the United States,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said in a press release. The United States periodically restricts visas when countries fail to allow citizens removed from the U.S. to be repatriated in their nation of birth. In July, the Department of Homeland Security imposed visa restrictions on Burma and Laos, after those countries failed to accept removed nationals in a timely fashion. Those restrictions affected B1 and B2 nonimmigrant visas, for visitors seeking to enter the United States as tourists or on business trips.

Sudan’s Bashir says border with Eritrea reopens after being shut for a year (VOA)
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said on Thursday that his country was reopening its border with Eritrea, which has been shut for about a year. Sudan closed the border in early January, 2018, after Bashir announced a six-month state of emergency in the regions of Kassala and North Kurdufan to help combat the trafficking of weapons and foodstuffs. “I announce here, from Kassala, that we are opening the border with Eritrea because they are our brothers and our people. Politics will not divide us,” Bashir said in televised remarks before scores of supporters in the town of Kassala, which is near the border in eastern Sudan. As Bashir was speaking in the remote town, the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, a union that has led calls for demonstrations against his rule, called for fresh protests across several Sudanese cities on Thursday afternoon.

Internet shutdowns mushroom across Africa (VOA)
The last two years have been grim for internet access on the African continent, according to analyst Robert Besseling of risk-assessment firm EXX Africa, and the situation may be getting worse. In the last four weeks alone, no fewer than five African governments have temporarily shut down internet access amid political crises and unrest. While this practice dates back several years, he says it has accelerated and hit nations that rely on the internet for spreading information and for internet-based commerce, like Zimbabwe. “We counted 21 shutdowns across Africa in 2018, and so far this year in the first three weeks of 2019, we saw shutdowns in five countries: again, Cameroon, as well as most prominently, Zimbabwe, as well as during the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and unrest in Sudan, as well as briefly following the attempted coup in Gabon,” Besseling said.