President Cyril Ramaphosa had his work cut out when he took on the chairmanship of the African Union this year.

He is committed to steering the continental body along its final bumpy stretch of road to the ambitious goal of silencing the Guns in 2020.

More importantly, the bean counters argue, he  has to oversee  the final implementation of the African Free Trade Agreement.

Both of these face an existential threat from COVID 19.

Silencing the guns means ending all wars, civil conflict, violence conflict, and gender-based violence on the continent.

Herculean does not being to describe this task.

Since their inception, African conflicts have gobbled up the lion’s share of United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Deploying the blue helmets currently takes up an amount approaching $8 billion a year. That is $1 billion more than the overall budget of the world organisation.

Of the 13 active UN peacekeeping operations around the planet, no fewer than seven – Western Sahara, Darfur, Central African Republic, Abyei, South Sudan, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo – are in Africa.

The latter is the largest and most expensive blue helmet operation, taking up 20 000 of the 100 000 UN peacekeepers deployed worldwide.

To put some perspective on this, the number of UN troops deployed in the DRC is half the number of US troops stationed in Germany.

The United States currently picks up 28% of the UN peacekeeping tab which is less than one percent of total US defense spending – about as much as Washington spends in a month on its military operation in Afghanistan.

African leaders have for a time sought to pay more for peacekeeping in their determination to give credibility to the principle of African solutions for African problems. 

The best they can manage is a 25:75 split in costs with  the UN and this has yet to be inked.

As the battle with the COVID 19 pandemic turns the G7 economies on their heads, African countries know that they will feel the cost even  more keenly.

They are having to go to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for money simply to feed their people.

The Bretton Woods institutions are obliged to make their assistance conditional on the recipients adhering to strict austerity policies.

Silencing the Guns and implementing an African Free Trade Agreement are undeniably desirable.

Silencing the Nevertheless AU chairman Cyril Ramaphosa will be hard pressed to convince the lenders that these projects take priority over fiscal discipline and  financing the bare necessities.  

The post COVID 19 puts a heavy burden on Cyril Ramaphosa as AU chairman appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

It come from Afghanistan and was en route to Europe and South Africa.

This is the first raid on heroin traffic off the Mozambique coast in more than 20 years.

It was undertaken by the navy and the national criminal investigation service known SERNIC.

The traffickers saw the authorities approaching and set fire to the wooden dhow carrying the drug and threw themselves into the sea 50 kms off Cabo Delgado

12 of them were saved and arrested and three drowned.

About 40 tonnes of heroin reaches Mozambique from Aghanistan every year.

From there it is shipped to Europe or taken by road to Johannesburg. 

The post Mozambique authorities seize more than tonne of heroin bound for Europe and South Africa appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

A massive campaign in the north of the country appears to have beaten Boko Haram’s efforts to stop vaccination against this painful wasting disease.

Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the three countries on earth where polio still exists.

If there is not another case recorded in Kanu State in the next fortnight, Nigeria will come off that list and Africa will be polio free.

Boko Haram has used a combination of intimidation and misinformation to stop the vaccination campaign, leaving 66 000 children in northern villages vulnerable.

Authorities, using soldiers and volunteers, have  toured these villages to counter false claims that vaccination causes impotence and is a Christian plot against the Muslim community.

The post Nigeria is days away from eradicating polio appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Recent events at the International Court of Justice in the Hague and the United Nations General Assembly remind us there is another: Britain’s continued administration of the Indian Ocean Chagos Archipelago.

Holding sway over the empire upon which the sun never set, Britain began calling the shots on  developments in the Indian Oceans around Mauritius from 1814.

Before giving that country independence in 1968, Britain paid four million pounds for the Chagos Archipelago and called it the British Indian Ocean Territory

In the mid sixties it leased one of the islands, Diego Garcia to the United States.

The Pentagon build a strategically importnat military base there, secure in the knowledge that it has tenure until 2035.

At Washington’s behest, Britain moved the  1800-odd islanders  off their home. They have never been allowed to return.

This type of behaviour might have been generally accepted in a bygone era of colonial administration..

It does not wash today – certainly not from a  country that has long passed the twilight of its global power.

Britain has set aside 40 million pounds to assist the displaced Chagoans who are mostly in Britain, the Seychelles and Mauritius.

Still not good enough.

The matter was brought to the United Nations’ top court that found in February that Britain had acted illegally by hiving off the archipelago to continue its occupation. The ICJ ruled this should end as soon as possible.

In the General Assembly this week, an African-sponsored motion was passed by 116 votes to six giving Britain six month to get off Chagos.

Britain’s ambassador to the world organization Dame Karen Pierce said candidly that this would not happen.

Britain is determined to continue its control of Chagos at least until 2036.

Not surprisingly the United States was one of the half-dozen opponents of the resolution.

It reminded the international community that operations from Diego Garcia protect the region from terrorists and pirates. The base is also used for humanitarian purposes like reducing tsunami victims.

Diego Garcia is not used to house terror suspects  but it is used as a refueling stop in transitioning them from points of capture to places of incarceration.

It was also used for US bombing raids on Iraq and Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington 18 years ago.

Neither the ICJ ruling nor the UNGA resolution is binding.

General Assembly resolutions cannot be enforced.

However the strongly reflects international opinion.

Flying in the face of it brings into question Britain’s commitment to the multilateral system of  governance.

With its military power having waned, Britain, like most other countries, has to rely on moral clout.

Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth urged countries to support the General Assembly resolution, saying failure to do so would be endorsing colonialism.

He maintains the United States can lease its military base from his government, adding that Mauritius would find it deeply offensive if Washington did not regard it as a trusted security partner.

The post Chagos archipelago questions Britain’s commitment to multilateral governance appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

South African Haysom was legal advisor to the late President Nelson Mandela.

Nicholas Haysom is an internationally acclaimed human rights lawyer. 

He’s been engaged by the United Nations in Afghanistan, Sudan and South Sudan.

Appointed by UN Secretary General António Guterres as his special envoy in Somalia, Haysom asked about the killing of supporters of former Al Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Robow and the detention of 3 000 people.

Robow has sought to run as regional president after falling out with the jihadis.

The authorities have overruled the electoral commission’s approval of Robow’s candidacy and arrested him.

For questioning this crackdown on dissent, Haysom has been accused by the government of acting like the ruler of the country  and expelled.

The post Top UN envoy expelled from Somalia for questioning crackdown on dissent appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

President Donald Trump’s security advisor John Bolton calls the international tribunal illegitimate.

The U.S. action  is sparked by the ICC considering prosecuting American soldiers  over alleged abuse of detainees in Afghanistan.

In his first official address as national security advisor, John Bolton tells the Federalist Society in Washington: “We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. And we certainly will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents sand purposes the ICC is already dead to us.”

He says judges who act against American citizens will face sanctions, travel  bans and even criminal charges.

The US is one of dozens of countries that have no signed the 2002 Rome Treaty establishing the ICC, maintaining that its constitution is its pinnacle legal body.

The post US threatens action against ISS judges who prosecute Americans appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Their action follows Germn pilots last year refusing to take deportees to Afghanistan and countries they deem unsafe.

The El Al pilots made their feelings known on their FaceBook sites.

Their action is largely symbolic.

The Israeli Government does not use the national carrier to move deportees.

In terms of legislation passed to expel thousands of them, they are taken to Rwanda and Uganda which have been paid to accept them.

They are flown on other carriers via Jordan or Ethiopia.

The Israeli NGO Zimzim Community Action is pressing  pilots to follow the example of German fliers who refused 222 flights last year carrying deportees out of Europe.

The post Israeli pilots refuse to fly deportees appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

An estimated 30 000 foreigners joined the terror movement when it declared a caliphate three years ago – a fifth of these are from Africa.

African Union Peace and Security Commissioner Smail Chergui says the danger is returning jihadis might try to relocate the Islamist militant group driven out of Syria and Iraq.

Algeria experienced something similar  more than 20 years ago when Mujahidin returned from fighting Russians in  Afghanistan almost took control of the government and forced the military to step in.

Chergui says African states must share intelligence and work closely to  prevent a recurrence of this

The post Jihadis coming from home from Iraq and Syria pose a threat to African states appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

It’s calling on the continental organization codevelop cooperative mechanism to control the jihadis.

ends intro

Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmajid Teboune was speaking for his President Abdelziz Bouteflika who’s been made the AU coordinator against violent extremism and terrorism.

He says more than 5 000 young Africans have joined jihadi groups in Iraq, Syria and the Sahel.

Their radical and violent ideas  pose a danger to their own countries when they come home – as Algeria learned to its cost with militants returning from fighting Russians in Afghanistan a quarter of a century ago.

Bouteflika says Africa must cooperate to curb the extremists by limiting their movement with stricter controls on transport and tougher  border controls

The post Algeria tells UN more than 5 000 African youths have joined jihadis appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

The United States is being increasingly drawn into a clandestine war in Somalia.

It is a battle that will embroil the next occupant of the Whitehouse -whomever he or she might be.

The US was at pains to stay out of Somalia following the 1993 setback known as Black Hawk Down when 18 American troops died fighting warlord Mohammed Aidid.

US troops, to use an old cowboy cliche, got outta there. They avoided Somalia like the plague for some years.

However they remained concerned about the incubation of terrorists in the virtually ungoverned Somalia and secretly supported the  2006 Ethiopian intervention to drive Islamists out of Mogadishu.

In the event, that give  rise to  the terrorist movement Al Shabaab – which means the youth in Arabic – and forced the Obama administration to think again.

The decider was Al Shabaab’s attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi that left at least 67 people dead.

Obama  felt obliged to drop his reluctance to put boots on the ground.

The battle against Al Shabaab special forces,  air and drone strikes, private contractors and African allies.

US attacks have increased exponentially on the movement that has been driven out of Somalia cities but manages to make indiscriminate attacks on urban targets from its rural bases.

The terrorists have struck Somalia police and army installations, popular restaurants and hotels and African Union bases.

The US had considerable success against Al Shabaab which was growing bolder and more daring its attacks.

Inevitably, though, there has been collateral damage with US forces inadvertently killing Somali government fighters.

They have been forced to mount more and more so-called self-defense attacks on Al Shabaab forcing, analysts says,  to an inevitable escalation in US military involvement in Somalia.

Michael Stock, director of the Washington-based Bancroft Global Development says they are in the business of nurturing a kernel of Somali fighters, trained by marines, around which a competent, sustainable defence force can be built.

They’re determined not to repeat the costly mistakes of Afghanistan and Iraq where large armies are formed that could not get the job done.

The elite Somali troops are also getting training at the US military task force in Djibouti, the self-governing enclave in the Horn  where Washington has its only permanent base on the African continent.

Independent analysts fear that the poor training, lack of  funds and equipment and poor motivation of the Somali forces will draw the US project out for many years.

The post US involved in shadow war in Somalia appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.