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Showing posts with label mali. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mali. Show all posts

Friday, September 27, 2013

Mali Tuareg Separatist Rebels Pull Out Of Peace Deal Fueling Speculation That War Will Return To Mali

Mali Tuareg Separatist Rebels Pull Out Of Peace Deal -- BBC

uareg separatists in Mali say they are suspending participation in a peace deal, accusing the government of not respecting the accord reached in June.

Three Tuareg groups meeting in Burkina Faso called for an emergency meeting of all parties to the peace agreement.

A ceasefire enabled national elections and allowed Mali's military to return to the northern Tuareg town of Kidal.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita wants to stabilise Mali after a French-led offensive pushed Islamist rebels north.

In a statement late Thursday, Mossa Ag Acharatoumane, a founding member of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) accused the Malian government of failing to live up to its promises made in the June agreement, signed in the capital of neighbouring Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou.

Read more ....

Update #1: Mali Tuareg separatists suspend participation in peace process -- Reuters
Update #2: Mali Rebels Suspend Role in Peace Accord -- ABC News/AP

My Comment: After a year of war and bloodshed .... it appears that no one has learned anything.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Civil War Fears Return To Mali


Malian Troops In First Clash With MNLA Rebels Since Truce -- BBC

Malian government forces have clashed with separatist Tuareg rebels in the first fighting since the two sides signed a peace accord in June.

The fighting took place near the western town of Lere, close to the Mauritanian border, leaving three soldiers injured.

Both sides have accused the other of provoking the attack.

A Malian army spokesman has warned that such fighting could jeopardise the truce.

A spokesman for the MNLA rebels told the BBC that government soldiers shelled positions that rebels had agreed to occupy under the ceasefire deal.

Read more ....

More News On the First Military Clashes Between MNLA Rebels And Malian Troops Since The Ceasefire

3 wounded as Tuareg rebels clash with Malian army in first clashes since ceasefire -- FOX News/AP
Two soldiers hurt in clash with 'bandits' in Mali -- FOX News/AFP
Mali Army, Rebel Clashes Reignite -- Voice of America
Tuareg rebels clash with Mali army -- Al Jazeera
French Seek to Prevent Rebel Revival in Mali -- Wall Street Journal
Mali's new president faces massive challenges -- The Guardian

Monday, August 12, 2013

Mali Has A New President



Keita Wins Mali Vote After His Opponent Concedes -- Wall Street Journal

BAMAKO, Mali—Ibrahim Keita, a former prime minster who vowed to rebuild his country, won Mali's presidency after his opponent conceded defeat before official results were announced.

Soumaila Cissé went late Monday to Mr. Keita's home to congratulate him on his victory, according to spokesmen for both candidates.

Mr. Cissé's concession, hours after he complained the election had been marred by fraud, raises hopes for Mali's recovery after more than a year of turmoil in the West African nation.

"My family and I went and congratulated Mr. Keita, the future president of Mali, on his victory. May God bless Mali," Mr. Cissé, a former finance minister, said on his official Twitter feed.

Read more ....

More News On Mali's Presidential Election

Keita Wins Mali Election After Cisse Concedes -- Voice of America
Ibrahim Boubacar Keita wins Mali’s presidency after runoff opponent concedes defeat -- Washington Post/AP
Mali: A Concession and a New Leader -- Reuters
Presidential candidate concedes race in Mali -- CNN
AU Monitor Says Mali Run-Off Vote Went Well -- Voice of America
Malians grateful to put elections behind them, after a coup and war -- Christian Science Monitor
Mali: elections are only the first step -- The Guardian editorial

Sunday, October 28, 2012

US vows to make Mali next stop in ‘war on terror’


 
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta makes a statement during a news briefing at the Pentagon on October 18, 2012.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/10/28/269135/us-vows-to-take-war-on-terror-to-mali/

Alleging “al-Qaeda” presence in Mali, the United States has vowed to make the West African country, the next stop in its so-called war on terror.

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta vowed in Pentagon to eliminate the threat from “al-Qaeda” in northern Mali, Reuters reported on Saturday. He said that he would ensure that al-Qaeda has "no place to hide.”

"Our approach is to make sure that al-Qaeda and elements of al-Qaeda have no place to hide. And we've gone after al-Qaeda wherever they are - whether it's in [the northwestern Pakistan] FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]; whether it's in Yemen; whether it's in Somalia; and whether they're in North Africa," he noted.

The comments came amid reports that the CIA is currently flying some surveillance drones over northern Mali, and that France is also reportedly sending surveillance aircraft to the African country.

A study, conducted by Stanford and New York Universities, has showed that only one in 50 people killed by US assassination drones in Pakistan -- one of the several countries where the US has carried out drone strikes -- are militants.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

US, France taking drone war to Mali: Rest of Africa next?


US, France mull taking drone war to Mali
 

A French Harfang drone (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/10/23/268272/us-france-mull-moving-drones-to-mali/

The military officials of France and the US have reportedly held secret talks in Paris to discuss a plan to move French surveillance drones from Afghanistan to the crisis-hit African country of Mali.

American and French officials met in Paris last week to draw a plan for military intervention in Mali by moving the unmanned reconnaissance aircraft to the African country, according to the Associated Press (AP).

Last Friday, African leaders had met in the Malian capital, Bamako, to discuss a plan for a military intervention in the north, which was seized under the cover of a coup d'etat six months ago.

On October 13, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that gave West African nations 45 days to offer details of a plan for a military intervention in Mali.

“France and the United Nations insist any invasion of Mali's north must be led by African troops,” the AP report claimed, adding that Paris, however, “is playing an increasing role behind the scenes.”

A French defense official said on the condition of anonymity on Monday that his country is considering a plan to send two more surveillance drones to western Africa from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

Reports say France has deployed its special forces to the region around Mali as well.

Meanwhile, a group of top American military officials and diplomats, including US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, arrived in Paris on Monday to hold talks on intelligence-gathering and security in the Sahel region, including Mali.

Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure was ousted in a military coup on March 22. The coup leaders said the president had failed to fight the separatist movement of Tuareg rebels in the north.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned against a military operation, saying it would further affect millions of people in the region.

Once a detailed plan for military intervention in Mali is received from the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), the African Union and the United Nations, the Security Council would consider a second resolution to approve the move.

 

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Islamic hardliners in Mali increase threats as France pushes for intervention


 
Several thousand people march on October 11, 2012 in Mali to call for armed intervention by a west African force to help wrest back the vast north from armed Islamist groups. (AFP Photo / Habibou Kouyate)

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/news/islam-mali-sharia-france-363/

Islamists in northern Mali threaten to “open the doors of hell” to French citizens in the area if France keeps pushing for military intervention. A quarter of a million refugees have fled Mali's north since Sharia law was implemented there in March.

The UN Security Council called Friday for an intervention plan to be drawn up within 45 days after passing a French resolution to revive attempts to end the crisis.

The renewed threat against French expatriates and hostages came ahead of a summit of Francophone nations in Congo, where French President Francois Hollande is expected to urge the formation of an African-led force to rout the Islamists.

Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for Islamists group MUJWA told Reuters, “If he continues to throw oil on the fire, we will send him pictures of dead French hostages in coming days.” This was an apparent reference to four French nationals seized in neighboring Niger in 2010. All but four have since been released.

“He will not be able to count the bodies of French expatriates across West Africa and elsewhere,” he continued.

MUJWA is one of the Islamist groups that have controlled the northern two-thirds of Mali since the country's military took power in a March coup.


Several thousand people march on October 11, 2012 in Mali to call for armed intervention by a west African force to help wrest back the vast north from armed Islamist groups. (AFP Photo / Habibou Kouyate)

The Saharan branch of al-Qaeda was quick to move into the increasingly lawless area, seizing control of the Tuareg-majority north after the coup, effectively seceding from the rest of Mali.

Hamaha added that ransom payments from France and other Western nations are his group's primary source of funding.

“The top country who finances the jihadis is France – I wonder what the international community would say if we took the French president hostage,” he boasted.

Fundamentalist Islamic law has been implemented across northern Mali, with suspected thieves dismembered, single mothers persecuted and suspected criminals flogged.


Several thousand people march on October 11, 2012 in Mali to call for armed intervention by a west African force to help wrest back the vast north from armed Islamist groups. (AFP Photo / Habibou Kouyate)

Over the last six months, a quarter of a million people have fled Mali for refugee camps in neighboring countries.

A journalist in neighboring Senegal told Euronews that he is worried about the unrest spreading to nearby capitals. “Mali has Pakistani, Afghan and Algerian forces involved in the crisis, which is becoming international. The international community should intervene in the north in its own interest. The Islamists have imposed Sharia law, and that could seriously affect the African continent – and then the whole world.”

Journalist Gerald Horne told RT that “what is happening in Mali is a humanitarian crisis and a disaster” and “a direct outgrowth of the North Atlantic countries' intervention in Libya in 2011.”

“The North Atlantic nations turned the tables on Gaddaffi, aligned with his former antagonists and overthrew him – and now the inevitable has happened,” he continued.


Several thousand people march on October 11, 2012 in Mali to call for armed intervention by a west African force to help wrest back the vast north from armed Islamist groups. (AFP Photo / Habibou Kouyate)

Mali: US Africa Command (AFRICOM) Prepares for Another “Humanitarian” Military Intervention?

 

By: Patrick Henningsen
http://21stcenturywire.com/2012/10/12/africom-is-a-go-obama-prepares-a-new-intervention-in-mali-using-somalia-as-his-model/

Source: Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/applying-the-somalia-model-us-africa-command-africom-prepares-for-humanitarianmilitary-intervention-in-mali/5308015

Obama has been carrying the AFRICOM ball down the field after the directive was launched under George W. Bush in 2007. Washington DC, led by African Secretary, Jonnie Carson, speaks to its public at a level deserving of an uninformed, Helen Keller-esque populace, claiming that Somalia was ‘a big success’ because Washington spooks spent $500 million backing an “African Proxy Force” that allegedly “drove out al Qaida” in that country. And it is no coincidence that massive untapped oil reserves in the Puntland region in northeastern Somalia were recently announced in early 2012.

Just as Washington’s corporate interests are hidden behind ‘humanitarian interventions’, the UK Prime Minister David Cameron will run the same facade. Last February he hosted an international conference on Somalia, where he pledged more aid, financial help and measures “to fight terrorism” in Somalia. Cameron does not tell you that those so-called terrorist forces are funded and supported, and ultimately steered – by the western intelligence agencies – whereby they control all sides of the local conflict. Note they are using the same recycled narrative in Mali now, fighting “Islamic extremists” there – promoting freedom and democracy in the region etc.

Mali’s vast potential wealthlies in mining, agricultural commodities, and oil - and these proven reserves are not currently exploited. Interestingly enough, Ghana and Mali together account for 5.8% of total world gold production. These assets are the true focus of US and UK interests in Africa – not humanitarian concerns.

 
The 2012 Somalia Oil Conference was a mere pre-negotiation meeting to discuss how oil assets would be divided up between the US, UK and other remaining energy players – demonstrating what is the real agenda with AFRICOM. Obama supporters will naturally give this President a free pass on Africa because he is of part African descent, not realizing that he is running the exact same agenda as his Republican predecessor. What corporate agents like Jonnie Carson does not tell electorate plebs is that the US has recently infested itself in Libya, Uganda, Somalia, North Sudan and elsewhere, and now has its eyes set on Mali. The initial goal of US domination of Africa is outlined in the AFRICOM documents, and names theeviction of China from the continent as task number one.

Africa Pulse spells it out: “Strong economic growth in the past decade among African countries rich in oil and minerals has failed to make a significant dent on their poverty levels, according to a World Bank report.”

In other words, the Anglo-American imperialists would like to eliminate competition for Africa’s bountiful resources, continuing a centuries-old policy of raping the Dark Continent and leaving nothing but perpetual internal strife and poverty behind.

America’s Secret War in Africa



Source: Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-secret-war-in-africa/5307958

The U.S. secret warfare is alive and well. In addition to its military command in Africa (AFRICOM), America has been deploying special forces all over the continent according to an AP article from October 2, 2012:

Small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa in the months before militants launched the fiery attack that killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya. The soldiers’ mission: Set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target or rescue a hostage. (Kimberly Dozier, White House widens covert ops presence in North Africa, AP, October 2, 2012.)

The U.S. is spreading its clandestine army all over Africa. As reported by Nile Bowie back in April, the goal is to balkanize the African continent:

At an AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declared the guiding principle of AFRICOM is to protect “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market”, before citing China’s increasing presence in the region as challenging to American interests [36].

In 2007, US State Department advisor Dr. J. Peter Pham commented on AFRICOM’s strategic objectives of “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.” (Nile Bowie, COVERT OPS IN NIGERIA: Fertile Ground for US Sponsored Balkanization, Global Research, April 11, 2012.)

The “War on Terror” fraud serves to cover up the destabilization of Africa with a view to taking control of its resources. The Balkans were destabilized for the same purpose in the 1990’s:

In Liar’s Poker The Great Powers, Yugoslavia and the Wars of the Future, Michel Collon explains how the Balkans were destabilized “to control oil pipeline routes, dominate Eastern Europe as well as weaken and get a hand over Russia” as well as” insure [the establishment of US] military bases [in Eastern Europe and the Balkans].” (Michel Collon, Liar’s Poker The Great Powers, Yugoslavia and the Wars of the Future, Editions Aden, 1998, p. 129.)

A similar process, over a large geographic region, is occurring in the Middle-East:

“Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an agreement for a gas pipeline in July 2011, which plans to link the Iranian South Pars field – the world’s largest – to Syria and therefore to the Mediterranean Sea. Another important oil field was discovered near Homs in Syria, which could become an alternative hub of energy corridors in opposition to those passing through Turkey and other routes controlled by U.S. and European companies” (Manlio Dinucci, L’art de la guerre. Syrie : l’Otan vise le gazoduc, October9, 2012)

America’s clandestine army will resort to drone warfare to assert control over the African resources. Although the U.S. and its allies have financially and materially supported Al-Qaida-linked mercenaries to topple the Libyan government and are operating in the same fashion in Syria, we are told that the “counter terror effort indicates that the administration has been worried for some time about a growing threat posed by Al Qaeda and its offshoots in North Africa.” (Dozier, op.cit.)

Although the Pentagon assures that “[t]here are no plans at this stage for unilateral U.S. military operations”, the article states quite to the contrary that a unilateral drone warfare is what awaits Africans:

Delta Force group will form the backbone of a military task force responsible for combating al-Qaida and other terrorist groups across the region with an arsenal that includes drones. But first, it will work to win acceptance by helping North African nations build their own special operations and counter terror units. (Ibid.)

The hypocritical discourse that follows indicates in which African states the“free flow of natural resources to the global market” and “access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources” will be protected under the “War on Terror” pretext:

The Obama administration has been concerned about the growing power and influence of al-Qaida offshoots in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and North Africa. Only the Yemeni branch has tried to attack American territory directly so far, with a series of thwarted bomb plots aimed at U.S.-bound aircraft. A Navy SEAL task force set up in 2009 has used a combination of raids and drone strikes to fight militants in Yemen and Somalia, working together with the CIA and local forces.

The new task force would work in much the same way to combat al-Qaida’s North African affiliates, which are growing in numbers and are awash in weapons from post-revolutionary Libya’s looted stockpiles. They are well-funded by a criminal network trafficking in drugs and hostages.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM, and Nigerian-based extremist sect Boko Haram are arguably the two largest and most dangerous affiliates.

The top State Department official for African affairs said Tuesday that the militants in Mali “must be dealt with through security and military means.” (Ibid.)

And even though we are told there are “no plans at this stage for unilateral U.S. military operations”, Johnnie Carson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs seems to contradict this claim:

“any military action up there must indeed be well planned, well organized, well resourced and well thought through” and, how thoughtful, “be agreed upon by those who are going to be most affected by it.” (Ibid.)