21, August 2020
Boko Haram: Multinational force hand over 94 rescued persons to Nigeria 0
A multinational force comprising troops from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, have handed over to Nigeria’s Borno state 94 persons who were rescued from Boko Haram captivity in the fringes of Lake Chad, a state official said Thursday.
In a statement released by the state governor’s spokesman Isa Gusau, the victims, 37 adult males, 17 adult females, and 40 children were rescued by the troops of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) during a major offensive against the insurgents around Lake Chad.
Gusau said the MNJTF commander Ibrahim Yusuf handed over the victims to the Borno government at a brief ceremony in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.
Yusuf was quoted in the statement as saying that some of the captives voluntarily went to the Headquarters Sector 1 of the MNJTF in north Cameroon.
Kakashehu Lawan, the state commissioner for justice, who received the victims, said in the statement the state will profile, debrief, de-radicalize, and reintegrate the rescued persons to live a normal life with their families.
Boko Haram has been trying to establish an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria since 2009, extending its attacks to countries in the Lake Chad Basin, posing enormous security, humanitarian, and governance challenges to countries including Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Benin, and Niger.
Source: Xinhuanet
21, August 2020
Emergency ECOWAS summit calls for reinstatement of Mali’s president Keita 0
An emergency summit of the West African bloc ECOWAS called Thursday for the reinstatement of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita as Mali’s president after he was deposed in a military coup on Tuesday. West African leaders said they would soon head to the country amid growing concerns about regional stability.
West African presidents plan to fly to Mali as regional powers escalate efforts to block a coup-driven regime change, two sources said, after an opposition coalition there joined the junta in rejecting foreign interference.
Leaders of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) convened over the crisis on Thursday, after it suspended Mali, shut off borders and halted financial flows in response to Tuesday’s overthrow of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
The bloc plans to send a delegation of presidents including the leaders of Niger, Senegal and Ghana to Mali’s capital, Bamako, to seek a resolution to the crisis, a regional diplomat and a senior official told Reuters.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the information.
The coup, which has rocked a country already in the grip of a jihadist insurgency and civil unrest, has been met with almost universal condemnation abroad.
Within Mali, the M5-RFP coalition of opposition groups said it was working with the mutineers. It labelled ECOWAS’s initial response to the coup over-reaction stemming from some regional leaders’ fears that it could set off unrest in their countries.
“(The leaders) are on an all-out drive to set ECOWAS against Mali,” said M5-RFP spokesman Nouhoum Togo.
The capital Bamako was calm for the second straight day on Thursday, a Reuters reporter said, as people appeared to heed earlier calls from junta spokesman Colonel Ismael Wague to return to work and go about their daily lives.
Marc-Andre Boisvert, an independent researcher on the Malian security forces, said the senior mutineers were all respected army colonels.
“It was a coup led by combat-experienced, not personality-driven officers,” he said “I expect they were selected to be the image of the coup as they are respected and close to the (ordinary) soldiers.”
ECOWAS is expected to release a statement outlining its next steps later on Thursday.
In July, an ECOWAS delegation failed to broker an agreement between Keita and the opposition, who were leading large-scale protests against the government.
Leaders attending the bloc’s virtual summit said the political upheaval in Mali could destabilise the entire region.
“The events in Mali (have).. grave consequences for the peace and security of West Africa,” Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari tweeted.
The coup has fuelled concerns it could disrupt a military campaign against jihadists linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State operating in northern and central Mali and West Africa’s wider Sahel region.
France will continue its Mali-based military operations against Islamist fighters, its armed forces minister said on Thursday.
Landlocked Mali has struggled to regain stability since a Tuareg uprising in 2012 which was hijacked by al Qaeda-linked militants, and a subsequent coup in the capital plunged the country into chaos.
(REUTERS)