Dozens of American soldiers have deployed to Mogadishu to train and equip Somali and AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) forces fighting extremism in Somalia, U.S. military officials told VOA.

The troops’ arrival marks the first presence of American military forces in Somalia, other than a small unit of counterterrorism advisers, since March 1994 when the U.S. pulled out of the U.N. intervention operation in the war-torn state, five months after 18 U.S. special forces personnel were killed in a battle with Somali militiamen that inspired the movie Black Hawk Down.

“United States Africa Command will conduct various security cooperation and/or security force assistance events in Somalia in order to assist our allies and partners,” U.S. Africa Command spokesman Pat Barnes told VOA on Thursday.

The move is another example of the acceleration of U.S. efforts to help combat violent extremism across the globe, a second military official said. The goal of the operation is to build partner capacity while helping to improve the logistics of local forces battling the military group al-Shabab.

A few dozen troops from the 101st Airborne Division in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, arrived in Mogadishu on April 2 at the request of the Somali government, a U.S. military official told VOA.

The team is carrying out a train-and-equip mission that is expected to last through the end of September, according to the official.

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Rudy DeLeon, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, said the U.S. team will help instill the professionalism and discipline that the local force can use to create the terms for security.

“It gives them the tools to help themselves,” DeLeon said in an interview with VOA.

The U.S. usually has a small unit of between 3 and 50 American troops in Somalia supporting U.S.-Somali military-to-military relations, and advising and assisting Somali troops. The new arrivals from the 101st Airborne Division will not be added to the mission of those Americans currently on the ground in Somalia, a military official said, “but there will be some overlap.”

Last week, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed called on al-Shabab fighters to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs.

Days later, a car bomb targeted senior officials leaving a military base in Mogadishu, killing at least 15 people and destroying a minibus carrying civilians, the Somali military said. Al-Shabab militants claimed responsibility.

Battle of Mogadishu

The mission of the troops sent from 101st Airborne Division, who are training in logistics and not participating in combat or peacekeeping, is nothing like the United States’ peacekeeping role in the country more than two decades earlier.

In the early 1990s, the United Nations attempted to provide and secure humanitarian relief in Somalia while monitoring a U.N.-brokered cease-fire in the Somali Civil War.

The U.S. deployed thousands of American troops to carry out these peacekeeping missions. By late 1993, the mission had expanded to try to restore a government in Somalia.

An American special operations team was sent into Mogadishu on October 3 to capture two top lieutenants of the warlord Mohammed Aidid.

During the mission, two Black Hawk helicopters circling overheard were shot down. Men sent to remove soldiers from the crash sites became pinned down elsewhere, and a 15-hour battle raged that killed 18 Americans and hundreds of Somalis.

Days later, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton announced that he would remove all American combat forces from Somalia by March 31. The U.S. has not sent combat troops for peacekeeping missions in the country since.
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Ahead of a June deadline to renew Darfur’s joint African Union and United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said her administration wants “proof” Sudan’s government is making progress toward peace and protecting civilians in the region.

The Darfur mission, known as UNAMID, costs $1 billion per year. The Trump administration has expressed interest in cutting back on the overall U.N. peacekeeping budget. But analysts say while the mission merits some streamlining, it still serves a purpose.

Sudan’s foreign minister, Ibrahim Ghandour, argued conditions in Darfur have improved significantly from 2003, when the conflict began.

“Now there are no rebel movements in Darfur, no fighting in Darfur, IDPs are returning back to their places, and peace is prevailing in Darfur,” he said.

Amnesty International’s Sudan researcher, Ahmed Elzobier, disagreed, saying the benchmarks for progress outlined previously by the Obama administration have not been fulfilled. “We see reports every day that there is attacks on IDPs in Darfur,” he said.

“The second benchmark is facilitation of humanitarian access in different parts of Darfur, especially in Jebel Mara, and this is not taking place at the moment, added Elzobier. “The third one is progress on the peace talks, between the armed groups in Darfur and the Sudan government. This was suspended since August 2016.And nothing has happened. And the fourth one, which is inter-communal fighting … this is still happening every now and then.”

Peacekeepers deployed to Darfur in 2007. Violence broke out in the region in 2003 when Khartoum was accused of unleashing local Arab tribes on ethnic Africans rebelling against the government for alleged discrimination. Unrest has continued in the years since.

Progress eases sanctions

The United States lifted some sanctions against Sudan in January, with then-President Barack Obama citing “positive actions” by the Sudanese government, including progress in ending military aerial bombardments in Darfur.

A State Department official said there could be a permanent revocation of sanctions in six months if progress continued, a timeline that coincides with the renewal of the UNAMID mandate.

Zach Vertin, a fellow at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, said  the U.N. mission in Darfur could be updated to reflect “current realities.”

“Things have definitely changed, but it remains a complex security environment with lots of overlapping security concerns, criminality — these kind of things,” he said.”So I think the Trump administration has been pushing for major peacekeeping cuts and while streamlining the mission is welcome, gutting it is not.”

Analysts worry that a large, abrupt cut to the UNAMID presence could impact humanitarian assistance and civilian protection in Darfur.

“UNAMID has been a failure by any reasonable peacekeeping standards, but failing doesn’t mean they haven’t provided some protection,” said Eric Reeves, a senior fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.

“That protection would disappear with the kind of cuts that are being mooted within the debates at the Security Council,” he added.

The government of Sudan does want UNAMID to leave, but carefully, said its foreign minister.

“We want a careful exit strategy in accordance with the agreement signed between us and the A.U. and the U.N. And on the basis of that, we are accepting any reasonable evaluation in all places where UNAMID is based,” said Ghandour. “So we are not talking about an immediate, total exit. We are talking about an exit strategy on the basis of conditions on the ground.”

In March, Ambassador Haley accused the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as MONUSCO, of “aiding a government that is inflicting predatory behavior against its own people.” She also said the United Nations should have the “decency and common sense to end this.”

MONUSCO’s mandate was renewed at the end of March, but with a reduction of 3,600 in the troop ceiling.

The mandates for peacekeeping missions in Mali, southern Lebanon, and the Central African Republic will also come up for renewal before the end of the year.
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At least 97 Libyan migrants are feared dead after their boat sank Thursday in the Mediterranean Sea, en route to Europe, Libyan authorities said.

A spokesman for the Libyan Coast Guard said authorities rescued 23 migrants a few kilometers off the Libyan coast after receiving a distress call from their sinking boat.

By the time the Coast Guard arrived, spokesman Ayoub Gassim said the boat, which was packed with African migrants, “completely collapsed.”

He said the survivors were all men who were found hanging onto a flotation device. The others were “probably dead,” he said.

Libya serves as a popular starting point for migrants, mostly from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, to try to reach Europe. Smugglers use dilapidated boats to take thousands of migrants on the long, dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.

Mass drownings like the one feared to have happened Thursday are becoming more common as traffickers pack as many migrants as possible onto rickety boats.

The International Organization for Migration reports that as of April 9, some 664 migrants have died on the Mediterranean, with 90 percent on the Libya-to-Italy route.
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The U.N. special envoy for Central Africa visited Cameroon this week to seek an end to the months-long stalemate on the strike and unrest in English-speaking parts of the country.

Francois Lonseny Fall, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general and head of the U.N. Regional Office for Central Africa, called on the government of Cameroon to take two steps to facilitate the reopening of dialogue with strikers in the English-speaking regions.

The United Nations cannot be indifferent when there are issues that could threaten the peace and stability of a sovereign state, he said, recommending that all detainees be liberated. He said the U.N. believes that if detainees are freed, peace will quickly return to Cameroon.

He also reiterated the U.N.’s call that the internet be reinstated in the northwest and the southwest. He called the internet blackout a violation of the freedom to access information.

Government spokesperson Issa Tchiroma declined VOA’s request for comment on the special envoy’s Wednesday statement, but said President Paul Biya is aware of the situation.

The government has announced some reforms to address the strikers’ grievances, but talks broke down earlier this year after the government refused to release detainees. Dozens of people have been arrested in connection with the strike, including three activist leaders currently on trial for charges related to violent unrest in December. If convicted, those three leaders could face death sentences. Schools remain closed in the affected areas; the internet was cut in January.

Tensions began in November when English-speaking lawyers and teachers in the two regions refused to work, demanding reforms. The situation intensified as the strike pulled other activists who say the country’s English-speaking minority is marginalized and those regions should declare total independence.

Biya has ruled out any discussion on the question of national unity.

The U.N. special envoy told reporters that the U.N. will not get involved on questions of secession or a return to federalism in Cameroon. He said Cameroon has strong institutions and a functioning democratic parliament to address political matters.
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A Ugandan academic detained for calling the country’s president “a pair of buttocks” resisted attempts to forcibly carry out psychiatric tests on her, her attorney said Thursday, describing the alleged incident as an attack on her dignity.

Psychiatrists visited Stella Nyanzi at a maximum-security prison on Wednesday but left without completing the evaluation after Nyanzi warned them of “dire consequences,” Isaac Semakadde said.

“It seems that the state is now going to create a gulag for its opponents,” the lawyer said.

Nyanzi was charged on Monday with cyber harassment and offensive communication, offenses relating to her persistent criticism on Facebook of longtime President Yoweri Museveni.

The government’s claims of Nyanzi’s possible insanity “could amount to torture,” Semakadde said.

Frank Baine, a spokesman for Uganda’s prisons system, denied the allegations, saying the claim of a mental exam was fabricated by Nyanzi’s lawyers.

“There’s nothing that happened. This is fictitious,” he said.

Nyanzi, a single mother of three who is a postdoctoral research fellow at Uganda’s Makerere University, is popular on Facebook for critiques of Museveni and his family.

She has denied the criminal charges but said she often writes metaphorically “to speak truth to power.”

Museveni has ruled for over three decades and is increasingly accused of planning to rule for life. In her writings on Facebook, Nyanzi frequently said Uganda is now under “despotic family rule.”

Her case is being widely followed in this East African country where few people dare to publicly criticize the first family in bold terms.

Amnesty International has urged Ugandan authorities to free her immediately and drop the charges.

Nyanzi most recently was involved in a campaign to raise funds for sanitary napkins that would be distributed to poor schoolgirls, many of whom drop out when they cannot afford them.

When First Lady Janet Museveni, who also serves as education minister, recently said there was no money to buy the sanitary napkins despite the president’s assurances last year to budget for them, Nyanzi charged on Facebook that the first family is corrupt and out of touch with the poverty of ordinary Ugandans.
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Zimbabwean entrepreneurs could soon use movable assets, including livestock and vehicles, to secure loans from banks, according to a bill brought before the country’s Parliament this week.

The southern African country’s economy is dominated by informal business following the formal sector’s contraction by as much as 50 percent between 2000 and 2008, according to government data, after President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned farms decimated the key agriculture sector.

The Movable Property Security Interest Bill, introduced Tuesday by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, seeks to make it easier for Zimbabwe’s burgeoning informal sector to access bank funds.

A copy of the bill seen Wednesday by Reuters defines movable property as “any tangible or intangible property other than immovable property.”

New economic reality

Presenting the bill, which still has to go through several stages before becoming law, Chinamasa said the majority of small businesses did not have the immovable assets that banks require as collateral for loans.

“The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act will be amended to achieve the objective of this bill, and the assets to be considered include any type, such as machinery, motor vehicles, livestock and accounts receivable,” Chinamasa told lawmakers.

The finance minister said banks had failed to adjust to Zimbabwe’s new economic reality, in which the informal sector, mostly made up of small businesses, plays a dominant role.

Loans to small businesses amounted to $250 million in the year to date, Chinamasa said, out of total bank loans of nearly $4 billion.

“As minister in charge of financial institutions, I feel there is need for a change of attitude by our banks to reflect our economic realities,” Chinamasa said.

The bill provides for a collateral registry to be set up by the central bank, which would maintain a database of all movable assets put up as loan security.

“The purpose of the registry is to facilitate commerce, industry and other socioeconomic activities by enabling individuals and businesses to utilize their movable property as collateral for credit,” reads part of the bill.

Pitching the proposed law to legislators, Chinamasa cited several developing economies — including those of Liberia, Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, Lesotho, Peru and Ukraine — that he said used movable assets as collateral to increase lending to small businesses.

“Their access to banking finance increased by 8 percent [on average], while interest rates declined by 3 percent per annum,” he said.

Foreign currencies

Zimbabwe’s economy enjoyed a temporary reprieve after it adopted the use of multiple foreign currencies — mainly the U.S dollar and South Africa’s rand — in 2009 to replace its inflation-ravaged local unit.

The currency move initially paid dividends, with the economy expanding by an average 11.3 percent between 2010 and 2012, according to World Bank data, while inflation came down to single digits.

However, declining exports from the mineral-dependent country following weaker mineral commodity prices coincided with a sharp rise in imports, triggering an acute foreign currency shortage and slowing down the economy as credit to businesses dried up.
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