A series of military victories over extremist Islamic groups along Libya’s Mediterranean coastline has forced hundreds of militants, including Islamic State fighters, to seek refuge in the vast deserts of the North African nation, already home to militias from neighboring countries, cross-border criminal gangs and mercenaries.

Libya’s lawless, desolate center and south provides a sanctuary for militants to reorganize, recruit, train and potentially plot for a comeback. That is especially important at a time when the Islamic State group lost not only its urban holdings in Libya but is crumbling in Iraq and Syria.

In Libya’s remote stretches near the borders with Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Algeria, Niger and Tunisia, multiple armed groups already operate freely. Arms are easily available. Human trafficking and cross-border smuggling, especially fuel, are rampant and lucrative.

Lack of effective border controls has allowed militiamen fighting the Sudanese and Chadian governments to set up camp inside Libya. Alongside them came soldiers-for-hire from places as far afield as Cameroon. Tribal and ethnic rivalries frequently boil over into deadly strife.

Militants “travel back and forth near the southern borders and all the way to the central parts of the country, robbing travelling cars and attacking civilians,” said Brig. Gen. Abdullah Nouredeen of the Libyan National Army. “They sometimes work close to the borders since there is money to be made from smuggling and arms trading.”

The migration of the militants comes after rivals drove them out of coastal cities like Sirte, Benghazi, Sebratha and Derna. Their dispersion into the desert undermines prospects for a return of stability in oil-rich Libya.

Claudia Gazzini, the International Crisis Group’s senior Libya analyst, said IS militants were generally lying low in the desert south of the coastline, moving in small convoys so as not to attract attention or just going home. Others, she explained, were active around Sirte, staging occasional attacks against their adversaries.

Going forward, she said, IS remnants will likely try to influence and win over groups opposed to Gen. Khalifa Hifter, the Egyptian-backed commander of Libya’s national army who has been fighting militants.

“We are already seeing signs that this may have already happened,” she said.

Sensing danger, Egypt has begun to closely monitor its borders with Sudan and Libya, fearing the area could turn into a major staging ground for attacks inside its territory. Egypt has said IS militants fighting its security forces in the Sinai Peninsula receive arms and fighters from Libya. It said militants behind recent deadly attacks against Christians were trained in Libya and sneaked into Egypt across the porous desert border.

Like the rest of Libya, the desert towns and villages in the country’s central and southern regions have seen law and order vanish since the 2011 ouster and death of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Across the country, militias – many of them with Islamist ideologies – have carved out fiefdoms, imposing their will on local administrations.

Some estimates put the number of full-time militiamen in Libya at around 120,000 and IS fighters around 1,000, but there is no way to independently verify these figures.

Gen. Hifter has sought to drive out Islamic militants and bring the center and south under his control – but with limited success. He said he intends to seal off Libya’s borders with Egypt, Sudan and Chad by early July to stop the flow of arms, fighters and migrants.

It is widely believed, however, that his forces don’t have the resources to enforce order in the vast region or take on the hardened militants and militiamen there.

In a sign of desperation over deteriorating security, Libya’s national oil company halted shipments to the south, after a series of hijackings of convoys delivering fuel. Invariably, the fuel surfaced later in the black market or in neighboring countries.

The following are key geographical locations for the militants and armed groups:

Zamzam Valley:

Zamzam Valley is south of Misrata about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the coast. Scores of IS militants found refuge there after they were defeated last year by militiamen loyal to the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli after a months-long battle. IS fighters in Zamzam Valley occasionally launch attacks against Misrata, the hometown of the militia that drove them out of Sirte, as well as kidnap travelers or attacks checkpoints.

Al-Awaynat:

This location in the remote southeastern corner of Libya close to the borders of Algeria and Niger has become something of a “mercenaries central” because of the hundreds of guns-for hire stationed there. The men, mostly from Chad, Niger and Cameroon, are hired mostly to fight under the banners of different militias. They make an average of $2,000 a month when hired. Militias and criminal groups in al-Awaynat, meanwhile, make money from human trafficking, kidnappings for ransom and smuggling of weapons, drugs and fuel.

Al-Kufra:

Small cells of IS and al-Qaida fighters are believed to have moved to the outskirts of this oasis city in southeast Libya in recent months. Al-Kufra has for decades been torn by a deadly conflict pitting the Arab Alzway tribes against the sub-Saharan African Tabu group, which inhabits a large swath of territory stretching across northern Chad, southern Libya, northwestern Sudan and northeastern Niger.

Alzway dominate the city and accuse the Tabu of harboring criminals and militants from Sudan and Chad. The Tabu deny the charges. Militias from both sides are involved in tit-for-tat raids that often target civilians. The conflict is widely seen as a rivalry over control of border crossings and lucrative smuggling routes.

Two brigades from Hifter’s Libyan National Army are stationed at al-Kufra, but they don’t have the manpower or resources to enforce law and order in the vast desert area.

Sabha:

Most of the hundreds of militants who managed to flee the assault on Sirte last year are thought to have made it near this town in central Libya.

It was a perfect destination. The city is virtually out of control, with several ongoing conflicts. The main players are Awlad Suleiman, an ethnically Arab tribe, and the Tabu and Twareg, all of whom have for years been vying for a bigger slice of the smuggling trade.

Anti-government militiamen from Sudan and Chad provide a pool of mercenaries for any armed group. They are also involved in cross-border arms smuggling, according to local politician Youssef Kalourki.

IS fighters in the area keep a low profile, spending most of their time in valleys and mountains outside the city.

In May, forces loyal to Hifter seized a nearby air base and several localities. It was a significant victory, but Hifter’s forces remain a long way away from controlling the region.

Ubari:

This town southwest of Sabha saw fierce fighting among rival criminal gangs in 2015 that displaced almost the entire population. The hostilities were triggered by an attempt by several militias to control the black market in subsidized fuel provided by the Tripoli government.

Radical militant groups in the area, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, are known to be involved in the illicit trade, selling the fuel in neighboring countries for at least 10 times the price in Libya.
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It’s nearly midday at the bustling Tegeta bus terminal in Tanzania’s biggest city and Olivia Mbiku is busy preparing ugali – a popular maize meal – beef stew and vegetables for her customers.

“I wake up early, light up the fire and rush to the market to buy meat, cooking oil, tomatoes and everything I need for the day,” said the 25-year-old mother of two.

Shrouded in a cloud of smoke, and with a traditional colorful ‘khanga’ tied round her waist, Mbiku takes some maize flour from a sachet and sprinkles it into boiling water while briskly stirring with a stick to make it stiff.

“I cook ugali every day because most of my customers like it,” Mbiku told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It’s not a lucrative business, but I get enough to feed my family.”

Mbiku is among dozens of food vendors trying to earn a living amid the hubbub of the Dar es Salaam bus terminal, where conductors hoot and yell to attract customers.

She works eight hours and day, earning around 45,000 shillings ($20) to supplement her husband’s income as a mason.

But unlike licensed hawkers who work from rows of wooden stalls, Mbiku cooks in the open air and is often harassed by the city militias for selling food without the proper papers.

“They often seize my cooking pots and sometimes lock me up. I have to pay some money to be released and get my stuff back,” she said.

Mbiku and other women with unlicensed businesses finally have a glimmer of hope after the Tanzanian government last month announced it would recognize them as part of its broader policy of empowering women.

Maria Ezekiel, 31, who has a stall serving chicken soup, chapati and tea along the busy Bagamoyo highway each morning, said the move to formalize micro-enterprises like hers was an important milestone for small-scale entrepreneurs.

A license would allow her to apply for credit to upgrade her business, she said.

“I think it’s a very good opportunity for me. As soon as the identity cards are issued I will start processing my bank loan,” Ezekiel told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I want to borrow at least 500,000 shillings ($225) to modernize my cooking business.”

The roadside chef wants to buy better equipment and switch to a gas stove to replace the smoky firewood she now cooks on.

Unprotected

Operating in the informal sector leaves women without protection and unable to access credit, experts say.

“Urban food vending may be a good tool for creating livelihood security for the urban poor, but to achieve this there has to be better policy initiatives,” said Haji Semboja, economics professor at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Presenting the annual budget in June, Tanzania’s finance minister, Philip Mpango, said all food vendors – most of whom are women – would be brought into the mainstream sector.

The government would work with regional authorities to identify informal businesses and license them before 2020, he said.

“We will issue identity cards and designate special premises for them,” the minister told parliament.

Margareth Chacha, a banker and former chief executive of Tanzania Women’s Bank that supports small-scale women entrepreneurs, said women are held back because of strict loan conditions imposed by banks.

“Most of the women can’t access the loans because the conditions are too tough,” she said. “But if the government can act as a guarantor, I’m sure the banks will be willing to give loans.”

The benefits of thriving women-led businesses are felt throughout the economy, she said.

Back at Tegeta bus terminal, Olivia Mbiku says she is now hoping for a more stable, prosperous future.

“I would very much like to get a bank loan and start a big catering business,” she said.
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Gambia could become the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to eliminate malaria on its track record of combating the mosquito-borne disease but more donor funds are needed for the “last mile” of the drive, health experts said Wednesday.

The prevalence of the malaria parasite in children younger than five has plunged to 0.2 percent from 4 percent in 2011, according to the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP).

The total number of new malaria cases across the West African nation has fallen by about 40 percent in that time — to 155,450 last year from 262,000 in 2011, NMCP data shows.

Gambia is aiming to achieve the milestone of having no new malaria cases by 2020, but donor fatigue is a concern with a funding gap of over $25 million, said NMCP head Balla Kandeh.

“This last mile is the most difficult — we need more support to sustain the gains we have made, yet donors often turn their attention elsewhere as cases drop,” he said, adding that malaria rates in Gambia may rebound if more funding is not secured soon.

Kandeh hopes that Gambia’s new leadership under President Adama Barrow, who won a December election to bring an end to 22 years of autocratic rule under Yahya Jammeh, will attract back donors after many left during the previous regime.

“There is a better working environment under Barrow, with less constraints and less political uncertainty,” he told Reuters. “The fear of the unknown has gone.”

Aside from the usual control measures, such as anti-malarial drugs, insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor spraying, Gambia has successfully used technology to tackle malaria, according to Carla Fajardo of aid agency Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

Tablets, online platforms and GPS have been used to track delivery of the above strategies, with real-time data enabling decisions to be made on the fly, while internet service providers have boosted bandwidth in remote areas, Fajardo said.

The world has made huge strides against malaria since 2000, with death rates plunging by 60 percent and at least six million lives saved globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

But efforts to end one of the world’s deadliest diseases — which kills about 430,000 people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa — are under threat as mosquitoes become increasingly resistant to measures such as bed nets and drugs.
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The U.N. said Wednesday it had identified another 38 probable mass graves in central Congo, where violence has killed thousands since August.

This would bring the total of mass graves found in the Kasai region to 80, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo said Wednesday.

The U.N. reports an estimated 1.3 million people from Kasai have been internally displaced and 30,000 have fled to neighboring Angola since a flare-up of violence in August.

The killing of a tribal chief by police and members of the army-triggered revenge attacks and counterattacks between the chief’s Kamuina Nsapu militia and government security forces.
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Four Boko Haram suicide bombers killed 19 people in a series of attacks that targeted a civilian self-defense force and the people who gathered to mourn their deaths, police in Nigeria said Wednesday. It was the deadliest attack in months in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram’s eight-year insurgency.

Borno state police commissioner Damian Chukwu said 23 others were wounded in Tuesday night’s attacks. The police commissioner said 12 of the dead were members of a civilian self-defense force and the other seven people had been mourning them.

At least one of the suicide bombers was female, said a spokesman for the self-defense force, Danbatta Bello. The bombers specifically targeted his colleagues while they were on duty, he said.

“A teenage female suicide bomber actually crept to the sandbag post of our boys at Molai and before they could realize what was happening she detonated herself and killed three of our boys,” Bello said.

“That happened simultaneously with the one that occurred at the tea vendor’s, where seven of our members who took their time off to eat their dinner were killed,” he said.

Boko Haram has increasingly used girls and young women to carry out attacks on marketplaces, checkpoints and other targets. Some young women who escaped extremist group have said girls are drugged and forced to carry out suicide missions.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw mourning residents preparing the bodies of the victims for burial.

Nigeria’s government late last year declared that Boko Haram had been “crushed” but deadly attacks continue. The Islamic extremist group’s insurgency has killed more than 20,000 people, abducted thousands of others and spilled over into neighboring countries.

Northeastern Nigeria is part of what the United Nations has called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in more than 70 years, with the World Food Program estimating that more than 4.5 million people in the region need emergency food assistance.
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In an effort to save one of Africa’s last desert elephant herds, Mali has employed Mitch, Bobby and Amy – Dutch spaniels with a nose for sniffing out illegal ivory.

The chocolate-colored spaniels are the newest members of an anti-poaching brigade set up to dismantle ivory trafficking networks that have devastated elephant herds in Mali, General Birama Sissoko, an advisor to the environment ministry, told Reuters.

Poaching has been rampant since Tuareg rebels and Islamists took over the north of the country in 2012. French forces pushed them back a year later, but lawlessness still reigns and ivory smuggling has flourished. Trade in elephant tusks funds militants, the United Nations says.

Only about 300 elephants are left in Mali. About 167 have been slaughtered since fighting broke out in 2012 and a system of local self-policing fell apart, the environment minister said earlier this year.

“There is a stock of ivory that circulates. If we can get hold of the ivory, we can work backwards until we get hold of the poachers,” Sissoko told Reuters.

The anti-poaching team will take the dogs on searches when they get intelligence about traffickers’ hideouts, and they should be able to help police make arrests, said Susan Canney, director of the Mali Elephant Project, which partnered with the U.S.-based Chengeta Wildlife organization to obtain the dogs.

No poaching has been detected since the unit was founded in February, but that could be because poachers are simply laying low for now, said Canney.

“This should be game-changing,” Canney said. “Poachers and traffickers are still there. This could catch them red-handed.”

Mali’s elephants roam the northern Gourma region, where Islamist and separatist groups still frequently stage attacks.

Elephant tusks from Mali are thought to be sold on the black market for up to 3 million CFA francs ($5,000), Canney said.

($1 = 580.6800 CFA francs)
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