Month: July 2017

Survivors of Wartime Rape Break the Silence

Posted on by SeeAF

“I was 12 years old when I was raped. I did not understand what was happening.”

Nelle is now 36 years old. But in 1993 when war broke out in Burundi, armed men came to her village near the capital, Bujumbura. They killed her mother and father and six siblings. She was raped, but she survived.

“I saw people were killing each other. They were running away and killing each other. I hid myself under dead bodies for five days,” she said.

Difficult story

Nelle’s story of survival was long and difficult to tell. After living through years of instability, she told VOA that she left for South Africa in 2004 when a new government came to power in Burundi.

“I was scared,” she said. “I was afraid war was coming and I did not want to go through the same thing as in 1993. I did not want to be raped again. So, I quit the country and became a refugee in South Africa.”

Nelle is one of 25 rape survivors from South Sudan, Mali, Colombia and 12 other conflict-affected countries around the world who attended a four-day retreat this week in Geneva.

They came to share their experiences and to devise strategies for the creation of a global movement to end rape as a weapon on war.

“These 25 women have suffered unthinkable things and developed remarkable powers,” said Esther Dingemans, director of the Mukwege Foundation.

“They have experienced the cruelest violence. But the perpetrators did not succeed in breaking them,” she said.

The foundation is headed by Denis Mukwege, a renowned surgeon from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has treated thousands of survivors of sexual violence in Congo.  

“We hope that this week will be the beginning of a large long-term movement that leads to a global platform of survivors,” said Dingemans, “and that their voices will finally be heard.”

Wartime atrocities

In 1992, after the atrocities committed in the Bosnian war, especially against Muslim women, rape, for the first time was recognized as a weapon of war by the United Nations Security Council.

In 2000, the Security Council adopted resolution 1325, which was the first formal and legal document that required parties to a conflict to “protect women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence in armed conflict.”

It also was the first U.N. resolution to specifically mention women.

Ulrike Lunasek, vice president of the European Parliament, who spoke at the ceremony honoring the 25 women survivors, said it is “important to break the vicious circle of shame and silence” that women usually feel when they are raped.

She said women raped in war must be supported, helped to heal and then “be encouraged to speak up, but also to tell the truth about what military conflict and war means for women.”

Women did speak up at this conference. Several survivors presented searing testimony about their ordeals.

Solange Bigiramana, who survived the horrors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, now lives as a stateless person in South Africa.

“My situation of being a survivor, that comes from a situation of war. It happened for me to face rape. I know what rape means,” she said.

“And I am here with a story of hope,” she said. “I once was under a shadow. I want every survivor to be out of the shadow and to be into the light.”

Yazidi girl

Another survivor, Farida Abbas-Khalaf, a Yazidi girl from the Iraqi village of Kocho, described the torment to which she and other members of her community were subjected by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in her book The Girl Who Beat ISIS.

She spoke movingly and in agonizing detail about being raped, beaten, insulted, and forced to pray and read the Koran.

“Young boys were brainwashed and sent to ISIS training camps to become ISIS fighters while women and young girls were taken as sex slaves and sold at slave markets,” said Abbas-Khalaf.

She said that she was able to heal because of support from her family, her community and her spiritual leader who she said made a statement “that the surviving girls are an important part of the Yazidi community and that what happened to them was against their will.”

She added, “It is time that survivors break the silence. But mostly it is time for the world to hear their voices.”
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Ukraine Blames Russia for Massive Cyber Attack

Posted on by SeeEU

Ukraine has blamed Russian security services for a massive cyber attack that started in the last week in Ukraine and eventually spread to computers across the world.

Ukraine’s security agency, the SBU, said in a statement Saturday the attack bore resemblances to past hacks of Ukrainian infrastructure by the Russian security services.

“The available data, including those obtained in cooperation with international antivirus companies, give us reason to believe that the same hacking groups are involved in the attacks, which in December 2016 attacked the financial system, transport and energy facilities of Ukraine, using TeleBots and BlackEnergy,” the statement said.

Russia has denied involvement in the recent attack that halted operations at large companies and government agencies in more than 60 countries around the world. The hackers encrypted data on infected machines and demanded a ransom to give it back to its owner.

Europol Director Rob Wainwright called Tuesday’s hack “another serious ransomware attack.” He said it bore resemblances to the previous ‘WannaCry’ hack, but it also showed indications of a “more sophisticated attack capability intended to exploit a range of vulnerabilities.”

The WannaCry hack sent a wave of crippling ransomware to hospitals across Britain in May, causing the hospitals to divert ambulances and cancel surgeries. The program demanded a ransom to unlock access to files stored on infected machines.

Researchers eventually found a way to thwart the hack, but only after about 300 people had already paid the ransom.

The most recent hack has been largely contained, but now some researchers are questioning the motivation behind the attack. They say it may not have been designed to collect a ransom, but instead to simply destroy data.

“There may be a more nefarious motive behind the attack,” Gavin O’Gorman, an investigator with U.S. antivirus firm Symantec, said in a blog post. “Perhaps this attack was never intended to make money [but] rather to simply disrupt a large number of Ukrainian organizations.”

Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab similarly noted that the code used in the hacking software wouldn’t have allowed its authors to decrypt the stolen data after a ransom had been paid.

“It appears it was designed as a wiper pretending to be ransomware,” Kapersky researchers Anton Ivanov and Orkhan Mamedov wrote in a blog post. “This is the worst case news for the victims – even if they pay the ransom they will not get their data back.”

The computer virus used in the attack includes code known as Eternal Blue, a tool developed by the NSA that exploited Microsoft’s Windows operating system, and which was published on the internet in April by a group called Shadowbrokers. Microsoft released a patch in March to protect systems from that vulnerability.

Tim Rawlins, director of the Britain-based cybersecurity consultancy NCC Group, says the attacks continue to happen because people have not been keeping up with effectively patching their computers.

“This is a repeat WannaCry type of outbreak and it really comes down to the fact that people are not focusing on what they should be focusing on, the very simple premise of patching your systems,” Rawlins told VOA.

 
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WHO: Cholera Death Toll in Yemen Rises to 1500

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The World Health Organization says a rapidly spreading cholera outbreak in Yemen has claimed 1500 lives since April and is suspected of sickening 246,000 people.

WHO representative in Yemen Dr. Nevio Zagaria said in a news conference in Sanaa on Saturday that the number of suspected cases in the country’s second outbreak of cholera in six months has multiplied tenfold in the last two months.

The death toll rose from 1300 as announced two weeks ago by WHO, which put the number of suspected cases at 200,000 at the time. The organization said that a quarter of those killed by the disease in the war-torn country are children.

A two-year Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels has damaged infrastructure and caused medicine shortages in the Arab world’s poorest country.
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Segregated Soldiers Toiled on Alaska Highway During WWII

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Alaska is commemorating 75 years since nearly 4,000 segregated black soldiers toiled in harsh weather and terrain to help build a highway across the state and Canada.

 

The soldiers worked on the 1,500-mile (2,400-kilometer) highway during World War II, a contribution largely ignored for decades.

 

It took the soldiers working from the north just over eight months to meet up with white soldiers coming from the south to connect the two segments on Oct. 25, 1942. The route set the foundation for the only land link to Alaska.

 

State lawmakers voted this year to set aside each Oct. 25 to honor the black soldiers who worked on the Alaska Highway. The anniversary has gained attention this summer with multiple Alaska events.

 

Leonard Larkins of Louisiana was among the black soldiers who helped build the route. The 96-year-old applauds lawmakers for finally recognizing their role.

 

Lawmakers note the soldiers’ work was a factor in the Army’s integration in 1948.
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At Memorial, Kohl Praised as Both German, European Patriot

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Current and former leaders from Europe and beyond are gathering in Strasbourg to bid farewell to former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died June 16 at 87.

 

The ceremony Saturday at the European Parliament’s seat in Strasbourg, close to the border with Germany, was deemed fitting for a chancellor whose biggest achievements included helping unite Europe.

 

It is the first time such a memorial for a national leader is being held at the European level.

 

Among the speakers are EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, French President Emmanuel Macron and current German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

 

Juncker described Kohl as “a German patriot and at the same time a European patriot.” 

 

Kohl will be buried later Saturday following a mass in the German city of Speyer. 
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After Mosul and Raqqa Fall, Where Will Next Battle With IS Be?

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With the Islamic State (IS) militant group on the verge of defeat in the Iraqi city of Mosul and surrounded by counter-Islamic State forces in the Syrian city of Raqqa, one question looms — where will the next major battle be?

Many U.S. military officials point to the Euphrates River Valley, namely Deir Ezzor province in Syria, and the area around the city of al-Qaim in Iraq. Those areas are not heavily populated like Mosul or Raqqa, but the fight could still prove incredibly difficult as multiple counter-Islamic State forces, with entirely different political agendas, converge on the region.

The counter-IS coalition has seen a steady stream of the terror group’s leaders try to move into swaths of the Euphrates River Valley, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Ryan Dillon said Thursday. The last five coalition strikes targeting high-level IS leaders were conducted in the Muyadin and Abu Kamal areas of Deir Ezzor province.

Dillon would not say, however, whether the area has become the new center of the so-called Islamic State caliphate.

“There is no hub anymore,” he told reporters. “They are on the run, and we will not allow them to regroup and catch their breath.”

​Training opposition groups

U.S. Central Command spokesman Major Josh Jacques told VOA the United States has been training two vetted Syrian opposition groups to fight IS in southeastern Syria.

Those two Syrian tribal groups are Maghawir al-Thawra (MaT) and Shohada al-Quartayn (ShQ), whose homelands include the Qalamoun Mountain region, the Euphrates River Valley and the Hamad desert, which stretches from the Jordan border north along the Iraqi border to the Euphrates River.

Both groups are supported under Section 1209 of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Action. In addition to first aid, clearing and marksmanship training, the coalition has provided MaT and ShQ with small arms, land navigation tools and medical supplies.

“I won’t go into specifics for operational security reasons, but the coalition’s two southern Syrian partner forces currently comprise a few hundred fighters. More are being recruited every day to help in the fight against ISIS,” Jacques told VOA, using an acronym for the militant group.

He added, “Vetted Syrian opposition groups all swear an oath to fight only ISIS, uphold the law of armed conflict, and respect human rights.”

But that oath to fight only IS could prove problematic for the future of Syria’s lower Euphrates River Valley.

Some members of these two groups are Syrian army defectors who have no interest in working with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

 

​Al-Tanf army base

Meanwhile, Iranian-directed, pro-Syrian forces have positioned themselves between the al-Tanf army base, where the coalition is training Maghawir al-Thawra and Shohada al-Quartayn fighters to defeat Islamic State, and IS-held territory in the Euphrates River Valley.

“I think that the only way to get to [the Deir Ezzor provincial city of] Abu Kamal right now, if that were something that was even on the table, it would have to be from a different direction or different location,” coalition spokesman Dillon told reporters recently.

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior defense fellow at Washington-based Brookings Institution, said the U.S. and Iran are now in direct competition for certain access points inside eastern Syria.

“We don’t necessarily want that for ourselves, but we don’t want it for Iran,” O’Hanlon said.

Iranian leaders sense an opportunity to create a continuous land bridge that would span from Iran to the Mediterranean, and the Syrian government wants to retake the oil-rich lands in Deir Ezzor province.

Dillon and other military officials have said the United States would welcome pro-Syrian forces moving in to defeat Islamic State in Deir Ezzor province and would deal with any necessary military conflicts at a later date.

“Right now the focus is on Raqqa, and we’ll have to see what happens after Raqqa and where there are still ISIS fighters that remain,” Dillon said.

But O’Hanlon said the United States does not need to issue open invitations to Assad to be anywhere in eastern Syrian, because Assad is an illegitimate leader who has lost the faith of many inside Syria.

“The Sunni populations are not going to tolerate Assad’s regime being in control of an area like Raqqa or Deir Ezzor, so if it’s Assad who liberates it, or if it’s Assad’s allies … it’s just going to be a guarantee of a Sunni attack down the road,” O’Hanlon said.
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DRC Declares Ebola Outbreak Over

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Democratic Republic of Congo declared its two-month Ebola outbreak officially over Saturday after 42 days without recording a new case of the disease.

The outbreak in Congo’s remote northeastern forests, a record eighth for the country where the disease was first discovered in 1976, killed four out of the eight people infected, Health Minister Oly Ilunga said in a statement.

“I declare on this day, at midnight, the end of the outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever of the Ebola virus in DRC,” Ilunga said.

Congolese health authorities approved the use of a new experimental vaccine but ultimately declined to deploy it because of the small scale of the outbreak and logistical challenges.

The latest outbreak came a year after the end of the virus’ deadliest episode in West Africa, which killed more than 11,300 people and infected some 28,600 as it swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and caused alarm around the world.

Health officials say northeastern Congo’s remote geography combined with the country’s experience fighting the disease allowed them to gain the upper hand quickly.

“The government of DRC has been very transparent in declaring that there is the outbreak and that really facilitated … communication and information sharing and rapid action,” Ibrahima Soce Fall, a senior World Health Organization official in Africa, told Reuters last week.
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Health Insurer Measure Shuts Down New Jersey Government

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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the Democrat-led Legislature are to return to work Saturday to try to resolve the state’s first government shutdown since 2006 and the first under Christie. 

 

The Republican governor and the Democrat-led Legislature failed to reach an agreement on a new budget by the deadline at midnight Friday.

 

Christie ordered nonessential services, including state parks and the motor vehicle commission to close beginning Saturday. He and lawmakers are in a stalemate over whether to include legislation affecting the state’s largest health insurer into the state budget. 

 

Remaining open under the shutdown will be New Jersey Transit, state prisons, the state police, state hospitals and treatment centers as well as casinos, race tracks and the lottery. 

Insurer’s surplus

 

Christie and Senate President Steve Sweeney agree on legislation to make over Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, including allowing the state insurance commissioner to determine a range for the company’s surplus that if exceeded must be put to use benefiting the public and policyholders. 

 

But Democratic Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto opposes the plan, saying that the legislation could lead to rate hikes on the insurer’s 3.8 million subscribers and that the legislation is separate from the budget. 

 

Prieto has said he will leave open a vote on the $34.7 billion budget that remains deadlocked 26-25, with 24 abstentions, until those 24 abstentions change their mind. 

Lawmakers wait

 

Democratic Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo, of Northfield, was among those abstaining. He reasoned that if the governor did not get the Horizon bill, then nearly $150 million in school funding, $9.6 million of which would go to his district, would be line-item vetoed out of the budget. 

 

And indeed, Christie said Friday during a news conference that he would slash the Democratic spending priorities if he did not get the Horizon bill as part of a package deal on the budget. 
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Turkey Moves Further From Secularism in Dropping Evolution From Schools

Posted on by SeeEU

Turkey has always prided itself on being a secular state.

The nation enshrined the separation of church and state in its constitution by constitutional amendment in 1928. But that was nearly a century ago, and about 99 percent of the nation’s citizens are now identified as Muslim.

Watch: Evolution vs. Erdogan: Turkey Struggles with Basic Science

The current government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has received some criticism for eroding the country’s historic commitment to secularism and moving the nation in a more fundamentalist direction.

Recently, in a decision that many saw as moving Turkey away from secularism and toward Islam, the government banned the teaching of evolution in high school.

That means Turkish students entering high school will no longer learn naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory that all living things share a common ancestor. It is a simple idea that is the foundation of the study of life on Earth and beyond.

In explaining its decision, the government said it is not about Islam. Instead, officials said that students, “Don’t have the necessary scientific background and information-based context needed to comprehend” the theory.

Alpaslan Durmus, head of the education ministry’s curriculum board, said members thought the theory should be taught to higher-level students.

“We tried to leave out some of the controversial issues from our students’ agenda,” Durmus added.

Unable to compete on world stage

Whatever their reason, critics say the practical outcome is that Turkish children will not get the education they need to compete on the world stage.

“The Turkish education system is very weak concerning the fundamental sciences,” secular scholar Alaattin Dincer told VOA. “Both in domestic and international exams; be it in math, physics, chemistry and biology, our students have very low passing grade percentages. It is actually terribly low.

“If you don’t tell our children, the next generation, about science and evolution and Darwin; if you raise them without them learning those subjects, how can you argue that we are a scientifically enlightened country that can producer the scientists of the future? How can you tell them this?” Dincer asked.

Other critics say it is part of a plan by President Erdogan to embed an official Islamic identity into Turkish society. But like Catholic scholars, many Islamic theologians say evolution and Islam can co-exist quite easily.

“If something has scientific truth, then you cannot stand against it,” Ihsan Eliacik, a Muslim theologian, told VOA. “If evolution is scientific truth that exists in nature, nobody can stand against it. Because it is true. Fiction cannot cover a lie. A religious faith cannot destroy truth. Besides, by my religious faith, scientific truth means religious truth. The two are not contradictory.”

VOA Turkish Service’s Tan Cetin contributed to this story.
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US, Philippines Navy Ships Patrol Sulu Sea

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The United States and Philippine navies held a joint naval patrol Saturday in dangerous southern Philippine waters, amid rising international concern about Islamist militancy and piracy in the region.

U.S. Navy combat ship USS Coronado joined a Philippine Navy frigate, BRP Alcaraz, in patrolling the Sulu Sea, where numerous pirate attacks on commercial shipping have been made since 2015.

“Our at-sea operations with the Philippine Navy demonstrate our commitment to the alliance and deter piracy and illegal activities,” U.S. Rear Admiral Don Gabrielson said in a statement issued by the U.S. embassy in Manila.

There are international fears that fighters sympathetic to Islamic State will cross maritime borders between Malaysia and Indonesia to join Muslim rebels who seized Marawi City in the southern Philippines five weeks ago.

About 300 militants, 82 security forces and 44 civilians have been killed in the fighting.

The naval patrols were held at the invitation of the Philippine government, the U.S. embassy said.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte does not allow joint patrols with the United States in the disputed South China Sea to avoid damaging its relations with China, which claims the sea as its own.

But he welcomes cooperation in the south because of increased militant activity. Two weeks ago, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines held joint naval patrols in southern waters.
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Evolution vs. Erdogan: Turkey Struggles with Basic Science

Posted on by SeeEU

The separation of church and state was enshrined in Turkey’s constitution by constitutional amendment in 1928. But the current government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has received some criticism for eroding the country’s historic commitment to secularism. The latest move by the government is to ban the teaching of evolution in high school. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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45 Years After Watergate Break-In, ‘Some Knew Where Things Could Go’

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It’s been 45 years since the break-in at the Watergate Office Complex in June of 1972. Initially it was viewed as just another attempted burglary. But it grew into a scandal involving high-profile figures close to the White House. Consequently, Richard Nixon was forced to resign. VOA Russian’s Rafael Saakov visited the Watergate hotel and the Washington Post whose journalists played key roles in the investigation.
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Trump Drops Plan to Change How Food Aid Shipped

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President Donald Trump’s administration has dropped plans for an executive order that would require all U.S. food aid to be transported on American ships after members of Congress protested, congressional and aid sources said Friday.

Reuters reported Thursday that Trump was considering issuing an order that would have increased to 100 percent the current requirement that 50 percent of such aid be transported on U.S.-flagged vessels.

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stopped short of confirming information about the order but said he had discussed the issue with Trump and that he understands that the shift would have increased the cost of food aid and caused more people to starve.

“I had a good conversation today with President Trump,” Corker said in a statement emailed to Reuters. “As a businessman, he understands that expanding the cargo preference would substantially drive up the cost of food aid and cause more people to starve around the world,” Corker said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lower shipping requirement

Although unlikely to have any significant effect on the $4 trillion global cargo shipping industry, the initiative originally touted as part of Trump’s “America First” platform might have slowed food aid getting to millions of people and do little to create jobs, critics said.

Aid groups, and members of Congress from both parties have been working for years to lower, or eliminate, the 50 percent shipping requirement. The United States, the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance, spent about $2.8 billion on foreign food aid in 2016. About half of that is estimated to go to shipping and storage.

The conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute said in a November report that shipping food aid on U.S.-flagged vessels costs 46 percent more than aid shipped at internationally competitive rates and can take as much as 14 weeks longer.

Congress calls to White House

Jeremy Konyndyk, a former director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, welcomed the administration’s decision to drop the order.

Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development, said that with four potential famines in the world “it would have been the worst possible moment to be shifting money out of hungry mouths and into subsidies for big shipping conglomerates.”

Corker has been pushing for years to reform the U.S. food aid program, including by eliminating the cargo preference. He said in his statement he looked forward to working with Congress and the administration to achieve “long overdue reforms.”

After hearing about the possible executive order, several members of Congress called the White House to express their concern, congressional aides said.

The administration’s budget proposal has suggested slashing foreign aid in general while increasing defense spending.

That plan was also met with stiff opposition in Congress, as lawmakers argued that “soft power” options such as food and medical aid and disaster recovery assistance can be effective tools in foreign policy that should not be discounted.

Supporters say Trump’s initiative would not only create new U.S. jobs in the shipping industry but that U.S.-controlled food shipments are important for national security because the U.S. fleet could be transferred to the military in case of a conflict.

Food aid is a very small percentage of the worldwide sea cargo flow, critics argue, while the security issue is moot as most cargo ships are too slow for use by the 21st century military.

They said the costs would also be far higher by eliminating competition for shipping contracts with lower-cost international carriers, requiring more U.S. taxpayer dollars to feed fewer people.
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Dakar Fashion Week Takes Style Back to the Streets

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One of Dakar Fashion Week’s biggest events is free and high-end – a fashion show in a working class neighborhood. The event’s founder, Senegalese designer Adama Paris, says the “Street Parade” is her favorite show of the week, because she gets to take fashion back to the streets where it belongs.
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IOM: Dozens Still Missing After Boat Sinks Off Libya Coast

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Dozens of people are missing and believed drowned after an inflatable boat carrying more than 100 people sank off the coast of Libya earlier this week, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday.

The IOM said the boat began sinking Monday just hours after leaving the North African country. Eighty people were rescued by a passing vessel and handed off to the British military ship the HMS Echo, which is taking part in the European Union’s operation to curb human trafficking in the Mediterranean.

“They don’t know how long it was before help arrived,” IOM spokesperson Flavio Di Giacomo told the French news agency AFP. He said survivors “clung to bits of the dinghy” until night fell and they were rescued.

Sixty people remain missing, the IOM said.

The Echo took part in several sea rescues this week and delivered 550 people to the Italian port city of Brindisis Friday.

Thousands of people from sub-Saharan Africa, trying to leave behind drought, poverty and war conditions, are trying to reach Europe. Nearly 100,000 have made the journey so far this year, the IOM said, and more than 10,000 this past week.

More than 2,000 people have died trying to reach Europe, the organization said Friday. Human traffickers often overload boats that are not seaworthy and push the migrants into the Mediterranean, where vessels that are part of an EU operation patrol.
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Heading to Sahel, France’s Macron Scrambles for Exit Strategy

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President Emmanuel Macron heads to Mali on Sunday to throw France’s weight behind a new West African military force he hopes will lay the basis for an exit strategy for its own troops; but its prospects for success look slim.

Mali is hosting a heads of state summit with Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania – known as the G5 Sahel – who could ultimately deploy thousands of troops into the vast, arid Sahel region that remains a breeding ground for militants and traffickers that Paris considers a threat to Europe.

Four years after intervening in its former colony to ward off a jihadist offensive, there is no sign of France withdrawing its 4,000-strong regional Barkhane contingent as they, alongside 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers, struggle to stabilize Mali and implement peace accords.

“It’s not wrong to say that it’s part of an exit plan because the Barkhane mission is not intended to be there for ever, but it’s hard to see how we could draw down soon,” said a senior French diplomat. “We need a long-term multilateral strategy so that we’re less exposed. The time of doing everything alone in West Africa is over.”

The force endorsed by the U.N. aims to initially establish specially-trained units by the end of the year, which would work with French forces where jihadist groups are known to operate.

But it faces headwinds before it even becomes operational, with questions over financing, manpower and equipment.

“France had an exit strategy in mind when it spearheaded the new force and wanted as much multilateral funding as possible,” said Vincent Rouget, West Africa analyst at Control Risks.

“They don’t have the option that they had in CAR [Central African Republic] to just leave. The fact that Macron is in Bamako twice in a month really shows he is pushing his whole weight behind it.”

Experts and officials question the merits of a mission that could muddy the picture in an area where there are already a plethora of military operations and there is a risk of diverting money away from local governance.

“By putting the emphasis on setting up a new autonomous force with ‘mostly’ external financing the risk is that it might distract from the absolute necessity of consolidating the states in all their dimensions,” said Yabi Gilles, founder of WATHI, a citizen think tank of West Africa.

French officials insist that their efforts will not just focus on security aspects. Macron pledged in May to ensure unfulfilled development promises from Paris and the wider international community would materialize.

Reaching the Limit

But the real concern is that there will not be enough appetite to finance another regional military operation and that it could be hampered because interests and objectives are not aligned.

The neighboring multi-national joint task force (MNJTF) to fight Boko Haram, for example, has been complicated by divisions and a lack of cooperation. With the world’s wealthy nations focused on the fight against Islamist militants in the Middle East, financial support for the MNJTF, has fallen short.

“Chad and Niger are already members of the MNJTF so a solid foundation has been laid; let us build on it instead of creating another layer and going begging for resources from the same donors,” said an African security source. The G5 Sahel gives them [France] leverage over the heads of states who virtually depend on it for their security.”

Those concerns were echoed by the United States when it watered down the French-backed Security Council resolution fearing that U.N. funding – as much as $800 million could be required – would be wasted and that bilateral financing would be more fruitful.

In response, France is lobbying for more European involvement beyond an initial 50 million euros and at some point might push for a donor conference. It will also have to dig into its own pocket despite its own budget constraints.

“We have always said that the security of the region should be done by Africans themselves,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Le Monde newspaper on June 29. “Barkhane will accompany them for as long as it takes… until the situation is pacified.”

But where those thousands of efficient troops to replace Barkhane will come from is a mystery.

The G5 Sahel nations are already heavily committed, leading to speculation that Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger may simply re-hat some or all of their 4,100 soldiers now serving in the U.N. MINUSMA force in Mali, potentially undermining a mission that is already struggling.

“We have reached our limit. We can’t continue to be everywhere,” Chadian President Idriss Deby, whose troops are considered the most battle-hardened in the region, said in an interview to French media on Sunday. “Even if we had financing, Chad would be either in the G5 or MINUSMA. Choices will have to be made.”
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