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NewDelhiTimes.com: Biden’s policy challenges in the Horn of Africa and Sahel regions

US President Joe Biden has set a new tone in the policy towards Africa as compared to that of his predecessor, Donald Trump. It was significant that the Biden’s first speech in his capacity as US President on an international forum was delivered virtually on February 5, 2021, at the 34th African Union Summit. Biden remarked, “This past year has shown us how interconnected our world is and how our fates are bound up together.

That’s why my administration is committing to rebuilding our partnership around the world and re-engaging the international institutions like the African Union. We must all work together to advance our shared vision of a better future; a future of growing trade and investment that advances prosperity for all our nations; a future that advances lives and peace and security for all our citizens; a future committed to investing in our democratic institutions and promoting the human rights of all people: women and girls, LGBTQ individuals, people with disabilities, and people of every ethnic background, religion and heritage”. “United States stands ready now to be your partner, in solidarity, support and mutual respect.

We believe in the nations of Africa, in the continent-wide spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation. And through the challenges ahead, although there is no doubt that our nations, our people, the African Union – we’re up to this task”, Biden said while concluding his speech. Biden’ speech reaffirmed commitment to multilateralism. The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, welcomed the message and said that the African Union looks forward to “resetting the strategic AU-USA partnership.”

On his first day in office, Biden repealed the Trump administration’s ban on travellers from Muslim-majority and African countries, including Libya, Somalia, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. Revoking the ban, the President said in a statement, “The United States was built on a foundation of religious freedom and tolerance, a principle enshrined in the United States Constitution.

Nevertheless, the previous administration enacted a number of Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations that prevented certain individuals from entering the United States — first from primarily Muslim countries, and later, from largely African countries. Those actions are a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all”.

Two regions in Africa pose a major policy challenge for Biden – the Horn of Africa and the Sahel. As regard’s Biden’s policy in the Horn of Africa, a major decision has been taken by appointing Jeffrey Feltman, a former senior Department of State official, as Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa on April 23. This signals the US intention of assuming an active role in the region. The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said that Feltman’s appointment “underscores the Administration’s commitment to lead an international diplomatic effort to address the interlinked political, security, and humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa.” “At a moment of profound change for this strategic region, high-level U.S. engagement is vital to mitigate the risks posed by escalating conflict while providing support to once-in-a-generation opportunities for reform,” he added.

On Eritrea and Ethiopia, the US has taken a hard stance by holding their troops accountable for the humanitarian crisis in Tigray and announcing a visa restriction policy and imposing wide-ranging restrictions on economic and security assistance. In Somalia, the Biden administration has continued with Trump’s policy of withdrawing the US troops from the country. The Biden administration has also issued order that drone strikes outside three long time war zones must be approved by the White House.

As regards the US policies in the Sahel countries which include Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Chad, security analysts contend that Biden needs to be more active in light of the threat that Islamic militancy in the region poses.

In March 2020, the United States created a Special Envoy for Africa’s Sahel region to counter rising violence from groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State which are expanding their foothold. Security analysts have stressed on upgrading the Sahel Envoy post to the status of a US Presidential Envoy who would report directly to Biden. Mali, which is under a second coup in a 9-month period, poses a major challenge for the US policy in Sahel. The United States of America is mulling sanctions on Mali over the detention of civilian leaders of Mali’s transition government. Ned Price, the US Department of State Spokesperson said, “A democratic, civilian-led government presents the best opportunity to achieve security and prosperity in Mali and the wider Sahel region.

The Malian transition government’s commitment to a civilian-led transition and democratic elections in 2022 set the stage for Mali’s continued engagement with international partners to advance democracy, human rights, peace, and security effort”.

In the Sahel, the US also needs to step up its counter-terrorism operations. Currently, the US dominant strategy is to provide weapons and training to partner countries’ security forces instead of deploying US troops to fight violent extremist group. Biden also needs a rethink on this strategy.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

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Eritrea blames US support for Tigray’s leaders for the war

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Eritrea’s foreign minister blamed U.S. administrations that supported the Tigray People’s Liberation Movement for the last 20 years for the current war in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, saying that blaming Eritrea for the fighting was unfounded.

Osman Saleh, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council circulated Monday, accused President Joe Biden’s administration of “stoking further conflict and destabilization” through interference and intimidation in the region. “The apparent objective of these acts is to resuscitate the remnants of the TPLF regime,” he said.

The TPLF led the coalition that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rose to power in 2018. Abiy alienated the TPLF in part by trying to make peace with its archenemy, Eritrea, then sent Ethiopian government troops into the region in November.

Thousands are estimated to have been killed in the war that has sent a third of the region’s 6 million people fleeing. The government forces are now allied with soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, who are blamed for many atrocities.

Saleh’s letter makes no mention of Eritrean troops in Tigray, despite international calls for them to withdraw.

Multiple witnesses, survivors of rape, officials and aid workers said Eritrean soldiers have been spotted far from the border, sometimes clad in faded Ethiopian army fatigues, and controlling key roads and access to some communities.

The Ethiopian government considers TPLF fighters to be terrorists who have defied Abiy’s authority. But recent atrocities appear to have increased support for the TPLF.

The Eritrean foreign minister accused the TPLF of conducting a disinformation campaign to camouflage its illicit schemes to arm itself and topple Abiy’s government and he urged the Security Council “to take appropriate measures to redress the injustice.”

Saleh also criticized the U.S. State Department’s recent announcement on visa restrictions for current or former Eritrean and Ethiopian government and military officials, saying it was only the latest in a string of “unilateral acts of intimidation and interference.”

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

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Two Aid Workers Killed in Ambush in South Sudan

The UN on Tuesday condemned the murder of two aid workers in South Sudan and called on authorities to bring their killers to justice following a spate of similar attacks.

The victims were ambushed Monday evening as their convoy returned from delivering food relief in a village some 64 kilometres (40 miles) from Rumbek, in the conflict-prone Lakes State.

They were working for the Italian charity Doctors with Africa CUAMM.

“I call on the government to strengthen law enforcement, investigate these crimes, and to bring the perpetrators swiftly to justice,” said Matthew Hollingworth, acting head of the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA.

“Four aid workers have been killed in the last month alone. I fear that continued attacks on humanitarians and the consequent suspension of activities will have a serious impact on humanitarian operations in South Sudan.”

Jacob Akuochpiir Achuoth, health minister for Lakes State, expressed “great sorrow” at the aid workers’ deaths and vowed to work closely with investigators to find those responsible.

South Sudan is considered one of the most dangerous countries for aid workers.

The UN, which maintains a peacekeeping mission in the troubled country, says 128 humanitarian workers — most of them South Sudanese — have been killed on the job since 2013.

Last month a South Sudanese doctor was murdered in the northern, oil-rich Unity state, barely a month after a nurse was killed in Eastern Equatoria, a south-eastern state.

In January, another aid worker was shot dead near Bentiu, also in Unity state.

The nationality of the latest victims has not been released.

South Sudan achieved independence from Sudan in 2011 but descended into civil war two years later, costing 380,000 lives before a ceasefire was reached in 2018.

The oil-rich country relies on foreign aid and despite ending the war is plagued by armed violence, with clashes between rival ethnic groups claiming more than 1,000 lives in the second half of 2020 alone.

Source: Voice of America

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Children Shot, Bombed and Knifed in Tigray War

Fifteen-year-old Beriha lost one eye in the war and was permanently blinded in the other.

And like many of the children hospitalized in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, she traveled for weeks to get here. Children in the ward had been shot, knifed or hit by shrapnel from heavy artillery. Some lost limbs from stepping on landmines.

“She and her cousin went out to play in the yard,” said her father, Gebray Zenebe. “Suddenly, they saw people running. They also ran, and they were both shot.”

Gebray and Beriha traveled from town to town searching for a functioning health care center. When they arrived at Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekelle, it took three days for Beriha to regain consciousness. She was shot in the right cheek, and the bullet exited through her left eye.

The only medical treatment she received before reaching the hospital was water to clean the wound.

The Tigray region has been at war since November 2020. Doctors Without Borders says less than 15% of health care centers are operating normally. Most have been looted, and many have been damaged.

“While some looting may have been opportunistic, health facilities in most areas appear to have been deliberately vandalized to render them nonfunctional,” the organization said in a statement in March. ?

Open but empty

After the fighting stopped in Edaga Hamus, Nurse Tefetawit Tesfay emerged from where she was hiding just out of town. She went to her clinic on the main road from Mekelle to find a burned-out tank, bullet-riddled signs and dead soldiers on the streets. Like so many others, her clinic was empty.

“I came and the door was opened,” she said. “The glass (was) broken, and the equipment (was) stolen.”

Patients, including children and victims of rape, still come to her with war injuries, but there is very little she can do.

“Emergency medicine (was there),” she said, sifting through what was left in her cabinets. “It was stolen, and some in here. Infusions and dressing, suturing, all the equipment (was) stolen.”

Tefetawit said she refers patients to the few hospitals in the main cities, where medical workers say they are short of supplies in every department.

Mussie Tesfay Atsbaha, administrative chief and business development director of Ayder Referral Hospital, said that because of ongoing battles and road closures, only a small percentage of injured people make it to the city for treatment.

“If one person comes, they will tell us 20 or 30 couldn’t make it,” he said Monday in his office.

Likewise, parents say for every child survivor in the hospital, many more children did not make it.

Mourning

Michaele Kahsay, 16, was at the school where his father worked as a groundskeeper when it was hit by heavy artillery. Michaele lost the lower part of his left leg. His brother, 19, was killed in the attack.

“I didn’t feel pain at the time,” he said. “When I woke up in the hospital, I saw my leg was cut.”

Michaele looked listlessly at a photograph of his brother. Before the coronavirus, before the war, there was school. Michaele was good at mathematics and wanted to be a doctor, he said. Now, he also wants revenge.

Michaele, like many people in Tigray, said the region is under attack by federal forces, Eritrean soldiers and militias. The government said it is fighting the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, not the people of Tigray, as the group continues to stage attacks after losing control of most of the region.

The Ethiopian government also said “it takes very seriously” its responsibility to alleviate the suffering of people in Tigray.

But at the hospital, parents said the people are reeling — short of food and electricity and in constant fear of new battles. Farm fields have been abandoned, and roughly 2 million people have fled their homes.

“How can I farm in these conditions?” said Gebray, Beriha’s father. “Look, she is here. And my wife and other three children are missing. I don’t know if they are alive or dead.”

Source: Voice of America

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Zimbabwe Rejects Donation of COVID-19 Vaccine Amid Shortages

Zimbabwe’s government is facing criticism for turning down a donation of three million doses of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Authorities say they are not prepared to deal with the refrigeration requirements and possible side effects. But critics also point to politics as the reason behind the government’s decision.

In a letter to the African Export-Import Bank, Zimbabwe’s government explained it was still analyzing possible side effects of the Johnson and Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Finance Ministry Secretary George Guvamatanga also said the country does not have the storage facilities required for the doses.

But in an interview, Dr. Norman Matara from the Zimbabwe Association for Doctors for Human Rights, said Johnson and Johnson vaccines are stored at the same temperatures as China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines, which Zimbabwe has been using since February.

“So, we already have those cold chain mechanisms to store vaccines at 2 to 8 degrees (Celsius) which Johnson and Johnson is supposed to be stored. So, it does not make sense to say they do not have cold chain reactions. In addition, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is given as a one-dose. So, the cost of rolling out that vaccine is much less than the Sinopharm and Sinovac and also the logistics of one dose is much better than the two-dose provided by the Sinopharm (and Sinovac). So, we do not get it why they would reject those vaccines,” Matara said.

The African Union set up the deal, in which the African Export-Import Bank would pay for 220 million doses of COVID vaccines. Zimbabwe was to receive three million doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine that were produced in Britain.

Harare-based political commentator Rejoice Ngwenya said that poor relations between Zimbabwe and Britain are the real reason the Zimbabwean government is rejecting the donation.

“It is a tragedy that the government of Zimbabwe is rejecting the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Why is the Harare-London diplomatic tiff allowed to interfere in a situation where citizens of this country are under threat? I really think that the ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe’s ruling party) government should desist from politicizing these issues and get out of its arrogance to ensure the safety and security of citizens of Zimbabwe is safeguarded. I think this is a tragedy and must be reversed with immediate effect,” Ngwenya said.

Relations between London and Harare have been strained since 2002, when Britain imposed travel and financial sanctions on Zimbabwean officials for human rights abuses and alleged election rigging.

On Tuesday, Dr. John Mangwiro, Zimbabwe’s junior health minister, refused to comment on the alleged political motivations, and reiterated that Zimbabwe will continue to use Chinese and Russian vaccines.

“So, we will stick to what we can, are used to, such as Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V. They are stored at temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius. Plus, once they are injected into a person, their weakened or deactivated viruses in them trigger protective immunity. That’s how we choose which vaccines to use here,” Mangwiro said.

Zimbabwe says it still has stocks of the 1.7 million vaccines it has received from China, Russia and India since February. But for weeks now, most places have run dry of jabs. That triggered a protest last week at the country’s main vaccination center in the capital.

Source: Voice of America

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Survivors of Burkina Faso Massacre in Urgent Need of Aid

The U.N. refugee agency says survivors of the Saturday massacre in a Burkina Faso village are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

Unidentified gunmen attacked the village of Solhan in Burkina Faso’s northeast Sahel region on June 5. They reportedly stormed the village in the middle of the night, executing at least 138 civilians, seriously injuring nearly 40 other people and setting houses and a market ablaze.

The U.N. refugee agency says more than 3,300 people have fled for their lives to nearby villages. UNHCR spokesman Babar Balloch says the newly displaced, mostly children and women, have been arriving in desperate straits. He says they have few or no belongings and need everything.

“The new arrivals urgently need water and sanitation, shelter, essential aid items and medical care. Authorities have delivered almost 400 tons of food and thousands of relief items, while UNHCR partners are providing medical care and psychosocial support,” he said.

The attack, the deadliest since 2015, highlights the increasing insecurity and violence that has been gaining a foothold in Africa’s Sahel region over the past few years. The UNHCR calls Burkina Faso the fastest growing displacement and protection crisis in the world.

Since 2019, the agency says, violence in the country has forced more than 1.2 million people to flee their homes. Balloch says so far this year, violence has displaced some 150,000.

“84%, either women, who face a high risk of gender-based violence, or children, half of whom have reportedly been subjected to physical violence and abuse. In addition to the IDPs, Burkina Faso continues to generously host more than 22,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, mostly from Mali,” he said.

The UNHCR is appealing for more generous support from the international community. It says the available funds cannot keep pace with the growing humanitarian needs in the hugely insecure Sahelian region.

It notes only a quarter of the nearly $260 million required to assist Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger this year has been received.

Source: Voice of America

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Cameroon Clerics Plea to Spare Clergy in Separatist Conflict

Clergy in Cameroon have appealed to both sides in the country’s separatist conflict to stop abducting and harassing priests. Within the past two weeks, six Roman Catholic priests and missionaries were abducted, and a church attacked, leaving at least two dead and 11 wounded.

The Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon says its priests and missionaries are suffering assaults, abductions and torture in the country’s separatist conflict.

A church press release Tuesday says Cameroon’s military took Reverend Father Sylvester Ngarbah Nsah from Vekovi, a northwestern village, on June 4 and have yet to release him.

The church says the military accused Nsah of cooperating with separatists, which the church denies.

Reverend Father Humphrey Tatah Mbui is director of communications at the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon’s Catholic Bishops.

He says rebels also abducted Nsah three months ago and accused him of collaborating with the military before releasing him.

“The church preaches peace. The church teaches that you cannot have peace without justice and without the truth,” Mbui said. “The church must keep on insisting on that justice and truth in and out of season. And when the church will speak the truth, often it does not sit well with one or the other side. Many parishes have been closed or they are not operating as they should.”

Mbui says at least six priests and missionaries were tortured by the military or rebels within the past two weeks and had to be treated at hospitals.

Reverend Father Christopher Eboka is the Cathedral administrator of Mamfe, a town in the anglophone southwest.

He says rebels abducted him on May 22 and freed him only after 10 days in captivity.

“The church has been caught up in between the separatist fighters on the one hand, and the Cameroon military on the other hand,” Eboka said. “The threats on the lives of priests, the attack on priests should be stopped. On Sunday, the 6th of June, priests gathered at the pastoral center, celebrating the anniversary of one of them, were attacked by unknown gunmen, who came in search of a priest.”

The church said one person died in the attack, a second died in the hospital, and 11 others were treated for injuries.

The Episcopal Conference of Cameroon’s Bishops this month called on separatists to stop targeting and harassing local clergy.

Rebels on social media claimed government troops organized the attacks on churches to give the rebels a bad image, an often-repeated claim, which the military denies.

Cameroon’s military on state radio confirmed the rebel attacks on the church and past abductions but did not mention taking any priests into military custody.

Cameroon’s government says civilians suspected of collaborating with rebels are placed under investigation, but a spokesperson would not say how many priests or missionaries have been arrested.

A March Human Rights Watch report says both military and rebel abuses are increasing in Cameroon’s western regions.

The U.N. says Cameroon’s separatist conflict has left more than 3,000 people dead since 2016 and 750,000 internally displaced or to neighboring Nigeria.

Source: Voice of America