United States Africa Command

Public Affairs Office

1 February 2010

AFRICOM - Related News

From the Beltway

SEMINAR TACKLES DRUG-TRAFFICKING ISSUES (DOD)

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN – Countering narcotics trafficking took center
stage during an eight-day seminar at the George C. Marshall European Center
for Security Studies here, as military and civilian security executives met to
discuss the challenge. The seminar attracted 91 participants from 61 countries
and focused on the complex security challenges posed by contemporary
international narcotics trafficking, and its links with terrorist networks and
organized-crime elements.

SOMALIA: ANARCHY AND DEATH RULE IN MOGADISHU, A CITY ON

THE FRONT LINE OF TERROR
Mogadishu - On Monday afternoon a seven-year-old boy called Mohamed was
hit when an 82mm mortar shell exploded outside a health clinic in Mogadishu
where his mother works as a cleaner. Afterwards he lay on a hospital floor,
shivering and terrified. His bandaged left arm, hand and leg were peppered with
angular chunks of shrapnel. Crouched beside him his mother, Fatima, wiped
tears from her eyes.

MARYLAND: MORGAN GRADUATE TO RECEIVE NATIONAL AWARD

(Baltimore Sun)
BALTIMORE - Gen. William "Kip" Ward, a 1971 Morgan State graduate and the
nation's only current African-American four-star Army general, will be honored
in Atlanta with the Trumpet Award.

NEW YORK: EMERGING WEST AFRICAN TERROR-DRUG NEXUS POSES

MAJOR SECURITY THREAT (World Defense Review)
NEW YORK CITY - The would-be "underwear bomber" Abdulmutallab
underscored the dangers of ignoring threats from Africa to the security of the
United States, though the administration has largely ignored the alliance
between terrorists and drug traffickers from West Africa.
LIBERIA: HILLARY CLINTON ENDORSES SIRLEAF’S 2ND TERM BID (The
Analyst)
MONROVIA - Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton expressed delight over
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's decision to seek reelection in 2011 during a
town hall meeting with the U.S. State Department to commemorate Clinton‘s
first year in office.

MASSACHUSETTS: WILL THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TRULY

SUPPORT AN INDEPENDENT SOUTH SUDAN? (Sudan Tribune)
NORTHAMPTON - The Obama administration has missed key opportunities to
increase pressure on Khartoum to honor the 2005 peace agreement with the
Sudan People‘s Liberation Movement (SPLM), making renewed military conflict
in Sudan more likely.

NIGERIA: PIRATES THREATEN WEST AFRICA’S OIL BOOM (UPI)

LAGOS - West Africa's oil boom has brought pirates that have not yet achieved
the global notoriety of the Somali pirates, but they have been causing a growing
problem for the region's burgeoning oil industry.

WASHINGTON, DC: “STUCK IN THE MUD” – THE OBAMA

ADMINISTRATION’S CIVIL WAR OVER SUDAN (Foreign Policy)
WASHINGTON, DC - A meeting of top U.S. officials on Sudan last week seems
to have left the Obama administration's Sudan policy in limbo, leading to angst
among both Sudan insiders and observers.

NEW YORK: SUDAN REJECTS US CHARGE ON ARMS TRANSFERS TO

SOUTH (Reuters)
NEW YORK CITY - Sudan's U.N. ambassador on Friday dismissed as
"irresponsible" U.S. allegations that weapons from northern Sudan were going to
armed groups in the semi-autonomous south ahead of a nationwide April
election.

ETHIOPIA: MALAWI’S MUTHARIKA NAMED NEXT AFRICAN UNION

CHAIRMAN (Bloomberg)
ADDIS ABABA - Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika, who has pledged to
champion greater investment in agriculture to end chronic hunger in Africa, was
named chairman of the African Union today.

UN News Service Africa Briefs

Full Articles on UN Website
31 January 2010

Ban commits UN to harnessing support for African development needs

 N chief launches campaign in Africa to eradicate male violence against
women
Senior UN official urges broad-based approach to fight piracy off Somali
coast
Sudanese peace pact has accelerated pace of mine removal, says UN
official
Security Council extends mandate of UN force in Côte d’Ivoire through
end of May
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morgan graduate to receive national award
Baltimore Sun - By John-John Williams IV
30 January 2010

Gen. William "Kip" Ward, a 1971 Morgan State graduate and the nation's only
current African-American four-star Army general, will be honored today in
Atlanta with the Trumpet Award.

Ward, 60, who will be one of 10 recipients of the award this year, said he is
humbled by the recognition. He said the award also honors Americans serving in
the military today.

"As one who wears our nation's cloth, I can represent so many women and men
who also wear the nation's cloth," Ward said. "Our service is being recognized.
Someone is taking note of it."

The award is given primarily to African-Americans who have achieved

professional success and have inspired others. The award was originally
presented by Turner Broadcasting in 1993 and is now presented by the Trumpet
Awards Foundation Inc.

Past honorees include Coretta Scott King, Thurgood Marshall, Maya Angelou,
Nelson Mandela, Halle Berry, Toni Braxton, Beyonce and Dr. Benjamin Carson.

"It's hard to believe," Ward said of the honor. "I clearly did not see myself in that
category. Those people are icons. It is something that is a bit awesome."

Ward, who grew up just north of Baltimore on Falls Road and graduated from
Towson High School in 1967, joined the Army after a two-year ROTC program in
college. He said he was attracted to the military because it offered opportunities
for leadership, discipline, responsibility and character-building.

"I enjoyed the challenges," he said. "I gravitated toward it."

Ward became the first commander of the U.S. Africa Command on Oct. 1, 2007,
and is based in Stuttgart, Germany. He is the fifth African-American four-star
general.

Ward and his wife of almost 39 years, Joyce Lewis Ward, have two adult
children. Ward's mother and other extended family members still live in
Maryland.

"My wife, our children, my mom are just very, very proud and happy," Ward
said. "It is all just numbing. It is a bit surreal being a part of this group."

This year's other honorees include comedian Steve Harvey; John Rogers Jr.,
founder of Ariel Investments; and Clarence Otis Jr., chief executive officer of
Darden Restaurants.
-----------------------
Emerging West African Terror-Drug Nexus Poses Major Security Threat
World Defense Review - By J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.
28 January 2010

Over the course of the last month, the foiled attempt by would-be "underwear
bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger
flight on Christmas Day has underscored the dangers of ignoring threats from
Africa to the security of the United States, even as the Obama administration's
handling of the case has raised questions of its own preparedness to grapple with
the reality of the war against Islamist terrorism—so much so that this past
weekend a Washington Post editorial excoriated the decision to read the
Nigerian his rights as "myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous,"
characterizing it as resulting "not from a deliberative process but as a knee-jerk
default to a crime-and-punishment model." Largely ignored in the debate,
however, has been the nearly simultaneous emergence of clear evidence of a
potentially even more dangerous threat emanating from the same West African
region: the alliance between terrorists and drug traffickers.

Exactly one week before the attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the U.S.
Attorney for the South District of New York charged three men from the West
African country of Mali—Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré, and Idriss Abelrahman—
with conspiracy to commit acts of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to provide
material support to a foreign terrorist organization. According to the complaint,
unsealed on December 18, 2009, the trio agreed to transport cocaine through
West and North Africa with the intent of supporting no fewer than three groups
formally designated by the U.S. State Department as "Foreign Terrorist
Organizations" (FTOs): al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The case marks the first
time that associates of al-Qaeda and its franchise in the Maghreb/Sahel regions
had been charged with narco-terrorism offenses in an American court.

Readers of this column may recall that in a piece last May analyzing trends with
AQIM, specifically the activities of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a.k.a. Khaled Abou al-
Abbas, a.k.a. Laâouar ("one-eyed"), who had emerged not only as the leader of
the AQIM's operations in the Sahel, but also its most effective field commander, I
warned:

These developments suggest that the Saharan/Sahelian brigade of AQIM may be

succeeding where the central leadership of the organization, notwithstanding its
"rebranding" as al-Qaeda's authorized "franchise" in North Africa, has failed:
shedding an almost exclusively Algerian orientation in order to take on a
broader Maghrebi identity. Moreover, the manner in which Belmokhtar has
integrated himself into the social fabric of his chosen theater of operation
represents a not insignificant advance from ad hoc cooperation between
terrorists and criminals to a convergence, if not transformation, of the two
spheres of activity. The question vexing many analysts is whether AQIM will
seek to expand its reach, both criminal and terrorist, into the large North African
diaspora communities in Europe. Taken together, all of these factors suggest that
far from being crippled, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb may be evolving into
an even greater challenge to security not only in Africa, but well beyond.

The case as prosecutors have presented it, confirms the very danger anticipated.
According to a joint statement released by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern
District of New York, Preet Bahara, and the Acting Administrator of the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Michele Leonhart, the three
defendants, who were arrested by authorities in Ghana and handed over to U.S.
authorities, were secretly recorded and videotaped by federal agents over the
course of a four-month investigation from September to December 2009:

Issa, Touré, and Abelrahman, who stated that they were associated with al-
Qaeda, conspired to assist purported representatives of the FARC in transporting
hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from West Africa through North Africa and
ultimately into Spain. In a series of telephone calls and meetings with two
confidential sources working with the DEA who claimed to represent the FARC
... the defendants stated that they had a transportation route from West Africa
through North Africa, and that al-Qaeda could provide protection for the cocaine
along that route.

In meetings with the DEA's confidential sources, Touré—apparently boss of the

alleged conspirators—"described his strong relationship with al-Qaeda groups
that controlled areas of North Africa, and discussed instances in which he had
transported drugs with al-Qaeda's assistance." He explicitly assured his
interlocutors that "al-Qaeda would protect the FARC's cocaine shipment from
Mali through North Africa and into Morocco en route to Spain" not only because
it wanted money—the criminal complaint says that after initially quoting a
transportation price of $2,000 per kilogram of cocaine, the defendants insisted on
$10,000 per kilogram for shipments of between 500 and 1,000 kilograms
(according to data from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, a kilogram of pure
cocaine was worth about $112,000 wholesale last year in Great Britain, Europe's
largest market)—but because the groups "were committed to the same anti-
American cause." He also described two possible transport routes, one going
through Algeria and Libya and the other through Algeria and Morocco.

Beyond the immediate case of Issa, Touré, and Abelrahman is the reality that, as
the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio
Maria Costa, told a special session of the UN Security Council in December,
"Drug trafficking in the region is taking on a whole new dimension. In the past,
trade across the Sahara was by caravans. Today it is larger in size, faster at
delivery, and more high-tech, as evidenced by the debris of a Boeing 727 found
on November 2 in the Gao region of Mali—an area affected by insurgency and
terrorism. It is scary that this new example of the links between drugs, crime and
terrorism was discovered by chance, following the plane crash." Considered
dispassionately, however, there are several reasons why there has been such a
sharp rise the movement of drugs between Latin America and West Africa.

First, it stands to reason that West Africa would be chosen as a transit hub for the
smuggling of a contraband substance like cocaine. Traditionally, the drug has
been produced in the Andean region with the three largest cultivators of coca
being Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, respectively (the president of the latter
country, Evo Morales, started out as a coca farmer and still heads the cocaleros'
umbrella union). However, in recent years, intensified eradication and
interdiction efforts by the DEA and other law enforcement agencies have
disrupted the networks that historically moved the cocaine from South America
to the United States and Canada. Moreover, the increasingly dominance of
Mexican gangs in the northward flow have weakened the position of the South
American syndicates which, in turn, opted to make a strategic shift to the
European market. To this end, not only is West Africa the shortest transatlantic
destination from South America, but the subregion's geography—myriad coastal
inlets and lagoons as well as sparsely populated open interior spaces—make
detection very difficult.

Second, the political geography of the region is as favorable as its physical

topography. The combination of weak governments, endemic poverty, and
instability ensure that law enforcement and judicial authorities—where they
even exist—will be either ill-equipped to combat the new challenge or simply
corruptible.

And that AQIM might be involved in the West African drug trade is hardly a
surprise. The group's activities in its traditional stronghold in the Berber region
of Kabylie along Algeria's Mediterranean coast continue to decline because of
pressure from security services. In its struggle for survival, the terrorist
organization has come to rely heavily on drugs, kidnapping for ransom, and
other criminal enterprises in the south to get the money it needs to keep going.
Working in its favor is the relative weakness of many of the states in the Sahel
and their general lack of capacity to monitor what is going on in their vast
territorial expanses. Even countries with robust capabilities like Morocco (see my
report last year on "Morocco's Comprehensive Counterterrorism Approach") find
their best efforts stymied either by weaker neighbors or, worse, neighbors whose
agendas do not necessarily include regional cooperation, much less on sensitive
matters like security and law enforcement.

Nor is AQIM the only Islamist terrorist group to exploit the possibilities offered
by the drug traffic through West Africa and across the Sahara to Europe. In the
current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, journalist Marco Vernaschi
reports from Guinea-Bissau:

According to reports from Interpol and United Nations agencies, cocaine traded
through West Africa accounts for a considerable portion of the income of
Hezbollah. These reports say Hezbollah uses the Lebanese Shiite expatriate
population in South America and West Africa to guarantee an efficient
connection between the two continents. To maintain and expand its influence on
the Shiite community, however, Hezbollah needs money. The estimated $120
million given annually by Iran is just a slice of the pie. Most of Hezbollah's
support comes from drug trafficking, a major moneymaker endorsed by the
mullahs through a particular fatwa. In addition to the production and trade of
heroin in the Middle East, Hezbollah facilitates, for a fee, the trafficking for other
drug-smuggling networks, such as the FARC and its cocaine trade.

Again, an open secret to longtime observers of the region—I had a column in this
space on "Hezbollah's African Network" more than three years ago and my
colleague Stephen Ellis of Amsterdam's Free University documented in the
journal African Affairs last year that "Lebanese smugglers were using West
Africa as a transit point to transport heroin to the U.S.A. as early as 1952"—but
one whose scope is certainly troubling. In testimony before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee last year, Douglas Farah of the International Assessment
and Strategy Center outlined the framework for relations between the Lebanese
Shī‗a terrorists and drug traffickers:
Given the prominence of the Lebanese Diaspora community and its members'
control of most of the existing pipeline to import and export illegal commodities,
it is inevitable that those organizations and the drug trafficking groups will
encounter each other and mutually benefit from each other because they each has
something the other wants and needs. The Lebanese networks control the
decades-old contraband networks and routes to Europe, while the drug
traffickers offer a new and lucrative product for the existing pipeline. Violent
clashes may take place, but the history of both groups indicates they will
cooperate where useful.

Given Hezbollah's long-established presence on the ground in the region and the
closeness of its operatives to that community, it is also reasonable to assume that
Hezbollah and the drug traffickers, operating in the same permissive
environment, will cross paths. It is precisely this type of environment that allows
for the otherwise unthinkable alliances to emerge. Most are short-lived, centering
on specific opportunities and operations that can benefit both groups, but others
are longer lasting and more dangerous.

More ominously, Farah, a veteran investigative journalist who uncovered al-

Qaeda's procurement of West African "conflict diamonds" through the good
offices of then Liberian strongman Charles Taylor in the period immediate before
9/11, warned:

There is a long history of outside terrorist actors, particularly Hezbollah, being

active in Latin America ...

Given Iran's ties to Hezbollah and Venezuela, Venezuela's ties Iran and the
FARC, the FARC's history of building alliances with other armed groups, and the
presence of Hezbollah and other armed Islamist groups in Latin America and on
the ground in West Africa, it would be dangerous and imprudent to dismiss the
possibility of an alliance of these actors. The history of these groups indicates
that they will take advantage of the ungoverned spaces and corrupt and weak
states of West Africa to get to know each other, work together, learn from each
other and exploit areas of mutual interest. Unfortunately, the primary area of
mutual interest is a hatred of the United States.

Although the increasing amounts of South American cocaine being smuggled

through West Africa in recent years that have received the most attention (see
my earlier report on this subject), they are not the causes for concern. UNODC
chief Costa told the Security Council in December that his agency had "acquired
evidence that ... two streams of illicit drugs—heroin from Eastern Africa and
cocaine into West Africa—are now meeting in the Sahara, creating new
trafficking routes across Chad, Niger, and Mali." Obviously the revenues terrorist
groups can derive from their newfound links to drug syndicates enable them not
only to purchase arms, but also to fund increased recruitment. Earlier this month
an exclusive investigative report by Reuters correspondents Tim Gaynor and
Tiemoko Diallo described a leaked Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
report that warned of the growing fleet of jet aircraft regularly crossing the
Atlantic from the cocaine-producing areas of South America with the connivance
of Venezuelan officials who permit their country's air fields to be used. The
anonymous author of the DHS report told Reuters: "The obvious huge concern is
that you have a transportation system that is capable of transporting tons of
cocaine from west to east, but it's reckless to assume that nothing is coming back,
and when there's terrorist organizations on either side of this pipeline, it should
be a high priority to find out what is coming back on those airplanes."

While the direct threat from the alliance of terrorists and drug traffickers,
however real, is perhaps farther on the horizon, the impact on states in West
Africa is much more immediate. Not only does the narcotics trade bring new
resources to extremists and criminals, but it undermines governments, turning
corrupt regimes into crime-driven enterprises. Commenting last week for a
special report by the German international broadcasting service Deutsche Welle,
Princeton Lyman of the Council on Foreign Relations, former U.S. ambassador to
South Africa and Nigeria, noted: "A lot of these countries have very weak
governments and the potential of turning them into narco-states is very scary.
There is already a lot of drug money along the coast of West Africa ... lots of the
fancy homes in [the Senegalese capital of] Dakar are now owned by drug lords."
(Ambassador Lyman's mention of Senegal is rather interesting. I have written
elsewhere about the corruption of Karim, son of that country's President
Abdoulaye Wade. Certainly neither terrorist networks nor drug gangs function
especially well without the benefit of some of modernity's infrastructure. In
many respects, Senegal combines the best of both worlds: a relatively developed
infrastructure, conveniently under the authority of Wade fils in his role as "super
minister" of regional planning, air, transport, and infrastructure, and a
government whose reputation for shady dealings is centered on the selfsame
individual.)

In addition to corruption, which itself discourages the type of foreign direct

investment countries in the region needed to grow their economies, the drug
trade also undermines development by making its potentially fabulous short-
term monetary gains that much more attractive than longer-term commitments
to more productive enterprises. As a result, while a very small number of people
will actually get richer, the vast majority of the population is rendered even
poorer, increasing already massive inequalities and, ultimately, heightening
social tensions. Furthermore, there is evidence that transit hubs quickly become
destinations in and of themselves as drug consumption spreads to local
communities and crime increases and addicts desperately try to feed their habits.
The cumulative effect of all this is a vicious circle that is likely to permanently
cripple some West African countries, if it has not already done so.

A multifaceted approach will be required to deal with this burgeoning threat. At

one level, it will require strengthening law enforcement capacity in African
countries. Some of this will require more resources for the training of law
enforcement and criminal justice managers, such as conducted at the State
Department-sponsored International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in
Gabarone, Botswana (see my previous discussion of this center). In an address on
"The Escalating Ties between Middle Eastern Terrorist Groups and Criminal
Activity" last week at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Assistant Secretary of State for
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs David Johnson announced
an effort by his bureau over the next three years to "strengthen criminal justice
institutions such as the police, prosecutors and the courts to successfully
investigate, prosecute and incarcerate transnational criminals, networks and
organizations." However, operational level liaison will also be needed. While the
DEA has some eighty-seven foreign offices in some sixty-three country, it
currently has only a presence in four African countries—Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria,
and South Africa—with plans afoot to open a fifth office in Kenya. At an entirely
different level, counterterrorism capabilities will also need to be built up such as
is being done by the State Department-led, Defense Department-supported
Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), which involves Algeria,
Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia. Programs are
also required to increase maritime domain awareness and maritime security
capacity of states on the West African littoral, needs which the African Maritime
Law Enforcement Program (AMLEP) and the Africa Partnership Station (APS),
both initiatives under the aegis of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), try to
meet (see my report in this column on APS). Finally, development is needed if
the allure of both the extremists and the drug barons is to be resisted. In short, no
one solution will be sufficient.

Furthermore, efforts to counter the challenge must be sustainable, which means

that while the many countries—some quite distant from the region—are
impacted by the alliance of terrorist and narcotics networks, it is those in the
front line which must assume ownership. Hence the strategy, as General William
E. "Kip" Ward, commander of AFRICOM, noted in an address to a counter-
narcotics seminar for senior government officials at the George C. Marshall
Center in Garmisch, Germany, last week, needs to be "focused on building
security sector capacity of our African partners through sustained security
engagement—such as bolstering support and special staff capabilities ...
bolstering special staff capabilities; conducting training to help ensure effective
African non-commissioned officer corps; or improving military and dual-use
infrastructure." In addition to strengthening national capacity, regional capacities
must be promoted: countries affected need to pool their information and
integrate their efforts with each other lest the transnational criminal forces which
threaten all lawful states exploit the gaps between them. Likewise the
international partners assisting African states need to coordinate there efforts.
For example, U.S. efforts to embed DEA and other counter-narcotics experts with
African governments will have even greater effect when they complement
similar initiatives by European countries to provide technical and managerial
experience, like "Operation Westbridge," the successful British program to send
Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs officials to work side-by-side with their
Ghanaian counterparts.

The task of breaking up the terror-drug nexus will undoubtedly require a

significant investment of resources by the United States and its allies in the
international community. However, failure to act now will only increase the
costs down the road, in both human and financial terms. Hence the effort must
be undertaken because at stake is not only the stability of West Africa, including
the Maghrebi and Sahelian regions, but the outcome of the larger struggle
against jihadist and other terrorist networks opposed to the very order on which
civilization is built.
-----------------------
Hilary Clinton Endorses Sirleaf's 2nd Term Bid
The Analyst (Liberia) - By Non-attributed Author
28 January 2010

If there is any historical reason Liberians today regard poll politics as tele-guided
and controlled by invisible hands, it is the consistency with which incumbent
presidents won "landslide" or "volcanic" victories over contenders in the past. It
is also the certainty with which defeated contenders must go into exile to protect
dear life. Liberians had thought they would be spared the nightmare of choosing
between another incumbent and a horde of contenders, but it is now clear that
they will not. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has thrown down the gauntlet and
the act resonates with one of the most powerful official in Washington –
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. With this, observers say, the key question is, "Is
Clinton's endorsement an act of female solidarity or does it forebode the support
of the Obama Administration?" The Analyst, reports.

US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton has expressed delight over

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's decision to seek reelection in 2011.

Secretary of State Clinton made the revelation, which many say has political
implication for Liberia, during a town hall meeting with reporters and
employees of the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., to commemorate
her first year in office.

"I was delighted to hear that Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said she will stand for
reelection. She has been one of the champions on this issue in her political and
governmental career," she said regarding the efforts of the Sirleaf Administration
to eradicate gender-based violence and inequality in postwar Liberia.

Mrs. Clinton's comments on President Sirleaf's reelection bid came in response to

a reporter's question regarding what the US State Department would do to
respond to gender-based violence around the world vis-à-vis the UN Security
Council resolution on gender-based violence.

But observers say US opinion at any level is so weighty in Liberia that a passing
statement from the #3 man in the Obama Administration has as much political
implication as an official statement.

So the question many are asking regarding the Secretary of State's comments,
which came barely 24 hours after the President announced her intention to stand
for re-election in Liberia's 2011 presidential elections is, "Is Clinton's
endorsement an act of female solidarity or does it forebode the support of the
Obama Administration?"

A short survey conducted by The Analyst on the question yesterday revealed

that while many say the Secretary's comment would have no impact on US
relation to elections in Liberia, some say it would be foolhardy to ignore the
handwriting on the wall.

"Mrs. Clinton was simply saying that President Sirleaf has been at the forefront
of the fight against gender-based violence and discrimination against women.
Since the question was about the United States' role in the future, she was simply
saying that she is happy that President Sirleaf is seeking reelection in order to
continue her role," said Martina Soppy of Duala, on Bushrod Island.

Martina, who said, she is an advocate for women equality with their male
counterparts, said she too supported President Sirleaf's re-run because it would
ensure that "this very important aspect of our social life is addressed and the
mentality changed against women".

She said since Mrs. Clinton was not addressing elections and candidates in
Liberia, any connection in that direction about her support or US support would
be illogical and unnecessary contention over nothing.
"It is this kind of jumping into issues and taking conjectures to be facts that can
lead to unnecessary suspicion and allegations of vote rigging. It is high time we
learn to have confidence in our electoral system and stop looking outside for
individuals who are about to cheat. President Sirleaf is qualified; she has the
charisma and the expertise. She does not need external support to win elections
in Liberia. She did not seek support to announce her bid and she will not be
seeking one now that she is in the race," said Martina who also said she is a
female activist for the UP.

Not all though, shared Martina's views, which critics believed were based
"purely on feminine solidarity and blind support for the President".

"Where there is smoke, there is fire. The US has been meddling in our elections
from the days of Joseph Jenkins Roberts to Charles Taylor. Clinton is not a
private citizen of the US; she is an official responsible for what the US makes of
the policies, politics, governments, and economies of nations outside its borders.
So her talks are not offhanded; they are not idle talks. They mean something
significant about the 2011 presidential elections and the Liberian opposition
better be wary," said Thomas Krah of Po River.

Krah said it was not unlikely that Mrs. Clinton's delight would be made manifest
in Liberia's electoral politics given the US government's financial and technical
role in the conduct of elections in Liberia.

"The State Department oversees all the support Liberia is getting from the US for
electoral purposes. So, if the head of that department is delighted in one
candidate, who can argue that the Obama Administration will turn the other
way?" Krah wondered.

He said while it was hard to dismiss the US President's recent declaration of

support for civil transition in Africa from one government to another as evidence
of good governance, a Clinton choice for president in the US' pilot nation in Sub-
Saharan Africa would carry the day without argument.

"After all, the US is not demanding transition for its own sake. They want to
improve the living conditions of the people and to improve delivery. If, in the
sight of Mrs. Clinton President Sirleaf has met these criteria, there would be no
argument," he said.

The debate over the Secretary of State's statement being a foreboder or idle talk
may have its place, but there are suggestions that such debate may come to
naught in this early time.
"Things could shift. There is a long time between now and November 2011;
anything can happen. One good thing is the State Department chief's comments
relate to commitment to a global policy in favor of women, not personalities.
Who knows, another candidate could emerge stronger than President Sirleaf on
the gender issue. Choices could change and new alliances charted," said one
analyst.

Meanwhile an Executive Mansion press release regarding Mrs. Clinton's

comments say the US Foreign Service Chief made specific reference to the
pioneering role played by President Sirleaf in combating gender-based violence.

"Indeed, at different institutions in Liberia, including the Ministry of Gender and

Development, the Liberia National Police, as well as the Special Court, the
Government of Mrs. Sirleaf has created special programs for the protection of
women and children who bore the brunt of the violence of the 14-year civil war,"
said the release signed by Presidential Press Secretary Cyrus Badio.

It said another topic raised by Secretary of State Clinton during her January 26
town-hall meeting centered on gender-based violence and recent events, among
them the violence in Conakry.

It then recalled how the Liberian President played a quiet but effective role in
finding a peaceful outcome to the political tension that was rising in Guinea,
especially after the violence that led to the deaths of hundreds of people and a
spate of gender-based violence following a peaceful demonstration in Conakry
last September.

Secretary of State Clinton added that President Sirleaf has "been one of the
champions on [the issue of gender-based violence] in her political and
government career."

"The Liberian leader traveled to Guinea and Burkina Faso and, along with
leaders of the sub-region, brokered a peace that is so far on course and should
lead to the first free and fair democratic elections in the history of Guinea," the
release said.

Moments after the President announced her intention to seek a second term as
she delivered her Annual Message to the National Legislature, according to the
release, thousands of jubilant supporters took to the streets to welcome the
decision.
General and presidential elections are scheduled for 2011, and would mark the
first time that Liberians have a chance to carry out a peaceful transition from one
elected government to another.

Announcing a candidacy that has long been the source of speculation, President
Sirleaf declared, "I will be a formidable candidate."
-----------------------
Will the Obama Administration truly Support an independent South Sudan?
Sudan Tribune - By Eric Reeves
30 January 2010

The evidence of recent months suggests that there is an increasingly grim logic
governing the military and geographic future of southern Sudan—and a
correspondingly urgent need for focused international diplomacy over the next
year. In particular the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party
(NIF/NCP) regime in Khartoum must be made to feel real pressure to honor the
key terms of its 2005 peace agreement with the southern Sudan People‘s
Liberation Movement (SPLM). So far, the Obama administration has missed
several key opportunities to increase that pressure, thereby making renewed
military conflict in Sudan more likely.

Less than a year from now the people of southern Sudan will vote on whether
they wish to remain part of a unified country or to secede and create an
independent nation. Virtually all observers expect that this referendum will
result in an overwhelming vote for independence; indeed, only the conviction by
southerners that the results of this referendum will be honored by the northern
regime and the international community has sustained the fragile
―Comprehensive Peace Agreement‖ (CPA) signed five years ago. If the self-
determination referendum is compromised, delayed, or preempted by
Khartoum, the CPA will collapse and fighting will engulf much of Sudan. Such a
conflict will threaten regional security.

Despite the importance of the referendum, far too little has been done to ensure
that it will occur as stipulated in the CPA. The NIF/NCP regime—which will
surely retain political and military power in Khartoum following compromised
April elections—has consistently reneged on agreements and benchmarks set out
in the peace agreement, including demarcation of the north/south boundary in
the oil regions. Various machinations and pronouncements by prominent regime
officials, especially over the last year, make clear that there is no real
commitment to honoring key obligations under the CPA, including the
referendum.
This was the situation in October when the Obama administration rolled out its
new ―Sudan policy;‖ and it was the situation again this month during a high-
level policy review by senior administration officials (the senior deputies from
the State Department, Treasury, Defense, National Security Council, and the US
delegation to the UN). And yet neither in October nor subsequently has this
policy come to terms with the key question facing the US: will we work
vigorously with the international community to guarantee the integrity of the
self-determination referendum? Will we support South Sudan in the event it
votes to secede? Will we declare this support publicly and unambiguously?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s words, and particularly those of special
envoy Scott Gration, are hardly encouraging in their tepid character. The official
administration policy announced on October 19, 2009 speaks only vaguely of
wishing to see, in the event of a vote for secession, an ―orderly path toward two
separate and viable states at peace with each other.‖ But this is not policy, merely
a stating of the obvious.

The real question is what the US is prepared to say—now—by way of

guaranteeing the integrity of the referendum vote. What can we do to coordinate
and focus international efforts to ensure that the referendum actually takes
place? What consequences will Khartoum face if it undermines the referendum
or refuses to accept the outcome? What economic, political, diplomatic, and
military support are we prepared to guarantee a nascent South Sudan, a country-
in-the-making that is presently wracked by ethnic violence, confronts a vast
humanitarian crisis, and is plagued by various weaknesses of governance,
especially in the arena of civilian security?

It matters enormously that the US and the international community be explicit

about their commitments—for now is the time in which Khartoum is calculating
the costs of subverting the referendum or resorting to military force as a way of
controlling the oil fields and valuable agricultural land in the south. If the US and
its partners are perceived as merely mouthing support for an independent South
Sudan, if Khartoum is convinced that it will confront only blustering rhetorical
condemnation, then the chances for war increase dramatically, especially given
the feckless and deferential posture of the African Union. On the other hand, if
Khartoum is convinced that failure to abide by the CPA or the terms governing
the referendum will be truly costly, it will be much less likely to resort to military
means as a way of controlling key parts of the south.

The tasks facing the US and those seeking to avoid a resumption of north/south
war are, then, twofold: first, to convince Khartoum that there will be severe
penalties for any abrogation of the CPA and in particular the self-determination
referendum. Second, since a southern vote for independence is virtually certain,
intense diplomatic efforts should begin now to engineer a ―soft landing‖ after
secession. Final establishment of a north/south border and an equitable division
of oil wealth will surely prove the most contentious issues; but citizenship
(especially for millions of southern Sudanese in northern Sudan), overland and
air transport, water, a division of external debt, and full military disengagement
will all be necessary.

Coherent, well-led, and energetic diplomacy to address these difficult issues is

already long overdue; the US for its part should make clear, now and in robust
terms, that we will fully support South Sudan if it votes for independence. We
must also convince both Khartoum and the southern leadership that we are
prepared to assist in an international effort to address post-secession issues well
before they become the occasion for a catastrophic renewal of violence
throughout Sudan.
-----------------------
Pirates threaten West Africa's oil boom
UPI - By Non-attributed Author
28 January 2010

West Africa's oil boom has brought immense wealth and political upheaval to
the region, and a new peril -- pirates and criminal gangs who prey on the black
gold that could transform a long-ignored part of the world.

The maritime marauders have not yet achieved the global notoriety of their
brethren operating off Somalia, on the other side of the continent, but they have
been building a fearsome reputation for some time and causing a growing
problem for the region's burgeoning oil industry.

On Jan. 5 Nigerian pirates stormed a Panamanian-flagged Ukrainian tanker, the

Westaf, anchored off Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, according to the
Sovfracht Maritime Bulletin published in Kiev.

They robbed the crew, shooting and wounding the captain and six of his men.
The Westhaf, built in 1986, is used as a floating storage and processing terminal.

On Nov. 23 pirates, probably Nigerian, hijacked the Liberian-flagged oil tanker

Cancale Star 18 miles off the coast of Benin, a tiny country that is Nigeria's
western neighbor, and 24 miles southwest of Lagos.

It was the first known hijacking in Benin waters and it underlined how the piracy
problem is spreading in the Gulf of Guinea and along the Atlantic seaboard as
the oil boom expands.
Most of the piracy still occurs off Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta. On Jan. 15 the
International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, classified the waters off Nigeria as "very dangerous."

IMB Director Pottengal Mukundan noted: "The attacks in Nigerian waters are
frequently much more violent in nature than those off Somalia. The incidence of
violent attacks against ships' crews has also spilled over into neighboring states."

The bureau reported that 28 attacks were logged in 2009 compared with 40 a year
earlier. But shipping sources suggested that there were another 30 attacks last
year that went unreported. Most were related to the oil industry.

In the Niger Delta, the marauders in armed speedboats attack tankers and work
with militants in the delta's swamplands who steal around 150,000 barrels a day
from oil installations or pipelines -- around 5 percent of Nigeria's daily
production -- in an illegal trade known as "bunkering."

This highly organized trade has become so big in the delta that the gangs have to
use rogue tankers to spirit the crude away for refining abroad.

One tanker, the Russian-registered African Pride, was intercepted by the

Nigerian navy in the Gulf of Guinea in October 2003 with 11,300 tons of stolen
crude aboard.

In May 2004 a Nigerian navy patrol boat killed 17 pirates in a gun battle in the
creeks and swamps west of the port of Warri, the heart of Nigeria's oil industry.

One of the main problems facing shipping off West Africa is the lack of naval
protection. The Nigerian navy's successes against the pirates are the exception
rather than the rule.

The pirates, able to buy heavy weapons with the proceeds from their plundering,
often have more firepower than the patrol ships they encounter.

The U.S., British and French navies have recently been conducting joint exercises
with regional forces. But there is nothing to compare with the international naval
task force deployed in the Gulf of Aden to counter the Somali pirates.

There is little real coordination by the governments of West Africa, a region

notorious for political upheaval, coups, corruption and inefficient, poorly armed
military services, to combat the problem.
But that may be changing. In recent years the U.S. Navy has handed over half a
dozen upgraded patrol boats to the Nigerian navy to boost its capabilities.

The inauguration of the U.S. Africa Command, known as Africom, on Oct. 1,

2008, to coordinate U.S. military missions across the continent, train African
forces and combat terrorism, may bolster efforts to crack down on the pirates.

That will undoubtedly take time. Africom, still headquartered in Stuttgart,

Germany, is already finding itself stretched. But West Africa is becoming an
important source of oil for the United States.

By 2015 the region, including Angola, Africa's top producer, and the Congo, is
expected to be supplying 25 percent of U.S. oil imports, greatly reducing
American dependence on the Middle East.

All that oil will be carried directly across the Atlantic in tankers that will be
increasingly at risk in West African waters.
-----------------------
"Stuck in the mud" -- the Obama administration's civil war over Sudan
Foreign Policy - By Josh Rogin
29 January 2010

A meeting of top U.S. officials on Sudan last week was supposed to yield big
recommendations on how to craft the right balance of incentives and pressures
toward the Khartoum regime, which stands accused of fomenting genocide in
Darfur and stirring instability in its autonomous southern region. Instead, the
meeting seems to have left the Obama administration's Sudan policy in limbo,
leading to angst among both Sudan insiders and observers, sources tell The
Cable.

The meeting, hosted by the National Security Council and carried out at the
deputies level, had been greatly anticipated by Sudan watchers as a watershed
moment in their long struggle to turn Darfur into a top-tier policy issue.
Expectations were so high that Sudan advocacy groups published an unorthodox
ad in the Washington Post before the meeting calling out the deputies -- U.N.
ambassador Susan Rice's No. 2 Erica Barks-Ruggles, NSC deputy Tom Donilon,
Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey,
and Michèle Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy -- by name.

Several members of the Sudan advocacy community said they were told that the
quarterly deputies meetings would be tracking progress and making
recommendations on specific "carrots and sticks" to use as leverage in Khartoum.
And they pointed to the October remarks of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
who said during the press conference announcing the administration's new
Sudan policy: "Assessment of progress and decisions regarding incentives and
disincentives will be based on verifiable changes in conditions on the ground.
Backsliding by any party will be met with credible pressure in the form of
disincentives leveraged by our government and our international partners."

But the deputies, who don't decide policy but make recommendations to their
bosses, never got to outlining those incentives and pressures, instead only
reviewing the various agencies' "assessments" of the situation in Sudan, one
high-level participant confirmed to The Cable.

"This was an opportunity to hear the views of the representative, a number of

challenges were outlined, and each of the assessments were in line," the
participant said, referring to Sudan envoy J. Scott Gration. "I thought it was a
very productive meeting," the participant said, arguing that the assessments
were always meant to be the basis of the discussion.

One big problem, though, was that the briefing paper that was to have all the
agencies' positions clearly spelled out was not prepared in advance, hurting the
deputies' ability to iron out any differences.

According to one person familiar with the meeting, Deputy National Security
Advisor Tom Donilon scolded NSC Africa Director Michelle Gavin for a lack of
preparation in front of all the other participants. A government source
characterized Donilon's comments to Gavin as no different than comments he
might make to any staffer at any meeting. Besides, this second source said, it
wasn't Gavin's responsibility to prepare the document. The source declined to
specify exactly who dropped the ball.

The first source also said that Steinberg, upon learning that the prep materials
were absent, moved to leave the meeting in protest but was directed to stay by
Donilon, which he did.

Steinberg denied that account. "I didn't move to walk out of the meeting,"
Steinberg told The Cable. "The meeting ran overtime and I had to leave to attend
another meeting on a time-urgent subject that was happening at the same time
and which I had previewed to Tom [Donilon]."

A participant source inside the meeting confirmed that Donilon asked Steinberg
to stay to the end, but said that Steinberg wasn't trying to make a show of
exiting.
Regardless, the inability of participants to demonstrate any real progress on
outlining a package incentives or disincentives struck many observers as a bad
sign going forward.

"What's concerning here is that this signals that the same kind of dysfunction that
occurred leading up to the policy review appears to continue to this day," one
advocacy leader said. "It's a cliché to say the clock is ticking, but it is."

National elections are slated for April, and Sudan watchers worry that the
Obama administration doesn't have a clear strategy for dealing with the
autonomous South, which in January 2011 will hold a referendum on whether to
remain part of a unified Sudan.

"If they're not moving the ball forward, that means the process is stalled at that
level and the new policy is already stuck in the mud," said John Prendergast,
cofounder of the Enough Project and an outspoken critic of the administration's
Sudan policy.

Rice vs. Gration?

Obama's approach to Sudan has been hobbled from the beginning by deep
divisions between senior officials -- especially Gration, the special envoy, and
Rice, the U.N. ambassador -- on how best to handle Khartoum, sources said.
Gration is said to be big on carrots, while Rice prefers sticks. Steinberg is also
said to lean towards a harder line, which the advocacy community also favors.

In 2006, Rice coauthored an article saying, "History demonstrates that there is

one language Khartoum understands: the credible threat or use of force."

ABC News reported that Rice was "furious" in June when Gration said that
Darfur was experiencing only the "remnants of genocide." The State Department
quickly confirmed that its official position is that genocide is ongoing.

In remarks this week, Rice stated clearly that violence in South Sudan was on the
rise and she was concerned new weapons were flowing in from the North. She
also said she was not confident April elections would be safe and fair.

Regardless, Prendergast said, Gration is the driver of policy now. He has

consolidated control and meets with Obama directly, often without Secretary
Clinton in the room.
"This is a White House driven policy and the State Department at multiple levels
has been deeply frustrated at their lack of input at various levels of the process,"
he said.

But if it's a White House driven policy, it's not one getting much public attention
from the president: Obama didn't mention Sudan or Darfur once in this week's
State of the Union address.
-----------------------
Sudan rejects US charge on arms transfers to south
Reuters - By Louis Charbonneau
29 January 2010

Sudan's U.N. ambassador on Friday dismissed as "irresponsible" U.S. allegations

that weapons from northern Sudan were going to armed groups in the semi-
autonomous south ahead of a nationwide April election.

Earlier this week the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said
Washington was concerned about the flow of arms, including heavy weapons,
into southern Sudan, and believed they were coming from northern Sudan and
neighboring countries.

Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem told Reuters that

Khartoum "categorically denied" Rice's allegations.

"The statement by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. attributing arms flows to
south Sudan to the north is most irresponsible," he said in an interview.

"It demonstrates that Susan Rice is still imprisoning herself in the past and failed
to move from an activist position to that of a worthy representative of a
superpower."

He added that it was U.S. arms sales that were making the world less safe, not
weapons from his oil-rich African nation.

U.N. officials have said privately that they, too, suspect the north was supplying
southern militants with weapons.

The oil-producing nation's north and south fought each other for more than two
decades until a 2005 peace deal that promised national elections, due in April,
and a referendum on southern independence in January 2011.

The International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent multinational group, has

said relations between the two sides have broken down and Sudan needed more
time to prepare for a widely expected 'yes' vote for southern independence if it
wanted to avoid a violent break-up.

Armies from both sides, and an array of rebel groups and militias, are also
stockpiling arms ahead of any conflict, despite U.N. and European Union arms
embargoes, according to a December 2009 report by the Small Arms Survey.

The Enough Project, a U.S.-based anti-genocide group, has been saying for
months that increasingly sophisticated attacks by the same ethnic-based militias
that were used by Khartoum in the south during the civil war was cause for great
alarm.

EUROPE'S GUANTANAMO

The Sudanese envoy also reacted angrily to comments from the chief prosecutor
of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Luis Moreno-Ocampo,
who said this week that he expected a genocide charge soon against Sudanese
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. [ID:nLDE60R1PZ]

Abdalhaleem said that "the enemies of Sudan" were trying to use Moreno-
Ocampo to destroy the peace process for Sudan's western Darfur region and
insisted that Khartoum would never cooperate with The Hague-based court.

He said Moreno-Ocampo was "just a screwdriver in the workshop of double

standards and injustice and the ICC is the European Guantanamo." He was
referring to the controversial U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Bashir in March 2009 for alleged war crimes
in Sudan's western Darfur region in connection with mass killings and
deportations, but it said there were insufficient grounds to charge him with
genocide.

Moreno-Ocampo appealed that decision to press for a genocide indictment.

The ICC has said it will issue a decision on the appeal on Feb. 3.

Bashir described the warrant against him as "all lies" last year and ordered major
aid agencies out of Sudan in response.

Estimates vary widely on how many people have died in the Darfur conflict,
which began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government
in 2003. The United Nations says as many as 300,000 have died, but Sudan's
estimate is 10,000.
-----------------------
Malawi’s Mutharika Named Next African Union Chairman
Bloomberg - By Jason McLure
31 January 2010

Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika, who has pledged to champion greater

investment in agriculture to end chronic hunger in Africa, was named chairman
of the African Union today.

―My brother, the president of the Republic of Malawi, will replace me and take
over,‖ Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the incumbent chairman of the AU,
said at the annual heads-of-state summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Under Mutharika, 75, Malawi has been transformed from a country in which
intermittent famines left 40 percent of the population dependent on international
aid into a food exporter. A government program of subsidizing fertilizers helped
corn production rise 36 percent to 3.7 million metric tons last year, leaving the
nation with a 1.3 million-ton surplus.

―Five years from now, no African child should die of hunger,‖ Mutharika said in
his speech, accepting the one-year term. ―Africa must feed Africa.‖

In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 265 million people are undernourished,

according to the World Food Program.

In August, Kenya set aside 9 billion shillings ($120 million) to pay for food
imports as up to 10 million faced the risk of hunger following a drought. In
Somalia, where civil war has raged for the past 19 years, 1.8 million people rely
on the United Nations food agency for aid.

Mutharika was the candidate of the Southern African Development Community.

Under AU rules, top positions rotate between the continent‘s five geographic
regions.

United States of Africa

Qaddafi had sought to extend his tenure by another year to advance his plan to
create a so-called United States of Africa. The proposal, which would incorporate
the continent‘s nations into a political federation, was rejected last year by other
leaders who feared losing their sovereignty.
Established in 2002 as a successor to the Organization of African Unity, the AU‘s
stated aims include achieving greater unity among member states, promoting
peace, stability and development and raising living standards.

Mutharika will have to address several other ongoing crises, including restoring
democracy in Madagascar, persuading Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to
uphold a power sharing accord and ending a protracted conflict in Sudan‘s
western region of Darfur.

―The realm of security remains a key challenge for the African Union,‖ said
George Katito, a researcher at the Johannesburg-based South African Institute for
International Affairs. ―We have seen the African Union challenge
unconstitutional changes in government‖ when it suspended Mauritania and
Madagascar from its ranks. Those actions are a ―vast difference from its ‗hear
nothing, see nothing‘ policy that we had before.‖
-----------------------
UN News Service Africa Briefs
Full Articles on UN Website
31 January 2010

Ban commits UN to harnessing support for African development needs

31 January – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today pledged to mobilize support
to tackle the critical challenges threatening peace and posperity across Africa,
including extreme poverty, economic and social well-being, and the ravages of
climate change.

UN chief launches campaign in Africa to eradicate male violence against women

30 January – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the support of
African leaders to give new impetus to his campaign to end the violence suffered
by women on the continent, which he called the ―unsung heroines‖ of
development in the region.

Senior UN official urges broad-based approach to fight piracy off Somali coast
28 January – A top United Nations official today urged a comprehensive,
cohesive and broad-based strategy to fight piracy off the coast of Somalia, noting
that the continued spread of the scourge points to the limits of a solely sea-based
approach.

Sudanese peace pact has accelerated pace of mine removal, says UN official
28 January – The 2005 peace accord that ended Sudan‘s north-south civil war has
enhanced efforts to rid the vast African nation of landmines that continue to
indiscriminately kill and maim decades after they are laid, a senior United
Nations official said today.
Security Council extends mandate of UN force in Côte d’Ivoire through end of
May
28 January – The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United
Nations mission in Côte d‘Ivoire (UNOCI), and the French forces supporting it,
for another four months to help support the staging of free, fair and transparent
elections in the West African nation.