David Axe - Africa is Boring: March 2009 Archives

Let’s be perfectly clear about this: deploying Western forces to establish a no-fly zone over Darfur is a bad idea, and would only further entangle foreign powers in a war in which they have no clear interest. Not to......more

  A Korean crewman aboard a ship sailing on the Indian Ocean was shot in the head by Somali pirates but survived, the AP reports. Despite the surge in East African piracy in the past 18 months, only two people......more

  Due to the global recession, the six-nation Central African Economic and Monetary Community — Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon — is anticipating economic expansion of just 2.8 percent in 2009, versus 4.4 percent......more

  Daniel Abbott over at tdaxp is editing a new book on fifth-generation warfare, to be published by Nimble Books. I’m writing a chapter addressing Somalia, piracy (pictured), human security and 5GW in Africa. Here’s a brief sample: The “fourth......more

 Last week Osama bin Laden exhorted Somalis to rise up in jihad against new president Shariff Sheikh Ahmed, a call that even Somali insurgent leaders rejected. Earlier, as many as two dozen Somalis living in the U.S. sneaked into Somalia......more

U.N. officials and aid workers are gathering in eastern Chad to discuss preparations for an alarming contingency. With the recent arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Bashir and his subsequent ejection of foreign aid groups from Darfur, the U.N.......more

U.N. officials are scrambling to prepare for the prospect of tens of thousands of refugees pouring into eastern Chad from Darfur to escape escalating tensions in Sudan. An mass movement of displaced peoples will pose major challenges to the......more

In late January, Ethiopia withdrew its last soldiers from Somalia after more than two years of bloody occupation and insurgency. Their departure immediately catalyzed a dramatic chain of events. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that had been backed by......more

After a year of escalating piracy off the Somali coast, during which pirates seized more than 100 large vessels, in early 2009 the rate of attacks decreased markedly. On Feb. 22, pirates captured a Greek-owned vessel carrying coal. Despite......more