Friday 11.  Oct 2024 {HMC} Trade and maritime traffic between Cameroon and Nigeria nosedived this week after a Cameroonian state governor ordered a temporary trade ban Wednesday in the Bakassi Peninsula, in response to the abduction of two officials from the area.

Cameroon reports about 35 percent of Nigerian petroleum products and basic commodities imported by Cameroon pass through the peninsula. Nigeria also depends on Bakassi for most of its cocoa and fish imports from Cameroon.

Aboko Patrick, mayor of Kombo Abedimo, a locality in Bakassi, told VOA that several thousand merchants have been unable to transport their goods out of the area since the ban.

“All petroleum products come from Nigeria, even food items come from Nigeria,” he said. “The fish which is caught in our territorial waters is carried to Nigeria. Today those fishermen, those who were doing legal business, are bound to suffer, but if this suffering can lead us to have peace, I think it is better that we go for it.”

On Wednesday, Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of Cameroon’s Southwest Region, ordered the suspension of trade and maritime activity with Nigeria in the peninsula because suspected gunmen from Nigeria allegedly abducted Roland Ewane, the division officer (D.O.) of the Idabato district.

“It is well established that the D.O was kidnapped with the complicity of the population of Idabato who are 95% Nigerians who refuse to pay taxes,” Bilai said, adding, “and once the D.O. want(ed) to fight illegal activities and to request the payment of taxes, he (was) attacked, kidnapped and carried to Nigeria. It is well established that he is now in Nigerian territory. They should release the D.O.”

Ewane was abducted alongside Ismael Etongo, an Idabato district council staff member, and taken to Nigeria in a speedboat, Bilai said.

Nigeria ceded control of Bakassi to Cameroon in the early 2000s, after a long legal battle in international courts. However, Cameroon has complained that most of the area’s 300,000 inhabitants, most of whom are Nigerians, refuse to pay taxes.

Merchants say Cameroon has deployed troops to enforce tax payments, something that Cameroon officials deny.

Cameroon says it has written to Nigerian authorities to help secure the release of the two abducted officials.

Joseph Vincent Ntuda Ebode, an expert on international security at the University of Yaounde-Soa, told VOA by telephone that it would be helpful if merchants paid taxes to the Cameroonian government.

It is a civic duty for all civilians to pay their taxes, he said, adding that Bakassi needs schools, hospitals, markets and lots of other infrastructure that can be developed with the money.

The trade ban appears to be having an impact, as Nigerian merchants say they have not received goods from Bakassi for the past two days.

Nigeria has not commented on the abductions or the ban on trade.

SOURCE BBC

Friday 11.  Oct 2024 {HMC} Kenya has appealed for urgent financial support from the international community to sustain a police deployment in Haiti, which has been extended by a year.

The multinational security mission, which began in June, is helping fight gangs controlling much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and nearby areas.

More than 3,600 people have been killed in the country since January, including over 100 children, while more than 500,000 Haitians have been forced from their homes, the UN said.

“We are asking the international community to match their commitment and their pledges with the necessary action for us to be able to complete the task ahead of us,” Kenya’s President William Ruto said on Friday.

He was speaking after a meeting in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, with Haiti’s Prime Minister Garry Conille.

Violence in Haiti is still rife and a UN human rights expert has warned that gangs are targeting new areas, causing further displacement.

Kenya deployed 400 of its pledged 1,000 police officers in June and July this year.

On Friday, President Ruto said the remaining 600 are undergoing training and would join the mission next month.

A handful of other countries have together pledged at least 1,900 more officers.

Although the mission was approved by the UN security council, it is not a UN operation and relies on voluntary financial contributions.

Only $85m (£65m) of the mission’s estimated $600m required annually for its operation has been received so far through a trust fund set up by the UN, according to Human Rights Watch.

It is not clear how much money has been spent so far but Ruto says more financial support is needed to “sustain” the mission until October next year.

“When resources are made available, there will be demonstrable progress of the mission,” President Ruto.

Ruto said that the available funds would run out by March next year.

“We have a window of success that is evident from the operations that have been carried out already,” the president added.

He said the deployment was already showing positive results – “restoring hope and a glimpse of stability”.

Conille asked international partners to send the officers they had pledged to ensure the “contingent from Kenya has the resources they need”.

The Haitian prime minister denied reports that the Kenyan police officers were staying in camps like tourists while the gangs were tightening their grip on large swathes of Port-au-Prince, since the mission began.

“I have personally been on patrol with the Kenyan troops who have engaged in delicate operations in the city centre. They are involved in patrolling universities, hospitals and administrative areas,” Conille said.

“They are also up north to help address the threat with the gangs.”

Last month, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution to extend the mandate of the mission for another year and rejected calls from Haiti on transforming it into a UN peacekeeping mission.

A UN human rights expert who has just been to the Caribbean nation said the mission was inadequately equipped and needed helicopters, as well as night vision goggles and drones.

“The Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS), authorised by the UN Security Council in October 2023, has so far deployed less than a quarter of its planned contingent,” William O’Neil said last month.

SOURCE BBC

Friday 11.  Oct 2024 {HMC}  Gunmen have killed at least 20 people at a coal mine in Balochistan province in southwestern Pakistan, according to local police.

The attackers stormed the workers’ accommodation at the Junaid Coal Company mines in the province’s Duki district in the early hours of Friday morning, rounded the men up and opened fire.

A hospital in Duki has received 20 bodies and is treating six injured people, reported Reuters.

The workers were attacked with heavy weapons, including rocket launchers and grenades, police said, while one survivor described seeing a drone overhead.

Subcontractor Hafeezullah told the BBC he spotted the drone and its red light as he and a number of others hid in the bathroom.

“When the attackers got closer they shouted ‘we told you to stop work here, why didn’t you?’,” he told the BBC. He said the attackers spoke in Pashto. “Then they opened fire.”

Hafeezullah estimates the attack, which he says started just after midnight, lasted for about an hour and a half, during which time machinery was set alight. He also heard loud explosions, which he thinks were grenades exploding.

Asim Shafi, police chief in Duki district, confirmed to news agency AFP both hand grenades and rocket launchers were used in the attack, which is believed to have been carried out by as many as 40 people who then disappeared “into the night”.

Police confirmed that four of the victims were Afghans, while the rest of the men were from Pashto-speaking areas of Balochistan.

Hafeezullah says he lost several friends in the attack.

“When I left, there were people lying on the ground,” he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the killings so far. In the past, the separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has carried out several deadly attacks in the province.

Mine owner Khairullah Nasar told news agency Reuters they had been getting “threats from the militants for some time, but there was no information about the attack”.

Friday’s attack is the latest to be carried out in recent days, and comes just ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a major security summit being hosted in the Pakistani capital Islamabad next week.

On Monday, a BLA militant killed two Chinese nationals and injured at least 10 people in a suicide attack near Karachi airport.

The group, which pushes for an independent Balochistan, also committed multiple attacks in August that killed more than 50 people. Pakistani authorities responded by killing 21 insurgents in the province.

The latest attack on the miners drew condemnation from Balochistan’s chief minister Sarfraz Bugti, who said the attackers had an agenda to destabilise Pakistan.

“The terrorists have once again targeted poor labourers… the killing of these innocent laborers will be avenged,” he said in a statement.

Balochistan is home to several separatist groups, who accuse the central government of exploiting the resource-rich province.

The militants often target security forces, as well as people who have come to work at the province’s many mining and infrastructure projects.

As well as enhancing security measures, Pakistani authorities will reportedly be curbing movements of Chinese citizens during the summit, due to the security risk from militant groups targeting them.

SOURCE BBC

Friday 11.  Oct 2024 {HMC} High-level security coordination in recent weeks has been under way between Egypt and Somalia on the deployment of Egyptian troops as part of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), amid regional concerns over Cairo’s mounting strategic and military influence in the Horn of Africa.

“An expanded meeting was recently held in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, between an Egyptian security delegation that involved high-ranking army and intelligence officers and their Somali counterparts to agree on the logistics of planned joint military drills and manoeuvres,” a senior Egyptian security official told The New Arab on condition of anonymity for not being authorised to talk to the media.

‘Uneasy’ over influence

Cairo and Mogadishu signed a defence agreement in August, amidst an ongoing dispute both countries have with Ethiopia. The two nations agreed to deploy 5,000 Egyptian troops to be stationed in Somali regions bordering Ethiopia as part of an African peacekeeping force in Somalia after its man-made ends in December this year, nearly half of some 11,000 military personnel the mission will have.

“The security agreement entails that Egypt provides military equipment and assigns officers to monitor army command centres in the Hiran region along the Ethiopian border,” said the senior Egyptian official, without elaborating further.

The terms of the defence deal between Egypt and Somalia also entail an exchange of intelligence information, a move expected to enable Egypt to carry out intelligence activities in the region and communicate with rebel groups inside Ethiopia.

The recent Cairo-Mogadishu rapprochement has alarmed several of Somalia’s neighbours.

Last week, Kenya-based The East African reported that the states contributing troops to the peacekeeping mission in Somalia, including Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Djibouti, had reportedly been “uneasy” about Egypt’s rising power in the Horn of Africa being a “new-found ally” to Mogadishu.

The report further suggested that the inclusion of Egyptian troops in AMISOM at the expense of Ethiopian forces, which have been part of the peacekeeping mission since 2014, is “a strategic win to Egypt.”

“The objections facing Egypt have been incited by Ethiopia and its allies to limit our influence in countries and restrict the deployment of further Egyptian troops in the Horn of Africa for fear of an inevitable military confrontation triggered by the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam [GERD],” the Egyptian official source argued.

For over a decade, Ethiopia and Egypt have been at odds over the construction of the dam on the Blue Nile, impacting the water shares of Egypt and Sudan.

Tensions have been growing between Somalia and Ethiopia earlier this year when Addis Ababa signed a memorandum of understanding with the self-declared republic of Somaliland to lease part of its coastline for a military base in return for recognising the region’s independence.

Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991, but this has not been recognised by the international community.