Special Reports

Editor’s note: Below is Thomas Joscelyn’s testimony to the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence on the threat posed by jihadist groups in Africa. In preparing today’s testimony, I reviewed the history of al Qaeda’s plotting against the West. A number of facts demonstrate that al Qaeda’s presence in Africa has been tied to these efforts. For instance, declassified documents recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound show that he

Jeremy Cronin, deputy secretary of the SACP, says South Africa is dealing with the "ghosts of a past that has never truly been transformed". ​ Violence, racial tension, heated debates about what the heritage of South Africa should look like, and most recently, the spate of xenophobic attacks begs the question: Where did we go wrong and what does the future hold? Over the past week, the African News Agency (ANA) spoke to four commentators working at grassroots level and within

The State Department today added two senior officials in Shabaab, al Qaeda’s official branch in East Africa, to the US government’s list of designated terrorists. One of the two, Ahmed Diriye, is Shabaab’s overall leader. Diriye rose to that position after Ahmed Abdi Godane, Shabaab’s previous head, was killed in a US airstrike in September 2014. Shabaab quickly reaffirmed its allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri after Diriye, who is also known as Sheikh Ahmad Umar

Amnesty International has joined the UN and others in urging Kenya to halt its plans to close the world’s largest refugee complex, arguing that forcing the 350,000 Somalis in Dadaab to return home would put their lives at risk and breach international law. Kenya ordered the closure of the camp last week after members of the Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab attacked Garissa University College on 2 April, killing 148 people. Although the Kenyan government has long viewed Dadaab

While international attention has focused on the election of President Muhammadu Buhari and the continued instability in the north of the country, events surrounding the gubernatorial elections in Nigeria on April 11 could also have significant repercussions in the coming months, especially with signs of an increasing threat of violence arising from the oil-rich Niger Delta region. As with the presidential poll, the 29 Nigerian states that held elections swung away from forme

​Al-Shabaab’s 2 April attack in Kenya that killed 147 people at a university in Garissa, 120km from the border with Somalia, has again cast doubt on the Kenyan government’s ability to keep its citizens safe. Three members of Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa staff consider here the implications of Al-Shabaab’s longstanding ambition to broaden its campaigns from Somalia into the wider East Africa region. Why is Al-Shabaab increasingly targeting Kenya? In its statement following th

On April 14, 2014, nearly 300 girls were abducted at midnight from their school, Federal Government Girls College, Chibok, in Borno State, Nigeria. The state has been the epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency. Both the insurgency and the counter-insurgency by Nigeria’s security forces have turned Borno and neighboring states like Yobe and Adamawa into war zones, producing the most egregious acts of human rights abuses from belligerents on both sides. Boko Haram’s viciousness

Welcome to the April issue of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project’s (ACLED) Conflict Trends report. Each month, ACLED researchers gather, analyse and publish data on political vio- lence in Africa in realtime. Weekly updates to realtime conflict event data are published through our research partners at Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) and also on the ACLED website. This month’s issue focuses on the intervention of French Military Forces in W

​Africa can expect to witness more incidences of state-sponsored domestic violence, as Chinese aid increases, a new study shows. With China’s flagship event showcasing how its influence has grown in Africa set for the continent this year, the focus will inevitably be on the amount of new aid and loans Beijing dangles at the continent. The last summit of the triennial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) saw President Hu Jintao put on the table $20-billion in loans to Afr

Terrorist atrocities by Sunni Muslim extremists are on the verge of becoming the world’s white noise. Two weeks ago, there was an attack by three killers swearing allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, against tourists visiting the Bardo National Museum in Tunis. The majority of the twenty-two victims were Westerners, mostly Christians. Two days later, another ISIS detachment bombed two Shiite mosques in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, murdering a hundred