Joe Penney

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Africa. Niger. Toumour. 2017. Nigerien security forces pass near Toumor refugee camp where 47 thousand Nigerian refugees and internally displaced Nigerians took shelter in southeastern Niger. According to the UN last report (August 2017) 2,3 million people displaced in Lake Chad Basin and 129 thousand Nigeriens internally displaced in Niger after Boko Haram attacks in the region since 2015.

MundoÁfricaMundoAmérica

Last October, four American soldiers, four Nigerien soldiers, and a Nigerien translator were killed in combat on Niger’s border with Mali while looking for the jihadi militant Doundoun Cheffou. For the most part, the fallout concentrated on President Trump’s mangled call with the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson. But the incident also called attention to a dangerous development at multiple levels of US politics. From a small village in rural Niger all the way to the White House, the US military has increasing influence over American foreign policy in Africa.

American Special Forces have been operating in Niger since at least 2013, when President Obama authorized forty troops to aid the French intervention against jihadist groups in Mali.…  Seguir leyendo »

Desert roads outside of Agadez, Niger, last year. Smugglers are abandoning hundreds of migrants as they try to cross the Sahara. Josh Haner/The New York Times

MundoÁfrica

A major international emergency is unfolding in northern Africa, and the world has yet to notice: Smugglers are abandoning hundreds of migrants as they attempt to cross the unforgiving sands and heat of the Sahara. In an effort to evade new patrols by the Nigerien military, the human traffickers are leaving their charges to die of thirst in isolation.

The European Union and the United Nations blame the smugglers for broadening “the death trap from the Mediterranean to the Sahara Desert.” But the dangers of the Saharan route have been exacerbated by the European Union’s own policy, which has pushed the hazards of irregular migration further into the desert and out of sight of the media and global attention.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

In a ransacked room on the third floor, a television set eerily broadcasted the France 24 news channel, where images of the attack were playing. In a room on the fourth floor, a half-eaten chicken sandwich sat next to a Turkish man’s passport on a bedside table. In an adjacent hallway, French troops serving with the United Nations stepped around drapes soaked with blood.

When gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, Friday morning and killed at least 19 people (reportedly now as many as 27), they struck at the heart of West Africa’s engagement with the rest of the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

When French soldiers stormed into northern Mali in January 2013 to chase out militants aligned with Al Qaeda, Malians throughout the country stood to gain. The French, aided by the Chadian and Malian Armies, swiftly took back most of the territory controlled by the extremists. Their mission, Operation Serval, was held up as a rare example of a successful Western intervention against terrorist groups.

In February, the president of France, François Hollande, visited Timbuktu, an ancient center of Islamic education, and a boisterous crowd that had suffered nine months of brutal jihadi rule hailed him as a savior. Later, in Bamako, Mali’s capital, Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »