Politics

Chadian junta sets August date for national dialogue which will involve armed groups

Published

2 years ago

July 15, 2022

The Chadian Transitional Military Council (TMC) has fixed August 20 as the date for a national dialogue which will involve several armed groups in the country as well as be a precursor to national elections which were promised by interim president, Mahamat Idriss Deby, when he took over power after the death of his father last year.

The dialogue, according to Deby in a nationwide broadcast on Friday, will see the setting up of an 18-month transition to democratic rule committee.

The national dialogue is the first step towards elections after the killing of longtime leader, Idriss Deby, during a visit to the battlefield where Chadian soldiers fought against a rebel group that had crossed into Sudan from Libya in 2021, which saw his 38-year-old son, a Colonel in the Chadian Army, taking over the reins of power.

In the dialogue proposal, Deby said it would, in theory, include armed groups but the conditions for their participation have not yet been agreed upon.

As part of processes for the national dialogue, a peace talk was held in March in Qatar between Chad’s military government and dozens of opposition groups.

The initial dialogue was to hold on May 10 in the capital N’Djamena, but was postponed by the Military Council which had failed to fix a new date for it to hold.

Related Topics:#CHAD #National Dialogue Featured Idris Deby

Click to comment

Politics

Burkina Faso investigating reports of northern killings

Published

19 hours ago

April 28, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

A government spokesman has revealed that Burkina Faso is looking into reports that 223 people were killed by the Burkinabe army in two villages in the north in February.

The killing was first reported by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), causing a rift between the junta-led West African state and some foreign media that published the report. The HRW report released on Thursday said that the military had executed residents of Nodin and Soro, including at least 56 children, as part of a campaign against civilians suspected of working with jihadist terrorists. The report was based on interviews with witnesses, members of civil society, and other groups.

Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, a spokesman for the government, said that HRW’s claims were “peremptory” and that the junta was not unwilling to look into the claimed crimes.

“An investigation has been launched into the killings in Nodin and Soro,” Ouedraogo said in a late-evening statement, quoting a statement from a regional prosecutor on March 1.

Since Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s militaries took over in a series of coups from 2020 to 2023, violence in the area has gotten worse. This is because of the ten-year fight with Islamist groups related to Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Attacks on Burkina Faso got much worse in 2023, with more than 8,000 people killed, according to the U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group ACLED.

Politics

S’Africa lengthens troop deployment in Mozambique, Congo DR

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a speech that South Africa’s military would keep sending troops to Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are both in the middle of wars.

The extension will leave 1,198 members of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) in eastern Congo for an unknown amount of time. They are there as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force helping Congo fight rebel groups.

The statement also said that 1,495 members of the SANDF would keep working in Mozambique, where they have been since 2021 helping the government fight dangerous extremism in the north.

After two SANDF troops were killed and three were hurt by a mortar bomb in Congo in February, South Africa’s military operations abroad have been looked at more closely at home this year.

Meanwhile, the major opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance, said that Ramaphosa sent troops into a war zone without being ready.
Under the supervision of the UN, the SANDF has taken on many dangerous and difficult peacekeeping tasks over the years to help war-torn African countries stay stable and peaceful.

In 2003, South Africa was one of the first countries to send troops to Burundi to help the peace process. During the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) peacekeeping mission in 2000, the SANDF led attempts to stabilize the country’s politics, rebuild and improve infrastructure, and train DRC troops.