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Defense & Security
Red Sea - IMG_0150.JPG

Navigating the Red Sea: Addressing threats and harnessing potential

by Frederic Gateretse-Ngoga , Farea Al-Muslimi , Lisa Boström , Veera Tuomala

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском Photo credit: Flickr/Sailing Nomad - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ Ambassador Frederic Gateretse-Ngoga, Farea Al-Muslimi, Lisa Boström and Veera Tuomala In recent months, the Red Sea has drawn global attention, particularly due to Houthi attacks on shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, as well as the deal between Ethiopia and the self-declared Republic of Somaliland on access to the Gulf of Aden, which sparked a dispute with Somalia. The rising tensions and increasing military responses risk worsening conflicts in a highly volatile region. The renewed focus on the Red Sea, however, also provides an opportunity to redouble commitment to multilateralism and enhance the collective action needed to address threats facing the region. This blog post gives an overview of current issues in the region and possible ways to address them, building on the outcomes of a panel discussion at the 2024 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development. Geopolitical competition in the Red Sea region The Red Sea has become a major flashpoint for global and regional contestation, with local, regional and global conflict dynamics deeply intertwined. Regional and global powers are constructing naval bases and military installations around the Red Sea to enhance their power projection, fuelling existing tensions and exacerbating ongoing conflicts. This has aggravated already dire humanitarian conditions, contributing to fragility across the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and North Africa. In Sudan, competition between Gulf states is widely considered a driving factor behind the civil war. In Somalia and Yemen, external influences have fuelled internal disputes and aggravated tensions, undermining state-building efforts and incurring particularly devastating consequences in Yemen. Climate change and a scramble for scarce natural resources and critical commodities, including water, agricultural land and food supplies, may reinforce this dynamic. Gulf states, in particular, have invested billions in agriculture and manufacturing in the Horn of Africa in recent years to secure food production and tap into the region’s burgeoning labour markets. Regional insecurity escalates Insecurity in the Red Sea region reached a critical point in early 2024 when the Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in response to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, further threatening regional and international stability, upending trade and disrupting global markets. In response, the United States and the United Kingdom carried out airstrikes against targets in Yemen, while the European Union took a more defensive approach with the launch of Operation ASPIDES to protect vessels. This escalation delayed peace negotiations in Yemen, weakening the fragile trust needed to agree on an extended ceasefire and a roadmap to peace. The Houthi attacks also further compounded humanitarian challenges, disrupting the flow of essential goods and humanitarian aid to the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region more widely, thus worsening shortages and human suffering. In Sudan around 26 million people, more than half the population, are suffering acute food insecurity. In Yemen, around 22 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, with about 17 million facing acute food insecurity. Instability on both coasts has also increased migration across the Red Sea. The number of migrants from the Horn of Africa arriving in Yemen has nearly tripled in recent years, with tens of thousands making the dangerous crossing annually in search of better economic opportunities. Additionally, the rise in piracy off the coast of Somalia has exacerbated regional insecurity, with reports of coordination between the Houthis and the Al-Shabaab armed group in the Horn, increasing the risk of human trafficking and forced migration. Opportunities to strengthen multilateralism, cooperation and collective action The barriers to effective cooperation in the Red Sea region are significant but not insurmountable. Historical rivalries and political instability have eroded trust among countries in the region, and the diverse priorities and strategic interests of these countries complicate collaboration. Despite these challenges, the region holds immense potential for growth and development. The strategic location and resources of countries on both shores, if harnessed constructively and collectively, could spur economic prosperity and regional stability. However, the region can realize its potential and accelerate socio-economic development only through inclusive growth, innovation and addressing long-standing developmental challenges. In this regard, prioritizing economic and regional integration is critical to unlocking the region’s vast potential. Indeed, the geographical proximity between the Horn of Africa and Yemen across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait has brought about initiatives such as the Bridge of the Horns, proposed in 2007 between Djibouti and Yemen, which represented a bold vision for a more integrated, peaceful and prosperous region. While the project did not materialize, it is symbolic of the potential for deep and mutually beneficial economic, cultural and political ties across the Red Sea. While there are currently no operational overarching mechanisms or forums for multilateral cooperation around the region, the establishment in 2020 of the Red Sea Council—formally the Council of Arab and African States bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden—could fill this gap. Once operational, it could help to mitigate tensions and foster cooperation towards a shared vision for the region. Moving forward There are several areas where enhanced cooperation is achievable and could benefit the Red Sea region as a whole. For example, establishing joint coastal patrols and information-sharing mechanisms could significantly enhance maritime security and combat piracy, smuggling and terrorism along the vital maritime corridor. Developing regional trade agreements and infrastructure projects could boost economic growth and interdependence, reducing the likelihood of conflict. Collaborative efforts to address climate change, manage shared water resources and protect marine ecosystems could promote sustainability and reduce resource-related tensions. Coordinating humanitarian responses and development programmes could address the root causes of instability, such as poverty, food insecurity, and poor access to education and healthcare. Finally, establishing platforms for dialogue and mediation could help to resolve disputes peacefully, preventing the escalation of conflicts. By focusing on these areas, the countries of the Red Sea region could move towards a more cooperative, stable and prosperous future. Strengthening cooperation through robust multilateral frameworks is vital to addressing the factors that underpin regional insecurity as well as to promoting sustainable development. Regional solutions should be led by the region, rather than relying on external entities whose priorities and resources are currently focused elsewhere. Countries on both coasts of the Red Sea need to view each other as partners for common goals and stability, prioritizing cooperation to connect their needs and interests effectively. As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres notes in the New Agenda for Peace, rebuilding consensus around shared norms and developing new ways for states to act cooperatively is crucial to addressing collective challenges and meeting shared objectives. SIPRI is pleased to share a series of guest blog posts from partners of the 2024 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development. This blog builds on a panel discussion at the Forum on the topic ‘Red Sea Security in a Time of Disorder’, which was organized by CMI–Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation.

Defense & Security
Map Countries where the Wagner Group has been active

The Wagner Group: Russia's Shadow Army and its Impact in Africa

by Isabella Currie

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском The Wagner Group has maintained an active and controversial presence in Africa since 2017, where it has contributed to regional instability, countered Western influence, and exacerbated human rights abuses. Despite the death of its figurehead in 2023, the emergence of the Africa Corps indicates that Russia’s covert geopolitical strategies in the region will persist. The Wagner Group has gained significant attention since its involvement in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a paramilitary organisation with deep ties to the Russian government, Wagner’s operations blur the lines between state and non-state actions. This ambiguity challenges traditional frameworks of accountability and international law, complicating efforts to address its activities on the global stage. Ukraine is not the group’s only violent contribution to the destabilization of peaceful nations. Wagner has maintained an active presence across Africa since 2017, where it has been accused of numerous human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and targeting civilians. The bulk of these activities have unfolded in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali. The Wagner Group’s international impact is multifaceted, affecting strategic, economic, and humanitarian outcomes. Functioning as a tool for Russian geopolitical ambitions, the group has contributed to regional instability in Sub-Saharan Africa, countered Western influence by infiltrating anti-Western and anti-colonial movements and sentiments online, and raised significant concerns regarding human rights and international law. In many of its areas of operations, Wagner’s presence has served as a catalyst for conflict escalation, and regional instability. In CAR and Mali, for instance, the group’s presence has been linked to increased violence and human rights abuses and undermining international and regional efforts towards peace and stability. The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s Chef,” on 23 August 2023, came two months after his march on Moscow, sparked by dissatisfaction with the Russian Ministry of Defence’s actions in Ukraine. It is likely that many of the governments and regimes in Africa that “benefitted” from Wagner’s services were deeply concerned about Prigozhin’s death. At the same time, many may have been relieved, hoping that his death might change the brutal and terror-driven campaign of violence that had plagued the Sahel region at the group’s hands. Additionally, Wagner has provided Russia with a platform to pursue state interests through covert operations. Until the invasion of Ukraine, this allowed Putin to maintain plausible deniability regarding association with Wagner and its controversial activities. In addition to military engagements, Prigozhin orchestrated extensive propaganda and disinformation campaigns across Africa. These operations bolstered Russia’s influence in countries that Wagner operated in, while obscuring the ability for international bodies and states to accurately assess and address the allegations of human rights abuses that came alongside Wagner’s deployments. In CAR, the Wagner Group was deployed in 2018 to provide protection for mines, support the government, and offer personal protection for President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. However, Wagner’s role in CAR far exceeded resource and government protection. The group actively engaged in military operations alongside members of the armed forces, leading to numerous accusations of serious human rights violations, including summary executions and sexual and gender-based violence. Despite these allegations, the group continued to receive support from the CAR government. The media outlet, Corbeau News, reported that President Touadéra had authorised Wagner’s sexual violence. This was evidenced in one of Wagner’s most extreme acts in CAR, which occurred in April 2022 when members of the group entered a military hospital in Bangui and sexually assaulted women and new mothers in the maternity ward. One source within the military administration of CAR stated that it was the third time members from the group had entered the maternity ward and assaulted women. In 2021, reports surfaced that Wagner would deploy to Mali to combat a rebel insurgency. This announcement sparked outrage from France, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, who warned Mali against partnering with the group. Similar to its operations in CAR, Wagner’s presence in Mali has been marked by violence and instability. In April 2022, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the massacre of 300 civilians during a joint military operation involving Malian armed forces and the Wagner Group from 27 March to 31. A key feature of Wagner’s presence has been countering Western influence in strategic regions. The provision of military support to governments and groups engaged in activities against Western-supported entities has been notably destructive. This dynamic was evident in Mali, where in 2022, an extensive disinformation campaign on social media, linked to Wagner, exploited anti-France and anti-imperialist sentiments to undermine the French presence. The campaign, along with “multiple obstructions” from Mali’s military junta led to France announcing the withdrawal of its military forces from Operation Barkhane in Mali in February 2022. Following the announcement, Malians celebrated in the capital, Bamako, and held signs stating, “Thanks Wagner” and “France is a terrorist nation.” Wagner-linked actors then continued their disinformation efforts, attempting to shift blame onto France following the discovery of a mass grave near a military base that French forces had recently vacated. Satellite imagery released by France later revealed Wagner Group mercenaries arranging the bodies in the mass grave. The bodies were believed to have come from a joint-military operation between the Malian armed forces and the Wagner Group in the same area in the days prior. In Africa, Wagner’s operations have been closely linked to the control and exploitation of natural resources. In countries such as CAR and Sudan, Wagner has secured access to valuable resources such as gold and diamonds. Recently, investigative efforts by groups like All Eyes on Wagner have revealed that the group has circumvented sanctions by exporting timber from CAR through Cameroon, in addition to operating an extensive blood diamond trading network. The Wagner Group’s involvement in these countries highlights the group’s role in bolstering autocratic regimes in exchange for strategic and economic benefits. Prigozhin’s march on Moscow in June 2023 had already fuelled significant speculation about the group’s future. Nonetheless, the group’s strategic plan to support autocratic governments, orchestrate foreign interference, and expand influence remains both politically and economically appealing to Moscow. The potential dissolution of the Wagner Group would pose a significant challenge and require the rebuilding of established relationships in countries where it has operated. The emergence of the Africa Corps, a new organisation seemingly poised to assume many of Wagner’s operations, emphasises the strategic and economic value these activities provide for Russia. With the announcement in January 2024 that 100 Russian soldiers from the Africa Corps would deploy to Burkina Faso, it is clear that the Wagner model is one that will continue.

Defense & Security
World geographic map made of metallic material with the African continent in the foreground.

Look towards the south

by José Segura Clavell

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском In a complex moment of geopolitical relations, marked by issues such as armed conflicts or climate change, it is more necessary than ever to pay attention to what is happening in the Sahel and Africa. In a world as turbulent as the one we live in, geopolitics returns to the front pages of newspapers with what is happening in Gaza, the potential consequences of the elections in the United States or France, or, in the Spanish context, the recent visit of our king, Felipe VI, to the Baltic Republics, with particular support and recognition for the Spanish military units serving there, all within the framework of tensions with Russia on the European eastern border. Despite the frequent discussions about the implications these issues have on our lives and our tendency to look beyond our borders for answers, what remains unchanged and continues to surprise me is the lack of interest that the African continent still generates among the public and experts, along with a vast ignorance of the geopolitical importance that the continent is acquiring. For these reasons, today I would like to talk to you about three issues that, from a geopolitical perspective, do not receive the attention and reflection they deserve. First, I would like to remind you that jihadism remains a major threat in many areas of the African continent, especially in the Sahel. In fact, there is barely any discussion about how the security crisis in this part of the world is spreading to the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea: Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Ghana. As they often do in Africa, jihadist groups are exploiting structural vulnerabilities, various frustrations, and resentments against states that do not always respond to their citizens' demands as they would like, to recruit young people who will swell their ranks. I recently read a republished article by Óscar Guijarro from the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies (IEEE, in spanish) titled "The Expansion of Jihadism from the Sahel to the Coastal Countries of the Gulf of Guinea", which I found extremely interesting, especially for Spain. These coastal countries, which appear to have more stable political environments than those in the Sahel, are marked by significant inequalities and socioeconomic divisions in different areas (poor north versus richer south), as well as religious differences that jihadist groups exploit to gain influence. The strategic location of these countries and the presence of forest reserves that are used as resources and refuges facilitate the expansion of jihadism and organized crime, including arms and drug trafficking. While it is true that the European Union is providing support to confront the jihadist threat and that the affected countries are adopting military and cross-border security measures, I believe that at the very least, more attention needs to be paid to this part of the world. Being aware of the importance of jihadist movements' penetration in Africa and their impact on global geopolitics should be a priority. Thousands of people are dying and are being displaced in West Africa due to violence of all kinds, and it cannot be something we ignore. A friend of Casa África, a senior official at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Lori-Anne Théroux-Bénoni, spoke in January before the United Nations Security Council on this matter. Ms. Théroux-Bénoni urged the international community not to ignore the Sahel and reminded that strategies to prevent terrorism must acknowledge the deep regional connections that allow extremist groups to recruit, fundraise, and manage their logistics across multiple countries. She asserted that the current situation in the region represents the worst possible scenario of violent extremism, coups d'état, and setbacks in regional integration, and called for international responses. From the ISS, they constantly remind us that the stability of West Africa is important to the global community for multiple reasons, some related to opportunities and socioeconomic development, and others related to terrorist threats, organized crime, and the illegal trafficking of all kinds of goods, from drugs and weapons to people. Regarding governance, Ms. Théroux-Bénoni stated that we must contribute to creating conditions that make coups d'état and political instability less likely. Another issue that I believe doesn't receive enough attention is what some analysts have already dubbed "new Russianism." Colonel and geopolitical analyst Ignacio Fuente Cobo, in articles published by the IEEE, uses this term to define Russia's neocolonial project to expand its influence in Africa, particularly in the Sahel region. While we focus on Ukraine and Europe's eastern flank, the truth is that we fail to fully grasp Russia's strategy of strengthening its presence in Africa. A quick glance at articles about the Sahel reveals that Russia is finding allies among the leaders of the region and a population that prefers Russian assistance over the help traditionally provided by France, for example, to solve their problems. Mr. Fuente Cobo discusses an alternative multipolar world order, whose reinforcement is evident, and Russia's interest in seizing natural resources and evading Western sanctions. The fact is that Russia has shown remarkable skill in exploiting the gaps in European cooperation in the Sahel and has managed to strengthen its position in some countries, particularly through the former Wagner group (now Africa Corps) and the military cooperation. The loss of European influence in the area should concern us and guide the design of our policy in the region, which I believe should always be based on mutual respect, attentive listening to our African partners and friends, and a mutually beneficial partnership that avoids paternalism and, especially, the geopolitical double standards that have discredited the West in the eyes of many countries, now more critical than ever of our decisions on the global stage. To conclude, I would like to highlight one of the many reasons why we depend on the African continent and should pay more attention to it: critical minerals, essential for the global energy and digital transition, a topic discussed by Mar Hidalgo García for the IEEE. In this area, Africa not only attracts Europe's attention. We face competition from other powers, such as the United States, Russia, India, Japan, and Australia. China, for instance, has established a strong presence in Africa, achieved through a long-term strategy that remains consistent regardless of the current leadership and involves more than just words. I believe it would be worthwhile to reconsider the focus on migration that seems to dominate the EU’s African strategy and to look beyond it by establishing strategic partnerships and developing infrastructure to negotiate access to African mineral resources, for example. Countless authors and analysts dedicate time to reflecting on the geopolitical implications of the changes occurring in our neighboring countries and to searching for formulas and strategies that can help us strengthen and improve our relations. What perhaps isn't emphasized enough, besides the need to look towards our southern neighbors and care about what happens to them, is that understanding and cooperating with them is the only way to progress and ensure that Europe remains relevant in the world. An equitable partnership based on mutual respect and a shared future is imperative. For the good of all. Article written by José Segura Clavell, Director General of Casa África, and published in Kiosco Insular, eldiario.es, and Canarias 7 on June 28 and 29, 2024.

Defense & Security
Disputed Claims In The South China Sea.

Africa’s delicate diplomacy in the South China Sea dispute

by Samir Bhattacharya

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском The ongoing skirmishes in the South China Sea between China and regional states represent another severe threat to the world economy, directly affecting Africa. As China grows increasingly aggressive in its race for global hegemony and influence, and the United States (US) slowly plunges into the battle to prevent China’s rise, the world is watching the unfolding of this rivalry with unease. Although a few places have felt intense pressure from this alarming competition, the South China Sea (SCS) region is where a violent showdown looks increasingly probable. Unlike the war in Ukraine or Gaza, the US and China may start a direct war in the SCS. And amidst this multifaceted new Cold War 2.0, Africa remains cautious. The South China tinderbox On 23 April, another skirmish took place between China and the Philippines when two Filipino patrol boats approached the shallow turquoise waters of a disputed shoal around 194 km west of the Philippine Islands province of Palawan. The patrol boats were there for an underwater survey near the disputed shoal claimed by both China and the Philippines, thus prompting a Chinese response. A Chinese coast guard, via radio, instructed them to leave the area and threatened hostile measures. Following several radio exchanges, the Chinese coast guard damaged both the Philippine patrol boats by firing high-pressure water cannons at them. However, this was not the first time China’s assertion in this region has caused friction with other SCS neighbours, including Japan and South Korea. China has used an unconvincing U-shaped “nine-dash line” that crosses the exclusive economic zones, or EEZs, of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam to demonstrate its claim in the region. Despite their low intrinsic value, the region lies along a vital trade and supply corridor that supports over US$3 trillion in yearly shipborne commerce. Oil, gas, and fishing sources abound in the area. Beijing has declined to acknowledge a 2016 decision from the Permanent Court of Arbitration that ruled Beijing’s broad claims invalid based on historical grounds. China and the Philippines have already fought many times over the Second Thomas Shoal and the Bashi Channel. China has become increasingly aggressive in the region in the last few years, putting regional stability at high risk. So far, these skirmishes will likely remain regional without the risk of any full-scale war. However, there are risks of casualties or even the vessel capsizing. Making of Cold War 2.0 over the SCS Washington’s response to the upcoming crisis is still modest. US President Biden raised concerns about China’s actions in the SCS , including efforts to impede the Philippines from resupplying its forces on the fiercely disputed Second Thomas Shoal. The US has repeatedly warned China that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships or aircraft come under an armed attack. The US also conducted Balikatan drills (‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ in Tagalog) with the Philippines with more than 16,000 American and Philippines military personnel. Indeed, its resources are thinly stretched, and Beijing seems to be moving ahead. To deter China by stepping up regional defence diplomacy, Washington is exploring the possibility of a security alliance with Japan, Australia, and the Philippines, tentatively called SQUAD. This is in addition to two other existing groupings in the region, “Quad” and “AUKUS,” a defence pact among Australia, the United Kingdom and the US. While AUKUS is a defence pact, Quad is simply a dialogue platform. Africa’s tricky balancing act Even while the socioeconomic repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine war have not yet wholly subsided in Africa, the ongoing skirmishes in the SCS represent another severe threat to the world economy, directly affecting several African nations. Despite being geographically far, the conflict’s spillover effect would impact the continent’s food security in terms of both the availability and pricing of some food crops. In addition, the SCS region represents a crucial geographic sweet spot for Africa as a source of trade and investment, translating into growth and development for many African economies. The crisis can potentially fuel price rise, particularly for oil-importing countries. The prospect of a consequential price rise of essential commodities will have enormous ramifications for domestic stability in most African countries. Furthermore, many African economies heavily rely on trade, investment, and aid from South and Southeast Asia, the crisis will significantly hamper the development and growth of the continent. There are also strategic lessons for Africa to learn from the conflict. China’s principal interest in Africa consists of protecting its BRI investments and ensuring steady trade flow. Africa is also essential for China to fulfil its resource needs, maintaining industrial growth and energy security. Therefore, securing stability in countries where China has invested is in China’s interest, just like keeping a stable relationship with China is in the interest of those investment-starved countries. Further, since many investment projects in China are located in different African countries, these countries should be careful. China can become aggressively irredentist, even in Africa. Currently, China owns a naval base in Djibouti and a ballistic missile tracker Yuan Wang 5, off the coast of Durban. It has strong economic influence across the countries of Africa’s east coast thanks to its Belt Road Initiative (BRI). On the West Coast, China has many seaports financed or constructed by Chinese entities. If the national governments of these countries fail to pay, China would happily take control of these ports through lease as it did in Hambantota, Sri Lanka. In addition to Sri Lanka, other South Asian countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar also faced dire consequences due to the failure of their BRI debt payment, leading to economic crises, and sometimes even political crises. Therefore, caution would be expected from these African governments. Conclusion China’s increasingly aggressive posture over the SCS raises concerns about the stability of the region. As the current uneasy détente between the US and China bears remarkable similarities to the Cold War, questions are raised regarding the possibilities of a new Cold War 2.0. Questions are also raised concerning the possible reactions from different African countries vis-á-vis Chinese aggression in the region. Undoubtedly, any serious conflict between China and the Philippines would be dangerous. These frequent skirmishes may not lead to a direct war between the US and China. Yet, the risk of vessel capsizing and casualties is high. Any such event would ultimately spark a crisis in Africa. So far, Africa is cautious and continues to balance its great power relationships. Undoubtedly, it is increasingly concerned with the aggressive posture of the Chinese in the region. On the other hand, it needs China for economic purposes. Therefore, Africa will continue to walk the tightrope where it would want US involvement in de-escalating the situation without ruffling any feathers with China. The views expressed above belong to the author(s).

Defense & Security
Kanyarucinya

Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: Continuing Humanitarian Action in One of the World’s Most Forgotten Crises

by Francine Kongolo

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском For almost three decades, North Kivu has been plagued by armed conflict, causing repeated displacement of thousands of residents. Despite humanitarian efforts, the needs of displaced people and host communities far exceed available resources, with many affected by ongoing violence and limited media coverage. In North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri, three provinces in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), years of conflict and armed violence have led to a deep and complex humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people have been and are being displaced, often repeatedly. In places of refuge, camps for displaced people, and among host families, living conditions remain precarious. With growing insecurity and needs, it is increasingly difficult to provide a suitable humanitarian response. This is also due to the lack of funding dedicated to this crisis. According to the International Organization for Migration, the DRC reached almost 7 million displaced people in 2023–the highest number ever recorded in the country. Approximately 81 percent of these people live in the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri. Armed conflict remains the main cause of displacement. “The fighting was so fierce that we decided to leave our village of Shasha and seek refuge in Sake. Shortly after arriving, my son was injured by shrapnel from a bomb. He was hit in the head, leg and arm. Of course, we’re used to being displaced, but this time it’s awful, the violence is unheard of…” Esther (40, sits at her 11-year-old son’s bedside at the CBCA Ndosho hospital (supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC]) in Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province. The two parties have been fighting in the North Kivu region for almost two years. From October 2023 to the beginning of 2024, the violence intensified greatly, causing an increasing number of casualties and injuries among both weapon bearers and civilians. Between 1 October 2023 and 29 February 2024, 540 wounded people were treated by the ICRC at CBCA Ndosho in connection with this conflict. North Kivu: More than two decades of violence North Kivu has been beset by armed violence for almost 30 years. In recent years, the province has seen various armed conflicts that continue to affect communities. “In 1996, we fled to Uganda when the AFDL (Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire) entered the DRC. Then, in 2008, when the CNDP (National Congress for the Defence of the People) war broke out, we were forced to leave our village and flee to Goma. The recent fighting linked to the M23 crisis meant that my nine children and I had to move twice in just one month. Whenever there’s fighting, we move and whenever we move, everything stops,” says Jean, a displaced person living in Kabaya in Rutshuru territory. Thousands of households have been forced to flee their homes. Many have been displaced several times, forced to leave everything behind. Crammed into collective centres or camps for displaced people, and lacking latrines or waste-disposal systems due to a lack of resources and the continuous arrival of new displaced people, they are at risk of epidemics, including cholera. In remote and isolated areas, families and communities who were once displaced themselves host other displaced people unable to reach a town due to distance, weather conditions or dangers they are exposed to during their displacement. Also affected by years of violence, these families and communities are forced to share their meagre resources, at the risk of falling into extreme poverty themselves. The same situation can be observed further north in the province, in Beni territory, where thousands of people are caught between local armed groups, attacks attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) (an armed group affiliated to the Islamic State group) and joint military operations against the ADF by the Congolese and Ugandan armies. Access to water, food, shelter, essential household goods, and health care remain critical for displaced people and members of host families. People’s needs, which are constantly growing, are exceeding the response capacity of humanitarian organisations. “As a Pygmy, I grew up in the forest, eating fruit and hunted animals for free. Because of the violence, armed men came and chased us out of the forest, killing my whole family, my four children and my wife. Now I’m a refugee here in Oicha. I’m finding it hard adapting to life outside the forest,” Pierre, 38, says sadly. He lives in one of Beni territory’s camps for displaced people. In the DRC, the ICRC is working to provide emergency assistance to displaced people. From January to December 2023, more than 247,000 people received food assistance and over 103,000 others received household items. Emergency response projects also provided more than 500,000 people with access to drinking water. In addition, under the mandate conferred on it by the states party to the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC strives to prevent human suffering by promoting and strengthening international humanitarian law. Working closely with the DRC Red Cross, the ICRC is helping people who have lost contact with their families to find them. In 2023, the ICRC helped reunite 465 families in the DRC and neighbouring countries. The ICRC also maintains a bilateral and confidential dialogue with armies and non-state armed groups to promote respect for civilians and persons hors de combat, particularly to prevent situations such as sexual violence or the recruitment and use of minors. Out of the spotlight, Ituri sinks deeper Military operations involving the ADF group in the north of North Kivu Province are also spreading into the neighbouring province of Ituri. Tensions over land rights in Ituri have exacerbated divisions between communities and are seen by some as a cause of the violence. Some conflicts and community tensions have led to serious acts of violence, causing the displacement of around 1.7 million people in the province. Attacks recorded against villages, hospitals, schools and even camps for displaced people have not received media coverage and have been met with general indifference. “The war tore away my foot and with it my soul. I won’t be able to return to my home village in this condition. Right now, we’re living off our host families’ charity,” confides Antoine, 50, a displaced person living in Dala, Djugu territory. At least 68 civilians lost their lives in Ituri during violence attributed to armed groups between mid-January and mid-February 2024, as reported by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Precarious situation in South Kivu Since the clashes between the Congolese army and the M23 intensified in January 2024, thousands of people fleeing neighbouring North Kivu have settled in Kalehe territory, South Kivu, adding to the number of people in need in this province. Having also received less attention, the crisis in South Kivu has persisted for several years. The security situation remains marked by the presence of approximately 20 armed groups. Constant clashes among ethnic armed groups, and between these groups and the Congolese army, are causing population displacement. On 31 December 2023, the United Nations estimated that there were 1.5 million internally displaced people. As in North Kivu and Ituri, these population movements are causing the loss of livelihoods. Entire communities, mainly farmers, often find themselves far from their fields and without the seeds to resume their farming activities in their place of refuge. “Being displaced is frustrating. It’s heartbreaking to be living on humanitarian aid while our fields have become scrublands,” laments Judith, who moved to the Mikenge camp for displaced people with her husband, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. They were forced to abandon their village when armed group members burned it down. To help communities regain their livelihoods, the ICRC often distributes seeds to communities in need. In 2023, 261,552 people received support to help them resume their agricultural activities. More needs but less mobilisation Eastern DRC is said to contain around 100 armed groups. Against this backdrop of proliferating armed groups and subsequent military operations, the violence has, among other things, increased the vulnerability of civilian populations even further. The duration of the chronic crises in North and South Kivu, as well as in Ituri, has led to the “normalization” of their humanitarian consequences, and a low level of donor mobilisation. However, needs are constantly growing, as is insecurity. Of the 113.6 million total population of the DRC, the United Nations estimates that more than 25.4 million people will need aid in 2024.

Defense & Security
Juba, South Sudan, February 2017. People with yellow jerrycans waiting for water at a borehole site. Salesian camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Sudan and the "ghost war"

by Alessia De Luca

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском A year after the start of the civil war, the country is overshadowed by violence and mass famine, amidst the silence and indifference of the world. After a year of civil war, Sudan is turning into a failed state. Humanitarian organizations on the ground are sounding the alarm on the first anniversary of the onset of violence. 'In the past year, I have seen my country descend into violence, madness, and destruction,' – said Elsadig Elnour, director of Islamic Relief for Sudan – 'amid the indifference of the rest of the world.' According to Doctors Without Borders, the country is facing a dramatic humanitarian crisis, with over 8.4 million people, about 16% of the population, including 2 million children under 5 years old, forced to flee within the country or across the border, and it is on the brink of mass famine. The conflict, a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, a warlord known as Hemedti, has already caused more than 14,600 casualties, according to the United Nations. However, the humanitarian response has tragically remained inadequate: only 5% of the funds requested have been allocated, making an already critical situation desperate, where Sudanese authorities systematically block the delivery of aid in some areas, while the RSF loot health facilities and supplies. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has warned the international community of the likelihood of further escalation of violence 'as the parties to the conflict arm civilians' – he explained – ‘and more and more armed groups join the fighting'.    A wall of silence? Despite humanitarian alarms, Sudan remains almost entirely absent from the news and global debate, both focused on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine: so far, international donors have allocated almost a thousand times more aid to Kiev than to Khartoum. To break the 'wall of silence' and reverse this trend, France organized an international conference in Paris that raised two billion euros. But it was precisely from the French capital that the director of Save the Children, Dr. Arif Noor, highlighted the shortcomings of international commitment: 'In the first 100 days of 2024' – Noor said – 'the amount of money raised for the humanitarian crisis in Sudan was less than a fifth of the funds allocated in just two days to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral’. Noor has defined it as 'shocking to note that, after a fire in which no one died, donors have been so generous in funding the restoration of the Cathedral, while 14 million children are left to fend for themselves as war rages in the country, hunger and diseases increase, and schools have been closed for over a year.' Noor and other operators have urged world leaders to work directly with the warring parties to ensure respect for international law, in the context of a conflict characterized by widespread and documented violations against the civilian population, mutilations, and rapes, especially of young people. The wars within the war? On April 15, 2023, after fighting erupted in the capital Khartoum and violence quickly spread to western Darfur, some observers still hoped that the conflict could be contained. Optimists hoped that, as in previous wars in Sudan, the two parties would quickly reach a stalemate and reach a power-sharing agreement. A year later, we can say that the war has taken a completely different turn, fracturing into a myriad of local conflicts affecting various of the 18 provinces into which the country is divided, and intertwining in the country's complex ethnic mosaic, ultimately involving various militias and rebel groups, along with their foreign supporters. Currently, weapons and militias pour into Sudan from the borders with Chad, Libya, and the Central African Republic, and through the Red Sea. According to various sources, mercenaries from Russia and Ukraine now support one militia or another, while competition for access to land and underground resources fuels the violence. And since neither of the warring parties can deliver the decisive blow, both the SAF and the RSF have begun to 'lose pieces,' creating rebel subgroups that in turn operate according to different agendas and interests. In this scenario, no one currently seems capable of restoring control over the entire Sudanese territory. 'We are plunging towards a failed state', observes Tom Perriello, American special envoy for Sudan, while after a year of war, the country witnesses the massive militarization of local communities, a dynamic that is unlikely to be reversed in the short term. The risk of famine? The country engulfed in violence also faces the risk of famine: according to the latest report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), acute malnutrition will affect most of the country by June, killing half a million people. In the 'extreme' scenario predicted by the Clingendael Institute, up to a million people could die. Due to the war, much of Sudan, especially Darfur, did not yield crops in 2023. Grain production has plummeted while the price of basic food items has increased by up to 88%. These forecasts are expected to worsen as the fighting has now reached the country's 'granary,' the State of Gezira, and although the UN has yet to officially declare famine, few doubt that it is already underway in some parts of Sudan. Further complicating the situation is the fact that, except for a few dozen trucks transported with great difficulty, humanitarian aid does not reach conflict zones. International organizations have reported multiple obstacles, as well as the armed groups' desire to control everything entering and leaving areas under their control by improperly appropriating supplies to resell them on the black market. Currently, hopes that something will intervene to save the country from the abyss it is sinking into are minimal and are directed towards Cairo, where ceasefire talks are ongoing. A separate negotiation, supported by the United States, is expected to resume soon in Saudi Arabia, but a date has not yet been announced. The comment by Lucia Ragazzi, ISPI Africa Program "After the initial weeks since its dramatic beginning in April 2023, the war in Sudan suffered from low priority in the international agenda. However, its consequences continued to manifest in the country and neighboring countries with dramatic intensity. On the one-year anniversary of the war's start, the international conference in Paris has rekindled attention on this serious conflict, taking a step forward to address the severe funding shortfall needed to address the crisis. Increased aid is crucial for a conflict that has already generated the most severe refugee and displacement crisis in the world, risking also becoming the largest food emergency. But, as highlighted by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, 'beyond global support for aid, there is a need for concerted and global push for a ceasefire, followed by a peace process.'"

Defense & Security
Fighters standing over a destroyed tank

The expansion of jihadism from the Sahel to the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea (reprint)

by Óscar Garrido Guijarro

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском This analysis is part of the Geopolitical Conflict Overview 2023. Abstract The security crisis in Sahel is spreading to the northern regions of the Gulf of Guinea coastal countries: Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ghana. Until recently, counterterrorism experts were wary of the jihadists' ability to expand along the West African coastline because these states, unlike their Sahelian neighbors, are more politically stable and have greater control over their borders. However, while the coastal countries are not as fragile as those in the Sahel, they have structural vulnerabilities, perpetuated by a north-south division in terms of development and economic opportunities. There is a religious factor also: unlike the Sahel, the Gulf of Guinea countries have a large Christian population and elites that sometimes have tended to marginalize Muslims. Thus, jihadist groups are being effective in exploiting this resentment against the state among the communities of the northern border regions of these countries, and they are succeeding in recruiting young Muslims with socio-ethnic links to the Sahel. Introduction The security crisis affecting the central Sahel is spreading to the northern regions of the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea: Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Ghana. Thus, violent incidents and terrorist attacks are crossing the porous borders from Burkina Faso into the coastal states. Between January 2021 and July 2023, 459 incidents — 171 social disturbances and 288 episodes of violence — have been recorded in the northern regions of Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Ivory Coast (Reliefweb, 2023).    Source: https://reliefweb.int/report/benin/outil-de-veille-multirisques-pour-les-pays-cotiers-dafrique-de-louest-benin-cotedivoire-ghana-togo-granit-au-30-septembre-2023 The network of protected forest areas in the region facilitates jihadist expansion. Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Benin host approximately 588 forest reserves covering around 142,000 km2. 188 of these reserves, including four of the five largest ones, are located within ten kilometers of an international border. In Ivory Coast alone, there are 249 reserves. None of them are separated by more than twenty-six kilometers from a border, and over a quarter of them border another reserve. These protected areas are crucial for preserving the remaining wildlife in the region but are at the center of an unprecedented security problem. As hideouts and routes for acting unnoticed, the reserves are a resource that favors the expansion plans of terrorist groups (Brottem, 2022a). The jihadist[1] group linked to both the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and the regional franchise of Al Qaeda, Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), has been operating with impunity in these forest reserves for years. This movement was first observed along the transhumance corridors extending from southern Algeria to these forests on the borders of the coastal states shortly after France began its anti-terrorism operations in Mali in 2013. The local jihadists, familiar with these corridors, moved south in search of safe resting spaces in the forests during the French operations in the Sahel. These forest reserves hinder aerial surveillance, provide access to food and fuel supplies, and facilitate discreet recruitment of young people to join the jihadist cause among marginalized communities (Bernard, 2021). So, groups like JNIM and ISGS have demonstrated their effectiveness in transforming a range of armed actors — bandits, rebels, militants, smugglers, local militias, and poachers — into allied and auxiliary groups, establishing a unity of purpose to undermine state control and facilitate illicit activities (Nsaibia, 2020). The maritime outlets of these four countries and their strategic position favor the establishment of organized crime in their territories, operating in their ports and coasts as logistical and distribution centers. Thus, the Gulf of Guinea and specifically Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria constitute entry and transit points in the routes of arms trafficking and cocaine and other narcotics. Other significant criminal activities include tobacco smuggling, motorcycles, and motor vehicle trafficking. This illicit trafficking directly fosters terrorist activity since, apart from the link between terrorist groups and criminal networks for the acquisition of weapons, a relationship can be established between the illegal flow of certain products and the ‘modus operandi’ of jihadist organizations. The illicit trafficking of fertilizers is an example, as they are introduced as contraband products from Ghana to Burkina Faso and used for the creation of improvised explosive devices (Collado, 2021). Thus, in the northern regions of the coastal countries, there has been a growing presence of jihadist groups that, before committing attacks, undergo a process of local approach and establishment. The arrival of this type of violence in the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea is a source of particular concern for the governments of these four countries, as well as for the international community, which fears that the destabilization in the region may lead to new humanitarian crises or exacerbate pre-existing problems. Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Ghana are economically stronger than their northern Sahel neighbors, but they also have weaknesses: factors such as the lack of economic and educational opportunities among youth, ethnic disputes, differences in living conditions between northern and southern populations, or conflicts over land ownership facilitate the potential establishment of terrorist groups (Summers, 2022). Until recently, counterterrorism experts were skeptical of the jihadists' ability to expand along the West African coast because these states, unlike their Sahelian neighbors, are more politically stable and have greater control over their borders. According to this logic, stronger security forces and government structures made jihadism unwelcome. However, while coastal countries are not as fragile as those in the Sahel, they have structural vulnerabilities perpetuated by a north-south division in terms of development and economic opportunities. Underdevelopment prevails in the north due to the distance from economically booming cities near the ports. The north-south gap is exacerbated by poor infrastructure and lack of roads. Northern populations are often deprived of resources — such as access to employment and education — which are available in the more industrialized southern regions (Bernard, 2021). In addition to these socioeconomic and intercommunity differences, a religious factor comes into play: unlike the Sahel, countries in the Gulf of Guinea have a significant Christian population and elites that sometimes tend to marginalize Muslims (Guiffard, 2023). Benin The activity of jihadist groups in Benin has significantly increased since 2019. The most affected areas are in the northern regions, where the population shares many geographic and ethnic similarities with the neighboring states. In recent years, several jihadist groups have taken advantage of Benin's forests to seek refuge and escape the pressure of regional counterterrorism efforts. A key area is the complex formed by the W-Arly-Pendjari National Parks (WAP), a UNESCO World Heritage site region divided between Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger. The national parks have often allowed these non-state armed groups to operate undetected, turning the region into a launching pad for their expansion into the West African savanna.    Source: United Nations Environment Programme Until recently, jihadist groups had used the area of the W National Park in Benin mainly as a rear base for operations in Burkina Faso and Niger. However, between 2019 and 2023, attacks by terrorist groups were repeated, most of the time against state security forces. The main jihadist groups operating in northern Benin are JNIM, its Burkinabe allied group Ansaroul Islam, as well as ISGS (Cristiani, 2023). The presence of these armed groups in the W National Park is disrupting conservation efforts and local livelihoods, fueling conflicts between farmers and nomadic herders over land and water. These jihadist groups are being effective in recruiting young Muslim herders from Benin, mostly Fulani, with socio-ethnic ties to the Sahel (Brottem, 2022b). This is a peripheral region where its inhabitants have been routinely overlooked by central governments and they lack social services, making these populations particularly vulnerable to infiltration and recruitment by Islamist groups. Over the past three years, there has been a growing influx of radical Islamic preachers facilitating the integration of jihadists into local communities through their preaching and infiltration into local Islamic schools (Lepidi, 2023). The next step is to impose the Sharia law, especially on women, and in some cases, they have already forced underage girls into marriage. Additionally, jihadists are engaging in smuggling activities of various goods such as gold, weapons, or money, and they trade with herds (International Crisis Group, 2023a). As has occurred in neighboring countries, jihadist groups exploit resentment against the state among communities in the border regions of northern Benin, where there is widespread discontent with central authorities. Authorities and official institutions in Benin are often seen as incapable of providing solutions to local problems and are criticized as opaque, discriminatory, and corrupt (Lepidi, 2023). For jihadists, Benin's geographical position is crucial. Its location as an intermediate stop for travelers moving from Mali or Burkina Faso to Nigeria makes it an important stronghold for facilitating the expansion of terrorist groups between Nigeria and the Sahel. Additionally, the fact that Hausa is the common language in northern Nigeria and is widely used in some areas of northern Benin contributes to facilitating cross-border operations of Nigerian bandits and jihadists (Zenn, 2023). The jihadists in northern Benin are taking control during the night. They move in motorcycle caravans with only one headlight on and descend upon villages to attack or engage in illicit activities. Locals note that these unpredictable nocturnal movements allow members of these groups to be intermittently present in many areas, making it difficult for state security forces to respond. The vast dimensions of the national parks on the border between Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger make monitoring them and providing security in adjacent communities a challenging task. The jihadists operating in this area have displaced civilian authorities and eliminated security agents through threats and attacks. This vacuum leaves local communities even more exposed to kidnappings and extortions (Brottem, 2022a). Government authorities in Benin assure they are taking terrorist threats seriously and claim to have detained seven hundred suspects, most of them from Benin, Nigeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The first alarm signal, confirming Benin was in the jihadists' sights, occurred in May 2019 when two French tourists were kidnapped near Pendjari National Park, in Benin territory, by a jihadist group from Burkina Faso. The two were released after the French army intervened, but their Beninese guide was killed (Vidjingninou, 2022). Less than two years later, in February 2021, JNIM carried out its first attack also in the northern part of the country. Among other actions, in September 2022, the jihadists killed two customs officers and kidnapped three government-affiliated individuals, signaling an alarming resurgence of jihadist violence in northern Benin. Meanwhile, in June 2022, JNIM carried out an attack in neighboring Togo, highlighting that the expansion of jihadism towards the West African coast had gained momentum (Zenn, 2023). Togo On April 7, 2023, the Togolese National Assembly voted to extend the state of emergency in the Savanes region, in the north of the country, by twelve months. The measure was first approved in June 2022 and has been extended since then. The state of emergency reflects the Togolese government's concern about the growing threat of non-state armed groups along the Togo-Burkina Faso border (Agence France Presse, 2023). This extension followed the jihadist attack in February 2023 that claimed the lives of thirty-one civilians in the town of Kpendjal, in the Savanes region (Crisis24, 2023). It is the deadliest attack by terrorist groups in the country's history. Although the attack remains unclaimed, reports by local media suggest that JNIM militants are behind it. Togo recorded its first attack in early November 2021 when jihadists from Burkina Faso clashed with Togolese military forces at a security post in Sanloaga, in the Savanes region (Zenn, 20212). In May 2022, another attack resulted in the deaths of eight soldiers in Kpendjal, on the border with Burkina Faso (Reuters, 2022). Most of the militants' activity in Togo has targeted security forces at rural outposts, although civilians in villages in the region have also been subject to attacks. The northern region of Savanes, with a population of 860,000 inhabitants in an area of 8,600 km2, harbors significant economic, social, and political issues that have facilitated the penetration of jihadist groups from the Sahel: massive unemployment, lack of infrastructure, distance from the central power, a sense of marginalization of rural and northern populations compared to urban elites in the south, and stigmatization and underrepresentation of minority Fulani nomadic communities in local governments. Additionally, it should be noted that the smuggling of light weapons and drugs has become an outlet to alleviate unemployment among the population in the border region with Burkina Faso. In fact, control of the underground economy in this area has become one of the driving forces behind the expansion of jihadist groups into northern Togo (Merz, 2022). Ivory Coast In June 2020, on the border with Burkina Faso, JNIM terrorists carried out the first jihadist attack to hit Ivory Coast since the 2016 shootings at the Grand-Bassam tourist resort by Al Qaeda in the Maghreb. Although the 2020 attack was a rare occurrence in Ivory Coast, it was not surprising, as jihadist militants operating between Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast had been able to grow and develop their capabilities largely due to the limited coordination, up to that point, between the two governments. JNIM militants established their presence in the border region between Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Mali in 2015. Even though organized political violence was sporadic and the network was presumably dismantled by security forces, remnants of these groups maintained their presence in the area (Nsaibia, 2020). In May 2020, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso decided to join forces to confront the common threat and launched a large-scale joint operation on both sides of the border against JNIM fighters, dubbed as Operation Comoé. The result of the operation was the dismantling of a base of jihadist militants near the village of Alidougou, the death of eight fighters, and the arrest of twenty-four suspects in Burkina Faso and fourteen in Ivory Coast. Weapons, ammunition, USB drives, and mobile phones were also seized in the operation (Jeune Afrique, 2020) A short time after the end of Operation Comoé, on June 11, 2020, JNIM fighters attacked a military post in the border village of Kafolo, killing fourteen Ivorian soldiers. This event demonstrated that, even after a large-scale joint operation, the jihadists were able to regroup and launch, in a matter of days, a devastating attack with a significant number of casualties, in a process much faster compared to the lengthy coordination process between Ivorian and Burkinabe authorities (Nsaibia, 2020). The attack served as a wake-up call for the Ivorian government, which retaliated with airstrikes and soon announced that it had located and arrested the alleged mastermind behind the Kafolo attack. In response to the attack and the persistent insecurity along the northern borders of the country, the government also authorized the creation of an operational military zone in the north to enhance border surveillance and prevent the infiltration of jihadist militants. Ivorian authorities have also established a community police force that works in collaboration with local citizens to relay information to security forces and have undertaken awareness campaigns in the northern regions (Le Figaro, 2020). However, in response to the terrorism problem, Ivory Coast has combined military action with a socio-economic approach by investing in programs aimed at providing social welfare and livelihood opportunities, especially to youth and women living in villages directly threatened by jihadism. Additionally, the government is aware that the country is the largest economy in the Francophone West Africa and maintains close ties with the former colonial power. Thus, Ivory Coast is a showcase of the West, and for jihadists, destabilizing the country would have significant propagandistic value (International Crisis Group, 2023b). Ghana Although in Ghana the jihadist threat may not be as perceptible as among its coastal neighbors, the penetration of jihadists from Burkina Faso into the northern provinces is also a concern. Thus, in the northern part of the country, favorable conditions for recruitment exist: a significant Muslim population and economic difficulties within the community. Ghana is exposed to jihadist activity within its territory due to its proximity to the Cascades region in Burkina Faso and northern region of Ivory Coast. In fact, the growing presence of jihadist fighting groups in the Cascades region, as well as the intensification of a strategy of attacks against neighboring Ivory Coast, make northern Ghana an ideal cross-border region for retreat and control for armed groups, especially because these areas offer access to highly attractive illegal activities such as clandestine gold mining or cattle theft (Merz, 2022). The fact that jihadist activity in Ghana is apparently lower could be related to several factors. The first is that it is the only Anglophone country in the region, which may be hindering (though not preventing) cross-border recruitment by the Francophone jihadists of JNIM (Moody, 2022). Another factor is that the government has taken the threat very seriously and has made significant efforts to improve security. Thus, military presence has been significantly strengthened in the north, where the army strives to involve the local population and encourage citizens to report suspicious incidents near their homes. This was demonstrated especially with the campaign 'If you see something, say something,' which encouraged the local population to call an anti-terrorism hotline if they saw anything suspicious (Africa Defense Forum, 2022a). Despite the anti-terrorism prevention measures, there is evidence that jihadist groups are established in the northern part of the country. Thus, after the military operation Otapuanu in southeastern Burkina Faso in March 2019, in which Burkinabe military forces attempted to dismantle JNIM and ISGS groups, authorities in that country reported that extremist elements had been discovered in northern Ghana. There is also evidence that in the Sahel, there is a considerable number of Ghanaian jihadist fighters. It is estimated that up to two hundred Ghanaian youths have left the country to join jihadist groups in Burkina Faso or Mali and that, in the future, they may return to their home villages to engage in religious proselytism activities. Additionally, everything indicates that JNIM uses Ghana as a resource stockpile area, particularly motorcycles, which suggests that jihadists are likely already familiar with the terrain of the country (Moody, 2022). In November 2019, military forces from Ghana and Togo detained one hundred and seventy suspected jihadist militants on Ghanaian territory near the border between both countries. This was part of a joint security operation, called Koudanlgou III, which objective was to thwart terrorist plans and other criminal activities that the detainees were allegedly involved in (Ghana Web, 2019). In October 2022, Ghanaian security forces detained an Islamic cleric and twelve of his followers for alleged terrorist activities in the town of Nangun, in the Karaga district. Apparently, the individuals had ties to a jihadist group in Burkina Faso (Geopolitical Report, 2022). In April 2023, one thousand special forces troops from the Ghanaian army were deployed to Bawku in the Upper East region after three immigration officials were shot, one of whom was killed (My Info Gh, 2023). Response to the terrorist threat Following the kidnapping of two French citizens and their guide in Benin in May 2019, the country's authorities questioned whether they had done everything in their power to confront the terrorist threat. Despite warnings, the Beninese government had not strengthened security in the border area. Regarding Pendjari National Park, it was only monitored by forest guards from African Parks, a South African NGO. State security forces were not present, even though this forest reserve borders the Arly Forest and the Pama department in Burkina Faso, known to be hotspots for criminal groups and jihadists (Barry, 2019). In response to the increasing threat, the coastal states of West Africa have been adopting a military approach in the fight against terrorism by enhancing cross-border security. Thus, over the past two years, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Benin have expanded troop deployments in their northern regions. These coastal states have relatively small armies ranging from ten thousand to sixteen thousand personnel and are generally not sufficiently trained and equipped. The governments of these countries have shown particular interest in acquiring drones for border surveillance and conducting targeted attacks. Additionally, they are seeking to strengthen regional bilateral relations to carry out joint operations and share information (Stratfor, 2022). In the realm of international organizations in West Africa, multilateral institutions and initiatives face two problems: insufficient funding and disputes and rivalries among their members, which limit effective cooperation and coordination in the fight against terrorism. The main initiatives comprising the regional security architecture are the G5 Sahel Joint Force (which is expected to disappear following the new security pact signed in September 2023 by Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, consolidating the shift towards Russia and the expulsion of France) (Al Jazeera, 2023); the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Standby Force; the Multinational Joint Task Force combating Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) and Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin; and the Accra Initiative, a multilateral security cooperation mechanism established by Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Togo in 2017, which also includes Mali and Niger as observer members. Five years after its creation, the Accra Initiative has agreed to assemble a multinational military force to help curb the spread of jihadism. This operational force will consist of ten thousand soldiers, the majority of whom will be stationed in Tamale (Ghana), with an intelligence component in the Burkinabe capital, Ouagadougou. Despite the recent withdrawal of European forces from the Sahel, the Accra Initiative has received €135 million from the European Union. It is estimated that the joint multinational force requires $550 million to operate effectively, and member states hope that, in addition to the European Union, funding can be provided by the African Union, ECOWAS, and Britain. Nigeria has agreed to join this initiative as an observer and provide air and logistical support (Africa Defense Forum, 2022b). Additionally, according to a German newspaper published last August, EU foreign ministers have already reached an agreement to launch a civilian-military mission in the coming months in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Benin. The number of police officers and soldiers to be deployed in the Gulf of Guinea has not yet been defined, as the mission is pending official approval by the community institutions. According to the source cited by the German newspaper, there is concern among European countries that jihadist groups will expand their activities in the region and destabilize the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea. The governments of Benin and Ghana have already issued the necessary invitation for the European mission to establish itself in their territory (Schiltz, 2023). Future perspectives of the conflict The political instability and coups d'état in the Sahel countries, which have led to the withdrawal of French military presence from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, offer new opportunities for jihadist groups to expand their positions, spread across the territory, and thereby increase their ability to threaten the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea. On the other hand, the trajectory of the Wagner Group mercenaries’ presence in the Sahel is uncertain following Prigozhin's death, but in any case, Russian paramilitaries do not appear to be the solution to the region's security crisis. The political fragility of the coup governments in the Sahel and regional insecurity will mutually reinforce each other, and it is to be expected that the jihadist threat to Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Ghana will continue to grow. However, several factors could hinder the progression of jihadist groups further south, starting with the need to forge local alliances. Jihadist groups are numerically small, which makes it difficult for them to hold territory. One of their main strengths lies in the alliances they can establish locally, through persuasion or threat, with local leaders and marginalized communities. However, as jihadist groups move southward, they will find it difficult to establish lasting bases and gain support from inhabitants of predominantly Christian regions. Additionally, they will lose much of their ability to move undetected among the local population. Nevertheless, the recent wave of coups d'état in the Sahel has demonstrated that it is not necessary for jihadists to spread throughout the entire territory of a country to create a crisis that leads to a failed state and chaos (Walther, 2023). From what is highlighted in this chapter, it is evident that preventing the terrorist threat depends on military decisions and actions, but also on better political and social integration of the populations living in the peripheral regions of the north. Although there may not be a deliberate policy of discrimination, the sense of marginalization seems to be one of the reasons why young people from these regions decide to collaborate with or join the cause of jihadist groups. The counterterrorism response should involve strengthening the social and investment presence of the state in the northern regions of these countries with the aim of improving access to basic services or employment opportunities, and also by enhancing dialogue between security forces and the population. In this conflict, nothing is yet decided, and it will be crucial, to prevent jihadist expansion in the region, for the cooperation of West African countries in regional organizations such as the Accra Initiative and ECOWAS. Likewise, military collaboration with the European Union will be of great assistance, as many of its countries are currently concerned (and would be affected tomorrow) by the expansion of the jihadist threat in the Gulf of Guinea. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Jihadism is a type of ideology characterized by the frequent use of terrorism with the aim of restoring the original greatness of Islam both spiritually and politically. This restoration involves the re-Islamization of Muslim societies from the strictest orthodoxy and the aspiration to create political structures that uphold and promote the realization of these principles. The scope of action may be solely regional, but all lines coincide in the desire to achieve the unity of all Muslims, and the willingness to spread Islam throughout the world. (https://www.wikiwand.com/es/Yihadismo).  References · Africa Defense Forum (2022a). Dans sa lutte contre l’extrémisme, le Ghana exhorte ses citoyens à dire quelque chose s’ils voient quelque chose. Africa Defense Forum. Disponible en: https://adf-magazine.com/fr/2022/06/dans-salutte-contre-lextremisme-le-ghana-exhorte-ses-citoyens-a-dire-quelque-chosesils-voient-quelque-chose/ (2022b). Accra Initiative Takes Aim at Extremism’s Spread. Africa Defense Forum. Disponible en: https://adf-magazine.com/2022/12/accra-initiative-takes-aim-atextremisms-spread/ · Agence France Presse (2023). Togo Extends Northern 'State of Emergency. Agence France-Presse. Disponible en: https://www.voaafrica.com/a/togoextends-northern-state-of-emergency-/7040918.html · Al Jazeera (2023). Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso establish Sahel security Alliance. Al Jazeera. Disponible en: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/16/mali-nigerand-burkina-faso-establish-sahel-security-alliance · Barry, Diawo (2019). Menace jihadiste: Bénin, Togo et Ghana à l’heure de la mobilisation générale. Jeune Afrique. Disponible en: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/776657/politique/menace-jihadiste-benintogo-et-ghana-a-lheure-de-la-mobilisation-generale/ · Bernard, Aneliese (2021). Jihadism is spreading to the gulf of guinea littoral states, and a new approach to countering it is needed. Modern War Institute. Disponible en: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/jihadism-is-spreading-to-the-gulf-of-guinea-littoralstates-and-a-new-approach-to-countering-it-is-needed/ · Brottem, Leif (2022a). Jihad Takes Root in Northern Benin. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Disponible en: https://acleddata.com/2022/09/23/jihad-takes-root-in-northern-benin/ (2022b). The Growing Threat of Violent Extremism in Coastal West Africa. Africa Center. Disponible en: https://africacenter.org/spotlight/the-growing-threat-ofviolent-extremism-in-coastal-west-africa/ · Collado, Carolina (2021). Evaluación de la amenaza yihadista y sus posibilidades de expansión en el golfo de Guinea. Revista Internacional de Estudios sobre Terrorismo. Disponible en: https://observatorioterrorismo.com/eedyckaz/2021/08/5-Evaluacion-de-laamenaza-yihadista-y-sus-posibilidades-de-expansio%CC%81n-en-el-Golfo-deGuinea-Carolina-Collado.pdf · Crisis 24 (2023). Togo: Attack in Kpendjal Prefecture, Savanes Region, Feb. 10. Crisis 24. Disponible en: https://crisis24.garda.com/alerts/2023/02/togo-attack-inkpendjal-prefecture-savanes-region-feb-10 · Cristiani, Dario (2022). Jihadist Violence Grows in Benin. The Jamestown Foundation. Disponible en: https://jamestown.org/program/jihadist-violencegrows-in-benin/ · Geopolitical Report (2022). Islamic cleric, 12 others arrested on suspected terrorism charges. Geopolitical Report. Disponible en: https://www.geopolitical.report/islamic-cleric-12-others-arrested-on-suspectedterrorism-charges/ · Ghana Web (2019). 170 persons arrested at Ghana-Togo border over suspected terrorism, illegal mining activities. Ghana Web. Disponible en: https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/170-personsarrested-at-Ghana-Togo-border-over-suspected-terrorism-illegal-miningactivities-800980 · Guiffard, Jonathan (2023). Gulf of Guinea: Can the Sahel Trap Be Avoided? Institut Montaigne. Disponible en: https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/gulfguinea-can-sahel-trap-be-avoided · International Crisis Group (2023a). Containing Militancy in West Africa’s Park W. Crisis Group Africa Report, 310. Disponible en: https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/sahel/burkina-faso-niger-benin/310-containingmilitancy-west-africas-park-w (2023b). Keeping Jihadists Out of Northern Côte d’Ivoire. Crisis Group Briefing, 192. Disponible en: https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/cotedivoire/b192-keeping-jihadists-out-northern-cote-divoire · Jeune Afrique (2020). Opération antijihadiste conjointe Côte d’Ivoire-Burkina: Abidjan salue d’excellents résultats. Jeune Afrique. Disponible en: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/987353/politique/operation-antijihadiste-conjointecote-divoire-burkina-abidjan-salue-d-excellents-resultats/ · Le Figaro (2020). Attaque djihadiste: la Côte d'Ivoire crée une zone opérationnelle militaire dans le Nord. Le Figaro. Disponible en: https://www.lefigaro.fr/flashactu/atttaque-jihadiste-la-cote-d-ivoire-cree-une-zone-operationnelle-militairedans-le-nord-20200713 · Lepidi, Pierre (2023). Au Bénin, la lutte antidjihadiste fait craindre une stigmatisation accrue des Peuls. Le monde. Disponible en: https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2023/01/27/au-benin-la-lutte-antidjihadistefait-craindre-une-stigmatisation-accrue-des-peuls_6159588_3212.html · Merz, Rafael (2022). The jihadist threat in northern Ghana and Togo. KonradAdenauer-Stiftung. Disponible en: https://www.kas.de/en/web/westafrika/laenderberichte/detail/-/content/thejihadist-threat-in-northern-ghana-and-togo-2 · Moody, Jessica (2022). Jihadist Attack on Togo Highlights Threats to Neighboring Ghana. The Jamestown Foundation. Disponible en: https://jamestown.org/program/jihadist-attack-on-togo-highlights-threats-toneighboring-ghana/ · My info Gh (2023). Government deploys 1,000 Special Forces to Bawku following deadly attack on immigration officers. My Info Gh. Disponible en: https://myinfo.com.gh/2023/04/government-deploys-1000-special-forces-tobawku-following-deadly-attack-on-immigration-officers/ · Nsaibia, Héni (2020). In Light of the Kafolo Attack: The Jihadi Militant Threat in the Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Disponible en: https://acleddata.com/2020/08/24/in-light-of-the-kafolo-attack-thejihadi-militant-threat-in-the-burkina-faso-and-ivory-coast-borderlands/ · Reliefweb (2023). Outil de veille multirisques pour les pays côtiers d’Afrique de l’Ouest. Reliefweb. Disponible en: https://reliefweb.int/report/benin/outil-de-veillemultirisques-pour-les-pays-cotiers-dafrique-de-louest-benin-cote-divoire-ghanatogo-granit-au-31-juillet-2023 · Reuters (2022). Eight soldiers killed in Togo, raising spectre of first deadly Islamist attack. Reuters. Disponible en: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/eightsoldiers-killed-attack-north-togo-government-says-state-tv-2022-05-11/ · Schiltz, Christoph (2023). EU plant zivil-militärische Mission in Westafrika. Welt. Disponible en: https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article247127834/Golf-vonGuinea-EU-plant-zivil-militaerische-Mission-in-Westafrika.html · Stratfor (2022). How Coastal West Africa Is Responding to an Expanding Jihadist Threat. Stratfor Worldview. Disponible en: https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/how-coastal-west-africa-respondingexpanding-jihadist-threat · Summers, Marta (2022). Actividad yihadista en el Magreb y en el Sahel occidental. Anuario del Terrorismo Yihadista 2022. Disponible en: https://observatorioterrorismo.com/eedyckaz/2023/07/ESPANOL-ANUARIO2022_final.pdf · Vidjingninou, Fiacre (2022). Bénin: l’étau terroriste se resserre au Nord. Jeune Afrique. Disponible en: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/1292906/politique/beninletau-terroriste-se-resserre-au-nord/ · Walther, Olivier (2023). Sahelian jihadists go? Mapping Territorial Transformations in Africa. Disponible en: https://mapping-africa-transformations.org/how-far-southwill-the-sahelian-jihadists-go/#MAPTA · Zenn, Jacob (2021). Togo Suffers First Al-Qaeda Affiliated Jihadist Attack». The Jamestown Foundation. Disponible en: https://jamestown.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021/11/TM-pdf-Draft-1.pdf (2023). Benin Becomes Bulwark Against Terrorism in West Africa. The Jamestown Foundation. Disponible en: https://jamestown.org/program/brief-benin-becomesbulwark-against-terrorism-in-west-africa/ Appendix  Table: Demographic, Economic, and Social Indicators. Source: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/

Defense & Security
MOROCCO v. ALGERIA Confrontation, religious conflicts

Conflict between Algeria and Morocco

by Carlos Echeverría Jesús

한국어로 읽기 Leer en español In Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربية Lire en français Читать на русском The growing tension between Algeria and Morocco must be analyzed considering the backdrop of the geopolitical competition among major powers characterizing the current world, wherein Morocco, above all, strives to position its conflict with its neighbor. However, this should not overlook the local and regional dynamics that have characterized it since ancient times. The origin and evolution of the strategic tension between both Maghreb states. Since Algeria achieved independence in 1962 – Morocco's independence dates back to 1956 and was much less dramatic than Algeria's – Rabat has been applying the concept of "territorial deficit" also in relation to this Arab, African, and Muslim neighbor. Defining the concept of "territorial deficit" immediately shows that Morocco is an uncomfortable neighbor for a number of states. It was so before Algeria for Mauritania, as it took ten years to recognize it as an independent state, not doing so until 1970. And before that, it was in relation to Spain, as in 1958, that is, two years after its independence, it managed to reclaim Tarfaya. And in 1969, it would achieve the return of Sidi Ifni. Even in relation to Mali, independent since 1960, Morocco immediately began to argue about the supposed rights acquired by Moroccan power, that is, by the reigning dynasty, based on old caravan routes and the political, religious, and commercial ties that for centuries allowed weaving contacts that Morocco would like to see reflected in terms of sovereignty over territories that have never been theirs. But Algeria is the state with which Morocco has been developing a more intense and assertive policy, which has already led both states to two armed conflicts: in 1963, in the Sand War, and in 1976, against the backdrop of the war between Moroccans and Mauritians, on one side, and with the Sahrawis, on the other, which had erupted that same year after the evacuation of Spanish forces. The strategic tension between the two Maghreb states is based both on Morocco's questioning of its neighbor's borders and on the evolution in the positioning of each on the regional and global stage. Morocco’s questioning of inherited borders Although both states signed a Border Treaty on June 15th, 1972, in Rabat, which was ratified by Algeria on May 17th, 1973, and by Morocco on June 22nd, 1992, two decades later; the Moroccans not only dragged their feet to ratify it but also, once authorized by Parliament, Morocco did not take the final step of depositing the ratification instruments with the UN. Therefore, we can affirm that the Treaty is not in force, and also that Morocco did accept the inherited border at that time, and it is important not to forget this. Morocco’s questioning of the possibility of an independent Western Sahara Morocco severed diplomatic relations with Algeria in 1976 and would not restore them until 1988. During that distant period, Algeria was the champion of national liberation movements and initially supported the emergence of the Polisario Front in 1973, a movement committed to accelerating the self-determination and independence of the still Spanish Sahara. It must be said that Spain was already preparing to leave the territory at that time – with the development of a rigorous census in 1974 in preparation for the self-determination referendum under the direction of Colonel Rodríguez de Viguri, Spanish diplomatic dynamics at the UN led by Ambassador Jaime de Piniés, etc. – but everything would accelerate with the regrettable launch of the Green March in the fall of 1975, which forced our country to evacuate the territory in February 1976 parallel to the invasion of our former province by Moroccan and Mauritanian troops. Already in 1975, Morocco was demonstrating its skills in relation to hybrid strategies that it has continued to apply to this day. The war would last until 1988, and throughout that time, we find a diplomatic maneuver that once again brings Morocco into relation with the 1972 Border Treaty: King Hassan II suggested at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Nairobi in 1981 that he accepted the formula of a referendum to define the final status of the territory, then he retracted, leading to the situation we are in 43 years later, with an expansionist Morocco that uses all sorts of tricks under the leadership of his son, Mohammed VI, to annex the territory. Competition between the two regional powers and their African scenarios If it was Morocco who broke diplomatic relations with Algeria in 1976, it has been recently Algeria, in August 2021, who broke them with Morocco. Both countries have had their land border, the one that Morocco now questions with renewed zeal, closed since 1994, indicating thereby that the foundation of the relationship is structurally flawed, hence the concern that burdens us. The three most important tension scenarios between Algeria and Morocco on African soil today are as follows: the management of the future of Libya, the growing Moroccan influence in the Sahel, and the open competition for the construction of respective gas pipelines connected to Nigeria. All this against the backdrop of a relentless Moroccan offensive within the African Union (AU), the successor of the OAU that Morocco left in 1984 – as a protest against the admission of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) – and to which Mohammed VI decided to return in 2017 to weaken Algeria's strong position within it from within. In the diplomatic management of the evolution of Libya – aiming to pull this Maghreb country out of the chaotic situation it found itself in as a result of the Arab uprisings and the subsequent fall of Muammar Al Gaddafi in 2011 – two Moroccan cities, Sjirat and Bouznika, have been chosen as the venues for sensitive meetings and achieve supposed progress. This only exacerbates the double wound perceived by Algeria: the first, resulting from foreign interference that led to the destabilization of Libya and, with it, that of the Sahel; and the second, the positioning of its Moroccan rival in a scenario of the eastern Maghreb where Algeria had traditionally held a privileged position, a position that we will soon see is also being lost in the Sahel. Morocco also leverages its advantages in relation to Libya, including its strong relationships with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), who are also present in Libya, as well as its influence in multinational circles, particularly at the UN. When advocating for the territorial integrity of Libya, Morocco skillfully introduces the caveat of the "territorial integrity" of Morocco regarding the Western Sahara, something that is always present in all Moroccan diplomatic dynamics. And linked to the Libyan dossier is also the Sahelian dossier in Moroccan initiatives that enter into direct competition with the interests of Algeria. Algerian foreign and security policy, which in the 2000s established the Coordination of Joint Operational Staff (CEMOC, by its initials in spanish), based in Tamanrasset, and which in 2015 achieved the signing – in May and June of that year – of the Algiers Accords – considered since then and until recent times the key tool for achieving the stabilization of Mali – has been overshadowed by the development of events and Moroccan exploitation of its initiatives. Although – from the Algerian point of view – the pernicious Western military presence in the Western Sahel, led by France, is now practically gone, instability persists, and the events that have occurred are exposing Algeria and facilitating the acceleration of Moroccan penetration. Examples we are going to highlight as illustrative, the first is the drift in Mali, where the coup government led by Colonel Assemi Goïta considers many of the signatories of the Algiers Accords as "terrorists," pursues them, and thereby deteriorates relations between Algiers and Bamako. In parallel, Morocco's presence is becoming increasingly visible, from diplomatic and commercial dimensions to the religious one. The second example is of a multilateral nature: in a complex scenario where the three coups d'état that have occurred and consolidated – in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – have cooled relations with the West and also those of Algeria with these three members of the Western Sahel subregion, Morocco threw down the gauntlet with the holding of the meeting of Foreign Ministers of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger, in Marrakech, on January 4th, 2024, convened by their Moroccan counterpart Nasser Burita to strengthen ties and design the future. The competition for gas pipelines pits, and will continue to do so in the coming years, the oldest and supposedly most viable initiative - lingering since 2009, although it has been delayed -, of the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP) connecting Nigeria with Algeria through Niger, against the newer and also complex initiative, the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP), in relation to which Rabat is deploying all its tools of influence. The TSGP has the advantage of being only 4,300 kilometers long and having sections already completed both in Algerian and Nigerian territory, requiring an estimated financial effort of $13 billion, and the possibility of being operational between 2027 and 2030. Its main drawback is having to traverse the volatile scenario of Niger. The NMGP is, of course, longer and more expensive, as it has to be deployed through the waters of fourteen states and its cost is estimated at over $25 billion, in addition to the estimated two decades it will take to put it into service. However, in its seduction efforts, Morocco seeks to attract important international, Arab, and Western backers, as well as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), by designing attractive scenarios of "Atlantic cooperation" - Mohamed VI described it in his speech on the 48th Anniversary of the Green March, on November 6, 2023, as a "development tool for the Atlantic band of Africa" - and, of course, includes the territory of Western Sahara as one of its important stages. With the latter, it aims to consolidate the image of an always prosperous and full of potential "Moroccan Sahara" in the region and in the world. If the TSGP can be a link promising energy supply to Niger and other countries in the Western Sahel, Morocco has already conveyed to these same states that with the NMGP, their energy needs and even access to the Atlantic of these landlocked states will be met. And finally, Morocco's diplomatic repositioning in the AU also exacerbates tensions with Algeria, which has been accustomed to a comfortable position during more than three decades of absence of its Moroccan adversary from the continental organization. Algeria has lost some key positions held by its diplomats in the peace and security organs of the organization and must be very attentive to subtleties such as Morocco's attempt, along with other African countries, to accept Israel as an observer state in the AU. Led by the AU Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki in July 2021, the combined Algerian-South African effort in Addis Ababa prevented this from happening. Since then and up to the present, Morocco's efforts to weaken the position of the SADR as a full member of the organization remain constant. Struggle led by Morocco in an international arena characterized by geopolitical competition among major powers During the Cold War, Morocco demonstrated great skill by presenting itself as a champion of the West in the sensitive region of the Western Mediterranean. It convinced the US and European capitals that, apart from being a moderate and stable country in the Arab world, it should be considered a bulwark against communism, which it perceived as taking root in Algeria and Libya. After the Cold War, Morocco continued to play the card of moderation and stability against the radical Islamist threats emanating from neighboring Algeria. This was the period when it devised its alleged excellence in preventing and managing the jihadist threat, thanks to its information and intelligence tools, which, it tells us, we should still rely on as a guarantee for our security. Throughout this time, Morocco has managed, thanks to its evident ability to promote its own image while tarnishing that of its adversary, to establish a privileged strategic relationship with both the United States and NATO, as well as with the EU starting in the 2000s. In relation to the United States, Morocco skillfully sells the narrative that it all began in December 1777 when the Moroccan sultan of the time, despite Morocco not being a modern state at the time, was the first world leader to recognize the independence of what is now a superpower. Acting as a bulwark against communism for decades, and now against the advances of Russia or Iran in the Maghreb, Morocco holds high regard in Washington DC, and its ‘lobbyists’ continuously polish its image. The longstanding combined military maneuvers "African Lion" enjoy a momentum that grants Morocco leadership, enabling it to showcase its territory – endeavoring at each stage, albeit unsuccessfully thus far, to solidify the ‘de facto’ "Moroccan-ness" of Western Sahara – and continue projecting the image of an indispensable actor. And in relation to the EU, Morocco – who formally and unsuccessfully applied for accession to the European Communities in 1987 - perseveres in its efforts to continue benefiting from privileged treatment in various domains, all of them lucrative, and to ‘lobby’ in EU institutions using various tools to strengthen its most sacred aspirations, prominently among them the consolidation of the principle of the "Moroccan-ness" of the Sahara. Are we heading towards an open conflict? In relation to Western Sahara, Moroccan ambition is becoming increasingly evident, and the use of various pressure tactics is becoming more scandalous, to the point of blackmailing various states using different instruments. Meanwhile, the territory is the scene of a hybrid war in which the Polisario Front – which broke the ceasefire in place for more than three decades on November 13th, 2020, due to incidents at the strategic Guerguerat border with Mauritania – issues periodic war reports, and Morocco primarily uses drones to inflict casualties on the Polisario (and incidentally, as collateral damage since then, deaths of Algerian and Mauritanian nationals). Although considered by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, as “low-intensity hostilities”, the risk of escalation is always present. Meanwhile, Morocco's relations are increasingly tainted not only with Algeria but also, and more recently, with Mauritania, and to a lesser extent, with Tunisia. But let's remember that it's not just the unresolved Western Sahara conflict the cause of tension between Algeria and Morocco; it runs deeper. Apart from the reinforcement of irredentist discourse in recent years – reviving the term “Eastern Sahara” accompanied by increasingly provocative cartography –, and as it also does in relation to Spain, Morocco is situating the management of its neighborhood within the broader context of geopolitical competition among major powers, hence the growing concern about the potential evolution of the situation. The transaction that led to the murky scene in which the recognition via Twitter of the “Moroccan-ness of the Sahara” in 2020, by President Donald Trump, who in exchange obtained, advantageously, Morocco's inclusion in the Abraham Accords signed with Israel by three Arab states (Bahrain, UAE, and joined by Morocco), opened a Pandora's box in the Maghreb and Western Mediterranean region. To the effects of our analysis on the increasing tension between Algeria and Morocco, Algerian authorities had to add, to their strategic concern about the deterioration of the situation in Libya and the Western Sahel due to foreign interference and the resizing of Morocco's foreign and security policy during all this time, the landing of the considered by Algiers "Israeli enemy at its doors". After the signing of the Abraham Accords by Morocco, Israeli presence on Moroccan soil is increasingly visible, with its epicenter in the visit to Rabat in November 2021 by Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and reflected in the growing acquisitions of high-end Israeli defense material. All this occurs furthermore in a scenario aggravated by the outbreak of the fifth war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023. The presence of Israeli military observers in the multinational exercise "African Lion 2022", which might seem innocuous to other states, was seen – by Algeria, which had just severed its diplomatic relations with Morocco the previous year – as a hostile act to add to the increasingly long list of grievances. Morocco also uses this scenario to portray Algeria, which, as a traditional supporter in the Arab world of the Palestinian cause, reinforced its perception of threat regarding Israel in the second half of the 1980s - following the Israeli bombing of the PLO Headquarters in Tunisia in 1985 - as an ally of Iran and its ‘proxies’, particularly Hezbollah. Morocco, which severed diplomatic relations with Iran twice, in 2009 and 2018, seizes any opportunity to launch delusional accusations against Algeria, portraying its neighbor as a close ally of Iran - both to its Western partners and to the Gulf petro-monarchies most opposed to Iran - and to accuse Hezbollah of training and arming the Polisario Front. In addition to exploiting the volatile Middle East scenario to its advantage, Morocco also adds to the equation the backdrop of growing tension between Russia, as well as China, and the West. Morocco, which has excellent relations with Russia, reinforced even after the invasion of Ukraine - signing the Morocco-Russia Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2022, an Agreement on nuclear cooperation with ROSATOM also in 2022, or hosting the Arab-Russian Summit in Marrakech in December 2023 - does not hesitate to portray Algeria as a dangerous ally of Russia at the gates of the West. As an example, Morocco, through its various electronic tools, portrayed the Algerian-Russian maneuvers in November 2022 in the Bechar region, an area claimed by Morocco from Algeria and which involved the participation of a hundred Russian paratroopers, as an imminent threat. It is interesting to note that these maneuvers took place shortly after 7,500 troops from thirteen countries, including Israeli military observers, participated in the "African Lion 2022" exercises; in this case, near the borders with Western Sahara and also with Algeria. References, although less intense, to China, overlook the fact that Moroccan military personnel have been trained in recent years at Chinese bases in drone operations, and that both China and Russia are fishing in the waters of Western Sahara, thereby violating International Law as it belongs to a non-self-governing territory and not to Morocco. And to the political-diplomatic and security dimension, we must add the advancements, especially those made by Morocco, given that Morocco is the most proactive actor, as we have been witnessing, occurring in the defense realm, which are also a cause for concern. The backdrop is the increase in defense spending by both countries, which represents a typical example of a security dilemma. Algeria has traditionally been among the small group of states spending more than 7 percent of its GDP on defense, but Morocco's entry into the club of states generously spending on defense, and in its case growing in geometric progression (from 3.6 percent in 2022 to the projected 9 percent in 2024), increases our concern. Moreover, qualitative aspects are more important than quantitative ones, especially concerning Morocco, as Algeria evolves as usual, maintaining the specificity of a submarine weapon that Morocco does not possess, with significant figures in its land and air power. However, Morocco, while also modernizing and expanding its land and air assets, takes advantage, and does not hide it, of its advantageous relations with Israel to make acquisitions in select areas such as air defense systems, electronic warfare, and its upcoming observation satellite, which will no longer be French (Thales Airbus) but Israeli (Israel Aerospace Industries, IAI). And all this while persisting in the use of armed drones in a war scenario like the Western Sahara, while continuing to refine its tools in the ongoing hybrid warfare. Conclusions Morocco, which is accustomed, and has accustomed us, to playing with the white pieces, thus always taking the initiative, is immersed in a game where its ambition and arrogance stand out, and its neighbor Algeria suggests with its attitude, as does Spain, that it accepts such a situation. In ruptures’ times — the ceasefire by the Polisario Front in November 2020, and diplomatic relations by Algeria in August 2021 — the growing tension between Algeria and Morocco is at a much more dangerous level than in previous crises. The possibility of escalation, either in Western Sahara or at the common land border, is more present than ever, and the multiplication of deteriorating fronts in the Maghreb and the Sahel makes the situation much more volatile than before. Having analyzed the case of the relationship between Algeria and Morocco and its characteristics, we should not conclude this article without a reference to Spain. Morocco is undoubtedly an important commercial partner and a window of opportunity for Spain to develop significant business ventures. However, this should not make us forget that Morocco is also an actor that consistently plays an unfriendly role with its illegitimate territorial claims. In terms of national interest, it has never been clearer than today that Spain needs to have more demanding relations with Morocco, shaking off the constant annoyance represented by both its territorial claims and its attempts to consolidate the annexation of Western Sahara. And in the turbulent times of permanent tension between Morocco and Algeria, the latter country cannot be sacrificed by a Spanish foreign policy that should have a healthy and advantageous relationship with both states.

Defense & Security
A miracle glass on the Yemen of the world map

The impact of Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea on the Yemen crisis

by Sergey Serebrov

The U.S.-British coalition’s military intervention in Yemen has become the most dangerous expansion of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (PIC), taking a heavy toll on the security in the Middle East and creating a parallel hotbed of military standoff in the Red Sea. There is no consensus in the region’s countries on the root cause of the current escalation, with some governments blaming the terrorist sortie of the Qassam Brigades militants from Hamas’ Al-Aqsa Flood (known as Toofan in Arabic) on October 7, 2023, while others—the abnormal situation of the decades-long occupation and blockade of Palestine by Israel, mentioned by UN Secretary General A. Guterres in October 2023. Yet they are all united in extremely negative assessments of the humanitarian consequences of the Iron Swords operation by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. The final document of the LAS and OIC summit in Riyadh on November 11, 2023, attended by 57 heads of state, had the most pacifist tone possible, but it clearly condemned Israel’s war crimes campaign and demanded “an immediate ceasefire along with the opening of humanitarian corridors.” While rejecting the adoption of collective non-military measures of pressure on Israel proposed by the so-called Axis of Resistance and a number of other states, a caveat was made that they could be applied individually: “The resolution calls on the members of the OIC and LAS to use diplomatic, political and legal forms of pressure as well as deterrent measures to stop the colonial occupation administration’s crimes against humanity.” Russian scholars V.V. Naumkin and V.A. Kuznetsov attribute the strategy of the Israeli government and the militarist policies of the U.S. and UK as the main reason for aggravation of the PIC: “Rejecting the draft settlement by founding an independent Palestinian state (within the borders as of June 4, 1967 with the capital in Eastern Jerusalem), prescribed by resolutions of the UNSC, which would exist side by side with Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is driving the problem into a dead end. And pumping American and British weapons into Israel only prolongs the bloodshed. Continued attempts to resolve the Gaza conflict by force are disastrous for the future co-existence of the two peoples.” Discussions at the UN showed that this conclusion is shared by most countries in the region, i.e. the fuse for spontaneous outbursts of resistance to the existing order remains unextinguished. Yemen is one such hotbed. Deep political divisions, an unfinished nine-year war with the Arab Coalition (AC) and a massive humanitarian disaster affecting 80 per cent of the population did not prevent the country’s inhabitants from voicing their attitude to the Gaza tragedy. Political activism and anti-Israeli sentiments rose everywhere. The epicenter was 14 of the country’s 22 most populous provinces, controlled by the authorities of Sana’a, where an alliance between the Houthi movement Ansarullah and the core of the country’s former ruling party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), formed a coalition regime in 2016 that recognized Yemen’s current constitution. These provinces are home to more than two-thirds of the country’s population (about 23 million people) as well as the largest cities, such as Sana’a, Ibb and the main Red Sea port of Hodeidah. The internationally unrecognized regime in Sana’a, targeted in March 2015 by a massive AC military operation at the request of the legitimate Yemeni authorities to neutralize it, has suddenly become one of the main centers of the region’s current political dynamics. The Ansarullah leadership’s public support of the Palestinian resistance has become a powerful springboard for strengthening of its status and authority both within Yemen and at the regional level, consolidating the ideological foundations of the Houthi movement as a new national symbol and political platform for the country. Castigating the U.S. and the UK for aiding Israel with its war in Gaza as “complicit in crimes against humanity,” the movement’s leader sayyid Abdul Malik al-Houthi placed an explicit emphasis on the importance of involving the peoples and governments of all Arab and Islamic states in the Palestinian struggle, while underscoring the vanguard role of Yemen. The Ansarullah leader condemned the Arab states that continued to pursue the course of normalizing their relations with Israel, calling on them to abide by the moral principles of Islam, which do not allow tolerance for the “usurper who clearly violates the rights of the Palestinian people.” He described Hamas’ Toofan operation as “a game-changer due to inflicting tangible losses on the Zionist enemy,” and Yemenis’ support for it as their “religious and moral duty.” Sana’a announced joining the Palestinian war on Israel and its readiness to send “hundreds of thousands of soldiers” at the right moment. The authorities organized the collection and transfer of money to Gazans, and they switched to active military support of the Palestinians in mid-October 2023 by launching missiles and drones towards the Israeli port of Eilat in an attempt to divert Israeli forces and hamper the port’s operations. On November 19, 2023, they arrested the ship Galaxy Leader, owned by an Israeli businessman, enforcing a ban they had imposed in mid-November on the navigation of Israeli ships and cargo through Yemeni territorial waters. Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vladimir Nebenzya said in early January 2024: “It is impossible to deny what is happening in the Red Sea is a direct projection of the violence in Gaza, where Israel’s bloody operation has been going on for three months,” while the U.S. “has turned the UN Security Council into a hostage by vetoing resolutions on an immediate ceasefire.” Since October 2023, the leader of Ansarullah has personally called on the people to participate in regular mass solidarity actions almost weekly, as part of a campaign he called “The Battle of Allah’s Promised Victory” and the Holy Jihad. To coordinate the mass demonstrations, which often involved more than 2 million people, and to provide ideological guidance, the authorities in Sana’a established the “Support for Al-Aqsa” committee, which turned those protests into weekly grand-scale political actions. The slogans of these marches, especially after the launch of Military Operation ‘Prosperity Guardian’ against Yemen on January 12, 2024, took on an increasingly militant tone: “You are not alone... we stand together with Gaza!”, “From the faithful people of Yemen—help, help Toofan,” “the Flood of al-Aqsa has already come—it will defeat the insolent countries,” “Al-Aqsa Flood, come and wash away the barriers and walls!” The Houthi ideology is based on the concept of the “Quranic path” proclaimed by the founder of this movement, sayyid Hussein B. al-Husi (1959-2004). The key tenet is that the consciousness of each Muslim believer and the Islamic community as a whole needs to be reformed and entrenched upon the rails of spirituality and morality as dictated by the holy book, which will make “ummah”, the entire Muslim community, exemplary and advanced. This progress towards the ideal should be led by a spiritual leader, personifying the selfless service to the faith and having genetic affiliation to the descendants of the Prophet’s house—the sada (hence the singular—sayyid). Among his main functions, as the doctrine has it, is to take care of the community’s readiness to defend the moral values of Islam against its worst enemies. Sayyid Hussein listed their names in his cliché (Arabic: sarkha), which he first uttered in a lecture to a youth audience in January 2002: “Allah is great! Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse to the Jews! Victory to Islam!” This clarion call has become a distinctive marker of the Houthi and the Ansarullah movement, and posters with this text have been a permanent feature of meetings, marches, and wall decorations in public institutions and schools since 2016. After the Prosperity Guardian coalition’s bombings commenced, a new term of the “evil trinity” (ash-shir al-thulathi)—Israel, the U.S. and the UK—appeared in the Houthi narrative. In the expert community, the autonomy and authenticity of the Houthi ideology and socio-political movement with deep Yemeni roots are generally not in doubt. The Houthi were not and are not “agents” or “proxies” of Iran, despite their growing cooperation in recent years. In the Houthi movement, as was correctly noted by the well-known orientalist B. Haykel, the influence of not only Shiite but also Sunni currents of modern political Islam, as well as secular ideologies, including “nationalism and anti-colonialism” [1], is quite conspicuous. The Houthi movement also purports to protect Yemen’s sovereignty, rebuild its economy on the basis of its own resources and modern technology, improve its education system and restore its historical glory as the heart of the entire Islamic world and one of the main hubs of Islamic civilization. Helen Lackner, the British researcher of Yemen, said: “The charge of acting as Tehran’s proxy serves as an insult to an organization that has its own motivations and ideological position.” After 2016, Ansarullah shares equal seats with the General People’s Congress (GPC) on the Supreme Political Council (SPC) representing in a binary coalition government the central executive authorities in a full-fledged state-type republican system that encompasses provincial and local levels. The regime is based on the old bureaucracy created by President Abdallah A. Saleh, remaining loyal to the coalition authorities in Sana’a after Saleh’s death in December 2017 and retaining the same structure and core, with Ansarullah members added as managers and employees. The SPC is spearheaded by one of the movement’s leaders, Mahdi Mashat, while the government of national salvation is headed by GPC member Abdul Aziz bin Habtoor, a former rector of the University of Aden. The shibboleths of external propaganda characterizing the Houthi as “militias,” “jamaat,” “rebels,” “insurgents,” or “tribes” do not correspond to the socio-political nature of the movement, nor do they agree with the contemporary Yemeni realities. Beside the executive branch, the Houthi are represented in parliament, the judiciary and all security agencies, including the army and intelligence. Together with the GPC, they define the regime’s foreign policy as well as cooperation with the countries of the so-called Axis of Resistance that includes Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. This comes precisely as a result of the Decisive Storm, a foreign military operation launched nine years ago. According to formal criteria, the Ansarullah organization since 2015, in the situation of a protracted crisis related to the division of the Yemeni nation and the foreign AC intervention, having retained the signs of a socio-political movement, functionally made a leap into the category of transitional actors moving from quasi-state to the state type body. It should also be noted that under the extreme conditions of war and blockade, the coalition regime in Sana’a achieved consolidation, which was not the case (for objective reasons) in the camp of the internationally recognized Government of Yemen (GoY or IRG), which received major military and financial support from the Arab Coalition. Organizationally, since the very beginning, the IRG has been in a state of chronic systemic disintegration that sparked direct armed clashes between its factions. Mass popular demonstrations in support of Palestine in the IRG-controlled part of the country, which covers about 75% of its territory, were sporadic and less crowded. Rashad Mohammed Al-Alimi, Chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), attended the November summit in Riyadh, where he expressed his condemnation of Israel’s military operation in Gaza and Yemenis’ solidarity with the Palestinian people. However, he distanced himself from the hostile stance to IRG policy of the unrecognized regime in Sana’a, especially on the military blockade of Israeli shipping and navigation. “The terrorist attacks by the Houthi in the Red Sea are harming the freedom of global trade and the peoples of the region, doubling above all the suffering of the Yemeni people, whose survival is 90% dependent on imports,” he said. Opinions were divided among the leaders of other factions within the IRG, but most of them supported the establishment of the American-British Coalition (ABC) and the listing of the Houthi as global terrorists by the U.S. on January 17, 2024, which signaled a possible setback of the Yemeni conflict. The most likely scenario for the conflict, which promises to be protracted and extremely unsavory to the ABC, is for the Anglo-Saxon partnership to exploit the complex military and political environment for a further instrumentalization of existing rivalries. The above analysis of the Sana’a policy shows that the ABC command could not expect Sana’a to lift the maritime sanctions against Israel through military blackmail, as this would mean a backdown on the entire ideology of the regime, defined by the mentioned Houthi concept of the “Quranic path.” The lifting of the ban on Israeli shipping was promised by the Sana’a authorities only after the Israeli ceasefire in Gaza and the opening of humanitarian corridors, which was officially voiced at all levels even before the launch of the ABC military operation in Yemen. Official spokesman of Ansarullah, Muhammad Abdulsalam, warned the ABC command about this intention immediately after U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the ABC establishment in December 2023: “the ABC mission is to provide a cover for Israel and to proceed with illegal militarization of the Red Sea that will not stop Yemen which will continue to provide legitimate support to the people of Gaza.” U.S. claims that Operation Prosperity Guardian is designed to “undermine and degrade the ability of the Houthi to endanger seamen and threaten global trade on one of the world’s most important waterways” are questionable as well, as the AC’s attempt to accomplish a similar task militarily for nine years is known to have been unsuccessful, ending with a transition to a de-escalation phase in April 2022. Since March 2015, U.S. and UK officers have been represented on the AC command staff, contributing to the Decisive Storm operation by using the same methods, the same weapons and the same intelligence sources as the ABC currently relies on. One of the major military outcomes of the AC’s “old” campaign was the emergence of a localized industrial base at the Sana’a disposal to build and maintain the kind of modern-day arsenal that made the transition to a political settlement of the crisis the most expedient choice for all sides. Finally, the proposition of the ABC command that the operation in the Red Sea was designed to protect the safety of commercial shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which accounts for about 14% of the world’s commercial cargo turnover, also proved to be completely untenable in the first month and a half. Already at the stage of the Anglo-Saxon coalition formation, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, suggested: “They have assembled a so-called ‘international coalition’ (which quite characteristically consists mainly of American ships), which is supposed to ‘ensure security’, although in reality the legitimacy of its actions raises the most serious questions in terms of international law. We should not have any illusions about the true goals of the authors of the resolution. This is not about ensuring the safety of navigation in the Red Sea at all, but an attempt to legitimize (post factum) the actions of the aforementioned ‘coalition’ and have Security Council’s endorsement for an unlimited time.” Operation Prosperity Guardian per se was the main cause behind the escalation of tensions and a threat to the navigation of all other carriers. It is no coincidence that neither the littoral states of this subregion nor the leading foreign states that use this route have yielded to the pressure or expressed any willingness to join the coalition. Egypt, 10% of whose budget depends on Forex earnings from Suez, saw the ABC action as “a dangerous acceleration of events in the southern Red Sea and Yemen ... with potential risks of a wider conflict in the region due to Israel’s ongoing attacks in the Gaza Strip.” His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, Qatar’s Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, said even before the ABC attacks in Yemen, the “from Qatar’s political perspectives, no military action leads to a resolution. We are closely watching developments in the Red Sea, but our greatest fear is the consequences of being drawn into an endless loop of region-wide tensions. We hope for an early end to what is happening to the civilian ships via diplomatic means. That will be the best way possible.” Essentially, all countries in the subregion agreed that the best way out of the military conflict in the Red Sea would be to fulfill the Sana’a demands to the Israeli authorities, i.e. putting an end to a devastating war in Gaza. Of all the countries in this subregion, only Bahrain, home to U.S. and British naval bases, joined the ABC. Objective data on the ship traffic through the Suez Canal shows that the drop was only about 2% in the first thirty days after the seizure of the Israeli ship by the Yemeni military. A deeper dive began only after the U.S. announcement of the ABC on December 18, 2023, reaching a record 50% by the end of February 2024, after the strikes on Yemen commenced, when the Sana’a authorities added to their sanctions list the U.S. and UK military and their merchant ships, which became the main targets of their attacks starting in mid-January 2024. A summary of the first month of Operation Prosperity Guardian was over 400 air and missile strikes by ABC forces on Yemeni territory and more than 25 retaliatory attacks by the Sana’a authorities against ABC and Israeli naval targets with the sinking of the British merchant ship Rubymar carrying ammonia fertilizers in February 2024. Nor has it been possible to stop the Houthi from launching missiles toward Israel. Besides the military risks to shipping, the ABC operation also threatened the ecology of the Red Sea waters, which is an important traditional source of income for fishermen in the coastal states. The true strategy of the ABC in Yemen can only be judged by the further course and results of the campaign, which promises to have far-reaching consequences for the entire region. Its most likely development will be an attempt to torpedo de-escalation, which has defined the downward dynamic of the “old” military crisis in Yemen involving the AC since April 2022. There are several reasons for this conclusion. First, the decisive move by KSA and Sana’a to remove the regional component of the Yemeni crisis has been highly successful in bringing it out of the stalemate it hit after the failure of the Kuwait round of UN-sponsored talks in 2016. The de-escalation process was accompanied by exchange visits of official delegations from Riyadh and Sana’a in April and September 2023 and their preparation of a compromise settlement formula that would satisfy both sides. The Houthi surrender as the only scenario for ending the war became a thing of the past, and the consolidation of the Ansarullah political alliance with the GPC core within the ruling regime in Sana’a finally appeared to get a sort of recognition. This shift removed the main motive for the AC to continue the war and meant a reorientation of the regional leader, Saudi Arabia, to deep readjustment of the entire system of subregional relations and to zero out its involvement in external military conflicts. To finalize the process, all that remained was to sign a ready-made roadmap and start preparing a national dialogue in the Yemeni format with the participation of Ansarullah under the auspices of the UN. Second, de-escalation was largely achieved due to the normalization of KSA-Iran diplomatic relations in March 2023, mediated by China. For the U.S. and the UK, this change meant, among other things, undermining their fundamental long-term geopolitical construct, which had been used for decades to structure the system and dynamics of regional relations across the Middle East. It was based on the exploitation of Sunni-Shiite and Iranian-Saudi contradictions, into which anti-American and anti-Israeli manifestations were also implanted as a sign of “Shiite” (aka “Iranian”) influence in the countries of this region. The conflict in Yemen has long ago proved its complete unsuitability for analyzing the Yemeni realities. The sociocultural ground in this country has ruled out the transformation of Yemeni contradictions into sectarian ones, as the relations between both dominant autochthonous religious communities of Yemen—Shafi’i (Sunni) and Zaydi (Shia)—have remained traditionally tolerant and friendly. The religious framing employed has been much more influential in sharpening their dichotomies with the proselytizing radical version of the Salafi ideology of the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood* operating within the Islah Party. The attribution of the “Iranian agent” label to the Houthi has generally remained very superficial to Yemeni political discourse proper and has not become a fully effective tool for manipulating this rivalry. Third, the very fact that Riyadh entered direct negotiations with Sana’a, mediated by Oman, signaled the increasing role of sovereignty in the system of subregional politics and the process of its transition to a more friendly architecture of relations, less dependent on the military presence of extra-regional superpowers in the Gulf and the Red Sea. Back in the summer of 2019, the UAE unilaterally announced the end of its military involvement in the AC operation in Yemen. The KSA’s new strategy toward Yemen has been heading in the same direction. Various attempts by the U.S. special ambassador to Yemen, T. Linderking, to slow down and derail this process were not quite successful. The U.S. emissary either inspired the KSA with mistrust of Iran’s intentions after the restoration of KSA-Iran diplomatic relations, or warned the Arabian countries that the U.S. would not leave Yemen out of its control anyway, saying, in particular, that the final stage of “an inclusive Yemeni-Yemeni political process [should] take place under U.S. auspices” instead of the UN format recognized by all parties. The UN mission in Yemen, which played an important and very positive role in the success of the “Oman track,” may also have been a source of discontent for the Anglo-Saxon partnership. A roadmap to end the KSA's military involvement in Yemen within three years was prepared by late 2023, which Hans Grundberg, the current head of the mission, publicly announced on December 23. This marked a de facto major step toward the final international legitimization of Ansarullah as a full-fledged participant in the political process. The struggle to keep the roadmap for a Yemeni settlement afloat, albeit in a postponed mode due to the ABC military intervention, is of fundamental importance for the future status and security systems of Arabia and the Red Sea. This is evidenced, in particular, by the KSA’s choice to consolidate the agreements reached with Sana’a after the Western coalition began bombing Yemen. At a meeting with T. Linderking in February 2024, KSA Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman reaffirmed the Kingdom’s commitment to “provide assistance to Yemen in facilitating a dialogue between the parties to reach a political solution under the auspices of the UN.” In addition to the KSA’s own experience of waging war in Yemen, there is a solid scientific basis for this choice: following a comprehensive analysis of the genesis and state of the Ansarullah organization, the authors of The Houthi Movement in Yemen, a fundamental monograph recently published by the KSA, conclude that “regardless of the final result, it seems that the Houthis will remain a key player in Yemen’s cultural, social, economic and political scenes for the foreseeable future [2].” Over the years of war, the leading Yemeni centers of political influence (CPIs) within the IRG and both active participants in the AC—the KSA and the UAE—brought about an amalgam of interests, which, in the context of a military intervention by the powerful ABC, risk being manipulated by the neocolonial project of the Anglo-Saxon partnership. By playing up intra-Yemeni contradictions and staging the pulling of certain Yemeni CPIs to their side, the two leading players of the ABC may try to turn them into an instrument of their policy both in the crisis zone and in the entire subregion. Unfortunately, they have serious and objective prerequisites for this attempt at sowing discord. The success of the “Omani track” within the Riyadh-Sana’a bilateral format in achieving sustainable de-escalation in the conflict zone was achieved almost without the participation of all the other CPIs in the IRG. This narrower format created a ground for their dissatisfaction and natural concerns about the current situation. The Emirati actors on the IRG’s Emirati flank, represented by General Aidarus al-Zubaidi’s Southern Transitional Council (STC) and General Tareq M. Saleh’s Political Council of the National Resistance Forces, were particularly wary, directly criticizing certain provisions of the roadmap that, in their view, provided excessive economic advantages to the hostile authorities in Sana’a—for example, their right to a share of the proceeds from the export of Yemeni oil to pay off debts on the salaries of civil servants. The ABC’s operation against Sana’a provoked something of a revenge attempt on the part of these CPIs within the IRG. President Rashad al-Alimi and the leaders of the Emirati flank of the PLC were quick to express their willingness to cooperate with the ABC, although each of the three CPIs had very different perspectives and goals in mind, both for themselves and for the future of the country. All the old political science constructs introduced to launch and accompany AC’s military campaign began to rapidly return to the Yemeni narrative: the diminutive labeling of the Sana’a authorities as “Houthi,” “militia,” or “rebels”; the reanimation of the Iranian expansion bugaboo through the Ansarullah movement, ostensibly willing to bring the Red Sea under Iran’s heel, etc. At the same time, the political reasons for the rivalry between the CPIs of the Saudi and Emirati flanks in the IRG camp have not disappeared. The probable supply of arms by the ABC to one of the flanks in the AC camp, or even to one of the CPIs on either flank, will inevitably lead to imbalances in the fragile configuration of forces, not only along the IRG-Sana’a Alliance (SA) axis, but also within the IRG camp. The risk of these CPIs clashing with each other is sometimes not lower, and in some scenarios even higher, than with the SA. Suffice it to mention the fact that the official policy of the leading faction on the Emirati flank, the Southern Transitional Council or STC, to withdraw the South within the 1990 borders of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), enshrined in the National Charter of Honor of the South that adopted in May 2023, is emphatically denied by most of the other Yemeni CPIs within the same IRG, as well as by both SA members. The ABC’s military involvement in the internal Yemeni tangle is difficult to coordinate and predict. It carries the risk of completely transforming the situation and ricocheting into the camp of the IRG itself as well as the AC partners backing it. This is exactly the scenario that the Qatari leader warned about, speaking of the endless loop of conflicts into which Arabia is being drawn by the aggression in Yemen recently unleashed by the ABC. *** In conclusion, we should emphasize the importance of historical and socio-cultural factors, underpinning the notion of identities that play a primary role in conflicts both in Yemen and in the region in a broader sense. Especially because these are particularly visible and instrumental in the current escalatory ladder. Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s representative to the UN, described what is happening in the Red Sea as a direct projection of the violence in Gaza, reminding that “the primary responsibility for maritime security rests with coastal States — best positioned to ensure the safety of crucial waterways — and underscor[ing] that any collective effort lacking the active involvement of such States is likely to fall short of achieving the desired results.” He also noted that “the Red Sea is more than just a trade route — it is steeped in civilizations and communities with legitimate aspirations and hopes.” * This organization is declared terrorist and banned in Russia. 1. The Houthi Movement in Yemen Ideology, Ambition and Security in the Arab Gulf / Ed. Abdullah Hamidaddin, I.B. TAURIS, King Feisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies Series, KFCRIS, 2022. P. 21. 2. Ibid. P. 3.

Defense & Security
Abuja, Nigeria, capital of Nigeria, anchored on the political map.

The Case Against Military Rule

by Ebenezer Obadare

Nigeria needs a change of direction, not a change of government. With Nigeria plunged into a full-blown crisis due to a worsening economic climate, a cross-section of Nigerians, desperate for a quick turnaround and certain that the Bola Tinubu administration has lost the plot, have started clamoring for a coup d’état. So loud has been the agitation, especially on social media, that Chief of Defense Staff Christopher Musa came out last week to warn those behind it that “the law will come after them,” and that “the armed forces of Nigeria are here to protect democracy.” It is an interesting paradox that the same generation of Nigerians who have consistently put their bodies on the line in defense of democracy are the ones now apparently demanding military intervention. The paradox is resolved as soon as it is realized that though seemingly divergent, both the hunger for democracy and the incipient yearning for khaki rule are united by the same impulse. That impulse is, not to put too fine a point on it, a government that delivers and is the thread that runs through the ongoing ferment in Nigeria and the spectacle in Western and Central Africa where, defying expectation, throngs of young people took to the streets to welcome assorted coupists. Nor is the impulse unique to young people in Africa. If, across Western democracies, the electorate appears to be souring on liberal democracy (“just half of Europeans aged 16-26 believe democracy is the best form of government”), populist appetite for strongman rule has noticeably increased in places like Hungary, the Philippines, El Salvador and, whisper it, among a key segment of the American electorate. While it is true that the Nigerian situation has some local wrinkles—for instance, there is no gainsaying that lingering resentment at the outcome of last year’s presidential election is an important subtext to the current discontent—this does not make it any less illuminating as an illustration of growing popular disenchantment with liberal democracy. Instructively, too, the concern on the streets has reverberated among the political elite, resulting in a trenchant, if misguided, insistence on a return to “African democracy.” Nigerians have good reason to be irate, having seen scant return on their emotional and physical investment in democracy since the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999. Indeed, one reason the clamor for military rule has grown is precisely because an increasing number of people see no improvement in their material situation, and therefore little justification in defending a regime that, from their standpoint, has only favored a narrow band of elites. For the average Nigerian, the only difference between civilian and military rulers is in their accoutrements. While this diagnosis is beyond dispute, it cannot be emphasized enough that military rule is the wrong prescription, and in the Nigerian case would mark a tragic regression after twenty-five years of civilian rule. The reasons are not far-fetched. In the first place, since the security aspect of the current crisis owes largely to the failure of the armed forces to contain the Boko Haram insurgency and rampant banditry, handing over the reins of political power to an institution that could not even discharge its constitutional duty of protecting the territorial integrity of the country would be tantamount to rewarding failure. If the Nigerian military cannot do even that for which it was trained, how can it be expected to accomplish that for which it lacks the expertise, never mind the temperament? Furthermore, no matter the underlying frustration, the clamor for military intervention ultimately boils down to a refusal to face the arduous task of institution building. Nigeria faces a clear challenge: ensure that budding democratic institutions put down roots, and where such institutions are absent, inaugurate new ones. That this is nonnegotiable can be gleaned from the history of the advanced economies, and military intervention at this crucial moment will only interrupt a social process that the country must have to pass through. The desire for military intervention also calls to mind the fantasy of “developmental dictatorship,” specifically the idea that what will ultimately right the ship in Nigeria and other African countries in a similar position is the intervention of a beneficent dictator who, knocking a few heads together and dispensing with all the inconveniences of the rule of law in the process, puts the country on the path to development and promptly steps aside. In Nigeria, this fantasy—the utopia of “a shirtless (Jerry) Rawlings driving a bulldozer,” as a Nigerian commentator puts it—has always existed cheek-by-jowl with agitation for popular rule, accruing popularity during moments of economic and political stress. It is often forgotten that this Faustian bargain often leaves societies with a lot of dictatorship and very little development. Lastly, the fact that the majority of the people currently championing the return of the military were either too young or had not been born during the last military era in the country points to an all-important generational dimension. The chasm between members of this generation and Nigerians for whom the terror of military rule is eternally fresh is one of the drivers of political division and misunderstanding in the country. For every member of the younger generation legitimately chafing at the lack of progress under successive civilian administrations, there is a member of the older generation, particularly Nigerians in their fifties and sixties, who cannot forget that the first thing military rule will abolish, together with all the other political freedoms that young people have come to take for granted, is the right to protest about how one is governed. While elected representatives may be petitioned or pelted as the case may be, unelected soldiers cannot, since martial law is the exact antithesis of the rule of law. There is no denying that, on the whole, liberal democracy has failed Nigerians, making their sense of grievance understandable. That said, Nigerians cannot afford to cut their nose to spite their face. While the problems besetting the country cannot be solved by a single administration, a democratic government in which people argue, write at the top of their voices, debate, and sometimes throw the odd punch, offers the best prospect. If that system can work elsewhere, there is no reason why it should not work in Nigeria. Of the many desiderata for democratic flourishing, the most vital, and, as it happens the one that is glaringly absent in Nigeria, is a democratic temperament. If the experience of the advanced democracies teaches us anything, it is that this temperament is acquired ever so slowly and starts to burgeon only after a period of patient and deliberate cultivation. Taking the long view, Nigerian intellectuals should step in to educate Nigerians—especially members of the younger generation—about the evils of military rule.