News you may have missed #895: Africa edition

February 20, 2018 by Leave a comment

Hailemariam Desalegn►►South African security contractor faces spy charges in South Sudan. William John Endley, a retired South African Army colonel, works as a security contractor for former South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar, who is now the leader of a rebel faction fighting the government of President Salva Kiir. Endley, who has been working as Machar’s bodyguard, was arrested in August 2016 in Juba. He is now facing charges of espionage and conspiracy to overthrow the government of South Sudan.

►►Somalia appoints new police, intelligence chiefs. The Somali government announced Monday it has appointed new police and intelligence chiefs, nearly four months after their predecessors were sacked following the deadliest ever terror attack in the war-torn nation. Former deputy health minister Hussein Osman Hussein has been named head of Somalia’s intelligence service, while deputy head of police Bashir Abdi Mohamed has been promoted to police chief. Their predecessors were sacked on October 29, a day after an attack that left 27 people dead, and just two weeks after 512 people were murdered in a truck bombing in Mogadishu on October 14.

►►Ethiopia bans protests, media criticism, under state of emergency. The government of Ethiopia has declared a six-month state of emergency that includes a ban on protests and publications deemed to incite violence. The measure was announced on Friday, a day after Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced his surprise resignation in a televised speech. In his resignation address, Desalegn said he resigned to “smooth the path for political reform”. But critics say that the purpose of the state of emergency is “not to protect the constitutional order but to silence the voices calling for change”.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 20 February 2018 | Permalink

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Sudan arrests senior intelligence officials linked to foiled coup plot

November 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

Salah GoshBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Authorities in Sudan have announced the arrest of senior current and former intelligence officials over an alleged coup plot, which has reportedly been foiled. Spokesmen for the government of longtime Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Thursday that thirteen senior “military and civilian figures” had been arrested for “inciting chaos […], targeting leaders [and] spreading [false] rumors” about the President’s health. Among them is Lieutenant General Salah Gosh, who directed Sudan’s National Security and Intelligence Services for a decade before stepping down in 2009 to become President al-Bashir’s Senior Security Adviser. Gosh was widely considered a key member of al-Bashir’s inner circle in Khartoum until April of 2011, when he was unexpectedly fired, allegedly for having raised criticisms of the President’s policies. Those arrested in the early hours of Thursday reportedly include Brigadier General Mohammed Ibrahim, a Field Commander in the Sudanese Army, and Major General Adil al-Tayeb, a senior military intelligence official. Reuters reports that witnesses in Khartoum saw several army tanks and dozens of armored vehicles speeding down a central street that links the capital with the Khartoum International Airport, shortly before midnight on Wednesday. However, reports from Khartoum this morning suggest that the city appears calm and traffic patterns are normal. The country’s Minster of Information, Ahmed Belal Osman, told local media that “the situation is now totally stable”. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Iranian-Israeli proxy war flares up in Sudan

November 1, 2012 by 1 Comment

Sudan and South SudanBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
While much of the world focuses on the effects of hurricane Sandy in the eastern United States, the proxy war between Israel and Iran continues to flare up, this time in Africa. Last week, the government of Sudan accused Israeli of being behind a surprise bombing of a weapons factory in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. According to Sudan’s Minister of Information, Ahmed Belal Osman, four Israeli Air Force jets invaded Sudanese airspace and struck the Yarmouk military complex in Khartoum, inflicting heavy damages. There are unconfirmed claims that the factory was operated by the Iranian government and produced weapons that were smuggled through the Sinai Peninsula into the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Palestinian group Hamas. On Tuesday, almost exactly a week after the alleged Israeli bombing took place, two Iranian warships arrived in Port Sudan, the country’s most important harbor, located on the Red Sea. The arrival of the vessels was confirmed by Iranian news agency IRNA, which said a helicopter carrier and a destroyer had docked at Port Sudan. The news agency, which is owned by the Iranian government, said the arrival of the ships was meant to contribute to anti-piracy efforts in the Red Sea. But non-Iranian news media, including British newspaper The Independent, quote observers who view the ships’ arrival in Sudan as an Iranian “show of support” for the Sudanese government. According to this explanation, Tehran’s decision to send the ships to the East African country is part of an ongoing proxy war between Iran and Israel taking place throughout the region. Read more of this post

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‘Massive expansion’ in US covert operations in Africa

June 14, 2012 by 4 Comments

US military base in DjiboutiBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The United States administration of President Barack Obama is implementing a near-unprecedented expansion of covert operations by American military forces throughout Africa, aimed at a host of armed groups deemed extremist by Washington. A lead article published yesterday in The Washington Post quotes over a dozen unnamed American and African officials, as well as military contractors, who refer to the US military-led effort as Project CREEKSAND. It allegedly involves secret operations in several African countries, conducted out of a large network of small air bases located in strategic locations around the continent. According to The Post, most of the airplanes used in Project CREEKSAND are small, unarmed, disguised to look like private aircraft, and bear no military markings or government insignia. In reality, however, they carry sophisticated electronic equipment designed to collect signals intelligence, while some are used to transport US Special Forces troops during capture or kill missions. The paper quotes an unnamed “former senior US commander […] involved in setting up the [air bases] network”, who alleges that the US government has built about a dozen such bases throughout Africa since 2007. These secret air bases are located in countries such as Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya, and Seychelles. Most of the US personnel involved in Project CREEKSAND consists of Special Operations forces tasked with “training foreign security forces [and] performing aid missions”. However, The Post alleges that there are also small teams of US operatives who are “dedicated to tracking and killing suspected terrorists”. Read more of this post

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US Special Forces now fighting the LRA in four African countries

February 24, 2012 by 3 Comments

Lord's Resistance ArmyBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
American troops fighting one of Africa’s most notorious rebel groups are now officially stationed across four African countries, a move that highlights the expansion of Washington’s military presence in the continent. Last October, the administration of US President Barack Obama announced the deployment of 100 US Special Forces members to Uganda, to fight an insurgency group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Founded in the 1980s, the LRA is widely considered the world’s most brutal Christian terrorist group. Its leader, Joseph Kony, who is wanted along with four of his commanders by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, is seen as a prophet by his followers. Washington had initially said that the Special Forces members would act as “advisors” to the Ugandan government, which has sustained the majority of the LRA’s attacks over the years. But Rear Admiral Brian L. Losey, the US Special Operations’ senior commander for Africa, said on Wednesday that, in addition to Uganda, American forces are currently stationed in military bases in Nzara, South Sudan, Obo, Central African Republic, and Dungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Speaking to Western reporters on the telephone, Rear Admiral Losey said that counterinsurgency activity directed at the LRA “will increase in frequency” during the spring and summer, and hinted that the Christian rebel group would soon be forced to go on the defensive. It is important to note that this official acknowledgement does not mark the beginning of Washington’s military involvement in activities against the LRA. In 2009, The New York Times revealed that the US Department of Defense assisted in the planning of a major offensive against the LRA. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #551

July 28, 2011 by Leave a comment

Salva Kiir Mayardit

Salva Kiir

►►Analysis: The fallout from the CIA’s vaccination ploy in Pakistan. We wrote earlier this month that not everyone is amused by news that the CIA tried to collect DNA evidence on Osama bin Laden by running a phony vaccination program in Pakistan. In an editorial published in The Washington Post on July 15, two American public health professionals argued that the CIA’s DNA-collection operation “destroyed credibility that wasn’t its to erode” and “burned bridges that took years for health workers to build”. The issue is developing into a very interesting case study in intelligence ethics, as two new articles on the subject were published this week. One is by Jack C. Chow formerly US ambassador on global HIV/AIDS and ex-assistant director-general of the World Health Organization on HIV/AIDS. The other, by Slate magazine columnist Tom Scocca, argues that the the CIA vaccination scheme “reveals the moral bankruptcy of American spooks”.
►►South Sudan dissolves intelligence and security bodies. The president of the newly established Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has issued an order dissolving the country’s national security and intelligence organs. There are at least two intelligence agencies in existence in the new nation, both of which were illegally formed in 2006, before South Sudan’s independence.
►►China warns US to halt spy plane flights. China has demanded that the United States stops spy plane flights near the Chinese coast, saying they have “severely harmed” trust between the two countries, state-run media reported Wednesday. The warning comes a month after two Chinese fighter jets chased an American U-2 reconnaissance plane into Taiwanese airspace.

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Radio station names hundreds of Zimbabwe secret agents

July 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

Happton Bonyongwe

Bonyongwe

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Zimbabwean opposition radio station has begun disclosing the names of hundreds of Zimbabwe intelligence operatives, in what experts say could potentially decimate Zimbabwean intelligence collection activities around the world. On June 30, SW Radio Africa, which is based in London, United Kingdom, aired the names of 83 officers of Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), and promised to air over 400 more in the coming weeks. The revelation is based on a 2001 document, which was leaked to the station by an unnamed CIO insider. In a statement, SW Radio Africa station manager Gerry Jackson dismissed national security concerns, arguing that the CIO “is not used to protect national security and to safeguard Zimbabweans”, but rather as “the brains behind the regime” of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his political grouping, ZANU PF. Jackson also cited a 2007 Human Rights Watch report, which found that the CIO is among the country’s most serious perpetrators of widespread human rights abuses. The station said that it decided to publish the names “in the interests of transparency and accountability and in the hope that by exposing these names […] some of the perpetrators of violence [will] think twice before they commit further human rights abuses”. Among the names included in the initial list of 83 persons is that of Hamad Adam, who is listed as a “political councilor” in the embassy of Zimbabwe in Berlin, Germany, as well as Paul Chikawa, who is a staffer in the country’s consulate in Hong Cong. Read more of this post

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