The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Monday for its first terrorist attack in Somalia. In an official statement circulated on social media, the extremist group said its fighters detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) targeting a military vehicle belonging to African Union peacekeeping forces on the outskirts of Mogadishu, the country’s sprawling capital. The blast damaged the vehicle, but it was not immediately clear whether anybody was either killed or wounded, the militant group aka either ISIL or ISIS said in its statement.

However, an African Union Mission in Somalia representative, Lt. Col. Joe Kibet, told International Business Times by phone the claim was “not true,” saying the explosion did not damage the vehicle and that there were neither deaths nor injuries. Speaking for Somalia’s Ministry of Internal Security, Abdikamil Moalim Shukri also denied the claim in a brief phone interview Monday.

It’s the first time ISIS has officially declared its involvement in an operation in Somalia. The incident signals the extremist group’s desire to make inroads in a war-torn region dominated by its rival, al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab. While it’s no easy task, increasing its base in Somalia could translate into big rewards for ISIS, including access to Africa’s longest coastline and the neighboring nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, all key U.S. allies.

“Setting off an IED is hardly a major achievement in Somalia,” said Matt Bryden, a Somalia expert and director of Sahan Research, a think tank based in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. “But it does testify to the presence of Islamic State sympathizers on the ground in Somalia, and the potential for the group to inspire fissures among al-Shabab fighters and sympathizers.”

Somalia’s conflict-ridden past, high unemployment rate, Muslim-majority population and Western ties make it a hot spot for jihadi groups, so ISIS has been courting al-Shabab members there for some time. The Syria-based extremist group released a recruitment video last year that showed Somali fighters urging their compatriots to join ISIS.

Somalia would be a strategic move for ISIS. The African country sits close to the world’s busiest shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden. The East African region also hosts U.S. military troops and bases, and is the recipient of millions of dollars in U.S. aid and investment.

“Looking at Somalia, ISIL is trying to insert itself and then may threaten to move into Kenya,” Rose Gottemoeller, the U.S. State Department’s undersecretary for arms control and international security, reportedly said at a roundtable in Johannesburg, South Africa, in December.

But the push has had marginal success thus far. Al-Shabab commander Hassan Mohamed, aka Hassan Fanah, was arrested by Somali forces in Mogadishu’s Kahda district Sunday night. He had reportedly defected from al-Shabab and joined ISIS at the end of last year, according toMareeg.com. Another senior al-Shabab commander in Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region reportedly defected from the group in October and pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He took about 20 of his followers with him, but the move represented a small split in the ranks as the vast majority of al-Shabab members in the region have remained loyal to the group.

There is also a new group calling itself Jahba East Africa, which this month gave bayah, or an oath of allegiance, to al-Baghdadi and recognized him as the “rightful khalifa [leader] of all Muslims.” The group may be made up of former members of al-Shabab. A representative said the group included fighters not only in Somalia but also in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and condemned al-Shabab for being a “psychological and physical prison,” according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors terrorist activity.

“The sentiment that Jabha reflects in its messaging is real: There is a growing Islamic State constituency across East Africa. But whether or not it has the potential to develop as a terrorist group remains to be seen,” Sahan Research’s Bryden said in an interview Monday. “Over time, if ISIS continues to project an aura of success and expansion, that could prove a challenge to al-Shabab’s cohesion and integrity.”

Controlling swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has gained ground in recent months with its branches in both North Africa and West Africa, amassing supporters and territory, but the militant group has been struggling to establish itself in East Africa for a number of reasons. While Somalia’s location makes it an appealing place to establish a base, its site also makes it a difficult one. Much of the country is within reach of the government security forces, peacekeeping troops or armies of neighboring countries.

“ISIS has not yet managed to establish a meaningful foothold in Somalia,” Bryden said. “Its current presence, in the remote northeastern highlands, is isolated enough to provide a degree of security, but also consigns the group to irrelevance.”

Analysts have estimated there are several thousand al-Shabab fighters in Somalia, and the group has threatened to kill any potential turncoats, which has likely choked ISIS’ recruitment efforts. Most of the defectors have been young fighters.

More al-Shabab members may choose to swap sides in the event they see immense benefits in defecting, such as better pay or higher ranks. For now, though, the group’s emir, Ahmed Omar, aka Abu Ubaydah, has clearly chosen to remain aligned with al Qaeda.

“There are signs that ISIS is gaining a very small toehold in the region. But they’ve been trying very, very hard to woo al-Shabab into the ISIS fold,” said Joshua Meservey, policy analyst for Africa and the Middle East at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. “This is a group with real teeth, and joining ISIS would be a feather in the cap.”

Al Qaeda and ISIS have a shared goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate ruled by a strict version of Sharia and they have a common enemy: the West and its allies. But they are locked in competition for resources, recruits and operational spaces. There are also fundamental differences between the two groups.

Al Qaeda leadership views the establishment of  a caliphate as a long-term project and sees the implementation of Islamic law as a slow process, in contrast to ISIS and its affiliates, which have declared caliphates quickly. Al Qaeda has traditionally relied on donor funding, while ISIS is comparatively more dependent on illicit activities such as selling oil on the black market. ISIS is also more brutal than al Qaeda, using extreme violence to attract attention and recruit followers, a tactic al Qaeda leadership has shunned.

Al Qaeda already has the upper hand in East Africa because its affiliate has had a longstanding presence in Somalia. Al-Shabab, whose name means “The Youth,” emerged in 2006 from the now-defunct Islamic Courts Union, which once ruled Mogadishu. The Sunni extremist group launched its own insurgency in major Somali cities in 2009, taking control of Mogadishu and southern Somalia until it was pushed out by domestic and foreign forces around 2012.

Al-Shabab frequently targets officials and peacekeeping forces in its efforts to topple Somalia’s Western-backed government, as well as civilians and non-Muslims. Although it’s based in Somalia, its fighters have launched deadly attacks in neighboring countries such as Kenya. Many areas of Somalia are still under al-Shabab’s control, and the militants have increased efforts in recent months to recapture lost territories.

Decades of civil war has ravaged much of Somalia’s economic infrastructure, government structures and other institutions. Clan warlords have battled for power in the country after the collapse of a military dictator’s regime in the early 1990s. After years of interim authority, a federal government headed by the president and parliament was established in 2012. But Somalia’s internationally recognized government has failed to assert central authority over the nation, which, in conjunction with a high unemployment rate, has created a niche for armed groups and piracy. It also leaves the door open for al-Shabab to expand or for ISIS to gain a foothold.

The youth unemployment rate in Somalia is among the highest in the world, at 67 percent, according to the United Nations Development Program. That figure is even higher for woman and in certain areas of the country. Somalia also has one of the lowest rates of school enrollment, with more than 80 percent of primary-age children no longer in school or have never attended. These issues verge on catastrophic, given that more than 70 percent of Somalia’s population of 10.5 million is under 35. And with this population almost entirely Muslim, Somalia is highly vulnerable to extremism and radicalization.

With few or no opportunities, many young Somalis have turned to joining militias or piracy as solutions to their problems in cases where migrating is not an option. An armed pirate can earn between $6,000 and $10,000 on a $1 million ransom, according to a 2008 report commissioned by the U.N. Militant groups such as al-Shabab also make tempting promises of income from their illicit dealings. ISIS could compete by offering even higher wages.

“The U.S. really needs to pay attention and remain engaged on Somalia,” the Heritage Foundation’s Meservey said.

ibtimes.com

The good news is that the killing in Burundi has not yet grown into a civil war like the one that killed 300,000 people in 1993-2005, let alone a genocide like the one that killed 800,000 people in neighbouring Rwanda in 1994. The bad news is that Burundi is getting there.

It’s hard to speak well of Sepp Blatter, the disgraced former head of Fifa, the international football federation. But Africa would owe him a large debt of gratitude if he had persuaded Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza not to seek a third term, and instead to accept a job as FIFA’s “ambassador for football” to the world.

When the story came out recently in Blatter’s autobiography, the Swiss foreign ministry (which asked Blatter to make the offer) explained that “The intention was to contribute to a peaceful solution in order to prevent the current crisis in Burundi.”

It might even have worked. Nkurunziza is a keen footballer, and he certainly has put aside enough money to retire on. But he chose to stay on and run for a third term, and started Burundi on the road back down to Hell.

African presidents suffer from two besetting sins. One is the belief that they are irreplaceable: almost two-thirds of African countries had two-term presidential limits in their constitutions by 2000, but since then ten of them have seen attempts by their presidents to remove the limit. The most recent was Rwanda, where President Paul Kagame’s last permitted term will now end in 2034.

But Pierre Nkurunziza’s excuse was particularly pathetic. He became president at the end of the civil war in 2005, when the peace was precarious. There was no time for a presidential election, so he was elected to the presidency by a parliamentary vote.

On the basis of that, Nkurunziza began claiming last year that his first term shouldn’t count towards his constitutional two-term limit because he was chosen by parliament and not by the people. Even Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe (seven terms and counting) saw the humour in that. “They say the first term was not a real term,” he said at an African Union summit last June, “but you were there for five years!”

Burundi’s Constitutional Court accepted Nkuruniza’s claim, however, as it would have been hazardous to the members’ health to do otherwise. (One of the judges then fled the country, saying that they had all been bullied and threatened into giving that judgement.) The opposition parties all boycotted the election last July, so Nkurunziza “won” – and by then the level of violence was rising rapidly.

The killing started after a failed military coup that tried to stop the sham election, and the reported death toll is now around 400. The known victims are mostly political activists and ordinary citizens murdered by the police in Bujumbura, the capital, but the real total of the killings must be far higher. Rural killings are rarely reported, but a quarter-million people have fled the country in the past year and now live in refugee camps in neighbouring countries.

The one consolation in this dreadful situation until recently was that it wasn’t a tribal confrontation. In both Rwanda’s genocide and Burundi’s civil war the majority Hutus (85 per cent of the population) were on one side and formerly dominant Tutsi minority on the other. Since the civil war, however, Burundi’s army has been evenly divided between the two ethnic groups, and the opposition groups have also included both Hutus and Tutsis.

The other besetting sin of African presidents, unfortunately, is that if they come from the biggest tribe (as they most often do), when they get into deep political trouble their default solution is to fall back on tribal loyalties. That is what Nkurunziza is doing now. The army is being purged of Tutsis, and the very same language used by the Hutus in the run-up to the Rwanda genocide is now being used by Nkurunziza’s Hutu backers in Burundi.

Révérien Ndikuriyo, the president of the Burundian senate, has been referring to the regime’s opponents as “cockroaches” (the same word used for Tutsis by the Hutu extremists in Rwanda). He has even called on the government’s supporters to “start work” (“kora”), which was the code-word used in Rwanda for the launch of the 1994 genocide.

Nkurunziza is trying to turn a political confrontation he might lose into an ethnic conflict that he could win, but the cost would be another genocide. The future of an entire country of ten million people is being put at risk by his personal ambition.

The African Union offered to send 5,000 soldiers to help quell the violence, but backed down when Nkurunziza objected. There are 19,000 United Nations peacekeepers just across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the political will to send them in is lacking.

So far the opposition parties (which are, of course, mostly Hutu) are resisting Nkurunziza’s attempts to scapegoat the Tutsis, but in the world’s poorest country many ordinary Hutus will be tempted to go along with the regime’s lies in order to steal their Tutsi neighbours’ land. We may be weeks away from Africa’s next genocide.

cyprus-mail.com/

Islamic State leader Abdiqadir Mumin shown in a video promoting the “Commander Sheikh Abu Numan training camp”

The Islamic State touted a small training camp and announced its first attack in Somalia as part of the its push establish a presence in the country. Islamic State followers in Somalia have been ruthlessly pursued by Shabaab, al Qaeda’s official branch in East Africa, thwarting their attempt to gain traction in Somalia.

The Islamic State released a video on April 14 of the “Commander Sheikh Abu Numan training camp,” which is likely located in the Puntland region in northwestern Somalia. The video, which was produced by the Islamic State’s Al Furat Media, featured former Shabaab commander Abdiqadir Mumin, who is known to be based in Puntland.

The video depicted just over a dozen fighters training in the camp, which is named after Bashir Abu Numan, a former commander who was killed by Shabaab’s Amniyat – the rival group’s internal security and intelligence branch – after he defected to the Islamic State in late 2015.

The Commander Sheikh Abu Numan camp does not appear to be a permanent facility. The fighters were shown undertaking physical and weapons exercises before listening to a speech from Abdiqadir Mumin, who likely holds a senior leadership position within the Islamic State’s fledgling branch in Somalia.

Mumin blessed the camp as the “first camp of the Caliphate in Somalia” before he and the fighters shown in the video renew their pledge of allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Mumin originally defected to the Islamic State late last year with just 20 of the 300 jihadists based in the Galgala hills of Puntland. The other jihadists are said to have remained loyal to Shabaab. [See LWJ report, Shabaab’s leadership fights Islamic State’s attempted expansion in East Africa.]

In addition to promoting its camp, the Islamic State claimed its first attack inside Somalia. In a statement released on social media accounts today, the Islamic State claimed it detonated an IED against a “a Military Vehicle of the African Crusader Forces in Mogadishu,” according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

The Islamic State has struggled to gain a foothold in Somalia despite a concerted effort to woo Shabaab fighters into its ranks. Shabaab’s Amniyat has been tasked with hunting down and killing any members who seek to or have defected to the Islamic State. Last December, the Amniyat gunned down Mohammed Makkawi Ibrahim, a veteran jihadist who was responsible for killing a diplomat for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and his driver in Khartoum, Sudan in January 2008.

longwarjournal.org

At least six Al-Shabaab militants were killed and three others captured at Raydabow village about 25km from Bur-hakabo town in Bay region of southwest Somalia during a security operation on Sunday.

Security commander of Southwest State Administration in Somalia, Mohamed Isak Ibrahim told reporters the operation was successful, adding that the officers gathered crucial intelligence that may lead to arrest of the insurgents in future.

“The security forces conducted successful operation between Baidoa and Bur-hakabo towns, we reached Raydabow village and found the nine militants preparing explosive devices. They tried to resist arrest and the fight ensued,” Ibrahim said.

“We over powered them, six of them died on the spot from explosion after hurling the devices on them while three others surrendered to us. We are questioning them,” he added.

The security commander added that there were no casualties on their side while thanking residents for their contribution on this successful security operation against Al-Qaida linked group of Al-Shabaab.

Al-Shabaab militants have not commented on the latest victory by the Somali security forces in the region so far.

Such operation comes less than 24 hrs when deadly attacks occurred at a restaurant in Bur-hakabo town where one person died and six others injured.

xinhuanet.com

A total of 1,934,765 displaced persons, IDPs, are currently living in formal camps, host communities and satellite camps in liberated communities as a result of insurgency in North Eastern States of Borno, Yobe, Taraba, Gombe, Bauchi and Adamawa states.

This was disclosed by the Yola Camp Coordinator , Saad Bello, who, on behalf of the Director General of NEMA, Muhammad Sani Sidi, took the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, round the facilities at Malkohi IDP Camp in Yola, Adamawa State at the weekend.

He said there were 32 formal camps in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States with a total of 189,783 IDPs. Borno has 19 camps with 150, 858 IDPs; Yobe has 9 camps with 31, 988 IDPs and Adamawa 4 camps with 6, 937 IDPs.

The Camp Coordinator added that there were 14 satellite camps in liberated communities, mainly in Borno State with 216,184 IDPs. The camps with the highest population are Ngala with 70,505; Dikwa 53,636; Bama 27, 00 and Damboa/Sabon Gari 25,311.

Mr. Saad said host communities in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states have a total of 1,391,613 IDPs. Borno state has the highest with 1, 158, 362; Adamawa 125, 689 and Yobe 107, 562.

He said “Federal Government through the coordinating agency, NEMA and relevant line Ministries, Departments and Agencies have been trying to meet the needs of the IDPs in the provision of food, nutrition, non-food items (NFIs), temporary shelter, medicament, psycho-social therapy, security and protection.

He said as the government continued in the efforts to meet the needs of the IDPs, more supports were critically required for the IDPs across the three identified kinds of camps before they return back to their communities.

The critical areas where further support is needed are food, non-food items (including basic household needs), shelter, WASH, education, nutrition, protection, health and sexual reproductive health, and psycho-social helps.

The U.S. Ambassador to the UN , Samantha Power, who led a high level delegation from US to the Malkohi IDPs camp and host communities told them that they were there to determine what more could be done to defeat Boko Haram so that they can return back to their communities.

“I know how difficult these last years have been for you and on behalf of President Barack Obama, I express my sympathy and my condolences for all you have lost and our resolve to try to make things better together,” she said.

premiumtimesng.com

Security sources say suspect was planning to stage an attack on western targets this weekend in capital Bamako

A Mauritanian man suspected of planning and carrying out deadly attacks on popular tourist venues in Mali last year has been arrested in the Malian capital Bamako, security sources told AFP on Friday.

Detained on Thursday in a Bamako suburb, the man is believed to have taken part in attacks in March, August and November that left more than 30 people dead , including a deadly assault on the upmarket Radisson Blu hotel he allegedly masterminded.

“He was planning to stage an attack on western targets this weekend in Bamako,” said a source who asked not to be identified.

The suspected is believed to attacked a bar and restaurant in Bamako in March 2015 in which five people died, including two foreigners, the sources said.

He is also suspected of planning deadly assaults on the upmarket Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako in November that left 20 dead and the Byblos hotel in central Mali in August, where 13 people died.

A security source close to the investigation said the Mauritanian had also been involved in a failed attack in March 21 this year on the Azalai Nord-Sud hotel in Bamako, where the EU mission is based.

Code-named “Ibrahim number 10,” the suspect was “the shooter at La Terrasse,” and he planned the Radisson Blu, Sevare and Nord-Sud attacks, the source said.

“He quickly confessed after his arrest yesterday (Thursday) at around 8:00 p.m. (2000 GMT),” the source added.

“He had arrived in Bamako on April 16 to carry out more attacks, and he spent several days in Mali without being detected,” he said.

Another security source said weapons and grenades were found at the suspect’s home in Bamako.

The March 7, 2015 grenade and gun attack on La Terrasse bar left five people dead — three Malians, a Belgian and a Frenchman. It was claimed by an affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the jihadist group’s North African branch.

The November 20 attack on the Radisson Blu left 20 people dead, including 14 foreigners. AQIM also claimed responsibility for the assault.

The August attack on the Byblos hotel in Sevare killed four foreign employees of the UN Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).

toi.com

The US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power has pledged support to countries involved in the fight against Boko Haram Islamists. Power made the statement while in Nigeria, having visited Chad and Cameroon.

The three countries have been battling the Islamists who have terrorized parts of northern Nigerian and neighboring Cameroon.

DW spoke to Ryan Cummings, director of the South African risk analysis group Signal Risk who believes the visit by an American top diplomat to the Lake Chad basin sends a strong signal to Boko Haram that the international community is committed to end their terrorist activities.

DW: How significant is her visit to the three countries?

Ryan Cummings: I think it’s a kind of reinforcement that the United State and other foreign governments are supportive of operations that aim at uprooting the Boko Haram Islamists. I think it’s also a kind of recognition that the Boko Haram threat has evolved and expanded outside of Northeastern Nigeria and become an issue of regional propositions which needs not only a regional but an international response.

Why has the United States been reluctant to help Nigeria fight Boko Haram and instead chose to support Cameroon with 300 troops?

I think we need to look at the relations between the Nigerian and the US government. They [relations] were earlier strained during former President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime accused the US government of failing to sell the weapons that the Nigerian government needed in the fight against Boko Haram. It was stated that the US government were concerned and reluctant to sell the Nigerian military any form of weaponry due to the long standing claims of human right abuses by the army in the fight against Boko Haram and also in operations elsewhere.

When Mohammed Buhari took over the presidency; there was emphasis on looking at strengthening relations with a lot of international countries, the US being one of them.

They are supplying armies not only to Cameroon but to Niger as well. However, these forces are not taking part in any combat operations. What they are doing is specializing in the training of counterterrorism forces of the respective countries with similar deployment taking place including to Nigeria following the Chibok kidnapping.

With a crackdown on freedom of protest and a government decision to shut down the internet and text messaging throughout Chad for several days during election time, do you think the US is in a difficult position to partner with a dictator in the fight against Boko Haram?

To a certain extent it’s a difficult compromise. I think Idris Debby is an ally to many governments specifically the French. He is a key partner in fighting insecurity in the region.

During Samathan Powers’ visit, President Deby said Washington and other foreign powers are partly to be blamed for the Boko Haram threat. What is your take on that?

I think it’s easy to point fingers. We can look at international powers and look at foreign interventions within certain contexts and the repercussions of foreign interventions have had in facilitating the creation of groups especially the Islamic state. I find it difficult to see foreign intervention in Nigeria beyond British colonial rule as in any way influencing the development of Boko Haram

The same situation is seen in Cameroon, with Paul Biya in power for over three decades. Is the US just there to talk about the joint effort to fight Boko Haram or are they also voicing their concerns against the oppressive regime?

I think it’s very much a dual approach. The United States will always have key partners across the world and specifically within the African context. These key partners need to espouse the levels of democratization that the US itself is a key custodian of and a key promoter of, and we are just not seeing that. The problem is that the reason Deby and Biya have become key partners in the fight against regional instability is because of their longevity within their specific countries. Because they have created key nexuses between various stakeholders in the region – is how they are able to ensure that they can respond to issues of insecurity.

Chad has intercepted a large cache of different types of weapons sent from ISIS affiliate in Libya and going to Boko Haram insurgents in the Lake Chad region.

The weapons were seized two weeks ago, underscoring the increasing ties between Boko Haram and the Islamic State, which now has a foothold, from its northern base of Sirte, south of Libya, next door to Chad.

Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, commander of US special operations in Africa made this revelation in Ndjamena today as US ambassador to the United Nations; Samantha Power came for a visit.

The Boko Haram-IS nexus may pose the greatest immediate threat to the Lake Chad region, Bolduc said.

Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, right, accompanied by U.S. State Department Principal Deputy Secretary for African Affairs Bruce Wharton, speaks to members of the media outside the U.S. Embassy in Chad in N’Djamena, Chad.

Although Boko Haram pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State last year, the operational connection has been unclear.

Bolduc said the groups clearly share “tactics, techniques, and procedures,” from the way they conduct complex ambushes and set improvised explosive devices like roadside bombs, to how they undertake high-profile attacks on hotels.

“You can, I think, draw a conclusion,” Bolduc told reporters. The implication was that the weapons were sent by the Islamic State, which has established a foothold along Libya’s Mediterranean coast, near the city of Sirte.

Given the range of threats here, he said the “Lake Chad Basin region is Ground Zero” in the fight against extremism in Africa.

U.S. officials warned of deepening links between the Islamic State and Boko Haram and prodded Chad’s ruling strongman to introduce reforms for the sake of long-term stability.

The visit to Chad by America’s U.N. envoy, Samantha Power, and top U.S. military officials highlights the country’s precarious position dealing with a multitude of hostile militant groups and unstable neighboring governments. It also underscores the impoverished, land-locked country’s growing geopolitical value.

Boko Haram has launched attacks on Chad’s territory from its base in Nigeria to the southwest. The Islamic State and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb lurk in chaotic and lawless Libya to the north. To the east is Sudan’s Darfur region; to the south is the Central African Republic, still recovering from years of interethnic conflict.

Stressing the civilian aspect to defeating Boko Haram, a once indigenous Nigerian militant movement whose rebellion has morphed into a regional force, Samantha Power stressed the need to bolster economic development, job opportunities, and political inclusiveness.

The message carried added weight, coming less than two weeks after Chad held elections that are widely expected to return Deby for a fifth term as president. Deby has led the country since 1990. Election results haven’t yet been announced.

“We noted how far Chad has come from the dark days of dictatorship to today,” Power said.

President Idriss Deby rejected opposition claims that some 60 security forces who voted against him in the elections have since disappeared.

“There are no disappearances,” he stated. “They will be presented on television, in front of the world.”

The 63-year-old Deby, who seized power himself in a coup after helping Chad defeat Libya in the 1980s, said Washington and other powers were partly to blame for the Boko Haram-IS threat. He said they are destabilizing Libya through their effort to install a functioning government.

“The international community is imposing a unity government from outside Libya that will fail,” Deby said.

thebreakingtimes.com

The American and African forces sent to Cameroon to fight Boko Haram have, on several occasions, located clusters of the schoolgirls kidnapped by the militant group two years ago, US officials said.

Rescue operations have not been carried out, the officials said, because of fears that any ensuing battle with Boko Haram fighters would put the captives at risk, or incite some form of retaliation against hostages still being held in other areas.

US officials said a combination of local intelligence, intercepted communications and drone footage had been used to locate groups of the 276 girls abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in the Nigerian town of Chibok two years ago this month. Some of the girls have since been tracked to Nigeria’s sprawling Sambisa Forest.

Officials insist that efforts to free the girls have not been abandoned. They say that a major concern is the hundreds of other women and girls who are also held by Boko Haram, captives who are often sexually assaulted, forced into marriages with their tormentors, and sometimes killed.

“You’re not just looking for 200 girls,” said General Carter F. Ham, the retired head of the US military’s Africa Command. “There are many, many others who have been taken hostage, and more thousands killed, and 2½ million people displaced.”

Senior US military officials joined Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, in Cameroon this week to speak with the country’s military and civilian leaders about the fight against Boko Haram and information gleaned by US intelligence.

The talks took place not far from where US Special Operations forces and hundreds of surveillance drone operators are based. Despite the proximity of the troops, Boko Haram’s attacks continued.

On Monday night, three Cameroonian soldiers were killed and five were wounded after Boko Haram fighters ambushed a military convoy near Dabanga, a town in the country’s north, Cameroonian military officials said. The ambush followed intense fighting on the Nigerian side of the border, where Boko militants attacked an army base, wounding 22 soldiers.

US military officials said that intelligence reports show that the girls have been divided into smaller groups. General David M. Rodriguez, the head of the military’s Africa Command, told reporters at the Pentagon this month that the Chibok girls have been “moved to some very isolated places.” Rodriguez added that locating them is “not an exact science.”

Because the girls have been dispersed, military forces from Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon might need to mount simultaneous rescues to make sure that Boko Haram fighters do not retaliate for the rescue of one group. Such a multipronged, coordinated operation would be difficult even for highly trained US troops with combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq to pull off.

“So the challenge is, how do you find lots of people held hostage in different places?” Ham said. “That’s really complex, and it stretches the capability of local forces.”

About 100 miles south of Maroua, the city where Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc, top US Special Operations commander for Africa, met Monday with Cameroonian military officials, about 200 US drone operators and Special Operations forces worked with local troops to gather intelligence on Boko Haram and the whereabouts of its many hostages.

Bolduc has recommended that the Pentagon send dozens of additional Special Operations advisers to the front lines of Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram. Such a move would push US troops hundreds of miles closer to the battle against an extremist group that has killed thousands of civilians in Nigeria’s northeast as well as in neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The additional Special Operations advisers would serve in noncombat advisory roles, military officials said.

Even if the African forces continue to push back the militants, as they have managed to do in recent months, the hostages issue is not going away.

There has been concern that Boko Haram, perhaps because it is on the retreat, is increasingly using its hostages as suicide bombers. Few observers appear to put much stock in the assertion by Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, that the militant group is technically defeated.

Col. Badjeck Didier, a spokesman for Cameroon’s Defense Ministry, said Tuesday that he worried that some of the Chibok girls may have been turned into suicide bombers.

“When we see the kamikaze bombers, they have the same age — 14-15 years — as the Chibok girls,” Didier said. He said a recent video released by Boko Haram that purported to show proof of life of a number of the Chibok girls — something the Nigerian government had demanded as a condition of negotiations — was a sign that the group wants to negotiate.

Tom M. Sanderson, director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the length of the girls’ time in captivity may have contributed to the difficulty in rescuing them.

“These women did not chose to become suicide bombers, but after two years of incarceration and bearing children of these men, some of them had to buy in out of personal survival,” Sanderson said. “I do think that Boko Haram has considered using these girls to kill their rescuers. And that would cause people to have spasms over what that symbolism meant.”

bostonglobe.com