Al Shabab gunmen shot and killed a senior national intelligence officer in front of his own house in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, police said, in the latest such incident by the group, reported Reuters.

The agency quoted police officer Ibrahim Nur as saying that the security officer killed was involved in conducting security operations against the group, and was sitting in front of his house without his body guards when armed militants shot him to death.

Al Shabaab, which is waging an increasingly deadly campaign of bombings despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government, claimed responsibility.

“We are behind the killing of the national security general called Mohamud Haji Ali,” Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al Shabab’s military operation spokesman, told Reuters on Thursday.

“Police and security forces reached the scene later to investigate and pursue the militants. It is difficult to prevent death, the officer had no guards with him when he was killed.” Nur told Reuters.

Early this month, Al Shabab said it was also behind a car bomb attack targeting senior officials leaving a military base in Mogadishu that killed at least 15 people.

Intelligence officers in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, have a unique capability that could help them fight against ISIS: reportedly, they can hack WhatsApp chats, and identify ISIS sympathizers on social media, like reported by motherboard.vice.com.

The US Treasury announced in January that it expects to lift sanctions on Sudan, which it had listed among the State Sponsors of Terrorism, because of such Sudanese cooperation. But few American officials acknowledge that Khartoum’s counterterrorism efforts to surveil dissidents and rebels and crack down on the freedom of speech rely in part on a hacker group called Electronic Jihad.

As Sudan struggles with corruption, poverty, and stagflation, its government has been combatting isolation in the international community by investing in its telecom infrastructure. These investments include purchasing surveillance technology, which Khartoum even tried to acquire from Milan-based tech company Hacking Team. Telephone companies such as MTN Sudan, Sudani One, and Zain Sudan have flourished in the last decade, and Sudan has hosted a strong system since 1996, when the Sudanese government introduced mobile service across the major cities, according to The World Factbook.

But the expansion of telecommunications in Sudan has also served to strengthen the Sudanese government’s stranglehold on freedom of expression. Electronic Jihad, the government-backed hacker group and subunit of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), employs computer and network surveillance as well as cell phone surveillance to stifle all military and political opposition to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has ruled the country since 1989.

“The adoption of modern, electronic surveillance methods would be in keeping with the way in which the Bashir government has historically monitored its perceived opposition,” said Steve McDonald, a former official at the US State Department and global fellow at the Wilson International Center for Scholars who focuses on conflict resolution in Africa. “Not just opposition parties, but student groups, law and women’s organizations, any outspoken civil society leader has been followed, groups infiltrated, and records kept on activities and actions, both planned and perceived.”

Back in the 1980s, Sudanese Islamists recruited students majoring in applied science, engineering, and medicine with the intent of overthrowing the country’s democratic government, according to Networks of Knowledge Production in Sudan: Identities, Mobilities, and Technologies.

The students, committed to conducting an “electronic jihad” against secularism, provided intelligence to Islamist officers in the Sudanese Armed Forces when they launched a coup d’état in 1989. In the 1990s, the students joined the NISS as Electronic Jihad under the new Islamist military dictatorship.

Sudanese rebels allege that the hacker group has continued to aid the Sudanese Armed Forces in operations against perceived military and political enemies of the state, surveilling the Sudanese Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army in Darfur and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army–North in the Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains near the South Sudanese border. JEM leaders asserted that Electronic Jihad records rebels’ calls and tracks their locations, providing warplanes coordinates to launch airstrikes.

“The managers of all public companies in the communication field are from the NISS, so they can monitor and spy on people on behalf of the government,” Adam Eissa Abakar, a JEM leader, told me. In 2015, the Sudanese government ordered telephone companies to bug telephone lines in Darfur.

Now that the American government has established its own regime for mass surveillance across Africa, while dictatorships from Ethiopia to Gambia are building their own electronic police states, Sudan may prove just another example of the new norm for data privacy and security culture on the continent.

If Sudanese dissidents and rebels hope to evade their government’s surveillance and evict it from power before the end of the Third Sudanese Civil War, they will have to rely on new tactics. For now, Khartoum has the upper hand in the online battle between between democracy and dictatorship.

South Sudanese government forces on Wednesday launched an offensive on a town in the north, displacing civilians who may be headed toward the border with Sudan, the UN envoy said according to digitaljournal.com .

Some 50,000 people in Kodok in Upper Nile state, many of whom fled fighting six weeks ago in the town of Wau Shilluk, were at risk from the violence, said David Shearer, who also heads the UN mission in South Sudan.

“The conflict has widened rather than contracted over the past few weeks,” Shearer told a news conference.

“As we speak, there is an ongoing operation by the SPLA (the government’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army) on the western side of the Nile… toward the town of Kodok. They are on the edge of Kodok,” he said.

Civilians were fleeing Kodok and “possibly headed to the Sudanese border,” he added.

The attack was the latest in an upsurge in fighting in South Sudan since the beginning of the year that has driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes.

Shearer said that 60,000 people per month had been forced to flee across the border in the first three months of the year.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday discussed the worsening conflict in South Sudan, but members were divided on the way forward to rein in the warring sides.

The United States, backed by France and Britain, said an arms embargo and sanctions could put pressure on the parties to return to political talks, but China and Russia disagreed.

After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan descended into war in December 2013, leaving tens of thousands dead and more than 3.5 million people displaced.

In February, South Sudan and the United Nations formally declared a famine in parts of northern Unity State affecting 100,000 people, a disaster that UN officials said was “man-made” and could have been averted.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/south-sudan-forces-launch-new-offensive-un/article/491241#ixzz4fRHyRadJ

As a child, Kalcheinbe Salamon’s world came crashing down when his father murdered his mother. Devastated by the incident, he ran away from this northern Cameroon city to Yaounde, the country’s capital, like reported by army.mil.

He lived on the streets and scraped up a little cash pushing carts at a market before he found refuge at a group home for troubled youth. Years later, he returned to his hometown to live at a similar place called the Sarre Jabaamma youth rehabilitation center.

A team of civil affairs Soldiers visited the center Saturday to pass out school supplies and food to Salamon and about 20 other at-risk youth.

Today, Salamon is a young man at the age of 18 and is doing well in secondary school, according to the center’s director. He has dreams of attending college after he graduates so he can one day help people as a doctor.

“It has traumatized me,” he said about his mother’s death, speaking through a translator. “But all I’m focusing on now is for me not to be like my father and be a doctor someday.”

This is the sort of positive story Soldiers hope will be repeated among the other youth in the local area. With Boko Haram and other violent extremist organizations preying on street children to join their ranks, any kid off the streets is a victory in itself, they say.

“From a U.S. angle, that’s less children out on the streets who are less susceptible to any kind of recruitment from a VEO [violent extremist organization] or any kind of nefarious act,” said Staff Sgt. Brandon Collins, a member of the 83rd Civil Affairs Battalion’s Team 8321.

The four-person team is assigned to Task Force Toccoa, a 101st Airborne Division-led unit that was created in 2015 to support Cameroon’s fight against Boko Haram, which currently carries out operations just north of Garoua.

The rehab center is located next to the Garoua air base, where the task force has set up a contingency location. A portion of the civil affairs mission is to ensure the area around the base is secure. One way to do that is to assist those in need.

The humanitarian missions can also paint the U.S. Army as a friendly, caring force, which can then open avenues for new partnerships and persuade locals to come forward with information.

“That’s part of our job at civil affairs, to ensure that U.S. operations don’t hamper the local population, but also that the local population has a positive image of the U.S.,” said Collins, 28, of Niles, Ohio. “Anytime we can go out and provide assistance, it enhances our relationship with the community.”

As for the group home, Collins said his team will look to address specific issues there to keep more children off the streets.

“We’re also looking for various non-governmental organizations that could possibly provide any kind of aid, whether it’s monetary donations, food or clothing,” he said.

While the rehab center gets some help from an Italian NGO, it still doesn’t get support from the Cameroonian government. As a result, it struggles to feed and clothe children as well as send them to school, which costs about $5 per child each year.

“The state cannot finance services like this,” said Robert Awe, the home’s director. “If it wasn’t for the NGO, all of the children would be exposed to the streets.”

Awe estimates there are about 400 children living on the streets of Garoua. His group home can handle only up to two dozen of them, so he also conducts outreach projects to engage youth.

Last year, Awe said, some homeless children were persuaded with money to leave the city with an unknown man. Later, he found out that the children had been recruited to be fighters for Boko Haram.

“It is something that has been going on [for some time],” he said through a translator. “That has been our main concern after getting this information.”

Awe and others have since stepped up their outreach, he said, so they can reduce the terrorist group’s recruiting pool.

“We have been vigilant about this situation,” he said. “We are putting in more effort to talk to the children and tell them to be careful, to concentrate on their education, and not to go with people who they do not know.”

And since this issue can impact U.S. Army operations, the civil affairs mission plans to look deeper into extending the group home’s reach.

“It helps our security posture, and it helps the locals,” Collins said. “It’s a win-win situation to provide any kind of donations to organizations like this.”

The U.S. and the African Union agree that the time for Somalis to take over security responsibility in their country is swiftly approaching, lije reported by voanews.com.

During a conference call organized by U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany, General Thomas Waldhauser, Commander of AFRICOM, said the recent announcement that the U.S. will send troops to Somalia does not signal a change in strategy. The U.S. will play a support role training the Somali National Army to create efficient logistics networks to supply their troops.

“This is part of a routine deployment that has been really in the works for quite some time,” Waldhauser said.

Somalia and its international partners are working to train a 28,000-person national army after more than two decades of civil war and turmoil. The terror group al-Shabab still controls an estimated 10 percent of the country and conducts regular attacks against military and civilian targets. Somalia relies largely on the 22,000-person African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) for its security.

U.S. troops on training mission

“Our goal from the United States’ perspective, in conjunction with our partners who are there doing the training, is that the Somali National Security Forces will be prepared to provide for their own security sometime in the 2020/21 timeframe when the next series of elections go,” Waldhauser said. “We all have to pull together to make sure that we’re very effective and efficient in the training now.”

Ambassador Francisco Madeira, the civilian head of AMISOM, said the AU intends to begin drawing down its forces in 2018.

“We were not intending to stay there forever,” he said. “Somalia is for the Somalis. We, like all other Africans, we have our own countries.”

Election boosts hopes for peace

Prospects for peace in Somalia were aided by a peaceful 2017 election and a smooth transfer of power to new President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. Madeira believes setting a timeline for withdrawal will allow the new Somali government to strengthen its institutions to face the continued terror threat as well as address internal clan divisions.

“We are in solidarity with the Somali people, we need to support Somali people. We have interests to have a stable Somalia,” Madeira said. “But surely, the Somalis, the country, can only be best defended by the Somalis themselves, who understand better their dynamics, their reality and their priorities and their objectives.”

In early April, President Mohamed announced that he would offer amnesty to members of al-Shabab who renounce extremism and agree to undergo demobilization and reintegration training. Mohamed declared war on all extremists who rejected the offer.

Extremist group in hiding

Lieutenant General Osman Noor Soubagleh, AMISOM force commander, said the extremist group holds very little territory in the country but hides among the civilian population. This makes eradicating them difficult.

“Whenever you fight, they melt with the population and they have no confront with the AMISOM. So the territory they have, when you go there, they melt with the population and you cannot touch them,” he said.

The last push to take out al-Shabab will require additional intelligence gathering and aerial surveillance, Soubagleh said.

“President Farmajo just announced an amnesty toward the elements of Al-Shabaab who have joined that organization for other different reasons. And he has opened his hands. But you will have to be clear. Those who still want to persist in their evil activities and violent activities against the people of Somalia and against the government of Somalia, these ones will have to be confronted by the force of arms,” Soubagleh said.

Two months after U.S. Africa Command sent a contingent of special operations forces for tactical training with African troops in areas threatened by Boko Haram militants, U.S. Army Africa is set to take training there to the operational level, like reported by stripes.com.

During five days in Cameroon that began on Monday, USARAF’s inaugural Unified Focus exercise is calling upon some 100 field-grade officers, civilian officials and aid-group representatives to consider how to react to plausible crises in the Lake Chad Basin region.

The region, encompassing parts of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria, has been the scene of attacks by Boko Haram and clashes with security forces. In the past eight, the years, the conflict has killed an estimated 200,000, forced more than 3 million to flee for their lives and laid waste to formerly fertile lands.

“It’s to think through problems that may or may not happen,” said Col. Mike Zinno, director of USARAF’s civil-military operations division. “We want them to think through things in a more collaborative way. When you start talking about all the challenges in the region, you see how much collaboration is necessary for success.”

Unified Focus, unlike February’s tactical Operation Flintlock, will be a tabletop exercise on countering Boko Haram and other extremist groups. It replaces a previous USARAF annual exercise, Central Accord, which focused on peacekeeping operations.

Participants will include the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the International Red Cross and field-grade officers with the Multinational Joint Task Force. The task force, authorized in 2015 by the African Union to combat Boko Haram in a more coordinated way, is made up soldiers from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Benin.

“There’s promise and potential in being able to work together,” Zinno said. “That said, there are still challenges.”

According to a September report by the Institute for Security Studies, the task force, hampered by “political, logistical, technical and financial challenges,” still struggles to demonstrate effectiveness but is “gradually gaining ground.”

Participants in Unified Focus will problem-solve five scripted scenarios.

One scenario involves a Cameroonian MNJTF unit that has crossed the border into Nigeria in pursuit of Boko Haram terrorists and discovered an abandoned factory used to make improvised explosive devices. The commander, rather than destroying it, wants to use the site, which is filled with explosives, to gather intelligence. The question to participants: How can the MNJTF use intelligence and organizational methods to counter Boko Haram’s use of IEDs?

A second scenario explores what MNJTF forces should do after people with an unclear relationship with Boko Haram surrender themselves. This scenario offers a forum for discussing policies and legal requirements for screening detainees and reintegrating them into society.

Other scenarios deal with second-order effects from the insurgency, such as hunger and threat of starvation gripping parts of the region.

“It’s secondary to Boko Haram coming in and blowing up your school, but it’s equally life-threatening,” Zinno, said.

In fact, according to the United Nations, a half-million children in northeastern Nigeria are so severely malnourished that 75,000 could die by June. In villages freed from Boko Haram, remaining residents have been found eating the only things left — grass and insects.

One vignette explores how to improve the security environment for humanitarian groups operating in the area generally and in zones in which security forces are conducting counter-Boko Haram operations. “The military is only part of the whole thing. The NGOs have a large piece,” said exercise planner Brad O’Neil.

“They bring a different perspective,” said Zino. “They’re on the ground every day.”

Shabaab, al Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, has claimed a massive improvised explosive device (IED) attack on Somali soldiers near Galgala in the northern semi-autonomous region of Puntland, like reported by longwarjournal.org . The blast left at least eight soldiers dead and many others wounded. Shabaab claimed credit for the ambush on its Radio al Andalus website.

Galgala has long been within Shabaab’s areas of operations. Since 2015, the region has also seen activity from Islamic State-loyal militants led by a former Shabaab commander, Abdulqadir Mumin. The wider Bari region has seen the town of Qandala taken over and a suicide assault on a popular hotel in Bosaso by the Islamic State. While military operations are underway against the Islamic State and Shabaab in the Bari region of Puntland, the Islamic State militants briefly seized another village last week before being forced to retreat.

Additionally, Shabaab claimed targeting the Baledogle Airfield in the Lower Shabelle region via its Shahada News Telegram channel. The statement reported that the jihadists fired 35 mortars at the base, which allegedly landed inside. The airfield is used as a base for the Somali military, African Union forces, and reportedly American troops. Shabaab was quick to include this information in its statement by saying it specifically targeted Americans inside the base.

However, no Somali officials, the African Union, or any US officials have commented on any attack or shelling on the base. Shabaab often claims targeting American military forces in Somalia, but these attacks often go without any comment from US officials. This will likely increase as the US military has been granted approval by President Donald Trump to target Shabaab with “additional precision fires.”

Operatives of the Civilian Joint Task Force, CJTF, on Monday morning killed two female suicide bombers while the third blew herself up in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, like reported by dailypost.ng .

The female bombers, attempted to enter the city through Mamanti village in Jere Local Government Area at about 5.10 a.m, but were shot dead before detonating the explosive devices strapped to their bodies.

In a statement by the State Police Commissioner, Damian Chukwu, one of the female suicide bombers, however, blew herself up.

The statement reads, “Today at about 05:10hrs, three female suicide bombers attempted to enter Mamanti village Jere Local Government. They were intercepted by Civilian JTF. In the process, one of the bombers detonated IED strapped to her body killing herself alone.

“The other two tried to escape but were shot dead by security personnel on duty.EOD mine drafted to the scene to sanitize and render the area safe.”

Kenya’s Ministry of Defense said its troops, operating under the African Union Mission in Somalia, have destroyed an al-Shabab camp, killing 52 militants and seizing weapons, like reported by voanews.com.

In a statement, the ministry said troops raided the camp, located near the town of Badhadhe in the Lower Jubba region, at around 1:00 a.m. Friday.

“The intelligence-led operation was executed after surveillance assets sighted al-Shabab terrorist concentration in the location,” the ministry said. “Ground troops supported by mortar and artillery fire were employed to neutralize the camp thereafter,” the statement added.

A local resident who could not be named for security reasons told VOA Somali the bombed al-Shabab camp is near Lagta Dishu, a military base used by Kenyan military operating in Somalia.

He said Kenyan troops used helicopters to bomb the area early in the morning, and said the aerial attack on the site was ongoing.

The resident said he could not confirm the casualty figure claimed by the Kenya military.

“It’s possible many al-Shabab fighters were killed, but I don’t know how many,” he said.

Kenya said other militants escaped with injuries. The statement said troops seized weapons including seven AK47 rifles, ammunition and explosive devices.

Badhadhe is 200 kilometers southwest of Kismayo and is one of the main towns in the region still controlled by al-Shabab.

Residents west of Kismayo reported separate clashes between Somali regional forces and al-Shabab militants Friday.

Jubbaland security forces spokesman Ahmed Mohamud Mohamed said their forces have seized new areas from the militants.

“We have conducted military operations against these religious bandits in Bulo Haji, our troops are there now,” he said.

He said the operations and the attack by Kenyan forces were coordinated.

The al-Qaida-affiliated militant group al-Shabab is trying to improve its reputation by delivering food to parts of Somalia that are suffering from drought, like reported by pbs.org.

Al-Shabab blocked food aid and killed some humanitarian workers during the last major famine in 2011, severely damaging its image. So this time, the group is taking a softer approach, claiming to have distributed food in the six central and southern regions of Bay, Bakol, Mudug, Hiraan, Lower Shabelle and Galguduug.

“This is a resilient group. They do learn their lessons,” said J. Peter Pham, vice president for Research and Regional Initiatives and director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council. The militants learned that part of their military defeat was due to the improved training of peacekeepers, but also their own handling of the 2011 famine, he said.

Al-Shabab has taken over parts of southern and central Somalia in order to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state, and has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks around the country.

The new government under President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed cannot enter al-Shabab territory for safety reasons, and they are loathe to engage the terrorist group directly when trying to deliver aid.

Otherwise, the Somali government would appear complicit, such as using al-Shabab-friendly contractors, or risk accusations of diverting international aid to the militants, said Pham.

“It underscores the resilience and adaptability of the terrorist group and underscores the weakness of the internationally backed government that al-Shabab is out there under its own banner distributing aid,” he said. “Progress clearly has been made (under the new government), but still there’s a long way to go.”

Reena Ghelani, deputy director for the Coordination and Response Division at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters on a conference call Thursday that al-Shabab is taking advantage of people’s suffering and it makes access to all areas by the international community even more crucial. “It’s important people have access to aid to avoid this exploitation,” she said.

President Mohamed, who took office in February, formed a National Drought Response Committee to collect donations from the Somali diaspora and distribute aid. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for $5.6 billion in international aid for the four countries.

Upwards of 20 million people are facing starvation and famine in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and northeastern Nigeria, according to U.N. estimates.

A famine is declared when 20 percent of the population is starving and 30 percent of children under 5 are suffering from malnutrition, Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, told reporters. Aid groups hope that sounding the alarm earlier than in 2011 will prevent thousands of deaths.

“We’re better funded now” than in 2011, thanks to the earlier call to action, said Husain. However, even if the current rainy season produces more rain than in past drought years, people still need food assistance to get them to the next harvest, he said.