PrairiePundit

BBC: The United States has expanded its controversial travel ban to include people from North Korea, Venezuela and Chad. The White House said the restrictions follow a review of information sharing by foreign governments. Donald Trump issued a presidential proclamation late on Sunday. "Making America safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet," Mr Trump said. The restrictions on Venezuelans apply only to government officials and their family members. The three new countries join five others from Mr Trump's original travel ban: Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. But the new proclamation removed restrictions that were placed on Sudan. ... Lifting the travel ban on Sudan may raise some questions.  It has a despotic Islamist leader and yesterday a legal Sudanese immigrant was accused of opening fire on worshippers at a Chruch of Christ in Tennessee killing one and wounding several others.  Authorities have not given...

AP: Morocco unravels plot to attack tourists, Western facilities The plot was by an ISIL affiliate from Chad.

AFP: Nigeria said Sunday it had carried out air strikes in the northeast of the country to repel an attack by Boko Haram and had killed a "large number" of the Islamist extremists. The air raids came as Nigeria and its neighbours prepared to launch a new multinational force to combat Boko Haram, in the face of the group's escalating violence in the region. The Nigerian Air Force said it had "successfully repelled an attack on Bita village by the Boko Haram terrorist group" in a combined operation with ground troops after spotting militants planning an assault. "Consequently, a large number of the insurgents were killed and several others were injured," it said in a statement, without disclosing when the incident took place. Boko Haram has staged a string of strikes -- often by female bombers -- targeting markets in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon that have killed and wounded scores in the past month. ... It will be interesting to see whether Nigeria is c...

NY Times: Chad’s President Says Nigeria Absent in Boko Haram Fight Rather than showing triumphalism, President Idriss Déby was frustrated waiting for a sign that Nigerian forces would take over. The Nigerian military has not been an effective force in dealing with Boko Haram.  It seems to waiver between brutality and passivity.  It shows no aptitude for counter insurgency warfare and protecting the people.   It does not even show any aptitude for organizing local militias to defend against the Islamic religious bigots. The Obama administration has also been largely absent from the fight against Boko Haram at first not even designating them as a terrorist organization  and offering little assistance to Nigeria in training its troops for counterinsurgency operations.  There have been some hints that the reluctance to engage is because of the President's opposition to Nigeria's position on gays.  But it shows no such reluctance to engaging with Iran w...

Reuters: Nigerian forces have killed more than 300 Boko Haram fighters during an operation to recapture 11 towns and villages since the start of the week, the military said on Wednesday, as regional neighbours also pounded the militants. "Weapons and equipment were also captured and some destroyed," defence spokesman Major-General Chris Olukolade said in a statement. "However, two soldiers lost their lives while 10 others were wounded," he added. It was not possible to independently verify the military's statement. Nigerian forces have in past been accused of overstating enemy casualties while greatly understating their own and those of civilians caught in the crossfire. Cameroonian forces supported by Chad's air force carried out air strikes and used heavy artillery against Boko Haram in the village of Gourgouroon, on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, Cameroon army spokesman Colonel Didier Badjeck said. Boko Haram's relentless attacks on military a...

Reuters: The United States military will provide communications equipment and intelligence to help African nations in the fight against Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, the commander of U.S. Special Forces operations in Africa said. West African military commanders have long complained that cross-border operations against Islamist groups, from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Mali to Boko Haram in Nigeria, have been obstructed by lack of compatible communications equipment, making it hard to swap information and coordinate. Brigadier General James Linder said that, as part of the annual U.S.-backed 'Flintlock' counter-terrorism exercises this year in Chad, the United States would provide technology allowing African partners to communicate between cellphones, radios and computers. The system also incorporates a translation function that would allow commanders in francophone countries like Chad to communicate by message with English-speaking officers in Nigeria, a ...

It is interesting to see the Germans showing more leadership than the Obama administration which has been running a Twitter hashtag campain against Boko Haram.

Reuters: Suspected Boko Haram Islamist fighters from Nigeria kidnapped around 80 people, many of them children, and killed three others on Sunday in a cross-border attack on villages in northern Cameroon, army and government officials said. The group, which has killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds in its bid to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has also targeted Cameroon and Niger over the past year as it seeks to expand its zone of operations. Sunday's kidnappings, among the largest abductions on Cameroonian soil, came as neighbouring Chad deployed troops to support Cameroon's forces in the area. "According to our initial information, around 30 adults, most of them herders, and 50 young girls and boys aged between 10 and 15 years were abducted," a senior army officer deployed to northern Cameroon told Reuters. He said the early-morning attack had targeted the village of Mabass and other villages along the porous border. Soldiers intervened and exch...

AFP: Dozens of Chadian tanks headed out of the capital Friday south towards Cameroon to help fight Nigeria's dreaded Boko Haram insurgents. It is rumoured to be eventually heading to Baga, the town on the shores of Lake Chad were as many as 2,000 people were massacred by the militants in a raid on January 7 described by US Secretary of State John Kerry as a "crime against humanity".The convoy, seen by an AFP journalist, roared out of the city after Chad's parliament voted to send armed forces to Cameroon and Nigeria to fight against the Islamists. Cameroon's President Paul Biya had announced Thursday that his Chadian counterpart Idriss Deby had agreed to send "a substantial contingent" of troops to help Cameroonian armed forces, who have faced repeated attacks from Boko Haram. The Russian ambassador to the country also pledged to supply Cameroon with more modern weapons to combat the extremists. The deployment came as the head of the west African ECOWA...

NY Times: Chad Said to Have Killed Mastermind of Algerian Attack Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s death was announced on state television in Chad, but the claim has not been confirmed. Hopefully this will be confirmed.  It will be interesting to find how he made his way to Chad.  It is too bad he was not captured and interrogated.  One of the flaws of the Obama strategy is that it would rather kill people with intelligence information than capture them and question them about ongoing operations.

Washington Post: Darfur rebels launched an unprecedented attack on the Sudanese capital of Khartoum on Saturday, crossing hundreds of miles of desert in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Omar Bashir , according to Sudanese officials and the rebels. Within a few hours, however, the Sudanese government said the attempt had been crushed. State television broadcast pictures of bloodied bodies in the streets and confessions from prisoners who appeared to have been badly beaten. Sudanese officials immediately accused neighboring Chad of backing the rebels. "The main aim of this failed terrorist sabotage attack was to provoke media coverage and let people imagine that they had the ability to enter Khartoum," a ruling party official said in the broadcast, according to the Reuters news agency. "Thank God this attempt has been completely defeated." The Sudanese government has waged a brutal, five-year campaign against several rebel groups and civili...

CNN: The government of Chad issued a communique Thursday that said mercenaries from Sudan had crossed into Chad. The communique, sent out from the capital N'Djamena, said that Sudan had launched "several heavily armed columns" of "mercenaries"against Chad the day before, The Associated Press reported. Mercenaries is the term the Chadian government attributes to Chadian rebels backed by the Sudanese government, AP reports. Chad is still recovering from a failed attempt last month by rebels to overthrow President Idriss Deby's regime. The fighting forced thousands to flee the capital, most of them going to the Cameroonian city of Kousseri, just across the river from N'Djamena. President Idiss Deby was in Dakar, Senegal, to sign a peace treaty with his Sudanese counterpart Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But al-Bashir failed to attend their meeting on Wednesday because he reportedly had a headache, news media reported. The recent tensions between Chad's go...

Whalid Phares: As Americans debate whhich presidential candidate is best to confront the jihadists or at least preempt their offensives worldwide, the latter almost seized a key African country for the forthcoming Darfur peace missions. In one day, the so-called armed opposition of Chad reached the capital N'Djamena and almost surrounded the presidential palace. In a few hours, what would become the future Taliban of Chad have scored a strategic victory not only against that government but also against the efforts by the African and European Unions to contain the Sudanese regime and stop the genocide in Darfur. Surprising the West and Africans, those forces backing the "opposition" proved they are restless against human rights on the continent. More importantly, the events showed how unprepared are Europeans and Americans in front of jihadi regimes which seem weak on the surface but able to surprise and undermine international efforts. On Saturday Feb. 2, as French Presid...

Washington Times: Iran, Cuba and Venezuela are working together against the U.S. by undermining democracy in Latin America, allowing trafficking of illegal drugs and creating safe havens for extremist groups, intelligence officials said. Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell said that influence from the three countries — led respectively by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez — has spilled into Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador, which "are pursuing agendas that undercut checks and balances" of democratic governments. "Moreover, each of these governments, to varying degrees, has engaged in sharply anti-U.S. rhetoric, aligned with Venezuela and Cuba — and increasingly Iran — on international issues, and advocated measures that directly clash with U.S. initiatives," said Mr. McConnell, whose department oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Mr. McConnell's statement...

Reuters: A Venezuelan man has been charged with laundering drug profits to buy U.S. aircraft to smuggle cocaine, according to U.S. court documents, as the FBI broadens a probe into South American cocaine kings. The man, Pedro Jose Benavides-Natera, goes on trial in Miami next month and more arrests may be forthcoming, thanks to a confidential informant who shed light on the drug-money-for-aircraft laundering scheme, the documents show. The documents were filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in October. In them, FBI agent Michael Hoenigman says the informant was "personally involved with a confederation of individuals" whose job was to scout out U.S. aircraft desired by Venezuela -based drug traffickers and help broker transactions to buy them to ferry cocaine shipments around the globe. Last year's arrest of Benavides was part of a more sweeping investigation of money laundering schemes aimed at uncovering the purchase of aircraft in the...

Times: Fierce fighting rocked N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, yesterday for the second day running as President Déby hit back with helicopter gunships and heavy artillery against rebels laying siege to the presidential palace. Troops loyal to Mr Déby, a virtual prisoner in his heavily fortified presidential compound in the west of the city since Saturday, fought battles with insurgents and drove them out of the capital last night. “The battle for N’Djamena is over,” declared Amad Allam-Mi, the Foreign Minister. However, the rebels claimed to have withdrawn only temporarily. “People should not think that Déby has won,” a rebel commander said. “He is still entrenched in his bunker, from which he cannot leave.” The President had reportedly declined offers to flee the city by air to France, his main international supporter. ... If the rebels have been driven from the city it is also hard to say they won. I suspect that the longer their operation takes, the more likely they are to be d...

Reuters: Chadian troops loyal to President Idriss Deby struck back at rebels besieging his palace on Sunday and the government said it repulsed an attack by Sudanese forces in the east that it called "a declaration of war." In the capital N'Djamena , government helicopters and tanks defended Idriss Deby's fortified presidential complex against rebels in pickup trucks mounted with cannon and machine guns who stormed into the city on Saturday. On Chad's far eastern frontier with Sudan's war-ravished Darfur region, the army said it had beaten back a ground and air attack against the border town of Adre by a mixed force of Sudanese army troops and allied rebels and militia. Deby's Minister of State for Mines and Energy, Gen. Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour, called the attack on Adre "a declaration of war" by Sudan , in comments to Radio France International . Sudan's government denied the accusations from its neighbor that it had backed the of...

Sunday Telegraph : A European Union military mission faced being dragged into a war in the heart of Africa as rebels advanced on Chad's capital on Friday. The oil-rich country, which has suffered years of conflict, has been earmarked for the deployment of 3,700 EU troops who will serve as peacekeepers on its eastern border with Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur. However, a plane-load of 54 Irish special forces did not depart for N'Djamena, Chad's capital, and a cargo aircraft carrying equipment and a dozen Austrian soldiers turned back yesterday. The United Nations also evacuated all non-essential staff from the country as rebels bent on overthrowing President Idriss Deby were advancing on the capital. Heavy fighting was reported within 30 miles of the city, sited on the banks of the Chari river. A rebel convoy, consisting of some 300 vehicles, had advanced across the desert from the border with Sudan. These insurgents are backed by Sudan's regime, which accuses Mr ...

Reuters: Chadian rebels seeking to overthrow President Idriss Deby battled their way into the capital N'Djamena on Saturday and fought government troops around the presidential palace, diplomats and residents said. The sound of machine gun and heavy weapons fire could be heard in the capital as foreign embassies advised their citizens to stay in doors and take cover. Fighting was reported to be taking place around the presidential palace and the parliament. "I can confirm they (the rebels) are in the city," a foreign diplomat told Reuters. The situation was confused and mobile phone networks were not working. "Rebels are headed for the palace and are about two blocks from here. The rebels are winning," one foreign resident said in an email sent from the compound of a western embassy in N'Djamena, adding she could hear tank and mortar fire. Rebels in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns had closed in on the capital of the central African oil p...