Free Republic

A Russian think tank reported on Sunday, that Turkey has allegedly concluded a military cooperation agreement with a country bordering Libya. According to Eurasia Political Studies website, "Katehon", who quoted private sources in the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA), Turkey had signed a military cooperation agreement with the country of Niger, which is located at the southern border of Libya. The site indicated that this agreement between Turkey and Niger will strengthen Ankara's control in the region, as the latter will support African countries, especially the Sahel countries, to be more effective in the issue of resolving the Libyan...

The leaders of the coup that ousted Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita spent most of the year training in Russia before returning to boot out the democratically-elected leader at gunpoint, according to sources in the Malian military. The rebels took control of Mali's largest military base in Kati, just outside the capital, Bamako, on Tuesday before storming Keita's official residence, seizing the president and forcing him to resign as leader of the West African nation. Numerous media outlets, including the BBC, immediately reported that the coup was led by Malick Diaw and Sadio Camara, two army colonels who hold top...

Despite being hailed as a "peace deal," the UAE-Israel agreement will more likely prolong ongoing regional wars. It will intensify conflict in those contested zones of the Middle East where the two blocs back rival actors -- primarily Yemen, Libya, and Syria. The insurgent bloc is winning in all three conflicts. The UAE has proved that its main strategy in these conflicts is to control the policymaking of its allies. Emirati leaders have leveraged their relationships in Riyadh and Washington over the last three years to give them or their proxies a free hand to fight in these contested zones....

Col. Assimi Goita, who emerged Thursday as the head of the junta in power, worked for years with U.S. Special Operations forces focused on fighting extremism in West Africa. He spoke regularly with U.S. troops and attended U.S.-led training exercises, said officers from both countries, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Goita, who also received training from Germany and France, according to the officers, headed Mali's special forces unit in the country's restive central region, where fighters linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have established a stronghold that...

Everything about Mami exudes exhaustion. Her round brown eyes are pools of sadness, and her bulbous body throbs with pain. "First, armed groups attacked nearby," she explains in a tired voice as we sit on plastic matting, five young children nestled close to their mother in Mali's fabled city in the sand Timbuktu. "Then the rains came, and did the rest." The worst rains in 50 years in northern Mali washed away their entire crop. Those rains poured through the cracks in her mud home caused by an explosion an armed group set off. The cracks are showing everywhere in...

UN demands that British army send more women for defense against jihad in Mali DEC 25, 2019 11:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS “The United Nations has placed strict gender quotas on a British Army peacekeeping deployment to Mali in west Africa, demanding more females are sent under the auspices of a special bureaucratic directive….The call for more female UK soldiers to be included is part of a wider set of directives drafted by the U.N. that mandates strict quotas for female personnel in the name of equal opportunity.” The UN is forcing the issue of more women in the British...

New Explosion Reported in Mali, At Least Two Servicemen Killed Sputnik News 15:41 03.11.2019(updated 17:59 03.11.2019) The day before, the Elysee Palace said in a statement that a French soldier was killed that day in the morning in Mali as an explosive device detonated near his armoured vehicle. Two Malian soldiers were killed and six more injured as a result of a blast of an improvised explosive device in the central part of the country, the national Armed Forces said on Sunday in a statement. "On Saturday, November 2, 2019, during the patrol mission, a vehicle of the Malian Armed...

Gunmen surrounded the village before attacking people in their homes in Ogossagou in the country's Mopti region, a local official said. The attack on Saturday targeted members of the Fulani ethnic community. Ambassadors for the UN are currently in Mali addressing the increasing levels of ethnic and jihadist violence. The victims of Saturday's deadly attack were "killed with guns and machetes", a local security official told AFP news agency. Unconfirmed reports put the death toll far higher.

A militia in Mali says it has recovered weapons and a vehicle abandoned by US special forces during a deadly ambush in Niger last year, and is prepared to return them to the Americans. The Tuareg rebel group says it seized the battered four-wheel-drive and two rifles during clashes with "bandits" on the Mali-Niger border. Four members of the US special forces were killed in last year's raid. An offshoot of the Islamic State (IS) group said it carried out the attack. In a statement, the MSA-GATIA militia group said it captured the materiel from unidentified "armed bandits" on the...

The John Durham investigation into the origins of the Justice Department's probe of alleged Russian collusion involving President Trump and his 2016 campaign leading to a guilty plea in Washington DC today..... A pro-Syrian government grouo claiming responsibility for a rocket attack on a US military base in the eastern part of the country...... The Prime Minister of the Bahamas backing down from a seven day complete lockdown of New Providence, the country's most populous island where the capital city of Nassau is located..... The "Conservative' Prime Minister of Australia a close ally of President Trump and the United States,...

Issued on: 19/08/2020 - 02:25 Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita resigned on Tuesday and dissolved parliament hours after mutinying soldiers detained him at gunpoint, plunging a country already facing a jihadist insurgency

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse have been detained by mutinying soldiers in the capital during an apparent coup attempt. The development on Tuesday came hours after soldiers took up arms and staged a mutiny at a key base in Kati, a town close to Bamako. It followed a weeks-long political crisis that has seen opposition protesters taking to the streets to demand the departure of Keita, accusing him of allowing the country's economy to collapse and mishandling a worsening security situation. Mali's years-long conflict, in which ideologically-motivated armed groups have stoked ethnic tensions while jockeying...

On July 26, 2019, by Executive Order 13882, the President declared a national emergency pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706) to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States constituted by the situation in Mali.The situation in Mali, including repeated violations of ceasefire arrangements made pursuant to the 2015 Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Mali; the expansion of terrorist activities into southern and central Mali; the intensification of drug trafficking and trafficking in persons, human rights abuses, and hostage-taking; and the intensification of...

  TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, within 90 days before the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Registerand transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. In accordance with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register for publication the enclosed notice stating that the national emergency declared with respect to the situation in Mali in Executive Order 13882 of July 26,...

Breaking News: President Trump commuting the sentence of Roger Stone...... How about "revenue raisers" or in plain language "higher taxes" to deal with tax revenue shortfalls and recovery from the coronavirus situation? Government officials across the country beginning to broach the subject. Among them New Jersey's Governor Phil Murphy..... A Kentucky judge's order putting a cloud over Democrat Governor Andy Beshear's mask (muzzle) order..... "Over the past several week I have been asked repeatedly about what the Town of Eagar plans to do about Covid-19, masks, visitors, riots etc. It is somewhat alarming how many expect and almost invite a...

France said on Friday its military forces had killed al Qaeda's North Africa chief Abdelmalek Droukdel, a key Islamist fighter that its forces had been hunting for more than seven years, during an operation in Mali. "On June 3, French army forces, with the support of their local partners, killed the emir of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and several of his closest collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali," French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly wrote on Twitter. The announcement of the death of Droukdel comes almost six months after former colonial power France and regional...

Late Breaking News from Australia where its Tuesday. The child sex abuse convictions of Australia's Cardinal George Pell have been overturned.... Lack of agreement on preliminary targets to cut oil production holding up the OPEC+ nations from starting their talks... But other talks between Russia and Saudi Arabia are moving forward.... In Iraq early this morning rockets struck a facility connected with foreign oil firms operating in Iraq including the American Haliburton... There's a report that an American military officer has been killed in an ambush in northeastern Syria.... Easter is coming this Sunday and in Idaho Ammon Bundy and...

Terrorist organizations are "on the march" in West Africa and the Sahel with international efforts failing to curb the increase in violence, a four-star American general in charge of U.S. troops in Africa warned on Tuesday.

Jury deliberations in the rape and sexual assault trial of movie mogul and Democratic Party donor Harvey Weinstein set to begin Tuesday.... Lawyer Michael Avenatti, who was a vocal critic of President Trump and lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against the President, found guilty of attempted extortion... The Russian and Turkish military leader talking about the situation in Syria's Idlib province.... In Syria today two Syrian soldiers killed when their helicopter was downed with Turkish weaponry..... Another pro-Israel delegation making a trip to Saudi Arabia.... The Acting US Attorney in Washington opting to drop a criminal...

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Mali will increase the size of its army by about 50% in a recruitment drive this year aimed at uprooting jihadist groups, Prime Minister Boubou Cisse said on Wednesday. The plan is to hire 10,000 new soldiers in the coming months to “allow our armed and security forces to be much more present in quantity and I hope in quality in areas where they were not,” Cisse said. He did not say how much the increase would cost or how the arid West African country would pay for it when military costs already take up a significant...