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Tag: Africa

Ben Curtis/AP

Kenya Begins Construction on Border Wall to Keep Somalis Out

The Kenyan government has broken ground on a new wall that will span a large swatch of the border between Kenya and Somalia. While the project had been announced in March, Kenyan authorities appear to have expedited the groundbreaking in response to the terrorist attack at Garissa University.

AP Photo

Sierra Leone’s Women Falling Victim to Kuwaiti Slave Trade

The Guardian published a damning report on recruitment agencies selling women as slaves in Kuwait. These agencies lure women to the tiny country with promises of work, but are “sold like slaves” and resold numerous times. The publication interviewed women from Sierra Leone, but research suggests this is a long-term problem in Kuwait affecting women from other countries, as well.

via Boko Haram video

A New Arc of Evil: The Boko Haram/ISIS Merger

In January, the world’s single largest terror attack since 9/11 was carried out by Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group in northern Nigeria. That incident, which drew only passing notice from the West, saw the slaughter of 2,000 civilians in the border town of Baga. Boko Haram’s oath of allegiance to the Islamic State last weekend raises questions about how this will affect the group. Given Boko Haram’s demonstrable ruthlessness in Baga, a better question would be, why aren’t we aiming to “degrade and destroy” it, too?

AP Photo/Militant Website, File

Report: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram Training Together

According to Veryan Khan of the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, the great under-the-radar terror threat comes from an expanse of the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, where ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram are working together to train Western recruits for jihad, including terror attacks in Europe and North America. “The situation in Mauritania is a powder keg very few people are talking about,” Khan told Fox News.

AP

Report: U.S. Marines An Ideal Force to Use Against Boko Haram

The U.S. Marines, with more than a decade of experience with counterinsurgency (COIN) in Iraq and Afghanistan, could prove to be an important asset in working to contain and eventually defeat the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram, reports the Marine Corps Times.

AP Photo

Egypt Reveals $45 Billion Plan to Build New Desert Capital, Replacing Cairo

Over the weekend, Egypt unveiled plans to build a wholly new capital. The new city would lie somewhere to Cairo’s east, closer to the Red Sea. It would sprawl across some 150 square miles and potentially be home to as many as 7 million people. Projected to cost $45 billion, it was announced at a summit in the seaside resort of Sharm El-Sheikh aimed at boosting the country’s flagging economy.