Libya: New Oil Guard head

A new head was appointed this month to the Oil Facilities Guard. Colonel Ali Al-Ahrash as part of the agreement signed in May between the government of Acting Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thanni and Ibrahim Jedhran, who heads the politburo of the Cyrenaican Transitional Council (CTC).
This is the second time that Al-Ahrash has headed up the Guard. He resigned from the post in July 2013 after clashing with the government of former prime minister Ali Zidan, and most notably with former oil minister Ali Al-Arusi.

The government accused Al-Ahrash of not being in proper control of his forces. He retaliated, complaining that his forces were not being supplied with proper weaponry and equipment and that they were not being paid on time. His reappointment is a bid by Al-Thanni to prove to that he is still the rightful prime minister and, more important, that he is the only one who has the key to resolving the oil crisis.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Sudan denies arming Libyan militants

Sudan has hit back at allegations that it is secretly arming militants in Libya. These allegations arose after Libyan National Army’s spokesman, Mohamed Hijazi, told the Al-Arabiya Al-Hadath television channel on 7 June that “a suspicious plane carrying weapons landed at the Mitiga air base” on 5 June.

Although Hijazi asserted that he did not want to accuse the government in Khartoum or the people of Sudan directly, he made it clear that this was where the suspicion lay. He also claimed that this was not the first time that weapons meant for Islamist militants had arrived in Libya in this way, and hinted that Sudan had previously sent several such cargoes without the knowledge of the Libyan authorities.

The LNA spokesman claimed that over the past three years the Mitiga airport which is one of the main bases for militant Islamist brigades operating in Tripoli, had received some 270 weapons cargos that were channelled to extremist elements. He claims, however, prompted an official in the Sudanese Presidency to publicly deny the accusations.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Britain to host summit on northern Nigeria crisis

 The UK’s Foreign Secretary William Hague is to use next week’s global meeting on conflict and gender violence to convene a special summit on Nigeria's crisis called “The London Ministerial Security in northern Nigeria”. Hague, regarded as one of the more effective ministers in Prime Minister David Cameron's cabinet, is taking advantage of the presence in London of over 40 foreign ministers, many from Africa and Europe, for the gender violence meeting.

Briefing journalists this week, Hague said the London meeting would build on – not replicate – the agreements and co-operation established at the regional summit on West African security hosted last month in Paris by President François Hollande. That was attended by heads of state from Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin, as well as senior officials from the US, the EU and Hague himself.

Hague said that the London meeting for foreign ministers and their security advisers will go into more detail, as well as diplomatic and security strategy. While praising the civil society effort to publicise the #Bringbackourgirls campaign, he said there was much work to do in “policy and institutional terms” to shape “an effective response to the crisis”. Most importantly, the meeting would look at more “pre-emptive measures” to fight terrorism.

Foreign Ministers from Canada, the US, the EU and West Africa are all due to attend.

For more news and expert analysis about Nigeria, please see Nigeria Focus and Nigeria Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Algeria: Prime Minister unveils the government's five-year plan

Also on Sunday 1 June, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal unveiled the government's plan of action for the next five years. As so many of the government’s five-year plans have come to grief in red-tape, delays, postponement, corruption and general inefficiencies, and are little more than annual reiterations, they are no longer taken quite as seriously as in the early years of the Bouteflika era.
Nevertheless, the National Press Service (APS) gave it top billing alongside the start of Ouyahia’s constitutional consultations.

According to APS, the plan is particularly focused on national security and stability, as well as building an emerging economy. In tones reminiscent of the earlier and more optimistic years of the Bouteflika era, Sellal said that the plan aims to enhance national reconciliation by convincing militants to lay down their arms and return to mainstream society. At the same time, counter-terrorism will be reinforced to safeguard homeland security.

As part of that reconciliation, Sellal said that Bouteflika had decided to "lift the ban on leaving the country for some people suspected of terrorism”. Although Sellal declined to name these people, he was referring to the lifting of travel bans issued against members of the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which was dissolved by court order in 1992.
Members of the now-dissolved FIS continue to oppose Bouteflika's government. It was strongly opposed to his fourth mandate, boycotted the April elections and is now boycotting the latest constitutional reform process.

Sellal also said that the government would hold regular dialogues with civil society and elected assemblies. He claimed the government was working to divide power among the judiciary, the legislature and the executive branches, pledging that reform will continue to improve public service of justice in a bid to make it fully independent and free. These are, however, all promises that Algerians have heard many times before and no longer pay much attention to.

For more news and expert analysis about Algeria, please see Algeria Focus and Algeria Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Libya's security crisis worries Cairo

Since the election, few incidents of violence have been reported although one attack points to a growing security concern for the government. On Sunday 1 June, the military’s official spokesman reported that an attack on an Egyptian patrol along its border with Libya had left six guards dead. The attack allegedly occurred as an act of retaliation for recent arrests made by Egyptian security forces on a group of smugglers operating along the border. The military’s statement claims that the attack was the work of the smugglers themselves, although social media sites linked to the militant group Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, which operates primarily out of its base in the Sinai Peninsula, have claimed to be responsible for the attack as well. We have increased our attention on Egypt’s western border because of the rising instability in Libya. It is notable that various figures from within Libya’s body politic have flown to Cairo looking for help to calm the situation and, as we note below, the situation is only likely to worsen in the short term.

It is clear that disorder in Libya, whose government has struggled to control Islamic militant groups operating inside its border and is currently embroiled in a new crisis, has become a security priority for Egypt in recent weeks. On Tuesday 20 May, the military announced that it had temporarily closed Egypt’s border to Libya following similar moves by both Algeria and Tunisia. Envoys of the Egyptian and Algerian governments recently met to co-ordinate security arrangements in light of the renewed hostilities in Libya. This may eventual pose complications to Egyptians working in Libya who, according to unofficial estimates of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, number over a million, although expatriates have not yet been asked to evacuate Libya.

It was reported on Monday 2 June that a Libyan delegation of four ministers aligned with General Khalifa Haftar’s (a.k.a. Khafter) forces who launched an offensive against Islamist militants in Benghazi, including its Minister of Foreign Affairs, arrived in Cairo on a two-day visit aimed at soliciting help from the Egyptian government. President-elect El-Sisi raised Libya on several occasions throughout his electoral campaign as an issue of immediate concern and has suggested that Egypt would intervene in the conflict if it needed to, although the scope and scale of potential intervention has never been made clear. These comments have been welcomed by some Libyans, including General Haftar, who essentially posed an invitation to Egypt to intervene militarily during an interview he gave to a well-read Egyptian newspaper. We are concerned that as the security situation in Libya deteriorates, Egypt may be pulled into the conflict, thereby adding another dimension to its current overall security risk.

For more news and expert analysis about Egypt, please see Egypt Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Tanzania: Sixteen suspected terrorists arrested in Arusha

Sixteen suspected terrorists were arrested in an operation in Arusha in northern Tanzania. The young men were charged in court on 29 May with the April bombing of an Arusha bar and with recruiting young men to Al Shabaab. Previous bombings in Arusha over the past two years were mentioned in police statements although they did not appear on the charge sheet. These include the June 2013 bombing of a CHADEMA election rally and a bombing of a Catholic church in the town the previous year.

Loose or informal connections between Al Shabaab and Tanzania are known to exist and Islamist groups are openly active. One Arusha resident was involved in the bombing of a bar in Uganda in 2010 and was arrested the following year. Given the extent of small scale mining operations in the area, particularly those for gemstones, there is also an easy supply of explosives in the general area.

For more news and expert analysis about East Africa, please see East Africa Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates
 

Iraq: Natural gas delivery for Dohuk power station

The Kurdish government announced on its website this month the first delivery of natural gas via pipeline to the Dohuk power station from the gas field at Summail 40km away. The Summail field comes under the Dohuk production-sharing contract signed in September 2013 for supply of gas from the field to the 750MW power plant. It is operated by Norway’s DNO, which has a 40% stake, in partnership with Genel Energy which has a 40% interest. Long-term deliveries are expected to reach 120 million cubic feet a day.

Kurdish natural resources minister Ashti Hawrami welcomed the development, describing the delivery as “the result of win-win coordination and cooperation of the Ministry of Natural Resources staff, local Kurdistan companies and IOCs to deliver natural gas on a fast-track basis to the benefit of ordinary citizens”. He went on, “This important achievement shows that newly discovered gas in Kurdistan can be monetised on a timely basis, and that this is the beginning of creating a gas market in Kurdistan ... to enhance gas deliveries within Kurdistan to the domestic market.”

For more news and expert analysis about Iraq, please see Iraq Focus.
© 2014 Menas Associates