Three months after the White House successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea over that country's nuclear test, the Bush administration "allowed" Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from Pyongyang in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, the New York Times reported April 8, citing unnamed US officials. The US allowed the arms delivery to go through in January, as Ethiopian troops were in the midst of an offensive against Islamist militias in Somalia. The account said the US was trying to "wean" Ethiopia off its longstanding reliance on North Korea for cheap Soviet-era military equipment.

A new report claims the CIA and FBI operate secret prisons in Ethiopia to interrogate terror suspects. According to the Associated Press, which worked with Human Rights Watch in the investigation, the US has interrogated hundreds of suspects from over a dozen countries in Ethiopian detention facilities—partially because of the lax standards on torture.

Speaking to reporters after winning Mauritania's first "free elections," Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdalahi pledged to "transform" the nation and "build a country that conforms to the norms of justice and economic development." In implicit reference to the early-'90s violence, in which Black Africans were expelled to neighboring Senegal and Mali, he said he would work for democracy "founded on tolerance and acceptance" to "reinforce national unity." But IRIN notes March 28 that "because of his association with former Taya supporters, Mr Abdalahi's detractors have alleged that his victory means the military's influence will creep back into politics, a perception not helped by the army chief of staff Ahmed Ould Daddah issuing a statement congratulating Mr Abdalahi on his victory."

South African and foreign intelligence agencies have been monitoring an alleged Islamist militant training camp at Greenbushes, Port Elizabeth, according to local press reports. One magazine has even published a report on the alleged training camp. The report—including photographs of the supposed training grounds—is the cover story in Molotov Cocktail, a magazine edited by James Sanders, author of a recently published history of South Africa‘s intelligence services. However, Port Elizabeth Muslim leader Samuel Panday on Monday dismissed the report, saying the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) was trying to increase its budget allocation through making claims of a military camp. "There is no such camp—it is all nonsense; rubbish," said Panday. (Mail & Guardian, March 27)

European Union election observers won't be sent to Nigeria's delta region during next month's landmark elections due to the ongoing attacks and kidnappings which have prompted thousands of foreigners to flee the oil heartland in the past year. "We are not going to deploy in Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa because in these states, the environment for international observers is not conducive," said Max van den Berg, leader of the EU Election Observation Mission. "It is painful that we cannot observe in these three states, but it is more important to stay alive." The EU will send 66 observers to Nigeria's other 33 states. The elections are to mark the first civilian-to-civilian transition in the world's eighth biggest oil exporter since Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960. (Reuters, March 21)

Muslim pupils at a secondary school in northeastern Nigeria's Gombe state beat a teacher to death March 21 after accusing her of desecrating the Koran, police and witnesses said. Oluwatoyin Olusase, a Christian, was apparently overseeing an "Islamic Religious Knowledge" when the incident occurred. "We have received information that a female teacher has been lynched by her students," Gombe state police commissioner Joseph Ibi said. "We are investigating the report."

Gunmen kidnapped two Chinese men and a Nigerian man working for a local company in the southeastern state of Anambra March 17. The Chinese were the first foreigners kidnapped outside of the country's oil heartland in the southern Niger Delta. The men were abducted from their workplace in the industrial town of Nnewi. Four men drove into the premises of the Innoson Group of Companies Ltd, a motorcycle assembly plant, shot in the air, hustled the three men into a four-wheel drive and sped off. Police say they suspect a separatist group operating in the southeastern region may have abducted the men. But the Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has denied any involvement. "We are asking for freedom for our people and have no reason to kidnap expatriates," MASSOB spokesman Nnamdi Ohiagu told Reuters.

It is endless, and it comes (tellingly) from the both the right and the left. The latest entry is from Columbia University scholar Mahmood Mamdani, writing in the March 8 London Review of Books—who probably fancies himself on the left. But like his counterparts on the right and even in the Bush administration, he has a lot invested in denying that there is genocide in Darfur. What's particularly maddening is that Mamdani's piece, "The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency," could be a good starting point for a sorely needed discussion—could, that is, if it were not guilty of exactly what he accuses his opponents of...