At least 16 people were injured Jan. 20 as Ethiopian police cracked down on opposition protests in the capital, Addis Ababa, on the second and final day of celebrations marking Timkat, the Epiphany festival of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Demonstrators joined up with religious processions around the city, and were attacked by police, who charged with truncheons. (South Africa Mail & Guardian, Jan. 20)

The international community has been attempting to restore peace to West Africa, long torn by multiple inter-related ethnic and civil conflicts. Now, just as Liberia is hailed as a success story—with the country's first post-war president, and Africa's first woman president, taking office Jan. 16—neighboring Ivory Coast is once again descending into war. Behind the new bloodshed is a continuing Anglo-American-versus-French struggle for control of the region and its precious resources—including significant and virtually untapped oil reserves.

Royal Dutch Shell has shut down a tenth of Nigeria's oil production, after armed militants kidnapped four foreign oil workers and blew up a major pipeline Jan. 11. The incidents followed attacks on pipelines owned by the Nigerian state-owned oil company in December, disrupting supplies from the world's eighth-largest oil exporter for several days.

More than 3,500 Congolese soldiers, supported by 600 UN troops and helicopter gunships, launched attacks Dec. 24 on guerillas operating in the eastern Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sixteen government troops and some 35 guerillas are reported killed in fighting near the city of Beni in Nord-Kivu province. An Indian blue beret peacekeeper was killed and four of his colleagues wounded when their camp was hit by a guerilla rocket-propelled grenade. But 300 Nepalese peacekeepers and 1,500 government troops captured the guerilla-held village of Nioka, 50 miles north-east of Bunia, the main town in Ituri district. The guerilla militia the operation was launched to uproot, the ADF/NALU (Allied Democratic Forces/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda), is seeking the overthrow of President Yoweri Museveni's regime in Uganda, across the eastern border.

From AP, Dec. 23:

PARIS — A French military tribunal opened an investigation Friday into allegations that French peacekeepers facilitated attacks on ethnic minority Tutsis during the 1994 genocide of more than half a million Rwandans, judicial officials said.

From Reuters, Dec. 19:

The World Court in The Hague found on Monday that Uganda violated the sovereignty of the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and was responsible for human rights abuses there during a 1998-2003 war.

The patrician wonks at the Council on Foreign Relations raise the alarm in a January report that Africa will be increasingly strategic to global energy security in the coming century—and that China is beating the US to the punch in securing access to the continent's fossil fuel resources. From Reuters, Dec. 7:

THE US faces stiff competition from China for oil supplies from Africa and Washington must take a more strategic view of the continent by investing more resources there, US experts say.

The December issue of The Broken Rifle, newsletter of the War Resisters International, which supports conscientious objectors from military service around the world, offers this report from a strategically-placed country not often in the news: Eritrea. We noted in our last post on Eritrea that military tensions with Ethiopia are once again growing. The secession of Eritrea in 1993 left Ethiopia landlocked. Ethiopia is much closer to the US, which has an interest in securing the Horn's access to the Red Sea (just north of the Strait of Djibouti chokepoint, already threatened by Somali pirates) against Islamic militants. Therefore Eritrea's strongman Isaias Afwerki is playing up supposed Islamist subversion of his regime—both as an excuse to suppress opposition and to win Washington's good graces. If war comes, it is Eritrean and Ethiopian conscripts who will be the first to pay with their lives in this power game. This report, which starts with a background primer on the country, notes thousands of Eritrean conscientious objectors who have been imprisoned or forced into exile. It seems that many have also been tortured and even executed.