Algeria ends Burkina Faso's run

 

Algeria claimed Africa's final place at the World Cup on away goals after beating Burkina Faso 1-0 in the second leg of their playoff on Tuesday and progressing with a 3-3 aggregate draw.

Algeria qualified for the finals in Brazil after a nerve-tingling finish at home to Burkina Faso, which hit the post in injury time to agonizingly miss the goal that would have taken the country to its first finals.

Angola's MPLA says opposition UNITA plans rallies 'to cause chaos'

 

 

 

Angola's ruling MPLA party on Tuesday accused the main opposition group, UNITA, of seeking to cause "chaos and anarchy" by planning nationwide rallies on Saturday to protest against the kidnapping of two activists last year.

Prosecutors said last week that Isaias Cassule and Antonio Alves Camulingui, who were involved in organizing protests by former presidential guards to demand payment of wage arrears, had been kidnapped and possibly murdered in May 2012.
Authorities have detained four suspects, but in strongly worded statement on Friday UNITA called the rallies to demand those who had ordered the kidnappings be held responsible and blamed President Jose Eduardo dos Santos for not preventing or investigating the crimes.
"The (MPLA) Political Bureau considers UNITA is clearly and irresponsibly taking political advantage... it is opportunistic to hold rallies under the pretext of protesting the disappearances," the MPLA said in a statement.
"Its only goal is to demand a change of regime, outside any political legitimacy, seeking to create a situation of chaos and anarchy with violence, subversion and terrorism, to prepare an ante-chamber for a new conflict," it added.
Former rebel group UNITA lost a 27-year civil war to the MPLA in 2002 and has since been trounced in two elections.
It has long accused Dos Santos of suppressing human rights and using excessive violence to clamp down on dissent during his 34-year rule over Africa's No. 2 oil producer.
The MPLA said the investigation into the disappearances had been ordered by the president and that everyone found responsible will be punished.
It alleged that UNITA is losing support and has been inspired by Mozambique's Renamo opposition guerrillas, who have staged attacks and clashed with government forces in recent months after two decades of peace following a devastating 1975-1992 civil war.
(Reporting by Shrikesh Laxmidas, editing by William Hardy)

DRC Armed Groups Ready to Demobilize, Activists Say

 

 

 

KIGALI, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO — Several armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have said they are ready to lay down their weapons, following the army's defeat of M23 rebels. Since then, there has been a series of letters and declarations by other militias expressing their willingness to be demobilized.

It has been two weeks since the M23 rebels fled from their last holdouts in Congo after coming under intense bombardments from the U.N.-backed Congolese army.

Other armed groups in North Kivu province seem anxious to avoid the same fate.

Several of them are ready to give up their activities and demobilize, according to documents VOA has seen that apparently were signed by their leaders.

One of these documents appears to have been signed by leaders of the Mai Mai Kifuafua and Raia Mutomboki groups in Walikale territory - two groups that recently were fighting each other. Another comes apparently from the so-called Cheka group, which has been repeatedly condemned for human rights violations, and named as a priority target by the U.N.

Researcher Fidel Bafilemba, who works for the NGO the Enough Project in eastern Congo, told VOA the documents are genuine. He said they are authentic and were given to Enough by local government officials in Walikale, and were then confirmed by a Catholic priest who helped organize a peacemaking dialogue.

The signatories to one of the documents pledge to abandon all armed group activities and to join the army or return to civilian life, without conditions.

The other document from the Cheka does pose conditions, as it asks the government to integrate its fighters in the army and to recognize their self-proclaimed “ranks.”

There are said to be some 30 armed groups in eastern Congo. Bafilemba said most of the others also have pledged to demobilize, with some already partly integrated in the army, while others are disintegrating as their members desert.

He said it really is an avalanche, a tidal wave of armed groups giving up since the Congolese army defeated the M23, which he said was, in a sense, the reason for their existence.

A civil society leader in Walikale, Prince Kihangi Kyawami, also said the armed groups in the territory have pledged to demobilize. A civil society spokesman for North Kivu province, Djento Maundu, said the same was true for the whole province.

Both the Congolese army and the U.N. mission MONUSCO have said their number one target among the armed groups is now the Rwandan rebel group FDLR, whose core members include perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.

As for the FDLR, said Bafilemba, they have received an ultimatum from the DRC army high command to lay down their arms, and already had written to the DRC president saying they were ready to disarm, but had concerns about their repatriation.

A senior Congolese government delegation, including several generals and the interior minister, was in North Kivu at the weekend. The minister told reporters he was there to discuss the province’s reconstruction, but he did not give further details.

Non-governmental organizations have called on the government to revive a program for demobilizing Congolese combatants and helping them to rejoin civilian life. 

Kenya's Ticking Time Bomb

How political corruption is turning the country's spiralling youth unemployment into a threat to society.     You can witness the same scene at dawn every morning in Kenya's capital, Nairobi: thousands of young people in search of work are streaming out from the city's slums towards its industrial areas. Most of them are neatly if simply dressed, many of them are full of optimism, but the vast majority are destined to be disappointed. Those that can afford it will try and cram onto a bus in an attempt to beat the crowds, the rest will weave their way on foot through the heavy morning commuter traffic. But when they arrive, the situation for all of them will invariably be the same as it was on the previous day and the day before that and on all the other preceding days.

DR Congo soldiers go on trial for mass rape, murder

The trial of 41 soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo began in Goma on Wednesday, with the troops accused of committing mass rape, murder and other war crimes as they fled their positions when M23 rebels took the city in November 2012.

Algeria's World Cup celebrations turn deadly

Celebrations in Algeria after the country qualified for the 2014 World Cup finals has left at least 12 people dead and some 240 injured, authorities said Wednesday, with at least nine of the victims killed in car accidents.

Murder of French journalists a ‘botched AQIM operation’

© Photo: AFP

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has said the kidnapping and killing of two French journalists was in retaliation for the "daily killings" by French troops in Mali. But the claim appears to be a jihadist whitewash for a botched operation.