Claudia Amikwa (left) and Shepheline Achuo live in Adagom, the refugee settlement in southeastern Nigeria where about 5,000 Cameroonians reside / credit: Philip Obaji, Jr.
MAMFE, Cameroon—One Saturday morning in March 2021, 17-year-old Beatrice* and 19-year-old Patience* stepped out of a single-room apartment they shared to buy food near the Adagom refugee settlement in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River State.
That’s when a young man they knew as “Mr. Patrick” approached them.
He asked the teenagers if they were interested in moving to the United States to work as caregivers for a monthly salary.
The two wasted no time in accepting the offer, which came with the condition that they would have to work in a bar in Cameroon, their home country, for at least a year to earn enough to make the journey.
“We immediately began to pack our bags and, after two days, we left for Cameroon,” Beatrice, now 19, said. “We were excited to hear that our stay in Cameroon was temporary and, after a year, we would be traveling to America.”
A little over three years ago, both women, who used to live close to each other, fled their homes in the southwestern Cameroonian town of Akwaya after soldiers stormed their compounds and began to burn houses as the war between English-speaking separatists and government forces in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions intensified. After spending days struggling through thick forests and grasslands, they arrived in Nigeria in November 2019, quickly seeking refuge in the Adagom refugee settlement, where about 5,000 Cameroonians now live. The site is on the outskirts of Ogoja town in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River State.
For the two days this reporter spoke with the petite women, they were dressed in the same outfit: Blue jean trousers and faded t-shirts. They also appeared emaciated.
According to sources this reporter interviewed, trafficking of adults and children has become rampant as a war rages in Cameroon between the Francophone government and Anglophone forces.
Map of Cameroon-Nigeria border depicting cities of Calabar, Mamfe and Oguja / map: Google; illustration: Toward Freedom
‘We Just Had to Leave’
Both women fled Cameroon on their own, leaving behind relatives, some of whom later fled to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Cameroon’s southwest and to other refugee settlements in southeastern Nigeria.
An Emergency Food Security Assessment that the United Nations conducted a year ago found more than 80 percent of Cameroonian households in refugee settlements and those in host communities are “severely or moderately food insecure.” Three in four refugees may be engaging in child labor and survival sex, according to the UN.
Beatrice and Patience, who spent three years at Adagom on a $2-per-day allowance they earned, jumped at the chance of paid jobs in Cameroon and an eventual trip to the United States.
“At Adagom, we only earned money during planting and harvesting seasons and, once these seasons are over, we go back to begging for survival,” Beatrice said. “When we heard there was something better waiting for us outside Nigeria, we just had to leave.”
Beatrice and Patience had no time to tell anyone they were going.
They arrived in the southwestern Cameroonian town of Mamfe alongside Mr. Patrick, who drove them in his red Volkswagen Passat car. That is when the women said they met a couple of other girls from the same refugee settlement in Nigeria at a bar where they quickly began to work as waiters. Later, they labored as cooks when a restaurant was added to the bar, which was run by three young men, including Mr. Patrick himself, according to the women.
“Behind the bar is a three-bedroom apartment, where everyone who worked there lived,” Patience said. “At some point it was only us (Beatrice and Patience), who remained as workers at the bar. The other two girls we met there were taken away from the apartment one morning.”
Less than a week after they arrived, each of the three men began to make advances at them, demanding sex and threatening to lie to Cameroonian authorities that the teenagers worked for the Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF) one of the two biggest armed English-speaking separatist groups.
“They said if we didn’t do what they asked us to do, they’d make our lives miserable,” Patience said. “We had to choose between doing what they wanted or having our lives turned upside down.”
Fearing that they could lose everything that was offered to them and even end up in jail, they gave in. Within weeks, the teenagers were pregnant. But after they gave birth to two boys in February, the traffickers took away their babies. They told the women that they needed to prepare for their trip to the United States and that U.S. authorities wouldn’t admit them if they went with children.
But the trip never happened. Instead, the bar closed in April and its owners fled with the babies.
“They sent us to the market one afternoon to buy baby toiletries and when we returned, we found that both the bar and our apartment had been locked,” Patience said. “The men had left with our children.”
Not having anywhere to stay, a Mamfe trader whom Beatrice and Patience often bought baby toiletries from took both of them into her home, where they remain for now.
Water spouts at the Adagom refugee settlement / credit: Philip Obaji, Jr.
‘No Mother Can Rest Until She Finds Her Child’
The women have solicited help from local activists and a Nigerian NGO to find their babies.
“We reported the incident to the police in Mamfe but haven’t heard anything positive from them since then,” Beatrice said. “We also informed [local] pastors and human rights activists, and they’ve been going ‘round the [southwest] area, asking people if they know anything about the men who took the children.”
A senior police officer, who was unauthorized to speak on the matter, told Toward Freedom human trafficking is growing in the city and traffickers are hard to track.
“They receive protection from armed groups,” the officer said. These groups control certain areas in the southwest. “[The police] isn’t equipped enough to engage these elements.”
In Nigeria’s Cross River State, from where Beatrice and Patience were trafficked, authorities explained policing in Adagom is difficult because of its distance from the state’s capital, Calabar, about 304 kilometers (188 miles) south of Adagom.
“Things can only change if funding improves,” said Godwin Eyake, who heads the Cross River State command of Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
A local NGO is helping Beatrice and Patience find their sons by visiting orphanages and writing advertisements.
“It’s hard when you are not sure where the babies were taken to,” said Salome Gambo, a researcher at human-rights group Caprecon Development and Peace Initiative. “We are doing what we are doing just in case it happened that the children were trafficked to Nigeria.”
Gambo admitted recovering the children will be difficult.
However, for the mothers of the babies, there’ll be no stop in their search.
“We will not rest until we find our children,” Patience said. “No mother can rest until she finds her child.”
*Names have been changed
Philip Obaji, Jr., is a journalist based in Nigeria. He won the Future Awards Africa Prize in Education in 2014, and the Future Awards Africa Prize for Young Person of the Year in 2015. Follow him on Twitter at @PhilipObaji.
Foreground: Ahmed Rabee for the Forces for Freedom and Change and Transitional Military Council (TMC) Deputy Chairman Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamadan ‘Hemeti’ on behalf of the TMC at a signing ceremony at the Corinthia Hotel in Khartoum, Sudan, in July 2019 (credit: SUNA). Background: Protest in Sudan in November 2019 (credit: Abbasher / Wikipedia / photo illustration: Toward Freedom
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Borkena.
Since December of 2018, the Republic of Sudan has undergone general strikes, mass demonstrations, the forced removal of longtime former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and the failed formations of several interim administrations.
Hundreds of people have lost their lives due to the repression carried out by the military and its supporters against protests which have been led by the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) and its Popular Resistance Committees (PRC).
The FFC was spearheaded by the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) as well as other organizations. Since December 2018, the alliance which came about as a direct result of the overall economic and political crisis in Sudan, has undergone several realignments involving the military leadership and within its own ranks.
After an extended sit-in outside the Ministry of Defense during the early months of 2019, the top military leadership staged a coup against then President al-Bashir vowing to create the conditions for the realization of a democratic dispensation inside the country which had experienced the rule of the National Congress Party (NCP), an entity formed by the military-turned civilian officials of the government that had remained in power since 1989.
However, despite the promise of reforms, the Transitional Military Council (TMC) led by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacked thousands of pro-democracy activists in Khartoum on June 3, 2019. It was estimated that at least 100 people died that day as 10,000 well-armed troops used live ammunition, teargas and concussion grenades to clear the demonstrators from in front of the military headquarters and the entire streets of the capital of Khartoum.
After the June 3, 2019 massacre in Khartoum, regional states coordinated by the African Union (AU) feverishly negotiated a truce between the FFC and the TMC. By August 2019, a Sovereign Council was created which outlined a 39-month transitional period where the military would serve as chair of the arrangements for the bulk of this time period which ostensibly would result in multi-party elections.
Nonetheless, the Sovereign Council consisting of FFC members and military leaders was dissolved on October 25, 2021. Interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was placed under house arrest while yet another crackdown on the mass organizations proceeded. Hamdok was briefly brought back into the government after being released from detention. Soon enough, however, Hamdok resigned from the second interim administration accepting his failure to stabilize the political and security situation in Sudan.
Communist Party Announces New Anti-Military Coalition
Just recently in late July, the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), which had resigned from the FFC on November 7, 2020, citing what it perceived to be the indecisiveness of the alliance as it relates to the continued role of the military within society and government, announced the establishment of another alliance. The SCP has categorically rejected any governance role for the Sudanese Armed Forces within a future democratic administration.
Calling itself the Forces for Radical Change (FRC), the SCP-led alliance consists of various mass organizations and trade unions. The FRC is demanding the immediate establishment of a civilian government which would force the military back to its barracks.
A report published by the Middle East Monitor on July 25, stated that: “According to Sudanese media, the new alliance hopes to bring down the coup authorities to implement radical revolutionary change. SCP Political Secretary Mohamed Mokhtar Al-Khatib said that the FRC rejects ‘the military institution’s interference in politics and rejects any partnership with it.’ The alliance statement stressed the need to take decisions related to all ‘deferred issues’ and resolve them during the transitional period. Al-Khatib added that the FFC will not be part of the new alliance because it adopted a social-political approach ‘that caused the destruction of national resources.’ He claimed that the FFC still believes in an agreement with the military component and ruled out the participation of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front because it is cooperating with the military. The SCP leader did not speak about the National Consensus coalition which is seen as part of the coup.”
This new FRC grouping has called for an end to the economic underdevelopment of Sudan, a citizens-based civilian administration along with the acquisition of genuine independence which would discontinue any reliance on foreign imperialist interests. These events represent a further fracturing of those claiming to represent the democratic movement of the people which erupted during December 2018. At present there is the FFC Executive Office, the National Consensus Forces which appears to want a continued role for the military in the administrative structures of the country and the SCP-led Forces for Radical Change (FRC).
Mass Demonstrations for Democracy are Continuing in Sudan
Two large-scale protests were reported during June and July centered around the capital of Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman. On June 30, four protesters were reportedly killed by the security forces during demonstrations calling for the reversal of the October 25 coup.
Later, on July 17, another demonstration was met with repression by the military and other security forces. Thousands participated in the protest actions prompting the security forces to utilize teargas and other crowd control weapons designed to disperse the crowds. Activists waved Sudanese flags and barricaded major thoroughfares in various locations in the Khartoum and Omdurman areas. Bridges leading to the cities were cordoned off by the military to prevent others from joining the demonstrations.
After the rejection of the October 25 coup, many of the FFC leaders who held positions in the Sovereign Council have expressed their reluctance to reenter another alliance with the military leadership of General al-Burhan. At the same time, the military regime has maintained its agreements with several armed opposition groupings known as the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an amalgam of rebel organizations based in Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan states. The SRF has sided with the Sudanese military leadership since al-Burhan has pledged to address their grievances during the putative transitional process.
The SRF played a political role in encouraging the October 25 coup by staging a sit-in Khartoum demanding the dissolution of the Sovereign Council. After the coup, the SRF expressed its support for the latest putsch.
Meanwhile, another alliance of 10 Islamist groupings have put forward a proposal for the establishment of a new regime. This alliance dubbed The Broad Islamic Current consists of members of the banned former ruling National Congress Party (NCP), now known as the Islamic Movement and the State of Law and Development Party of Mohamed Ali al-Jazouli, who is a supporter of the Islamic State (IS) recently released from prison. At the founding of the Broad Islamic Current, supporters chanted slogans against the left organizations and coalitions in Sudan while expressing support for the October 25 coup and the military leadership.
Interestingly enough, the Broad Islamic Current does not include the Popular Congress Party (PCP) in its alliance. The PCP is one of the largest Islamist parties in Sudan founded by Hassan al-Turabi. The PCP grew out of a split between al-Turabi and former NCP leader and President al-Bashir in 1999. The Broad Islamic Current is seeking to take advantage of the political climate which emerged in the aftermath of the October 25 coup.
General al-Burhan delivered an address on July 4 calling once again for dialogue among all political groupings inside the country. He also commented on the role of the military in Sudan even after the holding of democratic elections. The military leader proposed what he called a “Supreme Council of the Armed Forces” which would have an undefined role in the economic and political structures within the country.
The FFC along with the FRC are saying publicly that they are not interested in further talks with the military regime. Noting that all other previous agreements between the FFC and the TMC have been broken by the military and its allies within the now reconfigured Sovereign Council, which is staffed by former rebel leaders, supporters of the rule by the armed forces and Islamist groupings which were formally associated with the government of ousted President al-Bashir.
Political analyst Osman Mirghani wrote during early July in the Sudan Tribune noting: “Simply rejecting al-Burhan speech will be a continuation of the reactive approach that has enabled the military component to always be one step ahead of the civilian forces. If these forces overcome their differences and set a clear charter, they could turn the tables by agreeing on a civilian government that would close the way for any other attempts to obstruct the transitional period and be the starting point for full civil rule after the failure of the partnership formula.”
Obviously, greater unity among the democratic forces would be a tremendous step forward in the process of genuinely transforming Sudan into a people’s state. Nonetheless, without the purging and dismantling of the military apparatus, which is supported tacitly by the United States, the State of Israel and the Gulf monarchies, any transitional process to a just and humane society will remain elusive.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire, an international electronic press service designed to foster intelligent discussion on the affairs of African people throughout the continent and the world.
Demonstrators in Berlin, Germany, gathered on August 8 to protest Egypt’s attempts to greenwash crimes with the upcoming COP27 conference / credit: Twitter / FreedomForAlaa
The global climate meeting called COP27 (the 27th Conference of Parties) will be held November 6-18 in the remote Egyptian desert resort of Sharm el Sheikh. Given the repressive nature of the Egyptian government, this gathering will likely be different from others, where there have been large, raucous protests led by civil society groups.
So, as tens of thousands of delegates—from world leaders to climate activists and journalists—descend on Sharm el Sheikh from all over the world, U.S.-based activist Medea Benjamin asked Egyptian journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous to give his thoughts about the state of Egypt today, including the situation of political prisoners, and how he expects the Egyptian government will act with the eyes of the world upon it.
For those who don’t know or have forgotten, can you give us a quick overview of the nature of the present government in Egypt today?
The 2011 revolution against Hosni Mubarak, an uprising that was part of what has been called the Arab Spring, was very inspiring and had reverberations around the world, from the Occupy Movement in the United States to the Indignados in Spain. But that revolution was crushed in a very brutal way in 2013 by the military, led by General Abdel Fattah al Sisi–who later became president.
Right now, Egypt is ruled by a very tight and closed clique of military and intelligence officers, a circle that is completely opaque. Its decision-making process does not allow for any political participation and it does not brook any kind of dissent or opposition. It seems that the government’s answer to any problems with its citizens is to put them in prison.
There are literally tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt right now. We don’t know the exact number because there are no official statistics and this forces lawyers and the very harassed human rights groups to try to painstakingly tabulate the thousands of people who are trapped behind bars.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen Egypt build several new prisons. Just last year Sisi oversaw the opening of the Wadi al-Natrun prison complex. It’s not called a prison complex, it’s called a “rehabilitation center.” This is one of seven or eight new prisons that Sisi himself has dubbed “American-style prisons.”
These prison complexes include within them the courts and judicial buildings, so it makes a conveyor belt from the courthouse to the prison more efficient.
What is the status of this massive group of political prisoners?
The majority of political prisoners in Egypt are held in what is called “pre-trial detention.” Under Egypt’s penal code, you can be held in prison for two years without ever being convicted of a crime. Nearly everyone held in pre-trial detention faces two identical charges: one is spreading false information and the other is belonging to a terrorist organization or an outlawed organization.
The prison conditions are very dire. If you get sick, you are in big trouble. There have been a lot of deaths from medical negligence, with prisoners dying in custody. Torture and other forms of abuse by security forces is widespread.
We’ve also seen the number of death sentences and executions skyrocket. Under the former President Mubarak, in his final decade in office, there was a de facto moratorium on executions. There were death sentences handed down but people were not being put to death. Now Egypt ranks third in the world in the number of executions.
What about other freedoms, such as freedom of assembly and freedom of the press?
Basically, the regime sees its citizens as a nuisance or a threat. All forms of protest or public assembly are banned.
Alleged violations carry very stiff prison sentences. We’ve seen mass arrests sweeps happen whenever there’s any kind of public demonstration and we’ve also seen an unprecedented crackdown on civil society, with human rights organizations and economic justice organizations being forced to scale back their operations or basically operate underground.The people who work for them are subject to intimidation and harassment and travel bans and arrests.
We’ve also seen a massive crackdown on press freedom, a nearly complete takeover of the media landscape. Under Mubarak’s government, there was at least some opposition press, including some opposition newspapers and TV stations. But now the government very tightly controls the press through censorship and also through acquisition. The General Intelligence Services, which is the intelligence apparatus of the military, has become the largest media owner of the country. They own newspapers and TV channels. Independent media, such as the one I work for called Mada Masr, operate on the margins in a very, very hostile environment.
Egypt is the third largest jailer of journalists in the world and imprisons more journalists on charges of spreading false news than any other country in the world.
Can you talk about the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who is probably Egypt’s most famous political prisoner?
Alaa has been behind bars for much of the last decade. He is in prison ostensibly for the crime of “spreading false news,” but he is really in prison for these ideas, for being an icon and a symbol of the 2011 revolution. For the regime, imprisoning him was a way to set an example for everyone else. That’s why there has been so much campaigning to get him out.
He has been in prison under very, very difficult conditions. For two years he wasn’t allowed out of his cell and didn’t even have a mattress to sleep on. He was completely deprived of everything, including books or reading materials of any kind. For the first time, he started expressing suicidal thoughts.
But on April 2 he decided to go on a hunger strike as an act of resistance against his imprisonment. He has been on a hunger strike for seven months now. He started with just water and salt, which is a kind of hunger strike that Egyptians learned from Palestinians. Then in May, he decided to go on a Gandhi-style strike and ingest 100 calories a day–which is a spoonful of honey in some tea. An average adult needs 2,000 calories a day, so it’s very meager.
But he just sent a letter to his family saying that he was going back to a full hunger strike and on November 6, on the eve of the COP meeting, he’s going to stop drinking water. This is extremely serious because the body cannot last without water for more than a few days.
So he is calling on all of us on the outside to organize, because either he will die in prison or he will be released. What he is doing is incredibly brave. He is using his body, the only thing he has agency over, to organize and to push us on the outside to do more.
How do these repressed civil society leaders view the fact that Egypt is playing host to COP27?
It was very disheartening for a lot of people in Egypt who work for human rights and justice and democracy when Egypt was granted the right to host the conference. But Egyptian civil society has not called on the international community to boycott the COP meeting; they have called for the plight of political prisoners and the lack of human rights to be linked to the climate discussions and not ignored.
They want a spotlight to be placed on the thousands of political prisoners like Alaa, like Abdel Moneim Aboul Foitouh, a former presidential candidate, like Mohamed Oxygen, a blogger, like Marwa Arafa, who is an activist from Alexandria.
Unfortunately, hosting this meeting has given the government a great opportunity to remake its image. It has allowed the government to try to position itself as the voice for the Global South and the negotiator trying to unlock billions of dollars a year in climate financing from the Global North.
Of course the issue of climate reparations to the Global South is very important. It needs to be discussed and taken seriously. But how can you give climate reparations to a country like Egypt when you know the money will mostly be spent on bolstering this repressive, polluting state? As Naomi Klein said in her great article Greenwashing a Police State, the summit is going beyond greenwashing a polluting state to greenwashing a police state.
So what do you think we can expect to see in Sharm el Sheikh? Will the usual protests that happen at every COP, both inside and outside the official halls, be allowed?
I think what we are going to see in Sharm el Sheikh is a carefully managed theater. We all know the problems with the UN Climate Summits. There are a lot of negotiations and climate diplomacy, but rarely do they amount to anything concrete and binding. But they do serve as an important place for networking and convergence for different groups in the climate justice movement, an opportunity for them to come together to organize. It has also been a time for these groups to show their opposition to the inaction by those in power, with creative, vigorous protests both inside and outside the conference.
This will not be the case this year. Sharm el Sheikh is a resort in Sinai that literally has a wall around it. It can and will be very tightly controlled. From what we understand, there is a special space that has been designated for protests that has been built out near a highway, far away from the conference center and any signs of life. So how effective will it be to hold protests there?
This is why people like Greta Thunberg are not going. Many activists have problems with the structure of the COP itself but it is even worse in Egypt where the ability to use it as a convergence space for dissent will be effectively shut down.
But more importantly, the members of Egyptian civil society, including the allies and environmental groups that are critical of the government, will not be allowed to attend. In a departure from UN rules, those groups that manage to participate will have been vetted and approved by the government and will have to be very careful about how they operate. Other Egyptians who should be there are unfortunately in prison or are subject to various forms of repression and harassment.
Should foreigners also worry about the Egyptian government surveilling them?
The entire conference will be very highly surveilled. The government created this app that you can download to use as a guide for the conference. But to do that, you have to put in your full name, phone number, email address, passport number and nationality, and you have to enable location tracking. Amnesty International technology specialists have reviewed the app and flagged all these concerns about surveillance and how the app can use the camera and microphone and location data and bluetooth.
What environmental issues related to Egypt will the government allow to be discussed, and what will be off limits?
Environmental issues that will be allowed are issues such as trash collection, recycling, renewable energy and climate finance, which is a big issue for Egypt and for the Global South.
Environmental issues that implicate the government and military will not be tolerated. Take the issue of coal–something the environmental community is very critical of. That will be off limits because coal imports, much of it coming from the United States, have risen over the past several years, driven by the strong demand from the cement sector. Egypt’s largest importer of coal is also the largest cement producer, and that’s the El-Arish Cement Company that was built in 2016 by none other than the Egyptian military.
We’ve seen massive amounts of cement poured into Egypt’s natural environment over the past several years. The government has built nearly 1,000 bridges and tunnels, destroying acres and acres of green space and cutting down thousands of trees. They have gone on a crazy construction spree, building a slew of new neighborhoods and cities, including a new administrative capital in the desert just outside of Cairo. But no criticism of these projects has been or will be tolerated.
Then there is dirty energy production. Egypt, Africa’s second largest gas producer, is scaling up its oil and gas production and exports, which will mean further profits for the military and intelligence sectors involved in this. These projects that are harmful to the environment but profitable for the military will be off the agenda.
The Egyptian military is entrenched in every part of the Egyptian state. Military owned enterprises produce everything from fertilizers to baby food to cement. They operate hotels; they are the largest owner of land in Egypt. So any kind of industrial pollution or environmental harm from areas such as construction, tourism, development and agribusiness will not be tolerated at COP.
We have heard that the crackdown on Egyptians in anticipation of this global gathering has already begun. Is that true?
Yes, we’ve already seen an intensified crackdown and a massive arrest sweep in the run-up to the climate summit. There are arbitrary stop and searches, and random security checkpoints. They open your Facebook and WhatsApp, and they look through it. If they find content that they find problematic, they arrest you.
Hundreds of people have been arrested, by some counts 500 to 600. They have been arrested from their homes, off the streets, from their workplaces.
And these searches and arrests are not restricted just to Egyptians. The other day there was an Indian climate activist, Ajit Rajagopal, was arrested shortly after setting off on an eight-day walk from Cairo to Sharm el Sheikh as part of a global campaign to raise awareness about the climate crisis.
He was detained in Cairo, questioned for hours and held overnight. He called an Egyptian lawyer friend, who came to the police station to help him. They detained the lawyer as well, and held him overnight.
There have been calls for protests on November 11, or 11/11. Do you think people in Egypt will come out on the streets?
It is unclear where these protest calls started but I think it was started by people outside Egypt. I would be surprised if people come out on the streets given the level of repression we’ve been seeing these days but you never know.
The security apparatus was very surprised in September 2019 when a former military contractor turned whistleblower exposed videos showing army corruption. These videos went viral. The whistleblower called for protests but he was outside Egypt in self-imposed exile in Spain.
There were some protests, not very big but significant. And what was the government response? Massive arrests, the most massive sweep since Sisi came to power with over 4,000 people detained. They arrested all kinds of people–everyone who had been arrested before and a lot of other people. With that kind of repression, it’s hard to say if mobilizing people to go to the streets is the right thing to do.
The government is also particularly paranoid because the economic situation is so bad. The Egyptian currency has lost 30 percent of its value since the beginning of the year, precipitated by a variety of factors, including the war in Ukraine, since Egypt was getting so much of its wheat from Ukraine. Inflation is out of control. People are getting poorer and poorer. So that, combined with these calls for protests, have prompted the preemptive crackdown.
So I don’t know if people will defy the government and go out into the streets. But I gave up trying to predict anything in Egypt a long time ago. You just never know what is going to happen.
United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) Force Commander commends readiness of Rwandan peacekeepers in Bangui in the Central African Republic on September 7 / credit: Rwanda Defense Force/Flickr
On July 9, the government of Rwanda said that it had deployed 1,000 troops to Mozambique to battle al-Shabaab fighters, who had seized the northern province of Cabo Delgado. A month later, on August 8, Rwandan troops captured the port city of Mocímboa da Praia, where just off the coast sits a massive natural gas concession held by French energy company TotalEnergies SE and U.S. energy company ExxonMobil. These new developments in the region led to the African Development Bank’s President M. Akinwumi Adesina announcing on August 27 that TotalEnergies SE will restart the Cabo Delgado liquefied natural gas project by the end of 2022.
Militants from al-Shabaab (or ISIS-Mozambique, as the U.S. State Department prefers to call it) did not fight to the last man; they disappeared across the border into Tanzania or into their villages in the hinterland. The energy companies will, meanwhile, soon start to recoup their investments and profit handsomely, thanks in large part to the Rwandan military intervention.
Why did Rwanda intervene in Mozambique in July 2021 to defend, essentially, two major energy companies? The answer lies in a very peculiar set of events that took place in the months before the troops left Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda.
Billions Stuck Underwater
Al-Shabaab fighters first made their appearance in Cabo Delgado in October 2017. For three years, the group played a cat-and-mouse game with Mozambique’s army before taking control of Mocímboa da Praia in August 2020. At no point did it seem possible for Mozambique’s army to thwart al-Shabaab and allow TotalEnergies SE and ExxonMobil to restart operations in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of northern Mozambique, where a massive natural gas field was discovered in February 2010.
The Mozambican Ministry of Interior had hired a range of mercenaries such as Dyck Advisory Group (South Africa), Frontier Services Group (Hong Kong), and the Wagner Group (Russia). In late August 2020, TotalEnergies SE and the government of Mozambique signed an agreement to create a joint security force to defend the company’s investments against al-Shabaab. None of these armed groups succeeded. The investments were stuck underwater.
At this point, Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi indicated, as I was told by a source in Maputo, that TotalEnergies SE might ask the French government to send a detachment to assist in securing the area. This discussion went on into 2021. On January 18, 2021, French Defense Minister Florence Parly and her counterpart in Portugal, João Gomes Cravinho, talked on the phone, during which—it is suggested in Maputo—they discussed the possibility of a Western intervention in Cabo Delgado. On that day, TotalEnergies SE CEO Patrick Pouyanné met with President Nyusi and his ministers of defense (Jaime Bessa Neto) and interior (Amade Miquidade) to discuss the joint “action plan to strengthen security of the area.” Nothing came of it. The French government was not interested in a direct intervention.
A senior official in Maputo told me that it is strongly believed in Mozambique that French President Emmanuel Macron suggested the Rwandan force, rather than French forces, be deployed to secure Cabo Delgado. Indeed, Rwanda’s armies—highly trained, well-armed by the Western countries, and given impunity to act outside the bounds of international law—have proved their mettle in the interventions carried out in South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
What Kagame Got for the Intervention
Paul Kagame has ruled Rwanda since 1994, first as vice president and minister of defense and then since 2000 as the president. Under Kagame, democratic norms have been flouted within Rwanda, while Rwandan troops have operated ruthlessly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A 2010 UN Mapping Project report on serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo showed that the Rwandan troops killed “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of Congolese civilians and Rwandan refugees between 1993 and 2003. Kagame rejected the UN report, suggesting that this “double genocide” theory denied the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He has wanted the French to accept responsibility for the genocide of 1994 and has hoped that the international community will ignore the massacres in the eastern Congo.
On March 26, 2021, historian Vincent Duclert submitted a 992-page report on France’s role in the Rwandan genocide. The report makes it clear that France should accept—as Médecins Sans Frontières put it—“overwhelming responsibility” for the genocide. But the report does not say that the French state was complicit in the violence. Duclert traveled to Kigali on April 9 to deliver the report in person to Kagame, who said that the report’s publication “marks an important step toward a common understanding of what took place.”
On April 19, the Rwandan government released a report that it had commissioned from the U.S. law firm Levy Firestone Muse. This report’s title says it all: “A Foreseeable Genocide: The Role of the French Government in Connection with the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.” The French did not deny the strong words in this document, which argues that France armed the génocidaires and then hastened to protect them from international scrutiny. Macron, who has been loath to accept France’s brutality in the Algerian liberation war, did not dispute Kagame’s version of history. This was a price he was willing to pay.
What France Wants
On April 28, 2021, Mozambique’s President Nyusi visited Kagame in Rwanda. Nyusi told Mozambique’s news broadcasters that he had come to learn about Rwanda’s interventions in the Central African Republic and to ascertain Rwanda’s willingness to assist Mozambique in Cabo Delgado.
On May 18, Macron hosted a summit in Paris, “seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” which was attended by several heads of government, including Kagame and Nyusi, the president of the African Union (Moussa Faki Mahamat), the president of the African Development Bank (Akinwumi Adesina), the president of the West African Development Bank (Serge Ekué), and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (Kristalina Georgieva). Exit from “financial asphyxiation” was at the top of the agenda, although in private meetings there were discussions about Rwandan intervention in Mozambique.
A week later, Macron left for a visit to Rwanda and South Africa, spending two days (May 26 and 27) in Kigali. He repeated the broad findings of the Duclert report, brought along 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Rwanda (where only around 4 percent of the population had received the first dose by the time of his visit), and spent time in private talking to Kagame. On May 28, alongside South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Macron talked about Mozambique, saying that France was prepared to “take part in operations on the maritime side,” but would otherwise defer to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and to other regional powers. He did not mention Rwanda specifically.
Rwanda entered Mozambique in July, followed by SADC forces, which included South African troops. France got what it wanted: Its energy giant can now recoup its investment.
