First Independent Mena Newspaper
More than 200 sub-Saharan migrants on Friday stormed the Spanish enclave Melilla, at a crossing point on the Spain-Morocco border. They scaled the triple 20-foot fence surrounding Spain’s North African enclave in another mass crossing of the heavily protected border, the Spanish government said. The migrants, many of whom were reportedly from Cameroon, Guinea and […]
First Paris and then Brussels announced last Friday (14 February) that they would boost their peace-keeping forces in the strife-torn Central African Republic. Following a meeting of the national Defence Council at the Elysée Palace, France announced it would deploy 400 more soldiers and gendarmes, bringing its total forces in its former colony to 2,000. […]
Spain’s minister of state for security, Francisco Martinez Vázquez, recently completed his visit to Mauritania and Senegal that started on 4 February. The aim of his tour of the region was to bolster Sahel ties and discuss ways to tackle imminent threats to the region such as clandestine immigration, crime, drug trafficking, and cross-border terrorism. […]
France on Monday made an announcement refusing Niger’s appeal, last week, for western military action against Islamist fighters who have established bases in Southern Libya since the 2011 overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Niger’s call for help is a desperate one as Islamist attacks and kidnappings on its mineral-rich soil have posed a threat to […]
A resolution authorising European Union troops to use force in the Central African Republic (CAR), which has been torn apart by inter-religious violence over the past few months, was approved in a crucial UN Security Council earlier this week. This follows the EU’s own approval of a military operation, in which up to 600 soldiers […]
European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday (20 January) agreed to dispatch a battalion-sized force counting up to 1,000 soldiers to Central African Republic (CAR) to help to stabilize the war-torn African country. Being effectively the EU’s first major army operation in six years, the intervention by the 28-nation bloc comes after UN […]
While South Sudan is witnessing a rebellion and possibly the onset of a civil war, Western nations have airlifted their citizens from Africa’s youngest country. At the same time, French soldiers are patrolling the streets of the Central African Republic (CAR) along with African peacekeepers flown in from Burundi and Cameroon among others. 3700 African […]
Morocco has stressed the need to foster trust between the parties to the Middle East peace process and urged these parties to show the much needed sense of realism and spirit of compromise in order to push forward the peace process. The call was launched by Morocco’s King Mohammed VI during the opening of the […]
A new fisheries agreement between the European Union and Morocco has finally been approved on Tuesday by the European Parliament after two years of long and arduous negotiations. The new four year fisheries agreement, approved at a plenary session by 310 votes to 204, with 49 abstentions, will allow fishing vessels from 11 EU countries, […]
Maghreb, African, and European leaders met in Tangier during an event whose aim was to discuss the joint endeavor towards protection of the Sahel region. The meeting concluded that security in general, and specifically dealing with challenges coming from increasing instability across the region, is the most important issue. Therefore, all sides have agreed to […]