Crowds of civilians lined the rugged dirt-road leading through a string of villages towards Bunagana. They were cheering and singing the hundreds of men in uniform that were marching up, the drab uniforms a stark contrast to the colourful cloths wrapped around ululating women. Sweat dripped down these soldiers' faces, their shoulders burdened with heavy, macabre instruments of destruction: tank shells, mortars and boxes of ammunition.
This was the first time the government army had been in these hills for well over a year, having been ousted in July 2012 by ...
It has been nearly two weeks since the bloody attacks on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, where militants aligned with Somali Islamists, al-Shabaab, emptied guns and tossed grenades on unsuspecting shoppers. Last night, in Mombasa, a car lay on the side of a road, riddled with bullets and with four bloody corpses inside.
I first met Sheikh Ibrahim Ishmael two days before his killing, in the office of Abubaker Shariff Ahmed—nick-named "Makaburi"—a well-spoken, if not radical, debater who is ...
In a dusty backstreet of Goma, where cars creep past slowly over the jagged, volcanic rock on which the city is built, Lulu Castofas sits under a parasol. He wears a flat cap and a thick, black beard, peppered with grey. Around his neck hangs a ...
Hassan Nkussa sits in a conference room on the fourth floor of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism. On the door of the conference room a panel reads "Selous", the name of the largest game reserve in the country, but inside the interior is drab. Nine tables form a "U" shape and around them sit an assortment of mismatched, faux-leather chairs. The unadorned, dirty white walls are the antithesis of the vast reserve after which the room is named, with no images—or reminders—of the wildlife that the ministry is charged with protecting.
Mr. Nkussa has short, clipped hair, a light salt-and-pepper moustache and carries a briefcase. He is an attorney by trade, and ...
Goma has been taken for the first time in years. M23 rebels took over the city, ousting government forces whilst the United Nations peacekeepers, who had sworn to protect the city, stood by.
Since April, I have been covering the ...
