UNICEF: Mali chaos has left children to be recruited as soldiers

As West African leaders seek a green light to send forces into northern Mali, the United Nations child protection organization said at least 175 boys had been recruited as child soldiers in the region, prodded into fighting in the chaotic aftermath of a Tuareg rebellion.

Tuareg rebels equipped with weapons from Libya  declared their own state of Azawad in northern Mali this year.  Mali, unsettled by a military coup, has thus far been unable to stop them.

On the heels of the Tuareg advances, Islamic extremist groups took over Mali towns and imposed strict religious law, defaced and destroyed tombs and mosques, and reportedly sparred with the Tuareg, their onetime allies, ousting them from Timbuktu last week.

The Economic Community of West African States, a bloc of West African nations, has pressed to send regional troops into northern Mali to stabilize the turbulent region. The U.N. Security Council said Thursday that it wanted more information on those plans before it gave them its blessing.

With little access to northern Mali, UNICEF said it had only an incomplete picture of the violence and militarism affecting children. The agency said the shuttering of schools across the north had affected up to 300,000 children, leaving them at higher risk of being recruited or exploited.

UNICEF media relations chief Peter Smerdon said  that because its access to information was limited, the agency could not specify which armed groups had recruited children. Besides the child soldiers, the agency said there were also reports of children being maimed by explosives, raped and sexually abused.

Youth are also especially susceptible to malnutrition, which has spread across Mali during its lean season. More than 70,000 children have been treated for severe malnutrition this year, according to UNICEF, which has gotten barely a fifth of the funding it has sought to stem the hunger crisis in Mali. Locust swarms, left uncontrolled as Libya was riven by fighting between rival militias, threaten to worsen the problem.

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Islamist rebels in Mali destroy Timbuktu historic sites

Islamist rebels who have seized control of northern Mali used axes, shovels and automatic weapons to destroy tombs and other cultural and religious monuments for a third day on Monday, including bashing in the door of a 15th century mosque in Timbuktu, news agencies reported.

Rebels of the Ansar Dine faction fighting to assert Sharia law over the African nation at the crossroads of ancient trade routes ignored the appeals of United Nations officials over the weekend to cease the "wanton destruction" of the region's cultural heritage.

 In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday called on "all parties to exercise their responsibility to preserve the cultural heritage of Mali," saying the attacks "are totally unjustified.”

Irina Bokova, head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, on Saturday urged the Ansar Dine fighters “to stop these terrible and irreversible acts” after militants smashed mud-walled tombs in Timbuktu.

On Monday, the Islamists, who claim allegiance to Al Qaeda, tore open the door to the Sidi Yahia mosque, telling townspeople they were wiping out "idolatry" at the monuments to Sufi Islamic saints and scholars.

"In legend, it is said that the main gate of Sidi Yahia mosque will not be opened until the last day [of the world]," said the town imam, Alpha Abdoulahi, according to Reuters news agency, which reached him in Timbuktu by telephone.

In radio and television interviews from Senegal, the newly appointed chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, warned the rebels that destruction of religious and cultural heritage could lead to war crimes charges.

“The only tribunal we recognize is the divine court of Sharia,” the Associated Press quoted Ansar Dine spokesmen Oumar Ould Hamaha as saying in response to Bensouda's warning.

The AP said Hamaha justified the destruction as a divine order to pull down idolatrous constructions "so that future generations don't get confused, and start venerating the saints as if they are God.”

Timbuktu had been developed as a tourist attraction, with locals operating hotels, guest houses and guided tours for visitors to the ancient sub-Saharan trading post and Islamic educational center.

Hamaha told the AP that Ansar Dine opposes tourists' coming to the religious sites, saying they "foster debauchery."

UNESCO put Timbuktu and the nearby Tomb of Askia on its List of World Heritage in Danger last week, after the Ansar Dine rebels seized the region that has been beset by a three-way civil war since a March 22 coup deposed Mali's government. The Islamist radicals have been fighting for territory with Taureg separatists since the latter defeated Mali government troops in the spring, leaving the capital Bamako rudderless and incapable of putting down either rebellion in the remote north.

"Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a center for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries," UNESCO notes on its website. "Its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, recall Timbuktu's golden age."

The sites designated as important cultural heritage represent "the power and riches of the empire that flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries through its control of the trans-Saharan trade," UNESCO recalls in its description.

Fundamentalist Salafist Muslims have also attacked Sufi heritage sites in Libya and Egypt over the past year, and Al Qaeda-allied Taliban militants a decade ago blew up two 6th Century Buddha figures carved into a mountainside near Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan, on the same grounds that they idolized false gods.

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Photo: A still from a video shows Islamist militants attacking a shrine in Timbuktu on Sunday.  Credit: AFP / Getty Images

Mali rebellions put Timbuktu on UNESCO's endangered list

The United Nations cultural organization put the besieged city of Timbuktu and the nearby Tomb of Askia on its endangered list Thursday, citing threats to the designated world treasures from ethnic and religious fighting in northern Mali.

By placing the historic sites on its List of World Heritage in Danger, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said it "aims to raise cooperation and support for the sites threatened by the armed conflict in the region."

"Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a center for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries," as UNESCO described the city now engulfed in fighting among government troops and two rival rebel forces. "Its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, recall Timbuktu's golden age."

The mud-walled Tomb of Askia, built by the Emperor of Songhai in 1495 in his capital Gao, is described by UNESCO on its website as bearing testimony "to the power and riches of the empire that flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries through its control of the trans-Saharan trade." Both sites are examples of the monumental mud-building traditions of the West African Sahel, the agency said.

Since Taureg separatists staged a coup in March against the Mali government based in Bamako, fighting between the Tauregs and the fundamentalist Islamic Ansar Dine faction for control of the northern treasures has raged around the historic venues.

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee proclaimed after a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, that Timbuktu and the tomb in Gao are now in danger of being looted.

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Photo: The Islamic center and a mosque in Timbuktu in 2010. Credit: Habib Kouyate / AFP/Getty Images

Refugees of 2011 underline 'suffering on an epic scale'

More people became refugees in 2011 than in any other year since the new millennium began, with one out of every four of them coming from Afghanistan, the United Nations refugee agency reported Monday.

The agency called the new numbers a sign of “suffering on an epic scale.”

Though more than 800,000 people fled across borders last year, the highest number since 2000, the number of people displaced worldwide actually dropped as millions of people returned to their homes, the agency said.

All in all, 42.5-million people were displaced or seeking asylum last year, a figure that could actually be higher since many countries do not report the number of people believed to be stateless.

Afghanistan produced the most refugees, followed by Iraq, Somalia and Sudan. Most fled to neighboring countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Kenya; Pakistan hosted more than 1.7-million refugees last year, the largest number in the world according to government estimates. Nearly all of them came from Afghanistan.

The U.N. refugee agency said while growing numbers of displaced people have returned home, it is alarmed that almost three out of every four refugees under its watch have been exiled from their homes for at least five years, many of them languishing in refugee camps.

The report was released ahead of World Refugee Day on Wednesday. The day comes as the agency is grappling with several new crises.

The U.N. recently lamented a dire shortfall of funding to help people uprooted by conflict in northern Mali, where Tuareg rebels have declared their own state. Bangladesh has turned away Rohingya Muslims trying to leave Myanmar after a recent eruption of ethnic violence, despite calls from the U.N. and other countries to allow them in. And in South Sudan, tens of thousands of refugees crossing from Sudan are suffering from deadly dehydration.

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Photo: Afghan refugees travel on a truck as they cross the border between their homeland and Pakistan  at Torkham on May 20. Credit: A. Majeed / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images.

Locusts menace already hunger-stricken Mali and Niger

Mali is already bedeviled by the messy aftermath of a military coup, Tuareg rebels who’ve declared their own state, Islamists trying to impose strict religious law in the north, and waves of hunger.

Now Mali and neighboring Niger are facing swarms of locusts, which were left uncontrolled while Libya and Algeria, which normally keep local locusts from moving south, grappled with conflicts and insecurity of their own.

The swarming desert locusts, which can eat their own weight in fresh food every day, threaten to devastate crops in a region where millions of people are already menaced by food shortages. In some stretches of northern Mali and Niger, some people have resorted to eating plant leaves, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Food Program have said.

Locusts are usually managed by spraying chemicals that stop the swarms from spreading. Algeria and Libya ordinarily attack the swarms, preventing them from hitting Mali or Niger.

But in the last year, as Libya was wracked by fighting between rival militias in the aftermath of the ouster of Moammar Kadafi and Algeria suffered insecurity along its border, local teams and international experts have been blocked from stopping the swarms, the U.N.  Food and Agriculture Organization  said.

Teams trying to combat the locusts had treated more than 200 square miles of infested land in Algeria and Libya as of the end of May. More than $700,000 has been dedicated to the problem, the FAO said.

But locusts have reportedly already been spotted in the northern Mali region of Kidal, as well as neighboring northern Niger. “How many locusts there are and how far they move will depend on two major factors:   the effectiveness of current control efforts in Algeria and Libya and upcoming rainfall in the Sahel of West Africa,” FAO senior locust forecasting officer Keith Cressman said Tuesday.

The onslaught is especially alarming in Mali because the unrest has crippled its ability to fight them off. Bloomberg News reported Thursday that the equipment Mali needs to stop the swarms was destroyed during the Tuareg rebellion, quoting an interview with a locust control official broadcast on state radio.

Even before it was threatened by locusts, Mali has been facing its worst crisis in 50 years, Amnesty International said  last month. Rebels and soldiers alike have violated human rights with executions and rapes. Tens of thousands of people have fled the region.

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Photo: Malian refugees arrive at the Imbaidou refugee camp in Niger on May 29, 2012. Credit: Issouf Sanogo / AFP/Getty Images

Al Qaeda affiliate urges Mali fighters to form Islamist nation

An Al Qaeda affiliate urged fighters in northern Mali to use their “historic opportunity”  to make the would-be state of Azawad an Islamic nation, in another sign of how Islamists have tried to capitalize on tumult in the West African nation.

The Tuareg rebels who declared their own state of Azawad in northern Mali this year are not strict adherents to fundamentalist Islam, but Islamists have piggybacked on their advances to take over northern towns, imposing severe punishments for theft and drinking and forcing women to cover themselves.

In a 12-minute speech posted online Wednesday, Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, head of the regional    affiliate Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, advised the Islamist group Ansar Dine to gradually introduce Islamic law and not hasten to punish people, according to an extremism monitoring service.

Wadud said it would be best if the group kept its “field activities” under the cover of Ansar Dine “and keep the cover of Al Qaeda … limited to our activities in the global jihad” to avoid increased pressure.

The growing power of Islamists is just one of the forces racking Mali, now facing its worst crisis in half a century, according to a recent report from Amnesty International.

Tuareg forces took advantage of a Mali military coup, which ousted the president and plunged the country into political chaos, to take control of the north. Hundreds of thousands of people fled the country as the rebels advanced, putting more pressure on a region already strained by food shortages.

Coup leaders recently agreed to regional demands to allow an interim president stay on for a year, but the elderly statesman was beaten by protesters who broke into his office, suffering wounds so dire that he was sent to France for medical tests.  It is suspected that soldiers let the protesters in.

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Photo: A televised image shows the flag left by the Islamist group Ansar Dine over the sign of the entrance to the Sidi Bekaye military camp on April 3, 2012 in Timbuktu. Credit: Agence France-Presse / Getty Images / France 2

West African troops in Guinea-Bissau to restore order after coup

A West African bloc is sending hundreds of troops to Guinea-Bissau, part of a regional attempt to restore order after the latest military coup in the small nation's tumultuous history.

More than 600 soldiers from the Economic Community of West African States will arrive in Guinea-Bissau "to relieve the Angolan military personnel [and] support the restoration of constitutional rule," the group said in a widely reported statement. Seventy troops reportedly arrived Thursday.

Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr. was ousted last month just weeks before an election he was expected to win, accused of plotting with Angola to crush the national military. The prime minister had sought to reduce military power in the former Portuguese colony, which has a history pocked with coups.

Guinea-Bissau named former Finance Minister Rui Duarte Barros as its interim prime minister this week as part of a plan to shift power away from the military, but Gomes told reporters in Portugal that he plans to return to his country to combat drug trafficking, saying he was lawfully elected and had legitimacy to lead.

Portugal has indications that trafficking was at the root of the coup, Portuguese Foreign Affairs Minister Paulo Portas told Bloomberg News at the same news conference.

"All the problems in Guinea-Bissau are because of drug trafficking," Lucinda Gomes Barbosa, the former head of the country's anti-narcotics police, told McClatchy recently. "There are people in high positions in government who are benefiting from this. They only think about money."

The unrest in Guinea-Bissau parallels that in nearby Mali, where the military overthrew the government in March. Mali now faces the worst challenges it has confronted since independence, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday. The West African bloc has readied thousands of troops to go to Mali, but is awaiting a formal request from the government, it said in a statement this week.

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Photo: Guinea Bissau's overthrown prime minister, Carlos Gomes Jr., center, leaves the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Lisbon after a meeting Thursday with Portuguese officials. Credit: Jose Sena Goulao / European Pressphoto Agency.

The unrest in Guinea-Bissau parallels that in Mali, where the military overthrew the government in March. Mali now faces the worst challenges it has confronted since its independence, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday. The West African bloc may also send thousands of troops to Mali, but has said it is awaiting a formal request from the government before it deploys the force.

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Amnesty International: Mali facing its worst crisis in 50 years

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Mali is confronting its worst challenges since independence in 1960,  including a severe humanitarian emergency, human rights abuses committed by government troops and rebel militias, and international isolation after a military coup two months ago, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday.

The report said the West African nation, a beacon of stability for 20 years but now in the control of armed groups, faces an uncertain future. It called for steps to protect human rights and restore democracy.

The report, written by the London-based organization's researcher on West Africa, Gaetan Mootoo, and others, found that serious human rights abuses were being committed by all sides in the country's conflicts. The combatants include the Malian army, the fighters led by Amadou Sanogo, who carried out the coup in March, and the Tuareg and Islamic rebels in the north.

"Mali is facing, since the beginning of the year, the worst crisis that the country has known
since its independence in 1960," the report said. "The entire north of the country has been taken over by armed groups. Ten of thousands of people have fled the region, creating a humanitarian crisis
in southern Mali and in neighboring countries.

In Mali, a shaky debut for the would-be country of Azawad

A month ago, ethnic Tuareg fighters seized the northern stretches of Mali as it reeled from a coup, declaring a new state of their own called Azawad. Mali has so far failed to dislodge the rebels, but the Tuareg stab at independence has fallen flat internationally, winning scant support.

The would-be state has been rejected by the African Union, the European Union and the United States since it declared itself.  The African Union shuns changing any borders, let alone creating new nations, as part of a pact agreed to decades ago to quash conflict.

"If that door opened, almost every ethnic group might want its own separate state," said Calestous Juma, professor of international development at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "Africa's road to hell is paved by tribal intentions. Nobody wants another Somalia."

Others have overcome the resistance of the African Union to new nations, most recently South Sudan. But whereas South Sudan came into being after a long civil war and was legitimized by an agreed-on referendum, Azawad emerged from sheer force and the power vacuum following the Mali coup.

Azawad is also seen skeptically because of its ethnic roots. Giving a Tuareg state the African Union's blessing could encourage ethnic minorities in neighboring nations to split away, or allow Azawad to spread into other countries with Tuareg populations.

Mali coup leaders agree to step down in return for amnesty

REPORTING FROM JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- Mali's junta has agreed to step down in return for amnesty, after a coup that saw neighbors launch a blockade of the landlocked country and an ethnic Tuareg rebel militia seize the north.

The regional leadership group ECOWAS announced details of the deal late Friday, which will see the junta step down within days and the establishment of a transitional government of national unity.

The March 22 coup that toppled President Amadou Toumani Toure came just weeks before elections were scheduled. It was triggered by anger in the military over the government's failure to properly arm and equip the army to fight the Tuareg rebellion, which was launched in January.

The junta had hoped for international help to resist the rebels, but the opposite happened, with sanctions and a blockade. The rebels advanced swiftly, seizing key northern towns and taking control of half the impoverished country.

ECOWAS has put a force of 2,000 soldiers on standby, without indicating whether they would be given the task of trying to defeat the well-armed Tuareg rebels.