Attributed to resurgence in fighting between Boko Haram and Islamic West Africa Province

International news via Reuters:

A surge in attacks in Nigeria’s northeast by Boko Haram and its splinter rival ISWAP has raised fears of a major comeback by jihadists, whose tactics now include armed drones and explosive devices planted on major roads, security experts said.

At least 22 people were killed in weekend raids by militants in Adamawa and Borno states, while 26 others died on Monday after an explosive device ripped into two vehicles in Borno.

Dozens more have been killed by a string of jihadist attacks since January.

In Borno state, the heartland of the insurgency for over 15 years, governor Babagana Zulum has warned that insurgents were making gains, with little push back from the military.

Security experts attributed the resurgence to a lull in fighting between Boko Haram and Islamic West Africa Province (ISWAP) and the adoption of aerial technology by the groups.

“Both groups have become a bit bolder and showed they have some sophisticated technology,” said James Barnett, a Hudson Institute research fellow who conducts fieldwork on insecurity in Nigeria.

The use of armed drones also suggested ISWAP was receiving more funding from Islamic State, analysts said.

Last month, insurgents used drones to attack a military outpost near the Cameroonian border, killing several soldiers.

Vincent Foucher, a research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research who has interviewed former fighters, said there were reports that Islamic State advisers had been sent in to help ISWAP fighters on the ground.

“They can improve the tactics and we have seen the use of drones and explosives and large-scale attacks. This could be taken as impact of the advice from the Islamic State,” Foucher said.

Boko Haram and ISWAP had fought bitterly for supremacy since splitting in 2016.

But Foucher said “they are less busy fighting each other and have more time to carry out attacks.”

Last Friday, Zulum told reporters that militants were regrouping in the Lake Chad area and Sambisa hills in Borno, near the Cameroonian border.

The Nigerian military did not respond to a request for comment.

Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at security think-tank Good Governance Africa, said jihadists had shown to be resilient and adaptive to strategies deployed by the military.

“Their current resurgence mirrors previous periods when they took the fight to the military, instead of waiting for the military to attack before repelling them,” he said.

Reporting by Ope Adetayo, Editing by MacDonald Dzirutwe and Aidan Lewis

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International news via Reuters:

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals retained power in the country’s election on Monday, but fell short of the majority government he had wanted to help him negotiate tariffs with U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Liberals were leading or elected in 167 electoral districts, known as seats, followed by the Conservatives with 145, with votes still being counted.

The Liberals had needed to win 172 of the House of Commons’ 343 seats for a majority that would allow them to govern without support from a smaller party.

“Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over,” Carney said in a victory speech in Ottawa. “The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity for our country for decades, is over.”

“These are tragedies, but it’s also our new reality.”

Carney said the coming months would be challenging and require sacrifices.

Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a polling firm, told Reuters the Liberal win hinged on three factors.

“It was the ‘anybody-but-Conservative’ factor, it was the Trump tariff factor, and then it was the Trudeau departure … which enabled a lot of left-of-center voters and traditional Liberal voters to come back to the party,” Kurl said, referring to the resignation of unpopular former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Carney had promised a tough approach with Washington over its import tariffs and said Canada would need to spend billions to reduce its reliance on the U.S. But the right-of-center Conservatives, who called for change after more than nine years of Liberal rule, showed unexpected strength.

Minority governments in Canada rarely last longer than 2-1/2 years.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre conceded defeat to Carney’s Liberals and said his party would hold the government to account.

The result capped a notable comeback for the Liberals, who had been 20 percentage points behind in the polls in January before Trudeau announced he was quitting and Trump started threatening tariffs and annexation.

“America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,” Carney said. “These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never ever happen.”

WAVE OF PATRIOTISM

Trump’s threats ignited a wave of patriotism that swelled support for Carney, a political newcomer who previously led two G7 central banks.

Trump re-emerged as a campaign factor last week, declaring that he might raise a 25% tariff on Canadian-made cars because the U.S. does not want them. He said earlier he might use “economic force” to make Canada the 51st state.

Carney has emphasized that his experience handling economic issues makes him the best leader to deal with Trump, while Poilievre tapped into concerns about the cost of living, crime and a housing crisis.

Trump, in a social media post on Monday, reiterated his call for Canada to become the 51st state.

“Good luck to the Great people of Canada,” he said. “Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago.”

Tensions with the U.S. have caused supporters of two smaller parties, the left-leaning New Democratic Party and the separatist Bloc Quebecois, to shift to the Liberals. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh conceded defeat in his own district and said he planned to quit as party leader.

The Conservatives appeared on track to make gains in the seat-rich Toronto area to prevent a Liberal majority government, but Poilievre was trailing in his own Ottawa-area district, with votes still being counted.

“We didn’t quite get over the finish line yet,” Poilievre told his supporters in Ottawa. “We know that change is needed, but change is hard to come by. It takes time.”

The Liberals are the last party to win four consecutive elections in Canada, accomplishing the feat in 2004.

Poilievre focused his campaign on domestic issues and the need to fix a country that he said the Liberals had “broken.”

Reporting by Rod Nickel and Promit Mukherjee in Ottawa, Nivedita Balu in Toronto and Amanda Stephenson in Calgary; additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; editing by Deepa Babington, Nick Zieminski and Paul Simao

The Vietnam War lasted for two decades and killed nearly 60,000 Americans

International news via Reuters:

As a young U.S. intelligence analyst in Saigon during the Vietnam War, Chuck Searcy never thought that 50 years later he would be living in Communist Vietnam and helping its people fight a different war against unexploded mines.

The Vietnam War scarred a generation of U.S. soldiers, but like many, Searcy returned to the old battleground and has witnessed first hand the dramatic warming of relations between the two former foes.

Searcy, 81, now lives in northern Vietnam as the Communist-run nation celebrates 50 years since the end of the war on April 30, known as Reunification Day.

But he still remembers the prophetic words of a South Vietnamese soldier he met in the 1960s in Saigon, the capital of the U.S.-backed South Vietnam that spent decades fighting against Communist North Vietnam, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the war.

“Until you get out of our country, we will never get peace,” Searcy recalls the man telling him.

Searcy declined to name the soldier but marvelled that while he was America’s ally, he nevertheless believed that North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh was the only figure respected by the majority of the people and capable of bringing peace.

The Vietnam War lasted for two decades and killed nearly 60,000 Americans, many of them young soldiers drafted by their government. Some three million Vietnamese died on both sides of what is known in Vietnam as the American War.

But fewer and fewer Vietnamese have memories of the war. Vietnam’s median age is now below 35 and youths may rather link the notion of a conflict with America to the current trade war.

Vietnamese youths crowd Starbucks cafes throughout the country, and U.S. consumers buy “Made in Vietnam” goods – contributing in the process to Vietnam’s rapid economic growth.

The former foes have now turned into close economic partners, with U.S. multinationals, such as Apple, Nike and Intel, running large manufacturing operations in Vietnam.

HEALING WAR’S WOUNDS

After having experienced first-hand such legendary wartime events as the 1968 Tet Offensive, Searcy left the military and returned home to the United States, at least for a time.

He was in Atlanta when he watched on TV the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 and the iconic takeoff of the last helicopter from the roof of the U.S. embassy in the centre of the city.

“I felt this overwhelming sense of relief that it was over after such a long agony,” Searcy told Reuters.

Firmly in the anti-war camp at that point, Searcy acknowledged that his elation for the end of the war “was mixed with great concern” about Vietnamese friends who had supported the U.S. army and whose lives may have been in jeopardy. Over 1 million Vietnamese left the country after the war ended.

However, expectations that things were about to change brought him back to Vietnam 20 years later with a project for the rehabilitation of children with disabilities caused by polio and other diseases. 

That was shortly after Washington had lifted its embargo on Vietnam in 1994, giving people hope that a normalisation of relations was possible, he said.

Searcy has remained in Vietnam since, having later co-founded Project Renew, which helps people gravely injured by mines and deploys teams of de-miners to clear the country from unexploded ordnance out of the 5-8 million tons the Americans dropped during the war.

He is still impressed by the resilience and pragmatism of Vietnamese people, including these days when they face the threat of crippling tariffs from the Trump administration which could undermine the country’s growth model.

“We are still making life very difficult for the Vietnamese,” said Searcy.

Reporting by Minh Nguyen in Ho Chi Minh City and Francesco Guarascio in Hanoi; Editing by Michael Perry