Civil wars and militia conflicts have plagued the Republic of Congo, which is sometimes referred to as Congo-Brazzaville.

After three coup-ridden but relatively peaceful decades of independence, the former French colony experienced the first of two destructive bouts of fighting when disputed parliamentary elections in 1993 led to bloody, ethnically-based fighting between pro-government forces and the opposition.

A ceasefire and the inclusion of some opposition members in the government helped to restore peace.

Civil war

But in 1997 ethnic and political tensions exploded into a full-scale civil war, fuelled in part by the prize of the country's offshore oil wealth, which motivated many of the warlords.

The army split along ethnic lines, with most northern officers joining President Denis Sassou Nguesso's side, and most southerners backing the rebels. These were supporters of the former president, Pascal Lissouba, and his prime minister, Bernard Kolelas, who had been deposed by President Sassou Nguesso in 1997.

By the end of 1999 the rebels had lost all their key positions to the government forces, who were backed by Angolan troops. The rebels then agreed to a ceasefire.

Remnants of the civil war militias, known as Ninjas, are still active in the southern Pool region. Most of them have yet to disarm and many have turned to banditry.

Oil and diamonds

The Republic of Congo is one of sub-Saharan Africa's main oil producers, though 70 percent of the population lives in poverty. Oil is the mainstay of the economy and in recent years the country has tried to increase financial transparency in the sector.

In 2004 the country was expelled from the Kimberley Process that is supposed to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the world supply market. This followed investigations which found that the Republic of Congo could not account for the origin of large quantities of rough diamonds that it was officially exporting.

IMF debt relief to the country was delayed in 2006 following allegations of corruption.

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NAIROBI, Kenya – While putting few U.S. troops at risk, the United States is playing a growing role in Africa’s military battles, using special forces advisers, drones and tens of millions of dollars in military aid to combat a growing and multifaceted security threat.

Once again, the focus is Somalia, the lawless nation that was the site of America’s last large-scale military intervention in Africa in the early 1990s. By the time U.S. forces departed, 44 Army soldiers, Marines and airmen had been killed and dozens more wounded.

This time the United States is playing a less visible role, providing intelligence and training to fight militants across the continent, from Mauritania in the west along the Atlantic coast, to Somalia in the east along the Indian Ocean.

The renewed focus on Africa follows a series of recent and dramatic attacks.

In August, a hard-line Islamist group in Nigeria known as Boko Haram bombed the U.N. headquarters in the capital, Abuja, killing 24 people. A year earlier, militants from the Somali group al-Shabab unleashed twin bombings in Kampala, Uganda, that killed 76. And a Nigerian man tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 during a flight that originated from Lagos, Nigeria.

Most worrisome to the United States is al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked group in Somalia that has recruited dozens of Americans, most of Somali descent.

“If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it is the thought of an American passport-holding person who transits through a training camp in Somalia and gets some skill and then finds their way back into the United States to attack Americans,” Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of the U.S. Africa Command, said in Washington this month. “That’s mission failure for us.”

U.S. and European officials also worry that AQIM — an al-Qaida group that operates in the west and north of Africa — is working to establish links with Boko Haram and al-Shabab, the Somali insurgent group.

“I think the security threats emanating from Africa are being taken more seriously than they have been before, and they’re more real,” said Jennifer Cooke, the director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and equipping militaries in countries including Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia to “preclude terrorists from establishing sanctuaries,” according to the U.S. Africa Command.

In Somalia, the U.S. helps support 9,000 troops from Uganda and Burundi to fight militants in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. In June, the Pentagon moved to send nearly $45 million in military equipment, including four drones, body armor and night-vision and communications gear, for use in the fight against al-Shabab.

The U.S. also announced this month it is sending 100 advisers, most of them special forces, to help direct the fight against the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa and efforts to kill or capture its leader, Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court. In Libya, U.S. fighter planes helped rebels defeat former dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

In the latest attack against Africa’s militants, Kenya deployed troops this month into southern Somalia to fight al-Shabab insurgents. The U.S. says it is not aiding Kenya’s incursion, but America has given Kenya $24 million in aid this year “to counter terrorists and participate in peacekeeping operations,” the U.S. Embassy said.

The U.S. government “has had a burr under its saddle about Somalia” for years, dating to the 1993 downing of two U.S. helicopters over Mogadishu in a battle that became known as Black Hawk Down, said John Pike of the Globalsecurity.org think tank near Washington. Eighteen U.S. troops were killed.

At that time, Washington had deployed thousands of troops to combat a famine, but the mission escalated into a hunt for warlords.

These days, only a handful of U.S. troops are involved directly in Somalia — special forces troops who enter on kill missions. In 2009, Navy SEALs targeted and killed al-Qaida operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter raid. The Americans jumped out of the helicopters, grabbed Nabhan’s body from his bullet-riddled convoy and flew off. The corpse — like Osama bin Laden’s two years later — was buried at sea.

Pike, who monitors defense issues, said the Pentagon has ramped up operations in Africa tremendously since the time of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who didn’t see Africa as being in America’s strategic interest.

“The U.S. has really developed an interest in Africa that we just have never seen before,” Pike said.

“Between all the goings and comings in the Horn of Africa and all this snake-eater (special forces) Sahara stuff … it’s all over the place,” Pike said. “Since I think an awful lot of it is being run out of Special Operations Command and out of (the CIA), I think it probably far larger than anyone imagines.”

U.S. drones launched from the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean also provide intelligence, and the pilotless planes are capable of being armed.

Al-Shabab counts 31 American citizens among its ranks, a U.S. official in Washington told The Associated Press. They’re mostly American-Somalis who left the U.S. to join the group. The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters, said foreign fighters among al-Shabab’s ranks want to attack Western targets.

Intelligence has revealed sophisticated plans by al-Shabab to attack targets in Europe, the official said, but the operations have been disrupted by the recent stepped-up fighting in Somalia.

Ugandan and Burundian troops fighting al-Shabab militants in Mogadishu as part of an African Union force have pushed back the insurgents in recent months and now control most of the capital. The Kenyan incursion has forced al-Shabab to fight on its southern flank as well.

Though the Kenyan invasion appears to further the U.S. goal of pressuring al-Shabab, U.S. officials say the American military is not providing assistance.

“The United States has supported Kenyan efforts to improve its ability to monitor and control often porous land and maritime borders and territory exploited by terrorists and illicit traffickers, particularly along its border with Somalia,” said Katya Thomas, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

But, she added: “The United States did not encourage the Kenyan government to act, nor did Kenya seek our views. We note that Kenya has a right to defend itself against threats to its security and its citizens.”

Some aspects of Kenya’s military adventure appear poorly thought out. Troops moved in just as seasonal rains began and are now bogged down in the mud — a literal reminder of the potential quagmire for countries that intervene in Somalia, whose last nationwide leader was overthrown in 1991.

A paper published by the U.S. Army examining the ill-fated U.S. mission in Somalia in the 1990s concluded that “the chaotic political situation of that unhappy land bogged down U.S. and allied forces in what became, in effect, a poorly organized United Nations nation-building operation.”

It was a 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia that gave rise to the militants now known as al-Shabab.

“That’s the problem with Somalia, there is just no easy answer,” said Cooke, the analyst. “The problem is so huge and multi-faceted that tackling one aspect of it, i.e., beating back al-Shabab, just can’t fix it. Part of the problem is that the government we have invested in as our key partner in Somalia is a fiction of a government, and so Kenya can try to create some space, but there is nothing to fill that.”

The chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, told the House Armed Services Committee this month that the U.S. must remain active in Africa because terrorists are networked globally.

“One of the places they sit is Pakistan. One of the places they sit is Afghanistan. One of the places they sit is the African continent,” Dempsey said.

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Associated Press reporter Lolita Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

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Online: http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/somalia/somalia.htm

(This version CORRECTS death toll from Abuja bombing to 24)

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Al-Shabab's military spokesman warned of more attacks in the coming days

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A lot to lose

Kenyan incursion raises Somalia stakes

Q&A: Who are Somalia's al-Shabab?

Kenyan troops have clashed with Islamist militants inside Somalia for the first time since crossing the border nearly two weeks ago.

Kenya army spokesman Maj Emmanuel Chirchir told the BBC a convoy came under attack between the southern towns of Tabda and Bilis Qoqani.

Each side said the other had suffered casualties.

Kenya sent troops into southern Somalia earlier this month, blaming al-Shabab for a spat of kidnappings.

Al-Shabab, which controls much of central and southern Somalia, denies the allegation and has threatened reprisal attacks in Kenya.

Meanwhile, a Kenyan man, who confessed to being a member of al-Shabab, has been sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to being responsible for Monday's twin grenade attacks in the Kenyan, capital, Nairobi.

The BBC's Noel Mwakugu in court says Elgiva Bwire Oliacha smiled at the cameras and said he had no regrets and would not appeal his sentence.

One person was killed and 29 other wounded in two attacks in the city on a nightclub and bus stop.

Motives unclear

A Kenyan army spokesman said Kenyan forces were ambushed about 60km (40 miles) from the border, along the route that leads towards the port of Kismayo – an al-Shabab stronghold.

Residents in the area said the exchange of fire lasted for at least 30 minutes.

Maj Chirchir said nine al-Shabab fighters were killed and two Kenyan soldiers were wounded, one critically.

Al-Shabab disputed the figures, saying 20 Kenyans died and the group's spokesman, Abdul Asis Abu Muscab, told reporters this was just the start of the fighting and more attacks would follow.

Troops from the weak UN-backed interim government in Mogadishu are fighting alongside the Kenyans.

For more than two years, the government has been battling al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda, and relies on a 9,000-strong Africa Union force for its security in the capital.

Maj Chirchir said the Kenyan army would stick to its mission.

“The main aim is to help the TFG [Transitional Federal Government] attain or achieve freedom of access to the entire of Somalia – that's our aim to diminish al-Shabab,” he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

Elgiva Bwire Oliacha, a recent Muslim convert, said he was not going to appeal his life sentence

But BBC Africa analyst Grant Ferret say Kenya's exact aims in Somalia still remain unclear; some suspect it plans to create a buffer zone to provide protection from its unstable neighbour.

The risk is that it not only becomes bogged down in a military campaign against insurgents, but that its own security is undermined, he says.

Last week, the French authorities said a French woman suffering from cancer who was kidnapped from Kenya by Somali gunmen earlier in the month had died.

Other foreigners abducted from Kenya and being held in Somalia include a British woman abducted from a coastal resort, and a Kenyan driver and two Spanish aid workers seized from the Dadaab refugee camp near the Kenya-Somalia border.

Security has been stepped up in Nairobi since Monday's blasts, with many residents fearing there could be more attacks.

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The Kingdom of Morocco is the most westerly of the North African countries known as the Maghreb.

Strategically situated with both Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines, but with a rugged mountainous interior, it stayed independent for centuries while developing a rich culture blended from Arab, Berber, European and African influences.

Morocco was a French protectorate from 1912 to 1956, when Sultan Mohammed became king. He was succeeded in 1961 by his son, Hassan II, who ruled for 38 years. He played a prominent role in the search for peace in the Middle East, given the large number of Israelis of Moroccan origin, but was criticised for suppressing domestic opposition.

A truth commission set up to investigate human rights violations during Hassan's reign has confirmed nearly 10,000 cases, ranging from death in detention to forced exile.

A former capital, Marrakesh is famed for its architecture

After his death in 1999 Hassan was succeeded by his son, who became King Mohammed VI and was seen as a moderniser. There has been some economic and social liberalisation, but the monarch has retained sweeping powers.

Morocco is bidding for membership of the European Union, its main trade partner, but there appears to be little enthusiasm for this within the bloc.

To the south, the status of Western Sahara remains unresolved. Morocco annexed the territory in 1975 and a guerrilla war with Algerian-backed pro-independence forces ended in 1991. UN efforts have failed to break the political deadlock.

To the north, a dispute with Spain in 2002 over the tiny island of Perejil revived the issue of the sovereignty of Melilla and Ceuta. The small enclaves on the Mediterranean coast are surrounded by Morocco and have been administered by Madrid for centuries.

Morocco has been given the status of non-Nato ally by Washington, which has praised its support for the US-led war on terror. After deadly suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003, Morocco launched a crackdown on suspected Islamic militants.

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