Foreign Correspondent Margot Kiser
Letters to Annie from Kaftanistan
Write from experience, and experience only… Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost – Henry James, American-born writer (1843-1916)
Al Shabaab has claimed responsibility for targeting the elite US-trained Danab force in a roadside explosion about 110 km southwest of Mogadishu on Sunday. The attack killed a French national working with Bancroft Global Development, an American private military company. Two other contractors with the company were injured, as well as two senior Somali Brigade […]
The New York Times has reported that the U.S. military aims to broaden its counterterrorism drone war in Kenya. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/politics/shabab-drone-authorities-kenya.html#click=https://t.co/Lam9HALEWU Why now?A couple of things come to mind; damage control (publicity) ahead of presidential elections, and competition with China’s expanding military footprint in Africa.Seems to me that the US conducting drone strikes inside Kenya is […]
While a ransom was paid to Al-Shabaab, the militant group may not have been aid worker Sylvia Aisha Romano original captors in Malindi two years ago. Reports have suggested that Kenya Wildlife Service personnel were arrested in their connection with the abduction and that they hid the aid worker in the vast and dense Boni […]
The sculptured tableaux of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning – crusaders of transparency and free speech – are true to life… their silence is ironic. Where are the voices for Julian Assange? While Manning is serving her own jail sentence and Snowden lives in exile, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange remains locked up in […]
“…..the impetus to create these Chinese security firms was driven by market incentives, not political mandate.”
On January 15th, 2019, I flew from Nairobi to Lamu, where I’ve been living for some time. While waiting for my luggage I chatted with a fellow passenger, a young Somali who told mehe was working in the gas fields of Pate Island. We noted the gains Kenya has made in recent years in security and theuptick in international tourism. Other […]
This 2012 translocation of 23 rhino from a private ranch in Laikipia to a national park out west went without a hitch. [Footage of KWS sharpshooter darting a rhino with a tranquilizer] Translocations are fairly routine these days, though not without risks. So how did 11 highly endangered black rhino basically starve to death at […]
Update to my The Daily Beast story Who Killed This Man Who Saved So Many Rhinos and Elephants? On February 4th, 76 year-old wildlife conservationist Esmond Bradley Martin was found slaughtered in his mansion in Langata, a posh residential enclave in Nairobi. The “knife” that police and media had described as the murder weapon was […]
Fitness tracking Strava App reveals outlines of secret US bases (because people jog around the perimeter) around the world and as well as potentially sensitive information about military personnel on active duty. Here’s what US Forward Operating Base Camp Simba in Lamu County, Kenya looks like. The long vertical line in red is Camp Simba’s […]
‘The goal of the extrajudicial executions, according to Kiser, is to “exterminate and intimidate people believed to be associated with the Al Shabaab movement in neighboring Somalia.” Religious leaders told Kiser that Kenyan security forces “are targeting them unfairly for persecution if not indeed for summary execution,” though local authorities say they have intelligence linking imams to al-Shabaab’
