Skip to main content

Peace Corps pulls out of Niger

Image
By
No word on whether this had anything to do with Stephanie Chance's tragic death last October.  Here's what the Country Director passed along:
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 17, 2011
Peace Corps has suspended its program in Niger due to ongoing concerns about volunteer security. All 98 volunteers are safe and accounted for and have been safely evacuated to another country. Volunteers will take part in a transition conference and if possible will be offered the option to complete their service in another Peace Corps country.

Peace Corps will continue to assess the safety and security climate in Niger. The safety and security of volunteers is the Peace Corps' highest priority.

"The Peace Corps has been committed to development in Niger for nearly five decades," said Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams. "We have excellent relationships with Nigerien people and communities and we are grateful for the strong partnership we have had with counterpart organizations and the Government of Niger."

Prior to the suspension, Peace Corps had operated in Niger without interruption since 1962. Over 3,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in Niger since the program was established, working in the areas of Agriculture/Natural Resource Management, Health, Education and Municipal Community Development.
UPDATE: Apparently it was Al-Qaeda:
The
suspension came after a purported spokesman for al-Qaida's North Africa branch, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, claimed responsibility last week for kidnapping the two Frenchmen who later died during a failed rescue attempt.
(Thanks, Becca)
Labels:

Comments

  1. RebeccaJanuary 19, 2011 at 12:25 AM

    No it is because two French people were kidnapped and then killed in Niamey. Al Qaeda is taking credit for it...

    ReplyDelete
  2. RyanJanuary 19, 2011 at 8:33 AM

    Ah, I see. Good to know.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

By
So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actual...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Setswana Grammar Manual

By
One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer.  For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here .  If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .
6 comments
Read more

On Refusing to Vote for Bloomberg

By
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is attempting to buy the Democratic nomination. With something like $400 million in personal spending so far, that much is clear — and it appears to be working at least somewhat well, as he is nearing second place in national polls. I would guess that he will quickly into diminishing returns, but on the other hand spending on this level is totally unprecedented. At this burn rate he could easily spend more than the entire 2016 presidential election cost both parties before the primary is over. I published a piece today outlining why I would not vote for Bloomberg against Trump (I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Biden), even though I live in a swing state. This got a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people riled up . They scolded me and demanded that I pre-commit to voting for Bloomberg should he win the nomination. The argument as I understand it is to try to make it as likely as possible that whatever Democrat wins t...
4 comments
Read more