Chad Basin

The archetype is the Trans-Sahel runs, or the long interior routes in northern Nigeria and Niger, or the deep interior of Australia if we want a first world version.

But the purest version of the category is a route like Kano down toward the far south, or the Chad Basin routes, where you're looking at 800 kilometers of scrub and dust.

What's the bus? An aging coach, often a cast-off from a wealthier country, with seats that were reupholstered once a decade ago.

Air conditioning that either doesn't exist or exists and doesn't work.

Families fleeing violence in the Far North, Northwest and Southwest regions have been forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods.

Meanwhile, insecurity in the Lake Chad Basin and the Central African Republic has driven refugees into Cameroon, where host communities are already struggling to cope.

The increasing pressure on local resources, food supplies and markets further deepens food insecurity.

While many displaced families having lost their sources of income are left with no choice but to rely on humanitarian assistance and sell the few assets they still own to survive.

Um, and you could connect these kind of historical patterns.

There's people who have argued that Boko Haram is an echo of deeper historical patterns in, in the Lake Chad Basin, that, that it goes back to kind of slave raiding, um, you know, in, in pre-colonial times, that it's another manifestation of that.

And then there's been a lot of work connecting Boko Haram and, or comparing Boko Haram and Maitatsine in particular, and I think there's a lot to compare.

I mean, the, you know, the, um, the demographic/social base seems very similar.

Four months south of the Sahara puts the Romans deep into the Sahel, the southern border of the Sahara.

Scholars have argued for the Lake Chad Basin, the Tibesti Mountains, and the Eyre Massif, and nobody's settled it.

What's more interesting is Ptolemy's own reaction.

Marinus's raw arithmetic had placed Agisimba nearly 3,000 miles south of the equator, which would have put it in open ocean well beyond the southern tip of Africa.

And worryingly, although overall child labor numbers are falling, the UN warns that the recruitment of child soldiers is rising.

Child soldiers are a feature of conflicts in the DRC, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Colombia, Haiti, Mozambique, and across a region of West Africa called the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin.

In the DRC alone in one year, over 1,800 children were recruited.

It's a vicious cycle of poverty, a lack of schooling and a demand for cheap labour that pushes children into work.

So those two IS branches working together to carry out an attack.

And ISWAP, meanwhile, has also been carrying out a high-tempo of attacks in the Lake Chad Basin.

So I think it's 174 attacks since January to May by ISWAP in the Lake Chad Basin.

So An intense intensity of the threat there, intense conflict.

and one which is growing and the groups are taking more territory and trying to consolidate with the territory they have and trying to reach out to other populations to boost recruitment.