#security-crisis

#security-crisis

El Mezquital is neither a neighborhood nor a district. It started out as one, but now it's a motley patchwork of gray houses and corrugated metal roofs on the outskirts of Guatemala City. From here, the capital's buildings appear in the distance as tiny lights, as unattainable as green spaces, shopping malls, or health centers. Old yellow school buses burst noisily down the main street, belching smoke and carrying silent residents who travel with their cell phones hidden away.

Muhammadu Buhari, who has died aged 82, was military dictator and, later, democratically elected president of Nigeria, earning both lasting popularity and criticism.

"They're creating a proto-state that stretches like a belt from western Mali all the way to the borderlands of Benin. ... It is a substantial - even exponential - expansion," said Héni Nsaibia, West Africa senior analyst for the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.