The extremist groups threaten to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and spread instability across Africa. This is terrible for Africa and poses significant security and financial risks for the United States and Europe as well. Of the over three million refugees and internally displaced people in the Sahel, one in five needs humanitarian assistance. That’s around 16,000 victims in 2022 and 19,000 in 2023. Indeed, this conflict has taken a heavy toll.

This escalation of violence is mainly linked to competition between the region’s two main jihadist groups: Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the West African Province (ISWAP), which are affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, respectively. Jointly with other groups, they have taken advantage of the great instability in the region to launch indiscriminate attacks on government forces and civilians.

Coups and rebellions escalate the violence

Experts attribute the expansion of violent extremism in the Sahel to weak governance, high corruption, democratic deficits and human rights violations combined with poverty and social marginalization. State power tends to be concentrated in urban regions while rural and northern areas, such as Mali, remain underdeveloped and ripe for exploitation by extremist groups. Simultaneously, the jihadist collective has sought to exploit the increase in violence across the central Sahel, positioning itself as the defender of local communities and obtaining their support.

Moreover, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger experienced many military coups since independence. Recent military coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022 and Niger in 2023 have redefined the political landscape.

Current instability is associated with the collapse of the Libyan state in 2011, which led to the proliferation of weapons and armed fighters in the region. In 2012, the influx of extremists into northern Mali reignited the dormant Tuareg rebellion — the Tuareg minority, organized under the Azawad National Liberation Movement, sought an autonomous state and aligned with multiple Islamist groups.

On September 17, 2024, Islamist armed fighters attacked two symbolic sites for the security in the Malian capital of Bamako: a gendarmerie school and a military base, causing about 77 casualties and hundreds injured. JNIM, the main jihadist group active in Mali, quickly claimed responsibility for the double attack. This follows a pattern of escalating violent incidents in the Bamako area in the past two years by the JNIM coalition, primarily the Macina Liberation Front.

This growing pressure on Bamako reflects a broader deterioration of security in Mali under the military junta. Recently, militant Islamist groups have demonstrated an increased ability to expand their reach into southern Mali from their fortifications in northern and central Mali. The Malian government intends to maintain operations against the jihadists.

Do these attacks mark a turning point in the jihadists’ strategy? This is not an easy question to answer. The scale and impact of the September 27 operation show that JNIM now has the capacity not only to strike secondary urban sites, but to shake up the Malian forces in Bamako by expanding military operations to the state’s center.

Western withdrawal from the Sahel

This instability has had a major effect at the international level. In 2022, the definitive breakdown of diplomatic relations between France and Mali prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to announce the withdrawal of French troops from Malian territory. That November, the French military mission Opération Barkhane, which had deployed in the Sahel since August 2014, officially concluded. This profound revision of the region’s French military apparatus is in turn causing a crisis for the entire security framework built by the international community over the last decade.

The US has also provided coordination and advisory support. The US military has increased its presence in the Sahel in the last decade, deploying approximately 1,500 troops to the region — particularly Niger. However, after making an agreement with a Nigerien military junta in May 2024, the US withdrew from Niger in September.

In June 2023, Mali’s government demanded the departure of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, the UN peacekeeping force. The UN agreed to withdraw within six months, doing so in December 2023. This development raised concerns of a power vacuum and setbacks for Mali’s transition to civilian rule.

The July 2023 coup in Niger dealt a severe blow to counterterrorism and stabilization efforts in the Sahel. Despite pressure from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), including sanctions and the threat of military intervention, the coup leaders refused to cede power and declared a new government. In response, the African Union suspended Niger.

However, some of the sanctions were recently lifted or eased as ECOWAS pushed for a new dialogue. Military regimes in Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali have backed the Nigerien junta, with the latter two considering a possible military intervention in Niger to be a “declaration of war.” In September 2023, the military leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger signed a mutual defense pact — the Alliance of Sahel States — solidifying, in recent months, their alliance against external intervention.

Russian movement into Africa

This “authoritarian epidemic,” which the Italian Institute for International Political Studies characterizes by the seizure of power by the military, is mainly due to the persistence of the security crisis. This has delegitimized civilian governments that are demonstrably incapable of responding to growing security pressures. Jihadist escalation and the authoritarian and nationalist drift of local governments have finally created the ideal conditions for an influential increase of other international actors in the region, starting with Russia. These military regimes have strengthened ties with the Asian power, which has moved in to fill the void.

The most obvious element of this Russian entry is the presence of mercenaries belonging to the private security company Wagner. The government in Bamako uses them to conduct counterinsurgency operations increasingly characterized by indiscriminate brutality committed against civilians.

Russia’s “African renaissance” seems able to increase, based on an economic and military diplomacy that exploits anti-French and anti-Western sentiments. It seduces part of the African elite, attracts old and new partners, winks at coup-plotting juntas and has supplanted France as the gendarme of countries in turmoil in its historic pré carré — “own little corner.” Russia’s representation is that of a just ally eager to create egalitarian ties with African countries, capable of emancipating them from the relationship with European powers. The opposition to “imperialism” present in Russian rhetoric creates further common ground between the country and the Sahelian military juntas.

The presence of the Wagner group, and now of the Russian Africa Corps, initially called to operate against the jihadists, now has the function of supporting the coup juntas. The numerous internal and external actors involved in this conflict, as well as the competition between global powers to increase their influence in Africa, make finding a solution extremely difficult.

In this framework, Ukraine’s involvement in the crisis is experiencing an increasingly pronounced setback. In August 2024, the three Sahelian military juntas wrote to the United Nations Security Council to allegedly denounce Kyiv’s intervention in Mali to support Tuareg rebellion. After Mali and Niger broke diplomatic relations with Ukraine, the Asian country received yet more confirmation that its image had been damaged: Andriy Yusov, the spokesperson for the Ukrainian military intelligence services, said Kyiv had provided information for the JNIM and Tuareg rebels’ attack on the Malian army.

Learning that Ukraine is collaborating with its enemies, purely in an anti-Russian function, has raised concerns even outside the Sahel. Despite being amid a diplomatic crisis with the three coup juntas, ECOWAS has spoken out against any form of foreign interference.

Excessive militarization has proven counterproductive. In fact, local populations affected by repeated human rights violations have lost all confidence in international intervention as well as in international institutions.

The French era seems to have passed in what was once its African “backyard,” substituted by the Africa Corps that serves as the engine of Russian military penetration in Africa. The geopolitical revolution engulfing the Global South is redrawing global spheres of influence. Will this lead to a strategic downgrading of the West?

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Violence in the Sahel: Africa’s Never-Ending Crisis appeared first on Fair Observer.

In October, the prime ministers of the UK and Mauritius announced the decision to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius. Diego Garcia now stands at the center of a Byzantine nexus of colonialism, indigenous dislocation and contemporary geopolitics.

Settlement and colony

The native population of Diego Garcia, known as Chagossians, descended from enslaved Africans brought by French colonists in the late 18th century. The French were the first European power to lay claim to Diego Garcia, using the island primarily for coconut plantations. They brought enslaved people to the island who worked in agriculture and established a small, thriving community. 

After the abolition of slavery, these populations mixed with other ethnic groups and formed a Creole-speaking community with a unique cultural identity. However, in 1814, Britain took control of Mauritius and its dependencies under the Treaty of Paris — including Diego Garcia. For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the island and its Creole culture remained relatively isolated as it served as an obscure outpost of the British Empire’s Indian Ocean territories. 

The strategic importance of Diego Garcia only came to international attention during the Cold War. At the time, the US was searching for military base locations to counter communist influence from the Soviet Union and China. Diego Garcia’s location made it an ideal spot for a major military installation.

This was a watershed episode in the island’s history. In 1965, in anticipation of the establishment of a US military base, the British government separated Diego Garcia and the other islands of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius. This was part of the creation of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), under which Chagos became the last British colony in Africa. Under this agreement, the British leased Diego Garcia to the United States for use as a military facility. 

Mauritius, then still a British colony, was subsequently compensated £3 million ($3.8 million) for the transfer of the Chagos Archipelago. Based on an average inflation rate of 4.9%, that amounts to £50 million ($63 million) in today’s currency. This arrangement was made as part of the broader context of Mauritius gaining its independence, which finally occurred in 1968. However, critics claim the payment was inadequate. They state it took too long to reach Chagossian pockets, and that only 16.5% of the sum awarded to Mauritius actually went to the exiled Chagossian islanders.

More disturbingly, the entire arrangement was completed without the sanction or knowledge of the Chagossian peoples themselves. This planted the seeds for future disputes over the legal status of Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos Islands. It also laid the groundwork for the indigenous population’s deportation.

The expulsion of the Chagossians

One of the darkest days in the history of Diego Garcia was the forcible removal of the Chagossian population to make way for the US military base. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the early 1970s, the British government undertook a systematic campaign to remove all the inhabitants of the island. The exact number of people displaced is disputed, but estimates range from 1,000 to 2,000 individuals. 

The British justified this removal on the basis that Chagossians were only “transient contract workers,” not indigenous inhabitants. Declassified UK Foreign Office documents outline the extent of the falsehood which was utilized to deliberately justify British actions:

A small number of people were born there and, in some cases, their parents were born there too. The intention is, however, that none of them shall be regarded as being permanent inhabitants of the islands (28 July 1965 Foreign Office memo).

On this spurious basis for eviction, namely length of historical settlement, one could similarly have argued that the entire Pakeha population of Aotearoa New Zealand should be removed given that they have lived for less time on their islands than the Chagossians have on theirs. Regardless of the illogicality, as a result of this fiction, the Chagossians were forcibly transferred from their homes to Mauritius and the Seychelles, often under the pretense of “resettlement.”

Instead of resettlement, these communities were effectively abandoned in foreign lands where they faced extreme economic hardship. In his book Island of Shame, David Vine describes that the exiles often lived in “slums or temporary housing, struggling to adapt to life in an unfamiliar environment without the means to sustain themselves.” The difficulties plagued Chagossians in Mauritius and the Seychelles alike.

The battle against displacement

The exiled Chagossian population, including the descendants of the original displaced community, was estimated in 2016 to be around 5000. While scattered across several countries, many still reside in Mauritius. Despite the passage of time and their continued displacement, the Chagossians have maintained their identity and culture, and many still hope to return to their ancestral lands. 

For decades, the various displaced Chagossians dispersed across the world have fought legal battle after legal battle for the right to return to their homeland and for compensation for the injustices they had suffered. As a result of this pressure, the British government finally offered an additional sum of £4 million ($5.1 million) to Chagossians in 1982, but this too was insufficient. 

Most significantly, this compensation did not address the right to return. A British Court of Appeal ruling in 2000 did, however, make a start on that by deeming the expulsion of the islanders illegal and granting them the right to visit their homeland for the first time in thirty years. However, Diego Garcia itself, the largest and most habitable island, was to remain off limits to them still for security concerns.

Considering that the other atolls in the archipelago were concurrently deemed uninhabitable, and with Diego Garcia itself still off limits, this ruling was merely a Pyrrhic victory. To borrow Tim Marshall’s term, Diego Garcia and the Chagossians remained “prisoners of geography.” 

Calls for for the return of Diego Garcia 

Unsurprisingly, the status of Diego Garcia has remained an ongoing subject of international legal disputes. In February 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a ruling that Britain’s occupation of the Chagos Islands, including Diego Garcia, was illegal and that the islands should be returned to Mauritius. 

The court concluded that the detachment of the Chagos Islands from Mauritius in 1965 as part of the BIOT was unlawful and that the process of decolonization was incomplete. Whilst the court’s ruling was non-binding, it carried significant moral and political weight. 

Following the ICJ’s decision, the UN General Assembly then passed a resolution calling for the UK to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. However, the government refused to comply until this past October, citing the continued strategic importance of Diego Garcia for defense purposes. The US had also expressed opposition to any changes in the status of Diego Garcia until recently, when President Joe Biden reportedly pushed for a transfer of sovereignty.

History repeating itself

There is a sad irony at play with the recent willingness of the UK Government to comply with the ICJ’s decision. While the UK has agreed to hand over power, the judgment now gives control of the islands to Mauritius, not to the Chagossian peoples themselves. One very distant colonial power merely seems to have been replaced by another, less distant one. 

This recent development mirrors the events of 1965 when negotiations were brokered solely with the incoming Mauritian government of the day rather than the Chagossians themselves. To add further injustice to this recent political development, today’s agreement will continue to see Diego Garcia remain under US and UK jurisdiction for the next 99 years. This again is reflective of the 1965 narrative when it was made clear that Mauritius’s independence would not be granted without the annexation of Diego Garcia. 

History is repeating itself. Today, the only difference is that instead of being hidden in secret Foreign Office memos, this handover is being celebrated openly as the culmination of justice. 

The path forward

Some Chagossians see it as an event worth celebrating, at least according to the Mauritius Government Information Service. In the British press, the transfer of control is likewise being described as “making sense.” Meanwhile, international pundits are claiming that the agreement is a “‘win-win-win-win’ moment in international relations.”

Nevertheless, there is a flip side to this halcyon perception, namely the danger that the British, with UN connivance, are enabling Mauritius to rule an island group and its peoples some 2000 kilometers plus away without the consent of the entire indigenous population. 

Peter Lamb, the Labour MP for Crawley where a Chagossian community 3,000 strong resides, has been publicly critical of his own leader’s recommendation to hand the islands to Mauritius without their consent. He claimed that “the decision… belongs [to] the Chagossian people, it’s not for the UK to bargain away.” Other Chagossians are similarly highly critical, referencing indigenous rights. 

Wherever they reside, all Chagos Islanders deserve to have a say in their political future. Even with the return of the islands to Mauritius, little financial compensation is likely to reach the displaced Chagossians directly. Not to mention that base lease rights and payments notwithstanding, the entire archipelago has a potential exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of an astounding 640,000 km². It remains unclear if, and how, the Chagossians will regain independent rights to these zones and their resources. But the UK and US governments are not alone in bearing responsibility. The UN is also at fault in this dire situation, as the organization played a significant role in influencing the decision to return the atoll without the consent of the indigenous population. 

As the treatment of the Chagossian population in Diego Garcia demonstrates, history continuously repeats itself when it comes to the story of empire. As long as indigenous voices continue to be overlooked, the ghosts of the colonial past will haunt the present.

[Emma Johnson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Sinister Side of the Chagos Islands Handover appeared first on Fair Observer.

Plaut then goes on to explain the rise of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1912 as a unifying force for black South Africans against the increasingly oppressive white regime. Key figures like Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo emerged, advocating for more radical tactics and forming alliances with the South African Communist Party (SACP). 

The 1960 Sharpeville massacre in which police fired at unarmed protestors after a stray shot from the crowd fired up resistance to the apartheid regime. Many ANC leaders opted for armed resistance, which was utterly ineffectual but led to a crackdown by the apartheid regime. It banned the ANC and jailed its leaders.

After a few quiet years, the 1970s saw a resurgence of resistance, with white students, including Plaut, supporting the formation of labor unions and the United Democratic Front. These organizations, along with international pressure and the ANC’s armed struggle, contributed to the eventual downfall of apartheid. However, the ANC’s tendency to consolidate power and control other organizations came to the fore, raising concerns about its commitment to truly democratic principles.

To its credit, the ANC represented all ethnicities and stood for equality for all. It opposed discrimination and championed democracy. The post-apartheid South Africa has had many challenges, but the values of democracy, rule of law and freedom of expression run strong. The history of a prolonged independence struggle against colonialism makes South Africa resilient and gives us reason for optimism regarding the future.

[Peter Choi edited this podcast and wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Making Sense of South Africa’s Rich History appeared first on Fair Observer.

The war’s impact on Europe has been significant. Heightened energy prices have affected countries heavily reliant on Russian gas, such as Germany. European nations have also diverted resources and attention toward Ukraine and away from other crucial areas like social spending and healthcare. Most fundamentally, the war has shattered the last remnants of trust between the East and West, leading many European nations to up their defense budgets in anticipation of a potential direct conflict with Russia.

Switzerland in the middle of an increasingly anxious Europe

Reflecting this defensive attitude, EU High Representative Josep Borrell said that Europe is a garden and the rest of the world is a jungle. Germany has closed its borders, apparently to avoid the jungle taking over the garden. Switzerland takes a more moderate approach. While acknowledging migration and integration challenges, the country emphasizes the need for proactive and inclusive migration policies.

Right-wing leaders are in charge in many parts of Europe, like Robert Fico in Slovakia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is on the rise, and in France, the National Rally party made a decent dent in the latest parliamentary elections. Switzerland finds the rise of right-wing, anti-immigrant populist movements across Europe to be a cause for concern. Unlike other European countries, though, Switzerland is a decentralized confederation. This offers a degree of resilience against nationalist trends that would seek to dominate politics at the countrywide level. Yet Switzerland remains uneasy about the deeper political and social crises of which the rise of the far right is a manifestation.

Switzerland the investor

In lighter news, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway signed a free trade agreement with India in March. Swiss diplomat Ralf Heckner has received the credit for achieving what the EU, the UK and the US failed to do. The secret of Swiss success is the country’s independent position. As a non-member of major trade blocs, Switzerland has greater flexibility in forging agreements with emerging markets. Additionally, India’s status as a rapidly growing economy and Switzerland’s political commitment to strengthening economic ties played crucial roles in the successful negotiations.

Switzerland is looking east for economic growth, with China and India among its top export markets. However, the country has adopted a cautious approach toward China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy, economic slowdown and challenges faced by private actors. 

Switzerland the peacemaker

As a famously neutral territory for peace talks, Switzerland hosted a summit to resolve Sudan’s ongoing civil war. Yet Sudanese General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, decided to sit the talks out. Despite his absence from recent negotiations, Switzerland remains committed to facilitating dialogue and humanitarian access.

Switzerland has faced more than one setback in Africa in recent times. The cocoa crop in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana is facing its third tough year in a row. Chocolate-loving and chocolate-producing Switzerland may need to diversify its cocoa supply chain and include more suppliers from Latin America, with which it maintains cordial relations.

Finally, remaining in the Western Hemisphere, Switzerland views the current state of American democracy with concern, particularly regarding the deep political polarization and potential challenges to the peaceful transfer of power. The US is the preeminent global superpower, and uncertainty about its future direction adds to instability everywhere.

To manage these risks, Switzerland has adopted a flexible and open-minded approach, maintaining communication channels with both major political parties in the US. This proactive strategy ensures continued cooperation and stability in its relationship with the global superpower, regardless of the election outcome.

[Peter Choi edited this podcast and wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Swiss Perspective on World Affairs Today appeared first on Fair Observer.

At the heart of the conflict is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile. Ethiopia’s dam construction has angered Egypt, which sees it as a threat to its water supply. The Nile is crucial for Egypt, providing nearly all its water resources. While Ethiopia argues that the dam is solely for electricity generation and won’t significantly impact water flow, Egypt still needs to be convinced. This dispute has deep historical roots, reflecting long-standing power dynamics between the two nations.

The region’s history is marked by conflicts and shifting alliances. In the 1970s, Cold War dynamics played out in the Horn of Africa, with the United States and Soviet Union supporting opposing sides. The Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977–1978 was a significant event, resulting in a Somali defeat that still resonates today. These historical conflicts have shaped current relationships and tensions between countries in the region.

Countries of the Horn of Africa. Via Zeremariam Fre (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has ambitious plans for his country, including rebuilding the capital and reestablishing Ethiopia’s access to the sea. This vision includes developing a port in Somaliland, a move that has angered Somalia. Ethiopia’s potential recognition of Somaliland has further complicated regional dynamics. Meanwhile, Eritrea’s relationship with Ethiopia has cooled.

Involving outside powers adds complexity to the situation. Egypt has begun providing military support to Somalia, potentially countering Ethiopia. The United Arab Emirates plays a significant financial backer in the region, though its exact strategy remains unclear. Other external powers, such as Turkey, India, China and the United States, also have interests in the area, further complicating the geopolitical landscape.

Precarious stability and the global implications of African tensions

The ongoing civil war in Sudan and the instability in South Sudan contribute to the region’s overall volatility. These conflicts have drawn in various international actors, each with their own agendas. The situation in Sudan, in particular, has the potential to impact the broader regional dynamics, especially given its strategic location and historical ties to both Egypt and Ethiopia.

Despite having a significant military presence in Djibouti, the United States is currently preoccupied with other global issues. This relative disengagement from the Horn of Africa’s tensions could allow other actors to fill the power vacuum. A solid mediating force is necessary to avoid escalating regional conflicts.

The situation in the Horn of Africa resembles the complex alliances and tensions that preceded World War I. The interconnected nature of the conflicts, the involvement of multiple regional and global powers and the potential for rapid escalation are concerning parallels. The region’s strategic importance, particularly in maritime trade and geopolitical influence, makes these tensions globally significant.

Looking forward, the stability of the Horn of Africa remains precarious. The combination of historical grievances, current political ambitions and resource disputes creates a volatile mix. The role of external powers, particularly China and the United Arab Emirates, will be crucial in shaping future developments. As global attention remains focused on other crises, the risk of overlooking the simmering tensions in this critical region could have far-reaching consequences for regional and global stability.

[Peter Choi edited this podcast and wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Making Sense of Rising Tensions in the Horn of Africa appeared first on Fair Observer.

In the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 to 1962, France committed unimaginable atrocities against Algerians in both Algeria and France. Algerians who cooperated with French forces were often captured and killed by their countrymen fighting for independence. Many escaped and sought asylum in France, where they were then put in camps and denied basic human rights and access to education. Those in Algeria fighting against the French were subject to horrific crimes such as systematic torture, which often resulted in deaths that were labeled as suicides. 

In 1961, a year before Algeria gained independence, thousands of Algerians peacefully protested in Paris. In this event that became known as the Paris Massacre, French police killed over 100 of the demonstrators, shooting some and throwing others into the river. The French government covered up such atrocities by censoring the media and destroying archival evidence. 

On September 20, 2021, President Macron condemned the “massacre of Algerians in Paris.” He issued an apology to the Algerians who fought alongside the French forces and to the families of those whom the Algerians captured as traitors and killed during the fight for independence.  

Over the course of the conflict, the French colonization of Algeria is estimated to have cost up to 1.5 million Algerian lives. In 1962, an agreement was finally reached calling for a cease-fire, and Algeria gained independence after 132 years of French rule.

The shaping of Algeria

For the last five hundred years, Algeria has had a turbulent past. Around the turn of the seventh century, Arabs first conquered the region today known as Algeria. At the time, it was home to an indigenous group called the Berbers, known for their bravery and independence. However, that conquest was short-lived, and upon a second attempt, the Arabs were defeated by a Berber warrior queen named Kahinah. 

In 705, the conquest finally succeeded. Arabs settled in the region and Berbers gradually became Muslims, adopting Arabic as their language. In 711, Berbers joined the Arabs in the conquest of Al-Andalus, present-day Spain and Portugal. 

In 742, the Muslim Berbers rebelled against Arab rule and succeeded. By 907, much of North Africa came under the control of the Fatimids, a Shia sect. Over time, local rulers began to follow Sunni Islam and from that event to the 15th century, the area lived in turmoil. 

Then, the Europeans arrived. In 1471, the colonization of Africa began with the Portuguese taking some of the Moroccan coastlines. In the early 16th century, Algeria came under the Ottoman Empire. 

Although Algeria was under the Ottomans, that did not stop colonists from attacking it. The French invaded Algeria in 1682, the Dutch in 1715, the Spanish in 1775 and the US in 1815, to name a few. In 1830, the French conquered Algeria and it eventually became a French colony. 

The colonization of Algeria

When the French invaded again in 1830, it took them nearly 20 years to conquer Algeria. The occupation was bloody and brutal, resulting in a substantial reduction in the local population. Some even consider the conquest genocide. 

As the French struggled to gain control, they deliberately killed, raped, tortured, and buried unarmed civilians alive. Out of a population of three million, French forces caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Algerians, some occurring as the result of disease and famine. Around two million civilians were kept in prison camps. French officer Lucien de Montagnac, who was sent to assist in the colonization effort, wrote that the French must “annihilate all that will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs.”

The legacy of colonization in Algeria goes far beyond mass killings. The French stole religious endowments, restricted movement and confiscated fertile lands which they then gave to settlers. The French also plundered gold, iron, coal and other minerals, some of which are still in France.

Over the next century, France struggled to maintain control of Algeria. In 1911, a group of upper-class Muslims labeled themselves “Young Algerians” and demanded representation in the French National Assembly, which was duly declined. Not long after, when France began drafting Muslims to fight the Germans in WWI, many Algerian Muslims took up arms and resisted the law. In the following decades, tensions continued to boil over between Algerians and the French.

The Algerian War

By 1945, encouraged by the 1941 Atlantic Charter, Algerians demanded full independence. When Nazi Germany accepted defeat, Algerians gathered in large numbers to not only celebrate the fall of the Nazi regime but also to garner attention during the United Nations Conference in San Francisco. They wanted the delegates to know that Algeria existed and was ready to be an independent nation. In May, after the conference commenced, mass protests broke out in cities across Algeria.

Like all other mass protests, some violence occurred. The French reacted with aggression, and by the end of June had massacred several thousand Algerians. Many of those Algerians had fought side-by-side with France against Germany.

From their experience in 1945, Algerian patriots realized the only way to gain their freedom was through armed struggle. In 1954, unable to make progress, young Algerian patriots formed the Revolutionary Committee of Unity and Action (CRUA). They tried to unite the Algerians to fight the French and liberate their country. The CRUA created the National Liberation Front (FLN) to direct the Algerian War of Independence, which in turn created the National Liberation Army (ALN). So began the Algerian War. 

Protests continued throughout the country, and as France suppressed uprisings, violence broke out. French brutality angered more peaceful civilians to join the revolutionaries, and the movement grew. 

In 1958, France offered Algerian Muslims an opportunity to become equal with the French settlers. After so much bloodshed, it was too late, and revolutionaries rejected the offer and asked for independence. By March 1962, the French agreed to grant independence after the 132-year struggle.

Make wrongs right

Despite admitting their atrocities, the French maintain that they will not offer any “repentance or apologies.” To regain some respect, France could acknowledge, apologize and make reparations for the crimes against humanity they committed during colonial times. Importantly, reparation payments should go directly to victims and their descendants, not to the coffers of the Algerian government. To compensate for the ravages of colonization, the French could additionally allocate a sum for education and infrastructure. 

Support should also be offered by organizations like the UN. Despite its mission to support peace and security, the UN has consistently failed to stop genocide, prevent ethnic cleansing or sufficiently support victims such as those in Algeria. Consider the ongoing example of the innocent Palestinian men, women and children being butchered daily by US-backed Israel. From Cambodia to Sudan, the UN has let down countries and communities across the world. 

In the case of Algeria, the UN heard the cries but failed to provide justice. Even with denials and cover-ups, evidence of the French atrocities were overwhelming. To right these wrongs, a UN organized International Tribunal for Algeria (ITA) would be a good first start. Just as victims of the Holocaust have been compensated, Algerians must also receive compensation.

While no sum of money can ever erase the suffering of Algerians, reparations are an important step. First, victims get justice. Second, poor countries and victims get valuable financial support. Third, they set an important precedent for holding colonizers accountable. France must take responsibility and action to rectify the country’s dark history in Algeria. 

[Emma Johnson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post French Genocide in Algeria: Time for Introspection appeared first on Fair Observer.

Though its strong principles have propelled the country through decades of political and economic success, Botwana’s responses to current struggles will determine whether this success will continue. The greatest challenges include the ruling party’s diminishing dominance and economic fault lines.

Botswana is the oldest continuous multiparty democracy in Africa. Its democratic roots trace back to the colonial era, when the British only exercised indirect rule over its Bechuanaland Protectorate. This allowed its indigenous institutions and leadership of its chiefs to flourish.

Seretse Khama, Botswana’s first president and pioneer of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), came to power at the country’s founding in 1966. While in office, he translated those effective tribal structures into Botswana’s post-independence governance. He prioritized the role of local leaders, upheld protections for citizens and secured freedom of expression for the media.

After his death in 1980, the legacy of the BDP has carried on — the party has won every general election since. Ironically, this means that despite Botswana’s status as a thriving multiparty democracy, only one party has ruled throughout the country’s 57-year history. Today, this legacy of BDP dominance is challenged by Khama’s son, Ian.

The BDP’s dwindling dominance

Upon his death, Seretse Khama passed the office to Vice President Ketumile Masire, who reigned from 1980 to 1998. Festus Mogae, his vice president starting in 1992, took command from 1998 to 2008. Then Ian Khama took over for him from 2008 to 2018. As per the constitution, after serving his maximum two five-year terms, Khama relinquished power to his Vice President, Mokgweetsi Masisi. Against the backdrop of this legacy of succession within the BDP, support for opposition parties had steadily grown, with 45% of the popular vote in favor of all opposition parties combined, against a dwindling 53% for the BDP.

A falling out between President Masisi and Ian Khama further fueled this rise in opposition support. Khama claims that Masisi has “totally undermined democracy, human rights, [and] the rule of law” since becoming president. Khama resultantly departed from the BDP to form a new political party: the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF). The strife between these politicians came partly from Masisi’s refusal to appoint Ian’s brother, Tshekedi Khama, as vice president in 2019, among other requests that would give Ian a more active role in Botswana’s leadership.

This splintering of the BDP and Khama’s opposition against Masisi could challenge the party’s dominance ahead of October’s upcoming general elections. If the opposition parties are able to overcome factionalism and slightly increase their popular support, 2024 may mark the end of the 57-year legacy of the BDP’s rule in Botswana.

An end to diamond dependency?

Post-independence, Botswana’s consistent economic growth was driven almost entirely by its most precious resource: diamonds. Alongside the partially state-owned De Beers Group, Botswana established Debswana, a joint venture that quickly grew to become one of the world’s largest diamond suppliers by value. Botswana’s rich diamond reserves fueled decades of growth — the best in the region. However, the slow pace of diversification has kept Botswana’s economy dependent on diamond revenue.

In the first quarter of 2024, Debswana’s diamond sales fell 48% due to decreased demand and competition from lab-grown diamonds. This came with major consequences including rising unemployment and economic uncertainty. This uncertainty has only been exacerbated by the BHP mining group’s recent takeover attempt of Anglo American, the majority shareholder of De Beers. This triggered a hasty attempt by Anglo American to sell its majority stake in De Beers. The groups held many negotiations entailing complex restructuring that would directly impact their work in Botswana.

Although the acquisition attempt failed, it underscores the extent of exposure Botswana’s government has to De Beers and other major players in the diamond space. Not surprisingly then, despite its strong GDP per capita numbers, more nuanced economic indicators point in a different direction. For example, the country’s score for socioeconomic development in the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) has recently fallen from five points out of ten to four, due to extremely high income inequality. This is further underlined by a Gini index score of 53.3 and a high poverty rate of 38%.

Hoping to limit this diamond-dependency and trigger growth in high-value sectors that were stifled by the Covid-19 pandemic, Botswana has adopted the Reset Agenda. This project aims to accelerate economic diversification, empower youth and increase employment opportunities. Further, it attempts to promote local industry and economic self-sufficiency through import bans of fresh produce and water; the government seeks to use this to develop economic resilience and prepare for extreme weather conditions caused by climate change. Given the country’s high dependence on rain-fed agriculture, it is particularly vulnerable to changes in rainfall and droughts.

Simultaneously, Botswana’s strong financial institutions are promising indicators that the country has the tools required to overcome looming economic turmoil. Its robust banking system and relatively effective monetary stability from the Bank of Botswana exemplify this. Still, diversification and inequity remain pressing issues that will undoubtedly persist for years to come. They will be central issues in the upcoming general elections, which are shaping up to be the most competitive in the nation’s history.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Botswana Stares Down Trouble in the Economy and Competitive Politics appeared first on Fair Observer.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

China’s Strategic Economic Zones in Africa

China Knowledge at Wharton: At the African Summit in February, Robert Zoellick, the head of the World Bank, briefly mentioned the Oriental China Ethiopia Industrial Zone, which China is setting up to promote various industries and serve as a trading hub. Is this indicative of how China is forging a greater presence in Africa and if you could summarize in one point what it is that China is doing in Africa, what would it be?

Shinn: I would hesitate to narrow it down to such a small point. It’s done four major things in Africa, but if you want only one, the way I would summarize it as increasing economic and business collaboration with Africa. That is a huge topic in and of itself, but as I said, that is only one of four major objectives that China has in Africa.

The economic zones you identified … actually began in China, and over the last several years China has decided to expand the concept to Africa and maybe beyond Africa. I don’t try to suppose China’s activities in the rest of the world, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are doing this elsewhere.

At the Forum on China–African Cooperation in Beijing in 2006, they agreed to create six of these zones in Africa. They have already done or committed to doing eight in Africa, and one of these is in Ethiopia. That one is further along than several others, with the one in Zambia being the furthest along … This is certainly a unique Chinese approach to Africa. No Western donors do this sort of thing.

If you wanted to use this as a microcosm of what they are doing in Africa, it could be illustrative. But if you narrowed it down to that, you would sort of miss 90% of what they are doing in Africa.

Four Pillars of China–Africa Relations

China Knowledge at Wharton: Could you elaborate on the other areas?

Shinn: There are four interests that China has in Africa. The first one, which in my view is the most important, is to develop and retain access to Africa’s raw materials, such as oil and minerals. Agricultural products are also becoming more important.

Number two is a political goal. That is to develop or maintain relations with as many of Africa’s 53 nations as possible, so that China can draw upon their support in international settings, such as the United Nations or World Trade Organization, or some of the specialized agencies of the UN where numbers count and China might occasionally run into difficulties. If China has the support of most of the 53 countries, it has a big block of votes for defending its position, particularly in a place like the UN’s Human Rights Council.

Interest number three is getting Taiwan out of Africa, at least politically and diplomatically. They don’t care if Taiwan has trade offices or is involved economically on the continent. In fact, there are even instances in which Beijing and Taipei collaborate in Africa on some economic issues.

Four African countries still recognize Taiwan — Sao Tome, Swaziland, Burkina Faso and Gambia. These are not important countries, but they don’t care … it’s four votes, it’s four countries. Now it flies in the face of the whole “One-China” policy [in which China forbids countries that want to maintain diplomatic ties with it to not have official relations with Taiwan].

Economic Interests and Trade Growth

The fourth interest relates to the business component of developing Africa for China’s export market. Today, Africa trade is only 4% of China’s global trade, which is not very much. But it was only 2% five years ago, so it’s growing exponentially. If it gets up to double digits, which it probably will in the not too distant future, it starts to be big trade. 10% or more is fairly big even for China. Of course, it’s far more important for Africa. I don’t know what the global percentage of African trade with China is, but it is far above 4%. 

Looking at it from the African perspective, it is like one of these horns that you use at a football game where China has the small end and Africa has the big end. Africa is very interested in increasing its exports to China and it is becoming a very important market. But since we are looking at China’s interests, we are looking at only 4% of its global trade at the moment, but it is looking to the day I’m sure when that is in the double digits.

China’s Aid and Development Strategy in Africa

China Knowledge at Wharton: How would you define China’s aid to Africa? And in what ways is it providing sustainability and preventing future problems rather than being reactive?

Shinn: Defining aid is difficult for any country. In the West, at least you have the OECD Development Assistance Committee definition of aid, which the West agrees to. But it is not really used by China and it’s one of the explanations why you cannot get aid figures out of China. They don’t announce global figures. They’re just not available. One of the concerns is that the Chinese haven’t quite ascertained what constitutes aid.

Take the huge loans to Angola. They are loans. Normally, you don’t think of a commercial loan as aid because you’re making money. However, most of these loans are concessionary. When I was in Angola, I was told by the minister of finance that some of the loans had interest rates as low as 0.75% to about 1%. You can probably legitimately say the concessionary component of that loan is aid. I’ve looked at this issue pretty closely and [American University professor] Deborah Brautigam has just written a book on this [The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa]. She and I agree on the amount of aid [from China], in the OECD context, is about$1.5 billion per year to Africa.

[Knowledge at Wharton first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post China Poised to Become Africa’s Largest Trading Partner appeared first on Fair Observer.

Ethiopia is the most populous nation in East Africa. In the 20th century, it faced economic troubles and civil war between communist and non-communist forces. Today, it is quickly developing, building infrastructure and factories. Much of the capital for this development comes from foreign partners, especially China, whose ambitious Belt and Road Initiative has focused on this core of the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia’s industrial sector now employs millions of people, and Ethiopians are growing more prosperous. Yet it is not rosy for everyone; indeed, any development this large and fast will have uneven effects on the human lives involved in it.

Three women, three lives

It is easy to misunderstand industrialization in Ethiopia and China’s growing involvement. Made in Ethiopia takes a look at these developments through the lives of three women: a factory worker, a local farmer and a Chinese factory director who is charged with filling no fewer than 30,000 jobs.

The documentary takes a close and long look at the period between 2019 and 2023. It raises profound questions about what is fair and for whom in Ethiopia’s growing factory towns. These characters struggle to defend their own wellbeing in a rapidly changing, chaotic world. The trade-offs materialize in the concrete struggles of people’s lives. Still, people fight and they persevere.

Watching the characters navigate tricky terrain inevitably makes you reflect on how challenging it is to build prosperity for all.

Making a film in a tumultuous time

I am an Emmy-nominated Ethiopian American anthropologist and filmmaker. I served as an executive producer of the documentary along with Anna Godas, Oli Harbottle, Susan Jakes and Roger Graef.

First-time directors Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan shot the film over the course of four years, through both the pandemic and a civil war. I was living in Ethiopia when this film was shot and remember when Max and Xinyan started this journey. Ethiopia was in a very different place than it is now. The directors captured a particularly dynamic few years and indeed the pandemonium of a country that is rapidly accelerating towards the future.

The filmmakers had unprecedented access to the Eastern Industrial Zone (EIZ) in Dukem, Ethiopia. Dukem is a farming town that is home to the largest and first Chinese industrial park in Ethiopia. Located 40 kilometers outside of Addis Ababa, the EIZ is considered the benchmark for the development of industrial parks in Ethiopia and was established to accelerate the process of industrialization and job creation financed by Chinese investors.

Made in Ethiopia screens today in Washington, DC, which is home to the largest population of Ethiopians outside of Ethiopia. There, the film finds its largest Ethiopian audience yet and hopefully an even larger audience of global development policymakers.

Breaking through conventional thinking

The film reminds me that the power of cinema lies in its ability to take an audience into your mind’s eye. The film calls on all who see it to consider what lies beyond the binaries of technocratic frameworks.

Recently, The New York Times published the headlines “Why It Seems Everything We Think We Knew About the Global Economy is No Longer True.” People are coming to understand the limits of conventional thinking in policy circles. We need new perspectives on growth, development and the global economy. Long-form storytelling enables us to delve deep into local communities’ experiences. Everyday people on the ground understand things that Washington- and London-based think tanks and international institutions easily ignore.

To be sure, this is not the first time we have realized that reality is complicated. Chimamanda Adichei warned us about the danger of a single story and Michel-Rolph Trouillot highlighted how perception can distort reality in his tour de force Silencing the Past. Yet we need many reminders because it is so easy to get stuck in lazy thinking, stereotypes, soundbites and echo chambers.

Made in Ethiopia invites audiences to practice perceiving the more complicated layers of China’s expansion into Ethiopia. The film aims to give the viewer a more rounded understanding of what is going on and what exactly might make for a better life for ordinary Ethiopians.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A New Documentary Highlights China’s Expansion Into Ethiopia appeared first on Fair Observer.

Singers like Ayra Starr, with her soulful voice and introspective lyrics, King Promise, with his silky-smooth melodies, and the incomparable Burna Boy, whose Afro-fusion mastery knows no bounds, have captivated global audiences. Their popularity has spread to countries such as the United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States. Worldwide streams amounted to 13.5 billion in 2022. 

Afrobeats, from the rich musical heritage of Africa, fuses traditional rhythms with modern influences to create an irresistible tapestry of sound. With roots that stretch across the continent, Afrobeats encapsulates the vibrancy of Ghana’s Highlife — a genre that combines elements of rock and jazz — and the pulse of West African percussion from neighboring countries.

Music with a message

Afrobeats conveys messages of African liberation and culture. Songs like “Zombie” by Fela Kuti critique oppressive regimes, while “African Giant” by Burna Boy celebrates African resilience and unity. “Jerusalema” by Master KG (featuring Nomcebo Zikode), though not strictly Afrobeats as it also borrows from gospel-house, became a global anthem of hope during the COVID-19 pandemic. This musical renaissance has united Africa, reclaiming its narrative and breaking free from the chains of colonial history. Afrobeats artists shed light on the beauty of Africa and the African experience. They also challenge stereotypes, such as the idea that hip-hop has negative influences on youth.

Emerging artist Ayra Starr‘s profound voice captures the complexity of young adulthood, offering solace to a generation navigating their identities. Africa is, after all, the youngest continent in the world. Starr expresses that with confidence anything is possible for young people, even the unimaginable. In her song “Sability,” she sings, “Espiritu Fortuna, I go make you jo dada, shey you getty the power, sweety passy amala ketu.” In other words, “we are blessed beyond our knowledge to make any of our dreams come true.” In her lead single “Bloody Samaritan,” Starr dismisses those who underestimate her because of her age and gender, reiterating that change can be made at any age, sector, and in any region of the globe.

Hailing from Ghana, King Promise has already etched his name in the annals of Afrobeats history with his melodic prowess. His dulcet tones dance over Highlife-infused rhythms, creating a signature sound that radiates joy and nostalgia. Promise’s rise exemplifies the genre’s power to forge connections, both within and beyond borders, while recognizing the vast culture of Africa. His popular songs, such as “CCTV,” “Terminator,” and “Selfish,” not only showcase King Promise’s musical talent but also resonate with diverse audiences. Through these tracks, he infuses elements of traditional African sounds with modern beats, creating a unique sonic experience that celebrates the continent’s rich musical heritage and helps break stereotypes.

A conversation about celebrating cultural heritage would be remiss without paying homage to Burna Boy. His ascent from the streets of Port Harcourt to the Grammy Awards is a testament to the Afrobeats’ transformative impact. Burna Boy’s genre-bending and socially conscious Afro-fusion lyrics have redefined modern African music. Songs such as “Different” speak of the joy and uniqueness each country has in identifying as African. Unapologetic anthems like “Another Story” and “African Giant” touch on shifting from false narratives (i.e., colonialist perspectives) and standing true to one’s origin. In “Another Story,” Burna Boy sings, “They wanna tell you o, tell you o, tell you o/Another story o, story o, story o.” He has become a symbol of African pride and resistance.

A confident, growing continent

As Afrobeats shapes the world’s perception of Africa as a cultural trendsetter, it also emblematizes Africa’s transformative growth into a political and economic force on the global stage. The African Union’s efforts to foster unity and cooperation among member states are yielding tangible results, as seen in initiatives addressing regional conflicts, economic development and sustainability.

Some notable examples of sustainable practices include promoting renewable energy sources, implementing waste reduction and recycling programs, and advocating for responsible land use and conservation efforts. The African Union has been actively supporting eco-friendly agricultural practices, such as agroforestry and organic farming, to ensure long-term environmental health and food security for its member states.

In the realm of trade and investment, the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) heralds a new era of intracontinental commerce. The AfCFTA aims to boost intra-African trade and economic integration. The increased interconnectivity opens up African economies, entrepreneurs, producers and artists not only to each other, but to the world. This exposure has increased demand for African products, and African music, both within the continent and internationally. With its vast resources, youthful population and burgeoning economies, the continent is poised to make its mark on the global dynamic.

Afrobeats’ meteoric rise serves as a poignant backdrop to Africa’s emancipation from the remnants of colonialism. The “winds of change” are in the air, and former colonial powers must now reckon with a new Africa that demands recognition and equality. African nations such as Mali and Burkina Faso are asserting their sovereignty by marking an end to the “Francafrique” strategy in which France dominated post-independence relationships with its former colonies. Channeling the same spirit that enlivens Afrobeats — bold, unapologetic and eager for liberation — into their diplomatic negotiations, these nations are in pursuit of a true partnership across the African continent, free from neocolonial undertones.

The world is “recognizing that Africa’s story is no longer one of marginalization, but of unyielding strength and promise.”

[Young Professionals in Foreign Policy produced this piece and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Confident Africa Is Spreading Afrobeats to the World appeared first on Fair Observer.

Who can forget that Jacob Zuma, the former president, faces 700 allegations of corruption, fraud, money-laundering and racketeering charges but is yet to be tried in court? Instead, the ANC has finally admitted this week that the party lied to parliament when it described a publicly-funded swimming pool at Zuma’s private villa as a “fire pool” installed as a safety feature!

This year’s election will be tougher for the ANC than the earlier ones. Most recent polling shows that the party will get fewer than 50% of the votes. In South Africa’s proportional representation system, this means that the ANC will have to look for allies to continue governing. One outlier poll suggests that the ANC’s vote share would fall to just 33%. 

Rural realities and why the ANC pitch resonates

The black African population, upon which the ANC relies, still turns out and votes for the party, particularly in the rural areas. Under apartheid, the countryside, termed “homelands” or “Bantustans” were dumping grounds for black Africans. They could only legally leave these arrears if they could get one of the rare tightly-controlled permits. Today no such restrictions apply and there has been a migration to the cities. Yet the rural areas are still home to a third of the population. 

It is here that the people still vote for the ANC in huge numbers. They have not forgotten the party that led the fight to liberate them from apartheid. The ANC-led government also brought electricity to remote areas of the country, built homes across hillsides and, above all, provided them with social security benefits. Entire families, often unable to find work, came to rely on the small, but vital payments to family members who are disabled or retired. 

The maximum monthly state pension stands at 2 090 rand per month. That is just $122, but it keeps whole families from destitution. Maintaining this pension is vital and the ANC understands this well.

When elections come around, the ANC plays to all its strengths. The party still derives legitimacy from its decades-long opposition to the apartheid government and its previous great leaders, especially Nelson Mandela. However, the ANC’s primary appeal is simple: it warns the poor that they will lose their social security if another party comes to power. This is untrue but truth no longer matters to the ANC in its pursuit of power.

The ANC has employed this cynical tactic over several elections. A survey by the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA) carried out in the run-up to the 2014 election indicated that just under half of voters were not aware that the social grants that they received were theirs by right. 

The centre’s director, Leila Patel, said the finding was “worrying” as it meant that these voters — 49% of the respondents — were not aware of their rights. The potential for political abuse is large, given that just under 16-million grant beneficiaries are receiving social grants amounting to R121bn this year. Agriculture MEC [Member of the Executive Council – provincial Minister] in KwaZulu-Natal, Meshack Radebe, for example, said in April that “those who receive grants and are voting for the opposition are stealing from the government”. He said that those who voted for another party should “stay away from the grant”, as if social grants were gifts from the ruling party. In fact, these grants are funded by taxes in order for the government to meet its constitutional obligation to provide social protection.

Summarising the study, Professor Yoland Sadie described the role of social grants in deciding voter behaviour as important, possibly decisive.  

…social grants can provide an incentive for people to vote for the ANC, since a large proportion of grant-holders who support the party do not think that “they will continue receiving the grant when a new party comes to power.” A majority of respondents also agreed ‘that they would vote for a party that provides social grants’. Therefore, in a situation where one party has dominated the electoral scene for such a long time, and without having the experience of other parties being in power, it is difficult for voters to ‘know’ whether these benefits will continue under a different party in power – particularly if the official opposition has the legacy of being a “White” party.

Opposition tactics in 2024

The electorate has no shortage of parties to choose from in these elections. There will be more than 100 new political parties on the ballot, including ActionSA, the Patriotic Alliance, Rise Mzanzi. For the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance [DA], this will pose a challenge. The DA has its roots in the white, Progressive Party. For many years it fought apartheid with its sole Member of Parliament, Helen Suzman putting up doughty resistance to racist legislation. Bitterly attacked by the government for her stand, she won widespread international appreciation for her performance from 1961-1974.

Since the end of apartheid, the DA has gone through several leaders, some of them black. Today John Steenhuisen is leader of the party and, officially, of the opposition. As a white politician he can (and is) dismissed as representing an ethnic minority. 

The DA has made no secret that it is organising a coalition of opposition parties to challenge the ANC. What Steenhuisen calls the “moonshot pact.”  The ANC has used this to suggest to the electorate that, if elected, the DA will return to the policies of apartheid. ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe hinted as much when he accused Steenhuisen of organising “apartheid parties” to remove the ANC from power. “Steenhuisen is trying the impossible. He’s trying to organise all apartheid parties and parties of Bantustans to form a group that will defeat the ANC,” Mantashe said.

To resist these allegations the DA has now hit back. It is targeting the issue of benefits and grants, using a Tweet.

Steenhuisen is making a well targeted pitch. All South Africans know that their electricity supply has collapsed, the police seldom answer calls for help and unemployment has hit families hard. Will this pitch erode the ANC vote among key constituencies, including the rural communities? It is too early to tell.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why South Africa’s Poor Vote for the Now Corrupt ANC appeared first on Fair Observer.

I’m an Indian teenager and have lived and studied in India all my life. I am ashamed to say that until I was 12, I also thought that Africa was a country. I likened it to the Australian situation, where the country and continent are more or less the same.

Could you blame me, though? Much of what I had read until then, whether in textbooks or the news, spoke of Africa as an undifferentiated whole, an exotic landmass roamed by wild animals and exotic people, all sporting face paint on a dark canvas. Sprawling savannahs and exposed ribs were the images associated with the continent, pitifully ridden with disease, poverty and civil unrest. I never once read something that referred to the thriving middle class that constitutes about a third of the African population or the rolling beaches of this vast continent, let alone an individual reference to any of its 54 distinct countries.

The stereotype lives on

This very pigeonhole — or “shithole,” as Mr. Trump likes to say — of Africa as an outlandish jungle is what a 2019 New York Times (NYT) job ad for a Nairobi bureau chief position invokes. When it announces the exciting opportunity to cover “unexpected stories of hope” from the “pirate seas of the Horn of Africa” and the “forests of Congo,” it reduces Africa to the very stereotypes—dating to colonial times—that a correspondent reporting from Africa should aim to topple. The LAM Sisterhood, an African feminist content studio, topples this applecart brilliantly with a brilliant satirical reading of this NYT advertisement.

However, this video wasn’t easy for me to find. At first, when I searched for it on Google I was not able to find it. Indeed, when I think about this wonderful video, I haven’t encountered, as far as I can remember, any content online produced by Africans. Why are young Indians like me so unexposed to African voices? If we don’t learn about Africa from Africans, from whom do we learn about the continent and its expansive culture?

The answer, as it turns out, is that we just don’t. And when we do, it’s almost always negative. While Western media are often criticized for their coverage (or lack thereof) of developing countries like Nigeria and Tanzania, Indian media are no different. Even today, the press of the world’s largest democracy tends to pander to well-established African typecasting — that is, in the rare instance that African news even makes it to print. 

Western bias and pessimism

Prabhat Kumar and Dorcas Addo published a paper titled “A Study on the Coverage of Africa in Indian Print Media” which revealed that, out of the entire sample of 185 stories on Africa from The Times of India and The Hindu, two leading English-language newspapers in India, only 62 were positive. Even these few optimistic human-interest stories were permitted only a small space in the newspaper.

The authors propose that the primary reason for this scarce and skewed representation is a lack of Indian media correspondents on the ground in Africa and a resulting reliance on Western media for African news and stories. Kumar and Addo’s study found that, from August 2014 to August 2016, all stories about Africa, except for opinion pieces and editorials, had been taken from Western sources such as Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, Bloomberg and the New York Times News Service. 

Another interesting finding from the study was that the single country receiving the highest coverage in the newspapers examined, more than any of India’s neighbors, was the US. It is an open secret that India is fixated on America. Unsurprisingly, the study found that the US featured in the greatest number of lifestyle and entertainment pieces. 

Related Reading

Mandela: Gandhi’s Heir and Africa’s Greatest Son (Part 1/3)

Africa is more than three times the size of the US. In 2022, Africa’s population was over 1.4 billion compared to the US population of 333.3 million. So, why do Africans get disproportionately less representation in Indian media than our American friends?

In Indian media, the most intuitive reason for this distortion in coverage is that the media give the people what they want. As the media are nothing but a business setup following the principle of supply and demand, they only supply what their audience demands. So the underrepresentation of Africa in Indian media is merely a reflection of the Indian audience’s indifference towards African stories.

The most plausible explanation for this disregard is the average Indian reader’s fascination with the West in general and the US in particular. This is why coverage of the US is disproportionately high in Indian media. People in developing countries tend to look at developed countries with awe. They are keen to emulate the economic, military and sociocultural conditions that have led to the success and influence of developed countries.

Perhaps, this is an intrinsic human trait. We tend to mirror those we think are doing better than us. In the Indian case, this trait is amplified by the legacy of colonization. India was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. As Atul Singh has said repeatedly in his conversations and lectures, Indians have internalized their inferiority. This feeling is now embedded in their psyche. Hence, the Indian fixation with the West stems from a deep-rooted perception of Western superiority.

The most plausible explanation for this disregard is the average Indian reader’s fascination with the West, which as a result receives markedly more coverage in Indian news. Maybe it’s not unusual to look with awe upon more developed countries, eager to learn more about them to emulate the economic, military and sociocultural conditions that have earned them reverence and influence worldwide. It is likely an intrinsic human trait to mirror those one thinks are doing better than themselves. Or perhaps the Indian mindset’s captivation with the West stems from a deep-rooted perception of Western superiority, a gem that colonialism has securely embedded into the Indian psyche.

None of these explanations, however, can do away with the importance of Africa as a source of learning. Unless we start exposing ourselves to African narratives, we risk falling prey to what author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls the danger of a single story, the dominant one of the once-imperial and mercifully civilizing West.

Africa is a landmass where the earliest known Homo sapiens emerged, teeming with natural resources and home to a panoply of cultural traditions and some of the fastest-growing economies in the world. The continent and the significance of its stories are not to be underestimated.

[Lane Gibson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Great Omission: Why Don’t Indians Talk About Africa? appeared first on Fair Observer.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa tried to line up a number of African leaders to travel to Russia and Ukraine in an effort to persuade the two countries to stop fighting. He was joined on the trip by the leaders of Senegal, Comoros and Zambia. Three presidents pulled out, one (Uganda) because of a case of Covid, a second (Republic of Congo) because of security concerns and a third (Egypt) for no specific reason.

The timing was not great. Because it recently launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, Kyiv was not in the mood for compromise. Nor has Russia been exactly diplomacy-positive either, not only refusing to give up the territory it illegally annexed but continuing to try to expand its holdings. The Kremlin has also been busy bombarding Ukrainian targets. Missile attacks on Kyiv continued even as the African delegation visited the capital city, forcing the members to take cover in a bomb shelter.

And then there’s the fiasco at the Warsaw airport.

A second airplane with Ramaphosa’s security team and a number of South African journalists never made it to Ukraine. Stuck at their transit stop in Poland, the airplane sat on the tarmac for hours and hours as the Polish authorities refused to allow the passengers to disembark. A journalist on the trip reported:

Aboard the stuffy SAA A340-300 plane conditions are starting to resemble a refugee camp. Passengers have not left the plane since around 23:00 on Wednesday, and although water and take away food were delivered, supplies have now been depleted. Unwashed security personnel, SAA staff and journalists have been forced to shape a grim existence on the plane, walking up and down the aisles and using different toilets for distraction.

The head of Ramaphosa’s security detail accused the Poles of “shocking and racist” conduct. Then came news of 12 rather large containers of weapons on board the airplane that did not have the proper permits. The weapons were reportedly for the use of the security detail. But according to “highly placed South African government insiders,” the boxes also contained “long-range sniper rifles and weapons normally used in serious conflict.”

Wait, what? A peace delegation bearing gifts of war?

Okay, it was a large security detail of 100 people, and maybe they thought they’d be plunged into the thick of war. Or perhaps the weapons were somehow connected to South African arms dealer Ivor Ichikowitz, who was instrumental in organizing the initiative. Although the South African government has been quite close with the Kremlin—ditto Ichikowitz—it has not likely supplied Russia with any arms after its invasion of Ukraine. But arms dealers can make as much from a negotiated peace—supplying both sides of the ceasefire line—as they can from a continued war. Maybe those boxes were simply a sneak peek.

A Canadian Perspective on Ukraine, Iraq and Afghanistan

After more than 24 hours on the tarmac, the plane eventually returned to South Africa, with those 12 crates of weapons. It’s a shame the journalists on board never had a chance to accompany the Ramaphosa contingent, particularly when it arrived in St. Petersburg for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Russia, Ramaphosa was able to deliver his opening remarks. But before the other African leaders could speak, a clearly unhappy Putin interrupted to lecture the group with his usual talking points. Then the live feed cut off, and there are no independent accounts of what happened next.

There’s the fog of war. But there’s also the equally dense fog of diplomacy.

Meanwhile, in Beijing

As the African delegation was wrapping up its meetings in Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was conducting a series of sit-downs in China, including a 35-minute confab with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

On the face of it, the meeting was a success for both sides. China and the United States seemed to be putting behind them the incident that had recently divided them: the US shooting down of a Chinese weather balloon that may or may not have surveilled some semi-secret sites. Xi provided assurances, once again, that China would not send military assistance to Russia. Blinken provided assurances, once again, that the United States doesn’t support an independent Taiwan.

Most important of all, the two sides are again talking. The rest of us look on like little kids who are terrified when their parents go mum and only glare at each other across the dinner table. Yeah, we know that these powerful figures have their disagreements. But we also know how destabilizing and unpredictable a marital dispute can be.

Of course, China and the United States aren’t married. Far from it. Blinken couldn’t even get Beijing to agree to more communication between the two militaries. The warships and airplanes of the respective superpowers continue to jostle one another in areas around China. There is considerable economic competition. With nationalism on the rise on both sides, there is no love between Washington and Beijing.

But there is something remarkable about how the two countries have managed, so far, not to allow the war in Ukraine to turn into a truly global conflict. That has entailed restraint on both sides.

Two Reasons China Can Be a Valuable Partner for Europe

But will it lead to either a just peace in Ukraine or a meaningful US-China détente?

What did the Africans propose?

In its initial discussions around talking points, the delegation from Africa considered various quid pro quos to offer Russia and Ukraine. According to Reuters, which viewed the document, it included

a number of measures that could be proposed by the African leaders as part of the first stage of their engagement with the warring parties. Those measures could include a Russian troop pull-back, removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Belarus, suspension of the implementation of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant targeting Putin, and sanctions relief.

When Ramaphosa presented the plan in Russia, it contained 10 rather anodyne points. On the most contentious question of a Russian pullback, the list fudged the issue by noting simply that “the sovereignty of states must be respected.” Neither side found this language useful. Zelensky insisted on the precondition of a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s sovereign territory: not only the land seized in the 2022 invasion, but also the Donbas and Crimea that were occupied in 2014. Putin found the plan so off-putting that he pulled the plug on the live feed of his meeting with the African delegation, but only after he presented his side of the story: that Ukraine and the West had started the war and the invasion was defensive in nature.

Ramaphosa was undeterred, declaring that “this initiative has been historic in that it is the first time African leaders have embarked on a peace mission beyond the shores of the continent.” After decades—centuries, really—of Europeans beginning and ending wars in Africa, it is indeed refreshing for Africans to weigh in on a European affair. But it’s a shame that this first peace mission was such an obvious failure.

The World Presses to End the War in Ukraine: Can the US Agree?

For one thing, the trip was poorly planned, as the embarrassing standoff in Warsaw demonstrates. The Poles maintain that they held three consultative meetings with the South Africans where they explained exactly what paperwork was required. The crates of weapons were a surprise.

Second, South Africa is not exactly neutral. Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), has long been aligned with Russia, a carryover from the days when the government in Moscow was at least putatively left-wing. South Africa has benefited from arms shipments, (modest) trade relations, and political support from Putin’s government. It enjoys a higher profile because of its membership, with Russia, in the BRICS formation (along with Brazil, India, and China). In February, South Africa joined Russia and China for naval exercises in the Indian Ocean, tellingly on the first anniversary of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ramaphosa boldly attempted to trade on his country’s ersatz neutrality to expand its global reputation and possibly, just possibly, secure concessions that could benefit the warring parties and, in the case of boosting food exports, African countries as well. But if anything, the trip undercut South Africa’s reputation—as well as Ramaphosa’s personal brand, which is already at a low ebb because of various scandals. The media commentary in South Africa has been biting from virtually all sides. “Shambolic peace mission did us no favours,” reads the headline of a Business Live editorial. Or this headline from Mia Swart in The Daily Maverick: “ANC’s kamikaze Russian diplomacy puts SA on the road to economic and reputational ruin.”

What is oft said about “best-laid plans” applies even more forcefully to poorly-laid plans.

Détente along two axes?

China may not be supplying weapons to its erstwhile ally Russia, but it too is not neutral. It’s doing well by the war, boosting its trade with Russia and importing energy at a discount. China’s exports to Russia have risen by an astonishing 75 percent so far this year, compared to the same period last year. Xi Jinping’s well-calculated engagement is a big reason why the Russian economy has not gone completely down the toilet as a result of international sanctions.

Pundits and policymakers seem to agree: China should use its leverage to end the war. The United States is comfortable with China as mediator. So is the EU. Even Ukraine welcomes future Chinese initiatives.

Why would the Chinese have any more success than the Africans?

For one, China is waiting for the right moment. One scenario is that the Ukrainians kick Russian troops out of most of the occupied territory and then it’s China’s job to deliver the hard news to Putin: negotiate a face-saving deal or else. In a second scenario, the Ukrainians manage only to regain a small fraction of the occupied territory and then it’s China’s job to deliver the hard news to Zelensky: negotiate a deal that establishes some ambiguous sovereignty over the Donbas, the Crimean Peninsula, and the land between them.

What Now is the Future of Ukraine: Korea or Yugoslavia?

Neither scenario, alas, would be particularly durable. Putin and the nationalist right that has embraced him will not easily give up on their dream of an expanding “Russian world.” And Ukraine will not settle for amputation, regardless of the words used to describe the unsavory operation.

What of east-west relations? China knows that Russia doesn’t really count for anything in geopolitics, aside from its brutal unpredictability. The Chinese have an alliance of convenience, and they’re not going to yoke themselves so closely to the Kremlin that they too fall off the mountain if and when the Russians lose their grip. The real question for China, as Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Michael Klare has pointed out, is how it manages relations with both the United States and India, two frenemies of old.

Despite various left-wing (and far-right-wing) conspiracy theories, the United States does not want a forever war that bleeds Russia dry. The war is a costly distraction from Washington’s twin concerns: the economy at home and China abroad. If China helps negotiate an end to the conflict, that would help reduce tensions with Washington and win points in India as well, where the war is even less popular.

Now that the door is open again to Beijing, perhaps the United States and China can do a better job of coordinating their approach to the war in Ukraine. Because their alliances are clear, these conversations must be discreet (and who knows, maybe Blinken already got the ball rolling on his recent trip to China).

After all, there is nothing like a noisy marital dispute next door to help quarrelsome parents bond over their relatively more constructive partnership. Cooperating quietly on finding a way to end the war in Ukraine—with a just conclusion that Ukrainians, above all, accept—could ultimately reestablish a better working relationship between Beijing and Washington. The world could use a little détente right around now.

[Foreign Policy In Focus first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Twin Peace Missions Have Limited Success In Ukraine and China appeared first on Fair Observer.

Africa, the birthplace of mankind, is home to millions of ancient artifacts admired by the whole planet and coveted by museums and private collectors all around the world. But Africa itself rarely profits from the source of its own soft power. For centuries, its art has been stolen and sold abroad, leaving African museums and galleries with very few—sometimes none—of the essential elements of soft power to seduce other nations.

However,  a growing movement is reversing centuries-long,steady, outward flow of ancient African art towards other horizons. Last January, an ancient wooden sarcophagus, displayed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, was returned to Egypt after US specialists determined it had been looted years ago. This is just one of the 5300 stolen artifacts that were retuned to Cairo since 2021. A “Head of a King” or “Oba” dated from 1700 was part of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum collection for more than 70 years and it was returned to Nigeria, along with 31 other cultural artifacts. Also in the US, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art returned 29 Benin bronzes to Nigeria in late October, stolen in a British raid in 1897.

Last November, the Horniman Museum in London returned six artifacts looted by British troops 125 years ago from a place in Benin, now Nigeria. Of these six, two were 16^th century bronze plaques ransacked from the royal palace in 1897, when British forces sacked and burned the kingdom. The return put pressure on the British Museum to return over 900 objects, the largest collection of ancient African art in the world. The British Museum argues that the British Museum Act of 1963 and the Heritage Act of 1983 prevent it from returning the artifacts . 

In contrast, Germany signed an agreement with Nigeria in 2022 to return 1,100 metal plaques and sculptures from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, mostly taken by British forces and sold to 20 museums around Germany. The country will also return a female figure known as Ngonnso to the kingdom of Nso, in northwestern Cameroon. A colonial officer took it and donated it to Berlin’s Ethnological Museum in 1903. The figure’s presence in Berlin provoked  a civic initiative called “Bring Back Ngonnso,” with locals claiming that they have suffered multiple misfortunes since the statue was brought to their city. 

The Fight For Ownership of African Art

Do national laws prevent countries from returning artifacts to their homeland? Probably not. Tourists and international communities are increasingly rejecting the idea that museums in developed countries should still be allowed to profit from other peoples’ and other nations’ ancient art. In fact, the longer those museums keep these artifacts, the less they become attractive as a soft power tool. Instead of seducing visitors, they may even drive them away. 

Some accounts say that over half a million cultural artifacts originated in Africa are located in Europe. Countries like Belgium must now review all colonial-era acquisitions from the Democratic Republic of Congo. But as Bénédicte Savoy argues in her book, Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat, the movement began in the 1960s, when many African nations declared independence. It faded in the 1980s when European museums ignored these demands. Appeals by the likes of Ahmadou-Mahtar M’Bow, the then director-general of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), had no effect. In 1978, the UNESCO boss said that “everything which has been taken away (…) bore witness to a history of a culture and of a nation whose spirit they perpetuated and renewed.”

The resistance to the return of ancient art to Africa may cause damage beyond the walls of European museums. In her book, Savoy reminds readers that some European countries were receptive to the idea of restitution during the Cold War. They wanted to use both  hard power and soft power to improve relations with African countries. Returning art was a good way to increase the latter.

In the 21st century, those efforts may be needed more than ever. Europe and the US have been trying to strengthen commercial and political ties with Africa in an effort to counter the increasing influence of China. In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the return of 26 pieces, including sculptures and other artifacts, to the Republic of Benin. This West African nation had formerly been a colony of France. Later, the French press argued that this gesture may not be enough. It expressed the current public opinion that France should return other artifacts to Africa, including priceless antiques from venerated museums like the Louvre. 

Art Coming Home

Are there any arguments that justify European museums not returning Africa’s ancient art? One argument maintains that this would lead to a loss of cultural heritage. Museums would have poorer collections, making it more difficult for people to get cultural exposure and education. Another argument holds that European museums are safer places for ancient artifacts than unstable African countries. Many of these countries do not have proper storage conditions for artifacts. Many Africans find this argument ridiculous. Nigerian art historian, Chika Okeke-Agulu said that it reminds him of a “thief demanding the construction of a secure facility before returning a stolen BMW.”  

The arguments for returning ancient African art are not just rhetorical. First, new museums have been constructed in Africa. They highlight the African drive to bring their artifacts home. These African nations also want to increase their soft power, attract more tourists and earn revenues. After a series of delays, Egypt will finally inaugurate the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. This museum will cover 50 hectares and house over 100,000 objects, including artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb. 

Second, returned artifacts increase a nation’s self-esteem. When France returned the Dahomey statues to Benin, a parade attracted thousands to see the sculptures at a free exhibition installed at the presidential palace in Cotonou. These celebrations and the display of cultural artifacts in the land of their origins boost national pride, identity and confidence.

Finally and importantly, returned artifacts stimulate investment in a nation’s cultural life. Benin City in Nigeria is building a new museum complex to display the repatriated art from the West.  The museum’s promoters hope that this new museum will make Benin City a global destination. New hotels and businesses to serve tourists will create jobs and stimulate the local economy.

If this movement continues, we may  see priceless works of art return home. The Nefertiti Bust (1345 BC) in Neues Museum in Berlin, the Rosetta Stone (196 BC) in the British Museum and many others might soon return to Africa. Of course, there is a chance this might never happen. We can’t know the future yet. However, the time for Africa’s ancient art to return to its homeland, increase the continent’s soft power and stimulate its economy has arrived.
[This piece was edited by Bella Bible.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post It Is Now Time for the West to Return African Art appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Story of a Dam

A large recent African success is Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam. Built on the Blue Nile about 40 kilometers east of Sudan, Ethiopia completed the third phase of filling the reservoir for this huge dam in August last year. Two out of its 13 turbines are now operational, generating 750 megawatts of electricity. Ultimately, the dam is expected to produce more than 5,000 megawatts, which will more than double Ethiopia’s current output.

The construction of the dam is a triumph for Ethiopia. Neighbors Egypt and Sudan opposed the construction, fearful that the dam would reduce their share of the Nile waters. Their fears may be misplaced. The purpose of the dam is to generate hydroelectric power. It might change the timing of the flow of waters downstream but is unlikely to divert much water from the Blue Nile.

The Grand Renaissance Dam is a great Ethiopian triumph. The project was estimated to cost $5 billion. Given Egyptian hostility, international donors turned shy. Ethiopians dug into their own pockets to build this dam. In 2011, when dam construction began, Ethiopia’s GDP was a mere $31.95 billion. To put matters in perspective, the country decided to spend 15.65% of its GDP to build one single dam.

The entire country pitched in for the dam effort. The common women and men of Ethiopia bought bonds to fund the dam. The government persuaded employees to contribute a portion of their incomes to the project. Critics suggest that there was a fair degree of arm-twisting and this is probably true, but it is fair to say that Ethiopians saw this dam as a national project.

Impressively, the majestic wall of the dam was constructed without external funding. It is certainly true that China has pitched in to help construct the dam. In the US, China’s role has stirred controversy. Chinese companies have undertaken some of the construction work. In 2013, China provided Ethiopia a “loan of $1.2 billion USD in 2013 to build power transmission lines connecting the dam with nearby towns and cities.”

Yet it is important to remember that this impressive dam is fundamentally an Ethiopian achievement. It is a great example of a very African success.

Educating the Poorest

At the other end of the continent, many poor pupils are let down by South Africa’s education system.  Amnesty International, commenting on this “broken and unequal” system, reported that it was “characterized by crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, and relatively poor educational outcomes, is perpetuating inequality and, as a result, failing too many of its children, with the poor hardest hit.”

Even in such a system, a rare success has blossomed in an impoverished community. Bulungula College, an independent school in rural Eastern Cape, has become the first school in the district to achieve a 100% matric pass rate. This college was set up by Bulungula Incubator, which was founded in 2006. Then, “only one parent in the local Xhora Mouth community had passed matric.” In this community, “an average of six people from the community matriculate each year, and 95% of school learners from the area do not pass grade 12.”

In 2022, all 36 learners in the class of 2022 passed the matric examinations. Mthandwa Sincuba is the principal of the college. He hit upon the strategy of extra classes. In his words, “From the beginning of the year, we started with extra classes from 6am until 9pm. We also had weekend classes.”

Under Sincuba’s leadership, Bulungula College also takes a progressive approach. It provides students with better services, has a strict policy against corporal punishment, provides support to children from families that struggle to provide adequate nutrition, offers birth control to all girl students and encourages those who become pregnant to stay on in school until and after they give birth.

This extraordinary project was the brainchild of David Martin. He was walking along the coast in 2002 when he came across a beautiful site by a stunning river. Martin fell in love with the area and the people. They were desperately poor but he worked with the community of Nqileni village, establishing Bulungula Lodge at the river mouth.

Once the lodge was open for business, tourists came to stay in one of the most beautiful parts of South Africa. Today, Martin has transferred Bulungula Lodge to the local community, who now run it themselves and improve their living standards. Bulungula College is part of the same project and is a classic example of a small but significant African success story.

Examples in Every Town and Village

Many think that only outside advisers and external funding can transform poor communities. This is untrue. Almost every country in Africa has local successes that emerged from individual and community initiatives.

Three simple examples where Africans have spent their own money to make a material difference to their lives are:

• the bicycle (now, the scooter),
• the sewing machine, and
• the mobile phone.

Each of these goods has increased income, information and security, transforming millions of lives in the process. The success of the bicycle and now the scooter has been well documented. They provide a cheap way of transport in this vast continent. Similarly, the sewing machine is a raging success. It has provided millions of women livelihood.

Mobile phones are now found across the continent. East Africa has been a leader in mobile banking, thanks to the ubiquity of these phones and African ingenuity. The M-PESA system is a world leader in mobile banking. It enables customers to transfer cash as well as shop for products and services. They can also withdraw cash by visiting an agent, typically their local corner shop, or transfer it to others from their phones.

Even the much-maligned gun—the curse of mankind—has helped the continent. African leaders adopted this weapon to resist colonization and Ethiopians beat off Italian invaders in the Battle of Adwa. On March 1, 1896, African soldiers used guns better than their European counterparts, achieving a historic victory that still fills the continent with pride.

For all the ingenuity in Africa, the question as to who coughs up the cash for the investment the continent needs is tricky. Undoubtedly, funding from the World Bank and the African Development Bank is helpful. Private non-African companies, whether Western, Chinese or Indian, have a role too.

Yet the most important role is perhaps that of the African Diaspora. In 2016, the World Bank estimated remittances crossed $600 billion that year. Of these, over $440 billion went to developing countries and Africa comprised a small but significant percentage. In November 2022, the World Bank published a report on remittances and estimated that remittances to Africa in 2021 surged by 16.4% to reach $50 billion. In the same year, aid to Africa was $60.5 billion. 

Remittances reach beneficiaries directly. They are often sent to family members, Hence, they are better directed, suffer far less leakage and have a much bigger multiplier effect than aid. In other parts of the world internal savings and remittances have had a much bigger impact than aid. Africa’s people are no different from anyone else in the world. Like many other places in the world, including the US and the UK, they are building their own futures despite their politicians. Over time, African solutions to African problems can resolve Africa’s problems. The many successes are a living testament to that possibility.[Charlize Cheesman edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How Real African Solutions Now Overcome African Problems appeared first on Fair Observer.

South Africa has been placed onto Tier 2 by the US State Department, which means that it is considered to be a source, transit, and destination country for individuals trafficked for the purpose of forced labour or sexual exploitation. 

Although trafficking in South Africa is not a new issue, the extent of the crime has been growing in recent years. 

According to the annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, the number of people who became victims of human trafficking has more than doubled in the 2021-22 financial year in South Africa. The document revealed that eighty-three people were trafficked, which comes to a shocking comparison with the sixteen victims  the year before. 

Increasing cases of trafficking in South Africa raise the question of what needs to be done to target the crime more efficiently. 

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The National Freedom Network (NFN), which is an organization that establishes connecting players working in the counter-trafficking field in South Africa, underlines that for anti-trafficking efforts to be effective all relevant actors within and across civil society and government need to work together.  

The main vulnerability factors 

Poverty and unemployment are amongst the main causes of high trafficking cases in South Africa. These issues worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic as more than two million people have lost their jobs since March 2020. Now, in a country with a population of more than sixty million, the unemployment rate is at almost 34%. 

Those living in impoverished communities across South Africa are vulnerable to trafficking within the country due to limited access to education and few job openings. The same underlying causes affect those who are being trafficked from abroad and who think that South Africa offers more economic opportunities than their home countries. As the financial desperation of the most vulnerable is growing, traffickers lure them in with promises of employment, housing, or education. 

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Human Trafficking Hotline reported an increase in false job advertisements which have been used by traffickers as one of the main recruitment methods. Out of all trafficking cases, more than 44% involved this tactic, which is an increase from 20% in the year preceding the outbreak of the pandemic. 

EMBED: https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/world-trafficking-day-human-sex-traffickers-latest-world-news-32390/

The South Africa Impact Report 2021, published by A21, shows that a global organization is fighting to abolish human trafficking. It lists “job and family instability, violence and abuse, lower education, substance misuse, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and isolation” as factors that lead to a higher susceptibility to victimization in regards to trafficking and exploitation. 

The power of collaboration

Human trafficking is a degrading ruthless form of exploitation that traps victims in modern slavery. Due to the complexity and the hidden nature of the crime, the anti-trafficking response requires a great degree of collaboration. 

This is where the National Freedom Network steps in as it aims to connect all these actors, which are “acting as a link and ensuring that the interaction between the sectors allows for the flow of communication; the sharing of information, resources and best practices,” Marina Reyneke, the organization’s Operations Manager, tells me. And she adds that “strategic collaborations and networking can be highly effective in preventing and combating human trafficking”.

According to Dark Bali, an Indonesian anti-trafficking network, individual organizations acting independently do not have a supporting infrastructure, which is one of the main reasons for them failing. 

Coalitions bring together organizations that share the same goal. By joining efforts, they can learn from each other, get a more detailed overview of the situation and trends in the sector, and have more leverage when attempting to influence political positions. Consequently, working together allows them to identify major gaps and develop strategies designed to fill them. 

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Regrettably, in South Africa, the implementation of some anti-trafficking measures that require the cooperation of state departments and relevant stakeholders from civil society has been “weak and somewhat problematic”,according to researchers. 

Not only is it important to create a platform where anti-trafficking organizations can act as a united force, achieving better cooperation with government agencies  proves to also be an important part of the NFN’s agenda. 

Reyneke explains, “Government structures have been established and we need the capacity to continue working closely with these. Our vision is to see all sectors of a society organized and united in their efforts to prevent and combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP).  Our mission is to effectively fight Trafficking in Persons (TIP) through strategic networking, partnership and collaboration”.

The way forward

The NFN has been successful in creating an enabling environment for the many anti-trafficking organizations across South Africa. But to keep the momentum, the network needs funding, which can be challenging to secure. 

Donations help equip relevant actors with skills to assist survivors and prevent conditions that foster trafficking. Any kind of financial support can make a real impact and allows the Network to grow and expand its reach and continue its mission. “Our long-term goals are to include much more strategic prevention work as well as ultimately becoming a survivor-led Network,” Reyneke says. 

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The NFN has clearly defined goals and knows what needs to be done to create a more comprehensive anti-trafficking strategy and to better protect survivors. With the help of individual and community donors, the NFN can not only get closer to achieving these aims, but can also ensure the network’s organizational sustainability. 

Looking at the rising trafficking cases in South Africa, it is clear that improvements in the response to the problem are needed. For South Africa to be able to win the fight against human trafficking, the underlying economic, political, and cultural factors need to be addressed and more support needs to be offered to organizations such as the NFN that provide a linkage between relevant actors, government, and victims.  

[Charlize Cheesman edited this article]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How to Curb Rising Human Trafficking in South Africa appeared first on Fair Observer.

Yet the African Union brokered agreement is odd. It fails to mention one of the key participants in the conflict: the government of Eritrea. This is extraordinary since the Eritreans have tens of thousands of troops battling the Tigrayans. The agreement contains just one oblique reference to Eritrea’s role. Article 3/3 states that: “This Permanent Cessation of all forms of hostilities shall include…subversion or the use of proxies to destabilise the other party or collusion with any external force hostile to either party.”

The word “Eritrea” is never mentioned, yet the reality is that this war was primarily the brainchild of Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s unelected president and the region’s strongman. It is at his behest that conscripts have been rounded up and sent to fight in neighboring Ethiopia.

The Highway from Hell and House to House Conscription

All along the B30 highway – deep inside Tigray – Eritreans troops are under siege, fighting for their lives. The road links the western city of Shire, the sacred site of Axum and the historic town of Adwa, scene of the famous Ethiopian victory over the Italians in 1896. Today it has become the Highway from Hell, with beleaguered Eritrean and Ethiopian forces under constant attack from Tigrayan ambushes.

Some will wonder why Eritreans are inside Ethiopia at all. On March 21, 2001, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said Eritrean troops would be withdrawn. Yet 20 months later the Eritreans are still fighting on Ethiopian soil.

Eritreans in the diaspora tell of friends and families terrified into giving up their children to go and fight, and of Afwerki’s notorious security forces going door-to-door to search out the few remaining young men and women who can be taken away for “National Service”. Many will never return.

There are first-hand accounts of men as old as 70 being forced into conscription. Families that resist are put out onto the streets – with anyone coming to their aid facing the same humiliating penalty. Eritrean hospitals are reportedly overflowing with wounded soldiers who have been ferried back from the front. Some can hardly cope with the dead and dying.

Ethiopian divisions transferred to Eritrean

It now seems clear that while the fighting is inside Ethiopia, it is Eritrea that is pulling the strings. The Daily Telegraph reported that Ethiopian troops had been transferred to Eritrea as the current offensives were erupting on August 26.

One source at Ethiopian Airlines told The Daily Telegraph that the country’s flagship carrier has been chartering dozens of flights to ferry soldiers and weapons up north to the frontline. Flight data showed a significant uptick in unscheduled domestic chartered flights last month, which flew in the direction of Lalibela, a key logistics hub for the Ethiopian army near the frontline. On just one day, September 1, at least eight Boeing 737s with a capacity of 180 soldiers and four Canadian made De Havilland Dash 8-400 with a capacity of 90 appeared to set off for Lalibela.

This is very much in line with what Alex de Waal reported on October 7: “About 30 [Ethiopian National Defense Force] ENDF divisions relocated from Amhara and Western Tigray into Eritrea last month, placing themselves under Eritrean overall command.” This is exactly as Afwerki would wish it to be. His is the hand that will guide the region’s reconstruction, if the Tigrayans can be eliminated. 

Just prior to the war commencing in November 2020, Afwerki brought his closest political and military advisers together for an intense discussion on how to proceed. The president told them that the country had to accept that it has a small and not very viable economy and a lengthy Red Sea coast, which Eritrea cannot patrol on its own. He is reported to have suggested that some sort of “union” with Ethiopia might be possible, at least in terms of economic co-operation and maritime security.

War has been Afwerki’s modus vivendi ever since Eritrean independence in 1993. He has fought all his neighbors – from Sudan to Djibouti – and sent Eritrean troops as far as the Congo. As Asia Abdulkadir, a Kenyan analyst put it to Bloomberg: “War is the way for Afwerki to stay involved in Ethiopia’s politics” and peace is simply not an option as long as the TPLF are still around, she said. 

How Afwerki responds to Wednesday’s peace agreement is hard to predict, but he is unlikely to end the plotting that has been his modus operandi for the past five decades.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How Eritrea Has Driven Ethiopia’s Tragic Tigray War appeared first on Fair Observer.

Táíwò is a noted scholar and a provocative thinker. His views can be controversial. He says: “A lot of the decolonization movement is complete nonsense, it’s totally irrelevant. And I use very strong language because these people are causing a lot of damage in the continent.”

It is for this reason Táíwò fights back against the movement that spurred “Rhodes Must Fall’ and called for colonial reparations. Before this interview, he had just returned from Nigeria where his mother passed away but Táíwò says he’s keen to take his mind off his loss. And while he starts off gently, his appeals become more impassioned as he warms to his theme.

Táíwò’s book, Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously, prompted a FO° Live discussion on June 28 earlier this year: In 2022, Can and Does Africa Determine Its Own Destiny?

Táíwò’s book has now been recommended by The Financial Times. As per this venerable British newspaper, the book “makes a powerful case for how Africans can get out of their malaise: not by being trapped in a psychological state of victimhood, but by reclaiming their agency.”

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Claire Price: Agency is a big theme of your book – how do you define it?

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò: One of the central tenants of modernity is the idea of the self. That’s the agency that I’m talking about – that the individual is the author of her or his life script. Many of us are messed up and write very terrible scripts for ourselves but however we write it, what is important is that we own it. The colonialists substituted themselves for the agency of the colonized. While that lasted, the colonized didn’t give up their agency – they kept on contesting the power and authority of the colonizers. But much of the decolonising literature does not take seriously this agency of the African. And by making it seem as if colonialism is the axis on which to plot Africa’s entire phenomenon is just wrong.

Price: Do you feel that many African writers deny their own agency by blaming colonialism for their problems?

Táíwò: Much of the decolonising literature, not African writers but decolonising literature, is vested in that. But the fact that we can’t blame colonialism for everything does not mean we can’t blame colonialism for anything.

Price:  Have you faced criticism that you underplay the impact of colonialism?

Táíwò: Unfortunately no, I haven’t faced criticism.

Price: Is that fortunately or unfortunately?

Táíwò: Unfortunately! Who knows, in this book, I might get some people’s goat and they might challenge it. But previously, it was thought that colonialism brought modernity to Africa. I argued in my first book that modernity was introduced to Africa by the missionaries and that those ideas were stifled by colonialism. And 12 years since its publication, no-one has challenged this thesis. That’s not a boast, it’s just the honest truth.

Price: I’m going to go through a few things that people blame colonialism for. First, borders. Isn’t the decolonisation movement right to blame Europeans for drawing up arbitrary borders and causing all sorts of trouble?

Táíwò: I have argued in the book that it’s been 60 years now that most of Africa has been independent. If Africans don’t like their borders, they could do something about them. Those borders are not sacrosanct – look at Eritrea, Sudan and the secessionist movements in Cameroon. There is no country in the world that is natural, all borders are artificial. In fact, most of the world’s countries are multinational states. Just look at the United Kingdom and Russia.

Price: The second charge is tribal conflict, which people claim was exacerbated by the colonizers’ divide and rule policy. We can see how that played out in the recent Kenyan elections.

Táíwò: First, you need to get rid of that terminology. There are no tribes. That’s straight out of racist colonial anthropology. You don’t look to the national group that I belong to and call it a tribe. It’s global, it’s multi-ethnic, there are a lot of different dialects with regional variations. It has a civilization that dates back at least one thousand years.

When Europe was making the transition to modernity and the feudal structure was being broken up, they migrated to cities under their tribal affiliations. As capitalism grew, they started organizing themselves according to guilds and that was the start of the trade union movement. Africans wanted to do the same under the colonial movement – but the colonial authorities pre-empted them and insisted that Africans organized themselves by tribal unions.

Price: So they can be blamed?

Táíwò: Yes, they could be blamed for exacerbating tensions but some Africans have tried to craft different identities since independence – and some of their experiments have succeeded. For example, you don’t have those tensions in Tanzania, which is made up of various ethnic and national groups. That’s not the way they organize their elections. Even when you talk about Zanzibar, those tensions are religious rather than ethnic. And in Senegal, everybody now speaks Wolof – we’re seeing the Wolofisation of Senegal.

Claire:  You’ve talked about languages there. Can African thinkers be truly “decolonized” if they write in English or French?

Táíwò: Why do people assume that you cannot domesticate a language? We live in a world of several Englishes. I work in the US and I went to school in Canada and they don’t speak the same English. And they are not the same as UK English. Why are Indians celebrated for calibrating English in their own way and Africans are treated as if they are still minions. It doesn’t make sense.

That’s the reason why a lot of the decolonisation movement is complete nonsense, it’s totally irrelevant. And I use very strong language because these people are causing a lot of damage in the continent.

English did not just come with colonialism. Africans have been writing in English since 1769. Formal colonialism did not come to West Africa until 1865. Do you want to throw away 100 years of history?

And who insisted that Africans should speak their own indigenous languages and only speak enough English to service the colonial machine? The colonizers!

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Price: Ethiopian American academic Adom Getachew has said that: “Acknowledging that colonial history shapes the current inequalities and hierarchies that structure the world sets the stage for the next one: reparations and restitution.” What are your thoughts on that?

Táíwò: Honestly, I don’t touch that. And the reason why is a very simple one. There’s a reparations movement for those who were forcibly brought to the Americas, which was later expanded to include reparations for colonial rule. People need to separate the two.

As an African immigrant to the United States, I cannot be part of the reparation movement for black people in this country because there’s no basis for it. If I come from West Africa; a country like Nigeria, Ghana or Sierra Leone, from which many people were shipped off as slaves, I need to do some very serious genealogy. Because if I’m from one of those families that profited from it, I should be paying reparations! We need to take history very seriously.

The idea that people went in and kidnapped people – yes that’s how it started but eventually a market was created. Willing buyer, willing seller. Unfortunately, we’re still making the same deals. If we say we were coerced then and we’re still being coerced now, then we’re permanent children.

In 50 years, maybe our grandchildren will be asking the Chinese for reparations for what they’re doing in Africa right now. And that’s the fault of the Chinese? No, I’m sorry. We need to have internal debates about this. We should not pretend that Africans are victims all along.

Price: Why do these ideas matter?

Táíwò: As I did my research for this book, I said wait a minute, is this what people are peddling about pre-colonial history? Are you suggesting that how life was led in Africa in 15^th century was the same as in the 19^th century?

The kind of granular engagement with the complexity of life and thought in different parts of Africa is being effaced on a daily basis. That cannot be good for the future of scholarship about the African continent. That for me is not just a disservice, it’s really bordering on the criminal.

I’m sorry that I have to speak in very strong terms. This is not a divergence, it’s not academic. It’s about how Africa is going to deliver for its citizens. These are ideas that go to the heart of human dignity.

I don’t see the decolonisation movement getting into all that. It’s all about chasing slights. Not slights for ordinary people but for academics.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post High Time for Africans to Reclaim Their Agency appeared first on Fair Observer.

Even as the UAE has a historic relationship with the US, it has been deepening its relationship with Russia. Both countries target periphery nations for discreet joint involvement. Shared interest across Africa has seen the UAE-Russia partnerships from Senegal to Sudan.

A power struggle in Sudan

The UAE has significantly increased its involvement and direction of affairs within Sudan since the resignation of the civilian prime minister Abdalla Hamdok in January. He had already been ousted in a coup led by the generals in October last year and his brief return was due only to international pressure, primarily from Washington.

Since Hamdok’s departure, a power struggle between the chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his deputy, General Mohamed agalo, “Hemeti”, has developed. As competition between Burhan and Hemeti quietly intensifies, Sudanese actors are courting the UAE. Abu Dhabi is receptive to such overtures and Tahnoon bin Zayed, UAE’s national security advisor and Mohammed bin Zayed’s brother, has decided to back Hemeti. So has Russia.

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Burhan has attempted to consolidate his position by centralizing power within institutions, such as the ministry of defense, and by maintaining formal relationships with regional allies. This has seen the ministry increase its stake in the control of Port Sudan as well as other industrial ventures in the eastern region. By doing so, Burhan seeks to reduce the potential for Hemeti and his principal backer, the UAE, to secure access for themselves and Russia to the area. 

Moscow has long been trying to secure naval access to Port Sudan, a deal that continues to be delayed as Khartoum tries to secure greater financial and political support. It is important to note that Burhan is not overtly opposed to the UAE and Russia but is driven by the principal requirement to secure his own grip over Sudan. Burhan has tried to balance internal power dynamics while managing the tainted legacy of former president Omar al-Bashir with the whims and expectations of the international arena.

Burhan has recently visited Egypt, Libya, and Chad in an attempt to reinforce his own centrality in the future of Sudan. This has been conducted through high level relations with regional actors. Additionally, Burhan deployed Gibril Ibrahim, the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), to Saudi Arabia to secure short-term funding for Sudan.

Even as Burhan is making his moves, Hemeti is countering them. The chief of staff to Chad’s president is his first cousin and a prominent negotiator with leading figures in the Darfur region. There are even reports that the governor of Darfur, Minni Minawi, is preparing to leave Burhan’s coalition and side with Hemeti. However, this dynamic is extremely delicate as Hemeti was the leader of the Janjaweed who perpetrated mass violence in the Darfur region. The implications of these power struggles for Sudan’s domestic scene are extremely perilous. After several coups, there is a real risk of another civil war.

The UAE and Russia join hands for a common cause

Sudan is still suffering from continuing US-led sanctions imposed after the coup that removed Hamdok. In such a situation, the UAE has assumed the role of facilitator and provider of urgently needed funds. In doing so, the UAE is bolstering the military-led administration in Sudan, developing its network in Khartoum and averting any potential shift of power to civilian government. 

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While  supporting the role of the military within Sudan’s  political structure, Abu Dhabi has sought to develop ties with key civilian actors. The UAE is cultivating Osama Daoud, a billionaire businessman with close ties to the military. He is the chairman of the DAL Group, which has an office in the UAE.  It has been reported that Daoud maintains a very close relationship with Tahnoon bin Zayed, and it is through this dynamic that a $6 billion investment project came through. 

The Abu Dhabi Ports Group will construct a new port, just north of Port Sudan, with an accompanying free zone. In addition, the Sudanese Central Bank will have $300 million deposited which should help to smooth over the condemnation the country faces over the lack of progress towards a civilian government. The UAE has also signed an agreement to develop a large agricultural project in Eastern Sudan that will export its produce through the new port. While the West has been trying to force the military to cede power, the UAE has been concluding deals with key military and military-backed players that will only further their influence in Sudan.

The timing and decision to increase financial assistance to Sudan is crucial. It is now clear that the UAE backs Hemeti. In the past, he has proven his loyalty to Abu Dhabi by supplying a large contingent of soldiers to South Yemen where Hemeti’s soldiers helped secure key areas from Houthi forces. Now, Russia may be joining hands with the UAE to back Hemeti. The Wagner Group, Russia’s shadowy mercenaries, could intervene should civil war in Sudan break out. Hemeti has visited Moscow on several occasions, securing military assistance and intelligence support from Russia’s Internet Research Agency. 

To counter Hemeti, Burhan has tried to win the UAE’s support. In March 2022, Burhan visited the UAE but did not gain Abu Dhabi’s backing. Therefore, he recently ordered the release of some Islamist prisoners, a move that has irked the UAE and made it move closer to Hemeti.

The US is watching the UAE’s involvement in Sudan with concern, especially as Abu Dhabi and Moscow are working together to back the same horse. In essence, Washington’s long-term project to install a civilian government in and bring peace to Sudan is being undone by Abu Dhabi. The UAE is not only eradicating the last vestiges of Sudanese democracy but it is also enabling Moscow to extend its reach far beyond the Eurasian sphere. Washington would not be pleased if Moscow gains naval access in Sudan. Yet it can do little as Abu Dhabi and Moscow cooperate to achieve a common goal. Dynamics in Sudan reveal clearly the UAE’s centrality in a shifting power dynamics in the Middle East, both in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

Sudan has been on the periphery of international attention. The new democratic government was poorly supported by the international community. This made the country vulnerable to external designs. The transition to civilian rule failed when the UAE and Russia backed military elites to achieve their strategic interests. Should Sudan succumb yet again to civil war, Russia is likely to provide security assistance to Hemeti while the UAE will provide the money. In the process, Abu Dhabi will acquire economic assets whose value would have depreciated due to conflict. Any internal conflict and civil war will enable Russia and the UAE to secure their long-term interests in the Horn of Africa and beyond.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Civil Strife Could Further Advances by Russia and the UAE in Sudan appeared first on Fair Observer.

Rwanda has a tragic past. For 100 days in 1994, around 800,000 Rwandans were massacred in Rwanda by the ethnic Hutus in what has become known as the Rwanda genocide. Once, the country was run by the ethnic minority Tutsis. In 1959, they were overthrown by the ethnic majority Hutus. Thousands of Tutsis escaped to neighboring countries. Some of the Tutsis in exile united to set up the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which began fighting against the Hutu government until a peace treaty was signed in 1993. In April 1994, a plane carrying Rwanda’s Hutu president and high-ranking officials was shot down, killing all on board. Blaming the RPF, Hutu extremists began the slaughters of the Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers. 

The RPF maintained that the plane was shot by the Hutu extremists in order to blame the RPF and rationalize genocide. Meanwhile, French forces present in Rwanda watched the massacres, but did nothing. The French government has denied this persistently until recently. After 27 years of denial, France was finally forced by its own government commission to officially admit its complicity in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. In May 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron, spoke at the genocide memorial in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, where many of the victims were buried. He asked Rwandans to forgive France for its role in the 1994 genocide. “Only those who went through that night can perhaps forgive, and in doing so give the gift of forgiveness,” Macron said. 

United Nations Measures to Prevent Genocide

The United Nations (UN) Article 1 clearly states that the countries are bound to suppress “acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means,” a “settlement of international disputes” or resolution of situations that could lead to violence. In 1946, the UN General Assembly in its Resolution 96 (I) defined genocide and considered it an international crime. 

In 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, defined genocide as, “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” In the case of disputes, the convention made the International Court of Justice (ICJ) the final legal authority on genocide. In 1949, the Geneva Convention prohibited willful killings, torture, property destruction, unlawful deportation or confinement, and the taking of civilians as hostages.

More recently, international law has sought to prevent genocide. In May 1993, a Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established. The ICTY indicted a number of the perpetrators of the Bosnian genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Those indicted include Radovan Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity.

In August 1993, the Rwanda government signed a peace treaty with RPF, known as “Arusha Accords.” In October, the UN Security Council (UNSC) established the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) to assist the parties executing the peace agreement. The UNAMIR was supposed to monitor the progress in the peace process and help form the transitional government.

As mentioned earlier, the plane carrying the Rwandan Hutu President was shot down in 1994 and the Hutu government blamed the RPF. The next day, on April 7, 1994, government forces and Hutu militia began killing Tutsis, moderate Hutus and the UNAMIR peacekeepers who were among their first victims.

On June 22, 1994, after two and a half months of killings, the UN finally authorized a French-led multinational operation, “Operation Turquoise”, which set a protection zone in Rwanda to help victims and refugees. On July 15, 1994, RPF took over the country and stopped the 100 days of killings. In August 1994, whatever was left of the UNAMIR took over the French-led multinational operation and provided shelter to thousands of refugees.

In November 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was established. Headquartered in Arusha, Tanzania, the ICTR was supposed to “prosecute persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda and neighboring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994.” So far, ICTR has brought to justice 93 persons “responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda in 1994.” 

French Support of Genocidal Hutu-led Regime

In April 2019, the US law firm Levy Firestone Muse released A Foreseeable Genocide, a report based on million pages of documents after years of interviews and investigation. The report found France to be a “collaborator” of the Hutu government in the genocide. The French were aware that the regime planned to exterminate the Tutsis. 

As per the report, the “French government was unwavering in its support for its Rwandan allies even when their genocidal intentions became clear, and only the French government was an indispensable collaborator in building the institutions that would become instruments of the Genocide.” The report concluded that “the Government of France bears significant responsibility for having enabled a foreseeable genocide.”

In March 2021, a French commission found that France bore “heavy and overwhelming responsibility” for the Rwanda genocide. After this finding, the French government could no longer deny its involvement in the genocide. Under international pressure, the French president was finally forced to apologize for supporting the Hutu-led genocidal regime in Rwanda in 1994.

US Support for RPF

Even as the French backed a genocidal regime, the US supported the rebel RPF. Helen C Epstein, a visiting professor at Bard College, chronicled the secret role of the US in the Rwandan genocide in a tour de force in The Guardian. Rwandan President Paul Kagame was “then a senior officer in both the Ugandan army and the RPF, was in Kansas at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, studying field tactics and psyops, propaganda techniques to win hearts and minds.” He flew back to lead Uganda-backed RPF against the genocidal Hutu regime.

Kagame and the RPF were not blameless either. Epstein tells us that Robert Flaten, the then US ambassador to Rwanda, witnessed the terror caused by the RPF invasion of Rwanda. Apparently, “hundreds of thousands of mostly Hutu villagers fled RPF-held areas, saying they had seen abductions and killings.” Flaten urged the George Herbert Walker Bush (Bush Senior) administration “to impose sanctions on Uganda, as it had on Iraq after the Kuwait invasion earlier that year.” Instead, the US and its allies doubled aid to Yoweri Museveni’s government. Uganda’s defense spending ballooned to 48% of the budget. Strongman Museveni allocated a mere 13% for education and 5% for health, even as AIDS was ravaging the country and killing thousands.

In 2022, Museveni continues to rule Uganda while Kagame is the big boss of Rwanda. There has been relative peace in the region but both regimes are based on the barrel of the gun. Under the Belgians, the Tutsis “formed an elite minority caste in Rwanda” and “treated the Hutu peasants like serfs, forcing them to work on their land and sometimes beating them like donkeys.” Today, the Tutsis continue to occupy the top echelons of the Rwandan state. The Hutus may be better treated than a few decades ago but they are clearly second class citizens in their own land.

Time for Action

Like many other countries, Rwanda is still waiting for justice. It is another example of the failure of the UN to stop genocide, save victims, and bring to justice all guilty parties. In 1994, the UN only acted after 75 days of killings. Even then, it chose France, a biased party, to lead the operation. The UN has acted belatedly, inadequately and irresponsibly repeatedly. Genocides in Cambodia, the Balkans and other places are proof of that fact.

The UN usually serves the interests of the powerful and ignores the poor. Thus, we cannot rely on the UN to prevent genocides, crimes against humanity and other atrocities. It is we the people who must assume responsibility and support political leaders who strive for global peace and harmony.

In the hope of avoiding another genocide, we must demand that our political leaders take the following actions:

First, ICTR must continue its work until all individuals, Rwandan or not, are brought to justice. Its mandate must be expanded to include the forces of other countries who watched but chose not to take any action to stop the ongoing killings.

Second, France, which has already appointed a commission, must now form a criminal tribunal to investigate those who collaborated with the genocidal Hutu government in 1994. French troops who watched the killings, but chose not to act, should also be brought to justice. The French cannot be tried by the ICTR because France is a permanent member of the UNSC and will veto any such proposal. So, we must put pressure on France to bring its citizens to justice.

Third, France must make reparations for the loss of lives, injuries, human displacements, and property destruction caused by its illegal collaboration and complicity with the Hutu government. France has a GDP of over $2.7 trillion compared with Rwanda’s $10.4 billion. France must put its money where its mouth is and allocate at least $20 billion, amounting to less than 1% of its GDP, to compensate the victims of the genocide.

Fourth, the US must form a bipartisan committee to investigate its officials who played a dubious role in Rwanda or Uganda in the 1990s. Those who knew about killings and did nothing to prevent them must be brought to justice just like their French counterparts. Like France, the US is a member of the UNSC and its citizens cannot be tried by ICTR. So, it is up to American citizens to demand a reckoning of the dark days of the 1990s.

Fifth, the US must also pay reparations for the loss of lives, injuries, people displacements, and property destruction that occurred during the genocide. The US GDP is much larger than France and the US could easily give Rwanda $20 billion, about 1% of its GDP.  If the bipartisan committee discovers systemic support of genocide, then this amount should be higher. This money should be spent to build infrastructure, educate people, improve healthcare, create means of production and much more.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Those Responsible for the 1994 Rwandan Genocide Must Be Brought to Justice appeared first on Fair Observer.

To head off any chance of being imprisoned, he has deployed the so-called “Stalingrad defense.” This is a term for a legal strategy of stalling proceedings based on technicalities. Zuma’s lawyers are fighting every attempt to put him before a judge on the basis of arcane technicalities. Finally, this strategy is wearing thin and Zuma’s supporters are now resorting to alternative tactics.

Past Precedent

This is not the first time that Zuma faces time in prison. Last year, the Constitutional Court of South Africa found Zuma guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him to jail for 15 months. Zuma’s supporters took to the streets in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. They blocked roads, assaulted people, and looted and burned supermarkets.

When Zuma’s legal team were in court on April 11,  they reminded the court of what had happened. They warned the judge that the riots that ensued after his jail sentence last year resulted in the deaths of more than 350 people. Zuma’s lawyers claimed that the riots “were partly motivated or sparked, to whatever extent, by a sense of public outrage at perceived injustice and special treatment of Mr Zuma.” They were making an obvious threat.

It is important to put Zuma’s July 2021 riots in context. The country’s most notorious mass killing remains the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960. This occurred during the era of apartheid. The massacre cost 69 lives as the police fired into a crowd. The Zuma riots cost many more lives than the Sharpeville massacre.

To contain these riots, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had to deploy 25,000 troops. He admitted that he had no prior warning from his intelligence services of the scale of the unrest. This is unsurprising. Zuma was an intelligence agent for the African National Congress (ANC) and has strong links with South Africa’s security services. As the South African media have reported: “Former senior security agency and ANC members aligned with Jacob Zuma have allegedly instigated the unrest in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Citing sources in the intelligence community…these former agency members used intelligence networks to spark the riots.”

The government made promises to bring those who instigated the Zuma riots to justice.  Duduzile Zuma-Sambundla, Zuma’s daughter, was one of those accused of stoking the riots. She and none of the major figures allegedly behind the Zuma riots have been held accountable. Of the 3,000 suspects arrested, all of them have been small-fry.  

Constitutional Challenge And Risk of Becoming a Failed State

Like a latter-day Samson, the former president is threatening to bring down the South African constitutional order around him. Those close to Zuma have threatened both the judges and the constitutional order itself. The South African constitution, shaped under Nelson Mandela is today questioned by factions of the ANC who want to make the judiciary and the constitution subservient to the political establishment.

Many ANC leaders, keen to stave off allegations of wrongdoing, have muttered darkly about the constitution for years. KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala recently criticized the courts, saying “It is time we should debate whether the country does not need parliamentary democracy where laws enacted by Parliament should be above all and not reviewed by another organ…” Ironically, Zikalala is calling for a return to parliamentary supremacy — the hallmark of the apartheid years.

There is a real cost to such maneuvers by ANC politicians. In its December conference,the party will elect a new leadership. If some ANC members have their way, they could even remove Ramaphosa, although this seems unlikely as of now. Nevertheless, the ANC’s branches and its provincial structures are experiencing a bitter battle between the pro- and anti-Zuma factions. These factions are fighting for the support of the ANC’s 1.5 million members in meetings across the country, some of which are turning violent.

While the ANC is locked in internal battles, there are warnings that South Africa might be turning into a failed state. The government has failed to provide many essential public services already. The railways have been vandalized and looted so severely that no trains have run in the Eastern Cape since January 7. Critical coal and iron ore exports are grinding to a halt because of cable theft  that has gone unchecked for years because of South Africa’s systemic corruption.  As per Bloomberg, “more than $2 billion in potential coal, iron ore and chrome exports were lost” in 2021.

The failure of the electricity supply system is so chronic that it is hardly remarked upon. In the Cape, the opposition Democratic Alliance has plans to dump the state electricity provider — Eskom — and establish its own power supply.

In a September 2020 report, Eunomix warned that “bar a meaningful change of trajectory, South Africa will be a failed state by 2030.” The remarks were echoed in March this year by the treasury director general Dondo Mogajane. He took the view that, if South Africa continued on its present path, it could indeed become a ‘failed state’ with “no confidence in the government, anarchy and absolutely no control in society.”

In April, Ramaphosa was forced to respond to Mogajane. The president adamantly declared that South Africa was “not a failed state yet and we will not get there.” Ramaphosa claimed that his government was taking steps to rebuild South Africa’s capacity and fight corruption. This claim remains an admirable but unfulfilled ambition.

Zuma has not been brought to court and his associates are locked in battle with Ramaphosa’s supporters for control of the ANC and the country. Meanwhile, growth rates slide, unemployment rockets and poverty remains endemic. Even as South Africa is on the slide, the world’s attention is elsewhere. This is a tragedy. Africa could lose one of its few genuine democracies and see the collapse of its largest economy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Jacob Zuma Threatens to Bring South Africa to its Knees If He Is Jailed appeared first on Fair Observer.

Even as the focus has been on Ukraine, a bloody and brutal conflict has raged in Tigray for 17 months but hardly attracted global attention. On March 25, rebel Tigrayan forces declared that they would respect a ceasefire proposed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as long as sufficient aid was delivered to their war-scarred northern region “within reasonable time.”

Martin Plaut on the Tigray War, Ethiopia and More

In this episode, we have the former BBC World Service Africa Editor explain what is going on in the Tigray War in Ethiopia and you can read what he has to say below.

How significant is the humanitarian ceasefire in Ethiopia’s Tigray region?

This is the first real breakthrough in the negotiating process that we’ve had since the war began in November 2020. There have been terrible bitter months in which there has been a huge loss of life. As per estimates, up to 500,000 people have died either from the conflict or from starvation in Tigray. The whole of Tigray is surrounded by enemies with the Eritreans to the north and the Ethiopians to the south, the east and the west.

To avoid starvation, it is vital that supplies get through. The Tigrayans need something like a hundred (100) trucks a day. They’ve had 100 trucks in the last, I don’t know, six weeks. There’s starvation in Tigray and humanitarian assistance is desperately needed.

Why has the ceasefire taken so long?

Essentially the Ethiopians and the Eritreans who are prosecuting this war have used starvation as a weapon of war. They are trying to crush the Tigrayan population whom they loathe by any means possible. They attempted to invade the country in November 2020 but that didn’t work. The Tigrayans had to flee their capital but, after a few months, they reorganized and they pushed the Eritreans and the Ethiopians right out of most of Tigray.

There are only some areas on the west and in the far north of Tigray which are still occupied. So the Ethiopians and the Eritreans have basically used starvation as a weapon of war. They’ve cut all communications links, they’ve prevented medical supplies from coming in and they prevented the trucks from rolling in either through the east or through the south. The people are starving.

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How serious is the humanitarian situation?

The situation is terrible. As always, it is always the very young and the very old who die first. The problem is that we have no absolute certainty about what is going on because the government of Ethiopia and of Eritrea have refused to allow any journalists to the frontlines even on the Ethiopian and Eritrean sides, let alone into Tigray itself. All communications are cut to Tigray, banking services are cut, there’s no way of paying for anything, all fuel supplies going in have been prevented. So Tigray is almost like a sealed-off area and nobody knows really what is going on but we do get to know some things from whispers, and the whispers are terrible.

Why has this war attracted less attention than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

If you prevent all international journalists from going in, there’s a news vacuum. How do you cover a story when nobody is allowed to be on the ground? Then, you can’t actually get the shots, film the mother with the dying baby or the grandparents unable to feed themselves or look after themselves. You do not get this information we’re getting now, day in, day out, from Ukraine.

You’re getting nothing from Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, let alone the rest of the area, some of which is very remote. Most monasteries have been looted, women have been routinely raped, I mean literally routinely raped. Some of the testimony was so brutal it is truly some of the worst I have ever seen in my life.

What is at the stake for Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa?

Essentially, there are two views of Ethiopia. As per one view, Ethiopia is an imperial country, a single unitary country that was developed in the 19^th century and should really essentially return to that. The Tigrayan have another view. They say that we are all ethnic groups, we must all have a federated system in which real power reverts to all of the ethnic areas. That is what the Tigrayans tried to do until 2018 when they lost power. They tried to create this federation sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully.

Essentially, those are the two views of how Ethiopia should be run and it’s equally the way in which the whole Horn of Africa should be governed.

How can Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed resolve this war?

My view is if he doesn’t really allow an alternative view of the way Ethiopia is run then it is unlikely that we will have a resolution of this conflict. That will mean that we’ll go back to war. We’ve already seen somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 people killed and that’s before you take in the deaths of the Somalis who fought in this war, of the Eritreans, tens of thousands of whom have been thrown into the frontline, so I mean the death toll could be immense.

And we don’t want to see any more of this suffering so we really do need some kind of resolution that addresses the political as well as the humanitarian issues.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Making Sense of the Tigray War in Ethiopia appeared first on Fair Observer.

The first is 1.2 trillion rand ($85 billion). It is the estimate of how much money has been lost to corruption. The government’s commission, chaired by Justice Ray Zondo, has been unearthing corruption on an industrial scale.

Who Can Resolve Ethiopia’s Catastrophic Conflict?

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Nelson Mandela himself pointed to this scourge back in 2001, when he remarked: “Little did we suspect that our own people, when they got a chance, would be as corrupt as the apartheid regime. That is one of the things that has really hurt us.”

Yet the graft revealed by Zondo has been eyewatering. This is how The Washington Post reported the key finding: “[G]raft and mismanagement reached new heights during the 2009-2018 presidency of Jacob Zuma. While details remain murky, observers estimate that some 1.2 trillion rand ($85 billion) was plundered from government coffers during Zuma’s tenure.”

This is a sum that no middle-income country can afford to squander. Many hoped that President Cyril Ramaphosa could rectify the situation, but the glacial pace of his reforms has disappointed many who believed in him.

The other figure is 75%. It is the percentage of youths who are unemployed. While the ANC, and the well-connected elite that run the government, help themselves to taxpayers’ cash at will, the young languish without jobs.

Little surprise that the ANC’s appeal is fading. The party won fewer than half all votes for the first time when the municipal elections were held in November last year.

Racial Classification in South Africa

Bad as this tale is, at least one could assure friends that state-enforced racial classification is a thing of the past. Gone is the notorious apartheid system that divided every man, woman and child into four racial subdivisions: “African,” “Indian,” “colored,” “white.” One might have assumed that this madness was scrapped when white rule was eliminated in 1994 — or so one might have thought. Yet every South African is still racially classified by law.

Take one case. Anyone wanting to lease a state farm in August 2021 would be warned that: “Applicants must be Africans, Indians or Coloureds who are South African citizens. ‘Africans’ in this context includes persons from the first nations of South Africa.” No “white” South African — no matter how impoverished — would have the right to apply. Poverty is not a criterion; only race is considered. Even young men and women born years after the end of apartheid are excluded.

A complex system known as “broad-based black economic empowerment” (BBBEE) was introduced. Every South African is racially categorized and a system of incentives is applied across government and the private sector. White men face the greatest discrimination, African women the least.

Here is an example of how it applies in one sector. The Amended Marketing, Advertising and Communications Sector Code of 1 April 2016 specifies a black ownership “target of 45% (30% is reserved for black women ownership) which should be achieved as of 31 March 2018. The 45% black ownership target is higher than the 25% target of the Generic Code.” To win tenders or contracts, all enterprises must comply with the regulations.

Race Hate

At the same time, South Africa’s ethnic minorities face racial abuse and racial threats unchecked by the state. The radical populist Julius Malema made singing “Kill the Boers” a trademark of his rallies. In this context, the term “Boer,” or farmer, is about as toxic as the n-word is in the American South.

Malema is now on trial. Yet far from the state prosecuting him for stirring up race hate (a crime in South Africa), it was left to an Afrikaans trade union to take him to court. Asked whether he would call for whites to be killed, all Malema would say was that, “we are not calling for the slaughtering of white people … at least for now.”

The trial has had to be postponed because the prosecutor was so fearful of being ladled a “racist” for bringing the case that she resigned.

Nor are whites Malema’s only target. Malema has attacked South African “Indians” as an ethnic group, accusing them of failing to treat their African employees fairly. “Indians are worse than Afrikaners,” he declared in 2017. In another context, he referred to Indians as “coolies” — possibly the most derogatory term he might have used.  Yet the state fails to prosecute him.

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One final example. When President Ramaphosa was asked to pick the country’s next chief justice, the public submitted some 500 names. The final four were Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, President of the Supreme Court of Appeal Mandisa Maya, Gauteng Judge President Dunstan Mlambo, and Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. All are fine legal minds. Not one of them is from among the country’s ethnic minorities.

This, despite the fact that some of the most eminent lawyers South Africa ever produced, who fought racial discrimination for years were not African. Men like George Bizos, Joel Joffe, Sydney Kentridge, Ismail Ayob, Edwin Cameron and Bram Fischer would probably not be selected today. Even Arthur Chaskalson, who defended the ANC at the Rivonia trial of 1963 and was chief justice of South Africa from 2001 to 2005, would probably be excluded.

Fighting Back

Glen Snyman — himself a “colored” or a mixed-race South African — has founded People Against Racial Classification to campaign against discrimination. “The government and private sector should deliver to all South Africans equally and not discriminate on identity,” he argues.

But racial classification has its supporters. Kganki Matabane, who heads the Black Business Council, says that even though “democratic rule is nearly 27 years old, it is still too soon to ditch the old categories,” the BBC reports. “We need to ask: Have we managed to correct those imbalances? If we have not, which is the case — if you look at the top 100 Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies, 75% or more of the CEOs are white males — then we have to continue with them.”

The ANC’s most celebrated document was the Freedom Charter of 1955. It was the statement of core principles of the ANC and its allies and memorably promised that: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.” With South Africa’s ethnic minorities continuing to face racial discrimination and exclusion from top jobs in government and even in the private sector, it is a promise more honored in the breach than the observance.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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What England’s Premier League Did for Football

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I have no idea whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is familiar with Ferguson’s motivational strategies nor whether he has even heard of him (though I suspect he has). Yet they are improbable kindred spirits. Putin seems to share with Ferguson a defensive or paranoid attitude predicated on the conviction that they are surrounded by enemies. It’s possible to imagine Putin addressing his aides with the kind of blistering, expletive-fueled tirade that used to be known in football circles as the hairdryer treatment. 

Sweeping Russophobia 

The siege mentality that was integral to Ferguson’s success is easy for Putin: The rest of the world actually is against him and his subjects. I’ll exclude Belarus (and, for the time being, China), but pretty much everywhere else has decided that the seemingly obsessive Putin is leading his country maniacally toward self-destruction, probably taking a good portion of the rest of the world along for the ride.

Let me define Russophobia as a strong and irrational dislike of Russia and all things Russian, especially the political system of the former Soviet Union as well as its current leader. In Ukraine, ruling parties have pursued a nationalist Russophobic agenda at least since 2018. The sharp increase in worldwide Russophobia since the invasion — or liberation, depending on your perspective — of Ukraine is unprecedented, at least in my experience. 

The collective punishment of all Russians, whatever their status, affiliation or political outlook for what appears to be Putin’s war, is going to have effects, an unintended one being that it will probably encourage national solidarity in Russia. It’s unlikely to turn people against the man in the Kremlin and is much more likely to encourage the kind of paranoid mentality that would make Sir Alex envious.

Russian oligarchs, like Chelsea Football Club’s owner (for the time being) Roman Abramovich, will no doubt be angry, particularly at having to dispose of his £150 million London home. But they are not going to renounce Putin: A new home like the one Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s former oil tycoon, was given at the YaG-14/10 penal colony in Siberia for 10 years might await.

Consumer brands such as Apple, Nike and Ikea have pulled out of Russia, followed by PayPal, Visa and MasterCard. Sales of certain Russian vodkas outside Russia have stopped. The broadcaster RT has been removed from British, American and other platforms, presumably to protect guileless viewers becoming brainwashed by Putin’s propaganda.

Sports Boycott

The Russophobic blizzard has swept into sport too. Football’s governing organization FIFA has suspended Russia from international games, thus eliminating the country from the forthcoming World Cup (Russia is currently appealing this). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recommended to sports organizations that they deny the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes, even as representatives of the Russian Olympic Team or any other spurious denomination. 

Formula 1 has terminated its contract with the Russian Grand Prix. The International Paralympic Committee has banned Russians from the Winter Olympics (again subject to appeal.) A full-scale sports boycott of Russia is in the air, probably affecting all athletes, even professional tennis players like Daniil Medvedev, who currently lives in Monaco. The question is, will the sports boycott and other prohibitions actually hasten a cease to the hostilities in Ukraine or will they instead have a paradoxical effect?

The only comparable precedent we have is in South Africa under apartheid. The IOC withdrew its invitation to South Africa to the 1964 Summer Olympics when the country’s interior minister Jan de Klerk insisted that the national team would not be integrated. It would, he said, reflect the segregation of South African society — in other words, the team would be white. Other sports followed the IOC’s example until, in 1977, the embargo was enshrined formally in the Gleneagles Agreement, which effectively turned South Africa into a sports outcast. 

Countries that kept their sporting links with South Africa were themselves ostracized, or blacklisted, as it was known. Individual athletes were forced to compete outside South Africa. Zola Budd and Sydney Maree were notable examples, Budd moving to the UK, Maree to the US. The boycott was eventually removed when apartheid fell in 1990, its total disappearance celebrated in the 1995 Rugby World Cup that which took place in South Africa and was won by an ethnically diverse home team.

We often look back and think the much-publicized sports boycott was a determining factor in ending apartheid, and it’s satisfying to imagine that the fusion of sport and politics produced a joyous and wonderful culmination. Certainly, the sports prohibition was an awareness-raiser and effectively signaled the rest of the world’s abhorrence of constitutional racism. 

But it dragged on over two decades and there is, inconveniently, no conclusive evidence that it had any impact on President F. W. de Klerk’s decision to lift the ban on the African National Congress and other black liberation parties, allowing freedom of the media and releasing political prisoners. Nelson Mandela was freed from prison after 27 years, on February 11, 1990. 

Money And Morals 

The sports boycott embarrassed South Africa as the current cold-shoulder will embarrass Russia. It may also have also have persuaded South Africans, in particular white South Africans, that their prolonged period of misfortune was the result of the antipathy of the outside world. That is probably what will happen in Russia. Citizens will be exasperated when their access to consumables is strangled and they can’t use credit cards to purchase whatever products are left. They’ll probably resent being restricted to Russians-only sport. 

But it won’t make a scrap of difference to the wider conflict and might in fact strengthen the resolve of the Russian people. This is not the narrative we are offered by the media, of course. 

The longer Russia is starved of international sport, the more credible the siege theory will become. In any case, the boycott will be fractured. Money often strains morals, especially in professional sports. For all the proscriptions and threats of blacklisting, South Africa was still able to offer enough filthy lucre to attract world-class cricketers, including Geoff Boycott, footballers such as Bobby Moore, boxers like Santos Laciar and other athletes. Even the African American promoter, Don King, a staunch critic of apartheid, had agreements with South African boxing, revealed by The New York Times in 1984. 

The same will happen in Russia. If it prevails in Ukraine, the probability is that there will be some form of state under the full or partial political control of Moscow, meaning no softening on the various debarments. The sports boycott will expand. This will leave major sports organizations with a new question: Do they recognize Ukraine as an independent sporting nation as it has been since 1991, or as a Russian colony, dependency or protectorate? Ukrainian athletes so far haven’t been excluded from international competitions. If they were, the cruelty would be redoubled. It would be a repugnant collision of injustices. 

Perhaps justice would be better served if the block on Russian sport were lifted. I know this sounds counterintuitive and might appear to reward, or at least accept, an aggressive act. But I take counsel from the adage that two wrongs don’t make a right. An action, no matter how heinous, is never a justification for wrongful behavior.

Many readers will not interpret a sports boycott as wrongful behavior, merely a reaction to provocation. Perhaps. But it would be foolish to hyperbolize the importance of sport; obviously it is not as serious as war, or a million other things. So, why hurt people who are not responsible for the original sin? Anyway, in a practical sense, it would serve to show that while the leadership in Moscow may indeed be execrated, the 144 million Russian people are not.

*[Ellis Cashmore is co-editor of Studying Football.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Should We Lift the Ban on Russian Sport? appeared first on Fair Observer.

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February 25: Dead Empires

Perhaps the most lucid commentary on the Ukraine crisis came from the Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani. Addressing the UN Security Council earlier this week, Kenya joined the chorus of nations categorically condemning Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a prelude to a military assault. But unlike other nations, which have been framing their judgment only in terms of international law, Kimani proposed a measured reflection drawing on a much wider historical perspective than that of disputed territories in Eastern Europe. The experience of African nation-states, “birthed” as he reminds us in the past century, helps to clarify the crisis in Eastern Europe as just one more symptom of a pathology spawned by the Western colonial tradition.

From Repeated Mistakes to an Unmistakable Message

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The New York Times didn’t bother to mention Kimani’s speech. After all, who cares about Kenya or the historical insight of Africans? The Washington Post offered two minutes of video excerpted from the ambassador’s six-minute speech. It was accompanied by a single sentence of commentary that gives no hint of the substance of his remarks: “Kenyan Ambassador to the U.N. Martin Kimani evoked Kenyan‘s colonial history while rebuking Russia’s move into eastern Ukraine at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 21.”

Carlos Mureithi at Quartz Africa penned a fuller commentary that doesn’t quite get Kimani’s real point. He begins by describing the speech as “a scathing condemnation of the Russia–Ukraine crisis, comparing it to colonialism in Africa.” But it was much more than that.

Kimani invited the Security Council to consider how the nation-states we have today were crafted by European colonial masters focused on perpetuating their own interests and indifferent to the needs and even identities of the peoples who lived in those lands and who woke up one morning to find themselves contained within newly drawn national borders. Kimani makes the surprising case for respecting those borders. However arbitrary in their design, they may serve to reign in the ethnic rivalries and tribal tendencies that exist in all regions of the globe, inevitably spawning local conflicts. But even while arguing in favor of the integrity of modern nation-states, he showed little respect for those who drew the borders and even less for the self-interested logic that guided them.

“We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires,” Kimani urges, “in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.” The populations on the receiving end of colonial logic know that even dead empires, chopped down to size, can be sources of contamination. They have left a lot of dead wood on the path of their colonial conquests. Not only does dead wood tend to rot, but, if the vestiges of the past are not cleared away, those who must continue to tread on the path frequently risk tripping over it.

Kimani evokes the specter of “nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia.” He sees a bright side in the fact that an incoherently drawn map may have helped Africa avoid the worst effects of nostalgia. The real paradox, however, is that his description of dead empires applies to the two still breathing opponents who are facing off in the current struggle: Russia and the United States.

In an article on the Russia–Ukraine crisis published on Fair Observer in December, Atul Singh and Glenn Carle highlighted Vladimir Putin’s obsession with a form of nostalgic traditionalism. They described it as “a reaction to and rejection of the cosmopolitan, international, modernizing forces of Western liberalism and capitalism.” Though Putin’s wealth is as legendary as it is secret and the Russian president appears to be as greedy as a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, he seems possessed by a pathological nostalgia for the enforced order of the Soviet Union and perhaps even for the Tsarist Russia the Bolsheviks overturned a century ago. At the same time, Donald Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” reveals a similar pathology affecting the population of the US. It’s equally a part of President Joe Biden’s political culture. The “back” that appears in Biden’s slogan “America is back” and even in “Build Back Better” confirms that orientation.

In declining empires, the mindset of a former conqueror remains present even when conquest is no longer possible. Kimani alludes to this when he affirms that Kenya “strongly condemn[s] the trend in the last decades of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching international law with little regard.” He accuses those states of betraying the ideals of the United Nations. “Multilateralism lies on its deathbed tonight,” Kimani intones. “It has been assaulted today as it has been by other powerful states in the recent past.” In other words, Putin is not an isolated case.

Kimani politely names no names. But the message is clear: There is blame to go all around and it is endemic. That is perhaps the saddest aspect of the current crisis. Sad because in wartime situations, the participating actors will always claim to act virtuously and build their propaganda around the idea of pursuing a noble cause. Putin has provocatively — and almost comically — dared to call his military operations a campaign of “demilitarization,” which most people would agree to be a virtuous act. We have already seen Biden call the various severe measures intended to cripple Russia’s economy “totally defensive.”

Empires assumed to be dead are often still able to breathe and, even with reduced liberty of movement, follow their worst habitual instincts. The two empires that squared off against each other during the Cold War to different degrees are shadows of what they once were. But their embers are still capable of producing a lot of destructive heat.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Beware of Dying Empires, an African Warns appeared first on Fair Observer.

Of these, the conflict in Ethiopia is probably the most burning issue. The forces from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are advancing toward the capital, Addis Ababa, and panic is beginning to spread. The US has warned its citizens to leave now, saying that it will not repeat the evacuation from Afghanistan. Britain has echoed the warning while putting troops currently serving in Kenya on standby to assist.

Ethiopia’s Heavy Hand in Tigray Sends a Message

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The Somali situation has remained unsolved since the collapse of the last central government with the fall of Siad Barre in 1991. Sudan’s struggle to overthrow the military who have seized power is critical but unlikely to spill over into neighboring states.

From the start of the war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in November 2020, there were warnings that the conflict could lead to the collapse of the country, with catastrophic consequences for the region. The day after the war began, Johnnie Carson and Chester Crocker, both former US assistant secretaries of state for African affairs, put their names to a statement signed by some of America’s best-informed Africanists, warning that the conflict might lead to the “fragmentation of Ethiopia,” which would be “the largest state collapse in modern history.”

They suggested the consequences could be catastrophic, and their concerns are worth quoting in full:

“Ethiopia is five times the size of pre-war Syria by population, and its breakdown would lead to mass interethnic and interreligious conflict; a dangerous vulnerability to exploitation by extremists; an acceleration of illicit trafficking, including of arms; and a humanitarian and security crisis at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East on a scale that would overshadow any existing conflict in the region, including Yemen. As Ethiopia is currently the leading Troop Contributing Country to the United Nations and the African Union peacekeeping missions in Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia, its collapse would also significantly impact the efforts by both to mitigate and resolve others conflicts in the Horn of Africa.”

Their warning was prescient. What began a year ago as the invasion of the northern region of Ethiopia has spread across large areas of the country. Maps of the fighting show areas across Ethiopia held by Tigrayan forces or fighters of their allies, the Oromo Liberation Army.

How Did the Tigray War Begin?

This is by no means simply a war between the Ethiopian government and Tigray. The conflict began with an attack on Tigray by Ethiopian federal forces, militia from the Amhara region, supported by invading troops from Ethiopia’s northern neighbor, Eritrea, as well as forces from Somalia. The Tigrayans had ruled Ethiopia for 27 years until being ousted by the current prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, in 2018. The animosity between them was predictable.

The Tigrayans, smarting from their loss of power, attempted to defy the new Ethiopian prime minister. They resisted attempts to remove heavy weaponry from the Northern Command (headquartered in Tigray’s regional capital, Mekelle, which they controlled). These weapons guarded northern Ethiopia (and Tigray, in particular) against any Eritrean attack. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) mobilized their citizens to block roads and prevent their removal.

However, the position of the Eritreans and Somalis requires some explanation. Tensions between Tigray and Eritrea can be traced to the liberation movements of the 1970s. Back then, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) had an uneasy alliance, working together to fight the Ethiopian government. This culminated in 1991 with the simultaneous fall of Addis Ababa and Asmara. The EPLF provided support to the TPLF in the assault on Addis Ababa and then gave close protection to the TPLF leader, Meles Zenawi. But this alliance hid ideological and tactical disputes.

The TPLF came to power, ruling Ethiopia via the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. By 1998, this relationship had ruptured and Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a bitter war that ended in 2000, leaving some 100,000 people dead. A peace agreement was signed in Algiers, but, much to the fury of Eritrea, Ethiopia refused to accept the border drawn by the boundary commission established by the treaty.

In response, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki collaborated with the Somali Islamists of al-Shabab and Ethiopian guerrilla movements in a failed attempt to oust the Tigrayan rulers of Ethiopia. However, in 2018, internal factors finally saw the TPLF lose their grip on power in Addis Ababa, to be replaced by Abiy Ahmed.

Enter the Eritreans

Ethiopia’s Abiy and Eritrea’s Isaias believed they shared a common enemy in the Tigrayan military and political leadership. A series of initiatives led to an end to hostilities in 2018 between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a conflict that had simmered since the 1998-2000 border war. In a series of nine joint meetings by the Eritrean and Ethiopian leaders, they developed a joint strategy to rid themselves of the Tigrayans. It is instructive that their final visits were held at the military bases of Eritrea and Ethiopia.

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Abiy canceled scheduled elections, arguing they could not be held because of the coronavirus pandemic. But his mandate had expired and the Tigrayans said he had no right to act in this way. They proceeded with their own elections, despite being instructed by the federal authorities not to. The last straw came when Abiy sent General Jamal Muhammad to take control of the Northern Command at the end of October 2020, only to have the TPLF put him on a plane back to Addis Ababa.

The federal government and the Tigray regional authority were clearly on a collision course. Exactly what happened on November 4 last year is not clear, but fighting broke out at the Northern Command base in Mekelle, which the TPLF took control of. Tigray was under attack from the north, east and south, with reports of drones, possibly supplied by the United Arab Emirates, fired from the Eritrean port of Assab in support of the Ethiopian government’s war effort.

This is not the “law-enforcement operation” described by Abiy. On November 6, 2020, he said in a tweet that operations “by federal defence forces underway in Northern Ethiopia have clear, limited & achievable objectives.” Six months later, this was hardly a plausible assessment. It had evolved into a full-scale war, which the Ethiopian government and its allies appeared to be winning. After an artillery bombardment of Mekelle, Abiy could rightly claim that his forces were in “full control” of Mekelle. He said that the army’s entry into the city marked the “final phase” of the conflict with the TPLF.

From Defense to Offense

In reality, the Tigrayans had pulled their forces out of the cities and had headed to the countryside and the mountains to conduct a guerrilla war — just as they had done before 1991. Mekelle had fallen, but the Tigrayan administration had ordered its forces to withdraw before the attack.

The UN, in a secret report, feared the war would become an extended conflict, characterized by irregular warfare. This is indeed what has transpired. By April 4, 2021, Abiy admitted that the fighting was far from over. Capturing the cities had not ended the war. Then, in June this year, the Tigrayans burst forth from the countryside, recapturing their capital, Mekelle, by the end of the month. Instead of leaving matters there, they continued pushing south, taking cities until Addis Ababa itself felt under threat, even though the Tigrayans are still many miles away.

The United States and European Union have been working with the African Union in an attempt to end the fighting. The US has imposed sanctions on Eritrea for its role in the war and threatened to extend these to Ethiopia and Tigray. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has acted as a mediator, visiting Mekelle as well as Addis Ababa. He has had limited success.

The burden of resolving this conflict now rests on the shoulders of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta. Whether he can succeed where others have failed remains to be seen.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Who Can Resolve Ethiopia’s Catastrophic Conflict? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Wicked Problem of Climate, Blah, Blah, Blah

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Chakwera highlights the hypocrisy of nations who publicly claim to endorse the idea promoted by the United Nations that urgent action is required while, at the same time, lobbying behind the scenes against the specific recommendations the UN has put forth. To justify their hypocrisy, they create the illusion that it is an equal contest between protecting the planet and protecting a form of economic organization that is destroying the planet.

When they do accept to act, the wealthy countries propose what they call “energy transition,” a sensible approach that nevertheless requires investments that less wealthy nations are incapable of making on their own. President Chakwera notes that “wealthy countries are also imposing energy transition on Africa that risks doing great harm.” He cites the example of forcing African countries to transition by suppressing the use of “natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel.” Typically, he writes, the ban “only applies to poor countries, while richer countries face few bans on developing or importing gas.”

In other words, Chakwera characterizes the standard attitude wealthy countries put forward to solve global problems. Despite having massively abused the environment for centuries, they say they are willing to make sacrifices now, but only on condition that those who have not contributed to the abuse make the same sacrifices. The blanket gas ban they propose will penalize those who have suffered both directly and indirectly from the wealthy nations’ past and present levels of consumption. “A more nuanced approach,” the president calmly notes, “is needed if climate equity and justice are to be respected.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Nuance:

The art of taking into account important variables and subtle differences, often exemplified by reasonable politicians in their electoral discourse and eschewed by populists in theirs, but in all cases promptly abandoned by both when proposing and implementing real policy decisions

Contextual Note                                                                                                     

President Chakwera reminds readers that the 2015 Paris accord recognized the principle that “countries that had become rich through hydrocarbons had a duty to cut emissions faster to allow poorer countries to develop.” It also meant that “those same countries had a responsibility to help undeveloped countries adapt to the adverse conditions they did not create.” He provocatively concludes with a challenge. Noting that after the wealthy nations failed to mobilize “the promised billions in climate aid,” he legitimately wonders on what moral grounds they could possibly expect “those with more modest means … to do so.”

In the context of COP26, Yahoo announced what appeared to be a scoop concerning a deal the Biden administration claims to have worked out with six of the biggest banks in the US. It promises investments of “tens of trillions of dollars,” presumably in the new industries created to respond to the technological challenge of mitigating climate change.

John Kerry, the US special envoy for climate, teased the press with a forthcoming announcement that would clarify the commitment. Kerry hopes to reach “an agreement in Glasgow during the next two weeks that will commit all countries to steep enough cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to ensure the world doesn’t tip over into catastrophic climate change,” Yahoo reports.

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Kerry revealed an easily forgotten truth. There are many trillions of dollars in private hands sitting out there that could be productively invested in technology designed to stave off a climate catastrophe. Much of that wealth is in tax havens or cryptocurrency, but whatever its origin, people of goodwill could theoretically mobilize it not just to respond to globally-shared needs, but even for profit, since the market for such technology will rapidly grow.

There is, however, a problem Kerry is unlikely to evoke. Money affected to projects of public interest, even if it produces a handsome profit, tends to get blocked in those interests, a state of affairs those who control massive wealth find uncomfortable, if not intolerable. The best-laid plans of Wall Street-dominated politicians, just like those of Robert Burns’ mouse, are likely to go awry. 

The world should nevertheless thank Kerry for reminding us that those mountains of private money exist at a time when every government complains that they have no choice but to practice austerity (partly, of course, because the IMF gives many of them no choice). Which brings us back to Africa. President Chakwera might be the first to encourage Kerry to succeed in his vaunted plan. Except for one thing. Kerry didn’t bother with nuance. He appeared to adopt the very position Chakwera objects to, that obliges “all countries” to commit “to steep enough cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.” He fails to distinguish between the needs and capacity of wealthy countries as opposed to poor ones.

If Kerry hopes to complete the deal, he must be aware of the fact that there are two challenges. One is to convince the people who control the trillions to dedicate it to a cause that is presumably in the interest of the entire globe. The second is to find a way of applying it in an equitable manner by adapting the rules to help developing nations. Kerry seemed to admit as much in a CNN interview when he observed that “developing countries, even some big ones like India, can’t do this on their own.”

If Kerry can solve the big challenge by getting the banks and their wealthy clients on board, he will easily dismiss Chakwera’s objection to the idea that all countries observe the exact same constraints. Malawi and most African countries will have no voice and no choice. Even with assistance from wealthy countries, they will be disadvantaged. Getting the trillionaires on board is clearly the bigger challenge. They run the global show. They are unlikely to consent to a principle based on public interest that risks, by its example, undermining the one that has produced such wonderful results for them in the past: naked greed.

Historical Note

Starting with President George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty a mere two months after taking office in 2001 — far quicker than Donald Trump’s similar decision to pull out of the Paris accord in 2020 — the US has either avoided the question of climate change or only addressed it rhetorically. In 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Paris Agreement primarily because it was so toothless but good for his image. 

In 2001, The Guardian reported that the two reasons Bush cited for opposing the agreement were that “it exempted developing countries and would harm the US economy.” This mentality has been a constant in Republican politics in the US. But Democrats have consistently followed their lead, content that Republicans accept to bear the blame and appear publicly as the scoundrels. 

Twenty years later, Lazarus Chakwera is echoing the judgment of Gerhard Schroder, the German chancellor at the time. Schroder insisted that it was “important that the US accepts its responsibility for the world climate. They are the biggest economy in the world and the heaviest energy consumers.” Since then, things have considerably changed. Thanks to its rapid economic expansion, China has now become the world’s number one energy consumer. What this means is that some politicians in America, especially those who have built their brand on denying climate change, now have the excuse of complaining that China must act first to reduce its emissions before the US will commit to anything.

The nuanced strategy is simple. Always claim you will act when others first make the effort. The status quo is clearly the most powerful force at work today in human society. Inertia rules. Even when a change of direction is seen as absolutely necessary for survival, there will always be good reasons for keeping things the way they are. Especially if the only recognized driving force for change is money. And more especially if trillions are required.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Climate Around Climate Is Far From Sunny appeared first on Fair Observer.

In response, the international community, and the US in particular, increased pressure on Somali actors to come to an agreement, causing the states of Hirshabelle, Galmudug and South West to withdraw their support for Farmajo and call for new elections. Lacking international and domestic support, on May 1, Farmajo backtracked on his extended mandate and paved the way to new elections.

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Despite optimism around recent advances, Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble, who is in charge of organizing the elections, has a complicated task ahead. Armed confrontation created further distrust between political actors, and violence could easily flare up again in the run-up to the elections. Underlying constitutional, economic and international factors continue to drive this power struggle that is undermining Somalia’s already troubled state-building efforts.

Federal Tensions

On September 17, 2020, the federal government and the presidents of the member states agreed on amendments to the electoral process under pressure from the UN mission to Somalia, AMISOM. The agreement fell short of implementation, raising tensions between Mogadishu and the states of Puntland and Jubaland that staunchly oppose federal rule.

There are three contentious issues on the table. The presidents of Puntland and Jubaland, Said Abdullahi Deni and Ahmed Islam Madobe, accused President Farmajo of staffing federal and state electoral commissions with his loyalists, thereby undermining their expected neutrality. Somaliland is yet another stumbling block on the path to elections. Despite its de facto independence, the transitional constitution still assigns 57 parliamentary seats (46 in the lower and 11 in the upper house) to the region. Those seats could be decisive for the election result, so Farmajo wants the federal government to appoint Somaliland MPs, whereas Puntland and Jubaland want the chairpersons of the houses to manage the selection.

Finally, the issue of the district of Gedo has created a deep rift between the parties. Formally, in the state of Jubaland, government forces launched a military operation in February-March 2020 to occupy the region, which is dominated by President Farmajo’s Marehan sub-clan, sparking tensions between Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. If elections took place at this stage, Farmajo could secure the appointment of loyal MPs from the Gedo district; Jubaland’s Madobe and his allies reject this scenario.

Behind these flashpoints, however, there are two divergent visions of Somalia’s state-building. President Farmajo envisages the return to a pre-1991 centralized state with himself in the top job. On the other side of the rift, federal member states, specifically Puntland and Jubaland, want to safeguard their far-reaching autonomy within a decentralized Somali state and, therefore, reject Farmajo’s centralization project. Such fear has grown after the president managed to install his allies at the head of the states of Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West during his tenure. On top of that, the unprecedented reelection of an incumbent could strain the balance of power between the major clans which, until now, have informally rotated the top positions of Somali federal institutions.

Growing Stakes

Somalia has faced similar impasses among its elites in the past. Yet this crisis is proving more difficult to solve. One reason for this is economic. Thanks to the 2012 constitutional pact and AMISOM stabilization efforts, federal institutions are no longer powerless and can tap into the economic activities that have sprung up in recent years, especially in Mogadishu. This is consolidating clan-based patronage networks in what Transparency International considers the most corrupt country of the world along with South Sudan. Consequently, the federal government has become a relevant actor in Somalia’s political economy, raising the stakes over its control.

The most notable of these activities is the housing boom. In 2015, Mogadishu ranked second among the world’s fastest-growing cities as members of the Somali diaspora and wealthy locals built new properties in and around the capital. As there is no land tenure registry, affluent people often bribe public officials to obtain property rights and forcibly evict residents. This phenomenon has also driven severe tensions between public authorities and the local population, especially internally displaced persons.

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The oil and gas sector represents the most lucrative opportunity in sight for the Somali rent-seeking elites. Seen as promising by experts, the sector has been reorganized in recent years under the Ministry of Petroleum and the Somali Petroleum Agency and, after the delays due to COVID-19, the first bidding round is about to end. Despite the so-called petroleum law on the distribution of revenues and powers, some outstanding issues remain on the table and the current crisis might catalyze them. Consequently, the oil and gas sector might become another key arena of competition between the federal government and member states in the coming years.

Some relevant economic opportunities for the government also arrive from abroad. China, for example, showed its interest in Somalia given its strategic location along the Maritime Silk Road and, in turn, the Farmajo administration officialy joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2018. With the move, Somali authorities hope to attract investments in the country’s infrastructure. So far, the most visible result of the China-Somali cooperation is the fishing agreement through which Mogadishu granted fishing rights in Somali waters to a group of Chinese fishing companies in exchange for a $35,000 annual fee from each. This agreement, however, risks to upset the fragile livelihood of low-income fishing communities along the Somali coast.

Neighborly View

While cooperation with China has future potential, Turkey has been Mogadishu’s strongest partner for the last decade, with partnerships spanning across all sectors, from humanitarian aid to military training. Critically, Ankara has helped the government to train Somali special forces and build major infrastructural projects, like the Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu. The Turkish Albayrak Group will soon manage the capital’s seaport and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is even planning to build a spaceport for the Turkish space program on Somali territory, with an estimated investment of $350 million.

Given its extensive influence within Somalia, Turkey proposed itself as a mediator in the current crisis, with Foreign Minister Melvut Cavusoglu conducting shuttle diplomacy in support of the September agreement. Another Farmajo ally hesitant to take sides is Ethiopia. Despite Abiy Ahmed’s embedded alliance with Farmajo, the Ethiopian prime minister is probably aware that a direct endorsement could prove counterproductive to both the Somali president and to himself as a promoter of regional stability. On top of that, according to International Crisis Group Somalia analyst Omar Muhammad, Ethiopia is busy coping with its multiple domestic crises.

During his years in office, President Farmajo has built strong ties not only with Ankara and Addis Ababa, but also with Doha. After receiving funds from Qatar and refusing to take sides in the Gulf standoff, Farmajo deepened development cooperation with Doha and offered a concession for the Port of Hobyo to the Qatari operator, Mwani, in 2019. This is the reason why Qatar has long backed the Somali president in the current dispute.

However, as Farmajo’s chances of staying in power are narrowing, Doha is pulling its support and looking for new candidates to back. On the other hand, in reaction to Farmajo’s pro-Qatar stance, the UAE put its weight behind the presidents of Puntland and Jubaland over the past years by providing humanitarian aid, security cooperation and investments in the ports of Bossaso and Kismayo. Abu Dhabi was also the only country openly labeling Farmajo an interim president, a statement that attracted harsh criticism from the Somali government.

Regardless of diplomatic positioning, the economic and political support provided over the years by external powers has contributed to the current crisis. Investments increased stakes in government positions, strengthened the role of the president and his regional foes, and eventually reduced their willingness to compromise. Electoral commissions, Somaliland delegates and Gedo district remain the core stumbling blocks in the rift between Somali political actors, colliding against divergent visions of governance.

In the background, the terrorist group al-Shabaab, already in control of around two-thirds of the country, scaled up its bombing campaign at the beginning of the electoral cycle last summer. The international community has spearheaded an important step toward elections and now has to shore up a peaceful path to elections with the help of Somali leaders. Without this crucial support, al-Shabaab is likely to take full advantage of the impasse and further complicate the country’s fragile state-building project.

*[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Is Somalia’s Political Crisis So Difficult to Solve? appeared first on Fair Observer.

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After almost four years of severed ties, reconciliation in January led to the subsequent lifting of the blockade against Qatar and the formal restoration of relations. The resolution of the dispute is a positive regional development. However, it remains fragile because the issues that sparked the rift in the first place were never resolved.

It is therefore unlikely that the Gulf reconciliation will usher in a new beginning or bring about a return to pre-crisis normalcy. Deep-rooted mistrust between the Gulf countries, ongoing rivalries between them, divergence in their policies and geostrategic competition in Africa could trigger the next diplomatic crisis among member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Sudan’s Attempt to Play All Sides

Most Arab and sub-Saharan African states tried to resist pressure to join the anti-Qatar coalition and delicately maneuver their way into neutrality. These states were uneasy about their move because they feared that the Arab quartet would use their economic might against them. As a result, some African states cut or downgraded ties with Qatar.

Financial influence in Africa has helped GCC states capitalize on their geostrategic location, increase their food security and advance their diplomatic and security goals. By offering substantial economic incentives, they have been able to bolster peace agreements between warring factions. Some GCC states have achieved notable success, growing influence and African allies that support their policies. Sudan is a case in point. In 2019, Saudi investments in Sudan were estimated at $12 billion, the UAE at $7 billion and Qatar at $4 billion, as per the Sudanese Bureau of Statistics. 

Due to Saudi Arabia’s large investments, Sudan supported the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen in 2015 by deploying Rapid Support Forces and severing diplomatic ties with Iran. However, Bashir’s relationship with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi began stalling in the last few years of his rule. As part of the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s regional efforts to counter what they considered political Islam, Bashir was expected to root out Islamists in Sudan. However, since Islamists were deeply engrained in Sudan’s government, he could not risk alienating them and did not oblige.

The Gulf dispute put Bashir in another uncomfortable position. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar were all key investors in Sudan and he could not afford to alienate any of them. Therefore, Bashir took the safest route of remaining neutral while offering to mediate between the opposing sides.

The Sudanese leader’s reaction to the Gulf rift was not surprising. Historically, he cooperated with all regional powers, never fully aligning with any of them. His hands-off approach and ability to easily switch from the role of an army leader to an advocate of political Islam, enabled Sudan to simultaneously ally with rival GCC camps. It seems that Bashir’s key goal was to benefit economically from all Gulf states.

Sudan Under the New Transitional Government

Unfortunately for Bashir, Sudan’s economy collapsed, nationwide protests erupted in December 2018 and none of his Gulf allies came to his rescue. The GCC states were probably influenced by growing uncertainty regarding Bashir’s future. Their goal was to protect their investments, not Bashir. Without GCC financial support, the Sudanese president found his days in power numbered.

In April 2019, Saudi Arabia and the UAE backed a military coup that ended three decades of Bashir’s rule and led to the creation of a Transitional Military Council (TMC). The GCC duo promptly promised a staggering $3 billion in aid to support the TMC. However, growing international pressure pushed the TMC to sign a power-sharing agreement with Sudan’s pro-democracy movement. The TMC transferred power to a sovereignty council for a transitional period. Elections to usher in a civilian-led government are planned in late 2023 or early 2024.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have vested interests in backing the Sudanese military and ensuring it maintains control of the political transition. Consequently, they continue to offer economic and humanitarian support to Sudan. In return, the TMC has supported their war efforts in Yemen and, more recently, in Libya.

After the 2019 revolution, Sudan temporarily cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting Islamists. Qatar had a close relationship with Bashir’s former ruling National Congress Party that drew the ire of the TMC. However, Qatar has since rebuilt its influence by supporting Sudan’s removal from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST). In October 2020, Doha announced that a peace agreement had been brokered between the transitional government and rebel forces. Qatar has also provided much-needed humanitarian relief.

Sudan remains a country of great economic and security importance to the world. It has an abundance of natural resources. The African Development Bank Group estimates that approximately 63% of Sudan’s land is agricultural but only 15-20% is under cultivation. This offers vast investment opportunities in agriculture. Sudan is also strategically located on the Red Sea just south of the Suez Canal, a key shipping passage for world trade.

Major Challenges and Future Scenarios

Sudan’s transitional government recently set its priorities for 2021, which include a focus on the economy, peace, security, foreign relations and the ongoing democratic transition. However, the challenges facing the transitional government are dire. Foreign debt has risen to over $60 billion and inflation has crossed 300%. The country faces massive unemployment and chronic shortages of bread, fuel and foreign currency. Sudan is in the throes of a complex power struggle between civilians and the military. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) threatens Sudan’s water security. Sudanese and Ethiopian troops have clashed at the border. If this was not daunting already, Sudan has registered nearly 32,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, as of April 9.

In response to some of these challenges, the transitional government has instituted seismic constitutional changes. After nearly three decades, the US removed Sudan from the SST list in January, eliminating a major hurdle to debt relief and bringing an end to the country’s isolation from global financial systems. However, the transitional government remains under pressure to deliver quick economic wins. If it fails, power may shift back toward the military. In these tough circumstances, the transitional government’s success and Sudan’s democratic future depend on outside financial support.

For Sudan, the Gulf crisis served as a minor inconvenience. The revolution and Sudan’s removal from the SST list are more significant developments. GCC states are now encountering a growing number of new regional and international players who are looking at Sudan with increased interest. This could very well cause a shift in Gulf–Sudan relations.

Although GCC states have a shared strategic interest in Sudan’s stability, this takes a back seat to alliances that promote the individual interests of these Gulf countries. They are all trying to increase their regional influence and are turning post-revolution Sudan into another theater of GCC rivalry. Given Sudan’s fragile economic and political situation, it needs financial support. Economic forces played a major role in the fall of Omar al-Bashir’s regime and will determine the survival of the transitional government.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How the End of the Gulf Crisis Affects Sudan appeared first on Fair Observer.

Since his election, French President Emmanuel Macron has demonstrated what some French patriots feel is a morbid curiosity about the history of France’s relations with the African continent. In the first three months of 2021, two reports by French historians tasked by Macron to tell the truth have been released. The first concerns France’s role in the Algerian War of Independence between 1954 and 1962, and the second, the Rwandan genocide.

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Le Monde describes the 1,200-page Rwandan report as “solid, established by independent researchers and founded on newly opened archives.” Shortly after taking office in 2017, Macron asked historian Vincent Duclert to elucidate France’s role in the Rwandan genocide. Al Jazeera describes the report as criticizing “the French authorities under [Francois] Mitterrand for adopting a ‘binary view’ that set Habyarimana as a ‘Hutu ally’ against an ‘enemy’ of Tutsi forces backed by Uganda, and then offering military intervention only ‘belatedly’ when it was too late to halt the genocide.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Binary view:

A prevalent mindset among leaders responsible for foreign policy in powerful nations, whose tendency to reduce every problem to a contest between two diametrically opposed points of view permits them to justify the most cynical and cruelly destructive policies

Contextual Note

In the aftermath of the genocide, analysts speculated about whom to blame, not only concerning the genocide itself but also the failure to prevent it from spinning out of control. As the leader of the nation whose role as “policeman of the world” became consolidated after the fall of the Soviet Union, US President Bill Clinton exhibited an apparent “indifference” to tribal slaughter in Africa. It included deliberate “efforts to constrain U.N. peacekeeping.” Canadian General Romeo Dallaire accused Clinton of establishing “a policy that he did not want to know,” even though since 1992, US intelligence had been aware of a serious Hutu plan to carry out genocide.

French President Francois Mitterand’s guilt, it now turns out, was far more patent and direct than Clinton’s. The historians who authored the French report call it “a defeat of thinking” on the part of an administration never held accountable for its “continual blindness of its support for a racist, corrupt and violent regime.” Astonishingly, the report reveals that “French intelligence knew it was Hutu extremists that shot President Habyarimana’s plane down, which was seen as the trigger for the genocide.” Le Monde attributes Mitterand’s blindness to his “personal relationship” with the slain Hutu president.

Historical Note

By sneaking through the gaping cracks in the traditional parties on the right and left to be elected president, Emmanuel Macron became the leader of a new party created for the purpose of providing him with a majority in the 2017 parliamentary election that followed his historic victory. As a political maverick, Macron felt himself liberated from at least some of the shackles of history.

He first dared to do what Fifth Republic presidents of the past had carefully avoided when, as a candidate, he attacked the very idea of colonization, which not only played an essential role in France’s past, but continued to produce its effects through the concept of Francafrique. In an interview in Algiers, the Algerian capital, early in the 2017 presidential campaign, Macron described colonization as a “genuinely barbaric” practice, adding that it “constitutes a part of our past that we have to confront by also apologising to those against whom we committed these acts.”

Politicians on the right predictably denounced what they qualified as Macron’s “hatred of our history, this perpetual repentance that is unworthy of a candidate for the presidency of the republic.” This is the usual complaint of the nationalist right in every Western nation. Recently, columnist Ben Weingarten complained that Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project for The New York Times Magazine was motivated by “hatred for America.” Patriots in every country tend to believe that exposing any embarrassing historical truth is tantamount to hate and intolerance of their own noble traditions. Telling the truth is treasonous.

In January 2021, the historian Benjamin Stora presented the report Macron commissioned him to produce on France’s historical relationship with Algeria. Stora proposed the “creation of a joint ‘Memory and Truth’ commission.” The report also recommended “restitution, recognition of certain crimes, publication of lists of the disappeared, access to archives” and “creation of places of memory.” Suddenly, Macron realized that he had received more than he bargained for. As the website JusticeInfo.net reported, “The French presidency said there was ‘no question of showing repentance’ or of ‘presenting an apology’ for the occupation of Algeria or the bloody eight-year war that ended 132 years of French rule.”

These two examples demonstrate France’s curious relationship with history. They also tell us about how powerful nations elaborate and execute their foreign policy. France is not alone. Every nation’s policy starts from a sense of national interest. The ensuing analysis begins by assessing threats to it. These may be military, economic or even cultural. In the case of military threat, the nation in question will be branded either an enemy or, if diplomatic politeness prevails, an adversary. When the discord is purely economic, the other nation will most likely be called a competitor or a rival. When the threat is cultural — as when Lebanon and Israel square off against each other about who makes the most authentic hummus — foreign policy experts will simply shut up and enjoy the show.

On the other hand, three forms of cultural competition — linguistic, tribal and religious rivalries — have real implications for the exercise of power and may seriously influence the perception of whether what is at stake is enmity, rivalry or friendly competition. The danger in such cases lies in confusing cultural frictions with political ambitions.

The two French reports reveal that the very idea of “national interest” may not be as innocent as it sounds. It can also mean “extranational indifference,” or worse. Indifference turns out to be not just a harmless alternative to the aggressive pursuit of national interest. In some cases, it translates as a convenient pretext for the toleration or even encouragement of brutally inhuman practices. That is why Rwanda may be a stain on both Francois Mitterand’s and Bill Clinton’s legacies.

Another feature of modern policy may appear less extreme than the tolerance of genocide while being just as deadly. As Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies and others have repeatedly asserted, the imposition of drastic sanctions has become a major weapon in the US foreign policy arsenal. Sanctions essentially and often sadistically target civilian populations with little effect on the targeted leaders. Sanctions have become an automatic reflex mobilized not just against enemies or rivals, but also against the economically disobedient, nations that purchase goods from the wrong designated supplier.

In 2012, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, writing for The Guardian, noted that the Obama administration’s sanctions on Iran were “pushing ordinary Iranians to the edge of poverty, destroying the quality of their lives, isolating them from the outside world and most importantly, blocking their path to democracy.” Nine years later, those sanctions were made more extreme under Donald Trump and continue unabated under President Joe Biden. All the consequences Dehghan listed have continued, with no effect on the hard-line Iranian regime’s hold on power. Can anyone pretend that such policies are consistent with a commitment to human rights? Do they reveal the existence of even an ounce of empathy for human beings other than one’s own voters?

The French at least have solicited truthful historical research about their past. But politicians like Macron, who have encouraged the research, inevitably turn out to be too embarrassed by the truth to seek any form of reparation. After commissioning it, they prefer to deny the need for it.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Macron’s Campaign to Reveal France’s Historical Sins appeared first on Fair Observer.

In the meantime, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) leadership went underground, probably in the remote mountains of Tigray. Despite the initial bravado, the TPLF was unable to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Ethiopian forces, finding itself encircled and losing a considerable portion of its military assets. The TPLF’s very survival will depend on popular support, which, in turn, will depend on how the Ethiopian authorities are going to handle the Tigray region and its civilian population in the foreseeable future. The situation on the ground convinced Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to declare the mission accomplished.

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The heavy hand adopted against the TPLF sent a strong message in multiple directions. Domestically, it targeted Abiy’s Oromo and Amhara allies, but also the movements that currently defy the federal government across Ethiopia. Externally, the prime minister made it clear that the Tigray crisis was essentially a domestic issue, signaling to friends and foes that neither the country’s unity nor is his vision of an Ethiopia-centered regional order is under question. But why was such message deemed necessary in Addis Ababa and what impact did it have?

A System Under Strain

The label of “African Yugoslavia” has been hanging over Ethiopia for quite some time. Both states have enshrined a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society reflected in a federal constitutional system. Both countries have been ruled by a strong single party that initially controlled the political system from the center but subsequently gave way to regional, ethno-nationalist components. This shift eventually caused the violent break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In today’s Ethiopia, strong party leadership might ensure a different outcome.

Since Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, some events made observers doubt his ability to carry out his reform program and keep Ethiopia’s federation together. In June 2019, an attempted coup orchestrated by the head of the Amhara security forces led to a series of clashes between the Ethiopian army and groups of Amhara rebels. In August 2019, violent protests broke out in Hawassa as local ethnic movements demanded the formation of their own state in the south. On June 29, the killing of a famous Oromo singer sparked widespread riots in Oromia, while a series of ethnic-based murders further inflamed the political climate across the country.

Then came the constitutional quarrel with the TPLF. Back in June, Addis Ababa indeterminably postponed parliamentary elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The move was criticized by all opposition parties, yet only the TPLF defied the federal government and organized local elections, resulting in a relatively high turnout in support of the Tigrayan leadership. The situation spiraled out of control amid reciprocal accusations of illegitimacy. Ultimately, the TPLF attacked the bases of the Northern Command of the Ethiopian army on the night of November 3. Abiy’s response was swift and resolute, sending a convincing message regarding the state of the federation and his personal leadership.

The operation targeted the main rival of Abiy’s political project. The Tigrayans bore the brunt of the war against Eritrea and Ethiopia’s Derg regime despite being a small minority in the country. When it came to power in 1991, the TPLF managed to design an ethnic federation and dominate it for nearly 30 years. This was made possible through a careful political strategy that pitted the Oromo and the Amhara, the two major ethnic groups, against one another.

After his appointment as prime minister, Abiy heralded a new course for Ethiopia based on the unity between the Amhara and Oromo elites within his Prosperity Party. Along with his allies, he began to sideline the Tigray leadership through economic reforms and judicial prosecutions against security officers. This included an array of privatizations of Tigray-dominated public companies and tighter controls over financial flows that curtailed Tigrayan leaders’ grip on the Ethiopian economy. Now, by squashing the TPLF, the prime minister has killed two birds with one stone, eliminating his main domestic opposition and boosting unity among his allies.

The View from Outside

Prime Minister Abiy managed to convey a strong message abroad as well. Its first recipients have been Ethiopia’s neighbors in the Horn of Africa. The heavy hand in Tigray signaled that Ethiopia’s internal divisions did not affect the Addis Ababa-centered regional order currently under construction. When he came to power, Abiy understood that his country needed stability around its enormous borders in order to prosper and shield its periphery from instability. This is the reason why he developed strong relations with his Sudanese counterpart, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, and, most notably, with Ethiopia’s traditional foes: Eritrea and the Somali federal government.

The peace with Asmara, in particular, which won Abiy the Nobel Prize in 2019, marked a revolution in Ethiopian foreign policy. One of Addis Ababa’s key priorities is access to the Red Sea, a lack of which has made land-locked Ethiopia overly dependent on neighboring Djibouti. The main obstacle to the Asmara-Addis Ababa relations was once again the Tigrayans, Eritrea’s traditional enemies. Consequently, the operation against the TPLF will help consolidate the partnership between Prime Minister Abiy and Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki.

One collateral victim of the Tigray crisis is the African Union (AU). The Addis Ababa-based organization has become a recognized peacemaker across the continent, as witnessed in Somalia and Sudan. Last year, the Ethiopian prime minister was praised by the AU as an example of African leadership and empowerment. In turn, he demanded the union’s intervention in the mediation over Ethiopia’s dispute with Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). While Abiy accepted to meet with AU’s envoys, he made it clear that the Tigray crisis was a domestic issue. This approach undermined the AU’s peacemaking role by revealing that its efficacy is limited to small or failed states while it exerts very little influence over large African nations.

Finally, the message targets friends and foes in the Middle East, where all the regional powerhouses, especially in the Gulf, have stakes in the Horn of Africa. The United Arab Emirates has launched numerous investment projects in Ethiopia and opened a military base in Eritrea. The Tigray crisis represents a direct threat to its interests in the region and possibly provided a reason for alleged air support for the Ethiopian military operation, coupled with calls for mediation.

Cairo was also closely monitoring the operation in Tigray. With Ethiopia’s dam project threatening Egypt’s water security, Cairo has considered all options, including military ones, as was echoed by US President Donald Trump during a phone call with Abdalla Hamdok and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In addition, there were allegations suggesting Egyptian support for anti-government riots that swept Oromia in the summer. The Tigray crisis could have looked like another opportunity to weaken Addis Ababa as part of the complex chess game around the GERD. But by swiftly suppressing the TPLF insurgency, Abiy eliminated a potential back door for any external power to exert pressure over his government.

Although the TPLF has never posed a serious military threat to the federal army, the impact of the Tigray conflict on the future of Ethiopia is unquestionable. It laid bare the weaknesses of the country’s ethno-federal system and its propensity for crisis. At the same time, it convinced the prime minister to embrace a tougher approach to domestic challenges. The heavy hand used against the TPLF has delivered a powerful message aimed at consolidating the Amhara-Oromo partnership within the Prosperity Party and drew a red line for other opposition parties that may have considered defying Addis Ababa. Likewise, the military operation signaled to external actors that Ethiopia’s position in the region and beyond is not under discussion.

Whether this new approach to Ethiopian politics will suffice to keep the federation together is yet to be seen. But the Tigray crisis has shown that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed will no longer tolerate direct challenges to his leadership or to Ethiopia’s unity.

*[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ethiopia’s Heavy Hand in Tigray Sends a Message appeared first on Fair Observer.

Greenhouse gases produced as a result of anthropogenic activity such as the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes are being emitted at rates higher than at any point in the past 800,000 years. The resulting greenhouse effect is destabilizing the planet’s climate in hazardous ways. Extreme weather events are now more frequent and violent than ever. Heatwaves, droughts, blizzards, hail storms and floods are occurring with greater intensity, exacerbating poverty and forced migration. 2019 was the hottest year on record, with nearly 400 unprecedented instances of high temperatures reported in the northern hemisphere last summer alone.

Will Millennials and Zoomers Save the Future?

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Aside from the loss of biodiversity, the disappearance of small island nations and the proliferation of new diseases, climate change is currently responsible for the death of 150,000 people annually, and will expectedly produce 250,000 fatalities per year between 2030 and 2050. This is a wake-up call for societies, lured into complacency by technological advances, that our lifestyle and consumption patterns are not sustainable.

In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to professor Ashok Swain, UNESCO chair of International Water Cooperation at Sweden’s Uppsala University, about the human rights impacts of climate change, the ensuing conflicts over resources, and the interplay between global warming and poverty.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, nations “have an affirmative obligation to take effective measures” to mitigate the impacts of climate change on human rights. With political, economic and security concerns that are consuming resources, coupled with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, do you think enough is being done to address climate change and its human rights implications? If states have an “obligation” to combat climate change, how is it possible to make sure they are living up to those commitments?

Ashok Swain: Both climate change and COVID-19 are global crises and [are] interconnected. Degrading ecosystems, unsustainable lifestyles and declining natural resources have led to a pandemic like COVID-19. Thus, the world should not forget the threats of climate change while confronting the pandemic. Adding to these two serious crises, human rights are increasingly under threat, and civil and political rights of people are growingly compromised in a world that is witnessing a democratic decline. Climate change has multiplied the human rights crisis in a more unequal and undemocratic world by causing threats to human health and survival, food and water shortages, and weather-related disasters resulting in death and destruction of property. A healthy and robust environment is fundamental to the enjoyment of human rights.

The world has been committed for 72 years to the observation and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and these principles have been at the heart of international agreements. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap that exists between the international commitments on human rights and climate change, and the national policies adopted by the countries. Climate change and policy responses to meet its challenges will have a significant impact on the human rights of millions of people.

The world is also witnessing the climate justice movement in a big way. Only comprehensive and collaborative actions by the states in line with protecting human rights will make it possible for the planet to meet these unprecedented challenges. Countries must commit to ambitious climate mitigation targets to keep the global average temperature increase within a manageable limit. Countries providing climate mitigation assistance and those receiving the support must commit to protecting human rights.

They must incorporate human rights norms into their domestic legal frameworks. While countries need to take important steps toward fulfilling their obligations at home, they need to work cooperatively with other countries to combat climate change and ensure the protection of the human rights of people across the world.  

Ziabari: As reported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 60% of the world’s population depends on agriculture for survival, and 12% of the total available lands are used for cultivating crops. In what ways does climate change impinge on the development of economies that are centered around agriculture? 

Swain: Though the impact of climate change is very comprehensive, its effects on the agriculture sector are easy to notice. Changing rainfall patterns and rising average temperatures due to climate change affect agriculture and those who are dependent on it in a very big way. Floods, droughts, new pests and weed problems add more to their woes. Climate change brings food insecurity through its impacts on all aspects of global, regional, national and local food production and distribution systems. It severely affects the people who are already poor and vulnerable, and dependent on an agriculture-based economy, but the risk and vulnerability are gradually going to shift to other economies.

However, while most tropical, arid and semi-arid regions are likely to experience further agricultural production losses due to rising temperatures, food production in the temperate developed part of the world is expected to benefit in the short term from a warmer climate and longer growing seasons.

With climate change, increasing natural disasters, recurring droughts, salinity intrusion into water systems and massive floods are invariably affecting agricultural production and resulting in food shortages in developing countries. Increasing agricultural production for a growing population while facing climate change has become a major challenge for these agricultural economies as they already face serious shortages of freshwater supply and arable land. High concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reduces the number of nutrients such as zinc and iron in rice and wheat, and bring harmful effects on people in the countries whose diets are highly dependent on these crops.

The adverse effects of climate change on food security, health and economic wellbeing in the agriculture-dependent countries are undermining their ability to achieve their sustainable development goals in a big way. 

Ziabari: Small size, remoteness, insularity and susceptibility to natural disasters are some of the challenges faced by island nations. Last year, the Maldives’ environment minister warned that for small island nations, climate change is not only a threat, but its impacts are already being felt. What is at stake for the island nations as a result of global warming and extreme weather conditions? Do you agree that for these regions, climate change poses an existential threat?

Swain: If the present trend of greenhouse gas emission continues, the UN climate science panel warns against the possibility of sea-level rise up to 1.1 meters by 2100. The rise of the seawater level to this magnitude will not only inundate large areas in the highly populated low-lying countries but also can potentially submerge many small island states in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Way back in 1987, the then-president of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdool Gayoom, made an emotional appeal at the UN General Assembly that a sea-level rise of only one meter would threaten the life and survival of all his countrymen. More than three decades have passed, and the threat of several small island countries disappearing from the global map altogether looks more real than ever before.

While they are not underwater yet, these small island countries are already facing the impact of climate change in various ways. In these countries, most human settlement and economic activity take place in coastal areas. Climate change-induced coastal erosion has already brought significant changes in their human settlement patterns and socioeconomic conditions.

Coral reefs play a big role in the wellbeing of the small island countries by supplying sediments to island shores and restraining the impact of waves. Unprecedented coral bleaching due to increased water temperature and carbon dioxide concentration are adversely affecting the reef systems, which is critical for these small countries. Changing rainfall patterns, decreasing precipitation and increasing temperatures have also presented critical challenges for the freshwater supply on these islands and to their food security.

Frequent climate change-induced natural disasters like hurricanes and floods are also bringing devastation to their economy and infrastructure. And also, these severe weather-related events affecting their key tourism sectors. Climate change will affect every country in the world, but small island nations are most vulnerable to its impacts.

Ziabari: Is it accurate to say that climate change effects are disproportionately burdening the developing and low-income countries, and that nations in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia are making up for the shortcomings of the developed, industrialized world in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to achieve the goals set by the Paris Agreement?

Swain: Despite disagreement and debates, science is now unequivocal on the reality of climate change. Human activities contributing to greenhouse gases are recognized as its primary cause. It is a serious irony that people and countries that suffer most from climate change have done the least to cause it. The 52 poorest countries in the world contribute less than 1% of global carbon emissions.

The poor and the powerless have very little say in the actual climate negotiation process. Several disagreements had kept the countries of the world away from a global treaty. The primary contentions had been over how much and how fast countries were going to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and, upon reaching an agreement, who would monitor it. However, to address global climate change, 194 countries of the world have finally come to an agreement at the Paris Climate Conference on December 12, 2015. [To date, all of the world’s 197 nations have signed the accords, with the US set to rejoin the agreement after the Biden administration assumes office next year. — Fair Observer] In Paris, industrialized countries also promised to mobilize $100 billion to support carbon emission cuts and climate adaptation.

The Paris Agreement signals the turning point for the world on the path to a low-carbon economy — not only to cut the carbon emission but also to provide financial and technological support to poor developing countries for climate mitigation. However, the withdrawal of the USA from the Paris Agreement has been a serious setback, but, hopefully, it will return to it soon after the change of administration.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, in which only rich industrialized nations had climate mitigation targets, the Paris Agreement includes every country. Though the ratifying countries to the Paris Agreement enjoy the independence on how to lower their carbon emissions, it is binding on them to report their progress. It is true that developing and low-income countries are asked to do their part to mitigate climate change even if they had no role in contributing to climate change. However, the global fund [created] by rich industrialized countries is going to somewhat address this injustice by providing financial support to the most vulnerable countries and also helping them with clean environment technologies for climate change mitigation.

Ziabari: Water stress levels are high in parts of northern Africa, Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Indian subcontinent. How can the lengthy periods of drought and variability of water supply in these regions lead to conflicts and violent uprisings? Can we think of water as a determining factor in the political stability of nations in the 21^st century? 

Swain: The world is already experiencing a serious global water crisis. More than 40% of the global population is suffering from water scarcity and, by 2050, an additional 2.3 billion people from Asia, Africa and the Middle East are expected to live in serious water stress. Climate change is expected to seriously aggravate the water scarcity problem in these regions. Moreover, the increase of global surface temperature due to the greenhouse effect is expected to lead to more floods and droughts due to more intense, heavy precipitation. Not only floods and droughts are going to be frequent in the future, but even recent studies have also confirmed that climate change is already contributing to more intense precipitation extremes and the risk of floods.

As climate change brings changes to water supply and demand patterns, the existing arrangement of sharing water resources between and within countries in arid and semi-arid regions are likely to be more and more conflictual. There is no doubt that the projected impacts of global climate change on freshwater may be huge and dramatic, but they may not be at the same intensity and follow a similar periodic pattern in each region.

Climate change is also likely to cause extreme weather events, changing sea levels or melting glaciers that can generate serious threats to existing freshwater management infrastructure. It is easy to foresee that climate change will force comprehensive adjustments in the ongoing water management mechanisms as they need to have the flexibility to adjust to the uncertainties. The emerging unprecedented situation due to changes in climatic patterns requires countries and regions to cooperate and act collectively. There is no doubt that climate change poses extreme challenges to water sharing, and it has all the potential to create political instability and violent conflicts. Thus, climate change requires countries to have more flexible, hands-on politically smart management of their water resources.

Ziabari: Walk us through the interplay between climate change and poverty. Does the current pattern of the Earth getting warmer and extreme weather episodes unfurling more frequently have the potential to tip more people into hunger, unemployment and poverty? What do scientific forecasts say?

Swain: With sea-level rise, the world is also expected to witness serious storm surges in regular intervals as tropical cyclones will combine with higher sea levels. This is likely to enhance the risk of coastal high flooding, particularly in the tropics. Climate change also threatens to change the regular rainfall patterns, which can potentially lead to further intensive flooding, drought and soil erosion in tropical and arid regions of the world. Food production is going to be further affected due to extreme weather, unpredictable seasonal changes and wildfires. The Fourth National Climate Assessment Report of the US Global Change Research Program in 2018 warns that heatwaves, drought, wildfire and storms will increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity, bringing serious food insecurity and loss of farming jobs. 

Different countries and societies are responding to and will cope with climate change-induced food insecurity and economic decline differently. Existing cultural norms and social practices will play an important role in formulating their coping mechanisms. Some countries and societies are better at planning and implementing adaptation strategies to meet the hunger and unemployment challenges posed by climate change. The effectiveness and coping abilities of existing institutions of the countries also play a significant role.

No doubt that the adverse impact of climate change will be more severe on the people who are living in the poor and developing economies. Climate change will not only force more people back to poverty, but it can increase the possibility of more violent conflicts, particularly in societies and countries affected by poor governance, weak institutions and low social capital.

Ziabari: Since 2008, nearly 24 million people have been displaced annually on account of catastrophic weather events. One of the concerns scholars raise about these climate refugees is that they lack formal recognition, definition and protection under international law. What is the most viable way to help them?

Swain: Global warming leads to sea-level rise and that is taking away the living space and source of livelihood of millions of people. There are many estimates regarding the size of the climate-induced population migration the world is going to witness in the future. For the last two, three decades, several forecasts have been made, but there are no reliable estimates of climate change forced migration as the future forecasts vary from 25 million to 1 billion by 2050. Not only there is a lack of any agreement over the numbers on climate migration, there is also no clarity on how many of them will move beyond their national borders. But there is no doubt that climate change will displace a large number of people and will force them to move to other countries in search of survival.

However, climate or environment-forced migration is not included in the definition of a refugee as established under international law, which are the most widely used instruments providing the basis for granting asylum to persons in need of protection. International refugee agencies in the past have not been able to save the lives of many environmentally displaced people in the south due to the absence of their mandate.

In this context, the recent ruling of the Supreme Court of New Zealand is quite significant. Though the court recognized the genuineness of a Kiribati man’s contention of being displaced from his homeland due to sea-level rise, it could not grant him refugee status, reasoning that he wouldn’t face prosecution if he would return home. So, there is a need for the definitional fiat of “refugee” to be expanded to address the increasing challenge of climate-forced population displacement and possible international migration.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Change Will Impact the Human Rights of Millions appeared first on Fair Observer.

Thanks to the journal’s diligent research, its readers can discover pertinent statistical information about evolving situations. For example, it can step up, as it is doing today, to offer its readers an assessment of the never-ending debt crisis in Africa, a continent that happens to have the highest levels of poverty while possessing the world’s richest concentration of natural resources.

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In a brief article with the title “How to stop Zambia from turning into Zimbabwe,” The Economist summarizes the dire situation of the continent: “Because of covid-19, sub-Saharan Africa’s economy is expected to shrink by 3% this year, equivalent to 5.3% per person. The IMF reckons that six African countries are struggling to pay back loans and another 11 are thought to be at ‘high risk of debt distress.’”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Debt distress:

The essential principle that drives capitalism by creating a permanent barrier between, on the one hand, those who control the financial system and exploit the existing networks of power and, on the other, those who simply possess the resources that fuel the financial system, serving to consolidate the control of its masters over the both the system and the resources.

Contextual Note

Around the time of the Gilded Age in late 19^th-century America, vaudeville inaugurated a tradition of melodrama that turns around the trope of the villainous, mustachioed landlord who seeks to take advantage of a young lady whose family is struggling financially. Entering stage left, the villain bursts into the home and intones the fearful words: “You must pay the rent.” It’s a situation the audience immediately understands. This caricature functions as an archetype of economic and moral relations in a world defined by ownership and debt.

The Economist’s take on Zambia has no time for melodrama. It focuses on a purely political situation and avoids mentioning, let alone analyzing, the general political and historical context that explains how the Zambian or any other African economy is structured. All we need to know appears in the statistics cited and the description of the political personalities deemed responsible. And yet a glimmer of reality sometimes seeps through the cracks of this brief article. The essence of the moral lesson the journal wants us to take away appears in this sentence: “Economic growth has tumbled to 1.4% in 2019 owing in no small part to his government’s habit of scaring off investors by seizing mines and detaining mining bosses.” 

This fact sits alongside various observations about President Edgar Lungu’s despotic tendencies, which include arresting opposition leaders, muzzling the press and last-minute ballot-stuffing in an election he won by only a few thousand votes. In other words, Lungu has all the obvious traits of a political villain, but definitely not of the kind that bursts on stage to demand the rent.

Like nearly every other African country in the 21^st century, with the notable exception of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, Zambia understands that the obligation to service the debt is the equivalent of paying the rent. Before his demise at the hands of the French and American forces, Gaddafi had been preparing a hard African currency that he hoped might “free the continent from economic bondage under the dollar, the IMF and the French African franc, shaking off the last heavy chains of colonial exploitation.”

It took an invasion in 2011 and the provocation of a civil war that is still raging in Libya today to eliminate the threat to the West’s global control of African economies. Lungu is no Gaddafi. He has no vision for the African continent, no resources comparable to Libya’s oil reserves and no stockpile of gold that would allow him to change the course of things even in his own country. And yet he has dared to tell his creditors to hold fire and even sent the International Monetary Fund (IMF) packing.

The late David Graeber, an unconventional anthropologist who claimed the label of anarchist, has done more than anyone in recent years to change the modern perspective on debt. Whether his insight drawn from his analysis of the history of debt over the past 5,000 years will one day have an impact on our reigning economic system is an open question. One of Graeber’s key ideas is that the creative use of debt correlates very closely with the notion of trust.

The economist Michael Hudson, in his book “…and forgive them their debts,” noted that “the long sweep of history shows a universal principle to be at work: The burden of debt tends to exceed the ability of debtors to pay.” He notes that “today’s popular ideology blames debtors” while ignoring that debt stems “from economic strains that compel them to run up debts simply to survive.” The book reminds the reader that early civilization had a method for sanitizing the economy by systematically forgiving debt.

In the era of COVID-19, tens of millions of individuals find themselves in a situation similar to Zambia’s, heavily indebted with no prospect of emerging from it apart from acquiring more debt. One proposed solution that is now being taken seriously is universal basic income. Could the same solution be applied to African countries, allowing them to retain autonomy over the exploitation of their own resources?

Historical Note

The Economist published an article in May of this year with the title “Zambia was already a case study in how not to run an economy.” It recaps Zambia’s recent history leading up to the current situation. In it, we learn that “Zambia is arguably the developing country facing the biggest debt crisis in the era of covid-19.” The article reveals why The Economist feels it can justifiably blame Lungu and no one else for Zambia’s current problems. It is worth quoting their recap in full:

“Before his party, the Patriotic Front (PF), took power in 2011, Zambia’s economy was doing rather well. Over the previous two decades, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) had unpicked the one-party socialism of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president. Copper mines, which generate 75 per cent of the country’s exports, were privatised before the commodity boom of the 2000s. After Zambia was forgiven some loans, its debt as a share of GDP fell from 104 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent a year later. Economic growth averaged 7.4 per cent a year from 2001 to 2010.”

In other words, it is the classic story of a postcolonial nation tempted in the first phase of independence to nationalize its most valuable resources before waking up to realize that the powerful actors in today’s global economy are better equipped to exploit the wealth than Africans themselves. This leads to the “enlightened” decision by a new generation of politicians, encouraged — if not pressured — by the IMF to privatize the resources. The enlightened politicians are always duly rewarded for their pain.

Few will contest that Lungu’s economic competency is rudimentary at best and that his policies have produced largely negative results, compounded of course by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Economist nevertheless credits him with being “politically shrewd,” which, in the journal’s language means capable of finding ways to hold on to power while showing contempt for economic reality. But Lungu represents an attempt, however inept, at opposing the logic that has been imposed on all African nations for decades.

Reporting on the latest failure of Zambia to meet a deadline with an overdue Eurobond coupon, Al Jazeera signals that the significance of Zambia’s predicament extends far beyond the turpitudes of a local despot and reflects a general problem across the African continent: “With a number of African countries struggling with unsustainable debt, Zambia is being closely watched as a test case for how borrowers and creditors might navigate a broader debt crisis.” The Economist is calling those creditors to act. It even reminds us of a simple fact: “They wield a big stick.” As most Africans will admit, “Indeed they do.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Zambia Is The Economist’s Damsel in Distress appeared first on Fair Observer.

A UN report released earlier this year described some of the violence as potential crimes against humanity. The international community has promised itself to never turn a blind eye to violence and suffering of such scale. And yet when it comes to the DRC, the world is increasingly tuning out. This needs to change.  

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Just weeks away from the end of the year, some 74% of the funding the UN needs for its humanitarian response in the DRC is still not available. Donors are pulling back. UN officials are disengaging despite increasing political instability. The government has failed to demilitarize and unify a fractured landscape in which hundreds of armed groups operate. Criticism around the failures of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), the world’s largest and longest-running peacekeeping operation, has only increased a sense of hopelessness.

The rising violence comes amidst decades of armed conflict, hunger, political corruption, health crises, climate-induced disasters and long-term development challenges. The DRC is the biggest humanitarian crisis in Africa and is home to the largest number of internally displaced people on the continent. Some 15.6 million people need humanitarian assistance, while 5 million people total are displaced within the country’s borders. The DRC’s crises are overlapping and exacerbating one another. Food insecurity and a lack of development contribute to violence, which makes it more difficult for aid and development actors to operate in areas where people are in desperate need.

Response operations to medical crises like malaria, Ebola, measles, cholera and the plague are now complicated by donors who want to divert funds to the COVID-19 response, with big donor countries like the UK considering cutting their overseas aid budgets. To make matters worse, a recent aid scandal saw nearly $6 million in aid lost because of corrupt aid workers, businesses and community leaders.

The situation is particularly dire for displaced Congolese women and girls living in crowded and insecure conditions. The threat of sexual violence is all too common. In Ituri, armed groups have attacked and raped women and girls during raids on villages. In one incident alone, some 140 women were reportedly raped.

We cannot turn our backs on the enormity of this suffering. Disengagement risks an even further downward spiral. While humanitarian and peacekeeping operations have failed in the past, tuning out now is not the answer. There are tangible ways to make progress. The international community must reengage first and foremost by providing greater funding to the humanitarian response. This includes bolstering funds for the UN humanitarian appeal and the Ebola response as well as raising additional COVID-19 funding that does not take away from existing allocations for clinics and medical programs.

Those involved in the humanitarian response should also push for additional accountability and transparency measures to avoid future aid scandals and to restore confidence in the humanitarian system. The UN and other agencies have already taken positive steps, including internal and operational reviews alongside establishing an anti-fraud task force. But the aid landscape is still far from unified in the DRC, and gaps remain when it comes to coordination and collaboration, making it difficult to ensure that fraud and waste do not continue.

Finally, development actors need to find their footing in the DRC’s humanitarian landscape. Many challenges here are perennial, and development actors have a long history in the country. However, they still operate relatively separately from humanitarian efforts, and thus the gap between emergency relief to longer-term recovery is still wide. Given that displacement is protracted, food insecurity ongoing, climate-related crises are long-term and political instability will take years to overcome, this needs to change. Humanitarian assistance should remain a top priority for international funders, but development actors need to have greater say and ownership earlier on — even now, as the crisis continues to unfold.

The situation is getting worse in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The world has seen this happen before. This time the international community, as fatigued as it might be, needs to lean in and reengage.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post We Can’t Turn Our Back on the DRC appeared first on Fair Observer.

This strategic imperative has always been confronted with the hostility of nearly all the states of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden basin. Only Ethiopia and Eritrea have maintained relations with the Jewish state in the past decades, though with some setbacks.

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Now, even relations with Israel might see a significant change in the Horn of Africa. The Abraham Accords, signed in September by Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to normalize bilateral relations with Israel, have caused a diplomatic earthquake in the Middle East and beyond. On the one hand, the treaty turned Abu Dhabi into a broker facilitating dialogue between its regional partners and Israel. On the other, the accords showed the friends and foes of the United States that there is a file rouge between their ties with Washington and their relationship with Tel Aviv.

The Abraham Accords were undoubtedly part of an effort of the US administration to garner a foreign policy success ahead of the November presidential elections. Yet this policy might stay in place longer, even with a Democrat at the White House. The Horn of Africa mirrors the Middle East in many aspects, and the recognition of Israel might be yet another one.

Perspective Allies in the Horn

On October 23, US President Donald Trump made a double announcement about Sudan. He first revealed Khartoum’s intention to normalize ties with Israel. Then he removed Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for the payment of compensation for two terrorist attacks against American embassies in which the regime of erstwhile Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir was involved. The recognition of Israel clearly came down as an additional request for the delisting of Sudan — an indispensable, long-awaited measure that will allow international aid to flow into the country and help Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok to address the deepest economic crisis in decades.

But the issue of normalization with Israel is a highly contentious one for Sudan. The two countries have a conflicting history. The Jewish state has financed and trained South Sudanese guerrilla groups in the past, while the Arab country has long served as an operational base to ship weapons and aid to Hamas in Gaza. Not surprisingly, the announcement of the normalization sparked protests in Khartoum and led the Islamist National Umma Party to declare its withdrawal from the government coalition. Against this backdrop, the agreement does not seem under immediate threat since the levers of power ultimately remain in the hands of General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagolo and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who chair the Sovereign Council. The two generals benefitted from the UAE’s and Saudi Arabia’s military and financial support, with Abu Dhabi especially keen to see Sudan build stronger relations with its new ally, Israel.

Eritrea is another country set to move closer to Tel Aviv. Eritreans received crucial military assistance from Israel during the liberation war against Ethiopia. After obtaining independence in 1991 after 30 years of conflict, Asmara went beyond establishing diplomatic relations and reportedly offered Israel a concession to open a military base on the island of Daklah, strategically located in the Red Sea. However, Eritrea’s growing isolation in the mid-2000s pushed President Isaias Afwerki more into Iran’s sphere of influence and, subsequently, on a collision course with Israel. The Asmara-Tehran alignment then became a key strategic concern for Saudi Arabia and the UAE since Iran allegedly used Eritrean soil as a logistics base to smuggle weapons to the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

This concern prompted the Saudi and Emirati engagement in Eritrea, with Asmara ultimately realigning with the two Gulf states as signaled by the port concessions offered to the Emirati DP World and Eritrea’s membership in the Saudi-sponsored Council of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Now, with mediation by Abu Dhabi, even relations with Israel might be back on the table if President Afwerki decides to soften his country’s international isolation through a rapprochement with the United States.

The third actor on the list might be Somaliland. The Somali breakaway republic, which emerged from the collapse of the state back in 1991, is probably holding talks with Tel Aviv, as the chief of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, Eli Cohen, suggested in a recent interview. Here again, the UAE seems to play a crucial role. Somaliland has become a strong Emirati partner in recent years because of its strategic location looking out to the Gulf of Aden and southern Yemen. The alliance between Abu Dhabi and Hargeisa took shape around the concession of the port of Berbera to DP World and the construction of an Emirati airbase nearby.

Inching Closer

The UAE is very well positioned to bring Somaliland and Israel closer. Besides gaining a useful security partner in the fight against al-Shabaab, Hargeisa might see a rapprochement with the Jewish state as valuable political capital to sell to Washington in exchange for advancement in the process of recognition of its independence from Mogadishu. But Somaliland is not the only Somali state to enjoy strong ties with the UAE. Puntland in the north and Jubaland in the south are ruled by state governments similarly aligned to Abu Dhabi that could also require Israeli assistance against terrorism or even the Somali federal government in the future.

Last but not least, there is Ethiopia. Addis Ababa and Tel Aviv resumed bilateral diplomacy in 1989, when the Derg military regime was toppled in Ethiopia. After years of clement relations, in September 2019, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took a successful visit to Israel. On that occasion, he signed a joint declaration with Benjamin Netanyahu that underlined their intention to foster cooperation, particularly in terms of bilateral trade, as well as military, economic and technological assistance. In this specific situation, it might be Israel that pulls the brakes on cooperation in order to avoid any steps that might antagonize Egypt, currently at loggerheads with Addis Ababa over the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project on the Blue Nile.

Finally, the two remaining states in the Horn of Africa, Somalia and Djibouti, do not seem willing to reproach Israel. The reason for that can be found in the relations that these countries enjoy with Turkey and Qatar as well as in the lack of incentives from the United States to move in that direction.

Given Israel’s new posture in the Middle East and Africa, more states might be willing to open to Israel — or be pressed to do so — in order to improve their relations with the US and the UAE. Yet the Palestinian issue is still a contentious topic in the vast majority of the Muslim and the post-colonial world. This makes bilateral relations with Israel a divisive issue, both in domestic and regional politics. At the domestic level, recognition of Israel is often perceived as a betrayal of the Palestinian people, especially in those countries where the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist movements are active, such as Sudan.

At the regional level, the Turkey-Qatar axis firmly opposes any opening to Israel and has deep political, economic and security ties with many state and non-state actors across the Horn of Africa. Consequently, any agreement with Israel is likely to fuel internal dissent and entrench regional polarization at the same time. While new bilateral relations are always good news for the international system, normalization with Israel should be handled more carefully than other rapprochements.

*[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Israel’s Comeback in the Horn of Africa appeared first on Fair Observer.

East Africa Faces a Cascade of Crises

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A better life with work and dignity appeared possible. Ahmed had been a surprise candidate from the party of the largest ethnic group, the Oromo, which had never headed the government. He wanted to break with the rigid developmental state concept of the previous government, which had been dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Abiy’s guiding principles of democracy, privatization and love appeared outlandish. His peace settlement with neighboring Eritrea was a breakthrough that won him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Escalating Power Struggle

Today the borders between Eritrea and Ethiopia are firmly closed again. Hundreds of Ethiopians have died in ethnic pogroms in recent months. The killing of a prominent Oromo singer, Hachalu Hundessa, sparked weeks of protests, leading the government to block the internet for months and detain thousands of opposition supporters. The youth, whose protests propelled Abiy to power, have turned against him, their hopes dashed.

The tinder ignited in early November, when fighting broke out between the TPLF and the federal armed forces in the northern state of Tigray. Internet and telephone connections were cut and flights suspended. The federal government imposed a state of emergency on the region, declared the TPLF a terrorist organization and appointed a parallel government for the TPLF-run state. Federal armed forces were deployed to the state border from other parts of the country and from neighboring Somalia. Both sides now claim to have the situation under control: Prime Minister Abiy reports successful strikes on TPLF air defenses while the TPLF claims to be militarily unscathed.

The escalation began after Abiy indefinitely postponed the first free national elections, which had been scheduled for August, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. A few months earlier, he had dissolved the previous ruling party and founded the Prosperity Party. One effect of these moves was to reduce the political influence of the TPLF and enhance the position of previously neglected states like Somali and Afar.

The TPLF responded by questioning the government’s legitimacy — it regards Abiy as an opponent of ethnic federalism. In early September, the TPLF gained an absolute majority in elections to Tigray’s state parliament, which were deemed illegal by the federal government. After the TPLF’s long and harsh rule, many Ethiopians still bear resentment against it, and mass support for the group is therefore unlikely.

This hardening of fronts reflects the weakness of Abiy’s government, which has failed to rein in ethnonationalist divisions and prevent ethnic pogroms. The prime minister had assumed that the completion of the gigantic Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile would generate enthusiasm and support across the entire population and function as a national unification project. That hope appears to have been dashed.

A situation where conflict continues to escalate in Tigray and the country spirals into civil war could spell the end for Abiy’s transition. He risks losing the army’s loyalty and his control over parts of the country. A defeated TPLF could turn into an armed opposition, within or outside the country’s borders. There is also a risk that Eritrea’s president, Isayas Afewerki, will sense an opportunity to expand his country’s regional role again by intervening on Ethiopia’s side. This would weaken Ethiopia and render it more dependent.

A Ceasefire Will Not Be Enough

Internal collapse would have repercussions for Ethiopia itself — as the region’s most populous country – and for the entire Horn of Africa. A regional war would endanger the fragile transition in Sudan, while national fragmentation would directly impact the talks on a Nile dam agreement and the African Union Mission in Somalia, in which Ethiopia plays a decisive role.

The first step toward conflict resolution would be for the TPLF and the federal government to recognize each other as legitimate actors. Talks could then be conducted by the region’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development under Sudanese leadership. The African Union, Europe, the UN and other partners should agree on a shared line on de-escalation. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as the mediators of the Ethiopian-Eritrean peace agreement, could also play an important role as guarantors.

But a ceasefire can only be the start. Dissatisfaction is growing in all of Ethiopia’s regions, separatist tendencies are proliferating, and the system of ethnic federalism is on the verge of violent collapse. If these dangers are to be avoided, it is vital that the security forces prevent ethnic pogroms. And if he is to retain popular backing, Prime Minister Abiy must guarantee due process for political detainees. Finally, if any hope of a new start, democratic change and devolution of power is to survive, a comprehensive national dialogue will be vital.

*[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is Ethiopia on the Brink of Civil War? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Americans are not alone. In Belarus and Bolivia, Poland and Thailand, Chile and Nigeria, people are pushing back against autocrats and coups and police violence. Indeed, 2020 may well go down in history alongside 1989 and 1968 as a pinnacle of people power.

Some pundits, however, remain skeptical that people power can turn the authoritarian tide that has swept Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi into office. “People power, which democratized countries from South Korea and Poland in the 1980s to Georgia and Ukraine in the 2000s and Tunisia in 2010, has been on a losing streak,” writes Jackson Diehl this week in The Washington Post. “That’s true even though mass protests proliferated in countries around the world last year and have continued in a few places during 2020 despite the pandemic.”

Diehl can point to a number of cases to prove his point. Despite massive popular resistance, many autocrats haven’t budged. Vladimir Putin remains in charge in Russia, despite several waves of protest. Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to have only consolidated his power in Turkey. And who expected Bashar al-Assad to still be in power in Syria after the Arab Spring, a punishing civil war and widespread international condemnation?

Could COVID-19 Bring Down Autocrats?

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Even where protests have been successful, for instance most recently in Mali, it was the military, not democrats, who took over from a corrupt and unpopular leader. Rather than slink out of their palaces or send in the tanks for a final stand by, autocrats have deployed more sophisticated strategies to counter popular protests. They’re more likely to wait out the storm. They use less overtly violent means or deploy their violence in more targeted ways to suppress civil society. Also, they’ve been able to count on friends in high places, notably Donald Trump, who wishes that he could rule forever.

Pundits tend to overstate the power of the status quo. Autocrats may have the full panoply of state power at their disposal, but they also tend to dismiss challenges to their authority until it’s too late. As Americans await the verdict on Trump’s presidency, they can take heart that the tide may be turning for people power all over the world.

Overturning Coups: Bolivia and Thailand

One year ago, Bolivia held an election that the Organization of American States (OAS) called into question. The apparent winner was Evo Morales, who had led the small South American nation for nearly 14 years. The OAS, however, identified tampering in at least 38,000 ballots. Morales won by 35,000 votes. Pressured by the Bolivian military, Morales stepped down and then fled the country. A right-wing government took over and set about suppressing Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) party. It looked, for all the world, like a coup.

The OAS report set into motion this chain of events. Subsequent analysis, however, demonstrated that the OAS judgment was flawed and that there were no statistical anomalies in the vote. Granted, there were other problems with the election, but they could have been investigated without calling into question the entire enterprise.

It’s also true that Morales himself possesses an autocratic streak. He held a referendum to overturn the presidential term limit and then ignored the result to run again. He came under criticism from environmentalists, feminists, and his former supporters. But Morales was a shrewd leader whose policies raised the standard of living for the country’s poorest inhabitants, particularly those from indigenous communities.

These policies have enduring popularity in the country. With Morales out of the political equation, Bolivians made their preferences clear in an election earlier this month. Luis Arce, the new leader of MAS, received 55% of the vote in a seven-way race, a sufficient margin to avoid a run-off. The leader of last year’s protest movement against Morales received a mere 14%. MAS also captured majorities in both houses of congress. An extraordinary 88% of Bolivian voters participated in the election. The victory of MAS is a reminder that the obituaries for Latin America’s “pink tide” have been a tad premature.

The Bolivians are not the only ones intent on overturning the results of a coup. In Thailand, crowds of protesters have taken to the streets to protest what The Atlantic calls the “world’s last military dictatorship.” In the past, Thailand has been nearly torn apart by a battle between the red shirts (populists) and the yellow shirts (royalists). This time around, students and leftists from the reds have united with some middle-class yellows against a common enemy: the military. Even members of the police have been seen flashing the three-finger salute of the protesters, which they’ve borrowed from “The Hunger Games.”

The protesters want the junta’s figurehead, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, to step down. They want to revise the military-crafted constitution. And they want reforms in the monarchy that stands behind the political leadership. Anger at the royals has been rising since the new king took over in 2016, particularly since he spends much of his time with his entourage in a hotel in Bavaria.

It’s not easy to outmaneuver the Thai military. The country has had more coups in the modern era than any other country: 13 successful ones and nine that have failed. But this is the first time in a long time that the country seems unified in its opposition to the powers that be.

Finally, the prospects for democracy in Mali received a recent boost as the military junta that took over in August orchestrated a transition to more or less civilian rule over the last month. The new government includes the former foreign minister, Moctar Ouane, as prime minister and several positions for the Tuaregs, who’d previously tilted toward separatism. Military men still occupy some key positions in the new government, but West African governments were sufficiently satisfied with this progress to lift the economic sanctions imposed after the coup. National elections are to take place in 18 months.

Standing Up the Autocrats: Belarus and Poland 

Protesters in Belarus want Alexander Lukashenko to leave office. Lukashenko refuses to go, so the protesters are refusing to go as well. Mass protests have continued on the streets of Minsk and other Belarusian cities ever since Lukashenko declared himself the winner of the presidential election in August. The last European dictator has done his best to suppress the resistance. The authorities detained at least 20,000 people and beat many of those in custody.

This Sunday, nearly three months after the election, 100,000 again showed up in Minsk to give punch to an ultimatum issued by exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya: Lukashenko either steps down or will face a nationwide work stoppage. Lukashenko didn’t step down. So, people walked out. The strikes began on Monday, with workers refusing to show up at enterprises and students boycotting classes. Shops closed down, their owners creating human chains in Minsk. Even retirees joined in.

Notably, the protest movement in Belarus is directed by women. Slawomir Sierakowski describes one telling incident in The New York Review of Books:

“After receiving reports of an illegal assembly, a riot squad is dispatched to disperse it. But when they get there, it turns out to comprise three elderly ladies sitting on a bench, each holding piece of paper: the first sheet is white, the second red, the third white again — the colors of the pro-democracy movement’s flag. Sheepishly, these masked commandos with no identification numbers herd the women into a car and carry them off to jail.

How many sweet old ladies can a regime lock up without looking ridiculous?” 

Women are rising up in neighboring Poland as well, fed up the overtly patriarchal leadership of the ruling Law and Justice Party. The right-wing government has recently made abortion near-to-impossible in the country, and protesters have taken to the streets. In fact, they’ve been blockading city centers.

It’s not just women. Farmers and miners have also joined the protests. As one miner’s union put it, “a state that assumes the role of ultimate arbiter of people’s consciences is heading in the direction of a totalitarian state.”

Strengthening the Rule of Law: Chile and Nigeria

Chile has been a democracy for three decades. But it has still abided by a constitution written during the Pinochet dictatorship. That, finally, will change, thanks to a protest movement sparked by a subway fare increase. Beginning last year, students led the demonstrations against that latest austerity measure from the government. Resistance took its toll: Around 36 people have died at the hands of the militarized police. But protests continued despite COVID-19.

What started as anger over a few pesos has culminated in more profound political change. This week, Chileans went to the polls in a referendum on the constitution, with 78% voting in favor of a new constitution. In April, another election will determine the delegates for the constitutional convention. In 2022, Chileans will approve or reject the new constitution.

The protests were motivated by the economic inequality of Chilean society. A new constitution could potentially facilitate greater government involvement in the economy. But that kind of shift away from the neoliberal strictures of the Pinochet era will require accompanying institutional reforms throughout the Chilean system. A new generation of Chileans who have seen their actions on the streets translate into constitutional change will be empowered to stay engaged to make those changes happen.

In Nigeria, meanwhile, the recent protests have focused on an epidemic of police killings. But the protests have led to more violence, with the police responsible for a dozen killings in Lagos last week, which only generated more protest and more violence. Activists throughout Africa — in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and elsewhere — have been inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement to challenge police brutality in their own countries. Accountable governments, transparent institutions, respect for the rule of law: These are all democratic preconditions. Without them, the elections that outsiders focus on as the litmus test of democracy are considerably less meaningful.

The Future of People Power

People power has caught governments by surprise in the past. That surprise factor has largely disappeared. Lukashenko knows what a color revolution looks like and how best to head it off. The government in Poland contains some veterans of the Solidarity movement, and they know from the inside how to deal with street protests. The Thai military has played the coup card enough times to know how to avert a popular takeover at the last moment.

But in this cat-and-mouse world, people power is evolving as well. New technologies provide new powers of persuasion and organizing. Greater connectivity provides greater real-time scrutiny of government actions. Threats like climate change provide new urgency. Sure, authoritarians can wait out the storm. But the people can do the same.

Here in the United States, periodic demonstrations have done little to push the Trump administration toward needed reforms. Nor have they led to his removal from office. Trump delights in ignoring and disparaging his critics. He rarely listens even to his advisers. But the four years are up on Tuesday. The American people will have a chance to speak. And this time the whole world is listening and watching. Judging from the president’s approval ratings overseas, they too are dreaming of regime change.

*[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Counterweight to Authoritarianism, People Power Is on the Rise appeared first on Fair Observer.

Israel-UAE Deal: Arab States Are Tired of Waiting on Palestine

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The agreement hardly portends the economic, trade and security benefits that will follow from Israel’s earlier agreements with the United Arab Emirates or even Bahrain. Sudan’s economy is on the ropes, suffering from a brittle political climate, rampant corruption, punishing sanctions imposed by the US since 1993 as a state sponsor of terrorism (SST) and the concomitant economic isolation, the sharp fall in oil revenues following South Sudan’s independence, and continuing internal instability. Israel stands little to gain other than one more embassy in an Arab nation.

Normalization Amidst a Transition

Sudan, on the other hand, could potentially benefit longer term from Israel’s vaunted economy and the resulting technology transfer and investment. But the latter depends on the very action that the accord could jeopardize. Sudan is engaged in an existential transition. Its former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, was overthrown in April last year following five months of massive and violent popular demonstrations throughout the country, especially in the capital Khartoum. Among his many crimes, al-Bashir had allowed al-Qaida to set up operations in Sudan in the 1990s and had ordered a genocide in the Darfur region in the early 2000s.

Al-Bashir’s successor was also removed as Sudanese opposition groups united to assert their growing power and demands for democratic reforms in the country. But merely removing two autocrats wasn’t sufficient, and the opposition has been locked in negotiations with entrenched interests among the security and intelligence services and the armed forces over the country’s political future.

A transitional government, led by technocratic Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, is now engaged in a herculean effort to shed Sudan’s international pariah status, reintegrate the country into the international community, activate a moribund economy and establish the foundations for a durable democracy. To complicate his task, Hamdok faces resistance from the recalcitrant, self-interested class of al-Bashir leftovers in the armed forces and security and intelligence services. In addition, he must also now contend with dissent within the democratic opposition. Key members of this fragile coalition of opposition groups backing democracy have already announced their opposition to normalization.

So, Sudan’s future hangs in the balance. Mixing the Israel normalization agreement into this steaming political cauldron is hardly likely to quell things. For one, there has been no public dialog about normalization after more than a half-century of estrangement from and antipathy toward the Jewish state. With national elections still two years away, Hamdok rightly understood that as interim prime minister he had no mandate to proceed with normalization and told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as much earlier this month. He likely recalled the similarly rushed Israel-Lebanon peace agreement in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War in 1983, subsequently revoked by the Lebanese parliament after less than a year. (The Israelis may also be thinking the same thing.)

However, Trump and Pompeo had Hamdok and the interim government over a barrel. Sudan’s efforts to return to the international economic fold hinged on the US lifting its sanctions on Sudan. The government had already agreed to pay $335 million in reparations to the victims and families of the Dar es Salaam and Nairobi embassy bombings, which had been the principal condition for lifting the sanctions. Pompeo already had the authority to lift the onerous SST restrictions.

Desperate Need of Votes

Donald Trump’s flagging political fortunes intervened. He calculated that notching a third Arab country on his Israel normalization belt would burnish his foreign policy credentials in the election. He even tried to win Benjamin Netanyahu’s endorsement in a phone call, asking the Israeli prime minister if he thought “Sleepy Joe,” a disparaging reference to his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, could have negotiated such a deal. The supremely wily Israeli politician demurred, however, merely expressing Israel’s appreciation for all of America’s efforts on behalf of Israel. Israelis watch American polls, too.

In an act of what only can be seen as desperation in the face of trailing numbers in US national presidential polls, Donald Trump bragged to Netanyahu of a diplomatic achievement in negotiating — let’s call it by its real name, strong-arming — a weak and struggling nation into accepting a normalization deal with Israel. In an even more obvious sign of Trump’s fear of becoming a one-term president, he pressured a country he likely had in mind in his infamous declaration on “shithole countries” in January 2018.

Sudan isn’t good enough for Trump’s America, but it will do as Israel’s newest diplomatic partner. That Trump did not grasp this irony only underscores his gross ineptitude and neophyte status in foreign policy. The real tragedy, however, is that the Sudanese people’s heroic struggle for democracy, already pursued at great sacrifice, is further freighted. Regardless of how the Sudanese may feel about their nation’s new ties to Israel, the enemies of their freedom and democracy will surely use this as a political cudgel to thwart Prime Minister Hamdok and the allied groups. Normalization with Israel could have waited. Democracy cannot.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Amid Normalization With Israel, Sudan’s Future Hangs in the Balance appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Russian Pathology Deepens at The NY Times

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The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week on the major accomplishment of the protesters in an article with this title, “Nigerian Protesters Shut Down Africa’s Largest City, Escalating Standoff With Government.” The subtitle reads, “Authorities vow to restore order as demonstrations grow across Nigeria.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Restore order:

What all governments attempt to do in times of revolt, with the aim of returning to the status quo of untenable, organized disorder that reigned before the revolt

Contextual Note

Though the drama has intensified in the course of this week and the outcome is still uncertain, the Nigerian government has already begun to deploy massive force in its effort to end the protests. Despite official denial, it is now clearly established that government security forces fired on the demonstrators on Tuesday evening in a continuous barrage that lasted between 15 and 30 minutes. They reportedly removed the security cameras from the scene and turned off the streetlights shortly before the shooting began. By Wednesday evening, Amnesty International had reported the killing of 12 protesters.

The government did make a gesture to meet the protesters‘ demands when President Muhammadu Buhari proclaimed that the government would dissolve the specific police unit — known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) — blamed for excessive use of force and acts of depraved brutality. To prove their sincerity, on Sunday, the authorities, as reported by Al Jazeera, “ordered all personnel to report to the police headquarters in the capital, Abuja, for debriefing and psychological and medical examination.” But that promise of disbanding and replacing SARS had been made several times in the past and each time the same pattern of behavior and the same culture of violence returned.

The protesters are now demanding more than superficial reorganization of the police. They want to see concrete acts of justice for victims, including compensation for their families, the creation of an independent body for oversight of the police and “psychological evaluation and retraining of all disbanded SARS officers before they can be redeployed.” Having reflected on the root of the problem, they have also wisely asked for “an increase in police salary so they are adequately compensated for protecting the lives and property of the citizens.”

Whenever a government speaks of restoring order, the order they are referring to is an expectation of docile acceptance of the system of governance they represent. At least some of the protesters appear to understand that order is not the result of calm acceptance, but of systemic coherence combined with consistency about the mission of the police focused on protecting citizens rather than the government and the established order.

Where the government takes “order” to mean little more than a stable structure of power, in which the powerful have the means to fend off various forms of disturbance, the protesters seem to understand that the very idea of order implies systemic coherence. Any stable, functioning system relies on being able to identify, respect and manage complex dynamic principles.

Any reliable mechanical system, such as the rotors of a helicopter, must include a series of mechanisms designed to respond to and compensate automatically for excessive force or tension. Human organizations, from nations and cities to small enterprises, must elaborate behavioral systems that permit enough flexibility to self-organize when states of disequilibrium threaten. They will include hierarchies and laws but also a culture of interaction that involves shared understanding and common reflexes. For anthropologists, that is largely what the idea of culture represents.

The conflict in Nigeria — but the same could be said of the US today — is one between two conceptions of “order.” The first, that of the government, is an order that is imposed. The second, that of the protesters, is an order that is built on principles allowing for self-organization. To some extent, the tension between the two sums up many, if not most, of the dramas affecting democracy in the world today.

Historical Note

Al Jazeera quotes entertainer and entrepreneur Sidney Esiri, who sums up the logic of the events that have taken place over the past few weeks. “We the people, we are committed to peacefully protesting and exercising our rights as citizens to demonstrate for our cause,” he said, “but some arms of government, of different people, have found ways to disrupt this peaceful process and turn it into something violent so that they have the excuse to bring in the military, which is what they did yesterday.”

This reading of the situation was confirmed by Anietie Ewang, a Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Nigerian authorities turned a peaceful protest against police brutality into a shooting spree, showing the ugly depths they are willing to go to suppress the voices of citizens,” she stated. The UN appears to agree: “United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an end to what he called ‘brutality’ by police in Nigeria.”

The prospect for some reasonable, peaceful reestablishment of order seems remote. Femi Adesina, the Nigerian presidential spokesman, appealed “for understanding and calm across the nation, as the implementation of the reform gathers pace at federal and state levels.” But the protesters see that as the old trick of gaining time as the old order falls back into place. The public debate has become a question of time management — in this case, managing historical time. Esiri, better than anyone else in the leaderless movement, articulated the core question when he said to Al Jazeera that the “situation in Nigeria had gone to the point, where you have to look at it and say, ‘if not now, then when?’”

Nigeria has a rapidly growing population that is expected to overtake the US to become the world’s third-populous country in the world by 2050. It is also one of Africa’s richest nations because of its oil reserves, but it hosts one of the highest levels of poverty in the world. “More than 55% of Nigerians are underemployed or unemployed and youth unemployment is even higher, according to official statistics,” cited by The Wall Street Journal.

Whether consciously or not, the protesters against police brutality were inspired by this year’s demonstrations in the US. They may also have been inspired by the visible, albeit inconclusive cultural effects, of the US protests. At least for a short period, they enhanced the status of the Black Lives Matter movement, suddenly embraced by the corporate world and revealed some of the untenable chaos at the heart of a political class that is no longer capable of governing the nation in a stable or coherent way.

These are two powder kegs, dissimilar in so many respects, but both representative of the deep contradictions of this historical moment. No one can guess how things will develop in the coming months in either Nigeria or the US. It has become unthinkable, just in terms of probability, that either nation, however the politics plays out, will manage to achieve what their establishments hope, which is to restore at least a semblance of the old order. History is taking a chaotic and violent turn. In which direction, nobody knows.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Nigeria’s Chaos Is the World’s Chaos appeared first on Fair Observer.

The company signed a partnership deal in late 2016 with Kosmos Energy to acquire what it described as “a significant working interest, including operatorship, of Kosmos’ exploration blocks in Mauritania and Senegal.” BP’s working interest in Mauritania amounts to 62%, with Kosmos holding 28% and the Mauritanian Society of Hydrocarbons and Mining Heritage the remaining 10%.

Guyana’s Bright Future Is Under Threat

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BP says it is committed to sustainable development and promised a variety of programs to train Mauritanians, create jobs, contract local companies and build third-party spending with those companies. It has made further commitments to health and education projects, social development, capability building and livelihood and economic development.

Basket of Worries

But with the gas market depressed by a combination of COVID-19 and unusually warm winters in Europe, the bright hopes for Tortue Ahmeyim are already starting to fade. The initial goal of a staggered launch in three phases in 2020 to bring the field to full capacity by 2025 has been shelved. Phase one is now pushed back to the first half of 2023, with the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) quoting Kosmos CEO Andy Inglis in May as saying that a final investment decision on phases two and three will not now be considered “until post-2023 when we’ve got Phase 1 onstream.” The goal of reaching full capacity is pushed back toward the end of the decade.

What may be more unsettling for the government of President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani was BP’s announcement in the summer that it will slash oil and gas output by 40% over the next decade. That was followed by the 14 September release of the company’s Energy Outlook 2020 that presented scenarios where peak oil demand had already passed or would pass by the middle of the decade. It is important to note that, presenting the Outlook, BP’s chief economist, Spencer Dale, underlined that “The role of the Energy Outlook is not to predict or forecast how the ‎energy system is likely to change over time. We can’t predict the future; all the scenarios ‎discussed in this year’s Outlook will be wrong.” That may be cold comfort to President Ould Ghazouani.

The hard fact is that early ebullience about the potential of the Tortue Ahmeyim project by its consortium backers has now been replaced with an abundance of caution and with brakes strongly applied. So much so that James Cockayne, of MEES, opined: “The likelihood of these developments ever seeing the light of day, at least under BP’s stewardship, needs to be considered anew in the light of the latest far-reaching strategy shift from the UK major.” His gloomy conclusion was that “Mauritania’s hopes of gas riches appear to be hanging by a thread.”

The president has another issue weighing heavy in his basket of worries, and that is the question of normalization with Israel. Commentators have anticipated that Mauritania would join the UAE and Bahrain in recognizing Israel, especially as Tel Aviv and Nouakchott had diplomatic relations from 1999 to 2009. In 2009, Mauritania froze relations in protest at Israeli attacks on Gaza.

The UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince and de facto ruler, has been the driving force in Arab normalization with Israel. With Ould Ghazouani in attendance in Abu Dhabi, in February bin Zayed announced $2 billion in aid. For a country with a GDP that the World Bank estimated in 2018 stood at just over $5 billion, that sort of largesse buys a lot of influence.

Normalization Bandwagon

But the president is well aware of the strong sentiment within the country for the Palestinian cause. Tewassoul, the opposition Islamist party, was instrumental in 2009 in bringing protesters onto the streets of the capital demanding an end to diplomatic links with the Israelis. The party also backed the candidacy of Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar in last year’s presidential election. Ould Boubacar took 18 % of the vote, while another candidate and leader of the anti-slavery movement, Biran Dah Abeid, scored a similar percentage. Ould Ghazouani won with 52%, with the opposition denouncing the election as rigged.

Although Mauritania officially outlawed slavery in 1981, the practice continues, with approximately 90,000 out of a population of 4.6 million enslaved. That situation caused US President Donald Trump’s administration to revoke Mauritania’s preferred trade status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Justifying his decision, Trump cited the fact that “Mauritania has made insufficient progress toward combating forced labor, specifically, the scourge of hereditary slavery.”

It may be that if he wins reelection, Trump will revisit that decision and offer to drop the revocation as a carrot to bring Mauritania onto the normalization bandwagon. That would, of course, do nothing to hasten the end of slavery. As Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes in its World Report 2020, the Mauritanian government is doing precious little itself: “According to the 2019 US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, Mauritania investigated four cases, prosecuted one alleged trafficker, but did not convict any.” HRW also detailed numerous human rights abuses, the stifling of free speech and the harassment and arrest of opposition politicians and activists, including the anti-slavery movement leader and presidential candidate Biran Dah Abeid.

There is no doubt that the promise of economic gain that Tortue Ahmeyim represents could go some way toward steering Mauritania onto a modernizing path. Though the 2019 presidential election was challenged by the opposition, it did represent the first peaceful transition in the country’s long history of military coups after gaining independence from France in 1960. That, coupled with the windfall the gas field could bring, is a step in the right direction. But if the Tortue Ahmeyim project falters, so too will Mauritania’s chances for a better future.

*[This article was originally published by Arab Digest.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Mauritania’s Fading Promise and Uncertain Future appeared first on Fair Observer.

In a characteristically transactional manner, President Donald Trump and those around him, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and adviser Jared Kushner, are reportedly making a quid pro quo deal with Khartoum. The US State Department will remove Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) list in exchange for Khartoum normalizing relations with the Jewish state. Nonetheless, this is a cynical and misguided way for the Trump administration to approach Sudan as it disregards the significant ways in which Sudan has changed its policies, both domestically and internationally. Ultimately, it would serve US national interests to immediately remove Sudan from this list regardless of Khartoum’s stances on Israel and the API.

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Since Sudan’s former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir fell from power in the spring of 2019, the country’s democratic experiment has faced myriad challenges. From COVID-19 to human rights abuses committed by the Sudanese military and major economic problems, Sudan has been dealing with many difficult issues amid the post-Bashir period. Today, there is no denying that the popular and non-violent revolution which ended Sudan’s three-decades-long dictatorship is fragile. International support for Khartoum is necessary for Sudan’s democratic struggle to succeed.

Yet this is not forthcoming, due to a lack of focus in US foreign policy that has resulted in insufficient attention being paid to the specific policy drivers that must be implemented if Washington can hope to engage constructively with Sudan’s democratic process. It would behoove officials in Washington to adopt policies that result in the US helping, rather than hindering, Sudan’s difficult transition to democracy and civilian rule.

Struggle for Democracy

After Bashir’s ouster in a palace coup in April 2019, Sudan’s revolutionaries, millions of whom spent months on the streets pressuring the dictator to step down, continued protesting in favor of civilian leadership. In contrast to the many Egyptians who supported the military-backed coup in Egypt that toppled their country’s president, Mohammed Morsi, in July 2013, Sudan’s wider public knew not to blindly trust the country’s military to defend a democratic revolution. By June 3, 2019, hardline elements tied to the Bashir regime, including militants from the notorious Janjaweed militia, massacred Sudanese protesters in the capital, resulting in roughly 120 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Yet about two months after that atrocity, Sudan’s military and civilian revolutionaries agreed to a political compromise that came up with a government that is led by civilians but also maintains significant military representation.

Since August 2019, a sovereign council consisting of six civilian and five military officials has been governing Sudan. Additionally, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok heads a technocratic cabinet comprised of civilians. Sudan plans to run free and democratic elections in 2022, with the interim period of time supposed to give Sudanese civil society an opportunity to regrow after being harshly oppressed under Bashir’s rule. During the present period, there has been a restoration of the freedoms of assembly, press and speech. But the democratic transition was agreed upon in the pre-COVID-19 era and at a time when impacts of the pandemic on public health, the economy and society could not possibly have been foreseen.

For Sudan’s government, the gravest risk is that it will lose its legitimacy among more Sudanese citizens if the country’s economic situation remains bleak. Youth unemployment stands around 40% and could widen societal divisions if left unaddressed or if tackled in ways that exacerbate and widen existing fault-lines and inequalities. Long lines for petrol as well as staple foods are common in Sudan, where the country’s annual inflation rate reached 167% in September. The global coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown have only exacerbated the country’s economic problems and made it more urgent that actions be taken as soon as possible to support the political transition underway in Sudan rather than wait until 2022, by which time the impact of economic and social dislocation generated by the current crisis might be too late to effect a positive democratic outcome.

Harm of US Sanctions

“The single biggest obstacle to Sudan’s economic recovery is the continued U.S. economic sanctions, which … not only impacts trade with and investment from the United States, but from other countries and multilateral entities as well,” explained renowned American Middle East scholar, Dr. Stephen Zunes. Other experts such as the Atlantic Council’s Cameron Hudson agree that Sudan’s long-term economic progress depends on Washington removing its sanctions on Khartoum. Imposed by the US in 1993 when Washington labeled Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism, these sanctions were aimed at punishing Bashir’s government for its links to Osama bin Laden and other global terrorists, plus the regime’s sponsorship of armed Palestinian and Arab groups like Hamas, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Fatah-Revolutionary Council, Hezbollah, Jamaat al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Yet today, Sudan’s post-Bashir government is not sponsoring any Salafi-jihadi terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS). In fact, even Bashir’s government was not doing so during its final years in power. In its 2015 country report on terrorism, the US State Department stated that Washington and Khartoum “worked cooperatively in countering the threat posed by al-Qa’ida and ISIL.”

Thus, Washington’s current policy vis-à-vis Sudan suffers from being stuck in a previous era in which leaders, institutions and both regional and global circumstances were fundamentally different and in no way reflect the considerable changes in Sudanese politics over the past year and more. Hudson described the continued designation of Sudan as a state sponsor terrorism as representing to many “an anachronism and a symbol of Washington’s own lethargy in updating its policy toward Khartoum.” In sum, problems which the US had with Bashir’s regime decades ago should not be “effectively punishing [the Sudanese] further for having overthrown [the Bashir] dictatorship,” as Zunes argues.

Last year, Prime Minister Hamdok spoke before the UN General Assembly and addressed Washington’s outdated policies in relation to Sudan: “The Sudanese people have never sponsored, nor were supportive of terrorism. On the contrary, those were the acts of the former regime which has been continuously resisted by the Sudanese people until its final ouster. These sanctions have played havoc on our people, causing them untold misery of all types and forms.” There is a risk that the longer these sanctions remain in place, the more the US becomes vulnerable to narratives that portray bureaucratic inertia in responding to changing circumstances as something more sinister, ascribing to Washington malign policy motivations that damage America’s standing and public diplomacy interests.

A major concern is that Sudan’s economic situation and COVID-19 crisis could jeopardize the country’s transition to democracy. If the period of time between now and the planned 2022 elections is defined by economic crises and resultant social and political unrest, other actors including the military or conservative Islamists tied to the Muslim Brotherhood may find themselves best positioned to take power. The Sudanese public, so energized by the revolutionary success of 2019, may quickly become disillusioned if it perceives its struggle to have been in vain or to have been betrayed. The experience of disillusioned activists in Tunisia and Egypt has shown how some may be drawn toward radicalization if they feel there is no realistic alternative to an authoritarian status quo.

Policy Recommendations

In order to best secure the hopes for a future Sudan led by inclusive, secular, moderate and democratic civilians, the US government should end all its sanctions on Khartoum and establish fully normalized diplomatic relations with Sudan. Thus, given the urgency of helping Sudan preserve its hard-fought-for democratic gains since 2019 and US interests in seeing a smooth transition occur in the country, below are four key policy recommendations.

First, Washington should remove Sudan’s designation on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Sudan’s inclusion on the SST list not only bars the US from economically assisting Sudan but mandates that Washington prevent the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions from giving Sudan loans or other forms of assistance. As coronavirus spreads across Sudan, the authorities have had a more difficult time coping with the pandemic because the World Bank came under US pressure in April 2020 to exclude Sudan from a list of developing countries that received help from a $1.9-million emergency fund. Furthermore, the designation requires US citizens to obtain the Treasury Department’s approval prior to engaging in any financial transaction with these Sudanese government. So long as Sudan is on the SST list, it will be difficult to imagine the impoverished country receiving sufficient levels of investment and trade in order to develop and prosper in the future.

Second, the US should lift all other remaining sanctions on Khartoum and encourage multinational institutions to help Sudan, especially amid the global COVID-19 crisis. Because Omar al-Bashir ascended to power in an Islamist-driven military coup in 1989, and the military that took power in the 2019 palace coup did not come to power as a result of a democratic election, there remain prohibitions under Section 7008 of the State Department Foreign Operations funding. In practice, this prevents the US from providing much assistance to any country where the “military has overthrown, or played a decisive role in overthrowing, the government.”

Yet the US should not wait to pull these prohibitions until after the 2022 elections, which is what Washington currently plans to do. Darfur-related sanctions are also still enforced, which as Hudson argues “will continue to have a dampening effect on outside investment until durable peace and credible accountability mechanisms have been implemented.” These sanctions deter banks and other financial institutions around the world from taking the risks that currently come with Sudan-related opportunities. Thus, lifting these sanctions could help boost Sudan’s foreign investment climate.

Third, Washington should reverse its decision, made in February 2020, to end migrant visas from Sudan. This move basically brings all immigration from Sudan to a complete halt, and it will continue to do so even in the post-COVID-19 period if not addressed. As experts such as the Chatham House’s Matthew T. Page have explained, Trump’s domestic political agenda of taking hard stances on immigration issues amid his reelection campaign was largely behind this policy decision, which targeted Sudan and three other African countries. In the process, however, the US loses influence in these developing nations that see the American door slamming on them as only further reason to invest in even deeper ties with China and Russia.

Finally, the US should stand with Sudan’s government in solidarity against COVID-19. While the US should first end sanctions on Sudan, which would help combat the spread of coronavirus in the country and among its neighbors, Washington should also give Khartoum aid to help the Sudanese authorities deal with the pandemic within their own borders. As other states worldwide have practiced “coronavirus diplomacy” to boost their humanitarian credentials, this demonstration of American soft power could secure some goodwill from the Sudanese public following decades of negative relations between Washington and Khartoum.

Key Interests

Ultimately, there is no good reason for the US to be working to undermine Sudan’s democratic experiment, even if that is not the intent but rather the unfortunate byproduct of a bureaucracy that is slow to respond, giving the impression of stasis. Perceptions often play a key role in shaping emerging realities, and for the Sudanese, who feel that their actions in ousting a dictator are deserving of American support, there may not be an open-ended window before expectation turns to disillusionment.

Moreover, there are key American interests that can be advanced through a US-Sudan rapprochement that follows an unwinding of Washington’s sanctions on Khartoum. In terms of competition among global powers, Washington has long-term foreign policy interests in establishing a positive relationship with post-Bashir Sudan. Washington’s sanctions on Sudan, as well as outright American hostility against the country — most exemplified by the Clinton administration’s decision to bomb a factory in Khartoum in 1998 — have only pushed the country closer to China, Russia, and at previous junctures Iran too.

Although Sudan is not a high-ranking issue of interest to the diplomatic establishment in Washington nor to the US public, the American and Sudanese people alike could stand to gain in many ways if their governments reconcile and work toward a more cooperative relationship following a rapprochement. As a farmland-rich country situated along the Red Sea at the intersection of the Arab and African worlds, Sudan represents an important part of the conflict-prone Horn of Africa. In this volatile part of Africa, many powers — China, Israel, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Arab Emirates, etc. — are scrambling to consolidate their clout, and the US certainly has its own interests in the immediate and broader neighborhood.

While the focus on countering terrorism and violent extremism has, to an extent, taken center stage in the US, measures taken now that support the political transition to democracy and strengthen Sudan’s economy can have a significant impact in bolstering Sudanese resilience to potential shocks such as COVID-19 that, if mishandled, could undermine much of the progress made on the security and stability fronts.

Yet beyond such strategic interests shaped by Sudan’s geopolitical position in the wider African, Arab and Islamic regions, the US would in an ideational sense be living up to its professed values if Washington adopted new policies that are aimed at supporting the Sudanese people in their struggle for democracy following 30 years of brutal dictatorial rule. Ultimately, the US is sending the wrong message when it emphasizes the importance of human rights but turns its back on Sudan’s non-violent, democratic revolutionaries while engaging openly with highly authoritarian states around Sudan such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

From a soft power and public diplomacy perspective, too, greater support for Sudan would be a significant tool for the US to project as the world retreats into a great power rivalry synonymous with the Cold War in the 20^th century, not least because the African continent has emerged as one of the frontlines for such perceived geopolitical competition with China.

*[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The US Must Support Sudan’s Path to Democracy appeared first on Fair Observer.

Compounding these challenges, African governments are encountering a major debt crunch. Over the past 15 years, African countries have been building new infrastructure projects, from roads to football stadiums, and collectively taking on $417 billion in debt from lenders like the World Bank, the Chinese government and private investors. The pandemic has also drawn attention to the amount African governments pay in servicing these loans, where countries like Ghana spend five times on annual debt payments as on health care.

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As Africa struggles to provide crucial medical services and build the necessary infrastructure, it is clear that African countries will need a new approach to collectively recover from the pandemic and address the mounting debt crisis.

Calls for Debt Relief

In response to the effects of COVID-19, African finance ministers have called for a $100-billion relief package, including $44 billion in delayed debt payments over the next two years. African countries that are unable to make debt payments risk having their credit ratings downgraded, which would limit their financing capabilities for future economic growth initiatives. Countries that default on these loans may also face nightmarish predatory vulture funds or a repeat of the 1980s debt crisis.

To alleviate immediate concerns surrounding debt repayment, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the G20 and other multilateral institutions froze debt payments through the end of 2020 to help African governments respond to the pandemic. They are now discussing additional measures, including involving more private lenders. There is a global dialogue about redistributing IMF special drawing rights for additional resources, while questions remain how China — Africa’s largest bilateral creditor — will manage its remaining African debt, with broad debt forgiveness looking unlikely.

While these measures will each have some effect, any meaningful approach to debt relief in Africa must help countries survive today while building a foundation for future economic recovery. Therefore, investing in infrastructure and creating jobs in the short term is crucial to Africa’s economic recovery and advancement.

Infrastructure is widely viewed as a critical element for development and economic growth in Africa. Bureaucratic hurdles, lack of investment and perceived risk, however, remain key barriers to obtaining the estimated $130 to $170 billion of infrastructure funding the continent requires. Infrastructure construction in Africa is currently critical because it would expedite provision of basic services and regional trade, both necessary for alleviating economic pain from the global recession. 

For example, improving regional road networks would allow countries to trade food more regionally rather than facing current shortages from reduced food imports. In addition, building power-generating facilities would increase access to electricity and the internet for students learning from home during the pandemic, power health centers and facilitate future investments.

Increasing physical infrastructure across Africa would also advance implementation of the long-awaited African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which policy leaders consider an important mechanism for the continent’s economic recovery and resiliency to future shocks. Whenever the AfCFTA comes into force, having more regional infrastructure in place will only accelerate its ability to boost regional income by 7% (or $450 billion) by 2035, despite COVID-19. The faster Africa’s economies can recover and grow, the sooner countries can alleviate debt and address citizens’ needs.

How Do We Get There?

Africa requires a “New Deal” approach to debt relief and economic recovery, a mechanism to provide jobs and infrastructure that helps African economies recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression. In the 1930s, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) on the heels of the Great Depression. The WPA alone put 8.2 million people to work and built 78,000 bridges, 800 airports and over 650,000 miles of paved roads across the United States in less than eight years.

As Roosevelt’s New Deal focused on much-needed job creation, a similar plan could be adopted in Africa. Although not a silver bullet to the continent’s high unemployment rates, jobs generated by regional infrastructure projects could reduce the number of people living in extreme poverty and provide skills training needed for future work, another oft-cited barrier to investment. Perhaps most importantly, creating more jobs in Africa during a generational recession could save lives and livelihoods.

The underlying principles of the New Deal could be applied in Africa in several ways, but creating a short-term pan-African fund for infrastructure projects could be most effective. Leaders could set up the fund as a special purpose vehicle or a designated initiative within an existing pan-African organization such as the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa or the African Development Bank.

Like the New Deal’s WPA, this infrastructure fund could have a defined lifespan (five to seven years) and include appropriate financial oversight for donors like the United States, the European Union and private sector partners. The WPA was dissolved after the completion of its mandate, and adopting a similar approach for this initiative could focus efforts on critical projects, after which African leaders could choose how to address remaining infrastructure needs.

This fund should allow leaders to identify and implement infrastructure projects with the highest potential for economic recovery and regional development. Having a central entity with authority to coordinate infrastructure projects among African member states could significantly fast-track execution and reduce bureaucratic red tape that often hinders infrastructure projects. A wealth of information about African infrastructure needs and opportunities already exists to facilitate project selection.

Infrastructure in Africa has long been viewed as a national issue that individual countries must address rather than a regional challenge that requires broad international collaboration. Through a New Deal approach that incorporates collective infrastructure investment into global debt relief efforts, international partners have an opportunity to help Africa weather unprecedented challenges today and build a foundation for an accelerated economic recovery that can be sustained well into the future.

*[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Africa Needs Its Own “New Deal” appeared first on Fair Observer.

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Now, the competition between China and India is moving to Africa, and to East Africa in particular. Since 2000, the continent has witnessed China’s deep and ubiquitous penetration through trade, investments, infrastructures, energy, budget support and security cooperation. In 2008, New Delhi showed a newfound interest in Africa.

Despite China’s head start, India is trying to catch up to counter Beijing’s predominance over the continent. East Africa is the region where the two Asian powerhouses share vital interests and where their competition will likely play out more seriously.

India’s Africa Policy

India–Africa relations are rooted in history. The Indian Ocean constituted a channel of trade and population exchange for centuries. Consequently, East Africa has always enjoyed close ties with India, and around 3 million people of Indian descent live between the Horn and South Africa. After independence from British rule in 1947, India was politically active in Africa as a champion of decolonization and South-South cooperation. The period that followed saw India–Africa relations phase out until New Delhi brought the continent back into the picture from the mid-2000s.

In economic terms, trade augmented eightfold between 2001 and 2017, making India Africa’s third-largest trading partner with a total exchange worth $62.6 billion. While Chinese trade with the continent largely outnumbers it, India has kept up the pace and investments grew alongside trade, jumping to $54 billion in 2016.

As a fast-growing manufacturing power, India places strategic relevance to raw materials for the stability of its supply chain and energy sector. Indeed, New Delhi’s exchange with Africa, like Beijing’s, is driven by natural resources — with oil and gas accounting for approximately two-thirds of the total — followed by gold and other ores.

Political ties have also strengthened over the years. In 2008, the first India–Africa Forum Summit was launched in New Delhi and took place again in 2011 and 2015, with 41 African heads of state attending; the next conference was scheduled in September 2020. These summits allowed African leaders, on the one hand, to set out their cooperation priorities and India, on the other, to respond accordingly. As a result, India–Africa cooperation pivoted around capacity building, technology transfer and infrastructural investments. Lastly, India has sought support on UN reform, which would be unrealistic without the votes of African countries in the General Assembly.

Security issues have been on the agenda as well. New Delhi is particularly active in the realm of anti-piracy. After the kidnapping of several Indian citizens by Somali pirates, the Indian navy stepped up its efforts after 2008 and escorted over 1,000 vessels across the Gulf of Aden, sometimes in cooperation with the European Union’s Mission Atalanta.

Another domain that saw India at the forefront is UN peacekeeping missions. The Indian subcontinent has always been one of the leading suppliers of peacekeepers to UN missions, with 80% of them deployed in Africa. On top of that, Indian defense academies have provided training to the Nigerian, Ethiopian and Tanzanian military.

Modi and the Challenge to China

Modi has given further impetus to India–Africa relations. In July 2018, he outlined the 10 guiding principles of India’s engagement with Africa during a visit to Rwanda and Uganda. On that occasion, the prime minister leveraged India’s role in South-South cooperation to advance his credentials as leader of the developing world. Besides rhetoric, Modi moved from words to action by signing a defense agreement with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and by extending two credit lines worth nearly $200 million to the Ugandan government. He also announced the opening of 18 new diplomatic missions in Africa by 2021, bringing the total to 47.

The prime minister has placed a keen eye on East Africa, which is set to become the epicenter of the India–China confrontation. The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are essential maritime routes for India’s export-oriented economy. China is heavily investing along these two waterways through the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), especially in the port of Djibouti and the Suez Canal.

Djibouti is indeed becoming yet another element of the Chinese maritime network in the Indian Ocean, along with Pakistan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. This network, the so-called “String of Pearls,” geographically surrounds India and is perceived as a strategic nightmare in New Delhi. Therefore, the Chinese expansion in the western Indian Ocean urges India to intervene.

To counter the BRI in the Indian Ocean, New Delhi launched a similar initiative for East Africa: the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC). Conceived in 2016 and still at an early stage, this Indo-Japanese project will attract investments on development, quality infrastructure, institutional connectivity, capacity building and people-to-people cooperation to the region. Due to its anti-Chinese nature, the AAGC primarily targets contested countries like Djibouti and Ethiopia.

In 2017, Indian President Ram Nath Kovind clustered both countries for his first official visit. At the time, Ethiopia was already the largest beneficiary of India’s scholarship scheme and lines of credit for Africa with $1.1 billion, besides being the scene of the 2011 India-Africa Forum Summit. Djibouti was a relatively new target for New Delhi. In the year of the visit, China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti. Consequently, Kovind not only signed some cooperation agreements, but he also reportedly expressed India’s interest in a military base on Djiboutian soil, a project still under discussion.

The geopolitical confrontation between India and China looms on the horizon. Africa — particularly the east — is set to become an arena of such a global, momentous challenge. India has economic, energetic and security reasons to deepen its relations with the continent. Furthermore, China’s ubiquitous presence in Africa and the Indian Ocean is a direct menace to Modi’s global ambitions. Although China is still out of reach, New Delhi’s engagement has been steadily expanding in all fields, and its approach based on soft power looks promising. The concepts of building Africa’s capacities and unleashing its potential, along with the employment of African workers instead of foreign labor like China, have resonated across the continent.

On the one hand, East Africa is under India’s radar more than any other region of the continent for its strategic position. On the other, East African governments have a long track record of balancing off the influence of external actors. East Africa is also the region where India can rely on a robust diaspora community. Hence, India presents itself as a useful ally to balance China’s growing influence in the region.

Finally, yet importantly, the US and the European powers might prefer New Delhi’s penetration into the continent at the detriment of China’s, which is perceived as a growing geopolitical threat to the West. East Africa, in sum, might soon become the new battleground of the economic and security confrontation between the two Asian giants.

*[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can the India-China Confrontation Play Out in East Africa? appeared first on Fair Observer.

It was a golden opportunity to close borders, suppress civil society and issue decrees left and right (mostly right). Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and others took advantage of the crisis to advance their me-first agendas and consolidate power. Best of all, they could count on the fear of infection to keep protestors off the streets.

However, as the global death toll approaches a million and autocrats face heightened criticism of their COVID responses, the pandemic is looking less and less like a gift.

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The news from Mali, Belarus and the Philippines should put the fear of regime change in the hearts of autocrats from Washington to Moscow. Despite all the recent signs that democracy is on the wane, people are voting with their feet by massing on the streets to make their voices heard, particularly in places where voting with their hands has not been honored.

The pandemic is not the only factor behind growing public disaffection for these strongmen. But for men whose chief selling point is strong leadership, the failure to contain a microscopic virus is pretty damning.

Yet, as the case of Belarus demonstrates, dictators do not give up power easily. And even when they do, as in Mali, it’s often military power, not people power, that fills the vacuum. Meanwhile, all eyes are fixed on what will happen in the US. Will American citizens take inspiration from the people of Belarus and Mali to remove their own elected autocrat?

People Power in Mali

Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won the presidential election in Mali in 2013 in a landslide with 78% of the vote. One of his chief selling points was a promise of  “zero tolerance” for corruption. Easier said than done. The country was notoriously corrupt, and Keita had been in the thick of it during his tenure as prime minister in the 1990s. His return to power was also marked by corruption — a $40-million presidential jet, overpriced military imports, a son with expensive tastes — none of which goes over well in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Mali is not only poor, it’s conflict-prone. It has been subject to military coups at roughly 20-year intervals (1968, 1991, 2012). Several Islamist groups and a group of Tuareg separatists have battled the central government — and occasionally each other — over control of the country. French forces intervened at one point to suppress the Islamists, and France has been one of the strongest backers of Keita.

Mali held parliamentary elections in the spring, the first since 2013 after numerous delays. The turnout was low, due to coronavirus fears and sporadic violence as well as the sheer number of people displaced by conflict. Radical Islamists kidnapped the main opposition leader, Soumaila Cisse, three days before the first round. After the second round, Keita’s party, Rally for Mali, claimed a parliamentary majority, but only thanks to the constitutional court, which overturned the results for 31 seats and shifted the advantage to the ruling party.

This court decision sparked the initial protests. The main protest group, Movement of June 5 — Rally of Patriotic Force, eventually called for Keita’s resignation, the dissolution of parliament and new elections. In July, government security forces tried to suppress the growing protests, killing more than a dozen people. International mediators were unable to resolve the stand-off. When Keita tried to pack the constitutional court with a new set of friends, protesters returned to the street.

On August 18, the military detained Keita and that night he stepped down. The coup was led by Assimi Goita, who’d worked closely with the US military on counterinsurgency campaigns. Instead of acceding to demands for early elections, however, the new ruling junta says that Malians won’t go to the polls before 2023.

The people of Mali showed tremendous courage to stand up to their autocrat. Unfortunately, given the history of coups and various insurgencies, the military has gotten used to playing a dominant role in the country. The US and France are also partly to blame for lavishing money, arms and training on the army on behalf of their “war on terrorism” rather than rebuilding Mali’s economy and strengthening its political infrastructure.

Mali is a potent reminder that one alternative to autocrats is a military junta with little interest in democracy.

Democracy in Action in Belarus

Alexander Lukashenko is the longest-serving leader in Europe. He’s been the president of Belarus since 1994, having risen to power like Keita on an anti-corruption platform. He’s never before faced much of a political challenge in the country’s tightly-controlled elections.

Until these last elections. In the August 9 elections, Lukashenko was seeking his sixth term in office. He expected smooth sailing since, after all, he’d jailed the country’s most prominent dissidents, he presided over loyal security forces, and he controlled the media.

But he didn’t control Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The wife of jailed oppositionist Sergei Tikhanovsky managed to unite the opposition prior to the election and brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets for campaign rallies.

Nevertheless, Lukashenko declared victory in the election with 80% of the vote (even though he enjoyed, depending on which poll you consult, either a 33% or a 3% approval rating). Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania. And that seemed to be that.

Except that the citizens of Belarus are not accepting the results of the election. As many as 200,000 people rallied in Minsk on August 23 to demand that Lukashenko step down. In US terms, that would be as if 6 million Americans gathered in Washington to demand Trump’s resignation. So far, Lukashenko is ignoring the crowd’s demand. He has tried to send a signal of defiance by arriving at the presidential palace in a flak jacket and carrying an automatic weapon. More recently, he has resorted to quiet detentions and vague promises of reform.

Just like the Republicans in the US who appeared as speakers at the Democratic National Convention, key people are abandoning Lukashenko’s side. The workers at the Minsk Tractor Factory are on an anti-Lukashenko strike, and many other workers at state-controlled enterprises have walked off the job. Police are quitting. The ambassador to Slovakia resigned. The state theaters have turned against the autocrat for the first time in 26 years.

Despite COVID-19, Belarus doesn’t have any prohibitions against mass gatherings. That’s because Lukashenko has been a prominent COVID-19 denialist, refusing to shut down the country or adopt any significant medical precautions. His recommendations: take a sauna and drink vodka. Like Boris Johnson in the UK and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Lukashenko subsequently contracted the disease, though he claims that he was asymptomatic. The country has around 70,000 infections and about 650 deaths, but the numbers have started to rise again in recent days.

There are plenty of oppositionists ready to usher in democratic elections once Lukashenko is out of the way. A new coordinating council launched this month includes former Culture Minister Pavel Latushko as well as prominent dissidents like Olga Kovalkova and Maria Kolesnikova.

Even strong backing from Russia won’t help Lukashenko if the whole country turns against him. But beware the autocrat who can still count on support from a state apparatus and a militant minority.

The End of Duterte? 

Nothing Rodrigo Duterte could do seemed to diminish his popularity in the Philippines. He insulted people left and right. He launched a war on drugs that left 27,000 alleged drug dealers dead from extrajudicial murders. Another 250 human rights defenders have also been killed.

Still, his approval ratings remained high, near 70% as recently as May. But Duterte’s failure to deal with the coronavirus and the resulting economic dislocation may finally unseat him, if not from office then at least from the political imagination of Filipinos.

The Philippines now has around 210,000 infections and 3,300 deaths. Compared to the US or Brazil, that might not sound like much. But surrounding the Philippines are countries that have dealt much more successfully with the pandemic: Thailand (58 deaths), Vietnam (30 deaths), Taiwan (7 deaths). Meanwhile, because of a strict lockdown that didn’t effectively contain the virus, the economy has crashed, and the country has entered its first recession in 29 years.

Like Trump, Duterte has blamed everyone but himself for the country’s failings, even unleashing a recent tirade against medical professionals. But Duterte’s insult politics is no longer working. As Walden Bello, a sociologist and a former member of the Philippines parliament, observes at Foreign Policy In Focus, “The hundreds of thousands blinded by his gangster charisma in the last 4 years have had the scales fall from their eyes and are now asking themselves how they could possibly have fallen in love with a person whose only skill was mass murder.”

In the Philippines, presidents serve one six-year term, and Duterte is four years into his. He may well attempt to hold on for two more years. He might even pull a Vladimir Putin and change the constitution so that he can run again. A group of Duterte supporters recently held a press conference to call for a “revolutionary government” and a new constitution. Another possibility, in the wake of recent bombings in southern Philippines, might be a declaration of martial law to fight Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to the Islamic State group.

But the combination of the pandemic, the economic crash and a pro-China foreign policy may turn the population against Duterte so dramatically that he might view resignation as the only way out.

Democracy in the Balance

Plenty of autocrats still look pretty comfortable in their positions. Putin — or forces loyal to him — just engineered the poisoning of one of his chief rivals, Alexei Navalny. Xi Jinping has just about turned Chinese politics into a one-man show. Viktor Orban has consolidated his grip on power in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suppressed or co-opted the opposition parties in Turkey, and Bashar al-Assad has seemingly weathered the civil war in Syria.

Even Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, despite an atrocious record on both the pandemic and the economy, has somehow managed to regain some popularity, with his approval rating nudging above his disapproval rating recently for the first time since April.

The US presidential elections might tip the balance one way or the other. Although America still represents a democratic ideal for some around the world, that’s not the reason why the November elections matter. Donald Trump has so undermined democratic norms and institutions that democrats around the world are aghast that he hasn’t had to pay a political price. He escaped impeachment. His party still stands behind him. Plenty of his associates have gone to jail, but he has not (yet) been taken down by the courts.

That leaves the court of public opinion. If voters return President Trump to office for a second term, it sends a strong signal that there are no penalties for ruining a democracy. Trump operates according to his own Pottery Barn rule: He broke a democracy and he believes that he now owns it. If voters agree, it will gladden the hearts of ruling autocrats and authoritarians-to-be all over the world.

Voting out Trump may not simply resuscitate American democracy. It may send a hopeful message to all those who oppose the Trump-like leaders in their lands. Those leaders may have broken democracy, but we the people still own it.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Could COVID-19 Bring Down Autocrats? appeared first on Fair Observer.

On August 26, 2017, our lives changed irrevocably. Now, the pursuit of justice for Chris would become a central part of our existence. Our hearts were broken and, in addition to experiencing insurmountable grief, we found our family facing an uphill battle not only with the South Sudanese but also with Chris’ own governments in Washington and London, as well as with the United Nations.

No Justice

These are the very democratic institutions that are meant to protect journalists and press freedom, that are meant to fight injustice and ensure accountability for unspeakable crimes. Yet they have failed to act meaningfully to support us or help secure justice for Chris’ killing. Everything that is meant to be set into motion when a tragedy like this occurs simply did not happen — at least not without a fight from our side. Now, three years on, there has still been no investigation and no justice. We still lack even basic answers about what happened to Chris.

Chris developed his craft as a journalist in Ukraine, where he lived and worked from April 2014 and from there embarked on a new challenge. In August 2017, he traveled to South Sudan to cover the country’s under-reported civil war, embedding with the SPLA-IO, a rebel faction attempting to overthrow the established government in Juba.

Chris had embedded with the soldiers for more than three weeks, listening to the stories of their lives, their losses, motivations and fears before being targeted by government forces during a battle in Kaya, near South Sudan’s border with Uganda. We spoke with Chris the night before he was killed. The company was moving out that evening to walk through miles of bush to capture munition supplies.

We urged Chris not to go, to write a piece that covered the embed to date, to share with his readers the pain the families of these men suffered at the hand of those in power. But he insisted that the story of preparing for battle was incomplete. Chris’ dedication to his journalism was absolute — he felt he must bear witness to the battle. He said to us that he “had to see it through.” Our son looked for the truth at all costs.

As his parents, it is daunting and painful to recount this. Just as Chris sought the truth of the tragedies and difficulties of others, we have been working to establish the truth of the circumstances of his killing every day for three full years. Yet the very governments and institutions whose duty it is to help us find the truth have failed to support us at every key juncture over the past three years.

Based on evidence uncovered through journalistic investigations in the absence of any official inquiry, we know that Chris was killed by a member of the South Sudanese armed forces and that his killing and the treatment of his body post-mortem are likely to constitute war crimes. With support from a legal team as well as campaigners at Reporters Without Borders, we have tenaciously sought an independent criminal investigation from the South Sudanese and US authorities.

We Must See This Through

In our deep desire to secure justice and accountability for the wrongful killing of our son, a civilian and journalist armed only with a camera, and to remind states that they cannot suppress press freedom by killing journalists with impunity, we will continue to demand a meaningful investigation and justice. Like Chris, we must see this through.  

Despite our intense efforts, the US and UK governments and the United Nations have still failed to act meaningfully to help us find answers or justice, and in some cases have not responded at all. This is in sharp contrast to their publicly stated commitments to freedom of expression. The lesson we have learned over these past three painful years is that too often, these bodies cannot be taken at their word, and must very actively be held to account.

We persevere in our fight for justice not only for our son, but for all journalists taking tremendous risks to get out the truth from dangerous places around the world. Every case of impunity leaves the door open for further attacks on journalists and emboldens those who wish to use violence to silence public interest reporting. In contrast, every case in which justice is achieved sends a powerful signal that violence against journalists will not be tolerated anywhere and that those who commit such atrocious acts will pay the price. This, in turn, serves to deter violence and protect journalists everywhere.

We ask that a bright light be shed on the circumstance of Christopher’s killing. We call on governments and institutions to hold the South Sudanese military accountable for the wrongful death of our son. A transparent investigation is the first step. Accountability and justice for Chris must follow. By demanding accountability for our son’s killing, we hope to create a safer world for journalists and bolster press freedom everywhere.

We must see this through. 

*[Joyce Krajian and John Allen are the parents of Christopher Allen.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Three Years On, Still No Accountability for Our Son’s Death appeared first on Fair Observer.

Well documented is the Somali National Army’s (SNA) decline from one of Africa’s most effective fighting forces into corruption and inefficiency. Efforts to breathe new life into the country’s military nevertheless took a turn for the better following the brokering of a National Security Architecture. Signed by the federal government and member states in April 2017, this outlines the size and scope of Somalia’s security forces. The agreement also adds further definition to international efforts to redevelop the SNA’s capabilities.

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High-quality training provided by the United States, the African Union (AU) and others has enabled the SNA to score some notable victories over the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab, including the recapture of resource-rich Middle Juba as well as towns and villages that were out of reach for years. However, Somalia’s armed forces are by no means the finished article, with US military personnel continuing to provide intelligence and logistics for special forces operations. A recent Pentagon report also highlights limited progress with Operation Badbaado, a joint SNA-AU mission to retake Somalia’s southern provinces from al-Shabaab.

Concerns also remain over the SNA’s lack of numbers (approximately 20,000 personnel), poor quality hardware and continued susceptibility to corruption. Furthermore, despite the emergence of the National Security Architecture, forces loyal to Mogadishu are not necessarily under the same flag. Back in February, SNA troops clashed with members of the Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaa, a moderate Sufi militia that has also taken the fight to al-Shabaab. The skirmish prompted warnings that internal rivalries are slowing Somalia’s efforts to defeat the insurgency.

Ties Unbind

It would be naïve to assume that the UAE is oblivious to the current state of the SNA and the narrow capabilities it would bring to Yemen’s conflict. This also extends to providing humanitarian relief for Somali migrants caught in the crosshairs of the warring factions and allegedly experiencing mistreatment at the hands of their “hosts.” The UAE knows this because, prior to the Gulf crisis that erupted in mid-2017, Abu Dhabi was also a major provider of military support to Somalia.

Back in 2014, the Emirates embarked on its own program to train and mentor Somali troops. This arrangement started to unravel following Mogadishu’s refusal to take sides in the ongoing blockade of Qatar. The final nail came April 2018, after Somali security forces seized $9.6 million from a plane recently landed from the UAE. Despite Abu Dhabi’s protestations that the money was to pay the troops it was training, Mogadishu suspected the cash was to be used for more insidious purposes.

With an irksome SNA now effectively someone else’s problem, the UAE recalibrated its support for Somalia’s semi-autonomous regions. This included military and police training and the construction of an airbase at the Somaliland port of Berbera. Situated just 300 kilometers away from Yemen, the city is a strategically important location for a country heavily involved in the conflict, not to mention determined to cement its influence around the Red Sea.

However, the UAE’s relations with Somalia’s autonomous states are by no means perfect. On March 4, Abu Dhabi announced the cancellation of its construction of military bases in Somaliland. While presented as its own decision, it is speculated that Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi actually called time on the arrangement. Some analysts have mooted behind-the-scenes tensions over the UAE’s regional presence as a possible reason. Elsewhere, Puntland’s policymakers have expressed dissatisfaction at DP World’s lack of progress developing the Port of Bosaso. Arbitration between the federal government and a freight company is scheduled for this month.  

For its part, Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo offset poor relations with the UAE by drawing closer to Qatar and Turkey. Over the past decade, Doha has reportedly invested $4 billion in the country and recently struck a deal to build a seaport at Hobyo on the Bab-el-Mandeb. While Turkey has also poured billions into Somalia, Ankara’s most significant investment comes in the shape of Camp TURKSOM, Turkey’s biggest overseas military base. Costing approximately $50 million, this Turkish facility assists in the training of SNA recruits. It also underscores Ankara’s growing influence across the Horn of Africa region.

Meet the Opposition

Just as Abu Dhabi knows all about the SNA’s limitations, it also knew its request for Mogadishu to become involved in the Yemen conflict would be rebuffed. Beyond Somalia’s brotherly affinity with its neighbors across the Gulf of Aden, the aforementioned investments demonstrate the depth of its relations with two of the UAE’s biggest strategic rivals. However, this could change once the country is in a position to hold parliamentary and presidential elections.

Originally scheduled to take place on November 27, 2020, and February 8, 2021, both elections have fallen victim to COVID-19, flooding, internal security, constitutional challenges and technical issues. Once these problems resolve satisfactorily, Farmajo and his Tayo Party’s main rival will most likely be the Forum for National Parties (FNP). Formed in November 2019, the alliance unites six political parties opposed to the “blatant violation of the constitution and other laws by the current government.”

Among the politicians on the FNP ticket are two former presidents, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Both have difficult relations with Qatar. After being elected head of Somalia’s transitional federal government in 2009, Doha urged Sharif Sheikh to negotiate with all warring factions, only for Sharif Sheikh to eventually accuse Qatar of supporting al-Shabaab. Despite funding Hassan Sheikh’s 2012 presidential bid, Doha eventually lost patience with his government, accusing it of being as ineffective as its predecessors.

Accordingly, the UAE and other blockading states seemingly have a cohesive Somali opposition movement to throw its weight behind come election time. Electoral success could result in the redrawing of Mogadishu’s relations with the Emirates at the expense of Somalia’s partnerships with Turkey and Qatar. While the FNP will fight both elections on an anti-corruption and pro-constitution platform, the potential to spin the UAE’s request to join the Yemen conflict is unmissable. By failing to support its neighbor, Somalia has deprived itself of much-needed investment and access to health care just when it needs it most.

As the Emirates Policy Center sees it, the Somali opposition’s failure to align behind one candidate will keep Famajo in power. To overcome this, the FNP might just be the political movement to offer the incumbent president a serious run for his money. If so, then the UAE might have already signaled what it wants in return for its moral and material support: at least a token SNA presence in the Yemen conflict and the normalization of ties with Abu Dhabi. Achieving both will strengthen the UAE’s influence in a region of critical strategic importance to Gulf powerhouses.

*[Gulf State Analytics a partner organization of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why the UAE Wants Somalia in the Yemen Conflict appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Ebola outbreak not only killed thousands of people directly, but it also worsened other health crises like maternal mortality. While the Ebola virus rampaged the country, a woman’s risk of dying in childbirth increased by an estimated 22% between May 2014 and April 2015, according to the Ministry of Health. With already one of the highest maternal mortality rates, the most recent data from the World Health Organization shows that one in 17 women in Sierra Leone will die during pregnancy, childbirth or its aftermath.

For many Sierra Leoneans, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought back memories of Ebola, leading to nervousness, especially among pregnant women, about visiting the hospital. The race is on to protect these women and to prevent maternal deaths from skyrocketing as they did during the Ebola epidemic.

Understanding Patients’ Fears

No one senses this need more than Isata Dumbuya, a 50-year-old nurse who worked overseas for the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) for 19 years before returning in 2018 to her birthplace of Kono District, an eastern region of Sierra Leone famous for its diamond mines. Dumbuya runs women’s health services at Koidu Government Hospital (or KGH, as it’s often called).

“You wouldn’t want to send anyone to KGH how it used to be,” she says. “Everyone has a horror story to share.” This was especially true during the Ebola outbreak. “Hygiene was bad and there were no drugs,” Dumbuya mentions. “No one wanted to go to the hospital because people said, ‘You’ll either go in a body bag or you’ll leave in one.’”

Over the past few years of working for Partners in Health (PIH), a global medical nonprofit that supports KGH, Dumbuya has steadily transformed the hospital’s maternity ward, and she has provided training and mentorship to staff. Quality of care has risen, together with patient trust and attendance.

But when news of the first COVID-19 case reached Kono in early March, women began walking away. “The hospital was cleared of patients within 24-hours. Patients just got up and left,” Dumbuya says.

Dumbuya is concerned this latest crisis will result in widespread, prolonged avoidance of hospitals. During the Ebola outbreak — when there was an estimated 20% drop in hospital births — many pregnant women, fearful of contracting the virus at hospitals, opted for home-births without a trained clinician to help if complications arose.

Dr. Marta Lado, an infectious disease specialist who helped set up and operate one of the first Ebola treatment centers in Sierra Leone, talks about the connection between COVID-19 and Ebola. “It’s complicated to ask people to change their mindset,” she says. “But it is different this time. We are more ready for sure.”

Since the Ebola crisis, Lado has been the chief medical officer for PIH in Sierra Leone. She is currently based in the capital city, Freetown, at 34 Military Hospital — a facility that was built after the Ebola epidemic in preparation for future disease outbreaks. “It’s run by the army. They know how to defend,” Lado says of the hospital. “It’s a super high standard unit with biosecurity. People have been trained and drilled continuously.”

The hospital staff used their simulation training to spring to immediate action when the country’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in March 2020.

Learning From the Ebola Crisis

Sierra Leone’s experience in fighting the Ebola virus accelerated the government’s response, too. “With Ebola, we could have saved thousands of lives, and money that was spent later on, if we had tackled it early,” says Dr. Mohamed Vandi, the director of public health security, who is the most senior health official leading the country’s COVID-19 response. “But we had no experiences and no resources. Now, we have the capacity and knowledge.”

Vandi adds: “We knew it [COVID-19] was knocking at our door. My initial aim was to be proactive to prevent it.” Before the first confirmed case of COVID-19, Sierra Leone had already put strict measures in place, such as suspending flights, closing borders and installing stations for people to wash their hands and check their temperature. This trend was not seen in many other countries around the world.

So far, Sierra Leone has confirmed just over 1,500 cases of COVID-19 — approximately 80% of which have been near to Freetown, within easy reach of 34 Military Hospital. But as cases spread further afield, Vandi has instructed that treatment centers be set up across the country. He says the motivation behind this is to ease patients’ fears about long ambulance journeys. During the Ebola epidemic, many people died in transit to distant treatment facilities before receiving the care they desperately needed — a memory that still haunts today’s citizens in Sierra Leone.

“We have seen a reduction in women at the hospital, a reduction in ambulance calls and a reduction in referrals from other health centers,” Lado says. But clinical staff are combating this with compassion. “Nurses are the roots of what we are doing here,” she adds. “They don’t hesitate about spending as much time as they can with patients. They do a lot of psychosocial support and engagement.”

Saving Lives

Dumbuya mentions that her focus is on encouraging patients. “We have been out talking to women and leaders in the community about what’s going on around the world and to stress that hospitals are still open for business,” she says. “We are trying to spread the word that COVID is very different to Ebola. We can get to people quicker, isolate them and give treatment.”

It is too soon to predict the long-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. However, experts are hopeful that the county’s rapid, efficient response to the outbreak, coupled with the provision of counseling for patients and communities, will go a long way in making women feel confident about continuing to access maternal services — a mindset that was gravely lacking during the Ebola outbreak.   

At KGH, triage systems are firmly in place to separate COVID-19 patients from those seeking routine health services. Dumbuya’s priority now, along with her colleagues at PIH and KGH, is to prevent health care standards from dropping as they did during the Ebola crisis and to continue fighting maternal mortality.

“Dying in childbirth is an ongoing emergency in Sierra Leone,” Dumbuya says. “The care we offer is intended to save women’s lives, but also to improve the maternal journey so that they return.”

*[A version of this article was originally published by the Global Health News Wire. Updated: July 7, 2020]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post In Sierra Leone, COVID-19 Could Make Maternal Mortality Worse appeared first on Fair Observer.

Despite massive economic problems, political fragmentation and a deteriorating standard of living in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the transitional government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok still enjoys the confidence of the population. The Islamist military kleptocracy it replaced had ruled Sudan for three decades. Under President Bashir, the regime invested primarily in the military but neglected energy, health and the long-overdue modernization of agriculture. Revenues from currency transactions, gold smuggling and investment deals flowed straight into the bank accounts of members of the party/military complex.

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The new government now has to deal with that legacy, and it has appointed a committee to investigate corruption, money laundering and patronage networks between business, the military and the former ruling party. Monthly payments of tens of millions of dollars into Bashir’s private bank account have been identified and the assets and investments of members of the old regime have been frozen. But it remains unclear when — if at all — funds held abroad will be located, recovered and returned to the state.

The strongest and most influential political figure, militia leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) — who serves as deputy chairman of the Sovereignty Council — participates at least symbolically in the government’s new course by acquiescing the taxation of parts of his gold mining and other businesses. But this still leaves the government far short of the resources it needs to satisfy the needs of the population and invest in sectors capable of creating urgently needed employment.

This exacerbates the risk of waning support for democratization and failure of the political reset. A military coup or Libyan-style destabilization are both plausible scenarios and would have destabilizing effects far beyond the country’s borders.

No Economic Upturn Without Political Stability

Stabilization will require concerted international efforts. Any financial assistance should be aligned with a process seeking political stability, integration of the armed opposition and participation by civilian actors of the revolution in course-setting decisions about the country’s political future. Substantial support for rebuilding the Sudanese economy is expected to come, above all, from international financial institutions (IFIs). Sudan is still on Washington’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) and, therefore, excluded from access to funding from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Nevertheless, European/American cooperation, in particular in the Friends of Sudan group, has led the World Bank to prepare debt relief processes and the IMF to support necessary economic reforms with its own expertise. All of those involved regard the political transformation as a historic opportunity whose success is closely bound up with economic developments.

Alongside the IFIs, the Paris Club of creditor and donor countries is expected to participate in economic reconstruction. At the virtual conference, efforts will also need to go into persuading China and Sudan’s wealthy Arab allies in the Gulf to see the transition as a stabilization that also serves their interests in order to commit billions in investments. Whether the country’s desolate critical infrastructure can be stabilized — for example, in the energy and power sectors — will also depend on their commitments.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of a functioning health sector for meeting the needs of the population and, therefore, also for political legitimacy. Without a reliable electricity supply, economic recovery will be difficult and investments, for example, in major agricultural projects, are unlikely to be profitable.

The Sudan Partnership Conference comes at an opportune juncture. The Sudanese government hopes for substantial support for economic development. Hopefully, it will be clear on June 25 that this is only possible if all those involved work together on a joint solution. All parties should also be aware that economic recovery cannot succeed without political stability, and political stability in Sudan cannot succeed without the political transition. Therefore, financial assistance must always be aligned with the transition process.

*[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Sudan Conference Presents an Opportunity appeared first on Fair Observer.

Germany’s relatively short-lived colonial venture is one more dark spot in the country’s history. Its massacre of the Herero people in German Southwest Africa, in today’s Namibia, in 1904 was the first genocide of the 20^th century. When the Hereros rose up against the German colonizers, the colonial troops machine-gunned them, poisoned their wells and drove them into the desert and left them to die. Altogether more than 60,000 Hereros perished. It was not until 2004 that the German government acknowledged the massacre and offered an official apology.

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At the same time, however, it refused to recognize the massacre as a genocide and to compensate the victims’ descendants. Some 15 years later, there was some progress, but nothing was settled. Negotiations were dragging on, raising uncomfortable questions. As an article in The Washington Post put it earlier this year, Germany’s position on the Herero massacre stands “in glaring contrast to the attention and money Germany has dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust.” The German position rests on legalistic grounds: While Germany has finally recognized the massacre as an instance of genocide, it has maintained that “the legal implications established under the 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide do not apply to earlier mass killings.”

Dark History

This might, at least in part, explain a curious “scandal” that excited Germany’s intellectual community a few weeks ago. It involved the Cameroonian intellectual Achille Mbembe. Highly regarded in Germany, the recipient of a number of prizes for his work, Mbembe committed a cardinal sin of comparing apartheid South Africa’s treatment of its black population to present-day Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In Germany, this hits a nerve, given the centrality of the Holocaust in German official memory. For Mbembe, a citizen of a country that once was a German colony, the point of reference is likely to be closer to the observation made in The Washington Post article than to German sensibilities with respect to the state of Israel.

While the German media treated the incidence as a case of Holocaust relativization, for Mbembe it is a Black Lives Matter moment, given Germany’s refusal to compensate African victims of genocide, unlike Jewish victims of genocide. What African activists take away from how Germany has responded to the Herero massacre as compared to the Holocaust is that “black people’s lives are less important.”

Germany’s role in the quasi-extermination of an African people is despicable, but at least Germany played no role in the most despicable crime against Africans — the slave trade. Or so it seems. After all, at the heyday of slavery, Germany did not exist. Yet Germans did — and they played their part in the transatlantic slave trade.

It all started in 1682, with the founding of the African Company by the grand elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, Frederick William. Determined to rival Europe’s great sea powers, he ordered the establishment of a fort on the coast of present-day Ghana, to be named Groß Friedrichsburg. The fort was designed to serve as a point of departure for the German slave trade. In the decades that followed, German slave ships, such as the Friedrich III, transported thousands of African slaves overseas. Many of them ended up on the slave market of St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands, over which Prussia gained control from Denmark in 1685. For some time, St. Thomas had the dubious distinction of being the most important slave market in the world.

German merchants were an intricate part of the slave trade, particularly in France. Trading German linen fabrics for slaves in West Africa, who then were shipped overseas to the sugar plantations in Central and South America, they made a fortune. Some of them founded their own shipping lines devoted to the slave trade and used to supply the French overseas possessions with slave labor. One of the major destinations was present-day Haiti, which at the time was the source of three-quarters of the world’s sugar output.  

Other German merchants were based in London from where they contributed, directly or indirectly, to the slave trade. One of the best-known merchants was Heinrich Karl von Schimmelmann from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the east of Germany. Von Schimmelmann gained his fortune from his possessions on the Danish Virgin Islands, based on the forced labor of more than a thousand slaves. In his later life, von Schimmelmann settled in Wandsbek, a faubourg of Hamburg. There he quickly acquired a reputation as a major benefactor of the community. In 2006, Wandsbek’s administration commissioned a bust in his honor. Two years later, following protests from antiracist activists who doused the bust with red paint, the new red-Green administration ordered its removal.

Growing Attention

In recent years, Germans’ involvement in the slave trade has received growing attention, both from academia and the media. In general, however, Germany has largely ignored the country’s involvement in Africa, particularly when compared to the Nazi period and the heinous crimes committed during the period. In fact, like in other countries, for a long time there was a fundamental lack of sensibility to the impact of Germany’s brief colonial past. When I was growing up, I was particularly fond of a confectionary commonly known as Negerkuss — negro’s kiss.

As late as 2016, a German court had to decide whether or not an employee could be fired for racism because he had ordered a Negerkuss (rather than the neutral Schokokuss, or chocolate kiss) in a canteen, ironically enough from a woman originally from Cameroon. The decision: it could not. This was a singular case: The vast majority of Germans have been sensitized to the racist connotations of confectionaries known as Negerkuss or Mohrenkopf (Moor’s head).

A second example: When I was growing up, one of the most popular children’s books was “Der Struwelpeter,” a collection of horrible stories warning German children of what could happen if they behaved badly. Among the stories is the tale of a little girl who refuses to listen to her parents and plays with fire, only to be burnt alive. Or the story of the little boy who loves to suck his thumbs, only to see them cut off by a tailor with gigantic scissors. Or, finally, the story of the little boys who make fun of a “kohlpechrabenschwarzer Mohr” — a really very, very black Moor — going for a walk. As a punishment, St. Nicolas dunks them into a giant ink pot — and then they are as black as the Moor.

Third example: When I was growing up, a favorite card game was schwarzer Peter — black Pete. The goal of the game was to pass on the black Pete. The one holding the card at the end lost.

I suspect that growing up with images that portray Africans in a largely negative and dismissive way has a subtle impact that explains why Germans and other Europeans have had a hard time coming to terms with the legacy of a history of imperialism, racism, exploitation and misery visited upon a part of humanity deemed inferior, without value and not worthy of basic compassion. Those who object to the demolition of the statues dedicated to the agents of human misery might want to confront the horrors of colonialism and the slave trade. Their response says much about their humanity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Remembering Germany’s Dark Colonial History appeared first on Fair Observer.

East Africa Faces a Cascade of Crises

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Somalia, which is already beset by a series of natural and manmade calamities, is now bracing itself for the worst. A series of factors explain why humanitarians are so concerned about the impact of the global pandemic on the country’s highly vulnerable population, including around 5.2 million people already in need of assistance.

Five Factors

First, according to RAND, Somalia is the most vulnerable country in the world for infectious diseases. Indeed, the country is already in the midst of a cholera outbreak. While the worldwide standard is around 25 health care workers per 100,000 people, Somalia has only 2 at this same ratio. There is only one hospital in the entire country capable of treating coronavirus patients.

In Somalia, 79 people — the most in East Africa — are confirmed to have died from COVID-19. Yet the total death toll is likely to be significantly higher, according to The Guardian. Despite efforts to contain the virus, support medical workers and increase humanitarian coordination, the country’s health care system remains underequipped to combat a national epidemic and it needs external support.

Second, Somalia is home to 4.8 million food-insecure people. Around 2.1 million face acute food insecurity, while 1.1 million children under age 5 are acutely malnourished. Conflict is the principal driver in the world of food insecurity, but extreme weather events also contribute to Somalia’s food crisis. Ongoing droughts in central and northern Somalia have left about 162,000 people displaced, while southern and central Somalia has been experiencing extreme flooding during the rainy season.

Meanwhile, a locust crisis is accelerating regional food insecurity across East Africa and parts of the Middle East. Further complicating the humanitarian response, flight cancellations also mean that shipping costs of required equipment have increased by about 300%. The response to the COVID-19 crisis in Somalia is creating difficulty to address the driving factors of food insecurity and provide humanitarian assistance to those affected.

Third, Somalia’s civil war, which broke out in 1991, has created insecurity throughout the country. Limits on the movement of critical resources and the weakening of government influence complicate efforts to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus in a conflict zone. Instability has allowed al-Shabab, a militant group, to maintain control of parts of southern and central Somalia. Al-Shabab has exploited the virus for political gains by claiming that it was spread “by the crusader forces who have invaded the country and the disbelieving countries that support them.”

Humanitarian organizations have difficulty accessing areas that al-Shabab controls, which is becoming more critical as the public health crisis continues. Limits on the delivery of aid, a lack of preventive measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, and the dissemination of false information about COVID-19 will only heighten vulnerabilities for populations living under their control.

Fourth, the Somali government has been unable or unwilling to undertake an effective campaign to inform the public of the steps that need to be taken to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus. According to a survey by Save the Children, many residents, internally displaced people (IDPs) and other displaced populations were aware of the coronavirus, but a “significant number” did not have enough knowledge to take collective action against the spread of it. Somalia’s health care capacity is nearly nonexistent, so preventative measures are critical to enforce through the dissemination of public information.

Fifth, displaced communities and others in need of humanitarian assistance have many of the factors that put them at risk of contracting COVID-19. An estimated 2.6 million IDPs live in Somalia, with over 200,000 of them being newly displaced in 2020 alone. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) confirmed the first case of infection in an IDP camp on March 17. These camps are at risk of the virus spreading due to the high-density population and difficulties in social distancing. These environments are best served by surveillance programs and widespread testing, along with a capacity to isolate those who may have been infected — all of which are in short supply in Somalia.

Somalia Is at Risk

All of these factors combined lead experts to warn that Somalia could quickly become one of the worst-affected regions in the world if the spread of the coronavirus cannot be prevented or contained. However, the Somali government cannot do so alone. First, it needs help, especially when it comes to key humanitarian programs to give vulnerable populations access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Such interventions are essential elements of an effective response to the pandemic. Second, its health care facilities and hospitals need support to increase the ability to test people for the virus and trace who those infected came into contact with, especially in IDP camps. There is also a pressing need for personal protective equipment (PPE) and training for health workers. Yet only 13.6% of the UN COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan for Somalia has been funded. 

Donors must step up to give Somalia a fighting chance in the face of the pandemic. A global health crisis requires a truly global response, one that does not leave some of Africa’s most vulnerable populations behind.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Humanitarian Disaster Before Us: COVID-19 in Somalia appeared first on Fair Observer.