Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Powerbrokers of Arab world will be closely watching Tunisia

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Analysis: while the politics behind the government’s dismissal are local, regional players will want to influence what happens next

In the decade since the Arab spring, the crucible of the uprisings has been where its legacy has been thrashed out.

Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where it all began from mid-December 2010, have remained central to the narrative of what took place when autocracies crumbled in the face of restive streets. And for the region’s powerbrokers, all three north African states have since been the centre of an even bigger tussle for influence.

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Migrant boat capsizes off Libya, killing 57, as regional toll for 2021 nears 1,000

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International Organization for Migration links rise in deaths to decrease in sea patrols

At least 57 people have died after a migrant boat capsized off the Libyan coast, taking the total death toll in the central Mediterranean in 2021 to almost 1,000 – four times as many as in the same period last year.

Flavio Di Giacomo, Italy’s spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said the shipwreck raised the death toll to 987. “Last year there were 272. We must no longer hesitate, and do everything to strengthen the system of patrols at sea,” he said.

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Biden and Kadhimi seal agreement to end US combat mission in Iraq

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Joe Biden and the Iraqi prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, have sealed an agreement formally ending the US combat mission in Iraq by the end of 2021, more than 18 years after troops were sent to the country.

Coupled with Biden’s withdrawal of the last American forces in Afghanistan by the end of August, the Democratic president is completing US combat missions in the two wars that George W Bush began under his watch.

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Billionaire tycoon named as Lebanese PM as economic crisis bites

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Protesters wanted someone from outside the elite, but parliament went for Najib Miqati, who has led the country twice before

After a year-long standoff, Lebanon has named a new prime minister who its feuding factions hope can ward off a total economic collapse and save an estimated 2 million people from the brink of poverty.

Protesters had demanded the selection of a figure removed from the political elite, but the Lebanese parliament instead named a billionaire tycoon, Najib Miqati, who had led the country twice before, with little success, and was accused by a state prosecutor in 2019 of embezzlement – a charge he denies and has described as politically motivated.

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How ‘super-detector’ dogs are helping free Iraq from the terror of Isis mines

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Branco and X-Lang are part of an elite team – four canines and their Yazidi handlers – leading a groundbreaking sniff-search for the homemade devices that litter the land

On the wide, flat plain of the Sinjar district of northern Iraq, Naif Khalaf Qassim lets his dog, an eight-year-old Belgian shepherd, range across the dry earth on a 30-metre leash until Branco stops and sits, tail wagging, looking towards his handler with enthusiasm.

Branco has detected something underground and, when the mine-clearing team is brought in to investigate, they find an improvised explosive device (IED), known locally as a VS500.

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Tunisia president accused of staging coup after suspending parliament

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Kais Saied invokes emergency article of constitution after violent protests against country’s biggest party

Often touted as the lone success story of the Arab spring revolutions a decade ago, Tunisia is facing a critical challenge to its fledgling democracy after its president suspended parliament and dismissed his prime minister in what critics described as a coup.

Kais Saied, an independent without a party behind him, announced he was invoking an emergency article of Tunisia’s constitution late on Sunday night after a day of violent protests against the country’s biggest party, the moderate Islamist Ennahda movement.

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New Zealand agrees to repatriate suspected Isis member who grew up in Australia

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Jacinda Ardern said it was the ‘right step’ to allow return of woman and her children from Turkey

New Zealand has agreed that a suspected member of Islamic State who grew up in Australia can be repatriated from Turkey along with her two young children, a decision prime minister Jacinda Ardern said was “not taken lightly”.

The woman was a dual Australian-New Zealand citizen until Australia revoked her citizenship and refused to reverse the decision, prompting a furious response earlier this year from Ardern, who accused Australia of shirking its responsibilities.

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Corporate activism is too often cynical. In Ben & Jerry’s case, it offers hope | Nesrine Malik

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The company’s stand against illegal Israeli settlements is a small but welcome contribution to an ongoing shift in opinion

There is possibly only one thing worse for social justice movements than getting no recognition, and that is getting too much. Over the past few years, the subversive energy of popular movements for equality, whether #MeToo or Black Lives Matter, has regularly been appropriated by corporations.

Big businesses tend to have a good nose for trends that could affect their bottom lines, and so move early to show support for whatever fashionable cause has broken through. There is little actual activism going on here. These solidarity shout-outs are a safe, low-cost way both to get ahead of any internal issues that might end up being exposed, and to win over the sorts of customers who make political change part of their consumer habits. But the appearance of change, rather than any seismic shift, is what these corporates seem to prefer. The year since the Black Lives Matter protests has exposed the gap between internal practices and pledges of support for racial equality in many companies, with employees coming out to protest against what they see as tokenistic gestures.

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Foreign Office is ‘complicit in British man’s Somalia torture’

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‘David Taylor’ claims hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding was to persuade him to cooperate with the CIA

A British citizen has claimed he was tortured in Somalia and questioned by US intelligence officers, raising concern that controversial practices of the post-9/11 “war on terror” are still being used.

The 45-year-old from London alleges he has endured hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding at the hands of the Somali authorities to persuade him, he believes, to cooperate with the CIA. Foreign Office officials are aware of the allegationsof torture and US involvement, but their failure to act has raised questions over UK complicity.

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Leïla Slimani: ‘I think I’m always writing about women, domination, violence’

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The French-Moroccan author on why she writes, the complexity of identity, and the first book of a trilogy based on her family history

Author Leïla Slimani, 39, grew up in Rabat, Morocco, and moved to Paris when she was 17. Her first novel, Adèle, a melancholy story about a nymphomaniac mother in her 30s, was published in France in 2014. In 2016, she was the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt, for her second novel, Lullaby, about a nanny who kills the baby and toddler in her care. In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron appointed her as his personal representative for promoting French language and culture.

Last year, Slimani published a nonfiction book, Sex and Lies, a collection of intimate testimonies from Moroccan women about their secret lives. Her latest book, The Country of Others, is the first novel in a planned trilogy based on her family history. Set in the late 1940s and 50s, it centres on her maternal grandparents during Morocco’s period of decolonisation. Slimani lives with her husband and two children in Paris.

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Jehan Sadat obituary

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Champion of social justice and women’s rights in Egypt before and after the assassination of her husband, President Anwar Sadat

Jehan Sadat, who has died aged 88 of cancer, spent most of her life promoting social justice and women’s rights in Egypt. She continued to campaign decades after her husband, President Anwar Sadat, was assassinated, on 6 October 1981, by militants in the army avenging the imprisonment of fellow Islamists and condemning the 1978 Camp David accords that he had signed with Israel.

As a girl in Cairo, Jehan had explored the streets of her neighbourhood of Al-Manial, attributing her self-confidence to her supportive parents. She said that her fight against gender inequality started during her schooldays, when she was encouraged to focus on subjects such as sewing and cooking in preparation for marriage rather than the sciences that would lead to a university career. “I have always regretted that decision. I would never allow my daughters to close off their futures that way,” she wrote in her autobiography, A Woman of Egypt (1987).

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Iran accused of using unlawful force in water protest crackdown

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Amnesty says security forces used live ammunition on protesters while officials blame ‘opportunists’

Iran is using unlawful and excessive force in a crackdown against protests over water shortages in its oil-rich but arid southwestern Khuzestan province, according to international rights groups.

Amnesty International said it had confirmed the deaths of at least eight protesters and bystanders, including a teenage boy, after the authorities used live ammunition to quell the protests.

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Danish military spots Iranian navy ships in Baltic Sea

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Newly built destroyer and support vessel thought to be on way to Russian naval parade in St Petersburg

The Danish military has said that it has spotted an Iranian destroyer and a large support vessel sailing through the Baltic Sea, thought to be heading to Russia for a military parade in the coming days.

The Danish defence ministry posted photographs online on Thursday from the Royal Danish Air Force of the new domestically built Iranian destroyer Sahand and the intelligence-gathering vessel Makran passing by the Danish island of Bornholm.

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Death of 13-year-old girl sparks calls for action on FGM in Somalia

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Fartun Hassan Ahmed bled to death after undergoing female genital mutilation, a practice that 98% of women in the east African country undergo

A 13-year-old girl has died after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia, as activists report a rise in the practice during the pandemic.

Fartun Hassan Ahmed, the daughter of nomadic pastoralists, bled to death after being cut earlier this month in the village of Jeerinle in the state of Galmudug, her mother said.

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Syrian economy lies in ruins and China sniffs opportunity

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Analysis: War may be winding down, but with Assad in charge for seven more seven years the country remains splintered

Standing on a podium on Saturday to take an oath of office, Bashar al-Assad declared himself the only man who could rebuild Syria.

His first foreign guest, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, seemed to enhance his claim, endorsing the president’s win in a May poll described by Britain and Europe as “neither free nor fair” and laying a marker to help get the job started.

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Israeli PM: Ben & Jerry’s sales ban will have ‘serious consequences’

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Naftali Bennett hits back at Unilever after subsidiary stops selling ice-cream in occupied territories

The decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling its ice-cream products in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has been met with fierce criticism from the Israeli political establishment, including a warning from the prime minister, Naftali Bennett, that the decision will have “serious consequences” for Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company, Unilever.

The announcement from the ice-cream maker, which has also taken political stances on the climate crisis and social justice issues such as Black Lives Matter, is one of the highest-profile rebukes of Israeli settlement building to date by a well-known brand.

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Iraq: Market explosion in Baghdad kills dozens – video

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At least 35 people were killed and many more injured in an explosion in Iraq's capital Baghdad, on the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. The blast took place in Wahailat market, Sadr City district during rush hour. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack.

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Baghdad suicide bombing: dozens killed, scores injured in blast at packed Iraq market

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Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack in Sadr City neighbourhood

A suicide bomber has killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 60 in a crowded market in the Sadr City neighbourhood of Baghdad on Monday, the eve of the Eid al-Adha festival, security and hospital sources said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s Nasheer news agency said on Telegram. It said one of its militants blew up his explosive vest among the crowds. Hospital sources said the death toll could rise as some of the wounded were in critical condition.

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Ben & Jerry’s to stop sales in occupied Palestinian territories

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Vermont-based company says sales in the occupied lands were ‘inconsistent with our values’

Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream has announced that it will no longer sell its ice-cream in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying the sales are “inconsistent with our values.”

The announcement on Monday was one of the highest-profile rebukes by a well-known brand of Israel’s settlements which are regarded as illegal under international law.

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