The lack of jobs after graduation frequently pushes Cameroonian girls into searching for work opportunities, sometimes overseas and sometimes with horrific consequences. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jul 15 2015 (IPS)

Her lips are quavering her hands trembling. Susan (not her real name) struggles to suppress stubborn tears, but the outburst comes, spontaneously, and the tears stream down her cheeks as she sobs profusely.

The story of this 28-year-old’s servitude in Kuwait is mind-boggling. Between her sobs, she tells IPS how she left Cameroon two years ago in search of a job in Kuwait.

“I saw job opportunities advertised on billboards in town. The posters announced jobs such as nurses and housemaids in Kuwait. As a nurse and without a job in Cameroon, I decided to take the chance.”"We were herded off to a small room. There were many other girls there: Ghanaians, Nigerians and Tunisians … [then] bidders came and we were sold off like property" – Susan, a young Cameroonian women who escaped from slavery in Kuwait

With the help of an agent whose contact details she found on the billboard, Susan found herself on a plane, bound for Kuwait.

She was excited at the prospect of earning up to 250,000 CFA francs (420 dollars) a month. That is what the agent had told her, and it was a mouth-watering sum compared with the roughly 75 dollars she would have been earning in Cameroon, if she had a job.

“We work in liaison with companies in the Middle East, so that when these ladies go, they don’t start looking for jobs,” Ernest Kongnyuy, an agent in Yaounde told IPS.

But the story changed dramatically when Susan, along with 46 other Cameroonian girls, arrived in Kuwait on Nov. 8, 2013.

“We were herded off to a small room. There were many other girls there: Ghanaians, Nigerians and Tunisians,” then “bidders came and we were sold off like property.”

Susan was taken away by an Egyptian man. “I think I got a taste of hell in his house,” she says, tears streaming down her cheeks.

She would begin work at five in the morning and go to bed after midnight, very often sleeping without having eaten.

Very frequently, she tells IPS, the man tried to rape her but when she threatened to report the case to the police, she met with a wry response from her tormentor. “He told me he would pay the police to rape me and then kill me, and the case wouldn’t go anywhere.”

Cut off from all communication with the outside world, Susan says that she found solace only in God. “I prayed … I cried out to God for help,” she recalls.

Susan’s is not an isolated case. Brenda, another Cameroonian lucky enough to escape, has a similar story. She had to wash the pets of her master, which included cats and snakes.

“I was sharing the same toilet with cats … I called them my brothers, because they were the only “persons” with whom I conversed.”

Pushed to the limits, both girls told their employers that they were not ready to work any longer. Brenda says that when she insisted, she was thrown out of the house.

“At that time I was frail, I was actually dying and I didn’t know where to go.” After trekking for two days, she found the Central African Republic’s embassy and slept for two days in front of it before she was rescued.

Susan was locked in the boot of a car and taken to the agent who had brought her from the airport.

“Events moved so fast and I found myself spending one week in immigration prison and an additional three days in deportation prison,” she says.

When both girls were finally put on a flight bound for Cameroon, all their property had been seized, except for their passports and the clothes they were wearing.

The scale of the problem is troubling. According to the 2013 Walk Free Global Index of Slavery, about three-quarters of a million people are enslaved in the Middle East and North Africa.

The report indicates that for the past seven years, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have been ranked as Tier 3 countries for human trafficking and labour abuses. Tier 3 countries are those whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards in human trafficking and are not making significant efforts to do so.

Apart from Africa, people from India, Nepal, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, etc. … “migrate voluntarily for domestic work, convinced of the employment agencies’ promises of lucrative jobs,” said the report.

“Upon entering the country, they find themselves deceived and enslaved – within the bounds of a legal sponsorship system.”

Susan and Brenda are now back home, but they are suffering from the trauma of their horrible experience in Kuwait.

The Trauma Centre for Victims of Human Trafficking in Cameroon has been working to bring relief to the women. “We try to make them feel at home,” says Beatrice Titanji, National Vice-President of the Centre.

“They have been exposed to bad treatment. They have been called animals. They have been told they stink, and when they enter the car or a room, a spray is used to take away the supposed odour … I just can’t fathom seeing my child treated like that,” she told IPS.

She called on the government to investigate and prosecute the agents, create jobs and mount guard at airports to discourage Cameroonians from going to look for jobs in the Middle East.

Edited by Phil Harris   

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

The results of a survey of what 3,500 young people between the ages of 18 and 24 – in all Arab countries except Syria – feel about the current situation in the Middle East and North Africa have just been released.

The report of the survey, which was carried out by international polling firm Penn Schoen Berland (PBS), is not a minority report given that 60 percent of the population of the Arab population is under the age of 25, which means 200 million people. Well, the outcome of the survey is that the large majority of them have no trust in democracy.

Roberto Savio

The word democracy does not exist in Arabic, being a concept totally alien to the era in which Muhammad created Islam. However, it is worth noting that the concept of democracy as it is known today is also relatively recent in the West, and we have to wait from its origins in the Greek era for it to make a comeback at the time of the French Revolution.

It became an accepted value just after the end of the Second World War, and the end of the Soviet, Nazi and Japanese regimes.

As a matter of fact, it is still not a reality in large parts of Asia (just think of China and North Korea) and Africa.

Then we have governments, as in Hungary where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is openly preaching a style of governance à la Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by several of his esteemers, including the National Front party in France, and the Northern League in Italy. But few have such a negative view of democracy as young Arabs.After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent

After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent.

According to the survey, 39 percent of young Arabs agreed with the statement “democracy will never work in the region”, 36 percent thought it would work, while the remaining 25 percent expressed many doubts.

It is clear that the Arab Spring has been betrayed by the return of the army to power as in Egypt, or by the clinging of the old guard to power regardless of the costs, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

If you add to this the fact that 41 percent of young Arabs are unemployed (out of a total unemployment figure of 25 percent), and of those 31 percent have completed higher education and 17 percent have graduated from university, it is not difficult to understand that frustration and pessimism are running high among Arab youth.

It also contributes to explaining why so many young people feel attracted to the Islamic State (ISIS) which wants to topple all Arab governments, defined as corrupt and allied to the decadent West, and create a Caliphate as in Muhammad’s times, where wealth will be distributed among all, the dignity of Islam will be enhanced, and a world of purity and vision will substitute the materialistic one of today.

This is why ISIS is attracting youth from all over. Besides, according to experts, for the terrorist to have a geographical space and run it  as a state, where hospitals and schools function and there is a daily life to prove that the dream is possible, represents a great difference with previous terrorist movements like Al-Qaeda, which could only destroy, not really build.

But the survey also reveals something extremely important. To the question “which is the biggest obstacle for the Arab world?”, 37 percent indicated the expansion of ISIS and 32 percent the threat of terrorism. The problem of unemployment was mentioned by 29 percent and that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 23 percent.

It is worth noting that the threat of a nuclear Iran was mentioned by only 8 percent (contrary to the declarations of Arab governments), while 17 percent consider that the real problem is the lack of political leaders, while only 15 percent denounce the lack of democracy.

It is important to note that no interviews were carried out in Iran, which is not an Arab country but is a Muslim country. However Iranian Muslims are Shiites and not Sunnis, as in all Arab countries, except for Iraq and Bahrein, and perhaps Yemen, where Shiites are a majority. Of the world’s total Islamic population of 1.6 billion people, Shiites make up only 10 percent.

It is within Sunnite Islam that a dramatic conflict is going on, where Wahabism, a Sunni school born in Saudi Arabia and the official religion of the Saudi reigning house, has now split into those who want to return to the purity of the early times and those are considered “petrowahabists” because they have been corrupted by the wealth created by petrol (they are also called sheikh wahabists because they accept government by sheikhs).

Saudi Arabia has been spending an average of 3 billion dollars a year to promote Wahabism. It has built over 1,500 mosques throughout the world, where radical preachers have been asking the faithful to go back to the real and uncorrupted Islam.

It was with Osama Bin Laden that the Wahabist movement escaped from the control of Saudi Arabia, very much like the radical Hamas movement, originally supported by Israel to weaken the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Yasser Arafat, turned against the Israeli state. It is not possible to ride radicalism.

The survey also reveals that young Sunnis see ISIS and terrorism as their main threat, but we are talking here of a poll which should represent 200 million people between the ages of 18 and 25. Even if just one percent of them were to succumb to the call of the jihad, we are talking of a potential two million people … and this is now being felt acutely.

The polarisation inside Sunni society (Shiites are not part of that – there are no Shiite terrorists) is felt as the most important problem for the future.

In Europe and the United States, this should be the clearest of examples that ISIS and terrorism are first and foremost an internal problem of Islam and that to intervene in that problem will only unify the Arab world against the invader. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

View of Zahedan, administrative capital of the troubled Iranian Sistan and Balochistan region whose population “has decreased threefold since the times of the Pahlevis”. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
GENEVA, Apr 17 2015 (IPS)

Nasser Boladai is the spokesperson of the Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI), an umbrella movement aimed at expanding support for a secular, democratic and federal Iran. IPS spoke with him in Geneva, where he was invited to speak at a recent conference on Human Rights and Global Perspectives in his native Balochistan region.

Could you draw the main lines of the CNFI?

There are 14 different groups under the umbrella of the CNFI: Arabs, Azerbaijani Turks, Baloch, Kurds Lors and Turkmen … all of which share a common cause vow for a federal and secular state where each one´s language and culture rights are respected.

Nasser Boladai, spokesperson of the Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI), an umbrella movement aimed at expanding support for a secular, democratic and federal Iran. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The CNFI is meant to be a vehicle for all of us as there are no majorities in the country, we are all minorities within a multinational Iran. Today´s is a regime based on exclusion as it only recognises the Persian nation and Shia Islam as the only confession.

Which poses a biggest handicap in Iran: a different ethnicity or a religious confession other than Shia Islam?

Iran’s population is a mosaic of ethnicities, but the non-Persian groups are largely located in the peripheries and far from the power base, Tehran.

Elements within the opposition to the regime claim that religion is not an issue and some centralist groups would support a federal state, but not one based on nationalities. The ethnical difference is doubtless a bigger hurdle in the eyes of those centralist opposition groups as well as from the regime.

Iran appears to have been unaltered by turmoil in Northern Africa and the Middle East region over the last four years. Is it?

In 2007 we had several meetings in the European Parliament. Our main goal was to convey that, if any change came to Iran, it should not be swallowed as happened with [Ayatollah] Khomeini in 1979.“Islamic extremism of any kind, no matter if it comes from the Ayatollahs or ISIS [Islamic State], cannot solve the people´s problems so both are condemned to disappear” – Nasser Boladai, spokesperson of the Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI)

In May 2009 there were demonstrations against the regime in Zahedan before the controversial elections but the timing could not have been worse for a change. Mir-Hussein Moussavi was leading the so called “green movement” against [incumbent President Mahmoud] Ahmadineyad but he had no real intention of diverting from Khomeini´s idea.

Among others, the green movement failed because the people´s disenchantment was funnelled into an electoral dispute, but also because that movement did not include the issue of nationalities in its programme.

However, the changes in North Africa and the Middle East will have a positive psychological effect on the Iranian psyche in the long run in the sense that they can see that a tyrannical system cannot stay forever.

Islamic extremism of any kind, no matter if it comes from the Ayatollahs or ISIS [Islamic State], cannot solve the people´s problems so both are condemned to disappear.

Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadineyad in the 2013 presidential elections. Was this for the good?

Not for us. Since he took power there have been more executions and more repression. Rouhani is not only a mullah; he has also been a member of the Iranian security apparatus for over 16 years.

The death penalty continues to be applied in political cases, where individuals are commonly accused of “enmity against God”. Iran´s different nations´ plights have not yet been discussed. They have often promised language and culture rights, jobs for the Baloch, the Kurds, etc., but we´re still waiting to see these happen.

You come from an area which has seen a spike of Baloch insurgent movements who seemingly subscribe a radical vision of Sunni Islam.

It´s difficult to know whether they are purely Baloch nationalists or plain Jihadists as their speech seems to be winding between both in their different statements.

However, insurgency against the central government in Iran has a long tradition among the Baloch and we have episodes in our recent history where even Shiite Baloch were fighting against Tehran, an eloquent proof that their agenda was a national one, completely unrelated to religion.

Paradoxically, Tehran is to blame for the rise of Sunni extremism in both Iranian Kurdistan and Balochistan. Both nations are mainly Sunni so they empowered the local mullahs; they were brought into the elite through money and power to dissolve a deeply rooted communist feeling among the Kurds and the Baloch.

Khomeini just stuck to a policy which was introduced in the region by the British. They were the first to politicise Islam as a tool against Soviet expansion across the region.

You once said that Iranian Balochistan has become “a hunting ground”. Can you explain this?

It´s a hunting ground for the Iranian security forces. Even a commander of the Mersad [security] admitted openly that it had been ordered to kill, and not to arrest people.

As a result, many of our villages have suffered house-to-house searches which has emptied them of youth. The latter have either been killed systematically or emigrated elsewhere.

The fact that our population has decreased threefold since the times of the Pahlevis speaks volumes about the situation in our region.

Human Rights Watch has further documented the fact that the Baloch populated region has been systematically divided by successive regimes in Tehran to create a demographic imbalance.

Less than a century ago, our region was called “Balochistan”. Later its name would be changed to “Balochistan and Sistan”, then “Sistan and Balochistan”… The plan is to finally call it “Sistan” and divide it into three districts: Wilayat, Sistan and Saheli.

How do you react to the claims of those who say that Iran also played a role in the creation of ISIS, similar to Tehran’s backing of Al Qaeda in Iraq to tear up the Sunni society and prevent it from sharing power in post-2003 Iraq?

The theocratic regime in Iran indirectly supports extremist religious forces and, at the same time, manipulates them to control and deter them from becoming moderate and uniting with moderate religious, liberal or democratic forces in Iran.

The Iranian and Pakistani governments cooperate in the building and using of the extremist groups to first, create controlled instability in Balochistan, and second, to create false artificial political dynamics in the form of Islamic extremists to obstruct and distort Baloch struggles for sovereignty and self-determination.

They also try to change the Baloch liberal and secular culture, which is based on moderate Islam, into an extremist version of their own creation of fundamentalist Islam.

Balochistan’s geopolitical location allows access to the sea, something that the Islamic groups need. Balochistan’s division between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan enables the groups to communicate with each other across the borders and move to and from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.

With the support and tacit consent of both Iranian and Pakistani government, they also use the region to transport fighters and suicide bombers to the Arab countries and other locations in the world. From there, financial help is brought to extremist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Excerpt:

Boat carrying asylum seekers and migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Photo credit: UNHCR/L.Boldrini

By Sean Buchanan
ROME, Apr 15 2015 (IPS)

“The unbearable number of lives lost at sea will only grow if the European Union does not act now to ensure search-and-rescue operations across the Mediterranean,” Human Rights Watch warned Apr. 15.

The international human rights organisation was reacting to reports that as many as 400 migrants may have died in the Mediterranean sea over the past weekend, according to witness accounts collected by the Save the Children charity among the more than 7,000 migrants and asylum seekers rescued by the Italian Coast Guard since Apr. 10.

Noting that 11 bodies have been recovered so far from one confirmed shipwreck over the past few days, Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch said that “if the reports are confirmed, this past weekend would be among the deadliest few days in the world’s most dangerous stretch of water for migrants and asylum seekers.”

Many of those rescued over the weekend remain on Italian vessels as authorities scramble to find emergency accommodation, and Human Rights Watch said that the lack of preparation for arrivals was entirely preventable because many had predicted that 2015 would be a record year for boat migration.

“Other E.U. countries have shown a distinct lack of political will to help alleviate Italy’s unfair share of the responsibility,” according to the human rights organisation.

The European Union’s external border agency, Frontex, launched Operation Triton in the Mediterranean in November 2014, as Italy downsized its massive humanitarian naval operation, Mare Nostrum, which has been credited with saving tens of thousands of lives.

Triton’s geographic scope and budget is far more limited than Mare Nostrum, and the primary mandate of Frontex is border control, not search and rescue.

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as many as 500 migrants and asylum seekers have died already in the Mediterranean in 2015, a 30-fold increase over recorded deaths in the same period in 2014.

However, said Human Rights Watch, if the reports of hundreds more dead over the past few days are confirmed, the death toll in just over three months would be nearly 1,000 people, and that number is likely to rise as more migrants take to the seas during the traditional crossing season in the spring and summer months. The death toll for all of 2014 was at least 3,200 people.

The European Commission is to present a “comprehensive migration agenda” to E.U. member states in May but some of the proposals, while cloaked in humanitarian rhetoric about preventing deaths at sea, raise serious human rights concerns, Human Rights Watch said.

These include setting up offshore processing centres in North African countries, outsourcing border control and rescue operations in order to prevent departures, and increasing financial assistance to deeply repressive countries like Eritrea, one of the key countries of origin for asylum seekers attempting the sea crossing, “without evidence of human rights reforms.”

While some proposals contain elements that could potentially address root causes of irregular migration or provide safe alternatives for migrants, Human Rights Watch said that the proof of their success will rest on whether they respect the rights of migrants and asylum seekers, rather than simply stop the flow.

Early signs of intent suggest that rather than building the capacity to protect, the emphasis will be on enhancing and outsourcing containment mechanisms to prevent departures, and “it’s hard not to see these proposals as cynical bids to limit the numbers of migrants and asylum seekers making it to E.U. shores,” Sunderland said.

“Whatever longer term initiatives may come forth, the immediate humanitarian imperative for the European Union is to get out there and save lives.”

Meanwhile, the debate around immigration in Italy has taken on xenophobic tones in some quarters, with the leader of Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League, Matteo Salvini, calling on all local authorities to resist “by any means” requests to accommodate asylum seekers, and saying that his party is ready to occupy buildings to prevent arrivals.

Edited by Phil Harris    

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jan 12 2015 (IPS)

It is sad to see how a continent that was one cradle of civilisation is running blindly into a trap, the trap of a holy war with Islam – and that six Muslim terrorists were sufficient to bring that about.

It is time to get out of the comprehensible “We are All Charlie Hebdo” wave, to look into facts, and to understand that we are playing into the hands of a few extremists, and equating ourselves with them. The radicalisation of the conflict between the West and Islam is going to carry with it terrible consequences

Roberto Savio

The first fact is that Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with 1.6 billion practitioners, that Muslims are the majority in 49 countries of the world and that they account for 23 percent of humankind. Of these 1.6 billion, only 317 million are Arabs. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) live in the Asia-Pacific region; in fact, more Muslims live in India and Pakistan (344 million combined). Indonesia alone has 209 million.

A Pew Research Center report on the Muslim world also inform us that it is in South Asia that Muslims are more radical in terms of observance and views. In that region, those in favour of severe corporal punishment for criminals are 81 percent, compared with 57 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, while those in favour of executing those who leave Islam are 76 percent in South Asia, compared with 56 percent in the Middle East.

Therefore, it is obvious that it is the history of the Middle East which brings the specificity of the Arabs to the conflict with the West. And here are the main four reasons.“We are falling into a deadly trap, and doing exactly what the radical Muslims want: engaging in a holy war against Islam, so that the immense majority of moderate Muslims will be pushed to take up arms … instead of a strategy of isolation, we are engaging in a policy of confrontation”

First, all the Arab countries are artificial creations. In May 1916, Monsieur François Georges-Picot for France and Sir Mark Sykes for Britain met and agreed on a secret treaty, with the support of the Russian Empire and the Italian Kingdom, on how to carve up the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

Thus the Arab countries of today were born as the result of a division by France and Britain with no consideration for ethnic and religious realities or for history. A few of those countries, like Egypt, had an historical identity, but countries like Iraq, Arabia Saudi, Jordan, or even the Arab Emirates, lacked even that. It is worth remembering that the Kurdish issue of 30 million people divided among four countries was created by European powers.

As a consequence, the second reason. The colonial powers installed kings and sheiks in the countries that they created. To run these artificial countries, strong hands were required. So, from the very beginning, there was a total lack of participation of the people, with a political system which was totally out of sync with the process of democracy which was happening in Europe. With European blessing, these countries were frozen in feudal times.

As for the third reason, the European powers never made any investment in industrial development, or real development. The exploitation of petrol was in the hands of foreign companies and only after the end of the Second World War, and the ensuing process of decolonisation, did oil revenues really come into local hands.

When the colonial powers left, the Arab countries had no modern political system, no modern infrastructure, no local management.

Finally, the fourth reason, which is closer to our days. In states which did not provide education and health for their citizens, Muslim piety took on the task of providing what the state was not providing. So large networks of religious schools and hospital were created and, when elections were finally permitted, these became the basis for legitimacy and the vote for Muslim parties.

This is why, just taking the example of two important countries, Islamist parties won in Egypt and Algeria, and how with the acquiescence of the West, military coups were the only resort to stopping them.

This compression of so many decades into a few lines is of course superficial and leaves out many other issues. But this brutally abridged historical process is useful for understanding how anger and frustration is now all over the Middle East, and how this leads to the attraction to the Islamic State (IS) in poor sectors.

We should not forget that this historical background, even if remote for young people, is kept alive by Israel’s domination of the Palestinian people. The blind support of the West, especially of the United States, for Israel is seen by Arabs as a permanent humiliation, and Israel’s continuous expansion of settlements clearly eliminates the possibility of a viable Palestinian State.

The July-August bombing of Gaza, with just some noises of protest from the West but no real action, is for the Arab world clear proof that the intention is to keep Arabs down and seek alliances only with corrupt and delegitimised rulers who should be swept away. And the continuous Western intervention in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the drones bombing everywhere, are widely perceived among the 1.6 billion that the West is historically engaged in keeping Islam down, as the Pew report noted.

We should also remember that Islam has several internal divisions, of which the Sunni-Shiite divide is just the largest. But while in the Arab region at least 40 percent of Sunni do not recognise a Shiite as a fellow Muslim, outside the region this tends to disappear, In Indonesia only 26 percent identify themselves as Sunni, with 56 percent identifying themselves as “just Muslim”.

In the Arab world, only in Iraq and Lebanon, where the two communities lived side by side, does a large majority of Sunni recognise Shiites as fellow Muslims. The fact that Shiites, who account for just 13 percent of Muslims, are the large majority in Iran, and the Sunni the large majority in Saudi Arabia explains the ongoing internal conflict in the region, which is being stirred by the two respective leaders.

Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, then run by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (1966–2006), successfully deployed a policy of polarisation in Iraq, continuing attacks on Shiites and provoking an ethnic cleansing of one million Sunnis from Baghdad. Now IS, the radical caliphate which is challenging the entire Arab world besides the West, is able to attract many Sunnis from Iraq which had suffered so many Shiite reprisals, that they sought the umbrella of the very group that had deliberately provoked the Shiites.

The fact it is that every day hundreds of Arabs die because of the internal conflict, a fate that does not affect the much larger Muslim community.

Now, all terrorist attacks in the West that have happened in Ottawa, in London, and now in Paris, have the same profile: a young man from the country in question, not someone from the Arab region, who was not at all religious during his teenage years, someone who somehow drifted, did not find a job, and was a loner. In nearly all cases, someone who had already had something to do with the judicial system.

Only in the last few years had he become converted to Islam and accepted the calls from IS for killing infidels. He felt that with this he would find a justification to his life, he would become a martyr, a somebody in another world, removed from a life in which there was no real bright future.

The reaction to all this has been a campaign in the West against Islam. The latest number of the New Yorker published a strong article defining Islam not as a religion but as an ideology. In Italy, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the right-wing and anti-immigrant Lega Nord has publicly condemned the Pope for engaging Islam in dialogue, and conservative Italian pundit Giuliano Ferrara declared on TV that ”we are in a Holy War”.

The overall European (and U.S.) reaction has been to denounce the Paris killings as the result of a “deadly ideology”, as President François Hollande called it.

It is certainly a sign of the anti-Muslim tide that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was obliged to take a position against the recent marches in Dresden (Muslim population 2 percent), organised by the populist movement Pegida (the German acronym for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West”). The marches were basically directed against the 200,000 asylum seekers, most of them from Iraq and Syria, whose primary intention, according to Pegida, was not to escape war.

Studies from all over Europe show that the immense majority of immigrants have successfully integrated with their host economies. United Nations studies also show that Europe, with its demographic decline, requires at least 20 million immigrants by 2050 if it wants to remain viable in welfare practices, and competitive in the world. Yet, what are we getting everywhere?

Xenophobic, right-wing parties in every country of Europe, able to make the Swedish government resign, conditioning the governments of United Kingdom, Denmark and Nederland, and looking poised to win the next elections in France.

It should be added that, while what happened in Paris was of course a heinous crime, and while expression of any opinion is essential for democracy, very few have ever seen Charlie Hebdo and its level of provocation. Especially because in 2008, as Tariq Ramadan pointed out in The Guardian of Jan. 10, Charlie Hebdo fired a cartoonist who had joke about a Jewish link to the French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s son.

Charlie Hebdo was a voice defending the superiority of France and its cultural supremacy in the world, and had a small readership, which it obtained by selling provocation – exactly the opposite of the view of a world based on respect and cooperation among different cultures and religions.

So now we are all Charlie, as everybody is saying. But to radicalise the clash between the two largest religions of the world is not a minor affair. We should fight terrorism, be it Muslim or not (let us not forget that a Norwegian, Anders Behring Breivik, who wanted to keep his country free of Muslim penetration, killed 91 of his co-citizens).

But we are falling into a deadly trap, and doing exactly what the radical Muslims want: engaging in a holy war against Islam, so that the immense majority of moderate Muslims will be pushed to take up arms.

The fact that European right-wing parties will reap the benefit of this radicalisation goes down very well for the radical Muslims. They dream of a world fight, in which they will make Islam – and not just any Islam, but their interpretation of Sunnism – the sole religion. Instead of a strategy of isolation, we are engaging in a policy of confrontation.

And, apart from September 11 in New York, the losses of life have been miniscule compared with what is going on in the Arab world, where just in one country – Syria – 50,000 people lost their lives last year.

How can we so blindly fall into the trap without realising that we are creating a terrible clash all over the world? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Bondok Hassem (left) gets help to mount a mortar inside Zwara´s squat house. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ZWARA, Libya, Dec 5 2014 (IPS)

It could be a squat house anywhere: music is playing non-stop and there is also a radio station and an art exhibition. However, weapons are also on display among the instruments, and most here wear camouflage uniform.

“The house belonged to a former member of the secret services of [Muammar] Gaddafi so we decided to squat it for the local youth in Zwara [an Amazigh enclave 120 km west of Tripoli, on the border with Tunisia],” Fadel Farhad, an electrician who combines his work with the local militia, tells IPS.It could be a squat house anywhere: music is playing non-stop and there is also a radio station and an art exhibition. However, weapons are also on display among the instruments, and most here wear camouflage uniform.

The centre is called “Tifinagh” after the name given to the Amazigh alphabet. Also called Berbers, the Amazigh are native inhabitants of North Africa.

The arrival of the Arabs in the region in the seventh century was the beginning of a slow yet gradual process of Arabisation which was sharply boosted during the four decades in which Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011) remained in power. Unofficial estimates put the number of Amazighs in this country at around 600,000 – about 10 percent of the total population

Like most of the youngsters at the centre, Farhad knows he can be mobilised at any time. The latest attack on Zwara took place less than a kilometre from here a little over a week ago, when an airstrike hit a warehouse killing two Libyans and six sub-Saharan migrants.

Three years after Gaddafi was toppled, Libya remains in a state of political turmoil that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. There are two governments and two separate parliaments one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, 1,000 km east of the capital.

Several militias are grouped into two paramilitary alliances: Fajr (“Dawn” in Arabic), led by the Misrata brigades controlling Tripoli, and Karama (“Dignity”) commanded by Khalifa Haftar, a Tobruk-based former army general.

“Here in Zwara we rely on around 5000 men grouped into different militias,” Younis, a militia fighter who prefers not to give his full name, tells IPS. “We never wanted this to happen but the problem is that all our enemies are fighting on Tobruk´s side,” adds the 30-year-old by the pickups lining up at the entrance of the building.

Local militiamen gather outside their squat house in the Amazigh enclave of Zwara. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The polarisation of the conflict in Libya has pushed several Amazigh militias to fight sporadically alongside the coalition led by Misrata, which includes Islamist groups among its ranks.

However, the atmosphere in this squat house seems at odds with religious orthodoxy of any kind, with an unlikely fusion between Amazigh traditional music and death metal blasting from two loudspeakers. This is the work of 30-year-old Bondok Hassem, a well-known local musician who is also an Amazigh language teacher as well as one of the commanders of the Tamazgha militia.

“Both Misrata and Tobruk are striving to become the alpha male in this war. We are all fully aware that, whoever wins this war, they will attack us immediately afterwards so we are forced to defend our land by any means necessary,” laments Hassem between sips of boja, the local firewater.

But can it be international partnerships that hamper an already difficult agreement between both sides?

Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and France are backing Tobruk and Misrata relies mainly on Qatar and Turkey. Meanwhile, NATO officials are seemingly torn between wanting to stay out of the war, and watching anxiously as the violence goes out of control. Today, most of the diplomatic missions have left Tripoli, except for those of Italy and Hungary.

A fragile balance

Moussa Harim is among the Amazigh who seem to feel not too uncomfortable siding with the government in Tripoli. Born in Jadu, in the Amazigh stronghold of the Nafusa mountain range – 100 km south of Tripoli – Harim was exiled in France during Gaddafi’s time but he became Deputy Minister of Culture in March 2012.

Although he admits that Islamists pose a real threat, he clarifies that in Misrata there are also people “from all walks of life and very diverse affiliations, communists included.”

It is the geographical location itself which, according to Harim, inexorably pushes the Libyan Amazigh towards Misrata.

“Except for a small enclave in the east, our people live in the west of the country, and a majority of them here, in Tripoli,” the senior official tells IPS.

But there are discordant voices, like that of Fathi Ben Khalifa. A native of Zwara and a political dissident for decades, Ben Khalifa was the president of the World Amazigh Congress between 2011 and 2013.

The Congress is an international organisation based in Paris since 1995 that aims to protect the Amazigh identity. Today Ben Khalifa remains as an executive member of this umbrella organisation for this North African people.

“This is not our war, it’s just a conflict between Arab nationalists and Islamists, none of which will ever recognise our rights,” Ben Khalifa tells IPS over the phone from Morocco. Although the senior political activist defends the right of his people to defend themselves from outside aggressions, he gives a deadline to take a clearer position:

“If Libya´s Constitution – to be released on December 24 – does not grant our legitimate rights, then it will be the time to take up arms,” Ben Khalifa bluntly claims.

At dusk, and after another day marked by exhausting shifts at checkpoints and patrols around the city, the local militiamen cool down after swapping their rifles for a harmonica and a guitar at the squat house. This time they play the songs of Matloub Lounes, a singer from Kabylia, Algeria´s Amazigh stronghold.

“I can´t hardly wait for the war to end. I´ll burn my uniform and get back to my work,” says Anwar Darir, an Amazigh language teacher since 2011. That was the year in which Gaddafi was killed, yet a solution to the conflict among Libyans is still nowhere near.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The Italian Navy rescued 1,004 refugees and migrants on 14 August 2014. Some arrived barefoot, some children were shaking with cold. Men, women and children from Syria, Somalia, Gambia, Bangladesh and other countries were rescued. Credit: Amnesty International

By Matt Carr
MATLOCK, United Kingdom, Oct 10 2014 (IPS)

Since the end of the Cold War, the Mediterranean has become the most lethal of Europe’s barriers against irregular migration, having claimed nearly 20,000 migrant lives in the last two decades.  

And the first nine months of 2014 indicate that the phenomenon is on the rise, with more migrant deaths than in any previous year.

Last month, a report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that 3,072 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean this year out of a worldwide total of 4,077 deaths worldwide.  These figures are almost certainly underestimates, because many migrant deaths in the Mediterranean are not reported.

In the same month, a report from Amnesty International on migrant deaths in the Mediterranean estimated that 2, 200 migrants died between the beginning of June and mid-September alone.“It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Mediterranean has become an instrument in a policy of deterrence, in which migrant deaths are tacitly accepted as a form of ‘collateral damage’ in a militarised response to 21st century migration whose overriding objective is to stop people coming”

The worst incident in this period took place on Sep 11. when 500 men, women and children, many of them refugees from Syria and Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, drowned after their boat was deliberately rammed by their traffickers in Maltese territorial waters.

This horrendous crime took place less than one year after the horrific events of Oct. 3 last year, when at least 360 migrants drowned when their boat sank near the Italian island of Lampedusa.

At the time, the drownings at Lampedusa prompted an unprecedented outpouring of international anger and sympathy.

Pope Francis, European politicians such as Cecilia Malmstrom (European Commissioner for Home Affairs) and Juan Manuel Barroso (President of the European Commission), and  U.N. Secretary-General  Ban Ki-Moon all joined in the chorus of condemnation and called on Europe and the international community to take action to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Twelve months later, these worthy declarations have yet to be realised.

Following the Lampedusa tragedy, Italy undertook the largest combined naval/coastguard search and rescue operation in its history – known as ‘Operation Mare Nostrum’ – to coincide with Italian occupancy of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.    At a cost of nine million euros per month, the operation has rescued 100,000 people.

Yet despite these efforts, the death toll is already four times higher than it was in the whole of last year.  This increase is partly due to the rise in the numbers of people crossing, primarily as a result of the Syrian civil war and the collapse of the Libyan state. This year, more than 130,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean, compared with 60,000 the previous year.

A group of Somali women, among those rescued by the Italian Navy vessel Virginio Fasan, between 13 and 14 August 2014. Credit: Amnesty International

These numbers have tested the resources of Malta and Italy.  Some drownings have occurred as a result of a lack of clarity and coordination between the two countries over their mutual search and rescue areas.  In addition, Malta has sometimes been reluctant to rescue migrant boats in distress – a reluctance that some observers attribute to an unwillingness on the part of the authorities to accept them as refugees.

But the European Union has also been conspicuously absent from the unfolding tragedy on its southern maritime borders.

Despite numerous calls from the Italian government for assistance, it was not until August this year that the European Union mandated ‘Frontex’ – the European border agency – to undertake ‘Operation Triton’ in the Mediterranean to complement Italy’s search and rescue operations.

But Frontex is primarily concerned with immigration enforcement rather than search and rescue, and the joint operations that it coordinates are entirely dependent on resources provided by E.U. member states.

Glaring lack of response

It is at this level that the lack of response is most glaring.  There are many things that European governments could do to implement to reduce migrant deaths.

They could use their navies to establish the ‘humanitarian corridors’ between North Africa and Europe, as the U.N. refugee agency UNCHR once suggested during the Libyan Civil War.  They could facilitate legal entry, so that men, women and children fleeing war and political oppression can reach Europe safely without having to place their lives in the hands of smugglers. 

The European Union could also abolish or reform the Dublin Regulation that obliges asylum seekers to make their applications in one country only.  This law has placed too much responsibility on European ‘border countries’ like Malta, Italy, Spain and Greece, all of which have experienced surges in irregular migration over the last twenty years.

More generally, Europe could establish an international dialogue with migrant-producing countries to make labour migration safe and mutually beneficial. However, many governments clearly regard ‘Mare Nostrum’ as an essential moat between ‘Fortress Europe’ and its unwanted migrants.

Most migrants who cross the Mediterranean are refugees from nationalities that UNHCR considers to be in need of some form of protection under the terms of the Geneva Convention.   But in order to obtain this, they have to reach Europe first and undergo all the risks that these journeys entail.

All this has transformed the Mediterranean into what Amnesty calls a “survival test” for refugees and migrants. Few politicians will openly admit this because such an admission would directly contradict the values that the European Union has set out to uphold since the European project first took shape after World War II.

Most governments prefer instead to condemn the smugglers and organised criminals who profit from such journeys, and wring their hands whenever a particularly terrible tragedy takes place. Men who sink migrant boats or send them to sea without lifebelts certainly deserve to be condemned.

But, as Amnesty International points out, Europe’s ”woeful response” has also contributed to the death toll.  And it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Mediterranean has become an instrument in a policy of deterrence, in which migrant deaths are tacitly accepted as a form of ‘collateral damage’ in a militarised response to 21^st century migration whose overriding objective is to stop people coming.

Until these priorities change, migrants will continue to die, and 2014’s grim record may well be superseded.  Italy has already threatened to stop its search and rescue operations when its presidency of the European Union comes to an end later this year.

Amnesty International has urged European governments to fulfil their humanitarian obligations to save lives in the Mediterranean and warned that “the EU as a whole cannot be indifferent to this suffering.”

So far, there is little sign that anybody is listening.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The author posts blogs on this and other issues at infernalmachine.co.uk/

At a time when HIV rates have stabilised or declined elsewhere, the epidemic is still advancing in the Arab world, exacerbated by factors such as political unrest, conflict, poverty and lack of awareness due to social taboos.

According to UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS), an estimated 270,000 people were living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2012.

“It is true that the Arab region has a low prevalence of infection, however it has the fastest growing epidemic in the world,“ warns Dr Khadija Moalla, an independent consultant on human rights/gender/civil society/HIV-AIDS.With the exception of Somalia and Djibouti, the [HIV] epidemic is generally concentrated in vulnerable populations at higher risk, such as men-who-have-sex-with-men, female and male sex workers, and injecting drugs users

The United Nations estimates that there were 31,000 new cases and 16,500 new deaths in 2012 alone. “Infections grew by 74 percent between 2001 and 2012 while AIDS-related deaths almost tripled,” says Dr Matta Matta, an infection specialist based at the Bellevue Hospital in Lebanon.

However, both Moalla and Matta explain that figures can be often misleading in the region, due to under-reporting and the absence of consistent and accurate surveys.

With the exception of Somalia and Djibouti, the epidemic is generally concentrated in vulnerable populations at higher risk, such as men-who-have-sex-with-men, female and male sex workers, and injecting drugs users.

In Libya, for example, 90 percent of those in the latter category also live with HIV, notes Matta. Furthermore, adds Moalla, most Arab countries do not have programmes allowing for exchange of syringes.

The legal framework criminalising such activities in most Arab countries means that it is difficult to reach out to specific groups.  With the exception of Tunisia, which recognises legalised sex work, female sex workers who work clandestinely in other countries are not safeguarded by law and thus cannot force their clients to use protection, which allows for the spread of disease.

Lack of awareness, the absence of voluntary testing and of sexual education, social taboos, as well as poverty, are among the factors driving HIV in the region. “Arab governments and societies deny the epidemic and the absence of voluntary testing means that for every infected person we have ten others that we do not know about,” stresses Moalla.

People living with HIV or those at risk face discrimination and stigma.  “More than half of the people living with HIV in Egypt have been denied treatment in healthcare facilities,” explains Matta.

This bleak scenario is compounded by the security challenges prevailing in the region which not only make it difficult to deliver prevention and other programmes, but also restrict access to services by those on treatment and cause displacement and loss of follow-up according to the UNAIDS report.

The war in Iraq that began in 2003, for example, led to the destruction of most of the country’s programmes and facilities under the National AIDS Programme and, according to Moalla, the national aids centre in Libya was recently burnt down.

In addition, in some countries, conflict has significantly increased the vulnerability of women. By 2012, for example, only eight percent of the estimated number of pregnant women living with HIV in the MENA region received appropriate treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission according to the UNAIDS report.

Meanwhile, only a few governments have worked on effective programmes to fight the epidemic, although there are signs of the emergence of NGOs tackling the problem with people living with HIV and providing them with support.

“North African countries and Lebanon have generally done better than others, while Gulf countries are doing the least,” says Moalla, adding that less than one in five people living with HIV are receiving the medicines they need in the Arab region.

While some efforts have been made with the UNDP HIV Regional Programme pioneering legal reform in several countries, as well as drafting an Arab convention on protection of the rights of people living with HIV in partnership with the League of Arab States, these are not enough.

“The Arab world attitude taking the high moral ground on the issue of HIV is no barrier for the epidemic,” says Matta. “The region’s governments need to address a growing problem that is only worsened by the general upheaval.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The Muslim Brotherhood has its own army of the young that will not easily be defeated. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Baher Kamal
CAIRO, Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

Unconsciously or not, most mainstream media and foreign correspondents here have been echoing Muslim Brotherhood voices by depicting Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, as the general who led the July 2013 “military coup” against the “legitimately elected” Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi.
In doing so, they omit some key facts:

– that over 30 million Egyptians took to the streets exactly a year ago to press for the “impeachment” of Morsi. Morsi was elected by slightly more than 13 million voters. The Egyptian Constitution clearly states that sovereignty resides in the people.

– that Morsi’s rival in 2012 presidential elections was general Ahmad Shafik, a senior commander in the Egyptian Air Force who later served as Prime Minister from 31 January 2011 to 3 March 2011. Shafik was considered as former President Hosni Mubarak’s strong man.

– that the vast majority of political parties, including the Islamic radical Salafi Party Al Nour, and the former Vice-President responsible for International Relations, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, had held several meetings with the by then Defence Minister Al Sisi to agree on immediate action aimed at the impeachment of Morsi.“Regardless of who has now become the fifth top leader of Egypt in slightly more than three years, Egyptian citizens appear to have little hopes that their harsh daily living conditions will be alleviated”

The call for the impeachment of Morsi was motivated by widespread popular frustration: put simply, 13 million Egyptians elected Morsi in May 2012 as the representative of “charitable men of faith” – the Muslim Brotherhood – who would rescue millions of people from poverty, but who instead transformed his position into a platform for a systematic “Islamisation” of all state institutions while neglecting the pressing needs of the Egyptian population.

Another often neglected fact is that in Egypt there is much more than generals and “troglodytes” – as a number of local political analysts often call the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned for most of the time since it was created in 1928.

Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi won the three-day presidential elections (May 26-28) with a majority close to 97 percent. His rival, socialist Hamedin Sabbahi, obtained a mere 3 percent of the vote.

However, and regardless of who has now become the fifth top leader of Egypt in slightly more than three years, Egyptian citizens appear to have little hopes that their harsh daily living conditions will be alleviated any time soon, or even in the medium term.

The five men who have led Egypt in the last three years are: Hosni Mubarak who was ousted in February 2011; Field Marshal Mohamed Al-Tantawi, who ruled as chair of the Supreme Military Council between February 2011 and June 2012; Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, who took office in June 2012 and was deposed in July 2013; provisional president Adly Mansour (July 2013-June 2014); and now the elected Al Sisi.

The widespread scepticism among Egyptian citizens is based on their own experience, which shows that none of the previous four mandatories and half a dozen of governments they have had since they launched their massive popular revolution in January 2011 has been able to deal with their urgent needs.

Moreover, the two candidates to Egyptian presidency in May this year delivered big promises that ordinary people doubted they could ever deliver. In this, both of them behaved in a “business as usual” manner, just like in most Western electoral campaigns.

Therefore, and again regardless of who won and now takes office, and independently of the outcome of the summer/autumn parliamentary elections, the daily life of most of Egypt’s 94 million people is anything but easy.

Some facts help put the situation in perspective:

– Nearly 40 percent of Egyptians live in poverty or extreme poverty.

– Unemployment has jumped to over 13 percent, according to official mid -2013 data, with more than 3.2 million Egyptians now out of the job market, compared with 2.5 million in the same period in 2010. Egypt’s economically active population amounts to 23.7 million workers.

– Domestic public debt amount to nearly 200 billion dollars, according to governmental figures for July 2013. Meanwhile, foreign public debt reached around 39 billion dollars last year.

– Egypt’s foreign currency reserves were estimated in mid-2013 at some 19 billion dollars, compared with 33 billion in January 2011, and national currency rates have fallen by about 20 percent, implying a growing devaluation of the national currency – the Egyptian pound.

– Inflation has been steadily increasing by a monthly average close to 1 percent, with an annual rate estimated at more than 11.5 percent.

– The national budget deficit now exceeds 280 billion dollars, compared with 194 billion dollars in 2013.

– Slum inhabitants are estimated at more than six million Egyptians, with garbage collection and drug trafficking among their major sources of income.

– The Sinai peninsula has become a “nerve centre” of terrorism, with militants and mercenaries, both Egyptians and foreigners, reportedly armed with weapons provided by the Hamas Islamic movement in Gaza, Libyan arms traffickers and Turkish organisations, according to the findings of the Egyptian judiciary system. Most terrorist organisations active in both Sinai and other regions are believed to be linked to Al Qaeda.

All this is compounded by a number of features of the daily lives of Egyptians – hundreds of civilians have been victims of terrorist attacks, brutal killings and explosions, university students have been abducted and young women have been raped.

Since its president Morsi was ousted on July 3 last year, the Muslim Brotherhood has launched a systematic series of attacks everywhere in Egypt, according to national security services.

Related terrorist organisations, such as Beit Al Maqdas and Ajnad Misr, have been perpetrating violent, deadly operations against both civilians and military forces.

Meanwhile, former influential figures of Mubarak’s regime (which ruled Egypt from October 1981-to February 2011) have systematically taken their fortunes abroad, and are said to have funded professional criminals to destabilise the country with the hope that major chaos will return them to power.

An estimated total of over 200 billion dollars (equivalent to the national domestic debt) is reported to be lying in bank accounts in “fiscal havens” around the world. Mubarak’s family fortune has been estimated to amount at over 70 billion dollars and Egypt has been trying to recover these funds.

The first wave of massive popular revolution in January 2011, which ousted Mubarak, paved the way for dozens and dozens of opposition newspapers and tens of national and satellite TV networks.

With the exception of just a half a dozen of them, most of them have fallen into gossip-oriented practices, often with improvised commentators, all leading to a deeper, insane public opinion confusion.

Parallel to all these national hurdles, Egypt also faces huge challenges abroad. One of these is the risk that vital water supplies will dramatically decrease due to Ethiopia’s ‘Grand Renaissance’ dam, currently under construction on the Blue Nile. Some Egyptian experts have already started warning against the risk of a “dangerous water hunger” one decade from now.

Another challenge is represented by the unlimited funds reportedly provided by Qatar to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has resulted in the freezing of relations between the two countries.

This also led three Gulf countries – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates – to withdraw their ambassadors in Qatar on March 5, 2014, due to what they consider as flagrant intrusion in the internal affairs of another Arab state.

To complete the picture, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has found a “safe haven” in Libya, according to both Egyptian and Libyan sources, who say that some of the weapons used by the Muslim Brotherhood for its terrorist attacks come from Libya, where there are up to 25 million weapons, according to authoritative Libyan politicians.

Excerpt:

All eyes have turned to Libya since Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou’s statement claiming that recent attacks in north Niger were perpetrated by Malian terrorists based in south Libya.

While some security analysts have claimed that Islamist groups from Mali have set up camp in southern Libya, other experts told IPS that this was impossible.

The director of the Centre for African Studies in Tripoli, Faraj Najem, refuted the presence of Malian terrorists in Libya. He said that Mali did not share a border with Libya, which prevented the movement of fighters into south Libya.

“Tripoli could throw the accusation back on its Algerian and Nigerien neighbours’ doorsteps: if Malian terrorists are in Libya, they would have had to pass through neighbouring countries before arriving here,” Najem told IPS.

The Jihadist group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, claimed responsibility for two suicide attacks carried out on May 23 at the Agadez military base and the Arlit uranium mine in Niger. They said that the attacks were a punishment for Niger’s support of France’s intervention in Mali.

A coalition of armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda – composed of AQIM, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine – held northern Mali from early 2012 until a French intervention in January allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north.

And according to the Niger government, the attacks on the country were planned in Libya. Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, however, refuted these allegations as “baseless”.

Najem supported Zeidan’s view.

“South-eastern Libya is controlled by the Toubous who do not have any links with Islamist movements. The Tuaregs from Azawad and from Ansar Dine in Mali are wanted in Libya because they fought with pro-Gaddafi troops, and so they can’t return,” Najem said.

Former President Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed in October 2011 after 42 years in power, and a newly elected government was sworn in in November 2012.

“I have no information about a terrorist presence in south Libya,” Hussein Hamed Al-Adsari, a Tuareg member of parliament in Oubari, south-east Libya, told IPS in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

Abu Azoum, a councillor in Fezzan in south Libya, said the case was not clear cut. “I do not believe that the terrorists come from here. At the same time, it is entirely possible that they are getting arms supplies in the south. They are prepared to pay high prices for arms, and there are many weapons in circulation in Libya,” he told IPS.

Agila Majou Ouled, a representative of the Slimane community in Sebha, south Libya, observed that although “the southern borders with Chad, Niger and Sudan have been officially closed” since December 2012, “everybody crosses over as if it’s business as usual.”

He, however, did not believe that there were fighter camps in the south.

“It is possible that terrorists have passed through Libya on their way to Niger from Mali to cover their tracks. But it is not possible that they are still here. Everybody knows everybody in the desert. Any new arrivals are immediately known about,” Majou Ouled told IPS.

A Tripoli-based security analyst believes otherwise. “It is true that the tribes in the south are in full control of their territory. And therefore they know perfectly well that AQIM is on the ground,” he said, speaking anonymously.

His opinion is shared by Samuel Laurent, author of the book “Sahelistan” on the Jihadist movements in the region. “The Tuaregs (who control south-east Libya) harbour Islamic militants. As a general rule the reasons are purely financial rather than ideological,” he wrote, pointing out that “Belmokhtar is a millionaire.”

According to Laurent, who is a security consultant, Malian Islamists set up base in Libya in November 2012, well before the French intervention. “The real core of AQIM have been regrouping in south-east Libya for months,” he told IPS.

In Laurent’s view, unlike the Malian government, Tripoli will never agree to western intervention. “What’s more, thanks to the Gaddafi regime’s former arms caches, weapons are in full circulation. Libya is therefore by far a more profitable haven for terrorists than Mali,” he concluded.

In early June, the government of France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) offered support to the Libyan government against Al-Qaeda-linked fighters who had been pushed out of northern Mali. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had said that France was “ready” to help Libya “secure its borders” in the south.

On Jun. 4, NATO announced that it would send a team of experts to Libya, but the head of the organisation, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was categorical in stating that the mission was in no way a deployment of ground troops.

Although the Libyan government has requested assistance from NATO and western countries to secure its borders, some members of the government remain wary.

“Intervention by the Libyan army and police in the south is the preferred option,” Al-Adsari said. “Even if these institutions haven’t been fully formed, it is for Libyans to take charge of the situation.”

Majou Ouled added: “I am not comfortable with the idea of external intervention. If the West wants to help us, they should train our army, not come and enforce the law in our territory.”

Speaking at the press conference on Jun. 3, Zeidan announced measures to bolster the Libyan army’s presence. This included raising salaries and benefits to up to 1,200 dollars as an incentive to soldiers and former rebels to agree to work in the difficult southern region of the country.

Lingering violence, intolerance and oppression in Tunisia, following the ousting of former dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, tells the revolutionaries who sparked the Arab Spring that their work is just beginning.

With extremist violence on the rise, many Tunisians believe the revolution never ended, and that a second wave of protest is not far off. Credit: scossargilbert/CC-BY-2.0

Islamic fundamentalists represented by Salafists have presented themselves as the biggest challenge to Tunisian democracy.

By sanctioning and inciting violence against more progressive forces in the country, they are filling the cultural and political vacuum left by Ben Ali, whose regime effectively shackled freedom of expression, especially among the youth.

On Apr. 21 and 22, Jawhar Ben M’barek, the speaker for the social democratic group Doustourna, was violently assaulted by fanatics in the southern towns of Douz and Souk El Ahad, with the perpetrators going so far as to call for his death.

An undefined group of Salafists and others, acting in the name of ‘Muslim identity’, are responsible for these acts of aggression, which are becoming increasingly commonplace as traditionalists try desperately to steer the country’s post-revolutionary development with conservative reins.

Adnan Hajji, a member of the national trade union UGTT and former coordinator of the upheaval in the Gafsa mines in 2008, told IPS that “the situation is blocked because this government doesn’t want to listen and to negotiate with representatives of the different regions or with the “outraged”. The police are aggressive; the Salafists, supported by the (recently elected Islamist) Ennahda party, attack the media and civil society activists,” he lamented.

“You cannot yet call this a revolution, because it did not go till the end. It was an upheaval and we are going to have a second one.”

Freedom for all, or freedom for none

Tunisia has long boasted a very progressive family code and Tunisian women are seen as some of the most liberated in the region.

Now these freedoms are at risk, with Salafists clamouring for a return to a more “traditional” society.

“The way Tunisian society is evolving is worrisome because some are trying to impose limits to individual freedoms. The biggest threat is the expression of violence,” Tunisian filmmaker Salma Baccar, currently in Geneva to chair the International Oriental Film Festival, told IPS.

“The situation of women is not isolated from… society as a whole. If we manage to strike a balance between those who want the veil and those who don’t, those who want to drink alcohol and those who don’t, then we will have an equilibrated society where everybody can exercise his or her rights.”

The renowned artist – whose movie ‘Fatma 19’ has been censored for 36 years because it attributed Tunisian women’s progressive status not to the statesman Habib Burguiba but to a long cultural evolution – had never before been tempted by politics.

In February 2011, when 280,000 sub-Saharan African migrants fled worn-torn Libya to seek refuge in southern Tunisia, she decided to build a “cultural tent” to play music and movies, for which she was assaulted by the Islamic fundamentalist Salafists.

It was then that she realised that culture needed to go hand in hand with politics. She joined the Democratic Pole and in October 2011 was elected to the constitutional assembly.

She considers the progressive status of Tunisian women to be “irreversible”, but admits to being “a bit worried” by the situation in the country, particularly after Ennahda won the constitutional assembly elections.

“But you cannot stop history. Our real gain is the mentality of the people, not the laws. If a woman wants to wear a veil, or even a niqab, she is free to do it as long as she is an adult. For secular people like me, accepting (that) is a good exercise in democracy. But imposing it on children is a completely different story. And if someone physically assaults me in the name of his ideas, then it is not acceptable any more.”

Baccar says she would like to see another revolution, but a cultural one this time.

“The worst aspect of Ben Ali’s regime was that it deprived people of culture and education.”

Because this fundamental right was violated for so long, young people today are starting to express themselves exclusively through violence. Most of those who resort to aggression and attacks come from neglected regions and impoverished neighbourhoods, she added.

For her, these “cultural losers” are the biggest problem in today’s Tunisia, more of a liability than the 800,000 unemployed. Even the youngsters who went to colleges and universities were not truly educated – rather, their minds were emptied of any form of free expression, and some have turned into fanatics.

“This (was) Ben Ali’s worst crime against our society and remedying it will be a long term task.” She warned that society should also keep a close watch on primary schools, where many children are indoctrinated with reactionary ideas at a very early stage.

“In some maternal schools, mothers are encouraged to veil their daughters. That is where the fight starts: we have to invest in childhood and in the youngsters,” she stressed.

Ennahda’s limitations

For Hajji, nothing has changed since January 14, 2011, the legendary day when Ben Ali was forced to flee the country. In fact, things are actually getting worse, “which is normal after an upheaval where people are allowed to speak out for the first time; but something must be done to cool down a social situation that has been rotting since independence.”

“This government doesn’t know where it is going,” he complained. The constitutional assembly, which was supposed to complete its work by March 2013, has to act quickly.

“Ennahda doesn’t have a clear social or economic programme. They have never dealt with economic issues, never supported any social movement. I personally negotiate with the government and I can see how scared they are of taking any decision.”

The lack of a strict time frame within which to draft the constitution worries him, since the initial date of March 2013 has not been confirmed.

Hajji believes Ennahda is quickly losing the trust and support of its voter base. Though the party won the elections quite comfortably, only 46 percent of eligible voters turned out on polling day, while the majority abstained.

Next time around, Ennahda might not be first in line if they fail to deliver concrete solutions in the post-revolutionary period.

By Abderrahim El Ouali
CASABLANCA, Mar 15 2012 (IPS)

An unprecedented cold spell that struck Morocco in February and continues to linger well into March has raised serious questions about the country’s national agricultural development programme, which will fail to achieve its desired results if climate change continues to be mismanaged.

The ‘Green Morocco Plan’ was launched last year with the aim of remedying major obstacles that still hinder development of the agricultural sector, tackling everything from ensuring food security for 32 million Moroccans, to meeting the requirements of European markets, the biggest consumers of Moroccan produce.

However, the Plan does not do a thorough job of diagnosing climate factors, citing only drought, which it considers ‘periodical’, as an impediment to successful farming. The report does not address the sudden and unexpected arrival of cold weather, whose damages have been no less than disastrous.

Last February, more than 8,200 of the country’s 8,700 hectares of potatoes, were ravaged. A further 14,000 of about 21,000 hectares reserved for sugarcane were also blighted by the cold. This is particularly significant since potatoes and sugar are two of Morocco’s primary export commodities.

‘’We have never seen such a degree of cold. All that we worked for was completely destroyed,” Ahmed El Aiboudi, a farmer from the Ouled Frej region, 120 kilometres south of Casablanca, told IPS.

“We were not protected against this icy cold. Nobody expected it,” he added.

Nevertheless, for climatologists, such changes have been inevitable.

Mohammed-Said Karrouk, professor of climatology at Hassan II Mohamedia University and a United Nations expert on climate change, told IPS, “The Green Morocco Plan does not contain any (concrete mention of) management of climate change. All that is considered is the management of water resources, (but what is really needed) is a method for managing the totality of the changes.”

‘Managing the totality’ means especially taking into consideration the abrupt changes of temperature in both directions. “What we used to think of as the exception in the past is actually (now) the rule. The ascents and reductions in temperature are now more frequent than ever,” he explained.

Chemssi Bendriss, a farmer from the Benslimane region who said he had lost more than five hectares of potatoes, always reminds himself of the good old days when Morocco “had four clear seasons in the year.”

The population’s anxiety is justified. Agriculture contributes 19 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), supports 100,000 jobs in the food-processing industry, and supplies an income to 80 percent of Morocco’s 14 million peasants.

In spite of this essential role, the sector still suffers several setbacks including archaic agricultural practices. According to the ministry of agriculture, the country’s use of fertilisers by hectare is four times less than in France and national mechanisation is eleven times less than in Spain, the kingdom’s Northern neighbour. Meanwhile, the food-processing sector represents only 24 percent of the industrial units in the country.

However, though experts often cite the lack of industrialisation as the main obstacle to resilient agriculture, most farmers tend to take a different view.

“I believe that fertilisers and chemical processes are not what (we need). It would be sensible, on the contrary, to think of organic farming, because this is more profitable for farmers,” Abdelkebir Essaib, a farmer from the Ziyayda region, 80 kilometres Northeast of Casablanca, told IPS.

The Green Morocco Plan did not completely neglect this option. A project to produce organic olives has already been launched in the Southern region of Sraghna, approximately 300 kilometres from Casablanca.

Omar Zaki, a farmer from the region, told IPS, “The project will have a very positive impact on the daily life of inhabitants. It will create wealth and jobs opportunities for the population.”

Still, even organic farming is hindered by difficulties on the ground. The division of more than 70 percent of agricultural land into plots smaller than five hectares, according to the ministry of agriculture, remains one of the biggest problems.

The negative impacts of dated agricultural management also appear in the domination of cereal, which occupies 75 percent of agricultural land, though the crop contributes just five percent of total agricultural sales and 10 percent of total farm employment.

The situation has been aggravated, according to the Green Morocco Plan, by the shortage and the irregularity of rainfall, as well as the decrease of surface and subterranean water supplies caused by an extremely inefficient irrigation system.

However, the question is no longer how to face the lack of rainfall, but rather “to know how to manage (scarcity) and abundance at the same time,” said Karrouk.

“We are more and more exposed to strong inundations during the periods of intensive rainfall. Our infrastructure is not adapted to it. It is not any more a question of redirecting excess water towards the sea, but it is necessary to know how to save it during the periods of abundance to face times of drought,” he explained.

If the effects of climate change constantly escape the attention of Moroccan officials, it is not due to a lack of competence on the part of farmers to make their concerns heard, but to the lack of genuine outreach on the part of the government.

Mostafa Belaadassi, another farmer from the Ouled Frej region, told IPS, “Farmers are not being consulted enough to build up participatory solutions. The actual offices for agricultural advice lack both means and human resources.”

Though the Moroccan government established offices in most main villages to ensure the supply of technical advice years ago, no direct work with farmers has been carried out so far, he added.

Experts too feel that they have been overlooked by the government programme.

“I was never consulted officially by the government, whether during the elaboration of the Green Morocco Plan or (any) other. There were only some attempts to contain my criticism,” said Karrouk, who recently won the prestigious Albert Einstein Prize for his scientific contributions about climate change on the global level.

“This is not a technical matter, but a political and cultural one,” he concluded.

Excerpt:

At the battered terminal of Tripoli’s tiny Mitiga airport, over 150 young men and women jostle to be repatriated home to Nigeria on Libya’s Buraq airlines. This journey to Lagos is one of hundreds the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has facilitated since the start of the uprising against Gaddafi’s regime over a year ago.

IOM estimates that one million migrant workers were in Libya sending remittances home before the crisis, a heavy footprint for a Libyan population of under seven million.

Early on in the uprising, workers from Asia, the Middle East, and neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt fled across Libya’s borders. But Somali and Eritrean political refugees continued to arrive in Tripoli throughout the war; braving the harrowing journey north through Sudan.

IOM’s current flights are now filled with West Africans who traversed Niger and Chad to Libya seeking a better economic future, but whose ultimate hardships have forced them to return.

At Mitiga, many Nigerians don the brand new green sports jackets and shoes given to them by IOM, with their meagre possessions stuffed into plastic suitcases and shopping bags.

“The major problem is citizenship verification and temporary travel documentation,” explains Jeremy Haslam, IOM’s mission chief in Libya. “If they don’t have their documents – which I can say is (true for) over 90 percent – the first thing we have to do, before we can even think about repatriation, is confirm where they are from.”

While a few Nigerians look relieved to return home and laugh with comrades, the majority are in despair. After a costly and arduous car trip with smugglers over the desert into Libya, they have spent most days searching for piecemeal day labour, and living in perpetual fear of being harassed, robbed and detained by the Libyan militias policing the streets. They will now return to families – often indebted to smugglers – empty-handed.

“When I got to Tripoli I worked at a car wash and got up to 50 Libyan Dinars (40 dollars) a day,” says Dennis, a soft-spoken 24-year old. “When the war came however, it was hell. I lost my passport and money to the militia. They arrested me for 20 days and beat me up. During the war the militias were always stopping me, so I stayed indoors.”

Migrants interviewed by IPS often had their passports confiscated or lost early on, and none possessed entry visas. Libya is not a destination country for most, but a stepping-stone to Europe. While stigma towards Sub-Saharan migrants may have lessened since the war – when Muammar Gaddafi employed black mercenaries to fight against the rebels – racism is still pervasive, they say.

Many Nigerians at the airport terminal know each other. Each forked out around 1,200 dollars for a dangerous boat ride to Europe late last year, only to be apprehended by Libyan authorities while at sea and jailed in Tripoli’s Ain Zara prison for the past three months.

One among them is Shauna, a 38 year-old mother to daughters Angel, 4, and Blessed, 1. She was heavily pregnant when her husband reached Italy by himself at the start of Libya’s conflict. She gave birth to Blessed in an apartment in Tripoli, and then paid for a boat ride.

She was arrested with both daughters, and all three spent time in prison. “I don’t have any money,” Shauna says, opening her fake leather handbag full of torn, waterlogged documents and children’s drawings. “What am I to do?”

The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that roughly 50,000 people attempted to cross the Mediterranean by boat in 2011, and close to 2,000 drowned. Rumours persist that Gaddafi encouraged the crossings to Europe in retribution over NATO strikes. However, the numbers are small in the context of last year’s overall migration from Libya; the largest in the region since World War II.

“It’s a very complicated picture,” says IOM’s Haslam. “Migrants may have been moved from a basement of a house where they were protected for some time, and then whoever was protecting them couldn’t handle it any longer. They pass them to the next entity, person, group, militia – and they are bouncing all over the place. They may have been working in forced labour to earn their keep.

“Maybe some opportunistic types have seen they can actually trade migrants,” says Haslam. “It gets into the whole debt-bondage deal. Migrants are being sold on now for 260 – 800 LD (208 – 642 dollars) per person. You come across enough cases to see a trend. We saw a discount on one particular day of 21,000 LD (16,875 dollars) for 78 people – that’s a knocked-down price for West Africans, with women and children among them.”

Economic and political refugees now face another new threat. Libya’s minister for labour, Mustafa Ali Rugibani, has declared a Mar. 4 expulsion deadline for irregular workers. Despite the lack of a transparent system to process people in place, he says, “if they are not legalised they will be deported.”

“I hope they won’t expel people who should not be expelled, such as asylum seekers and refugees, or people in need of international protection,” says Emmanuel Gignac, UNHCR’s mission head in Libya.

On a sodden, winter day at a Tripoli railway yard that a Chinese company was building before the war, hundreds of refugees from Somalia and to a lesser extent, Eritrea, live in ramshackle housing. The government-owned property is now ‘managed’ by a local militia, replete with 4×4 trucks patrolling with anti-aircraft guns, and a detention cell.

This militia is entrepreneurial – charging refugees 24 dollars each per month to stay, and assigning them laminate ID cards. They offer ‘protection’ and paid daily labour – as well as harassment, the residents claim.

Seventeen-year-old Ayan is originally from the war-torn Ogaden region in southeast Ethiopia, but had been living in Mogadishu. It took her seven months to reach Libya, and after some boys accidentally hit her during an overcrowded car ride through the desert, she developed physical pain that won’t go away. Her friend, Fawza, 20, is also from Mogadishu. “In Somalia, there is forced marriage and no education. Every day people are dying from the war,” she says.

All the residents interviewed by IPS say they want to go to Europe, despite the fact that 15 recently washed-up bodies from a shipwreck were Somalis from their camp.

“I am going to Italy, I have many friends there,” exclaims Theodras from Eritrea, who is able to find work three days a week loading trucks. When asked about the labour ministry’s threat of expulsion, he replies: “Who cares – we will get to where we are going.”

Meanwhile, across Tripoli in an Italian-era Catholic church a festive crowd gathers in glittering gowns and headdresses. This is a Nigerian wedding, replete with traditional musicians, food, and a chance for dancing, gossip and laughter. On this rare morning, the tight-knit migrant community can forget their daily hardships, at least for an hour. (END)

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Dec 17 2011 (IPS)

Activists across the Middle East are reporting a mysterious toxin, possibly a banned nerve agent, in the thick clouds of tear gas used by security forces to suppress anti-government protests in recent months.

Demonstrators in Cairo hold up used tear gas shells. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

“This wasn’t tear gas, it was something else,” says Hassan. “It burned the skin and lungs, and we all fell to the ground shaking uncontrollably.”

A similar gas is suspected of causing the deaths of at least eight civilians in Bahrain since February. In Yemen, doctors reported that anti-government protesters exposed to what appeared to be tear gas arrived at field hospitals paralysed, unconscious, or in convulsions. Routine treatments for tear gas exposure had no effect.

“We are seeing symptoms in the patient’s nerves, not in their respiratory systems. I’m 90 percent sure it’s nerve gas and not tear gas that was used,” Dr. Sami Zaid, a physician at the Science and Technology Hospital in Sanaa, said in March.

Conventional tear gas is a white powder composed of ortho-chlorobenzylidene-malononitrile, commonly known as CS. The chemical was developed for crowd control in the 1950s, proving a more powerful irritant but less toxic than the chloroacetophenone (CN) series it has largely replaced.

It is unclear whether the numerous reports of a toxic incapacitating gas involve one chemical compound or manufacturer, or many. But the observed symptoms, whether in Cairo or Sanaa, are remarkably similar: a severe burning sensation on the skin and in the lungs, nausea, paralysis, convulsions, and in some cases, death.

Tear gas canisters recovered from protest sites in Arab cities bear markings of several different companies. Most of the canisters found near Cairo’s Tahrir Square after recent protests carried the manufacturing stamp of Combined Tactical Systems (CTS), an American firm that produces chemical irritants and smoke munitions for military and police forces around the world. Other CS canisters carried the markings of U.S.-based firm Federal Laboratories and British weapons manufacturer Chemring Defence.

“We think the CTS canisters are causing the strange symptoms (reported in Egypt),” says Sherif Azer of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR). “But we also found some canisters with no markings at all.”

In contrast, most of the canisters recovered in Bahrain bear the markings of U.S. firm NonLethal Technologies. Federal Laboratories, CTS, Chemring, and French security firm SAE Alsetex also supplied tear gas to the Gulf Arab state in recent years. CTS is a leading supplier of riot control agents to the Yemeni government.

Rights activists investigating claims of a toxic tear gas are exploring several theories. One of the first to emerge was that the substance used against protesters across the region was dibenzoxazepine (CR), a form of tear gas up to ten times more powerful than CS as a lachrymator. The riot control agent produces similar effects to CS, but also induces intense pain on exposed skin and membranes, which becomes more painful when flushed with water.

The highly persistent form of tear gas has been used by Israeli forces to suppress demonstrations in the Palestinian Territories. It was also used by the American military to flush out enemy combatants, but shelved from civilian use due to its carcinogenic properties.

While there are accounts of people seeing used tear gas canisters with CR markings in Egypt and Bahrain, journalists and rights activists investigating the issue have been unable to verify their claims.

“We’ve only seen canisters marked CS, although we cannot rule out that some canisters were mislabeled or tampered with to increase their potency,” says Azer.

Another commonly heard accusation is that security forces are using expired tear gas.

CS gas has a shelf life of three to five years, but activists in Bahrain and Egypt have published photos of used canisters with production dates more than ten years old. They argue that over time the chemical components in CS break down, forming dangerous byproducts.

One concern is a buildup of malononitrile in the expired canisters. When heated, the acidic powder degrades into highly toxic hydrogen cyanide gas – the same gas used with lethal effect in Nazi Germany.

According to medical sources, symptoms of cyanide poisoning include weakness, nausea, and difficulty in breathing. Higher concentrations can lead to a loss of consciousness followed by convulsions, muscle twitching and apnea. Less than a gram of cyanide is fatal to humans.

Dr. Ramez Moustafa, a neurologist at Ain Shams University in Cairo, noted many of these symptoms during his visits to field hospitals in Tahrir Square last month.

“My colleagues and I saw cases where the tear gas caused people to have convulsions and involuntary movements,” Moustafa told IPS. “Even in high concentrations, regular tear gas does not (affect the) nervous system. There were reports that some people died of seizures.”

Experts, however, dispute the possibility of lethal chemicals forming spontaneously in aging or improperly stored tear gas canisters. They argue that like medicine, CS loses its efficacy over time.

“Tear gases usually lose effectiveness and sometimes (do) not even ignite to start the smoking process when they are expired,” says Kamran Loghman, former president of Zarc International, a California-based manufacturer of non-lethal chemical sprays. “They do not turn into another chemical.”

More likely, he suggests, the observed symptoms are the result of overexposure. Since the Arab Spring, security forces have stepped up the use of tear gas to counter protesters’ growing tolerance to the chemical irritant – whether due to repeated exposure or physical means such as gas masks and goggles. Videos show riot police saturating demonstrations with tear gas, often in confined spaces.

The larger doses of tear gas could push an individual’s exposure well beyond the “intolerable concentration” (IC), the mount required to incapacitate them. While the margin between the concentration giving intolerable effect and that which may cause serious injury is high, studies have shown that with prolonged or intense exposure the human body metabolises CS gas into deadly cyanide.

Lab testing has so far proven inconclusive. Egyptian health ministry officials declared that the spent tear gas canisters it tested contained no deadly toxins. Independent analysis allegedly found the tear gas used in Cairo contained a mixture of 2.5 percent bromine cyanide and arsenic – though this could not be verified.

Further testing is under way.

Excerpt:

The scars of war in Tripoli's Abu Salim district. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Karlos Zurutuza
TRIPOLI, Dec 12 2011 (IPS)

“They would call you a Gaddafist if you drove one of those 4 X 4 cars,” says Bashar, emerging from one of those traffic jams in Tripoli. “Today almost every rebel commander has one.”

Since the city fell into rebel hands in August, this young man of 30 has watched life change by the day through the windshield of his battered taxi. Like most Libyans, Bashar has known only one form of government under Gaddafi. Today it’s different, but he’s far from happy with Libya’s newly appointed executive.

“Is this the freedom and peace the rebels were supposed to bring us?” he asks, after going through yet another militia-run checkpoint. “Are these the new leaders of Libya?” A fake smile and the tricolour flag hanging from the rear-view mirror are his political licence to ply his taxi.

“Muammar, Muammar…” Bashar cries wistfully at the sight of the destruction in Bab al-Aziziya, Gaddafi’s former residential bunker. The scars of war are also clearly visible in Abu Salim neighbourhood three kilometres south of Martyrs’ Square in downtown Tripoli. Craters of all sizes mark walls around blackened windows from which, surprisingly, laundry sometimes hangs.

The old bazaar area is also struggling to return to normal. But few have as yet opened their stalls in the huge market that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombs reduced to rubble.

“People are leaving,” says Abdul Rahman who has recently added second-hand taps next to the kitchen equipment he was selling before the outbreak of war. “Everybody is afraid of the militia patrols. They break into the houses under the pretext of searching for Gaddafists and take our young people to an undisclosed location.”

The end of the war was officially announced Oct. 24 – three days after Gaddafi’s death – but Abu Salim area saw violent incidents between militiamen and alleged Gaddafi loyalists in November. Besides, several casualties were also reported last month after clashes in Bani Walid – Gaddafi’s penultimate stronghold.

It’s hard to say whether organised Gaddafi militiamen were involved, or whether this was just an angry and spontaneous response from residents constantly harassed by raids and arbitrary arrests.

A United Nations report revealed last month that around 7,000 people are being held in Libyan detention centres controlled by “revolutionary brigade” militias.?Ahead of a Security Council meeting on Libya’s reconstruction after the death of Muammar Gaddafi, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that foreigners and many women and children were among the detainees. Several of them have been tortured, according to the report.

Bilal, like others, preferred not to give IPS his full name. The former electronics retailer from Abu Salim was among many who were held in Jdeida prison, Tripoli’s main detention centre. Bilal will never forget the hellish week he spent there before he was released without any explanation.

“They accused me of having joined Gaddafi militias and killing a woman and her two children in Souk al Juma district (east of Tripoli),” Bilal recalled. “I was tortured with electrodes and lit cigars daily. They would always tell me they had a witness to confirm their suspicions, that the sooner I confessed, the better.

“One day, somebody told me to stand by the back wall of the cell. I noticed somebody was watching me through the peephole. A few hours later they told me to pick my stuff and leave.” He says he has no plans to go back to Abu Salim.

Testimonies like Bilal’s are also common outside the Libyan capital. The town Majer, 150 kilometres east of Tripoli, came on the map after a NATO air strike Aug. 8. Gaddafi government spokesman then Musa Ibrahim spoke of 85 civilian deaths; NATO pointed to “military and mercenary casualties.”

Relatives of many of those killed told IPS they had buried 35 persons. Today, these families are torn by grief over the loss of their loved ones, but also by anxiety over the militia constantly criss-crossing this former Gaddafist stronghold.

“Not only have we not been recognised nor compensated, we have become the scapegoats of the new regime. They loot our properties, steal our cars and then they accuse us of those, or any other crimes,” complained local resident Merwan, after making sure no one had spotted us entering his house.

Back in Tripoli, Suleyman, 40, who made his fortune in the days of the ousted regime in construction and “import and export”, still drives the same 4 x 4 luxury car he has had for the last three years.

“Of course there was corruption during Gaddafi’s years but I doubt it was higher than in other Middle Eastern countries, or even in the European-Mediterranean,” says Suleyman at a trendy coffee shop in Gargaresh neighbourhood – an exclusive district in the Libyan capital. Some of the country’s most expensive shops are spread alongside its main street. Parked cars boasting distinctive rebel symbols are in minority.

Suleyman admits he was loyal to the deposed colonel “until the very day he died,” and so has not bothered to fly the tricolour. He owns several apartments in the area, doubtless a safe cushion amid the uncertainty of a post-war economy.

Whatever tomorrow brings, this successful local businessman doesn’t look concerned about the recent and violent changes in his country.

“We businessmen always manage to find our way through the jungle,” says Suleyman. “Besides, my contacts in the new government are practically the same ones as before.”

By Cam McGrath and - -
CAIRO, Dec 3 2011 (IPS)

Islamists appear poised for a landslide victory in the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, putting them on track to secure a majority in the country’s first parliament since the fall of president Hosni Mubarak.

Preliminary results leaked on Friday indicate that Islamist parties took at least 65 percent of votes in the opening round of Egypt’s three-stage parliamentary election, which began Monday and will conclude in January. The strong showing is an early indication that moderate and hardline Islamists are set to play a pivotal role in shaping the country’s post-Mubarak future.

“The next parliament will definitely have a strong Islamist flavour,” says Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University.

The scenario was inconceivable just a year ago.

Under Mubarak, suspected members of banned Islamic fundamentalist groups were harassed, arrested and tortured. Since the dictator’s downfall in February, Islamists have met openly, appeared on prime time television talk shows, and stormed the mainstream political arena. A number of parties toting an “Islamic frame of reference” are running candidates for the 498 lower house seats up for grabs in this election.

For the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest and best organised conservative Islamic group, the landmark election could be a defining moment in the organisation’s 83-year history. For the first time since it was founded as an Islamic social movement in 1928, real and significant legislative power lies within its grasp.

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Muslim Brotherhood’s newly established political wing, dominated the polls in the first round, reportedly winning at least 40 percent of parliamentary seats in the nine provinces that voted this week. The party even managed to pull off decisive victories in Cairo and the Red Sea province, two of the country’s most liberal areas.

Pundits had expected the Muslim Brotherhood to make a strong showing. The moderate Islamist movement, which renounced violence long ago in favour of political participation, positioned itself as the party of the poor – a huge constituency in a country where nearly half the population lives in poverty.

Banned from political activities in 1954, the group focused its energy on providing social services, schools and health clinics to fill the gaps left by the derelict state. For decades it bided its time, building networks and preparing for free and fair elections that few thought would ever come.

“If anything, the Muslim Brotherhood was patient,” says political analyst Wahid Abdel Naguib. “Its leaders carried out a decades-long hearts and mind campaign; now they’re cashing in on the effort.”

In 2005 elections, Muslim Brotherhood candidates running as independents won 20 percent of parliamentary seats despite ruling party interference and fraud. This time round, the group appears to have benefitted from the short run-up to parliamentary elections and the court’s decision to dissolve its only significant political rival, Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP).

“Mubarak’s ouster created a political vacuum,” says Abdel Naguib.

Egypt’s traditional opposition parties were pawns of the regime and lack credibility, while the new liberal and leftist parties announced since the revolution are weak and disorganised, he explains. Only the Muslim Brotherhood has the grassroots support, organisational experience and financial muscle to make a strong showing in this election.

The Muslim Brotherhood appears assured of a dominant role in the next parliament, but its FJP could end up sharing the floor with other Islamist parties cleaved from the movement or influenced by its doctrine. The strongest is the hardline Al-Nour party, which is reported to have captured over 20 percent of the vote in the first round.

Al-Nour is one of several parties established by Salafis, an ultra-conservative Islamic sect that assiduously avoided involvement in the world of secular politics under Mubarak, but now zealously embraces it. The party is competing under an electoral bloc that includes the political wing of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, a group that plotted the assassination of former president Anwar Sadat in 1981 and led an armed insurgency during the 1990s.

The parliament Egyptians vote in will have the power to draft a new constitution and pass legislation that will shape the country’s future for years to come. Secular Muslims and minority Coptic Christians fear an Islamist-stacked legislature would impose restrictions on women, ban alcohol, and institutionalise discrimination against non-Muslims. Some accuse Islamists of “hijacking” the revolution to fulfil their long-stated goal of establishing Egypt as a Taliban-style Islamic state.

“Nobody wants to replace Mubarak with a theocratic and authoritarian regime,” says Cairo University’s Nafaa.

Islamists have tried to reassure citizens that their rise to power would neither harm the country’s interests nor curb individual freedoms.

“Some people are promoting the idea that Islamists would diminish women’s rights and freedom of speech, damage the country’s relationship with Israel and also prevent non-Islamic forces from being politically involved,” local news portal Ahram Online quoted a senior Al-Gamaa leader as saying. “Those who say so either have no idea what Islamists are like or (are) deliberately trying to defame them. In all cases, they didn’t clearly affect us in the elections as most constituents gave us their votes.”

More than 8.5 million Egyptians, or 62 percent of registered voters, cast ballots in the first round of elections for the lower house of parliament. The second round voting will commence on Dec. 14 in nine provinces. The final round on Jan. 10 will cover the remaining nine provinces.

“We can expect Islamist parties to score even bigger wins as the voting moves into more conservative rural areas,” says Abdel Naguib. [END/IPS/MM/IP/HD/PI/RA/RL/CM/SS/11]

Excerpt:

By Correspondents and - -
DOHA, Nov 24 2011 (IPS)

Egypt’s ruling military council has reportedly asked a former prime minister, Kamal al-Ganzouri, to form a new cabinet. But there are no signs of a let-up in the anti-military demonstrations.

Ganzouri headed the government from 1996 to 1999, under the deposed president, Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011).

The state newspaper Al-Ahram said on its website, quoting sources close to Ganzouri, that he had agreed in principle to lead a national government after his meeting with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

The military council earlier accepted the resignation of caretaker prime minister Essam Sharaf’s cabinet, amid continued unrest in Cairo and other major cities.

After the popular uprisings earlier this year, Ganzouri distanced himself from Mubarak in a television interview, prompting several Facebook pages to recommend him as a future presidential candidate.

Born in 1933, Ganzuri served as minister of planning and international co-operation before his first tenure as prime minister. He then made a name for himself by working to strengthen ties between Egypt and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

SCAF apology

The apparent appointment of a new prime minister followed an apology by the SCAF for the deaths of demonstrators and a promise to hold elections on time, despite a push from activists and some political parties to postpone them.

Thursday’s apology came amid a tense calm across the country following nearly a week of street battles that has left 38 people dead and more than 3,000 wounded.

The SCAF “presents its regrets and deep apologies for the deaths of martyrs from among Egypt’s loyal sons during the recent events in Tahrir Square,” it said on Thursday in a statement on its Facebook page.

Al Jazeera’s Malika Bilal, reporting from Cairo, said “the army is out in relative force to enforce the peace … the centre of Tahrir Square is peaceful. Protesters have begun cleaning up.”

The army also called on “honourable citizens” to protect the square, separate the protesters from interior ministry riot police and arrest those who are found suspicious, raising concerns among some that the announcement had given license for street violence.

The SCAF’s announcement and increasing reports of arrests and violence against local and international journalists has created a tense atmosphere in Cairo, with protesters calling for another “million-man” march on Friday, a day when protest crowds in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East typically mass for major demonstrations.

The military also began asserting a firmer street presence on Thursday, promising to help police secure the country during the voting and erecting a two-metre-tall concrete barricade on Mohamed Mahmoud Street.

The street leads towards the interior ministry and has been the focal point of violence between riot police and crowds of young men.

Future in question

Clashes between protesters and security forces first erupted on Saturday, days before the first phase of parliamentary elections scheduled to begin on Monday – casting the country’s political future into question.

But Mamdouh Shahin, a major-general on the military council, said in a news conference on Thursday that election plans would continue as planned.

Shahin also assured demonstrators that those responsible for killing or injuring protesters would be held accountable and that many detainees would be released as early as Saturday.

He did not, however, meet the protesters’ primary demand of immediately handing over power to a civilian authority.

Monday’s elections will be Egypt’s first vote since long-time ruler Mubarak was ousted from power in February by a popular uprising.

A temporary truce between security forces and protesters broke down on Wednesday night in and around Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of public dissent.

Police from the interior ministry’s Central Security Forces appeared to fire an unprovoked barrage of tear gas at a large crowd gathered on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, witnesses said, despite the truce that had settled in after the arrival of army vehicles and religious scholars.

“Interior ministry forces are out of control … they’re not being professional and they’re not being controlled by the military council,” Rebab el-Mahdy, a politics professor at the American University in Cairo, told Al Jazeera.

Ambulances raced back from Mohamed Mahmoud Street and other frontline battles south and east of the square throughout the night, ferrying dozens of protesters suffering from tear-gas inhalation.

Alexandria clashes

Fighting also resumed in other cities. In Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, clashes erupted for another night along a street near the main security directorate.

Riot police there fired tear gas after the withdrawal of the army, which had stepped in to oversee a prisoner release.

Besides Alexandria, clashes were reported in the city of Ismailia that left at least one person dead and two others injured.

Meanwhile, thousands of people have remained in Tahrir Square, rejecting concessions offered during a Tuesday-night speech by Field Marshal Muhammed Hussein Tantawi, the chairman of the ruling military council which took power following Mubarak’s overthrow.

“The people want the fall of the field marshal,” they called in thunderous unison, waving large Egyptian flags and signs denouncing the military.

The crisis began when riot police violently cleared a small encampment in Tahrir Square on Saturday, and protesters say the continued fighting has hardened their resolve to remove the military from power and complete a revolution that began in January.

Tantawi announced on state media that the military had no interest in staying in power and that parliamentary elections would go ahead.

He also pledged that the presidential election would take place before July 2012, the first time the military has set a deadline for the vote. The presidential election would mark the last step in a transition of power to civilian rule.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Excerpt:

Solar thermal power plants are indispensable to meet Europe’s energy demands and to reduce greenhouse gases emissions substantially, according to a new study by a European scientific commission.

The report by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) says solar thermal power plants can play a central role in moving the European power grid to renewable energy sources by 2040.

Such solar units “are able to provide energy at any time, to compensate for fluctuations in the supply of renewable energies…and help stabilise the power grid,” Robert Pitz-Paal, director of the study published earlier this month, and co-director of the German Institute for Solar Research told IPS.

These virtues make “the value of the electricity generated go beyond just the kilowatt-hours they feed into the system,” Pitz-Paal said.

Solar units use mirrors to concentrate sunlight and convert it into thermal energy. This process achieves temperatures of 400 to 1200 degrees Celsius, which can be used to generate power in the same way as a conventional steam-operated power station.

The technique has been in use since the 1980s, but experts say it only reached maturity during the last decade. Solar units are in operation on a significant scale in western U.S. and in Spain.

A giant plan to install solar units in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region called the Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) was announced in the summer of 2009. The solar units under this would feed North African energy demands, and also deliver electricity to the European Union (EU).

The plan was drawn up following studies by the Club of Rome, an independent development group, and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), a state-owned research institute and part of the EASAC.

Earlier this month DII announced construction of a 500 megawatt (MW) solar unit in Morocco next year. DII was set up by ten large European companies, including the German electricity providers E.ON and RWE, the electronics giant Siemens, the insurance company Munich Re and Deutsche Bank. Now, more than 50 companies have joined DII.

DII chief executive Paul van Son says the solar power plant in Morocco would be a “reference project” to show investors and policy makers that the Desertec project can work as a major source of renewable electricity.

Van Son said the plant in Morocco, to come up at a cost of 2 billion euros (2.8 billion dollars), should be in operation in 2015.

The first phase of the 12-square-kilometre Moroccan complex will be a 150 MW facility costing up to 600 million euros. Other plants in Tunisia and Algeria would follow, he said.

EASAC points out that the EU has established ambitious energy and climate change objectives. EU targets include a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 (rising to 30 percent if international conditions are right) and to increase the share of renewable energy to 20 percent.

In the longer term, the EU has committed itself to substantially decarbonise energy supply, with a target to reduce the region’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2050.

The EASAC report points out that present costs of generating electricity from solar power panels match the cost of generating power from offshore wind farms. But that means, Pitz-Paal said, that renewable energy sources are two to three times costlier than fossil fuel plants.

According to the study, progressive introduction of solar power panels, backed by appropriate levels of research and development, will lower generating costs by 50 to 60 percent over the next 10 to 15 years.

“Given the strides currently being made in technology and the rising price trend for fossil fuels, we believe that electricity from solar power panels will become competitive with fossil fuel counterparts somewhere between 2020 and 2030,” Pitz-Paal said.

Furthermore, solar power panels’ capacity to store electricity and deliver it on demand eliminates the need to have fossil fuel or nuclear power stations on standby to satisfy the base load – the amount of power required to meet minimum demands based on estimations of consumer requirements.

Wind and solar farms are heavily dependent on weather conditions. Because electricity grids are not able at present to store enough electricity, fluctuations in renewal energy makes standby, conventional power plants indispensable to meet the base load demand.

This handicap of renewable energy sources would disappear with new solar power panels and with new intelligent grids capable of storing electricity and delivering it on demand, the study claims.

The study also stresses that solar power panels can be of high local value in under-developed regions, such as the MENA region.

“In the medium-term, the expansion of transmission capacities can give rise to exports into Europe of an easily managed supply of solar power coupled with secure and carbon dioxide-free power generation at its point of origin,” Pitz-Paal said.

By Karlos Zurutuza and - -
TRIPOLI, Nov 5 2011 (IPS)

“We’ve walked all the way here to tell everybody that we are being treated like dogs,” said 23-year old Hamuda Bubakar, among a couple of hundred black refugees protesting at Martyrs Square in Tripoli. “I’d rather be killed here. I wouldn’t be the first, or the last.”

A woman from Tawargha protests at Tripoli's Martyrs Square. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

A few days back, she said, “guerrilla fighters from Misrata (90 kilometres east of Tripoli) entered our place and took seven young guys with them. We still know nothing about them.” Several women at the camp have been abducted and raped in recent weeks, she said.

“Raise your head, you’re a free Libyan”, the group chanted before a stage set up for the recent celebrations. That’s the very slogan that became almost an anthem for the rebels who rose against Gaddafi.

Tempers flared amid the group of armed soldiers guarding the central square. “I should kill you all for what you did to us in Misrata,” shouted a young man in camouflage fatigues. The protesters are from Tawargha, 60 km south of Misrata, that was known as a Gaddafist base.

The armed men at the square, and angry honking soon split up the group.

“Not only do they call us Gaddafists, they hate us for the colour of our skin,” said Abdulkarim Rahman. “All blacks in Libya are going through very hard times lately.”

Abdurrahman Abudheer, a volunteer worker at one of the barracks that used to house construction workers for new apartment blocks, and that are now home to refugees, estimates there are about 27,000 Tawarghis scattered between Tripoli and Benghazi.

“Just in this camp there are over 200 families, all from Tawargha,” said Abudheer. A flashy billboard at the entrance to the camp in the ghostly district Fallah still advertises the “upcoming construction of 1187 houses” by a Turkish company. But now even the grey rows of corrugated iron shacks look more comfortable than those naked and incomplete concrete structures.

The number of refugees is growing by the day, but so is the number of Tripolitanians like Abudheer who show up to help.

Amnesty International expressed concern in September over “increasing cases of violence and indiscriminate arrests against the people from Tawargha.” It said tens of thousands of former residents of Tawargha may be living in conditions similar to those in Fallah, or worse.

“Many families arrive after spending days living on the beach,” said Abudheer. “Most of them are afraid to even walk down the street.”

The scene is similar in Tarik Matar, five minutes drive from Fallah. The most recent census at this camp figures 325 families from Tawargha.

From the room she shares with eight members of her family, Azma, a refugee from Tawargha, showed a portrait of her brother. On Sep. 13 Abdullah was taken from the car he was travelling in with his three children and his sister at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Tripoli.

The last they know of what happened to him is in the autopsy report Azma keeps with her: “Died from several injuries caused by solid and flexible objects throughout the body, especially in the forehead and chest.”

Inevitably, the families of the seven young men recently dragged away from this camp fear a similar fate for them.

“We are asking for more security and for those from Misrata to be able to return to our houses without fear of reprisal,” said Mabrouk Mohammed, a former physical education teacher who coordinates entry of food and supplies to the complex, mostly from private initiatives. But return to Tawargha is a forgotten dream for most.

Abdullah Fakir, head of Tripoli’s Military Council, had told IPS they would increase security at camps where the Tawarghis are staying. But with militias from Misrata showing up at the camps often, nobody feels secure.

Excerpt:

By Karlos Zurutuza and - -
TRIPOLI, Nov 1 2011 (IPS)

“A crossroads of history, continents and ancient empires; a place where history comes alive through the extraordinary monuments on its shores”, reads a well- known tourist guidebook about Libya. It’s all still there, but the tourists aren’t there to see it.

Receptionist Habib Dwek at his hotel. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

But the booming atmosphere couldn’t be more different just a few metres away from where the locals sit in the shade for hours taking small sips of cappuccino and big pieces of cake.

“I just keep the shop open in case any of you (journalists) wants to buy one of these postcards,” Muhamed Bariani tells IPS. The 45-year-old shopkeeper has known better times. His is not a product any local would buy.

For the last two months only a handful of journalists has entered his shop – and the number of foreign correspondents in the country’s capital is decreasing by the day.

“Now that the war is over and Gaddafi buried, I doubt I’ll come across any other customer for the rest of the week,” laments Bariani. He says he’s considering closing his shop, which is just opposite the arch of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Next to the surprisingly well-preserved monument is the 19th century Zumit hotel, with ten charming rooms boasting satellite channels and free wireless internet connection.

“We live on the restaurant, otherwise we wouldn’t be open by now,” Habib Dwek at the reception desk says. Just a few months ago he would barely have had a minute to share with us.

“We used to be full,” recalls Dwek over a cup of strong Arabic coffee. “A new group would come every week and they would gaze in awe at our fine Roman monuments. Did you know that nowhere else are they as well preserved as in Libya?”

Daily life, though, included duties other than the regular check in and out, or useful tourist tips.

“We had to report on every group to the police, especially in the case of American and British tourists,” says Dwek. “Police would often show up during lunch or dinner time to double-check that we were not fooling them.”

Apparently, there was no such thing as “independent travel” during Gaddafi’s times.

“You would be escorted by the tourism police from the time you set foot in Libya until the day you left,” recalls Izmail Eluonsi, who has been running the Echo Libya tourist agency for years.

“If any tourist left the group at some point, the agency would be in deep trouble. In fact, several colleagues were forced to fold because of that,” he says.

The company’s tourism programme looks most appealing. “We used to run two different 11-day trips: the first and most popular was the archaeological sites in the north. The second was an adventure trip to the Sahara desert in a 4X4,” says Eluonsi, whose former customers have been replaced today by businessmen looking for deals in gas and uranium.

The austere but imposing building hosting the General Authority of Tourism and Handcraft – the closest thing to a ministry of tourism the new Libyan authorities have – is far from appealing, unless you have an interest in Soviet architecture.

From a desk with a view to Tripoli’s increasingly busy harbour, Mohamed Fakron, director of international cooperation, talks about the complex times of old.

“Gaddafi was always changing policies: one day we would have a ministry of tourism and the following one it would turn into a general directorate of tourism,” says Fakron, who might be minister if the new authorities had a ministry.

“Libya boasts deserts, mountains and five UNESCO protected sights at the throw of a stone from Europe, but Gaddafi kept the country closed to tourists until 1990,” says Fakron. The senior official adds that key issues for the future of the sector are improvement of infrastructure and, immediately, security after the nine-month war.

“I think we will be able to guarantee safety all around the country by the beginning of 2012,” the official tells IPS.

As almost everyday for the last two months, crowds waving the pre- and post-Gaddafi Libyan flag rejoice in their thousands at noon in Tripoli’s Martyrs’ square.

Hicham Aduli, 39, worked almost 20 years as a tourist guide, almost until the very day the uprising gained momentum last February.

Aduli is confident he will get back his former job and share Libya’s treasures with all willing to see them. But that, he says, won’t be tomorrow.

“Rebuilding the whole country and removing the debris is not such a big deal,” says Aduli in flawless English. “The problem is that tourism is a very sensitive sector. I’m sure it will take at least five years to convince potential tourists that Libya is a safe country to travel in.” He heads out to the restaurant where he plans to work until his future customers get reassured about visiting Libya.

Excerpt:

By Karlos Zurutuza and - -
BANI WALID, Libya, Oct 31 2011 (IPS)

Suleyman and Rasool have come to the University of Bani Walid, in western Libya. If they are lucky they might find some chemistry notes and, perhaps, a computer that works. Unfortunately it is not likely, since NATO reduced the campus to rubble.

Khaled Abdullah next to the hole in the wall of his home in Bani Walid, the last stronghold of the Gaddafi regime. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

“Why did NATO shell this place?” complains Suleyman amid tons of twisted metal, rubble and papers blown around by the wind.

There is no sign whatsoever of a recent military presence here: no uniforms or mortar shells, not even the bullet cases that dot the broken streets of Bani Walid.

“There was a rumour about Musa Ibrahim – Gaddafi’s former spokesman – sleeping here, probably that’s why they bombed,” says Rasool, standing next to a massive crater left by a NATO missile.

The brand-new red seats in the auditorium are among the few things that can be salvaged. A group of rebels are piling them up in the back of their pickup trucks.

“We are taking them with us to a safe place, there’s been a lot of looting here, you know?” says Omar Rahman, one of the drivers.

But it’s already too late for the computer room in the annex building. There, two rows of intact yet empty computer desks suggest that a new Internet café might open its doors somewhere in Libya in the next few days.

The picture is equally bleak along the bazaar’s long avenue. Only one store has raised its blind. The shopkeeper, Rafiq, doesn’t want to talk. The blackened mannequins he is now removing from inside his shop speak for themselves.

“Zawiya Brigade”, “Misrata boys”, “Geryan forever” can be read along the alley – just some of the graffiti left by the more than forty rebel battalions that finally captured Bani Walid on Oct. 17, supported by NATO air strikes.

Most of the slogans on the walls look alike, but there is one that is repeated throughout the entire city: “Warfalas are dogs”. Bani Walid is the only “monotribal” location in the entire country. Everybody here belongs to the Warfalla clan, Libya’s biggest, made up of over one million people out of a total population of 6.4 million. Along with the Qaddadfa, they were the most loyal to Libya’s ousted ruler.

Few houses intact

It is almost impossible to find a house that hasn’t been burnt or looted in Bani Walid. In the southern district of Bahra, a projectile opened a hole the size of a window in Bubakhar Shaman’s apartment. The windows are broken and their shades have disappeared along with the curtains, the television and the radiators.

“They have plundered every house,” the 51-year-old former aircraft technician complains in the courtyard, where there is a mountain of clothes and objects that nobody wanted. Shaman picks up a small, empty jewellery case. “I wonder who is wearing these rings and earrings now.”

Breaking into Khaled Abdullah’s house was even easier. This 24-year-old truck driver was about to marry, and the couple were to move afterwards to the first floor of his family home. But all their dreams dashed out through the ugly hole in his wall.

“I left Bani Walid on Oct. 14, three days before the rebels entered the city. My house was intact,” says Abdullah, who is now renting a flat.

The stories are painfully similar throughout the city. Athila Athman Abdallah, 65, lost two of the trucks he had tried to protect by taking them to the outskirts of the city. Somebody set them ablaze. Nevertheless, Abdallah smiled today for the first time in months when his son brought back his car.

“It was in Geryan, southwest of Tripoli. We were told that they had spotted it so we went there to pick it up,” explains Abdallah from the threshold of his house. “Allah u akbar”- God is great – reads a graffiti next to him. Whether they painted it before or after taking his lamps and curtains and television is irrelevant at this point.

Abdallah says he will stay. But according to local sources, more than 100,000 civilians have fled the former Gaddafi strongholds of Sirte and Bani Walid since the war started in February. However, the number of those seeking refuge in camps could be much higher, as that is only the figure for those who registered.

Paying in gold

Sheikh Omar Mukhtar is the leader of the 45 militias currently in control of Bani Walid.

“Many people in Bani Walid were loyal to Gaddafi, so we had to check every single house to make sure nobody was hiding any weapons,” the commander and tribal leader explains to IPS at his headquarters in the city’s airport.

Mukhtar says he does not know where Saif al Islam is. But he believes Gaddafi’s son had to escape on foot after the convoy he was travelling in was reportedly attacked by NATO last week.

“We heard the rocket but when we arrived there we only found the bodies of those who accompanied Saif,” recalls Mukhtar.

The commander admits that looting has happened in Bani Walid, but says that compensation will be paid. “We are almost ready to deliver three million Libyan dinars (1.5 million euros) in gold among the people who were affected,” adds the commander.

Until that day arrives, Abdulhamid Saleh, a local resident, is producing a detailed census of all the victims among his neighbours. The 52 bullet holes in the door of his house attest that, although it was not an easy task, the assailants eventually managed to get in without knocking down the door.

“All these crimes must be brought to the authorities. No one in Bani Walid is willing to work with any administration that ignores us,” says the electrical engineer. Among the personal things he has lost, there is one he misses most:

“They tore up my son’s school diploma, probably because it read ‘the Green School of Bani Walid'” – green is the colour of the former government- says Saleh, who is seriously thinking of retaking his former position as a professor at the University of Manchester in England.

“Our city has been shelled by NATO and assaulted by militias coming from all parts of Libya,” complains Saleh. “They call this ‘liberation’? To me this is nothing but a blatant occupation”.

Excerpt:

I came across an anti-Gaddafi demonstration for the first time in February 2011 in Baghdad’s Tahrir square.

A Gaddafi poster found in his bunker in Tripoli. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali – Tunisia’s former ruler – had left the country a few weeks earlier, and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak would be ousted just a few days later. In the context of the “Arab spring”, angry Iraqis were also protesting against their corrupt government and the lack of opportunities.

At the same time, many of them were carrying portraits of leaders who had been governing their Arab neighbouring countries with an iron fist for decades.

“Gaddafi has been in power for over 40 years so far, don’t you think it’s more than enough?” a young Baghdadi carrying a caricature of the ousted Libyan leader told me. I remember telling that man that Gaddafi could well stay in power another two decades until he died peacefully in bed. He nodded, but time has proved us both wrong.

Sadly enough for the Iraqis, the rest of the world hardly got to know that Baghdad’s main square is also called “Tahrir” – “freedom” – and, like the one in Cairo, it also hosted several “days of wrath”.

It was obvious to everybody that North Africa had turned into the place to work as a journalist in the forthcoming months.

By early spring the international media were flooded with reports coming from Benghazi in Libya. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) had been bombing Tripoli for weeks, so I thought of entering the country on a Libyan visa to report, among other things, on the real impact of NATO bombings on the local population.

Working conditions, though, were far from ideal to conduct independent research. Libyan officials said I would only be able to leave the hotel assigned by the government either by bus, where Libyan officials would herd foreign journalists, or escorted by security agents.

I soon realised that reporting from Libya involved either being voluntarily “imprisoned” in a golden jail by Gaddafi’s regime, or “embedding” with the Libyan rebels on the country’s different fronts. I chose the latter.

As the weeks went by, the Libyan war turned into a stalemate situation in Libya’s eastern front as well as in Misrata – a besieged rebel coastal enclave in the centre of the country.

It wasn’t until mid-May when I discovered there was also a “mysterious” and still under-reported third front in western Libya. Surprisingly, only a few journalists had entered the country via the Tunisian border through the Nafusa mountains – a mountain region which hosts Libya’s biggest Berber population.

I had read all those statements where Gaddafi described the rebel side as a group of “drug addicts and al- Qaeda members” assisted by “foreign mercenaries”. I was curious what I was going to find once I set foot in Libya.

By late May, the Nafusa mountain range was under constant bombing from Gaddafi’s positions down the valley. My very first and obvious experience was that Gaddafi had been, and still was, bombing the civilian population, at least where I was.

As for the real nature of the rebels’ ranks, I came across farmers, teachers, accountants…all had been forced to take up weapons, when available. The majority were Berbers, members of Libya’s biggest minority who had endured repressive treatment from a regime attempting to erase them by denying their very existence.

“Call yourselves whatever you want inside your homes – Berbers, children of Satan, whatever – but you are only Libyans when you leave your homes,” Gaddafi said, according to a 2008 cable released by Wikileaks.

In a Berber settlement called Yefren, I met Madghis and Mazigh Buzakhar, two brothers who had been arrested and tortured after Gaddafi’s secret service had confiscated “compromising” material: around 500 volumes on the Amazig language and culture they had sneaked through several trips to neighbouring Algeria and Morocco, countries that also host a significant Amazigh population.

“They imprisoned us with those condemned to life imprisonment or the death penalty,” Mazigh Buzakhar said. “We thought that our only way to leave that prison was execution.”

Madghis and Mazigh were literally released by the revolution that erupted on Feb. 17. Muhammed al- Bakker, a black Libyan from Nalut – a mountain village 70 kilometres from the Tunisian border, was not that lucky. “They simply put me in jail and nobody told me why until six years later.

“They said I was accused of being a spy and their proof was that I spoke English,” Mohammed told me in flawless English he had taught himself. He had spent 18 years in prison due to the paranoia of a man who saw “foreign western agents” and “al-Qaeda terrorists” behind any opposition to the alleged “rule of the masses” he was leading.

It couldn’t be otherwise for the leader who was convinced that all Libyans “love me”, as he told the BBC in a rare interview in late February, amidst an uprising against him that was gaining momentum by the day.

After a series of attacks coordinated with NATO aircraft, anti-Gaddafi fighters took over Tripoli on Aug. 21. The little resistance posed by Gaddafi loyalists came as a surprise to local civilians and fighters and, of course, to foreign reporters.

The massive yellow cranes abandoned at the Green Square – today “martyrs’ square” – spoke volumes about Gaddafi’s megalomania: they were supposed to hoist the world’s biggest portrait – of Gaddafi, of course – to celebrate the 42nd anniversary of his coming to power on Sep. 1.

Those planned celebrations were replaced by those claiming victory over his fallen regime.

People were euphoric; nobody thought that the battle for Tripoli would just be a “matter of hours”. Now we have come to know why. The upcoming stalemate against Ben Walid and Sirte – Gaddafi’s native town – would soon tell us that the loyalists had not surrendered but pulled back from the capital to offer resistance in the toppled regime’s last strongholds.

*Karlos Zurutuza has reported extensively for IPS from Libya over recent weeks.

Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after National Transitional Council fighters overran loyalist defences in Sirte, the toppled Libyan leader’s hometown and final stronghold.

“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed,” Mahmoud Jibril, the de facto Libyan prime minister, told reporters on Thursday in Tripoli, the capital.

Crowds took to the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi, the eastern city that spearheaded the uprising against Gaddafi’s 42-year rule in February, to celebrate the news, with some firing guns and waving Libya’s new flag.

Abdul Hakim Belhaj, an NTC military chief, said Gaddafi had died of his wounds after being captured on Thursday.

The body of the former Libyan leader was taken to a location which is being kept secret for security reasons, Mohamed Abdel Kafi, an NTC official in the city of Misrata, told the Reuters news agency.

Earlier, Abdel Majid, another NTC official, said the toppled leader had been wounded in both legs.

The news came shortly after the NTC captured Sirte after weeks of fierce fighting.

“Thank God they have caught this person. In one hour, Sirte was liberated,” a fighter in the town said.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley, reporting from Sirte, said Libyans there celebrating the beginning of a “new Libya”.

“This is bringing a form of closure,” he said. “Gaddafi stayed true to his words, that he would stay in Libya till the end.

“It was surprising to many that he did actually stay here in Sirte – it’s taken such a bombardment in the last 13 days. Nothing could survive in here for very long. I think they were starved of food, starved of ammunition, and finally there was nothing to do but to run”.

Conflicting reports

In Tripoli, Jibril said he had received unconfirmed reports that Gaddafi’s most prominent son, Saif al-Islam, was in a convoy fleeing Sirte.

Meanwhile, there were conflicting reports about the fate of one of his sons, Mutassim Gaddafi.

Reuters reported that one of the news agency’s sources had seen video of Mutassim lying on a bed and covered in blood, but alive.

Mahmoud Shammam, the NTC’s information minister, said he had received reports that Mutassim had been captured alive in Sirte, but could not confirm the news.

However, Mohamed Leith, an NTC commander, told the AFP news agency that Mutassim had been killed.

“We found him dead. We put his body and that of (former defence minister) Abu Bakr Younus in an ambulance to take them to Misrata”.

Footage had emerged earlier in the day of the body of Younus.

Abdul Hakim Al Jalil, commander of the NTC’s 11th brigade, said that Moussa Ibrahim, the former spokesman for Gaddafi’s fallen government, had been captured near Sirte.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Libya’s governing National Transitional Council (NTC) is holding about 2,500 detainees in the capital Tripoli alone, many of whom have been beaten and subjected to other ill-treatment and not given access to lawyers or judicial proceedings, says London-based human-rights watchdog Amnesty International.

Prisoners interviewed by the group’s researchers said they had been held for varying periods of time, from a few days to a few months, and that with rare exception they had not been arrested under any kind of legal order.

In the report released on Thursday, “Detention Abuses Staining the New Libya”, Amnesty said mistreatment most commonly involves beatings, particularly with wooden sticks or ropes on the feet.

At least two guards in two different detention facilities told Amnesty researchers they beat detainees in order to extract “confessions” more quickly.

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, the group’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “There is a real risk that without firm and immediate action, some patterns of the past might be repeated. Arbitrary arrest and torture were a hallmark of Colonel (Muammar) Gaddafi’s rule.

“We understand that the transitional authorities are facing many challenges, but if they do not make a clear break with the past now, they will effectively be sending out a message that treating detainees like this is to be tolerated in the new Libya.”

NTC ‘to investigate’

Jalal al-Galal, a spokesman for the NTC, told Reuters news agency that the council leadership would look into the report.

“(NTC Chairman) Mustafa Abdel Jalil has said time and time again that he will not tolerate abuse of prisoners and has made it abundantly clear that he will investigate any such allegations,” he said.

Sub-Saharan Africans suspected of being mercenaries made up between a third and a half of those detained, according to Amnesty. Some have been released after no evidence was found to link them to fighting.

A man from Niger, initially presented to Amnesty as a “mercenary and killer”, broke down and explained that he had “confessed” after being beaten almost continuously for two days. He denied being involved in fighting.

Amnesty says black Libyans – particularly from the Tawargha region, which was a base for Gaddafi forces in their efforts to regain control of Misrata – are also particularly vulnerable. Dozens of Tawarghans have been taken from their homes, checkpoints, and even hospitals.

The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have also expressed concern over the sweep of arrests of men accused by interim authorities of fighting for Gaddafi.

Al Jazeera’s James Bays visited police stations in Tripoli where detainees were held in August and September when Amnesty carried out its research.

“Many of them were from Sub-Saharan African countries, who came here as workers and were then rounded up and accused of being mercenaries, ” he said.

“It’s quite possible that some of those people were fighting for Gaddafi but having spoken to some of them myself, it was pretty clear that some of them were also innocent people, rounded up simply because of the colour of their skin.”

In meetings with Amnesty in September, NTC officials acknowledged concerns over arbitrary detention and ill-treatment, and pledged to do more to get a grip on armed militias and ensure that all those detained enjoy equal protection of the law.

“The NTC has to act urgently to translate their public commitments into action, before such abuses become entrenched and stain the new Libya’s human rights record,” Amnesty’s Sahraoui said.

“These detainees have in most cases been arrested without a warrant, beaten – and sometimes worse – on arrest and arrival in detention. They are vulnerable to abuse by armed militias who often act on their own initiative.

“The authorities cannot simply allow this to carry on because they are in a ‘transitional’ phase. These people must be allowed to defend themselves properly or be released,” she said.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

By IPS Correspondents
MIDRAND, South Africa, Oct 12 2011 (IPS)

The African Union must take the lead in helping Libya achieve peace by ensuring the formation of a unity government between pro-Muammar Gaddafi forces and the National Transitional Council, as this and not foreign intervention will pave the way for peace and stability in Libya.

PAP member Chief Fortune Charumbira headed a fact-finding delegation to the Libyan capital Tripoli. Credit: Saaleha Bamjee/IPS

“It is imperative that Libyan citizens should decide their future democratically,” said PAP member Chief Fortune Charumbira of Zimbabwe.

Charumbira headed a PAP-authorised fact-finding delegation to the Libyan capital Tripoli, after protests and subsequent armed interventions by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the North African country led to the toppling of its leader of 41 years, Gaddafi, and the establishment of the National Transitional Council (NTC) as a provisional governing body.

Presenting the delegations’ report before PAP, Charumbira called for the immediate cessation of war in Libya and recommended that the country should remain a sovereign state with both the NTC and the pro-Gaddafi forces working together. He said that the AU should take the lead in helping Libya move towards a peaceful solution.

The report noted that the situation on the ground was worsening each day on both sides. “Today Libyans are fighting and killing Libyans. This can be viewed as a civil war. Private and public properties, including administrative blocks have been destroyed. Black Africans are being mistaken for mercenaries and are being tortured and killed,” said Charumbira.

“The fact is that NATO has deviated from the United Nations Security Council’s objective to protect civilians, it has instead killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in its strikes,” Charumbira said.

PAP member Ahmed Reza Issack of Mauritius who accompanied the delegation to Libya told IPS “the fear there is palpable.”

“What is happening now in Libya is what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where there is foreign intervention, there is disaster. In Tunisia and Egypt, the people rose up and stood up themselves. They did not need foreign intervention.”

“We need to leave the country to its own people. Libya for Libyans. The NATO raids have resulted in immense insecurity. We met a mother who’d lost her daughter who was so stricken by the bombardment that she died of heart failure while hiding in a toilet,” Issack said.

Charumbira added that the AU needed a united approach.

“It is, however, of great concern that despite the enormous challenges that the African continent is confronted with, the AU lacks a united approach to issues affecting the continent,” Charumbira said.

He referred to the fact that the AU was late to recognise the NTC as the legitimate authority in Libya at the United Nations headquarters in New York only after African states had already done so, and despite the AU’s earlier resolution that they would only accept the NTC after its formation as an inclusive transitional government.

“It is therefore not surprising that the AU has been marginalised by NATO member states in respect of the conflict in Libya,” Charumbira said.

For Charumbira, the future of Libya is far from certain.

“The first challenge for the NTC is to establish law and order in the country, especially in Tripoli. A major concern is that there is a proliferation of small arms and this could create future problems with sides wanting to avenge the deaths of their family and comrades. Reconciliation will be very important in going forward,” he said.

PAP parliamentarian Mohammed Ali Almardi of Sudan said that the parliament should encourage the NTC to support the AU. He noted that previously Gaddafi, in support of the AU, used to pay for the AU membership of several other African countries.

“We must remember that these were not his private funds but the funds of the people of Libya. We need to then encourage the NTC to take this further and support the AU roadmap to building peace and development on the continent by joining us.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MIDRAND, South Africa, Oct 7 2011 (IPS)

A firm call for African Union member states to impose sanctions against Morocco until it abides by the United Nations mandate that affirms the people of Western Sahara’s right to self-determination was made at the Pan African Parliament proceedings.

The Pan African Parliament (PAP), the legislative organ of the African Union (AU), is meeting from Oct. 3 to 14 for the Fifth Ordinary Session of the Second Parliament in Midrand, South Africa. The call comes as PAP reviewed recommendations of a fact-finding mission to the region on Wednesday.

The Western Sahara is a disputed territory, with the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) claiming sovereignty over the entire region while Morocco continues to occupy about 75 percent of Western Sahara after Spain withdrew in 1976.

“What Morocco calls its southern provinces in the Western Sahara region, SADR deems occupied territory and over 100,000 Saharawis have been displaced from the area over the last 35 years, the bulk of whom now reside in refugee camps in Western Algeria,” said PAP member Juliana Kantengwa of Rwanda who headed the fact-finding mission.

In line with PAP’s objective to promote peace and security on the continent, the parliament sent the delegation in July to look into SADR’s state of decolonisation.

Kantengwa referred to SADR as a government in exile, as their seat of governance lies in refugee camps next to the city of Tindouf, in Western Algeria.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the Algerian government has said that there are an estimated 165,000 Saharawi refugees in the Tindouf camps.

In her team’s report before PAP, Kantengwa recommended the parliament strengthen its advocacy of the plight of Western Sahara and that it should urge the AU, through its Peace and Security Council, to push member states to impose sanctions or use other forms of leverage to force Morocco to abide by the U.N. mandate that affirms the people of Western Sahara’s right to self-determination.

While PAP does not currently have the legislative power to put the reports’ recommendations to action, Kantengwa said that PAP’s advisory and advocacy clout could go a long way to educating the members of the international community.

“It’s been a silent conflict but for as long as we keep it on our agenda, the international powers will be made aware of what is happening in Saharawi,” she said.

Morocco has proposed a plan with which to end the conflict. Dubbed the Automomy Plan, it outlines that Western Sahara will be granted some measure of autonomy by way of their national governance, while still under the sovereignty of Morocco. However, it does not allow for the Saharawi to hold a referendum to decide between independence or integration into Morocco.

Ouaddadi Cheikh Ahmed El-Haiba, PAP member from SADR, referred to the Autonomy Plan, as a “death plan”. “The Saharawi want to be able to determine their own fate. We want nothing more than independence,” El-Haiba said.

Morocco exited the AU (the then Organisation of African Unity) in 1984 when the union recognised SADR as a member state. However, AU member states still maintain diplomatic ties with Morocco.

“I think the AU should take its own resolutions and recommendations into practice. Despite the resolutions that have come through from the U.N., security councils and human rights bodies etc, each affirming the rights of the Saharawi, Morocco is still not willing to accept any of them.

“If they are not sanctioned they will continue to act as they are doing in Western Sahara, because they feel they are supported by international powers,” El-Haiba said.

Salah El Abd Mohamed, the Saharawi Ambassador in South Africa, told IPS that the embassy was very satisfied with the report that was presented before PAP.

“The team saw what was really happening on the ground and how the Saharawi people are struggling for their self-determination. We thank PAP for the delegation that was sent to the Saharawi and welcome their recommendations,” El Abd Mohamed said.

Kantengwa told IPS that despite the challenges they face living in the camps and the uncertainty of their futures while Western Sahara remains under occupation by Morocco, the women of Saharawi were hopeful that their right to self-determination will one day come to fruition.

Kantengwa noted that Saharawi women played active roles in the community and that many held positions in governance.

Women were especially active in the camps and have totally taken over the organisation and provision of social services such as health and education, Kantengwa told IPS.

The youth, however, seemed less hopeful she said. “The society is dominated by women. The few youth that were there told us that they were becoming impatient with the laboured negotiation processes between SADR and Morocco over the contested territory, and that armed conflict may break out if it is too slow.”

El-Haiba told IPS that Saharawi women have always been in the vanguard of the struggle and they occupy high levels in the structures of the Polisario Front, a liberation movement initially established to fight Spanish colonialism in Western Sahara, which now struggles against Morocco’s occupation.

“At the level of village governance you will find that out of 10 members per committee, only one or two will be men. If you got to the level of the districts, all the leaders are women. They make up 34 percent of our national assembly and we have three female ministers in the portfolios of education, culture and women affairs,” El-Haiba said.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 21 2011 (IPS)

As Somalia undergoes its worst famine in six decades and Yemen slides into civil war, the administration of President Barack Obama is expanding its network of bases to carry out drone strikes against suspected terrorists in both countries, according to reports published in two major U.S. newspapers Thursday.

Based in part on newly disclosed U.S. diplomatic cables recently posted by Wikileaks, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. military has been flying armed drones over both countries from a base in Djibouti and is planning to build a second base in Ethiopia.

The Post and the Wall Street Journal also reported that a base in the Seychelles that the U.S. military has previously used to fly surveillance drones will now host armed drones capable of flying their lethal payloads the more than 1,500 kms that separate the Indian Ocean island chain from Somalia and the African mainland and back.

The “constellation” of drone bases will also include a secret new Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) base that the administration announced earlier this year would be situated somewhere on the Arabian Peninsula.

That facility will be hosted by Saudi Arabia, according to an unnamed “senior U.S. military official” quoted in a FoxNews.com report also published Thursday.

“Operations in Saudi (Arabia) are (the) only new expansion to this plan,” the official was quoted as saying. “The rest has been working for over a year when we long ago realised danger from AQAP (Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula),” a Yemen-based affiliate which, according to recent statements by U.S. intelligence officials, has been consolidating links with al Shabaab, the Somali group which Washington claims also has ties to Al-Qaeda.

IPS calls to the Pentagon press office for confirmation that Saudi Arabia is hosting the new base were not returned. But a former U.S. ambassador to Riyadh who has retained good ties with its government, Amb. Chas Freeman (ret.), said the report was “highly plausible” given both the “close and robust” cooperation on counterterrorism between the U.S. and the kingdom and its geographical proximity to Yemen.

According to one of the authors of the Post report, the expanding network is designed to “avoid the mistakes of the past”.

“When al-Qaeda fled Afghanistan into Pakistan in 2001 and 2002, it took years before the CIA had assembled a drone program capable of putting the terrorist network under pressure,” wrote Greg Miller on the Post’s website. “That delay, and costly deals for air-basing access in neighboring countries, allowed al-Qaeda to flourish.”

The reports come amid considerable controversy about the increased use by the Obama administration of armed drones, ominously named Predators, and the longer-range Reapers, in its counterterrorism campaign.

In Pakistan, where the CIA sharply increased unilateral drone strikes – to nearly 200 – against “high-value” Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in the first two years of the Obama administration, the tactic has contributed heavily to an increase in anti-Americanism. An overwhelming 97 percent of respondents in a recent Pew Research Center poll in Pakistan, where anti-Americanism is at an all-time high, said they viewed drone attacks negatively.

Indeed, none other than Obama’s first top intelligence chief, Adm. Dennis Blair (ret.), told an elite gathering of foreign policy and national security wonks in July that it was a mistake “to have (an air-only) campaign dominate our overall relations” with Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

“Because we’re alienating the countries concerned, because we’re treating countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us, we are threatening the prospects of long-term reform,” he said. Such strikes should only be carried out with the consent of the host government.

But Obama’s new Pentagon chief and former CIA director Leon Panetta rejected that criticism, insisting that the tactic had been and would continue to be “effective at undermining Al-Qaeda and their ability to plan …attacks (against the U.S.)”.

Panetta and the Pentagon have also reportedly led the charge in an ongoing debate within the administration to broaden the current target list in Yemen and Somalia from high-level leaders of AQAP and al-Shabaab, who are presumed to share Al-Qaeda’s global aims, to include low-level foot soldiers, whose motivation for joining such groups may be more parochial and less ambitious.

The drone has increasingly become the administration’s “weapon of choice” in its efforts to subdue Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, although it has been used far less frequently against targets in Yemen and Somalia than in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

At least six drone strikes targeted alleged militants in Yemen in 2010 and 2011, but that number may have risen recently due to the collapse amid the ongoing political turmoil of the central government’s authority over various parts of the country. Militias which Washington believes are tied to AQAP have taken control of towns near the Gulf of Aden.

“There’s an assumption that the U.S. has used a lot of aerial strikes in recent months, but it’s difficult to get verification,” said Gregory Johnson, a Yemen expert at Princeton University.

In Somalia, where Washington has also used cruise missiles and heliborne Special Operations Forces (SOF) against senior al Shabaab leaders, there are believed to have been only two drones strikes since 2007.

According to the Post and Journal accounts, Washington used a base in the Seychelles in 2009 and 2010 to fly drones for surveillance of both Somalia and Somali piracy activity in the Indian Ocean. According to the Wikileaks cables cited by the Post, Seychelles President James Michel has concurred with the idea of arming the drones.

Somalia’s prime minister, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, told the Journal that he did not object to armed drone attacks on members of Al Shabaab, provided that such operations were coordinated with his government, but that he opposed attacks on pirates.

The Post reported that the U.S. has negotiated with Ethiopia, with which Washington also cooperates closely on counterterrorism activities, for four years over building a base for armed drones on its territory. Fox News reported that the U.S. has flown surveillance drones from several Ethiopian bases.

“There could certainly be a lot of internal discussion before they would agree to authorise the use of a base (for armed drones),” said David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Addis Ababa. “They don’t want to be seen as a pawn of anyone.”

Shinn, who teaches at George Washington University, said the use of armed drones should be highly constrained and warned against its becoming “the default policy for dealing with Somalia”.

“I don’t see a problem with using an aerial strike with a couple of huge caveats,” he told IPS. “First, that you have intelligence which is 95 percent accurate or better on a high value target – which is a pretty tough standard – and, second, that there’s little or no likelihood of collateral damage. If you’re using these things willy- nilly on the basis of not very good intelligence, then it will be counter-productive.”

Johnsen voiced similar caution, noting that “Washington has drifted into this tactic, because it can’t seem to find any other good options in Yemen.”

“But it runs the very real risk of actually exacerbating the situation,” he noted. “The problem with drones is that the U.S. doesn’t have a very good track record on killing who it’s aiming at in Yemen. So it often ends up killing civilians, which drives their brothers, fathers, sons, nephews, etc. into the hands of Al-Qaeda and makes it easier for Al-Qaeda to argue that Yemen is an active theatre of Jihad, no different from Iraq or Afghanistan.”

He also expressed concern about the CIA building a base in Saudi Arabia. “One of the primary motivations for Osama bin Laden’s jihad against the U.S. were military bases housing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War,” he wrote on his blog, Waq al- Waq. “Does the U.S. think this current of thought no longer holds sway in Arabia?

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Excerpt:

Al Jazeera has found evidence of a possible mass execution of political activists in Libya.

Visiting a hospital in Tripoli on Thursday, Al Jazeera’s James Bays said he saw the bodies of 15 men suspected to have been killed a few days earlier as the rebels closed in on the Libyan capital.

“The smell here is overpowering,” Bays said from the hospital where a number of bodies lay.

“I have counted the bodies of 15 men we were told there were 17 here. Two bodies were taken away by relatives for burial.”

“We are told these men were political activists who have been arrested over the last few days and weeks and being held near the Gaddafi compound. When the opposition fighters started to enter the compound we are told they were killed.

“Everyone I have spoken to who has looked at these injuries, all the medical staff, they say they believe that the injuries they see on the bodies of these men have the hallmark of a mass execution.”

Bays said there were no forensic scientists at the hospital. Doctors there had taken photos of the exit and entry wounds on the bodies, with the intention of showing it to an expert at a later stage.

Hunt for Gaddafi

The grisly discovery came amid rumours that rebels had surrounded a Tripoli building where Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader now on the run, is reportedly hiding along with some of his sons.

“They are together. They are in a small hole,” Muhammad Gomaa, one of the fighters involved in the battle near Bab al-Aziziya – Gaddafi’s compound that was overrun by the rebels – told Reuters. “Today we finish. Today we will end that.”

However, Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton reporting from Tripoli, said “at the moment, these are rumours, we cannot confirm whether those reports are true or not.”

The rebels are determined to find Gaddafi, and have offered amnesty and a reward to anyone who kills or captures the 69-year-old Libyan leader.

In Benghazi, the National Transitional Council (NTC) told a news conference on Wednesday that Libyan business people had contributed 1.7 million dollars for the cash reward.

“The NTC supports the initiative of businessmen who are offering two million dinars for the capture of Muammar Gaddafi, dead or alive,” Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the NTC chief, said.

Gaddafi made an audio address broadcast earlier on Wednesday by the al-Rai television channel. In the address he called on Tripoli residents to repel the rebels’ advance.

But rebel reinforcements have streamed into Tripoli to join in the fight against remnants of Gaddafi’s forces.

Fighting on Thursday was concentrated along the perimeters of Bab al-Aziziya and the neighbouring Abu Salim district, where Gaddafi reportedly released, armed and paid former prisoners to fight for his regime.

A rebel spokesman told Al Jazeera that “Libyan territory is 90 to 95 per cent under the control of the rebellion”.

Turton reported on Thursday that locals are very worried that there are going to be attacks by pro-Gaddafi supporters across the city.

“There are check points popping up all over the city. Locals are managing to get hold of weapons to police their streets,” she said.

“There is a lot of nervousness … people are very worried that Gaddafi loyalists are coming through these streets

“We’ve been told about clashes as rebels try to regain control of Abu Salim, the pro-Gaddafi neighbourhood that took a lot of casualties yesterday when rebels took on Gaddafi loyalists there.”

The fight for Sirte

Elsewhere in the country, rebel commanders said they are readying fresh attempts to advance against Gaddafi’s forces in his hometown Sirte, 360km east of the capital and to break a siege of Zuwarah, a town to the west.

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Ras Lanuf, 200km from Sirte, said rebels there were assembling heavy weaponry in anticipation of an assault on the Gaddafi stronghold of Sirte.

However, Scott Heidler, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the eastern city of Benghazi, said there had already been a stop to rebel advancement towards the Gaddafi stronghold.

“So we are facing a battle in the coming hours,” he said.

Rebels advancing towards Sirte were also blocked on Wednesday in the town of Bin Jawad as loyalists kept up stiff resistance.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Rebels have entered the fortified compound of Muammar Gaddafi in Bab al-Azizya in Tripoli, following intense fighting with forces loyal to the Libyan leader.

The rebels “broke through the gates of Bab al-Aiziya [and] some opposition fighters managed to enter the government’s stronghold in the Libyan capital,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent Zeina Khodr said, reporting from the compound on Tuesday.

A Libyan rebel commander told Al Jazeera that 90 per cent of the compound was under rebel control.

As celebratory gunfire rang out, there were reports that the compound armoury was being looted.

Khodr said that the looting was being done by civilians and not rebel fighters. A rebel supporter was seen kicking around a broken sculpture of Gaddafi.

Fighting meanwhile also continued across the capital for a second day with the sound of gunfire and occasional explosions ringing out.

The al-Mansoura district was the focus of fierce clashes between government forces and opposition fighters, two days after the rebels marched into the heart of the city, prompting scenes of jubiliation.

“Gaddafi troops are holed up in a series of pockets where they still seem to have strength, the main one of which is inside that sprawling Gaddafi compound,” said Al Jazeera’s James Bays, another correspondent reporting from Tripoli.

Gaddafi’s forces are reportedly fighting back using heavy weapons including mortars and shells fired in the direction of Green Square, which rebels have renamed Martyrs’ Square, casting doubts on opposition claims that much of the city was under their control.

The Libyan leader’s whereabouts are unknown.

“The battle is certainly not over. The city is on a knife edge,” our correspondent said.

There have been reports of NATO planes flying very low on top of Gaddafi’s compound.

Confusion on the ground

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, analyses the fight for Tripoli and what it means for Libya

Meanwhile, 30 journalists remained holed up in Tripoli’s Rixos hotel on Tuesday. The New York Times reported that journalists from the BBC, CNN and other international news organisations were stuck inside the hotel with no electricity and described the hotel as a “prison”.

In a dramatic development earlier in the day, Saif al-Islam, the son of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, appeared in al-Mansouraand at the Rixos hotel to refute claims that he had been captured by opposition forces and rally government loyalists.

“There is confusion among the ranks of opposition fighters on the ground,” Al Jazeera’s Khodr added. “Some people are asking whether the National Transitional Council has been infiltrated.”

The head of Libya’s opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) on Monday announced the end of Gaddafi’s decades-long rule.

But the re-appearance of Saif, an influential figure who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, has raised fresh questions about the NTC leadership’s grip on a fast-changing situation.

Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reporting from Benghazi said: “Now we are seeing accusations, doubts, and confusion.

“It is going to be interesting to see how the NTC explains this debacle and how it seeks to reinforce and strengthen these alliances and enable the rebels to get to Tripoli itself.”

The NTC held a joint press conference in Benghazi with Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister on Tuesday.

“We stand by NTC leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil … He established the path for Libya for the future,” Davutoglu said.

Caution and confusion

Celebrations followed the rebels push into central Tripoli on Sunday night, when an opposition force took control of the Green Square and claimed victory, but has since given way to caution and confusion.

Snipers scattered across the city continued to wage resistance, while a rebel convoy was ambushed by Gaddafi loyalists using anti-aircraft weapons.

Elsewhere in the country, the US military said that its warplanes had shot down a scud missile fired from Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown, indicating that remnants of Gaddafi’s forces were continuing to resist.

Rebel fighters in eastern Libya advanced towards the oil terminal of Ras Lanuf after taking the coastal town of Ageila from forces loyal to Gaddafi.

Moussa Ibrahim, the government spokesperson, claimed Gaddafi forces had control of at least 75 per cent of Tripoli. But rebels said Gaddafi supporters only held about 20 per cent of the city.

The tenuous nature of the rebels’ grip on Tripoli has dampened rebel hopes of a swift victory and raised concerns that the city of two million people could be the stage for a protracted armed struggle.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Despite 12 years of reform, Morocco’s universities continue to fall short of expectations, with students complaining that the training they get does not meet the demands of the job market.

Professors in this North African country of 32 million people echoed their students’ grievances, adding that Moroccan universities are poorly managed and riddled with corruption.

“The kind of training provided by universities remains poor and does not meet any of the educational, pedagogic, academic and intellectual conventional standards,” Zakaria Rmidi, a student preparing for his master’s degree in English studies, told IPS.

“We have not moved yet from the logic of teaching to that of training,” said Abdellatif Fetheddine, head of the Department of Philosophy at Hassan II-Mohammedia University in Casablanca, in an interview with IPS.

Morocco’s university system has been subject to reforms since 1999 when King Hassan II decided to institute wide-ranging measures in the field of education. The reform aimed especially at adapting university training to the needs of the job market. Hassan II, however, died that same year. He had ruled Morocco for nearly four decades since 1961.

But the death of the king did not stop the reforms, which were continued by his successor, Mohamed VI. In a speech on Oct. 8, 1999, the king said the purpose of the reform was “educating good citizens capable of acquiring knowledge and skills” as well as “the rationalisation of expenses reserved for education, and the protection of these public funds from any abuse or manipulation.”

Less than a year later on May 19, 2000, the Moroccan parliament enacted a new law granting total administrative and financial autonomy to Morocco’s 15 universities.

According to official figures by the Ministry of National Education, the total number of students in these universities during the academic year 2009-2010 reached 306,595.

The law established a modular system of training, with the academic year divided into semesters. Also for the first time, master’s degrees were created, replacing the former system where universities granted only Diplomas of In-depth studies (DEA) and Diplomas of Higher Education (DES).

But these educational reforms do not satisfy students. “University education in Morocco is much more quantitative than qualitative,” Rmidi explained. “Students sometimes find themselves having nine to 10 subjects within the same semester, dealing with plenty of material, studying up to 24 hours a week. They are required to be present in all the sessions and to prepare presentations on what they study.”

Despite this, the new system still has a long way to go before it reaches the goal of reform laid out 12 years ago. Rmidi said that because of the incompatibility with the employment market, students have “lost trust in universities as a place of knowledge and thought.”

“A lot of students who get their baccalaureate would prefer to go to a vocational training institute instead of going to university. Sometimes, even those who go to university can opt for another two years training in a vocational institute after they get their license degrees,” Rmidi added.

The problem is not only educational. Professors also complain of poor working conditions, including the lack infrastructure and facilities, Rmidi said.

The causes are not necessarily financial, a case in point being the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Ben Msik, affiliated to Hassan II-Mohammedia University in Casablanca. An official statement of accounts of the faculty, a copy of which IPS obtained, says it spent over 6.3 million dirhams (more than 800,000 dollars) in 2010 alone.

The statement also showed that of this amount, more than 480,000 dirhams (60,000 dollars) were spent on catering and accommodation. The faculty has no restaurant and no residence halls for students. In contrast, the faculty spent only 633 dollars for new books for the library.

The dean of the faculty refused an IPS request for an interview.

Those who raise their voices against these practices have gotten into trouble. Mohamed Said Karrouk, professor of climatology in the same faculty, wrote several letters to the administration to denounce mismanagement, corruption, and falsification of documents, only to find himself dragged before a disciplinary council.

“They did not even open an investigation to show whether I am right or wrong,” he told IPS.

When resistance to reform comes from those supposed to apply it, “this reform remains only on paper,” Abdelmajid Jahfa, a member of the National Syndicate of Higher Education, told IPS.

“I do not see absolutely any advantages of the system. What advantages exist are completely demolished by an archaic administrative system,” he said.

“We still need to democratise more the management of the university. We need to reform the reform,” Abdellatif Fetheddine said.

The head of the Libyan rebel’s armed forces and two of his aides were killed by gunmen Thursday, the head of the rebel leadership said.

The death of Abdel Fattah Younes was announced at a press conference in the de facto rebel capital, Benghazi, by the head of the rebels’ National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil. He told reporters that rebel security had arrested the head of the group behind the killing.

Rebel security had arrested Younes and two of his aides early on Thursday from their operations room near the rebels’ eastern front. Security officials said at the time that Younes was to be questioned about suspicions his family still had ties to Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

Younes was Gaddafi’s interior minister before defecting to the rebels early in the uprising, which began in February.

Abdul Jalil said that Younes had been summoned for questioning regarding “a military matter.” He said Younes and his two aides were shot before they arrived for questioning.

Abdel-Jalil called Younes “one of the heroes of the 17th of February revolution,” a name marking the date of early protests against Gaddafi’s regime.

While he criticised Gaddafi for seeking to break the unity of rebel forces, he did not say directly that Younes’ killers were associated with the regime. Instead, he issued a stiff warning about “armed groups” in rebel-held cities, saying they needed to join the fight against Gaddafi or risk being arrested by security forces.

There were reports of gunfire outside the hotel in Benghazi following the press conference.

Also, at least three loud explosions shook the centre of the Libyan capital Tripoli shortly after rebel forces announced the death of their commander-in-chief.

Two explosions were heard at 10:20 pm local time (20:20 GMT), followed by another blast several minutes later, as Libyan television reported that planes were flying over the Libyan capital, which has been the target of NATO air raids.

Rebel offensive

Meanwhile, Libyan opposition fighters in the western mountains have launched attacks on several government-controlled towns, hoping to push out loyalist troops and open a route to the border.

The attacks began around dawn as rebels descended from around the towns of Nalut and Jadu in an attempt to expel forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from the Nafusa mountain foothills.

By midday local time, rebels had taken and lost the town of al-Jawsh and reached the outskirts of Ghazaya, a significant base for Gaddafi’s troops near the Tunisian border.

Four rebels were killed and 10 injured, while 18 loyalist troops were captured, according to opposition sources. Rebels from Nalut assemble before moving out to attack Gaddafi positions [Nalut Media Committee]

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, who approached al-Jawsh with the rebel advance, said fighters initially took the town and moved on but were caught by a surprise counterattack.

Despite hitting al-Jawsh with artillery fire and attempting to clear out Gaddafi’s troops, some regime forces apparently remained in town, while others fired Grad rockets after the rebels entered.

Farther west, Ghazaya had been bombard by rebel tanks and “long-range guns” throughout Wednesday night in preparation for the attack, an opposition source said.

The fight for Ghazaya continued into Thursday afternoon, and rebels claimed to have seized the nearby town of Takut. A rebel spokesman in Jadu claimed rebels had taken Ghazaya, but that claim was not confirmed by other sources.

Hundreds of trucks carrying hundreds of fighters were involved in the operation at al-Jawsh, Bays said.

It appeared to be the largest attack by opposition fighters in the Nafusa Mountains since the conflict began.

* Published under agreement with Al-Jazeera. ** This story updates Libya Opposition Arrests Senior Leader, moved Jul. 28.

General Abdel Fatah Younis, the chief of staff of the rebel forces in Libya, has been arrested by the National Transition Council.

He is being held at an undisclosed military garrison in Benghazi. An official statement from the NTC is expected soon on Thursday.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley, reporting from Benghazi, quoted unconfirmed reports as saying the former minister of interior was arrested for dealing with and smuggling arms to Gaddafi loyalists.

“He spent 40 years as one of Gaddafi’s right hand men as minister of defence and in charge of the special forces. So when he came over five months ago to the opposition cause it was quite a coup. But some people have had their doubts about… his loyalties…

Some of his men have come back from the front line demanding his release. This is an ugly situation in the making,” our correspondent said.

Meanwhile, Libyan opposition fighters in the western mountains have launched attacks on several government-controlled towns, hoping to push out loyalist troops and open a route to the border.

The attacks began around dawn as rebels descended from around the towns of Nalut and Jadu in an attempt to expel forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from the Nafusa mountain foothills.

By midday local time, rebels had taken and lost the town of al-Jawsh and reached the outskirts of Ghazaya, a significant base for Gaddafi’s troops near the Tunisian border.

Four rebels were killed and 10 injured, while 18 loyalist troops were captured, according to opposition sources. Rebels from Nalut assemble before moving out to attack Gaddafi positions [Nalut Media Committee]

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, who approached al-Jawsh with the rebel advance, said fighters initially took the town and moved on but were caught by a surprise counterattack.

Despite hitting al-Jawsh with artillery fire and attempting to clear out Gaddafi’s troops, some regime forces apparently remained in town, while others fired Grad rockets after the rebels entered.

Farther west, Ghazaya had been bombard by rebel tanks and “long-range guns” throughout Wednesday night in preparation for the attack, an opposition source said.

The fight for Ghazaya continued into Thursday afternoon, and rebels claimed to have seized the nearby town of Takut. A rebel spokesman in Jadu claimed rebels had taken Ghazaya, but that claim was not confirmed by other sources.

Hundreds of trucks carrying hundreds of fighters were involved in the operation at al-Jawsh, Bays said.

It appeared to be the largest attack by opposition fighters in the Nafusa Mountains since the conflict began.

Diplomatic recognition

On Wednesday, the political vice continued to squeeze Gaddafi’s government, with the UK officially announcing its recognition for the Libyan opposition as the sole legitimate authority in the country.

Khaled Kaim, Gaddafi’s deputy foreign minister, condemned the decision as “irresponsible, illegal and in violation of British and international laws” in a press conference in Tripoli.

He said the government “will take necessary actions” and pursue a legal challenge to the move in both British and international courts. Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Phillips reports on the British recognition of the opposition National Transition Council

William Hague, the UK foreign minister, announced the recognition of the National Transitional Council (NTC) on Wednesday, 12 days after the US made a similar move.

Britain also asked all diplomats belonging to Gaddafi’s government to leave the country.

Recognition in the UK means the NTC can send its own diplomatic personnel, who will be treated like the representatives of any other government, and can receive millions of dollars in frozen oil funds.

Mahmud al-Naku, a Libyan exile in Britain, has been tapped as the NTC’s ambassador, an opposition official announced on Wednesday.

Britain will transfer about $147m in frozen assets to the NTC and has already said it will extend a $143m loan based on frozen Libyan funds.

“In line with this decision, we summoned the Libyan charge d’affaires here to the foreign office this morning and informed him that he and other regime diplomats from the Gaddafi regime must now leave the United Kingdom,” Hague said on Wednesday.

“We no longer recognise them as the representatives of the Libyan government and we are inviting the Libyan National Transitional Council to appoint a new Libyan diplomatic envoy to take over the Libyan embassy in London.”

Expulsion order

The current charge d’affaires and all eight remaining staff and their dependents have three days to leave the country, the UK foreign office said.

In an audio message to loyalists on Wednesday, Gaddafi said that he and his people were “ready to sacrifice” in order to defeat NATO and the Libyan fighters.

Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught, reporting from the opposition stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya, said that the release of frozen funds would be welcomed by NTC leaders, as they had been running dangerously low on cash.

She said that if the funds were handed over to the oil company that Hague named in his statement, they could go towards repairing an oil pipeline to one of the east’s largest oil fields, in Soriya.

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head of the NTC, said in Benghazi on Wednesday that the UK’s decision “gives us a political and economic boost”.

“This means Gaddafi and his followers are no longer legitimate,” he said.

Britain’s diplomatic moves implement a decision made at the July 15 meeting in Istanbul.

The US, Britain and 30 other nations recognised the NTC as the country’s legitimate government, and individual countries have followed that collective acknowledgement with individual announcements.

But not all countries involved in the Libyan conflict have fallen in line.

Russia has criticised such moves as a “policy of isolation” that takes sides in a civil war and goes beyond the UN mandate of protecting civilians.

Russia has said Gaddafi must go and has recognised the NTC as a party to negotiations to end the conflict, but it has not disavowed Gaddafi’s government or said the NTC is the sole representative of the Libyan people. * Published under an agreement with Al-Jazeera.

Libyan officials have accused NATO of killing at least eight people in an air raid on a food warehouse and medical clinic in Zlitan, east of Tripoli.

Foreign journalists taken to the town of Zlitan on Monday were unable to verify if it was a NATO operation.

NATO has denied targeting civilians and says it only hit military facilities in the area.

Muammar Gaddafi, the longtime leader, remains in power despite a four-month NATO air campaign and five months of fighting with opposition fighters who have seized large parts of the oil-rich North African country.

Zlitan is the largest city between opposition-held Misurata and government-controlled Tripoli, and remains in Gaddafi’s control.

“We are, generally, in a stalemate,” Michael Mullen, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said in Washington during what could be his last news briefing before retirement.

Mullen said NATO has “dramatically attrited [reduced] his forces” and “additional pressure has been brought”, even if Gaddafi has not been ousted.

“In the long run, I think it’s a strategy that will work … [towards] removal of Gaddafi from power,” Mullen said.

Diplomatic push

The developments came as the Abdul Elah al-Khatib, the UN envoy to Libya, and the Benghazi-based opposition council discussed ideas for ending the fighting.

With a diplomatic push to end the conflict gathering steam, al-Khatib told the Reuters news agency after the meeting on Monday that he would head to Tripoli on Tuesday to hold talks with the government.

Lawyers in Misurata are building a case against Gaddafi.

“We did not put a plan in front of them. We discussed the views and ideas on how we can trigger a political process … to achieve a political solution,” he said.

NATO has continued to attack Gaddafi’s forces around Libya, striking twice in central Tripoli on Monday, and Britain has said there would be no let up during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in August.

But hopes have grown for a negotiated end to a war that has dragged on longer than many initially expected.

Speaking to Reuters after the meeting, Mahmoud Jibreel, a senior opposition official, said he had made clear his side would reject any initiative that did not involve the removal of Gaddafi from power as a first step to peace.

That appeared to be a tacit rejection of UN ideas floated informally by a diplomat last week, which envisaged a ceasefire followed by a power-sharing government without Gaddafi.

The UN issued a statement on Monday that said it has identified shortage of fueld, food and cash in areas under Gaddafi’s control.

‘Productive dialogue’

Gaddafi’s foreign minister, Abdelati Obeidi, recently ended three days of talks in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to seek a negotiated end to the war.

Libya’s government has said its representatives are ready to hold more talks with the US and the opposition, but that Gaddafi himself will not negotiate and will not quit.

Moussa Ibrahim, the Gaddafi government spokesman, said on Friday that senior Libyan officials had a “productive dialogue” with US counterparts earlier this month in a rare meeting that followed US recognition of the opposition government. Click here for more of Al Jazeera’s special coverage

Complicating Gaddafi’s situation is the fact that the world court in The Hague is seeking his arrest for crimes against humanity allegedly committed by his forces.

This makes it difficult for him to find refuge outside the country.

Hopes for a negotiated settlement have grown, however, since France said for the first time last week that Gaddafi could stay in Libya as long as he gives up power.

The opposition leaders have given conflicting signals in recent weeks over whether they would allow Gaddafi and his family to stay in Libya as part of a deal, providing he gives up power.

In the latest comment on the issue, opposition leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told the Wall Street Journal that it would be acceptable.

“Gaddafi can stay in Libya but it will have conditions,” he said. “We will decide where he stays and who watches him. The same conditions will apply to his family.” * Published under an agreement with Al-Jazeera.

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jul 18 2011 (IPS)

Fortified by formal U.S. recognition as Libya’s legitimate government, fighters loyal to the rebel Benghazi-based Transitional National Council (TNC) made a key advance Monday by reportedly gaining control of most of the eastern oil port of Brega.

But whether that achievement, combined with the diplomatic gains made by the TNC in recent days, will be enough to decisively break the protracted deadlock in the civil war, now entering its sixth month, remains doubtful, according to both officials and independent analysts here.

Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gaddafi, who has been personally rallying forces loyal to him in cities in and around Tripoli, appears well- entrenched in the capital, even as rebel forces in the east and western mountains seem to be advancing for the moment.

“We think the overall tide of events has clearly shifted toward the rebels,” one administration official told IPS. “But that doesn’t mean this isn’t going to take a good while longer.”

Monday’s advance on Brega came three days after the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama joined 27 other governments in offering official recognition of the TNC as “the legitimate governing authority for Libya”.

Speaking at the meeting of the “Libya Contact Group” in Istanbul, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington had received sufficient assurances from the TNC regarding its “intention to pursue democratic reform that is inclusive geographically and politically, and to uphold Libya’s international obligations and to disburse funds in a transparent manner, to address the humanitarian and other needs of the Libyan people” to justify recognition.

“We will help the TNC sustain its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Libya, and we look to it to remain steadfast in its commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms,” she added.

In addition to its psychological and diplomatic impact, Washington’s decision to recognise the TNC paves the way for the transfer of some of the roughly 32 billion dollars in Libyan assets that the administration froze at the end of February to protest Gaddafi’s violent crackdown on protests around the country.

In a background briefing after Friday’s announcement, senior U.S. officials stressed that any funds released by the U.S. would have to be used by the TNC for humanitarian aid and basic public services, rather than weapons or other forms of military assistance to enhance its fighting capabilities against Gaddafi’s forces.

The briefers also stressed that funds are unlikely to be released very soon. “We still have to work through various legal issues, but we expect this step on recognition will enable the TNC to access additional sources of funding,” Clinton said in her announcement.

The latest developments come amid growing pressure by some of Washington’s NATO allies, notably France and Britain, on the administration to provide more support for the NATO military campaign in Libya.

The Financial Times reported Monday that Britain’s defence secretary, Liam Fox, had asked Washington’s new Pentagon chief, Leon Panetta, for more help but failed to get a commitment.

Since the early days of the campaign when the U.S. took the lead in bombing key targets, particularly Libya’s air force and air-defence systems, Washington has played a more limited role.

Most of its operations have been confined to logistical support, aerial surveillance and refuelling, and providing targeting information, although U.S. warplanes and Predator drones have also been used occasionally to strike specific targets.

Washington’s self-imposed restraints have frustrated France and Britain, as well as several other NATO allies that are taking part in the campaign, which have found that their own much more modest capabilities and military equipment are being stretched to the limit.

Arguing that Washington is already bearing almost all of the burden of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that Europe has far more at stake in North Africa than the U.S., the Obama administration also faces domestic pressure to limit its Libya intervention.

Pluralities and majorities of respondents in numerous polls taken here since March have said that Washington should “not be involved” in military operations in Libya.

That discontent has been compounded by the administration’s insistence that its operations fall short of the level of “hostilities” that, under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, would require the president to gain Congressional authorisation to continue them after 60 days.

That position stirred a bipartisan revolt in Congress.

Late last month, the House of Representatives rejected a resolution, based on a Senate counterpart co-sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. John Kerry that would have authorised U.S. participation in the NATO operation for up to one year.

Several days later, Kerry’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the resolution by a 14-5 margin, but the full Senate, which appeared poised to pass it earlier this month, is now unlikely to act on it until September.

Earlier this month, the House approved an amendment to a Pentagon appropriations bill that barred funding for arming, equipping, training or advising any military force in Libya.

Indeed, while TNC leaders – mostly Western-educated businessmen, professionals, academics, and diplomats – who have come to Washington have made a favourable impression on their interlocutors here, there remains significant concern about the composition, unity and intentions of the diffuse and mostly rag-tag forces nominally under their command.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported last week that rebels in the western mountains had looted and damaged four towns they had taken from Gaddafi’s forces last month in apparent reprisal actions.

At the same time, the New York Times reported that some of the 20,000-man portable air-defence missiles (MANPADS) that Gaddafi is believed to have accumulated in recent years were looted from government bunkers in the western mountains and eastern Libya and could not be accounted for.

“MANPADS have long been one of the most worrisome forms of conventional ordnance from a counterterrorist point of view, because of the potential to use them against civilian aircraft,” noted Paul Pillar, a former top regional analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, who blogs at the nationalinterest.org website. “It looks like terrorists with thoughts of shooting down airliners have a new source of supply.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Excerpt:

At least 11 people have been killed and dozens more wounded in shelling by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, around the besieged rebel enclave of Misurata, the rebels say.

“Eleven people were killed and 57 wounded, almost all of them civilians,” a rebel source told the AFP news agency by telephone from Misurata, 200km east of Tripoli, on Tuesday.

The attacks marked another bloody milestone for a city that has been shelled almost continuously since March.

Sources said five rebels were killed in fighting at the western entrance to the city earlier in the day.

Meanwhile, Gerard Longuet, France’s defence minister, questioned the rebels’ chances of defeating Gaddafi and pushing towards the capital.

The expression of doubt came as reports emerged that the rebels had launched what they called a promised attack on a key gateway to the capital Tripoli. There was no independent verification on the rebels’ claim.

Curbing support

The rebels have a “growing capacity to organise politically and militarily” but are “currently not in a stabilised, centralised system”, Longuet said.

He also said that the rebels were no longer in need of controversial French weapons drops.

“There is emerging a political order distinct from that of Tripoli. The [rebel] territories are organising their autonomy… That is why the parachute drops are no longer necessary,” he said.

Across the Gulf of Sirte, on the eastern front line, a rebel representative said nine Gaddafi soldiers were captured between Ajdabiya and Brega.

Amid the uneasy military stalemate, diplomatic talks continued about a possible negotiated solution to the conflict, although no proposal appears to have gained much traction yet.

An unnamed senior Russian official was quoted on Tuesday as saying Gaddafi would consider stepping down – an offer that, if realised, would meet the rebels’ central demand.

“The colonel is sending signals that he is ready to cede power in exchange for security guarantees,” the respected business daily Kommersant quoted the official as saying.

The Russian source added that France appeared to be the country most willing to play a part, by unfreezing some of the Gaddafi family’s accounts and promising to help him avoid trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

‘No escape’

The rebels have thus far rejected any deal that would leave Gaddafi in power.

“There is no escape clause for Gaddafi – he must be removed from power and face justice,” Mustafa Mohammed Abdel Jalil, Transitional National Council (TNC) chief, said earlier this week.

Meanwhile, preparations were underway for an international meeting on Libya in Istanbul on Jul. 15-16. TNC foreign affairs point man Mahmud Jibril held talks with his Turkish and UAE counterparts on Tuesday.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, whose country is NATO’s sole Muslim-majority member and an influential regional player, has called on Gaddafi to cede power and leave Libya.

The Jul. 15-16 meeting comes as diplomats increasingly mull what post-Gaddafi Libya might look like, with many hoping to avoid Iraq or Afghanistan-style chaos.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO chief, said on Tuesday that the alliance would like to see the United Nations assume the leading role in Libya’s transition to democracy in the event Gaddafi leaves power.

Speaking in Russia’s second-largest city, Saint Petersburg, Rasmussen said, “To accommodate the legitimate aspirations of the Libyan people, it is necessary that Gaddafi leaves power.”

“After that, it is necessary to ensure a transition to democracy… We want the United Nations to take the lead in this effort,” he said.

One of the new elements in the road map agreed by the African Union on Friday includes provisions for a multinational peacekeeping force organised by the United Nations.

Rasmussen is to meet Libyan opposition members in Brussels next week, an alliance diplomat said Tuesday, the anti-Gaddafi contingent’s first invitation to NATO headquarters.

*Published under an agreement with Al-Jazeera.