Dakar to Riyadh: Links for 10/4/2024
News and analysis from the Sahel, North Africa, the Horn, and the Middle East.
Sahel/West Africa
Senegal’s ex-President Macky Sall is not done with electoral politics.
Human Rights Watch: “Niger: New Terrorism Database Threatens Rights.”
Abiodun Jamiu at HumAngle on Nigerians working in Malian gold mines:
Satellite images, corroborated by multiple sources we spoke to, show that most Nigerians, especially those from Zamfara, work in the three major mining sites in the rural Tinzaouaten commune, located far North East of Mali on the border with Algeria. When Bashir got to Mali, they drove to Kidal. Set on the dust of the desert, Kidal is a crucial stopover between Mali and Algeria. Most Hausa-speaking migrants — Nigerians and Nigeriens — stayed here. The shared identity and language helped them to settle and get along with their ‘brothers’, who introduced them to other miners.
Speaking of Tinzaouaten, will there be an “Act Two” there following the Malian Army and the Wagner Group’s loss there in July?
Chadian President Mahamat Déby visited Paris for the Francophonie Summit and met French President Emmanuel Macron on October 3. Find some context on the summit here.
Ololade Faniyi in The Republic: “Despite their purported mission of advancing women’s interests, in Nigeria, institutionalized structures such as the first lady’s office and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, more often reinforce than challenge patriarchal norms.”
I have a new paper out in the journal Mediterranean Politics. The paper is called “Salafism and Dialectics of Muslim Identity in Nigeria and the Sahel.”
North Africa
Tunisia holds presidential elections on October 6. President Kais Saied is a lock to win, given the narrowness of the field and the widespread arrests of dissidents and opponents. International Crisis Group says their unpublished polling indicates only 20%-25% of likely voters back Saied as their first-round choice. At Middle East Eye, Hatem Nafti argues that a combination of factors since 2011 - counterterrorism, foreign (especially U.S.) assistance, and Saied’s policies - have empowered the Tunisian military and made it central to political life.
A new session of the Moroccan parliament will open on October 11, with the deputies expected to consider numerous significant reforms, including a controversial reform of the Family Code.
On September 30, Libya’s House of Representatives approved the appointment of Naji Issa as Governor the Central Bank, ending (?) a weeks-long political crisis. Issa was a senior employee of the Bank. For more, see International Crisis Group, “Getting Past Libya’s Central Bank Standoff” and Reuters, “Libyan Oilfields Open Now That Central Bank Dispute Resolved.”
The self-proclaimed Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) must reveal the fate and whereabouts of former Minister of Defence Al-Mahdi al-Barghathi and 18 of his relatives and supporters who were abducted in Benghazi by armed men, said Amnesty International marking a year since their enforced disappearances.
[…]
Al-Mahdi al-Barghathi, a rival of LAAF General Commander Khalifa Haftar, returned to his hometown of Benghazi on 6 October 2023 following tribal reconciliation efforts. Following his return LAAF-affiliated armed groups raided his mother’s home in the al-Salamani neighbourhood. Ensuing armed clashes between LAAF affiliated armed groups including Tariq Ben Zeyad (TBZ) and the Internal Security Agency (ISA), on the one hand, and fighters loyal to Al-Mahdi al-Barghathi, on the other, left at least 15 dead and more injured, amid an internet shutdown by LAAF.
Assala Khettache at RUSI: “Algeria faces a strategic dilemma as it confronts the Wagner Group's presence in neighbouring Mali, balancing security concerns with its critical relationship with Russia.”
Greater Horn of Africa
Tahany Maalla at Africa Is a Country:
Sudan is battling not only bullets but also the suffocating absence of communication infrastructure, an often-overlooked lifeline that is as critical as food or medicine. As the country grapples with a severe food-security crisis, grassroots initiatives, such as mutual aid groups and emergency kitchens, are the only reliable sources of survival for millions. Yet these fragile support networks depend on stable internet access—a vital tool now throttled by war. With the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) tightening its grip on communications in territories it controls and using smuggled Starlink devices to monitor and control access, international actors remain disturbingly silent on this critical obstruction.
BBC: “South Sudan’s President Sacks His Powerful Spy Chief.”
The Economist on Ethiopian-Somali tensions over port access. See also Fred Harter at The New Humanitarian.
Representatives of the State of Qatar, the Republic of Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America met in Washington, D.C. on October 1 for the seventh meeting of the Somalia Quint. Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) representatives also participated.
Kenya's government has asked the International Monetary Fund to conduct an official assessment of corruption and governance issues, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters, after a push by Western nations.
The countries themselves must request the IMF's so-called "governance diagnostic", which investigates whether corruption and governance vulnerabilities are draining revenue or creating other problems in state finances.
Mashriq
Israel’s killing of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Lebanon, have been dominating headlines this week. Here are some of the most significant pieces I’ve seen on these topics:
Mehul Srivastava et al. in the Financial Times: “How Israeli Spies Penetrated Hizbollah.” Not everyone is convinced by the FT’s account, though.
Stefan Tarnowski in the London Review of Books: “Two Weeks in Beirut.”
Stefanie Glinski in Foreign Policy: “How Beirut Reacted to Nasrallah’s Death.”
New York Magazine: “ ‘They Hit Everyone and Anyone’: From Lebanon, Residents Share What Life Has Been Like Since Israel Launched Its Attack.”
Fátima Fouad el-Samman at the Public Source: “Jabal Amel’s Defiance, From Adham Khanjar to Hassan Hussein.”
Erin Banco and Nahal Toosi in Politico: “US Officials Quietly Backed Israel’s Military Push Against Hezbollah.” Derek Davison unpacks the administration’s behavior and mentality here.
The National: “Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Doha amid mounting fears of regional escalation following Iran's massive missile attack on Israel.”
Eskander Sadeghi-Boroujerdi analyzes Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Friday sermon.
Here is the State Department’s (September 27) statement on the “transition plan” for U.S. troops leaving Iraq. In The Hill, Rosemary Kelanic argues, “The U.S. Can Leave Iraq. Really.” An excerpt:
Drawdown opponents, however, knavishly conflate ISIS assaults on Iraqi and Syrian military forces with the possibility of terrorist attacks on American civilians as if the two were the same. They aren’t. Just because the Islamic State can mount rudimentary ambushes on lightly defended targets in Syria doesn’t mean the group can meaningfully menace ordinary Americans on U.S. soil. So while it may be the case that ISIS activity in the Middle East increased this year, the suggestion that the United States is somehow more vulnerable as a result is pure alarmism.
Bassem Saad in N+1 on the Lebanese Marxist Mahdi Amel (1936-1987):
As the [Lebanese civil] war wore on, ever fewer intellectuals were able to see any clear progressive cause or commitment on any side. It was in this torrid ideological climate that Amel intensified his work with the [Lebanese Communist Party], deepening his defense of Marxism as a form of scientific thought. Well after the expulsion of the Palestinian resistance from Lebanon, Amel maintained his anticolonial Marxist line. He remained convinced that the Lebanese bourgeoisie—not least the segment that had turned to pro-Israel collaborationism and Maronite fascism during the war—was still built in the image which French colonialism had constructed. This was another distinctive feature of his thought: Amel understood contemporary sectarianism not as a popular cultural heritage or vestigial backwardness, but as a distinctly modern formation, a system of bourgeois domination enshrined in Lebanese law during the French mandate and further consolidated after nominal independence. “If the French Mandate, thanks to the 1926 constitution, laid the (sectarian) foundation of this system, then the Lebanese bourgeoisie subsequently completed this system’s construction and strengthened it,” he wrote.
Daanish Faruqi in New Lines Magazine: “Saad Eddin Ibrahim spent his life advocating for democratization in the Arab world, but ended it as an apologist for authoritarianism.”