Dakar to Riyadh: Links for 5/10/2024
News and history from the Sahel, North Africa, the Horn, and the Mashriq
Last week’s links here.
Sahel and West Africa
Surprising no one, Mahamat Deby won Chad’s presidential election.
Some good economic news for Nigeria? Reuters:
Global ratings agency Fitch revised Nigeria's outlook on Friday to positive from stable, citing the country's economic reforms under its new president.
Since taking office about a year ago, President Bola Tinubu has embarked on sweeping reforms, including slashing costly petrol and electricity subsidies and devaluing the naira currency twice within a year to narrow the gap between the official and parallel market exchange rates.
I suspect, though, that the policies that please investors and ratings agencies are also often the policies that hurt ordinary people - especially in the case of the fuel subsidy.
Mali’s High Islamic Council is concerned about what it sees as rising incidents of blasphemy (Fr). Given how tightly controlled political space in Mali is right now, I wonder whether the council’s intervention is meant to parallel nationalist discourses emanating from the junta.
North Africa
Le Monde (Fr) looks at how the issue of returning Emir Abdelkader’s swords from France to Algeria is both key to, and symbolic of, the relationship between former colonizer and former colonized.
Jeune Afrique (Fr) tells the story of Fatma Mourali, the first Tunisian woman to obtain a diploma (in 1921); this is part of JA’s new series on notable Tunisian women.
ICESCO (the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, formerly called ISESCO) is celebrating various cities as “Cultural Capitals of the Islamic World,” including Benghazi (Ar).
Greater Horn of Africa
Human Rights Watch on Darfur:
From late April until early November 2023, the [Rapid Support Forces, RSF] and allied militias conducted a systematic campaign to remove, including by killing, ethnic Massalit residents…from El Geneina, home to an ethnically mixed population of around 540,000 people. Violence began on April 24 and continued in phases over seven weeks, peaking in mid-June, with another surge in November. [There has been] a deluge of atrocities that the RSF and allied militias, predominantly from Darfuri Arab groups, have carried out in El Geneina and West Darfur in general since the outbreak of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF on April 15, 2023.
The Institute for Security Studies offers a critical perspective on Ethiopia’s plans to create a new Special Prosecutor’s Office.
Mashriq
The New Humanitarian gives a look at the situation and mood in Rafah as Palestinians and aid workers brace for the Israeli assault. The article is from May 8, and could soon be overtaken from events, but is worth a read.
Middle East Eye covers controversy surrounding the Iranian cleric Alireza Panahian, and delves into his background:
Panahian, 59, is widely reguarded as one of [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei's favourite clerics. In 2009, he co-founded the Ammar Base think tank, a political-religious organisation close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, following the disputed presidential elections that saw principlist Mahmoud Ahmedinejad re-elected.
[…]
Panahian is also known for his controversial statements. In 2013, he labelled the 2009 protesters as supporters of the Islamic State militant group, and said the "seditionists" should be "punished by execution".
More recently, the cleric referred to the 2022 anti-establishment demonstrations, following the death of Mahsa Amini while in morality police custody, as "the uprising of wild men" whom he accused of "vulgarities, cursing, and brutal killings".
Al-Monitor on the “limits to reform” in Saudi Arabia.