Dakar to Riyadh: Links for 7/19/2024
News and analysis from the Sahel, North Africa, the Horn, and the Middle East.
You can find last week’s links here.
General
Afrobarometer has released its 2024 flagship report, “Democracy at Risk - The People’s Perspective.”
Fewer than half (45%) of Africans think their countries are mostly or completely democratic, and only 37% say they are satisfied with the way democracy works in their countries.
Abebe Aemro Selassie of the International Monetary Fund on “Fostering Africa’s Economic Transformation through Innovative Financing.” Not much new here - “growth needs to be more private sector oriented” etc.
Humanitarianism and the military should no longer be seen as parallel but separate subjects, and our understanding of both ‘military humanitarianism’ and its chronology need to significantly expand. Rather than seeing it as post-Cold War phenomenon, could we trace the roots of military–humanitarian interaction back to the early nineteenth century, or beyond?
Sahel and West Africa
Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu has asked the Senate to approve an additional spending of 6.2 trillion naira ($4 billion) to plug shortfalls in this year's national budget, according to a letter read to lawmakers on Wednesday.
Tinubu also sought to impose a one-off windfall tax on banks' foreign exchange gains, as his government aims to raise revenues to fund "capital infrastructure development, education, and healthcare as well as welfare initiatives."
In The Gambia, a majority of parliament rejected (Fr) lifting a ban on female genital cutting.
How do Malian Muslims celebrate Ashoura (Fr)?
The BBC: “Leaving Syria's Civil War to Be a Mercenary in Africa [Niger].”
North Africa
Although Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is very likely to win the September 7 election, other candidates (Fr) are coming forward too, including Abdelaali Hassani of the Islamist party called the Movement of Society for Peace.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was in Libya on Wednesday for a conference on - what else? - migration. Tunisian Prime Minister Ahmed Hachani, attending the conference as well, said, “More assistance must be provided to countries such as Tunisia. The aid provided is insufficient to address the problem.”
Also in Libya this week: Chief of the Turkish General Staff, Metin Gürak.
Greater Horn of Africa
Kari Mugo on Kenya:
From imperious to concessional, President [William] Ruto seems to be scrambling as a steady drumbeat calls for his resignation. The “flying president,” who has not left the country in nearly a month, has capitulated to demands to trim government expenditure, making a series of pronouncements that removed unconstitutional offices of the first wives, cut back on government advisors, and slashed nonessential travel for public officers, all of which had cost taxpayers millions of dollars in the previous financial year. He also signed into law a bill paving the way for the reconstitution of the country’s electoral commission board, a key demand of the movement, which is eager to begin the recall process for members of parliament who are barely two years into their terms, forcing them into new elections. Among the targets are MPs who voted “yes” to the Finance Bill and others accused of murder (and clearly unfit for office). Bowing to demands for transparency over the country’s debt, President Ruto also promised a national debt audit, although his methods for carrying out this audit are under fire.
When Abiy Ahmed touched down in Port Sudan last week, Sudanese army chief Abdul Fattah al-Burhan made a point of driving the Ethiopian prime minister through the wartime capital himself.
It was an unusual step. But Abiy was the first foreign leader to visit Burhan since Sudan’s war broke out in April 2023 and his arrival came after months of tensions between Burhan’s military-dominated government and Ethiopia.
Somali’s Puntland region calls on the United Nations to reinstate an arms embargo on the country.
Mashriq
Jeremy Scahill interviews Mohammed al-Hindi of Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
Jeremy Scahill: What do you understand as the direct objectives of the October 7 operations?
Mohammed Al-Hindi: First, this is another episode of this conflict. It has erupted like that, but it is another episode of a long, bitter, and bloody conflict since 1948. By 1948, we refer to the Nakba where enormous crimes were committed. Around 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed. The Palestinian people have been fighting since 1948. You might know, or not, that there is no Palestinian family that does not have at least one martyr. All the fake news that Israel fabricates to mislead the Western world is obvious, but the West accepts and wants it because they want to keep Israel as a control and hegemony project in the region. What happened on October 7 was an extension of those crimes. It is also proof that the Palestinian people cannot be destroyed. In short, Israel and the United States wanted to completely end the Palestinian cause, not only in Gaza but everywhere.
Things started to become clearer after the Abraham Accords, which overlooked the rights of the Palestinian people and aimed to arrange the region along security terms by building security and economic alliances in the region away from the rights of the Palestinian people. Obviously, the Palestinian people are not dead and it was expected they would defend themselves and their rights. Unless they receive their rights in full, there would be nothing but more blood in the region. It is against that context that we understand Al-Aqsa Flood: not in the context of October 7, rather in the context of 1948.
Al Jazeera: “Turkey to Soon Wind Down Latest Operation in Northern Iraq, Erdogan Says.”
I wasn’t a big fan of this piece, on the Houthis’ textbooks. There’s a whole genre of such pieces on textbooks in war zones or among militant groups, and these pieces, I think, take the easy way out by treating the group in question as fanatics.
At Los Angeles, U.S. law enforcement arrested Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who “was in charge of Syria’s infamous Adra prison from 2005 to 2008 under President Bashar al-Assad.”
The Islamic State attacked a Shi’i mosque in Muscat, Oman.
MERIP has released its summer 2024 issue, “Post-Fossil Politics.”