Dakar to Riyadh: Links for 9/27/2024
News and analysis from the Sahel, North Africa, the Horn, and the Middle East
You can find last week’s links here.
General
Karabo Mokgonyana at African Arguments: “Without Debt Relief, Africa Is Fighting Climate Change with Its Hands Tied.”
Alex Skopic at Current Affairs: “Why Does the US Media Ignore Africa?” An excerpt:
The picture looks even worse when we consider the kinds of stories that are run about Africa. Many of them have a U.S. focus. Those counted among the ten include “Three Americans Sentenced to Death for Failed Congo Coup,” “United States Backs Africa’s U.N. Security Council Bid, With a Catch,” “U.S. to Wave Requirements for Egypt Aid,” and “U.S. Pushes Nigeria to Release Imprisoned Binance Employee.” These are technically stories to do with Africa, but are more about the U.S. relationship with Africa, or about Americans who happened to be in an African country. The other six stories are all about natural disasters or violence, meaning that there was not a single article in a ten-day period on African electoral politics, economics, or society, leaving readers who get their news from the Times with the impression that the only noteworthy things that happen in Africa are flooding and wars.
Sahel and West Africa
In Bamako, authorities are responding to the September 17 jihadist attack by launching mass interrogations, often on the basis of community informers, and with a major does of ethnic profiling against the Peul/Fulani.
Nigeria held an off-cycle gubernatorial election in Edo State on September 21. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) won, although the opposition People’s Democratic Party is challenging the result. The BBC’s Mansur Abubakar comments that the APC “has won its first big electoral test since Bola Tinubu became president last year, despite the dire state of the country's economy.”
Senegal looks towards legislative elections on November 17. The parties of two former presidents, Abdoulaye Wade (in office 2000-2012) and Macky Sall (in office 2012-2024) are teaming up to oppose current President Diomaye Faye (took office 2024).
Another coup plot in Burkina Faso?
North Africa
Tunisia will hold presidential elections on October 6. Protests against President Kais Saied continued on September 22, amid sweeping moves by Saied and his administration to curtail and repress dissent and opposition.
Hannah Jagemast and Jamil Zegrer at Inkyfada: “The Hidden Costs of Germany’s Nurse Shortage: Tunisian Migrants Caught Between Bureaucracy and Recruitment Scams.”
At Context, Madjid Serrah reports that Algeria’s approach to fighting forest fires is reducing death and destruction: “Better equipment and smarter policies, along with airplanes that can douse flames from above, are all part of a nationwide campaign that has already paid off, inhabitants of Tizi Ouzou told Context as the burning season came to a close in August.”
In Morocco, a beef between former Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and the rapper El Grande Toto.
Simon Cordall at Al Jazeera: “Diplomatic Failings and ‘Elite Bargains’ Prolonging Libya Turmoil.”
Greater Horn of Africa
ACLED: “Ruto Settles with Odinga to Quell Unrest in Kenya.”
Somalia accused Ethiopia of smuggling weapons on Tuesday amid fears that arms going into the conflict-riven Horn of Africa nation could end up in the hands of Islamist militants.
The neighbours traded barbs a day after an Egyptian warship unloaded heavy weaponry in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, the second shipment since a security pact in August.
The World Bank has released its new “Poverty and Equity Assessment” for Somalia.
Harriet Robinson and Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty at the BBC: “How an Ethiopian Emperor Ended Up Living in Bath.”
Mashriq
The White House hosted the United Arab Emirates’ President Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan (“MBZ”) for an official visit on September 23. You can read the remarks by President Joe Biden and President MBZ here, the readout of MBZ’s meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris here, and the joint US-UAE statement here. The portion on Sudan was widely parsed and heavily criticized. I will excerpt it here:
On the conflict in Sudan, the leaders expressed their deep concern over the tragic impact the violence has had on the Sudanese people and on neighboring countries. Both leaders expressed alarm at the millions of individuals who have been displaced by the war, the hundreds of thousands experiencing famine, and the atrocities committed by the belligerents against the civilian population. They stressed that there can be no military solution to the conflict in Sudan and underscored their firm and unwavering position on the imperative for concrete and immediate action to achieve a lasting cessation of hostilities, the return to the political process, and transition to civilian-led governance.
Both leaders reaffirmed their shared commitment to de-escalate the conflict, alleviate the suffering of the people of Sudan, ensure humanitarian assistance reaches the Sudanese people, and prevent Sudan from attracting transnational terrorist networks once again. Noting their shared concern about the risk of imminent atrocities, particularly as fighting continues in Darfur, they underscored that all parties to the conflict must comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, and all individuals and groups that commit war crimes must be held accountable. The leaders emphasized that the priority right now must be the protection of civilians, particularly women, children and the elderly, securing humanitarian pauses in order to scale up and facilitate the movement of humanitarian assistance into the country and across conflict lines, and ensuring the delivery of aid to those in need, especially to the most vulnerable.
Among the critics of the UAE’s approach to Sudan are the New York Times. A recent investigation is titled “How a U.S. Ally Uses Aid as a Cover in War.”
Iraqi Kurdistan will hold regional elections on October 20. At Amwaj, Winthrop Rodgers argues that the Gorran Movement has lost its image as a vehicle for change, while the major parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, remain unpopular.
Lina Mounzer at Middle East Eye on the pager attack in Lebanon:
Countless pundits on social media likened it gleefully to a Hollywood movie. They’re right. But it’s not the “spycraft” that makes it akin to a Hollywood movie. Rather the fact that there are faceless brown hordes who can be mowed down without a second thought, killed en masse to the triumphant cheers of the audience.
Those murdered are not individuals who, like every individual, is a single star in a constellation of relationships, and whose passing alters the very gravity of their surrounding patch of the universe.
No, they are “extras”, who don’t even merit any mention in the credits, and whose deaths don’t go simply unmourned but outright celebrated. This is the political reality that not only Hollywood, but that western media reflects and maintains. One in which terrorism is a crime arbitrated not by the deed but the doer.
Brett Murphy at ProPublica: “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.”
Will U.S. troops actually leave Iraq by the end of 2026?