Month: December 2018

Funding Shortage Threatens to Cut Off Vital Air Service in Central African Republic

Posted on by SeeAF

The World Food Program warns a lack of money is threatening to ground the crucially important U.N. Humanitarian Air Service in Central African Republic early next year. 

More than half of Central African Republic’s population of five million depends upon international humanitarian assistance to survive.   The U.N. Humanitarian Air Service or UNHAS transports the people who provide and implement vital assistance programs to hard-to-reach areas of the country.

C.A.R. is a huge country.  The roads are largely impassable, and the presence of armed groups makes road travel very dangerous.  The World Food Program, which runs UNHAS, says aid workers from the U.N. and non-governmental organizations depend upon this air service to reach people living in remote areas.

WFP spokesman, Herve Verhoosel, tells VOA this service will be forced to shut down in 2019 if donors do not come up with the cash needed to keep it operating.

“If we do not find the three million in the coming weeks, the $3 million U.S., we will need after January to stop the service and that will obviously be catastrophic for the country, catastrophic for the humanitarian community there because they will need to stop the activities in many cities of the country because of the lack of access,” said Verhoosel. 

Fierce fighting among armed gangs erupted in November in the central, north-west, east and south-east regions of C.A.R.  Following these clashes, Verhoosel says UNHAS transported more than 2,000 aid workers, a record for a single month, to provide help to the thousands of desperate civilians caught up in the violence.   

Since conflict erupted in 2013, some 700,000 people have become internally displaced and more than 570,000 have fled to neighboring countries as refugees.  This year, WFP has provided food aid to more than 1.2 million people.

 
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UN Cease-fire Monitors Arrive in Yemen

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A United Nations monitoring team has arrived in Yemen to monitor the fragile cease-fire in the port city of Hodeida.

The group, led by Patrick Cammaert, a retired Dutch general, meets with government officials Saturday in Aden.

The team’s next stop is Sana, before traveling to the Red Sea port city of Hodeida.
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Native American Museum Hosts Artists From Across the Americas

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When textile artist Porfirio Gutierrez works at his loom, or wanders through the picturesque mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, he often thinks about his ancestors. And the ancient skills they have passed down through the generations.

Zapotec — the place of gods

Gutierrez is a descendant of the Zapotecs, an ancient civilization originating in southern Mexico. For centuries, the Zapotec people have created intricate, hand-woven textiles. It is a tradition that Gutierrez and his family are continuing, with what he calls “functional works of art,” inspired by the natural world.

“One of my memories as a child is walking up into the mountains above the hill to collect the plants that my parents needed for making their dyes, almost like a pilgrimage,” he recalled. “They would tell us about the respect that we need to have towards our Mother Earth, as well as where the plants are growing, what colors they give us and the best time to collect them.”

These were basic principles in understanding how to work in harmony with Mother Nature, Gutierrez explained.

Journey with the threads

Using the bounty of Mother Nature gives the family’s handicrafts a warm, soft look and feel. The vibrant earth tones and symbolic designs are representations of their ancient culture.

In the past, such textiles would be used primarily as blankets, Gutierrez said, but starting in the 1970s, they began to be used mostly for rugs and tapestries. “These are pieces that could be used as a centerpiece, or wall art, or as a rug,” he said, while holding up a colorful, woven rug.

Native Art market

Gutierrez was speaking from his booth at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, which recently hosted a two-day Native Art market. It offered visitors a rare opportunity to purchase traditional and contemporary artwork by some of the finest Native American artists from across the hemisphere.

Other crafts on display at the market included silver and semi-precious jewelry, ceramics, fine apparel, handwoven baskets, traditional beadwork, dolls, paintings and sculptures.

Like Gutierrez, many of the artists shared how they, too, were inspired by nature for their work.

Comanche/Blackfeet

Traditional artist Jhane Myers, for example, uses elk teeth and buffalo bone for some of her jewelry.

“Each elk has two ivory teeth, so I do these necklaces, and they have buffalo bone beads,” she said, pointing to a long necklace she was wearing made of the ivory-colored materials. “I try to use all the same items that we used as a traditional Native people 200 years ago,” she added.

And just like her Comanche/Blackfeet ancestors, Myers and members of her community try to use every part of the animal. “Like the Buffalo and the elk, we use everything, not just the teeth,” she said. “We also eat the meat and tan the hide.” She creates dresses made from elk hides, and pointed out that there are a multitude of other uses for the animals they harvest.

Jemez Pueblo

Visual artist Kathleen Wall breaks clay out of the earth around Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico, where she’s from, to make her signature dolls.

As she spoke from behind her booth at the art market, she was surrounded by dolls of varying sizes, each with their own serene face and individual paint job.

“This piece here, she is hand built from the bottom up and I use a coil technique,” she explained while cradling one of her dolls. After the coiling, which means arranging or winding something in a joined sequence of concentric circles or rings, she lets the clay dry, then scrapes and sands it and then uses a kiln for firing, she explained.

“Like so many Pueblo potters working today, I feel that I’m fulfilling my grandmother’s legacy, passing on the knowledge of Pueblo potter.”

Wall says she sculpts expressions of joy onto the faces of her Native clay figures, which is a reflection of the beauty of Native culture in and around her life.

Cherokee

Vivian Cottrell has been making baskets for 46 years, a skill inherited from her Cherokee ancestors.

“This is part of our culture, our heritage, our history. It makes us who we are,” she said.

She uses river cane to create her baskets, and natural plant materials to dye them. It takes her two days on average to boil the materials together in a large kettle, which gives her pieces a natural, earthy tone.

Spiritual connection

For the artists, being able to display their crafts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian — a place dedicated to Native American history and culture — was especially meaningful.

“This is really important for me to be in such a hallowed space,” Myers said. “It’s not only hallowed but it’s happy. And for me it’s so important to see my other fellow artists here because you have people from all different types of nations offering different types of art, so it’s like a family place; it’s almost like coming home.”

“I would say this is one of the most important institutions that aims to honor the traditional ways of arts, knowledge, wisdom, and promote it,” said Gutierrez. Like many artists, he fears that the time-honored traditions of their ancestors are in danger of disappearing.

“So I feel like I need to contribute to their preservation,” he said. “And the only way to preserve it is to actually employ these old ways of making the arts, and teaching younger members of the community about our ancient traditions.”

Gutierrez said he is also grateful for institutions like the Smithsonian for celebrating and honoring Native people, and for creating opportunities for them to promote their work.

The museum, a short distance from the U.S. Capitol, has been holding the annual market since 2006. Hayes Lavis, the museum’s cultural program specialist, says his hope is that visitors will take away from the experience of the art market “a realization of the contributions of native people to the Americas.”

“They were here first, they’ve always been here, they’ve gone through a lot of adversity and they are still thriving, strong, creative cultures,” he said.

The art represented in the market doesn’t just reflect the beauty and rich history of Native cultures, but the strength and resilience of the people themselves.
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15 Killed In Explosions in Somalia

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Two explosions near the presidential palace in Somalia’s capital have killed at least 15 people, including a prominent journalist.

Witnesses said the first blast was caused by a car bomb at a security check point near the national theater, where a thick white smoke was seen rising into the sky.  

Security official said the explosion killed mostly security forces and civilians. Among those killed in the first attack is Awil Dahir Salad, a prominent Somali journalist who works for the London-based Universal TV. Dahir was the anchor of popular TV show “Dood Wadaag.”  At least two other staffers of the TV station were among the dead.

VOA Somali service’s Harun Maruf, who had known Salad for over 25 years, said “This is a very sad day. Somalia has lost a great journalist . . . and a wonderful person.”

Witnesses say more than 31 other people are reported to have been wounded in the first blast.

“We have carried 5 dead people and 14 others injured from the first blast” an official with Mogadishu’s Amin Ambulance told VOA.

Somali Red Crescent told a local VOA reporter that also they carried from the scene ten dead bodies and 17 others wounded from the blast.

A security official told VOA among those wounded were Warsame Mohamed Jodah, a Somali lawmaker and Abdullahi Mohamed Tuulah, the deputy mayor of Mogdishu.

The second explosion occurred nearby, but it’s unclear what caused it.

The al-Qaida linked group al-Shabab had claimed the responsibility for both blasts. A pro-al-Shabab website said the second blast was a car bomb that targeted those who had responded to the first blast.

Somalia’s national intelligence agency said the driver of the second car and a man who was coordinating the attacks were arrested.  

VOA contributed to this report.
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UN Tells Britain to Let Assange Leave Ecuador Embassy

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U.N. rights experts called on British authorities Friday to allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to leave the Ecuador embassy in London without fear of arrest or extradition.

The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention reiterated its finding published in February 2016 that Assange had been de facto unlawfully held without charge in the embassy, where he has now been holed up for more than six years.

He initially took asylum to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where authorities wanted to question him as part of a sexual assault investigation. That investigation was dropped.

Bail violation

Assange, whose website published thousands of classified U.S. government documents, denied the Sweden allegations, saying the charge was a ploy that would eventually take him to the United States where prosecutors are preparing to pursue a criminal case against him.

Britain says Assange will be arrested for skipping bail if he leaves the embassy, but that any sentence would not exceed six months, if convicted. It had no immediate comment on the experts’ call, but in June, foreign office minister Alan Duncan said Assange would be treated humanely and properly.

“The only ground remaining for Mr. Assange’s continued deprivation of liberty is a bail violation in the UK, which is, objectively, a minor offense that cannot post facto justify the more than six years confinement that he has been subjected to since he sought asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador,” the U.N. experts said in a statement.

“It is time that Mr. Assange, who has already paid a high price for peacefully exercising his rights to freedom of opinion, expression and information, and to promote the right to truth in the public interest, recovers his freedom,” they said.

​Ecuador rules

Lawyers for Assange and others have said his work with WikiLeaks was critical to a free press and was protected speech.

The experts voiced concern that his “deprivation of liberty” was undermining his health and could “endanger his life” given the disproportionate amount of anxiety that has entailed.

Ecuador in October imposed new rules requiring him to receive routine medical exams, following concern he was not getting the medical attention he needed. The rules also ordered him to pay medical and phone bills and clean up after his cat.

Assange has sued Ecuador, arguing the rules violate his rights. An Ecuadorean court on Friday upheld a prior ruling dismissing Assange’s suit.

“We have lost again,” said Carlos Povedo, Assange’s attorney in Ecuador, adding that the legal team would consider bringing a case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
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Police Arrest Two in Gatwick Airport Drone Investigation

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British police have arrested a man and a woman in connection with the drone incursions that have hampered operations at Gatwick Airport for three days.

No other information about the detainees has been released.

Sussex police said in a statement early Saturday that the arrests were made late Friday.

The statement said the investigation is “still ongoing and our activities at the airport continue to build resilience to detect and mitigate further incursions from drones, by deploying a range of tactics.”

The closing down of the runway at Britain’s second largest airport because of the drones has disrupted flights and has affected hundreds of thousands of passengers.

Gatwick shut down late Wednesday after the first drone sightings and reopened on a limited basis Friday. By Friday afternoon, however, flights were suspended again, following reports of additional drone sightings. Later Friday, the airport’s runway reopened.

Sussex Police Superintendent Justin Burtenshaw said the number of drone sightings at Gatwick has been “unprecedented.”

Gatwick, 45 kilometers (29 miles) south of London, is Britain’s second largest airport.Its shutdowns have affected flights at London’s main airport, Heathrow, as well as other hubs across Europe.

More than 43 million passengers a year travel through Gatwick.
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US Federal Government Begins Partial Shutdown

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The U.S. federal government has begun a partial shutdown of its operations.

About a quarter of the government ran out of funds at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Washington time. More than 800,000 federal employees’ jobs have been disrupted and more than half of those employees are required to work without pay.

The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives adjourned late Friday without passing a federal spending bill that provides President Donald Trump with the $5 billion that he insists is needed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in addition to appropriations for government agencies.

Lawmakers had until midnight to enact a measure to keep the government fully funded.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement Saturday saying, “Democrats have offered Republicans multiple proposals to keep the government open, including one that already passed the Senate unanimously, and all of which include funding for strong, sensible, and effective border security — not the president’s ineffective and expensive wall. If President Trump and Republicans choose to continue this Trump shutdown, the new House Democratic majority will swiftly pass legislation to re-open government in January.”

Trump tweeted a video late Friday, saying “we’re going to have a shutdown. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

​Senate advances House bill

Earlier Friday, the Senate voted to advance a House-passed bill that included funding for the wall. The procedural vote gave the Senate “flexibility” to continue negotiating, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told The Washington Post that Democrats were open to discussions but would not agree to any new money for a border wall.

After previously saying he would “proudly” accept responsibility for a partial U.S. government shutdown if Congress does not pass legislation that includes funding for his proposed border wall, Trump early Friday tweeted, “The Democrats now own the shutdown!”

Friday afternoon he tweeted:

Congress will be back in session Saturday, but no votes are scheduled at the present time.

House bill has wall funds

On Thursday, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a temporary spending bill that included billions for Trump’s proposed wall along the southern U.S. border.

Trump repeatedly has demanded funds to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and he told House Republican leaders he would not sign a bill that did not include funding for the wall.

Schumer told colleagues Friday on the Senate floor that Trump is making unilateral decisions that are creating chaos throughout the world.

“All of this turmoil is causing chaos in the markets, chaos abroad and it’s making the United States less prosperous and less secure,” Schumer said. “There are not the votes in the Senate for an expensive taxpayer-funded border wall. So President Trump you will not get your wall. Abandon your shutdown strategy. You’re not getting your wall today, next week or on January 3rd when Democrats take control of the House.”

McConnell argued for the wall’s funding, saying, “The need for greater security on our southern border is not some partisan invention. It’s an empirical fact and the need is only growing.”

Frustration with Congress

Trump has voiced increasing frustration that Congress has refused his request for a $5 billion down payment on the $20 billion wall he says will thwart illegal immigration. Construction of the wall was a popular rallying cry at Trump campaign events during his successful 2016 run for the White House. Trump also told his supporters that Mexico would pay for the wall.

The dispute is occurring in the last days of Republican control of both houses of Congress.

Democrats, adamantly opposed to Trump’s wall proposal, picked up 40 seats in the 435-member House of Representatives in the November elections and are set assume control in early January, although Republicans will maintain their edge in the Senate.
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Report Puts Russia, China and Iran in Line for Sanctions for Election Meddling

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Voters who went to the polls last month in the United States’ midterm elections can rest assured that their votes were registered and counted properly.

However, a new report by the U.S. intelligence community concluded Americans were subjected to ongoing influence operations and disinformation campaigns by several countries, a finding that could trigger automatic sanctions.

“The activity we did see was consistent with what we shared in the weeks leading up to the election,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a statement late Friday.

“Russia, and other foreign countries, including China and Iran, conducted influence activities and messaging campaigns targeted at the United States to promote their strategic interests,” he added.

Early signs were there

In the months leading up to the November vote, intelligence and security officials, and analysts had expressed concerns that countries like Russia and even non-state actors might seek to physically compromise U.S. voting systems.

But the fears, based on evidence Russian hackers had accessed some U.S. state and local systems, such as voter databases, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election did not play out according to the new assessment.

“At this time, the intelligence community does not have intelligence reporting that indicates any compromise of our nation’s election infrastructure that would have prevented voting, changed vote counts, or disrupted the ability to tally votes,” Coats said.

The report, required under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in September, supports the initial assessment by Homeland Security officials the day of the election and in the weeks that followed.

“There were no indications at the time of any foreign compromises of election equipment that would disrupt the ability to cast or count a vote,” Christopher Krebs, director of the DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said a week after voters went to the polls.

Report could spur new sanctions

The new report now goes to the U.S. attorney general and to the Department of Homeland Security, which have 45 days to review the findings. Should they concur with the intelligence community’s assessment, Russia, China and Iran could be slapped with new sanctions.

Those measures could include blocking access to property and interests, restricting access to the U.S. financial system, prohibiting investment in companies found to be involved, and even prohibiting individuals from entering the United States.

Additionally, the president’s executive order authorizes the State Department and the Treasury Department to add additional sanctions, if deemed necessary.

But as in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when the CIA and FBI concluded with “high confidence” that Russia sought to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral process and help then-candidate Donald Trump win election, gauging the success of the 2018 meddling efforts is difficult.

“We did not make an assessment of the impact that these activities had on the outcome of the 2018 election,” Coats cautioned in his statement. “The U.S. intelligence community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion.”

‘Witch hunt’

That impact will likely be debated in U.S. political circles, fueled in part by the president’s own attacks against the ongoing special counsel investigation into Russia’s activities and into possible collusion with Trump’s own campaign staff.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

Still, some lawmakers see the new intelligence community assessment as reason to act.

“The Russians did not go away after the 2016 election,” Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Warner, who previously criticized the president’s executive order for failing to lay out strong, clear consequences for election meddling, said it was no surprise China and Iran tried to manipulate American voters, and that the problem will only get worse.

“We’re going to see more and more adversaries trying to take advantage of the openness of our society to sow division and attempt to manipulate Americans,” he added. “Congress has to step up and enact some much-needed guardrails on social media, and companies need to work with us so that we can update our laws to better protect against attacks on our democracy.”

Executive order praised

Former officials have urged patience, praising the executive order as a good start and cautioning it will take time to see how well it works.

“I don’t know that it will be a complete solution,” said Sean Kanuck, a former intelligence officer for cyber issues, said when the order was first introduced. “I doubt it will completely change the incentive-cost-benefit analysis of the other side.”

Even after the executive order was unveiled, U.S. officials, as well as social media companies, continued to turn up evidence that Russia and others tried to meddle in the 2018 U.S. midterm election.

In October, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment against 44-year-old Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, charging her with helping to finance disinformation campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, targeting both Republican and Democratic voters.

As with previous efforts, the accounts were designed to make it appear as though they belonged to American political activists and some managed to generate tens of thousands of followers.

Later that month, Facebook said it had removed 82 accounts, pages or groups from its site and from Instagram that originated in Iran and targeted liberal U.S. voters.

But U.S. officials and experts have also warned that the heavy focus on social media and influence campaigns, and the lack of evidence of tampering with U.S. voting systems and databases, should not be seen as a victory.

Saving ‘best tricks for 2020’

They say that just as the U.S. has hardened its systems against attacks and intrusions, cyber adversaries like Russia have been watching and learning, with their eyes perhaps on a much more significant target.

“The Russians were going to save their best tricks for 2020,” said William Carter, deputy director, Technology Policy Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, predicted in the days before the U.S. midterm elections in November.

“They’re going to let us chase our tails in 2018 and look for them where they’re not,” he added.
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Turkey to Delay Offensive on US-Backed Forces in Syria 

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that his country would hold off on a military operation against the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, citing a telephone conversation this past week with U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Our phone call with Mr. Trump, as well as the contacts of our diplomatic and security units, and the statements from the American side have led us to wait a little longer,” Erdogan said during an awards ceremony in Istanbul.

“Of course, this is not an open waiting period,” he said, underlining his country’s intention to carry out an assault in “the coming months” on the Kurdish fighters, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), who played a key role in the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

Civilians flee

The Turkish military launched an operation against the YPG in January and took over the Kurdish town of Afrin in northwestern Syria. The military last week threatened another incursion against YPG, this time vowing to eliminate the fighters from all of northeastern Syria, where about 2,000 U.S. special forces have operated, helping in the fight against IS and serving as a buffer in Turkish-Kurdish clashes.

The recent Turkish threats have forced many civilians to evacuate their homes on both sides of the border to avoid being targeted.

WATCH: Turkey’s Gaziantep Residents Concerned Amid Border Tensions With Syria

The United States and Turkey have for years been at odds over Syria, where Washington depended on YPG as the main element of local Syrian Democratic Forces to retake large swaths of territory from IS, including the jihadi group’s self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa.

Turkey claims the YPG is the Syrian wing of the Turkey-based separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and European Union.

Western allies, however, distinguish between YPG and PKK. 

WATCH: Why Turkey Is Attacking YPG

Erdogan, during a speech Friday at the Turkish Exporters Assembly, said U.S.-Turkish differences over Syria were nearing a solution, particularly after Trump on Wednesday announced plans to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria.

“These problems, especially during the [former President Barack] Obama era, were left to Trump as a bad legacy, which would have wasted time in a new arrangement. I have personally seen Mr. Trump and think the same in many points on the Syrian issue, and we have shared the same convictions in our last phone call,” he said, adding Ankara welcomed Washington’s “promising” remarks with caution “because of our bad experiences in the past.”

“Mr. Trump asked us, ‘Would you clean IS from there?’ ” Erdogan said, referring to his conversation with Trump on the IS threat in Syria.

” ‘We have cleaned it up before and we can clean it now, as long as you give us the necessary logistical support,’ and then they [U.S. troops] started to withdraw,” Erdogan added. 

 

IS defeat 

 

Trump said he had decided to pull U.S. troops from Syria because IS had been defeated there. 

“We have won against ISIS. We have beaten them and we have beaten them badly,” Trump said Wednesday in a video post on Twitter. “We have taken back the land and now it’s time for our troops to come back home.” 

The next day, Trump said Russia, Iran and Syria were unhappy about the U.S. move “because now they will have to fight ISIS and others.” If IS hits the U.S., Trump tweeted, “they are doomed!”

But Kurdish officials have argued otherwise, warning IS remnants still pose a significant threat in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, where they still control some pockets.

A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated IS might still have 20,000 to 30,000 militants in Iraq and Syria, mostly operating underground.

WATCH: Syrian Kurdish Leader Says US Troop Withdrawal Will Boost IS 

Mustafa Bali, the spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in a tweet Friday said heavy clashes erupted after IS fighters conducted a “huge” counterattack in Abu Khater village in eastern Syria’s Hajin region.

He said the U.S.-led coalition provided airstrikes in support of the Kurdish fighters, who control only 35 percent of the region.

The Syrian Kurds, who are disappointed by the withdrawal, consider the U.S. decision a stab in the back.

Kurdish officials say they are seeking alternatives, including gaining European assurance and even an agreement with the Syrian government, to prevent a potential attack from Turkey in their northern region and on IS remnants in the south of the country.

WATCH: Thousands Protest American Withdrawal in Northern Syria 

Some experts warn that while IS has lost over 95 percent of the territory it once held, a sudden withdrawal could embolden the militants to regroup and re-establish themselves.

“This withdrawal will mean the SDF are forced to fall back into a defensive posture, both against IS and against Turkey,” said Max Hoffman, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning public policy research group in Washington. 

“IS will have time and space to reconstitute itself, and will almost surely make a comeback over the next few years,” he added. 

Hoffman warned the decision would most likely also affect other U.S strategic objectives in the Middle East, such as containing Iran and its allied Shiite militias.

William Wechsler, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, a global affairs think tank in Washington, said that besides Iran, the Syrian regime and their allies, the U.S. decision was also a major win for Turkey and its influence in the region.

‘Betrayed’

“The Syrian Kurds, who bore a disproportionate burden in the battle against the Islamic State, will feel abandoned and indeed betrayed by the U.S. This is therefore undeniably a big win for Turkey. It is likely not a coincidence that just yesterday the Trump administration announced it would reverse another policy and now sell the Patriot missile defense system to Turkey,” Wechsler told VOA.  

 

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday announced approval of the sale of a $3.5 billion Patriot missile system to Turkey.

Naim Baburoglu, a former Turkish military officer, said the U.S. withdrawal would make it more practical for the Turkish army to launch future military actions in northern Syria.

“If Turkey goes into Syria for an operation, there won’t be risk of clashing with U.S. soldiers,” Baburoglu told VOA. “This is a positive solution for Turkey, because it would be more free to do an operation and neutralize PKK/PYD much more easily.”  

  

VOA’s Kurdish and Turkish services contributed to this report.  
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Nigerian Police Arrest Suspected Mastermind of 2015 Abuja Bombings 

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Police said Friday that they had arrested the suspected mastermind of bombings by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram that killed 15 people in Abuja in 2015.

Police named the man as Umar Abdulmalik and said he and other people they arrested had confessed to the bombings, the jailbreak of more than 100 prisoners in June, the killing of seven police officers in July and various bank robberies.

There was no comment from any lawyer representing Abdulmalik, who police said was arrested Thursday in Lagos.

Police issued a photograph of Abdulmalik in handcuffs in front of a van, and another of seven other men in front of weapons, walkie-talkies, credit card point-of-sale machines and ammunition.

More than 30,000 people have been killed and millions forced to flee in Boko Haram’s decade-long campaign to carve out an Islamist state in northeast Nigeria. 

A military campaign by Nigeria and its neighbors has pushed the group out most of its territory since the beginning of 2015, but fighting has rumbled on.

Over the past year, a splinter group allied with Islamic State has become the dominant branch, killing hundreds of soldiers and frequently overrunning military bases.
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UN Security Council Unanimously Backs Yemen Cease-Fire Deal

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The U.N. Security Council has unanimously endorsed a deal for a cease-fire around the vital Yemeni port city of Hodeida. The agreement was reached last week during U.N.-led intra-Yemeni talks outside the Swedish capital.

“The resolution endorses all the agreements reached by the parties at Stockholm,” said British Ambassador Karen Pierce, whose delegation drafted the text. “These critically include a cease-fire, a mutual redeployment of forces from Hodeida city and port, and that came into force on 18 December. It authorizes the United Nations to deploy support for implementation of those agreements, including monitors.”

The United Nations will monitor the cease-fire and is authorized by the resolution to deploy an advance team for that purpose for an initial period of 30 days. It is being headed by Major General Patrick Cammaert of The Netherlands, a former U.N. peacekeeping commander. He already has deployed to the region.

The resolution approved Friday “insists” that all parties respect the cease-fire agreed for Hodeida.

The city is the entry point for 70 percent of Yemen’s food, fuel and medicines, and it has been under rebel Houthi-control for the past two years, putting it in the crosshairs of the conflict.

The U.N. secretary-general also is being asked to provide the Security Council with proposals before December 31 on how the U.N. plans to carry out monitoring operations.

Additionally under the deal, fighters are to be redeployed to agreed upon locations outside Hodeida within 21 days of the cease-fire coming into effect.

In addition to Hodeida, the parties in Sweden last week agreed to the exchange of thousands of prisoners.

They also came to an understanding aimed at easing the situation in the southwest Yemeni city of Taiz, with humanitarian corridors to allow safe passage of persons and goods across the front lines, as well as to reduce fighting. The council resolution endorsed these agreements.

“The resolution does not address all the issues of the multifaceted crises that Yemen faces, but the implementation of the concrete measures in the Stockholm agreement will provide much needed steps in that direction, with direct and positive humanitarian impact for the people of Yemen,” said Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog. He said Sweden is ready to participate in the monitoring mission.

It took several days of negotiations for the 15 council members to agree on the text. The United States and Kuwait wanted the language to stick to the points agreed in Stockholm and not extend to humanitarian and other issues.

The United States also wanted Iran named for its support to the Houthis. At one point, the U.S. submitted its own draft resolution.

“While we voted for the resolution put forward by our friends the United Kingdom, we regret that it does not call Iran to account for its destructive agenda in Yemen,” said U.S. representative Rodney Hunter. “We hope that in the days to come, Iranian missiles or misdeeds do not shatter promise of peace and bring us back to where we were before.”

The language in the adopted resolution dropped calls in earlier drafts for condemnations of violations of the international arms embargo imposed on the Houthi rebels and the need for investigations into alleged violations of international humanitarian law.

A Saudi Arabian-led coalition began bombing Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels in support of Yemen’s government in March 2015. Since then, the U.N. estimates more than 10,000 people have been killed, mostly due to coalition airstrikes.

While there is a glimmer of hope on the political horizon, the country is still facing massive food shortages that have left millions of Yemenis starving amid a collapsing economy.

The United Nations hopes to convene a second round of intra-Yemeni talks early next year.
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Thousands in Sudan Demonstrate Over Deteriorating Economy

Posted on by SeeAF

Hundreds of protesters in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, chanted slogans Friday against the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, including the popular Arab Spring slogan, “The people want to topple the regime.” It was the fourth day of protests over rising prices and political oppression.

Social media reported protests Thursday in more than half a dozen districts of Khartoum, in addition to multiple demonstrations in the neighboring city of Omdurman.

Amateur video showed a top regional official in Gadarif, thought to be the governor of the town, fleeing an angry crowd in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. The crowd pelted the car with stones. Gadarif has been a hotbed of protests, prompting a curfew to be imposed.

Photos on Twitter showed government buildings set ablaze by angry protesters. Some photos showed government soldiers observing the demonstrations without intervening, while others showed security forces firing tear gas at protesters.

Rabie Abdel Attie, a leader of the ruling National Congress Party, said popular protests are “legitimate” to a certain extent.

He says it is normal for citizens to protest fuel shortages and rising bread prices, but condemned what he called troublemakers who were exploiting popular discontent to ransack public and private property.

Prime Minister Motazz Moussa told a press conference several days ago that the current economic crisis has been a long time in the making.

Moussa says the ongoing economic difficulties the people are experiencing over shortages of hard currency, bread, fuel and medicine are the result of flaws in the economy which go back many years.

Sudanese political leader Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was overthrown in the coup led by Bashir in 1989, recently returned from exile in Egypt. Photos on social media showed the former prime minister in the midst of a crowd of demonstrators.

Al Hadi Ezzedin, a Sudanese journalist in Cairo, told VOA that the Sudanese people were revolting against what he called a “dictatorial regime.”

He says the government has been in power for 30 years and that it governs by force, preventing people from freely expressing their opinions or beliefs. It uses force and oppression, he says, to subdue opposition.

Bashir has been trying to amend the constitution to allow him to run for another term.

​Meeting in Syria

Separately, Bashir met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after traveling to Damascus on a Russian plane. It was the first visit by an Arab head of state to the Syrian capital since the Assad government was expelled from the Arab League in 2011.

There has been speculation in the Arab media that Bashir is seeking a country that might grant him exile if he were forced to resign. Bashir is wanted on an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for genocide and war crimes committed in the Darfur region in the early 2000s. It is thought that a number of countries have told him that they would not grant him asylum.
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Differences With Trump’s Views Prompted Mattis Departure

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis Thursday announced he was quitting, personally handing his letter of resignation to U.S. President Donald Trump following a lunch meeting at the White House.

 

While not mentioning Trump by name, the letter from Mattis outlined sharp differences between his views and those of the president, notably on the importance of allies and the use of U.S. power.

 

“We must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours,” Mattis wrote, warning that Russia and China in particular “want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model-gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.”

 

“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down,” Mattis concluded, saying he would step down at the end of February.

 

The defense secretary’s decision came one day after Trump announced he would withdraw some 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, a move the Pentagon opposed. 

 

Mattis did not mention the dispute over Syria in his letter, but he did note his “core belief” that U.S. strength is “inextricably linked” with the nation’s alliances with other countries. 

 

President Trump first announced Mattis’s departure on Twitter, saying the former four-star Marine general will retire “with distinction.”

 

“During Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting equipment. General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations. A new Secretary of Defense will be named shortly. I greatly thank Jim for his service!”

 

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters late Thursday that Trump and Mattis are on good terms despite not agreeing on foreign policy and other issues. 

 

“He and the president have a good relationship, but sometimes they disagree,” Sanders said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have a good relationship with somebody. He was laying out the reasons he was stepping down from his post.”

 

Still, the resignation has sparked an outpouring of anger and despair from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and even top U.S. officials.

 

“I was deeply saddened,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in an official statement Friday, describing Mattis as a “national treasure.”

 

“The experience and sound judgement that Secretary Mattis has brought to our decision-making process is invaluable,” Coats continued. “His leadership of our military won the admiration of our troops and respect of our allies and adversaries.” 

 

Much of the pushback from U.S. officials and lawmakers has centered on the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Syria – a decision that, according to some officials, ultimately convinced Mattis to resign.

 

U.S.-backed forces have made steady progress against Islamic State over the past several years. Last week, taking advantage of a dramatic increase in U.S. and coalition airstrikes, the forces were able to enter the town of Hajin, part of the terror group’s last stronghold in eastern Syria.

 

But despite Trump’s declaration of victory against IS, senior administration officials have said it will be up to the U.S. partner forces to liberate the rest of Hajin and the surrounding areas, where about 2,000 IS fighters have been mounting a stubborn last stand for several months.

 

Pentagon officials have also warned that despite the gains, IS was still well-positioned to rebuild. And Mattis had said that before leaving, the U.S. must train enough local troops to assume the role of suppressing the militants. He said the United Nations peace process in Syria must progress toward a resolution of the country’s eight-year-old civil war.

 

While a relatively small number of troops are involved, their withdrawal will have sweeping consequences in Syria’s long-running civil war. Allies will be more heavily burdened with confronting energized adversaries and Turkey, Iran and Russia’s influence in Syria will increase.

 

“This is scary,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, a Democrat. “Secretary Mattis has been an island of stability amidst the chaos of the Trump administration.”

 

Republican senator and former presidential hopeful Marco Rubio tweeted, “It makes it abundantly clear that we are headed toward a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances and empower our adversaries.”

 

While the decision to pull out of Syria may have been the last straw for Mattis, tensions have been simmering over other issues for quite some time, including on Russia and Iran.

 

Mattis believed Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying to undermine NATO and assaulting Western democracies.

 

“[Putin’s] actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point, but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals,” Mattis told U.S. Naval War College graduates at a commencement ceremony in June.

 

But Trump has praised Putin’s leadership skills and recently caused concern among U.S. allies by calling for Russia’s reinstatement in the group of major industrial nations. Russia was expelled from what was then the Group of Eight after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

 

Another point of contention between the two men involved the Iran nuclear deal.

 

Mattis argued the U.S. should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless Tehran was found not to be abiding by the agreement. Iran was following the pact’s rules, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors the use of nuclear energy and has verified Iranian compliance with the accord multiple times since 2015.

 

Despite Mattis’s position, Trump pulled out of the deal in May, saying it had been poorly negotiated during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

 

As Mattis turned in his resignation, the Defense Department was preparing plans to withdraw up to half of the 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the coming months, U.S. officials said. The development marks a sharp departure from the Trump administration’s policy to force the Taliban to the negotiating table after more than 17 years of war.

 

Rumors of Mattis leaving the Defense Department have been circulating for months.

 

In October, Trump appeared on the television news show 60 Minutes, where he told TV anchor Lesley Stahl that while “I like General Mattis,” he believed he knew more about NATO than his defense secretary. 

 

“I think he’s sort of a Democrat, if you wanna know the truth,” Trump said. “But General Mattis is a good guy. We get along very well. He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That’s Washington.”

 

Mattis became secretary of defense shortly after Trump’s inauguration and is one of the longest-serving Cabinet members.

 

Before that, Mattis served 44 years in the Marine Corps and led the Marines and British troops during the bloody Battle of Fallujah in Iraq in 2004.
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Yemen: Rebels Breached Truce in Port City, Killing 4

Posted on by SeeEA

Yemen’s internationally recognized government says Shi’ite rebels have violated a U.N.-brokered cease-fire in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida with a barrage of artillery and rockets.

The pro-government Sabaa news agency quoted a military official as saying four members of an elite force were killed and 16 others were wounded in Saturday’s shelling by the rebels, known as Houthis.

The shelling is the latest in a number of cease-fire breaches in Hodeida since the truce came into force Tuesday.

The truce was negotiated in U.N.-sponsored peace talks held in Sweden last week.

It’s the latest attempt to end Yemen’s four-year-old war civil war in which the Iran-aligned rebels are fighting government-allied troops along with a Saudi-led coalition. The rebels control Sanaa, the capital, and much of northern Yemen.
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Somalia’s Al-Shabab Declares War on Pro-Islamic State Group

Posted on by SeeAF

Somalia’s al-Shabab militants have announced a military offensive against Islamic State-affiliated forces in Somalia.

A statement read Friday by al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage on Radio Andalus said the offensive, code named Disease Eradication, is aimed at getting rid of IS-related militants in Somalia.

“A so-called Islamic State has emerged in our land and stated to attempt to divide our Mujahidin [jihadist fighters], weaken our strength and carry out assassinations against our own. We have been ignoring their wicked behaviors for some time to give them a chance to change, but they have continued their wrongheadedness,” he said.

“Our senior command has ordered our fighters to attack and eliminate the ‘disease’ of IS and uproot the tree that would be used to undermine the fruits of the Jihad,” Rage said.

The conflict between the two rival terrorist groups has been simmering since the emergence of an IS-affiliated group in Somalia in October 2015. The group found a foothold in the northeastern Puntland state of Somalia, where it began recruiting former al-Shabab fighters before carrying out attacks and assassinations elsewhere in the county.

On Dec. 16, Islamic State reported its first offensive on al-Shabab in Somalia.

On Tuesday this week, IS released a video showing its fighters firing their guns and several dead bodies they identified as al-Shabab members in a mountainous area called B’ir Mirali, southwest of Qandala in Bari region of Puntland. IS claimed to have killed 14 al-Shabab fighters and wounding others.

The IS-affiliated group is estimated to have about 200 active members and is far smaller than the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab group, which has thousands of fighters in largely rural areas in Somalia.

Hussein Moallim Mohamud, a former Somali counterterrorism officer and national security adviser, said despite having a similar agenda of terrorizing people to achieve jihadist goals inside Somalia, they also have differences.

“Al-Shabab remains predominantly focused on Somali issues and is keen to preserve its allegiance to al-Qaida, while IS is more focused on linking its presence in Somali with international terrorism. Because of this difference each group sees the other to be a threat to its existence,” Mohamud said.

Other analysts previously interviewed by VOA Somalia agree that the IS ideology of promoting global expansion and domination does not sit well with al-Shabab leaders, who prefer focusing mainly on domestic matters.

It is not clear what this would mean to the jihadist groups in Somalia and their fight against the Somali government and African Union peacekeepers in the country.
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Justice Ginsburg Has Surgery to Remove Cancerous Growths

Posted on by SeeUS

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery Friday to remove two malignant growths in her left lung, the Supreme Court said.

It is the 85-year-old Ginsburg’s third bout with cancer since joining the court in 1993.

Doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York found “no evidence of any remaining disease” and scans taken before the surgery showed no cancerous growths elsewhere in her body, the court said in a statement. No additional treatment is currently planned, the court said.

Ginsburg, who leads the court’s liberal wing, is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days, the court said.

The growths were found during tests Ginsburg had after she fractured ribs in a fall in her Supreme Court office on Nov. 7.

The court’s oldest justice had surgery for colorectal cancer in 1999 and pancreatic cancer 10 years later.

Among other health problems, she also broke two ribs in a fall in 2012 and had a stent implanted to open a blocked artery in 2014. She was hospitalized after a bad reaction to medicine in 2009.

Ginsburg has never missed Supreme Court arguments in more than 25 years on the bench. The court won’t hear arguments again until Jan. 7.

Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg rebuffed suggestions from some liberals that she should step down in the first two years of President Barack Obama’s second term, when Democrats controlled the Senate and would have been likely to confirm her successor.

She already has hired clerks for the term that extends into 2020, indicating she has no plans to retire.

 
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UK Defense Chief Takes Black Sea Ride on Ukrainian Gunboat

Posted on by SeeEU

Britain’s defense minister has taken a ride aboard a Ukrainian naval vessel in the Black Sea in a gesture of support after last month’s naval clash between Russia and Ukraine.

On November 26, Russian coast guard vessels fired upon and seized three Ukrainian naval ships in the Black Sea as they tried to sail to Ukrainian ports on the nearby Sea of Azov. Russia also detained the ships’ 24 crewmen.

U.K. Defense Minister Gavin Williamson went to sea Friday on a vessel similar to one of the seized Ukrainian gunboats with Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak.

Williamson’s visit followed the arrival earlier this week of a British warship at the Ukrainian port of Odessa, located on the Black Sea. Poltorak was given a tour of the British vessel.
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India Busts Fake Call Center Duping Americans

Posted on by SeeUS

 Indian police arrested on Friday 126 people working for a allegedly fake call center making up to $50,000 a day by duping US citizens, officials said.

India became the global call center capital in the early 2000s as foreign firms, drawn by an educated and cheaper English-speaking workforce, farmed out jobs answering customer phone inquiries.

The suspects arrested in Noida outside Delhi would tell Americans there were problems with their social security numbers and solicit money to fix it, police said.

Another scam was telling people they had committed tax offenses and that they had to pay to settle, Noida police official Ajay Pal Sharma told AFP.

“Your warrant is on my desk and if this issue is not resolved we will have to freeze your account and put you behind the bars,” one caller is heard to say in a recording made available to AFP.

In Indian-accented English, he says that the man can either fight the US Inland Revenue Service (IRS) in court and face a $75,000 fine as a “tax defrauder” or pay immediately an “out-of-court settlement”.

“Many responded to the call and fell for their trap,” Sharma said.

The local authorities have also contacted the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and shared the details of the case.

The call center had been in operation for three years. Around 300 computers were seized.

Mumbai police in October 2016 detained more than 770 people suspected of defrauding Americans by impersonating IRS agents and demanding payments.

The US Justice Department subsequently charged 61 people for involvement in India-based schemes that defrauded nearly 15,000 US citizens.

Later in April 2017 they arrested the alleged mastermind of the racket, 24-year-old Sagar Thakkar, who was making more than $155,000 a day at the height of the scam.
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Cameroon Reopens Border with Nigeria

Posted on by SeeAF

Cameroon has reopened its southwestern border with Nigeria after closing it about a year ago because of conflicts between Cameroon’s military and armed separatists fighting to create an English-speaking state.

A senior official from Cameroon’s military asks the people of Ekok village on the southwestern border with Nigeria to consider the soldiers as friends who are there to protect them.

Cameroon businessman Christopher Efiom, 46, buys food from Cameroon and takes it to Nigeria where it is sold. When he is returning from Nigeria, he buys spare motor parts and sells them in Cameroon. He says the presence of the military in the border market has chased fighters to the bushes and across the border to Nigeria. He says that for a month now, merchants have been able to do business despite ongoing fighting between the military and the separatists.

“There are days that the military goes down to attack the boys [fighters] and when they go down, there is serious gun shooting,” Efiom said. “So many casualties are on the field. The Amba fighters usually block us on the way and you can never predict when they are there. There are days that even the military are unable to carry the convoy right to Nigeria.”

“Amba” is the self-declared English-speaking region of Ambazonia, where armed separatists are fighting for independence.

Cameroon businessman Cletus Ndungang, 32, says although the military has reopened the border, business has yet to resume fully because most buyers and sellers still fear for their safety.

“Eighty percent of our rice is imported. It is very risky for a businessman to carry rice knowing that there is going to be a problem. Even maize. We also have oil, we have sugar. In fact, all the food, there is a problem because of this barbaric act. Most of the businessmen would not want to come in,” he said.

When Cameroon declared war on the armed separatists in November 2017, it said gunmen were attacking border localities in Cameroon’s southwest and escaping to Nigeria.

Nigeria denied the assailants were crossing over from its territory into Cameroon.

Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of Cameroon’s southwest region, says collaboration between the Nigerian and Cameroon militaries is bringing peace to the border areas and business is resuming; but, he says, civilians who sought to escape the fighting should look to the military as their partners in working toward peace.

The separatist insurgency gained momentum in 2017 following a government crackdown on peaceful protests by Anglophones, who complain of being marginalized by the French-speaking majority. Some political leaders have called on President Paul Biya to initiate dialogue with the separatists. But Biya — who has ruled Cameroon for 36 years — has refused any talks on Cameroon becoming a divided state.
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Violations Increase in DRC’s North Kivu Province as Security Worsens

Posted on by SeeEU

The United Nations reports human rights violations have surged over the past two years in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu Province as security in that conflict-ridden region has worsened.

A report issued by the U.N. human rights office documents hundreds of cases of violations against civilians in North Kivu province between January 2017 and October 2018. It said a significant increase in the number of armed groups fighting against each other and the Congolese security forces has led to escalating abuse.

The report found that two-thirds of the human rights violations are committed by armed groups, and government army and security forces are to blame for one-third.

Together, it said the number of violations and abuses occurring in North Kivu province amounts to one-third of all the human rights violations documented throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Human Rights spokeswoman, Marta Hurtado said civilians are victims of extra-judicial killings, torture, forced labor and other forms of abuse.

She said sexual violence is on the rise, and women and children often are kidnapped for purposes of sexual exploitation. She added that rapes and gang rapes are being committed by all armed groups as a tactic of war.

“In cases where one group thinks that a specific community has been collaborating or likely collaborating with another group, they do rape women and girls there, and explicitly say it is to punish the whole community for their alleged involvement with another group,” she told VOA.

Hurtado said internal displacement is soaring as thousands of people flee their homes to escape the violence. And instability in the region, she said, is affecting the emergency response to the Ebola epidemic and the likely spread of the disease.

The authors of the report fear insecurity in North Kivu could undermine the political rights of the population.

Presidential elections in DRC were to have taken place next Sunday but have been postponed to December 30. The U.N. says violence in the province could discourage many people from going to the polls, thereby preventing many from participating in this democratic process.
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Migrant Deaths on the Mediterranean Continue to Climb

Posted on by SeeEU

United Nations agencies report the number of fatalities of migrants making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea continues to increase as two more shipwrecks off the coast of Spain Thursday have claimed more lives. 

The Spanish Coast Guard carried out a search and rescue operation in the Western Mediterranean on Thursday.  UN agencies report some six boats were rescued in the Alboran Sea with at least 25 people reported dead or missing.

The UN refugee agency reports two boats had dead people on board who had died at the time of the rescue by Spanish search and rescue services.  But, UNHCR spokeswoman, Liz Throssell, notes this is a developing story and the numbers are likely to change.

“On the one boat, we understand 33 people were rescued, including a person who, unfortunately, died later at the hospital and there were 12 people dead and 12 missing during the journey and apparently there was a massive sea swell that threw them into the water,” said Throssell.

Throssell says a second boat had 57 people on board, as well as one person who had died during the rescue.

The International Organization for Migration reports more than 113,000 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea this year through three main migratory routes.  IOM spokesman Joel Millman tells VOA that since mid-2017 there has been a constant rise in arrivals.

“What was remarkable and noticeable about Spain for most of this year was the volume of arrivals kept increasing but the fatalities reported were quite few,” said Millman. “In the last two months, that situation has changed.”  

IOM has documented the deaths of 769 people in the waters between North Africa and Spain this year.  It says this is more than triple the number recorded in 2017 and six times higher than in 2016.
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US Set to Extend Sanctions Waiver for Iraq to Import Iranian Gas

Posted on by SeeEA

The United States has reached an agreement in principle with Iraq to extend for 90 days an exemption to sanctions against Iran, allowing Baghdad to keep importing Iranian gas that is critical for Iraqi power production.

The extension was reached on Thursday, when a previous 45-day waiver was due to expire, during a visit to Washington by an Iraqi delegation, according to two Iraqi officials with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

A senior Iraqi government official and a central bank official told Reuters that talks were continuing on Friday to finalize details, including how to pay Iran for energy imports, two sources said.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has said Iraq should not pay Iran in U.S. dollars or euros. A team from Iraq’s central bank joined the delegation to find a solution.

Washington initially granted Iraq a 45-day waiver for Iranian gas when it reimposed sanctions on Nov. 5, after months of negotiations.

Iraq relies heavily on Iranian gas to feed its power stations, importing roughly 1.5 billion standard cubic feet per day via pipelines in the south and east.

Iraqi officials have said they need about two years to find an alternative source.

Washington has said it wants to roll back Iranian influence in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where Iran holds broad sway over politics and trade.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said on Dec 11 that the United States was working with Iraq on the issue of Iranian gas because it was “linked to a very sensitive issue which is electricity”.

Persistent power shortages fueled protests this summer in the south of Iraq, which is still reeling from a three-year war against Islamic State.

The prime minister, who took office in October, met U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry in Baghdad this month. Perry, who came with a delegation of more than 50 business people, also met Iraq’s oil and electricity ministers.

Iraq has reached a deal with U.S. energy giant General Electric and German rival Siemens to install liquefied natural gas-operated mobile power units at some small southern oil fields, Iraq’s state newspaper reported last month.

The Financial Times reported in October that the U.S. government had intervened in favor of GE for a contract sought by both companies to supply 11 gigawatts of power generation equipment, reportedly worth around $15 billion.
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Turkey to Delay Syria Operation, Erdogan Welcomes US Decision to Withdraw Troops

Posted on by SeeEA

Turkey will postpone a military operation against Syrian Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday as he “cautiously” welcomed a U.S. decision to withdraw its troops in the area.

The surprise announcement from U.S. President Donald Trump this week that Washington would withdraw its roughly 2,000 troops has felled a pillar of American policy in the Middle East. Critics say Trump’s move will make it harder to find a diplomatic solution to Syria’s seven-year-old civil war.

For Turkey, the step removes a source of friction with the United States. Erdogan has long castigated his NATO ally over its support of Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters against Islamic State. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), fighting for Kurdish autonomy across the border on Turkish soil.

NATO allies France and Germany warned that the U.S. change of course risks damaging the fight against Islamic State, the jihadists who seized big swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014-15 but have now been squeezed to a sliver of Syrian territory.

The U.S.-backed militia that is spearheaded by the YPG warned on Friday that a Turkish attack would force it to divert fighters from the battle against Islamic State (IS) to protect its territory. The insurgent group meanwhile launched an attack in Syria’s southeast against the U.S.-backed SDF militia, employing car bombs and dozens of militants.

Erdogan announced plans last week to start an operation east of the Euphrates River in northern Syria to oust the YPG from the area that it largely controls. This week, he said the campaign could come at any moment. But on Friday, he cited Washington’s move and a talk with Trump as reasons to wait.

“We had decided last week to launch a military incursion… east of the Euphrates river,” he said in a speech in Istanbul. “Our phone call with President Trump, along with contacts between our diplomats and security officials and statements by the United States, have led us to wait a little longer.

“We have postponed our military operation against the east of the Euphrates river until we see on the ground the result of America’s decision to withdraw from Syria.”

The Turkish president said, however, that this was not an “open-ended waiting period”.

Turkey has repeatedly voiced frustration over what it says is the slow implementation of a deal with Washington to pull YPG fighters out of Manbij, a town in mainly Arab territory west of the Euphrates in northern Syria.

U.S. AIR STRIKES TO END

The United States will probably end its air campaign against IS in Syria when it pulls out troops, U.S. officials have said, as Trump has been forced to defend the planned withdrawal against criticism from allies abroad and at home.

Trump maintained that IS had been wiped out, a view not shared by key allies, that Washington had been doing the work of other countries and it was “time for others to finally fight”.

His defense secretary, Jim Mattis, opposed the decision and abruptly announced on Thursday he was resigning after meeting with the president.

In a candid letter to Trump, the retired Marine general emphasized the importance of “showing respect” to allies that have voiced surprise and concern about the president’s decision.

Russia said on Friday that it did not understand what the United States’ next steps in Syria would be, adding that chaotic and unpredictable decision-making in Washington was creating discomfort in international affairs.

Several of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress, joined by opposition Democrats, urged the president to reverse course, saying the withdrawal would strengthen the hand of Russia and Iran in Syria and enable a resurgence of Islamic State.

Trump has given no sign of changing his mind. He promised to remove forces from Syria during his 2016 election campaign.

The roughly 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, many of them special forces, were ostensibly helping to combat Islamic State but were also seen as a possible bulwark against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has retaken much of the country from his foes in the civil war, with military help from Iran and Russia.

IS declared a caliphate in 2014 after seizing parts of Syria and Iraq. The ultra-hardline militants established their de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, using it as a base to plot attacks in Europe.

A senior U.S. official last week said IS was down to the last 1 percent of the territory it once held. The group has no remaining territory in Iraq, though militants have resumed insurgent attacks since the group’s defeat there last year.

Islamic State launched an attack on Friday on positions held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria’s southeast and the U.S.-led coalition mounted air strikes in the area, an SDF official said.

Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria may not be able to continue hold Islamic State prisoners if the situation in the region gets out of control after a U.S. pullout, top Syrian Kurdish official Ilham Ahmed said on Friday.
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Moving Energy Initiative Engages Refugees in Producing Clean Energy

Posted on by SeeAF

A new initiative in Kenya is employing refugees and displaced people to produce clean energy and become part of a market economy, instead of relying on aid. The Moving Energy Initiative helps residents in refugee camps produce the energy they need. VOA co-sponsored a recent MEI town hall at the Kakuma camp in northwestern Kenya, where residents could discuss the energy needs of their communities. Zlatica Hoke has this story.
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