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wmulnea

Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views

www.economist.com/...factional-chaos-it-should-come

shared by wmulnea on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
  • Benghazi is again a battlefield.
  • The black plumes of burning oil terminals stretch out over the Mediterranean.
  • ...69 more annotations...
  • Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring
  • Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters
  • the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
  • Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
  • In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
  • Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
  • he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
  • militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties
  • The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
  • Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
  • The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad
  • tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
  • The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
  • He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
  • which might have given militiamen jobs
  • Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
  • the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
  • In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
  • In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
  • The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
  • Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
  • Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
  • Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
  • Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
  • So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
  • The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
  • Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.
  • General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
  • the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
  • Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
  • Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
  • threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
  • Yusuf Dawar
  • The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
  • And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
  • ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
  • Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile
  • oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago
  • The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money
  • The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli
  • Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways
  • Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out
  • Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter
  • In Fashloum
  • residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi
  • “No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti
  • Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,
  • Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe
  • On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
  • The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.
  • the Western powers
  • have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
  • Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador
  • Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.
  • Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off
  • Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
  • The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west
  • If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
  • Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
  • The old divisions still matter
  • the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
  • Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.
  • July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
  • In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
  • Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.
  • Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
  • opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
  • Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
  • In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
ccfuentez

Middle East the human trafficking capital of the world | Al Bawaba - 0 views

www.albawaba.com/...t-human-trafficking-ilo-483607

Jordan International Labour Organization forced labor ILO

shared by ccfuentez on 10 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The report indicated that some 600,000 migrant workers are subject to forced labour and exploitation.
  • In Jordan and Lebanon migrant workers make up a significant part of the workforce, particularly in the construction and domestic work sectors, the study said.
  • ccfuentez on 10 Feb 16
     
    A report prepared by the ILO showed the highest rates of human trafficking were registered in the Middle East. Many times the employees are routinely deceived regarding their living and working conditions. A lack of an inspection mechanism makes workers more vulnerable to mistreatment.
aromo0

NGOs lose ground in Sisi's Egypt | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...os-lose-ground-in-sisi's-egypt

ngos egypt human rights

shared by aromo0 on 06 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • aromo0 on 06 Apr 16
     
    NGO's in Egypt are now required to register under law 84/2002 but this law restricts the movement, development, and funding of NGO's. Speculations are that the government is attempting to downsize the number of NGO's in Egypt.
sheldonmer

Timothy Spangler: Ukraine's brief social-media coup - The Orange County Register - 0 views

www.ocregister.com/...ssian-633265-ukraine-kiev.html

shared by sheldonmer on 16 Nov 14 - No Cached
    • sheldonmer
      sheldonmer on 16 Nov 14
       
      This article gives an overview of what is currently going on in Ukraine. It talks about how social media is being used in the area. Russia swears that it isn't getting involved in the conflict, but on one of Russia's government Facebook pages, soldiers have been posting things on social media that are geotagged inside of Ukraine. People are now suspicious that they are fighting alongside local military.
sheldonmer

Egyptians visit Washington to defend their 'revolution' - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the ... - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...si-human-rights-terrorism.html

United States egypt egyptian revolution washington

shared by sheldonmer on 03 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • during an anti-Morsi and anti-Muslim Brotherhood protest in Tahrir Square in Cairo, June 28, 2013. (photo by REUTERSAsmaa Waguih)
  • group of influential Egyptians sought to convince a dozen Americans that the removal of elected president Mohammed Morsi in 2013 and his replacement by Field Marshal Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was a plus for Egypt’s political evolution and US interests.
  • Morsi had violated the constitution by claiming dictatorial powers in November 2012 and acquiesced in the brutal beating of demonstrators in front of the presidential palace. Crime rose during Morsi’s tenure and Egyptians were afraid to walk the streets or send their kids to school, she told Al-Monitor.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The Americans, in turn, criticized Egypt for criminalizing the Muslim Brotherhood, killing more than a thousand people and detaining thousands more, including journalists and secular liberals, in the aftermath of Morsi’s ouster.
  • Coptic and other Christian leaders and a representative of the Ministry of Endowments. T
  • told Al-Monitor that the Egyptians conveyed their support for Sisi, who, after ruling as head of a military council that replaced Morsi, was elected president in May with a large percentage of votes, although a smaller turnout than in the previous presidential election.
  • Zaki said the delegation also expressed their view that while “we know we are moving toward a strong state, a strong state needs civil society and political opposition.” The third message, he said, was that Egypt wants US support in the fight against terrorism.
  • Washington has praised Cairo for mediating last summer’s Gaza war between Israel and Hamas and expressed sympathy for those fighting Islamic extremists, such as the Egyptian soldiers killed in the Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 24.
  • l some restrictions on US aid to Egypt and many analysts in Washington assert that Egypt cannot return to stability while repressing major components of its society. They also criticize an impending edict for civil society groups to register with the government, which has led many respected foreign-funded nonprofit organizations
  • encouraged the Egyptians to embrace political and religious pluralism. “The Egyptians should understand that no government can deliver peace, prosperity and law and order that does not involve all sections of society,” he said.
  • “Don’t deal with us like a teacher with a pupil,” said Nashwa el-Houfi, a columnist for the daily newspaper Al Watan. “No one has the whole truth. You have part and I have part.”
  • Another plea was for Americans to stop acting as though they knew better what was in the interests of a country with a recorded history going back 7,000 years.
    • sheldonmer
      sheldonmer on 16 Nov 14
       
      This article talks about how some Americans feel like Egypt did itself a disservice by getting rid of Morsi's rule. This article describes the conversation had by some members of the Egyptian delegation that were invited to Washington by Hands Along the Nile Development Services. This articles goes on to talk about different issues regarding U.S., Egyptian relations and basically was the U.S. condones and what it doesn't, as if it mattered.
  • kristaf on 03 Nov 14
     
    The article mentions the views of Americans and the views of Egyptians regarding the state of Egypt with concerns surrounding the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptians were able to carry a message to Americans. Egyptians voiced their want for U.S assistance with terrorism. 
nicolet1189

BBC News - Can Iraqi militants be kept off social media sites? - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...technology-28016834

ISIS Twitter Facebook social media Iraq

shared by nicolet1189 on 14 Oct 14 - No Cached
micklethwait liked it
  • co-ordinated hashtag campaigns to get its content trending on Twitter.
  • The Iraqi government responded by blocking social media sites and, in some provinces, barring access to the internet entirely.
  • But some of the most active Islamist social media accounts are still live,
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • n Twitter using military pseudonyms,
  • The BBC spoke to a number of social networks, all of which said they did not actively monitor their sites for content promoting terrorism, but rather responded to requests from governments and individuals to remove offending material.
  • r Twitter said the company would remove a reported post that violated its rules.
  • Twitter's terms ban threats of violence and the "furtherance of illegal activities" on the site.
  • Many of the militants on Twitter redirect users to their Kik accounts.
  • Ask.fm, a
  • One Ask.fm account offered advice on how to join Isis fighters in Iraq, as well as what weapons one could expect to be equipped with on arrival.
  • Facebook and YouTube, have been more successful in removing extreme content.
  • rminated any account registered by a member of a foreign terrorist organisation - as designated by the US secretary of state - and used in an official capacity to further its interests.
  • nicolet1189 on 14 Oct 14
     
    Interesting article about challenges social media companies face in preventing and deactivating accounts with content or users linked to terrorist organizations such as ISIS.
wmulnea

Is Libya on the brink of a new civil war? - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...l-war-2013102183055736865.html

shared by wmulnea on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • former rebel fighters who helped to oust Gaddafi are now jostling among themselves for power
  • The country is flooded with weapons
  • In the past year alone, more than 80 people, many of them high-ranking military and police figures, have been killed in eastern Libya.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Libya's Prime Minister Ali Zeidan
  • The country's prime minister recently called on western powers to help him stop the spread of what he calls 'militancy' in his country.
  • There are more than 225,000 Libyans registered in militias. They receive state salaries but often act outisde of government control, taking orders from local or political commanders.
  • Groups in Libya's eastern Cyrenaica region and in the southern Fezzan region have called for independence
  • In Cyrenaica, former rebel leader Ibrahim al-Jathran and his 20,000 men strong militia say they now run local affairs, with Jathran and his men controlling facilities that account for 60 percent of Libya's oil wealth.
aromo0

Egypt News, Egypt Current Events, Modern Egyptian Society, Egyptian Tourism | Modern Eg... - 0 views

www.modernegypt.info/...womens-rights

women egypt rights voting

shared by aromo0 on 20 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • passed a law allocating a quota of 64 seats in the lower house to women
  • The new law will give women more than 12 percent of the seats in an expanded parliament after the next election in 2010.
  • women registered for voting increased from 18 percent in 1986 to 39.8 percent in 2007;
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • 30 women were appointed as judges presiding over family courts;
  • 25.7% of top management positions in the state are held by women
  • 49 percent of students enrolled in universities and higher education institutions;
  • • There was a significant increase in the proportions of mothers assisted at delivery by medical provider - from 61.5 percent in 2000 to 78.6 percent in 2006;
  • The percentage of women who gave birth at an age younger than 18 decreased from 23.7 in 1992 to 20.4 in 2000 then to 15.8 in 2005.
  • diamond03 on 20 Nov 14
     
    This site stats that women's rights have improved over the years. A new law made in 2010 gave women 12% of he seats in Parliament.
  • yperez2 on 12 Feb 15
     
    Information on women rights in Egypt are presented. Women political, voting, educational and health rights are included.
  • aromo0 on 24 Feb 16
     
    This piece talks about women in politics, voting, and it public positions. It also gives facts dealing with women's health and education.
mcooka

Schooling in a crisis: the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey - ODI HPN - 0 views

odihpn.org/...e-of-syrian-refugees-in-turkey

refugee schooling crisis turkey Syria camps education

shared by mcooka on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The Syrian civil war has created one of the largest and most intense episodes of human suffering of the early twenty-first century.
  • 387,883, with 200,039 living in government camps and 164,143 living in rented apartments
  • Turkey’s efforts to meet the needs of refugees have been spearheaded by the Afet ve Acil Durum Yonetimi Baskanligi
  • ...36 more annotations...
  • majority of refugees are women and, especially, children; of the 200,000 refugees in Turkish camps, about 60% are children.
  • t was left to him to find tents, wooden flooring, carpets and paving bricks, desks, chairs, drawing boards, teaching aids and, of course, textbooks
  • urkish Red Crescent
  • acquired through AFAD channels a
  • egging
  • he result
  • ten large tents with floors
  • drawing boards
  • electricity
  • computer projectors.
  • limate control consisted of large fans
  • he pre-school director in Islahiye Camp used empty office and storage space in the warehouse to house five rooms full of loud young children
  • preschools enjoyed the largest proportion of age-group participation.
  • camp schools are administered by Turks
  • curricula are not recognised or sanctioned by the Turkish education authorities, and so licenced Turkish teachers cannot be assigned to them.
  • amp education directors rely heavily on volunteers from among the refugees themselves
  • time and instruction with the children is often inconsistent
  • not be able to teach in Arabic
  • There is little incentive for parents to commit their children to learning a new language
  • Closely related to the issue of language is the curriculum
  • eenage students in the camps generally do not have access to the secondary schooling
  • Indeed, one source of tension between Syrian parents and the Turkish authorities has been the Syrian demand for special classes for advanced students whose preparations for university entrance exams were interrupted by the war.
  • Syrian schools have opened outside of the camps with funding from the local government,
  • using the Syrian curriculum and books salvaged from Syrian schools and reproduced
  • Gaziantep
  • namely Syrian demands for the separation of the sexes in classrooms
  • Syrian parents also tend to insist that their daughters wear headscarves (hijab) in public and in schools, while it is illegal for Turkish teenage girls to cover their hair at school.
  • Tensions over the separation of the sexes, curriculum and language of instruction are compounded by the politics of Syrians’ refugee status
  • y contrast, the Turkish government chose not to officially recognise the Syrians as refugees as defined by UNHCR, and did not ask UNHCR to register the newcomers as refugees.
  • officially designate Syrians as refugees would limit Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian civil war,
  • Turkey has allowed arms and non-lethal aid through its territory to supply the Free Syrian Army
  • here are also concerns that Syrians, desperate for income, take jobs at lower wages than Turks
  • Even guests can outstay their welcome, and with no end in sight to the civil war and no prospect of a return of Syrians to Syria, Turks are beginning to question how long they can sustain their assistance. I
  • une 2013 AFAD began accepting offers of financial and other aid from outside agencies, including UNHCR and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
  • The schools developed in Syrian refugee camps in Turkey provide valuable models for establishing schools for rapidly growing refugee populations.
  • The next critical challenge for Syrian education in Turkey is what to do with the growing number of Syrian teenagers who need to finish their high-school studies at accredited schools in order to compete for places at universities in Turkey or elsewhere.
  • mcooka on 17 Feb 16
     
    This was probably the most interesting article I have read about education in the MIddle East. It is from the "Humanitarian practice Network". This article is about Turkey and the Syrian refugees, who are not documented as refugees, and the growing desire for improvements to education. Right now, the education which is in place for Syrians is adequate for a temporary stay of preserving knowledge. It is not designed to be used long term, to advance students, or to prep them for universities. This article looks at those issues and tensions which are happening currently in Turkey
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