Contents contributed and discussions participated by Ed Webb
No end in sight to Libya crisis after UN envoy quits - 0 views
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The abrupt resignation of the United Nations special envoy for Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, is the latest sign of the failure of reconciliation efforts in the war-torn North African country, analysts told AFP.The Senegalese diplomat, who on Tuesday tendered his resignation after only 18 months at the helm of the UN support mission UNSMIL, has repeatedly accused rival leaders of perpetuating divisions to serve their own interests.
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the diplomat decried a "lack of political will and good faith by the major Libyan actors who are comfortable with the current stalemate".
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Bathily's efforts have been undermined by Egypt, which alongside the United Arab Emirates is the main power supporting the Haftar-backed administration.
Jewish pilgrimage organisers in Tunisia scrap celebrations over Gaza war - 0 views
Opinion | In the Iran-U.S. shadow war, Biden scored an unheralded victory - The Washing... - 0 views
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On Feb. 2, U.S. forces dropped more than 125 precision munitions on 85 targets in Iraq and Syria belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and its affiliated militia groups. The U.S. Air Force even deployed giant B-1 bombers that flew all the way from the continental United States. According to U.S. Central Command: “The facilities that were struck included command and control operations centers, intelligence centers, rockets, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicle storage, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities of militia groups and their IRGC sponsors who facilitated attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces.”Five days later, on Feb. 7, a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad killed a senior commander of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most dangerous Iranian-backed terrorist groups. This demonstrated not only how precise U.S. weapons systems are but also how successful U.S. intelligence was in tracking the movements of senior Iranian operatives.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementThe clear message was that other Iranian commanders would be next if they didn’t knock off their attacks against U.S. troops. And guess what? Iran did stop. Things could change at any moment, but a senior U.S. defense official told me last week that there hasn’t been an Iranian-directed attack against a U.S. military base in either Syria or Iraq since Feb. 4. By contrast, there were at least 170 such attacks between Oct. 7 and Feb. 4.
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“We’re not under any illusions,” the defense official told me. “Iran continues to pose a serious threat to the United States and our interests in the region. Under certain circumstances, attacks could restart, but we demonstrated that we’re willing and able to defend our forces.”
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there is no way for Washington to overthrow the Iranian regime without risking becoming embroiled in another Iraq- or Afghanistan-style quagmire
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Ambiguous Ethiopia port deal fuels uncertainty over Somaliland statehood | Features | A... - 0 views
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“The agreement is mutually beneficial, and Ethiopia will share military and intelligence experience with Somaliland, so the two states can collaborate on protecting joint interests,” Redwan Hussein, Abiy’s national security adviser, said at the event announcing the agreement. “To facilitate this, Ethiopia will establish a military base in Somaliland as well as a commercial maritime zone.”
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the billions Djibouti is believed to charge Ethiopia annually in port fees has had it exploring alternatives in Sudan, Somaliland and Kenya since the mid-2000s.
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In 2017, Ethiopia acquired shares in Berbera port as part of a deal involving Emirati logistics management company DP World to expand the port and turn it into a lucrative trade gateway catering to the needs of 119 million Ethiopians. At the time, Somalia denounced the deal as illegal. Ethiopia did not follow through on commitments and eventually lost its stake by 2022.
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Ethiopia: Exploiting the Gulf's scramble for the Horn of Africa | African Arguments - 0 views
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the United Arab Emirates played a key behind-the-scenes role in facilitating the deal between Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki. Both men met with Emirati leaders on several occasions before and during the reconciliation, and they have stayed in regular contact ever since.
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After decades of disengagement, countries east of the Red Sea are scrambling to gain a greater footprint along the opposite coast. In response, states on the Horn such as Ethiopia are trying to leverage these rapidly changing geopolitical dynamics to enhance their own influence.
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profound geopolitical shifts have now renewed the Middle East’s interest in the Horn and reinvigorated the strategic significance of countries west of the Red Sea. The two main reasons for this are the war in Yemen and deepening intra-Gulf rivalries. These factors have led three main groups to vie for influence in the Horn: the Arab axis (led by Saudi Arabia and UAE, but including Egypt and Bahrain); the Iran axis; and the Qatar-Turkey axis
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AGSIW | UAE and the Horn of Africa: A Tale of Two Ports - 0 views
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Along with the competition by outside players has come greater leverage for Horn of Africa countries, whose elites have long been adept at playing external patrons off one another. Ethiopia has to some degree succeeded in diluting Abu Dhabi’s reliance on its enemy, Eritrea, by supporting its plans for the Berbera port. In 2015, after losing access to Djibouti for military operations, the UAE constructed a base in the coastal Eritrean city of Assab, which has been vital to its operations in southern Yemen. By supporting the UAE’s military and commercial infrastructure plans in Somaliland, Ethiopia – the Horn of Africa’s largest and most powerful country – also contributed to the fracturing of Somalia by encouraging the de facto consolidation of Somaliland’s independence
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Turkey’s soft power and popularity in Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia is formidable, and was built on its early economic, diplomatic, infrastructure development, aid, and education involvement with the country
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the UAE’s longer-term interests – as well as those of its competitors – are economic and strategic. The country is working to make itself an essential component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and secure Dubai’s Jebel Ali as the key logistics and trade hub linking Asia to Africa via DP World infrastructure, in the face of competition by a glut of new ports built by rivals with similar ambitions in Iran, Pakistan, Oman, and elsewhere along the Horn of Africa. DP World is involved in two other port projects in breakaway Somali states, as well as logistics infrastructure and ports projects in Rwanda, Mozambique, Algeria, and Mali.
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Indoor farms are energy hogs, a test for their climate credentials - The Washington Post - 0 views
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As the effects of climate change intensify, bringing more severe droughts, flooding and pest infestations, some growers are wresting control of their crops away from nature. Huge high-tech greenhouses and smaller vertical farms — windowless warehouses that typically grow plants stacked in trays — hold the promise of letting farmers grow almost anywhere.But all that control comes with an environmental cost. Inside these facilities, farmers are creating the perfect growing conditions with power generated mostly by burning fossil fuels, and lots of it.
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“There’s extraordinary water efficiency in these facilities, but energy is really the Achilles’ heel.”
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In colder climes, indoor farm operators heat their greenhouses with natural gas or propane, since these fossil fuels are often the cheapest option. Vertical farms are a smaller slice of the market, but they typically consume much more electricity than greenhouses to replace natural sunlight and to power cooling and dehumidifier systems.
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The obliteration of Gaza's multi-civilizational treasures - 0 views
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Cultural heritage is an essential component of a nation’s identity and carries enormous symbolic meaning, as recognized and protected by countless international conventions, treaties, and bodies. Yet Israel’s pounding of Gaza, now in its fifth month, displays a callous disregard for these testaments to the thousands of years of Gaza’s rich cultural history — to such an extent that it could amount to cultural genocide.
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while the loss of human life is the greatest tragedy in any war, Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s physical cultural heritage achieves much the same goal: the erasure of the Palestinian people. Indeed, many of those interviewed for this article believe this is precisely why these sites are being targeted
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“It’s challenging for experts to keep track while being in a state of displacement themselves, being targeted, and continually moving from one place to another,” Taha explained. “We have lost more than 10 antiquities experts, including four archaeologists.”
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Opinion | Noah Feldman: To be a Jew today, after Oct. 7 - The Washington Post - 0 views
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Progressive Judaism gives expression to what it considers the biblical values of justice, equality, freedom and the like. When the Holocaust and Israel became part of this social justice theology, both had to accord with it. The Holocaust became a moral lesson of Never Again on par with the Hebrews’ slavery in Egypt. Israel became a model of aspirational redemption, a role it could play only because it was possible to imagine the Jewish state as liberal and democratic.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementIf Israel does not embody the values of liberal democracy, however, it cannot serve as a moral ideal for progressive Jews whose beliefs mandate universal human dignity and equality. In the starkest possible terms, a God of love and justice cannot bless or desire a state that does not seek to provide equality, dignity, or civil and political rights to many of the people living under its authority.
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Today’s Israeli Zionists sometimes think and act as though American Jewish progressives owe Israel a duty of loyalty. For Jewish progressives, however, the higher duty of loyalty is owed to divine principles of love and justice.
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Their great-grandparents, if they were Reform Jews, had the option of de-emphasizing Israel, almost to the point of ignoring Zionism. Before the state of Israel existed, they did not need to reconcile their beliefs about Judaism as a private, diasporic religion with the aspirations of Zionist Jews. Even after the state arose, it was possible for a time to treat it as separate from Jewish thought, practice and identity.The young progressives do not have this luxury. They inherited a form of Judaism that already incorporated Israel into its theology. They do not know how to be Jews without engaging Israel. Yet the content of their broader theology — their beliefs about Jewish morality and tikkun ‘olam — make support of Israel difficult or even repugnant.
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Making It Work From the River to the Sea - New Lines Magazine - 0 views
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Israelis, enjoying vastly superior power, remain maximalist, Palestinians slightly less so. Both seek national self-determination on their own terms. But the plain reality is that they cannot both have it, because — rightly or wrongly — they both seek it in the same place. For them both to be able to achieve true and lasting national self-determination, they must do so not in 2D, cartographically, but in 3D, holographically. Say hello to nonterritorial autonomy, a long-standing but little-discussed method of managing diversity within a state by granting dispersed groups self-government on the basis of identity rather than land, while also retaining a broader structure of power sharing.
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Overlaying two nations on one country sounds like science fiction, but that is testament to the corrosive power of the nationalist thinking that drives the two-state solution. Partition says more about the preoccupations of the chiefly American and European politicians who cling to it than it does about the aspirations or real lives of the people who will have to live in the resulting states.
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Partition has failed almost everywhere it has been attempted. Ireland is perhaps the starkest example, but we might also consider India and Pakistan in 1947, Pakistan again and Bangladesh in 1971, Korea, Vietnam, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Sudan and a fistful of others. Partition has perpetuated conflict and embedded trauma down the generations. Millions have died thanks to the idea that separating supposedly irreconcilable populations solves everything.
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