Month: September 2023

The strongman of eastern Libya, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, was received by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday, his Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) and the Kremlin announced.

Marshal Haftar “met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Choigou in the Russian capital Moscow”, the LAAF announced on their official Facebook page, without giving details.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the meeting to Russian state agency TASS. “The situation in Libya and the region as a whole was discussed”, he said, without elaborating.

It was the first meeting between the two men since 2019, according to Libyan media.

Haftar arrived in Russia on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Libya and bilateral relations with Russian officials, according to LAAF. He was received by Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who has made several trips to eastern Libya to meet the field marshal.

Their last meeting was on September 17, at the LAAF headquarters in Benghazi, a few days after the floods that left thousands dead and missing in the eastern Libyan city of Derna.

For several years now, Russia has been leading a diplomatic offensive in Africa, aiming to supplant the traditional Western powers. Isolated on the international stage and in search of allies, it has stepped up its efforts tenfold since its assault on Ukraine in February 2022.

Moscow maintains close relations with Marshal Haftar, who had used mercenaries from the Russian paramilitary group Wagner in his failed attempt to seize the capital Tripoli, from April 2019 to June 2020.

This failure was followed in October 2020 by a ceasefire agreement, compliance with which is supervised by a military commission comprising five officers from each side.

Since then, hundreds of Wagner members have remained active in the east, which is also the oil terminal zone, and in southern Libya, despite the departure of some of their forces to Mali or Ukraine to fight alongside the Russian army.

Riddled by divisions since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya is governed by two rival administrations: one in Tripoli (west), headed by Abdelhamid Dbeibah and recognized by the UN, the other in the east, embodied by Parliament and affiliated to Khalifa Haftar’s camp.

New advisors to Pope Francis will be officially “created” or appointed on Saturday (Sep. 30) during a ceremony inside St. Peter’s Basilica.

During the event known as consistory, picked clergymen will receive the cardinal’s red three-cornered biretta hat from the Pope.

Three of the 21 new cardinals named last July serve in Africa. Among them is the Archbishop of Cape Town who who spoke, Thursday (Sep. 28), ahead of the consistory .

“I think the church in Africa is young, it’s vibrant, it’s alive and I think we can bring that sense of joy and that sense of hope to people because Africa is a continent of hope. It is quite true that we suffer from many difficulties and many problems, many challenges but our people are people of great hope.”

“Coming particularly from South Africa where we have come through the Apartheid area and where I personally expected in those years that the country would just descend into a civil war, we were able to achieve a democratic country and a peaceful settlement. And I think that, that was a miracle that was given to us and I think that in itself is a sign of hope as well.”

The co-adjutor archbishop of Tabora in Tanzania and the archbishop of Juba, South Sudan will also be appointed on Saturday.

Cardinals serve as advisers to the pontiff on matters of teaching and administration.

Most importantly, they elect the next Pope.

A Cairo University employee was shot and killed by a rejected colleague, the Egyptian Interior Ministry announced late Wednesday, a new case of femicide in the most populous Arab country.

“An employee of one of the faculties of Cairo University” “fired shots” at one of his colleagues, “causing her death,” details the police press release.

And when the authorities got their hands on the suspect in Marsa Matrouh, 450 kilometers west of the capital, “he killed himself by shooting himself with the same weapon” as that used to kill the victim.

According to the state newspaper Al-Ahram, the victim, identified only by her first name, Nourhane, allegedly refused a marriage proposal from her colleague, Ahmed, who was harassing her.

The suspect had already been arrested for having “set fire to the victim’s car five years ago and having threatened him by SMS”, according to the daily.

Only the day before, the local press announced the assassination of a woman by her ex-fiancé as she left work in the chic Heliopolis district, in eastern Cairo.

In 2022, several feminicides had been highly publicized in the country where, the same year, according to the NGO Idrak, 301 women or young girls were killed.

At the end of June, the murderer of a student who refused his advances was sentenced to death.

The same day the courts announced the murder of a television presenter by her magistrate husband.

Two months later, this judge was also sentenced to the death penalty, while a court called for the broadcast of the executions of perpetrators of femicide live on television to “dissuade the greatest number”.

Murder is punishable by death in Egypt, which carried out the fourth highest number of executions in the world in 2022 according to Amnesty International.

In Egypt, although women have been voting since 1956, they remain subject to century-old patriarchal legislation and are the first victims, according to feminists, of the spread of a rigorist Islam associated with the entrenchment of conservatism.

On social networks, Egyptians voiced their frustration: “how long will women have to pay with their lives for saying no?” asked the Speak Up education initiative.

The United States will continue to support “civilian-led” armies in Africa, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in Luanda on Wednesday, blaming militaries on the continent for “subverting the will of the people” through coups d’état.

“When generals subvert the will of the people and put their own ambitions above the rule of law, the security situation deteriorates, and democracy dies,” said Mr. Austin in a speech on U.S. security partnerships in Africa, delivered in the Angolan capital.

The Defense Secretary reiterated the US commitment to “support government policies that advance peace, security and democratic governance together”, stressing that these “elements are inseparable”.

“Africa needs armies that serve its citizens, not the other way around”, he added.

Mr. Austin’s visit to Angola, a first for an American Secretary of Defense, is the third and final stop on his African tour, following Djibouti and Kenya.

On Monday, in Nairobi, the Secretary of Defense indicated that the United States was evaluating various options concerning the future of its military presence in Niger, the day after France announced the withdrawal of its troops.

The United States has some 1,100 troops stationed in Niger, engaged against jihadist groups active in the region.

Niger is one of six African countries where the military has taken power by force in the last three years, along with Gabon, Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan and Guinea.

The military in power in Bamako have turned to Russia, going so far, according to multiple sources, as to enlist the services of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner.

“Africa deserves better than foreigners trying to tighten their grip on this continent,” said Austin.

“And Africa deserves better than autocrats who sell cheap arms, support mercenary groups like the Wagner Group, or starve populations around the world of grain,” he added, in an allusion to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Oil-rich Angola has long enjoyed close ties with China and Russia.

But since 2017, current president Joao Lourenco has been forging closer ties with Washington, which will partly finance the renovation of a railway line linking the Congolese mining regions to the Angolan port of Lobito, on the Atlantic Ocean.

“Over the past few years, the relationship between the United States and Angola has made enormous progress”, Mr. Austin praised.

The 2027 Africa Cup of Nations will be jointly hosted by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, while Morocco will stage the 2025 edition, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced on Wednesday.

Morocco last hosted the AFCON in 1988 and was chosen in 2015 but asked for the tournament to be postponed because of the Ebola virus, although CAF later decided to strip the north African nation of the hosting rights.

While Morocco were hot favourites to host the 2025 edition of the premier African sport event, the shock last-minute withdrawal of Algeria from the 2027 race on Tuesday threw it wide open.

“This withdrawal can be explained by a new approach from the FAF (Algerian football federation)related to its strategy for developing football in Algeria,” it said.

The Kenya-Uganda-Tanzania bid then got the nod from the CAF executive committee, taking the biennial tournament back to east Africa for the first time since Ethiopia staged the 1976 finals.

“I am very proud of Morocco,” said CAF president Patrice Motsepe after naming the successful hosts in Cairo.

“Morocco’s competing countries (for 2025 tournament) — Algeria, Zambia and Nigeria-Benin — announced their withdrawal, even if these countries still made their presentation,” he said.

“The main reason is to support Morocco in its candidacy for the 2030 World Cup,” jointly with Spain and Portugal, explained Motsepe.

Morocco boast many world-class stadiums and have successfully hosted numerous African and world football tournaments.

But Kenya and Tanzania have only one international-standard venue each and Uganda none, which forced their national team to play 2023 Cup of Nations qualifiers at neutral venues.

“One of the key objectives is that the decision that was taken today (promotes) the development of infrastructure and stadiums (and) be a source of enthusiasm among young people,” said Motsepe.

– ‘Timing not ideal’ –

Taking the tournament to east Africa follows a statement this year by Motsepe that he did not want successive tournaments in the same region.

“We cannot assign the organisation of the CAN successively to the same region,” he said at a press conference before the African Nations Championship (CHAN) in Algeria last January.

However, several months later, CAF secretary general Veron Mosengo-Omba said regional rotation may not always be possible.

“Today, only five or six countries out of the 54 CAF members are able to apply to host the African Cup. Consequently, it will not be possible to make this alternation,” he said.

Ivory Coast will host the 2023 Cup of Nations, which has been put back to January and February 2024 due to the rainy season in west Africa.

“The timing is not ideal,” Motsepe has said, referring to the tournament falling in the middle of the European club season.

“But we could not risk the tournament being disrupted by inclement weather,” added the South African billionaire, who was appointed CAF president in 2021.

Stars who will have to leave their clubs for the African tournament include Mohamed Salah of Liverpool, Andre Onana of Manchester United and Victor Osimhen of Napoli.

The Cup of Nations has grown from a three-team tournament in Sudan in 1957 to a 24-team event since 2019, and attracts a worldwide TV audience.

Egypt have been the most successful country with seven titles, including three in a row from 2006. Cameroon triumphed five times and Ghana are four-time champions.

The line-up for the next edition in five Ivorian cities includes the top 16 African countries in the latest FIFA rankings, led by 2022 World Cup semi-finalists Morocco.

Moroccan and Algerian representatives to the United Nations sparred over the fate of Western Sahara on Tuesday, with Algiers calling for the revival of a long-stalled referendum on the fate of the former Spanish colony.

“We Algerians have chosen the camp of justice, decolonization, freedom, self-determination and human rights,” said Algerian Ambassador Amar Bendjama.

“This commitment applies to the cause of the Sahrawi people, who have been waiting for nearly half a century for the UN to do them justice.”

Considered by the United Nations to be a “non-self-governing territory,” 80 percent of Western Sahara is controlled by Morocco, which envisions autonomy for the region, though with it ultimately remaining under Rabat’s control.

Algeria meanwhile has long supported the Polisario Front, an independence movement led by the region’s Indigenous Sahrawi population.

A UN mission has been deployed in Western Sahara since 1991, tasked with organizing a referendum on the territory’s future.

The referendum has never taken place, and in late 2020 the Polisario announced it was resuming fighting after a long cease-fire.

“If the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara had really turned it into a paradise, with or without the granting of autonomy, why is this referendum being prevented?” Bendjama said, while also conveying his country’s condolences to Morocco, in the wake of the country’s deadly earthquake earlier this month.

“You can’t shed crocodile tears and at the same time attack a country that is still living through a tragedy,” Moroccan Ambassador Omar Hilale shot back.

Hilale also reiterated Rabat’s stance on Western Sahara, calling for the respect of “Morocco’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“Morocco is in the Sahara and will remain so until the end of time,” he said.

Emboldened by US recognition of Morocco’s claims over Western Sahara in 2020, in return for Rabat’s rapprochement with Israel, the kingdom has since deployed increasingly offensive diplomacy to rally other countries around its position.

The devastating floods that swept through Libya have revealed new structures at an ancient Greek city near Derna.

The Libyan authorities who came to inspect the ancient city and salvage what could be saved unexpectedly found archaeological sites that appeared after the floods subsided.

Dr. Ahmed Issa from the Department of Archeology at Omar Al-Mukhtar University said that a national committee consisting of experts should be formed to classify the new archaeological monuments and develop a plan to restore the area.

Anis Hamed, from the Shahat Antiquities Control Department, said that the floods caused cracks in the walls of archaeological buildings, and that they contacted local official authorities and UNESCO for help.

The city of Cyrene was founded in 631 BC by the Greeks, and it witnessed the height of its prosperity in the fourth century BC with the development of agricultural and commercial activity.

The city is distinguished by its Greek baths, the Temple of Zeus, which was founded in the fifth century BC, the Temple of Apollo, and other temples.

The floods killed thousands, uprooted residential buildings and washed away roads and bridges, especially in the city of Derna.

More than 11,000 people have been reported killed, and more than 10,000 others remain missing more than a week after the disaster, according to the Libyan Red Crescent and the United Nations.