Saturday, September 30, 2023
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Eswatini (Swaziland) Is Having Political unrest
An Absolute Problem
ESWATINI
Late last year, pro-democracy activists, political dissidents, and others gathered in South Africa to discuss how they might compel King Mswati III, the absolute monarch of the tiny, independent landlocked nation of Eswatini, to resign.
Soon after, in January 2023, gunmen shot and killed Swazi human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko in his home. Maseko was an outspoken advocate for creating a multiparty democracy in his country, reported the Associated Press. Formerly known as Swaziland and nestled between South Africa and Mozambique, Eswatini is the last absolute monarchy in Africa. King Mswati has ruled there since 1986.
Maseko’s death was the latest incident in a crackdown against the king’s critics that began two years ago amid protests for political change in the country, explained Human Rights Watch (HRW). At least 46 people were killed in that crackdown – deaths that the government, meanwhile, has allegedly failed to investigate.
The activist’s absence has been deeply felt in the country, wrote the Institute for Security Studies. In the meantime, while South African leaders have pressured King Mswati to make gestures to expand political participation, the king has resisted real reforms.
“The protests that began two years ago have been seen as the beginning of a tipping point in Eswatini’s governance, human rights and democratic crisis,” said HRW researcher Nomathamsanqa Masiko-Mpaka this summer. “The government needs to realize that the movement for human rights and justice is not going to go away and that it needs to end its repression.”
Now, as voters are slated to go to the polls for legislative elections on Sept. 29, critics fear that candidates won’t necessarily represent their interests – because the king has likely cherry-picked his allies for the chamber, wrote news24.
Political parties are not allowed to field candidates for the Eswatini legislature. If independent candidates were allowed to run for office, they might challenge the king’s rule, after all. Polls in Eswatini, for example, found that 86 percent of the country believes the country’s economic future looked “fairly bad” if not “very bad.”
The electoral system is also stacked against the people. Voters elect 59 members of the lower chamber called the House of Assembly, while the king appoints 10 lawmakers, according to the Anadolu Agency. Then the lower house elects 10 members of the Senate while the king appoints 20 senators.
Political activists in the country today are torn between boycotting the elections, and contesting them to at least have a chance at some political power, the Daily Maverick wrote.
Unfortunately, their success relies on the whims of one powerful man.
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Monday, September 18, 2023
The Sahel Pact
SAHEL
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger signed a mutual defense pact over the weekend, pledging to help each other against armed rebellions and external aggression in the wake of coups in each of the three countries, Al Jazeera reported.
Known as the Alliance of Sahel States, the pact binds the signatory parties – all three ruled by military governments – to assist each other in the event of an attack on any one of them.
Malian officials said the alliance will be “a combination of military and economic efforts” between them, adding that their top priority is to fight terrorism.
The security situation in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger is dismal: The Sahel region has been grappling with armed rebellions and Islamist insurgents for more than a decade.
All three states were members of the France-backed G5 Sahel Alliance Joint Force with Chad and Mauritania, launched in 2017 to tackle armed groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State groups.
But since 2020, the same three countries have suffered coups, with Niger the most recent to experience a military takeover.
The Economic Community of West African States regional bloc has warned it would intervene militarily in Niger if the military government doesn’t relinquish power.
Mali and Burkina Faso have warned that such intervention would amount to a “declaration of war” against them, too.
Meanwhile, relations between the three Sahel countries and France have deteriorated following the takeovers. France has withdrawn its troops from Mali and Burkina Faso, and currently remains in a tense standoff with Niger’s military government.
On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said France’s ambassador to Niger is “literally being held hostage at the French embassy,” CNN noted.
Following their July coup, Niger’s junta ordered France to withdraw its troops and its ambassador – although Paris has refused to recognize the new military authority.
Friday, September 15, 2023
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Monday, September 11, 2023
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Saturday, September 9, 2023
Thursday, September 7, 2023
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Monday, September 4, 2023
Friday, September 1, 2023
The Horrors In Sudan Do Not Stop
Old Story, New Horrors
SUDAN
Sudan’s military-led central government and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary force formerly allied with the government, have been waging a civil war for almost five months. Around 4,000 people have died in the fighting, but neither side has been able to vanquish the other. The people of Sudan have suffered as a result.
Violence has displaced four million people, including 1.7 million children within the northeastern African country, according to the United Nations. Around 430,000 people have fled the fighting by crossing through the western Sudanese region of Darfur and Sudan’s border into Chad. Many needed to evade the RSF and other militant groups in Darfur, where some of the worst horrors of the war are occurring today.
“A tragedy is unfolding in Nyala, South Darfur, as fighting continues to rage, with targeted and indiscriminate attacks against civilians reaching catastrophic levels,” warned Doctors Without Borders in a statement. “All roads in and out of the area are effectively cut off by the fighting.”
Refugees who reached Chad attested to the disaster.
“Four of us were wounded,” refugee Souad Ibrahim told Agence France-Presse. “We wandered barefoot around El-Geneina for seven days, moving from one place to another. We had no water and no food. Even though I was seven months pregnant, I had to carry my four-year-old boy on my back and my girl who is six followed on foot.”
CNN described the West Darfur capital of El Geneina as a “hellscape.”
The latest violence evokes the crimes against humanity and genocide that occurred in Darfur two decades ago, argued the Guardian in an editorial. The mass killings, sexual assaults, and the destruction of entire villages are occurring now as they did in the early 2000s. Approximately 300,000 perished in Darfur in that hellish period.
The two rivals in the civil war once worked together, noted the Council on Foreign Relations. Army Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan became de facto head of state in 2019 when he helped oust former dictator Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled for three decades. RSF Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo supported Burhan but later refused to go along with a plan to integrate the RSF into the central government’s armed forces.
Sudan unfortunately has a long tradition of coups, rebellions, and other sources of instability that has prevented it from developing its economy and civil society, explained the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
This latest war will likely add another chapter to this sad history.