Mali: Race TO The Bottom

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Good Morning, today is May 31, 2019.

NEED TO KNOW MALI Race to the Bottom Gunmen on motorcycles recently shot and killed seven people in the remote Malian town of Koury near the border with Burkina Faso. A similar motorcycle attack occurred at the same time in Boura, 34 miles away, but nobody died. That, unfortunately, is just another day in Mali. Nobody claimed responsibility, reported the Associated Press, but Islamic extremists and other armed groups are active in the region. This month, an improvised bomb injured three Chadian peacekeepers in northern Mali. Unidentified assailants killed a Nigerian peacekeeper in Timbuktu. And 17 soldiers from Niger died and 11 went missing after an ambush in western Niger in the same area where four American special forces soldiers and four local troops died in a 2017 firefight. Mali is the most dangerous country in the world for United Nations peacekeepers. Nearly 200 have died since 2013. They deployed to Mali, as the Defense Post explained, after a French force had repelled Islamist militants who had seized northern Mali in 2012 amid an insurgency driven by ethnic Tuaregs who wanted an independent state. Today, around 4,500 French troops are fighting jihadists in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. Around 2,700 are in Mali. The UN has more than 12,000 troops and almost 2,000 police officers in the country. A West African regional coalition is organizing a 5,000-personnel force to help, too. Mali, while large geographically, has only about 19 million people, about as many as China’s capital, Beijing. Meanwhile, what happens if and when this massive international military effort declares victory? The governments they have been fighting to keep alive have sometimes disappointed. Malian Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga resigned in April after revelations that government-affiliated “self-defense groups” had killed 160 people, including 46 children, in cold blood in Ogossagou, a village in central Mali. The victims were members of the Fulani ethnic group, which leaders in the capital of Bamako accuse of having links to Islamist extremists. Read a heartrending account of the massacre written by UNICEF’s chief of communications in Mali, Eliane Luthi, in CNN: “When he arrived here, his eyes were red and he could hardly speak,” a social worker recalls of one 9-year-old boy. “The only thing he could say was: ‘They killed my mother in front of my eyes, didn’t you see?'” Under the leadership of a new prime minister, Boubou Cisse, Malian Foreign Minister Tiebile Drame recently told diplomats in Brussels that his country desperately needs more help. “It’s a race against time,” said Drame, appealing for security forces, funding and other aid from “Europe and other countries in the world that have the means and feel concerned by the terrorist threat.” More help might come, but it may or may not yield much in the way of results. WA

South Africa-Lean But Not Clean

SOUTH AFRICA

Lean, Not Clean

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled a leaner government on Wednesday in which half the cabinet ministers are women even as he reappointed a powerful politician accused of corruption as his deputy despite earlier vows to clean up the African National Congress (ANC).

“He’s too powerful not to be deputy,” political analyst Ralph Mathekga said of Ramaphosa’s decision to reappoint David Mabuza as his second-in-command, the New York Times reported. “The strength of this presidency depends on Mabuza.”

After the ANC won the general elections earlier this month, many were interested to see what Ramaphosa would do with his cabinet: He had forced out former President Jacob Zuma but retained some figures close to him who were implicated in corruption cases.

His choices reflect a split in the party that has shepherded South Africa through the post-Apartheid era, said William Gumede of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “Ramaphosa is only in control of one half, and he has to make compromises with the other.”

Cutting the cabinet to 28 ministers from 36 represents “evolution, not revolution” political analyst Richard Calland told the Guardian. “A statement of reformist intent, if not necessarily reformist action.”

Madagascar: Rolling Up Their Sleeves

MADAGASCAR

Rolling Up the Shirt Sleeves

The East African island of Madagascar has the dubious distinction of suffering the worst deforestation on the planet.

So it’s heartening that some Malagasy teenagers are working with environmentalists to practice sustainable farming that feeds people while preserving forests in the Indian Ocean nation.

The forest “provides the fresh air we breathe and helps the livelihoods of the local people,” Omega, a 16-year-old farmer, toldthe BBC. “If it continued to be destroyed, there would be less water to drink. There would be a loss of habitat for wildlife in the forest, such as the lemurs – they would disappear. They would all die.”

The country is also among the most impoverished in the world.

That fact recently spurred a group of mothers to launch their own public health initiatives with the help of local and international aid groups. The mothers hold song circles in the southern town of Tanandava, for example, to inculcate lessons on hygiene, water treatment and the virtues of spacing out pregnancies, wroteUNICEF USA in Forbes.

Unfortunately, that hard work is necessary in part because many Malagasy leaders have washed their hands of addressing their country’s daunting challenges.

Fortunately, things might be changing.

Madagascar’s anti-corruption agency recently recommended that prosecutors charge more than half of the country’s lawmakers – 79 out of 151 – with accepting bribes and other corruption-related crimes, reported Agence-France Presse.

That action stems from investigations into allegations that parliamentarians accepted $14,000 apiece last year to vote in favor of electoral law changes that would benefit ex-President Hery Rajaonarimampianina in the November 2018 presidential elections.

Thousands took to the streets to protest the changes. After two months of demonstrations, the country’s top court ruled the changes unconstitutional. Andry Rajoelina won the presidential election and promptly pledged to root out graft in government.

As Africanews explained, he found more rot than initially expected. Investigators also recently alleged that Madagascar’s former ambassador to the United Nations and two former staffers at its embassy in Washington, DC, had embezzled about $300,000 in public funds.

The anti-corruption office’s stunning moves came shortly before parliamentary elections that are slated for May 27. Few of the accused lawmakers are running for re-election. If found guilty, they could face up to five years in jail.

Rajoelina has more work to do. Last month, for example, Amnesty International claimed that long, torturous pretrial detentions are common in Madagascar, crowding prisons designed to hold around 10,600 people with more than 14,000 detainees who have not been convicted of any crimes.

He’s trying, though. He’s trying.

Kenya: Return Of The King

Return of the King Archaeologists recently rediscovered the skeletal remains of a giant carnivore that had lain inside a drawer at the National Museums of Kenya for decades. After a thorough study, they reported that the fossils belonged to a new species that was larger than modern-day lions and polar bears, making it one of the largest carnivorous mammals ever to live on land, according to CNN. Dubbed Simbakubwa kutokaafrika, which stands for “big lion coming from Africa” in Swahili, the large mammal was at the top of the food chain about 23 million years ago. Researchers estimate that it had teeth that could rip flesh and crack bones, weighed about 1.6 tons and hunted large herbivores similar to today’s elephants and hippopotamuses. Although referred to as an “ancient lion,” the new species is not closely related to today’s lions and other big cats. It belongs to an extinct group of mammals known as hyaenodonts that ruled sub-Saharan Africa for 45 million years. Scientists speculate that climate change led to their demise, leaving the throne open for a new regent. Today, the lion may be the king of the wild but millions of years ago, it wouldn’t stand a chance against this larger and more ferocious predator.

Sudan: When An ultimatum Lacks Teeth

SUDAN When Ultimatums Lack Teeth The African Union granted Sudan’s military leaders an additional 60 days to hand over power to a civilian authority or face suspension, after their previous deadline whooshed by, seemingly unnoticed. Noting “with deep regret” that its April 15 ultimatum that the military council relinquish power by the end of April had been ignored, the bloc issued a more generous one and reiterated “its conviction that a military-led transition in the Sudan will be totally unacceptable,” Al Jazeera reported. The military council that assumed power after ousting longtime leader Omar al-Bashir in the wake of months of anti-government protests initially promised to hold elections within two years. But the protesters have rejected that plan and are pushing for immediate civilian rule. They’ve called for more rallies and a nationwide strike on Thursday, while the military has warned against further chaos and demanded the protesters clear the roadblocks from around the army headquarters in the capital of Khartoum.

Algeria: The Young Gun

ALGERIA

The Young Gun

Algeria’s ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) party has elected a 50-year-old businessman as its new leader a month after long-running protests forced former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to resign rather than seek a fifth term in office.

Considering that the resignation of the ailing, octogenarian leader had not silenced protesters’ demand for a complete overhaul of the political system and a harsh crackdown on corruption, the election of Mohamed Djemai could help convince voters the party is sincere about a true changing of the guard in the lead-up to presidential elections slated for July 4.

Meanwhile, the army chief of staff who helped push out Bouteflika said Tuesday that the judiciary had been freed up to vigorously pursue corruption cases against members of the former political elite like the finance minister, ex-prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia and several rich businessmen, Al Jazeera reported.

Fine sentiments aside, Amel Boubekeur, a research fellow at the Paris-based School for Advanced Studies, told the news channel that the army and secret service have long used anti-corruption drives to curb politicians’ power – without much impact on actual graft.

Egypt: The New Pharaoh

EGYPT

The New Pharaoh

A man stood alone on a Cairo street corner in April holding a placard.

“No to amending the constitution,” said the sign.

Police quickly arrested him, the New York Times reported.

The man was protesting a referendum that asked voters whether they wanted to give President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi the opportunity to extend his term in office through 2030, Voice of America explained.

Election officials said 44 percent of voters turned out, and almost 90 percent of them said yes.

Critics lamented the results, which were, many say, a nullification of the country’s revolution.

In 2011, Egyptians inspired by the success of protests in Tunisia took to the streets and helped launch the Arab Spring, a movement for democratic reforms that swept through North Africa and the Middle East. The Egyptian protests, focused on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, succeeded in ousting President Hosni Mubarak, a corrupt, US-backed dictator who had ruled the country for 30 years. They pushed officials to hold true democratic elections for the first time.

Then things went sideways. Islamist candidate Mohamed Morsi won office and embarked on a series of reforms that rankled secular Egyptians. In 2013, Sissi and the military staged a coup. Morsi is now sitting in jail, and the White House said Tuesday that the Trump administration is mulling whether to declare his Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.

Since then, Sissi has increasingly exerted control over Egyptian society. Human rights activists have called his rule oppressive. He’s jailed 60,000 people for political reasons, wrote Bahey eldin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, in the Washington Post.

But Sissi portrays himself as a messianic figure who is the country’s sole guardian against extremism and foreign threats, and the only leader who can revive its moribund economy. “God created me like a doctor who can make a diagnosis,” he said in 2015. “This is God’s blessing. I know the truth and I see it. … Now the world listens to me.”

For many, the referendum appeared to cement the country’s slide back into authoritarianism. “Eight years ago, Egypt was the beacon of hope for the Arab world,” wrote CNN in an analysis. “Now it is a cautionary tale.”

Few Egyptians believe the vote was free and fair, added British-Arab journalist Osama Gaweesh in a Guardian opinion piece.

Critics noted that the language of the referendum was finalized only 72 hours before voting began. Allegations of vote buying were widespread. A Reuters journalist saw authorities giving voters vouchers for cooking oil, pasta, sugar and tea as they left a polling station.

The reported turnout of 44 percent was suspiciously high for a referendum, analysts told Middle East Eye, a London-based news outlet. They questioned how officials could have processed 27 million voters in the three days polls were open, then counted the ballots so quickly.

Sissi will nonetheless claim he has the support of his people. That may or may not be true. But he’s still in charge.