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Guinea Junta Starts Transitional Government Talks

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Zoe Maven
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The junta that ousted Guinea’s President Alpha Conde last week has started a week-long consultation with political, religious, and business leaders that it says will lead to the formation of a transitional government.

The dialog, which began with a meeting with leaders of the main political parties on Tuesday, is expected to lay out the framework of a promised government of national unity that would lead Guinea back to constitutional order.

The talks are expected to define the duration of the transition, what political and institutional reforms are needed before elections, and who will lead the transition.

The coup led by Guinea’s special forces and helmed by Mamady Doumbouya, a former French Foreign Legionnaire, has been condemned by Guinea’s partners and regional bodies.

West Africa’s regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which suspended Guinea from its decision making bodies, has called for a short, civilian-lead transition.

The meeting with political party leaders on Tuesday will be followed by a meeting with representatives regional governments, then religious organizations.

Civil society organizations, diplomatic missions, heads of mining companies and business leaders are also scheduled for meetings with the junta throughout the week.

Deal Allowing Russian Mercenaries Into Mali Is Close – Sources

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Zoe Maven
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A deal is close that would allow Russian mercenaries into Mali, extending Russian influence over security affairs in West Africa and triggering opposition from former colonial power France.

According to seven diplomatic and security sources, Paris has begun a diplomatic drive to prevent the military junta in Mali enacting the deal, which would permit Russian private military contractors, the Wagner Group, to operate in the former French colony.

A European source who tracks West Africa and a security source in the region said at least 1,000 mercenaries could be involved. Two other sources believed the number was lower, but did not provide figures.

Four sources said the Wagner Group would be paid about $10.8 million a month for its services. One security source working in the region said the mercenaries would train Malian military and provide protection for senior officials.

It could not be independently confirmed how many mercenaries could be involved, how much they would be compensated, or establish the exact objective of any deal involving Russian mercenaries would be for Mali’s military junta.

France is worried the arrival of Russian mercenaries would undermine its decade-old counter-terrorism operation against al Qaeda and Islamic State-linked insurgents in the Sahel region of West Africa at a time when it is seeking to draw down its 5,000-strong Barkhane mission to reshape it with more European partners.

The French foreign ministry also did not respond but a French diplomatic source criticised interventions by the Wagner Group in other countries.

Algeria Aims At $2.6 Bln Increase In Energy Investment

By
Zoe Maven
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OPEC member Algeria plans to increase investment in its oil and gas sector by $2.6 billion next year to boost production by 8.9 million tonnes of oil equivalent.

Speaking to parliament awhile presenting his government action plan, Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane said Oil and gas investment in 2022 will total $10 billion, up from $7.4 billion this year, aiming to increase output to 195.9 million tonnes of oil equivalent from 187 million tonnes of oil equivalent.

Algeria, which relies heavily on the energy sector, last year halved planned investment spending in oil and gas to $7 billion to cope with financial pressure caused by a fall in global crude oil prices due to the pandemic.

The government expects energy export earnings to rise to $33 billion this year from $20 billion in 2020 after a rise in oil prices in international market.

The action plan includes reforms to improve the investment climate mainly in the non-energy sector to help to reduce Algeria’s reliance on oil and gas which account for more than 90% of total export earnings and 60% of the state budget.

The plan also included a commitment to keep the government’s subsidy policy unchanged to avoid social unrest. It currently subsidies almost everything from basic foodstuffs to housing, medicine and fuel.

EU Says It Has No Option But To Talk To Taliban

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Zoe Maven
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EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell delivers a speech on the situation in Afghanistan during a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, September 14, 2021. Julien Warnand/Pool via REUTERS

The European Union says it has no option but to talk to Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers and Brussels will try to coordinate with member governments to organise a diplomatic presence in Kabul.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was speaking in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, stating that the Afghan crisis is not and so to have any chance of influencing events, they have no other option but to engage with the Taliban.

EU foreign ministers have set conditions for re-establishing humanitarian aid and diplomatic ties with the Taliban, who took control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, including respect for human rights, particularly women’s rights.

Borrell told EU lawmakers that the bloc should be prepared to see Afghans trying to reach Europe if the Taliban allow people to leave, although he said he did not expect migration flows to be as high as in 2015 caused by Syria’s civil war.

The European Commission plans to secure funding from EU governments and the common budget of 300 million euros both this year and next to pave the way for resettlement of around 30,000 Afghans.

UN Investigators Say Syria Violence Worsening

By
Zoe Maven
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U.N. war crimes investigators say Syria is still unsafe for the return of refugees a decade after its conflict began, documenting worsening violence and rights violations including arbitrary detention by government forces.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said the overall situation was increasingly bleak, noting hostilities in several areas of the fractured country, its collapsing economy, drying riverbeds and increased attacks by Islamic State militants.

Releasing its 24th report the Chair of the Commission, Paulo Pinheiro said, One decade in, the parties to the conflict continue to perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity and infringing the basic human rights of Syrians.

He said the Commission has continued to document not only torture and sexual violence in detention but also custodial deaths and enforced disappearances.

The war, which spiraled out of an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, sparked the world’s biggest refugee crisis. Syria’s neighbors host 5.6 million refugees, while European countries are hosting more than one million.

Covering the year to the end of June, the report also noted increased hostilities in the northwest, saying markets, residential areas and medical facilities had been struck from the air and ground, “often indiscriminately, causing numerous civilian casualties.”

At least 243 people were killed or maimed in seven car bomb attacks in the rebel-held towns of Afrin and Ras al-Ain north of Aleppo, though the full toll was considerably higher, it said.

Afghan Acting Foreign Minister Urges Int’l Donors To Restart Aid

By
Zoe Maven
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Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister on Tuesday called for international donors to restart aid, as the Taliban government seeks to shore up the finances of a country heavily reliant on external assistance.

Following the insurgent Taliban’s return to power after sweeping away government forces last month, a majority of international donors have frozen aid.

Addressing a News Conference in Kabul, Amir Khan Muttaqi said the country is a war-hit country and it needs the international community’s assistance in different sectors, especially education, health and development.

He said Projects that are incomplete need to be completed in order to avoid waste of resources, also calling for more assistance from multilateral donors including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Islamic Development Bank.

After the takeover, the United States froze Afghanistan’s dollar-denominated bank deposits that make up the majority of the central bank’s reserves.

He said the international community should not politicize their assistance to Afghanistan, adding that they helped the US until evacuation of their last person, but unfortunately the US, instead of thanking them, froze their assets.

Blinken Defends US Withdrawal From Afghanistan

By
Zoe Maven
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken beat back criticism of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan at a contentious congressional hearing as irate lawmakers accused the White House of presiding over a historic disaster.

In five hours of often testy exchanges with lawmakers, Blinken defended President Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan and pushed back on accusations that the State Department should have done more to help Americans and at-risk Afghans to be evacuated, blaming the previous administration for lacking a plan.

He repeatedly noted that Republican former president Donald Trump had negotiated the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, and defended the Biden administration’s failure to renegotiate the deal.

He also insisted that threats from the hardline Islamist group to resume killing Americans were a security threat.

He added that there is no evidence that staying longer would have made the Afghan security forces or the Afghan government any more resilient or self-sustaining.

Members of Congress – Biden’s Democrats as well as opposition Republicans – have pledged to investigate since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last month after a rapid advance.

Republican lawmakers have portrayed the pullout as chaotic and accused the president of abandoning Americans to the fate of the Taliban.

They noted that last year’s agreement with the Taliban, signed in the presence of Blinken’s predecessor Mike Pompeo, had set conditions for the withdrawal.

Macron Proposes Plan For Parliamentary Oversight Of Police

By
Zoe Maven
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French President Emmanuel Macron says he wants to double the presence of police officers and gendarmes on the ground in ten years to boost police oversight following repeated allegations of brutality and racism in the force.

Speaking at the National Police School in Roubaix, in northern France, Macron said he wanted to set up some form of parliamentary oversight regarding the country’s police forces and the monitoring of their conduct.

Macron’s speech followed months of discussions with police on the theme of security and relations with the population.

Macron, adding that a parliamentary oversight body for the police forces was necessary. One of the key criticisms of policing in France is that the country does not have an independent police watchdog.

The trigger for the consultations was a video showing four White officers beating up an unarmed Black music producer in his Paris studio in November last year.

The attack on Michel Zecler caused widespread outrage and amplified complaints by French Black Lives Matter activists about the rough tactics used against minorities, particularly Black and Arab men.

The Inspection Generale de la Police Nationale (IGPN), which currently hears complaints, is composed mostly of police officers and its head is appointed by the interior minister, who is in charge of the police.

In June 2020, thousands of French people took part in the global Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the death of Black American George Floyd at the hands of US police.

Tropical Storm Nicholas Brings Heavy Rain To Texas

By
Zoe Maven
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Tropical storm Nicholas has been downgraded from a hurricane after making landfall on the Texas coast in the US, bringing heavy rain and the risk of life-threatening flooding.

The storm was upgraded to a hurricane after reaching land at 00:30 (05:30 GMT), but has now weakened. It comes just weeks after Hurricane Ida – the fifth strongest to ever hit the US mainland – killed dozens and left more than a million Louisiana residents without power.

According to PowerOutage.us., over 500,000 power outages have been reported in Texas while President Joe Biden declared an emergency in Louisiana.

Nicholas is carrying maximum sustained winds of 110km per hour according to weather officials, and is expected to hit the Texas coast and upper Louisiana with five to 10 inches of rain.

There could be rainfall of up to 20 inches across central to southern Louisiana, they said.

The US National Hurricane Centre said that Nicholas “has continued to move slowly inland and has weakened during the past few hours”.

But it warned that “life-threatening flash flooding impacts, especially in highly urbanised metropolitan areas, are possible”, and the National Weather Service called it a “life-threatening situation”.

Dozens of schools across the two states have been closed, and hundreds of flights have been cancelled or delayed at airports in the Texas cities of Corpus Christi and Houston.

Burkina Faso Says 374 Children Rescued From Traffickers

By
Zoe Maven
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Officials in Burkina Faso say they have rescued 374 children between January and March from being trafficked to neighbouring countries to work in agriculture or small-scale mines.

This is according to government figures released on Monday.

Helene Marie Laurence Ilboudo, minister for humanitarian action said for some time now, this phenomenon affecting children has grown to worrying proportions in our country.

According to the ministry, last year, 2,318 children were intercepted through checks on buses or through denunciation. Most were under 16 and destined to work in plantations, artisanal mines, or for domestic work in countries neighbouring Burkina Faso.

Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, is a major destination for child trafficking and has also intercepted and repatriated minors used for work in the fields, the ministry said.

In addition, 58 children found by security forces during various operations were handed over to social services, Ilboudo said, also highlighting the scale of the problem of homeless children living on the streets.

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