Region


WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on two cousins of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad over the trafficking of the stimulant drug captagon, a growing export for the state, which is quickly normalizing ties in the region.

An AFP investigation in November found that Syria has become a narco state with the $10 billion industry in captagon dwarfing all other exports and funding both Assad and many of his enemies.

The United States, in coordination with Britain, announced it was imposing sanctions on two of the president's cousins, Samer Kamal Al Assad and Wassem Badi Al Assad over the drug trade.

Samer Kamal Al Assad owns a factory in the coastal city of Latakia that produced 84 million captagon pills in 2020, the US Treasury Department said.

"Syria has become a global leader in the production of highly addictive captagon, much of which is trafficked through Lebanon," said Andrea Gacki, the senior Treasury official handling sanctions.

"With our allies, we will hold accountable those who support Bashar Al Assad's regime with illicit drug revenue and other financial means that enable the regime's continued repression of the Syrian people," she said in a statement.

Others targeted in the sanctions include Nouh Zaitar, Lebanon's most famous drug lord who is on the run from authorities, and Hassan Dekko, a Lebanese-Syrian drug kingpin with high-level connections in both countries.

Under the Treasury action, the United States will block any assets on US soil held by the alleged drug traffickers and will make transactions with them a crime.

The action by the United States comes as its pleas to other nations not to normalize relations with Assad are increasingly ignored.
Assad in March paid his second visit in as many years to the United Arab Emirates, and neighbouring Turkey, long a main backer of rebels, has opened to the Damascus government.

Assad, helped by Russian airpower, has largely restored control over Syria after the conflict that has killed half a million people, displaced half the country's pre-war population and saw the rise of the Daesh terror group.

CAIRO — In a time of dire economic trouble, Egyptians are holding fast to the Ramadan tradition of charity, with both donors and those in need pinning hopes on holiday generosity.

Families have buckled under the weight of inflation, which hit 32.9 per cent in February as Egyptians tried to fill their shelves ahead of the Islamic holy month of daytime fasting and special evening meals, known as iftar.

"Last year, we were giving out 360 iftar meals every day — this year, I'm not sure we'll make it to 200," said the founder of a small charity in the working-class Cairo district of Al Marg.

Yet, those meals have never been more vital, the charity worker said, asking not to be named for privacy concerns.

For many families, Ramadan boxes of food staples or daily charity iftar meals, organised in droves across the country, "are their only chance to eat meat or chicken", she added.

Even before the current economic crisis — worsened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, which destabilised crucial food imports — 30 per cent of Egyptians were living under the poverty line, with the same number vulnerable to falling into poverty, according to the World Bank.

In addition, surging costs of animal feed have pushed the once-affordable meal of chicken out of reach for most of Egypt's nearly 105 million-strong population.

Before Ramadan began, the charities upon which tens of millions of Egyptians depend raised the alarm that they were struggling to meet more people's needs, at higher costs, with dwindling donations.

But a focus on generosity, even and especially in times of trouble, is baked into Ramadan, "when most Egyptians give out their yearly charity, a very cherished custom", said Manal Saleh, who heads the Egyptian Clothing Bank.

Egyptians gave nearly 5 billion Egyptian pounds to charity (at the time, around $315 million) during 10 months of donations recorded in 2021, according to state media.

But of that, around "90 per cent" was given during Ramadan, Saleh estimated, who also helped found one of the country's biggest charities, the Egyptian Food Bank.

Each day of the holy month, a staple of Egyptian city streets at sunset is the sight of Mawaed Al Rahman, charity tables where strangers come to break their fast for free, sometimes hundreds at a time.

Many are organised by anonymous donors such as Fouad, a 64-year-old retired engineer, who asked to use a pseudonym because his initiative is not a legally recognised charity.

This year, he and his group of friends who run the soup kitchen out of a local mosque have had to double their budget, committing to feeding even more people in their community and "not just the least fortunate".

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, they have forgone the conventional banquet table for a grab-and-go makeshift cafeteria.

All month, the kitchen serves meals to the community, including underprivileged families and, increasingly, store clerks and other workers who can no longer afford a mid-shift hot meal, saving them some 60 or 70 pounds, around two dollars.

"They know their family needs that money," Fouad said.

'People stick together' 

According to the latest official figures from 2021, the average salary in Egypt is 4,000 pounds a month, or $129.

Meanwhile, the price of a kilogramme of the cheapest subsidised local meat has nearly doubled to 220 pounds, about a quarter of a week's pay.

Savings have been slashed as the currency lost half its value in a year, and more and more people are struggling to make ends meet.

With families across classes cutting back on everything from grocery bills to schooling, charity budgets could have been the first to go.

"Honestly, I had grown almost hopeless a couple of weeks ago, when we looked at the numbers and realised we may not be able to pull it off this year," Fouad told AFP.

"But those who could have doubled their donations from last year, because they know how important it is for us to step up in times like this."

Saleh said that Ramadan charity is a tough habit to break.

"We've seen crises before, and people stick together," Saleh said.

"I think that even if individuals can't give as much, you'll see more people lending a hand, volunteering, making meals for those around them, even if cash is tight."

BAGHDAD — Iraq's parliament voted Monday to restore electoral laws that were scrapped after 2019 anti-government demonstrations, sparking anger from independent lawmakers who see it benefitting larger parties.

The law, which parliament said in a statement was "adopted" without detailing the votes, revives the electoral law of 2018 and sweeps away one of the gains of the mass protest movement which shook Iraq.

After the protests, a new system favoured the emergence of independent candidates, with some 70 independents winning seats in the 329-member parliament in the last legislative elections in 2021.

Parliament is dominated by the Coordination Framework, an alliance of powerful pro-Iran Shiite factions, from whose ranks Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani emerged.

The new law removes 83 electoral districts and creates 18 seats, one for each of Iraq's provinces.

This "makes it easier for top party politicians to win seats", analyst Sajad Jiyad said on Twitter.

Conversely, it will make it "harder for candidates in smaller parties and independents to compete" because they will be running at a provincial rather than a local level, he added.

During the debate, which ran from Sunday into the early hours of Monday, several angry independent lawmakers were expelled from the debating chamber, according to videos they filmed themselves.

The law also replaces a first past the post system with proportional representation.

Overall, the changes will benefit the larger parties and make it possible "for their candidates who didn't get enough votes initially to win seats", Jiyad added.

"Independent candidates will no longer have any hope of obtaining representation in parliament", said Alaa Al Rikabi, an independent lawmaker. "They will be crushed".

But Coordination Framework lawmaker Bahaa al-Dine Nouri welcomed the change, arguing that it will “distribute the seats according to the size of the parties”.

Nouri said this will “lead to the formation of a government within the time limits set by the constitution” to avoid the endless stand-offs that followed the 2021 election.

The new law will apply to the next legislative elections, the date of which has not yet been set.

It will also apply to provincial elections slated for November 6, to be held in 15 of the 18 Iraqi provinces, excluding the three provinces in the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, regional elections will take place on November 18 under a separate electoral system.

MOSUL, Iraq — The horrors they endured under the Daesh group may be in the past for the people of Iraq, but the traumatic memories remain.

Now a research project is recording their witness testimonies for posterity.

Omar Mohammed, founder of the Mosul Eye project, rose to prominence during the Daesh reign by bravely sharing news via Twitter from inside the city under terrorist rule.

Years later, he wants to make sure nothing is forgotten.

“When I was in Mosul recording everything myself, I felt the need to include all the people, to record our history in their own voice,” he told AFP.

Bereaved mother Umm Mohammed, 55, is among those who have shared their memories of terror, suffering and loss with the non-governmental group.

The Sunni extremists of Daesh came for her family one night in 2015 and took away her son Ahmed, then a 27-year-old construction worker.

His brother Mohammed, 10 years younger, then made a fateful choice: he decided to join the ranks of Daesh, with a daring plan to find and liberate Ahmed.

“I told him: ‘My son, don’t join them’,” recounted Umm Mohammed, her hair under a dark scarf.

“He said: ‘It’s none of your business. I’m going to get my brother. I’ll go into the prisons.’”

The elderly woman told AFP, with sadness in her voice, that Mohammed left “and never came back”.

And neither did Ahmed.

Both are presumed to be among the many killed under the group’s self-declared “caliphate” that cut across swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Umm Mohammed said she suspects the terrorists felt that Mohammed “was not one of them. They must have thought he was a spy”.

Murder, rape, torture 

Speaking about those dark days years later for the Mosul Eye project has brought up a storm of emotions, but ultimately had a cathartic effect for Umm Mohammed.

“I had a volcano inside me,” she said. “When I spoke I felt joy, sadness, despair, relief.”

Iraq had already endured years of war and sectarian turmoil that followed the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein 20 years ago when Daesh launched its campaign of murder, rape, torture and enslavement.

Sweeping out from their base in Syria, the Sunni extremists in mid-2014 rampaged across northern Iraq’s ancient city of Mosul and Nineveh province.

There were fears they would attack Baghdad before they were pushed back by a US-supported alliance that eventually deprived Daesh of its Iraqi territory in late 2017.

Gruelling urban battles left much of Mosul in ruins and many of the survivors deeply traumatised.

Mosul Eye, with funding from the US Agency for International Development, has trained 10 students to conduct and film interviews, mostly in Mosul but testimonies have also been collected from people hailing from elsewhere in Iraq.

The youngest of the 70 witnesses are barely 10 years old. Others are in their 80s. The oldest is 104.

The footage will be kept at the group’s archives at Mosul University, and George Washington University in the US capital, for use by researchers and for future generations.

“We wanted to show the world how the people of Mosul overcame this experience,” said a spokesman for Mosul Eye, MohannadAmmar.

‘Opening wounds’ 

Another witness is Moslem Hmeid, a 27-year-old law student whose Sunni Arab family endured five months of jihadist rule in Sinjar in 2014 before fleeing.

Seared in his mind especially is the “bloody first week, impossible to erase from memory”.

He relived with pain how Daesh targeted the local Yazidi minority, whose non-Muslim faith the extremists considered heretical.

Hmeid remembered watching helplessly as the militants came and loaded Yazidi girls and women into lorries.

“Once I saw two or three trucks full of women,” he told AFP. “And a few men, but mostly young women, aged 17 to 30, maybe.”

Entire Yazidi villages were emptied and many fell victim to crimes since recognised as genocide by the United Nations and courts in several countries.

Women were forced into sexual slavery and the men were killed, while “those who could fled into the mountains”, Hmeid said.

“Witnessing such a catastrophe happen to your neighbours and not being able to help... We were heartbroken,” said Hmeid. “Psychologically, we were devastated.”

With three of his brothers in the military and on the Daesh kill list, the family fled to Turkey but later returned to Iraq.

“By talking about these topics, we reopen wounds,” said Hmeid. But, added the father of two, “the next generations must know exactly what happened”.

TUNIS — Tunisia's coastguard said on Sunday the bodies of 29 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries had been recovered after three vessels capsized, the latest in a string of such tragedies.

A series of shipwrecks has left dozens of migrants dead and others missing in the country that serves as a key conduit for migrants seeking to reach nearby European shores.

It comes after President Kais Saied made an incendiary speech last month, accusing sub-Saharan Africans of representing a demographic threat and causing a crime wave in Tunisia.

The coastguard said in a statement on Sunday that it had "rescued 11 illegal migrants of various African nationalities after their boats sank" off the central eastern coast, citing three separate sinkings.

In one, a Tunisian fishing trawler recovered 19 bodies 58 kilometres off the coast after their boat capsized.

A coastguard patrol off the coastal city of Mahdiya also recovered eight bodies and "rescued" 11 other migrants after their boat sank as it headed towards Italy.

Fishing trawlers in Sfax meanwhile recovered two other bodies.

Black migrants in the country have faced a spike in violence since Saied's speech and hundreds have been living in the streets for weeks in increasingly desperate conditions.

People fleeing poverty and violence in Sudan's Darfur region, West Africa and other parts of the continent have for years used Tunisia as a springboard for often perilous attempts to reach safety and better lives in Europe.

'Migratory wave' 

The Italian island of Lampedusa is just 150 kilometres off the Tunisian coast, part of the Central Mediterranean route described by the United Nations as the most deadly in the world.

Rome has pressured Tunisian authorities to rein in the flow of people, and has helped beef up the coastguard, which rights groups accuse of violence.

Italy’s hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned Friday that Tunisia’s “serious financial problems” risked sparking a “migratory wave” towards Europe.

She also confirmed plans for a mission to the North African country involving the Italian and French foreign ministers.

Meloni echoed comments earlier in the week by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, who warned Tunisia risks economic collapse that could trigger a new flow of migrants to Europe — fears Tunis has since dismissed.

Since Saied’s speech, hundreds of migrants have been repatriated in flights organised by their embassies, but many say they fear going home and have called on the UN to organise evacuation flights to safe third countries.

Tunisia is in the throes of a long-running socioeconomic crisis, with spiralling inflation and persistently high joblessness, and Tunisians themselves make up a large proportion of the migrants travelling to Italian shores.

The heavily indebted North African country is in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a $2-billion bailout package, but the talks have been stalled for months and there is no sign a deal is any closer.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Wednesday that unless they reach an agreement, “the economy risks falling off the deep end”.

SAINTE-SOLINE, France — French police again clashed with protesters on Saturday as campaigners in the southwest sought to stop the construction of giant water storage facilities, the latest flashpoint as social tensions erupt nationwide.

The violent scenes at Sainte-Soline came after days of unrest over President Emmanuel Macron's pensions reform, which forced the cancellation of a visit by King Charles III of the UK.

The protest movement against the pension reform has turned into the biggest domestic crisis of Macron's second mandate, with police and protesters clashing daily in Paris and other cities over the past week.

At Sainte-Soline, several protesters and members of security forces were injured in Saturday's confrontations at the banned protest. Campaigners there are trying to stop the construction of giant water "basins" to irrigate crops, which they say will distort access to water amid drought conditions.

A long procession of activists set off late morning for the site, numbering at least 6,000 people according to local authorities, around 30,000 according to the organisers.

"While the country is rising up to defend pensions, we will simultaneously stand up to defend water," said the organisers.

Once they arrived at the construction site, which was defended by the police and gendarmes, clashes quickly broke out between the more radical activists and the security forces, AFP correspondents said.

The authorities had mobilised more than 3,000 police officers and paramilitary gendarmes to guard the site.

Protesters threw various projectiles, including improvised explosives, while police responded with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets.

According to the latest figures from the prosecutor's office, seven demonstrators were injured, including three who had to be taken to hospital. In addition, 28 gendarmes were injured, two of them badly enough that they had to be hospitalised.

Two journalists were also injured.

The alliance of activist groups behind the protests said 200 of their number had been injured, and one of them was fighting for their life, information not confirmed by the authorities.

In a tweet supporting the work of the emergency services there, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne denounced “the intolerable wave of violence” at Sainte-Soline.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin also condemned the violence, blaming elements from the “ultra-left and the extreme left”.

Eleven people were detained after police seized cold weapons, including petanque balls and meat knives, as well as explosives.

While not directly related to the anti-pensions reform campaign, the clashes over the water reservoir construction have added to tensions in an increasingly challenging situation for the government.

The government is bracing for another difficult day on Tuesday when unions are due to hold another round of strikes and protests. That would have fallen on the second full day of Charles’s visit.

The recent scenes in France have sparked astonishment abroad. “Chaos reigns in France”, said the Times of London above a picture of rubbish piling up.

In France, Macron has faced accusations from the left that he removed a luxury watch in the middle of a television interview on Wednesday, fearing images of the timepiece could further damage his reputation.

‘I will not give up’ 

Uproar over legislation to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 was inflamed when Macron exercised a controversial executive power to push the plan through parliament without a vote last week.

The streets of the capital are strewn with rubbish because of a strike by waste collectors.

But there has also been controversy over the tactics used by the French security forces to disperse the protests.

On Friday, the Council of Europe warned that sporadic violence in protests “cannot justify excessive use of force”.

Macron has refused to offer concessions, saying in a televised interview Wednesday that the changes needed to “come into force by the end of the year”.

The Le Monde daily said Macron’s “inflexibility” was now worrying even “his own troops” among the ruling party.

In another sign of the febrile atmosphere, the leader of Macron’s faction in parliament, Aurore Berge, posted on Twitter a handwritten letter she received threatening her four-month-old baby with physical violence, prompting expressions of solidarity across the political spectrum.

It remains unclear how the government will defuse the crisis, four years after the “Yellow Vest” demonstrations rocked the country.

Borne is under particular pressure.

But she told a conference on Saturday: “I will not give up on building compromises...

“I am here to find agreements and carry out the transformations necessary for our country and for the French,” she said.