Region

By Bachir Al Khoury and Alice Hackman
Agence France-Presse

BEIRUT — They may often squabble but Lebanon’s political parties seem united in rejecting an investigation into Beirut’s massive port explosion that they fear could threaten their survival, analysts say.

The explosion of a huge stockpile of poorly stored fertiliser on the dockside on August 4, 2020 killed more than 210 people, wounded thousands and ravaged half the capital.

In the aftermath of mass protests in late 2019 demanding the ouster of the traditional ruling class, many said the disaster was just the latest example of official incompetence and corruption.

But months into a domestic investigation, no one has been held accountable.

Politicians have repeatedly obstructed the work of judge Tarek Bitar by refusing to show up for questioning, filing legal complaints against him or calling for his dismissal, which last week sparked deadly violence in the heart of Beirut.

Analyst Lina Khatib said hopes were fading of holding those responsible for the port blast accountable.

“The ruling class in Lebanon is in agreement about wanting the port probe to be abandoned and they will use all available means to derail it,” said Khatib, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the Chatham House think tank.

The country’s powerful Shiite movement Hizbollah has spearheaded a campaign to remove Bitar, accusing him of political bias.

The debate over his future, which comes after the previous investigator was removed in February, has already triggered the postponement of one Cabinet meeting despite the urgency of addressing Lebanon’s acute economic crisis.

Nadim Houry, executive director at the Arab Reform Initiative, said that the whole ruling class felt under threat in what he described as “an essential battle in Lebanon for rule of law”.

“A section of society has decided that they want to go all the way and ask for truth,” but they face “a political class that is willing to use threats, use violence, use even launching into another civil war to prevent that quest for truth from leading to a result”, he said.

It emerged after the port blast that officials had known that hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate had for years been left to linger in a warehouse near residential neighbourhoods.

Families of the victims see in Bitar the only hope for justice in a country where impunity has long been the norm.

After the 1975 to 1990 civil war, Lebanon issued a broad amnesty that benefitted the country’s warlords, allowing many of them to become political leaders.

“Regardless of what Bitar finds, it’s the idea itself that any of them can somehow be held accountable that they are resisting,” Houry said.

Any success in the blast probe would set a precedent and unravel an “impunity regime” under which each party agrees not to pursue the other for its crimes, as long as it is not targeted itself.

Tensions came to a boil last week after a rally against Bitar organised by Hizbollah and its Shiite ally Amal descended into violence that killed seven of their supporters.

‘Price too high’

The sound of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades trapped residents indoors for hours, reviving memories of the civil war.

Hizbollah accused snipers of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian party, of causing the bloodshed, but the latter has denied this.

The army, meanwhile, is investigating a video circulated on social media that appears to show a soldier shooting at protesters.

“Hizbollah is increasingly acting as the praetorian guard of the regime that has come into place since the 1990s,” Houry said.

The Iran-backed movement, the only one not to have disarmed after the civil war, is at least partly blacklisted by most Western governments but holds seats in parliament.

While political parties have publicly supported an investigation, analysts say they ultimately wish to protect their own interests.

“Lebanon’s ruling class may be political opponents but they are united in profiteering from the system... and they therefore oppose any steps to reform it or to instil accountability within it,” Khatib said.

A spokesman for the families of blast victims quit on Saturday, after many feared he had been intimidated into toeing the Hizbollah line and calling for Bitar to step down.

Ibrahim Hoteit, who lost his brother in the explosion, lives in a Shiite-majority neighbourhood.

The following day, many refrained from taking part in a protest to mark the second anniversary of the now-defunct 2019 protest movement, fearing further violence.

“Ultimately, the ruling class want to push the Lebanese to conclude that the price of accountability is too high.”

By Hamza Mekouar
Agence France –Presse

BANI WALID, Libya — A huge portrait of Muammar Qadhafi marks the entrance of Bani Walid: 10 chaotic years since the Libyan dictator’s death, residents of the desert town still hanker for his rule.

“Muammar Qadhafi is a symbol,” said resident Mohamed Dairi, in his fifties. “We will always support him.”

Unfinished concrete buildings litter the town of some 100,000 people on the edge of the Sahara desert, many of them scarred by bullets and mortar rounds fired during over a decade of conflict.

Rebels killed Qadhafi in his hometown of Sirte on October 20, 2011, months into the NATO-backed rebellion that ended his four-decade rule.

Residents of Bani Walid, a stronghold of the Warfala tribe — the country’s biggest and a key pillar of Qadhafi’s rule — had backed him to the bitter end.

Many fighters from the town were killed, with more dying in further battles when rival militia groups attacked.

Today, dusty wind whips through the town centre, where a de-commissioned tank overlooks a dried-up fountain and a board bearing pictures of “martyrs” hangs above a pile of mortar shells.

“Muammar will stay in our hearts forever,” one resident told AFP.

‘10 years of injustice’ 

Bani Walid lies in an oasis some 170 kilometres southeast of Libya’s capital Tripoli.

An imposing government building has been reduced to a battle-scarred shell, but the green flags of Qadhafi’s era still flutter in the desert wind.

The red, black and green flag of the pre-Qadhafi years, adopted again by rebels in 2011, is nowhere to be seen.

Residents are open about their nostalgia for his rule.

“Before 2011, Libyans were the masters of their destiny. Since then we’ve seen 10 years of injustice, bombing, killing and kidnapping,” said Mohammad Abi Hamra, who wore a wristwatch bearing Qadhafi’s face.

“Revolution is meant to bring change for the better. But what has happened since 2011 hasn’t been a real revolution, it has been a conspiracy against Libya,” he said.

The 10th anniversary of Qadhafi’s death comes as the country prepares for December elections, part of a United Nations-led peace process that some hope will help start a new, more peaceful chapter in Libya’s history.

‘We had security’ 

But many in Bani Walid are sceptical, seeing more hope in the old regime than in the country’s current political forces.

“The reason this town is so attached to the former regime is that the 2011 revolution brought nothing but wars, catastrophe, division of the country and violations of its sovereignty,” said engineer Fethi Al Ahmar.

“We still cling to the past because back then we had security, which is the main thing that’s missing in Libya today.”

Journalist Ahmed Abouhriba agreed.

“Qadhafi wasn’t a dictator, but the guardian of the citizenry,” he said.

For Abouhriba, the state of the country’s economy — wracked by inflation and conflict — is more stark evidence that life was better under Qadhafi.

He said Bani Walid’s attachment to the former leader stretches to his son Seif Al Islam, whose face appears on posters on the walls of town.

In July, Seif Al Islam gave a rare interview to The New York Times in which he suggested he may run for president.

MARIB, Yemen — The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said on Monday it had killed 150 Houthi rebels near Marib, as fierce fighting raged for the strategic city in a war that has raged for seven years.

Air strikes "destroyed 13 military vehicles and killed 150 terrorist elements" in Abdiya within the past 24 hours, the coalition said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The latest toll takes to more than 1,100 the number of rebels the coalition says it has killed in the past week around Abdiya which is about 100 kilometres  from Marib, the internationally recognised government's last bastion in oil-rich northern Yemen.

The Iran-backed Houthis rarely comment on losses, and the numbers could not be independently verified by AFP.

In a televised speech on Monday, rebel leader Abdelmalek Al Houthi called for continued fighting.

"We must... confront the aggression with all firmness until the siege is lifted, the aggression and the occupation ends," he said.

Tens of thousands of Houthi sympathisers took part in a rally on Monday in areas under the control of the insurgents, AFP correspondents reported.

In video footage shot by AFP, government loyalists shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest) as they fired assault rifles on a rebel position in Marib and clouds of smoke billowed from the base of a mountain range.

"We are today fighting on the southern front line" of Marib, one of them says.

"We gave the enemy an unforgettable lesson and captured some of them," he told AFP.

"We thank the Arab coalition for their air support and the strikes that they carried out against the enemy and for the destruction of their vehicles."

On Sunday, the Houthis declared on Twitter that they had advanced on several fronts around Marib, including Abdiya, where the coalition says it is pounding the insurgents.

The Houthis began a major push to seize Marib in February and have renewed their offensive since September after a lull.

The Yemeni civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa, 120 kilometres  west of Marib, prompting Saudi-led forces to intervene to prop up the government the following year.

Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced in what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations last week called for a halt to fighting in Abdiya, where it said the movement of aid to tens of thousands of people had been “extremely restricted”.

KHARTOUM — Police fired teargas on Monday at pro-army protesters in Sudan's capital Khartoum outside the office of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, officials said, on the third day of well-organised demonstrations.

Hamdok, who gathered his Cabinet for an "urgent" emergency meeting, has called recent unrest the "worst and most dangerous crisis" of the country's precarious two-year transition since the army's ouster of hardline ruler Omar Al Bashir.

The demonstrations come as Sudanese politics reels from divisions among the civilian and military factions steering the rocky transition since the fall of Bashir, who was toppled in April 2019 following mass protests.

"Riot police repelled an attempted assault on the seat of government," Khartoum state authorities said in a statement.

Before police intervened, the pro-military protesters shouted "down with Hamdok!".

Critics allege the protests are being driven by members of the military and security forces, and involve counter-revolutionary sympathisers with the former regime.

The protesters began a sit-in outside the presidential palace on Saturday, with some travelling for days across hundreds of kilometres across the vast country.

They demand the dissolution of Sudan’s post-dictatorship interim government, which is mired in both political and economic crises.

Sudan is run by a Sovereign Council, a military-civilian body that oversees the transition until elections slated for 2023, with the government led by Hamdok, a former UN economist.

“The civilian government has failed,” said Tahar Fadl Al Mawla, a 52-year-old tribal elder, speaking at a tent erected at the gates of the presidential palace.

“We want a government of soldiers to protect the transition,” he added.

A column of protesters marched from there to shout slogans outside Hamdok’s office, also in central Khartoum, but left after police broke up the rally.

Unlike many previous protest camps in the past, these pro-military demonstrations are well run and well supported, those taking part say.

Ahmad Jumaa, 65, said he travelled more than 900 kilometres from Nyala in Sudan’s western Darfur region, with one goal in mind — to replace the transitional authorities with a “military government”.

‘Very well organised’ 

Demonstrations were organised by a splinter faction of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), a civilian alliance which spearheaded the anti-Bashir protests and became a key plank of the transition.

“The uprising that toppled the dictatorship [in 2019] was self-financed,” political scientist Otham Merghani told AFP.

In contrast, “this sit-in is orchestrated by an official party”, Merghani said, adding that “some have doubts that this party is financing it”.

The mainstream FFC bloc has called for rival counter demonstrations on Thursday.

At the protest camp on Monday, volunteers distributed trays of food, while others helped pitch tents for those arriving from long distances.

“We receive food from individuals or organisations, as well as from the sit-in management committee,” said Ahmed Adam, one of those helping feed them crowd of — largely male — protesters at a large open-air kitchen, surrounded by baskets of vegetables, sacks of rice and bottled water.

“We have food and drink,” said Mohammed Issa, a 57-year-old farmer from Gedaref, some 350 kilometres southeast of Khartoum, as patriotic songs blasted from loudspeakers. “Everything is very well organised.”

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s election was a disaster for the pro-Iranian former paramilitary force Hashed Al Shaabi, with voters desperate for an economic recovery rather than shows of military muscle.

According to preliminary results the Conquest (Fateh) Alliance, the political arm of the multi-party Hashed, emerged with only around 15 MPs from the October 10 vote.

In the last parliament it had 48, which made it the second largest bloc.

The big winner, with more than 70 seats according to the initial count, was the movement of Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite Muslim preacher who campaigned as a nationalist and critic of Iran.

Hashed leaders have rejected the results as a “scam” and said they will appeal, ahead of a final tally expected in the next few weeks.

Analysts say the results show that the mainly Shiite Hashed alliance has failed to live up to the political expectations of Iraqis after entering parliament for the first time in 2018, following their major role in defeating the Daesh group.

Opposition activists accuse Hashed’s armed groups — whose 160,000 fighters are now integrated into Iraq’s state security forces — of being beholden to Iran and acting as an instrument of oppression against critics.

The Fateh MPs are also seen as having a lack of vision for economic development in an oil-rich country plagued by failing public services and endemic corruption — the very complaints behind a youth-led anti-government protest movement that began two years ago and led to this month’s elections.

Unlike in the 2018 polls, Salwa, 22, said she did not vote for the alliance this time. “All they came up with were hollow slogans,” said the student, who did not give her last name.

“My father insisted my mother and I vote for the Conquest,” but Salwa opted for former prime minister Nuri Al Maliki, who held the post between 2006 and 2014.

In the election’s biggest surprise, Maliki, an ally of Hashed and a figure close to Iran, won more than 30 seats in the 329-seat parliament.

For political scientist Ihsan Al Shamari, the Hashed’s weaponry was “a main cause” of its poor showing.

Its close ties with Iran and several instances of “appearing to be above the state” have also damaged its popularity, according to Shamari.

Since the October 2019 revolt, dozens of activists have been kidnapped or assassinated, and their movement blames the pro-Iranian camp.

Jalal Mohamed, a 45-year-old grocer, said he also did not vote for the Hashed.

“The country is in free-fall, while their leaders live in the [high security] Green Zone” insulated from everyday life, he said.

According to a source from within the pro-Iran camp, Hashed leaders have quarrelled and blamed each other for the debacle over having run rival candidates, thus fragmenting the vote.

“The different parties [in Hashed] tried to impose their own candidate in the same constituency and the votes were lost,” said the source, on condition of anonymity.

Analysts say Sadr will have to come to terms with the Hashed alliance in the negotiating process to form a government and name the new prime minister. The Hashed is still expected to carry weight in parliament through the support of members who say they are independent, and arrangements with Maliki.

Harith Hasan, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Centre, puts Maliki’s success down to running “strong candidates who resonated with the Shiite electorate, associating [him] with a strong Shiite state, rather than a state dominated by militias”.

Maliki “attracted votes from social categories that benefited from his government’s employment and patronage largesse when oil prices were at their highest”, Hasan wrote in an analysis published by the Centre.

On Saturday, a coalition of Shiite parties to which the Hashed belongs took a harder line, blaming the electoral commission for “the failure of the electoral process” and warning against “the negative repercussions on the democratic path”.

KHARTOUM — Hundreds of pro-military protesters have rallied for days in Sudan, exacerbating what Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok dubbed the “most dangerous crisis” so far in a precarious transition from decades of dictatorship.

Here is a recap of events since autocratic president Omar Al Bashir was toppled over two years ago:

2019: Bashir ousted 

On April 11, 2019, four months after mass protests sparked by a hike in bread prices spiral into demands for wholesale reform, Sudan’s army removes Bashir from power.

He is replaced by a transitional military government.

Thousands camp in front of army headquarters demanding civilian rule.

Talks between the generals and protest leaders break down.

Bloody crackdown 

Armed men move in on the protest camp on June 3 and dozens are killed in a days-long crackdown.

A feared paramilitary group that sprang from the notorious Janjaweed militia, accused of war crimes in the 2003 Darfur conflict, is blamed for the violence, but rejects allegations it was involved.

Power-sharing 

After the African Union intervenes, civilian and military factions agree to share power in a three-year transition to full civilian rule.

On August 17, a “constitutional declaration” is signed and a sovereign council comprised of leading military and civilian figures is formed three days later.

In October, the government and rebel groups who had fought Bashir’s iron-fisted rule for decades agree to a “permanent ceasefire” in the country’s three war zones.

Bashir convicted 

On December 14, Bashir is convicted of corruption and sentenced to two years in a correctional centre.

The toppled autocrat has long been wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague over charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 2003 Darfur conflict in which 300,000 people were killed.

A Khartoum prosecutor rejects extradition as not “necessary”.

2020: Unrest spreads 

On March 9, 2020 Hamdok survives an assassination attempt which many see as a bid to derail the transition.

Inflation skyrockets in April to 99 per cent and higher, with food prices soaring after borders are closed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

On June 30, street demonstrations reiterate demands for justice for people killed under Bashir and during the protests of recent years.

Bashir tried for coup 

On July 21, 2020, Bashir goes on trial in Khartoum for the 1989 coup that brought him to power.

The government announces it will devalue the currency in a bid to curb black market activity as it struggles with an “economic emergency”.

Peace deal 

In October, Sudan signs a landmark peace deal with an alliance of rebel groups.

Two key rebel groups refuse to sign and tribes in Sudan’s east also oppose it, saying it overlooks them.

Also in October, Sudan agrees to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, in what is seen as a quid pro quo for the US to remove the country from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list in December.

Ethiopia tensions 

In November 2020, conflict breaks out in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, sending tens of thousands of refugees into Sudan.

The fighting rekindles a decades-old dispute between Sudan and Ethiopia over the fertile border region of A Fashaqa. Khartoum sends troops to secure the area.

The two countries are also at odds over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, as Sudan — along with Egypt — are both downstream from Ethiopia on the Nile.

2021: Fragile government 

Sudan in February announces a new Cabinet including seven ministers from ex-rebel groups.

In June, Hamdok warns of fractures within the civilian alliance which spearheaded the anti-Bashir protests.

He also points to worrying splits within the main security blocs.

Economic mire 

Sudan embarks on tough economic reforms to qualify for international debt relief.

In February, it launches a managed float of the Sudanese pound, and in June it scraps subsidies on petrol and diesel.

The measures further hit citizens in the pocket and spark sporadic protests, but also bring long-sought debt forgiveness and unlock loans.

Pledge to 

extradite Bashir 

On August 11, Sudan’s cabinet says it has agreed to hand Bashir over to the ICC. The decision, however, awaits ratification by the ruling civilian-military sovereign council.

Failed coup, protests 

Protests in eastern Sudan block trade through the key hub of Port Sudan from September into October.

Khartoum announces on September 21 that it has thwarted a coup attempt by civilian and military plotters linked to Bashir’s ousted regime.

Hamdok says the attempt highlights the urgent need for security reforms.

Hundreds protest in Khartoum on October 16 and 17 to demand a military government, ostensibly at the behest of a splinter faction of the main civilian protest bloc.

But critics allege the protests are being stage managed by members of the security forces, including sympathisers with the former regime.