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TUNIS — Under a blazing Tunis sun, cafe owner Radhi al-Chawich is chatting amicably with customers when he lets slip he supports the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha Party, the main opponent of a power grab by President Kais Saied.

All five turn on him immediately, telling him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and that Ennahdha are all “hypocrites” and “liars”.

It is a widespread sentiment in the alleyways of Tunis’s Old City after 10 years in which Ennahdha has maintained its position as Tunisia’s largest party but has failed to win a parliamentary majority, forcing it to make sometimes unpalatable compromises.

Most people interviewed by AFP blame the party for Tunisia’s multiple crises, not the president it accuses of mounting a “coup”.

Last Sunday, Saied sacked prime minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended parliament for 30 days. On Wednesday, he ordered a graft crackdown targeting 460 businessmen for alleged embezzlement alongside an investigation into alleged illegal funding of political parties, including Ennahdha.

For supporters like Chawich, the cynicism about the party’s motives is a throwback to the dictatorship of president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, ousted 10 years ago in the Arab Spring uprisings.

The 61-year-old said the party deserved more respect for its share of the vote in successive elections since his ouster.

“We are back to the time of the dictatorship. It is a recognised party which ran for election... Let its mandate end and then we’ll see in the elections. It is the ballot box that must decide.”

Chawich said he would continue to support Ennahdha until investigators proves the party had done something wrong.

“If it turns out that they stole, and they are convicted, then I will not vote for them anymore.”

‘Chaos’ fears 

Chawich said he fears for the country’s future now that the standoff between the president and the party has come to a head. “I don’t want it to slide into chaos.”

It is a fear also voiced by the international community, which does not want to see the birthplace of the Arab Spring revert to authoritarianism or slip into violence.

But for now calm reigns on the streets of Tunis. After mobilising a few hundred supporters for a sit-in outside the shuttered parliament building on Monday, Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi has adopted a more cautious approach.

He has appealed for a “national dialogue” and for early parliamentary and presidential elections to resolve the months-long standoff between Saied and the legislature.

For political scientist Selim Kharrat, it is a pragmatic response that acknowledges the party’s limitations.

The “failure of Ennahdha to mobilise its base” for larger protests on Monday had tipped the balance of power in the president’s favour, he said.

“Ennahdha has always been ready to compromise because the party is obsessed with its own survival, haunted by the possibility of a new ban like that imposed under the Ben Ali dictatorship.”

For many ordinary Tunisians, it is those compromises that have shattered their trust in Ennahdha.

“I voted for their false promises,” said Ismael Mezir, 42. “They made a lot of promises, and in fact they were lies.”

Clothing store owner Taoufic Ben Hmida says he still supports Ennahdha but understands the disillusion among some voters.

“I like Ennahdha,” the 47-year-old told AFP.

“From the point of view of their programme, of what they imagine and plan, they are right. Ennahdha could have done great things in Tunisia. But the problem is that they have not been able to face the obstacles that have occurred.”

TRIPOLI — Seif Al Islam, the son of slain president Muammar Qadhafi, wants to “restore the lost unity” of Libya after a decade of chaos and does not exclude standing for the presidency.

He spoke in a rare interview, given to The New York Times at an opulent two-storey villa inside a gated compound at Zintan in the west of the North African country.

For years, mystery had surrounded the precise whereabouts of a man wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The 49-year-old, who before 2011 had been seen as his father’s presumed successor, said politicians in the decade since have brought Libyans “nothing but misery”.

“It is time for a return to the past. The country — it’s on its knees... There’s no money, no security. There’s no life here,” Seif al-Islam said in his first appearance in years.

After four decades in power, Moamer Kadhafi and his relatives were the target of a popular uprising in 2011.

Three of the dictator’s seven sons were killed, but the fate of Seif Al Islam, whose name means “sword of Islam” was unknown.

He was captured by a Libyan militia in November 2011, days after his father was killed.

Four years later, a Tripoli court sentenced him in absentia to death for crimes committed during the revolt.

The ICC has repeatedly asked for him to be handed over for trial.

Political comeback 

Until the interview, Seif Al Islam had not been seen or heard from since June 2014, when he appeared via video link from Zintan during his trial by the Tripoli court.

He said in the interview that he was a free man organising a political return, and that his former captors “are now my friends”.

He told the paper the militiamen eventually realised he could be a powerful ally.

In recent years Libya has been split between two rival administrations backed by foreign forces and countless militias.

In October, after Turkey-backed forces of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) routed those of eastern military strongman Khalifa Haftar, the two camps agreed a ceasefire in Geneva.

The security situation has been slowly improving since. A provisional government was agreed in March, and general elections are expected to take place on December 24.

Any possible return by Seif Al Islam to Libyan politics would face hurdles, including his conviction by the Tripoli court and the ICC warrant for his arrest.

But the Britain-educated son of Qadhafi seems undeterred, according to The New York Times.

He  said “he was confident that these legal issues could be negotiated away if a majority of the Libyan people choose him as their leader”.

The paper quoted him as saying: “I’ve been away from the Libyan people for 10 years. You need to come back slowly, slowly. Like a striptease. You need to play with their minds a little.”

Asked if it felt strange to seek shelter in Libyan homes when he was on the run in 2011, he was as enigmatic as some of the opinions expressed in his late father’s ‘Green Book’.

“We’re like fish, and the Libyan people are like a sea for us,” Seif Al Islam replied.

“Without them, we die. That’s where we get support. We hide here. We fight here. We get support from there. The Libyan people are our ocean.”

BEIRUT — Lebanon battled rapidly spreading wildfires for a third straight day on Saturday after they destroyed pine forests and threatened homes in northern areas.

The blaze that started on Wednesday in Lebanon’s remote Akkar region “is spreading quickly over large areas,” Agriculture Minister Abbas Mortada told AFP.

“It’s spreading in all directions” fanned by high winds, Mortada said, adding that it had reached neighbouring Syria.

The blaze, which has killed a 15-year-old volunteer firefighter and forced many people from their homes, gained pace overnight, according to the state-run National News Agency.

“The fires were out of control in the Jabal Akroum” region which straddles the border, NNA said.

“The area affected by the fire expanded significantly overnight... approaching orchards, farmland and some homes evacuated by their residents,” it said.

There is no official estimate of the size of the area affected.

The army deployed two helicopters early Friday to help douse the flames and more local volunteers joined the firefighting effort, NNA said.

The Red Cross treated one volunteer with breathing difficulties, it added.

George Abou Moussa of Lebanon’s civil defence said firefighting teams were working to contain the blaze.

“But there are areas we can’t reach,” he told AFP.

According to Mortada, the cash-strapped government is looking for outside help.

“The Lebanese government doesn’t have access to many firefighting aircraft,” and is pinning its hopes on assistance from Cyprus, Greece and neighbouring Syria, Mortada said.

For its part, Syria said that it has managed to contain fires spreading from Lebanese territory.

“The fire that spread from Lebanese territory to the... Qusayr region has been completely extinguished,” the state SANA news agency reported, citing the director of Syria’s civil defence.

The government’s failure to contain devastating wildfires in October 2019 was one of the triggers of an unprecedented, nationwide protest movement against perceived official incompetence and corruption.

TUNIS — Tunisia lurched further into political uncertainty on Wednesday, as President Kais Saied sacked more officials, days after he suspended parliament and assumed executive powers in what opponents labelled a "coup".

Key civil society groups warned against any "illegitimate" extension of Saied's 30-day suspension of parliament, and demanded in a joint statement a timeline for political action.

After suspending parliament and sacking Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi on Sunday, and firing the defence and justice ministers on Monday, Saied then ordered the dismissal of several top officials.

Late Tuesday, 63-year-old Saied, a former law lecturer who was a political newcomer when he won a landslide 2019 presidential election victory, issued decrees sacking a long list of senior government officials, including the army's chief prosecutor.

He has also lifted the parliamentary immunity of lawmakers, and assumed judicial powers.

Saied say his actions are justified under the constitution, which allows the head of state to take unspecified exceptional measures in the event of an "imminent threat".

On top of the political turmoil, the North African nation is beset by a crippling economic crisis including soaring inflation and high unemployment, as well as surging COVID-19 infections.

Judicial probe 

The moderate Islamist Ennahdha Party, which was the largest faction in the coalition government, has labelled the power grab a "coup d'etat", while the US, EU and other powers have voiced strong concern.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Wednesday urged Tunisia to rapidly appoint a new prime minister and government.

Further ramping up tensions, the Tunisian prosecutor's office announced on Wednesday the judiciary has opened an investigation into allegations that Ennahdha and two other political parties received illegal funding ahead of elections in 2019.

The financial arm of the judiciary opened the probe on July 14, focusing on “the foreign financing and acceptance of funds of unknown origin”, prosecution spokesman Mohsen Dali said.

Tunisians are waiting anxiously for clarity on the next political steps.

Saied, an austere law academic who has said he is determined to revolutionise the political system through the law, said he would assume executive power “with the help” of a government whose new chief he would appoint himself.

Names of possible candidates circulated on Wednesday after Saied met with representatives of national organisations late Monday.

“President Saied will be very careful in choosing the future head of government, because he wants a trustworthy and loyal person who would adopt the same policies as him,” said political scientist Slaheddine Jourchi.

The young democracy had often been cited as the sole success story of the Arab Spring.

But, a decade on, many in the nation of 12 million people say they have seen little improvement in living standards and have grown infuriated by protracted political deadlock with infighting among the elite.

The ousted government had also been criticised for its handling of the COVID pandemic. Tunisia has one of the world’s highest official per-capita death tolls.

“President Saied is faced with a great challenge: To show Tunisians and the world that he made the right decisions,” added Jourchi.

After violent clashes outside the army-blockaded parliament on Monday, the Ennahdha party said “organised thugs” were being used to “provoke bloodshed and chaos”.

On Tuesday Ennahdha said that, “for the sake of the democratic path”, it is “ready to go to early legislative and presidential elections” while demanding “that any delay is not used as a pretext to maintain an autocratic regime”.

Noureddine B’Hiri, a senior Ennahdha leader, said the party had “decided to campaign peacefully to defeat” the president’s plans.

But before any elections, “parliament should resume its activities and the military end its control”, B’Hiri told AFP.

In the 10 years since Tunisia’s popular revolution toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has had nine governments.

Some have lasted just months, hindering the reforms needed to revamp the country’s struggling economy and poor public services.

BEIRUT — A year after the cataclysmic Beirut Port blast, Shady Rizk’s doctors are still plucking glass from his body. The latest extraction was a centimetre-long sliver above his knee pit.

“Almost every month, I find a new piece... the glass is still stuck in my thighs, my legs, and I guess, in my arms,” said Rizk, a 36-year-old network engineer who was sprayed with shards during the explosion.

“The doctors said there will continue to be glass in my body for several years,” he said.

The August 4 blast that thundered through the city levelled entire neighbourhoods, killed more than 200 people, wounded 6,500 others and pummelled the lives of survivors.

This dark blotch in Lebanon’s chaotic history has since folded into a nightmarish year amid a stalled blast probe and an accelerating financial crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern times.

With no politicians held to account and the country facing soaring poverty, a plummeting currency, angry protests and shortages of basic items from medicine to fuel, many survivors are simmering in the lead-up to the tragedy’s first anniversary.

“The explosion still lives inside of me,” Rizk said, speaking to AFP from under the office building where he was when the blast went off.

“With August 4 approaching, knowing that nobody has been caught or sent to prison, the anger is hitting hard,” he added.

“It makes you want to break things, take to the streets in protest, throw Molotov cocktails, spark a fire... anything to let the anger out.”

‘Survival mode’ 

Rizk was standing on a balcony overlooking the port, filming plumes of smoke rising from a warehouse, when the hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser stocked inside it exploded in front of him.

The blast left him with more than 350 stitches and permanently impaired his vision. He can barely see at night now, making his world even darker in a country blighted by endless cuts.

But physical scars are a secondary problem, he said.

“The trauma, it rips you up inside,” said Rizk, who is now planning to emigrate to Canada. “It’s like internal crying.”

Sitting in his clinic nearby, Rony Mecattaf said he is adjusting to the permanent loss of vision in his right eye after three surgeries and several meetings with specialists in Europe over the past 12 months.

To compensate for blind spots, the 59-year-old psychotherapist always sits on the corner of the table and walks on the left side of the street.

He laughs along when his friends jokingly call him the “one-eyed man”.

Mecattaf said the past year has felt like a “shedding of illusions”.

“It’s been an incredible illusion this country, this capacity that we always prided ourselves on, on being able to have fun... to live the life,” Mecattaf said. “All of that got shattered.”

What remains is the reality of collective trauma and the lack of space to heal as the country slides deeper into chaos.

“There is a survival mode we are all in,” Mecattaf said. “This surviving process doesn’t allow for a real and healthy time to process.”

‘Home is so sad’ 

On the roof of her apartment in Mar Mikhael, a neighbourhood severely damaged by the blast, Julia Sabra said she now feels unsafe at home.

The 28-year-old singer moved back to her renovated flat five months after it was devastated by the explosion.

“My boyfriend was unconscious on the floor, blood all over his face and leg,” Sabra said.

Since moving back, she said they have been “just terrified of any sound... doors shutting, storms, winds being too loud, hearing something fall down the stairs”.

With the blast’s anniversary date approaching, Sabra said she mostly felt “rage and hopelessness”.

“You can’t get a break... you are trying to heal from a certain trauma or wound from the blast and you also have to deal with day-to-day shortages of everything,” she said.

In July, Sabra and her band — Postcards — played at the renowned Baalbek festival, including a track which explicitly references the explosion and is called “Home is so Sad” after a Philip Larkin poem.

The nagging drumbeat and ethereal vocals convey deep sadness and vulnerability, aptly capturing what has been the dominant mood for many Beirutis since the blast.

“Something changed,” Sabra said. “I’m not sure if I would say [Beirut] lost its soul, I still think it has a lot of soul, but it’s a wounded soul.”

TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that experience has shown “trusting the West does not work”, as the Islamic republic prepares for a new administration to take power.

Khamenei also blasted the US, which is indirectly involved in Iran’s talks with world powers to revive a nuclear deal, of tying its return to the accord to “future” negotiations on Iran’s missile programme and regional issues.

The 2015 deal, the signature achievement of outgoing moderate President Hassan Rouhani, gave Iran some relief from international sanctions in exchange for limits on its nuclear programme.

But it was torpedoed in 2018 by then US president Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew from the agreement and imposed punishing sanctions.

“Future generations should use this experience,” Khamenei told Rouhani and members of his Cabinet. “It was made clear during this government that trusting the West does not work.”

Rouhani’s government has been holding talks with major powers in Vienna since April on bringing Washington back into the agreement, but a deal now seems unlikely until after he hands over to President-elect Ebrahim Raisi early next month.

Raisi is an ultraconservative but has expressed support for the nuclear talks, arguing Iran needs an end to US sanctions.

Iran’s ultraconservative camp, which deeply distrusts the United States, has repeatedly criticised Rouhani over the 2015 deal.

Raisi has said his government will support talks that “guarantee national interests”, but will not allow negotiations for the sake of negotiations.

‘Future’ talks 

Khamenei said Washington has conditioned its return to the 2015 deal on including “a sentence... that [says] some issues be talked about in the future, or we will have no agreement”.

“With that sentence, they want to have an excuse for their next meddlings with the [deal] itself — missiles and regional issues,” his official website quoted him as saying.

One of the major criticisms of the 2015 deal raised by Trump was its failure to address Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its alleged interference in regional affairs.

But Tehran has always rejected bringing non-nuclear issues into the agreement, which is known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Khamenei also criticised the US for refusing to “guarantee that [it] will not violate the agreement in the future” by pulling out unilaterally, as Trump did in 2018.

“Whenever you postponed issues with agreements with the West or negotiations with the West and America and the like, you were stuck and could not progress,” he told the Rouhani government.

“Because they don’t help. They are the enemy after all.”

Trump’s successor Joe Biden has signalled his readiness to return to the nuclear deal and has engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran alongside formal talks with the agreement’s remaining parties, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Iran’s chief negotiator Abbas Araghchi said this month that the talks must “await our new administration” as Tehran is “in a transition period”.

A sixth round of talks concluded on June 20 and dates for the next round have yet to be fixed.

Rouhani, in office since 2013 and preparing to leave after the maximum two consecutive mandates, had repeatedly promised to achieve sanctions relief before the end of his term.

But earlier in July, he expressed hopes that his successor can clinch a deal to lift sanctions, insisting that from his administration’s side, “the work was ready” to be done.

RABAT — Archaeologists in Morocco have announced the discovery of North Africa’s oldest Stone Age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3 million years, an international team reported on Wednesday.

The find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in North Africa of the Acheulian stone tool industry associated with a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, researchers on the team told journalists in Rabat.

It was made during excavations at a quarry on the outskirts of the country’s economic capital Casablanca.

This “major discovery... contributes to enriching the debate on the emergence of the Acheulian in Africa,” said Abderrahim Mohib, co-director of the Franco-Moroccan “Prehistory of Casablanca” programme.

Before the find, the presence in Morocco of the Acheulian stone tool industry was thought to date back 700,000 years.

New finds at the Thomas Quarry I site, first made famous in 1969 when a human half mandible was discovered in a cave, mean the Acheulian there is almost twice as old.

The 17-strong team behind the discovery comprised Moroccan, French and Italian researchers, and their finding is based on the study of stone tools extracted from the site.

Moroccan archaeologist Abdelouahed Ben Ncer called the news a “chronological rebound”.

He said the beginning of the Acheulian in Morocco is now close to the South and East African start dates of 1.6 million and 1.8 million years ago respectively.

Earlier humans had made do with more primitive pebble tools, known as Oldowan after their East African type site.

Research at the Casablanca site has been carried out for decades, and has “delivered one of the richest Acheulian assemblages in Africa”, Mohib said.

“It is very important because we are talking about prehistoric time, a complex period for which little data exists.”

Mohib said the study also made it possible to attest to “the oldest presence in Morocco of humans” who were “variants of Homo erectus”.

Prehistoric man’s ability to “design the shape of the tool he wants”, such as the latest find, was a “very important technological advance”, he added.

In 2017, the discovery of five fossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, estimated at 300,000 years old, overturned evolutionary science when they were designated Homo sapiens.

The Moroccan fossils were much older than some with similar facial characteristics excavated from Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dating back around 195,000 years.

The “Prehistory of Casablanca” programme is the result of collaboration between the Moroccan Institute of Archaeology (INSAP), Paul-Valery Montpellier 3 University in Montpellier, France, and the French foreign ministry.

French and Italian laboratories also took part in the project.

The Paleolithic age is the first and longest period of prehistory which began more than 3 million years ago and ended 12,000 years ago.