region:the maghreb

Time for EU to stop being bystander in Western Sahara

The Western Sahara conflict is at a turning point.

UN peace talks towards a negotiated settlement are expected as early as November.

With the recent appointment of a new UN secretary general’s special envoy, former German president Horst Koehler, and the upcoming renewal of the UN peacekeeping operation (MINURSO) in a conflict that has been frozen for nearly 40 years, there is a rare window of opportunity to change the status quo.

It is in the interest of the EU, and the future of the Maghreb region as a whole, for decision makers in Brussels to stop being a bystander in the political process and use their effective policy options to create the conditions for meaningful negotiations.

This is not about the EU doing the UN’s job. But instead about the EU being an active player in the security and stability of its Southern neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, the EU’s current approach is defined by a narrow and misguided focus on trade with Morocco at the expense of the Saharawi people. This has clear negative implications for the UN political process.

In successive judgements, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU-Morocco trade agreements could not be applied to Western Sahara – which in line with international law is deemed “separate and distinct” from Morocco.

But the EU has continued on a course of undermining its own legal rulings and somehow finding a process that would support the illegal trading of Western Saharan resources through Morocco.

As the prospects of renewed UN peace talks approach, the EU cannot continue to ignore the grave consequences of its actions. As the recognised representative of the Saharawi people, the Polisario is duty bound to protect the interests of our people and of our natural resources.

We are left with no choice but to go back to the courts, which will only tie up our and the EU’s bandwidth, all at the same time when the UN and UN Security Council members are asking us to focus all our resources on the political process.

The negative impact of the EU’s actions goes further.

While the Polisario has stated clearly and publicly our position to negotiate with no pre-conditions, when the talks likely resume in November we will be sat opposite an empty chair.
Happy with status quo

Put simply, Morocco will not come to the negotiating table to agree to peacefully give up its illegal occupation of Western Sahara while the EU continues to sign trade deals which implicitly help to strengthen the status quo.

The uncomfortable reality for the EU is that Morocco neither wants negotiations nor a genuine political process; yet it is being rewarded for the illegal occupation and exploitation of our natural resources.
What about Saharawi?

A key missing element in the EU’s approach has been the will of the Saharawi people.

The EU has sadly afforded preferential treatment to Morocco’s illegal occupation of Western Sahara including by knowingly excluding from the trade talks the thousands of Saharawis forced to live in exile in refugee camps as a result of the occupation.

To highlight this, 89 Saharawi civil society organisations wrote to EU leaders earlier this year to highlight their deep concerns over EU’s trade negotiations, the absence of consent, and to remind EU leaders of the dire human rights situation under Morocco’s brutal and illegal occupation.

This leaves the Polisario with no other choice but to pursue all available legal avenues to ensure such agreements do not continue to violate our rights under international and European law.

Against this backdrop, an urgent change of approach is needed, which would see the EU finally play a genuine, impartial, and constructive role in supporting peace – including by suspending all ongoing trade negotiations and agreements which concern the territory or territorial waters of Western Sahara, appointing an EU envoy to support the UN political process on Western Sahara, and using preferential trade agreements as a peace dividend to incentivise the successful conclusion of a peace agreement.

During his recent visit to the region Koehler was clear: the ultimate goal of the political process is the self-determination of the Saharawi people.

International law is unequivocal on this.

It is high time for the EU to get behind this international objective for the sake of a sustainable future for the Maghreb built on democratic stability, prosperity, and the rule of law.

https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/euobs-media/15f1a2257d3ba26030fa3073e196bad5-800x.jpg

▻https://euobserver.com/opinion/142566
#Sahara_occidental #conflit #Sahraoui
cc @reka

Sudan, Libya, Chad and Niger sign border protection agreement

The Foreign Minister for the Libyan Government of National Accord, Mohamed Taher Siala, said an agreement to control and monitor borders among Libya, Sudan, Chad and Niger has been signed in Ndjamena.

In a statement issued on Friday, Siala said the agreement was reached to promote cooperation, to protect the joint borders and in order to achieve peace, security, economic and social development.

He said the agreement would enhance joint efforts of the four countries to secure the borders, stressing Libya’s keenness to support all efforts to fight against terrorism, illegal migration, human trafficking and all forms of cross-border crime.

In a meeting held last April, Sudan, Chad, Libya and Niger agreed to “coordinate the actions” of their armed forces to fight against the transnational “crime” in the region.

The four countries agreed “on the establishment of a cooperation mechanism for border security and the fight against transnational organized crime”.

Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and Boko Haram pose a serious threat to Niger and Chad while Sudan seeks to prevent trafficking of arms to Darfur and migration of mercenaries to Libya.

Sudan is not part of the multi-national military force in Africa’s Sahel region dubbed “#G5_Sahel force” which includes Chad, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.

The UN-backed force is tasked with policing the Sahel region in collaboration with 4,000 French troops deployed there since intervening in 2013 to fight an insurgency in northern Mali.

http://cdn-ar-1.alwasat.ly/uploads/articles/JJcPZZaTjLj2iuhkFsDD.jpg

#frontières #contrôles #frontaliers #surveillance_des_frontières #accord #terrorisme #militarisation_des_frontières #Sahel #Burkina_Faso #Mauritanie
#Soudan #Libye #Tchad #Niger
cc @isskein

Desert ‘wastes’ of the #Maghreb : #desertification narratives in French colonial environmental history of North Africa
▻http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1191/1474474004eu313oa

Founded on historical inaccuracies and environmental misunderstandings, this narrative helped to justify land expropriation, changes in land tenure, forest appropriation and the criminalization of traditional land use, all of which facilitated the colonial venture in the three Maghreb countries.

America’s Misadventures in the Middle East - Chas Freeman
▻http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/americas-misadventures-in-the-middle-east

The United States is a secular democracy. It has no intrinsic interest in which theology rules hearts or dominates territory in the Middle East. It is not itself now dependent on energy imports from the Persian Gulf or the Maghreb. For most of the two-and-a-half centuries since their country was born, Americans kept a healthy distance from the region and were unharmed by events there. They extended their protection to specific nations in the Middle East as part of a global struggle against Soviet communism that is long past. What happens in the region no longer determines the global balance of power.

U.S. wars in the Middle East are—without exception—wars of choice. These wars have proven ruinously expensive and injurious to the civil liberties of Americans. They have poisoned American political culture with various manifestations of xenophobia. Islamophobia has transitioned naturally to anti-Semitism and other forms of racism and bigotry. In the region itself, American military interventions have produced more anarchy than order, more terror than tranquility, more oppression than democratization, and more blowback than pacification.

Signalé par Sophia sur Tweeter :
▻https://twitter.com/les_politiques/status/855100730809753601

Borderlands - Power and Peripheries :

▻http://prisms.delma.io/borderlands/en

Signalé ce matin par l’ami @alaingresh que je remercie beaucoup

http://delma.io/website/addons/v2/images/6.png http://delma.io/website/addons/borderlands/sharing/en/landing.png

“A dynasty is stronger at its centre than it is at its border regions,” ​wrote the 14th-century Maghrebi scholar and statesman Ibn Khaldun.

Today, his observation continues to inform our understanding of the challenges facing states and societies in the Maghreb.

Sharing a history of trans-Saharan trading, a patchwork of ethnicities, and modern borders that define post-colonial states, the borderlands between Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya are at the nexus of the national and transnational.

Well before the first ripples of upheaval in Tunisia scattered across the region in 2011, smuggling, extremism, and conflict challenged the perception of these borders as fixed and inviolable. The uprisings that subsequently engulfed the region amplified these powerful transnational currents.

What follows is the story of borderlands, the often overlooked stage in this regional drama.

Hollande’s promise to respond militarily to the Nice attack just continues the West’s vicious circle of terror and war | Voices | The Independent
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nice-terrorist-attack-france-isis-francois-hollande-response-syria-ir

At some point, we in the West are going to have to learn that if we intervene militarily in Mali or Iraq or Libya or Syria or interfere in Turkey, or Egypt, or the Gulf, or the Maghreb – then we will not be safe ’at home’

Germany deports Afghan refugees in effort to deter new arrivals | News | DW.COM | 24.02.2016
►http://www.dw.com/en/germany-deports-afghan-refugees-in-effort-to-deter-new-arrivals/a-19070750

http://www.dw.com/image/0,,19070699_304,00.jpg

The head of the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that Berlin had sent a planeload of Afghan refugees back to their native country, emphasizing that they “had no prospects to stay in Germany.”

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere confirmed that the 125 refugees had landed in Kabul and would receive some financial support.

“The voluntary return and - in case of need - the financial support is of great importance,” he said. “It contributes to the important task of rebuilding Afghanistan.”

Slim asylum chances for 40 percent of refugees in Germany: report | News | DW.COM | 07.02.2016
▻http://www.dw.com/en/slim-asylum-chances-for-40-percent-of-refugees-in-germany-report/a-19032005

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The paper quoted statistics from the EU’s border agency, Frontex, indicating that only around 39 percent of the migrants coming into the bloc last month were Syrians, compared to 69 percent last year. Twenty-four percent were from Afghanistan, up from 18 percent, and 25 percent from Iraq, compared to 8 percent in 2015. The rest were from North Africa and the Balkans.

Refugees coming from countries other than Syria have a lower chance of being recognized as asylum seekers, the report noted. Citizens of the Maghreb countries - including Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria - and the Balkan states are categorized as economic refugees. The German government is currently working on a law to designate some nations as safe regions and enable authorities to deport citizens from these countries more easily.

More refugee deaths

The largest influx of refugees was recorded in October, with an average of 6,929 refugees arriving in Europe every day. The numbers had considerably decreased in January, when 60,466 refugees reached the bloc, the FAS reported.

Safe countries of origin? | Germany | DW.COM | 29.01.2016
▻http://www.dw.com/en/safe-countries-of-origin/a-19012766

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The three Maghreb countries, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria will be placed on Germany’s list of “safe countries of origin.” In practice, this means that people entering Germany from those countries basically have no right to asylum and cannot permanently reside in Germany on the basis of asylum claims.

The government is thereby responding to the increased number of asylum seekers from these countries. According to figures from Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), nearly 2,300 Algerians and 3,000 Moroccans traveled to Germany in December 2015. That means altogether 5,300 people entered the country, which is a substantial increase over the full year 2014, when 4,000 people from the two countries arrived in Germany.

After the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne; Algerians and Moroccans found themselves under the harsh spotlight of the public and police authorities. A great number of the alleged perpetrators came from the two North African countries.

Germany has been urging people in the war-torn central Asian country to remain there in an effort to stem the flow of migrants that has put a heavy burden on Berlin for months. De Maiziere said it was important for Germany to “help people help themselves” in economically, politically and socially devastated countries. He added that such work would be key to solving the refugee crisis. Some 1.1 million people sought refuge in Germany in 2015❞

The North of the South and the West of the East
▻http://www.ibraaz.org/essays/108

Geopolitical naming and mapping are fictions, and #fictions have creators. Take the regional name ’#Maghreb'. If you look for the ’meaning’ of Maghreb on the Internet in a standard search – which to my mind expresses the general understanding of the term – you will find the ’reference’: that is, the name of the countries within the Maghreb. If you insist, you will find the etymology of the word, and not the reference: ’the place of the setting sun’.[3] The source will also tell you, so you do not get lost, that it is in the west that the sun sets. But to the west of what, you may wonder. It may take a while to realize that the Maghreb is located on the side where the sun sets in relation to Mecca and Medina.[4]

On the other hand, if you search for the meaning of ’#Occident' (again in a standard Google search) you will find that the term incorporates the countries of the western world, especially Europe and America. If you search for the etymology, you will find that the term comes from the Latin occidentem: ’the part of the sky where the sun sets’.[5] Now, if Europe and America are countries ’to the west’ then what west are they in relation to? If you continue to search, you will find out: the west of Jerusalem.

The act of naming and mapping is always an act of #identification, and identification at this level requires someone who is in a position to name and map. Furthermore, effective naming and mapping can only be done from a position of power that overrules local senses of territoriality. Take Alfred Thayer Mahan, who in 1902 renamed a region that was identified in Orientalist discourse as the ’Near East’ with the label ’Middle East’.[6] Thayer Mahan was not interested in people, but in natural resources and strategic geo-political mapping, and a great deal of India’s territory became part of his newly identified ’Middle East’. But not everyone in the region was happy with such an identification and proceeded to dis-identify from it, making it clear that in this case, naming cartographic regions carries the weight of #imperial identification. There is never a direct relation between the name and the map on the one hand, and the people and the region on the other.[7]

Here, the consolidation and expansion contained in the act of naming and mapping is not only economic and political, but also – and above all – epistemic in terms of authority, and the management of knowledge and identities. Geopolitical naming and mapping are fictions in the sense that there is no ontological configuration that corresponds to what is named and mapped. The act is possible through a control of knowledge; and it requires epistemic privilege that makes naming and mapping believable and acceptable. That naming and mapping territories and peoples creates fictional cartographies does not mean that what is mapped and named already had an ontological existence beyond its mapping and naming, either. On the contrary, they are grounded in the interests of people, #institutions and languages (modern European vernacular languages grounded in Greek and Latin) who have the privilege of naming and mapping.

#cartographie #nommer #pouvoir #géopolitique #étymologie #langage #connaissance #epistémique

Al-Qaeda in Maghreb Recruits Locals for Jihad
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2013/04/al-qaeda-maghreb-jihadists-syria.html

Signs of a war between al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria have started lurking in the horizon.

Events took this drastic turn after AQIM issued a statement accusing groups that are trying to send jihadists from Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Western Europe to fight in Syria of coordinating with France and Arab regimes in the Maghreb. These groups are also accused of hindering cooperation with cells working on sending jihadists to Syria by way of Turkey. This is the first time that such tensions have arisen between two branches affiliated with al-Qaeda.

(Note: je ne sais pas ce que vaut el-Khabar, source de cet article.)

Article, long et plutôt intéressant, dans le National, sur la « mort » des mouvements politiques laïques arabes : The death of Arab secularism par Faisal Al Yafai.
►http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/the-death-of-arab-secularism#full

But the secular conception of the state that animated both nationalist and pan-Arabist politics was widespread in political life. It is difficult to overstate the degree of popular attachment to a secular state among the political class. With the exception of Saudi Arabia, no country of the Arab world, from Sudan and Yemen, to Iraq, to Algeria in the Maghreb, was without its secular, nationalist parties.

It is possible to say that, from the 1950s to perhaps even the 1980s, the strongest political trends in the Arab world were secular.

[…]

The Baath Party in Iraq and Syria focused their energies on ruling their respective, but markedly different, countries: persecuting the intellectuals, who were mainly secular nationalists, as threats to the regime; persecuting political religious movements while appropriating some appearance of religion; creating, in Syria under Hafez Al Assad, the illusion of participatory democracy, and, in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, an overwhelming cult of personality that stifled real political discussion. The Baath so emptied politics of ideas that there was nothing left.

The fact that those who held the reins of Arab governments in this period were secular - and backed by business and military elites who were also secular - in fact proved to be their undoing. The great intellectual rival of Arab secularism, Islamism, had precisely the opposite circumstances. Finding themselves hunted everywhere, those movements that wished to put religion at the heart of their politics had to create a mass movement with strong support and seamless organisation.

The era of the Baath is now ending. When Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003, the Iraqi Baath Party went with him. Whatever happens in Syria, the reaction of Assad’s son to the uprising has destroyed the always fragile notion of a party for all Syrians that the Baath propagandised. While the Baath will remain a trend, like communism and Marxism exist in the Arab world today, there is unlikely to be any revival.

In the same way, secularism as an idea hasn’t died. One can see it animating the politics of young people in Tahrir Square, politicians in Tunisia, liberals in Lebanon, and in what the Syrians and Yemenis and Libyans are calling for in practice. Nor has the idea of a separation of politics and religion faded from the business and military elites of most of the republics.

But secularism as politics does not exist in any organised, large-scale political form. Secularism, like any political idea, requires a political vehicle through which to express itself. And those political vehicles have yet to revive with any large degree of political support.

Cependant :

– L’article fait reposer le très fort recul des mouvements laïcs (essentiellement, ici, le baassisme et le nassérisme) sur leurs propres insuffisances et dérives, mais occulte totalement le poids des ingérences extérieures : depuis le début du XXe siècle, tous les partis laïcs ont été considérés comme les principaux ennemis des puissances qui se sont ingérées dans la région.

– L’article me semble très léger sur le fait que les pays qu’il cite explicitement ont tous d’importantes minorités religieuses qui vivent ensemble depuis des siècles. De fait, la laïcité dès le début du XXe siècle est une question incontournable pour ceux qui imaginaient l’avenir de leur propre pays, avec une indépendance qui préserve leur unité et la cohérence de leur société. Quand l’article évoque l’alternative de faire reposer l’unité du « monde arabe » sur « la foi », il oublie le fait que c’est extrêmement dangereux dans des pays avec autant de religions différentes (ou au moins que, pour les premiers architectes du monde arabe moderne, cela apparaît comme un choix totalement illogique).

– Pas réellement d’explication sur la situation des mouvements arabes laïcs qui ne sont ni nassériens, ni pan-arabes (d’autres sont pan-syriens, internationalistes ou simplement « locaux »), ni bassistes ; la saadisme est un mouvement différent, les marxistes aussi… à peine ou pas du tout évoqués, ces mouvements ont pourtant joué un rôle intellectuel important. Ce qui fait que le recul de la laïcité ne peut s’expliquer uniquement par la responsabilité des dictatures bassistes ou le déclin du pan-arabisme.

– Pas réellement de point de vue sur les évolutions économiques et/ou démographiques.

– Malgré l’évocation de la plaisanterie de Nasser sur la revendication – par un homme – du voile des femmes, pas vraiment de questionnement sur « l’avis » de 50% de la population (les femmes). Il n’est pas réellement caricatural de voir que les mouvements laïcs arabes incluent systématiquement des femmes (avec quelques figures héroïques) ; alors que les mouvements politiques basés sur « la foi » sont assez exclusivement masculins.

Les mouvements laïcs arabes ont été désignés comme cibles privilégiées par les ottomans, les français et les anglais, sont totalement antagonistes avec le sionisme (ses murs de séparation et sa vision ethno-religieuse des sociétés), sont incompatibles avec le « choc des civilisations » américain, sont évidemment inacceptables pour les wahhabites qui sont les principaux financiers de la politique régionale ; et ne passionnent pas les promoteurs de la fitna entre chiites et sunnites. De fait, certes la responsabilité des dictatures laïcisantes est important pour discréditer l’idée ; mais ne suffit pas à expliquer l’éventuel recul des idées de laïcité (surtout dans les pays qui, eux, n’ont pas connu de dictature laïque).

Frantz Fanon and the Arab Uprisings: An Interview with Nigel Gibson
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/6927/frantz-fanon-and-the-arab-uprisings_an-interview-w

The Martiniquan intellectual was skeptical of revolutions from above, as was the case with several anti-colonialist movements in the Arab World. Interestingly, while the Arabic translation of the The Wretched of the Earth came out shortly after its publication in French, it omitted many passages because they were critical of the national bourgeoisie. Fifty years later, Fanon is almost absent in public discourses in the Middle East and is still marginal in the Maghreb. The uprisings should have been an excellent opportunity for Arab intellectuals and activists to engage with Fanon’s work on the revolution and the subaltern in the new conjuncture. However, despite the significance of his political philosophy for the current revolts, his books are either out of print or conspicuously absent from many bookstores in the Arab world.

Libya’s Significance
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/741/libyas-significance

On the other side of the ledger Libya is and will remain a rentier state, and such entities have a tradition of producing absolutism and the means to keep their populations quiescent. But that is precisely why the Libyan case is of such significance. It is not Syria or Morocco, but rather the “Kuwait” of the Maghreb. More to the point, and despite its huge resources and small population, socio-economic discontent appears to have played a prominent role alongside political fury in unleashing the uprising. True, Libya is not a Gulf state and unlike the latter proved incapable of resisting the winds of change during an earlier revolutionary period. But Bahrain is already on fire, and the implication is that the prospects for upheaval in some of the latter’s neighbours – particularly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – is more than wishful thinking. Why, indeed, do the potentates of such islands of eternal stability feel suddenly obliged to gift their subjects billions if they are immune to the Tunisian virus that has become an Arab disease?

#Libye

Experiments in Map-Making « The Moor Next Door
►http://themoornextdoor.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/experiments-in-map-making

Below are some rough, experimental maps that attempt to show some of the priorities discussed last week’s post on some of the politics between the various actors in the Maghreb-Sahel region. Nothing here is perfectly depicted or with total accuracy, but they are a start toward … something. [UPDATE: Another map, after the jump.]

#sahel #aqmi #map #alqaida #maghreb #afrique