#angola

Immigration irrégulière : Londres menace l’#Angola, la #Namibie et la #RDC de « chantage aux #visas »

Selon Londres, des « milliers » d’Angolais, de Namibiens et de Congolais se trouvent en en situation irrégulière au Royaume-Uni après avoir été #déboutés de leur demande d’asile. Et leur pays d’origine ne coopère pas suffisamment pour les reprendre, accuse le Home office qui menace de réduire les visas d’entrée de ces trois pays sur le sol britannique.

Londres a menacé, lundi 17 novembre, de restreindre l’octroi de visas à trois pays africains qu’il accuse de ne pas coopérer suffisamment pour réadmettre leurs ressortissants en situation irrégulière après qu’ils ont été déboutés de leur demande d’asile. Il s’agit de l’Angola, de la Namibie et de la #République_Démocratique_du_Congo (RDC). Londres juge « inacceptable » leur faible coopération en matière d’#expulsions.

Ces trois pays « ont un mois » pour améliorer les choses, a prévenu le secrétaire d’État à l’Asile et à la sécurité des frontières #Alex_Norris sur la chaîne Sky News lundi.

Le Home office fait valoir que « des milliers de migrants en situation illégale originaires de ces pays sont actuellement au Royaume-Uni ».

Les restrictions de visas s’appliqueraient aux visas de tourisme et visas VIP (pour les personnalités de notoriété publique), a détaillé le ministère, qui prévient qu’elles pourraient s’étendre à d’autres pays, notamment ceux qui affichent « des taux élevés de demandes d’asile » de personnes entrées légalement au Royaume-Uni.

« Mon message pour les gouvernements étrangers aujourd’hui est clair : acceptez le retour de vos ressortissants ou vous perdrez le privilège de pouvoir entrer dans notre pays », a prévenu la ministre de l’Intérieur #Shabana_Mahmood, citée dans le communiqué.

La ministre doit présenter dans l’après-midi au Parlement une vaste réforme contre l’immigration irrégulière, pour tenter de réduire les arrivées de migrants au Royaume-Uni depuis le nord de la France sur de petits bateaux, des traversées qui alimentent la montée en puissance du parti d’extrême droite Reform UK. Parmi les mesures déjà annoncées, figurent la réduction de la protection accordée aux réfugiés, qui seront « forcés de rentrer dans leur pays d’origine dès qu’il sera jugé sûr » et la suppression de l’accès automatique aux aides sociales pour les demandeurs d’asile.

Le gouvernement entend également accélérer les expulsions avec le passage d’une loi qui encadrerait les recours à la Convention européenne des droits de l’Homme.

Depuis le 1er janvier, 39 292 personnes sont arrivées au Royaume-Uni à bord de petites embarcations, un chiffre qui dépasse celui de l’année 2024 (36 816).

►https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/68174/immigration-irreguliere--londres-menace-langola-la-namibie-et-la-rdc-d
#UK #Angleterre #chantage #migrations #asile #réfugiés #sans-papiers #réadmission #renvois

Immigration irrégulière : Londres menace l’Angola, la Namibie et la RDC de « chantage aux visas » - InfoMigrants
►https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/68174/immigration-irreguliere--londres-menace-langola-la-namibie-et-la-rdc-d

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Immigration irrégulière : Londres menace l’Angola, la Namibie et la RDC de « chantage aux visas »
Par La rédaction Publié le : 17/11/2025
Selon Londres, des « milliers » d’Angolais, de Namibiens et de Congolais se trouvent en en situation irrégulière au Royaume-Uni après avoir été déboutés de leur demande d’asile. Et leur pays d’origine ne coopère pas suffisamment pour les reprendre, accuse le Home office qui menace de réduire les visas d’entrée de ces trois pays sur le sol britannique.Londres a menacé, lundi 17 novembre, de restreindre l’octroi de visas à trois pays africains qu’il accuse de ne pas coopérer suffisamment pour réadmettre leurs ressortissants en situation irrégulière après qu’ils ont été déboutés de leur demande d’asile. Il s’agit de l’Angola, de la Namibie et de la République Démocratique du Congo (RDC). Londres juge « inacceptable » leur faible coopération en matière d’expulsions.
Ces trois pays « ont un mois » pour améliorer les choses, a prévenu le secrétaire d’État à l’Asile et à la sécurité des frontières Alex Norris sur la chaîne Sky News lundi. Le Home office fait valoir que « des milliers de migrants en situation illégale originaires de ces pays sont actuellement au Royaume-Uni ». Les restrictions de visas s’appliqueraient aux visas de tourisme et visas VIP (pour les personnalités de notoriété publique), a détaillé le ministère, qui prévient qu’elles pourraient s’étendre à d’autres pays, notamment ceux qui affichent « des taux élevés de demandes d’asile » de personnes entrées légalement au Royaume-Uni. « Mon message pour les gouvernements étrangers aujourd’hui est clair : acceptez le retour de vos ressortissants ou vous perdrez le privilège de pouvoir entrer dans notre pays », a prévenu la ministre de l’Intérieur Shabana Mahmood, citée dans le communiqué.
La ministre doit présenter dans l’après-midi au Parlement une vaste réforme contre l’immigration irrégulière, pour tenter de réduire les arrivées de migrants au Royaume-Uni depuis le nord de la France sur de petits bateaux, des traversées qui alimentent la montée en puissance du parti d’extrême droite Reform UK. Parmi les mesures déjà annoncées, figurent la réduction de la protection accordée aux réfugiés, qui seront « forcés de rentrer dans leur pays d’origine dès qu’il sera jugé sûr » et la suppression de l’accès automatique aux aides sociales pour les demandeurs d’asile. Le gouvernement entend également accélérer les expulsions avec le passage d’une loi qui encadrerait les recours à la Convention européenne des droits de l’Homme. Depuis le 1er janvier, 39 292 personnes sont arrivées au Royaume-Uni à bord de petites embarcations, un chiffre qui dépasse celui de l’année 2024 (36 816).

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#royaumeuni#angola#congo#namibie#sante#droit#visas#politiquemigratoire#migrationirreguliere#expulsion

Cuba’s Role in Angola Changed the Course of African History
▻https://jacobin.com/2025/11/cuba-angola-anti-imperialism-solidarity

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/10165608/GettyImages-1238295913.jpg

11.11.2025 by Antoni Kapcia - When Angola gained independence in 1975, the Cuban military came to the new government’s defense. The mission had global reverberations, from hastening the fall of South African apartheid to reshaping Cubans’ own identity and worldview.

The end of Portuguese colonial rule in Angola fifty years ago was also the beginning of a Cuban military mission that had a major impact on the country’s history, beating back a South African invasion and denying Pretoria the opportunity to bring its local allies to power. It also left its mark on the region as a whole: Nelson Mandela credited the Cuban victory over the South African army in 1988 with hastening the fall of apartheid.

When Cuba’s armed forces became openly involved in Angola in November 1975, there was a widespread assumption that Cuba was a Soviet “proxy.” Those who knew Cuba well argued that it was not that simple. They questioned whether it could really be described as a client state, and whether Moscow was really interested in becoming embroiled (indirectly) in the internal conflicts of Southern Africa.

In due course, further research shifted attention away from an interpretation that owed much to the hegemonic Cold War perspective. It slowly became clear that Cuba’s involvement had come at the request of Angola’s new People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government, to which Portugal had hastily handed control of the country.

The MPLA was now threatened by rival forces that had the backing of South Africa and the United States. The MPLA requested help from Havana based on its own close links with Cuba and the record of Cuban support for the anti-colonial struggle.
International Solidarity

From 1961 on, Cuba followed a strategy of actively supporting armed revolution and anti-colonial struggles in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The seminal Havana Tricontinental Conference of 1966 expressed this line of ideological solidarity with Third World radicals.

That policy also included support for postcolonial states against external threats, for example through military aid to defend Syria against Israel in 1973. The MPLA request in 1975 was therefore a natural step, as was Cuba’s positive response. From August, there was already a small Cuban contingent in Luanda advising on the city’s defences.

Cuba’s rapid response to the request for aid caught Moscow unawares, and Soviet leaders were embarrassed into offering logistical support despite their reservations, which echoed their previous opposition to Cuba’s insurrectionary strategy. Far from obeying the diktats of its Soviet ally, Havana was actually influencing Soviet interpretations of developments in the Global South, a pattern that was later repeated with Nicaragua and Grenada.

There was another, more domestic context for Cuba’s involvement in Angola, rooted in the country’s political culture. Solidarity with anti-imperialist forces abroad was partly an external manifestation of well-established patterns at home, as witnessed in many of the successful mobilizations and participatory campaigns since 1959.

This was all happening in a Third World that was undergoing dramatic transformations. New postcolonial governments were emerging, and many of them sought Cuban advice or assistance on the basis of past links. In Latin America, the pattern of pro-US military regimes during the 1960s and early ’70s had started to change, with more nationalist governments in many countries prepared to recognize Cuba and trade with it.

This brings into question the traditional view that Cuba ended its active support for armed struggle in the Americas after 1970 because of its economic dependence on the USSR. In fact, with the US and continental siege of the island having been loosened to some extent, Cuba could now seek allies through diplomacy rather than support for guerrilla movements.

Cuba’s regional insurrectionary strategy was not merely based on an unorthodox radical interpretation of Marxism and an ideological commitment to anti-imperialism. It also reflected the reality that Cuba had little to lose by responding in that way to siege and isolation, against the backdrop of a secret US undertaking after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis not to invade the island. Now that the isolation was easing, Havana could explore new ways of promoting Third World solidarity.

Once the MPLA and its Cuban allies had stopped the immediate military threat to Angola, Cuban aid extended into civilian areas for the construction of postcolonial infrastructure. Hundreds of technicians, medical personnel, teachers, agronomists, and even cultural workers volunteered for sustained periods. The Cuban practice of internationalism would thereafter principally express itself in nonmilitary fields, extending to more than forty countries.
Turning Point

What did all of this mean for Cuba itself? Looking back, it is clear that the country’s involvement in Angola represented a turning point in several ways.

Volunteering played an important role from the outset. The leadership in Havana made it clear that the whole enterprise would be based on that principle and called on Cuban soldiers to respond.

The scale of their response was remarkable. Indeed, many outsiders found it unbelievable, assuming that willingness to serve was the result of coercion or the promise of material benefits. Yet when academics from outside Cuba researched the phenomenon, they tended to agree that volunteering was genuine, at least in the early stages.

To understand that, we must see it in the context of popular participation in Cuba since 1959. By 1975, practical and ideological solidarity had been mobilized through mass involvement in a range of organizations — most obviously the neighbourhood Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) — and a series of campaigns to achieve defined goals, from the promotion of literacy and health to the defense of Cuba against the threat of invasion.

Through those constant collective experiences, notions of solidarity and volunteering had become familiar parts of the Cuban social fabric and political culture. Indeed, much of the nation-building project of the 1960s and early ’70s had been achieved through those mechanisms.

There were other attractions as well. For example, many people could see working abroad as a way to break their enforced habits of looking inward under the US siege, offering them new experiences. It might also give them access to otherwise scarce goods and hard currency. In addition, there was a degree of peer pressure in the workplace, with the example of volunteers persuading others to follow suit.

Eventually, however, the strategy of sending people abroad to provide assistance became a natural and prominent strand of Cuba’s foreign policy and of the lives of ordinary Cubans. Many people either worked abroad themselves or had a friend or family member who did so.
Cuba and Africa

As for the actual military effort in Angola, an early public response was a high degree of national pride. Cuba was now seen to be acting in support of a fellow postcolonial state, against both the unpopular United States and the pariah apartheid regime of South Africa. This boosted collective self-confidence about the potential for Cuba to play a global role that was clearly honorable but had previously seemed impossible.

There was also an unforeseen but significant effect of the Angolan campaign. It brought a new focus, both popular and official, on Cuba’s ethnic make-up. From November 1975, the Cuban leadership referred to the project as “the return of the slaves,” recalling the huge numbers of Africans who the Spanish colonialists had brought forcibly from Angola to boost sugar production. The official name for the campaign was Operation Carlota, after a famous Angolan slave rebel of those times.

Angola thus reminded Cubans about Africa’s cultural impact on their society and its vital contribution to the country’s economic patterns as well as its political radicalism (in all three nineteenth-century independence rebellions). This reshaped the process of defining a Cuban identity as the base of the revolution and a way of finding a place in the world.

That was necessary because Cubans had gone through a fairly typical experience where colonialism and neocolonialism shaped their identity, prompting them to accept their own inferiority and the superiority of their colonizers, and to look northward in search of collective aspirations for a future “Cuba Libre.” That pattern had continued into the period of Cuba’s questionable independence between 1902 and 1958, reinforced by substantial Spanish immigration until the 1930s.

After 1959, new policies and US hostility toward the Cuban Revolution forced the development of a new radical affinity with Latin America. This expressed itself through active support for armed rebellion in the region but also through the seminal continental cultural protagonism of Casa de las Américas. During the early 1970s, however, Cuba’s membership of Comecon, the trading network for the Soviet-led bloc, brought an end to the austerity of the previous decade. Material improvements engendered a tendency for Cubans to see themselves as potentially forming part of the “Second World.”

Cuban involvement in Angola, along with new forms of collaboration with a radicalizing Anglophone Caribbean and a visible shift to the left in Central America, served as a powerful reminder that Africa had always made a substantial contribution to shaping Cuba’s national identity. That contribution had long been subject to questioning and contestation, in spite of social reforms and official declarations after the rebel victory.

Suddenly color was no longer a taboo subject (in a supposedly colorblind society) but represented a basic element of an identity that Cubans could be proud of. The new wave of austerity that struck Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of hope that accompanied it would undermine this color awareness to some extent. Even so, such awareness now had deeper roots than before and remained a key part of the whole Cuban equation.
Legacies

In view of all this, how did Cubans continue to perceive their country’s role in Angola? The 1980s did see a slight decline in the initial enthusiasm, with an estimated death toll of around six thousand, out of more than two hundred thousand serving there. There was also a tendency in some quarters to see peer pressure as a form of state pressure, with volunteering as a means for individuals to jump queues for housing or other benefits.

After a dengue epidemic in 1980, there was a widespread rumor that it originated in internationalist volunteering. The following year, the mass boatlift of more than 120,000 Cubans at the port of Mariel, which shocked the Cuban people and their leadership alike, made complaints about Angola more audible.

However, enthusiasm and pride returned after the events of March 1988, when a force of over fifty thousand Cuban troops inflicted a major, morale-boosting defeat on South Africa’s army at Cuito Cuanavale in a standing battle.

Pride grew as the effects of the Cuban victory became clear: South African troops withdrew from Angola and Namibia shortly afterward, and the apartheid state soon began to unravel with the release of Mandela in 1990 followed by his election as the country’s president. That sense of pride even survived (and may have helped comfort people) during the crisis of the early 1990s.

Yet the same crisis also put paid to Cuba’s ability to continue with its policy of internationalism on the former scale. The provision of aid was now generally limited to assistance after natural disasters or, as in the case of Palestine, free education and training for students from the Global South.

The patience of Cubans was often strained during the crisis years, as some contrasted their daily struggles to survive on limited supplies and rationing with what they saw as Cuba’s generosity abroad. Overall, however, a commitment to the idea of international solidarity did seem to endure among many Cubans, suggesting (in the direst of dire straits) that popular belief in solidarity still had some sway.

It may also have helped that Cuba’s record of providing aid to other countries, even during crisis, elicited significant global sympathy for the country. This was on display every year starting in 1992 in the overwhelming United Nations General Assembly votes against the US embargo (ritually opposed only by the United States and Israel), fortifying a sense that Cuba was not alone. With Donald Trump having tightened the embargo even further, that sympathy might seem like a small blessing, but a blessing it was nonetheless (and perhaps still is).

The Angolan experience thus affected Cuba in several ways, mostly for the better. It enhanced many of the country’s beliefs and commitments, gained it many allies, and inspired feelings of pride (as well as complaints and resentments). Cuba after 1975 was different, and we are probably still discovering the extent and character of those differences.

#Cuba #Angola #colonialisme #impérialisme

How the US Intervened to Sabotage Angola’s Independence
▻https://jacobin.com/2025/11/angola-civil-war-independence-kissinger

Encore un anniverssire, le début d’une guerre de prèsque trrente ans.

11.11.2025 by Elizabeth Schmidt - November 11, 2025, marks the fiftieth anniversary of Angola’s independence, ending more than five centuries of Portuguese domination. The independence struggle had been long and bloody, marked by outside intervention that turned Angola into a Cold War battleground.

In this regard, Angola was not alone. In the aftermath of World War II, African independence movements sprang up in French, British, and Belgian colonies, where civilian populations had been forced to support the European war effort. In exchange for their sacrifices, they demanded political rights, better living and working conditions, and eventually complete independence.

By the early 1960s, France, Britain, and Belgium were forced to concede. They granted political independence to most of their colonies in exchange for economic privileges that provided them with the same benefits but without the hassles and expense of political control.

Portugal, in contrast, was an impoverished country with an underdeveloped economy. Without the cheap labor and raw materials that resulted from a harsh colonial regime, Portugal’s industries would not be profitable. Unable to compete in an unprotected market, Portugal was thus determined to retain political control of its African colonies. From 1961 to 1974, it waged devastating wars to keep them.
Fight for Independence

Angola was the most valuable of Portugal’s African possessions. A major producer of oil, industrial diamonds, and coffee, it was the site of significant investments by US and other Western firms. When the winds of change blew through the continent after 1945, Angolans joined activists from other countries in their demand for an end to colonial rule.

Three nationalist organizations strove for dominance: the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The MPLA’s stronghold was in north central Angola, which included the capital city of Luanda. The FNLA was based in the northwest, while UNITA dominated the central highlands.

The three movements were distinguished by ideology as well as geography. The MPLA was avowedly Marxist, with ties to the Portuguese Communist Party and eventually with Cuba and the Soviet Union. The FNLA and UNITA used anti-communist rhetoric to win international backing but accepted support from the People’s Republic of China, which was intent on countering Soviet patronage of the MPLA. Initially UNITA adopted a Maoist ideology. However, it abandoned that identity when lobbying for US aid.

Both the FNLA and UNITA spurned the MPLA’s offer to establish a common front, attacking MPLA cadres instead. By 1972, UNITA’s leader Jonas Savimbi had signed a secret pact with Portugal in which he pledged to suspend military operations against the imperial power in exchange for Portuguese collaboration against UNITA’s rivals.
Portugal’s Allies

Although Soviet involvement in the Portuguese territories was minimal in the 1960s, Lisbon claimed that it faced a Soviet-backed communist insurgency and sought support from its NATO allies. NATO countries responded by providing hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic aid that enabled Portugal to finance its colonial wars and bolster its failing economy.

It was through the NATO alliance that the United States first intervened. As part of the defense pact, the US provided military equipment to Portugal for European defense. Although Washington stipulated that US equipment must not be used in Lisbon’s African wars, it turned a blind eye when its ally funneled US weapons, tanks, planes, ships, helicopters, napalm, and chemical defoliants into its African colonies. Meanwhile, US military personnel trained thousands of Portuguese soldiers in counterinsurgency methods.

By 1974, the colonial wars had drained the Portuguese economy and taken a heavy toll on the lower classes, whose conscripted sons bore the brunt of the fighting. In April, young army officers overthrew the Portuguese regime. They established a government of national unity that included leaders of the Portuguese Socialist and Communist parties and promised to end the colonial wars.

In Angola, the Portuguese coup dramatically altered the lay of the land. China immediately intensified aid to both the FNLA and UNITA, and the CIA followed suit. In August, the Soviet Union announced its moral support for the MPLA but did not provide material aid. Instead, Moscow urged the three movements to resolve their differences through negotiations.

The result was an African-led peace initiative that produced the Alvor Agreement. Signed by Portugal and the three liberation movements on January 15, 1975, the agreement obliged the signatories to form a transitional government that included representatives from all three movements and to hold constituent assembly elections in October. The elected assembly would choose a president, and independence would be granted on November 11, 1975.
Kissinger’s War

The Alvor Agreement was violated almost immediately. Although the FNLA was the strongest movement militarily, the MPLA was far better established among the civilian population. It had developed a broader base and achieved greater popular mobilization than either the FNLA or UNITA. War would play to FNLA strengths, while peaceful political activism would benefit the MPLA.

Henry Kissinger, who served the Nixon and Ford administrations as both national security advisor and secretary of state, considered the MPLA to be a Soviet proxy and was determined to eradicate it. Rejecting the cautionary advice of Africa experts in the State Department, he promoted a CIA plan to undermine the organization.

With Washington’s public endorsement of the Alvor Agreement as a cover, the CIA resumed covert support for the FNLA less than a week after its signing, providing escalating amounts of military and economic aid. From March through May, the FNLA launched a series of attacks that killed MPLA activists in the capital and elsewhere in northern Angola.

More significant, Washington offered substantial military and economic support for the FNLA through Mobutu Sese Seko’s military regime in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). A few months after the Alvor Agreement was signed, more than one thousand Zairian soldiers infiltrated Angola to fight on the FNLA’s behalf.

Convinced that Africans were incapable of responsible government, Kissinger considered them easy targets for Soviet propaganda. Certain that Congress and the US public would oppose another distant war in the aftermath of the Vietnam fiasco, Kissinger hid his war from both Congress and the US citizenry, using proxies to fight for US interests.

According to the Kissinger plan, the white settler regimes in Southern Africa would serve as regional policemen, keeping African populations in check and serving as an important bulwark against Soviet expansion. Kissinger’s actions in 1975 and 1976 turned this region into yet another Cold War battleground.
Invasion

Moscow responded reluctantly to the US-led escalation. In March 1975, it shipped arms that enabled the MPLA to expel the FNLA from the capital, where the MPLA had significant public support.

With Moscow in the game, South African intelligence reported that an MPLA victory could only be thwarted if its state got involved. In July of that year, US and South African intelligence began to collaborate. Moving in tandem, Washington and Pretoria funneled weapons and vehicles valued at tens of millions of dollars to the FNLA and UNITA.

Moscow again responded, supplying the MPLA with more arms and military advisers. In September, East Germany followed suit, furnishing weapons, instructors, pilots, and doctors. By the end of the month, the MPLA was dominant in nine of Angola’s sixteen provinces, including the capital, the coastline from Luanda to Namibia, and the coastal hinterland. Angola’s five major ports, the oil-rich Cabinda Enclave, and most of the diamond-bearing Lunda district were also under MPLA control.

In October, the South African Defence Force began what was to be a massive invasion to thwart the MPLA’s ascendancy. By the end of the month, about one thousand South African soldiers were already entrenched in Angola. Another two thousand troops, along with planes, helicopters, and armored vehicles, were poised on the border. Joined by FNLA and UNITA units, Zairean troops, and European mercenaries, the South African contingent, with CIA encouragement, began to advance on the capital, rapidly winning the territory that the FNLA and UNITA had been unable to conquer on their own.

Until this point, Cuba’s response to MPLA requests had been relatively modest. It was only after the South African invasion in October that Cuba responded to the MPLA’s pleas for troops. Unwilling to upset a tenuous détente with the United States, Moscow had refused to supply Soviet troops — or to airlift Cuban soldiers — until after Independence Day on November 11. As the Alvor Agreement disintegrated, it became clear that whoever controlled the capital on that day would determine the nature of Angola’s government.

Convinced that South Africa would take Luanda before November 11 unless impeded by outside forces, Havana was unwilling to wait. On October 23, Cuban soldiers participated in the fighting for the first time. On November 10, MPLA and Cuban forces held Luanda against an onslaught of 2,000 FNLA and 1,200 Zairean soldiers, more than 100 Portuguese mercenaries, and advisers supplied by South Africa and the CIA.
Independence

On November 11, the Portuguese high commissioner granted independence to the “Angolan people,” instead of transferring power to any of the warring parties. The MPLA, which controlled the capital, announced the establishment of the People’s Republic of Angola.

After independence, thousands of foreign troops poured into the country. Having waited until November 11 to intervene directly, the Soviet Union embarked on a massive sea and airlift operation, transporting more than 12,000 Cuban soldiers between November 1975 and January 1976. Meanwhile, thousands of South African troops and hundreds of European mercenaries, recruited and funded by the CIA, arrived to assist the MPLA’s rivals.

By late November, the CIA’s secret Contingency Reserve Fund was depleted. On December 19, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the covert operation in the New York Times, sparking a furor in Congress. Embarrassed by the imbroglio, especially the details of US collaboration with white-ruled South Africa, Congress passed the Clark Amendment to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which banned further funding of covert activities in Angola. President Gerald Ford reluctantly signed the bill into law.

Abandoned by its allies, South Africa withdrew from Angola during the first few months of 1976. Without Pretoria’s backing, the FNLA and UNITA rapidly collapsed. By February 1976, the MPLA, with Cuban assistance, controlled all of northern Angola.

Disgusted by the collaboration between the MPLA’s rivals and apartheid South Africa, the Organization of African Unity and the vast majority of African nations recognized the MPLA government. By the early 1980s, only the United States and South Africa continued to withhold diplomatic recognition.
The Next Round

The Angolan war was on pause, but it had not ended. After a brief hiatus, UNITA resumed the fight. In 1985, the Reagan administration convinced Congress to repeal the Clark Amendment, and in 1986, Congress restored US military aid to UNITA, supplying the rebel force with some of the most sophisticated American weapons on the market, including heat-seeking Stinger antiaircraft missiles. The war against Angola continued until 2002, when UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in combat.

Angola has not yet recovered from the devastating destabilization of wars that lasted more than a quarter of a century — wars that destroyed the country’s infrastructure, claimed the lives of one million people, and drove four million people from their homes. With the country in tatters, corrupt, authoritarian leaders moved into the void, turning Angola into another African petrostate that takes from the many and gives to the few.

In a political environment that tends to blame the victim, the United States would do well to remember that Washington’s intervention was one of the major factors that crushed Angola’s prospects for establishing a successful democracy and a development plan that privileged the needs of the majority over those of the minority. Fifty years after Angola’s independence, the United States should acknowledge its role in subverting that dream and setting the stage for another failed state in the Global South. History again harbors a lesson that we would do well to learn.

#Angola #colonialisme #impérialisme

Droit d’asile

http://www.desrondsdanslo.com/images/Droit-d-Asile/CouvNED800.jpg

Jeune dessinateur de BD, Étienne rencontre des demandeurs d’asile et des jeunes en difficulté au Foyer du jeune homme de Strasbourg géré par l’Armée du Salut et financé par la Région Alsace. Portraits émouvants de jeunes ayant fui leur pays en guerre pour certains, remplis d’espoir malgré tout. Mise en abîme d’un auteur de BD se servant de son expérience personnelle pour donner la parole à de jeunes garçons dont chaque histoire est bouleversante.

▻http://www.desrondsdanslo.com/Droit-d-Asile.html

#livre #BD #bande-dessinée
#asile #migrations #droit_d'asile #MNA #mineurs_non_accompagnés #Cambinda (#Angola) #Sri_Lanka #réfugiés_tamoul #audition #récit #tests_osseux #âge

Fifty Years Ago, Angola Looked Forward to a False Dawn
▻https://jacobin.com/2025/01/angola-portugal-alvor-agreement

15.1.2025 by Klas Lundström - January 15 marks 50 years since the Alvor Agreement promised Angola’s independence from Portugal. Yet the new state was doomed to be a Cold War battleground, with Washington planners seeking to avenge their defeat in Vietnam.

Vitor Alves stops his four-wheeler along the road that leads to Cuito Cuanavale. The town in Angola’s southeastern corner has often been dubbed “Africa’s Stalingrad” due to its longtime besiegement (October 1987–June 1988) during the civil war that gripped the country throughout the final quarter of the last century. He points to abandoned and dilapidated tanks, adorned with graffiti and looted of technical gadgets, decorative items, and removable scrap metals.

“Be careful, there’re still landmines here,” Alves warns. Despite a massive nationwide cleanup effort, over a thousand minefields across Angola must still be cleared.

Alves was the son of Portuguese settlers who escaped dire poverty in their homeland under António Salazar’s fascist Estado Novo dictatorship. Born in a newly independent African nation that had suffered five hundred years of colonialism, he recalls a violent youth.

“Angola’s birth was more a Big Bang than a blank page,” he says while studying the dusty and desolate landscape that was center stage during the civil war. “The Alvor Agreement,” he sighs. “What a shit piece of work!”

The ten-page document, signed on January 15, 1975, by Portugal and Angola’s three liberation movements, promised the start of a bright future. Army captains disillusioned by the failures of Portugal’s brutal warfare in the African colonies — Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, and Angola — had overthrown the dictatorship in Lisbon during the Carnation Revolution in late April 1974, thus ending four decades of fascist rule and five centuries of colonialism.

Even as Europe’s last colonial empire was being hastily dismantled, the US Army bombed with impunity in Vietnam and Cambodia amid an oil crisis that had erupted in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Western powers dug deep to secure accessible resource wells and Chevron-Gulf began extracting oil in the Angolan enclave Cabinda in 1972, along the mouth of the Congo River.

Lisbon’s new revolutionary leadership, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), was keen to fulfill its promise of “not even one more soldier in the colonies,” and it wasted no time in pledging these lands full independence. In Angola, however, three liberation movements had waged war against Portuguese forces since the early 1960s. The Marxist-inspired Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angolan (MPLA), led by Agostinho Neto, was supported by Cuba and blessed by the Soviet Union; the United States and Zaire backed Holden Roberto’s Bakongo tribal National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA); meanwhile, South Africa’s apartheid regime, Communist China, and the United States all supported Jonas Savimbi’s black nationalist National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

UN secretary-general Kurt Waldheim traveled to Portugal in August 1974 to launch constructive negotiations between the parties but failed. Yet Kenya’s president, Jomo Kenyatta, succeeded and had Neto, Roberto, and Savimbi gathered for productive talks in Mombasa from January 3 to 5, 1975.

The Mombasa gathering led to sincere talks in Alvor, southern Portugal, starting on January 10 under the guidance of Vice Admiral Rosa Coutinho, known as the “Red Admiral” for his Communist sympathies. Despite varying ideological backgrounds, political aims, and deep-rooted mutual suspicions, an agreement was reached and signed on January 15.

Under the deal, MPLA, FNLA, UNITA, and the Portuguese government would cooperate during a ten-month period leading up to Angola’s unconditional independence on November 11, 1975. A transitional government was formed including all parties, and a united national army, consisting of soldiers from all three movements, would replace the Portuguese after their gradual withdrawal from October 1975 to February 1976. General elections were to set up Angola’s first democratically elected parliament.

On paper — historian Douglas Wheeler noted — the Alvor Agreement seemed like “a masterful piece of diplomacy and compromise” that cleared the path to a well-planned and stable future for the Angolan people. Unfortunately, it was a poor reflection of reality. The agreement depended on the premise that the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA would cooperate peacefully and strive for a common goal.

“The agreement offered a better chance than anyone had dared hope that Angola might complete the transition from colony to country without a civil war and major outside intervention,” Wayne Smith, then a Cuba expert at the US State Department, wrote in a 1976 essay.

Wheeler, however, also noted a looming power struggle that, “if the structure set up by the Alvor Agreement disintegrates,” ran the risk of resulting in a conflict that might “spread and affect a wider area of Central Africa.”

Angola’s transitional government assumed power on January 31, 1975, “in an atmosphere of deep mistrust,” writes US foreign policy expert Piero Gleijeses. Admiral Coutinho had been held captive by the FNLA in the early 1960s, during the outbreak of Angola’s colonial war, and was deemed pro-MPLA by the FNLA and UNITA. Coutinho allowed the MPLA to control the transitional government’s broadcaster, Rádio Luanda.
War

Angola was destined, however, not to be liberated but rather to be an obedient provider of resources, cheap labor, and geopolitical influence. In Washington, Henry Kissinger, President Gerald Ford’s secretary of state and national security adviser, haunted by the lost war in Vietnam, lobbied for increased American involvement in Angola’s internal affairs.

“A display of resolve in Angola would exorcize the ghost of Vietnam, and the installation of a client regime in Luanda would provide a cheap boost to American prestige and his own reputation,” writes Piero Gleijeses.

Thus, on January 22, 1975, a week after the agreement was signed, the US National Security Council’s “40 Committee” — which oversaw clandestine CIA operations — transferred $3.5 million in today’s worth to the FNLA. Shortly after, Roberto launched a large-scale attack on MPLA strongholds in Luanda and northern Angola, encouraged by the Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and the US government. FNLA killed unarmed MPLA recruits, one among numerous other atrocities, and wrecked the Rádio Luanda station.

Then and there, writes John Stockwell, CIA agent and chief of the Angola Task Force in 1975, “the fate of Angola was sealed in blood.”

A shellshocked MPLA turned to the Soviet Union, which had cut off support in 1973, for help. Faced with a situation where Washington and Beijing had formed an unholy alliance in funding the FNLA, Moscow reopened its political, economic, and military ties to the MPLA, while Cuba deployed its first military advisers to Luanda.

“At one time or another almost two dozen countries, East and West, felt the urge to intervene in the conflict,” writes historian William Blum.

In March 1975, the transitional government broke down after the Zairian army joined the FNLA in its push for control over Luanda and became a de facto invading force. At the same time, Daniel Chipenda, an ousted MPLA leader-turned-FNLA-commander, traveled to South African–occupied Namibia to persuade the apartheid regime to assist the attempt to occupy Luanda before Independence Day, on November 11.

All actors made sure war was the only outcome for an independent Angola. MPLA recruited anti-Mobutu cadres, exiled allies of Patrice Lumumba within Zaire’s own military police, and secured large-scale Soviet arms shipments. FNLA strengthened its ties to Zaire, received $30 million in covert support from the 40 Committee, and had Roberto begging for war funding from Iran, Kuwait, and Abu Dhabi. There were, however, African nations that pleaded with Neto and Roberto to work things out before the conflict reached disastrous proportions. Once again they met in Kenya, this time in Nakuru, in mid-June 1975, along with Savimbi, to broker a revised agreement that renounced any use of force.

But once again, the written words changed little on the ground. Fighting between the MPLA and FNLA soon spread from northern Angola to grip the entire country, and from then on the United States funded Savimbi and UNITA at full tilt to make sure MPLA was defeated before November.

The Organization of African Unity (the predecessor to the African Union) pleaded with Portugal to act, but Lisbon instead annulled the Alvor Agreement in late August 1975. “Lisbon has neither the means nor the will to play cop,” Le Monde reported. Portugal’s new leadership just wanted to “get out,” as noted in a US National Security Council meeting. Lisbon’s lack of control and interest facilitated the South African Army’s border crossing into Angola on October 9. It teamed up with UNITA and FNLA and advanced toward Luanda, only to be halted by a swift intervention by Cuban forces. Thus, on November 11, 1975, it was MPLA leader Agostinho Neto who became Angola’s first president as he proclaimed the former colony’s independence.

South Africa’s invasion of Angola was the product of intense American lobbying. Domestically, with the 1976 presidential election looming, Ford could not openly admit Washington’s approval of the South African intervention, instead dismissing it as Pretoria’s own initiative. P. W. Botha, then South Africa’s defense minister and later its president, countered that there was an “understanding” and an “approval and knowledge of the Americans.” He bewailed, “We were ruthlessly left in the lurch.”

On the geopolitical scene, actors sniped at one another from all directions; for the Angolan people, there was nowhere to hide. War had come.

Had the Alvor Agreement failed without sabotage by external forces? The United States proved its blatant imperialistic ambitions by replacing napalm bombing in Vietnam with proxy warfare in Angola. Furthermore, Portugal’s domestic uncertainty in the wake of the Carnation Revolution, which led to the rapid demise of an entire empire, left the door ajar for external actors to stake their claims in Angola.

The Clark Amendment to the 1976 Arms Export Control Act prohibited any form of US funding to UNITA and FNLA. The CIA, however, continued to aid UNITA illegally, which replaced the FNLA as Angola’s primary anti-Communist movement, by delivering arms to South Africa, which in turn ferried the military aid into Angola. In the 1980s, the Reagan Doctrine sprang into action and hailed Savimbi’s child soldiers and mercenaries as “freedom fighters.” When Ronald Reagan invited Savimbi to the White House in 1986, the president stated that UNITA secured “a victory that electrifies the world and brings great sympathy and assistance from other nations to those struggling for freedom.”

Human Rights Watch holds that Washington funded UNITA with “$250 million between 1986 and 1991” in addition to defending Savimbi politically as a legitimate actor. Cuban and Soviet forces aided the MPLA government against UNITA and its Zairian and South African counterparts up until the early 1990s, when South Africa’s apartheid regime collapsed along with the Soviet Union.

A peace agreement and general elections in 1992 looked set to end Angola’s carnage, but Savimbi lost the presidential vote to MPLA’s José Eduardo dos Santos, cried foul play, and returned to the battlefield. Another decade of war followed, with lucrative deals for illegal arms, mercenaries, war crimes, and blood diamonds until Savimbi was killed in 2002.

“In a beautiful slip of irony, rumor has it that the CIA, and possibly Mossad, played a significant part in pinning him down,” writes journalist Lara Pawson.
False Dawn

This year marks fifty years of Angolan independence, and as many years since the disastrous Alvor Agreement spelled a false dawn of hope and stability. Twenty-odd years since the end of the civil war, minefields remain uncleared and the responsibility for human rights atrocities and war crimes has yet to be claimed for actors on all sides of the conflict.

At the heart of Cuito Cuanavale, a monument has been erected to commemorate the civil war. It’s the first time Vitor Alves, raised on truths, lies, and legends about the last military battle between East and West during the Cold War, has visited Africa’s Stalingrad. Here Cuban forces and Soviet advisers aided the MPLA-led army (FAPLA) against the US-funded UNITA and its South African troops.

It’s a form of closure. It’s a long journey from Alvor, southern Portugal, where the agreement set out to prevent any bloodshed in the wake of the fall of the Portuguese Empire and the looming independence of Angola.

“The Alvor Agreement was dead at birth,” sighs Alves, admiring the war monument. In hindsight — given the various liberation movements’ differing aims and political visions, the outside forces jumping at the chance to exploit Angola’s natural riches, and Portugal’s lack of willingness to take responsibility for its historic atrocities and put things right — he’s not sure how things could have turned out much differently, let alone less bloodily than it did. “The wounds of colonialism were still bleeding when Angola became independent, so imagining a peaceful country to pop up in an atmosphere of trauma, despair, and war was very naive. But sure, also beautiful in a way.”

He adds, “Let the Alvor Agreement be an example for future generations on how not to solve complex conflicts.”

#Angola #Poetugal #histoire #colinialisme #guerre_froide #Cuba #apartheid

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt sur X :
▻https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1829709634912813278

NEED TO ENFORCE ARMS EMBARGO

According to information received, the vessel #Kathrin, flying with Portuguese flag, is expected to deliver 8 containers of explosives to Israel.

These explosives are reportedly key components in the aircraft bombs and missiles that Israel is deploying against besieged Gaza and in its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians. As #Namibia has rightfully denied port access to Kathrin, upholding int’l law, my hope is that #Angola will follow Namibia’s example and not consent to harbour the ship. This could be a serious breach of the #Genocide Convention.

I am also extremely concerned by #Portugal's potential sponsorship of the ship and for facilitating Kathrin’s delivery. This may be a breach of the #Genocide Convention.

Critical reminder: Any military transfer to Israel, which the #ICJ determined may be plausibly committing genocide, amounts to a breach of the Genocide Convention and of the HRC resolution 55/L.30 mandating an arms embargo on Israel.

DDR-Geschichte : Abenteuer mit der Freundschaftsbrigade in Afrika
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/ddr-geschichte-abenteuer-mit-der-freundschaftsbrigade-in-afrika-li.

L’état socialiste allemand poursuivait une politique d’aide au développement solidaire. Des milliers de jeunes diplomés y participaient et construisaient des logements et d’autres infrastructures. A la fin d’un projet les partenaires locaux en prenaient la gestion autonome. L’auteure raconte son expérience personnelle .

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Fast 13.000 Lastwagen W50 lieferte die DDR nach Angola, manche rollen noch heute. Hier zwei Exemplare im Jahr 2020 in der Stadt Calulu.

14.1.2024 von - Maritta Adam-Tkalec - Ein Weg in die Welt führte für etliche Tausend junge Leute nach Asien, Afrika und Lateinamerika – für viele Monate zur Entwicklungshilfe. Was für eine Erfahrung!

Die Freie Deutsche Jugend musste ran, sobald die DDR Außerordentliches anging – ob der Bau einer Erdgastrasse in der Sowjetunion, des Zentralflughafens Berlin-Schönefeld, des Kernkraftwerks Lubmin oder der Umbau der alten Berliner Mitte zur repräsentativen DDR-Hauptstadt.

Zentrale Jugendobjekte profitierten von der Allgegenwart der FDJ, die über straffe Strukturen für solche klar definierte und zeitlich begrenzte Projekte verfügte.

Solche Großvorhaben setzten natürlich auch auf die Begeisterungsfähigkeit junger Leute, in der Anfangszeit der DDR mit Riesenerfolg. Dem Aufruf zur Aktion „Max braucht Wasser“ 1949 folgten 2400 Jugendliche und bauten eine Wasserleitung von der Saale zum Stahlwerk Maxhütte in Unterwellenborn. Die Schüler und Studenten schliefen in Güterwagen mit Kanonenöfen und legten die fünf Kilometer lange Leitung binnen 90 Tagen.

Im Geiste dieses legendären Vorbilds zogen 1964, vor 60 Jahren, die ersten FDJ-Freundschaftsbrigaden in junge Nationalstaaten. Sie sollten Dörfer aufbauen, aber auch von der Solidarität der DDR mit den ehemals kolonial unterdrückten Völkern künden – als Botschafter im Blauhemd. Entsandt wurden keineswegs allein von Idealismus getriebene Laien, sondern qualifizierte und nach persönlicher Eignung ausgewählte Leute – SED-Mitgliedschaft erwünscht, aber es ging auch ohne.
Freundschaftsbrigaden aus der DDR in 26 Staaten

Die ersten reisten als Agrarberater ins 1960 unabhängig gewordene Mali, kurz darauf begann eine Brigade in Algerien mit dem Wiederaufbau eines im Unabhängigkeitskampf gegen Frankreich zerstörten Ortes. 1966 ging eine Brigade an den Aufbau eines Musterdorfes in Sansibar, samt einer Berufsschule für Schlosser, Klempner sowie Tischler und einer Moschee.

„Über ein Vierteljahrhundert lang arbeiteten wir in 26 Staaten an mehr als 40 Standorten und halfen mit, dort aus der Jugend Tausende eigene Fachleute für die Wirtschaft auszubilden“, schreibt eine Gruppe ehemaliger Brigadisten zu Beginn des Jahres 2024 zum 60. Jahrestag an einstige Mitaktivisten.

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Straße mit DDR-Plattenbauten in Sansibar – Ergebnis der Arbeit einer FDJ-Freundschaftsbrigade imago

Diese Einsätze in Asien, Afrika und Lateinamerika sind heute wenig bekannt. Die nach der Wende verfassten, dürftigen Studien fallen hoffnungslos einseitig aus. Zumeist fußen sie auf bürokratischen Arbeitsberichten oder auf den in der Regel als ideologischer Kulissenzauber produzierten „Brigadetagebüchern“.

Die ehemals Beteiligten erinnern sich an Schönes und Schwieriges: „Im engen freundschaftlichen Kontakt – oft weit entfernt von den Zentren der Einsatzländer und unter komplizierten Bedingungen mit einfachen Mitteln – gaben wir mit großem persönlichem Einsatz unsere beruflichen Erfahrungen und Fähigkeiten aus dem Bauwesen, dem Handwerk, dem Gesundheitswesen und der Landwirtschaft an unsere jungen, wissbegierigen Freunde vor Ort weiter.“ Einsatzbereitschaft auch über die Aufgabe hinaus und Bescheidenheit verschafften den Brigaden hohes Ansehen – zumindest hört man das noch heute aus den Gastländern.

In Angola arbeiteten mehr als 20 Jahre lang Hunderte Kfz-Schlosser, -Elektriker, -Klempner, Fahrschullehrer, auch einige Ärzte und Krankenschwestern. Die Autorin dieses Textes war als Dolmetscherin von Juli 1978 bis März 1979 dabei, davon fünf Monate in der südlichen Basis Lobito, eindrucksvoll gelegen zwischen Gebirge, Wüste und Atlantik. Das größte denkbare Abenteuer ihrer bis dahin 22 DDR-Lebensjahre.

Abenteuerlust, Neugier auf die ganz andere Welt da draußen und die Aussicht, dauerhaft Reisekader zu werden – das nennt auch Roland Scholz, von 1978 bis 1988 (mit Unterbrechung) Leiter der Zentralen Einsatzleitung der Brigaden in Angola, als Hauptmotive für die Entscheidung, sich für viele Monate, ohne Familie in unkomfortable Lebensumstände zu begeben, in Mehrbettzimmer, große Hitze, meist ohne Klimaanlage, mit instabiler Wasser- und Stromversorgung – und Myriaden von Malariamücken.

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Auch nach dem Ende der DDR arbeitete das Krankenhaus Carlos Marx in Managua weiter. Es war 1985 als eines der größten Solidaritätsprojekte der DDR gegründet worden. 2008 reiste Margot Honecker aus ihrem Exil in Chile zum Besuch an.Esteban Felix/AP

Angola wuchs zu einem der größten Einsätze von Freundschaftsbrigaden. Doch die Zuständigkeit lag bis 1986 gar nicht beim Zentralrat der FDJ, sondern in den Händen von Fachministerien (Verkehr und Maschinenbau). Auch rührte der Einsatz nicht allein aus dem Motiv, Angola nach dem Ende der portugiesischen Kolonialmacht 1975 zu helfen.

Die DDR hatte handfeste Interessen: politische, weil sich die neue Führung Angolas für einen sozialistischen Weg offen zeigte, und wirtschaftliche. Die Kaffeepreise auf dem Weltmarkt waren 1977 extrem gestiegen, die devisenschwache DDR litt und das Volk murrte, weil es nicht genug „guten Bohnenkaffee“ gab. Angola verfügte über erstklassige Kaffeeanbaugebiete. Statt „Max braucht Wasser“ galt nun „Heinz und Erika brauchen Kaffee“.

Als der Kaffee in der DDR plötzlich eine teure Mangelware wurde

Reiseweltmeister DDR: Von wegen Urlaub im Zwangskollektiv

1977 fädelte Werner Lamberz, Mitglied des SED-Politbüros, den Deal Kaffee gegen Lastwagen aus Ludwigsfelde ein, was einer Direktumwandlung von DDR-Mark in Dollar gleichkam. Allradgetriebene W50, geeignet für den Einsatz in gebirgigen Kaffeeplantagen, hatte man auf Lager – Restbestände von Militärlieferungen, ursprünglich für Verbündete in der arabischen Welt produziert, daher die saharagelbe Lackierung. Seinerzeit munkelte man, sie seien für den Einsatz im Jom-Kippur-Krieg 1973 gedacht gewesen. Das hieße: im Aggressionskrieg gegen Israel.

Den Lkw-Service in Angola sollten die Freundschaftsbrigaden etablieren und obendrein Kaffeeschälmaschinen reparieren – alles schnell, improvisierend, kostengünstig. Wer als Brigadist nach Angola wollte, sollte neben der Fachqualifikation auch Grundwehrdienst geleistet haben, tropentauglich, verheiratet und Parteimitglied sein. In meiner Brigade erfüllten die wenigsten die letzten beiden Punkte. Auch ich nicht – ledig, parteilos.

Westgeld für zu Hause

Das Gehalt (plus Tropenzuschlag) wurde zu Hause gezahlt, Unterkunft und Verpflegung hatte laut Vertrag der angolanische Staat zu stellen, dazu ein Taschengeld in der Landeswährung Kwanza im Gegenwert von 90 US-Dollar pro Monat. Wer das nicht verbrauchte, konnte es als Devisengutschein nach Hause transferieren. Das machten alle. Für die Privatkasse betrieb jeder je nach Talent einen (DDR-offiziell streng verbotenen) Tauschhandel. Billige Ruhla-Armbanduhren waren der Renner.

Zum Vorteil für alle geriet die in der „ersten Heimwerkerdiktatur auf deutschem Boden“ (so ein namhafter Historiker) antrainierte Fähigkeit zum Improvisieren. Also: mit wenig oder nur halb passendem Material kreativ umgehen und das fehlende zu „organisieren“. Für Schlosser einer Autowerkstatt in Angola waren Schrottplätze und Unfallstellen solche Quellen. Dort lagen Ersatzteile – leider auch in kurz nach der Lieferung verunfallten W50.

Bildstrecke

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_Völkerfreundschaft live: Der kubanische Koch (Mitte) aus der Nachbarschaft hat gefüllte Tintenfische serviert. Dolmetscherin Maritta hats geschmeckt. Maritta Tkalec

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Brigadist vor FDJ-Fahne im Gemeinschaftsraum der Basis Lobito. Maritta Tkalec

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Unterkunft der FDJ-Brigade Lobito, vom Atlantikstrand aus gesehen, ehemals Wohnungen portugiesischer Postbeamter. Maritta Tkalec

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Weihnachten 1978/79 am Atlantikstrand, eine eher traurige Versammlung Maritta Tkalec

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Der Schriftsteller Jürgen Leskien, der die Arbeit der Brigade einige Monate lang begleitete, schenkt Hochprozentiges aus. Maritta Tkalec

Ansonsten floss viel Energie in den Alltag: Sauberes Wasser herbeischaffen, Moskitonetze und Stromgenerator erzwingen, Bananenkisten durch ein paar Möbelstücke ersetzen, Kontakt zur Brauerei pflegen, denn Bier hebt die Laune in jedem Schützengraben und diente in Angola als Tauschwährung. Der Bauer des Ananasfeldes mit köstlichen Riesenfrüchten nahm gerne Bier, während der deutsche Farmer, seit Jahrzehnten ansässig im Hochland von Gabela, sich über ein Neues Deutschland freute.

Vom Mut des jeweiligen Basisleiters hing ab, wie viel Abenteuer möglich war: Ausflüge ins Umland, in atemberaubende Landschaften, in abgelegene Dörfer, mit dem kubanischen Krabbenfischer auf den Atlantik, zur nächtlichen Festa mit Trommeln unter Palmen, der Besuch in der Zaubermittel-Apotheke eines Heilers. Wer zu Hause von solchen Erlebnissen berichten konnte, war der beneidete Star der Familienfeier.

Für die Partei- und Jugendarbeit gab es in Luanda zwei Verantwortliche, aber Lobito lag Hunderte Kilometer weit weg. Als sie uns besuchten, hing natürlich im „Wohnzimmer“ die gebügelte FDJ-Fahne. Das Verbot, über die Arbeitskontakte hinaus keine Beziehungen in die Bevölkerung hinein zu pflegen, unterhöhlte die propagierte Grundidee von der Freundschaft der Völker, ließ sich aber umgehen.

Roland Scholz erinnert sich an die politische Stimmung der Brigadisten: „Der Solidaritätsgedanke war nicht motivierend. Und von FDJ war da anfangs noch gar nichts.“ Dennoch: Die Bereitschaft, den angolanischen Nachbarn zu helfen, den Werkstattkollegen etwas beizubringen war groß – Ehrensache ebenso wie der reparierte Motor, auch wenn es mal über den Feierabend hinausging.

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W50 als Busersatz im kubanischen Baracoa. Auch in Kuba arbeitete eine Freundschaftsbrigade. Sarang/CC0 1.0 Universal

Immer wieder rückten wir camaradas alemães aus zu Sonderaktionen am Wochenende oder wenn die örtliche Verwaltung ein besonders großes Problem hatte. Zu offiziellen Anlässen wie Kundgebungen an Feiertagen oder Kulturereignissen erschienen wir im Blauhemd. Man war froh über jede Abwechslung.

Heimweh und Seelenkasper

Und nicht jeder blieb in den langen Monaten fern von zu Hause – ohne Telefon und nur alle vier Wochen Postlieferung – psychisch stabil. Da konnten die Palmen noch so rauschen und der Atlantik in der Sonne blitzen: Zu Weihnachten kam zum Heimweh der Seelenkasper, nach reichlich Bier flossen auch die vom Vater oder Opa gehörten Landsersprüche. Ansonsten erlebten wir eine Region im Krieg. Die Rebellenorganisation der Unità überfiel Transporte, zündete Bomben vor Krankenhaus und Volksladen. Es galt nächtliche Ausgangssperre. Kubanische Militärs wohnten in der Nachbarschaft.

In den DDR-Zeitungen, die über die Freundschaftsbrigaden berichteten, fehlte das Wort „Solidarität“ niemals – dennoch blieben die Texte überwiegend in offiziösem und emotional trockenem Tonfall. Unkontrollierte Begeisterung für Abenteuer in Afghanistan, Somalia, Guinea-Conakry oder Kuba zu wecken, lag offenbar nicht in der Absicht. Dafür bekamen wir den vermessenen Anspruch zu hören, man stehe als Brigadista gemeinsam mit den natürlichen Verbündeten in den Entwicklungsländern an „vorderster Front im Kampf für den weltweiten Übergang vom Kapitalismus zum Sozialismus/Kommunismus“.

Gleichwohl: Die Männer der DDR-Führung meinten es mit der Botschaft der Brigaden – Internationalismus und Solidarität – ernst. Bei Begegnungen mit Vertretern junger Nationalstaaten gingen ihnen die Herzen auf. Auch die Taschen. Als Dolmetscherin habe ich das erlebt: Wenn DDR-Offizielle Afrika besuchten, brach sich sentimentale Erinnerung an die Träume der eigenen Jugend Bahn. Wirtschaftlich ertragreich arbeiteten die Freundschaftsbrigaden nicht. Doch sie brachten Renommee – wichtig in den Jahren, als die DDR um staatliche Anerkennung kämpfte, dann bei Abstimmungen in der Uno und schließlich bei der Suche nach Wirtschaftspartnern.

Die DDR kannte sich aus im Metier Berufsausbildung; und jeder hielt das für nützlich und sinnvoll. Die Partner wussten, dass die DDR-Brigaden mit Plan und Auftrag auch in entlegenen Gegenden arbeiteten, koordiniert und nicht nach dem Gießkannenprinzip.

Der Berliner Afrikaspezialist Professor Ulrich van der Heyden hat in seiner Studie „Freundschaftsbrigaden, Peace Corps des Ostens“ die Strategie der Berufsausbildung beschrieben: die Besten aus den Berufsausbildungszentren zur Lehrmeisterausbildung in die DDR schicken, nach deren Rückkehr Übernahme der Projekte in lokale Hände.

Das Ziel bestand von vornherein darin, sich wieder aus dem Projekt herausziehen, statt dauerhafte Abhängigkeiten zu erzeugen. Vorbildlich im Sinne der Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe. In den wenigen Projekten, die nach der Wiedervereinigung vom DED (Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst) übernommen wurden, verloren die Ortskräfte die Verantwortung. Dies erfuhr Ulrich van der Heyden von einer DED-Mitarbeiterin. Die DDR-Erfahrung interessierte nicht mehr.

#histoire #DDR #RDA #Angola #FDJ #tier_monde #Afrique #solidarité_internationale

La musique d’Angola : Un incroyable répertoire
▻https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/la-serie-musicale/bonga-5221922

https://www.radiofrance.fr/s3/cruiser-production/2023/11/baf510e2-1fff-42eb-b5de-b5c50c53cc5b/1200x680_sc_bongaaaa.jpg

La semba, ce genre musical politique, fusion de rythmes anciens, la kizomba, musique lascive évidemment poétique et presque nostalgique qui se danse, l’incontournable kuduro… L’Angola est l’un des pays dont l’histoire, terrible, n’a d’égal que la richesse de son incroyable répertoire musical.

L’Angola a connu la terrible colonisation portugaise, la très difficile lutte pour l’indépendance et une guerre civile qui a duré jusqu’en 1991. Toutes les difficultés, les souffrances, le peuple angolais les a racontées, les a chantées et a tenté de les transcender justement par la #musique, même si bien des figures musicales dans cette playlist sont mortes à cause de leurs positionnements.

Les défis du féminisme en Angola

Comment les femmes féministes s’organisent dans la lutte pour leurs droits et contre la violence politique

« Dans l’histoire postcoloniale contemporaine de l’Afrique, l’Angola est connu comme le site de l’un des conflits les plus perfides qui sévissent sur le continent. », dit Sizaltina Cutaia. Le pays qui a obtenu son indépendance du Portugal en 1975 a connu 27 ans de guerre civile entre le Mouvement populaire pour la libération de l’Angola (MPLA), l’Union nationale pour l’indépendance totale de l’Angola (UNITA) et le Front national pour la libération de l’Angola (FNLA). La victoire du MPLA en 1991 a mis fin à la guerre dans le pays et, depuis lors, ce même parti est resté au pouvoir.

Nous avons parlé à Sizaltina Cutaia et Maria Luiza, également connue sous le nom de Tchengita, militantes d’Ondjango Feminista. Ondjango Feminista est une organisation créée en 2016, guidée par la Charte des principes féministes pour les féministes africaines. Un féminisme situé dans les enjeux particuliers du contexte africain. Dans l’interview, elles nous ont parlé de la façon dont les femmes s’organisent dans la lutte pour leurs droits dans le contexte politique de l’Angola, des défis auxquels les femmes sont confrontées pour s’organiser sur un agenda féministe, et ont partagé leurs impressions et perspectives sur les prochaines élections qui auront lieu le 24 août.

▻https://entreleslignesentrelesmots.wordpress.com/2022/07/27/les-defis-du-feminisme-en-angola

#féminisme #angola

Grano : una guerra globale

Secondo molti osservatori internazionali, la guerra in corso in Ucraina si esprimerebbe non solo mediante l’uso dell’artiglieria pesante e di milizie ufficiali o clandestine, responsabili di migliaia di morti, stupri e deportazioni. Esisterebbero, infatti, anche altri campi sui quali il conflitto, da tempo, si sarebbe spostato e che ne presuppongono un allargamento a livello globale. Uno di questi ha mandato in fibrillazione gli equilibri mondiali, con effetti diretti sulle economie di numerosi paesi e sulla vita, a volte sulla sopravvivenza, di milioni di persone. Si tratta della cosiddetta “battaglia globale del grano”, i cui effetti sono evidenti, anche in Occidente, con riferimento all’aumento dei prezzi di beni essenziali come il pane, la pasta o la farina, a cui si aggiungono quelli dei carburanti, oli vari, energia elettrica e legno.
La questione del grano negli Stati Uniti: il pericolo di generare un tifone sociale

Negli Stati Uniti, ad esempio, il prezzo del grano tenero, dal 24 febbraio del 2022, ossia dall’inizio dell’invasione russa dell’Ucraina, al Chicago Mercantile Exchange, uno dei maggiori mercati di riferimento per i contratti cerealicoli mondiali, è passato da 275 euro a tonnellata ai circa 400 euro dell’aprile scorso. Un aumento esponenziale che ha mandato in tensione non solo il sistema produttivo e distributivo globale, ma anche molti governi, legittimamente preoccupati per le conseguenze che tali aumenti potrebbero comportare sulle loro finanze e sulla popolazione. In epoca di globalizzazione, infatti, l’aumento del prezzo del grano tenero negli Stati Uniti potrebbe generare un “tifone sociale”, ad esempio, in Medio Oriente, in Africa, in Asia e anche in Europa. I relativi indici di volatilità, infatti, sono ai massimi storici, rendendo difficili previsioni di sviluppo che si fondano, invece, sulla prevedibilità dei mercati e non sulla loro instabilità. Queste fibrillazioni, peraltro, seguono, in modo pedissequo, le notizie che derivano dal fronte ucraino. Ciò significa che i mercati guardano non solo agli andamenti macroeconomici o agli indici di produzione e stoccaggio, ma anche a quelli derivanti direttamente dal fronte bellico e dalle conseguenze che esso determinerebbe sugli equilibri geopolitici globali.
I processi inflattivi e la produzione di grano

Anche secondo la Fao, per via dell’inflazione che ha colpito la produzione di cereali e oli vegetali, l’indice alimentare dei prezzi avrebbe raggiunto il livello più alto dal 1990, ossia dall’anno della sua creazione.

Le origini della corsa a questo pericoloso rialzo sono molteplici e non tutte direttamente riconducibili, a ben guardare, alla sola crisi di produzione e distribuzione derivante dalla guerra in Ucraina. I mercati non sono strutture lineari, dal pensiero algoritmico neutrale. Al contrario, essi rispondono ad una serie molto ampia di variabili, anche incidentali, alcune delle quali derivano direttamente dalle ambizioni e dalle strategie di profitto di diversi speculatori finanziari. I dati possono chiarire i termini di questa riflessione.

Il Pianeta, nel corso degli ultimi anni, ha prodotto tra 780 e 800 milioni di tonnellate di grano. Una cifra nettamente superiore rispetto ai 600 milioni di tonnellate prodotte nel 2000. Ciò si deve, in primis, alla crescita demografica mondiale e poi all’entrata di alcuni paesi asiatici e africani nel gotha del capitalismo globale e, conseguentemente, nel sistema produttivistico e consumistico generale. Se questo per un verso ha sollevato gran parte della popolazione di quei paesi dalla fame e dalla miseria, ha nel contempo determinato un impegno produttivo, in alcuni casi monocolturale, che ha avuto conseguenze dirette sul piano ambientale, sociale e politico.
Il grano e l’Africa

L’area dell’Africa centrale, ad esempio, ha visto aumentare la produzione agricola in alcuni casi anche del 70%. Eppure, nel contempo, si è registrato un aumento di circa il 30% di malnutrizione nella sua popolazione. Ciò è dovuto ad un’azione produttiva privata, incentivata da fondi finanziari internazionali e governativi, che ha aumentato la produzione senza redistribuzione. Questa produzione d’eccedenza è andata a vantaggio dei fondi speculativi, dell’agrobusiness o è risultata utile per la produzione occidentale, ma non ha sfamato la popolazione locale, in particolare di quella tradizionalmente esposta alla malnutrizione e alla fame. Un esempio emblematico riguarda l’Etiopia e i suoi 5 milioni circa di cittadini malnutriti. Questo paese dipende ormai interamente dagli aiuti alimentari e umanitari. Allo stesso tempo, migliaia di tonnellate di grano e di riso etiope sono esportate ogni anno in Arabia Saudita per via del land grabbing e degli accordi economici e finanziari sottoscritti. In Sudan si registra il medesimo fenomeno. Il locale governo ha infatti ceduto 1,5 milioni di ettari di terra di prima qualità agli Stati del Golfo, all’Egitto e alla Corea del Sud per 99 anni, mentre risulta contemporaneamente il paese al mondo che riceve la maggiore quantità di aiuti alimentari, con 6 milioni di suoi cittadini che dipendono dalla distribuzione di cibo. Basterebbe controllare i piani di volo degli aeroporti di questi paesi per rendersi conto di quanti aerei cargo decollano giornalmente carichi di verdura fresca e rose, con destinazione finale gli alberghi degli Emirati Arabi e i mercati di fiori olandesi. Come ha affermato l’ex direttore dell’ILC (International Land Coalition), Madiodio Niasse: «La mancanza di trasparenza rappresenta un notevole ostacolo all’attuazione di un sistema di controllo e implementazione delle decisioni riguardo alla terra e agli investimenti ad essa inerenti».

L’Angola ha varato un piano di investimenti così ambizioso da attrarre sei miliardi di dollari esteri nel solo 2013. Prima dello scoppio del conflitto civile, durato trent’anni, questo paese riusciva a nutrire tutti i suoi abitanti ed esportava caffè, banane e zucchero. Oggi, è costretto a comprare all’estero metà del cibo destinato al consumo interno, mentre solo il 10% della sua superficie arabile è utilizzata. Ciò nonostante, ha ritenuto legittimo incentivare l’accaparramento dei propri terreni agricoli da parte di multinazionali dell’agrobusiness e fondi finanziari di investimento. Ragioni analoghe guidano Khartoum a negoziare migliaia di ettari con i paesi del Golfo. Tra il 2004 e il 2009, in soli cinque paesi, Mali, Etiopia, Sudan, Ghana e Madagascar circa due milioni e mezzo di ettari coltivabili sono finiti nel portafoglio finanziario di multinazionali e dei fondi sovrani.
Non solo Ucraina

Quanto descritto serve per superare un’ottica monofocale che tende a concentrarsi, per ciò che riguarda il tema della terra e del grano, esclusivamente sull’Ucraina. Nello scacchiere globale della produzione e dell’approvvigionamento rientrano, infatti, numerosi paesi, molti dei quali per anni predati o raggirati mediante accordi capestro e obblighi internazionali che hanno fatto del loro territorio un grande campo coltivato per i bisogni e i consumi occidentali.
Il ruolo della Russia

Anche la Russia, in quest’ambito, svolge un ruolo fondamentale. Mosca, infatti, ha deciso di conservare per sé e in parte per i suoi alleati, a fini strategici, la propria produzione cerealicola, contribuendo a generare gravi fibrillazioni sui mercati finanziari di tutto il mondo. Nel 2021, ad esempio, il paese governato da Putin era il primo esportatore di grano a livello mondiale (18%), piazzandosi sopra anche agli Stati Uniti. Questa enorme quantità di grano esportato non risulta vincolata come quello occidentale, ma riconducibile al consumo interno e al bilanciamento dei relativi prezzi per il consumatore russo che in questo modo paga meno il pane o la carne rispetto ad un occidentale. Non è però tutto “rose e fiori”. Sulla Russia incidono due fattori fondamentali. In primis, le sanzioni occidentali che limitano i suoi rapporti commerciali e impediscono a numerose merci e attrezzature di entrare, almeno in modo legale, per chiudere la filiera produttiva e commerciale in modo controllato. Secondo, l’esclusione della Russia dai mercati finanziari comporta gravi conseguenze per il paese con riferimento alla situazione dei pagamenti con una tensione crescente per il sistema finanziario, bancario e del credito. Non a caso recentemente essa è stata dichiarata in default sui circa 100 milioni di dollari di obbligazioni che non è riuscita a pagare. In realtà, il default non avrà un peso straordinario almeno per due ragioni. In primo luogo perché il paese è da molto tempo economicamente, finanziariamente e politicamente emarginato. Secondo poi, il fallimento sarebbe dovuto non alla mancanza di denaro da parte della Russia, ma alla chiusura dei canali di trasferimento da parte dei creditori. A completare il quadro, c’è una strategica limitazione delle esportazioni di grano da parte ancora della Russia nei riguardi dei paesi satelliti, come ad esempio l’Armenia o la Bielorussia. Ciò indica la volontà, da parte di Putin, di rafforzare le scorte per via di un conflitto che si considera di lungo periodo.
Il grano “bloccato”

A caratterizzare questa “battaglie globale del grano” ci sono anche altri fattori. Da febbraio 2020, ad esempio, circa 6 milioni di tonnellate di grano ucraino sono bloccati nel porto di Mikolaiv, Odessa e Mariupol. È una quantità di grano enorme che rischia di deperire nonostante lo stato di crisi alimentare in cui versano decine di paesi, soprattutto africani. Sotto questo profilo, i paesi occidentali e vicini all’Ucraina dovrebbero trovare corridoi speciali, militarmente difesi, per consentire l’esportazione del cereale e successivamente la sua trasformazione a tutela della vita di milioni di persone. D’altra parte, sui prezzi intervengo fattori non direttamente riconducibili all’andamento della guerra ma a quelli del mercato. Ad esempio, l’aumento del costo delle derrate cerealicole si deve anche all’aumento esponenziale (20-30%) dei premi assicurativi sulle navi incaricate di trasportarlo, attualmente ferme nei porti ucraini. Su questo aspetto i governi nazionali potrebbero intervenire direttamente, calmierando i premi assicurativi, anche obtorto collo, contribuendo a calmierai i prezzi delle preziose derrate alimentati. Si consideri che molti industriali italiani del grano variamente lavorato stanno cambiando la loro bilancia di riferimento e relativi prezzi, passando ad esempio dal quintale al chilo e aumentando anche del 30-40% il costo per allevatori e trasformatori vari (fornai e catene dell’alimentare italiano).
Le ricadute di una guerra di lungo periodo

Una guerra di lungo periodo, come molti analisti internazionali ritengono quella in corso, obbligherà i paesi contendenti e i relativi alleati, a una profonda revisione della produzione di grano. L’Ucraina, ad esempio, avendo a disposizione circa 41,5 milioni di ettari di superficie agricola utile, attualmente in parte occupati dai carri armati russi e da un cannoneggiamento da artiglieria pesante e attività di sabotaggio, vende in genere il 74% della sua produzione cerealicola a livello globale. Non si tratta di una scelta politica occasionale ma strategica e di lungo periodo. L’Ucraina, infatti, ha visto aumentare, nel corso degli ultimi vent’anni, la sua produzione di grano e l’ esportazione. Si consideri che nel 2000, il grano ucraino destinato all’esportazione era il 60% di quello prodotto. La strategia ovviamente non è solo commerciale ma anche politica. Chi dispone del “potere del grano”, infatti, ha una leva fondamentale sulla popolazione dei paesi che importano questo prodotto, sul relativo sistema di trasformazione e commerciale e sull’intera filiera di prodotti derivati, come l’allevamento. Ed è proprio su questa filiera che ora fa leva la Russia, tentando di generare fibrillazioni sui mercati, azioni speculative e tensioni sociali per tentare di allentare il sostegno occidentale o internazionale dato all’Ucraina e la morsa, nel contempo, delle sanzioni.

Esiste qualche alternativa alla morsa russa su campi agricoli ucraini? Il terreno ucraino seminato a grano e risparmiato dalla devastazione militare russa, soprattutto lungo la linea Sud-Ovest del paese, può forse rappresentare una speranza se messo a coltura e presidiato anche militarmente. Tutto questo però deve fare i conti con altri due problemi: la carenza di carburante e la carenza di manodopera necessaria per concludere la coltivazione, mietitura e commercializzazione del grano. Su questo punto molti paesi, Italia compresa, si sono detti pronti ad intervenire fornendo a Zelensky mezzi, camion, aerei cargo e navi ove vi fosse la possibilità di usare alcuni porti. Nel frattempo, il grano sta crescendo e la paura di vederlo marcire nei magazzini o di non poterlo raccogliere nei campi resta alta. Ovviamente queste sono considerazioni fatte anche dai mercati che restano in fibrillazione. Circa il 70% dei carburanti usati in agricoltura in Ucraina, ad esempio, sono importanti da Russia e Bielorussia. Ciò significa che esiste una dipendenza energetica del paese di Zelensky dalla Russia, che deve essere superata quanto prima mediante l’intervento diretto dei paesi alleati a vantaggio dell’Ucraina. Altrimenti il rischio è di avere parte dei campi di grano ucraini pieni del prezioso cereale, ma i trattori e le mietitrici ferme perché prive di carburante, passando così dal danno globale alla beffa e alla catastrofe mondiale.

Una catastrofe in realtà già prevista.
Un uragano di fame

Le Nazioni Unite, attraverso il suo Segretario generale, Antonio Guterres, già il 14 marzo scorso avevano messo in guardia il mondo contro la minaccia di un “uragano di fame” che avrebbe potuto generare conflitti e rivolte in aree già particolarmente delicate. Tra queste ultime, in particolare, il Sudan, l’Eritrea, lo Yemen, e anche il Medio Oriente.

Gutierres ha parlato addirittura di circa 1,7 miliardi di persone che possono precipitare dalla sopravvivenza alla fame. Si tratta di circa un quinto della popolazione mondiale, con riferimento in particolare a quarantacinque paesi africani, diciotto dei quali dipendono per oltre il 50% dal grano ucraino e russo. Oltre a questi paesi, ve ne sono altri, la cui tenuta è in tensione da molti anni, che dipendono addirittura per il 100% dai due paesi in guerra. Si tratta, ad esempio, dell’Eritrea, della Mauritania, della Somalia, del Benin e della Tanzania.

In definitiva, gli effetti di una nuova ondata di fame, che andrebbe a sommarsi alle crisi sociali, politiche, ambientali e terroristiche già in corso da molti anni, potrebbero causare il definitivo crollo di molti paesi con effetti umanitari e politici a catena devastanti.
Il caso dell’Egitto

Un paese particolarmente sensibile alla crisi in corso è l’Egitto, che è anche il più grande acquirente di grano al mondo con 12 milioni di tonnellate, di cui 6 acquistate direttamente dal governo di Al Si-si per soddisfare il programma di distribuzione del pane. Si tratta di un programma sociale di contenimento delle potenziali agitazioni, tensioni sociali e politiche, scontri, rivolte e migrazioni per fame che potrebbero indurre il Paese in uno stato di crisi permanente. Sarebbe, a ben osservare, un film già visto. Già con le note “Primavere arabe”, infatti, generate dal crollo della capacità di reperimento del grano nei mercati globali a causa dei mutamenti climatici che investirono direttamente le grandi economie del mondo e in particolare la Cina, Argentina, Russia e Australia, scoppiarono rivolte proprio in Egitto (e in Siria), represse nel sangue. L’Egitto, inoltre, dipende per il 61% dalla Russia e per il 23% dall’Ucraina per ciò che riguarda l’importazione del grano. Dunque, questi due soli paesi fanno insieme l’84% del grano importato dal paese dei faraoni. Nel contempo, l’Egitto fonda la sua bilancia dei pagamenti su un prezzo del prezioso cereale concordato a circa 255 dollari a tonnellata. L’aumento del prezzo sui mercati globali ha già obbligato l’Egitto ad annullare due contratti sottoscritti con la Russia, contribuendo a far salire la tensione della sua popolazione, considerando che i due terzi circa dei 103 milioni di egiziani si nutre in via quasi esclusiva di pane (chiamato aish, ossia “vita”). Secondo le dichiarazioni del governo egiziano, le riserve di grano saranno sufficienti per soddisfare i relativi bisogni per tutta l’estate in corso. Resta però una domanda: che cosa accadrà, considerando che la guerra in Ucraina è destinata ad essere ancora lunga, quando le scorte saranno terminate?

Anche il Libano e vari altri paesi si trovano nella medesima situazione. Il paese dei cedri dipende per il 51% dal grano dalla Russia e dall’Ucraina. La Turchia di Erdogan, invece, dipende per il 100% dal grano dai due paesi coinvolti nel conflitto. Ovviamente tensioni sociali in Turchia potrebbero non solo essere pericolose per il regime di Erdogan, ma per la sua intera area di influenza, ormai allargatasi alla Libia, Siria, al Medio Oriente, ad alcuni paesi africani e soprattutto all’Europa che ha fatto di essa la porta di accesso “sbarrata” dei profughi in fuga dai loro paesi di origine.
Anche l’Europa coinvolta nella guerra del grano

Sono numerosi, dunque, i paesi che stanno cercando nuovi produttori di cereali cui fare riferimento. Tra le aree alle quali molti stanno guardando c’è proprio l’Unione europea che, non a caso, il 21 marzo scorso, ha deciso di derogare temporaneamente a una delle disposizioni della Pac (Politica Agricola Comune) che prevedeva di mettere a riposo il 4% dei terreni agricoli. Ovviamente, questa decisione è in funzione produttivistica e inseribile in uno scacchiere geopolitico mondiale di straordinaria delicatezza. Il problema di questa azione di messa a coltura di terreni che dovevano restare a riposo, mette in luce una delle contraddizioni più gravi della stessa Pac. Per anni, infatti, sono stati messi a riposo, o fatti risultare tali, terreni non coltivabili. In questo modo venivano messi a coltura terreni produttivi e fatti risultare a riposo quelli non produttivi. Ora, la deroga a questa azione non può produrre grandi vantaggi, in ragione del fatto che i terreni coltivabili in deroga restano non coltivabili di fatto e dunque poco o per nulla incideranno sull’aumento di produzione del grano. Se il conflitto ucraino dovesse continuare e l’Europa mancare l’obiettivo di aumentare la propria produzione di grano per calmierare i prezzi interni e nel contempo soddisfare parte della domanda a livello mondiale, si potrebbe decidere di diminuire le proprie esportazioni per aumentare le scorte. Le conseguenze sarebbero, in questo caso, dirette su molti paesi che storicamente acquistano grano europeo. Tra questi, in particolare, il Marocco e l’Algeria. Quest’ultimo paese, ad esempio, consuma ogni anno circa 11 milioni di tonnellate di grano, di cui il 60% importato direttamente dalla Francia. A causa delle tensioni politiche che nel corso degli ultimi tre anni si sono sviluppate tra Algeria e Francia, il paese Nord-africano ha cercato altre fonti di approvvigionamento, individuandole nell’Ucraina e nella Russia. Una scelta poco oculata, peraltro effettuata abbassando gli standard di qualità del grano, inferiori rispetto a quello francese.
L’India può fare la differenza?

Un nuovo attore mondiale sta però facendo il suo ingresso in modo prepotente. Si tratta dell’India, un paese che da solo produce il 14% circa del grano mondiale, ossia circa 90 milioni di tonnellate di grano. Questi numeri consentono al subcontinente indiano di piazzarsi al secondo posto come produttore mondiale dopo la Cina, che ne produce invece 130 milioni. L’India del Presidente Modhi ha usato gran parte della sua produzione per il mercato interno, anch’esso particolarmente sensibile alle oscillazione dei prezzi del bene essenziale. Nel contempo, grazie a una produzione che, secondo Nuova Delhi e la Fao, è superiore alle attese, sta pensando di vendere grano a prezzi vantaggiosi sul mercato globale. Sotto questo profilo già alcuni paesi hanno mostrato interesse. Tra questi, ad esempio, Iran, Indonesia, Tunisia e Nigeria. Anche l’Egitto ha iniziato ad acquistare grano dall’India, nonostante non sia di eccellente qualità per via dell’uso intensivo di pesticidi. Il protagonismo dell’India in questa direzione, ha fatto alzare la tensione con gli Stati Uniti. I membri del Congresso statunitense, infatti, hanno più volte sollevato interrogativi e critiche rispetto alle pratiche di sostegno economico, lesive, a loro dire, della libera concorrenza internazionale, che Nuova Delhi riconosce da anni ai suoi agricoltori, tanto da aver chiesto l’avvio di una procedura di infrazione presso l’Organizzazione mondiale per il Commercio (Omc). Insomma, le tensioni determinate dal conflitto in corso si intersecano e toccano aspetti e interessi plurimi, e tutti di straordinaria rilevanza per la tenuta degli equilibri politici e sociali globali.

▻https://www.leurispes.it/grano-una-guerra-globale

#blé #prix #Ukraine #Russie #guerre_en_Ukraine #guerre_globale_du_blé #produits_essentiels #ressources_pédagogiques #Etats-Unis #USA #Inde #instabilité #marché #inflation #céréales #indice_alimentaire #spéculation #globalisation #mondialisation #production #Afrique #production_agricole #malnutrition #excédent #industrie_agro-alimentaire #agrobusiness #faim #famine #Ethiopie #Arabie_Saoudite #land_grabbing #accaparemment_des_terres #Soudan #Egypte #Corée_du_Sud #exportation #aide_alimentaire #Angola #alimentation #multinationales #pays_du_Golfe #Mali #Madagascar #Ghana #fonds_souverains #sanctions #marchés_financiers #ports #Odessa #Mikolaiv #Mariupol #assurance #élevage #sanctions #dépendance_énergétique #énergie #ouragan_de_faim #dépendance #Turquie #Liban #pac #politique_agricole_commune #EU #UE #Europe #France #Maroc #Algérie

Will The Reckoning Over Racist Names Include These Prisons?

https://i.imgur.com/WtzNK1r.png

Many prisons, especially in the South, are named after racist officials and former plantations.

Not long after an #Alabama lawyer named #John_Darrington began buying up land in Southeast #Texas, he sent enslaved people to work the soil. They harvested cotton and sugarcane, reaping profits for their absentee owner until he sold the place in 1848.

More than a century and a half later, men—mostly Black and brown—are still forced to work in the fields. They still harvest cotton. They still don’t get paid. And they still face punishment if they refuse to work.

They are prisoners at the #Darrington Unit, one of Texas’s 104 prisons. And not the only one in the South named after slaveholders.

While the killing of George Floyd has galvanized support for tearing down statues, renaming sports teams and otherwise removing markers of a (more) racist past, the renewed push for change hasn’t really touched the nation’s prison system. But some say it should. Across the country, dozens of prisons take their names from racists, Confederates, plantations, segregationists, and owners of slaves.

“Symbols of hate encourage hate, so it has been time to remove the celebration of figures whose fame is predicated on the pain and torture of Black people,” said DeRay McKesson, a civil rights activist and podcast host.

Some candidates for new names might be prisons on former plantations. In #Arkansas, the #Cummins Unit—now home to the state’s death chamber—was once known as the #Cummins_plantation (though it’s not clear if the namesake owned slaves). In North Carolina, Caledonia Correctional Institution is on the site of #Caledonia_Plantation, so named as a nostalgic homage to the Roman word for Scotland. Over the years, the land changed hands and eventually the state bought that and other nearby parcels.

“But the state opted to actually keep that name in what I would say is a kind of intentional choice,” said Elijah Gaddis, an assistant professor of history at Auburn University. “It’s so damning.”

Among several state prison systems contacted by The Marshall Project, only North Carolina’s said it’s in the early stages of historical research to see what name changes might be appropriate. Spokesman John Bull said the department is “sensitive to the cultural legacy issues sweeping the country,” but its priority now is responding to the COVID pandemic.

Two of the most infamous and brutal plantations-turned-prisons are #Angola in #Louisiana and #Parchman in #Mississippi—but those are their colloquial names; neither prison formally bears the name of the plantation that preceded it. Officially, they’re called Louisiana State Penitentiary and the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

In some parts of the South, many prisons are former plantations. Unlike Darrington or Cummins, the vast majority at least bothered to change the name—but that isn’t always much of an improvement.

In Texas, for example, most of the state’s lock-ups are named after ex-prison officials and erstwhile state politicians, a group that predictably includes problematic figures. Arguably one of the worst is Thomas J. Goree, the former slave owner and Confederate captain who became one of the first superintendents of the state’s penitentiaries in the 1870s, when prison meant torture in stocks and dark cells.

“Goree was a central figure in the convict leasing system that killed thousands of people and he presided over the formal segregation of the prison system,” said Robert Perkinson, a University of Hawaii associate professor who studies crime and punishment. “Even though he thought of himself as a kind of benevolent master, he doesn’t age well at all.”

In his book “Texas Tough,” Perkinson describes some of the horrors of the convict leasing practices of Goree’s era. Because the plantation owners and corporations that rented prisoners did not own them, they had no incentive to keep them alive. If you killed an enslaved person, it was a financial loss; if you killed a leased convict, the state would just replace him. For decades, Texas prison laborers were routinely whipped and beaten, and the leasing system in Goree’s day sparked several scandals, including one involving torture so terrible it was known as the “Mineola Horror.” Goree defended the system: “There are, of course, many men in the penitentiary who will not be managed by kindness.” Plus, he explained, prisoners in the South needed to be treated differently because they were different from those in the north: “There, the majority of men are white.”

The present-day Goree Unit is in Huntsville, an hour’s drive north of Houston, but his family’s former plantation in Lovelady—about 20 miles further north—has been turned into another prison: The Eastham Unit, named for the later landowners who used it for convict leasing.

James E. #Ferguson—namesake of the notoriously violent Ferguson Unit, also near Huntsville—was a governor in the 1910s who was also an anti-Semite and at one point told the Texas Rangers he would use his pardoning power if any of them were ever charged with murder for their bloody campaigns against Mexicans, according to Monica Muñoz Martinez, historian and author of “The Injustice Never Leaves You.”

Ferguson got forced out of office early when he was indicted and then impeached. Afterward, he was replaced by William P. Hobby, a staunch segregationist who opposed labor rights and once defended the beating of an NAACP official visiting the state to discuss anti-lynching legislation.

#Hobby, too, has a prison named after him.

“In public he tried to condemn lynchings, but then when you look at his role in suppressing anti-lynching organizing he was trying to suppress those efforts,” Martinez said of Hobby. “It’s horrific to name a prison after a person like him. It’s an act of intimidation and it’s a reminder that the state is proud of that racist tradition.”

Northwest of Abilene, the Daniel Unit takes its name from #Price_Daniel, a mid-20th-century governor who opposed integration, like most Texas politicians of the era. As attorney general he fought desegregating the University of Texas Law School, and later he signed the Southern Manifesto condemning the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

The namesakes of the #Billy_Moore Unit and the frequently-sued Wallace Pack Unit were a pair of prison officials—a major and a warden—who died in 1981 while trying to murder a Black prisoner. According to Michael Berryhill, a Texas Southern University journalism professor who wrote a book on the case, it was such a clear case of self-defense that three Texas juries decided to let the prisoner off.

“They should not have prisons named after them,” Berryhill said. He called it “a stain” on the Texas prison system’s reputation.

In Alabama, the #Draper Correctional Center is named after #Hamp_Draper, a state prison director who also served as an interim leader—or “imperial representative”—in the #Ku_Klux_Klan, as former University of Alabama professor Glenn Feldman noted in his 1999 book on the state’s Klan history. The prison closed for a time in 2018 then re-opened earlier this year as a quarantine site for new intakes.

In New York City, the scandal-prone #Rikers Island jail is one of a few that’s actually generated calls for a name change, based on the namesake family’s ties to slavery. One member of the Dutch immigrant clan, #Richard_Riker, served as a criminal court judge in the early 1800s and was known as part of the “#Kidnapping_Club” because he so often abused the Fugitive Slave Act to send free Blacks into slavery.

To be sure, most prisons are not named for plantations, slave owners or other sundry racists and bigots—at least not directly. Most states name their prisons geographically, using cardinal directions or nearby cities.

But some of those geographic names can be problematic. In Florida, Jackson Correctional Institution shares a name with its home county. But Jackson County is named after the nation’s seventh president, #Andrew_Jackson, who was a slave owner obsessed with removing Native people to make room for more plantations. Less than an hour to the south, #Calhoun Correctional Institution also bears the name of its county, which is in turn named after John C. Calhoun—Jackson’s rabidly pro-slavery vice president. The same is true of Georgia’s Calhoun State Prison.

Also in #Georgia, Lee State Prison is in Lee County, which is named in honor of #Henry_Lee_III, the patriarch of a slave-owning family and the father of Robert E. Lee. A little further northeast, Lee County in South Carolina—home to violence-plagued Lee Correctional Institution—is named after the Confederate general himself.

In #Arkansas, the namesake of #Forrest City—home to two eponymous federal prisons—is #Nathan_Bedford_Forrest, a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan who also controlled leased convicts in the entire state of Mississippi at one point.

To many experts, the idea of changing prison names feels a bit like putting lipstick on a pig: No matter what you call it, a prison is still a prison. It still holds people who are not free. They are still disproportionately Black and brown.

“If you are talking about the inhumanity, the daily violence these prisons perform, then who these prisons are named after is useful in understanding that,” Martinez said. “But what would it do to name it after somebody inspiring? It’s still a symbol of oppression.”

But to Anthony Graves, a Texas man who spent 12 years on death row after he was wrongfully convicted of capital murder, the racist names are a “slap in the face of the justice system itself.” New names could be a powerful signal of new priorities.

“At the end of the day the mentality in these prisons is still, ‘This is my plantation and you are my slaves,’” he said. “To change that we have to start somewhere and maybe if we change the name we can start to change the culture.”

▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/29/will-the-reckoning-over-racist-names-include-these-prisons

#prisons #USA #Etats-Unis #toponymie #toponymie_politique #esclavage #Thomas_Goree #Goree #James_Ferguson #William_Hobby #John_Calhoun

Sajid Javid clears England’s travel red list as Omicron takes hold | Transport policy | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/14/englands-travel-red-list-to-be-cleared-again-as-omicron-takes-hold
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0bb5c74d6e582ccd553dae044f23b34285936e8b/0_0_6278_3767/master/6278.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

Sajid Javid clears England’s travel red list as Omicron takes hold
All 11 countries to be removed from list as concerns about importing variant diminish
All 11 countries on England’s travel red list are to be taken off it from 4am on Wednesday, amid diminishing concern about Omicron cases being imported into the country.Given that the variant has already taken hold in the UK – making up a third of new infections in London – the health secretary, Sajid Javid, announced that mandatory hotel quarantine for those arriving from some southern African countries was set to end.Instead, all travellers arriving in England will be able to isolate at home. If double-vaccinated, they can be released with a negative PCR test taken within two days of arrival. If not they must stay at home for 10 days and get a test before day two and another on day eight or later.The red list was cleared at the end of October, but after the discovery of the Omicron variant in South Africa, 11 countries were put back on it. They were: Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.Omicron’s spread through the UK has been swift. The UK Health Security Agency said on Monday that the number of confirmed cases of the variant was 4,700, but estimated daily infections were about 200,000.Javid announced in parliament on Tuesday that the red list was being emptied, saying it had become “less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad”. He said the requirement to get tested before departure would remain in place.He had hinted at the move in a statement to the Commons last week. Under pressure from Tory MPs who raised concerns about the aviation and tourism sectors, Javid said that because Omicron cases would probably spread quickly in the UK, there would be “less need to have any kind of travel restrictions at all”.As health restrictions are devolved, it will be up to the administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland whether to follow suit.Last week, EU leaders discussed easing similar curbs. Reuters reported a senior official as saying the travel ban was “a time-limited measure” but there were no immediate plans to lift it.The US has kept up its own travel ban, with the White House’s chief medical adviser saying action was taken when the country was “in the dark” about the variant, to give time to assess its threat.Some political leaders in southern Africa said the restrictions were unfair. Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the action. According to the BBC, he said: “The only thing the prohibition on travel will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to, and recover from, the pandemic.”Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank Group, tweeted last week: “Now that Omicron has been found in many non-African and developed countries, why are travels from those countries not banned? Singling out African countries is very unfair, non-scientific and discriminatory.”

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#grandebretagne#omicron#sante#angola#botswana#eswantini#lesotho#malawi#mozambique#namibie#nigeria#africadusud#zambie#zimbabwe#frontiere#circulation#santepublique#restrictionsanitaire

Coronavirus: UK lifts Omicron travel ban for 11 African nations | South China Morning Post
▻https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3159718/coronavirus-uk-lifts-omicron-travel-ban-11-african-nations

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/og_image_scmp_coronavirus_generic/public/d8/images/canvas/2021/12/14/42cc3448-fa2d-46f1-a222-c4fff6089e7c_90753eed.jpg?itok=5Gp7LFHj&v=1639495229

Coronavirus: UK lifts Omicron travel ban for 11 African nations
Countries on the UK’s travel red list include South Africa, Zambia and Botswana. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the measure is less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad as the new variant has already taken hold in Britain
Britain will remove all 11 countries from its Covid-19 travel red list from Wednesday because there is now community transmission of Omicron, Health Secretary Sajid Javid told parliament.The British government added the southern African countries to its red list in late November, meaning that entry was only allowed to UK citizens or residents who then must quarantine in a hotel, in a bid to slow the spread of the new variant.“Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad,” Javid said.
UK’s PM Boris Johnson accused of ‘culture of disregard’ for Covid-19 rules
13 Dec 2021“Whilst we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4am tomorrow morning.”Britain requires all inbound travellers to take either a PCR or a rapid lateral flow test a maximum of 48 hours before departure.Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said these testing measures would be reviewed in the first week of January.
What do we know about the new coronavirus variant Omicron?“As always, we keep all our travel measures under review and we may impose new restrictions should there be a need to do so to protect public health,” he said on Twitter.The 11 countries which will be removed from the list are Angola, Botswana, Eswantini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#grandebretagne#omicron#sante#angola#botswana#eswantini#lesotho#malawi#mozambique#namibie#nigeria#africadusud#zambie#zimbabwe#frontiere#circulation#santepublique#restrictionsanitaire

L’exposition « Refuser la guerre coloniale, une histoire portugaise »

https://histoirecoloniale.net/IMG/jpg/1-61.jpg

A la maison du Portugal de la Cité universitaire internationale de Paris a lieu une exposition sur l’engagement des années 1960 et 1970 contre les guerres coloniales menées par le Portugal en #Guinée-Bissau, #Angola et #Mozambique. Elle traite de l’exil parisien des 200’000 Portugais #déserteurs et insoumis à cette guerre.

▻https://histoirecoloniale.net/L-exposition-Refuser-la-guerre-coloniale-une-histoire-portugaise-

#résistance #désobéissance_civile #colonisation #guerre_coloniale #histoire #Portugal #exposition #France #exil

ping @isskein

RI
#Energies et #Relations_Internationales
Pétrole et paranoïa, par Pierre Rimbert (Le Monde diplomatique, avril 2015)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2015/04/RIMBERT/52870

Gaz de schiste, la grande escroquerie, par Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed (Le Monde diplomatique, mars 2013)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2013/03/AHMED/48823

Maudit pétrole bon marché, par Michael T. Klare (Le Monde diplomatique, avril 2016)
▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/04/KLARE/55199

Choc pétrolier : les finances des producteurs africains dans le rouge. Par Martin Mateso
►http://geopolis.francetvinfo.fr/choc-petrolier-les-finances-des-producteurs-africains-dans-le-
#Cemac #Tchad #Angola #Portugal #Afrique

Le Nigeria renonce à 90 représentations diplomatiques pour réduire ses dépenses
▻http://geopolis.francetvinfo.fr/le-nigeria-renonce-a-90-representations-diplomatiques-pour-red

Le Nigéria prévoit de se retirer de certaines organisations internationales pour limiter les dépenses - Agence Afrique
▻http://www.agenceafrique.com/11517-nigeria-prevoit-de-se-retirer-de-certaines-organisations-intern

« Le Nigéria vient à peine de sortir de la récession dans laquelle il était plongé depuis presque deux ans. Ce premier producteur de pétrole sur le continent africain a été frappé par la chute des cours de l’or noir »

Batailles commerciales pour éclairer l’Afrique, par Aurélien Bernier (Le Monde diplomatique, février 2018)
►https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/02/BERNIER/58354

Une dépendance aux matières premières jamais résolue, par Renaud Lambert (Le Monde diplomatique, janvier 2016)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/01/LAMBERT/54474
#Discours_orthodoxes #Orthodoxie #Amérique_latine #Amérique_du_Sud

Pétrole et Moyen-Orient : le dessous des cartes … par Benjamin Louvet
►http://leseconoclastes.fr/2016/01/petrole-moyen-orient-le-dessous-des-cartes-a-travers-le-prisme-petro

« en Syrie aussi, ce sont les ressources énergétiques qui sont au centre des raisons du conflit. Plus précisément, le gaz du champ géant de South Pars, plus grand champ de gaz au monde, situé au milieu du Golfe Persique, et dont les droits d’exploitation sont répartis entre le Qatar et l’Iran. Ces deux pays exploitent donc ce champ chacun de leur côté et cherchent un moyen d’exporter leur gaz sur le marché international.

Et c’est là que la Syrie joue un rôle central. Car pour rejoindre le marché international du gaz, l’Iran et le Qatar ont tous deux un projet de pipeline qui passe, à un moment donné, par le territoire syrien, mais avec des ambitions stratégiques totalement différentes. Le pipeline qatari prévoit ainsi de se connecter au projet de gazoduc Nabucco, ouvrage pensé par les européens pour alimenter leur marché en énergie en s’affranchissant du gaz… russe.

De son côté, la Russie envisage plutôt un projet de pipeline partant de Syrie pour se raccorder au gazoduc South Stream, projet de pipeline russe. »

La guerre d’Irak était BIEN une guerre du pétrole (cette fois, c’est prouvé !) par Matthieu Auzanneau | Oil Man
▻http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/06/14/la-guerre-dirak-etait-bien-une-guerre-du-petrole-cette-fois-ces

« Après avoir quitté le gouvernement, Lady Symons, aujourd’hui âgée de 59 ans, est devenue conseillère de la banque d’affaires MerchantBridge, qui a réalisé d’importants profits dans des contrats de reconstruction dans l’Irak d’après-guerre, précise The Independent. »

#Mers :

La guerre du pétrole se joue en mer, par Michael T. Klare (Le Monde diplomatique, février 2015)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2015/02/KLARE/52621

Course au gaz en Méditerranée, par Bachir El-Khoury (Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 2015)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2015/10/EL_KHOURY/53934

Litige frontalier en mer entre Israël et le Liban, par Cécile Marin (Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 2015)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/litigegazmediterranee

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/jpg/gaz-liban-israel.jpg

#Documentaires Mer de Chine, la guerre des archipels | ARTE
►http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/054777-000-A/mer-de-chine-la-guerre-des-archipels
Mer de Chine, la guerre des archipels ARTE - YouTube
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sGNZDrPMbY

Et pour quelques rochers de plus…, par Didier Cormorand (Le Monde diplomatique, juin 2016)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/06/CORMORAND/55728

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/arton55728.png

Le Vietnam, son encombrant voisin et l’ami américain, par Martine Bulard (Le Monde diplomatique, février 2017)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2017/02/BULARD/57045

De la mer en partage au partage de la mer, par Nicolas Escach (Le Monde diplomatique, juillet 2016)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/07/ESCACH/55919
#Aménagement_du_territoire #Conflits_d'intérêts_fondations #Environnement

20 ans de mutations des routes maritimes en 4 pages — Géoconfluences
►http://geoconfluences.ens-lyon.fr/actualites/veille/20-ans-mutations-routes-maritimes #Mers_Commerce #Commerce_International_Mers #Lectures

–#Nord_Stream_2 : Plus qu’un pipeline #Russie #UE
▻https://www.tdg.ch/monde/europe/nord-stream-2-qu-pipeline/story/11494268

Forcing américain pour supplanter les livraisons russes
Comment saboter un gazoduc
►https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2021/05/RIMBERT/63053
Washington sème la zizanie sur le marché européen du gaz
▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2021/05/REYMOND/63052

En #Afrique, le retour des présidents à vie, par Tierno Monénembo (Le Monde diplomatique, décembre 2015)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2015/12/MONENEMBO/54360

Le Bénin carbure à la contrebande, par Sabine Cessou (Le Monde diplomatique, janvier 2016)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/01/CESSOU/54506
#Bénin #Togo #Nigéria #Pétrole #Energies
#Afrique #Relations_Internationales

Croissance sans réconciliation en Côte d’Ivoire, par Vladimir Cagnolari (Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 2015)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2015/10/CAGNOLARI/53965

Le Tchad, puissance de circonstance, par Delphine Lecoutre (Le Monde diplomatique, juin 2016)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/06/LECOUTRE/55774

Au Burundi, les racines de la colère, par Pierre Benetti (Le Monde diplomatique, juin 2015)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2015/06/BENETTI/53067

L’Afrique du Sud lassée de ses libérateurs, par Sabine Cessou (Le Monde diplomatique, juin 2017)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2017/06/CESSOU/57568

Métamorphoses de la dette africaine, par Sanou Mbaye (Le Monde diplomatique, mai 2015)
►https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2015/05/MBAYE/52950
#Dette #Dette_publique

L’Afrique francophone piégée par sa monnaie unique, par Sanou Mbaye (Le Monde diplomatique, novembre 2014)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2014/11/MBAYE/50931

#DataGueule S5E7 - Le Franc CFA : une monnaie de plomb IRL
▻http://irl.nouvelles-ecritures.francetv.fr/datagueule-S5E7-1.html

Une croissance économique inégale en Afrique de l’Ouest, par Cécile Marin (Le Monde diplomatique, novembre 2014)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/afrique-francophone

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/jpg/Afrique-croissance-2.jpg

Choc pétrolier : les finances des producteurs africains dans le rouge. Par Martin Mateso
►http://geopolis.francetvinfo.fr/choc-petrolier-les-finances-des-producteurs-africains-dans-le-

L’Angola au secours du Portugal, par Augusta Conchiglia (Le Monde diplomatique, mai 2012)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2012/05/CONCHIGLIA/47660
#Cemac #Tchad #Angola #Portugal

Cocktail meurtrier en Afrique centrale, par Gérard Prunier (Le Monde diplomatique, février 2016)
►https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/02/PRUNIER/54746

La Corne de l’Afrique dans l’orbite de la guerre au Yémen, par Gérard Prunier (Le Monde diplomatique, septembre 2016)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/09/PRUNIER/56229
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/09/PRUNIER/56230

Transition à haut risque en République démocratique du Congo, par Sabine Cessou (Le Monde diplomatique, décembre 2016)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/12/CESSOU/56889

"pour de nombreux observateurs congolais, la « communauté internationale » pratique une diplomatie à géométrie variable. « Du point de vue de Joseph Kabila, ces pressions relèvent d’une profonde injustice, dans la mesure où la plupart de ses voisins s’éternisent au pouvoir dans une relative impunité », relève une source diplomatique africaine (5).

Le secrétaire d’État américain John Kerry a maintes fois mis en garde Kinshasa. Pour Washington, il s’agit de préserver des intérêts stratégiques et de ne pas se couper des jeunes Africains, à la fois nombreux (327 millions de 15-24 ans, 32 % de la population totale) et impatients. En août 2014, en marge du premier sommet États-Unis - Afrique à Washington, le chef de la diplomatie américaine a reçu M. Kabila et trois autres présidents en tête-à-tête pour évoquer la nécessité de respecter la limitation du nombre de mandats. Trois mois plus tard, le Burkinabé Blaise Compaoré était chassé du pouvoir par la rue après vingt-sept ans de présidence. En revanche, le Burundais Pierre Nkurunziza s’est fait réélire en juillet 2015 pour un troisième mandat, sans même changer la Constitution, en recourant à une répression massive. De son côté, M. Denis Sassou-Nguesso, au Congo-Brazzaville, a organisé en octobre 2015 un référendum constitutionnel, suivi en mars dernier de sa réélection, avec un score officiel de 60 % des voix. Contesté par l’opposition, le scrutin a été suivi d’une vague de répression."

Omniprésence des intérêts étrangers en RDC, par Sabine Cessou (Le Monde diplomatique, décembre 2016)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/12/CESSOU/56890

« Depuis 2003, plusieurs rapports du groupe d’experts des Nations unies sur les causes économiques du conflit dans l’est de la RDC (2) ont mis en lumière le lien entre les milices armées et l’exploitation, pour le compte de sociétés étrangères, de minerais stratégiques indispensables à la fabrication de certains appareils électroniques comme les téléphones portables. »

Trafics d’influence en Afrique, par Anne-Cécile Robert (Le Monde diplomatique, janvier 2017)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2017/01/ROBERT/56968
#Asie #Golfe #Mondialisation #Organisations_internationales #Multinationales

"Le changement majeur pour l’Afrique contemporaine réside dans une diversification inédite de ses partenaires"

"Multinationales et puissances étrangères, traditionnellement attirées par les matières premières, sont désormais séduites par la multiplication d’alléchants programmes d’investissement"

"Grâce aux cours élevé des minerais et des produits de base au début du millénaire, l’Afrique a en effet bénéficié d’une manne suffisante pour entamer son désendettement et lancer de spectaculaires projets financés sur les marchés mondiaux"

" les pays arabes souhaitent diversifier leurs économies, trop dépendantes du pétrole et du gaz [...]. Dans les années 2000, les États du Golfe, notamment l’Arabie saoudite, ont pris part au mouvement d’accaparement des terres dans le but d’assurer leur sécurité alimentaire ou de s’inscrire dans la production d’agrocarburants "

"si cette nouvelle géoéconomie confère des marges de manœuvre aux capitales africaines, leur fournissant des partenaires et des financements, elle demeure le fruit d’une insertion passive dans le concert mondial."

"Pékin se voit désormais contraint de déroger à sa règle de non-ingérence dans les affaires intérieures des pays hôtes. Cette réserve, qui contrastait avec le paternalisme des anciens colonisateurs, était plutôt bien perçue. Mais, comme toutes les puissances, la Chine doit protéger ses intérêts et ses expatriés."

"En 2013, l’opération « Serval », au Mali, a conforté Paris dans son rôle de gendarme du continent. L’ancienne puissance coloniale n’oublie pas les intérêts de groupes tels que celui de M. Vincent Bolloré, souvent sollicité pour assurer la logistique de ses opérations."

"Les organisations régionales [...] créent des zones de libre-échange sur les bons conseils des institutions financières internationales, mais se révèlent incapables de définir des politiques concertées de développement et une vision des intérêts continentaux. "

"l’acheminement d’un conteneur du Kenya au Burundi coûte toujours plus cher que de la Belgique ou du Royaume-Uni vers Nairobi "

Le #Maghreb entre autoritarisme et espérance démocratique, par Hicham Alaoui (Le Monde diplomatique, novembre 2016)
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2016/11/ALAOUI/56776

Les entreprises françaises défiées dans leur pré carré, par Olivier Piot (Le Monde diplomatique, avril 2017)
▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2017/04/PIOT/57344
#Economie_Statistiques #Statistiques #Traités_commerciaux_APE #Multinationales

"Dans son dernier livre (13), Alain Deneault dissèque les mécanismes de « perversion du droit » utilisés par un fleuron français. Ses armes, selon ce professeur de sciences politiques à l’université de Montréal ? « La fixation des cours du pétrole et le partage des marchés ; la collaboration avec des régimes politiques officiellement racistes ; la corruption de dictateurs et de représentants politiques ; la conquête de territoires à la faveur d’interventions militaires ; la délocalisation d’actifs dans des paradis fiscaux ; la pollution de vastes territoires au point de menacer la santé publique... »"

Dictature oubliée en #Guinée-Équatoriale. par Jean-Christophe Servant
▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2021/11/SERVANT/64011

The strange case of Portugal’s returnees

White settler returnees to Portugal in #1975, and the history of decolonization, can help us understand the complicated category of refugee.

The year is 1975, and the footage comes from the Portuguese Red Cross. The ambivalence is there from the start. Who, or maybe what, are these people? The clip title calls them “returnees from Angola.” (▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzd9_gh646U

) At Lisbon airport, they descend the gangway of a US-operated civil airplane called “Freedom.” Clothes, sunglasses, hairstyles, and sideburns: no doubt, these are the 1970s. The plane carries the inscription “holiday liner,” but these people are not on vacation. A man clings tight to his transistor radio, a prized possession brought from far away Luanda. Inside the terminal, hundreds of returnees stand in groups, sit on their luggage, or camp on the floor. White people, black people, brown people. Men, women, children, all ages. We see them filing paperwork, we see volunteers handing them sandwiches and donated clothes, we see a message board through which those who have lost track of their loved ones try to reunite. These people look like refugees (▻http://tracosdememoria.letras.ulisboa.pt/pt/arquivo/documentos-escritos/retornados-no-aeroporto-de-lisboa-1975). Or maybe they don’t?

https://i.imgur.com/WbgmMg2.png

Returnees or retornados is the term commonly assigned to more than half-a-million people, the vast majority of them white settlers from Angola and Mozambique, most of whom arrived in Lisbon during the course of 1975, the year that these colonies acquired their independence from Portugal. The returnees often hastily fled the colonies they had called home because they disapproved of the one party, black majority state after independence, and resented the threat to their racial and social privilege; because they dreaded the generalized violence of civil war and the breakdown of basic infrastructures and services in the newly independent states; because they feared specific threats to their property, livelihood, and personal safety; or because their lifeworld was waning before their eyes as everyone else from their communities left in what often resembled a fit of collective panic.

Challenged by this influx from the colonies at a time of extreme political instability and economic turmoil in Portugal, the authorities created the legal category of returnees for those migrants who held Portuguese citizenship and seemed unable to “integrate” by their own means into Portuguese society. Whoever qualified as a returnee before the law was entitled to the help of the newly created state agency, Institute for the Support of the Return of the Nationals (IARN). As the main character of an excellent 2011 novel by Dulce Maria Cardoso on the returnees states:

In almost every answer there was one word we had never heard before, the I.A.R.N., the I.A.R.N., the I.A.R.N. The I.A.R.N. had paid our air fares, the I.A.R.N. would put us up in hotels, the I.A.R.N. would pay for the transport to the hotels, the I.A.R.N. would give us food, the I.A.R.N. would give us money, the I.A.R.N. would help us, the I.A.R.N. would advise us, the I.A.R.N. would give us further information. I had never heard a single word repeated so many times, the I.A.R.N. seemed to be more important and generous than God.

The legal category “returnee” policed the access to this manna-from-welfare heaven, but the label also had a more symbolic dimension: calling those arriving from Angola and Mozambique “returnees” implied an orderly movement, and possibly a voluntary migration; it also suggested that they came back to a place where they naturally fit, to the core of a Portuguese nation that they had always been a part of. In this sense, the term was also meant to appeal to the solidarity of the resident population with the newcomers: in times of dire public finances, the government hoped to legitimize its considerable spending on behalf of these “brothers” from the nation’s (former) overseas territories.

Many migrants, however, rebutted the label attached to them. While they were happy to receive the aid offered by state bureaucracies and NGOs like the Portuguese Red Cross, they insisted that they were refugees (refugiados), not returnees. One in three of them, as they pointed out, had been born in Africa. Far from returning to Portugal, they were coming for the first time, and often did not feel welcome there. Most felt that they had not freely decided to leave, that their departure had been chaotic, that they had had no choice but to give up their prosperous and happy lives in the tropics. (At the time, they never publicly reflected on the fact that theirs was the happiness of a settler minority, and that prosperity was premised on the exploitation of the colonized.) Many were convinced they would return to their homelands one day, and many of them proudly identified as “Angolans” or “Africans” rather than as Portuguese. All in all, they claimed that they had been forcibly uprooted, and that now they were discriminated against and living precariously in the receiving society—in short, that they shared the predicaments we typically associate with the condition of the refugee.

Some of them wrote to the UNHCR, demanding the agency should help them as refugees. The UNHCR, however, declined. In 1976, High Commissioner Prince Aga Khan referred to the 1951 Refugee Convention, explaining that his mandate applied “only to persons outside the country of their nationality,” and that since “the repatriated individuals, in their majority, hold Portuguese nationality, [they] do not fall under my mandate.” The UNHCR thus supported the returnee label the Portuguese authorities had created, although high-ranking officials within the organization were in fact critical of this decision—in the transitory moment of decolonization, when the old imperial borders gave way to the new borders of African nation-states, it was not always easy to see who would count as a refugee even by the terms of the 1951 Convention.

In short, the strange case of Portugal’s returnees—much like that of the pieds-noirs, French settlers “repatriated” from Algeria—points to the ambiguities of the “refugee.” In refugee studies and migration history, the term defines certain groups of people we study. In international law, the category bestows certain rights on specific individuals. As a claim-making concept, finally, “the refugee” is a tool that various actors—migrants, governments, international organizations, NGOs—use to voice demands and to mobilize, to justify their politics, or to interpret their experiences. What are we to make of this overlap? While practitioners of the refugee regime will have different priorities, I think that migration scholars should treat the “refugee” historically. We need to critically analyze who is using the term in which ways in any given situation. As an actor’s category, “refugee” is not an abstract concept detached from time and place, context, and motivations. Rather, it is historically specific, as its meanings change over time; it is relational, because it is defined against the backdrop of other terms and phenomena; and it is strategic, because it is supposed to do something for the people who use the term. The refugee concept is thus intrinsically political.

Does analyzing “the refugee” as an actor’s category mean that we must abandon it as an analytical tool altogether? Certainly not. We should continue to research “refugees” as a historically contested category of people. While there will always be a tension between the normative and analytical dimensions, historicizing claims to being a “refugee” can actually strengthen the concept’s analytical purchase: it can complicate our understanding of forced migrations and open our eyes to the wide range of degrees of voluntariness or force involved in any migration decision. It can help us to think the state of being a refugee not as an absolute, but as a gradual, relational, and contextualized category. In the case of the returnees, and independently from what either the migrants or the Portuguese government or the UNHCR argued, such an approach will allow us to analyze the migrants as “privileged refugees.”

Let me explain: For all the pressures that pushed some of them to leave their homes, for all the losses they endured, and for all the hardships that marked their integration into Portuguese society, the returnees, a privileged minority in a settler colony, also had a relatively privileged experience of (forced) migration and reintegration when colonialism ended. This becomes clear when comparing their experience to the roughly 20,000 Africans that, at the same time as the returnees, made it to Portugal but who, unlike them, were neither accepted as citizens nor entitled to comprehensive welfare—regardless of the fact that they had grown up being told that they were an integral part of a multi-continental Portuguese nation, and despite the fact that they were fleeing the same collapsing empire as the returnees were. Furthermore, we must bear in mind that in Angola and Mozambique, hundreds of thousands of Africans were forcibly displaced first by Portugal’s brutal colonial wars (1961-1974), then during the civil wars after independence (1975-2002 in Angola, 1977-1992 in Mozambique). Unlike the returnees, most of these forced migrants never had the opportunity to seek refuge in the safe haven of Portugal. Ultimately, the returnees’ experience can therefore only be fully understood when it is put into the broader context of these African refugee flows, induced as they were by the violent demise of settler colonialism in the process of decolonization.

So, what were these people in the YouTube clip, then? Returnees? Or African refugees? I hope that by now you will agree that … well … it’s complicated.

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/12/10192555/Screen-Shot-2020-12-10-at-4.25.16-PM.png

▻https://africasacountry.com/2020/12/the-strange-case-of-portugals-returnees

#Portugal #colonialisme #catégorisation #réfugiés #asile #décolonisation #Angola #réfugiés_portugais #histoire #rapatriés #rapatriés_portugais #Mozambique #indépendance #nationalisme #retour_volontaire #discriminations #retour_forcé #retour #nationalité

Et un nouveau mot pour la liste de @sinehebdo :
#retornados
#terminologie #vocabulaire #mots

ping @isskein @karine4

#Covid-19 #migrant #migration #portugal #rapatriement #angola

Angola : COVID-19 - La TAAG effectuera des « vols de rapatriement » vers le Portugal - afriqueactudaily
▻https://afriqueactudaily.com/index.php/2020/07/12/angola-covid-19-la-taag-effectuera-des-vols-de-rapatriement-vers-l

https://afriqueactudaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png

Angola : Remaniement ministériel, 244 médecins cubains attendus contre le Covid-19, appel à contribution - KOACI
▻https://www.koaci.com/article/2020/04/09/angola/politique/angola-remaniement-ministeriel-244-medecins-cubains-attendus-contre-le-covid-
#Covid-19#migrant#migration#Angola#Santé

Angola : Le gouverneur de Zaire veut un renforcement aux postes frontaliers - allAfrica.com
▻https://fr.allafrica.com/stories/202004070979.html
#Covid-19#migrant#migration#Angola#RDC#Frontières

Angola : COVID-19 - La police arrête un citoyen provenant de la Turquie - allAfrica.com
▻https://fr.allafrica.com/stories/202004070981.html
#Covid-19#migrant#migration#Angola#Frontières

Les « Luanda Leaks » secouent les milieux d’affaires portugais
▻http://www.rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20200125-luanda-leaks-secouent-milieux-affaires-portugais

http://scd.rfi.fr/sites/filesrfi/aefimagesnew/imagecache/rfi_16x9_1024_578/sites/images.rfi.fr/files/aefimagesnew/aef_image/2020-01-23t113020z_289640991_rc2nle934xs2_rtrmadp_3_angola-dossantos-portugal.jpg

These Ghost Towns Once Thronged With Life
▻https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/05/160501-atlas-lost-cities-ghost-town-travel-chernobyl-pompeii-ngbooktalk/?sf228435134=1

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2016/05/01/Book-Talk/Book-Talk-Lost-Cities01.ngsversion.1494187615030.adapt.1900.1.jpg

Isn’t it a tad creepy to be obsessed with ruins? Aude de Tocqueville doesn’t think so. For her, they hold a mysterious, poetic fascination that no living city can match. In her new book, Atlas of Lost Cities: A Travel Guide to Abandoned and Forsaken Destinations, de Tocqueville sets off on a journey of exploration to 44 places that once thronged with life but now lie dead and often buried. On the way, she discovers that, like us, cities are mortal. (Experience Chernobyl’s haunting ruins in 360-degree photos.)

L’#Angola avoue qu’il aura du mal à se débarrasser de ses mines d’ici à 2025

https://www.courrierinternational.com/sites/ci_master/files/styles/image_original_765/public/afp/df001f54c431f64fd476e9c4b6fffcd9d24e7217.jpg?itok=7ALwFnO-#.jpg

L’Angola ne pourra probablement pas respecter son engagement de se débarrasser du million de mines antipersonnel enfouies pendant sa guerre civile (1975-2002) d’ici à 2025, faute de moyens suffisants, a annoncé un de ses responsable.

Responsable du bureau chargé des efforts de déminage (CNIDAH), Adriano Gonçalves a fait ce constat samedi soir devant la presse à l’issue de la visite du prince Harry, sixième dans l’ordre de succession au trône d’Angleterre.

Vendredi, le duc de Sussex a marché dans les pas de sa mère Diana, très engagée dans la lutte pour l’éradication des mines.

Il a notamment visité à Huambo (centre-ouest), la deuxième ville angolaise, une rue anciennement minée où la princesse de Galles s’était rendue peu avant sa mort en 1997.

« Il est temps de consigner ces armes dans les livres d’histoire, une bonne fois pour toutes », a lancé Harry, « en déminant, nous pouvons aider cette communauté à trouver la paix, et avec la paix viennent les opportunités ».

« L’Angola a encore plus d’un millier de champs de mines à nettoyer, mais a perdu environ 90% de son financement international pour lutter contre ce fléau », a pour sa part déploré M. Gonçalves, « ça rend plus difficile de tenir l’objectif de libérer le pays de ces engin en 2025 au plus tard ».

L’Angola est signataire de la convention d’Ottawa (1997), qui vise à l’éradication totale des mines antipersonnel d’ici 2025.

Outre le recul des fonds étrangers qui « ont de nombreuses autres priorités », l’Etat angolais a réduit lui aussi ses financements à cause de la chute des prix du pétrole en 2014, a noté le chef du CNIDAH. « Nous aimerions que (le déminage) se fasse avec plus de vitesse et plus d’intensité, mais c’est difficile ».

L’Angola est avec le Nigeria le principal producteur d’or noir d’Afrique subsaharienne.

Selon M. Gonçalves, l’Angola estime aujourd’hui entre 40.000 à 60.000 le nombre de ses citoyens blessés par des mines.

Sur les 3.000 champs tapissés de ces engins explosifs recensés à la fin de la guerre civile en 2002 dans les 18 provinces de l’Angola, plus de 1.200 doivent encore être nettoyés.

▻https://www.courrierinternational.com/depeche/langola-avoue-quil-aura-du-mal-se-debarrasser-de-ses-mines-di
#déminage #mines_antipersonnel #mines_terrestres

ping @albertocampiphoto