Author: M Barbu

Afrocentrism is trending in the Maghreb. It’s because Sub-Saharan migrants are rewriting their narrative.

North Africa morphing into a permanent host destination rather than a transit country on the way to Europe for hundreds of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans is no news. What is new, however, is a rising Afrocentric discourse across social media platforms calling for “reappropriating” North Africa and “chasing” the non-black inhabitants of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia from the continent on the pretense that they are illegitimately colonizing the land.

Libya’s crisis is a tough puzzle to solve for Egypt

The new Turkish assertiveness in Libya and Libya National Army (LNA) General Khalifa Haftar’s strategic retreat from the Western part of the country have created a new equilibrium in the conflict. This is a potential watershed moment that could lead Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Russia to rethink their support for Haftar and prepare a possible compromise over Libya, especially given the pronunciation of the so-called Cairo Declaration on June 6, 2020. In fact, Haftar is gradually losing internal and external support—from within his own forces to Egypt and the UAE—to the point that no one will likely bet on him again. In this fluid scenario, neighboring Egypt, which has emboldened Haftar since 2014, may play an important new role in order to protect its specific foreign and domestic interests in Libya.

Libya has a mercenaries problem. It’s time for the international community to step up.

A couple of weeks after a state institution in Tripoli was stormed by gunmen and a suicide bomber in 2018, I was sitting in a Tunis café with a friend who had been working in the building on the day of the terrorist attack. Aymenn believed that the suicide bomber was wandering the premises in the run-up to the tragedy and had walked by his desk. He described a beatific smile on the man’s face. “He was drugged up in some way,” Aymenn said. “And this is the thing that kept running through my head: He definitely wasn’t Libyan.”

A moment of opportunity: Can the UN’s new special representative for Libya break the country’s cycle of devolution?

While a precarious ceasefire has uneasily prevailed in Libya since the end of its third bout of civil war in 2020, the country is increasingly showing signs of an eventual relapse into conflict today. This may be why many policymakers were quick to hail as a breakthrough the appointment of Senegalese diplomat Abdoulaye Bathily as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Libya and head of the United Nations (UN) Support Mission to Libya in September. After two months into the job, SRSG Bathily may be quickly realizing that Libya’s war never abated, and that it is now simply fought by other means in the halls of the UN and corridors of foreign capitals.

Il n’y a pas de raison pour des pourparlers de paix

On entend de plus en plus de voix occidentales suggérer que des pourparlers de paix dans l’ancienne Ukraine pourraient être une bonne idée, ce qui indique que certaines personnes ont peut-être dépassé le stade du déni (quelques sanctions et la Russie se repliera comme un parapluie) et de la colère (jetez tout votre argent et toutes vos armes sur le régime de Kiev !) et approchent le stade du marchandage (laissons la Russie garder la Crimée, mais rendre le reste). Comme pour les étapes précédentes, cette attitude repose sur une incompréhension très profonde de la situation actuelle. Ce n’est pas si difficile à expliquer – à ceux qui sont prêts à traiter de nouvelles informations – et je vais donc essayer.

Russie Occident, l’autre guerre de 100 ans (deuxième partie)

Dans la première partie, nous proposions d’envisager le conflit entre la Russie et l’Ukraine, dans la perspective historique élargie d’une guerre de 100 ans opposant, depuis 1917, la Russie et l’occident. Nous suggérions aussi que le conflit idéologique entre propriété privée et collective des moyens de production ne s’était pas éteint, mais transformé en une opposition entre économie libre-échangiste complètement dégagée de toute intervention étatique, et les économies russe ou chinoise, laissant une large part à la planification par l’État.

Nigeria: How UK Special Forces Have Been Operating Secretly in Nigeria – Report

A report has revealed that the British Special Air Service and the European country’s other special forces have carried out operations clandestinely in Nigeria and 18 other nations for the past 12 years.

This was corroborated by an incident in 2012 when a group of SBS commandos attempted and failed to rescue a Briton and an Italian held by an Islamist group in Nigeria.

Ethiopia is dangerously adrift after Tigray war 

The US and other donors should avoid bailing out the country in ways that bolster Abiy’s personal political agenda.

For decades, Ethiopians were accustomed to their politics moving at a glacial pace, punctuated by rare but decisive regime turnover. Citizens didn’t know what their rulers were up to, but they were confident conspiracies hatched in the palace and party headquarters would be executed efficiently.