A new study from Europe provides insight into how migrants lock and smuggling is working in Libya. Not only local rulers are involved, Russian interests are also involved.
Since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Russia has had a problem: the future of its naval base at the Mediterranean port of Tartus and its Syrian air base Hmeim is in question. It is uncertain whether and, if so, to what extent the Russian military can hold both bases in Syria after Moscow’s partner Assad has been expelled.
Libyan authorities recently ordered ten international aid organizations to suspend their operations and close offices in the country, accusing them of providing humanitarian assistance to help resettle African migrants in “a plot” to change the demographic composition of Libyan society.
The statement reflects similar incendiary comments from Tunisian President Kais Saied in 2023, echoing the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
The scene is a middle-class dining-room in a western country in the late 1960s. A fresh-faced Child, flushed with excitement, just home from university, recounts their participation in a march against the Vietnam War.
“So what you mean” says Parent, “is that you want the Communist system set up here. You won’t be so happy when they take you away to a labour camp like they do in Vietnam.” the discussion rapidly degenerates into an exchange of insults and Child rushes out of the room.
The Libyan Attorney General accused suspected traffickers of torturing migrants to pressure their families into paying ransoms for their release.
Four suspected human traffickers have been arrested for their ties to a migrant smuggling network that held and tortured 164 migrants, Libya’s attorney general said Tuesday.
The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has resulted in nearly $300 billion in expenditures, over 150,000 lives lost, and the displacement of more than 10 million people, as reported by The Washington Post. While the war is framed around a simple ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ to Ukraine’s NATO membership, a deeper analysis suggests that the conflict is a strategic battle over maintaining global hegemon status and somewhere for mineral resources, particularly between the United States and Russia. It is also to undermine the silent rise of China’s threat against USA’s unipolar hegemony by stopping the subsequent bandwagoning of countries in Asia and Africa.
(FPRI) — As the global epicenter of Salafi-jihadi activity, the Sahel in 2023 accounted for 26 percent of global terrorist attacks, which caused 47 percent of terrorist-related deaths. Burkina Faso is ranked as the country most affected by terrorism in the world, followed by Mali in third place and Niger in tenth. Both would be one spot higher if not for Hamas’s October 2023 attacks in Israel. These standings show the prevalence and lethality of jihadist groups in the Sahel. The situation has not always been this dire. After Malian and French security forces regained control of northern Mali from jihadists in 2014, terrorist attacks were infrequent. There was little evidence of insurgencies until 2016. However, jihadist activity rose steadily from 2017 until 2021, and since 2021, jihadist attacks have doubled and resulting deaths have tripled. Mali has little control over its northern regions and is constantly contested in its central regions. Jihadist groups control or contest over half of Burkina Faso. In all three countries, jihadists are encircling areas closer to the capitals. Attacks have spread to coastal countries Benin, Togo, and Côte d’Ivoire. Thus, jihadist groups have reconstituted since their 2014 setback to wage escalating insurgencies and conduct complex terrorist attacks.
Financing: Kidnappings, robbery and extortion: Boko Haram gets funding from bank robberies and kidnapping ransoms. As an example, in early 2013 gunmen from Boko Haram kidnapped a family of seven French tourists on vacation in Cameroon. Two months later, the kidnappers released the hostages along with 16 others in exchange for a ransom of $3.15 million.Any funding they may have received in the past from al-Qaeda affiliates is insignificant compared to the estimated $1 million ransom for each wealthy Nigerian or foreigner kidnapped.
Also Known As: Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, HSM, Al-Shabaab al-Islaam, Al-Shabaab al-Islamiya, Al-Shabaab al-Jihaad al Shabaab, As-Saḥab, Ash-Shabaab, Hezb al-Shabaab
Since 1991, the United Nations has led a series of fruitless efforts to resolve the standoff over Western Sahara. A swath of desert about the size of the entire United Kingdom, Western Sahara is claimed both by the Polisario Front—a rebel group that the UN recognizes as the legitimate representative of the region’s inhabitants—and by its northern neighbor, Morocco, which wants to cement its de facto control over what it considers its “southern provinces.” By now, the dispute may seem frozen—or worse yet, that might is beating right: over the past five years, Morocco has bypassed the UN and secured extralegal bilateral endorsements of its sovereignty from France, Spain, and, most consequentially, the United States. But recent events in Azerbaijan, Sudan, and Israel show how suddenly so-called frozen conflicts can shift—and the contours of the Western Saharan dispute are poised to shift dangerously. The Polisario Front has started to take on Morocco more aggressively in legal forums, challenging its right to exploit Western Sahara’s resources, and Morocco and its neighbor Algeria—a key backer of the Polisario Front—have begun a dangerous arms race.
