Day: August 13, 2022

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA, is to resume contingent rotations starting Monday under fresh approval procedures, the Malian foreign minister and a U.N. spokeswoman have said.

“MINUSMA agreed to the new procedures and communicated them to all countries contributing troops. There will be no exception,” Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said Saturday, after the Sahel state suspended the rotations last month for “national security” reasons.

The peacekeeping force’s spokeswoman Myriam Dessables confirmed the news and said: “Rotations are to resume from Monday.”

The announcement came after Germany said Friday it had stopped reconnaissance operations and helicopter transport flights in Mali until further notice after Bamako denied flyover rights to MINUSMA.

Those rights were refused despite assurances to the contrary from the Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara in a call with his German counterpart Christine Lambrecht Thursday, the German defense ministry spokesman said.

Diop said the various contingents previously had to seek approval directly from the Malian authorities.

But now “all requests must go via MINUSMA, who will then pass them on to the foreign ministry,” the minister said.

The July 14 suspension of rotations came four days after Mali arrested 49 Ivorian soldiers it later described as mercenaries intent on toppling the country’s military-led government.

Ivory Coast said the troops had been sent to provide backup to MINUSMA.

The peacekeeping mission acknowledged there had been what it called dysfunctions in deploying the Ivorian troops.

Former MINUSMA spokesman Olivier Salgado was expelled from the country for publishing what the authorities deemed unacceptable information on Twitter following the arrest.

MINUSMA, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, was launched in 2013 to help one of the world’s poorest countries cope with a bloody jihadi campaign.

It is one of the U.N.’s biggest peacekeeping operations, with 17,609 troops, police, civilians and volunteers deployed as of April, according to the mission’s website.

Mali has been ruled by a military junta since 2020.

The junta has turned away from France and toward Russia in its fight against the jihadi insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

France is pulling out the last of its military equipment from the country.

On Saturday, residents in the southeastern Menaka region said Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) jihadis had attacked the Assaylal district, “killing seven civilians and taking with off their cattle.”

It comes after a suspected jihadi attack in the town of Tessit, near the borders with Niger and Burkina Faso, killed 42 Malian soldiers on Sunday last week. The army blamed ISGS.

Source: Voice of America

Three-day-old lion cubs were on display Saturday in a cardboard box at a Gaza City zoo, a rare joyous sight for children and adults alike, just days after Israeli aircraft pounded the territory and Gaza militants fired hundreds of rockets at Israel.

Veterinarian Mahmoud al-Sultan said each cub weighed about 700 grams. He said he felt lucky the birth was successful despite the deafening sound of constant explosions during three days of fighting. The cubs’ mother had suffered miscarriages in the past, said al-Sultan.

Loud noise “causes stress to the wild animals, especially the lions, whose roars get higher, and they keep moving in a circular way inside the cage,” he said.

The cubs were born Friday, several hours apart, and five days after an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire halted the fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants. Forty-nine Palestinians, including 17 children, were killed and several hundred were injured in the fighting.

Shocks from war aren’t the only threat to animals. Gaza is impoverished, with double-digit unemployment, largely as a result of a border blockade Egypt and Israel imposed after Hamas militants took control of the territory 15 years ago.

In the past, a number of animals in small private Gaza zoos starved to death or were killed in the long-running conflict, which included four Israel-Hamas wars and countless smaller skirmishes.

International animal welfare groups carried out several evacuations to move frail lions and tigers to sanctuaries in Jordan and Africa. The costly effort to rescue animals, while some 2.3 million Gazans remain largely trapped in a small territory, has also drawn criticism.

On Saturday, visitors flocked to the small Nama zoo on the outskirts of Gaza City, with children allowed to pet the newborns. Nama is operated by a private charity, putting it in a slightly better position than the small number of private zoos that often struggle to provide for the animals.

Schools organize daily trips to the zoo and the entry fee is less than $1, helping to cover costs.

The zoo also houses a variety of birds, along with monkeys, deer, foxes, wolves and hyenas.

Source: Voice of America

Mohamed gave up farming because of successive droughts that have hit his previously fertile but isolated village in Morocco and because he just couldn’t bear it any longer.

“To see villagers rush to public fountains in the morning or to a neighbor to get water makes you want to cry,” the man in his 60s said.

“The water shortage is making us suffer,” he told AFP in Ouled Essi Masseoud village, around 140 kilometers from the country’s economic capital Casablanca.

But it is not just his village that is suffering — all of the North African country has been hit.

No longer having access to potable running water, the villagers of Ouled Essi Masseoud rely solely on sporadic supplies in public fountains and from private wells.

“The fountains work just one or two days a week, the wells are starting to dry up and the river next to it is drying up more and more,” said Mohamed Sbai as he went to fetch water from neighbors.

The situation is critical, given the village’s position in the agricultural province of Settat, near the Oum Er-Rbia River and the Al Massira Dam, Morocco’s second largest.

Its reservoir supplies drinking water to several cities, including the 3 million people who live in Casablanca. But the latest official figures show it is now filling at a rate of just 5%.

Al Massira reservoir has been reduced to little more than a pond bordered by kilometers of cracked earth.

Nationally, dams are filling at a rate of only 27%, precipitated by the country’s worst drought in at least four decades.

Water rationing

At 600 cubic meters of water annually per capita, Morocco is already well below the water scarcity threshold of 1,700 cubic meters per capita per year, according to the World Health Organization.

In the 1960s, water availability was four times higher — at 2,600 cubic meters.

A July World Bank report on the Moroccan economy said the decrease in the availability of renewable water resources put the country in a situation of “structural water stress.”

The authorities have now introduced water rationing.

The interior ministry ordered local authorities to restrict supplies when necessary and prohibits using drinking water to irrigate green spaces and golf courses.

Illegal withdrawals from wells, springs or waterways have also been prohibited.

In the longer-term, the government plans to build 20 seawater desalination plants by 2030, which should cover a large part of the country’s needs.

“We are in crisis management rather than in anticipated risk management,” water resources expert Mohamed Jalil told AFP.

He added that it was “difficult to monitor effectively the measures taken by the authorities.”

Agronomist Mohamed Srairi said Morocco’s Achilles’ heel was its agricultural policy “which favors water-consuming fruit trees and industrial agriculture.”

Key sector

He said such agriculture relies on drip irrigation which, although it can save water, paradoxically results in increased consumption as previously arid areas become cultivable.

The World Bank report noted that cultivated areas under drip irrigation in Morocco have more than tripled.

It said that “modern irrigation technologies may have altered cropping decisions in ways that increased rather than decreased the total quantity of water consumed by the agricultural sector.”

More than 80% of Morocco’s water supply is allocated to agriculture, a key economic sector that accounts for 14% of gross domestic product.

Mohamed, in his nineties, stood on an area of parched earth not far from the Al Massira Dam.

“We don’t plough the land anymore because there is no water,” he said, but added that he had to “accept adversity anyway because we have no choice.”

Younger generations in the village appear gloomier.

Soufiane, a 14-year-old shepherd boy, told AFP, “We are living in a precarious state with this drought. I think it will get even worse in the future.”

Source: Voice of America