Eritrea Wire

The breezy, cool markets are moderately crowded on Wednesday afternoon, and blue tuk-tuks whiz through the streets. Sidewalk juice and coffee shops are busy, in what appears to be a relaxed regional capital.

But it is not long before we notice glimpses of how much this city is not relaxed. War has permeated every aspect of life here, from mundane activities to unspeakable horrors, such as children being shot at and knifed.

Mobile phone data doesn’t work, and only a few hotels and organizations have Wi-Fi. In our hotel lobby, one of the lucky few with a connection, the bar area is packed with college-age men and women, and soldiers with their AK assault rifles on the tables. Most eyes are glued to mobile phones.

But they are not just catching up on emails and Facebook. Everyone seems to be worrying about someone who is out of contact and possibly displaced, injured or worse.

An evening curfew begins at 6 p.m. or 8 p.m., depending on whom you ask. Either way, they say, getting home before night falls is preferable because the streets are dangerous after dark.

Only last year, Mekelle was run by an entirely different government, and when the federal government took over last year, the police just left, many presumably to fight with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which formerly controlled the city.

“Every night we have to take everything we have in our store back home and bring it back the next morning,” a tailor in the market tells us as he closes up shop, adding that he doesn’t want his name or picture in the press for security reasons. “It’s not safe.”

Displaced

The next morning, we visit the newest displacement camp in the city — it is only a month or so old. It is one of 26 camps in this city, where 200,000 people are displaced. Across Tigray, about 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes since last November.

At first glance the camp looks quaint and comfortable. It is an adapted school campus, with ample trees and stone buildings painted with things like maps and microscopes.

But we soon learn that the more than 7,000 residents are not enjoying the views. The camp is overcrowded, with as many as 100 people sleeping in a classroom about 10 meters by 8 meters. What’s more, there is very little food. By midafternoon, almost no one we speak to has eaten yet.

Less than a year ago, this region was at peace. Displaced families here now mourn their thousands of dead and missing, along with their homes, farms and businesses.

“I had my own kiosk in my hometown,” says Merchawit Kiros, a 27-year-old mother of one, who is six months pregnant with her next child. Merchawit was stoic when she described the violence of displacement, but when her shop comes up, she bursts into tears. “When the soldiers came in, they looted it and took everything. I used to sell many things, like sugar, coffee, candles and matches.”

Another camp in town also looks like a tiny village. It is a converted campus, with English lessons dangling from the ceilings of the classrooms. It is smaller than the first camp, and a Catholic charity provides food for the residents. It’s still crowded, with 35 to 45 people packed in a room, and there is a monthslong waiting list to get in.

On a bench in what once was a play yard, we meet Gebre Gebreslase, a 70-year-old former cattle farmer, as he waits for news of his place in line. Right now, he is staying with family in the city, but it is crowded and his family is poor.

He wears a fraying cowboy hat and a black mask against coronavirus, one of the few to be seen in the yard. Tigray is unsure of how much COVID-19 is present — they started testing only about a month ago, according to local hospital workers.

Like others from his community who are sitting on the bench, Gebre cannot imagine ever going back to his home, which he fled as gunfire blasted through the town. He says he is certain that his properties and animals have all long been confiscated by the controlling forces.

“I had 130 cows, 70 goats and a villa,” he says. “Now I am a beggar.”

Injured

As dismal as the camps are, nothing could prepare us for what we see at the hospital later in the day. Dozens of children with missing limbs, broken bones and gunshot wounds fill room after room, with quiet parents by their side. The children are also mostly silent.

“The only noise she makes is crying or asking for her mother,” says Gabre Hiwet, a young father, speaking of his 4-year-old daughter, Samrawit, who winces at the metal bars stuck in her broken leg.

Gabre then goes on to describe how he wasn’t home on March 30, when eight members of his family were killed, including his wife. Little Samrawit was the only survivor, after being knifed in the leg and shot through her left hand.

“She was bleeding so badly, we thought she was dead,” Gabre says. “We couldn’t believe she survived.”

It’s a story so gruesome, we might not believe it, if it weren’t for the fact that displaced families and refugees from Tigray have told us stories like this, over and over, from every corner of the region.

We meet other children wounded from sniper fire, point-blank shootings, artillery fire, planted mines and other explosives. A 15-year-old girl, Beriha, was hit in the face by a bullet that exited through her left eye. Her doctors say she will survive, permanently blinded, but hopefully one day with less pain.

Downstairs, the cheerful hospital garden belies the facility’s lack of medical supplies.

“There is a shortage of everything,” says one medical student, briskly explaining the snowball effect of substandard medicine that allows the patients to get sicker and puts them in need of even more advanced treatments that the hospital doesn’t have.

Around the corner, a military truck of injured soldiers reminds us there is a war still going on, and hospital workers say more wounded fighters arrive almost every evening. Much of the region is closed to reporters and, more tragically, aid workers, leaving 90% of the people in Tigray in desperate need of emergency food.

At the hospital, there are no battles and hardly any noise. No one appears to be starving. Just a stark view of the horror that families in Tigray are facing.

“Forget the bang-bang,” says Yan Boechat, our photojournalist. “This is the real war.”

Source: Voice of America

France said Thursday it would suspend joint military operations with Malian forces after the West African country’s second coup in nine months, adding to international pressure for the military junta to return civilians to positions of power.

The decision comes after Mali’s military strongman Assimi Goita, who led last year’s coup, ousted the country’s civilian transitional president and prime minister last week.

The move sparked diplomatic uproar, prompting the United States to suspend security assistance for Malian security forces and for the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to suspend Mali.

France’s armed forces said Thursday that “requirements and red lines have been set by ECOWAS and the African Union to clarify the framework for the political transition in Mali.”

“While awaiting these guarantees, France has decided to suspend, as a temporary measure, joint military operations with Malian forces and national advisory missions for their benefit,” the ministry said in a statement seen by AFP.

“These decisions will be re-evaluated in the coming days in the light of answers provided by the Malian authorities.”

Earlier Thursday, the International Organization of La Francophonie, a cooperative body that represents mainly French-speaking states around the world, became the latest organization to suspend Mali.

5,100 French troops

Both Mali and France play key roles in the fight against a bloody insurgency plaguing the Sahel region.

France has about 5,100 troops in the Sahel under its Barkhane operation, which spans five countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

The Barkhane force, which was launched after France intervened to fend off an insurgent advance in Mali in 2013, will continue to operate but on its own for the moment, the ministry said.

However the French-led Takuba force, launched in March 2020 to enable European special forces to train Mali’s army to fight insurgents, will be suspended.

A diplomatic source said last week there was a risk that the new coup could dissuade European countries from joining the force.

A military official in Mali said on condition of anonymity that Malian authorities had been informed of France’s suspension.

French President Emmanuel Macron at the weekend warned that France would pull its troops out of Mali if it lurches toward radical Islamism following the coup.

“Radical Islamism in Mali with our soldiers there? Never,” he told the weekly newspaper The Journal du Dimanche.

Drawdown already planned

Even before the latest coup, France had been considering disengaging its troops from the costly and dangerous Sahel mission in the run-up to next year’s presidential election.

Macron said in February there would be no troop reduction in the immediate future, but left the door open for reducing the size of France’s force, with plans to be approved this month.

“Beyond taking a principled position, one wonders whether this decision is not a way for France to let disengaging with Barkhane enter the narrative,” said Elie Tenenbaum, a researcher at the French Institute of International Relations.

“In other words,” he said, “is (Mali’s) not respecting the democratic process not a pretext to reduce an arrangement whose days were counted anyways?”

Goita had served as vice president since leading a coup last August that removed democratically elected President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, following mass protests over perceived corruption and the insurgency.

After pressure from the 15-nation ECOWAS, the roles of transitional president and prime minister were given to civilians ahead of elections scheduled for February.

However on May 24, Goita orchestrated the ouster of President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, raising doubts about his commitment to holding the elections.

Goita will be officially inaugurated as Mali’s transitional president on Monday, when a new prime minister is also expected to be nominated.

Source: Voice of America

Protests banned and political activists and journalists detained. Lawyers and judges reprimanded or otherwise targeted, ostensibly for their ties to a grassroots protest movement demanding profound political change.

As Algeria readies for legislative elections this month, the government is tightening its grip, rights groups and others say, with a raft of detentions and even prison sentences against its rainbow of critics. In the capital, Algiers, and other cities, authorities have effectively banned weekly demonstrations organized by the two-year-old Hirak protest movement, largely by placing administrative hurdles.

If today the government crackdown gives its leaders a tenuous upper hand, it risks backfiring in the longer term, experts warn, further dampening an anticipated low voter turnout in the June 12 parliamentary vote, deepening the country’s social and economic crisis and fueling new support for the Hirak movement.

“There’s a fundamental contradiction,” said Brahim Oumansour, North Africa specialist at the Paris-based French Institute of International Relations think tank. “Authorities are searching for political legitimacy through the elections, but paradoxically this repressive policy contributes to perpetuating the crisis.”

Rights concerns

Rights groups say Algerian authorities have arrested thousands of peaceful demonstrators since February, when members of the Hirak movement returned to the streets after months of coronavirus-imposed restrictions. Reports say many protesters were released, but others were held for questioning or faced legal action.

Ahead of the legislative polls, “the efforts have intensified, including against peaceful protests and protesters,” according to a joint press statement Tuesday by several prominent rights groups, including the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization Against Torture, in Geneva.

The United Nations’ human rights office has also raised concerns, saying reported attacks on peaceful assembly and free expression were reminiscent of the state’s previous heavy-handed responses.

Algiers is pushing back. In an interview published Wednesday by France’s Le Point magazine, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune suggested the Hirak movement had lost its legitimacy, and that voters were keenly interested in the upcoming vote — despite a chunk of the opposition boycotting it — “especially the young.”

“There’s a minority who refuse the election,” he told Le Point, adding, “I think all Algerians should express themselves, but I refuse the diktat of a minority.”

An old story

In many ways, it seems Algeria is reliving an old narrative, analysts say, despite hopes for change in 2019. As ailing longtime leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika sought a fifth term in office, millions took to the street in protest, giving birth to the Hirak movement. Bouteflika was ousted, as the street movement profoundly unsettled but did not destroy a power system in place since Algeria’s 1962 independence.

The country’s powerful military subsequently jailed and sidelined many in Bouteflika’s government, including his brother. Tebboune, 75, was elected to office in December 2019, but with official voter turnout at just 40%. He promised change, despite being a fixture of the regime, serving as minister of housing and prime minister under Bouteflika.

Eighteen months later, some analysts say there has been little beyond rhetoric and cosmetic tinkering. Ordinary Algerians are underwhelmed and disenfranchised. A referendum on the country’s new constitution last November drew another record low turnout.

For Algeria’s opposition, “the main problem is that the system is the same,” said analyst Michael Ayari at the International Crisis Group. “It’s not because there has been a constitutional change, or reassuring declarations, or democratic language in the Constitution promising more liberties, at least on paper, that the system has changed.”

Adding to the government’s worries are a deepening economic crisis, aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic and shrinking oil revenues. Also, there are broader regional instabilities, with massive Algeria bordering the restive Sahel, Western Sahara and Libya.

“After more than 18 months of Tebboune’s presidency, the results are very mediocre in terms of political, social and economic reforms,” said analyst Oumansour.

Now, he added, “the government faces pressures from the army to organize elections, regardless of the price, to give the appearance of relative stability, to put an end to Hirak and the demonstrations.”

A second wind?

For its part, the Hirak has seen its numbers dwindle from the millions of 2019 to tens of thousands today, with street protests vanishing completely last year, once the coronavirus pandemic struck. Many supporters have taken to the internet instead. But the movement remains unstructured and leaderless.

In recent weeks, they have been increasingly targeted in police crackdowns. Journalists, opposition leaders and civil society members have also been detained and sometimes imprisoned, rights groups say. Among them, journalist Kenza Khatto of Radio M, a media outlet considered close to the Hirak movement, who was given a suspended sentence after covering the protests.

On Sunday, a prominent judge, Saadedine Merzoug, was ousted from the country’s magistrate’s body, Agence France-Presse reported, ostensibly for his pro-Hirak rulings.

Meanwhile, Algeria’s military released a documentary last month suggesting a mix of interests — from independence fighters from its northeastern Kabylia region, to French public television and Morocco — were plotting against the state.

“It’s always the same discourse,” said analyst Ayari, summing up the government’s reaction. “That they’re a power surrounded by agents hostile to the revolution, and foreign agents who want to destroy Algeria.”

Meanwhile, Hirak leaders are calling on voters to boycott the legislative vote, in their demand for a broad political overhaul. Some expect a record number of independent candidates to run, although it’s unclear how independent they will be. A number of leftist opposition parties say they will boycott the vote.

“The specter of abstention really worries the political leaders,” said expert Oumansour. “It helps explain the crackdown. Another major abstention vote in these legislatives will be seen as a failure of the regime’s road map — and it risks breathing new life into the protest movement.”

Source: Voice of America