THE FAILED STATE
Colombia greenlights private sector to buy and apply Covid-19 vaccines



Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 
An indigenous nurse of the Misak ethnic group inoculates an elderly indigenous man with a Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19 in the Guambia indigenous reservation, rural area of Silvia, department of Cauca, Colombia, on April 14, 2021 Luis ROBAYO AFP
2 min
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Bogota (AFP)

Colombia on Tuesday gave the green light for the private sector to buy and distribute coronavirus vaccines under certain conditions, in a bid to expand the country's slow-moving immunization campaign.

President Ivan Duque said in his daily television address that after several studies, the ministry of health had drafted a resolution "that enables the purchase [of vaccines] and the contribution of the private sector to the national vaccination plan."

Any party buying vaccines must be endorsed by the health ministry and guarantee delivery using their own logistics chains so as not to be a burden on the public sector. They must also abide by guidelines to ensure the most vulnerable sectors of the community are the first to receive the shots.

"This should not be a matter of business, intermediaries, or unknown persons... but rather be carried out through specialized distributors," Duque said.

With 50 million inhabitants, Colombia has vaccinated 3.8 million people with at least one dose in more than two months of its mass immunization campaign.

On Tuesday, the country reached a new record of deaths (429) for the second day in a row, as a third wave of the pandemic threatens to swamp the hospital system.

Health Minister Fernando Ruiz said the private sector will be able to purchase vaccines as of Wednesday, but their distribution will only be allowed when the government advances to the third stage of vaccinations that includes people between 16 and 59 years old who are affected by some co-morbidity.

So far in Colombia, health personnel and adults over 80 have been immunized, and the campaign is currently focusing on people over 70. The current stage is the second, and will eventually cover people aged 60 and over, but it is not clear when it will be completed.

© 2021 AFP

CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALISM

Millions of Americans are jobless, yet firms struggle to hire



Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 

As the US economy recovers from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, job openings are prevalent, but applicants are less so Olivier DOULIERY AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of American remain jobless, but even as the economy reopens some employers are finding hiring an unexpected challenge.

From fears of being infected with the coronavirus to trouble finding childcare to the lure of generous unemployment benefits, some jobless Americans are holding off on re-entering the workforce.

"It's a paradox for the Covid crisis," said Gregory Daco, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. "We have, and risk having over the coming months, an imbalance between job openings and demand."

The US economy has begun to recover as Covid-19 vaccines allow businesses to return to normal, and companies are starting to recruit to meet growing demand.

But not all unemployed workers are ready to return to their jobs, analysts say.

"The main issue is we still have a pandemic, and there is huge concern among job seekers about workplace health and safety," said Julia Pollak, an economist for job search website ZipRecruiter.

A quarter of the US population is fully vaccinated, well ahead of Europe and many other major economies, but three-quarters of the country nonetheless remains at risk of contracting Covid-19.

And childcare is another challenge for working parents, since only a little more than half of the nation's schools are back to full-time classes after the pandemic forced them to close or modify operations, according to FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University.

- Search for 'better conditions' -

The Covid-19 pandemic destroyed 22 million jobs in the world's largest economy, of which more than half, 14 million, have been restored.

However, nearly 17 million people are still receiving government unemployment aid, including self-employed workers, and many are working part-time because they cannot find full-time work.

But Daco said worker shortages are being seen across multiple sectors, including some of those hardest hit by the waves of layoffs, like retail, food service, hospitality and entertainment.

In a survey of US businesses conducted between late February and early April, the Federal Reserve noted "hiring remained a widespread challenge, particularly for low-wage or hourly workers, restraining job growth in some cases."

A hotelier surveyed by the Federal Reserve bank in Richmond, Virginia reported that "they were able to hire some front desk workers but had unfilled cleaning staff positions and little interest from workers in those jobs."

The central bank's Chicago branch reported a number of factors keeping unemployed workers at home, including "financial support from the government," like the extra $300 weekly benefit jobless employees will receive through August.

The Chicago Fed cited other complications in the hiring process including finding childcare, concerns about the virus, difficulty obtaining public transportation and "job search fatigue."

ZipRecruiter's Pollak said some workers also are fearful that if they take a job, they will simply be let go again.

"Many people experienced getting laid off as a really hard blow," she said, comparing the situation to people "who got divorced now being scared to go back into the dating market and get married again."

"They're not in a rush to put themselves back in a vulnerable position, especially since the extended and expanded benefits are giving them a little bit of time," Pollak said.

- Coaxing workers -

Some Americans have taken to working from home, which makes it easier to combine work with family life and not spend time commuting.

"Many people are not prepared to go back old jobs they had," Pollak said, and are instead holding out for remote work opportunities.

This trend has hit the restaurant industry in particular, which is hoping to see a rebound in the spring and summer after the pandemic forced many to close starting in March 2020.

"As the weather improves and more state restrictions are lifted, restaurant traffic will increase and that will create a greater need for employees," Hudson Riehle, who heads research for the National Restaurant Association, told AFP.

"With fewer people in the workforce, the stimulus supports still in place, worker safety concerns and much greater competition with other industries for workers," Riehle predicted some eateries may offer higher pay or additional benefits and opportunities to coax workers.

Amazon, Costco, Target and Walmart -- which run some of the largest distribution firms in the United States -- already announced pay increases.

© 2021 AFP

PROMOTED C

Documentary tells 'unknown' story of Titanic's Chinese survivors


Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 

Eight Chinese were aboard the Titanic when it sank after hitting an iceberg. Six, most of them sailors but not working on the ship, made it out alive PETER MUHLY AFP/File

Shanghai (AFP)

A new documentary film has revealed the "completely unknown" story of six Chinese men who survived the sinking of the Titanic and adds a new chapter to the history of the world's most famous ship.

With Oscar-winning director James Cameron as executive producer, "The Six" has earned glowing reviews in China and at one point trended on the country's Twitter-like Weibo after its release on Friday.

Director Arthur Jones hopes it will have the same impact when it is screened overseas and finally dispel myths that have endured for more than a century.

For the Briton and lead researcher Steven Schwankert, "The Six" gives a voice, life and faces to a small band of Chinese men who were among about 700 people to survive the Titanic's sinking in 1912.

Jones said that a painstaking project stretched over several countries and years began as little more than a joke between the long-time friends, both of whom are based in China.

"Steven came to me and said that we should do the Chinese Titanic story with the Chinese guys who were on the Titanic," Jones, 47, told AFP at his studio in Shanghai.

"I thought he was joking because I thought it was just one of those things that we would laugh about.

"I looked it up, and it was true. But initially my thought was: I don't know if the world needs another Titanic film or another Titanic documentary."

Jones said they knew they were onto something when they mentioned it to Chinese friends.

"They were just amazed that there's this completely unknown story from Titanic, it just seemed an extraordinary thing," he said.

- Last survivor -

"The Six" sees Schwankert and his fellow researchers pore over archives and meet descendants across continents as they try to piece together what happened to the men after surviving the most famous sinking of all time.

"It became fairly epic in terms of the research," said Jones.

Eight Chinese were aboard the fateful vessel, in third class, when it sank after hitting an iceberg. Six, most of them sailors but not working on the Titanic, made it out alive on life rafts.

Cameron, who won best director and best picture at the Oscars for his 1997 smash-hit "Titanic", was fully supportive of the documentary and allowed Jones to show a scene which was not included in the cinema version of the blockbuster.

In the cut scene, an Asian-looking man hanging on for life on a piece of wood is plucked from the freezing water, perhaps becoming the last person to be saved.

When Schwankert and his team tracked down the man's son in real life, it turned out that he knew almost nothing of what his late father had endured because he never really spoke about it.

As they delved further into what became of the six men, word spread of their project, drawing more people to come forward with information. Even now fresh details are coming to light.

- Parallels with today -

A strong element of the film is the prejudice that Chinese immigrant workers like the seamen faced as they sought new lives in the West.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited Chinese labourers from the United States, slamming the door on their "American Dream". The men arrived in New York with the other survivors but were shipped out of the country less than 24 hours later.

The parallels between anti-Asian sentiment then and now, in particular in the United States, are not lost on Jones and Schwankert.

"People -- whether it's in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom or anywhere else -- didn't suddenly develop these negative feelings in the last two or three months," Schwankert, 50, said by video call from Luoyang, in the central province of Henan.

"These are deep-seated problems."

The film also debunks claims that the Chinese men sneaked onto the lifeboat that saved them by disguising themselves as women or hiding on the raft.

Chinese viewers are happy that their countrymen's true survival story has now been told.

"Above anything else, audiences here are saying thank you for filling in this little bit of unwritten history, or maybe badly written history," Jones said.

© 2021 AFP

Large-scale Huthi offensive roils Yemen's oil-rich Marib


Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 

Heavy fighting has raged near the Yemeni city of Marib as Huthi rebels press their offensive on the government's last northern toehold - AFP

Marib (Yemen) (AFP)

Peering through binoculars, a Yemeni commander scans a forbidding desert moonscape for lurking Huthi rebels, who are ramping up a bloody offensive to seize the strategic oil-rich region of Marib.

The outcome of the scorched-earth battles raging around Marib city, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government's last northern stronghold, could significantly alter the future course of a conflict now in its seventh year.

The loss of Marib, gripped by a worsening humanitarian crisis, would be a heavy blow to the government, giving the Iran-backed rebels more leverage in any future negotiations or even spur them to push further south, observers say.

Hundreds of combatants have been killed since the large-scale offensive began in February, according to local sources.

Loyalist commanders say the rebels are sending wave after wave of fighters towards frontlines around Marib city, the regional capital, from seemingly inexhaustible reserves.

"The Huthi strategy is... aimed at exhausting (us)," a Yemeni commander told AFP at the sand-swept Al-Kanais battlefront in the north of the city, where loyalist soldiers crouched in sandbag-ringed foxholes and heavy machine guns were loaded on the rear of pickup trucks.

In a pattern emerging across multiple frontlines, the commander said the Huthis are pushing zealous waves of young recruits, many of them children, with the goal of wearing out loyalist forces and depleting their ammunition.

Hours-long gun battles are typically followed by a brief lull to collect the dead bodies.

Then a more lethal wave of experienced Huthi fighters moves in under the cover of constant shelling, the commander said of a desperate rebel strategy that is heaping pressure on loyalist forces.

"The Huthis don't care how many of their men die," he added, a point echoed by other Yemeni officials, including Marib's governor Sultan al-Aradah.

"They are sacrificing the people of Yemen... But they will not be able to reach Marib no matter the price we have to pay," added the commander, who requested that his name be withheld.

- 'Sacrifice young men' -

Marib is already paying a huge price since the Huthis, who set their sights on taking the area last year, relaunched their offensive in February on the back of large reinforcements.

The city of Marib and some outlying areas make up the last pockets of government-held territory in the north, the rest of which is under rebel control, including the capital Sanaa.

Non-aligned observers of the conflict are alarmed at the high casualties around Marib, with one international official telling AFP "the Huthis seem to have a lot of fighters to throw into the battle".

"At the end of the day, the Huthis will say, 'We still have fighters... and we can sacrifice people and young men'," this official said.

An AFP journalist travelled to Marib from Saudi Arabia in an Apache helicopter at the invitation of the Riyadh-led military coalition battling the rebels.

The low-flying aircraft hovered above sprawling oil fields, a natural gas bottling plant and a modern dam that supplies freshwater to the parched region, assets that make Marib a prized target.

The city itself is splashed with posters of fallen commanders and brimming with checkpoints that watch against Huthi infiltrators and sleeper cells.

Marib is home to hundreds of thousands of civilians already uprooted by Yemen's ongoing conflict –- and they face the prospect of being displaced again in a country with fewer and fewer safe havens.

"My husband has lost his mind" due to war and constant displacement, said Hala al-Aswad, a 40-year-old mother of four sheltering in Al-Suweida, one of the nearly 140 camps that have sprung up in Marib.

"He keeps beating the children."

The escalation in hostilities has displaced 13,600 people in Marib this year, according to the UN refugee agency, putting a heavy strain on the city in the midst of a second coronavirus wave.

Lacking clean water and electricity, the makeshift settlements are overflowing and camp residents say they have repeatedly come under Huthi shelling.

One woman in Al-Suweida, on the edge of the city, said she suffered a miscarriage due to the strains of war.

Another woman parted her toddler's hair to reveal a shrapnel wound on her scalp. As she spoke, one child held up a piece of twisted metal from what she said was the wreckage of a shell that hit her camp.

- 'Sons of desert' -

"A ceasefire is necessary," pleaded Arafat Asubari, a 31-year-old camp resident, who is a father of six.

If the fighting doesn't stop, he said, "we will all die here".

In March, the Huthis rejected Riyadh's call for a nationwide ceasefire. They have instead escalated missile and drone strikes deep inside Saudi Arabia, which provides air support to Marib's loyalist forces.

Officials in Saudi Arabia criticise US President Joe Biden's decision to rescind a terrorist designation imposed on the Huthis by his predecessor Donald Trump, saying the concession has emboldened the rebels.

Western officials defend Biden's decision, saying the designation, which came late in the Trump presidency, would have worsened Yemen's humanitarian crisis by further impeding access, while doing nothing to blunt the Huthis' military ambitions.

But one Western official said he slammed the Marib offensive as a "big mistake" during direct talks with Huthi negotiators, drawing parallels with stalemated fighting during World War I that only added to widespread suffering.

The plea, the official told AFP, fell on deaf ears.

Meanwhile, Marib's tribes have responded to local calls to send their men to reinforce frontlines alongside the loyalists, with many saying that the terrain offered them an edge over the Huthis, known to be more adept at mountain warfare.

Describing themselves as "sons of the desert", many Marib tribesmen see a military advantage in a largely flat desert landscape dotted with scrubby bushes.

"Let them (Huthis) come," said the frontline commander, quoting a tribal elder from Marib.

"We will kill them all."

© 2021 AFP

Graveyard of the bikes: China's failed share-cycle scheme from above

Issued on: 21/04/2021 -

Damaged or abandoned low-cost shared bikes in China often end up in 'graveyards' like this one STR AFP

Beijing (AFP)

Handlebars tight in snaking rows of colour, thousands of abandoned bicycles line an open field outside the city of Shenyang, relics of a shared bike mania that has overwhelmed China's cities.

The turquoise, blue and yellow bicycles, arranged in long lines, some piled on top of each other, bear the logos of the companies that dominate China's bike-sharing sector -- Hellobike, Didi and Meituan.

Low cost-shared bikes, which users can unlock using apps and park virtually anywhere, burst onto Chinese streets in the middle of the last decade with investors rushing to fund bike startups like the now-defunct Ofo and Mobike

But the two-wheelers soon took over pavements and spilled over into bike lanes and streets, parked haphazardly by users who sometimes simply tossed the bikes into shrubbery, creating a headache for urban authorities and pedestrians.

Many bikes suffered damage or were stolen, while some were even repurposed into makeshift barricades when Covid-19 broke out last year.

The problem is a familiar one to cities around the world battling to round up stray bikes, from metro stations in Washington DC to the bottom of Melbourne's river.

Aerial photographs from the suburbs of Shenyang, Liaoning province, show a bicycle graveyard, one of many which began appearing as early as 2018 as tech start-up darling Ofo imploded, defaulting on debts as its users claimed back rental deposits.

Mountains of damaged bikes belonging to other companies have also been discarded rather than repaired, in contrast to the "green" image usually associated with urban cycling.

The bikes now jostle for space on Chinese streets with hordes of shared electronic scooters, which have also made their appearance elsewhere in the world including Paris and California.

Chinese cities have vowed to curb the chaotic fleets of bikes, with Beijing saying it will remove 44,000 bikes from the city centre this year in order to cap bike numbers at under 800,000, according to state media.

© 2021 AFP

South Korea court dismisses 'comfort women' case against Japan

Issued on: 21/04/2021 -

The issue of wartime sex slavery has been at the core of frosty ties between Seoul and Tokyo in recent years Jung Yeon-je AFP/File



Seoul (AFP)

A South Korean court on Wednesday dismissed a case brought by a handful of World War II sex slaves and their families against the Japanese government, saying Tokyo enjoyed "sovereign immunity" over the issue, reports said.

The ruling comes after the same court in January ordered Tokyo to compensate a dozen women forced to serve Japanese troops -- euphemistically labelled "comfort women" -- marking the first civilian legal victory against Tokyo in South Korea.

The different verdict could pave the way for an improvement in frosty ties between the neighbours, analysts said.

The comfort women question and other issues stemming from Japan's 20th-century colonial rule over Korea has bedevilled their relations, despite a 1965 treaty which declared claims between them and their nationals had been settled.

Tokyo and Seoul are both major US allies, democracies and market economies, but their rift -- which has worsened significantly in recent years -- presents US President Joe Biden with a foreign policy headache as he seeks to build a common front on China and nuclear-armed North Korea.

The Seoul Central District Court dismissed Wednesday's case after "reaching the decision that sovereign immunity must be applied to the Japanese government", Yonhap news agency reported.

"Diplomatic conflict will be inevitable in the process of sentencing and enforcing if the exception of sovereign immunity is recognised," the court said according to Yonhap.

The victims suffered "immense pain", it added, but said the issue should be solved through "efforts including diplomatic negotiations".

One plaintiff, a former comfort woman now in her 90s, was shaken by the ruling and left the courtroom before the hearing ended.

"This is really outrageous," Lee Yong-soo told reporters outside.

"But whether the result is good or bad, I will take the case to the International Court of Justice."

Her lawyer Lee Sang-hui said the plaintiffs and legal team would discuss whether to appeal, adding: "I would like to express my regret once again that the ruling was made contrary to the direction toward guaranteeing individual human rights."

- Improving ties? -

Analysts said the ruling will be a "plus" for improving ties between South Korea and Japan, whose disputes have spread to affect trade and security in recent years.

Biden held his first summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the weekend and will meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in next month.

"Diplomatically, it could serve as a pillar for taking relations in the direction for improvement," said Lee Won-deog of Kookmin University.

But while the decision will be welcomed by Japan, the professor said it could heighten South Korean resentment over the comfort women issue.

Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also other parts of Asia including China were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

The Japanese government denies it is directly responsible for the wartime abuses, maintaining that the victims were recruited by civilians and that the military brothels were commercially operated.

© 2021 AFP

EU unveils AI rules to temper Big Brother fears



Issued on: 21/04/2021 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said rules are needed to ward off abuses in the artificial intelligence sector Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD AFP/File


Brussels (AFP)

The EU unveils a plan Wednesday to regulate the sprawling field of artificial intelligence, aimed at making Europe a leader in the new tech revolution while reassuring the public against "Big Brother"-like abuses.

"Whether it's precision farming in agriculture, more accurate medical diagnosis or safe autonomous driving -- artificial intelligence will open up new worlds for us. But this world also needs rules," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her state-of-the-union speech in September.

"We want a set of rules that puts people at the centre."


The Commission, the EU's executive arm, has been preparing the proposal for over a year and a debate involving the European Parliament and 27 member states is to go on for months more before a definitive text is in force.

The rules are part of the EU's effort to set the terms on AI and catch up with the US and China in a sector that spans from voice recognition to insurance and law enforcement.

The bloc is trying to learn the lessons after largely missing out on the internet revolution and failing to produce any major competitors to match the giants of Silicon Valley or their Chinese counterparts.

But there have been competing concerns over the plans from both big tech and civil liberties groups arguing that the EU is either overreaching or not going far enough.

- 'High-risk' -

The draft regulation, seen by AFP, will create a ban on a very limited number of uses that threaten the EU's fundamental rights.

This would make "generalised surveillance" of the population off-limits as well as any tech "used to manipulate the behaviour, opinions or decisions" of citizens.

Anything resembling a social rating of individuals based on their behaviour or personality would also be prohibited, the draft said.

Military applications of artificial intelligence will not be covered by the rules, and special authorisations are envisioned to cover anti-terrorism activities and public security.

Infringements, depending on their seriousness, may bring companies fines of up to four percent of global turnover.

To promote innovation, Brussels wants to provide a clear legal framework for companies across the bloc's 27 member states.

To this end, the draft regulation says companies will require a special authorisation for applications deemed "high-risk" before they reach the market.

High-risk systems would include "remote biometric identification of persons in public places" as well as "security elements in critical public infrastructure".

Other uses, not classified as "high risk", will have no additional regulatory constraints beyond existing ones.

- Difficult balance -

Google and other tech giants are taking the EU's AI strategy very seriously as Europe often sets a standard on how tech is regulated around the world.

Last year, Google warned that the EU's definition of artificial intelligence was too broad and that Brussels must refrain from over-regulating a crucial technology.

Alexandre de Streel, co-director of the Centre on Regulation in Europe (Cerre) think tank, said there is a difficult balance to be struck between protection and innovation.

The text "sets a relatively open framework and everything will depend on how it is interpreted," he told AFP.

Tech lobbyist Christian Borggreen, from the Computer and Communications Industry Association, welcomed the EU's "risk-based approach" to regulating AI.

"It would be a wise and strategic approach," he said.

But for some civil liberties activists the new rules do not go far enough in curbing potential abuses in the cutting-edge technologies that look set have a far-reaching impact on everyday life.

"It still allows some problematic uses, such as mass biometric surveillance," said Orsolya Reich of umbrella group Liberties.

"The EU must take a stronger position... and ban indiscriminate surveillance of the population without allowing exceptions."

© 2021 AFP

Myanmar junta has 'no heart for humanity', says Karen leader as ethnic groups join forces

Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 

© France 24 screengrab

Text by:FRANCE 24|

Video by:FRANCE 24

Unrest continues in Myanmar where more than 700 civilians have been killed since the February 1st military coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi. The protest movement is developing on the political front with opponents of the military junta announcing the formation on Friday of a National Unity Government, including members of Suu Kyi’s ousted Cabinet and representatives of ethnic minority groups and other allies.

The Karen National Union in the east, on the border with Thailand, has offered shelter to fleeing protesters in the territory it controls.

Major-General Nerdah Mya, head of the Karen National Defence Organisation, spoke to FRANCE 24 about the developments in Myanmar. A leader of the Karen National Liberation Army, the oldest guerilla group still fighting in Myanmar, he described the situation in the country as "very critical" and called on the international community to act immediately to end the killing. He stressed that the people of Myanmar are not giving up the fight and discussed efforts to coordinate with other ethnic groups and democratic forces to bring an end to the military regime.

"We have been fighting for self-determination and freedom and an autonomous state for people for so many years. It has been more than 17 years already. And we are also working together with other ethnic groups who have the same goals and objectives like us," the major-general told FRANCE 24. "We are holding hands and fighting against the current military regime," he says. "They are so brutal. They have no heart for humanity."


To watch the interview, click on the player 

ET TU BRUTUS
Chad President Idriss Deby Itno killed in clash with rebels: Military

The announcement came just hours after electoral officials had declared Deby, 68, the winner of the April 11 presidential election, paving the way for him to stay in power for six more years.

I GUESS THAT WAS A BIT MUCH FOR SOME



Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno (Picture: AP)

Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno, who ruled the central African nation for more than three decades, died Tuesday of wounds suffered on the battlefield during a fight against rebels, the military announced on national television and radio.

Chad's Idriss Deby, a longstanding French ally in the troubled Sahel

Issued on: 20/04/2021 

In this April 20, 2016 file photo, then Chadian president Idriss Déby at a meeting with then US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power at the presidential palace in N'Djamena, Chad, Wednesday, April 20, 2016. © Andrew Harnik, AP

Text by:FRANCE 24


Idriss Deby Itno, who was on course for a sixth term as Chad's president before he died from injuries sustained in battle, had earned a reputation as a stalwart French ally in the fight against jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel – despite accusations of authoritarianism.


The 68-year-old son of a herder would have been one of the longest-serving leaders in the world, after provisional results showed him winning re-election this week.

But his shock death cut his 30-year political career short and will likely throw Chadian politics into disarray.

Classic path to power

Deby, from the Zaghawa ethnic group, took the classic path to power through the army, and relished the military culture.

Last August, the National Assembly named him field marshal, the first in Chad's history, after he led an offensive against jihadists who had killed nearly 100 troops at a base in the west of the country.

Dressed in a dark-blue silk cape embroidered with oak leaves, and clutching a baton, Deby dedicated the tribute to "all my brothers in arms".

As a young man, he enrolled at the officers' academy in the capital N'Djamena before heading to France, where he trained as a pilot.

He returned in 1979 to a country in the grip of feuding warlords.

Deby hitched his star to Hissene Habre and was rewarded with the post of army chief after Habre came to power in 1982, ousting Goukouni Weddeye.

He went on to distinguish himself fighting Libyan-backed rebels over mountainous territory in the north of the country.

But in 1989, he fell out with his increasingly paranoid boss, who accused him of plotting a coup.

Deby fled to Sudan, where he assembled an armed rebel group, the Patriotic Salvation Movement, which rolled into N'Djamena unopposed in December 1990.

In 1996, six years after he seized power and ushered in democracy, Deby was elected head of state in Chad's first multi-party vote. He won all succeeding elections.

The main opposition withdrew its participation in 2006 and 2011, irked by a change to the constitution enabling the former soldier to renew his term, and the elections in 2015 were marked by accusations of fraud.

French friend

Deby was solidly backed by former colonial power France, which in 2008 and in 2019 used military force to help defeat rebels who tried to oust him.

"We safeguarded an absolutely major ally in the struggle against terrorism in the Sahel," French Defence Minister Florence Parly told parliament in 2019.

Deby supported French intervention in northern Mali in 2013 to repel jihadists, and the following year stepped in to end chaos in the Central African Republic. Experts consider Chadian soldiers the strongest in the G5 Sahel – the regional bloc transformed into a military alliance at Paris’ behest in 2017, bringing together forces from Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.

In 2015, Deby launched a regional offensive in Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger against Nigeria-based Boko Haram jihadists, dubbing the Islamic State affiliate "a horde of crazies and drug addicts".

One of Deby's political rivals, Saleh Kebzabo, had protested against France's backing and urged the world to recognise the regime's "dictatorial nature".

Deby's power base, the army, comprises mainly troops from the president's Zaghawa ethnic group and is commanded by loyalists.

It is considered one of the best in Sahel. According to the International Crisis Group think tank, defence spending accounts for between 30 and 40 percent of Chad's annual budget.

'Bullying society'?

In 2018, Deby scrapped the position of prime minister to assume full executive authority.

"Everything is centralised around the presidency – he uses all the weapons of absolute power while bullying society," Roland Marchal at the Centre of International Research at the Sciences Po school in Paris told AFP.

Marchal said Deby had a reputation for a hot temper and notorious mood swings, although a close aide said he had "great listening ability and analytical skills".

Accused of iron-fisted rule during his long reign, Deby banned opposition demonstrations, made arbitrary arrests and severed access to social networks, raising regular objections from human rights groups.

The late president also named relatives and cronies to key positions, and failed to address the poverty that afflicts many of Chad's 13 million people despite oil wealth.

The country ranks 187th out of 189 in the UN's Human Development Index (HDI).

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

From Myanmar to Afghanistan: are we seeing the end of western interventions?

Demonstrators carry placards and flash the three-finger salute during an anti-military coup protest yesterday in Mandalay, Myanmar. EPA

A coup is launched against a democracy barely 10 years old. The brutal military junta that takes over murders hundreds of its citizens. It even stoops to shooting children; a baby loses an eye as a result. The country is near united in opposition to the new regime, as shown by the mass civil disobedience that is crippling the economy. There is no ambiguity: the cause of righteousness is clearly on one side.

In the days of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, even of David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy, the call might have gone out for the West to act – to send in external armed forces to rescue the country from dictatorship and build a new liberal democracy.

Yet when the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meets in Jakarta this Saturday to discuss the situation in Myanmar, the junta leader Min Aung Hlaing will be in attendance and the talk will be of sanctions and dialogue. The acting foreign minister of the shadow government formed to represent the overthrown parliament has asked the international community for “co-ordinated political, financial and security measures” to support his country’s people, but for nothing more visceral.

Despite many warnings that Myanmar is on the brink of a Syria-style civil war, the former American ambassador to Naypyidaw, Derek Mitchell, said in an interview with Bloomberg this week that “there’s little more that the West can do”.

Mr Mitchell, now president of the National Democratic Institute, may well be right. The fact that almost no one appears to be suggesting the use of external force, however, makes one ask: has the doctrine of liberal interventionism been so thoroughly discredited that it is not just dead, but has gone extinct?


The worry is that western exceptionalism is alive and all too well

Liberal interventionists were in the ascendance around the turn of the millennium. Britain’s military expedition in 2000 helped bring a close to Sierra Leone’s civil war, while then UK prime minister Tony Blair’s role in Nato’s air campaign in support of Kosovo the previous year was so well received locally that “Tonibler” became a popular name for young boys born in the soon-to-be-independent state.

With their neo-conservative allies in the George W Bush administration, liberal interventionists backed regime-change wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, convinced that they not only had the right to overthrow governments they deemed barbaric and illegitimate, but that they had a moral duty to export democracy and western values, even at the barrel of a gun.

Today, we hear nothing of such liberal interventionist ideas. Even the related notion of the “Responsibility to Protect” adopted by the UN in 2005, under which the Security Council could authorise force to prevent atrocities and protect civilians, has virtually disappeared from regular parlance. (This has been raised in the context of Myanmar, but China and Russia would almost certainly veto any military proposals.)

Other powers are more than willing to insert themselves in other countries – most obviously Turkey, Russia and Iran in Syria – but their interventions have clearly been in pursuit of their own interests, not idealistic (if wrong-headed) goals.

There are also still plenty of liberal hawks. From the Biden administration to Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, there is no shortage of leaders who warn of a “polarisation between authoritarian regimes and autocracies, and the liberal democracies that we love”, as Mr Morrison put it last week. UK parliamentarians speak darkly of the “dangers” they believe are posed by Russia and China. The black-and-white mindset which views western-style liberal democracy as the only legitimate form of governance remains untroubled by nuance, history, or knowledge of – let alone respect for – local cultures.

But moving from the observation that different countries have different value-systems to saying that they must, by necessity, clash, or making clear that the US will defend treaty allies in the Asia-Pacific, falls far short of arguing for liberal interventionism.

From the vantage point of 2021, it is easy to see why very few prominent proponents are left for this once-fashionable doctrine. The catastrophes wreaked by regime-change interventions on Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan – the last described so eloquently by Sulaiman Hakemy and Hussein Ibish in these pages recently – cannot be painted as exceptions to the rule. Empirically, they are the rule.

But it took a while for the facts to dim the reckless warmongering of liberal interventionists and the neo-conservatives who sought ends so similar as to make no difference between them. In his book After the Neocons, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama describes a lecture given by the late US columnist Charles Krauthammer at the American Enterprise Institute in 2004, entitled American Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World. Mr Fukuyama wrote that the war in Iraq was “treated … as a virtually unqualified success”.

“I could not understand why everyone around me was applauding enthusiastically, given that the United States had found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was bogged down in a vicious insurgency, and had almost totally isolated itself from the rest of the world by following the unipolar strategy advocated by Krauthammer.”

Seven years later, Britain’s Mr Cameron and France’s Mr Sarkozy appeared to have learned very little when they cheered Nato’s ousting of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. I warned in these pages at the time that “although the gamble appears to have paid off, it was, like similar ventures in the past, one taken hastily, instinctively (on the basis that ‘something must be done’), with no serious thought for what happened afterwards nor even the vaguest notion of how long it would last”. Now, sadly, we do know what happened afterwards.

Perhaps it has taken the forthcoming allied withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the US military spent not far short of $1 trillion and lost 2,448 military personnel, and where up to 40,000 civilians have died, with precious little gained, to have provided the writing on the headstone for liberal interventionism.

I would hope that this misguided doctrine might rest undisturbed and unconsulted for decades to come. The worry is that the western exceptionalism that underpinned it is alive and all too well. There are many, armed with the unwarranted moral superiority they award themselves, who are itching for conflict as much as the unlamented liberal interventionists. These nostalgists for a US-led unipolar world may in future prove just as deluded – and just as dangerous.

Sholto Byrnes is an East Asian affairs columnist

 for The National/UAE
Updated: April 20, 2021