Exclusive-United Arab Emirates set to run Kabul airport in deal with Taliban, sources say

By Alexander Cornwell - 

Taliban members stand on airport runway in Kabul

DUBAI (Reuters) -The Taliban and the United Arab Emirates are poised to strike a deal for the Gulf nation to run Kabul airport and several others in Afghanistan that could be announced within weeks, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

The Taliban, whose government remains an international pariah without formal recognition, have courted regional powers, including Qatar and Turkey, to operate Kabul airport, landlocked Afghanistan's main air link with the world, and others.

But after months of back-and-forth talks, and at one point raising the possibility of a joint UAE-Turkey-Qatar deal, the Taliban is set to hand the operations in their entirety to the UAE, who had previously run Afghan airports, the sources said.

An agreement would help the Islamist militants ease their isolation from the outside world as they govern an impoverished country beset by drought, widespread hunger and economic crisis. It would also hand Abu Dhabi a win in its diplomatic tussle with Qatar for influence.

Under the deal with the UAE, Afghans will be employed at the airports, including in security roles, crucial for the Taliban who want to show they can create jobs but also because they staunchly oppose the presence of foreign forces, sources said.

An Emirati state-linked contractor had been contracted to provide security services, which should be announced soon, while negotiations over airspace management are ongoing, they said.

The militants in May awarded the ground services contract to UAE state-linked GAAC, which was involved in running security and ground handling services at Afghan airports before the Taliban takeover, shortly after Taliban officials had visited Abu Dhabi.

SECURITY CONTRACT

Meanwhile, Qatar and Turkey's joint negotiations with the Taliban broke down around the same time, sources said.

Emirati officials had no immediate comment when contacted by Reuters. GAAC did not respond to a request for comment.

Arms trade or not, DSCA wants on-the-ground supervision in Ukraine

By Boyko Nikolov On Jul 7, 2022 

WASHINGTON — DSCA, the agency in charge of foreign US arms sales, currently has no on-the-ground access to US-donated weapons to Ukraine and whether they are being used as intended. This was stated by Jed Royal, deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency [DSCA] to journalists during a round table meeting last Thursday [June 30].

Photo credit: VOA

• Pentagon suspended a deal to sell four MQ-1C UASs to Ukraine
• Ukraine received M30/M31 rockets with 51lb of PBX-109 high explosives
• Sweden donates Gripen fighters to Ukraine, but not until 2027

Due to the war in Ukraine, no toolkit works as it did in peacetime, i.e. going to a foreign country, opening military warehouses, tracking serial numbers, the state of weaponry, its availability, etc. Royal confirmed the view that currently in this situation, DSCA officials are “somewhat limited” in their ability to carry out more robust monitoring of weapons supplied to Ukraine.

BulgarianMilitary.com recalls that in recent weeks there have been allegations of illegal arms trade during wartime. As we wrote, sources claim that Ukraine sold Russia two self-propelled French Caesar howitzers. Ukraine [France too] rejects this claim. Last month, a Javelin anti-tank guided missile system appeared for sale on the darknet, with the place of purchase being Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

Jed Royal told reporters that officials will have to be more creative in carrying out their duties, but only if the agency sends more people into the field to conduct inspections. “Once we have more people in the country, we should be in a position to actually go do more physical validation [and] verification, going forward,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that we’re looking for here. It still won’t be like a peacetime environment for it. So we’re going to have to get creative in how we do this.”

It has not yet been decided how and when DSCA officials will begin inspections of weapons delivered to Ukraine. Royal is hoping to get a cooperation office in Ukraine to house examiners, a practice worldwide carried out by the agency. However, Royal does not want to send a “task force”.

Photo credit: Think Defence

Jed Royal said that at the moment the only verification being done was on credibility – assurances from the Ukrainians that were given to DSCA agents and described them as “very solid and satisfactory”.

Congress wants the same

BulgarianMilitary.com recalls that currently, Ukraine has received US$6 billion worth of military equipment as military aid. US President Joe Biden almost once a month announces a new package of weapon systems, ammunition, and consumables that the US is ready to give to Ukraine, thereby increasing the revenge against Ukraine.

While Congress has been broadly supportive of security assistance to Ukraine, lawmakers across the political spectrum — including Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — have raised concerns about the department’s seeming lack of oversight.

***

BulgarianMilitary.com 

Our standards: Manifesto & ethical princliples.

Russian UN veto could threaten aid deliveries to 3m people in Syria - BBC News

Russia has threatened to veto a UN Security Council resolution reauthorizing cross-border deliveries of vital aid into north-western Syria.

The closure of the last route from Turkey would immediately put more than 3 million people at risk of starvation.

Russia occupies 22 percent of Ukraine farmland: NASA

AFP
Published: 07 July ,2022

Russian forces now occupy about 22 percent of Ukraine’s farmland since the February 24 invasion, impacting one of the major suppliers to global grain and edible oils markets, NASA said Thursday.

Satellite data analyzed by scientists at the US space agency shows that Russia’s occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine gives it control of land that produces 28 percent of the country’s winter crops, mainly wheat, canola, barley, and rye, and 18 percent of summer crops, mostly maize and sunflower.

The war’s disruption of harvesting and planting – including farmers fleeing the war, the lack of labor and fields pockmarked by shelling – could have a heavy impact on global food supplies, NASA scientists said.

“The world’s breadbasket is at war,” said Inbal Becker-Reshef, director of NASA’s Harvest program, which uses US and European satellite data to study global food production.

According to US data, before the war Ukraine supplied 46 percent of the sunflower oil traded on global markets, nine percent of the wheat, 17 percent of the barley, and 12 percent of maize.

Russia’s invasion has blocked exports of food from Odessa, the main port on the Black Sea, and destroyed storage and transport infrastructure in some areas.

That means farmers in the entire country, but especially in occupied areas, have less options for getting their output into storage and to markets.

And it also threatens the planting of winter crops in the fall.

“We’re in the beginning stages of a rolling food crisis that will likely affect every country and person on Earth in some way,” said Becker-Reshef.

Donbas: What’s Ukraine Losing—Industrial Hub, Breadbasket or Both?

July 07, 2022

RM Staff

With Russian forces coming closer to establishing control over the entire Donbas, one can’t help but wonder what Kyiv might lose for good if Russia captures the remainder of this historical region, which consists of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, and holds onto it, per Putin’s plan. Searches for “Donbas”1 turn up descriptions of an “industrial heartland” and a “breadbasket” (though the latter term crops up far less often). Is the Donbas either? And what would Russia gain from controlling it?

The short answer to the first question, based on data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, is that prior to the conflict there the Donbas could indeed have been described as an industrial heartland, but not exactly a breadbasket. In 2013—the last full year before Russia’s de-facto separation of parts of these two regions from Ukraine—Donetsk and Luhansk:

• Jointly accounted for a quarter of Ukraine’s industrial production; 
• Had the 2nd- and 9th-highest gross regional product, respectively, among Ukraine’s 27 constituent territories.
• When it comes to agriculture, however, only the Donetsk region made it into the top 10 of Ukrainian regions with the greatest agricultural production.

The longer answer to the first question is below.

Industrial production: In 2013 the Donetsk and Luhansk regions ranked No. 1 and 5, respectively, among Ukrainian constituent territories in terms of the value of their industrial production, jointly accounting for 25% of Ukraine’s total.

Agricultural production: In 2013 the Donetsk and Luhansk regions ranked No. 10 and 19, respectively, among Ukrainian regions2 in terms of the value of their agricultural production, accounting jointly for 7% of Ukraine’s total.

Source: USDA3

In addition, we have decided to crunch some numbers on two broader indicators typically measured when calculating the national power of countries: economic output and population. Here’s what we found:

Economy: In 2013 the Donetsk and Luhansk regions ranked No. 2 and 9 among Ukrainian constituent territories in terms of the size of their gross regional product, accounting jointly for 14% of Ukraine’s GDP in 2013.

Population: In 2013 Donetsk and Luhansk regions ranked No. 1 and 7 among Ukrainian constituent territories in terms of the size of their populations, jointly accounting for 14% of Ukraine’s GDP in that year.

As noted at the beginning of this post, the second question to ponder is this: If Donbas is indeed lost to Ukraine, what is it that Russia has gained? That question is much more difficult to answer, as both the population of Donbas and its economic output have shrunk considerably since de facto separation from Ukraine in 2014. For a sense of scale, however: If the population and economic output of Donbas were somehow transferred to Russia in their entirety in 2013, then Donbas’s share in Russia’s output and population would have been about 2%.5  Therefore, in relative terms, Ukraine’s loss would be greater than Russia’s gain.

Footnotes

1. There is no “Donbas” administrative unit in Ukraine. There is the Luhansk Oblast (province or region) and the Donetsk Oblast. The Russian side, however, insists that there is a Donetsk People’s Republic, which should comprise all lands within the borders of the Donetsk Oblast, and a Luhansk People’s Republic, which should comprise all lands within the borders of the Luhansk Oblast. It is all these territories that Russia’s present leaders typically have in mind when they refer to Donbas. The toponym itself is derived from two words: Donetsky (Donetsk) and bassein (basin), a reference to a coal basin, most of which is located in the modern-day Donetsk region.  
2. Three constituent territories—the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol, as well as the Republic of Crimea—were not included in the count by Ukraine’s statistical agency.
3. More USDA data on Ukraine’s crop production can be found here.
4. Here and elsewhere 1 hrvynia = 0.1226 USD, per the average exchange rate in 2013.
5. This calculation doesn’t include Russia’s de facto control, as of June 26, 2022, of the land bridge from Donbas to Crimea and of Crimea itself.

Photos shared under a Pixabay license.

Giving Saudi a free pass undermines universal human rights

Kourosh Ziabari
02 Jul, 2022

Kourosh Ziabari warns that the lack of international criticism and accountability towards Saudi, especially following the execution of 81 people, means other nations like Iran feel no sense of obligation towards the defence of universal human rights.


Amongst the 81 people executed in a single day, 41 were Shia Muslims, eight were Yemeni citizens and one was a national of Syria. [GETTY]

Only a few months have rolled by since Saudi Arabia pulled off its largest campaign of mass execution by beheading 81 people in a single day, and it seems the scandalous misadventure has been clouded by the passage of time.

Corporate media’s coverage of the Middle East has barely been affected by that travesty, and human rights advocacy organisations appear to be preoccupied with other things, including their unvarying Iran fixation.

Even by the standards of Saudi, one of the most profligate practitioners of capital punishment, such a large-scale execution is rare. In fact, it has been recorded as the largest in the kingdom’s modern history.

Of those sent to the gallows, 41 people were Shia Muslims, eight were Yemeni citizens and one was a national of Syria.

The disproportionate number of Shia people sentenced to death against the backdrop of the nation’s slender minority of Shias making up only around 12% of the population, and the action taken against nine non-Saudis cast doubt on the authenticity of the legal procedures resulting in the verdicts.

But even when the alarming cruelty unfolded, it wasn’t perceived as an anomaly or a surprise story meriting exclusive attention. There were sporadic references to the chilling execution spree in the media, and human rights organisations issued generic statements denouncing the beheading of an inordinate number of convicts whose custody and trial circumstances were debatable.

''The Saudi leadership has now recognised that its ironclad partnership with the US and other Western powers has insulated it from critical investigation over its transgressions. This is not simply favouritism, but duplicity in upholding a set of principles that are supposed to be applied coherently and integrally.''

That was pretty much it. Saudi was not singled out for scrutiny at the UN Human Rights Council, mainstream broadcasters didn’t spend hours chewing over a gross violation of human rights by an autocratic government, world leaders didn’t bombard Mohammed bin Salman with castigatory messages, and economic sanctions weren’t brandished to penalize Saudi’s excess.

Just days after the executions, British PM Boris Johnson travelled to Saudi Arabia to court the oil-rich nation to boost crude output in a bid to kick Russia out of the global energy market. There, he generously lavished praise on the royal family for their progress on human rights protection.

Iran International, a Saudi-funded London-based broadcaster that airs news and entertainment for the Persian-speaking audiences in Iran and abroad, delicately brushed aside the shocking story. It made a few cursory mentions sans the typical sentimental outcries it kicks up over imprisonment and execution reports trickling out of Iran.

Reactions to Riyadh’s rights abuses and its conduct overseas evoke valid questions around the consistency of the enforcement of human rights benchmarks and the solidity of international law.

When the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 prompted a media frenzy and a reckoning was in the offing on the viability of a strategic partnership with the Saudis, the Trump administration, faced with unrelenting public pressure, erred on the side of safeguarding billions of dollars’ worth of arms deals that were being negotiated. He toiled away at keeping the fiasco under the wraps and avoided discomfiting MBS by speaking out against his ghastly elimination of a noted dissident. Accountability became the casualty of corporate interests.

In defiance of Congress, Trump had championed a whopping $8 billion arms deal with Saudi in 2019, which even the most optimistic ideologues of his Middle East policy contested. It came right after a contract in 2017 between the two governments when MBS set his sights on a deal to purchase weaponry from the United States valued at $110 billion.

Trump’s transactional logic persuaded him to mince words on Khashoggi’s assassination – a multibillion arms deal obviously outmatched any human rights nicety.

In the same vein, the international community has found it expedient to shrug off the years-long carnage in Yemen crafted by Saudi, the outcome of which is some 150,000 victims, including at least 15,000 civilians so far. The reasons shouldn’t be too difficult to decipher: Saudi is an essential component of an alliance that determines the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the broader Middle East, so its military campaigns, however deadly, can be explained away.

Human rights advocacy represents an instance of Riyadh being cherry-picked for special treatment. The status of prisons, dominance of cruel punishment forms, curtailment of free speech and extreme gender inequities have produced a tapestry of overt human rights abuses that leave no room for defence of the kingdom.

Between 2010 and 2020, Saudi has executed at least 1,175 convicts, and even though the numbers cannot be precisely confirmed, some 3,000 political prisoners are languishing in jails. These are some of the reasons to be sceptical of the reforms that are promised to be rolled out. And, why the establishment must be challenged for paying lip service to the rule of law and right to life.

But the very governments and organisations that tend to be characteristically meticulous in documenting abuses internationally and denouncing the “regimes” that perpetrate them, have acquiesced to giving Saudi a free pass so that their ally doesn’t feel mortified when it tramples the universal values and indulges in cruel treatment of its citizens.

The US sanctions aimed at punishing those involved in such violations are unambiguous and already being implemented against individuals or entities within the governments of China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Syria.

Since 2009 until April 2021, a total of 1,791 individuals and entities were sanctioned by the US over human rights violations and corruption. This long-winded list includes only 22 Saudi entities and individuals.

The Saudi leadership has now recognised that its ironclad partnership with the US and other Western powers has insulated it from critical investigation over its transgressions. This is not simply favouritism, but duplicity in upholding a set of principles that are supposed to be applied coherently and integrally.

One of the critical "what ifs" Iranians are asking these days, is what would have been the reaction by the international community had the Islamic Republic gone on a similar analogous rampage as Saudi?

In comparison to the kingdom, Iran has faced a hard time in the recent decades justifying its human rights failures to global audiences.

As long as states such as Saudi Arabia are given a carte blanche to suppress the civil society and extinguish the rights of their people, countries like Iran will continue to dismissively downplay the global efforts to push for accountability over human rights. They will push ahead with their own agenda, namely, arbitrary executions, imprisonments and crackdowns, because these standards are seen to be implemented disingenuously.

Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist and reporter. He is the Iran correspondent of Fair Observer and Asia Times. He is the recipient of a Chevening Award from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and an American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue at Stanford Fellowship.
Follow him on Twitter @KZiabari

BEING COY BEFORE THE PROM
Resistance and trust issues as US, Israel push for defence pact with Arab states

The idea, which would use Israeli technology, could gain momentum during President Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East.

Thursday 07/07/2022

The Arab Weekly

US President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington. (Reuters)


RIYADH -

The United States and Israel are seeking to lay the groundwork for a security alliance with Arab states that would connect air defence systems in order to combat Iranian drone and missile attacks in the Middle East, four sources familiar with the plan said.

The idea, which would use Israeli technology, could gain momentum during President Joe Biden’s stops in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Saudi Arabia on a July 13-16 trip, said two of the sources who were briefed on the plans.

As regional tensions have grown over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and parts of Iraq have come under UAV or missile strikes claimed by or blamed on Iranian-backed militias.

Discussions are still at an early stage and have already met resistance from several Arab countries who refuse to do business with Israel, the four sources said.

But Israel’s defence minister Benny Gantz last month said an emerging US-sponsored air defence alliance was “operative”‌ and could be boosted by Biden’s visit. The apparatus has already foiled attempted Iranian attacks, he added.

Speaking to media on condition of anonymity, an Israeli official said partner countries were synchronising their respective air defence systems through remote electronic communication, rather than using the same physical facilities.

Israel in recent years has offered defence cooperation to US-aligned Arab states which share its concerns about Iran, although the US assessment is that Gantz appeared to have overstated how far such security cooperation has advanced.

For their part, Gulf Arabs have been publicly reticent on the idea.

One person in Washington familiar with the matter said that while Biden will discuss wider regional security coordination, including with close ally Israel, at a Saudi-led Gulf Arab summit next week, no announcement of a formal pact is expected.

The plan would be to build a network of radars, detectors and interceptors between Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt, with the help of Israeli technology and US military bases, three of the sources said.

Isolating Iran

That would allow those countries, especially Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to detect aerial threats before they cross their borders.

Israeli officials introduced the idea of a regional defence system at a US Central Command meeting attended by military officials from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Egypt in Sharm El Sheikh in March, one of the sources said.

“The proposal is for a joint detection system, where each country that signs up notifies the others of a detected attack,” added one of the sources, who declined to be identified.

A senior Israeli official in Washington previewing Biden’s trip described the efforts to form an alliance as “a goal that is set.”

“There’s a long way to go and the US is supportive of that.”‌

Washington hopes more cooperation would help further integrate Israel in the region and isolate arch-enemy Iran.

The regional defence plan coincides with months of deadlock in talks on reviving a 2015 deal that limits Iran’s nuclear activities. Washington says Iran’s uranium enrichment, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons, has made alarming progress. Iran denies seeking atomic weapons.

Israel’s worries about the outcome of the nuclear negotiations and its threats to take unilateral military action against Iran, carry weight in Western capitals.

Iran, armed with one of the region’s biggest missile systems, has said joint military activities of Israel and some Arab countries in the Gulf are done “out of desperation.”


Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system fires to intercept a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, as seen from Ashdod, Israel. (Reuters)

US push and Arab caution

But the US push for anti-Iran cooperation also faces resistance from some Arab states such as Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait.

“There are different views in different capitals,”‌ a senior Biden administration official said on condition of anonymity.

“We are not trying to create some top-down structure. We are trying to build upon the relationships that exist, some of them above-board, some of them below the surface,”‌ the official said.

Iraq is a prime example of the difficulties of signing up some Arab countries to an alliance. Iran has wide sway in the country through Shia militias and politicians and would certainly block any attempts to join a security pact.

In May, Iraq’s parliament approved a law that will ban normalising relations with Israel, at a time when several Arab countries have established formal ties.

Iraq has never recognised the state of Israel since its establishment in 1948 and Iraqi citizens and companies cannot visit Israel. However, the new law goes further, specifically criminalising any attempts to normalise relations with Israel.

A senior Iraqi security adviser said no official plan has been presented to Baghdad to enter a pact that includes Israel and opposes Iran, so the alliance is out of the question.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also treading carefully, to preserve nascent relations with Tehran, said the sources.

Trust issues

The UAE government said it is not party to any regional military alliance against any specific country and is not aware of any formal talks. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan did not respond to requests for comment.

Washington hopes more regional security cooperation could pave the way for more normalisation deals with Israel, which established ties with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020.

Israel’s top prize would be Saudi Arabia, which says normalising its own ties to Israel would need the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. US officials say Israeli-Saudi normalisation is far off.

Saudi and Israeli cooperation might also help mend US-Saudi relations, strained by the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Yemen’s war and high oil prices.

In an ideal world for Israel, an alliance would lead to missile defence sales to the Gulf, including its Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems which could work with the US Patriot missile batteries long used by Gulf states, experts say.

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East defence specialist at Janes, said Gulf coast radars would give Israel additional early warning of attack, probably making it the main beneficiary of any alliance.

In Israel, Biden will visit Palmachim air base to inspect defence systems including Arrow, David’s Sling, Iron Dome and a laser interception weapon, Israel’s defence ministry said.

Yasmine Farouk at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the idea of integrated missile defence goes back years and successive US administrations had tried to overcome mistrust between Gulf states in sharing intelligence.

She said increasing threats from Iran and its Yemeni Houthi allies might now take priority over “trust issues” among Gulf Arab states.

“But it is a work in progress,” she added.

This salt plant in northeastern Alberta is closing, taking jobs and tax revenue with it

NATIONALIZE IT!

UNDER WORKER/COMMUNITY CONTROL!

Community leaders in the County of St. Paul, Alta., are concerned about losing jobs and tax revenue after next month's closure of a salt plant that has operated continuously for more than 70 years.


© Submitted by Jacob Bialik/Morton Salt

This salt plant in the County of St. Paul, Alta., is set to close this month after operating since 1948.

Dennis Kovtun - CBC

The Windsor salt plant, near the hamlet of Lindbergh, 235 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, is set to close in early August.

The owner of the facility is closing it for financial reasons and plans to tear the building down. Thirty-six of 47 employees will lose their jobs when the plant is shuttered. The others will be let go over the next one to two years.

Parrish Tung, the mayor of Elk Point, 20 kilometres west of the plant, said it has provided employment to generations of workers in the area, many of whom live in his town.

"Fathers and sons work there one after another generation," Tung said this week. "I just hope that all the residents who are affected by the closure of the plant, that they will be able to find employment within our region and choose to stay in our town."

The plant is part of the community fabric, said Terri Hampson, president of the Elk Point and District Chamber of Commerce.

"If you walk down the street and you say, 'Oh, a salt plant!' — probably, somewhere in somebody's life, they've worked there," she said.

"We already have salt plant employees and their families making arrangements to leave our community because now they have to go find this specific work elsewhere."
Plant built in 1948

The plant is owned by Quebec-based Windsor Salt, which is a part of Morton Salt, headquartered in Chicago.

Built in 1948 on top of a natural salt deposit, it produces table salt, water softener, agricultural salt and ice melt. The products are mainly sold in Alberta and Saskatchewan, with some also going to Ontario.

The plant produces salt from naturally occurring rock salt underground. Water is pumped underground and the salt dissolves in it. The brine solution is brought back to the surface where the water is evaporated.

Jacob Bialik, evaporative operations and project portfolio management leader at Morton Salt, said the decision to close the plant was made on June 1, but it had been under evaluation for several years.

It was strictly financial, Bialik said. The plant has not been not profitable for the past few years, and rising inflation and high transportation costs made its continuing operation no longer viable, he said.

BULLSHIT ITS A PAID OFF OPERATING PLANT MEANS ITS PURE PROFIT 

Bialik said employees who are being let go will receive severance, but he declined to discuss the terms.

The plant pays about $600,000 per year in county taxes, said Sheila Kitz, chief administrative officer for the County of St. Paul. That entire amount will not be immediately lost when the plant stops operations because some of it is tied to the plant's buildings. But when the plant is torn down, the tax revenue will go with it, Kitz said.

Bialik said the decision to demolish the plant was made because of its limited ability to serve any other function and "the condition of the operation." Materials will be recycled as much as possible, he said.
Truckers, nearby hamlet to feel impact

Kitz, the county's CAO, said the trucking industry in the county is likely to be affected by the closure. There are no rail lines in the county, so all the produced salt had to be transported by road.

The small hamlet of Riverview, about one kilometre southwest of the salt plant, is a former company community. Some of its residents still work there.

The salt plant has its own power plant, natural gas wells and water treatment facility and has provided infrastructure and services for the hamlet, including gas, water and wastewater services.

The county has been easing the hamlet away from its dependency on the salt plant. Water cisterns and holding tanks for wastewater were installed in each house last year.

The plant's owners have promised not to disconnect the hamlet from natural gas when the plant stops operating. The local gas supplier is working on providing supply to Riverview in the future.

"Once that is available, there is no reason that the residents in that community cannot stay in their homes," said Kitz.

She hopes that the esthetic qualities of Riverview and the County of St. Paul will attract new residents, even with the salt plant gone.

"It's a beautiful little community, actually. It's right along the North Saskatchewan River. It's quite a scenic place to live."

Q&A | Top WHO official on how they limited the recent Ebola outbreak in DRC

Lenin Ndebele

The Democratic Republic of Congo has declared an end to Ebola outbreak. (Isaac Kasamani, AFP)

• The last Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had a 100% fatality rate because of late detection.
• In recent epidemics, there has been a resurgence from persistent virus in survivors, meaning more outbreaks can be expected.
• Conflict does not directly affected the fight against Ebola in the DRC.

---

The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the end of the 14th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Monday.

News24 spoke to Dr Mory Keita, WHO's incident manager for the Ebola outbreak, about how they managed to end the recent cycle, the challenges, and what the future holds for the fight against the disease that was first detected near the Ebola River in 1976.

Lenin Ndebele: Compared to the previous outbreak, which had 130 confirmed cases and 50 deaths, the most recent one was very small. What do you attribute that to?

Dr Mory Keita: This latest outbreak was brought under control in approximately two months, with a total of five cases reported from two health zones.

This is a great achievement when compared to the previous one in the same province, which lasted about five months and had a total of 130 cases reported from 13 health zones.

This is attributable in large part to the early detection of the first confirmed case. In the previous epidemic, there was a long delay in the detection of the first confirmed case, which occurred only after several probable deaths, facilitating the spread of the virus in several health zones.

Ndebele: The DRC has had 14 Ebola outbreaks since 1976. What is the likelihood of having more outbreaks?

Keita: The likelihood of having more outbreaks is almost certain. The question is perhaps how soon. If we take the last three outbreaks in Équateur province, we had a frequency of two years (2018, 2020, and 2022).

Nationwide, we have at least one outbreak every year, referring to the five past years (six epidemics between 2018 and 2022). So, the latest resurgence was not unexpected given the fact that the Ebola virus is enzootic (found in animals) and present in animal reservoirs in the DRC and in the region.

READ | Democratic Republic of Congo declares end to Ebola outbreak

A resurgence from a persistent virus in survivors has also been described in recent epidemics. This means that the risk of re-emergence through exposure to an animal host or from a persistent virus cannot be excluded.

Ndebele: Why are we seeing more infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans and impacting large urban areas in the DRC?

Keita: It is important to note that more than 60% of infectious diseases in humans globally originate from animals.

The DRC's ecosystem is favourable to several infectious diseases, which makes it one of the most affected countries by infectious disease outbreaks in the WHO African region.

This can partly be explained by the over-urbanisation of most African countries, including the DRC. The "One Health" approach, therefore, appears to be an essential component of the strategy to combat infectious disease epidemics.

Ndebele: What did the swift response entail?

Keita: Building on skills and materials from the 2020 outbreak allowed for rapid detection of the first case in 2022.

The deployment of the ministry of health's rapid response teams and partners and the rapid shipment of vaccines were determinants.

The time frame between the declaration of the epidemic and the beginning of vaccination was halved compared to the previous epidemic – four days compared to seven.

Other important elements to note include the fact that this latest epidemic was declared a few days after the launch of a REDISSE (Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement) project funded by the World Bank.

Ndebele: Are any vaccine outreach programmes under way?

Keita: Vaccination with the ERVEBO vaccine (Ebola Zaire vaccine) was stopped just before the declaration of the end of the epidemic.

Consequently, there are no ongoing outreach programmes for this vaccine. However, the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) is planning to implement a vaccination programme with Johnson & Johnson in some of the health zones in the coming weeks or months.

This will necessarily require vaccine outreach programmes before the official launch.

Ndebele: Does conflict in the DRC affect the fight against Ebola and other diseases?

Keita: The ongoing conflict in the DRC has not directly affected the Ebola response as the area affected by the epidemic (Équateur province) is not a conflict zone.

An indirect impact on funding for infectious disease outbreaks and responses cannot be excluded as the conflict may affect the overall economic situation of the country.

Ndebele: From the families and communities where deaths occurred, how long would surveillance work be under way?

Keita: This outbreak that just ended had a 100% case fatality rate (five cases-five deaths). Three deaths occurred in the community and two at the Ebola Treatment Centre (ETC). It should also be noted that these two cases were also admitted late to the ETC, reflecting weakness in early case detection.

Surveillance must be continuous (before, during, and after the epidemic). Although the end of the outbreak has been declared, the community must continue to be attentive and to report promptly any unusual event such as the death of bush animals, and the death of at least two people in the same household within two to three weeks (event-based surveillance).

In addition to this, indicator-based surveillance from health facilities should also be maintained on a continuous and systematic basis.

Ndebele: Is there anything you want people to know about Ebola in the DRC?

Keita: Investing in preparedness is important to shorten and quickly control possible future outbreaks. An easy example is a hotline. Permanently funding a hotline for community alerts would be one of the most cost-effective interventions for managing outbreaks.

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The News24 Africa Desk is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation. The stories produced through the Africa Desk and the opinions and statements that may be contained herein do not reflect those of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.

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