Algeria forest fires kill at least 37

August 19, 2022
Written by VOA

Charred trees are pictured on the outskirts of the Algerian city of El Taref

Algeria's civil protection authority said Thursday that the death toll from forest fires raging in at least 26 provinces had risen to 37.

At least 161 people have been reported injured, with dozens more missing. Algerian media showed video of fires burning out of control in forests across the country, claiming thousands of acres of woodland and affecting the country's national parks.

Interior minister Kamel Beldjoud told journalists that fires were raging unchecked in large swaths of the country and that authorities were still trying to collect data from local officials to determine the number of buildings and other structures that were damaged or destroyed.

Beldjoud said his ministry had received reports of 106 fires spreading in Skikda, Jigel, Setif, El Taref, Souq Aras and Tipaza. Ibtissam Hamlawy, who heads Algeria's Red Crescent Society, told state TV that her organization was well positioned to deal with such a crisis and was busy sending volunteers to help in areas affected by the fires, in addition to sending aid to those families worst hit by the tragedy.

She said the Red Crescent began sending aid to those affected by the fires early Thursday, including 20 tons of medicine, mattresses and blankets, foodstuffs and water to the region of El Taref, in the east of the country.

Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek, now based in Tunisia, told VOA that summer temperatures in parts of North Africa, including Algeria and Tunisia, have been unprecedented and that this had contributed to conditions favourable for wildfires.

"The whole area of North Africa from Morocco to Algeria to Tunisia [is] facing big challenges," Sadek said. "The weather is changing, and they are suffering from water shortages and extreme heat, rising heat, that are pushing that."

Sadek noted that both Tunisia and Morocco were rationing water because of lengthy droughts, and that dry weather was contributing to making forest areas prone to wildfires. Algeria, Tunisia and Libya were badly hit by wildfires in 2021, caused by similar climatic conditions. Numerous wildfires have been reported this year in parts of Europe, including France and Italy, because of high temperatures and drought.

Last year, Algerian media said a drone was spotted setting some of the forest fires and reported that parts of the plane subsequently were recovered after it crashed. Authorities are looking into the reports to see if there is a connection.

Region Outside Moscow Declares Wildfire State of Emergency

By AFP

Updated: Aug. 23, 2022

Wildfires in the Ryazan region.Alexander Ryumin / TASS

Ryazan, a Russian region to the east of Moscow, announced a state of emergency Monday after a spate of forest fires laid waste to more than 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) of land.

Interim Governor Pavel Malkov said on Telegram the measure would facilitate mobilization of resources "to protect inhabitants and territory."

Malkov added that aerial surveillance indicated as much as 9,000 hectares of forest had been engulfed.



Greenpeace cited satellite footage in estimating at least 11,000 hectares had been destroyed.

Local authorities responded after Moscow counterparts reacted to smoke from the fires reaching the capital.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who visited the affected region Monday, posted on Telegram that 8,500 people and 200 units of specialized equipment, including helicopters, would be dispatched to help extinguish the flames.

NEWS

Wildfire Smog Blankets Moscow Amid Heatwave

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Regional authorities had earlier indicated 900 firefighters, seven planes and 10 helicopters were up against the blaze in what Sobyanin termed a difficult to access area.

Scientists are blaming a slew of forest fires across Europe in what has been an summer of unusually high temperatures on climate change and Russia has been no exception, suffering several notably in Siberia and the country's Far East.

'Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union'
Vladislav Zubok's monumental book is shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize.

By Leyla Latypova

MOSCOW TIMES

Author Vladislav ZubokElena Vitenberg


In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin famously labeled the collapse of the Soviet Union “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Years later, analysts, pundits and casual observers have repeatedly returned to the phrase to find a possible explanation for the Kremlin’s geopolitical moves from the 2008 war in Georgia to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. But how much do we actually know about the event that dramatically altered the global geopolitical landscape and ended the nearly half-a-century-long Cold War?

While some may know much more than others, everyone — newbies and seasoned observers alike — will find new answers and food for thought in Vladislav Zubok’s Pushkin Prize-nominated “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union.”

Zubok, one of the world’s leading experts on the history of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, is a professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

This comprehensive, wide-ranging work, which tracks the years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership in the 1980s and early 1990s, is an encyclopedia of the Soviet demise. But the rich factual material is carefully interwoven with first-hand accounts of the events — derived, in part, from personal diaries provided to Zubok by the participants — resulting in a captivating, emotionally-charged read.

In “Collapse,” Zubok refutes the notion that the fall of the Soviet empire was pre-determined. Instead, he argues that the country that is no more “fell victim to a perfect storm and a hapless captain” —Gorbachev himself.

Though Gorbachev is often pictured as a hero in the collective Western imagination, Zubok doesn’t shy away from exposing the faults and character flaws of the last Soviet leader that ensured his instrumental role in the process of destroying the Union. In contrast to the many flattering biographical accounts and several autobiographies written by Gorbachev himself, Zubok’s Gorby is a man blinded by his idealism, striving for recognition by the liberal West and inability to acknowledge his own failures. These are the traits that made him an ideal fit for the role of a destroyer of the Soviet project.

Zubok, however, doesn’t attribute the end of the Soviet project solely to one personality. The economic collapse and role of the West are also explored in great detail.

Though “Collapse” explores events that took place more than a quarter of a century ago, it is difficult to shake off an ominous feeling when reading it against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

As the former Soviet imperial core and its neighbors once again face a turbulent, uncertain future — that, as some argue, could even bring about the collapse of Russia itself — it’s difficult not to draw parallels with the events of the 80s and seek answers for the questions about the present in Zubok’s book. The author, however, firmly cautions the reader against searching for remedies to present problems in the distant past.

“The economic calamity and social traumas of the Soviet collapse do not explain, even less justify, what happened many years later,” Zubok writes.

“What they point to, however, is the possibility of great reversals and historic surprises…down the road.”

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union


From Chapter Three: Revolutions

History Accelerates

In the spring and summer of 1989, another dramatic development occurred within the Soviet political elites: the Iron Curtain that prevented them from going abroad suddenly parted. This had revolutionary implications for Soviet politics, especially for the educated Moscow-centered intelligentsia. Since Stalin’s times, the West had been the forbidden fruit and the object of intense curiosity for Soviet citizens. The post-Stalin intelligentsia held an “imagined West” as a vital part of their identity, dreams, and cultural self-validation. Several educated cohorts had grown up with a veritable obsession with and idealization of Western culture and music, first jazz, then rock. Many of those people who learned to despise the Soviet system under Brezhnev felt uncritical admiration for all things Western.

In Leonid Brezhnev’s household, the General Secretary and his wife had watched Soviet news and entertainment. Their grandchildren instead watched Western movies and cartoons on a large Sony TV screen with a video-cassette recorder (VCR). By 1989, VCRs, along with personal computers, became the most coveted object of social status, as well as an informational tool. Hundreds of new “cooperatives” began to import and sell them in great numbers on the Soviet market, a trade more lucrative than still illegal currency exchange. Yet nothing could be a substitute for the experience of crossing borders. “Trips to the West were the most important status symbol,” wrote the Russian scholar Dmitry Furman. “See Paris, and die,” was a popular joke, but also a dream for many in the Soviet Union. Scientists, artists, dancers, symphony orchestras, and many Soviet Jews lived in fear that they would not obtain clearance from “competent organs” to cross the Soviet borders— for no apparent reason other than that somebody higher up the pyramid of power questioned their loyalty or someone close to them informed on them. Memoirs from the post-Soviet period are replete with anger and drama regarding the abrogation of that clearance.

In early 1989, the Soviet rules for foreign travel were radically relaxed. It was no longer necessary to grovel and conform to Soviet authorities, including the Party and the KGB, in order to obtain permission for a private trip abroad. During the first half of 1989, the number of approved applications for exit visas reached 1.8 million, three times more than two years earlier. During the same period about 200,000 people received official permission to emigrate, mostly to Israel and the United States. 36 The majority, however, applied for a foreign Soviet passport and a permit to leave the USSR and return— for the first time in their life. Bureaucrats and officials, directors of enterprises, cooperative managers, academic scholars, scientists, artists and actors rushed under the rising curtain. Performers went to perform, artists sold their art, intellectuals delivered talks. The glasnost journalists, academic scholars, government officials, especially those who knew some English and other foreign languages, were in high demand abroad. Western universities, the United States Information Agency (USIA), think tanks, fellowship programs, foundations all used their funds to invite Soviet visitors. Intellectuals were invited by Western foundations.

Scholars have studied this phenomenon exclusively as a factor in bringing the Cold War to an end. Yet, it also delegitimized the Soviet system. Most Soviet diplomats, KGB officials, and military representatives abroad had become habituated to navigation between the West and their homeland; they lived in a kind of controlled schizophrenia. Gorbachev traveled abroad several times in the late 1960s and 1970s, and began to see a humiliating gap between the abundance in Western stores and a dearth of goods in Soviet ones. Yet this was nothing compared with the shock that thousands of Soviet people experienced when they crossed Soviet borders and visited Western countries from early 1989 onwards— many of them for the first time. In May of that year, Shevardnadze’s aide and speechwriter Teimuraz Stepanov wrote in his diary about West Germany: “The Devil took us to this Federal Republic, so groomed, preened, accurate, and caressed, where it is particularly painful to think about my beloved country— dirty and exhausted from futile efforts to overcome the utmost ugliness created by the most inhumane regime in the world.” A few days later in Irkutsk, on the way to the Sino-Soviet summit, he wrote with even more bitterness: “Who said that my Motherland is less beautiful than the German Heimat . .  .? It is, however, gutted [by the apparatchiks] armed with Party directives and a never-ending Marxist-Leninist world view.”

For first-time Soviet travelers to the West a visit to a supermarket produced the biggest effect. The contrast between half-empty, gloomy Soviet food stores and glittering Western palaces with an abundant selection of food was mind-boggling. Not a single Soviet visitor was prepared for the sight of pyramids of oranges, pineapples, tomatoes, bananas; endless varieties of fresh fish and meat, in lieu of a butcher cutting chunks from bluish hulks from a freezer; efficient cashiers with a smiling attitude, instead of rude saleswomen doling out greasy cans and jars to a long line of desperately hungry customers. And then actually to be allowed to touch, to smell, to savor! A severe aftershock awaited Soviet visitors upon their subsequent return to the Soviet Union, and to scenes of misery. This experience changed Soviet travelers forever. Western standards, unimaginable before, immediately became the new norm. Soviet realities, part of everyday habit, suddenly became “abnormal” and therefore revolting, unbearable.

Most of the newly elected deputies of the Supreme Soviet traveled to the West in March– August 1989 for the first time at the invitation of Western parliamentarians, universities, non-governmental institutions, and émigré friends and relatives. Gennady Burbulis, elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies, had grown up as an admirer of Lenin and joined the Party on his centennial in 1970. Because of his security clearance (he had served in strategic rocket forces during his obligatory draft), he never had a chance to travel outside the Soviet Union. In June 1989, however, he joined the MDG opposition [Inter-regional Deputies Group- MT] in the Supreme Soviet and traveled with a group of other deputies to Stockholm for a seminar on “Swedish socialism.” Many years later he still recalled the shock from visiting a giant fish supermarket: a mile of stands and aquariums filled with fresh fish, oysters, calimari, shrimp, and other sea creatures. Equally amazing for Burbulis was the absence of long lines of customers. Burbulis left Stockholm as an enthusiast of “Swedish socialism” and an even more bitter enemy of the Soviet Party system. Another member of this group, Nikolai Travkin, a construction worker and Soviet patriot, joined the MDG as a fan of “democratic socialism.” His Soviet identity also crumbled in Stockholm. He returned to Moscow an angry man, convinced that the communists had been fooling Soviet people all along. In March 1990 he quit the Party and launched the Democratic Party of Russia in an attempt to seize power from the nomenklatura.

The most consequential eye-opening experience occurred to Boris Yeltsin. In June 1989, he asked the American ambassador Jack Matlock to help him visit the United States. The idea came from Yeltsin’s aides Lev Sukhanov and Pavel Voshchanov, who wanted to raise his international profile. Matlock’s attempt to contact US Congressmen and their staff did not produce results; then Yeltsin’s people discovered Gennady Alferenko, a remarkable cultural entrepreneur, founder of one of the first cultural NGOs of Gorbachev’s era. Alferenko specialized in East-West public diplomacy and operated under KGB supervision. He contacted Jim Garrison from the Esalen Institute, an esoteric cultural center in Big Sur, California. The two worked out a ten-day lecture tour for Yeltsin across the United States; the proud Russian wanted to pay for all his expenses abroad. The tour began in New York on 9 September 1989 and covered eleven cities in nine states. This visit was more intense than Khrushchev’s “discovery of America” in 1959. And it was to have even more impact on the fate of the Soviet Union. Available accounts of Yeltsin’s journey vary from stories of drinking bouts, scandals, and gaffes to descriptions of his eye-opening experiences. All of them were true. Yeltsin’s political agenda was still to build a “democratic socialism,” but without the Party monopoly on power. This was what he wanted to tell Americans and their leaders. He relished attacking Gorbachev on every occasion and in every interview. At the top of Yeltsin’s list of engagements was a meeting with President George Bush. Jim Garrison knew Condoleezza Rice, who worked at the National Security Council on Soviet affairs, and contacted her. Ultimately, Yeltsin met instead Bush’s National Security Advisor, General Brent Scowcroft. President Bush “dropped by” for a chat during that visit. The Russian and his aides left the White House in a triumphant mood. Sukhanov recalled: “Yeltsin was the first among the high-placed Soviet leaders who broke ‘the seal’ on the White House during the rule of Bush. Not Gorbachev, but Yeltsin.” The United States was the first country that Yeltsin had ever visited outside the Soviet Union on his own rather than as part of an official Soviet delegation. He was feted and dined by wealthy Americans, flown by private jets, and stayed in the houses of American millionaires. Although he expected the lifestyle of the super-rich to be a never-ending feast, the real shock for him was his impromptu visit to Randalls discount supermarket, on the way to Houston Airport. As a regional party secretary, Yeltsin had spent years battling with lack of food supplies in his Sverdlovsk region. His greatest achievement had been to establish a system of poultry farms near Sverdlovsk that supplemented the meagre diet of workers in the industrial plants and factories. Randalls supermarket amazed him. This was an average place where the poorest American could buy what even the top Soviet nomenklatura could not back home. In the sweltering Texan desert Yeltsin and his entourage entered an air-conditioned paradise. The aides saw Yeltsin brooding, as if he was thinking: “Does this cornucopia exist every day for everyone? Incredible!”

Yeltsin realized how stupid he must have appeared in the eyes of his American hosts when he repeated the slogans of “democratic socialism.” He said to his aides: “What did they do to our poor people? Throughout our lives, they told us fairy tales, tried to invent the wheel. And the wheel already exists . .  . yet not for us.” An aide wrote that “the last prop of Yeltsin’s Bolshevist mentality decomposed” at this moment. After returning from his American trip, while speaking to journalists and his MDG colleagues, Yeltsin regaled them with details of his supermarket visit. He waxed lyrical about the “madness of colors, boxes, packs, sausages, cheeses,” and rhapsodized that the average American family spent one-tenth or less of their salaries on food, while a Soviet family spent over half of their salaries on food, and more. Yeltsin decided that his mission now was to bring the “American dream” to the Russian people.

Excerpted from “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union” by Vladislav M. Zubok, published by Yale University Press. Copyright © 2021 Vladislav M. Zubok. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Footnotes have been removed to ease reading. For more information about the author and this book, see the publisher’s site here.

“Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union” has been shortlisted for the 2022 Pushkin House Book Prize.

OPINION

Who Killed Daria Dugina? Untruths and Consequences

The Russian blame machine is spinning versions that don’t bear scrutiny.

By Victor Davidoff

Aug. 23, 2022

Daria Dugina in the Donbas.t.me/dplatonova

Ever since the car that ultra-right-wing journalist Daria Dugina was driving exploded on a highway near Moscow on Saturday night, the Russian blame machine has been spitting out versions of guilt non-stop.

The first version was the same as the last version. Denis Pushilin, head of the separatist Donetsk Republic (DNR), blamed the attack on Ukrainian special services. However, Pushilin did not provide any facts and is known for blaming everything bad that happens in the world on Ukraine.

The second version was exotic. It rejected political motives for the murder and claimed that Daria Dugina was a member, if not the head, of a criminal gang engaged in racketeering in the Moscow region. She was the victim of a gang-war hit. There was more than one source for this version, but they were all anonymous.

A doctoral student of philosophy who takes breaks from studying Plato to go out with tough gangsters to collect money from businessmen is a very good plot for a Hollywood thriller. But it has nothing to do with reality.

The next version took us even farther — into the world of Frederick Forsythe and John le Carré. According to this version, Dugina acted as an intermediary for the illegal transfer of money from the Kremlin to the French far-right politician Marine Le Pen. In this tale, Dugina kept some of the money and paid the price for it.

This version has one thing going for it: Dugina did meet with Le Pen, but that was ten years ago when Dugina was studying in France. And it’s true that the Kremlin financed Le Pen, but it was done differently: her party took loans it didn’t have to pay back from European banks affiliated with Moscow. If any money was passed on in suitcases, it was done by professionals, not students.

Even more confusion was sown by former Russian State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev, who was one of the few Russian deputies who voted against the annexation of Crimea and participated in protest rallies in Moscow. Naturally, a criminal case was brought against him, and he fled to Kyiv. On Sunday Ponomarev read a statement on Ukrainian television on behalf of the "National Republican Army," which claimed responsibility for the attack. No one had heard of this group until then. It has a channel on Telegram, but there is no proof it really exists.

And then finally the people who are supposed to present a version spoke up. The Federal Security Service (FSB, successor to the KGB) announced that it had solved the crime and named the suspect: a 43-year-old Ukrainian citizen Natalia Vovk, née Shaban. According to the FSB, she entered Russia about a month ago and rented an apartment in the same house where the victim lived.

However, the FSB report raised more questions than it answered. The only thing that is known is that Vovk-Shaban was a clerk in the Ukrainian National Guard, according to her relatives.

It is inconceivable that such a complex operation could have been carried out by a lone agent. Where did the professionally made bomb came from? How did she get to Moscow? The Russian-Ukrainian border is closed. She might have entered Russia through the DNR, but if she did, then the whole story changes.

If Vovk came to Russia via DNR, it means it wasn’t a Ukrainian special op, it was a Russian special op.

The possibility that this was a false flag operation organized by Russia got some confirmation on late Monday when a photo appeared of Vovk and her husband Alexander, who was allegedly one of the organizers of a referendum to leave Ukraine in Donetsk region in 2014.

But the story doesn’t quite hold up in any case. If the suspected terrorist lived in the same house as Daria Dugina, then she was the original target, not her father. But why would a journalist, little known even in narrow nationalist circles, be the target of assassination?

Within hours of the attack Kremlin propagandists accused others of guilt as well: the "pro-Ukrainian intelligentsia" in Russia, or more precisely, those who are against the war. Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian propaganda television channel RT, wrote that “Everyone making fun of Dasha's death with snotty remarks and trolling — all those municipal council members, bloggers and activists should be arrested. Time to take out the trash."

State Duma deputy writer Zakhar Prilepin cast a wider net, blaming "the civilized world, all Europe, the collective Angelina Jolie, all those writers and songwriters" for the attack.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova explicitly demanded that they "find a way to extend the available legal norms to information violence." In normal language this means: time to begin repressions.

No matter who is responsible for this tragedy, it will be used to intensify repressions inside the country. As journalist Yulia Latynina asked right after the attack, "Is the murder of Dugin's daughter the new assassination of Kirov?" This refers to the Stalinist reign of terror, which began with the assassination of party leader Sergei Kirov in 1934.

Lyubov Sobol, a colleague of Alexei Navalny's at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, tweeted: "By the next morning the murder already seemed to make no sense — no one cared about Dugin, and especially his daughter. But now it’s clear that it was some kind of primitive FSB false flag operation.”

All terror has its logic. Today Putin is in a very tough situation: the war looks like it will drag on for years with no victory in sight. Russia can only hold the occupied territories through violence and bayonets. Sanctions are slowly killing the economy. It is impossible for a dictator to admit defeat, and someone must be blamed for all the failures.

This is what Stalin always did. Putin is unlikely to find a better solution.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.

Victor DavidoffVictor Davidoff is a Soviet dissident and independent journalist, author of "The Ninth Circle" (Moscow, 2021), a study of the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR.

Britain's troubled water sector facing threat of litigation over raw sewage being dumped illegally into rivers

By LUKE BARR, FINANCIAL MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED:  27 August 2022

Britain's troubled water sector is facing the threat of litigation over raw sewage being dumped illegally into rivers, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Lawyers at top firm Mishcon de Reya are plotting possible claims against water firms, which are under mounting pressure due to their performance on pollution.

Critics argue regulators have not done enough to tackle their failures, and lawyers are looking at the potential for High Court cases.

 


Litigation: Lawyers at top firm Mishcon de Reya are plotting possible claims against water firms, which are under mounting pressure due to their performance on pollution

Alexander Rhodes, who heads Mishcon's Purpose division, said litigation is a way to hold water wrongdoers to account.

He said claims could help individuals and businesses who have lost out financially due to pollution.

'We have to decide as a country what we want,' Rhodes said.

'If we want safe and healthy rivers, we are going to have to press for it.'

The Environment Agency recently called for bosses responsible for the most serious pollution to face prison.

But Rhodes said governing bodies must be accountable alongside water firms.

US blasts ‘cynical’ Russia for blocking UN nuclear text


AFP
Published: 28 August ,2022: 

The US on Sunday denounced Russia's “cynical obstructionism” after Moscow blocked adoption of a joint declaration on nuclear non-proliferation following lengthy international negotiations at the United Nations.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which 191 signatories review every five years, aims to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, promote complete disarmament and promote cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Russia on Friday prevented the declaration's adoption, saying it took issue with “political” aspects of the text -- a step criticized by Washington.

“After weeks of intensive but productive negotiations, the Russian Federation alone decided to block consensus on a final document” at the conclusion of the four-week NPT review conference, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said in a statement.

He said Moscow's move was done “in order to block language that merely acknowledged the grave radiological risk at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine,” a major atomic facility that is currently occupied by the Russian military.

The latest draft text had expressed “grave concern” over military activities around Ukrainian power plants, including Zaporizhzhia, as well as over Ukraine's loss of control of such sites and the negative impact on safety.

Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear US blasts ‘cynical’ Russia for blocking UN nuclear text
power station in Europe, was seized by Russian troops in early March, shortly after Moscow launched its deadly invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The facility is near the battlefront in Ukraine's southeast.

Kyiv and Moscow have repeatedly traded accusations of shelling at the plant, and its operator has warned of the risks of a radioactive leak.

“Despite Russia's cynical obstruction, the fact that all other parties supported the final document demonstrates the treaty's essential role in preventing nuclear proliferation,” the State Department's Patel said.

He reiterated Washington's call for Russia to end its military activity near Zaporizhzhia “and return control of the plant to Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, neutral and non-nuclear Austria on Saturday condemned the attitude at the talks of major powers, and not just Russia.

“While three-quarters of the 191 signatory states support credible progress for nuclear disarmament, it is mainly the nuclear-armed states, and above all Russia, which resisted,” the government in Vienna said in a statement.

It noted that contrary to treaty commitments, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US are improving or expanding their stock of nuclear weapons.

Egypt archaeologist calls for return of Rosetta Stone, other artefacts from UK and Europe

Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian antiquities minister, is spearheading a campaign calling for artefacts including the Rosetta Stone which is held at the British Museum in London, to be returned to Egypt.

The New Arab Staff
25 August, 2022

The Rosetta Stone has been at the British Museum in London for more than 200 years

 [AFP via Getty]

An Egyptian archaeologist is spearheading a campaign for iconic Egyptian artefacts to be returned from European museums to their home country.

Zahi Hawass, also former Egyptian antiquities minister, is calling via a petition for the artefacts - including the Rosetta Stone, which has been at the British Museum in London for more than 200 years - to be returned to Egypt.

"The Rosetta Stone is the icon of Egyptian identity," Hawass told The National last week. "The British Museum has no right to show this artefact to the public.”

Hawass is also calling for the bust of Queen Nefertiti in Berlin and a sculpted Zodiac ceiling currently at the Louvre in Paris to be returned to Egypt.

"We collected all the evidence that proves that these three items are stolen from Egypt," he told the UAE-based outlet.

Nawass will reportedly send the petition to European museums in October.

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The Rosetta Stone, held at the British Museum since 1802, was acquired from by Britain from French forces during the Napoleonic Wars, following their surrender after a brief French occupation of Egypt.

The 2,200-year-old stone has been key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Hawass, who was antiquities minister until the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, has been campaigning for the return of the stone to Egypt since 2003.

The British Museum said it had not received a formal request for the return of the stone to Egypt, according to The National.

European museums have begun sending some artefacts to their countries of origin as campaigns for their return have grown in recent years.

Hawass has sparked controversy in the past. He was accused of wasting public funds and making illicit gains, but was cleared of the charges by Egypt's top prosecutor in 2014.

How the UAE became Russia's safe haven for evading sanctions

Analysis: Huge amounts of Russian money are being transferred to the UAE through property, businesses, and cryptocurrencies to avoid international sanctions, with Abu Dhabi leveraging its standing as a global financial hub.

Ahmed Alqarout
25 August, 2022

The signing of the US-backed Abraham Accords between the UAE and Israel in 2020 was supposed to represent a new era in ties between Abu Dhabi and Washington.

However, since then, the UAE has defied the US on global issues, most notably on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At the onset of Moscow’s war, the UAE took an unexpected position in the United Nations Security Council, abstaining from voting to condemn the Russian ‘special military operation’.

Weeks later, the UAE abstained in another vote to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. But more importantly, Abu Dhabi has also embarked on helping Russia overcome Western sanctions devised to undermine its will to fight.

"The flocking of Russians to Dubai has meant that billions of potentially sanctionable dollars and euros have been transferred to the emirate"

Russian businesspeople and entrepreneurs have sought to move their businesses to Dubai to benefit from its global standing as a key financial hub. Similar to many Iranian businesses subject to Western sanctions, Russian businesses are using the UAE as a base to avoid such sanctions and continue their operations.

Wealthy Russians have been applying for the UAE golden visa scheme which enables applicants to gain long-term residency in the country conditional on investing 10 million dirhams (£230,000) in a local company or an investment fund. The flocking of Russians to Dubai has meant that billions of potentially sanctionable dollars and euros have been transferred to the emirate.

The property market in the UAE has also been another key recipient of Russian funds, causing a boom in a market that has been recovering from the Covid-19 slowdown. The UAE is also aspiring to be an industrial hub for some Russian factories struggling to access the global market due to sanctions, which would generate significant financial flows to the country.

Luxury yachts dock in Dubai and private jets are hangered in its airports. More Russians are also interested in the UAE for tourism as they struggle to access other destinations due to sanctions.

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Why the UAE is hedging its position on the Ukraine war

Analysis

Giorgio Cafiero

The result is pumping the UAE market with billions of dollars and supporting the strength and the reserves of the UAE national currency, the dirham, which plummeted in February partly due to the implications of Russia’s war on the global economy.

Despite the UAE Chamber of Commerce’s confirmation that the country is in compliance with the main sanctions against Russian oligarchs, it affirmed that it will not be imposing sanctions on ordinary Russian citizens.

Such policy choices effectively open the door for state-sponsored sanctions evasion. For example, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, best known as the owner of Manchester City and the deputy prime minister, has helped to manage relationships with wealthy Russians looking to move money into the UAE.

Valeria Scuto, a MENA Analyst at London-based risk consultancy Sibylline, referred to the increasing links as “not new, but increasing”.

She explained to The New Arab that the UAE is effectively responding to competition with other regional players such as Turkey, Iran, and Egypt that could alternatively use their currencies to help Russia evade sanctions and thus increase the international status of their currencies.

The property market in the UAE has been a key recipient of Russian funds, causing a boom in a market that has been recovering from the Covid-19 slowdown. [Getty]

Russians are taking advantage of the UAE’s lenient financial transparency regulations and data secrecy regarding the flows of capital to utilise cryptocurrencies for sanctions evasion.

Coinsfera, an over-the-counter crypto exchange, is a favourite for Russians who struggle to transfer money through banks due to Western sanctions or local restrictions. The over-the-counter (OTC) structure allows customers to buy crypto assets with local currency and sell them for hard cash in Dubai in minutes.

Because trades are cash-based and not reported publicly, it’s unclear how much money is being moved using crypto. The company is also helping Russian clients buy and sell real estate and luxury watches using cryptocurrencies.

While the UAE wants to maintain strong relationships with the US, inherent domestic political instability in America makes Abu Dhabi wary, undermining the level of confidence it has in the strategic partnership.

Thus, the UAE is seeking to hedge its bets by deploying its financial might to support countries like Russia to balance against the US, Magdy Abd Alhadi, an Egyptian economist, told The New Arab.

"Russia is a key player in OPEC+ and many regional conflicts where the UAE is involved such as Yemen, Libya, and Syria, and the UAE cannot afford not to coordinate with it on issues of major national concern"

Furthermore, the UAE is leveraging its participation in the Abraham Accords and the US tolerance it created to exert pressure on Washington to get concessions on many outstanding issues in the bilateral relationship.

The explosion of financial transactions between Russia and the UAE, meanwhile, is also leading to a deepening of official financial relations.

The Moscow Exchange announced in June it will begin trading new currency pairs including the UAE’s dirham. The date when trading of these pairs will begin has not been announced yet, but the move signals entrenched financial arrangements.

Andrey Skabelin, the director of the Moscow Exchange's foreign exchange market department, said: “We see growing interest in these currencies and we understand that they will have liquidity. As a number of technical issues are resolved, we will launch these pairs”.

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Skabelin explained the need to sign interbank agreements with Emirati counterparts to launch trading. As Russian traders get blocked from Western financial markets, such steps will help them use the UAE stock exchanges as a way to stay in business.

These deepening financial ties are being noticed globally. Reportedly, Russia is seeking payment in UAE dirhams for oil exports to some Indian customers. In addition, Bangladesh is also in pursuit of finding an alternative for the dollar to buy Russian energy and is considering similar options as India, including the use of the dirham, according to media reports.

“The prime minister said if India can import fuel from Russia, why can’t we?” Bangladesh’s planning minister said. He added that the prime minister ordered the government to figure out what currency should be used to buy fuel from Russia.

"While the UAE is not betting on America's demise, it is certainly planning for a multipolar world where the hegemony of the US dollar is no longer guaranteed"

Scuto sees these developments as strategic. “Russia is a key player in OPEC+ and many regional conflicts where the UAE is involved such as Yemen, Libya, and Syria and the UAE cannot afford not to coordinate with it on issues of major national concern even if that would frustrate the West,” she told The New Arab.

However, in the long term, Scuto does not foresee the UAE transforming into a global hub facilitating the evasion of Russian sanctions, as it values its financial interests with Western businesses more.

Abd Alhadi gauges better prospects for the UAE in the reconfiguration of the global financial architecture. In his view, the UAE is using soft financial power to play an arbiter role in the emerging global financial world, which will empower its global standing as a small state reliant on soft power for influence.

The UAE is using soft financial power to play an arbiter role in the emerging global financial world. [Getty]

The UAE is trying to hedge its strategic bet on the US for security and economic relations by growing its relations with other global powers such as Russia.

The leveraging of its standing as a global financial hub is helping it strengthen such a position in a more financially fragmented world.

While the UAE is not betting on America’s demise, it is certainly planning for a multipolar world where the hegemony of the US dollar is no longer guaranteed and other financial power brokers rise in pursuit of rewriting the global financial order and the power it gives to its makers.

Ahmed Alqarout is a specialist in the political economy of conflicts. His research focuses on the impact of financial and economic policies on regime stability in the Middle East and North Africa.

UN condemns Ethiopia air raid on school as fighting escalates

The targeting of kindergarten in war-torn Tigray has brought condemnation from around the world. Local media put the death toll at seven, including three children.

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
28 August, 2022

Civilians in Tigray have been the target of Ethiopian air strikes before in the last few years. [YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images]

The UN on Saturday condemned a deadly Ethiopian air strike on a kindergarten in war-torn Tigray as fighting between rebels and government forces intensified along the region's border.

The air raid on the city of Mekele came just days after fighting returned to Ethiopia's north, shattering a five-month truce and dimming hopes of peace talks to end the brutal war.

On Saturday, the government said federal forces had withdrawn from Kobo, a city just south of rebel-held Tigray, in a border region where combat erupted in recent days.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been fighting forces allied to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for 21 months, said it had captured a number of towns and cities in a counter-offensive.

The tit-for-tat claims could not be independently verified, as access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted.

On Friday, as conflict on the ground escalated, an air strike on Mekele killed at least four people including two children, an official at the city's biggest hospital told AFP.

Tigrai TV, a local network, put the death toll at seven, including three children.

The broadcaster aired graphic footage of mangled playground equipment and a compound brightly painted with cartoons in ruins at the apparent scene of the strike.

Addis Ababa said only military sites were targeted and accused the TPLF of "dumping fake body bags in civilian areas" to manufacture outrage.

But the UN children's agency UNICEF said the strike "hit a kindergarten, killing several children, and injuring others".

"UNICEF strongly condemns the air strike," said UNICEF chief Catherine Russell.

"Yet again, an escalation of violence in northern Ethiopia has caused children to pay the heaviest price. For almost two years, children and their families in the region have endured the agony of this conflict.

 It must end."

'Appalling'

Vicky Ford, the UK's Africa minister, said on Twitter: "Reports of civilian casualties following airstrikes on #Tigray are appalling."

The EU commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, called for international humanitarian law to be respected.

"Civilians are #NotATarget," he said on Twitter.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, himself from Tigray, described the air strike as "barbaric" and "horrifying".

In March, the UN said at least 304 civilians had been killed in the three months prior in airstrikes "apparently carried out by the Ethiopian Air Force".

The UN human rights office has documented aerial bombardments and drone strikes on refugee camps, a hotel and a market, and warned that disproportionate attacks against non-military targets could amount to war crimes.

Ethiopia's air force operates the only known military aircraft over the country's skies.

Untold numbers have been killed in northern Ethiopia since the war began in November 2020, and the conflict has been marked by reports of civilian atrocities.

A truce in March paused the worst of the bloodshed and allowed aid convoys to slowly return to Tigray, where the UN says millions are nearing starvation, and cash, fuel and medicine are in short supply.

Shifting frontline

Since the end of June, Abiy's government and the rebels have repeatedly stated their willingness to enter peace negotiations but disagreed on the terms of such talks.

And on Wednesday, fresh offensives broke out southeast of Tigray in border regions near Amhara and Afar, with both sides accusing the other of firing first.

On Saturday, the government announced the army had pulled back from Kobo, a city in Amhara, under attack from "many directions" by the TPLF.

"In order to avoid mass casualties within the city in exchange of fire, the defence forces have been forced to leave Kobo city and take defence positions on the outskirts," the government said in a statement.

The TPLF said its "heroic army, after repelling and weakening the enemy's attacks for the last three days" had pushed through army lines and taken Kobo along with other towns and cities in the area.

The UK on Saturday advised its citizens against travel to Lalibela, a popular tourist destination some 130 kilometres (80 miles) by road west of Kobo.

The return to battle has alarmed the international community, which has been pushing for a peaceful resolution to the war in Africa's second most populous nation.

Abiy, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner, sent troops into Tigray 21 months ago to topple the TPLF, accusing the former ruling party of the dissident region of attacks on federal army camps.

ISRAEL

Amid talks, Liberman asks for injunction forcing teachers back to work

Finance minister’s move proves he doesn’t want a deal, argues education minister; despite negotiations, teachers union is threatening to strike when school year begins on Thursday

Education minister says Liberman's injunction request 'proves' he doesn't want a deal

Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman speaks during a press conference at the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem, August 17, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Education minister says Liberman’s injunction request ‘proves’ he doesn’t want a deal

Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton speaks at a conference of the Federation of Local Authorities ahead of the opening of the school year in Ganei Tikva, August 18, 2022. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton scolds Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, arguing that the latter’s request for an injunction forcing teachers back to work during ongoing negotiations signals he isn’t interested in reaching a compromise.

“Those who ask for an injunction, at a time when teams from all sides are convening for negotiations on agreements that will lead to the orderly opening of the school year, are proving that they aren’t interested in reaching a deal and aren’t invested in the future of the education system and the children’s future,” she says.

“This is a national crisis,” Shasha-Biton adds. “It’s time to convene the government to solve it.”