Amazon workers in Alabama get a do-over in union election


FILE - In this March 30, 2021 file photo, a banner encouraging workers to vote in labor balloting is shown at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. A labor official is confirming a new union election for Amazon workers in Bessemer, based on objections to the first vote in a rare move. The decision was first announced on Monday, Nov. 29, 2021 by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which spearheaded the union organizing movement (AP Photo/Jay Reeves, File)

ANNE D'INNOCENZIO
Mon, November 29, 2021,

NEW YORK (AP) — A new union election for Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama will be held based on objections to the first vote that took place in April.

The move is a major blow to Amazon, which had spent about a year aggressively campaigning for warehouse workers in Bessemer to reject the union, which they ultimately did by a wide margin.

The rare call for a do-over was first announced Monday by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which spearheaded the union organizing movement. A National Labor Relations Board spokeswoman confirmed the decision but did not yet provide details.

The RWDSU charged Amazon with illegal misconduct during the first vote. In August, the hearing officer at NLRB who presided over the case determined that Amazon violated labor law and recommended that the regional director set aside the results and direct another election.

The main reason for the determination was a U.S. Postal Service mailbox Amazon installed in the parking lot ahead of the election, which could have left the false impression that the company was running the election. Security cameras in the parking lot could have scared off workers who thought Amazon may have been watching workers vote. About 53% of the nearly 6,000 workers cast ballots during the first election.

Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, called the decision “disappointing.”

"Our employees have always had the choice of whether or not to join a union, and they overwhelmingly chose not to join the RWDSU earlier this year,” she said. “It’s disappointing that the NLRB has now decided that those votes shouldn’t count.”

Stuart Appelbaum, president of the RWDSU, sees the NLRB decision as a victory.

“Today’s decision confirms what we were saying all along – that Amazon’s intimidation and interference prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union in their workplace – and as the Regional Director has indicated, that is both unacceptable and illegal, “ he said in a statement. “Amazon workers deserve to have a voice at work, which can only come from a union.”

But even with a second election, labor experts say a union victory is a long shot. Amazon will likely appeal and try to delay another vote. And even when an election is held, workers may chose to vote against joining a union again. Last time around, 1,798 workers rejected the union and 738 voted in favor of it.

A repeat of the election means another battle for Amazon with the RWDSU. The first election garnered nationwide attention and put a spotlight on how Amazon treats its workers. It was the biggest union push in Amazon’s history and only the second time that an organizing effort from within the company had come to a vote.

Pro-union employees at the Bessemer facility said they spent 10-hour shifts on their feet in the warehouse, where online orders are packed and shipped, and didn’t have enough time to take breaks. A union could force Amazon to offer more break time or higher pay, those workers said. Amazon, meanwhile, argued that it already offered more than twice the minimum wage in Alabama plus benefits without workers having to pay union dues.

This is the second unionizing attempt by Amazon workers in the past year.

A group of Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York withdrew its petition to hold a vote to unionize early in November. The workers, however, can refile a petition.

The organizing effort in New York City is working without the help of a national sponsor and is being spearheaded by a former Amazon employee, Christian Smalls. He said he was fired just hours after he organized a walkout last year to protest working conditions at the outset of the pandemic.

Canada's Capital Power and Enbridge to partner on carbon capture project


FILE PHOTO: The Enbridge Tower on Jasper Avenue in Edmonton

Mon, November 29, 2021, 7:14 AM·1 min read

(Reuters) - Capital Power Corp and Enbridge Inc agreed to partner on a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, the companies said on Monday, that would aim to capture up to three million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

The proposed project would serve Capital Power's Genesee Generating Station near Warburg, Alberta, which currently provides over 1,200 megawatts of baseload electricity generation to Albertans.

Alberta, home to Canada's oil sands, is aiming to become a hub for carbon storage and hydrogen production as the world moves away from fossil fuel consumption and tries to cut climate-warming carbon emissions.

Enbridge would be the transportation and storage service provider, while Capital Power would be the carbon dioxide provider on the project, which could be in service as early as 2026.

The captured carbon dioxide emissions from the re-powered units would be transported and stored through Enbridge's open access carbon hub that could also serve several other local industrial companies.

Enbridge is applying to develop an open access carbon hub in the Wabamun area through the government of Alberta's request for full project proposals process, which is expected to start as early as December 2021.

Companies including TC Energy, Suncor Energy, Royal Dutch Shell also plan to build new CCS storage facilities.

(Reporting by Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

EXPLAINER-What is behind unrest in the Solomon Islands?


FILE PHOTO: Protests turn violent in Solomon Islands

Kirsty Needham
Mon, November 29, 2021

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Four people were killed during violent anti-government protests in the Solomon Islands that prompted Australia to send police and soldiers to help keep order.

In three days of unrest https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/calm-returns-clean-up-begins-solomon-islands-media-2021-11-28 last week, buildings were set ablaze and shops looted by protesters angered by problems such as high unemployment and crowded housing, witnesses said.

The unrest followed protests by residents of Malaita, the South Pacific island nation's most populous province, which opposed a decision by Prime Minister Sogavare's government in 2019 to formally recognise China instead of Taiwan.

That decision has not only contributed to strains in relations between Malaita and the Solomon Islands government, but also left the island nation of 650,000 at the centre of a geopolitical tussle involving big powers.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE UNREST?

The violence began after protesters from a group calledMalaita for Democracy travelled to Honiara, the Solomon Islands' capital in Guadalcanal province, and gathered outside parliament. They called for Sogavare to address them on Nov. 24.

Witnesses said rioting erupted after Sogavare failed to meet them. Much of Honiara's Chinatown area was destroyed during the unrest that followed, involving young men from Honiara's outskirt settlements which have no running water.

Australian sent 100 police and soldiers, and 50 peacekeepers were dispatched by Papua New Guinea, in response to requests from the Solomon Islands government. They helped local police restore calm, and Fiji said it would send 50 troops.

Sogavare said unnamed foreign powers had intervened because they did not want the Solomon Islands to have diplomatic relations with China. Taiwan has denied any involvement in the unrest.

HOW HAVE TAIWAN-CHINA TENSIONS AFFECTED THE SOLOMON ISLANDS?

China and Taiwan have been rivals in the South Pacific for decades. Some island nations have switched allegiances and allegations have surfaced about rival offers of aid and infrastructure being made to sway influence.

Fifteen countries maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. The last two to ditch Taipei in favour of Beijing were the Solomon Islands and Kiribati in September 2019.

Malaita's premier, Daniel Suidani, has banned Chinese companies from the province and accepted development aidfrom the United States.

Suidani visited Taipei for medical treatment in May, sparking protests from Sogavare's government and the Chinese embassy in Honiara.

Suidani's doctors said they suspected a brain tumour and recommended overseas hospital treatment. Suidani returned to Malaita in October after a series of delays caused by the government's COVID-19 restrictions.

WHAT DO CHINA AND TAIWAN SAY?

Taiwan said it had nothing to do with the unrest. China's foreign ministry said it was concerned about developments in the Solomon Islands and that attempts to undermine these ties were "futile".

China's foreign ministry spokesman said: "Facts have proven that the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Solomon Islands is in line with the fundamental and long-term development of the Solomon Islands."

WHAT DO OTHER PACIFIC ISLAND NATIONS SAY?

The secretary general of the Pacific Island Forum, the main regional group, Henry Puna, issued a statement urging patience by "all parties" and adherence to the rule of law and the constitution.

WHAT ABOUT THE UNITED STATES?

The U.S. State Department has expressed concern about the violence in Honiara and supported the rapid restoration of peace and security. It said the United States has "enduring ties" with the Solomon Islands.

In 2020, the U.S. Agency for International Aid Development (U.S. Aid) granted $25 million for a development program to be based in Malaita, beginning with a sustainable forestry project, and re-establishing the Peace Corps.

The Solomon Islands government said in October 2020 the U.S. aid program would need to be approved by the national government first, cautioned Malaita province to respect the proper processes and urged people to stop "politicizing foreign aid".

The U.S. aid was made in response to a letter from the Solomon Islands national government requesting aid, before the 2019 switch to recognise China, a political adviser to Suidani said.

WHY DID AUSTRALIA SEND TROOPS?

Australia said it responded to Sogavare's request to send police to restore order in Honiara under a bilateral security treaty and that "our focus is to support stability, we do not take sides in these differences".

Malaita province said it was surprised https://www.reuters.com/world/china/solomon-islands-province-not-happy-australian-police-presence-political-aide-2021-11-29 by Australia's decision.

Australian police were previously deployed to the Solomon Islands in 2003 under a peacekeeping mission authorised by a Pacific Island Forum declaration, and stayed for a decade.

Severe internal unrest and armed conflict from 1998 to 2003 involved militant groups from Guadalcanal and Malaita.

Australia's diplomatic relationship with China is tense. Its defence minister has accused China of "alarming" actions which do not match its rhetoric about promoting regional peace and prosperity, prompting a rebuke from Beijing.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

China Cash Flowed Through Congo Bank to Former President’s Cronies





Sun, November 28, 2021

LONG READ

(Bloomberg) -- The Chinese businessman had walked out of a bank in Kinshasa with 13,624 hundred-dollar bills, 10,001 fifties and 43,000 smaller U.S. notes, despite explicit instructions to prevent it from happening.

“The account has finally been emptied,” Yvon Douhore, head of an in-house audit team in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, wrote in an email that day, July 5, 2018, after noticing the withdrawal. “I’m at a loss for words,” a colleague replied the next day.

The previous month, Groupe BGFIBank’s compliance department in Congo had frozen accounts held by the businessman’s firm, Congo Construction Co., or CCC, because the client file was missing key documents, according to bank records. A history of transactions reviewed by Bloomberg News as part of the biggest leak of financial information from Africa showed an even bigger issue: its political connections.

Over a five-year period, tens of millions of dollars flowed through CCC’s accounts to people and companies closely associated with Congo’s then-president, Joseph Kabila, all at a bank partly owned by his sister and run by his brother, Selemani Francis Mtwale. But a series of scandals had forced the lender’s parent company in Gabon to reconsider its embrace of the presidential family. It removed Selemani as chief executive officer in May 2018 and then reclaimed a 40% stake held by Kabila’s sister, which it said she’d never paid for.

Douhore’s colleagues blocked the accounts while he conducted an autopsy of Selemani’s tenure. Yet someone at the bank was still authorizing transactions, right through to the final $2.5 million cash withdrawal in July 2018. The documents hint at why: Douhore was witnessing the closing act of CCC’s secret role as an intermediary between Chinese mining groups and the Kabila clan.

For more than six months, Bloomberg has analyzed a trove of 3.5 million bank documents from BGFI that offer an unprecedented glimpse into how several individuals and companies operated in what would turn out to be a takeover of much of the Congolese mining industry by Chinese companies during Kabila’s presidency. The information was obtained by Paris-based anti-corruption group Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and the French news organization Mediapart and shared with media outlets coordinated by the European Investigative Collaborations network and five non-governmental organizations.

The consortium’s investigations, dubbed “Congo Hold-up,” demonstrate the extent to which the country’s most powerful family used the bank to serve its private interests and how at least $138 million in state funds transited BGFI to Kabila’s relatives and associates. The new information also casts a light on some of the previously unseen ways in which Chinese companies came to dominate the mineral riches of one of the poorest nations in the world.

The Sentry, a Washington-based anti-corruption group, used the banking data to write a report about the Kabila family’s financial ties to Chinese mining companies. Bloomberg was given access to the organization’s documents and findings before the report’s release. Over the course of several months, Bloomberg independently obtained additional documents and spoke with dozens of people on five continents to confirm and complement the information.

In a statement posted on its website on Nov. 23, after the first consortium stories appeared, BGFI said that while it decried the leak and questioned the authenticity of the documents, it “strongly condemns acts contrary to law and ethics that may have been committed in the past within its BGFIBank RDC SA subsidiary and of which its employees could possibly have been perpetrators or complicit.” The bank added that it had restructured its ownership of the Congo unit in 2018, conducted an internal audit to identify methods that may have been used to circumvent controls, put in new management and filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office to determine who was responsible for the alleged acts and sanction them.

This isn’t the first time BGFI has been at the center of corruption allegations in Congo. Five years ago, a former compliance officer shared thousands of bank documents with media outlets including Bloomberg that showed how Selemani had directed millions of dollars in public funds to the bank and a company owned by some of Kabila’s closest allies. The new leak of documents shows that was only part of the story.

After replacing his assassinated father in 2001 and negotiating an end to a brutal civil war, Kabila opened the country’s vast reserves of copper and cobalt to international investors. Western firms, initially enthusiastic about Kabila’s Congo, have since beat a steady retreat. BHP Group, Anglo American Plc’s De Beers and Freeport-McMoRan Inc. have all sold mines or abandoned projects. Those that stayed often formed high-risk partnerships that are now the subject of corruption probes, including one by the U.S. Department of Justice into Glencore Plc and two others by the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office into Glencore and Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. Glencore says it’s cooperating with the authorities. ENRC denies wrongdoing.

That’s increasingly left the field to companies from China eager to expand their control over the supply of two metals that are mined together in Congo and are at the heart of the nascent revolution in electric vehicles. In less than a decade, Chinese companies have gone from minor contributors to accounting for half of Congo’s cobalt output and about 70% of its copper production, according to Congo’s main business lobby.

The centerpiece of this transformation is a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure deal, the biggest investment in Congo’s history, spearheaded by China Railway Group Ltd. and Power Construction Corp. of China, known as Powerchina.

In 2008, the two countries agreed that the Chinese companies would finance $3 billion worth of infrastructure and build a $3.2 billion copper and cobalt project known as Sicomines, whose tax-free profits would repay both investments. Supporters hailed it as a proud symbol of China’s new “win-win” model of development financing, an alternative to the strict conditions attached to lending from the Western-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Congo’s government also handed a no-bid contract to a subsidiary of China Railway to rebuild and maintain the road from the mining hub of Lubumbashi to the border with Zambia, with tolls charged to fund the work. The highway is the primary path to export for Congolese copper and cobalt, making it one of the most lucrative routes in Africa. Each year, tens of thousands of trucks laden with metal pay the concession fee, currently $300, to make the round trip. The toll road generated a total of $302 million between 2010 and 2020, according to an unpublished government audit seen by Bloomberg.

Kabila set up a government agency — the Bureau de Coordination et de Suivi du Programme Sino-Congolais — to oversee the Chinese relationship and appointed an ally, Moise Ekanga, to run it. Ekanga, it turns out, was also the chief operating officer of a private firm owned by the Kabila family, corporate documents and contracts reviewed by Bloomberg show. The company, Strategic Projects and Investments, or SPI, profited handsomely from China’s growing presence.

SPI held a 40% stake in the toll road business until 2015, and then took it over completely. The audit, by an anti-graft agency under the current government, claims that since China Railway’s exit six years ago, the toll company has misappropriated nearly $121 million. Bloomberg wasn’t able to independently verify the allegation.

Cong Maohuai, a Chinese businessman who owns the Kinshasa hotel in which CCC had an office, told the consortium that he acquired control of the toll company in November 2016. However, information available at Congo’s corporate registry still lists SPI as the sole shareholder. Cong declined to provide documentation proving the change of ownership, citing confidentiality requirements. He disputed the audit’s findings, saying, “I reaffirm that there was never any misappropriation” in the concession contract. Neither China Railway nor Kabila’s younger brother Zoe, SPI’s founding shareholder, responded to multiple requests for comment.

It’s not clear how much, if anything, SPI paid China Railway to take over the toll road firm in 2015. Minutes of a board meeting approving the share transfer don’t mention any compensation. But there are traces of what the company did with at least some of the money it made: It sent it to CCC.

From June 2013 to January 2016, BGFI records show, the toll venture made 41 transfers, worth $7.8 million, to CCC, almost all of which was taken out in cash.

CCC’s owner was an aspiring academic born in 1979 in Liaoning, China, named Du Wei. He began working in Africa in the early 2000s and in August 2016 wrote an article for Wuhan University’s Institute for International Studies bemoaning Chinese companies’ tendency to use “unscrupulous means” to win major projects, according to an article Du wrote that the Sentry cited in its report.

Du, who went by “David” in Congo, worked for Sicomines for three years until 2012, when he became a consultant for Kabila’s China agency, according to his LinkedIn profile. That’s also the year he incorporated CCC with Guy Loando, then a 29-year-old Congolese lawyer, and opened a company account at BGFI.

Between February and July 2013, CCC, which had no known construction projects, received $18 million from bank accounts in China and Hong Kong held by four offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. The BGFI records list the justifications as “construction fee payment,” “other transfers” and “other.” The toll road business also wired $1 million to CCC that June. Du sent most of the $19 million on to Kabila’s China agency through a series of identical cash withdrawals and deposits, rather than direct transfers, the records show.

Ekanga, the agency’s head, then promptly paid off a $14 million loan his office had taken from BGFI for the benefit of companies that were or would be linked to Kabila. The agency had wired half of the borrowed funds to another BGFI account that advanced the same amount to a cattle business Kabila would shortly purchase. It also transferred $6 million to a building firm owned by two associates of the then-president, bank records show.

Neither Ekanga nor the agency’s spokesman responded to multiple emails, texts and phone calls from the consortium requesting comment. China Railway and Sicomines’ other Chinese shareholders didn’t respond to questions asking if they ultimately provided the funds to CCC or owned the BVI firms, which were created by the same Hong Kong-based corporate services provider that China Railway used to set up a subsidiary to hold shares in Congolese mines.

Sicomines later made three large payments to CCC, from June to September 2016, for a total of $25 million. Du distributed most of the money to companies and individuals linked to the president’s family, bank records show. This included $7.5 million for a firm whose shareholders were Kabila’s sister and Selemani’s wife, $1.6 million that went to the owner of a vessel that transported animals including zebras, giraffes and wildebeests to Kabila’s private nature reserve in 2017 and $1 million sent to a director of the shipping company. A lawyer representing the ship’s then-owner declined to respond to a request for comment.

CCC also forwarded more than $1.7 million to Du’s personal accounts in Congo and Hong Kong, BGFI documents show.

Sicomines didn’t respond to questions from the consortium. The Chinese embassy in Kinshasa said its government “always asks Chinese companies working in the DRC to strictly respect local laws and regulations” and to “conduct cooperation projects in a win-win manner.” Chinese investors should “never interfere in Congolese political affairs,” an embassy spokesman said by email.

Du didn’t respond to questions. His WhatsApp and one of his email accounts were deleted after the consortium made numerous efforts to contact him.

While Sicomines entered production in 2015, it won’t be able to reach its full capacity of 250,000 metric tons of copper a year until it has a reliable supply of electricity. To ensure that, the company proposed building a dam near the village of Busanga. The $600 million project was originally supposed to be part of the minerals-for-infrastructure deal. But in July 2016, China Railway and Powerchina created a new company with Congo’s state-owned miner Gécamines, which owns 32% of Sicomines, to hold the 240-megawatt hydropower plant. This time, 15% of the state’s share went to a previously unknown entity called Congo Management Sarl, or Coman.

Efforts to contact Coman’s two shareholders were unsuccessful, but the company does have close ties to people in Kabila’s entourage. Coman is represented by the ex-president’s former personal lawyer and managed by someone who was an employee of Kabila’s China agency. In addition, financial transactions that appear to mirror each other occurred in the accounts of Coman and CCC. In November 2016, CCC’s Du withdrew $430,000 from the company’s account. A deposit of equal size appeared in Coman’s account at BGFI on the same day. After remaining untouched for a year, a similar amount was withdrawn by the chairman of a company co-owned by Kabila’s sister and sister-in-law, records show.

A man who would shortly become the manager of a Coman subsidiary also received $1 million from CCC in May 2017 — money that, banking records show, originated from Sicomines.

Neither Norbert Nkulu, Kabila’s former lawyer and Coman’s legal representative, nor Claudine Paony, the company’s manager, responded to questions sent by the consortium. In 2018, Kabila appointed Nkulu, who is also a former minister, to serve on Congo’s constitutional court.

Du began restructuring CCC in March 2017. First, the company took over a phosphate mining permit owned by Allamanda Trading Ltd., whose representative co-owns several companies with the person who managed Kabila’s farming company. Du then acquired the 20% stake in CCC owned by Loando, the Congolese lawyer, and transferred all the firm’s shares to a company registered in the British Virgin Islands called Harefield Overseas Ltd.

In January 2018, China Molybdenum Co. purchased CCC and its phosphate license for $40 million. China Moly had recently arrived in Congo by buying control of the giant Tenke Fungurume copper-cobalt mine in a deal worth more than $3 billion. Last year, the Chinese firm paid $550 million to take over another large copper-cobalt deposit in Congo.

None of the parties to the deal responded to questions about whether CCC paid Allamanda for the permit or if any member of the Kabila family was a beneficiary of the company. China Moly said Du learned of its interest in the phosphate deposit at an unspecified time in 2017 and that he was the only shareholder of the offshore vehicle that held CCC at the time of the transaction. The company said it will develop the project “at an appropriate time in the future.”

By late 2017, as reports of corruption accumulated, BGFI realized that it needed to act to avoid potentially crippling U.S. Treasury sanctions, bank documents show. First, it distanced the Congo unit from the presidential family.

Next, the bank instructed Douhore, the chief auditor in Kinshasa, to review Selemani’s leadership of the Congo unit. Douhore’s assessment, completed in July 2018, concluded that governance had been “unacceptable” and characterized by a “lack of integrity and transparency in the declaration of conflicts of interest.” Multimillion dollar payments into and out of CCC’s accounts, including those from Sicomines and the toll road company, were executed either without essential paperwork or with documents of questionable authenticity, according to the audit. Douhore didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Even after China Moly’s purchase of CCC, Du continued to control its accounts at BGFI, records show. In May 2018, CCC received $7.7 million from a company partly controlled by Kabila’s sister and sister-in-law. In the same month, a BGFI account belonging to Congo’s central bank wired nearly $1.9 million to CCC.

Du transferred $1.5 million to a company registered in the United Arab Emirates in May 2018, before he and another individual removed the rest of the funds in cash, including the final withdrawal of $2.5 million in July of that year. At least two of the transactions took place after BGFI’s compliance team had tried to block CCC’s accounts.

Douhore blamed the then-CEO — who had worked closely with Selemani — for overriding the freeze, according to the documents. The audit department notified BGFI headquarters that two companies owned by Kabila family members were draining their accounts at the same time as CCC. Together, the firms took more than $23 million out of the bank in cash over two months in mid-2018.

China Moly said it’s “not aware of the existence of CCC’s bank account” and doesn’t have any knowledge of the activities executed by Du through its subsidiary. BGFI’s CEO, who has since retired, said he had no relationship with Du and that he couldn’t have authorized a cash withdrawal on a frozen account without required justifications. Deogratias Mutombo, the governor of the central bank from 2013 until earlier this year, didn't respond to questions sent by the consortium.

In total, about $65 million flowed through CCC’s accounts between January 2013 and July 2018, of which $41 million was withdrawn in cash, making it impossible to track the beneficiaries of all the funds. Still, bank records show that at least $30 million was routed, via transfers or in cash, to people and entities directly linked to the Kabilas or companies owned by the presidential family.

Loando, Du’s former business partner, was elected in late 2018 to Congo’s senate as a member of Kabila’s coalition and has successfully navigated the deterioration of a pact between the former president and his successor, Felix Tshisekedi. In April, he became minister of regional planning. In response to questions about his role at CCC, Loando said he was simply a legal adviser and played no part in the daily management of the company. He said he wasn’t kept informed of the firm’s commercial activities and therefore had no knowledge of its transactions.

Kabila stepped down at the beginning of 2019, after 18 years in power, following delayed elections held under pressure from the U.S. and the African Union in which Tshisekedi was declared the winner.

What hasn’t changed is the control of Congo’s mines by Chinese companies. However, Tshisekedi has launched investigations into the minerals-for-infrastructure deal, including the Busanga hydropower plant, and whether China Moly is complying with its contractual obligations. It’s not clear when any conclusions from those probes will be announced.

Of the $3 billion in promised infrastructure financing from the Chinese companies, most of it still hasn’t arrived. Tshisekedi’s government said in September that projects worth only about $825 million have been built so far.

And the new president’s top anti-corruption official, Jules Alingete, has been examining alleged corruption scandals that have involved BGFI. Executives at the bank were “specialists in falsifying accounts,” he said in an interview with the consortium. “They fabricated, fabricated, fabricated, fabricated things.”

Douhore also criticized BGFI’s willingness to accept the explanations Du and an associate provided as they pulled nearly $10 million out of the bank in the middle of 2018. Those were just excuses “to allow unjustified withdrawals around suspicious [financial] movements," he wrote in an email to his bosses. To another colleague in the Kinshasa office he wrote, “We really are in another world.”

IMPERIALISM AND FINANCIAL CAPITAL

WHO reaches draft consensus on future pandemic treaty


FILE PHOTO: A logo is pictured on the headquarters of the WHO in Geneva

Sun, November 28, 2021,
By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - Member states of the World Health Organization have reached a tentative consensus to negotiate a future agreement on preventing pandemics, bridging the gap between sides led by the European Union and United States, diplomats said on Sunday.

The draft resolution, hammered out in negotiations over the weekend, will be presented for adoption to health ministers at the WHO's three-day special assembly that opens on Monday, they said.

The diplomatic breakthrough came amid growing international concern over the Omicron coronavrius variant, first detected in South Africa this month, which has spread further around the world.

A global agreement to strengthen pandemic prevention and responses, expected to be ready in May 2024, would cover issues such as sharing of data and genome sequences of emerging viruses, and of any potential vaccines and drugs derived from research.

"This decision, to establish a negotiating body on a future pandemic agreement, may only be the end of the beginning, but the flexibility shown and the breadth of support is a good portent for the vital efforts to come," Simon Manley, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said in a statement.

Britain, along with the EU and some 70 other countries, had pushed for a legally-binding treaty. The United States backed by states including Brazil and India was reluctant to commit to a binding treaty, diplomats said last week.

"There is agreement on a text which for us is very satisfying," a European diplomat said. "It also gives the Americans a way out, who are clearly joined up."

Another diplomat said: "It is a good outcome...There was enormous goodwill to get common language."

The draft resolution was posted on the WHO website.

More than 260.77 million people have been reported to have been infected by the coronavirus and 5.45 million have died since SARS-CoV-2 emerged in China in December 2019. The WHO says that China has still not shared some of its early data that might help identify the virus origin.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Climate crisis may be pushing polar bears to drown reindeer for food


Josh Marcus
Mon, November 29, 2021

Polar bears have been spending more time on land as the climate crisis causes see ice to melt (China News Service via Getty Ima)

The climate crisis may be pushing polar bears to use new tactics to seek out unexpected sources, including drowning reindeer, according to researchers.

In 2020, Polish researchers captured what’s believed to be the first ever recording of a polar bear drowning a reindeer, which they described in a recent article in the journal Polar Biology.

The clip, filmed by Mateusz Gruszka on Norway’s frigid Svalbard archipelago, shows a polar bear that appears in “excellent condition” swimming after a reindeer, which it drowns then drags to shore.

The tactic suggests that the bears, increasingly pushed to spend more time on land because of melting polar ice caps, are seeking out other food sources to replace their usual diet of fat-rich seals.

“In recent decades, more polar bears have been forced to remain longer on land, so their access to seals is limited,” the researchers write, though they caution “the importance of terrestrial food to polar bears is disputable, and more data are needed.”

Polar bears weren’t known to hunt reindeer in large numbers before 2000, as global heating became unignorable, and reindeer remains began showing up in “high frequency” in polar bear scat, according to the researchers.

Svalbard, home to a population of about 300 polar bears, could become a regular reindeer hunting ground.

“If polar bear mothers learn to hunt reindeer efficiently, their offspring, which stay with their mothers for over two years, may also become reindeer hunters,” the researchers add.

The climate crisis could also push the bears to seek out other opportunistic food sources, such as dead fish and cetaceans washed ashore, rodents, offal from landfills, and the leftover remains of marine mammals hunted by humans.

Disturbing theory behind 'rare' polar bear video

Michael Dahlstrom
·News and Video Producer
Mon, November 29, 2021

This article originally appeared on Yahoo News Australia.

WARNING – DISTURBING CONTENT: Video of a polar bear attacking and killing a reindeer shows how the species are adapting their diet.

Polish scientists stationed in Norway's Svalbard archipelago believe this is the first time such an interaction has been captured on film.

Shaky hand-held-footage shot in 2020 shows the apex predator swimming closely behind its frightened prey.

The adult female then pulls the reindeer underwater and drowns it.

A polar bear has been filmed chasing down a reindeer. Source: AFP / Izabela Kulaszewicz

Moments later the bear can be seen dragging its lifeless prey onto the rocky shore.

Images published in the journal Polar Biology show the reindeer being consumed and the remains buried.

Polish scientists said the bear was observed using “much the same method” to kill reindeer twice, leading them to hypothesize it could be becoming “specialized” at hunting the species.

With reindeer outpacing polar bears on land, forcing the reindeer into water could be giving giving the predator an advantage.
Climate crisis forcing polar bears to adapt their diet

As sea ice melting worsens across the Arctic due to global heating, researchers have observed polar bears are spending more time on land around Svalbard.

This is limiting the bears’ access to their primary prey, seals, forcing them to look for land-based high-calorie food sources.

Polar bears are classified as marine mammals due to their habitat and food sources, so their changing behaviour could one day lead to an adjustment as to how scientists categorize them.

Researchers studying the animals did not find evidence that polar bears had been hunting reindeer before 2000, but by 2013 their remains were found in "high frequency" through their scats.

They theorize that reindeer could increasingly be forming a regular part of polar bear diets.
Concern for future of polar bears despite signs of adaption

Studies have indicated polar bears have lost weight attempting to adapt to land-based food sources, however the animal filmed killing the reindeer appeared to be in "excellent condition".

Despite not being as fatty as seals, reindeer appear to be an increasingly important food source during the summer months.

The region is home to around 300 polar bears who have been observed passing down the same hunting grounds for generations.

Reindeer numbers are increasing across Svalbard. Source: Getty

“If polar bear mothers learn to hunt reindeer efficiently, their offspring, which stay with their mothers for over two years, may also become reindeer hunters,” researchers said.

Scientists believe their impact on the island’s birds will also likely increase, however seals will continue to be a key food source during spring and early summer.

Despite their success at hunting terrestrial prey, as sea ice continues to retreat the seal hunting season will become shorter, and there will likely be a tipping point when polar bears will struggle to further adapt.

How One Family is Being Impacted by the Texas Law Targeting Transgender Students

Victoria Rossi, El Paso Matters
Mon, November 29, 2021, 

When Lori Edwards told her transgender teenage daughter that Texas’ House Bill 25 had passed, the 14-year-old turned away and started flipping through her phone.

“Oh that sucks,” Emily said, and went silent.

During the regular Texas legislative session this spring, a rash of anti-trans bills filed by Republican state lawmakers had sent Emily’s mental health, along with her grades, spiraling downward. What was the point of studying, reasoned Emily, who was assigned male at birth but identifies as a girl, if they would just have to leave El Paso for a different state?

When Texas’ regular legislative session ended in late May without any anti-trans measures becoming law, the Edwards family breathed a sigh of relief. But then in July, Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session.

Then another, and another. And with each special session, Abbott pushed lawmakers to ban transgender kids from playing on sports teams that fit their gender identity. HB 25 was Texas Republicans’ fourth attempt to enact the ban this year. At home, Edwards turned off the news.

Emily Edwards, right, and her brother Emilio played soccer when they were younger, but both have felt pushed away from sports. They are shown with their father, Tyler. (Photo courtesy of the Edwards family)

On Oct. 15, two months into Emily’s first semester at Coronado High School, HB 25 cleared its final legislative hurdle in the Texas statehouse. It was signed by the governor Monday.

“Did you hear what I said?” Edwards asked her daughter. “It passed.”

Emily hid her face behind her hair, a telltale sign she did not want to talk. “What difference does it make, Mom. I’m not going to be able to do any of that stuff anyway.”

The Edwards are not a sports family, but they used to be. Growing up, Edwards competed in volleyball and cross country; she studied kinesiology in high school and for a brief period majored in sports medicine. “I loved being around the football players and helping and being a trainer,” Edwards said.

Emily was in a youth running club, took karate and played soccer.

But well before lawmakers took aim at trans student athletes, years of discrimination and bullying based on Emily’s growing sense of her gender identity led Edwards to pull her daughter from sports.

“My child doesn’t play sports (anymore) because it was never given as an option,” Edwards said. “It wasn’t given as an option because we had to protect her.”

Five years earlier, from the sidelines of a youth soccer game, other parents would heckle her child right in front of her. “Why is that little boy like a little girl?” they would say in Spanish, thinking that she couldn’t understand. “He’s just being sissy. He can’t even kick very hard.” And why, they wondered, was the boy’s hair so long?

Edwards said nothing, comforted by the fact that the comments never reached Emily — who loved soccer, and loved having long, gleaming blond hair. It was one of the few ways that Emily, who then presented as a boy and used “he” pronouns, could outwardly express what he’d soon come to realize was his true gender identity.

At 8 years old, Emily had begun to say: maybe I could be a girl someday.

Soon, however, the insults of the parents reached their children. At Emily’s elementary school in Phoenix, kids taunted with “you suck at being a boy,” and wouldn’t let Emily into the boys’ bathroom.

Emily Edwards participated in Kids Excel El Paso, an extracurricular program that uses dance to teach children determination, discipline and excellence. (Photo courtesy of the Edwards family)

The family left Phoenix for El Paso. There, in gym class, another sport gave Emily a word for the question that had been around for years. The 9-year-old came home from school to say the boys in PE football wouldn’t let Emily play football with them, saying, “This is for boys only. No transgenders.”

Emily asked her mother what the word meant.

Edwards pulled up a series of YouTube videos from transgender girls in their teens who explained the term’s meaning — someone whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth — and how they’d felt growing up in boys’ bodies, knowing they were girls.

“Oh,” Emily said. “That’s me.”

“I hate that the first time she heard that word, it was an insult,” Edwards said. “As if it’s a bad thing.”

As soon as Emily had that word, Edwards saw her daughter become a new person. When someone told her she sucked at being a boy, she’d respond, “Well obviously. I’m transgender. I’m a girl. Thanks for noticing.”

Like many parents, Edwards has agonized over past parenting choices. And while she’d been determined to let Emily arrive at her gender identity at her own time, on her own terms, she now believes she should have given her daughter the vocabulary sooner; maybe knowing the word “transgender” could have avoided some suffering.

Edwards is sometimes struck with guilt for the decision that she and her husband came to about sports. The last day of fifth grade was the last time Emily went to school dressed as a boy. From that time on, “we very, very, very much discouraged sports,” Edwards said.

She and her husband worried about the uniforms; they worried about the locker rooms.

“It’s a fine line between being able to pursue things that are extracurricular, like volleyball or track or soccer, and continually outing herself every single time and having to fight for every single thing. Like it doesn’t necessarily prove to be worth it at that point.”

More than anything, they worried about the other kids’ parents.

“Parents can be crazy as it is already, when it comes to sports,” Edwards said. “Just in general, you go and you’re like, ‘wow, this person is gonna have an aneurysm right here next to me,’ because they’re just so pumped, right? But when you throw the added context of their child also competing against someone who’s transgender, and then throw in the fear mongering. … These parents can be absolutely vile and abusive.”

Family football-watching nights became rare. Emily’s younger brother joined band and “now has this opinion that all athletes are jerks,” Edwards said. “It makes me so sad that he thinks that, but he definitely formed that opinion by watching them bully his sister.”

Emily didn’t push back.

“The love that she had for sports was clouded and very much destroyed by that machismo thing,” her mother said.

And at that age, Emily trusted her parents’ choices. “Whether or not sports would have been a big part of her life, we’ll never know. Because I took it,” Edwards said. “I had to.”

Emily Edwards wore a dress in public for the first time in 2018, when she saw a performance of “The Lion King” at the Plaza Theatre. (Photo courtesy of the Edwards family)

Emily has stayed active through dance, and has found other interests “that absolutely enrich her life,” Edwards said, like choir and gaming and theater and anime. She volunteers at the Borderland Rainbow Center, the LGBTQ+ rights nonprofit where her mother works, and is studying to be a veterinarian.

“We really pushed her wholeheartedly into things that were co-ed where it wouldn’t be made such a big issue. … But the fact that she doesn’t have sports as an option breaks my heart.”

As a mother, Edwards has tried to look at least five, 10 years ahead. Planning the family’s move to El Paso while Emily was still in elementary school, Edwards chose their new neighborhood based on what middle and high schools it would feed into. She wasn’t looking for the best schools, necessarily. She was looking for schools that would keep Emily safe — and found them, she said, in Hornedo Middle School and Coronado High School.

But even as Edwards tried to predict the future, she never imagined that the social issues they’d encountered in sports would draw the attention of state legislators.

“I really just thought it was going to be a social issue,” Edwards said. “I never thought there would be bills that would be passed that would give these people fuel for their social issues. That’s the difference, right. When they have legal backing, that gives them power — more power than they need, is what I’m saying — to discriminate, and to put her safety at risk.”

Both mother and daughter spent much of last spring fighting against the onslaught of Texas bills that targeted trans youth, triple the number introduced by any other state. Trans children and their families flocked from across Texas, including El Paso, to deliver passionate testimonies against the bill.


But as the fight continued into the summer, Emily grew wary. Adri Perez, an ACLU policy and advocacy strategist who lobbies against bills targeting Texas’ LGBTQ+ community, saw the same effect play out with the kids who came to the Capitol.

“They get up there and talk into a podium and a microphone that’s taller than they are,” Perez said. “It’s heartbreaking to see, to know that these kids’ spirits are effectively being broken every time these hearings come up.”

Edwards still doesn’t know what to make of Emily’s seemingly calm reaction to the new law. Maybe the reaction she’d expected from Emily was something closer to her own: “This bill passing here in Texas has absolutely devastated my ability to believe that we can affect change,” she said. She worries that the sports ban is just the beginning.

Edwards hoped that, after months of bracing herself for the worst, Emily really was OK. But the other day, in the drive-thru line at Dutch Bros, a construction cone blocked their way and Emily exploded.

“Everybody wants to tell you what you can do,” Emily said, far angrier than Edwards would have expected. “Now they tell you that you can’t play sports, you can’t get married, you can’t have kids — now you can’t even drive your car.”

It was Emily’s way, her mother said, of “communicating something that hurts so much.”

This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Syrian Women Navigate the Patriarchy of War and Women’s Rights


by Ishtar Al Shami
Oct 20, 2021
Ishtar Al Shami is a Syrian writer and activist.

Brief Analysis

Despite Syrian women’s significant contributions in coordinating anti-Assad activity during the 2011 revolution, Syrian women now face exacerbated obstacles against participating in civil society.

While women’s roles in Syrian civil society have expanded in the wake of the 2011 revolution, a heated debate about the role and rights of women is taking up a large portion of Syrian revolutionary media, be it press, television programs, or social media—including Clubhouse rooms dedicated to the issue. Today, one can read, watch, and listen extensively to dialogues about the female and feminist presence in community work inside Syria.

Syrian women stress the recency of their presence and credit it to the beginning of peaceful, organized revolutionary action against the Assad regime in 2011. During the revolution, women took on much more active roles than those previously available to them under a regime that claimed to be a secular state that ensures social justice—but failed to reflect this in personal status laws, which can significantly limit the rights of women. Moreover, the regime exercised a continuous violation of public liberties and designed a system dedicated to eliminating the role of civil society, monopolizing public space, and cementing the ideology of a single party leading all aspects of society and state. Additionally, the regime categorized any political, civil, or cultural movement outside its control as a treacherous activity hostile to the state, and accused it of collaboration with global imperialism.

In contrast, women participated in popular protests from the beginning of the revolution, and played a major role in establishing Local Coordination Committees, community networks that organized demonstrations throughout the country. This enabled women to effectively participate in the peace, media, and relief movements throughout Syria, especially in besieged and conflict-stricken areas. Women have also been active in various political activities, and continue to work to prove the importance of their involvement in opposition institutions.

However, these efforts have not quelled the stigma against women in civil leadership roles. Female activists still encounter great resistance to their participation in decision-making, despite international institutions’ insistence on women’s representation. Moreover, feminists do not want to become mere numbers in the quotas often required by the international community. They continue to strive for substantive participation in political work due to increased social awareness regarding women’s contributions , not as a symbolic response to an external dictate.

Internal Pushback Against the Syrian Feminist Movement

However, these women face significant internal pressures against their involvement. Islamists consider the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and other international rights conventions to be contrary to Islamic law, classifying them as a major danger to society and rejecting their applicability in Syria. Therefore, Syrian women find themselves on fragile ground given the marked absence of appropriate legal frameworks to protect them from violence and marginalization.



Images of a post by National Coalition Member Mohammad Ayman Aljamal, and the Syrian Feminist Lobby’s response to it:
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Even those women working with international organizations or leading internationally funded projects in opposition areas have faced a marked increase in inflammatory rhetoric against their work. Specifically, they face allegations that they are merely tools of the West carrying out schemes hostile to Sharia and social norms. These accusations put Syrian female activists and employees of international institutions, along with their colleagues, at risk of ideologically-motivated violence.

Images from publications by Saeed Nahhas about the CEDAW convention and anti-feminism being equivalent to antisemitism:
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The situation escalated after a Friday sermon delivered by the President of the Syrian Islamic Council, Sheikh Osama al-Rifai, on August 6 in the area of Azaz, near Aleppo. In the sermon, he addressed the local community, warning against women’s work in international organizations in the area, and describing them as having broken with religion and traditions. He stated that women are recruited by the West and the United Nations with the goal of destroying the stability of the family and social system in Syria by propagating alien thought forbidden under the rules of Islamic law.

Al-Rifai’s statement has prompted impassioned responses, including by women who wear hijab and are outwardly committed to Islam. Many took to social media to express their rejection of his implicitly inflammatory and unfair rhetoric against women.

Images of activist Bayan Rehan’s August 11 Facebook post in response to Sheikh Osama al-Rifai’s sermon:

Battle for Marib: Why is it crucial in Yemen war?

Intense fighting for the Yemeni city of Marib has killed thousands of combatants and forced large numbers of people to flee their homes for makeshift desert camps.

© - The months-long battle for Marib, the last northern bastion of the Yemeni government, has killed thousands of Huthi rebels and pro-government forces and forced civilians to flee their homes

The northern city is a key front between the Yemeni government -- supported by a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition -- and the Iran-backed Huthi rebel fighters.

Here are four important points about the battle for the strategic and oil-rich province, which is considered pivotal in Yemen's seven-year civil war.

- Why Marib? -

The city is the last northern bastion of the internationally-recognised government, which was driven from the capital Sanaa by the Huthis in 2014.

© Sophie RAMIS Map of Yemen locating the province and city of Marib.

Just 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of Sanaa, Marib sits at a crossroads between Yemen's southern and northern regions, commanding a highway to Saudi Arabia.

© - Yemeni pro-government forces are pictured during fighting with Huthi rebels near Marib on November 10, 2021

The surrounding province boasts oil and gas reserves, making it a major economic prize. The Safer oil refinery is only one of two in Yemen, with a capacity to produce 10,000 to 20,000 barrels per day.

Marib is considered one of the most significant historic sites on the Arabian Peninsula, according to UNESCO, and surrounded by rugged mountains and valleys.

It is said to have been the capital of the ancient Saba kingdom, best known for the legendary Queen of Sheba.

- How close are the rebels? -

The Huthis have previously claimed they were on the outskirts of the city, but two pro-government military officials said the rebels were still 30 kilometres west and north of the city, and 50 kilometres to the south.

© MOHAMMED HUWAIS A Yemeni man attends the mass funeral of Huthi rebel fighters killed in battles with Saudi-backed government troops in the Marib region on October 28, 2021

The rebels began a major push to seize the city in February and, after a lull, they renewed their offensive in September.


Thousands of rebels and pro-government fighters have been killed, according to reports from both sides.

Military officials say Huthi fighters are launching daily attacks from the west, north and south.

"They are sending thousands of fighters on armed trucks -- and sometimes motorcycles -- and using their drones to try to capture one village after another, until they reach the city," one official said.

The Saudi-led coalition, which has propped up the government since 2015, has reported carrying out frequent air strikes on the Huthis in recent weeks, boasting of casualties in the thousands.

The Huthis rarely comment on their losses, and AFP cannot independently verify the tolls.

- Will Marib fall? -

Despite the Huthis' advances, the government claims it is certain that the city won't fall into rebel hands.

Government troops have been digging tunnels around the city to give it further protection, military officials said.

"Marib has resisted and will keep on resisting," the province's governor Sultan al-Arada told local media.

"Marib, with the help of the coalition, will counter this assault."

But if the Huthis do take Marib, they would control the north -- and could push on and capture other provinces.

It would also give them significant leverage in any negotiations with the government.

Huthis have military reasons to capture Marib but it is also a matter of "pride and image", said one of the two military officials.

© - A boy stands outside a tent at a camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Yemen's northeastern city of Marib on November 3, 2021

"They will continue no matter how many fighters they lose," the official said.

- Thousands flee conflict -

As the fighting rages, civilians are caught in the crossfire, suffering heavy casualties. Thousands have also been forced to flee their homes.

In October, at least 22 people were killed when a Huthi missile hit a mosque south of the city, and 13 others died when a missile demolished a tribal leader's home in the same area.

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned that "escalating hostilities since early September" have caused "civilian casualties, renewed displacements and further restricted civilians' movements."

Some 40,000 people have been forced to flee since September, UN refugee agency spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said.

mah-faw/th/jsa/hkb/pjm/fz

The Battle of Marib: the Challenge of Ending a Stalemate War
by Nabil Hetari
Jul 9, 2021


ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Nabil Hetari
Nabil Hetari is a Yemeni writer and human rights activist. His research and work focuses on Yemen and Gulf politics. Hetari is a contributor to Fikra Forum.


Brief Analysis


Without an exerted international peace effort, the siege on Marib could destroy the possibility of a unified Yemen.

Since February 6, 2021, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized Hadi government, along with local popular resistance forces, have been locked in a battle for the city of Marib. Despite months of violence, the battle has not yielded clear results on the ground, and the Houthis have neither retreated nor ceased direct attacks on the city. Continuous Houthi escalation in Marib, including attacks with ballistic missiles and drone strikes, has resulted in the killing and wounding tens of civilians, including children. As a result, the battle for Marib may have become the bloodiest in the past seven years of the Yemeni conflict.

The reasons for such sustained, desperate combat are clear. For the Hadi government, the battle for Marib may be a matter of existential survival. For the Houthis, Marib represents a potentially critical strategic point if they want to negotiate favorable terms with foreign powers in the future and impose control over northern Yemen. The results of the battle for Marib could therefore dictate the end of the Yemeni conflict. Furthermore, a Houthi victory over Marib could mean added humanitarian catastrophe on top of the existing humanitarian crises throughout Yemen. As such, looking forward, Marib may be the most important episode in the trajectory of Yemen’s civil war.


The Role of Marib

The Houthis initiated the battle for Marib with a direct attack on the city, the last stronghold of the legitimate Hadi government in the north and the main headquarters of Yemen’s Ministry of Defense. In addition to the strategic importance of eliminating the Hadi government’s presence in northern Yemen, the Houthis see that a victory in Yemen could bring them to political negotiations with the Saudi-led coalition. These factors explain why Houthi leadership did not respond to UN Envoy Martin Griffith's call for dialogue in Oman. Instead, the Houthis continued to directly attack the city on several fronts, demonstrating that they do not want to engage in peace talks until they have acquired the maximum leverage possible, for which Marib is critical.

Of course, on the other side, Marib is important to the Hadi government for the same reasons, though the Hadi government is currently lacking the resources to effectively prevent Houthi attacks. The Hadi government and the Islah Party, its fighting partner in Marib, recognize that the city is their last main stronghold in the north, and they therefore consider it to be immensely important. Consequently, all the parties involved in the battle are focused on Marib as a potential decider in the nature of their exit from this war. Furthermore, retaining control over Marib is important for public appearances, and failure to do so may convince Yemenis that the Houthis are practically invincible in this conflict.

In fact, the battle has been so critical to the two sides that both forces have suffered immense casualties, including the deaths of major leadership figures. According to reports from both sides, the Hadi government has seen the death of its director of the officers’ affairs department, the chief of the military judiciary, the attorney general, the sixth district commander, and three commanders of the special forces, not to mention hundreds of other casualties. Likewise, the Houthis have suffered 3,000 casualties in the battle.

Geographic Significance

Beyond its status as the Hadi government’s final stronghold in the north, Marib is also geographically significant because it lies on the easiest road that runs from northern Yemen to Shabwa Governorate in the south (a seafront on the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea) and Al-Mahra Governorate, where the Saudi-led coalition forces are located.

In addition, facing north, Marib directly borders Houthi-controlled Sanaa, and it is therefore a major concern for the Houthis if the Hadi forces and popular resistance forces continue to be stationed there. If Houthis want to keep their control of Sanaa, getting rid of any opposition forces on its borders is critical.

Marib is likewise bordered on the south by territory where the increasing activities of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) have made the area unwelcoming to the Hadi government. As such, the government forces realize that its failure to defend Marib will cause them to retreat into unfriendly terrain.

And finally, Marib is one of Yemen’s most productive oil regions. Though the conflict has caused frequent interruptions to production of oil and gas there, consistent control of the region's resources could mean a steady, substantial source of income.

The Humanitarian Dimension

Beyond the strategic importance of Marib, there is also a humanitarian dimension that underscores the consequences of a Hadi government defeat there. With thousands of internally displaced persons living in the city, a Houthi victory could drive vulnerable populations into dangerous situations.

After years of war, Marib has become a major host for internally displaced persons in Yemen. The city has been welcoming displaced people since the fall of Sanaa in 2014, and in recent years, according to the Executive Unit for IDP Camps, the population of displaced persons has exceeded 2.5 million people. Supporters of the Islah party constitute the majority of displaced people from areas which have fallen under Houthi control or influence.

Thus, the battle for Marib could create major issues for the displaced civilians living in the city, especially since many of them support the Islah Party, a political identity that is not desirable in the southern regions. The STC, which controls much of southern Yemen, still dislikes Islah, which it considers the main player of the 1994 war against the south in which the STC has accused Islah of providing Sanaa government the religious approval and militia support to reclaim the unification of Yemen. This antagonism between the STC and Islah is particularly concerning because, in the event of a Houthi victory in Marib, those southern regions will be the immediate destinations for displaced persons as they flee the city.

More immediately concerning than the prospects of retreat, the violence of the battle itself could pose major threats to civilian populations. Currently, the battle is taking place in deadly confrontations on the city walls, and the Houthis’ suicide attacks on Marib prove that they are set on expanding into the city. If the battle reaches into the city itself, the Hadi forces and the popular resistance forces seem unlikely to retreat immediately. Instead, the battle could continue inside the neighborhoods and the streets of the city, and such violence could be life-threatening for civilians. In fact, drone strikes and missile attacks have already killed civilians, and there is no reason to believe they will stop.

Given these risks, foreign countries and international organizations have issued constant warnings about the humanitarian catastrophe resulting from the raging battle in Marib, but it seems that those warnings are not resonating with forces on the ground.

Prospects for Peace

To understand the prospects for peace, and an end to the fighting in Marib, one must consider the agendas of Saudi Arabia and Iran, the conflict’s two major international stakeholders. To a large extent, the civil war in Yemen can be described as a proxy war between the Saudi-led coalition and Iran, and both sides have contributed to continued humanitarian problems while making a peace process elusive. The total lockdown of the country, a result of this proxy war, makes the choice of joining the any of the fighting forces in Marib a favorable choice for unbiased civilians to earn a monthly salary and keep their families one step further from famine, perpetuating the conflict and contributing to more violence.

On one hand, Saudi Arabia’s continued airstrikes have damaged local Yemeni industries and endangered the local population, with some strikes killing civilians. Moreover, the Saudi-led coalition’s closure of Yemen's air and seaports can be seen as a direct cause for the increasing famine in many areas of Yemen. 

On the other side, Iranian support for the Houthis increases the Houthis’ motivation to create new battlefronts and to refrain from engaging in any prospective peace process. This trend was evident in late March, 2021 when the Houthis turned down a ceasefire offer from the Saudi-led coalition. At that time, a Houthi negotiator told a FRANCE24 reporter, “Marib is essential for us because of the blockade which stops the impoverished Yemeni population from buying petrol and gas at market prices… As long as this blockade is imposed on northern Yemen, preventing access to these much-needed goods, we will have to try and lift it by force.”

Generally, as seen through the past seven years of the Yemeni conflict, external military support for any of the parties to this war can be described as disastrous for local society, and such support has created an obstacle for the international attempts for peace and negotiation. In the end, the cost of peace could be much cheaper than the cost of war if the Yemenis took another path other than the path of conflict.

A Critical Moment for Yemen

Given the strategic significance and humanitarian ramifications of the battle for Marib, the coming developments in this battle could decide the fate of Yemen’s civil war. If the Houthis are able to take the city, remove the Hadi government from the north, and begin a process of negotiations with the Saudi-led coalition, it would seem unlikely for the Hadi government forces to make any kind of resurgence.

In that event, as the Hadi government struggles to find a foothold in increasingly hostile territory, Yemen would start to resemble its old north-south divide, with the STC controlling territory in the southern provinces, and the Houthis controlling territory in the north. As a result, the battle for Marib could be a final stand for the possibility of a unified Yemen.

In his special briefing, the U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Timothy Lenderking summarized what critical times Yemen is going through. Lenderking also pointed out that the international community holds a responsibility in solving the Yemeni issue. In fact, it seems very difficult for Yemenis to come together by themselves. As such, an exerted approach by the international community is perhaps the only way to resolve the disastrous Houthi siege on Marib.

Finland's secret school for children of ISIS fighters

Al Hol is a sprawling tent city in Syria housing around 60,000 people, mainly women and children

 

Kurdish fighter stand guard as Syrian child, suspected of being related to Islamic State (IS) group fighters, waits at the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp, before being released along with women and children to return to their homes, in the al-Hasakeh governorate in northeastern Syria. AFP

AFP

Nov 29, 2021

At home in Helsinki, Ilona Taimela scrolls through hundreds of WhatsApp chats with her former pupils — pictures of animals, maths sums and simple sentences in English and Finnish.

Last year, the teacher gave lessons to Finnish children imprisoned about 3,000 kilometres away in Syria's Al Hol displacement camp — using only the messaging app.

Al Hol is a sprawling tent city housing around 60,000 people, mainly women and children displaced by the US-backed battle to expel the ISIS militant group from war-torn Syria

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Teacher Ilona Taimela in Helsinki. AFP

Among them are thousands of children of foreign mothers who travelled to Syria to be the wives of ISIS fighters.

“Some of the children didn't know what a building is, what a house is, because they've always been in a tent,” Ms Taimela told AFP.


“There was so much that they needed to learn.”

Rights observers warn the camp's children are under constant threat from violence, poor sanitation and fires.

“It's a miserable place, it's out of control,” said Jussi Tanner, Finland's special envoy charged with ensuring the fundamental rights of the Finnish children in Al Hol, including access to healthcare and schooling, and eventual repatriation.

Extremist propaganda “is free to roam with no counter-messaging,” he said.

Mr Tanner had the idea of offering lessons by phone to Al Hol's Finnish children when pupils everywhere moved to distance learning at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.


A girl at the new Children's Rehabilitation Centre for relatives of ISIS fighters in Al Hasakah, Syria. AFP

With the help of Finland's Lifelong Learning Foundation, officials engaged Ms Taimela, a specialist in teaching Finnish children abroad, and another teacher, to design and teach a curriculum.

With phones banned in the camp, the lessons would have to be in secret, and the politically sensitive project was also to be kept hidden from the Finnish public.

Mr Tanner forwarded details about the voluntary classes to the mothers.

“That same day … we got maybe eight children,” Ms Taimela said.

Soon 23 of around 35 Finnish children in the camp had signed up.


“Good morning! Today is Thursday May 7, 2020. The first day of distance school!”

Children at the new centre hosting ISIS fighters' relatives in northeastern Syria. AFP

Ms Taimela's first message to the children included a smiling selfie.

“The sun is shining here in Finland. What kind of weather is it there?”

Soon Ms Taimela and her colleague were exchanging hundreds of text and voice messages a day with the children, who were taught one or two subjects a day.

“The little ones would always get Finnish, and the older ones would get geography or history, and some of them also wanted to learn English.”


Sending photos used too much data, so the teachers relied on emojis, but soon realised there were no symbols for mathematical fractions or the ubiquitous Finnish blueberry.

Children play at the centre for relatives of ISIS fighters. AFP

“During the year the blueberry [emoji] arrived, so we were happy,” Ms Taimela says, laughing.

Despite knowing only scant details about the children, Ms Taimela said she and her colleague were “worried all the time about their welfare — especially when we heard that they were sick, or there was a storm and the tent had collapsed”.

Communication with some families would stop periodically.

“Some of them escaped the camp,” Mr Tanner says, “so they were actually taking part in the school while on the run in northwestern Syria in an active conflict zone.”


Others were suddenly repatriated and left the group for good.


After months of lessons, the mother of one six-year-old revealed her daughter could now read.

“Not all six-year-olds in Finland can do that,” Ms Taimela says, smiling. “It was a eureka moment.”

ISIS fighters declared a “caliphate” in large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, three years into Syria's civil war.

Ms Taimela says she feels “sadness rather than anger” towards the mothers who led their children into the conflict.


Many were vulnerable and believed the promises of jihadists that they would live in some “kind of paradise".

But several military offensives whittled away at the brutal ISIS proto-state, until in 2019 Syrian Kurdish forces declared it defeated.

Pupils learn at the newly inaugurated Children's Rehabilitation Centre in Al Hasakah. AFP

Reluctant Western nations have since brought home handfuls of their ISIS-linked nationals, mostly children.

Ms Taimela had accepted that she would never know what happened to the repatriated children she had taught, but one day she was called to a reception centre in Finland.

“It was an emotional few hours” meeting some of her pupils face to face for the first time, she said.

They “came very close” and Ms Taimela read to them.

“I just wanted to know, 'How is everything, what can I help with?'," she said.

Finland's foreign ministry has now repatriated 23 children and seven adults.

Mr Tanner told AFP that only around 15 “harder-to-reach” individuals, of whom 10 are children, remain in camps in Syria.

The issue originally proved divisive in Finland, but opposition has “become much more muted".

Ms Taimela's teaching drew to a natural close in mid-2021 and the ministry later made the project public.

She is now looking at how to use the innovative teaching model in other crisis zones or camps, and has received requests regarding Greece, Myanmar and Colombia.

“The Al-Hol teacher, that's my label now,” Ms Taimela smiles.

“But I'm proud of what we did”