#Says Sahara Africa Reporters

[zvaigzdelasas]

An Amazigh separatist movement in Algeria has enlisted an American lobbyist based in Morocco to help it make a case for support from US officials and lawmakers built on concerns over Algiers' deepening ties to Russia and harsh crackdown on pro-democracy protests. The Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK), whose leadership is based in Paris, calls for independence for the predominantly Amazigh region in Algeria's northern mountains. According to registration documents filed this week at the US Department of Justice, MAK has recruited Elisabeth Myers, an American lawyer, to represent it in Washington. The contract was signed on 25 June. Myers registered as a lobbyist using an address in Marrakech on the same day. “Activities will involve promotion of US friendship with Kabylia, along with an understanding of the region, its people, and the impact of the Algerian government's strong-arm tactics over the region,” the documents say. MAK has already secured meetings with two US lawmakers’ offices. On Thursday, Kabylie independence leader Ferhat Mehenni will meet virtually with senior officials from Democratic Senator Tim Kaine’s office and Democratic Congressman Don Beyer, a source familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye.[...]

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US made a bid to pull Algeria away from Moscow’s orbit. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited the country in March 2022 as part of a wider trip to the region that included a stop in Morocco. A US spokesperson said Blinken vowed to "broaden and deepen the [US] relationship with Algeria."

But Algiers has proven resistant. In June, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune met Putin on a visit to Russia designed to strengthen cooperation between the longtime allies. Western countries have had more success gaining access to Algeria’s massive gas reserves. US energy giants Chevron and Exxon are nearing a deal that would allow them to drill in the country for the first time, Algeria’s energy minister told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month. But European countries’ rush to find alternatives to Russian gas has also empowered Algeria, which has replaced Russia as the top gas supplier to Italy, and is now shopping around for Italian-made military hardware. It is also locked in a rumbling dispute with Spain over the status of Western Sahara which has brought non-energy trade between the two countries to a halt.[...]

The separatist group's bid for influence in Washington could prove to be an indicator of the future direction of Washington’s wider relations with Algeria, a major North African exporter of gas and oil.

Algeria designated MAK a terrorist organisation in 2021. Authorities accused the group of working with Morocco and Israel to start deadly forest fires in the Kabylia region. MAK and Morocco denied the allegations. A 2021 US State Department terrorism report called the terrorism label “more political than security focused,” adding that Algerian authorities refrain from discussing the group or its threats with their US counterparts.[...]

Algeria hosts and supports the Polisario Front, a rebel movement that established the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in 1973 in the disputed Western Sahara, which Morocco annexed in 1975 after the end of Spanish colonial rule. The US unilaterally recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the territory in exchange for Rabat's normalisation of ties with Israel. Amazighs [...] are an ethnic group scattered across Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya whose roots in the region predate the Arab conquest of North Africa. Amazighs are believed to account for about 20 percent of Algeria’s 44 million population. Their culture and language have historically been suppressed by the Algerian government. Amazigh activists played a prominent role in the Hirak movement.

29 Jun 23

[beardedmrbean]

Two people have been killed and five others injured after shells were fired on the historic northern Malian city of Timbuktu, the army says.

The military blamed what it called "terrorists" for the shelling.

Timbuktu, a UN-designated World Heritage Site, has been under siege in recent weeks by jihadists, leading to acute food shortages.

Back in 2012, it was captured by Islamist and Tuareg fighters, who were eventually ousted by French forces.

However, the jihadists continued to stage attacks from their bases further north in the Sahara Desert.

The insurgency was the main reason Mali's military seized power in 2020, accusing the civilian government of failing to provide security.

It pledged to end the militant attacks but in recent months it appears they have been on the increase.

In one of the bloodiest incidents, 49 people died when a river boat in the north-east of the country was ambushed a fortnight ago.

Inside northern Mali amid the Islamist insurgency

Why UN peacekeepers are being told to leave Mali

Africa Live: Updates on this and other stories from the continent

The UN peacekeeping force, which has been in the country since 2013, is pulling out at the request of the military government.

Last year, France withdrew its forces as the authorities brought in mercenaries from Russia's Wagner group.

Thursday's attack on Timbuktu, a seat of Islamic learning home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, caused panic among residents, local media report.

The city's inhabitants have endured faced shortages of food, petrol and medicine since the beginning of August, when jihadists warned trucks from neighbouring regions not to enter the city.

This has led to a sharp increase in the price of those goods which are still available.

As well as reporting Thursday's shelling of Timbuktu, the army said it had foiled an attack 240km (150 miles) south-west in Léré town, killing five militants.

On Sunday, five soldiers were killed after two military camps were raided by ethnic Tuareg rebels.

An alliance of Tuareg groups that re-launched a rebellion last month said it had captured two bases from the Malian army in Sunday's fighting.

The Tuareg rebels, who want independence for northern Mali, are opposed to the army taking control of bases vacated by departing UN troops in the area. They also accuse the junta of reneging on the 2015 Algiers peace deal that ended their previous rebellion.

The Islamist insurgents have spread from northern Mali and also operate in neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.

The insecurity has led the army in all three countries to seize power but the jihadist insurgency has continued.

#nunyas news

[sleepingchaosart]

The Stalker of Saharan Nights (Lovecraftian OC)

 In the desolate wastes of the Sahara Desert, there lived a powerful and ancient entity known as The Stalker of Saharan Nights. This eldritch deity was worshipped by a long-forgotten civilization of humans who believed it to be a god of the night, darkness, and the hunt.

As time passed, the civilization crumbled and its people disappeared, leaving The Stalker of Saharan Nights to wander the vast, empty expanse of the desert alone. It was said that the entity's true form was that of a massive, shadowy predator with eyes that glowed like stars in the darkness.

For centuries, The Stalker of Saharan Nights remained dormant, barely noticed by the few travelers who crossed its path. But as the world changed and new civilizations rose up, the deity's power began to grow once more.

It was during the era of the Pharaohs that The Stalker of Saharan Nights first made itself known to the outside world. In an effort to expand their empire, the Pharaohs sent armies deep into the desert, hoping to conquer the lands beyond their borders.

But these armies were met with an unexpected resistance. As they ventured further into the desert, they began to see strange shapes moving in the darkness, and many soldiers reported feeling a sense of unease and dread. Some even claimed to have seen the glowing eyes of The Stalker of Saharan Nights watching them from the shadows.

As the Pharaohs' armies retreated back to their cities, rumors of a powerful, malevolent entity lurking in the desert began to spread. Some believed it to be a demon, while others thought it to be a forgotten god from a bygone era.

But it wasn't until the coming of the Islamic empire that The Stalker of Saharan Nights truly began to reveal its power. As the armies of Islam swept across North Africa, they too encountered the entity, and were horrified by its immense strength and terrible wrath.

Legends say that the Stalker of Saharan Nights would emerge from the darkness to slaughter entire armies with a single blow, leaving nothing but blood and carnage in its wake. Even the most skilled warriors were no match for its supernatural abilities.

As the centuries passed, The Stalker of Saharan Nights faded into obscurity once more, and was eventually forgotten by all but the most obscure of scholars and historians. But in recent times, whispers of its return have begun to spread once more, and some fear that the deity's power may soon be unleashed upon the world once more.

It is said that those who venture into the depths of the Sahara Desert may yet encounter the Stalker of Saharan Nights, and that those who do may never return. Some say that the deity's hunger for blood and flesh has only grown stronger over the centuries, and that it will stop at nothing to claim its next victim.

#oc #hp lovecraft #lovecraftian #eldritch #original art

[ammg-old2]

Surface water is all the water we can observe: ponds, streams, rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans. It coats almost three-quarters of the planet. When we imagine water, we usually envision surface water.

Our stores of groundwater, on the other hand, are invisible and vast.  Most of this water is stored in the gaps between rocks, sediment, and sand—think of it like the moisture in a sopping wet sponge. Some groundwater is relatively young, but some represents the remains of rain that fell thousands of years ago. Overall, groundwater accounts for 98 percent of Earth’s unfrozen freshwater. It provides one-third of global drinking water and nearly half of the planet’s agricultural irrigation.

Water is constantly cycling between below-ground stores and the world above. When rain falls or snow melts, some replenishes surface waters, some evaporates, and some filters down into underground aquifers. Inversely, aquifers recharge surface waters like lakes and wetlands, and pop up to form mountain springs or oases in arid lands.

Despite our utter dependence on groundwater, we know relatively little about it. Even within the hydrological community and at global water summits, “groundwater is kind of sidelined,” Karen Villholth, a groundwater expert and the director of Water Cycle Innovation, in South Africa, told me. It’s technically more difficult to measure than visible water, more complex in its fluid dynamics, and historically under- or unregulated. It “is often poorly understood, and consequently undervalued, mismanaged and even abused,” UNESCO declared in 2022. “It’s not so easy to grapple with,” Villholth said. “It’s simply easier to avoid.”

Take a crucial U.S. groundwater case, 1861’s Frazier v. Brown. The dispute involved two feuding neighbors and “a certain hole, wickedly and maliciously dug, for the purpose of destroying” a water spring that had, “from time immemorial, ran and oozed, out of the ground.” Frazier v. Brown questioned the rights of a landowner to subterranean water on the property. Ohio’s Supreme Court ultimately argued against any such right, on the premise that groundwater was too mysterious to regulate, “so secret, occult and concealed” were its origins and movement. (The case has since been overturned.)

Today, groundwater is still a mystery, says Elisabeth Lictevout, a hydrogeologist and the director of the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre in the Netherlands. Scientists and state officials often don’t have a complete grasp of groundwater’s location, geology, depth, volume, and quality. They’re rarely certain of how quickly it can be replenished, or exactly how much is being pumped away in legal and illegal operations. “Today we are clearly not capable of doing a worldwide groundwater survey,” Lictevout told me. Without more precise data, we lack useful models that could better guide its responsible management. “It’s a big problem,” she said. “It’s revolting, even.”

Water experts are certain, however, that humans are relying on groundwater more than ever. UNESCO reports that groundwater use is at an all-time high, with a global sixfold increase over the past 70 years. Across the planet, groundwater in arid and semi-arid regions—including in the U.S. High Plains and Central Valley aquifers, the North China Plain, Australia’s Canning Basin, the Northwest Sahara Aquifer System, South America’s Guarani Aquifer, and several aquifers beneath northwestern India and the Middle East—is experiencing rapid depletion. In 2013, the U.S. Geological Survey found that the country had tripled the previous century’s groundwater-withdrawal rate by 2008. Many aquifers—which, because they are subterranean, cannot easily be cleaned—are also being contaminated by toxic chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers, industrial discharge, waste disposal, and pumping-related pollutants.

Because these waters are hidden and can seem “infinite,” Lictevout said, few people “see the consequences of our actions.” She and other hydrology experts often turn to a fiscal analogy: All of the planet’s freshwater represents a bank account. Rainfall and snowmelt are the income. Evaporation and water pumping are the expenditures. Rivers, lakes, and reservoirs are the checking account. Groundwater is the savings or retirement fund—which we are tapping into.

“We have to be careful about dipping into our savings,” says Jay Famiglietti, an Arizona State University hydrologist and the executive director emeritus of the University of Saskatchewan’s Global Institute for Water Security.

#studyblr #current events #environmentalism #climate change #agriculture #water #groundwater #france

[heirheirthespare]

[A]t the end of May 1879 [Arthur Rimbaud] is very sick. He has typhoid. He returns hurriedly to France. He carries a letter of recommendation from his employers; he is inordinately proud of it, Delahaye reports, with a hint of mockery in his voice.

This was in September. It is the first time Delahaye has seen him for two years; it is the last time they will ever meet, Delahaye leaves this description:

His cheeks, once so round, were now hollowed, quarried, hardened. The interval of two years had changed the fresh, rosy, English child's complexion which he had had for so long into the dark hue of a Kabyle [i.e. a Berber Arab], and over his brown skin, a novelty which amused me, there curled a little dark-blonde beard . . . His voice had lost the shrill and rather childish timbre which I had hitherto known, and had become grave, deep and suffused with a calm energy.

He would hardly have recognized him, he says, were it not for his extraordinarily beautiful blue eyes, which were quite unchanged. The tenor of this reminiscence is of a new manlines: the beard and the deep voice are signs of his 'full physical virility'. All traces of the boy-poet are gone.

Other Charleville friends also noted the change, and saw in it a kind of isolation. 'His contact with his friends was broken,' said Louis Pierquin. 'Long before his final departure, his silence and detachment struck us'. And Ernest Millot would later sum up this impression with the following reverie:

I imagine myself meeting him one day, somewhere in the middle of the Sahara, after several years of separation. We are alone, and going in opposite directions. He pauses for moment. 'Hello, how are you?' 'Fine. Good-bye.' And he continues on his way: not the slighest emotion, not a word more.

——

From “SOMEBODY ELSE: ARTHUR RIMBAUD IN AFRICA 1880–91” by Charles Nicholl

#myquotes #arthur rimbaud

[the-firebird69]

They're going to be removing diamonds all day and the millivars will come down to about 70 but they're going to hold it 80 because it's going to rain and it's going to rain because of the moisture down south it's kind of going to level it off meaning that they won't the Max from DC and Tommy F won't be panicking and it'll happen all week and eventually probably a day or two at the current rate it should be tomorrow it's going to plummet to about 60 but it's still going to be raining and it might even hold at about 80 cuz it'll be coming down the Mississippi in the Missouri and refilling the pressure head will be heightened

We're getting calls here from hours and they're telling us they need to be shot just people here need to be shot and all over the place and then warlock that are here and they're going to work and Max are going to work and it is true they do need to be shot.

It's more reports coming in but it's kind of preliminary. We can tell you if it's a lot of changes occurring, and we're getting calls about Max not that much for getting a lot of calls about cork and Trump.

Thor Freya

This is terrific I need to know this and we are moving in we have tons of things to do and we're getting our spots and really the camera and camera are almost ready and Godzilla is some of them and recently they found a few holes and they're going into them that may develop into some sort of issue too

Is more happening that I'm happy about the USPS is being cleared here and his paperwork is on the way these people are mad as hell and they're going to be shot and I'm happy about that there are several other places being renovated and more than I thought and it's wonderful cuz it's nasty here and devices are being removed and it's causing angry which is needed and is eBike is doing okay but that's really something we need to upgrade. Seems struggling to chew because of these people and they're such assholes and they need to leave nothing's ever normal or helpful or anything he's always in trouble I don't need this people is stupid retards. I hear globally that trumpsters will be out today this afternoon good

Hera

We here too I report to coming in they're down to 15% and a nasty and our answer own ships trying to keep them and trying to go back after other ships they lost and Dan is trying for ships they lost both of them will be out including Terry and others and they need to get fired from jobs then they'll start doing that again. We do have good news several areas are clear of the warlock completely and it's not because the ships are gone it's just because they're all dead. And they have to try and get back in they say and they know where it is some of the caucuses with a supposedly strong big parts of Russia and large parts of Islam the Middle East practically all of Egypt the Sahara half of Africa half of the South American continent and half of Mexico and half of Asia and their ships at those locations so trying to push back in and everybody's being called and Trump says are called his remainder. Is good work here but boys they are becoming absent in the world and they are going back after their ships and they're going to be gone and almost fully

Thor Freya

The macs are taking big hits too and they're going to try an actual recovery program the foreigners don't mind and soon enough they'll be after the money. They have to do it and I have to put it in Utah they have to do it soon and the money they're taking out is around $300 million dollars and that's not what he'll inherit but that's the money they're going to move there and it's his to protect Utah. So you're trying to move it and then signs when but they're not that great we have to do with the crew that's doing it and we've seen one of them in character on TV. And others were close and cortic will take over San Francisco which actually may spur on LA. It makes sense because they're carrying the heavy arms that's what happens in San Francisco. We think it will be fairly soon within a day or two and that was set in motion the plan to reinstate some kind of income to our son

Olympus

[habaklef]

MERCY CITY!!! See the most beautiful church in Nigeria, Pastored by Billionaire Prophet Jeremiah OMOTO FUFEYIN, Says Sahara Africa Reporters

MERCY CITY!!! See the most beautiful church in Nigeria, Pastored by Billionaire Prophet Jeremiah OMOTO FUFEYIN, Says Sahara Africa Reporters

MERCY CITY!!! See the most beautiful church in Nigeria, Pastored by Billionaire Prophet Jeremiah OMOTO FUFEYIN, Says Sahara Africa Reporters Founder and Billionaire prophet of Mercy Land Deliverance Ministry, Jeremiah OMOTO Fufeyin yesterday through his Press Secretary, Mr Moses Akpovititi in the occasion of his 50th birthday, described his glamorous Warri based church as fast becoming a center…

View On WordPress

#MERCY CITY!!! See the most beautiful church in Nigeria #Pastored by Billionaire Prophet Jeremiah OMOTO FUFEYIN #Says Sahara Africa Reporters

[odinsblog]

“Coming from a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Abiy Ahmed’s call for restraint and diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine might have attracted more attention if the Ethiopian prime minister hadn’t stained his laurels with the blood of his own people. Reports of hideous war crimes committed by his forces and those of his Eritrean allies against civilians in the rebel northern province of Tigray make a mockery of his appeals for nonviolence in other parts of the world.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has diverted international attention from conflicts elsewhere, including those in Yemen, Mozambique and Africa’s Sahel, the region just south of the Sahara. In Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation, a bloody civil war is now in its 16th month. The fighting between Abiy’s forces and the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front seems at a standstill, but human-rights groups and multilateral organizations have condemned atrocities on both sides.

Caught in the middle are civilians in the northern province, who now face a calamity that is being likened to horrors of Africa’s — and Ethiopia’s — past: mass starvation and ethnocide. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, himself an Ethiopian, says there is “nowhere on earth where the health of millions of people is more under threat” than the Tigray region.

Abiy’s government, which had celebrated Tedros’s elevation to the leadership of the WHO as a matter of national pride, now is trying to tar him because his family has origins in Tigray. But as well as anecdotal evidence, there is a growing body of data to support Tedros’s claim that the province is on the edge of a major humanitarian disaster.

Though the war’s true toll is impossible to know, researchers from Belgium’s Ghent University estimate as many as half a million people have died so far: between 50,000 and 100,000 from the fighting, 150,000 to 200,000 from starvation and more than 100,000 from the lack of medical attention.”

— The World’s Deadliest Civil War

#ethiopa #abiy ahmed #war crimes #civil war #tigray #politics #tedros adhanom ghebreyesus

[fatehbaz]

where can i read more about the devegetation of north africa? (reliable sources that you prefer)

Hey hi.

So just wanna be very clear that this is not really my “area of expertise.” (More focused on North American environmental history; most reading on North Africa limited to megafauna distribution range.) More like a fun side-interest that I revisit from time to time. And these resources are mostly just about the Sahel, specifically. Including the environmental history of the Holocene (past 10,000 years in the Sahel), and also the dynamic and drastic ecological change that took place between 1895-1960, during colonial and post-independence land management schemes. But some of the resources here also deal with the geography of the Sahara. (There is also an interesting history of the Sahara during the Holocene, when the desert was full of lakes and river courses. Up until the 1970s, there were still isolated populations of hippo and crocodile in remote Sahara lakes and oases.)

I’ll recommend some of the older “classics.” As usual, I’d try to recommend writing from local people who are explicitly willing to share their ecological knowledge. But a lot of my recommendations are unfortunately from academics. And I’m sorry for that.

Assuming you’re referencing this:

When searching online for environmental histories or local environmental knowledge case studies of the Sahel, I see a lot of stuff sponsored by NGOs, the UN, and US academia, which will emphasize “rediscovery” or “utility” of “using” traditional knowledge for “combating climate change,” and many mentions of the “green wall” proposals. I’ll also see “white savior complex” kind of stuff, which talks about “crises” and “civil wars” as if they’re “endemic” to the Sahel. But (just my opinion), I don’t like those resources. They engage in cultural appropriation (”acquiring” local Indigenous knowledge), superficial posturing (Euro-American academics using cute language about “local knowledge” without holistically contextualizing the devegetation), weird culturally-insensitive elitist chauvinism (continuously talking about “religious conflicts” and “civil wars” in North Africa and the “urgency” to use “agriculture” to establish stable economics and therefore “law and order”), and reductionism (talking about importance of halting southward desertification and expansion of the Sahara, without acknowledging role of World Bank, IMF, etc. in continuing to use lending/debt to hold West Africa hostage.) Part of my skepticism of these sources is because I’ve met and/or worked with agricultural specialists from institutions in the Sahel and environmental historians who had worked for many years in the region. (They’ve shared some really cool anecdotal stories about the sophistication of dryland gardening in the Sahel, and how local horticulturalists would laugh at the Euro-American corporate agricultural agents and USDA staff sent in with their special “space-age chemically-coated super-moisture-retaining” seed supplies after independence.)

Fair warning: Most of my recommendations are a little old, from the 1970s and 1980s. Two of the main drawbacks of these “outdated” sources: since their publication, scholars have since greatly expanded lit/research about both imperialism and traditional ecological knowledge. (West Africa had only been “independent” for a short period of time, and the hidden machinations of neocolonial institutions weren’t as clearly visible as they are to us, today, I’d imagine. And some academics, writing about the Sahel in the 1980s, weren’t as willingly to openly call-out major institutions.) But I think they provide a brief background for Sahel’s ecology and agroforestry/horticulture.

So both of these are available free, online, through the New Zealand Digital Library. (Don’t wanna link them here, but you can find them online pretty easily.)

Firstly, from 1983/1984, there is this summary of desertification, traditional environmental knowledge, traditional land use systems, and agroforestry in the Sahel: National Research Council. 1983. Agroforestry in the West African Sahel. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Something that was always exciting for me ...

Despite how dry and hot the Sahel is, fruit trees and gardens are actually very fertile and productive, for many reasons, mostly related to sophistication of local ecological knowledge of nutrient-replenishing relationships between different plants. An excerpt:

“Today, a number of agro-silvicultural systems appear to be practiced in the Sahel. Gardens are found within settlements where water is available, usually with a tree component that provides shade and shelter and, often, edible fruits or leaves. The same holds true for intensively managed, irrigated, and fertilized gardens near urban centers. Both subsistence home gardens and cash-generating market gardens are highly productive. Fruit and pod-bearing trees, shade trees, and hedges or living fences are the "forestry" components, sometimes supplemented by decorative woody plants. Mangoes, citrus trees, guavas, Zizyphus mauritiana (Indian jujube), cashews, palms, Ficus spp., and wild custard-apples are prominent kinds of fruit trees. Shade is often provided by Azadirachta indica or similar species, while fencing is provided by thorny species of Acacia and Prosopis, and by Commiphora africana, Euphorbia balsamifera, flowery shrubs such as Caesalpinia pulcherrima (paradise-flower), and other species.

Close to the settlements is a ring of suburban gardens, often irrigated, in which cassava, yams, maize, millet, sorghum, rice, groundnuts, and various vegetables are grown, for subsistence as well as sale, depending on the ecozone.”

---

Then this sounds more like what you might be looking for? Basically, a history of environmental knowledge and the ecological trends of the past 10,000 years in the Sahel.

National Research Council. 1983. Environmental Change in the West African Sahel. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Though this report from 1983 is now kinda outdated, and has some iffy elitist and vaguely-chauvinist language at times, but it is still accessible, generally easy to read, concise, and  it goes out of its way to say that 1970s drought and current environmental crises in the Sahel cannot be understood without addressing the early Holocene ecology of the Sahara/Sahel.

So the report emphasizes the importance of context, by addressing the drying of river courses and lakes in the Sahara of the Late Pleistocene, the early domestication of crops, the emergence of cattle and goat over-grazing, the importance of gum arabic and acacia trees in maintaining moisture in gardens, early trans-Sahara caravan travel, medievel geographical knowledge of the Sahara, etc.

“Because climatic change and variability are regular features of the Sahel, the native plant and animal communities of the region are generally well adapted to the range of climatic variation existing in the region. [...] Many efforts in "development" or modernization have also contributed to their plight. [...] In order to provide a better understanding of the role of human activity in modifying Sahelian ecosystems, this chapter briefly explores nine agents of anthropogenic change: bush fires, transSaharan trade, site preferences for settlements, gum arabic trade, agricultural expansion, proliferation of cattle, introduction of advanced firearms, development of modern transportation networks, and urbanization. These agents illustrate the breadth and diversity of the human impact on the region.”

----

Then there is this: Jeffrey A. Gritzner. The West African Sahel - Human Agency and Environmental Change. 1989.

And I also recommend the work of Jeffrey A. Gritzner. He’s American, but respectful and knows what he’s talking about. Gritzner works with dryland ecology; human ecology, especially relationships with plants/vegetation; environmental change during the Holocene (past 10 to 12,000 years); and traditional environmental knowledge. And he’s especially knowledgeable about the Sahel, North Africa, and Persia/the Middle East, where he worked with region-specific horticulture in the 1970s in Chad, Senegal, etc. during the peak of the drought, and had personal observations of post-independence neocolonial mismanagement and continued corporate monoculture from World Bank, IMF, etc. His writing contrasts local/traditional gardening/plant knowledge with imported corporate/neocolonial agriculture.

---

Beginning in about the 1990s, it seems to me that Euro-American geography/anthropology departments were much more willing to use words like “empire” and “neocolonialism” and more willing to call-out corporate bodies and institutions, so there are many better articles from after that period.

Keita, J. D. 1981. Plantations in the Sahel. Unasylva 33(134):25-29.

Winterbottom, R. T. 1980. Reforestration in the Sahel: Problems and strategies--An analysis of the problem of deforestation, and a review of the results of forestry projects in Upper Volta. Paper presented at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, October 15-18, 1980, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Glantz, M. H., ed. 1976. The Politics of Natural Disasters: The Case of the Sahel Drought. Praeger, New York, New York, USA.

National Academy of Sciences. 1979. An Assessment of Agro-Forestry Potential Within the Environmental Framework of Mauritania. Staff Summary Report, Board on Science and Technology for International Development, Washington, D.C., USA.

Huzayyin, S. 1956. Changes in climate, vegetation, and human adjustment in the Saharo-Arabian belt with special reference to Africa. Pp. 304-323 in Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, William L. Thomas, Jr., ed. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Vermeer, D. E. 1981. Collision of climate, cattle, and culture in Mauritania during the 1970s. Geographical Review 71(3):281-297.

Smith, A. B. 1980. Domesticated cattle in the Sahara and their introduction into West Africa. Pp. 489-501 in The Sahara and the Nile, M. A. J. Williams and H. Faure, eds. A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Again, these resources are mostly just about the Sahel.

Then, since the early 1990s, for better or more specific case studies of local-scale environmental knowledge, I think it might be easier or more fruitful to search based on subregion or specific plants. My perception is that, though much of the woodland and savanna ecology might be similar across the region, the Sahel is still spatially/geographically vast, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. And so, there are so many different diverse communities of people, with long histories situated in place, and there are diverse local variations in approach to horticulture. So, if you’re more interested in traditional ecological knowledge and local food cultivation, it might be easier to pick a specific subregion of the Sahel, or to pick a favorite staple food, and then to search those keywords via a university library website, g00gle scholar, etc.

(About the distribution range and local extinction, in the Sahel, Sahara, and Mediterranean coast, of lion, cheetah, elephant, giraffe, rhino, desert hippos, the “sacred crocodile,” etc. More my cup of tea. I’ve got some maps and articles, I’ll try to put them into a list of resources, too.)

[sciencespies]

Tomb Painting Known as Egypt's 'Mona Lisa' May Depict Extinct Goose Species

https://sciencespies.com/history/tomb-painting-known-as-egypts-mona-lisa-may-depict-extinct-goose-species/

Tomb Painting Known as Egypt's 'Mona Lisa' May Depict Extinct Goose Species

The 4,600-year-old tomb painting Meidum Geese has long been described as Egypt’s Mona Lisa. And, like the Mona Lisa, the artwork is the subject of a mystery—in this case, a zoological one.

As Stuart Layt reports for the Brisbane Times, a new analysis of the artwork suggests that two of the birds depicted don’t look like any goose species known to science. Instead, they may represent a type of goose that is now extinct.

Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, noticed that the animals somewhat resembled modern red-breasted geese. But they aren’t quite the same—and researchers have no reason to believe that the species, which is most commonly found in Eurasia, ever lived in Egypt.

To investigate exactly which kinds of geese are shown in the artwork, Romilio used what’s known as the Tobias method. Essentially, he tells the Brisbane Times, this process involved comparing the painted birds’ body parts to real-life bird measurements. The resulting analysis, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, found that two species shown in the artwork corresponded to greylag geese and greater white-fronted geese. But two slightly smaller geese with distinctive color patterns had no real-world match.

“From a zoological perspective, the Egyptian artwork is the only documentation of this distinctively patterned goose, which appears now to be globally extinct,” says Romilio in a statement.

A facsimile of the full Meidum Goose painting

(Public domain via Metropolitan Museum of Art)

While it’s possible that the artist could have simply invented the birds’ specific look, the scientist notes that artwork found at the same site depicts birds and other animals in “extremely realistic” ways. He adds that bones belonging to a bird that had a similar, but not identical, appearance to the ones shown in the painting have been found on the Greek island of Crete.

Per Live Science’s Yasemin Saplakoglu, Meidum Geese—now housed in Cairo’s Museum of Egyptian Antiquities—originally adorned the tomb of Nefermaat, a vizier who served the Pharaoh Snefru, and his wife, Itet. Discovered in what’s known as the Chapel of Itet, it was originally part of a larger tableau that also shows men trapping birds in a net.

Other paintings found in the chapel feature detailed depictions of dogs, cows, leopards, and white antelopes, writes Mike McRae for Science Alert. Looters stole much of the artwork from the tomb, but Italian Egyptologist Luigi Vassalli’s removal of the goose fresco during the late 19th century ensured its preservation.

In 2015, Kore University researcher Francesco Tiradritti published findings, based partly on the idea that some of the geese depicted were not found in Egypt, suggesting that Meidum Geese was a 19th-century fake. But as Nevine El-Aref reported for Ahram Online at the time, other scholars were quick to dismiss these arguments.

Romilio tells the Brisbane Times that it’s not unusual for millennia-old art to portray animals no longer found in modern times.

The tomb of Nefermaat contained many animal images.

(Maler der Grabkammer der Itet / The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons under public domain)

“There are examples of this from all over the world,” he says. “[I]n Australia you have paintings of thylacines and other extinct animals, in the Americas there are cave paintings of ancient elephants which used to live in that region. With Egyptian art it’s fantastic because there’s such a wealth of animals represented in their art, and usually represented fairly accurately.”

The researcher also notes that other Egyptian art shows aurochs, the extinct forebears of modern cows.

Ancient art can help scientists trace how life in a particular region has changed over time, as in the case of Egypt’s transformation from a verdant oasis into a desert climate.

“Its ancient culture emerged when the Sahara was green and covered with grasslands, lakes and woodlands, teeming with diverse animals, many of which were depicted in tombs and temples,” says Romilio in the statement.

As Lorraine Boissoneault reported for Smithsonian magazine in 2017, northern Africa became a desert between 8,000 and 4,500 years ago. The shift was partly a result of cyclical changes in Earth’s orbital axis, but some scientists argue that it was hastened by pastoral human societies, which may have eliminated vegetation with fire and overgrazed the land, reducing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere.

Romilio tells the Brisbane Times that he hopes his work sheds light on species loss, which is accelerating today.

“I think we sometimes take it for granted that the animals we see around us have been there for all our lives, and so they should be there forever,” he says. “But we’re becoming more and more aware that things do change, and we are becoming much more familiar with the idea that animals can and do go extinct.”

#History

#02-2021 Science News #2021 Science News #Earth Environment #earth science #Environment and Nature #Nature Science #News Science Spies #Our Nature #outrageous acts of science #planetary science #Science #Science Channel #science documentary #Science News #Science Spies #Science Spies News #Space Physics & Nature #Space Science #History

[zvaigzdelasas]

South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, has appealed to the United States of America not to “punish” African nations by pressuring them to cut ties with Moscow, citing legislation passing through Congress which calls for more US intervention on the continent.

After meeting with US President Joe Biden on Friday, Ramaphosa spoke with reporters about the bill, the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, saying the measure “will harm Africa and marginalise the continent."

“We should not be told by anyone who we can associate with,” he added [...]

Though the two leaders exchanged pleasantries during their sit-down and did not mention the Russia legislation [...] Ramaphosa separately spoke with the Congressional Black Caucus during his visit and again offered criticism of the bill.

South Africa is “concerned (about) the possible implications for the African Continent if the ‘Countering Malign Russian Activities Bill’ were to become US law,” he said, adding that it could have “the unintended consequence of punishing the continent for efforts to advance development and growth.”

The president explained that his country considers both Washington and Moscow to be “strategic partners,” while urging American lawmakers not to “punish those who hold independent views,” especially at a time when “President Biden has sought to engage African countries on the basis of respect for their independence and sovereignty.”

However, US policymakers have insisted the bill does not propose any punishments for African states that opt to continue ties with Russia, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby saying “the United States isn’t making anybody choose between us and somebody else, either when it comes to Ukraine or in the Indo-Pacific region.”

So if they insist there's no negative incentives.....what's the point of the bill? [17 Sep 22]

[beardedmrbean]

Measles is not a febrile disease like chickenpox and is less contagious. Although a slight global outbreak has recently been in the news, vaccines and drugs are available and difficult to obtain.

Well, if you're talking about the Marburg virus that you read about in my post today, that's a different story.

Unfortunately, it looks like anger, but unlike anger, we (humans) have no weapon against it.

According to some, it is responsible for 88% of immunity and resistance to viruses.

Unfortunately, even worse than monkeys, they are far away in some parts of Africa.

My own opinion is that bees and sand rise from the Sahara desert to the mountains of America and people sing these stories hoping for more freedom.

This doesn't work

Submitted anonymously

This is a very strange translation of what I wrote on that ask

Part the second I guess

(Final draft)

Measles is not as contagious as chicken pox. Although small outbreaks have recently been reported around the world, vaccines and drugs are hard to come by. If I talk about the Marburg virus infection in my post today, that's another story. Sorry, you're angry. But unlike anger, we have no weapon against anger. According to some reports, it is responsible for 88% protection and protection against viruses. Unfortunately, they are even more dangerous than African monkeys. I mean the Sahara and America. Honey and sand fly and people sing these songs to relax. It's useless 

  Suffering will end, but the world will change. Marlboro is different now. No one calls you Satan. Unfortunately, researchers have found that 88 percent of African families are at risk of death. Those in the camps and America.

A small loss, but a new light to the world. Marlboro is different now. No one worships such a god. However, research shows that 88% of Africa's animals have died. People make their homes in the forests and deserts of America.

  The pain disappeared, but the world changed. Marlboro is different now. No one called him a masked man. Unfortunately, researchers found that 88% of African families died. America is free. It was a small loss, but a new light appeared in the world. Marlboro is different now. No one worships God, but studies show that 88% of deaths occur in Africa. People built their homes in the forests and deserts of America.

  Laura is dead But the world has changed and so has Marlboro. There's no cheating. Unfortunately, researchers have found that the risk of death in African families is 8-9%.

A small loss, but a new light to the world. Marlboro is different now. There is no one who serves God. However, according to research, 88 percent of animals die in Africa. People lived in the forests and deserts of America. Laura's death changed the world of Marlborough. However, researchers have found that 8-9% of African families are male.

A little lost, but a new light to the world. Marlboro is different now. No one worships God. According to the study, 88% of African animals died. Gas and American Gas. American oil Natural gas and natural gas. You are from America. 

  Even the earth is not fair. As the virus has spread worldwide in recent years, vaccines and drugs are still available. The story of Marlboro's death may be different today. Good luck to all my friends who are fighting the hate and I hate to admit it. According to other data, 88% of diseases can be prevented and treated. Unfortunately, African chimpanzees are extremely dangerous. This is America's desert. Honey and sand flow for relaxation and meditation. enter your email address 

  Sumo Taro Taco Space Spicy Pentagram Salad; Kohlrabi Salad; Chili Pepper Taco Salad; Chili Pepper Taco Salad; Gingerbread Taco Salad. Talo Sumo Salati Taco Space Pentagram; Hot Taco Salad Mixture.  

Still anonymous

I'd say you're @the-scungles-of-crungles but this is to coherent and ordered

So instead I'm just a bit perplexed

#submission #anonymous #word salad

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 12/1/20

by Kyle Anzalone 

US News

Biden has elected Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Budget Management. Tanden is a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and is unconcerned about the US budget deficit. [Link]

Congress is looking to include reforms to Section 230 – a law that works to ensure free speech online – in the coming defense spending bill. Reports say Trump will sign the law if the reforms are included. Trump has threatened to veto the bill because of a provision that will require the US to rename bases that memorialize confederal generals. [Link]

A woman attempting to get her right to self-defense back loses her case to the US Court of Appeals. Lisa Folajtar cannot own a gun because she pled guilty to felony tax charges. [Link]

The operating costs of US warplanes are on the rise. [Link]

Covid and the lockdown have caused a 40% increase in people in need of humanitarian aid. [Link]

Iraq

An Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander was killed near the Iraqi-Syrian border. Israel frequently bombs the area. [Link]

Followers of Iraqi cleric Sadr raided an anti-government protest camp. Three people were killed in the clashes. [Link]

An Iraqi militia leader under US sanctions is being trained with the Iraqi military in Egypt. [Link]

The Islamic State claims it was behind an attack on an Iraqi oil facility. The facility had to shut down after the attack caused fires. [Link]

Africa

The WHO predicts that the effect of the lockdowns will cause between an additional 20,000 – 100,000 malaria deaths among young children in sub-Sahara Africa. [Link]

The acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller visits Somalia. Reports have claimed Trump is pushing to drawdown troops in Somalia. [Link]

A suicide bomber killed six people at an ice cream parlor in Mogadishu. [Link]

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister claims victory against rebels in Tigray. The leader of the Tigray militia indicated his forces would now fight a guerrilla war. [Link]

Militants linked to al-Qaeda fired rockets at three French bases in Mali. [Link]

At least 40 farmers were massacred in Nigeria. Jihadist groups operate in the area of the attack, although it is unclear who the attackers are. [Link]

Read More

#kyle anzalone #immersion news #libertarian institute #news roundup

[cryptidd-enthusiast]

Adjule

(i do not own this drawing)

The Adjule has been a widely known cryptid for quite some time now between the Cryptid Community. So I guess I’ll be talking about it. If you would like to add anything, reblog and tell me!

For starters, the Adjule goes by many names. It’s more simple name, Bush Dog is a more popular one. However, in Northern Africa it is either regarded as a Kelb-el-Kela for the males, and Tarhsît for females. As I stated, this cryptid originates in Northern Africa, close to the Sahara Desert.

Skeptics have regarded this cryptid as an undiscovered variety of the African Wild Dog, which very well may be true, as a species known as the New Guinea Wild dog was said to be extinct for 50 years, but recently seen alive and well in 2016! So saying that it could possibly just be a mangy wild dog, is not out of range.

For people who are fans of the series “Resident Evil” may recognize this cryptid, however, it resides far out of the popular videogame “Resident Evil 5″, as a person by the name of Théodore Monode wrote about them way back in 1928. Accompanying this, the nomadic Tuareg people have also reported sightings of this cryptid.

Now however much data we may have on this cryptid, there is very little physical description of it. People who have believed to have seen it say it stands at about 2 and a half feet tall, and roughly 30 pounds. It’s diet is unknown, but seeing how it resembles the African Wild Dog, it is possibly carnivorous or omnivorous. The select few that have seen this have described it as “very different from a regular dog”. Whatever this may mean, is hard to tell, as the witnesses never gave much of a description other than its assumed height and weight, and its coloration, which ranges from a smoky, dark grey to a dirt brown, similar to African Wild Dogs.

Other theories surrounding this cryptid say it is possibly a phantom taking the form of a dog or wolf, however proving or debunking this theory would be near impossible, so its left in the air.

Do you believe in the Adjule, or do you think it is some form of African Wild Dog? Let me know!!!

(This is my very first post on this website and i went on like, the 3rd page of google researching it so thank you for reading down to the bottom!!!!!!)

#cryptidcore #cryptid #cryptozoology #goblincore #chaoscore #adjule #buzzfeed unsolved #cryptozoolologist

[creepingsharia]

“Kidnapped, Raped, Humiliated, and Forced to Convert to Islam”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, December 2019

Martyred on Christmas Day: Islamic State in Nigeria videotaped the slaughter of 11 Christians

by Raymond Ibrahim

The following are some of the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of December, 2019; they are categorized by theme:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria:  The Islamic State in West Africa Province released a video of the execution of 11 Christian aid workers on the day after Christmas.  The brief video shows one Christian being shot followed by 10 others being beheaded by masked jihadis standing behind the tied hostages. “This message is to the Christians in the world,” a man’s voice narrates over the footage. “Those who you see in front of us are Christians, and we will shed their blood as revenge for the two dignified sheikhs, the caliph of the Muslims, and the spokesman for the Islamic State [who were killed by the U.S.]”  Before being slaughtered, the captives reportedly made pleas, including to Nigeria president Muhammadu Buhari, to save them.  Buhari, who has himself been accused of turning a blind eye to the persecution of Christians in Nigeria—and even abetting it—condemned the executions, adding that “these barbaric killers don’t represent Islam.”

A separate report cited by Fox News found that more than 6,000 Christians have been slaughtered by Islamic terrorists since 2015—a thousand of them in just 2019.  According to the report,

They attack rural villages, force villagers off their lands and settle in their place — a strategy that is epitomized by the phrase: “Your land or your blood.” In every village, the message from local people is the same: “Please, please help us! The Fulani are coming. We are not safe in our own homes.”

The nomadic Fulani herdsmen “seek to replace diversity and difference with an Islamist ideology which is imposed with violence on those who refuse to comply,” Baroness Caroline Cox commented. “It is—according to the Nigerian House of Representatives—genocide.  Something has to change—urgently.  For the longer we tolerate these massacres, the more we embolden the perpetrators. We give them a ‘green light’ to carry on killing.”

Kenya: After armed Muslim militants stopped and stormed a passenger bus near the Somali border on December 6, they proceeded to separate the 56 passengers into Muslim and Christian groups—reportedly by asking them to recite the Islamic shahada (creed); 11 of those who would or could not due to their Christian faith, were paraded out of the bus. “They were told to lie on the ground face down and were shot at close range,” one report said. “The militants then ordered the bus to leave with the rest of the passengers.” The attackers apparently also relied on whether a passenger appeared to be local (meaning likely Muslim) or not (meaning likely Christian).  “The majority of the population in this region is Muslim,” Rev. Nicholas Mutua, a Catholic priest, explained. “The non-locals had come from other parts of the country and they would definitely have been Christians.” “One of the Muslim men gave me Somali attire, and when the separation was being done I went to the side of the Muslims, and immediately we were told to get [back] into the bus,” a survivor recalled. “As the locals were getting back into the bus, the non-locals who were left behind were fired upon with gunshots.”   Separating Muslims from Christians before slaughtering the latter has long been the modus operandi of Islamic terror groups.  In the Garissa University College massacre of 2015, when militants slaughtered nearly 150 people, a survivor explained how the Islamic terrorists burst into a Christian service, seized worshippers, and then “proceeded to the hostels, shooting anybody they came across except their fellows, the Muslims.”  Another witness said the gunmen were opening doors and inquiring if the people inside were Muslims or Christians: “If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot.  With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die.”

Burkina Faso:  On Sunday, December 1, Islamic terrorists stormed a church during service and opened fire; 14 worshippers were killed and many injured.  The gunmen fled on motorbikes following the massacre.  Discussing this incident, a separate report offers statistics:

Burkina Faso’s Christian minority used to live in relative peace. Now the violence and persecution of Christians has quadrupled in the last two years and is expected to increase by [another] 60%…  Radical Islamic groups such as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and other local insurgents have pushed nearly half a million people from their homes.  Sunday’s attack comes after a Catholic priest was executed in February, five Christians were killed during an attack on a Church service in April, and 13 Christians were killed in a Church arson attack and procession in May. Most recently was on October 26 when unknown gunmen stormed a Christian village and reportedly killed 12 and abducted several others.

Cameroon:  In just the first half of December, Islamic militants “began an onslaught of attacks on Cameroonian Christians that left 7 dead and 21 captive to the terrorist group.”  According to the report:

On December 1, gunmen opened fire at a funeral in Mayo Sava district, in the far north of Cameroon. Four were killed and three were wounded. In another attack on the same day, militants ransacked homes and looted them of food and basic necessities. The next night, three more people were murdered and another was injured in another looting of Zangola village. A few days later on December 5, militants methodically searched for children and young adults and kidnapped them. In the middle of the night they came and stole nine girls and twelve boys from their homes, ranging from 12 to 21 years old. Four of the captives managed to escape. While en-route to their base, the Boko Haram militants attacked Tahert village where one girl was injured and a motorbike was stolen. Nearly 300 people have been killed in Cameroon in 2019 by Islamic militants, with 80% being civilians.

Pakistan: Naveed Masih, a 24-year-old Christian man was found hanging from a tree, dead, because he had earlier prevented Muslim men from harassing and pressuring a married Christian mother to convert to Islam.   Due to this, “a mob of 20 individuals attacked Naveed’s house,” the report says. “The mob beat Naveed and damaged many of the family’s belongings. The mob further threatened Naveed to not interfere with their efforts to convert the Christian woman.”  Two months later, he was lured to a supposed parley.  When he arrived at the meeting point, “he was brutally tortured and he was hanged from a tree as a result of protecting a Christian woman’s faith,” his father, Herbert, recalled:   “Carrying your son’s dead body in your arms is heartbreaking and unbearable.  It almost ended my life when I had to shoulder my son’s funeral….  My family is still under threats to withdraw the case against the culprits.  However, I have nothing to lose now.”

In a separate but similar incident in Pakistan, after sexually abusing him, two Muslim men killed Daud (“David”) Masih, a Christian teenager, on December 14 in a factory.  According to a local Christian activist, “Daud and his elder brother started working at the embroidery factory during the night shift about three months ago. They were additional breadwinners for the family as the mother is sick and their father is a day laborer.”  Weeks before the murder, Masih had complained about the “unethical behavior from his Muslim co-workers.”  Because the owner of the factory did not seem to care or intervene, Masih stopped going to work, until the owner assured him of protection.  He was abused and killed on the same day he returned to work; one of his murderers is allegedly the brother of the owner.  Last reported, the individuals accused of the crime have not been arrested and were pressuring and trying to bribe the victim’s family to drop the case:  “Although I am a poor Christian woman, I want justice for my son and punishment for those who killed Daud,” his mother said. “I will never go for compensation or reconciliation, as my son was killed brutally.”

Attacks on Churches

Philippines:  During Sunday Mass on the evening of December 22, Islamic terrorists detonated a bomb just outside Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Cotabato, a city on the island of Mindanao.  Twenty-two people were injured in the explosion, 12 of whom were soldiers patrolling the church as part of security measures adopted during the Christmas holidays.  Parish priest Zaldy Robles, who called it “a cowardly act on the eve of the Christmas celebrations,” said “casualties would have been unimaginable” had the bomb reached the inside of the church.  In 2009, a similar bomb attack on the same cathedral in Mindanao killed five people and injured 34.  Most of the Philippines’ Muslim minority live in Mindanao, which has been a hotbed of terrorism in recent years.  Among other attacks, “Islamic State-affiliated terrorists were blamed for twin suicide bombings at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Cathedral in Jolo, Sulu Province on Jan. 27 [2019], which killed at least 22 people and wounded more than 100. Jolo is a small island off the coast of Mindanao.”

Iraq: The Catholic Church of Divine Wisdom in Baghdad, built in 1929, was invaded on the day after Christmas in what was described by one report as a “hostile takeover attempt”: “Details remain scarce. Security footage of the invasion show that an Islamic leader was present amongst the invaders, who attempted to open the gate and remove the cross.”  Later reports revealed that the church had been “marked for demolition by the authorities, together with some surrounding buildings, as part of a redevelopment programme in the city,” but that “local residents say the project is driven by commercial and political forces, and does not take into account the significance of the church for the community.”

Indonesia: Several reports appearing around Christmas indicated the difficulties churches experience during the holiday season.  In “Aceh Christians forced to celebrate Christmas in a tent,” the BBC reported on December 23 that:

Christians in the Indonesian province of Aceh are preparing to celebrate Christmas in makeshift tents in the jungle.  Their churches were destroyed four years ago by Islamic vigilante groups and the police.  Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim population – has a pluralist constitution that is meant to protect the rights of followers of all the major faiths.  But Church leaders in Singkil Aceh say the local authorities are stopping them from rebuilding….

Separately, authorities on the Indonesian island of Sumatra banned Christians from celebrating Christmas in private homes.  According to Sudarto, the director of an intercommunity initiative, “They did not get permission from the local government since the Christmas celebration and worship were held at the house of one of the Christians who had been involved. The local government argued that the situation was not conducive.”  He added that the ban on Christians to celebrate Christmas and the New Year “has been going on for a long time [since 1985], so far they have been quietly worshiping at the home of one of the worshipers, but they have applied for permission several times. Yet the permit to celebrate Christmas was never granted. The house where they performed worship services was once burned down in early 2000 due to resistance from residents.”

Discussing yet another incident, the Jakarta Post reported on Christmas Day that “Christians in Jambi city, Jambi, still struggle to find joy on the eve of the holy day since the authorities sealed a number of local churches in the city….  Several Christians in the region were aghast when they were welcomed by a notice plastered on the closed front doors of the Assemblies of God Church (GSJA) informing them the church was sealed on Dec. 24, instead of the customary Christmas prayers and services.”  This church is among three churches in the area to be closed down by the Jambi city administration following protests by local Muslim residents who cited the lack of building permits.  “This is the second Christmas celebration to feel depressing for us,” said its pastor Jonathan Klaise on Christmas Eve.  “It’s a difficult situation. We have no other choice but to cope with it…  We can only hope that we will soon be able to pray in our church.”

Attacks on Muslim Converts (“Apostates”)  to Christianity

Uganda: A Muslim man with three wives abandoned one of them and their three children on learning that she had converted to Christianity.  Problems began for Florence Namuyiga, 27, when she took her eldest son, aged 7, to the church that she had been secretly attending following her conversion last May. “That evening, while back at home, my son began singing some of the Christian songs that were sung in the church,” she explained. “My husband began questioning me where the son picked such kinds of songs, but I kept quiet. He then turned to our son, who narrated what he saw in church of both men and women worshipping together in one big hall. Thereafter we went to bed with no communication with my husband.”  Then, on November 29, her husband, Abudalah Nsubuga, 34, insisted she to go to Friday mosque prayers.  “I refused,” she said. “He started beating me up with sticks, blows and kicks.

When I fell down, he left me and went to the mosque. I began bleeding with serious injury on my left arm. That evening he did not come to the house but slept in the house of one of my co-wives.”  On the next day,

He arrived [home] and pronounced [ritual Islamic] words of divorce and threatened to kill me if I remained in the homestead…  There and then I left the homestead, leaving all my belongings behind….  I have been supporting my three children by washing peoples’ clothing around the village.  Indeed life is quite difficult for me and the children. I have realized that following Jesus is not easy. Sometimes I spend sleepless nights thinking on my future and that of my small kids, especially their school fees.

Iran: On December 20, Mohammad Moghiseh, the head of Tehran Revolutionary Court, sentenced nine Muslim apostates to a total of 45 years in prison.  “These Christian converts have objected to the verdict issued by the Tehran Revolutionary Court and are awaiting final appeal,” the report states. The day before sentencing, on December 19, the US Treasury Department accused Mohammad Moghiseh and another Revolutionary judge of violating justice and abusing the rights of religious minorities and others.

General Abuse of and Discrimination against Christians

Tajikistan: A Christian pastor who was sentenced to three years in prison on the charge of “singing extremist songs in church and so inciting religious hatred,” was released on December 18, 2020, after serving two-and-a-half years.  In 2017, authorities had raided the Good News of Grace Protestant Church in Khujand. Many of the congregation were beat, lost their jobs, and faced other forms of repercussions in the wake of the raid on their church.  Pastor Bakhrom Kholmatov, a 43-year-old married father of three, was then sentenced on the aforementioned charges.  According to the report,

Officials claimed that Christian songs found on his computer and the book More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell are “extremist materials.” They alleged that religious “experts” recognised the songs Praise God, O Unbelieving Country, Army of Christ and Our Battle is Not Against Blood and Flesh as “extremist and calling people to overthrow the government.”

“I’d like to express my huge gratitude to all the people who supported and prayed for me, my family and my church,” Kholmatov said in a statement. “All these three years I felt your prayers, they helped me to stand, they helped my precious wife and children, they helped the members of my church who were left without a pastor, then kicked by the authorities out of our building.”

Iran:  “The Iranian regime has begun cracking down on evangelical Christians in Iran in the run-up to Christmas,” Al Arabiya reported on December 15. “Security officials routinely arrest Christian citizens during the Christmas season, according to the 2019 US Commission for International Religious Freedom report, which found the regime arrested 114 Christians during the first week of December in 2018.”   Dabrina Tamraz, who experienced persecution as a Christian before she managed to flee the Islamic republic nine years ago, shed light on the plight of Christians by recounting her own experiences:  “Christmas celebrations make it easier for Iranian authorities to arrest a group of Christians at one time,” said the escapee who currently resides in Europe.  During a family Christmas gathering in Tehran in 2014, “My brother opened the door only to be confronted with about 30 plain clothes officers who pushed their way in. They separated men from women and conducted strip body searches. Three people, including my father, were arrested and charged with acting against national security and conducting evangelism.”  The report adds that “The Iranian government considers evangelism—the sharing of the Christian faith—a criminal act.”

As another example of the persecution and discrimination Christians routinely experience around Christmas, the annual Armenian Christian market at Tehran’s Ararat Club, which was supposed to be held between Christmas Eve and the New Year, was canceled by officials.  According to that report,

In a situation where the economy is declining and the business market is sluggish due to the policies of the Islamic Republic … this cancellation for preventing ‘Christian propaganda’ is an irrational decision.  The cancellation of the market, which is a clear sign of discrimination and inequality, has received widespread criticism in the Armenian community… Every year on the eve of Christmas, pressure on the Iranian Christian community by various government agencies is increasing, including arresting Christian activists, obstructing the business of Christian sellers, even those who sell Christmas decorations!…  Christian compatriots are subject to double discrimination, whether in the labor market, employment, job position or in violating their right to run private businesses.

Pakistan:  “A 14-year-old Christian girl from Zia Colony, Karachi, was kidnapped, forcibly converted and married off to a Muslim man,” Asia Times reported on December 3. “Our daughters are insecure and abused in this country,” the mother of Huma Younus, explained. “They are not safe anywhere. We leave them at schools or home but they are kidnapped, raped, humiliated, and forced to convert to Islam.”  The eighth grade student was seen by neighbors being forcefully dragged into a car by three armed men.  “She was kidnapped by Abdul Jabar, a Muslim,” her father said.  After the girl’s family went to police, Jabar sent documents to the family over WhatsApp: “He asked us not to be worried for Huma as she is now his wife and has entered into Islam”; however, “the religious conversion documents are fake,” said the mother, noting that the date of the document of the 14-year-old’s alleged conversion is the same date of her abduction.  “My daughter’s life is in danger. She could be tortured or killed. I beg the authorities to recover my daughter as soon as possible.”   “Christian girls are being abused and forcefully converted,” Fr. Saleh Diego, Director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Karachi, said while discussing this latest incident:

The kidnappers are misusing religion for their motives and spoiling the lives of hundreds of young girls from the marginalized Christian community….Huma must be recovered with no further delay. This unethical and illegal practice must also be stopped and the kidnappers of Huma and other girls must be brought to justice and punished for their crimes.

To date, police and courts have largely been unresponsive.  “Abducting for the purpose of forced conversion and marriage is a major issue in Pakistan,” Asia Times concludes. “Most of the victims are Christian and Hindu girls and young women, forced to wed against their will to much older Muslim men.”

United Nations: According to a December 4 CBN News report, “Christian Syrian refugees … have been blocked from getting help from the United Nations Refugee Agency … by Muslim UN officials in Jordan.” One of the refugees, Hasan, a Syrian convert to Christianity, explained that Muslim UN camp officials “knew that we were Muslims and became Christians and they dealt with us with persecution and mockery. They didn’t let us into the office. They ignored our request.” “Hasan and his family are now in hiding,” the report adds, “afraid that they will be arrested by Jordanian police, or even killed. Converting to Christianity is a serious crime in Jordan.”  Timothy, another Jordanian Muslim convert to Christianity, confirmed: “All of the United Nations officials [apparently in Jordan], most of them, 99 percent, they are Muslims, and they were treating us as enemies.”  Addressing this issue, Paul Diamond, a British human rights lawyer, elaborated:

You have this absurd situation where the scheme is set up to help Syrian refugees and the people most in need, Christians who have been “genocided,” they can’t even get into the U.N. camps to get the food. If you enter and say I am a Christian or convert, the Muslim U.N. guards will block you [from] getting in and laugh at you and mock you and even threaten you…. [saying]  “You shouldn’t have converted. You’re an idiot for converting. You get what you get,” words to that effect.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.  Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1)          To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2)          To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam;  theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

#Islam #Muslim #Religion #Sharia #Jihad #Legal #News #Politics #Media #Mosque #Travel #Persecution

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“The pro-independence Polisario Front declared a three-decade-old ceasefire in disputed Western Sahara was over after Morocco launched an operation to reopen the road to neighbouring Mauritania.

Morocco said its troops have launched an operation in a no man’s land on the southern border of Western Sahara to end “provocations” by the Polisario Front.

Rabat on Friday said its troops would “put a stop to the blockade” of trucks travelling between Moroccan-controlled areas of the disputed territory and neighbouring Mauritania, and “restore free circulation of civilian and commercial traffic”.

The Polisario Front said on Friday that Morocco had broken their ceasefire and “ignited war”, but Rabat denied there had been any armed clashes between the sides and said the three-decade truce remained in place.

The group on Monday had warned that it would regard a three-decade-old ceasefire with Morocco as over if Rabat moved troops or civilians into the buffer zone on the Mauritanian border.

It warned that “the entry of any Moroccan military, security or civil entity” into the Guerguerat buffer zone “will be considered as a flagrant aggression to which the Sahrawi side will respond vigorously in self-defence and to defend its national sovereignty”.

“This will also mean the end of the ceasefire and the beginning of a new war across the region,” the Polisario Front said.

Guerguerat is located on the southern coast of the disputed Western Sahara, along the road leading to Mauritania, some 380km (235 miles) north of Nouakchott, a buffer zone patrolled by a United Nations’ peacekeeping force.

“The Sahrawi government also holds the United Nations and the Security Council in particular responsible for the safety and security of Sahrawi civilians,” the Polisario statement added.

Last week, around 200 Moroccan truck drivers appealed to Moroccan and Mauritanian authorities for help, saying they were stranded on the Mauritanian side of the border near Guerguerat.

In a statement carried by the Mauritanian news agency Alwiam, the produce truck drivers said they were returning from Mauritania and sub-Saharan Africa but “militias affiliated with separatists” had stopped them from crossing.

In recent weeks, Moroccan media outlets said Sahrawi separatists had set up roadblocks and stopped passage across the border. Al Jazeera could not independently verify the reports.

The UN also cited isolated incidents at Guerguerat in a recent report.

Riccardo Fabiani of the International Crisis Group told Al Jazeera from Lisbon that the latest flare up could be a “potential breaking point” that could have major repercussions.

“It is very important to understand in the the next hours and days what the Polisario group is willing to do – if they are willing to escalate even further, their and actions and initiatives, and how foreign actors can step in and help mediate,” he added.

Fabiani said the United Nations had been “quiet negligent” towards this issue, citing the lack of a UN special envoy for the past few months “to try and mediate between the two sides”.

UN chief Antonio Guterres expressed “grave concern” on Friday over the situation in Western Sahara.

“In recent days, the United Nations, including the Secretary-General, has been involved in multiple initiatives to avoid an escalation of the situation in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area and to warn against violations of the ceasefire and the serious consequences of any changes to the status quo,” said spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

“The Secretary-General regrets that these efforts have proved unsuccessful and expresses grave concern regarding the possible consequences of the latest developments,” he added.

Algeria on Friday “strongly” condemned “serious violations” of the ceasefire in Western Sahara, calling for the “immediate cessation” of military operations.

“Algeria calls on both parties, the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, to show a sense of responsibility and restraint,” the foreign ministry of Algeria, which backs the Polisario pro-independence movement, said in a statement.

What is the conflict about?

Western Sahara, a vast swath of desert on Africa’s Atlantic coast, is a disputed former Spanish colony.

Rabat controls 80 percent of the territory, including its phosphate deposits and its fishing waters.

Morocco, which maintains that Western Sahara is an integral part of the kingdom, has offered autonomy but insists it will retain sovereignty.

The Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which fought a war for independence from 1975 to 1991, demands a referendum on self-determination.

The two sides signed a ceasefire in September 1991 under the aegis of the UN after 16 years of war, but the planned referendum has been repeatedly postponed due to a dispute between Rabat and the Polisario over the composition of the electorate and the status of the territory.

Negotiations on Western Sahara involving Morocco, the Polisario, Algeria and Mauritania have remained suspended for several months.” - “Morocco troops launch operation in Western Sahara border zone,” AlJazeera. November 13, 2020.

#western sahara #polisario front #morocco #ceasfire #liberation struggle #guerguerat #phosphate #independence struggle #sahrawi #ceasefire #frozen conflict #displaced people #refugee camps #decolonization #moroccan imperialism