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Consultants pocket $20bn of global aid
May 29, 2005 - Consultants are creaming off a staggering $20 billion from hard-won global aid budgets. The $20bn total is 40 per cent of the international communities' overseas development pot of $50bn - money that is meant to relieve poverty in developing countries.
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The World Bank has confirmed the figure for the first time: this weekend it admitted that money spent on 'technical assistance' and consultants had increased by $2bn on last year's $18bn total. A spokesman conceded that ballooning consultants' fees 'need to be addressed'.
The news comes in the wake of a hard-hitting report by charity ActionAid, which said that a huge proportion of aid was wasted, misdirected or recycled in rich countries.
...Wolfowitz's arrival at the bank comes at a pivotal time. Many see any proposed increase in international aid as the last chance to seriously address fundamental global inequalities. Since the 1950s, some $300bn has been spent on aid to Africa while living standards have fallen.
Nick Mathiason The Observer
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Who owes who?
Uganda was the first country to complete the debt relief program, but as coffee prices plummeted it has seen its debt increase again - demonstrating the current relief efforts are not sufficient.
Mozambique, with a history of apartheid-caused war, was forced by loan conditionalities to cut support for an infant cashew roasting industry that could have helped stabilize the economy when the raw cashew prices collapsed.
Designated as having "sustainable debt" by the World Bank - yet who owes whom?
South Africa has $25 billion in foreign debt that is considered sustainable even when it is one of the most unequal countries in the world with 20 percent of adults HIV infected. A large percent of the debt is odious and illegal with an estimated 11.7 billion from interest on loans from the apartheid era.
Angola is wealthy from oil and diamond exports and considered to have sustainable debt, but the country ranks near the bottom of the United Nations human development index, 161 out of 173 countries. The majority of the $10 billion debt is owed to countries involved in the cold-war era decades of war.
Classic case of "odious" debt
Democratic Republic of Congo was promised 80 percent debt relief ($10 billion) but it is one of the strongest cases for full cancellation. Former dictator Mobuto Sese Seko who assassinated the country's elected leader was granted loans that disappeared into foreign banks with few traces.
"Our campaign's call for cancellation of odious and illegal debt is no different that President Bush's current pleas to Iraq's creditors" said Imani Countess, coordinator of the AFSC Africa Program and the Life over Debt campaign. "Creditors should forgive the debt that was odious and illegal in the first place when loans were made without the consent of the people and not spent in their interest."
AFSC is grounded in Quaker beliefs respecting the dignity and worth of every person and has historically worked with communities of color in the US on civil and human rights. The AFSC has been involved in Africa for decades working in economic development projects, diplomatic exchanges, health promotion, housing, and community reconciliation.
Africa's Debt - Who Owes Whom?
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"Liberia was founded, not by freed slaves, but by the American Colonization Society (ACS), an uneasy coalition of slave-holding Southerners and moderate abolitionists who believed that blacks roaming free in the U.S. could only mean trouble. So they determined that the best course would be to ship them back to Africa: exactly the position taken today by white supremacists. "
TO HECK WITH LIBERIA! Justin Raimondo
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CIA global trends report
Ethnic, political, and religious conflicts
Role of Nonstate Actors.
The atrophy of special relationships between European powers and their former colonies in Africa will be virtually complete by 2015. Filling the void will be international organizations and nonstate actors of all types: transnational religious institutions; international nonprofit organizations, international crime syndicates and drug traffickers; foreign mercenaries; and international terrorists seeking safehavens.
Fundamentalist movements, especially proselytizing Islamic groups, will plow fertile ground as Africans seek alternative ways to meet their basic needs.
Internal conflicts will attractand leaders will in some cases welcome foreign criminal organizations or mercenaries to assist in the plundering of national assets, while faltering regimes will willingly trade their sovereignty for cash.
International organizations will be heavily engaged in Sub-Saharan Africa over the next 15 years, given its growing needs and slow growth relative to other regions. Africa will continue to receive more development assistance per capita than other regions of the world.
The international financial institutions will be a continuing presence in Africa, as many donor countries funnel development assistance through them.
The perpetuation of poor governance and communal conflicts in a region awash with guns will generate frequent natural and man-made humanitarian crises, precipitating international humanitarian relief efforts.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the SADC will be the primary economic and political instruments through which the continental powers, Nigeria and South Africa, exert their leadership.
summary
read full report [6.4mb pdf file]
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Congo war shuts off aid to three million
Eastern Congo is rapidly turning into one of the world's biggest humanitarian disasters, with 3.3 million people out of reach of relief groups, a senior United Nations official said.
Jan Egeland, the emergency relief co-ordinator, told a UN Security Council meeting yesterday that 10 million people in 20 countries were in conflict areas with little access to aid, the largest number in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
New Zealand herald
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Africa's Hitler?
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Zimbabwe bomb plot to drive out whites
AN alleged plot to drive most of Zimbabwes 50,000 remaining whites out of the country is being investigated by the Foreign Office.
The Sunday Times has obtained a document, apparently drawn up on the orders of a senior official in President Robert Mugabes secret police, which calls for the bombing of an economic target in Zimbabwe that could be blamed on British funded terrorists.
Diplomatic relations with Britain could then be broken off and all British nationals told to leave within 48 hours or risk being interned as suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathisers, says the document.
It is dated June 8, 2004 and is headed Solution to the White Problem.
Sunday Times
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For the past three years, Zimbabwe has been in crisis. The battle between the increasingly dictatorial and repressive President Robert Mugabe and the opposition has had disastrous economic consequences, with unemployment and inflation running out of control.
While Zimbabweans suffer, all of southern Africa is feeling the repercussions. Trade with what was Africa's breadbasket has come to a standstill and hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have fled to neighbouring countries. The question now is why South Africa the regional power and widely seen as the only country that can end the impasse - has so far resisted a strong intervention.
Radio Netherlands
Last week's two-day national labour stayaway against the impending privatisation of South African electricity, telephones, water and transport services was only a mixed success. But combined with other recent regional dynamics and ruling-party convulsions, it adds to the sense that activists are now thoroughly fed up with rampant neoliberalism and the political tyranny that invariably accompanies it on the world's periphery.
To illustrate, the failed neoliberal strategy of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe during the 1990s generated malgovernance, rebellions and an opposition movement from the trade unions and urban poor. Since losing a February 2000 referendum, Mugabe responded not only with talk-left/act-right bluster and by activating a paramilitary posing as land-reformers.
He also conclusively cheated on three elections, including last weekend's national poll of rural district municipalities. In more than half the districts, intimidation was so severe that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) could not even register their candidates for the 1400 seats. Arrests, beating and torture of MDC supporters were again in evidence, against a backdrop of worsening starvation induced both by drought and venal politics, in which food aid is being used by Mugabe's lieutenants as a weapon and rape of rural women opposed to his regime is also steeply on the rise.
Patrick Bond
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Operation Murambatsvina
On 25 May, Africa Day, the Government of Zimbabwe began an operation labelled "Operation Murambatsvina". While Government has translated this to mean "Operation Clean-up", the more literal translation of "murambatsvina" is "getting rid of the filth". The operation has continued throughout the month of June, and has affected virtually every town and rural business centre in the country. From Mount Darwin in the north, to Beitbridge in the south, Mutare in the East and Bulawayo in the west, no part of the nation has been spared the impact of what could be termed a slow-moving earthquake; every day the nation awakes to find more buildings have fallen around them, more families have been displaced. Families are often having their homes and possessions ruthlessly burnt to the ground, or are given a few hours to remove what they can save before bulldozers come in to demolish entire structures. - sokwanele.com
President Mugabe Bulldozes Homes Of 200,000 Across Zimbabwe
Zimbabwean President Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina ("Drive out rubbish") has seen at least 200,000 people made homeless in Zimbabwe as the government bulldozes "illegal" homes, buildings and markets.
The opposition has said the operation is designed to "punish" those who object to Mugabe's government. Two children under the age of two have been killed, the first deaths reported so far in the actions which have been taking place for a month now.
International pressure is building on Zimbabwe to stop. British Foreign Minister Jack Straw has been joined by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in condemning the evictions and urging African leaders to speak out.
The government has said the buildings it is destroying are "illegal", and have said that the "black markets" are to blame for the country's "economic meltdown". Over 70% of the population is unemployed.
The bulldozers have the protection of armed police as they do their work. Sometimes the police have forced homeowners to carry out the destruction themselves.
At other times, the government has claimed it is destroying the buildings to get rid of unsafe structures and to reduce overcrowding. Other children have died when the walls of their houses have collapsed. The authorities are also preventing non-governmental organisations from providing aid to those who have lost their homes. The country currently needs to import 1.2 million tonnes of food to avoid famine as rural farming production drops.
Sources
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice condemns the evictions ????
What about this Condi? - Eminent domain expanded - Court rules cities can seize homes for economic development
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South Africa
Imagine you have been living under a racist regime for decades...
In shanty towns, in poverty, in violence and fear...
...and then the militant party who were in solidarity & fought for freedom come into power.
what would you expect to happen?
ANC - the New Labour effect?
The IMF WEF & privatization in South Africa
For critics who believe liberalization is likely to heighten economic inequality (and also mire the country in economic stagnation), there could hardly be a worse time to defer to market forces. South Africa's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $2,700 is approximately equal to that of Chile, Brazil and Malaysia, is substantially higher than Poland or Thailand, and is far higher than any other large African country. But with a legacy of apartheid married to extremely skewed, concentrated wealth, South Africa remains characterized by:
dire poverty -- more than half of the population lives in households earning below 300 rand ($72) per month -- highly concentrated in rural areas (in particular, in former "bantustan" homelands in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Province) and among women and youth;
extraordinary levels of income inequality (the top 5 percent of the population consume more than the bottom 85 percent), matching Brazil and Nigeria as major countries with the worst distribution of wealth;
ongoing racial bias in income distribution, as 95 percent of the poor are black "African," and 4 percent are "colored" (mixed race), with whites and Indians comprising less than 1 percent of the poor;
inadequate access to basic services, with fewer than one third of Africans having internal taps, flush toilets, electricity and refuse removal; and
a UN Human Development Index (measuring life expectancy, literacy and per capita GDP) for Africans that ranks at approximately the level of the Congo, while the index for whites is at the level of Canada and New Zealand. The national unemployment rate stands between 40 percent and 50 percent, and only 12,000 net jobs have been created during the cyclical upturn that began three years ago, following the longest depression (from 1989 to 1993) in the country's history. Another downturn is likely in 1997, with steady manufacturing job losses likely to intensify.
Patrick Bond
On April 16 in Washington DC, there will be huge demonstrations calling for the shutting down of the IMF and the World Bank. On that day South Africas Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel will be on the other side of the barricades so to speak, chairing the important IMF Governing Board meeting.
It was the same Trevor Manuel, former radical community activist and leader of the United Democratic Front (the radical alliance of peoples organisations that substituted for the ANC in the 1980s when it was banned) that brought Michel Camdessus to SA in 1996 on a speaking tour "to address his critics". "We have invited him to extend the good relations that we have with the IMF... He wants to have discussions with the trade union movement, student organisations as well as the normal constituency such as business people and government leaders."
The background for Camdessus visit includes a history of IMF support for apartheid, including loans of more than US$1 billion to the South African regime during the late 1970s (in the wake of financial panic caused by the Soweto uprising) and early 1980s (when the gold price collapsed and the regime was most urgently in need of external monetary support). From exile, the ANC condemned the IMF for propping up apartheid. The IMF then assisted the regime with its increasingly neoliberal economic policies during the late 1980s, and designed South Africa's Value Added Tax during the early 1990s, leading to mass popular protest.
Brian Ashley
An aspect of the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa was inadvertently captured at the opening of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting held at the International Convention Centre in Durban, in June 2002, as the police arrived with a massive show of force and drove protesters away from the building with batons and charging horses. One of the organizers of the WEF was approached by an incredulous member of the foreign media and asked about the right to protest in the new South Africa. The organizer pulled out the program and, with a wry smile, pointed to an upcoming session entitled Taking NEPAD to the People. He said he could not understand the protests because the people have been accommodated.
The transition to democracy led by the African National Congress (ANC) was trumped by the transition to neoliberalism. The new ruling elite and the beneficiaries of the old apartheid regime had already made common cause after the ANC came to power in 1994. Now they were cementing their alliance with the corporate raiders in the advanced capitalist world.
Ashwin Desai
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HIV causes AIDS a myth? -
a cover for other diseases caused by poverty, malnutrition,
and an unclean water supply which is a result of
War, corruption & privatization
[neo-liberalism/ corporatism]
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In the late 1980s the media that initially swooned over Gallo became more critical of his ethics and his "discovery" of the AIDS virus. The green monkey story and the "out of Africa" view of AIDS was still widely held, but other theories of AIDS origin were allowed to be expressed.
On May 11, 1987, a highly important AIDS story appeared on the front page of The London Times, one of the world's most respected newspapers. The headline ran, "Smallpox vaccine triggered AIDS virus." Written by science editor Pearce Wright, the story suggested that the smallpox eradication vaccine program sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) was responsible for unleashing AIDS in Africa.
Man made from :Gay Today's AIDS Series
Between the years 1966-1977, almost 100 million Blacks living in Central Africa were injected by the WHO. Scientists now speculate that the smallpox vaccine might have awakened a "dormant" AIDS virus infection on the continent.
Pearce Wright noted that the smallpox vaccine connection to AIDS could explain why Brazil, the only South American country covered in the WHO eradication campaign, has the highest incidence of AIDS in that region. In addition, approximately 14,000 Haitians working in Central Africa were inoculated in the smallpox campaign, thus explaining why AIDS also broke out in Haiti.
It is widely believed that Africa is being devastated by a plague of "AIDS." This is in spite of the fact that, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Record, 19 years' worth of AIDS cases for the entire continent of Africa has amounted to only 876,009. (In the US, more people than this die in one year of heart disease.) Africa is generally blamed as the origin of AIDS, yet statistics point towards a more likely source of this disease: the United States.
It was not until 1997 that the cumulative number of AIDS cases in Africa surpassed those in the United States. The most current statistics (November 2000) show that the cumulative tally stands at Africa 876,009 and the United States 733,374 -- not much of a difference considering WHO's estimate that 25.3 million Sub-Saharan Africans have HIV/AIDS, whereas in the United States it is well below one million. Why is there this huge discrepancy? The main reason is many Africans test positive on HIV antibody tests -- while very few Americans do -- and few HIV-positive people in any country go on to develop AIDS.
WHY THE "AIDS TEST" DOESN'T WORK IN AFRICA
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Why cause instability across a whole continent?
The policy of socio-economic warfare is divide and rule...it allows multinationals [THE GLOBAL CARTEL] access to the worlds biggest resource of oil & mineral deposits
AFRICA: THE NEW OIL AND MILITARY FRONTIER
In January of this year a symposium sponsored by Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (a Jerusalem based think tank) was held in Washington to discuss "African Oil and U.S. National Security Priorities," as Africa is quickly becoming the new oil frontier for the U.S. According to Ed Royce (R-CA) Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, "African oil should be treated as a priority for U.S. national security post 9-11, and I think that post 9-11 it's occurred to all of us that our traditional sources of oil are not as secure as we once thought they were."
The main product emerging from the symposium was a newly developed working group called the African Oil Policy Initiative Groups (AOPIG) composed of Congressional members, representatives from various offices in the Bush Administration as well as oil companies, U.S. investors and international consultants. AOPIG then created a blueprint for energy investment in Africa that the Administration has been closely following.
AOPIG recommendations are divided into three categories Energy Security, Developmental Strategies, and Regional Security - all encompassing the same theme of securing oil and strategic mineral resources.
Under the title of Regional Security, AOPIG recommends that
1) Congress and the Administration should declare the Gulf of Guinea an area of "Vital Interest to the U.S."
2) A regional sub-command, similar to U.S. Forces in Korea, should be established for the area
3) That regional sub-command should strongly consider the establishment of a regional homeport, possibly on the islands of Sao Tome and Principe
4) A U.S. -Nigerian compact on regional security issues should be established to make the area more secure and thereby more attractive for direct foreign investment.
Additionally, AOPIG has declared that U.S. interest should not be limited to oil. "The Gulf of Guinea, as part of the Atlantic oil-bearing basin, surpasses the Persian Gulf in oil supplies to the U.S. by 2:1; moreover, it maintains significant deposits of critically important strategic mineral including chromium, uranium, cobalt, titanium, diamonds, gold, bauxite, phosphate and copper."
Dena Montague-World policy institute
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"As Bush creates a corporate protectorate in Iraq, many companies who stand to benefit from reconstruction and oil exploration there are familiar to Africans. Shell, Bechtel and Fluor Corporation are all associated with massacres and crimes against humanity in Africa. Oil giant Shell Corporation had a hand in the death of Ken Saro Wiwa and the massacre of hundreds of Ogoni in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Bechtel has profited from and exacerbated the ongoing war in the DRC. And Flour Corporation had tight relationships with the Apartheid regime of South Africa. "
War Profiteers, in Africa, as Well as Iraq -Blackstate
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"Aside from Nigeria, the five biggest oil producers in Africa - in descending order are Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Angola. Angola alone is the ninth largest oil supplier to the U.S. The U.S. currently imports more oil from these six countries than it does from Saudi Arabia. Recent projections by the U.S. National Intelligence Council as reported in The Petroleum Supply Monthly estimate that the proportion of U.S. oil imports from sub-Saharan Africa will reach 25% by 2015."
Saudi Arabia, West Africa -- Next Stops in the Infinite War for Oil
Mike C Ruppert
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[Karen] Kwiatkowski retired in early 2003, now reporting for lewrockwell.com, criticising Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and other NeoCons.
"...Referring to the National Intelligence Council's "Global Trends 2015" report, which came out last December, Kwiatkowski pointed out that 25 percent of U.S. oil imports in 2015 will come from sub-Saharan Africa. The prime "energy locations" identified in the study are West Africa, Sudan, and Central Africa..."
It becomes very clear, that the US Interests in Africa are not about yet another "liberation" or "war against terrorism" and definetely not about "a new fight against AIDS".
War in Africa was planned for years Ewing 2001-Global Free press
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"Little noticed among the Pentagon's plans to radically reshape the U.S. military presence overseas is the groundbreaking possibility of basing thousands of American troops in or around West Africa.
Under discussion: everything from positioning a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group off Africa's vast west coast to establishing one or more forward operating bases in Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Equatorial Guinea or the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe."
U.S. troops may be headed for Africa -Capitol Hill Blue
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Oil flow threatened ahead of Nigeria election - CIA
May 17, 2005 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gang violence ahead of Nigeria's 2007 presidential election threatens to disrupt exports from Africa's biggest crude oil producer, an analyst with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency said on Monday. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo's second term ends in 2007, when he must leave the presidency, according to the constitution rewritten in 1999. That election will be "very contentious" and could bring a repeat of violence and attacks against Western-owned oil installations that marked the run-up to the 2003 election, said Helima Croft, an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
"There are few signs that the region will be more stable in the near-term," Croft said at an event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, where she is a fellow.
Unrest in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest exporter, has been one of the many factors that have kept global oil market traders on edge, along with violence in war-torn Iraq and rampant demand in China and India. Nigeria is an OPEC member and the fifth biggest foreign oil supplier to the U.S. market, shipping an average 1 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Department. Obasanjo's election in 1999 spelled the end of 15 years of military rule in the poverty-stricken nation. But Nigeria under nonmilitary rule has been marred by violence in the nation's oil-rich Niger Delta region, including sabotage and seizure of oil facilities.
"You have a growing criminal element in the oil producing regions," said Croft, pointing to gangs armed with automatic weapons and portable missile-launchers. "There are few signs this criminal enterprise will go away any time soon."
At the depth of the 2003 crisis, 40 percent of the country's output of more than two million bpd was shut.
U.S.-based Chevron was by far the worst hit and 30 percent of its former production is still shut because of extensive vandalism.
Offshore production could be Nigeria's "salvation" because offshore platforms are harder to damage than their onshore counterparts, Croft said.
Recent drilling in Nigeria's new offshore oil exploration area, the focus of a big new licensing round, has been disappointing, a top geologist for ExxonMobil said last month.
Nigeria is one of the few members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to have fully opened its oil reserves to the private sector. It aims to increase output from 2.5 to 4.0 million barrels daily by 2010.
- By Chris Baltimore
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How many people have to die of malnutrition before they label it a famine?
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Crop failure, locusts contribute to critical food shortages
By Marlene Barger NIAMEY, Niger, 8 April 2005 -
Children and families in Niger face critical food shortages in 2005.
Following poor harvests, almost 3.7 million people - half of them children - do not have enough to eat, and this number is expected to grow. Last year, swarms of desert locusts consumed millet and niebe bean crops, and insufficient rainfall damaged harvests and threatened livestock.
There is already evidence that mothers and children are foraging for leaves and breaking into termite mounds in search of the few grains stored there.
Many families count on cereal banks to make grain accessible and affordable in the villages. But the cereal banks are empty. Those who took out loans of grain last year were unable to repay them because their harvests were inadequate. Cereal bank management committees failed to anticipate and prepare for the crisis. - UNICEF
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Famine in Niger...
A British aid plane is transporting 41 tons of emergency supplies to malnourished families in the West African country Niger.
Organised by the Charity Save the Children and funded by the Department for International development, the supplies will feed families for one month.
Niger has been hit by locusts and drought bringing grain shortages and increased food prices but why has it taken so long for the country's desperate situation to come to light.
Emergency aid is beginning to get through, but for some children it's too late. The opposition in Niger says the government was reluctant to sound the alarm before the elections last December, not wanting to admit to the voters that they'd failed to feed the poorest members of society.
Others blame donors for not responding to last year's UN appeal.
So why wasn't the endemic crisis in Niger brought up by the Make Poverty History campaigners pressuring the G8 leaders in Scotland just three weeks ago?
- Channel 4
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Oxfam says UN Summit must act to stop Niger food crisis happening again
In September world leaders have the opportunity to prevent food crises like Niger ever happening again, says international aid agency Oxfam.
A $1bn emergency fund is on the agenda of the UN Summit in New York starting on 14 September, which is billed as the biggest meeting of world leaders in history.
If the proposal is agreed to, UN member states would pay into the permanent fund, so that when a country such as Niger needs assistance, money would be available immediately.
3.6 million people, including 800,000 children, face a major food crisis in Niger, however the UN emergency appeal and the World Food Program appeal for the food crisis in West Africa are still not fully funded.
Phil Bloomer, Oxfam's Director of Campaigns and Policy, said: "It is outrageous that the world waits until children are dying before acting to save them. The UN launched their appeal for Niger in November 2004, but it wasn't until international TV crews arrived last week that money really started coming in. The amounts asked for are paltry. A small proportion of the new money pledged at the G8 would cover it. Money for Niger will eventually arrive, but it will be too late for many."
The World Food Program appeal for $16 million is still only 40 per cent funded. The UN emergency appeal for $30 million has only received $10 million, although more has been pledged.
Oxfam says that if this money had been given six months ago, it would have cost $1 per person affected per day to prevent the food crisis in Niger, Mali and Mauritania. It will now take about $80 to save each starving person.
"Starvation does not have to be inevitable. The food crisis in Niger was predicted months ago and could easily have been prevented if funding was immediately available, said Phil Bloomer. "In 50 days time, world leaders must set up a UN emergency fund to stop food crises like Niger ever happening again." - 999today.com
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African Development fund say it garauntees its loans...
but does it squeeze the farmer to enable the Multinationals to clear the land ready for another form of harvest?
Guaranteeing Loans and Food Security in Niger
The United Nations Development Program's 2004 Human Development Report ranks Niger as the world's second poorest nation. Most of its 11 million citizens live in semi-arid grasslands and survive on subsistence cultivation of millet, sorghum, and other drought-resistant grains.
Wild annual fluctuations in basic commodity prices have forced many of Niger's farming families into chronic debt. Producers living near the subsistence level must often sell their yields in August and September, the peak months of the harvest season, when local markets are flooded with grain and prices are extremely low. These farmers must then purchase additional food supplies in the "hungry months" of June and July when food is scarce and commodities traders charge exorbitant prices.
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To help local communities develop new routes to food security, ADF has funded cereal bank initiatives in Niger that allow small growers to buy and sell grain at favorable rates through warehouses that are situated in local communities and owned and operated by community-based organizations. Now ADF is helping Eco-Développement Participatif (EDP) transform warehouses in the Maradi District into banks of another sort: locally sustainable credit-lending institutions.
EDP is implementing an innovative "warrantage" system that allows farmers affiliated with a community-based organization (CBO) to store portions of their annual yields at warehouses based in their home villages. These reserves then serve as collateral on cash loans that farmers use to finance income-generating activities during Maradi's seven-month dry season. The farmers can also withdraw and sell their deposits toward the end of the seven-month term, which coincides with the peak period of the annual price cycle.
The sustainability of the EDP warrantage model is guaranteed by a fair but effective credit management process. If a farmer defaults on a loan, the CBO will sell his or her harvest to recoup its loss, and it will return any surplus from the sale to the producer. This system helps prevent spiraling cycles of debt and dependency that have historically forced many families into highly exploitative relationships with private creditors. - ADF
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The harvest of natural resources and the expansion of the Niger Delta pipelines?
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resources: uranium, coal, iron ore, tin, phosphates, gold, molybdenum, gypsum, salt, petroleum
The landlocked west African republic of Niger has abundant reserves of uranium and it is this mineral resource upon which the country's economy depends. However, it is also actively promoting its upstream oil potential. Geological research has shown potential oil fields in the country's eastern region in the area where oil fields have been discovered in neighbouring Chad. The international oil companies, Exxon, TG World Energy Inc, and Hunt Oil are currently engaged in exploration activity in Niger.
Its downstream oil industry is wholly dependent on refined petroleum products imported via the port of Cotonou in neighbouring Benin and from the refineries in Nigeria.
The Niger oil industry is regulated by its Ministry of Mines and Energy through the state oil company, Sonidep, which has responsibility for representing the government in all dealings concerning petroleum resources in the country. - mbendi.co.za
Although uranium has historically been Niger's primary mineral product, its gold mining industry is set to grow dramatically based on potential gold mining projects being developed and evaluated by Canadian, Australian and South African mining and exploration companies. Niger's coloured gemstone potential is about to be assessed by Canadian Consolidated Pacific Bay Resources who have secured prospecting rights that covering 20 000 km2. Areas include the Air Massif region in the north, Liptako region in the west and the Damagaram-Mounio, Zinder and Maradi areas in the south. - mbendi.co.za - mining in Niger
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7th July = 7 - 7 2005 = 2+0+0+5=7 = 777
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More Mayhem for London Marks Gains for Gold
By Jon Nones - 21 Jul 2005 at 06:45 PM EDT
St. LOUIS -- Precious metals surged today in light of a currency revaluation in China and explosions in London, boosting gold to its highest closing level since July 12.
"Gold is not normally a 'feel good' purchase. One wants to own it not because 'all is well,'" said Peter Grandich, editor of the Grandich Letter, in recent a Resource Investor article.
"Gold buyers have not considered the terrorism factor for quite a while but now can't ignore it for the foreseeable future," he added.
- resourceinvestor.com
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What are a 'nations interests?
Well in the Case of Anglo-American Empirical values, it's the plunder of vital resources...
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Gold -
Gold is used primarily for fabrication and bullion investment and is traded on a world-wide basis. Fabricated gold has a variety of uses, including jewellery, electronics, dentistry, decorations, medals and official coins. Central banks, financial institutions and private individuals buy, sell and hold gold bullion as an investment and as a store of value.
Apart from gold's status as the 'ultimate store of value' (estimates are that the world's central banks hold approximately 33,000 tonnes) the overwhelming use for gold is in jewellery. Over the past decade, demand for gold from the jewellery industry has consistently outstripped newly mined supply. - angloamerican.co.uk
Diamonds
De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited ("DBCM") is the ultimate parent company in South Africa. The major diamond assets of DBCM consists of the South African diamond mines owned and operated by De Beers and interests in the South African elements of the DTC, De Beers' marketing arm.
De Beers Centenary AG (DBCAG) is the ultimate parent company outside of South Africa. angloamerican.co.uk
Gold is also a SUPERCONDUCTOR
In 1997 researchers discovered that at a temperature very near absolute zero an alloy of gold and indium was both a superconductor and a natural magnet. Conventional wisdom held that a material with such properties could not exist! - source
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Project 777 -
Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting (HBMS) completed the final phase of the 777 Project, the development of the 777 mine. The $400 million project, which commenced in 2000, consisted of 6 components. This included expansion and upgrading projects at the Flin Flon metallurgical plant and development of two new underground mines. The 777 mine reached full production of 1 million tonnes per year in January 2004. The deposit contains mineable reserves of 14.5 million tonnes grading 4.56% zinc and 2.5% copper, and significant precious metal credits. Hudson Bay Exploration conducted geophysics and drilling of SPECTREM airborne targets in the Flin Flon-Snow Lake belt and beneath the Paleozoic in the Hargrave Lake-Moose Lake area. Drilling was also carried out in the vicinity of current and past producing mines. - www.gov.mb.ca
Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company US$240m Approval for 777 Project | 22 September 1999
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G8 debt deal under threat at IMF
By Steve Schifferes - BBC News economics reporter - Friday, 15 July, 2005
Even before the ink has dried on proposals to relieve poor countries' debts to international lenders, the deal agreed by the G8 at Gleneagles is under threat.
A number of European governments are apparently having second thoughts about proposals for debt relief which formed a key part of the help world leaders offered to Africa at last week's summit.
" These proposals are in direct contradiction to what millions of campaigners and poor people were told by the G8 " -
Stephen Rand,
Jubilee Debt Campaign
The Belgians have apparently proposed changing the terms of the deal to give lenders more leverage over poor countries than they would have if they simply wrote off 100% of their debt.
In a document that has been leaked to the activist group Jubilee Debt Campaign, Belgian IMF representative Willy Kierkens is quoted as telling the IMF executive board that "rather than giving full, irrevocable and unconditional debt relief... countries would receive grants".
The IMF would then be able to withdraw the grants if countries failed to meet IMF conditions such as implementing the Poverty Growth Reduction Strategy which is a pre-requisite for receiving debt relief.
The head of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, Stephen Rand, says: "These proposals are in direct contradiction to what millions of campaigners and poor people were told by the G8."
The proposals have also alarmed African officials at the IMF, if the leaks are accurate. The three African directors representing sub-Saharan Africa say any change to the G8 debt deal "would delay benefits" and that it "does not seem appropriate that debt cancellation would reintroduce conditionality".
Britain is against changing the terms of the deal agreed at Gleneagles, a UK spokeswoman said. The Gleneagles deal aims to foster good governance and root out corruption among governments receiving aid, she added. Mr Kierkens was travelling in Europe and unavailable for comment, his Washington office told the BBC. The IMF had been expected to approve its part of the deal at its annual meeting in Washington in September.
Politics of aid
If the G8 countries stick to their guns, it is unlikely that the smaller nations on the IMF can derail the deal. But as it only takes 15% of the votes on the IMF to block a deal, the attitude of larger G8 countries like Germany and Japan will be crucial. Although they signed the debt deal at a meeting of G8 finance ministers in June, the Germans in particular were known to be unhappy with the plan for complete debt cancellation.
They are believed to have argued that this would create a moral hazard, with the poor countries who borrowed irresponsibly being rewarded, while other countries like Botswana who prudently avoided international borrowing receiving less aid. And there is also the problem of funding the debt deal.
Funding
While the G8 finance ministers agreed to fully fund the World Bank and African Development Bank portion of the deal, there was a fudge when it came to paying for debt relief in relation to the IMF. The finance ministers' statement says that the IMF debt relief "should be met by the use of existing IMF resources".
But, it adds, "in situations where other existing and projected debt relief obligations cannot be met form existing resources, donors commit to provide the additional resources necessary" on a "fair-burden sharing basis".
At the G8 press conference, UK Chancellor Gordon Brown suggested that the IMF had found additional resources by revaluing its gold reserves. And indeed the Belgians say that the total cost of the deal may be as much as 4.1bn SDR ($2.4bn) and suggest selling up to 2bn SDR ($1.2bn) worth of IMF gold to finance debt relief. This is likely to be blocked by the US and Canada, who fear it will hurt their domestic gold producers.
Slow pace
Many activists have been disappointed by the slow pace of debt relief since campaigning began a decade ago.
That it has taken so long to get agreement on the multi-lateral deal is a reflection of the deep disagreements among the major industrial countries - and the slow pace at which such relief has been administered. And the US has been reluctant to put up additional funds to pay for the World Bank's share of any debt relief. It took high-level negotiations between Tony Blair and US President George W Bush to change this position - and open the way to a deal.
It probably helped that sums involved in debt relief are relatively modest - with the US, for example, expected to put in just $175m a year over 10 years.
The debt deal is worth around $1.5bn - critical sums to some very poor countries, but only 3% of total aid flows of $50bn per year. And the amount is also modest because so few poor countries - just 18, perhaps rising to 27 in a few years - qualify for debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. - BBC
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Further reading on the corporate carve-up of Global resources:
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Probe begins into Nigeria plane tragedy
Last Modified: 24 Oct 2005 Source: ITN - The sad task of recovering the bodies and excavating the wreckage of the Nigerian passenger jet that crashed killing 117 people has begun.
Investigators are working on the theory that the Boeing 737 nosedived into a marsh north of Lagos on Saturday night and most of the fuselage and victims of the crash are now buried beneath the impact zone.
Dismembered and burned body parts, fuselage fragments and engine parts are strewn over an area the size of four football fields around Lissa village, but much of the plane and many bodies appeared to be missing.
Aviation Minister Babalola Borishade said he had asked foreign construction companies to help dig out the crater, which was still emitting a pungent smoke on Monday morning.
Fingers, part of a foot and other unidentified pieces of human flesh are still visible amid mangled metal and personal papers at the crash site.
Bellview Airlines flight 210 lost contact with the control tower three minutes after take-off from Lagos en route to Abuja in a heavy electrical storm. The pilot made a distress call shortly afterwards, indicating a technical problem. It took emergency services 15 hours to locate the crash site. The black box containing vital information from the plane's flight deck has yet to be recovered. -channel4
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Blasts heard in Republic of Congo capital
BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) -- Explosions and gunfire sounded briefly in the Republic of Congo's capital for the second time in a week as security forces launched an operation Wednesday against former rebels who have failed to lay down arms since a 2003 peace deal.
As booms echoed in the center of the city, pupils ran from schools, shopkeepers closed their stores and the streets were full of people heading home. State television, headquartered in the stricken neighborhood, was off the air. Residents reported at least three heavy detonations and exchanges of gunfire over a half-hour period in Brazzaville's Bacongo neighborhood, a stronghold of ex-rebels loyal to renegade Pastor Frederic Bitsangou.
Clashes between the two sides broke out in the area last week leaving six dead, one day before former Prime Minister Bernard Kolelas returned from an eight-year exile to bury his wife. Kolelas, who is still in Brazzaville, led the so-called Ninja rebels during back-to-back wars in the late 1990s before Bitsangou took over the group's leadership.
A senior army intelligence officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to speak publicly to the press, said the army had launched an operation to clean rebel fighters from the area. He said troops had encircled Bitsangou's Brazzaville residence, home to top rebel officials. Bitsangou is not in the capital. He lives in his stronghold in Vinza, 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the northwest.
Sylvie Monka, a university student who fled southern Brazzaville on Wednesday, said she heard gunfire for around half an hour around the state television headquarters. She said streets were empty except for military units, who ordered residents to clear out of the area Tuesday.
Ninja rebels first took up arms in the late 1990s. They agreed to a 1999 cease-fire that ended two years of fierce fighting that included artillery barrages in Brazzaville. After President Denis Sassou-Nguesso won a 2002 presidential race that international observers deemed fair, the rebels took up arms again, but fighting ended with a new peace deal in March 2003. The Ninjas vowed to disarm after the accord but fought briefly with government security forces on Thursday, and their southern strongholds have remained tense. In 2000, a Brazzaville court sentenced Kolelas to death in absentia for a range of crimes committed by his militia, including torture and the rape of prisoners during the nation's bloody five-month civil war in 1997.
President Denis Sassou-Nguesso said this month that Kolelas could return to bury his spouse, Jacqueline, who died in France last month after suffering a brain hemorrhage. - CNN
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LIBERIA: Africa finally gets first female president as defeated soccer tsar calls for peace
MONROVIA, 15 November (IRIN) - Africa won its first female president on Tuesday when counting ended in Liberia's historic presidential poll, with former World Bank economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf garnering 59.4 percent against former soccer star George Weah.
"Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has received 4778,526 votes corresponding to 59.4 percent and George Weah has received 327,046 votes corresponding to 40.6 percent," said the head of the election commission, Frances Johnson-Morris.
While Weah continued to cry foul and demand a reassessment of the count, he also issued a plea to his supporters to keep their dismay off the streets for the good "of our fragile peace" and said he would challenge the results through the legal process.
Tuesday's provisional results were based on a tally of all votes but a final official result is expected only next week. Johnson-Morris said the tally would have to be verified and reconciled by the Commission before it is declared final.
The presidential poll, held under the watchful eye of international observers and some 15,000 UN peacekeeping troops, was slated to seal the peace on a brutal 14-year civil war that ended in 2003.
Weah, a former FIFA footballer of the year who won most of the votes in the first round of the two-round ballot, on Tuesday reiterated his claims of "massive fraud" in the run-off. On Friday, as Weah filed a petition to the Supreme Court to allege fraud, hundreds of his supporters protested in the streets chanting "No Weah, No Peace". They also staged sit-in protests before the offices of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), the European Union and the 15-nation West African regional block, ECOWAS that two years ago brokered the country's peace, in a bid to have the final results annulled.
But Johnson-Morris said: "I have no authority, nor does the commission, to overturn the elections results which reflect the will of the Liberian people." According to Johnson-Morris, 805, 572 people, or 60 percent of the electorate turned out to vote last week.
Weah in a statement broadcast on his privately-owned radio station KINGS FM on Tuesday, a copy of which was given to IRIN, said his party Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) had been "cheated and there is strong evidence that the run-off elections were rigged". His statement said ballot papers were pre-marked in favour of his rival Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and the commission tally sheets in his party's possession "shows this pervaded the entire process". But he ordered a halt to all street protest by his supporters saying he would follow legal procedures to channel his fraud allegations.
"Public demonstrations in the streets of Monrovia or elsewhere in protest of the run-off election results is not expedient; it is not good for our fragile peace; it might even be counter-productive to the legal bid we have put in motion at the National Elections Commission," Weah said.
The commission head said public hearings into Weah's complaints would start on Wednesday. Diplomats and observers have been meeting with Weah to investigate his fraud claims. Some 18 members of his party, the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), which is the best represented in a fragmented parliament, have said that they will not take their seats unless the fraud allegations are adequately addressed.
International observers meanwhile have declared the elections broadly free and fair and ECOWAS has urged Weah's supporters to accept the results with dignity and grace. - alertnet.org
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Natural Gas The Future Of Africa's Energy Security Needs, Conference Told
Natural gas is seen as a "greener" alternative to oil and its usage is being mooted to combat the effects of global warming.
Maputo (AFP) Jun 03, 2005 - Natural gas in Africa will play a major role in the future of the continent's energy needs and can be used in wide-ranging roles from household cooking to generating electricity at power stations, an African energy expert said Friday.
"Diversification is essential in improving energy security in Africa... and natural gas has become an essential part in the continent's energy consumption," said Hussein ElHag, executive director of the Africa Energy Commission, based in Algeria. "Gas can be used in many functions, from heating in household cooking to the generation of electricity," ElHag said, speaking at a four-day conference in the Mozambican capital.
Firewood remained the continent's major source of energy, UN Conference on Trade and Development financial risk and commodities chief, Lamon Rutten, said Monday, adding that some 85 percent of the continent's population did not have access to electricity. Natural gas is seen as a "greener" alternative to oil and its usage is being mooted to combat the effects of global warming.
"Natural gas presents an alternative to deforestation, it will also help prevent desertification in countries like Sudan," said ElHag. "Sudan for instance, is only concentrating on oil but there is gas onshore and offshore, they need to think of natural gas to combat desertification," he said.
Algeria was the continent's largest producer of gas, with some 61 percent of Africa's total production of 141 billion cubic metres, followed by Egypt, Nigeria and Libya. But new gas fields are constantly being explored, including the Pande and Temane gas fields in Mozambique which is connected by pipeline to South Africa, as well as the Kudu gas field off the Namibian coast, the conference heard. Countries like Sudan, Tanzania and Mauritania also hold some signifcant gas reserves. The Algiers-based Africa Energy Commission, has proposed an African Gas Market Agreement, calling for a giant continental market in which the commodity could be traded within states on the continent.
"We need to improve energy security in Africa through a continental integrated gas industry," ElHag said. But gas still played a second-fiddle to oil, he said. "The biggest problem is that there is widespread thinking that gas is the baby of oil. We need to 'delink' the two commodities if we want to move forward." - spacemart.com
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China, Japan Vie For African Oil
By Andrea R. Mihailescu - UPI Energy Correspondent - Washington (UPI) Nov 17, 2005
China and Japan are vying for energy supplies around the globe, but African resources are of particular interest to the two rivals. In addition to the rivalry over energy interests in the East China Sea, Russia, Central Asia and Southeast Asia in 2004, China surpassed Japan as the second-largest importer of African oil following the United States, studies showed. Japan's African energy supplies rose by nearly 20 percent in 2004, while China's imports grew by more than 35 percent. Surpassed as the world's second-largest oil consumer in 2003 by China, Japan has emerged as the world's fourth-largest energy consumer and second-largest energy importer, after the United States, according the U.S. Energy Information Administration. While experiencing a period of slow economic growth over the past decade, Japan assumed a number of steps toward economic deregulation and restructuring as renewed economic growth last year could lead to higher energy demand, the EIA said.
Since the bulk of its oil comes from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, particularly the Persian Gulf, Japan has sought to diversify its oil import sources away from the Middle East but with little success, due to increasing competition from China and India.
Political differences have distanced Japan from many African nations, especially at the United Nations, while China has supported the position of African nations on Security Council reform and opposes Japan's membership on the body. By aiming to secure control of African energy resources, China has pursued a policy that is focused on bilateral ties with oil-producing nations, by fostering relationships with African elites, which helps its state-owned oil firms facilitate activities in exploration, extraction, processing and shipping African petroleum.
China receives approximately 25 percent of its oil from Sudan, Chad, Libya, Nigeria, Algeria, Gabon and Angola. Other African nations, such as Equatorial Guinea, are looking to increase or strengthen economic relations with China. Individually, these countries form a small share of Chinese imports, but the supplies create a significant share of the exports of the African oil-producing nations. Sudan exports 60 percent of its oil to China, Angola exports 25 percent of its crude, and the remaining countries export a significant percentage of their energy resources.
Chinese oil firms are providing capital, technology and expertise for Sudan's oil fields, United Press International reported in July. Beijing's growing investments give Sudan cash and allow it to resist pressure from the West. With increasing investment in its African resources, China's capital has allowed it to seriously affect the political and social development of these countries. In addition to oil, China increased investment and trade with African nations. It supplied Nigeria and Zimbabwe with fighter jets and pursued trade relations with Southern African Development Community countries, local media reported.
China's financial and military support to Sudan during its civil war and violence in Darfur was criticized by many Western nations. China espouses a policy of non-interference in African internal affairs. China is also reluctant in joining the United States when it condemns human-rights violations, which often causes tension between Washington and Beijing. U.S. sanctions on African countries instead provide an opportunity for China to further its economic ties to the continent.
Much of China's capital targets infrastructure projects facilitating development of the oil industry. Industry experts say China's financial assistance encouraged Angola to decline loans from the International Monetary Fund that would force it to be accountable in how it allocates earned oil revenues. If it were to open its books, Angola might have to reform.
The Japanese media has scrutinized China's approaches to securing its African energy resources by reporting that Chinese business methods espouse terrorism and anti-democratic African nations. But as the Bush administration continues to support a policy of spreading democracy and aims to increase energy supplies from sources outside the Middle East, Africa has the potential to become a growing and important supplier and its relations with China will become increasingly critical.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said during his visit to Beijing earlier this week it is important for the United States and China -- the world's two largest energy consumers -- to strengthen ties in the energy industry as their demand for energy resources increases. Diversifying supplies to ensure supplies will meet demand, while ameliorating disruptions, will be the next greatest challenges energy consumers will have to face.
- spacewar.com
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Eritrea says Ethiopia stokes border fears as ploy
NAIROBI, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Eritrea's president has accused Ethiopia of raising the spectre of renewed conflict between the two neighbours over their disputed border as a ploy to distract attention from Ethiopia's domestic troubles.
Military manoeuvres on both sides of an unmarked 1,000 km (620 mile) frontier between the feuding Horn of Africa neighbours have raised international concern about a possible repeat of their 1998-2000 border war that killed 70,000 people.
The growing tension along the border coincided with protests in Ethiopia over a May 15 election the opposition says was rigged, but which Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government says was fair.
Ethiopian authorities have accused Eritrea of supporting the biggest opposition party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, whose leaders face treason charges and are accused of inciting the violence in which more than 40 people died.
In an interview with local media late on Saturday, Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki dismissed the Ethiopian claims as a "baseless allegation", the Information Ministry said.
"President Isaias Afewerki underlined that statements about the resumption of imminent war between Eritrea and Ethiopia are the invention of the TPLF and its collaborators designed to divert (attention from) the prevailing internal crisis in Ethiopia," it said.
The ministry was referring to Meles' former rebel movement, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front.
Isaias said that "in a bid to escape from the current internal crisis it is facing, the TPLF regime is resorting to war as an alternative".
Ethiopian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Eritrea has grown frustrated at the international community's failure to pressure Ethiopia to implement a border ruling by an independent commission.
Under a 2000 peace deal, both sides agreed to accept the commission's decision about the location of the frontier as final. But when the commission in 2002 awarded the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea, Addis Ababa rejected the ruling.
The Eritrean statement, on the official Web site www.shabait.com, warned that the country's patience over the border issue was running out.
Both Ethiopia and Eritrea have said they will not be provoked by the other side into starting a new war. Top military brass from both sides are expected in Kenya this week to discuss border tensions and troop movements. - alertnet
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Interpol chiefs warn of bioterror attack risk
21/11/2005 - The heads of the international police organisation Interpol today warned that a bioterrorist attack is not a case of "if" but "when," citing threats by the al-Qaida network to use biological weapons to kill millions of people.
South African police chief Jackie Selebi, president of Interpol, said there was a need for much more global cooperation to reduce the threat.
"Interpol believes the risks of bioterrorism are so momentous that the police and the public health communities must break down the barriers preventing close collaboration," said Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble.
Interpol is holding a three-day bioterrorism workshop for African law enforcement chiefs.
- IOL
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17 held as Moroccan police smash terror network
21/11/2005 - Moroccan police have dismantled a terrorist network, arresting 17 people, including two former prisoners at the US base at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay reported. At least some of the suspects were linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, it was reported.
Brahim Benchekroun and Mohammed Mazouz - among five Moroccans freed from Guantanamo Bay in August 2004 - were among the suspects, the official MAP news agency said yesterday. They were arrested on November 11 at their homes in connection with a probe into al-Qaida, a Moroccan security official said.
Information about the network, dismantled before it was fully structured, remained sketchy, and it was unclear when the 15 other arrests were made. The top two suspects, Khaled Azig and Mohamed R'ha, were recruiting extremists for their cause, MAP quoted police as saying. Members of the network had links with small groups on the Iraqi border and close ties to leading members of the al-Qaida terror network, MAP reported.
No details were provided, including the exact nature of the link to al-Qaida.
Al-Qaida in Iraq is reportedly holding two Moroccan embassy employees, Abdelkrim el-Mouhafidi and his driver, Abderrahim Boualam. They disappeared on October 20 while driving to Baghdad from Jordan. Morocco's intelligence services have been tracking Azig, one of the two lead suspects in the network, since March. The Moroccan once studied theology in Syria and made frequent trips to Turkey, but returned to Morocco in June, police said. Azig was joined on September 29 by R'ha, a Belgian of Moroccan origin known to have close ties with North Africans in Europe. He had also made trips to Syria, MAP reported.
The two men were in the process of recruiting Islamic extremists when their efforts were cut short by the arrests, the agency said. Benchekroun and Mazouz, the former Guantanamo prisoners, were among those being recruited, according to police. Arrested in Pakistan and Afghanistan in late 2001, they were among five Moroccans accused of taking training courses in how to handle firearms and make explosives. |
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Nicolas Sarkozy
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A suspected former bodyguard of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, Abdellah Tabarak, was one of the five released. Turned over to Moroccan authorities in August 2004, after two years and eight months in the US detention camp, the five were given provisional freedom. The five all face trial.
Morocco has been tracking Islamic extremists since bombing attacks in Casablanca in 2003 killed 45 people - 13 of them suicide bombers. The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group is suspected in the bombings that authorities have said were linked to al-Qaida.
The arrests were announced hours after French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy concluded a meeting with his Moroccan counterpart, Mustapha Sahel, devoted mainly to the fight against terrorism. - IOL
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Zambia in Crisis
The Government of Zambia has declared the current food shortfall a disaster and appealed to the donor community for assistance with its relief efforts. The VAC has estimated food aid needs through March 2006. Major food aid distributions after this time are likely to compromise the harvest in April and May. New phytosanitary import regulations imposed on maize have delayed maize imports from South Africa. This has led to higher prices being offered by the large traders, and, consequently, higher maize meal prices for urban consumers. Although maize and meal prices are higher than last season, in real terms they have not reached the high levels of the 2002, the last food crisis year. Recorded informal imports from Tanzania have significantly increased in the last few months, while exports to the DRC have declined.
- alertnet.org
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KENYA: Drought-related deaths in the northeast
NAIROBI, 22 December (IRIN) - Several people have died of drought-related causes in Mandera district in Kenya's Northeastern Province, where a prolonged dry spell has led to high levels of malnutrition and livestock deaths, officials said on Thursday.
"The situation is getting worse. Several people have died not as a direct result of starvation but of complications related to malnutrition and the use of contaminated water," said Paul Chemutut, the district officer in charge of Mandera.
About 70 percent of Mandera's 300,000 population was in need of humanitarian assistance, he added. The arid district is largely inhabited by ethnic Somalis, most of whom are nomadic pastoralists.
James Kobia, the government officer in charge of Mandera's El Wak Division, said four people had died in his division. "Children and old people are very weak, and many of them are falling sick because they do not have enough to eat," he said. Kobia said the government was distributing rations of maize, beans and milk powder once a month to about 40 percent of El Wak's 50,000 people, but it was not enough because almost everybody was in need. "We are appealing to humanitarian agencies to come and help us because the situation is getting out of control," he added.
Ahmed Mohammed Abdi, a disaster response officer with the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), said most wells had dried up and people had congregated around the few working boreholes, which kept breaking down because of overuse. The government, he added, had provided seven water tankers but more were needed.
Abdi said the KRCS would embark on an exercise to "buy and slaughter" weakened livestock in Mandera on Friday, so that herders could earn some income. The meat would be distributed to the most vulnerable families. He said the worst affected areas were El Wak and Takaba divisions.
The Kenyan government has appealed for urgent food aid, saying hundreds of thousands of people in arid and semi-arid areas in the east and northeast will go hungry because of the failure of the short rains.
On 16 December, the UN World Food Programme warned that the number of people in need of food in Kenya could rise to 2.5 million in the first half of 2006 because the October-December short rains had failed in many eastern and northern districts. - alertnet.org
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SOMALIA: Two million facing food crisis in the south
NAIROBI, 22 December (IRIN) - An estimated two million people in southern Somalia are facing an imminent humanitarian emergency and acute livelihood crisis over the next six months, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned.
"Somalia is experiencing a dangerous confluence of factors that almost certainly will lead to rapidly plummeting humanitarian conditions throughout southern regions," FAO said in a statement on Wednesday.
Nick Haan, the chief technical adviser for the Food Security and Analysis Unit (FSAU) Somalia, said that as the rainy season came to an end, it was clear that "the situation is going to evolve into a humanitarian emergency that could deteriorate as early as next month". Haan said a poor rainy season, localised resource-based conflict, market disruption and internal tensions had all combined to create the current situation. "Malnutrition levels as high as 20 percent in some areas of the south have reduced the resilience of the population to shocks," he added.
FSAU provides analysis of Somalia's food, nutrition and livelihood situation in order to promote food and livelihood security and is implemented by FAO.
"This year's main cereal harvest in July was the worst in a decade," FAO said.
The current projections, it noted, were in addition to ongoing humanitarian emergencies in Gedo and Lower Juba: "The failed Deyr (October-December rainy season) will both expand and make these crises more severe." "Humanitarian actors have limited access to some areas most critically in need of assistance," it added. "Further, the upsurge of piracy off the Somali coast limits food supply lines for both commercial and humanitarian imports."
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Somalia, said it was imperative that the international community beefed up its operational capacity, particularly in southcentral Somalia, where access is difficult.
"There is an urgency to mobilise partners to address the existing need and to better approach the additional need that has been forecast," he said. "We are on the eve of a new humanitarian crisis." - alertnet.org
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Congo, UN troops battle militia in lawless east
By David Lewis - KINSHASA, Dec 22 (Reuters) - U.N. and Congolese forces launched a major operation against a local militia on Thursday to try to assert government control over the lawless east, days after a landmark vote on a post-war constitution, the U.N. said. A U.N. spokesman said a government soldier and seven militiamen were killed when hundreds of Nepalese U.N. peacekeepers and some 1,500 Congolese soldiers, backed up by helicopter gunships, clashed with militiamen near Fataki, around 75 km (50 miles) north of Bunia, in Ituri province. Another U.N. official said nine Congolese troops were killed in separate fighting on Wednesday with another ethnic militia near Boga, 80 km southwest of Bunia.
The clashes highlighted insecurity in the east days after millions voted in Congo's first free national poll in 40 years. U.N. military operations across the country ceased in the run-up to the poll to allow as many people as possible to vote.
Latest results released on Thursday showed that with nearly 60 percent of polling stations counted, the "yes" vote had just over 80 percent -- which appeared to guarantee the adoption of a constitution paving the way for elections in 2006.
"There is a major operation going on at the moment; 375 of our men and 1,500 Congolese soldiers are carrying out an operation to restore the rule of law," said Major Hans-Jakob Reichen, a military spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force. "Clashes are taking place and the U.N. is giving fire support," Reichen said. "So far one Congolese soldier has died and seven militiamen have been killed."
He said the militiamen were Lendu fighters who refused to join a U.N.-backed disarmament process and are accused of atrocities against civilians.
Near Boga, another local ethnic militia fought a bloody battle with government troops, a U.N. official said. "There was fighting between the Congolese army and other militia fighters near Boga yesterday. Nine government soldiers were killed and another 30 are injured, three of them seriously. We are told about 30 militiamen were killed," the official said.
MILITIAMEN REFUSE TO DISARM
The world's biggest U.N. peacekeeping force is trying to restore peace to the Democratic Republic of Congo after the five-year war, which is estimated to have killed nearly 4 million people, mainly through hunger and disease. The war officially ended in 2003, but bands of gunmen still terrorise civilians in large areas of the country, particularly eastern areas whose mineral riches are believed to have fuelled a conflict that at one point drew in six foreign armies.
Often accused of failing to protect civilians in Congo's eastern Ituri province, this year the U.N. force has carried out more robust operations with a new Congolese army drawn from the ranks of former rebel movements and existing government forces.
Some 15,000 fighters signed up to the disarmament process in Ituri but several thousand are believed to have remained in the bush, persecuting civilians and resisting efforts to re-establish central government authority.
The U.N. Security Council stepped up a drive on Wednesday to rid eastern Congo of Rwandan Hutu rebels who have hidden out in the area for over a decade and terrorised local civilians.
It authorised U.N. sanctions to be imposed on the leaders of armed groups in Congo who have failed to fulfil promises to disarm and leave the country or prevented others from doing so.
Hutu rebels fled to Congo after helping to carry out the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed. - alertnet.org
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Flashback 2002: World Bank supports African pipeline
The World Bank is continuing to support a controversial oil pipeline project between Chad and Cameroon despite criticism by independent inspectors.
The inspectors claimed the project was harming the environment and failing to meet some objectives. But a report defending the Bank's role and rejecting the inspectors findings will be discussed on Thursday by its shareholders, including its biggest shareholder - the US.
"Management believes that the bank has made exceptional efforts to apply its policies and procedures and to pursue concretely its mission statement," said Reuters quoting the report. "Given these actions, management does not agree that, as a result, the requestors' rights or interests have been, or will be, directly and adversely affect by these projects," it added.
Non-governmental organizations and environmental groups have already criticized the Bank's response.
Credibility gap?
The Bank is providing $140m (£90.2m) of the $4bn needed to develop the oil fields in southern Chad and to build a 1,050 km pipeline to an offshore oil-loading facility off Cameroon's coast. It is the largest US investment project in Africa. The funding is critical to the credibility of the project, which is led by US oil company Exxon Mobil and includes ChevronTexaco and Malaysia's Petronas. The report rejected inspectors claims that the environmental impact study was inadequate and that allocating just 5% of revenues to Chad was too little. It would be unprecedented for the Bank to pull out at this stage of the project.
Pipeline progress
The state-owned Cameroon Tribune newspaper has reported that by 7 June, almost 20 months into the project, 425 km of pipe had been laid; 450 km of road had been renovated or built, including 11 bridges; and optic fibre cable has been laid alongside the pipe. The paper said £4m ($6.2m; 4bn CFA francs) had been paid out in individual compensation and 1bn CFA francs given to community projects. Six thousand people have been employed on the project, including 5,500 Cameroonians.
- news.bbc.co.uk
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THE PROJECT
The Chad Oil and Pipeline Project is a $3.7 billion development project comprising some 300 oil wells, which are expected to extract approximately one billion barrels of oil over twenty-five years. Located in Chad's southwestern region, it is one of Africa's largest public/private development projects. Once extracted, the oil will be transported by a 640 mile underground pipeline, through neighboring Cameroon, to an offshore export loading facility. Construction began in October 2000 and the oil is expected to flow in 2004. Project ownership is comprised of a three-company oil consortium (Exxon/Mobil 40%, Petronas Malaysia 35% and Chevron 25%) and the governments of Chad and Cameroon, which hold a combined 3% stake in the pipeline portion of the project. The funds used to secure the investment share of the two countries were provided in the form of a loan by the World Bank. Exxon/Mobil, operating under the name EssoChad, is the project's construction and operations manager.
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THE COUNTRY
Chad is a landlocked country in north-central Africa. It is among the world's poorest countries, a condition aggravated by various civil wars during thirty of its forty years of independence from France. Political stability has been hindered by tensions between the Muslim populations in the north and non-Muslim populations in the south, as well as by conflicts within each population. The political conflicts, coupled with its limited natural resources, have resulted in minimal private investment. The country is governed by an elected President, Idris Deby, a Muslim from the north who seized power in 1990 and was elected for a five-year term in June 2001. The current Constitution was passed by referendum in 1995 and a constitutional court began to hear cases in 2000. Chad's legal system is based on customary law, French civil law and now the provisions of the new Constitution. It has not accept compulsory International Court of Justice (ICJ) jurisdiction. 125 four year seats are available in the country's single-house legislature, which will held elections in late 2001.
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THE ECONOMY
As one of the ten poorest countries in the world, Chad's economic development is challenged by its landlocked geography and the desert climate in the northern half of the state. In 2000, GDP was estimated at $8.1 billion with an expected real growth rate of 4% and an inflation rate of 3%. Per capita GDP was $1000. Most of the population (85%) worked in agriculture, often on the subsistence level. According to a 1995 estimate 64% of the population lives below the poverty line, receiving inadequate health care and educational opportunities. Economic factors undoubtedly contribute to the fact that Chad has 1:30,000 doctor to patient ratio and an adult illiteracy rate of 80% (people over the age of fifteen illiterate in French or Arabic). Life expectancy is approximately 50 years (48.86 years for males and 52.98 years for females) and the infant mortality rate is 95.06 deaths/1,000 live births (2001 est.).
Chad is said to be one of the few countries in the world never to have a railroad, and with less than 200 miles of paved roads in one of Africa's largest countries, its road infrastructure is poor. The communications system is also underdeveloped. A 1997 estimate by the CIA claims Chad has only 7000 main phone lines in use. Internet access is even worse: 1 server used by an estimated 1000 people out of a population of 8,707,078 (2000 estimate). The UNDP Human Development Report for 2000, ranks Chad eighth from the bottom of the 174 countries surveyed.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN CHAD PRIOR TO THE OIL PROJECT
Since receiving independence from France in 1960, nation-building in Chad has been hindered by civil wars largely stemming from competition among ethnically-defined groups seeking overall political power. There has also been external interference from Libya in the north. Traditionally in Chad political power holders governed local resources such as grazing rights, water, and land for agricultural cultivation.
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Women in Chad and Cameroon often walk long distances to gather water for drinking, cooking, and other everyday activities. http://www.esso.com/eaff/essochad/
Today the group in control of the country administers all the nation's natural resources and designs and implements all social, economic and political policies, including the use of external aid. Competition for this power has undermined other efforts to unite disparate tribal cultures under a single state authority based on pluralism, rule of law, and a just distribution of resources, power and authority based on constitutional democracy. These political ideals have remained on the horizon as each successive president sought to centralize power in his office. Recent changes in communications and growth in the numbers of local NGOs have brought world attention to the country and to the oil project in particular.
In June 2000, the World Bank's Board of Directors gave the final approval for its loan to the Chadian and Cameroonian governments. This was the final component necessary to move the project forward. Many environmental and human rights international NGOs and activists opposed the Bank's approval. Their reasons included Chad's poor human rights record and environmentalists' concerns that proper legal and technical environmental safeguards did not exist in Chad, thus exonerating the oil consortium from any future liability or accountability with respect to its operations. Several international NGOs requested the World Bank to grant a two-year moratorium to its approval of the project. The Bank declined, http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/wbank/chad.htm
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As a precondition to the two governments' loan request, the World Bank required the oil consortium to prepare a comprehensive environmental assessment (EA) and risk management plans. This resulted in a 13-volume package, six volumes of which were dedicated to issues in Chad. (While the primary focus of this assessment is an examination of environmental issues, the environmental issues are clearly related to the rights to physical well-being and survival of people in such marginal societies) [One section of the project's EA addresses issues related to human rights at, http://www.essochad.com/eaff/essochad/
documentation/english/summary/index.html (From the link, go to Chapter Nine, Section 9-41 (the last page of the Chapter)).]
The development of Chad's oil reserves is predicated on the goal that the revenues will be used to reduce poverty in Chad by investing in education, health and other basic infrastructure projects. Critics fear that little of the income will reach the poorest populations, much will be lost through incompetence and corruption and that a large part will finance military and political interests under the guise of national interest. Persistent civil unrest in Chad has left the government fighting a perpetual civil war in the north and occasional ones in the south. The concern that oil money will be used to purchase weapons to strengthen the government's force against rebel opposition movements proved valid in November 2000, when the government used $4.5 million of a $25 million oil contract bonus to purchase weapons from Taiwan. The President justified this action by stating that "development must be protected." - columbia.edu
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Clashes in Chad leave 100 dead
ISN SECURITY WATCH (Monday, 19 December: 10.45 CET) - Fighting near Chad's eastern town of Adre, on the border with Sudan, has left some 100 people dead, officials from the government of Chad told reporters.
According to the government, rebels who had defected from Chad's army launched an attack on a military base in Adre, calling for the overthrow of President Idriss Deby.
Chad is blaming the Sudanese government, which it said had allowed the rebels to infiltrate the military base from Sudan, for the attack.
"The Chadian government holds the Sudanese government totally responsible for this morning's attack mounted from its territory," Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, Chad's communication minister said in a statement.
Chadian officials also warned they might pursue the rebels into Sudan.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry denied any involvement of Sudan in the attack.
- isn.ethz.ch
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Chad announces state of war with Sudan
ISN SECURITY WATCH (Saturday, 24 December: 2005) - The government of Chad has announced a "state of war" with neighboring Sudan in connection with an attack on the town of Adre in Chad earlier this week, news agencies reported.
Some 100 people were killed in fighting with Chadian rebels. The government of Chad has accused the government of Sudan of supporting the rebels.
Chad government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor told reporters that Chad is in a "state of belligerence with Sudan".
He called on Chadians to mobilize themselves against Sudanese aggression.
Chad shares a border with Sudan's volatile western Darfur region.
- isn.ethz.ch |
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Rights fear over giant oil scheme
Oil firms and African states have been accused of "contracting out" of their human rights obligations in Africa's biggest investment project.
The Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline contract may impair the countries' ability to protect farmers, fishermen and others affected, Amnesty International says. The governments face cash penalties if they interfere with the ExxonMobil-led project, according to Amnesty. The oil firm says it has not seen the report, but condemns rights violations. It also insists that formal mechanisms exist whereby credible allegations of potential wrong-doing are taken to the government of Chad - with a request that they be investigated.
But Amnesty claims in its report; Contracting out of human rights: The Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project, that the legal framework for the £2.6bn World Bank-backed scheme, means the oil company is "de facto unaccountable in the pipeline zone".
Rights responsibilities
Both Chad and Cameroon are obliged to regulate the conduct of third parties, including companies, to ensure they the respect human rights of the thousands of farmers and fishermen living in the zone being developed. But as they face financial penalties, even if they intervene to protect rights and enforce laws that apply elsewhere in their countries, Amnesty says it would make it very difficult for governments to proceed against the consortium for malpractice, for example.
Amnesty is particularly concerned because this type of "host government" or "state investment" agreements are used in many large-scale development projects. It says that although such agreements are ultimately designed to ensure projects run smoothly in troubled areas, they should not be interpreted to carve out "a corridor" where individuals enjoy lesser protection. It is calling on the World Bank not to support projects based on these contracts.
Professor of Law at Essex University Sheldon Leader said: "Disturbingly there may be hundreds of such agreements in existence around the world, drawn up to a similar template, weakening the capacity of states to protect human rights."
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