Reuters reported May 29 that Mali’s armed forces are hunting down Tuareg rebels who have taken up arms again, demanding more autonomy for the desert north. According to the report, the rebels used pickup trucks mounted with machine guns to… Read moreMali: Tuareg revolt back on?
We recently noted an internal shake-up in the Libyan regime that seemed to signal a tilt back to the sidelined hardliners. This seems not to have affected Washington’s plans, announced today, to restore diplomatic relations. This may actually reveal something… Read moreChávez, State Department woo Qadaffi
The conventional wisdom is that Libya’s Mommar Qadaffi is defanged and domesticated. Recent events, however, indicate a strategic tilt back towards the bellicose on the part of the savvy despot. A cabinet shake-up favoring the hardliners comes on the heels… Read moreLibya tilts to hardliners, threatens Italy
This is practically Orwellian. Is the Algerian regime using the printing of the anti-Islam cartoons—blurred and denounced—as an excuse to crack down on pro-Islamist newspapers? From Al-Jazeera, Feb. 13: Algeria and Yemen have arrested journalists working for newspapers that have… Read moreArab journalists arrested in cartoon controversy
The Pope greeted a group of Tuareg desert nomads in St Peter’s Basilica Nov. 13, using the occassion to invoke the “universal brotherhood” of all the world’s peoples. The ten Tuareg visitors, dressed in blue and white robes and turbans,… Read moreTuaregs do Vatican
“The speed with which Algeria has gone from symbol of revolutionary socialism to Islamic battleground has confounded most observers,” states the blurb for The Call From Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution, and the Turn to Islam by Robert Malley (UC, 1996)…. Read moreAlgerians jailed for eating lunch
Ten years after Niger’s government and insurgents signed an accord to end the Tuareg rebellion, authorities have launched an economic assistance program for more than 3,000 ex-combatants in the country’s north—the final phase as laid out in the peace pact…. Read moreLong-delayed peace deal for Niger’s restive Tuaregs
Moroccan troops killed six undocumented African migrants attempting to reach the Spanish-controlled enclave of Melilla on the Mediterranean coast Oct. 6. Citing Abdellah Bendhiba, the governor of Nador province, news accounts said the Africans were killed in a “violent” assault… Read moreMoroccan security forces kill African migrants; crisis grows over Spanish enclaves
Morocco’s leading independent human rights group called on the government Aug. 29 to start talks to try to end a hunger strike by prisoners from Morocco-occupied Western Sahara who are demanding better conditions. The Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH) said… Read moreWestern Sahara prisoners on hunger strike
After more than 20 years in captivity, 404 prisoners of war have returned home to Morocco, the last of more than 2,400 freed by Western Sahara’s Polisario Front independence movement. Two privately chartered planes carrying the prisoners, some of them… Read moreLast Moroccan POWs freed by Western Sahara guerillas
In an Aug. 1 statement, Amnesty International expresses concern about the recent arrest and detention of six human rights defenders in Western Sahara, and reports that two of them had been tortured. Some of those arrested are former “disappeared”, others… Read moreMore arrests, torture in Western Sahara
It seems that Mommar Qaddafi’s Libya, of all places, has been overlooked by the current Bush “regime change” offensive. Now that sanctions have been lifted, an opposition is starting to emerge, and appears (in contrast to its counterparts in Syria,… Read moreLibyan opposition meets to demand Qaddafi’s ouster
