Political chaos in Libya makes it a haven for radical terrorist groups

Salman Abedi’s suicide bombing in Manchester on May 22 was immediately met with speculation that he may have been working with a jihadist group or network, perhaps even the Islamic State (IS). Sources linked to IS soon took credit for the attack. It then transpired that Abedi had recently travelled to Libya, and his father and brother have since been arrested in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

It’s still unclear whether Salman Abedi was indeed connected with IS or some other group, but his visit to Libya is ominous and telling. The country remains a haven for radical Islamist terror groups, among them IS – groups that won’t be rooted out any time soon.

It’s far from surprising that Libya is still ravaged by violence. The country has been a failing state since its revolution in 2011. It was long host to two rival governments: one based in Tripoli consisting of Islamic hardliners, and a more moderate one based in the eastern city of Tobruk, comprising moderates who were elected to the UN-backed House of Representatives in June 2014. In March 2016 the House of Representatives was able to move back to Tripoli as part of a plan to create an internationally recognised “unity government”, but the security situation is still incredibly weak.

Relatively free and fair elections have been held before, and further ones are set for 2018, but Libya is still is awash with militias and terrorist groups some of which date back to the fall of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

When Gaddafi was killed, thousands of militias popped up to carve out their own territory. They were joined by various other terrorist groups keen to make Libya their base. The country is ideal for their purposes: to this day, it has porous borders, no working unified security force, an abundance of loose weapons, and various things that can be smuggled to finance terrorist missions. Chief among these are oil and people; indeed, most of the terror groups’ financing actually comes from human smuggling, which reportedly generates up to US$323m for IS and other jihadist groups.

All over the place

IS controlled the coastal town of Sirte for more than a year, but lost control of it at the end of 2016. The group currently holds no territory, and its remaining fighters fled Sirte and have been moving around the country in small groups. These fugitive militants and sleeper cells are hard to locate and eliminate, and while theirs is not the most powerful group in Libya, they continue to wreak havoc, undermining the new Libyan government by cutting off power and water supplies.

IS is far from the only player. It faces competition from a number of Islamist extremist groups, most notably Ansar al-Sharia Libya (ASL) and the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade (ASMB). ASL is a major jihadist group that emerged in 2011 during the Libyan civil war, and is based in the north-eastern city of Benghazi, where it mounted the infamous September 2012 attacks on the US consulate. But though ASL and IS are both extremist Salafist jihadist groups, they continue to have tensions with one another. ASL refused to swear allegiance to IS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; instead, it has made connections with al-Qaeda affiliates in North Africa.



ASMB, meanwhile, is another Islamist militant group that aims to implement Sharia Law, specifically within the eastern Libyan town of Derna, where it imposed strict social codes. IS came to Derna in 2014 and started to take over much of ASMB’s resources; the groups clashed for months, and IS was eventually forced out. All three groups then came into direct conflict with one another in 2015 when IS assassinated ASMB leader Salim Derby, a member of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, which included both AMB and ASL.

Both ASMB and ASL’s appeal is mostly local. ASL has focused on charity work, enticing the local population to join it by providing basic services. ASMB, meanwhile, was one of the first groups to take up arms in the revolution, and many Libyans gave it credit for restoring order in the areas where it operated.

In contrast, IS is not in the business of providing public goods; it is instead focused on luring international recruits, preferring to use its Libyan base and resources to plot and stage attacks on the West. Though it originally relied on Libyan recruits who came home from fighting in Iraq and Syria, it is now recruiting foreign forces from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan, and most notably, Europe. Joining IS’s Libyan affiliate is appealing to European wannabe fighters because they can travel to Libya by boat and avoid government detection.

And so the fight goes on. All the while, an alarmingly large number of Britons are still travelling to the Middle East and North Africa to join jihadist organisations. More than 850 are known to have gone, most of them under the age of 30. Groups such as those in Libya have a strong social media presence, and they are good at appealing to foreign fighters who want to join a cause and find a sense of belonging. IS and its ilk may be losing ground, but their appeal to Western would-be jihadists endures.

Natasha Ezrow, Senior Lecturer, University of Essex

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Gunmen kill 26 in attack on Christians in Egypt

Gunmen attacked buses and a truck taking a group of Coptic Christians to a monastery in southern Egypt on Friday, killing 26 people and wounding 25 others, witnesses and the Health Ministry said.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said the unidentified gunmen had arrived in three four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Eyewitnesses said masked men stopped the two buses and a truck and opened fire on a road leading to the monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in Minya province, which is home to a sizeable Christian minority.

Security forces launched a hunt for the attackers, setting up dozens of checkpoints and patrols on the desert road.

The grand imam of al-Azhar, Egypt's 1,000-year-old center of Islamic learning, said the attack was intended to destabilize the country.

"I call on Egyptians to unite in the face of this brutal terrorism," Ahmed al-Tayeb said from
Germany, where he was on a visit.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called a meeting of security officials, the state news agency said. The Health Ministry put the toll at 26 dead and 25 wounded.

Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's population of 92 million, have been the subject of a series of deadly attacks in recent months.

About 70 have been killed since December in bomb attacks on churches in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Tanta.

Those attacks were claimed by Islamic State. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attack.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein, Omar Fahmy and Mohamed Abdellah; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Louise Ireland and Gareth Jones)
Source

 

Craig Williamson: the spy who came in for apartheid

Apartheid spy Craig Williamson (far right).

-Book Review: Spy - Uncovering Craig Williamson by Jonathan Ancer; Jacana Media, Johannesburg, March 2017

One can judge a book’s bleakness by the photograph on its cover. The Mephistophelian figure holding a tea cup is Craig Williamson: police informant, Cold War spy and apartheid assassin.

Prizewinning journalist Jonathan Ancer’s goal is clear from the get-go. He wants to expose the man on the cover in all his infamy in order to set himself free.

It’s no surprise, then, that there’s no place in these pages for the political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s idea of the “banality of evil” – those who perpetuate terrible deeds are mostly thoughtless functionaries.

For Ancer the man on the cover of the book – not apartheid, nor his handlers – was responsible for a two-decade career of falsehood, cover-up, betrayal, and murder. These were Williamson’s choice, and his alone.

Class, rather than race at the core

So who is (or was) Williamson?

Born into an English-speaking Johannesburg family, Williamson was schooled at one of the city’s great institutions, St John’s College. Gently, Ancer opens to the idea that class, rather than race, may have been at the core of Williamson’s inability to tell right from wrong.

Awkward and always overweight, the boy was bullied and in turn learned to bully. Other writers might have been tempted to position a propensity for violence at the centre of their narrative. Ancer is near playful when discussing Williamson’s school days.

But trawling through old copies of the school magazine, Ancer discovers that when they emerged, Williamson’s politics were of a raw racist strain which was integral to the search for a white South African patriotism after the Second World War.

In 1966, Williamson won a school debating-cum-mock election by drawing on the racial ideology espoused by the (now long-forgotten) Republican Party, a right wing splinter group of the National Party.

If this was the direction of his politics, his “gap year” confirmed it: his national served was not with apartheid’s South African Defence Force (SADF), as was the case for most young white men, but with the South African Police (SAP).

It was 1968. Maintaining domestic order and the travails of white-ruled Rhodesia, were uppermost in the thinking of prime minister John Vorster, apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd’s successor. Their National Party embarked on a charm offensive towards English-speakers: an approach that drew on the pervasive anti-Communism of the time.

So, young Williamson’s choice of national service in the SAP – which was then at the sharp end of racial repression – didn’t seemed untoward, even in Johannesburg’s supposed more liberal white English-speaking northern suburbs.

Student politics

After his year in the SAP, he enrolled to read Politics and Law at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). Here Williamson began his decade-long career of subterfuge. He immersed himself in student politics: first, through the Wits Students’ Representative Council (SRC) and, later, the leftist National Union of South African Students (Nusas).

During these years, Williamson interacted with (and reported on) several generations of student leaders from almost every English-speaking university. Interviewed by Ancer, several of them report that suspicions about Williamson abounded, but the liberal impulse to believe, to forgive, to understand, stayed any serious investigations of a double life.

After Nusas, and purportedly without a passport, Williamson was catapulted (accompanied by his medical student wife, Ingrid) into the Geneva-based International University Exchange Fund (IUEF). This Nordic-funded body fronted for liberation movements across the world, but particularly in southern Africa.

This was when the police informant turned to espionage by passing information to apartheid’s notorious Special Branch (SB). Despite Williamson’s hints to the contrary, there’s no hard evidence that he passed on deep Cold War secrets to western intelligence agencies.

But, here, regretfully, Ancer leaves an intriguing question hanging. Might Williamson not have been working for the British, too?

This question isn’t asked out of mischief or malice. It simply connects the dots. Williamson’s Scottish-born father, Herbert, had a claim on British citizenship. If these were exercised the son might have travelled under the cover of British papers; and maybe he even worked as a double agent.

Imperfect infiltrator

In Geneva the ever-dutiful, ever-practical Williamson was drawn into the
IUEF, eventually becoming deputy to its Swedish Director, Lars-Gunner Erikson.

But efforts to infiltrate (and divide) the ANC and the PAC in London were imperfect; indeed, these may well have been the moment every spy fears, overreach. His undoing came in an exposé in the British press after the defection of a South African agent.

He immediately absented himself from the IUEF and called his SB handler, General Johann Coetzee, who flew to Europe to accompany Williamson (and Ingrid) back to South Africa.

On landing, he was lauded by the local press – especially the then odious Sunday Times – who played off the metaphors of the Cold War spy-writer, John le Carré. It’s not surprising that in apartheid circles he became something of a hero. But an exaggerated James Bond-like characterisation of himself rendered him a figure of fun, even within the Security Branch.

Williamson continued to work in apartheid’s cause: building its international work, serving on various security bodies, and participating in South Africa’s wicked policy of regional destabilisation. It was in servicing the latter that the Cold War spy turned into an apartheid assassin.

Personal anguish

If Ancer is measured in the early part of the narrative, he draws from the depth of his craft – and his personal anguish - to describe Williamson’s role in the assassinations of three people. Journalist, academic and political activist, Ruth First, was killed by a parcel bomb in her office in Maputo, Mozambique. Fellow anti-apartheid activist, Jeanette Schoon, and her six-year old daughter, Katryn, suffered the same fate in Lubango in Angola.

For these killings and the bombing of the ANC Office in London, Williamson appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Amnesty Committee in September 1998. He was, according to an eyewitness, “not even remotely apologetic” for his role in these atrocities. But within the legal technology of the TRC process, Williamson’s 21-day performance was sufficient enough to be granted the amnesty he sought.

But what incenses Ancer – and should incense us all – is that the man on the cover’s sole interest was in reproducing what he regarded as his birthright: wealth and racial privilege. This is a beautifully written and meticulously researched book; it’s story told with disarming intellectual honesty and great passion. It’s destined become a minor classic about apartheid’s ruinous path.

Peter Vale, Professor of Humanities and the Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg
Read the original article.

Big alcohol is poised to expand into Africa. Why this is bad news for health

The alcohol industry is doing exactly what the tobacco industry did several decades ago to ensure growth and increase profits: expanding into Africa as an underdeveloped market. As a result, exposure to alcohol in African countries is expected to increase in the next few years. With it comes alcohol-related health and social problems.

Strategy hints coming out of the US$ 103 billion merger between SAB Miller and AB InBev provide a good reference point. The merged entity’s strategy clearly shows that Africa will be a critical driver for growth. Competitors like Pernod Ricard and Diageo are not far behind.

The alcohol industry is under pressure and needs to develop new sources of growth and profits. Markets in the developed world are under threat as a result of saturation. This is coupled with the fact that only a limited numbers of new drinkers are entering the market each year due to low population growth rates.

The expansion into developing economies comes as warnings about the harm that alcohol causes are gaining traction. As a result several countries have revised their guidelines on alcohol consumption. In the UK for example, there’s a move to regulate the sale and marketing of alcoholic drinks. And in Scotland a minimum price for alcohol is about to be introduced.

As a result the alcohol industry is targeting less regulated but more affluent low and middle income countries. Africa is becoming a key focus.

Studies show this is bad news for the continent. Alcohol is a risk factor for non-communicable diseases such as liver cirrhosis, heart disease and a range of common cancers of the breast, throat and mouth. Alcohol also interacts with other health challenges such as HIV, road traffic accidents, violence – including domestic violence – and mental health.

Alcohol use in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa provides particularly fertile ground for growing market share due to the high proportion of the population in many countries who don’t yet consume alcohol (especially among females), the high youth population in most countries, and the growth in GDP in certain countries. Low advertising costs, weak regulation, high-intensity consumption of beer in these markets make for an ideal environment for global brands.

The dangers of alcohol are well documented. Across the globe, more than 3.3 million people die from harmful use of alcohol each year. More than 20% of deaths from liver cirrhosis, certain cancers of the mouth and throat, interpersonal violence and self-harm are due to alcohol use.

Alcohol is responsible for more than 7% of all deaths globally and it was the 9th leading risk factor for death and disability globally in 2015, up from tenth place in 2005 and eleventh in 1990. In the southern sub-Saharan Africa region alcohol ranked fifth as a risk factor for death and disability. With rising alcohol exposure, the extent to which alcohol contributes to various negative health outcomes are expected to also increase.

Using tobacco tactics

The global alcohol industry’s new focus in low and middle income countries mirrors the moves made by big tobacco companies in penetrating these markets.
Transnational tobacco corporations have succeeded in driving up smoking in African markets through aggressive marketing strategies. Their strategy included disguising marketing as corporate social responsibility programmes.

Alcohol firms are using the same strategy. Under the guise of corporate social responsibility they have run campaigns to promote “responsible” and “moderate” drinking.

Alcohol companies also position themselves as being committed to promoting the consumption of lower alcohol products. For example AB InBev’s campaign, called Global Smart Drinking Goals, states that its objective is to:

Ensure no- or lower-alcohol beer products represent at least 20% of AB InBev’s global beer volume by the end of 2025.

This may appear to be a positive message, but research on similar strategies suggests otherwise. It indicates that this is unlikely to be about substituting regular beer products for lower alcohol beverages. Rather the aim is to increase the overall size of the beer market through an expanded range of products.

Alcohol companies have also developed low-cost, entry-level products aimed at attracting new consumers, citing the greater safety of commercially produced products over homebrews.

An example is the introduction of commercially manufactured ‘Chibuku Shake Shake’ beer by SABMiller in Zambia. It’s based on a locally brewed traditional sorghum beer but is marketed as offering more consistent quality and safer than the home-brew variant.

The promotion of brewers products as safer alternatives forms part of a wider corporate social responsibility agenda aimed at highlighting the positive social impact that companies are having. A good example is Diageo’s water sanitation project.

Another strategy used successfully by tobacco companies as well as alcohol companies is government partnerships.

These have become an effective avenue through which the industry influences and limits regulation. For example, national alcohol policy documents from four sub-Saharan countries (Lesotho, Botswana, Malawi and Uganda) have been found to be identical and reflecting the alcohol industry’s preferred policy wording.

As the global alcohol industry moves to expand across the continent, more research, policy and public attention needs to be paid to industry practices and governance mechanisms to help understand and prevent the negative impact this will have on the population’s health. Industry expansion into African markets will be sold as being progressive, as providing new jobs, access to safer and healthier alcohol products. Perhaps nearer to the truth would be to describe this as David Jernigan, the leading health academic who has analysed the impact of alcohol and its marketing did, labelling it “Thirsting for Markets” and as possibly even as part of the recolonisation of Africa.

Karen Hofman, Program Director, PRICELESS SA, Wits/MRC Agincourt Rural Health Transitions Unit, University of the Witwatersrand and Charles Parry, Director of the Alcohol, Tobacco & Oher Drug Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How to talk to children about terrorism

Distressing events like the recent terrorist attack in Manchester affect us all in different ways. While adults often have enough life experience to be able to take a long-term perspective towards such disasters, children can face different challenges.

When a child has directly experienced extremely distressing events, or witnessed them through the news and social media, it is entirely normal for them to experience much higher levels of distress than usual.

Depending upon the impact of the trauma, the age of the child, and the supportive relationships they have prior to the traumatic event, their distress may be shown in all sorts of ways. This can include aches and pains, sleeplessness, nightmares, bed-wetting, becoming very snappy or withdrawn, or not wanting to be separated from their parent(s).

But there are lots of strategies that can help young people who are struggling after traumatic events.

Ask questions

Although the natural response is often to want to protect and shield children from the reality of terrorism, it is not a helpful goal long-term. It is also just about impossible to achieve – young people today are exposed to anxiety provoking information like never before.

So rather than shielding children from inevitable stressors, we need to focus on arming them with balanced information, compassion, hope and the chance to develop their resilience.

Incomplete stories and uncertainties can add to children’s worries, but a common worry for adults is how much to say and what gaps to fill in. In such instances, asking open questions about what a child has heard or understood can be helpful.

“How” and “what” questions, such as “how are you feeling about what you saw or heard?” or “what have your friends said about what happened?” can help in gaining insight into the story that the child is trying to establish and understand.

Point out the heroes

Showing children how people are actively trying to help and support people in need is a great way to frame horror with heroes. While older children will be able to process and understand many of the details and implications of tragedy that surround traumatic attacks and events, younger children just don’t have the life experience or developmental mechanisms to process such details.

Remind children that real life heros don’t wear capes. Instead, point out that the heroes in this story are the people in paramedic uniforms or theatre scrubs. They are the passersby, the people who offered help, taxi rides, cups of tea and a bed for the night when people were stranded after the attack.

Not only does this give a new focus to the story but it also highlights familiar cultural narratives – of heros and villains or goodies and baddies – that children can connect with. Such approaches have also been shown to enhance children’s confidence, sense of bravery, ability to problem solve and develop their moral compass.

Use drawings to help

If children are able to name and express what they are feeling, they are more likely to be able to talk about their thoughts and feelings and experience the benefits of connecting emotionally with others.

Don’t assume children know they can share their feelings. Always offer explicit permission for all emotions, especially emotions they may feel concerned about voicing, such as anger and sadness.

One way to do this might be to get out the pens and pencils and physically draw out emotions as characters, or consider how they feel in the body. For instance, “anxious” might feel like a hot head, sweaty hands and fast heart.

Keep things simple

Adults tend to use particular words around trauma, such as “awful”, “horrific”, or “terrible”. But these words don’t translate with much meaning for children.

If possible, it is helpful to break these terms down and use language that holds more meaning for children and connect with emotions they may be feeling or noticing in others, such as sad, worrying, frightening, kind or brave.

You can also try to reduce some of the anxious uncertainty by giving those responsible a name and explaining that they are a small group of people who make bad choices. This not only gives the perpetrators an identity for the child – which helps contain the idea of faceless “baddies” – but also helps to disqualify some of the unhelpful stories they may here from others.

Make time for hugs

Children only feel as safe as they are led to believe they are by the adults around them. So being able to reassure young people that they are safe, loved and cared for can make all the difference.

Research has shown that loving environments at home are hugely protective to the emotional well-being of children. Teenagers in particular benefit enormously if they have positive friendships that support them emotionally.

Relationships actually operate on a physiological level in the body, as well as an emotional one. Cuddles and emotional connection, sooth and calm down a child’s threat system by releasing feel-good hormones such as oxytocin – also known as the “cuddle” or “love” hormone.

You can find more information about how to talk to children after a traumatic event here

Sarah Parry, Senior Lecturer in Clinical and Counselling Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan University and Jez Oldfield, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.