‘The War of Liberation’
NEED TO KNOW
‘The War of Liberation’
TUNISIA
Tunisian fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself in protest against his country’s uncaring, corrupt government 14 years ago. By doing so, the movement he triggered, the so-called Arab Spring, raised hopes around the world that Tunisia and other countries in the region could embrace democratic and fair rule.
Those hopes were dashed in the succeeding years. Today, they seem like pipe dreams.
These days, in a country long seen as the region’s most progressive, police have been rounding up activists, dissidents and opposition politicians in the run-up to the North African country’s Oct. 6 presidential elections, wrote Amnesty International. Authorities recently, for example, detained 97 members of the opposition group Ennahda, charging them with conspiracy and other terrorism-related crimes.
Such incidents have become commonplace under the presidency of Kais Saied, noted World Politics Review.
Saied has not generated enough jobs to improve his people’s lives, injected dynamism into Tunisia’s stagnant economy, or reduced the country’s sizeable public debt. He hasn’t proposed a strategy or any measures to tackle those problems, either. Instead, he has cracked down on anyone who might point out these failures or seek to unseat him.
He’s sacked around 100 high-level officials, including prime ministers, cabinet ministers and provincial governors, eliminating anyone who has demonstrated a tepid allegiance to his regime.
A former constitutional law professor who won office in a fair election in 2019, Saied has also manipulated Tunisian law to guarantee that he will win the election, added the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His control over the country’s election commission, for example, allowed his cronies to disqualify 14 candidates running against him.
Now he has just two opponents, versus the 26 who ran against him when he won five years ago. One of them, Ayachi Zammel, is serving a six-month sentence in prison for falsifying documents. “It is another unjust ruling and a farce that clearly aims to weaken (Zammel) in the election race,” Zammel’s lawyer told Al Jazeera story.
Meanwhile, just nine days before the election, Tunisian lawmakers stripped the Administrative Court of its power to settle electoral disputes, Reuters reported. The court would have probably ruled against the president in a likely challenge to the election results on the grounds that some candidates were illegally excluded.
Those lawmakers won office in a 2022 election held after Saied dissolved the previous parliament in which only 11 percent of voters took part.
After the dissolution, Saied ruled Tunisia by decree, recounted a European Parliament research briefing. He then proposed a new constitution, which voters approved, that established a new presidential system, giving himself more powers. Now he will assume office once again under the new system he created.
Funny how that worked out, commented OkayAfrica. “In his rhetoric, these radical political changes are serving Tunisia’s ‘war of national liberation,’” it wrote.
But in reality, it’s a “coup d’etat,” say critics like Tunisian civil rights activist Hakim Fekih, a coup that is nearly complete after three years of Saied having ruthlessly “deconstructed the architecture of the democratic regime installed after the 2011 revolution,” wrote the Arab Reform Initiative.
“We are witnessing the capture of the state days before the vote,” Tunisian political activist Chaima Issa told Reuters. “We are at the peak of absurdity and one-man rule.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
No Quarter
SUDAN
Sudan’s army will continue its offensive to reclaim the capital Khartoum from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), military officials said this week, intensifying a 17-month-long civil war despite international efforts to broker a ceasefire, the BBC reported.
Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Gabir confirmed the military’s commitment to recapturing the city, saying that “peace talks can go on, but the army will not stop” until the RSF vacates the areas of the country it has occupied, including large parts of Khartoum.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been grappling with a civil conflict following a dispute between army leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti) over the country’s future.
Fighting has killed more than 150,000 people, displaced around 10 million others and pushed half of the country’s population to the brink of famine.
Aid access remains limited, though some progress has been made in recent months, with several hundred trucks delivering supplies to previously blocked areas. Still, aid organizations report ongoing looting of humanitarian goods by the RSF, particularly in the besieged North Darfur city El Fasher.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese government has not officially declared a famine – a move that could unlock more humanitarian relief.
The war has also drawn in several foreign countries: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been accused of supplying advanced weapons to the RSF, while Iran and Russia are allegedly supporting the Sudanese military, according to Deutsche Welle.
Mercenaries from Chad and Ukrainian pilots have also reportedly been involved in the conflict.
The United States and other countries, including Egypt and Switzerland, have to date tried unsuccessfully to secure a ceasefire.
Meanwhile, Sudan’s former civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, warned that the civil war risks turning Sudan into “fertile ground” for regional terrorism, the Financial Times noted.
Hamdok, who led the country between 2019 and 2022, expressed concern that the instability could connect various Islamist armed groups allied with al Qaeda in West Africa with other jihadists, such as Somalia’s al-Shabab.
Sudan was for many years on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism before it was removed under Hamdok in 2020.
To Be Continued
INDIA
Tens of thousands of people protested in the eastern city of Kolkata in West Bengal this week when doctors resumed a strike and called for new demonstrations over the rape and murder of a female colleague at a state-run hospital in August, Agence France-Presse reported.
On Tuesday night, doctors and other protesters from various Indian cities marched through the streets of the city. They disbanded Wednesday morning.
The medical practitioners said they restarted their strike after officials failed to fulfill their demands for improved hospital safety, including better lighting and security cameras.
The demonstrations are set to continue, organizers said, with one plan being to use the upcoming Durga Puja festival, one of the city’s largest annual religious celebrations, as a platform to raise awareness about violence against women.
The renewed protests came two months after the rape and murder of a 31-year-old female doctor, a crime that sparked a series of demonstrations across India protesting violence against women and inadequate safety measures.
The weeks-long demonstrations saw numerous doctors walk off their jobs. The unrest prompted India’s supreme court to create a hospital safety task force, with judges urging the state government to implement safety measures by Oct. 15 to meet the doctors’ demands, Al Jazeera wrote.
So far, authorities have detained one male suspect in the murder case, but the West Bengal government has faced criticism for its handling of the investigation. As a result, Kolkata’s police chief and top health ministry officials were fired, while top hospital officials are under investigation for corruption, Deutsche Welle reported.
Observers noted the recent protests echoed the widespread outrage that followed the 2012 Delhi gang rape case, which led to the death of a 23-year-old student. That attack resulted in weeks of demonstrations, tougher laws for rape, and national soul-searching regarding violence against women.
No Spare Change
SWEDEN
The Swedish government is facing a backlash after announcing plans this week to ban begging nationwide, with critics accusing it of trying to “outlaw poverty” and questioning the legality of such a measure, reported the Guardian.
The center-right coalition government and its far-right supporters said such a ban is necessary to restore peace to Sweden’s streets.
At a press conference on Monday, the far-right Sweden Democrats’ leader, Linda Lindberg, said people were coming to Sweden from other European countries “to beg outside our shops.”
“Begging had been rare in Sweden until the early 2010s when many EU citizens came from other countries to Sweden to beg,” Lindberg said, adding that this phenomenon leads to increased crime.
The government has appointed an official to determine how to legally implement the ban without violating human rights laws and will present their findings to the Swedish parliament in June 2025, according to Politico. If deemed legal, the government will implement the ban, said Lindberg.
A ban on begging was one of the promises of the Sweden Democrats in the national 2022 election, which along with the country’s three governing right-wing parties won a slim majority. The Sweden Democrats party provides outside support to the current government.
Fanny Stilberg, a spokesperson from the Stockholms Stadsmission, an organization that works with vulnerable people in the capital, argued that the ban would essentially make poverty a crime and would not address its root causes.
Meanwhile, human rights organizations said the government would likely face legal action if the proposal moves ahead.
Aida Samani, the deputy director of Civil Rights Defenders, said that banning begging would violate rights to self-determination and freedom of expression enshrined in European human rights law, according to the Guardian.
The proposal would have to be approved in parliament before becoming law, and already faces criticism from members of the governing coalition.
DISCOVERIES
The Ultimate Hunter
Lions versus tigers, wolves versus bears – these are the apex predators of the animal kingdom.
But which ones are the best hunters?
According to a new extensive study on land-based carnivores, solitary hunters, such as tigers, bears and lynx outpace their more social counterparts when it comes to sheer hunting efficiency.
Researcher Luke Emerson and his team conducted a review of 196 studies on 31 terrestrial carnivores, shining light on the differences in how they hunt, kill and influence ecosystems.
While wolves and lions may get the glory for their coordinated attacks, smaller predators – such as cheetahs and pumas – kill more frequently than larger ones.
“Our research shows solitary carnivores like the Eurasian lynx kill every four days, while a grey wolf might only make a kill once every 27 days,” they wrote in the Conversation.
This difference is connected to how social animals tend to rely on teamwork to bring down larger prey, meaning each individual doesn’t need to hunt as frequently.
But despite having a higher “kill rate,” smaller predators often don’t get to enjoy their meal in peace.
“Larger predators like lions and bears are notorious for stealing these kills,” the researchers noted.
Pumas, for instance, lose so much prey to scavengers, such as bears, that they end up providing over 3.3 million pounds of carrion per day across the Americas.
The review also revealed some biases in existing research: More than 55 percent of studies focused on North American carnivores, particularly grey wolves. Meanwhile, Asia – home to more than half of the world’s large carnivore species – was seriously underrepresented, with just seven percent of studies conducted there.
The authors said their research also shows the vital roles these carnivores play in the ecosystem.
Large predators help regulate herbivore populations, preventing overgrazing and promoting plant diversity. Meanwhile, smaller carnivores can provide carrion that supports scavengers.
In turn, these hunters help control populations and eliminate disease-carrying animals that benefit humans too, the Smithsonian magazine wrote.
“Apex predators don’t just eat prey,” the researchers said. “They shape entire ecosystems by influencing species behavior and distribution.”
