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Month: March 2024
Senegal Constitutional Council Confirms Faye as President-Elect
Dakar, Senegal — Senegal’s Constitutional Council on Friday confirmed anti-establishment candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye as president-elect, releasing final official results giving him a first-round victory of 54.28 percent in the March 24 vote.
The governing coalition’s candidate, former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, finished with 35.79 percent, and the council other contenders had raised no objections.
Faye, 44, is due to be sworn in as Senegal’s youngest president on Tuesday in the city of Diamniadio, according to the presidency.
The handover of power from outgoing leader Macky Sall is then scheduled at the presidential palace in the capital, Dakar.
Faye’s victory is the first time a Senegalese opposition candidate has won the election in the first round since independence in 1960.
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Indian Navy Says It Intercepted Hijacked Vessel Near Somalia
New Delhi — India’s navy said Friday it intercepted a fishing vessel in the Arabian Sea after a suspected hijacking, its latest anti-piracy operation after a spate of regional attacks on shipping.
Two Indian vessels had approached the Iranian-flagged FV Al Kamar 786 around 165 kilometers (103 miles) southwest of the Yemeni island of Socotra, not far from the eastern tip of Somalia.
An operation was “currently underway by the Indian Navy towards rescue of hijacked FV & its crew,” the navy said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter.
The statement added that nine armed pirates were believed to have taken over the vessel. It did not say how many crew members were aboard.
India’s navy has been deployed continuously off Somalia since 2008.
It stepped up anti-piracy efforts last year following a surge in maritime assaults, including in the Arabian Sea and by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea.
This month, the Indian navy rescued 19 crew members off the Maltese-flagged cargo ship MV Ruen, which had been hijacked by Somali pirates in December.
On Saturday, it brought 35 Somali nationals accused of the hijacking to Mumbai aboard the warship INS Kolkata, which had led the rescue operation, to face a piracy trial in an Indian court.
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Pugacheva, Queen of Soviet Pop, Likely to Be Labeled ‘Foreign Agent’ in Russia
MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors have asked the justice ministry to label Alla Pugacheva, the queen of Soviet pop music, as a “foreign agent,” the state RIA news agency reported.
Pugacheva, 74, a Soviet and then post-Soviet icon, has criticized the war in Ukraine.
She is one of Russia’s most famous people – known across generations for hits such as the 1982 song “Million Scarlet Roses” and the 1978 film “The Woman who Sings.”
Pugacheva has in the past been feted by both President Vladimir Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin. When Mikhail Gorbachev died in 2022, she praised the last Soviet leader for allowing freedom and rejecting violence.
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World Braces for Islamic State to Build on Moscow Attack
WASHINGTON — What is normally a time of celebration is turning to one of anxiety, as counterterrorism officials are on high alert for the Islamic State terror group to build on its deadly Moscow attack with new plots targeting Easter.
Already, some European countries have issued heightened threat alerts while increasing security. Italy, in particular, cites the approach of the Easter holiday as one reason for additional concern.
The latest propaganda from Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, has only served to reinforce such worries.
In a statement Thursday marking 10 years since IS first announced its now-defunct caliphate in Iraq and Syria, spokesperson Abu Huthaifa al-Ansar called on followers to target “crusaders,” especially in Europe and in the United States.
Even in its claim of responsibility for the attack near Moscow, the group’s Amaq news agency said its operatives have targeted a gathering of Christians. And this past January, IS claimed responsibility for an attack on a Catholic church in Istanbul that killed one person.
IS also has a history of attacking Christians celebrating Easter, notably claiming responsibility for Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka in April 2019 that killed more than 300 people and wounded at least 500 more.
“Easter and/or Easter-related activities would absolutely be high on the hit list for a potential attack,” said Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm the Soufan Group.
“ISIS is on a roll, and there could be a real push to sustain the momentum by launching another high-profile assault, especially on a symbolic target,” Clarke told VOA. “I’d also be concerned about Orthodox Easter the following weekend, and the logical place to look would be where ISIS has struck Christian targets before.”
‘Substantial’ threat risk
Other countries, while acknowledging the threat, say they have long been on high alert for such plots and that sounding additional alarms will do little good.
“The security authorities’ risk assessment of the Islamist threat in Germany has not yet changed as a result of the terrible attack in Moscow,” a German government spokesperson told VOA, speaking on the condition they not be named.
“It was already high before,” the official added, calling the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate “currently the most aggressive” of the terror group’s branches while adding it “currently poses the greatest Islamist threat in Germany.”
Britain has taken a similar stance.
“The threat level to the U.K. from terrorism is already currently substantial, meaning an attack is likely,” a spokesperson told VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This assessment has not changed.”
In the United States, as well, nothing has changed.
Last May, U.S. officials warned the country was stuck in a “heightened threat environment.” In September 2023, the Department of Homeland Security’s annual threat assessment said the U.S. was at “high risk” for a terror attack, specifically pointing to the threat from the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, also known as IS-Khorasan, ISIS-K, or ISKP.
“We remain vigilant against the evolving threat posed by terrorist groups, including ISIS-K,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Thursday. “We have maintained an unwavering focus.”
US assessment
The Pentagon issued a similar assurance.
“The Department of Defense has not taken its eye off of ISIS,” press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said Thursday in response to a question from VOA.
Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have portrayed IS as a terror organization that may be at a turning point, underscoring what the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, issued earlier this month, described as “cascading leadership losses in Iraq and Syria.”
But the same report warned that “regional affiliates will continue to expand.” And while the U.S. report cited a shift to Africa, U.S. and other current and former Western officials see IS leadership in Afghanistan as taking on a more prominent role.
“Most plots that we are aware of go back to ISIS-K,” a former senior Western counterterrorism official told VOA earlier this year.
There has been long-running concern about IS-Khorasan’s efforts to expand its sphere of influence beyond Afghanistan.
Some Western officials and regional observers warn that as far back as 2021, the IS Afghan affiliate was seeking to seed Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with small but highly capable cells and networks that could serve as the basis for future attacks.
Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who specializes in jihadism, said, “There was a large cohort of Central Asian foreign fighters that went to Syria last decade when IS was controlling territory there. So, those that survived were likely a backbone to this broader facilitation and plot/attack network.
“There was also a smaller cohort of Central Asians that joined up with ISKP in Afghanistan,” Zelin told VOA. “Then there are Central Asian migrant communities in Russia that IS can recruit from in the same way they do with Arab migrant populations in Western Europe.”
Focus on Central Asia
One humanitarian official in Central Asia, who asked that their name be withheld because of fears they could be targeted, told VOA that IS has managed to establish small, high-quality cells and networks across the region.
“The networks still exist, but they are not going to be recruiting more [big] numbers,” the official said, adding that there are signs that “the recruitment might happen more outside of Central Asia.”
“The vulnerabilities and push factors [that move someone to join IS] are a lot stronger in Russia, especially in light of the current situation in Russia toward migrants,” the official said, noting those same factors exist across many European countries that host Central Asian diaspora communities.
There are indications that IS-Khorasan has found ways to leverage other terror groups.
Andrew Mines, a program specialist at the United States Institute of Peace, said, “ISKP doesn’t just attract foreign recruits, it also cooperates with Central Asian-dominated groups like IMU [Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan] and … ETIM/TIP [Turkistan Islamic Party] to a more limited extent.”
Mines told VOA that IS-Khorasan has proven to be adept at maximizing its resources.
“ISKP has shown it is capable of receiving, training and deploying assets within and outside of Afghanistan, as well as using the ‘virtual planner’ and inspiration attack planning models.”
Current and former officials say it is those types of capabilities, combined with high-profile attacks, such as the one near Moscow and January’s double suicide bombing in Kerman, Iran, that make IS-Khorasan a formidable threat even as some data suggest the affiliate’s exploits in Afghanistan itself have been on the decline.
The IS-Khorasan attack in Russia, along with foiled plots in Germany late last year, both of which appear to have relied on ethnic Tajiks, could also be an indication that group’s efforts to build an extended network is coming to fruition.
“This could even be the first sort of real flowering of a developed ISIL-Khorasan capability,” according to Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former senior U.N. counterterrorism official, using another acronym for the IS Afghan affiliate.
And Fitton-Brown, now a senior adviser for the New York and Berlin-based Counter Extremism Project, worries IS leaders will want to capitalize on the momentum they likely see from this year’s successful terror attacks.
“They got that attention for Iran. They’ve got a lot more attention for doing it in Russia. And they would get even more attention if they could bring off something on this scale in Western Europe,” he told VOA.
“But whether they can bring it off is a question, because up to now there have been a lot of abortive attempts where they’ve had active terrorist plots in Western Europe, particularly in Germany, but they’ve been detected and prevented and disrupted,” Fitton-Brown said.
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Regional Governments Seen Struggling to Control IS-Khorasan
Washington — Last week’s concert hall massacre in Russia demonstrates not only the capacity of Islamic State-Khorasan to stage complex attacks beyond its base in South-Central Asia, but also the inability of the Taliban and regional countries to counter its threats, experts say.
The Islamic State group claimed the attack on a music venue near Moscow Friday that killed 143 people and wounded more than 180. Although it was the Islamic State, not its offshoot IS-Khorasan, that took the responsibility, U.S. officials said that IS-Khorasan was behind the murderous rampage.
The Taliban’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, condemned the attack “in the strongest terms,” describing it as “a blatant violation of all human standards.”
“The regional countries must take a coordinated, clear & resolute position against such incidents directed at regional destabilization,” Balkhi said Friday on X, previously known as Twitter.
The Islamic State, in a 30-page statement published on social media platforms and sent to journalists Monday, praised the attack and mocked the Taliban for seeking relations with the United States, Russia, China and other countries.
Homayoun Mohtaat, former Afghan deputy ambassador to Russia, told VOA that the attack made it clear that IS has the ability “to launch complex attacks that could inflict heavy casualties.”
Using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, he said the “Daesh attack shows the group’s maneuverability and ability to move from one place to another.”
Mohtaat said that IS-Khorasan, also known as ISKP, has been able to expand its activities within the region and beyond.
“But we can see that Afghanistan, because of its geopolitical location, has become an operational platform for Daesh,” he said. “It allowed the group to expand its operation to the Central Asian states and beyond, in Russia.”
He said that the Taliban “neither has the will nor resources” to fight IS-Khorasan.
The Taliban, however, have claimed success against the IS affiliate in Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s defense minister, Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, claimed at a press conference in Kabul in December that because of their operations against IS-Khorasan, the number of the group’s attacks decreased by 90%.
But a U.N. report released in January said IS-Khorasan “continued to pose a major threat in Afghanistan and the region.”
In another report released in June 2023, the U.N. estimated that IS-Khorasan’s fighters and their families number between 4,000 and 6,000, including citizens of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and Central Asian countries and a small number of Arabs who traveled from Syria to Afghanistan.
Kamran Bokhari, senior director of the Eurasian Security and Prosperity Portfolio at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, told VOA that IS-Khorasan is taking advantage of “weak security, weak governance and strategic vacuums” in the region.
“Afghanistan is the strategic vacuum,” Bokhari said. “Yes, the Taliban are there, but it’s not a robust state. The Taliban regime is still trying to consolidate power. Pakistan is in meltdown mode on all levels — political, social, economic and security wise. And Iran has its challenges internally.”
IS-Khorasan is a major rival to the Taliban and has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban took power.
In January, the group said it was behind twin blasts in the Iranian city of Kerman that killed at least 95 people. Iranian Intelligence traced back the attacks to the Tajik fighters of IS-Khorasan.
Russia has said that its security forces arrested four Tajik nationals for allegedly carrying out the Moscow massacre.
Attacks will help recruitment
Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA that the attacks in Russia and Iran would “certainly” help IS-Khorasan to recruit more militants.
“Those spectacular attacks have a great effect on recruiting. … So, they might be able to poach some fighters from [other extremist] groups, the disaffected or those who want to see the result now,” Roggio said.
The United Nations says that there are around 20 militant groups active in Afghanistan.
Most of these, including al-Qaida and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have close ties to the Taliban. But even before seizing power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban considered IS-Khorasan as an adversary and conducted military operations against the group.
Riccardo Valle, Islamabad-based analyst and director of research for The Khorasan Diary, told VOA that the Taliban have been “successful” in their fight against IS-Khorasan.
The Taliban “were able to decapitate the Islamic State leadership in several instances. They have been able to infiltrate Islamic State in Afghanistan and thus it has been able to prevent several attacks,” said Valle.
But he said the group has been able to move across Turkey, Central Asia and Afghanistan. “This is coupled with the fact that [the relationship] between Afghanistan and Pakistan is extremely tense,” which makes it easy for the militants to move across that border.
Pakistan accuses the Taliban of harboring and supporting TTP fighters involved in attacks in Pakistan, a charge the Taliban deny.
Valle said that the Taliban alone would not be capable of “tackling the issue” of containing IS-Khorisan.
“The real threat posed by the ISKP in Afghanistan and the whole region is fueling instability within the region, fueling mutual distrust between the countries and posing a major threat to the civilians,” Valle said.
Ali Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister, told VOA he believes the threats will continue until the Taliban cut ties with all foreign extremist groups in Afghanistan.
“During their war against the republic, they allied with many extremist groups. These groups supported them. Now they are in [Afghanistan], and they cannot cut their ties with them,” he said.
Jalali said that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has not brought stability and the formation of a ‘lawful’ government. “And unless there is [political] stability, this will continue.”
This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.
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Swedish Embassy Exhibit Highlights Uses of Artificial Intelligence
WASHINGTON — Artificial intelligence for good is the subject of a new exhibit at the Embassy of Sweden in Washington, showing how Swedish companies and organizations are using AI for a more open society, a healthier world and a greener planet.
Ambassador Urban Ahlin said at an embassy reception that Sweden’s broad collaboration across industry, academia and government makes it a leader in applying AI in public-interest areas such as clean tech, social sciences, medical research and greener food supply chains. That includes tracking the mood and health of cows.
Fitbit for cows
It is technology developed by DeLaval, a producer of dairy and farming machinery. The firm’s market solution manager in North America, Joaquin Azocar, said the small wearable device the size of an earring fits in a cow’s ear and tracks the animal’s movements 24/7, much like a Fitbit.
The tags send signals to receivers across the farm. DeLaval’s artificial intelligence system analyzes the data and looks for correlations in patterns, trends and deviations in the animals’ activities to predict if a cow is sick, in heat or not eating well.
A trained veterinarian, Azocar said dairy farmers being alerted sooner to changes in their animals’ behavior means they can provide treatment earlier, translating to less recovery time.
AI helping in childbirth
There are also advances in human health applications. The developing AI Pelvic Floor project identifies high-risk cases of pelvic floor injury and facilitates timely intervention to prevent or limit harm.
It was developed by a team of gynecologists and women’s health care professionals from Sweden’s Sahlgrenska University Hospital to help the nearly 20% of women who experience injury to their pelvic floor during childbirth.
The exhibition “is a great way to showcase the many ways AI is being adapted and used in medicine and in many other areas,” said exhibition attendee Jesica Lindgren, general counsel for international consulting firm BlueStar Strategies. “It’s important to know how AI is evolving and affecting our everyday life.”
Green solutions using AI
The exhibition includes examples of what AI can do about climate change, including rising sea levels and declining biodiversity.
AirForestry is developing technology “for precise forestry that will select and harvest trees fully autonomously.” The firm says that “harvesting the right trees in the right place could significantly improve overall carbon sequestration and resilience.”
AI and the defense industry
Outlining the development of artificial intelligence for the defense industry, the exhibit acknowledges the controversy.
“There are exciting possibilities to use AI to solve problems that cannot be solved using traditional algorithms due to their complexity and limitations in computational power,” the exhibit states. “But it requires thorough consideration of how AI should and shouldn’t be utilized. Proactively engaging in AI research is necessary to understand the technology’s capabilities and limitations and help shape its ethical standards.”
AI and privacy
Exhibition participant Quentin Black is an engineer with Axis Communications, an industry leader in video surveillance. He said the project came out of GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, a European Union policy that provides privacy to people who are out in public whose image could be picked up on video surveillance cameras.
The regulations surrounding privacy are stricter in Europe than they are in the United States, Black said.
“In the U.S., the public doesn’t really have an expectation of privacy; there’s cameras everywhere. In Europe, it’s different.” That regulation inspired Axis Communications to develop AI that provides privacy, he said.
The Axis Live Privacy Shield remotely monitors activities indoors and outdoors while safeguarding privacy in real time. The technology is downloadable and free, he said.
Black explained the four quadrants shown on a display monitor. One window of the monitor displayed privacy with a full-color block-out of all humans, using AI to distinguish the difference between the people and the environment.
Another window showed masking of just the person’s head. A third window showed pixelization of the person’s entire body and the immediate environment surrounding them. And the final window showed blockage of the environment, so “an inverse of the personal privacy,” Black explained.
“So, if it was a top-secret facility, or you want to see the people walking up to your door without a view of your neighbor’s house, this is where this can this be applied,” he said.
Tip of the iceberg
Molly Steenson, president and CEO of the American Swedish Institute, said, “I think that AI is on everybody’s thoughts, and what I appreciate about the House of Sweden’s approach in this exhibition is highlighting a thoughtful, scientific, business-oriented and human-oriented perspective on AI in society today.”
Although AI and machine learning have been around since the 1950s, she said it is only now that we are seeing “the contemporary upswing and acceleration of AI, especially generative AI in things like large language models.”
“So, while large companies and tech companies might want us to speed up and believe that it is only scary or it is only good, I think it’s a lot more nuanced than that,” she said.
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All Parties to Conflict in CAR Violate Civilians’ Human Rights, Experts Say
GENEVA — Human rights experts accuse all parties to the conflict in the Central African Republic of perpetrating serious human rights abuses and violations against the civilian population.
The experts, who held a high-level dialogue at the United Nations Human Rights Council Thursday to assess developments in the CAR, warned that the ongoing violence and instability in the country have adversely affected the human rights of civilians and kept the country mired in poverty.
Nada Al-Nashif, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights, blamed armed groups for “51% of the abuses and state actors for the remaining 49% of violations.”
She said between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, 2,100 abuses and violations were reported by U.N. peacekeeping forces, known as MINUSCA, affecting 4,676 victims.
Among the victims, she said, were hundreds of women and girls who were “subjected to conflict-related sexual violence.”
“These violations were mainly attributable to armed groups, but also to the military and other security personnel,” she said, adding that the warring parties have committed other serious violations, as well, such as extrajudicial executions, trafficking, forced recruitment and use, and forced marriage.
She said children also are victims of grave human rights violations, “with the recruitment and use of children and abduction and sexual violence being the most frequent. …Armed groups remain the main perpetrators in this regard.”
Al-Nashif pointed out the government has taken some steps to improve the country’s deplorable human rights situation. However, she stressed that was only a first step, saying strengthened measures are urgently needed to eliminate all forms of exploitation and abuse.
Responding to the deputy high commissioner’s remarks, Arnaud Djoubaye Abazene, CAR’s minister of state for justice, explained that his country’s years of experience with recurrent conflict and turbulence have led to “serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law of which women and girls are the main victims.”
He said President Faustin-Archange Touadera was intent on rectifying the situation, noting that the president has placed “the promotion and protection of human rights at the epicenter of his public policy,” with particular emphasis on the rights of women and girls.
He listed and recounted in detail the many new and revised constitutional laws and other legal remedies that have been implemented by his government related to gender-based violence. Some, he said, are aimed at ending discrimination, strengthening the rights of women, protecting women and children from abuse, and seeking justice for crimes against them.
“During the criminal sessions of the Bangui Court of Appeal in 2020 and 2023, several criminal cases of rape were tried, and the perpetrators and accomplices found guilty were severely punished,” he said, adding that “several cases are currently being investigated at the level of the courts.”
Joanne Adamson, deputy special representative of the secretary-general of the United Nations for MINUSCA, praised the government for “the significant progress it has made on human rights,” including the adoption of a national human rights policy, the extension of a plan of action to combat conflict-related sexual violence, and the government’s commitment to combat against impunity for sexual violence linked to conflict.
“However, despite these efforts and the improvements in certain areas, the security situation remains volatile throughout the country and continues to bring challenges in the context of human rights, particularly in remote areas where armed groups remain active,” she said.
“Conflict-related sexual violence remains a reality because of the ongoing gender inequalities and harmful traditional practices,” and that often causes abused women to remain silent.
Adamson said many victims do not seek justice because they “fear reprisals, are ashamed or fear stigmatization and do not speak out.”
She said allowing women to participate more fully in political and public life would help to “consolidate peace, reconciliation and development.”
Deputy High Commissioner Al-Nashif noted that the Central African Republic ranks 188th out of 191 countries in terms of gender equality.
“Gender-based discrimination and exclusion from public and political life remain deeply entrenched,” she said.
“It is regrettable that the revised Electoral Code, adopted by the National Assembly in January 2024, did not include a provision on the implementation of a 35% quota for women in line with the Gender Parity Law of 2016.”
Adamson called on the government to “ensure the political participation of women in all decision-making bodies through effective legal frameworks and policies.”
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Businesswomen Envision a Greener Mozambique
Two female entrepreneurs in Mozambique have started businesses that help fight climate change and reduce pollution. Amarilis Gule has this story from the capital, Maputo. Michele Joseph narrates.
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Growing Number of Americans End Up in Russian Jails — Prospects for Their Release Are Unclear
Bus Crash in South Africa Kills 45 People
Blinken Heading to Paris, Brussels to Seek Unity on Ukraine, Gaza Wars
Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to go to France and Belgium next week to try to build unity among allies in support of Ukraine in its war against Russia and of Israel in its war against Hamas. Analysts say he faces a tough task. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Wagner Mercenaries Helping Mali Army Kill Civilians, Rights Groups Say
DAKAR, Senegal — The Russian mercenary group known as Wagner is helping government forces in central and northern Mali carry out raids and drone strikes that have killed scores of civilians, including many children, rights groups said in reports published this week that span the period from December to March.
Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for over a decade battled an insurgency fought by Islamic extremist groups, including some allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russia’s mercenary units for security assistance instead.
Violence has escalated in Mali since Russian mercenaries arrived there following a coup in 2021. Its ruling junta has ramped up operations, carrying out deadly drone strikes that have hit gatherings of civilians, and raids accompanied by Russian mercenaries that have killed civilians.
Residents of the Sahel region that includes Mali say Russia’s presence does not appear to have changed since Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died in a suspicious plane crash last year.
“Mali’s Russia-backed transitional military government is not only committing horrific abuses, but it is working to eliminate scrutiny into its human rights situation,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Thursday.
In an example of a raid carried out by Russian-backed government forces in January, Human Rights Watch said the army entered a village near a military base in central Mali and arrested 25 people, including four children. Their bodies were found later that day blindfolded and with bullet wounds to the heads, the report said.
Amnesty International said in a separate report earlier this week that two drone strikes in northern Mali killed at least 13 civilians, including seven children aged 2 to 17. A pregnant woman who was injured in the bombing miscarried days after the attack, it said.
Human Rights Watch has said the Turkish-supplied drones in Mali are capable of delivering precise laser-guided bombs. The group has also documented how drone strikes have killed civilians. In one example, a drone strike in central Mali’s Segou region killed at least seven people at a wedding, including two boys, it said. The following day, a second drone strike targeted a funeral held for those killed in the previous day’s strike.
The juntas ruling Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso earlier this month announced a joint security force to fight the worsening extremist violence in their Sahel region. This follows steps taken by the juntas to step away from other regional and Western nations that don’t agree with their approach.
Although the militaries had promised to end the insurgencies in their territories after deposing their respective elected governments, conflict analysts say the violence has worsened under their regimes. They share borders and their security forces fighting extremist violence are overstretched.
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Stakes Are High for Turkish President, Opposition in Local Elections
washington — Millions of Turkish citizens will head to the polls Sunday to elect mayors and local administrators for their cities and districts.
The elections come less than a year after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured his term for another five years last May.
“Now we have 2024 ahead of us,” Erdogan said in his victory speech, adding, “Are you ready to win both Uskudar [a district in Istanbul where Erdogan’s personal residence is] and Istanbul in the local elections in 2024?”
Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) aims to win back key cities, including Turkey’s largest, Istanbul, and its capital, Ankara, which it lost to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 2019 through its alliance with the nationalist IYI Party.
Istanbul race
Winning Istanbul and Ankara, two cities that account for a quarter of Turkey’s population, gave the CHP a key position in power for the past five years.
Some analysts observe that the Istanbul race will be one of the main contested races.
“This election largely revolves around Istanbul. In the presidential elections, [opposition alliance candidate] Kemal Kilicdaroglu received more votes than Erdogan in both rounds in Istanbul,” political scientist Ismet Akca told VOA.
Istanbul, with its 15 million population, is symbolically important for political parties. An old saying in Turkish politics – “Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey” – was used by Erdogan a couple of times. Early in his career Erdogan was the city’s mayor, from 1994 to 1998.
The current Istanbul mayor and CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu was considered one of the possible vice presidents if the opposition alliance had won the May 2023 parliamentary and presidential elections.
However, after Erdogan’s victory in May 2023, the opposition alliance, headed by CHP and IYI, collapsed. The two parties are running their own candidates in the local elections.
Also, new political parties, including the center-right DEVA, the far-right Victory Party and the Islamist New Welfare Party, have emerged over the past five years, and they will compete in the Istanbul race with their own candidates.
In the 2019 election, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP, which is using a new name, DEM Party) did not announce a candidate and supported the opposition alliance’s Imamoglu. However, this year, the DEM Party has campaigned for prominent Kurdish politician Meral Danis Bestas, its candidate for Istanbul.
Erdogan’s AKP selected Murat Kurum, 47, former minister of environment and urbanization, who was one of the leading figures in the government’s response to the February 2023 earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in southeastern Turkey.
Main opposition CHP has Imamoglu, 52, seeking a second term. Already one of the most prominent figures in Turkey’s opposition, he is expected to run for president in 2028 if he wins.
With the lack of a broader alliance and Kurdish votes, Imamoglu is facing a tough race against Kurum, as Erdogan and his Cabinet officials are quite active in his campaign.
Erdogan’s ‘last election’
During a meeting of the Turkish Youth Foundation on March 8, Erdogan, 70, asked for support in the local elections, saying, “This is a final for me; under the mandate given by the law, this is my last election.”
“The eyes of the entire Islamic world are on Turkey. What will happen in Turkey? What result will the AKP get in these elections?” the president continued.
Erdogan came to power in 2002 and served as prime minister until 2014, when he became the first president elected by the public. He was re-elected in June 2018 and May 2023.
The Turkish constitution, which was last amended in 2017, enables the president to serve only two terms of five years. However, according to Article 116, if the parliament decides to repeat the elections during the president’s second term, the president may run for election again.
Erdogan hinted in November 2023 that his party aimed to work on a new constitution. Political scientist Akca thinks Erdogan’s statement was meant to consolidate his party’s voters.
“Erdogan does not want to lose this election to Imamoglu for the second time. The latest elections reveal that the lower classes and young people dissatisfied with the AKP are looking for other options,” Akca told VOA. Many of those voters have shifted allegiance from AKP to the Islamist New Welfare Party.
“The president is trying to overcome this problem with his emphasis on the Islamist cause and his speech with a high emotional tone.”
Gonul Tol, director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program, said Erdogan is involved “as if he were the one on the ballot box.”
“So he is intervening in the electoral process so often and attacking the incumbent, CHP Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, almost on a daily basis. It sounds like this is turning into a referendum on Erdogan, which I personally believe is a bad strategy,” Tol said Thursday in a webinar.
Kurdish votes
Several prominent Kurdish politicians, including Ahmet Turk, Leyla Zana and the imprisoned former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas, have recently named Erdogan as one of the vital actors in the solution to the conflict with the Kurds.
“Our door is closed to terrorists and those who play a political game under the guidance of a terrorist organization,” Erdogan said Wednesday while campaigning in Diyarbakir.
Some analysts think that Erdogan ended the possibility of a peace process.
“Considering Erdogan’s speech, I do not expect anything like a new compromise, negotiation or a meeting between DEM Party and Erdogan,” Reha Ruhavioglu, director of the Diyarbakir-based Kurdish Studies Center, told VOA.
The Turkish government says the DEM Party has links with the PKK, which the United States, European Union and Ankara have designated as a terrorist group. The party denies this allegation.
In 2019, the then-HDP won 65 municipalities, but later, the mayors of at least 48 municipalities were sacked over terror accusations and placed under the control of government-appointed trustees.
This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service. VOA Turkish’s Hilmi Hacaloglu and Mahmut Bozarslan contributed from Istanbul and Diyarbakir.
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