Month: September 2024

United Nations — The U.N. Security Council unanimously renewed for another year an arms embargo on parties in the Darfur region of Sudan, where the war between rival generals has intensified in recent months, exacerbating a dire humanitarian crisis.

Sudan’s envoy welcomed the extension but urged the council to go further and sanction the entire Rapid Support Forces militia, the rival of the government-backed Sudanese Armed Forces.

“The militia, in its entirety, really needs to be listed, because it fulfills all the conditions,” Ambassador Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed said. “There also needs to be an end to the financing of the militia.”

The RSF as it is known, has captured most of Darfur, and a battle has been going on since May over North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, which is the only Darfuri regional capital not to have fallen to the RSF.

Sudan’s military has repeatedly accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying the RSF with arms and ammunition smuggled in through neighboring Chad. The UAE strongly denies the accusations.

A report by a United Nations panel of experts earlier this year said there was substance to media reports that cargo planes originating in the UAE capital had landed in eastern Chad with arms, ammunition and medical equipment destined for the paramilitary group.

At the meeting, Sudan’s envoy accused the UAE of profiting from his nation’s natural resources, including gold and uranium, and he urged the Security Council to act.

“We are calling for clear measures to be taken against those who seek to sabotage the Sudanese economy — namely businesses and companies whose headquarters are in the UAE,” Mohamed said.

“The repetition of baseless allegations does not make them true,” Emirati Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab told the council. He urged the army, known as the SAF, to show “political courage” and participate in peace talks to end the war.

The SAF sat out U.S.- and Saudi-brokered talks in Geneva in August because the UAE was invited to participate.

The United States led the negotiations in the council on the renewal of the Darfur arms embargo, which was first put in place in 2004 during the genocide carried out by Arab Janjaweed fighters against non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur. Janjaweed fighters make up elements of today’s RSF.

“Renewing the sanctions measures will restrict the movement of arms into Darfur and sanction individuals and entities contributing to, or complicit in, destabilizing activities of Sudan,” U.S. envoy Robert Wood said. “All of this is critical to helping end the escalating conflict, alleviate humanitarian catastrophe and put Sudan back on the path to stability and security.”

The U.S. also has proposed that the Security Council sanction two RSF commanders, but their designation remains in limbo after Russia put a hold on it on August 31.

Rights groups said the embargo renewal did not go far enough and should include the whole of Sudan.

“The council should correct this failure as soon as possible and expand the arms restrictions to cover all of Sudan, to limit the flow of arms and curb widespread atrocities being committed in the country,” said Human Rights Watch’s Jean-Baptiste Gallopin.

Sudan is facing a massive humanitarian crisis as a result of the war between the rival generals that began in April 2023. More than 10 million people have fled their homes in search of safety, and last month, international monitors confirmed famine in North Darfur. Across the country, the United Nations says, 26 million people are in crisis levels of hunger.

Human rights violations are also rife. In June, the RSF and SAF were added to an annual U.N. blacklist for perpetrators of grave violations against children. They were named for violations committed last year, including the killing and maiming of children, for attacking schools and hospitals, and in the case of the RSF, for sexual violence and recruiting and using children in their ranks.
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Soyuz craft heads to space station with 2 Russians, 1 American

MOSCOW — A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American blasted off Wednesday for an express trip to the International Space Station.

The space capsule atop a towering rocket set off at 1623 GMT from Russia’s manned space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and was scheduled to dock with the space station three hours later, in contrast to some missions that last for days.

The mission commander is Alexei Ovchinin, with Russian compatriot Ivan Vagner and American Donald Pettit in the crew.

The blast-off took place without obvious problems and the Soyuz entered orbit eight minutes after liftoff, a relief for Russian space authorities after an automated safety system halted a launch in March because of a voltage drop in the power system.

On the space station, Pettit, Vagner and Ovchinin will join NASA’s Tracy Dyson, Mike Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams, and Russians Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko.
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Afghanistan, Turkmenistan begin work on long-delayed gas pipeline

09/11/2024 ITasLeave a comment

ISLAMABAD — Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and neighboring Turkmenistan on Wednesday marked the resumption of work on a long-delayed gas pipeline designed to run through the two countries, Pakistan and India.

The estimated $10 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, or TAPI, project is designed to annually transport up to 33 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas from the southeastern Galkynysh field through the proposed 1,800-kilometer pipeline.

Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund of the de facto Taliban government traveled to the Turkmen border region of Mary and joined top leaders of the host country to inaugurate construction of a vital section of the TAPI project. It is intended to link the city of Serhetabat in Turkmenistan to Herat in western Afghanistan.

Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov joined and addressed the ceremony via video link. “This project will benefit not only the economies of the participating countries but also the entire region,” he said.

Taliban authorities declared a public holiday in Herat, the capital of the province of the same name, to mark the occasion, with posters celebrating the TAPI project plastered across the border city.

Initially signed in the early 1990s to provide natural gas to energy-deficient South Asia, the TAPI project has faced repeated delays due to years of Afghan hostilities, which ended in 2021 when the then-insurgent Taliban recaptured power as all U.S. and NATO forces exited the country.

While Turkmen leaders Wednesday pledged to enhance bilateral ties between Ashgabat and Kabul and carry forward the TAPI project, experts remain skeptical that the gas pipeline will become operational soon. They cite funding issues, U.S.-led Western economic sanctions on Afghanistan and the international community’s refusal to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government over restrictions on Afghan women’s rights.

Islamabad’s persistent diplomatic and military tensions with New Delhi are also considered a significant obstacle to the materialization of the TAPI project.

According to officials of the participating countries, Pakistan and India, each one plans to purchase 42% of the gas exports, and Afghanistan will receive the rest. Kabul will also earn around $500 million in transit fees annually.

Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan deteriorated after the Taliban takeover over terrorism concerns. Islamabad complains that Kabul shelters and facilitates fugitive anti-Pakistan militants to orchestrate cross-border terrorist attacks from Afghan sanctuaries, charges the Taliban reject.
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Conflicts have closed 14,300 schools in 24 African countries, study finds

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Spain PM asks EU to ‘reconsider’ EV tariffs plan

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Generation Z drives far-right support in Europe

Support for the far-right among young voters appears to be growing in several European countries – not least in Germany, where the AfD party is hoping to secure another victory in an upcoming state election. Henry Ridgwell has more from London. (Videographer: Henry Ridgwell)
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Workers call off protest that grounded flights at Kenya’s main airport

Nairobi, Kenya — Kenya’s airport workers’ union has called off a strike that grounded flights in the country’s main airport on Wednesday over awarding the contract for its modernization and operations to an Indian firm.

The decision came after daylong talks between the union leaders and the government.

The workers were protesting a build-and-operate agreement between the Kenyan government and India’s Adani Group that would see the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport modernized, with an additional runway and terminal constructed, in exchange for the group running the airport for 30 years.

The union wrote on X that a return-to-work agreement had been signed and union secretary general Moss Ndiema told journalists and workers that the union would be involved in every discussion moving forward.

“We have not accepted Adani,” he said.

Transport Minister Davis Chirchir told journalists that the government would protect the interests of Kenyan citizens during the quest to upgrade and modernize the main airport.

Hundreds of workers at Kenya’s main international airport demonstrated on Wednesday as planes remained grounded, with hundreds of passengers stranded at the airport.

Kenya Airport Workers Union, in announcing the strike, said that the deal would lead to job losses and “inferior terms and conditions of service” for those who will remain.

Kenya Airways on Wednesday announced there would be flight delays and possible cancellations because of the ongoing strike at the airport, which serves Nairobi.

The strike affected local flights coming from the port city of Mombasa and the lake city of Kisumu, where delays have been reported by local media.

At the main airport, police officers had taken up security check-in roles with long lines seen outside the departure terminals and worried passengers unable to confirm if their flights would depart as scheduled.

The Kenya Airports Authority said in a statement that it was “engaging relevant parties to normalize operations” and urged passengers to contact their respective airlines to confirm flight status.

The Central Organization of Trade Unions’ secretary-general, Francis Atwoli, told journalists at the airport that the strike would have been averted had the government listened to the workers.

“This was a very simple matter where the assurance to workers in writing that our members will not lose jobs and their jobs will remain protected by the government and as is required by law and that assurance alone, we wouldn’t have been here,” he said.

Last week, airport workers had threatened to go on strike, but the plans were called off pending discussions with the government.

The spotting of unknown people moving around with airport officials taking notes and photographs raised concerns that the Indian firm officials were readying for the deal, local media outlets reported last week.

The High Court on Monday temporarily halted the implementation of the deal until a case filed by the Law Society and the Kenya Human Rights Commission is heard.
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Gunmen kill Pakistan polio vaccinator and police guard near Afghan border

09/11/2024 ITasLeave a comment

Islamabad — Gunmen in northwestern Pakistan killed an anti-polio worker and a policeman guarding him Wednesday, the second attack on healthcare teams trying to carry out a national immunization campaign against the paralytic virus.

Area officials reported that the assailants targeted a polio team providing vaccine to children in the Bajaur district, bordering Afghanistan. The attack also injured a policeman.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the deadly attack in one of the militancy-hit districts of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The start of the immunization campaign Monday was marred by a roadside bombing of a polio vaccination team in the province’s South Waziristan district. That attack resulted in injuries to at least ten people, including three vaccinators and six police personnel.

An Afghanistan-based Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan reportedly claimed responsibility for the deadly blast.

Militants in violence-affected districts often target polio vaccinators, suspecting them of spying on behalf of Pakistani security forces. Such attacks have killed dozens of vaccinators and police personnel escorting them in past years, mostly in areas near or adjacent to the Afghan border, dealing critical blows to polio eradication efforts.

On Monday, the Pakistan Polio Eradication Program said that the country of about 240 million is facing an “intense outbreak” of wild poliovirus this year, paralyzing 17 children so far nationwide. It reported that sewage samples tested positive in 66 districts for the highly contagious virus, threatening more children.

The program noted that the ongoing house-to-house campaign aims to vaccinate more than 33 million children under five in 115 districts nationwide.

Pakistan and Afghanistan, which reported nine paralytic polio cases so far in 2024, are the only two remaining polio-endemic countries globally.

Polio immunization drives in both countries, which share a nearly 2,600-kilometer border, have long faced multiple challenges, such as security and vaccine boycotts, which have set back the goal of eradicating the virus from the globe.

Officials at the World Health Organization have reported an improvement in Afghan vaccination efforts since the Islamist Taliban retook control of the country three years ago, ending years of nationwide hostilities and enabling polio teams to inoculate children in previously inaccessible areas.
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Wagner lost veteran fighters in Mali ambush, in setback to Russia’s Africa campaign

LONDON/DAKAR — Among the dozens of Wagner mercenaries presumed dead after a lethal battle with Tuareg rebels during a desert sandstorm in Mali in July were Russian war veterans who survived tours in Ukraine, Libya and Syria, according to interviews with relatives and a review of social media data.

The loss of such experienced fighters exposes dangers faced by Russian mercenary forces working for military juntas, which are struggling to contain separatists and powerful offshoots of Islamic State and Al Qaeda across the arid Sahel region in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

The Mali defeat raises doubts over whether Moscow, which has admitted funding Wagner and has absorbed many of its fighters into a defense ministry force, will do better than Western and U.N. troops recently expelled by the juntas, six officials and experts who work in the region said.

By cross-referencing public information with online posts from relatives and fighters, speaking to seven relatives and using facial recognition software to analyze battlefield footage verified by Reuters, the news agency was able to identify 23 fighters missing in action and two others taken into Tuareg captivity after the ambush near Tinzaouaten, a town on the Algerian border.

Several of the men had survived the siege of Bakhmut in Ukraine, which Wagner’s late founder Yevgeny Prigozhin called a “meat grinder.” Others had served in Libya, Syria and elsewhere. Some were former Russian soldiers, at least one of whom had retired after a full-length army career.

Grisly footage of dead fighters has now circulated online, and some of relatives told Reuters the bodies of their husbands and sons had been abandoned in the desert. Reuters could not confirm how many of the men it identified were dead.

Margarita Goncharova said her son, Vadim Evsiukov, 31, was first recruited in prison where he was serving a drug-related sentence in 2022. He rose through the ranks in Ukraine to lead a platoon of 500 men, she said. After coming home, he worked as a tailor but struggled with survivor’s guilt and secretly traveled to Africa in April to join his former commander, she said.

“He wanted to fly to Africa many times. I discouraged him as much as I could,” Goncharova said in an interview with Reuters. “I told him ‘fate has given you a once-in-a-million chance. You can start your life again; you’ve won such a crazy lottery’.”

The Russian Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Wagner did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

After Prigozhin died in August last year, Wagner employees were invited to join a newly created group called the Africa Corps, under the defense ministry, “to fight for justice and the interests of Russia,” according to the Africa Corps channel on social-media platform Telegram.

On the channel, Africa Corps says about half its personnel are former Wagner employees who it allows to use Wagner insignia. Wagner’s social media channels remain active.

The Russian government has not publicly commented on the Tinzaouaten battle.

Mali’s armed forces-led government said the defeat had no impact on its goals. The Malian Armed Forces “are committed to restoring the authority of the state throughout the country,” army spokesman Colonel Major Souleymane Dembele told Reuters.

Wagner has acknowledged heavy losses in the Mali ambush but gave no figure. The Malian army, which fought alongside the Russians, also did not give a toll. Tuareg rebels, who are fighting for an independent homeland, said they had killed 84 Russians and 47 Malians.

Reuters could not independently establish how many were killed in battle. One video, out of more than 20 sent to Reuters by a Tuareg rebel spokesman, showed at least 47 bodies, mostly white men, in military-style uniforms lying in the desert. Reuters verified the location and date of the video.

Mikhail Zvinchuk, a prominent blogger close to the Russian defense ministry, said on social media platform RuTube in August that the defeat showed Wagner fighters who arrived from Ukraine had underestimated the rebels and the Al Qaeda fighters.

Missing in action

Wagner-linked Telegram accounts named two of the dead as Nikita Fedyakin, the administrator of The Grey Zone, a popular Wagner-focused Telegram channel with over half a million subscribers, and Sergei Shevchenko, who the accounts described as the unit commander. Reuters could not verify the identity of Shevchenko.

Reuters separately identified 23 Wagner operators missing in Mali via relatives who posted in an official Wagner Telegram chat group, checking the names against social media accounts, publicly available data and facial recognition software. All the relatives received calls from Wagner recruiters on Aug. 6 to notify them their men were missing in action, they said in the chat group.

Lyubov Bazhenova told Reuters she had no idea her son Vladimir Akimov, 25, who had briefly served in Russia’s elite airborne forces as a conscript, had signed up. She was angry with Wagner for sharing no further information about his fate or the whereabouts of his body. She said letters to the prosecutor’s office, defense ministry and foreign ministry had gone unanswered.

Facial-recognition software was used to identify another two men captured by Tuareg fighters, based on photographs and videos of the ambush site published by Tuareg sources. The Tuareg rebels posted videos and photos of the two captives on social media. Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesman for the rebel alliance, confirmed the men were in rebel captivity as of late August.

One of the missing fighters, Alexei Kuzekmaev, 47, had no military experience, his wife Lyudmila Kuzekmaeva told Reuters.

“Neither my hysterics, nor tears, nor persuasion – nothing helped. He just confronted me a month before he left home. He said ‘I bought a ticket and will be leaving.'”

Among the most experienced men was Alexander Lazarev, 48, a Russian army veteran who served in wars against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and 2000s, according to his wife’s posts in the Wagner channel.

She declined to comment. Lazarev appears in many photos on the Russian Facebook equivalent VKontakte wearing military uniform, with symbols linked to several army subdivisions.

Parastatal mercenary force

Democratic governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were overthrown since 2020 in a series of coups driven by anger with corrupt leaders and a near decade of failed Western efforts to fight insurgencies that have killed thousands and displaced millions.

The military juntas have kicked out French and U.S. troops and U.N. peacekeepers.

In Africa, Wagner emerged in Sudan in 2017 as the deniable face of Russian operations. Its enterprises soon ranged from protecting African coup leaders to gold mining and fighting jihadists. Wagner is also active in Central African Republic. It first appeared in Mali in late 2021.

Wagner’s fortunes rose and fell last year. In May, the group led Russia to its first significant Ukrainian battlefield victory in almost a year with the capture of Bakhmut. But after his criticism of Russian military leaders and his effort to lead a rebellion weeks after the Bakhmut victory, Prigozhin died in a fiery plane crash in August. The Kremlin has rejected as an “absolute lie” U.S. officials’ claim that Putin had Prigozhin killed.

Eric Whitaker, the top U.S. envoy to Burkina Faso until retiring in June, who previously served in Niger, Mali and Chad, said the Putin administration has achieved complete control over the Wagner brand in the post-Prigozhin era.

“Africa Corps earns (the Russian government) hard-currency payments from host governments for its services and also gains a significant sources of revenue from gold derived from its activities in the Sahel,” he said.

Russian mercenary activity soared in Mali after Africa Corps was formed, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group. Based on media reports and social media documenting, the data shows violent events linked to Russian mercenaries rose 81% and reported civilian fatalities rose 65% over the past year, compared to the year before Prigozhin’s death.

Wagner does not publish recruitment figures. Jędrzej Czerep, an analyst at Warsaw-based think tank Polish Institute of International Affairs, estimated that around 6,000 Russian mercenaries serve in Africa, while three diplomatic sources said about 1,500-2,000 were in Mali.

“When Africa Corps started to promote and recruit, they were flooded with applications,” said Czerep.

“Being sent to one of the African missions was seen as far safer than Ukraine,” he said.

Tuareg spokesman Ramadane said the rebel alliance was preparing for more clashes.

Further losses could eventually drive Russia out, said Tibor Nagy, the top U.S. envoy to Africa in 2019, when Wagner withdrew from northern Mozambique months after around a dozen of its men were killed during a conflict with an Islamic State affiliate.

“They were out of there very quickly,” said Nagy.

Wagner has not publicly commented on its plans in Mali.

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Ukraine shoots down 20 Russian drones as top US, British diplomats travel to Kyiv

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Arrested Nigerian workers’ union leader freed

Abuja, Nigeria — The Nigerian secret police released labor union leader Joe Ajaero on Tuesday after hours of interrogation over alleged terrorism financing.

Ajaero’s arrest Monday sparked criticism about what critics see as a government crackdown on dissent.

Ajaero, was released by the Department of State Services, or DSS, after he was arrested at the Abuja airport while on his way to the United Kingdom to attend a labor conference.

He said Tuesday that DSS kept his passport.

He said the police questioned him for hours about alleged terrorism financing involving British national Andrew Wynne and last month’s anti-government protests in Nigeria.

Ajaero is a prominent critic of the Nigerian government and has led many demonstrations to denounce reforms introduced by President Bola Tinubu last year.

Hamisu Santuraki, the spokesperson of the United Action Front of Civil Society, a coalition of civil society groups, said the government should have asked Ajaero to come in for questioning.

“It’s not done anywhere — arresting somebody without sending him an invitation, it is wrong, they should’ve sent him a letter,” Santuraki said. We just want them to release his passport, so we’re having a meeting. Nigeria is our country.”

Later Tuesday, a government spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, said Ajaero was invited to speak to a law enforcement agency and was stopped from traveling abroad because he “snubbed” that invitation.

In a statement released on X, Onanuga also said Nigeria “categorically denies any human rights abuse.”

Santuraki said the coalition and the Labor Congress are deciding on what steps to take.

The Nigerian government is facing a wave of criticism from rights groups who accuse it of trying to stifle dissent and free expression. Investigative journalist Isaac Bristol was recently detained on charges of leaking classified and restricted documents, sedition, and tax evasion, among other allegations.

Another journalist, David Hundeyin, was declared wanted by the police last week.

Ajaero’s arrest came days after he criticized a decision by Nigerian officials to increase the gasoline price by 39 percent.

Nigerian authorities said global oil market forces determined the new pump price of refined petrol, which had more than quadrupled in Nigeria since President Tinubu scrapped fuel subsidies last year.

On Monday, the Socio-Economic Rights Accountability Project, or SERAP, said state operatives also raided their offices. The group this week called for a probe of the national oil company.

“We consider this an act of aggression, intimidation and harassment by the government, and it might not be unconnected with the statement that SERAP had issued over the weekend calling on the president to direct the NNPC to reverse the price of petroleum,” said Kolawole Oluwadare, a deputy director at SERAP. “We consider this as an instance of the escalation of attacks against the civic space and this of course is not acceptable in a democracy.”

Ajaero was also arrested in November by police in southeastern Imo state, moments before he was to lead a rally.
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US, UK top diplomats head to Ukraine with eye on weapons

Przemysl, Poland — The top U.S. and British diplomats headed together into Ukraine on Wednesday to discuss further easing rules on firing Western weapons into Russia, whose alleged acquisition of Iranian missiles has raised new fears.

In a rare joint trip, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was taking the train to Kyiv with Foreign Secretary David Lammy, whose 2-month-old Labor government has vowed to keep up Britain’s role as a key defender of Ukraine.

The pair, who boarded the train early Wednesday at the Polish border town of Przemysl, are expected to meet in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has kept pressing the West for weapons with more firepower and fewer restrictions.

U.S. President Joe Biden, asked in Washington whether he would let Ukraine use longer-range weapons, said: “We’re working that out right now.”

Biden, while strongly supportive of Ukraine, has previously made clear he wants to avoid devolving into direct conflict between the United States and Russia, the world’s two leading nuclear powers.

Blinken, speaking Tuesday in London alongside Lammy, said the United States was committed to providing Ukraine “what they need when they need it to be most effective in dealing with the Russian aggression.”

But Blinken, who is on his fifth trip to Kyiv since the war, said it was also important to see if Ukrainian forces could maintain and operate particular weaponry.

Pressed later in an interview with Sky News on whether the United States would green-light long-range weapons, Blinken said, “We never rule out, but when we rule in, we want to make sure it’s done in such a way that it can advance what the Ukrainians are trying to achieve.”

The renewed talk about long-range weapons comes after the United States said that Iran has sent short-range missiles to Russia, which could strike Ukraine with them within weeks.

The Iranian shipments have raised fears that Moscow would be freed up to use its long-range missiles against comparatively unscathed areas in western Ukraine.

Western powers announced new sanctions against Iran’s clerical state over the sale, which defied repeated warnings.

The United States earlier this year gave its blessing for Ukraine to use Western weapons to hit Russian forces when in direct conflict across the border.

But Ukraine last month launched a surprise, daring offensive directly into Russian territory in Kursk, hoping to restore morale and divert Moscow as Russian troops trudge forward in the front lines of eastern Ukraine.

British media reports said Biden, who meets Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday, was set to end objections to letting Ukraine fire long-range Storm Shadow missiles into Russia.

Britain has repeatedly pushed the United States, by far Ukraine’s biggest military supplier, to be more forward on weapons.

One key ask of Ukraine is to loosen restrictions on U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, which can hit targets up to 300 kilometers away.

In a joint letter to Biden, leading members of Congress from the rival Republican Party asked him to act on ATACMS immediately.

“As long as it is conducting its brutal, full-scale war of aggression, Russia must not be given a sanctuary from which it can execute its war crimes against Ukraine with impunity,” said the letter signed by Representative Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Republicans, however, are deeply divided over Ukraine, and a victory in November by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump over Biden’s political heir Kamala Harris could dramatically shift US policy.

Trump aides have suggested that if he wins, he would leverage aid to force Kyiv into territorial concessions to Russia to end the war.
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Tigray leader reports talks with archrival Eritrea