Agrégateur de flux

La BBC s'est rendue dans ce pays d'Afrique de l'Ouest, l'un de ceux qui paient le plus lourd tribut aux attaques djihadistes.

Napoli said they "never meant to offend or mock" Victor Osimhen in a social media post but stopped short of publicly apologising to him.

Le capitaine Ibrahim Traoré a déclaré, vendredi, qu'aucune élection ne se tiendrait au Burkina Faso tant que la situation sécuritaire dans le pays ne le permettrait pas. Le président de transition, au pouvoir depuis le coup d'État de septembre 2022, a également annoncé une "modification partielle" de la Constitution.

Male migrants from Syria, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt danced after being rescued off the coast of Libya.

L'Assemblée nationale a largement rejeté, dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi, la première motion de censure visant Élisabeth Borne cette saison, la 18e depuis son arrivée à Matignon, entraînant l'adoption en nouvelle lecture de la loi de programmation des finances publiques 2023-2027.   

The BBC's Mohamed Osman writes about his emotional return after war forced him to flee.

Over a year and a half has passed since the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, violating international law as enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The core intention of the Charter remains the same today as when it was ratified: the prevention of a third world war and, secondarily, the institutional scaffolding needed to address the underlying causes of war, including systemic poverty, insecurity, and, most interestingly, grudges. 

One need not be an expert on international law to understand how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March of 2022 has violated the laws’ core principles. The Kremlin’s pretexts, the alleged violation of Russia’s “sphere of influence,” cited by, for example, international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, remain inadequate to justify the invasion of an internationally recognized sovereign state. On top of that, in its prosecution of an illegitimate war, Russia continues to practice war crimes—systematically and deliberately attacking noncombatants, including medical personnel and facilities. We may continue to debate whether allowing Russia to reclaim the USSR’s sphere of influence is acceptable as a tradeoff to prevent a global conflict. Still, there can be no question that Russia’s continual rape, torture, and murder of noncombatants is illegal and damages Russia’s reputation on the world stage. 

The question, then, is, what explains Russia’s behavior? 

From Tsar to Commissar  

During the entire rule of Russia’s Tsars—from the very founding of the Russian state until 1917, Russia’s military was no more or no less brutal toward noncombatants than the militaries of any other state or empire. But the Russian Revolution and the horrific civil war that followed changed everything. In place of an aristocratic code of honor, Russia’s surviving officer corps were loyal to the person of Josef Stalin (although in 1938, he had three-quarters of them above the rank of lieutenant executed for treason) and, more broadly, to the international communist movement, which they believed was destined to liberate the world from its capitalist and imperialist chains. There is little difference between this messianic vision and the twelfth-century crusaders or Protestant and Catholic militaries of the Thirty Years War. The same is true of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from 1972–75 or Iran’s theocracy after 1979. All militaries representing such a “messianic” or “revolutionary” ethos were deeply implicated in the mass killing of noncombatants. 

Operation Barbarossa, Stalingrad, and Berlin 

The logic of the revolutionary’s lack of restraint on the use of armed force is twofold. First, this ideology insists on the dehumanization of opponents: “Our enemies are not actually people. They cannot be bargained with, and will themselves acknowledge no limits in their use of violence against us.” Second, his ideology is self-justifying: “What conduct wouldn’t be justified in the pursuit of an earthly paradise, in which poverty and war are banished?’ 

Until 1941, Russia’s formative military experience had been its civil war (1917–1923), which displayed, to a terrible degree, both aspects of ideological warfare and their impact on civilians. As Vladimir Lenin famously insisted: “It is with absolute frankness that we speak of this struggle of the proletariat; each man must choose between joining our side or the other side.” But on June 22, 1941, 3.8 million German soldiers crossed the Soviet border in Operation Barbarossa, which by December would strike within a few kilometers of Moscow and result in the loss of 4.5 million Soviet soldiers killed or captured. 

In the late Summer of 1942, the Third Reich’s Sixth Army reached Stalingrad. By November 22, the Germans found themselves encircled by the Red Army, and on February 2, they surrendered. The fighting in that storied city on the Volga River remains among history’s most brutal. Given both sides’ commitment to zero-sum, totalizing visions of warfare, the campaign systematically repudiated the very idea of “noncombatant.” 

Revolutionary logic was a core component of Soviet practice as their armed forces advanced toward Berlin. Any Soviet soldiers refusing a suicidal attack or attempting a retreat, even for sound military reasons, were executed by special forces dedicated to that purpose. Soviet leaders did not acknowledge Soviet prisoners of war. Any soldier captured by the enemy must have been a counterrevolutionary, as evidenced by the fact that they still drew breath. There were no Soviet “civilians” in formerly-occupied territories either: any who were not active partisans were labeled “Nazi collaborators” and left to starve or die of exposure as Red Army advanced toward Germany. 

In practice, Soviet soldiers—particularly junior officers—often took pity on civilian survivors of Nazi occupation, even at the very real risk to their own lives. But upon reaching German territory, any pretense of the existence of “noncombatants” vanished. As historian Norman Naimark argues, while in a few formal documents the Red Army was ordered to respect noncombatant immunity, on the ground, Soviet armed forces understood they were in Germany to avenge the rapes, forced starvation, and murders their own citizens had suffered since the German invasion. Retreating German or German-allied soldiers understood that surrender was not an option. At best, a surrendering soldier could expect a stint of lethal hard labor in Siberia (of the 91,000 soldiers of the German Sixth Army taken into captivity by the Soviets at Stalingrad, only 5,000 would survive to return to Germany). And the most savage harm of all would fall on German women and girls: victorious Soviet soldiers raped girls as young as nine and women as old as seventy during their occupation of Berlin. According to one female contemporary of the Soviet occupation, rape was so universal that Berlin’s women lost even their shame at having been victims. 

Soviet to Russian Military Doctrine: Doctrinal Inertia 

It should now be much easier to understand the persistence of targeting noncombatants in Russian military culture. Indeed, the USSR’s last armed conflict—its ten-year effort to keep Afghanistan communist (1979–1989)—only further embedded this principle into Russian military thinking and doctrine. We could call this “doctrinal inertia.” 

Today, Russia’s military, in practice, ignores noncombatant immunity and systematically and deliberately targets medical facilities in areas of operations—a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions of 1948 and 1949, to which Russia remains a signatory. In international law, the Additional Protocols of 1977—which were intended to protect national liberation movements from brutality of the sort for which Russia is now famous—did nothing to protect Chechen nationalists when they sought the independence to which they were entitled by law after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. 

In Syria after 2015, Syrian and Russian armed forces made no distinction between civilians and insurgents in areas of operations (sadly, this is hardly unique to Syria or the Russian Federation). But what is perhaps unique, again, is the deliberate targeting of medical personnel and facilities, the persistent use of starvation as a weapon, and systematic and intentional attacks on civilian infrastructure during combat operations. 

All of this matters as much for Russia’s security as it does for the world because Russia’s barbarism remains profoundly counterproductive. Fans of “taking the gloves off” in combat often forget that winning and losing are not just objective outcomes but are, to some extent, determined via social construction by audiences. So, in a boxing match where one fighter overcomes an adversary with an illegal move, a “win” could only happen if the cheating contender killed the entire audience. Since no one in history has managed that—not the Nazis, not Milosevic’s Serbs, not Rwanda’s Interahamwe—survivors will carry the grudges that, like the dragon’s teeth in Greek mythology, sooner or later sprout into visceral counter-violence. 

An Inconvenient Truth: It’s Not Just Russia 

We are likely to see more, rather than less, military barbarism in the future—not only from Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the PRC but also from the United States and its democratic allies. This is for two reasons. 

First, the world is becoming more urban, and urban environments complicate infantry tactics. Rather than ask soldiers to risk their lives breaching a building, scanning for and potentially engaging hostile troops, commanders yield to the temptation to back away and call in artillery or air support, then sort through the rubble later. Given the traditional proximity of “hostiles” to “civilians” in urban settings, this necessarily means more “collateral damage,” which then evolves into the systematic injury of civilians. 

Second, in the global north, our increasing interactions in cyberspace—including social media algorithms that trade rage for profit—have accelerated a trend toward political polarization—not just in the United States but everywhere. Democracy is, as the British might say, “on the back foot.” That means we’re likely to see more, not fewer, authoritarian states in the near future. To gain and maintain power, authoritarian leaders both require and remain gifted at “othering,” identifying a category of human beings—foreigners, counterrevolutionaries, enemies of the people, LGBTQ+, immigrants, religious minorities, artists, intellectuals, people of color, even women—as subhumans who become the targets of deliberate harm ending in what is known as “cleansing.” 

It’s clear that all militaries—especially in the prolonged conflicts that have become the norm—suffer from the dilemmas of conducting combat operations without harming noncombatants. But for the Russian Federation, whether in Syria or Ukraine (or in cyberspace), respect for noncombatant immunity in war or military occupation isn’t a dilemma; it died in the October Revolution of 1917. 

Ivan Arreguin-Toft, PhD (@imarreguintoft) is the author of How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict. He is a founding member of the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre at Oxford University’s Martin School, where he served as Associate Director of Dimension 1 (cybersecurity policy and strategy) from 2012 to 2015. He is currently a Visiting Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. 

Image: Shutterstock.

With the prisoner swap carried out last week between the United States and Iran after the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues, critics of the administration are again voicing their opposition to making deals with Iran’s current government. Alongside the acknowledged terms of the agreement for the prisoner swap and transfer of funds, it also has become clear in recent months that there is a broader effort to incentivize Iran to slow the pace of its uranium enrichment program and reduce tensions in the Middle East. This has aimed to build informal “understandings” with Iran through a combination of communicating U.S. “red lines” and the apparent relaxation of sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports rather than negotiating a formal agreement, which would be subject to Congressional review under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA). This approach will have little overt support among the Washington political class of either party. However, in the absence of better alternatives, it presents an opportunity for the Biden administration to both prevent an escalating crisis with Iran and offset Saudi moves to raise oil prices, either of which could undermine Biden’s bid for reelection in 2024. 

The results of this effort on Iran’s nuclear trajectory thus far are modest but positive. The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), circulated in early September in advance of its Board of Governors meeting, showed that they had slowed down their production of 60 percent highly enriched uranium (HEU), just short of weapons-grade, and diluted some of that material to reduce their inventory accumulation. They also have slowed down what had previously been a breakneck pace of installing additional advanced enrichment centrifuges. These actions do not lengthen Iran’s “breakout time” if they choose to enrich weapons-grade uranium, but this pause is a de-escalatory step that, if continued, should prevent an acute crisis. 

Iran also has apparently instructed its proxies in Iraq and Syria to cease attacks on U.S. military personnel deployed there, which had been frequent until last year. There have been no such incidents in Syria in over four months and none in Iraq in over a year. While Iran still opposes the U.S. presence in those countries and could decide to reverse this move, it removes for now another source of friction that could escalate into a crisis. 

On the oil front, it has become increasingly apparent over the summer that the United States has shifted even further toward lax enforcement of the sanctions aimed at Iran’s oil exports, allowing volumes to rise as the broader market has tightened. TankerTrackers.com reported that export loadings of crude and condensate in August averaged 1.9 million barrels per day (BPD), up from 1.5 million BPD in May and a full-year average below 1 million BPD in 2022. While the State Department has officially denied that a policy shift has occurred, U.S. officials have acknowledged on background that they have pursued sanctions enforcement with a “lighter touch.” Critics of the Biden administration’s dealings with Iran have certainly noticed. 

This comes as Saudi Arabia announced in June a 1 million BPD unilateral production cut beginning in July, in addition to the production curtailment as part of the OPEC+ framework, now extended at least through the end of the year. The move was a surprise, showing a very aggressive push to tighten the market and support prices. Crude is up more than 25 percent since the Saudi announcement, with Brent above ninety-four dollars, and OPEC’s own forecast shows a large supply deficit of 3.3 million BPD for 2023’s fourth quarter. While the Biden administration is pursuing a multifaceted deal to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which could improve U.S.-Saudi ties, there is no indication whatsoever that Saudi oil production policy is part of the current U.S.-Saudi discussions. With Wall Street commodities analysts again talking about the potential for $100/barrel oil and a U.S. presidential election approaching next year, it would be difficult for the Biden administration to take a harder enforcement line against Iran, to say the least. 

Thus far, The Biden administration has kept mum on its indirect discussions with Iran and has not acknowledged any deal connecting the apparent Iranian forbearance on enrichment and proxy attacks with the evident U.S. forbearance on sanctions enforcement. This is probably intentional, as a formal agreement would trigger an INARA review by Congress, which would be highly contentious and inevitably partisan in an election year. It also reflects that what seems to have been agreed upon is very narrow compared to any plausible formal follow-up to the JCPOA. 

Efforts by mediators, including Qatar and Oman, to build on this effort continue. Still, it is not likely that we will see any formal agreement before the November 2024 U.S. elections. Rumored efforts to engineer at least an indirect exchange between the United States and Iran during the UN General Assembly meetings in New York last week were apparently unsuccessful. Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian recently mentioned the possibility of taking up European-mediated talks with the United States again, picking up where they left off in September 2022, but this seems unlikely. The United States has clarified that the window for a return to the JCPOA has closed, and Iran’s demands for U.S. “guarantees” at the time seem even more far-fetched as President Joe Biden’s first term approaches its end. At present, trying to avoid disaster in the near term is the best available option. It is unsatisfying, but given the constraints under which they are operating, including the loss of U.S. credibility as a result of President Trump abandoning the JCPOA while Iran complied with it, the Biden administration deserves credit if they have indeed steered Iran away from a nuclear path which would have led quickly to crisis. 

If President Biden wins re-election, there may be room for renewed discussion of a more permanent accommodation. A second-term Biden would arguably reduce Tehran’s concerns about Washington again abrogating an agreement. Still, it is unlikely that the Biden administration can induce Iran to roll back its nuclear program to anywhere near the constrained levels imposed by the JCPOA, let alone the extension of some of those provisions that the United States had hoped for—a “longer and stronger” deal. Unfortunately, Iran is now a threshold nuclear state, a status that cannot be reversed permanently, even in the event of military conflict. A reasonable agenda for a follow-up agreement in a second Biden term would center on restoring transparency and lengthening Iran’s breakout time to allow the world more certainty that Iran remains a threshold state and does not become a nuclear power. 

Greg Priddy is a Senior Fellow for the Middle East at the Center for the National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

Le Débat BBC Afrique - Africa Radio avec Boubacar TOURE

L'armée malienne enregistre-t-elle sur le terrain d'importantes pertes face aux assaillants ? Les attaques sont en tout cas de plus en plus nombreuses . Les populations civiles désertent des localités.

Cette semaine, la république autoproclamée du Haut-Karabakh a annoncé s’autodissoudre, 32 ans après sa création. L’exode des Arméniens de l’enclave continue. Au Niger, la France retirera ses troupes avant la fin de l’année, l’ambassadeur français étant déjà rentré à Paris. Un duel Trump-Biden se précise pour la présidentielle américaine de 2024. Enfin, un rapprochement entre l’Arabie saoudite et Israël s’est dessiné cette semaine, avec des visites historiques.

À l'inverse des autres putschistes d'Afrique de l'Ouest, le colonel guinéen Mamadi Doumbouya s'est rendu à New York pour l'Assemblée générale des Nations unies le 21 septembre 2023. Multipliant les rencontres officielles et officieuses depuis son accession au pouvoir en 2021, il tisse sa toile (...) / Matières premières, Afrique de l'Ouest, Autoritarisme, Coup d'État, Guinée - 2023/10

Longtemps assimilés à l'univers de la domesticité, les gardiens d'immeuble aspirent à faire leur métier, rien que leur métier. Une gageure pour cette profession, féminisée et peu syndiquée, à qui l'on demande toujours plus : se tenir à la disposition des copropriétaires dans les beaux quartiers ; œuvrer à (...) / Logement, Société, Chômage, France - 2023/10

In 2022 the desired narrative of a renewed partnership between Africa and Europe, as adopted in a February summit of heads of state and government, was disrupted by Russia’s war against Ukraine and its global implications. Notwithstanding challenges in the relationship on areas including Ukraine, the green transition, and vaccine equity, several initiatives in the area of trade and investments sought to deepen cooperation between the EU and African states in an era of considerable international competition. This includes the EU’s Global Gateway initiative as well as its support for South -Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership. At the same time, South Africa’s decision to leave the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States showed that the discussion on rationalising the EU’s fragmented institutional frameworks with Africa is far from over.

In 2022 the desired narrative of a renewed partnership between Africa and Europe, as adopted in a February summit of heads of state and government, was disrupted by Russia’s war against Ukraine and its global implications. Notwithstanding challenges in the relationship on areas including Ukraine, the green transition, and vaccine equity, several initiatives in the area of trade and investments sought to deepen cooperation between the EU and African states in an era of considerable international competition. This includes the EU’s Global Gateway initiative as well as its support for South -Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership. At the same time, South Africa’s decision to leave the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States showed that the discussion on rationalising the EU’s fragmented institutional frameworks with Africa is far from over.

In 2022 the desired narrative of a renewed partnership between Africa and Europe, as adopted in a February summit of heads of state and government, was disrupted by Russia’s war against Ukraine and its global implications. Notwithstanding challenges in the relationship on areas including Ukraine, the green transition, and vaccine equity, several initiatives in the area of trade and investments sought to deepen cooperation between the EU and African states in an era of considerable international competition. This includes the EU’s Global Gateway initiative as well as its support for South -Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership. At the same time, South Africa’s decision to leave the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States showed that the discussion on rationalising the EU’s fragmented institutional frameworks with Africa is far from over.

Rendez-vous exceptionnel au Palais de Tokyo, à Paris, à l’occasion de la sortie du nouveau jeu vidéo FC24, dont le rappeur Ninho est l’ambassadeur. Analyse de l’univers du jeu avec l’intervention de gamers pro, de commentateurs de sport, de footballeurs et d'invités spéciaux tels que Naza, Ninho, Hakim Jemili, SDM ou Zinedine Zidane.

The EU is meant to become a safer place for women from Sunday (1 October), as the Istanbul Convention enters into force.

Au sommaire : la crise de l'eau à Mayotte, la Martinique, qui compte le plus grand nombre de sexagénaires en France, et un indépendantiste calédonien qui fait son entrée au Sénat.

Il y a eu Muhammad Ali, le plus grand boxeur de tous les temps, héros d'un duel désormais mythique à Kinshasa en 1974. Avec lui, d'autres noms figurent au panthéon des boxeurs : Marcel Cerdan, Rocky Marciano ou Mike Tyson. Et puis il y a les milliers d'anonymes, payés au round, le plus souvent issus (...) / Identité culturelle, Sport, Inégalités, Société - 2023/10