Region

TRIPOLI — A blockade of Libya's oil production will continue, forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar have warned, despite the country's National Oil Corporation announcing this week the resumption of production.

Libya, which sits atop Africa's largest proven crude oil reserves, is torn between the rival powers of the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and eastern-based Haftar.

Since January, groups loyal to Haftar have been blocking the production and export of oil from the country's most important fields and terminals, claiming they want a fair distribution of the oil revenues managed by Tripoli.

"The closure of ports and oil fields will be maintained until the demands of the Libyan people are satisfied," said a statement published late Saturday on Facebook by pro-Haftar forces spokesman Ahmad Al Mismari.

“Only one oil tanker” is authorised to load “a quantity of stored oil”, as agreed “with the international community and brotherly and friendly countries” that have requested it, said the statement without elaborating.

Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) had announced on Friday the resumption of crude production and exports after a nearly six-month shutdown due to conflict dividing the country.

Oil exports are the source of almost all state revenue in Libya, which has been mired in chaos since the ouster and killing of dictator Muammar Qadhafi in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising.

A first ship was due to start loading crude from the Al Sidra oil port in the east of the country, the NOC had said.

But the state oil giant warned it would take time for output to return to previous levels because of major damage to energy infrastructure.

Supported by Turkey, pro-GNA forces have scored important victories in recent months, regaining control of the northwest and driving out forces loyal to Haftar, who had launched an abortive offensive in April 2019 to seize Tripoli.

Haftar is backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

The NOC had invoked force majeure in response to the blockade — a measure used in exceptional circumstances that allows it to be exonerated from liability in the event of non-compliance with oil delivery contracts.

The company said Friday that it had “lifted force majeure on all oil exports from Libya”.

Earlier this month, the NOC had reported talks, “supervised by the United Nations and the United States”, to allow the resumption of production.

ZAHLE, Lebanon — Inside the French-language school she has run for years in east Lebanon, Sister Colette Moughabghab welcomed parents devastated by the news the century-old establishment was locking up its classrooms.

Books are stacked by the stairs leading to the playground that will no longer see pupils flood in autumn, after the school became the latest victim of a crippling economic crisis.

“I did everything to obtain financial aid... but in vain,” said Moughabghab, who has run Our Lady of Lourdes in the eastern town of Zahle for four years.

“It’s like closing up a home,” added the nun, visibly upset about closing a school that had welcomed Christian and Muslim pupils since 1885.

Lebanon, where Arabic is the official language, has a long tradition of education in French.

The first French schools were set up by Christian missionaries in the 19th century before the country came under French mandate in 1920 until its independence in 1943.

Until recent years, Lebanon’s French-speaking schools, mostly private and a majority of them Catholic, taught 500,000 children — equivalent to around half of all pupils nationwide.

But the country’s worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war has left them battling to stay afloat as parents struggle to pay fees.

“It’s catastrophic,” says Father Boutros Azar, secretary general of a network of 331 Catholic schools.

“Fifty to 70 schools in our network risk closing” by September, Azar said.

“Without the Catholic schools, there will be no French-speaking education in Lebanon.”

Up to 80 per cent of the schools in his network teach primarily in French and a quarter of the students who frequent them are Muslim.

Fees there are up to half those of high-end private secular schools, which are also struggling to survive.

The French Secular Mission that runs five private teaching institutions has already laid off 180 teachers and expects more than 1,500 students to leave over their inability to pay school fees.

‘Won’t be able to pay’ 

Lebanon’s economic crisis has seen tens of thousands of Lebanese lose their jobs or take pay cuts since the autumn.

With banks capping dollar withdrawals, the Lebanese pound has lost up to 80 per cent of its value on the black market, sparking alarming inflation and plunging a large segment of the population into poverty.

In Sister Colette’s office in Zahle, the parents of seven-year-old Julien and his younger brother are worried about the future.

Other parents plan to send their children to other private schools when the new term begins, but Julien’s father Samer said he is cash strapped.

“I make about 1.2 million Lebanese pounds a month, which is now worth just a little more than 150 dollars,” instead of 800 a year ago, said Samer, who declined to give his surname.

“I won’t be able to pay for my second son to go to [private] school next year,” said the 47-year-old.

A source at the education ministry said 120,000 pupils were expected to join state-run schools next year, as their parents could no longer afford sending them to private ones.

But that would be an added burden on the public education system.

Already under-equipped and over-crowded, these schools have welcomed hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugee children who fled the war in the country next door.

To avoid the worst, several initiatives have been launched to try to save French-language schools.

The Vatican in May said it would give 200,000 dollars to cover 400 scholarships.

France would also offer “significant” help, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Wednesday, promising to announce details during an upcoming visit to Lebanon.

Ambassador Bruno Foucher said France would set up a fund to help Christian schools, and also channel “several million” euros to more than 50 accredited schools teaching around 120,000 pupils.

“Our presence in Lebanon is first and foremost educational, and if education — including in French — crumbles... we will lose a key tie,” he said.

GENEVA — Nearly 10 million people are facing acute food shortages in Yemen and urgent action is needed to avert a famine, the UN's World Food Programme said on Friday.

The WFP said it needed $737 million to the end of the year to keep its aid programme running in the war-torn country, which is gripped by what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

"The humanitarian situation is deteriorating at an alarming rate, pushing people to the edge," WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told a virtual briefing in Geneva.

"We must act now. If we wait for famine to be declared, it will already be too late as people will already be dying."

She said the famine warning signs were already present.

“Yemen is facing a crisis on multiple fronts. Imports have declined, food prices are soaring, the riyal is in freefall, and foreign currency reserves are nearing total depletion,” said Byrs.

The spokeswoman said more than 20 million people were food insecure in Yemen, of which 13 million receive humanitarian food assistance.

Meanwhile two million children, plus a million pregnant or breastfeeding women, require treatment for acute malnutrition.

Byrs said WFP distributions were down to once every other month in the north of the country and the UN agency hoped it would not have to do the same elsewhere.

Yemen’s war between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and pro-government troops escalated in March 2015, when a Saudi-led military coalition intervened against the rebels who control large parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa.

Tens of thousands have been killed, an estimated four million displaced and 80 per cent of the country’s 29 million people are dependent on aid for survival.

The coronavirus pandemic is also raging unchecked in the country.

The UN raised only around half the required $2.41 billion in aid for Yemen at a June donor conference co-hosted by Saudi Arabia.

TUNIS — Hundreds of Tunisians demonstrated in the south of the country on Saturday against unemployment and the death of a young man they say was killed by soldiers earlier this week.

Protesters in the town of Remada demanded that President Kais Saied visit their region to discuss their living conditions, witnesses told AFP and videos published online showed.

"Either we get a better life or we all die," demonstrators, including women, could be heard shouting, according to the reports.

"We want to see President Kais Saied. We voted for him and he must come here to Remada to hear us out and see how our children are being killed," a woman seen in one video said.

On Tuesday night, a young man suspected of being a smuggler was killed during a police operation in the town, which is close to the border with conflict-riddled Libya.

The defence ministry has opened an investigation to determine if he died when soldiers opened fire on four vehicles transporting smuggled goods from Libya.

Southern Tunisia is one of the country’s most marginalised regions, with above-average unemployment, failing infrastructure and a stunted private sector.

Nearly a decade after the revolution that toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the government has yet to resolve regional inequalities.

In recent weeks, protests have also rocked the southern town of Tataouine, some 80 kilometres from Remada, with demonstrators demanding the government honour a 2017 pledge to invest millions to develop the region and provide jobs to thousands.

Protesters in Tataouine have blocked roads and sought to prevent trucks from accessing the remote El-Kamour pumping station in the desert outside the town.

“The situation in the south of Tunisia is unacceptable,” Saied said in a video published on Thursday on the presidency’s official Facebook page.

Saied, who had focused on Tunisia’s disenfranchised youth during his 2019 election campaign, said protests were “legitimate” as long as they respected the law.

ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday rejected worldwide condemnation over Turkey's decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, saying it represented his country's will to use its "sovereign rights".

Erdogan, who is accused by critics of chipping away at the Muslim-majority country's secular pillars, announced Friday that Muslim prayers would begin on July 24 at the UNESCO World Heritage site.

In the past, he has repeatedly called for the stunning building to be renamed as a mosque.

"Those who do not take a step against Islamophobia in their own countries ... attack Turkey's will to use its sovereign rights," Erdogan said during a ceremony he attended via video-conference.

A magnet for tourists worldwide, the Hagia Sophia was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

Erdogan's announcement came after the cancellation by a top court of a 1934 Cabinet decision under modern Turkey's secularising founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to preserve the church-turned-mosque as a museum.

"We made this decision not looking at what others say but looking what our right is and what our nation wants, just like what we have done in Syria, in Libya and elsewhere," the Turkish leader said Saturday.

‘A blow to global Christianity’ 

Erdogan went ahead with the plan despite an open appeal from the NATO ally the United States as well as Russia, with which Ankara has forged close relations in recent years.

Greece swiftly condemned the move as a provocation, France deplored it while the United States also expressed disappointment.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, said: “We regret” the decision, speaking to Interfax news agency on Saturday.

“The cathedral is on Turkey’s territory, but it is without question everybody’s heritage,” he said.

“We would like to hope that [Turkey] will fully honour all of the commitments having to do with the World Heritage status of the cathedral, in terms of its management, protection and access.”

The influential bishop Hilarion, who heads the Russian Orthodox Church’s department for external church relations, expressed sorrow, speaking to state TV Rossiya24 aired late Friday.

“We had hoped till the end that Turkish leadership would overturn the decision and it brings great sorrow and great pain that the decision was taken.

“It is a blow to global Christianity... For us [Hagia Sophia] remains a cathedral dedicated to the Saviour.”

But Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Ankara director of the German Marshall Fund, told AFP the move would win hearts and minds as most Turks “would favour such a decision for religious or nationalist sentiments”.

“This is a debate president Erdogan cannot lose and the opposition cannot win. As a matter of fact, this issue also has the potential to disunite the opposition parties.”

‘It is closed’

After Friday’s decision, hundreds gathered outside the iconic building and performed evening prayers.

On Saturday, police had put up barriers around the Hagia Sophia.

“We wanted to come and visit Istanbul and the Hagia Sophia museum but unfortunately we realised that from today it is closed,” said Renato Daleo, tourist from Italy.

Ksennia Bessonova, a Russian living in Istanbul flanked by her 16-month-old daughter and her husband, said they had also wanted to visit. “It was our little dream because since our daughter was born we were not able to come and here we go,” she said.

She hoped the authorities would not change anything inside.

“From what our friends and family were telling us it was something special and we wanted to feel the same. At the moment I am not sure what to expect but I feel sad in a way.”

On Friday, Erdogan gave assurances that the Hagia Sophia would be open to all visitors, including non-Muslims.

“The Hagia Sophia’s doors will remain open to visitors from all around the world,” his press aide, Fahrettin Altun tweeted Saturday.

“People of all religious denominations are welcome and encouraged to visit it — just as they have been able to visit other mosques, including the Blue Mosque.”

MAARET MISRIN, Syria — After surviving months of bombardment, Nasr Sultan now fears his 10 children may starve or catch coronavirus as a divided UN holds up a renewal of cross-border humanitarian aid to rebel-held northwest Syria.

A UN Security Council resolution authorising aid deliveries through the Turkish border expired on Friday as Russia and China vetoed an extension.

The world body's failure to agree on a compromise formula has threatened humanitarian assistance to an estimated 2.8 million people who depend on such handouts.

Germany and Belgium are still working on an initiative to rescue the authorisation in place since 2014, with hopes of bringing it to a vote this weekend.

In a crowded Idlib displacement camp, 45-year-old Nasr said life without aid would plunge into hunger many of those who had already lost their homes in Syria's nine-year war.

"We have abandoned our home, our land and our livelihoods. The aid they give us is all we have," he said from inside his tent near the town of Maaret Misrin.

"If the assistance is scrapped, we will face famine."

'Coronavirus will get us' 

The Idlib region, Syria's last major opposition bastion, is home to some 3 million people, nearly half of whom have been displaced from other regions.

Nasr's family fled their hometown in southern Idlib to safer areas near the border with Turkey after a regime offensive that displaced nearly a million people between December and March.

A truce has stemmed the Russia-backed campaign on Idlib, a region dominated by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), an extremist group led by Syria's former Al Qaeda affiliate, and their rebel allies.

Apart from food insecurity, Idlib has recorded at least three cases of COVID-19 since Thursday, sparking fears of a health catastrophe if the pandemic hits overcrowded displacement camps.

The confirmed cases are all medical personnel working in hospitals near the Turkish border.

"If medical assistance is not delivered to the camps, then we will be finished" said Nasr. "The coronavirus will get us."

Abed Al Salam Youssef, also displaced, said camp residents will be more vulnerable to the coronavirus if aid is halted, especially since many will have to venture out to seek food and work.

"How can we commit to confinement inside the camps if people can't even secure their basic daily needs without humanitarian assistance?" he asked.

"Most of the displaced rely entirely on monthly food baskets" distributed by aid groups to survive, Youssef added.

'Politicising' aid 

Save the Children also condemned the UN's failure so far to renew the authorisation for aid distribution to the displaced without having to pass through Damascus.

"The border crossings were the only meaningful way for vital humanitarian aid ... to reach families in northwest Syria," it said in a statement.

"If the border crossings are not reinstated, many families will not be able to eat, will not receive healthcare, and will not find shelter" said the charity's CEO, Inger Ashing.

European countries and the US want to maintain two crossings on the Turkish border — at Bab Al Salama, which leads to the Aleppo region, and Bab Al Hawa, serving Idlib.

An alternative proposal submitted by Russia would keep only the Bab Al Hawa access point open, for one year.

Moscow says more than 85 per cent of aid has been going through Bab Al Hawa and that Bab Al Salama can be closed.

In January, Moscow succeeded in reducing the crossing points from four to two, and in limiting the extension to six months.

The International Crisis Group accuses Russia of "politicising cross-border aid" to Syria and warns that the policy could backfire.

"Continuing to attempt to make a political point at the expense of the most vulnerable could drive Western states to revert to a pre-2014 modus operandi, bypass multilateral mechanisms and deliver aid directly to northern Syria," said its senior Syria analyst, Dareen Khalifa.

Standing in front of his tent in the Maaret Misrin camp, Abed Al Salam fears for the future.

Millions of Syrians will face "a huge catastrophe in front of the eyes of the world", he said.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — Russia and China on Tuesday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended authorisation for cross-border humanitarian aid in Syria for a year, though Moscow swiftly proposed a more limited extension.

Germany and Belgium, two of the council's non-permanent members, had drafted the resolution, which would have allowed aid to continue to pass through two points on the Turkish border without interference from Damascus.

Beyond Russia and China, the other 13 council members voted to approve the draft, the diplomats said.

During negotiations, Moscow had asked that the extension be limited to six months, rather than a year, and that it only be allowed at one border crossing, not two, they said.

“The draft resolution has not been adopted,” Germany’s UN Ambassador Christoph Heusgen, the acting president of the body in July, confirmed in a letter to Council members.

Immediately after the vote, Russia proposed its own draft resolution.

Obtained by AFP, it repeats the call for a six-month extension, underlines the improvement in the delivery of humanitarian aid under the control of the Syrian regime, and excludes one of the two entry points into Syria — Bab al-Salam — from the mechanism.

The results of a vote on that resolution will be known on Wednesday.

Authorisation for cross-border humanitarian aid has existed since 2014, with periodic extensions. The latest extension expires on Friday.

Tuesday’s vote was the 15th time that Russia has used its veto since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, and the ninth for China.

They argue that the UN authorisation violates Syria’s sovereignty and that aid can increasingly be channelled through Syrian authorities.

Western nations and the UN secretariat however insist that cross-border aid is the only credible option, and that relief supplies would face multiple obstacles if they had to pass through Damascus’ control.

The Bab Al Hawa crossing point allows for shipments of humanitarian aid to the three to four million people living in the opposition-held Idlib region.

The International Rescue Committee quickly condemned the veto.

“Blocking access to food, healthcare supplies, vaccines, and ventilators is unacceptable anytime but in the year of COVID-19, it is even more reprehensible,” said IRC President David Miliband in a statement.

After the vote, China explained that it too was in favour of maintaining the cross-border authorisation.

Its veto is due to the refusal of Germany and Belgium to take into account its request for a statement condemning the unilateral US sanctions imposed on Syria, Chinese diplomats said.

In January, Moscow, Syria’s closest ally, succeeded in having the crossing points reduced from four to two and in limiting the authorisation to six months instead of a year, as had been done previously.

In a report in late June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a one-year extension of the use of the two crossing points.

Guterres said that since 2014, 4,774 trucks have used the Bab Al Salam crossing and 28,574 have used Bab al-Hawa.

According to a report published by the UN in Geneva on Tuesday, the humanitarian situation in Idlib province is disastrous.

“Syria’s economy is devastated,” said Hanny Megally, one of the authors of the report.

“The country has been in a nine-year conflict. People are suffering.”

BEIRUT — A Lebanese businessman jailed in the United States over allegations of funding Shiite movement Hizbollah arrived back in Beirut on Wednesday, his family said, after he was granted early release from prison due to poor health.

Kassim Tajideen, 64, had been extradited to the United States after he was designated as a financier of Hizbollah, a key Lebanese political player that Washington has listed as a “terrorist organisation”.

In late May, a US judge granted an emergency request for compassionate release on the grounds that Tajideen’s age and “serious health conditions” made him vulnerable to the novel coronavirus in prison.

His family in a statement welcomed “his return to Beirut after a painful absence of over three years in prison in the United States”.

It said his return, which was also reported by the National News Agency, had been delayed “until a plane was provided to transport him and other Lebanese citizens from the United States to Lebanon”.

Tajideen’s release has stirred speculation it was a US response to Lebanon’s release in March of Amer Al Fakhoury, a naturalised US citizen and former member of a pro-Israel militia accused of torture as a prison warden.

But Tajideen’s lawyer has said it was not a swap.

A wealthy businessman with companies in central and west Africa as well as Belgium, Tajideen was deemed a “specially designated global terrorist” by the United States in 2009 for allegedly providing tens of millions of dollars and other support to Hizbollah.

He was arrested in Morocco and extradited to the United States in 2017, where he was charged with violating US sanctions by providing financial support to a “designated terrorist organisation”, as well as money laundering.

After he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to launder money as part of a scheme to evade US sanctions, he was sentenced in 2019 to 60 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $50 million.

His return to Lebanon comes as the country grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and tensions spike between Hizbollah and the United States.

Hizbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah on Tuesday blasted the US ambassador to Lebanon as a “military ruler” who was inciting tensions after she accused the party of stealing billions from state coffers.

Hizbollah is the only group not to have disarmed after the 1975-1990 civil war, and is a major player in the country’s politics.