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Arab News
5 days ago
- Business
- Arab News
Libya is without justice, peace and a functioning state
Fourteen years since the revolution, Libya's institutional framework has undergone near-total dissolution, as evidenced by the state's effective surrender of responsibility for core sovereign functions to nonstate actors. Clashes in Tripoli last month, triggered by the assassination of a militia commander in circumstances under the guise of negotiations, resulted in nine documented civilian fatalities and 47 injuries, all with absolute impunity for the perpetrators, reflecting a systemic pattern in which violence has been monetized by the ruling elites. This incident was not an anomaly but the inevitable byproduct of a rentier political economy dominated by kleptocratic networks and external sponsors. Despite generating $50 million daily from the export of 1.2 million barrels of oil, Tripoli remains fractured, split into militia fiefdoms in which any nominal state authority depends entirely on 120-plus armed groups. These factions control informal and illicit economies, including human trafficking corridors that funnel thousands of migrants each year to Europe, municipal extortion rackets and parallel 'customs' operations at ports such as Misrata. Hydrocarbon revenues subsidize militia salaries and systems of patronage instead of funding public services, creating a self-perpetuating war economy in which institutional collapse is not a failure but a design feature to enable elite capture. The Tripoli-based government's fumbled 'purge' last month constituted a predatory realignment, not a much-needed change or institutional reform. When state-aligned forces eliminated a rival militia commander during a purported negotiation, they seized control of Abu Salim, a district that controls vital central bank access points that are responsible for processing an estimated $1.8 billion a month in hydrocarbon revenues. The maneuver exposed the Government of National Unity's existential paradox: it exterminates competing factions while relying entirely on aligned militias such as the 444th Combat Brigade, which receives $15 million to $20 million a month from state coffers for 'security services.' The inevitable urban warfare last month demonstrated the ways in which violence services the competition between elites for dwindling resources. Libya's $6 billion quarterly oil revenues remain captive to this cycle of predation, with the militias systematically diverting more than a third of the proceeds through fuel-smuggling syndicates that move more than 100,000 barrels a day. Meanwhile parallel 'customs' operations at the Port of Tripoli impose a 25 percent 'tariff' surcharge. Taking control of Abu Salim alone secured illicit revenues worth $300 million a month, confirming militia consolidation as a resource grab mechanism through which state collapse enables elite enrichment. Meanwhile, foreign engagement in Libya operates as a transactional marketplace in which external powers exchange military capital for access to resources, with zero regard for Libyan sovereignty or stability. Turkiye's 5,000-troop garrison and drone bases near Tripoli oversee hydrocarbon-rich maritime zones, while Russian mercenary forces at Al-Qardabiyah Airbase guard Libyan National Army commander Khalifa Haftar's eastern oil terminals and are repaid with crude oil allocations worth about 80,000 barrels a day. Such engagement fuels fragmentation, a strategy that Washington has also co-opted as part of its rather puzzling policy on Libya. On the one hand, the US expresses explicit support for the Tripoli-based parallel authority. On the other, it simultaneously makes diplomatic overtures to the eastern-based rival government — which is actively mobilizing troops toward Sirte, positioning it to seize $50 million per day in oil revenues — and holding joint military exercises that lend it legitimacy. Hydrocarbon revenues subsidize militia salaries and systems of patronage instead of funding public services. Hafed Al-Ghwell With more than 12 foreign military bases now established, the disintegration of Libya is not collateral damage but the intended outcome of resource access opportunism masquerading as diplomacy. Beneath this warlord calculus, there simmers the prospect of societal collapse as a result of deliberately engineered scarcity; 200 percent inflation eviscerates household purchasing power, while 18-hour-a-day electricity blackouts cripple critical sectors and industry, despite the billions of dollars of hydrocarbon revenue flowing in each year. This systematic deprivation fuels mass dissent, as evidenced by the 4,000 citizens who chanted 'neither east nor west' during protests last month, serving as a direct indictment of all ruling factions after 1,400 days of undelivered election promises. Meanwhile, youth unemployment stands at a staggering 40 percent, reflecting generational abandonment, compounded by resource-hoarding by elites — such as the millions in embezzled dam maintenance funds, a direct result of which was the Derna dam collapses in September 2023 that resulted in at least 5,000 preventable deaths, a figure exceeding the number of front-line combat deaths. As a consequence, public fury is on the rise, as evidenced by the nightly burning of tires and occupation of ministry buildings, protests that are often met with live militia fire. Beyond Libya's own borders, the disintegration of the country actively metastasizes into regional instability, with militia-controlled coastal networks dispatching thousands of migrants each year across the Mediterranean. This human commodity market intersects with the implosion of Sudan, where 9 million displaced persons have fled conflict zones, alongside the funneling of small arms into and out of Libya through porous southern borders. The concern, therefore, is that a renewed Tripoli-Benghazi civil war could trigger immediate and very grave consequences that would dwarf even the descent into conflict of neighboring Sudan. It would not only be a matter of the potentially unprecedented scale of human suffering it might cause, but the domino effect on the global economy of disruption to oil exports in a country that contains about 41 percent of Africa's total proven reserves, while also accelerating refugee flows. Appointments of UN envoys and ceasefire agreements remain largely performative when global powers are actively fueling conflict. The collapse of the Government of National Unity and the ascendance of Haftar prove that Libya's 'leaders' prioritize personal enrichment over the establishment of a credible and sustainable social contract. With international diplomatic missions now fleeing Tripoli for Tunis and militias stockpiling weaponry, the question now is not whether the violence will escalate but when the spillover will force a reevaluation of the international complacency and a recalibration of approaches. In the meantime, an accountability vacuums persist. Without the prosecution of those accused of embezzlement or war crimes, the demilitarization of cities and an end to foreign arms flows, Libya's frozen conflict will thaw into a regional conflagration. A forensic auditing process must commence before the next dam breaks because, every 3.6 seconds, another barrel of oil adds more funds to this engineered chaos, while the spark of regional ignition draws ever closer.
Reuters
12-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Exclusive: China-backed militia secures control of new rare earth mines in Myanmar
BANGKOK, June 12 (Reuters) - A Chinese-backed militia is protecting new rare earth mines in eastern Myanmar, according to four people familiar with the matter, as Beijing moves to secure control of the minerals it is wielding as a bargaining chip in its trade war with Washington. China has a near-monopoly over the processing of heavy rare earths into magnets that power critical goods like wind turbines, medical devices and electric vehicles. But Beijing is heavily reliant on Myanmar for the rare earth metals and oxides needed to produce them: the war-torn country was the source of nearly half those imports in the first four months of this year, Chinese customs data show. Beijing's access to fresh stockpiles of minerals like dysprosium and terbium has been throttled recently after a major mining belt in Myanmar's north was taken over by an armed group battling the Southeast Asian country's junta, which Beijing supports. Now, in the hillsides of Shan state in eastern Myanmar, Chinese miners are opening new deposits for extraction, according to two of the sources, both of whom work at one of the mines. At least 100 people are working day-to-night shifts excavating hillsides and extracting minerals using chemicals, the sources said. Two other residents of the area said they had witnessed trucks carrying material from the mines, between the towns of Mong Hsat and Mong Yun, toward the Chinese border some 200km away. Reuters identified some of the sites using imagery from commercial satellite providers Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies. Business records across Myanmar are poorly maintained and challenging to access, and Reuters could not independently identify the ownership of the mines. The mines operate under the protection of the United Wa State Army, according to four sources, two of whom were able to identify the uniforms of the militia members. The UWSA, which is among the biggest armed groups in Shan state, also controls one of the world's largest tin mines. It has long-standing commercial and military links with China, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a conflict resolution non-profit. Details of the militia's role and the export route of the rare earths are reported by Reuters for the first time. University of Manchester lecturer Patrick Meehan, who has closely studied Myanmar's rare earth industry and reviewed satellite imagery of the Shan mines, said the "mid-large size" sites appeared to be the first significant facilities in the country outside the Kachin region in the north. "There is a whole belt of rare earths that goes down through Kachin, through Shan, parts of Laos," he said. China's Ministry of Commerce, as well as the UWSA and the junta, did not respond to Reuters' questions. Access to rare earths is increasingly important to Beijing, which tightened restrictions on its exports of metals and magnets after U.S. President Donald Trump resumed his trade war with China this year. While China appears to have recently approved more exports and Trump has signalled progress in resolving the dispute, the move has upended global supply chains central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers and semiconductor companies. The price of terbium oxide has jumped by over 27% across the last six months, Shanghai Metals Market data show. Dysprosium oxide prices have fluctuated sharply, rising around 1% during the same period. A prominent circular clearing first appears in the forested hills of Shan state, some 30 km (18.6 miles) away from the Thai border, in April 2023, according to the satellite images reviewed by Reuters. By February 2025 - shortly after the Kachin mines suspended work - the site housed over a dozen leaching pools, which are ponds typically used to extract heavy rare earths, the images showed. Six km away, across the Kok river, another forest clearing was captured in satellite imagery from May 2024. Within a year, it had transformed into a facility with 20 leaching pools. Minerals analyst David Merriman, who reviewed two of the Maxar images for Reuters, said the infrastructure at the Shan mines, as well as observable erosion levels to the topography, indicated that the facilities "have been producing for a little bit already." At least one of the mines is run by a Chinese company using Chinese-speaking managers, according to the two mine workers and two members of the Shan Human Rights Foundation, an advocacy group that identified the existence of the operations in a May report using satellite imagery. An office at one of the two sites also had a company logo written in Chinese characters, said one of the workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters. The use of Chinese operators in the Shan mines and transportation of the output to China mirrors a similar system in Kachin, where entire hillsides stand scarred by leaching pools. Chinese mining firms can produce heavy rare earth oxides in low-cost and loosely regulated Myanmar seven times cheaper than in other regions with similar deposits, said Neha Mukherjee of London-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. "Margins are huge." Beijing tightly controls the technology that allows for the efficient extraction of heavy rare earths, and she said that it would be difficult to operate a facility in Myanmar without Chinese assistance. The satellite imagery suggest the Shan mines are smaller than their Kachin counterparts but they are likely to yield the same elements, according to Merriman, who serves as research director at consultancy Project Blue. "The Shan State deposits will have terbium and dysprosium in them, and they will be the main elements that (the miners) are targeting there," he said. The UWSA oversees a remote statelet the size of Belgium and, according to U.S. prosecutors, has long prospered from the drug trade. It has a long-standing ceasefire with the junta but still maintains a force of between 30,000 and 35,000 personnel, equipped with modern weaponry mainly sourced from China, according to Ye Myo Hein, a senior fellow at the Southeast Asia Peace Institute. "The UWSA functions as a key instrument for China to maintain strategic leverage along the Myanmar-China border and exert influence over other ethnic armed groups," he said. Some of those fighters are also closely monitoring the mining area, said SHRF member Leng Harn. "People cannot freely go in and out of the area without ID cards issued by UWSA." Shan state has largely kept out of the protracted civil war, in which an assortment of armed groups are battling the junta. The fighting has also roiled the Kachin mining belt and pushed many Chinese operators to cease work. China has repeatedly said that it seeks stability in Myanmar, where it has significant investments. Beijing has intervened to halt fighting in some areas near its border. "The Wa have had now 35 years with no real conflict with the Myanmar military," said USIP's Myanmar country director Jason Towers. "Chinese companies and the Chinese government would see the Wa areas as being more stable than other parts of northern Burma." The bet on Shan's rare earths deposit could provide more leverage to China amid a global scramble for the critical minerals, said Benchmark's Mukherjee. "If there's so much disruption happening in Kachin, they would be looking for alternative sources," she said. "They want to keep the control of heavy rare earths in their hands. They use that as a strategic tool."
Al Jazeera
03-06-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Photos: Aiming a blow at narcos, Colombia pays farmers to uproot coca
As cocaine production reaches an unprecedented high, Colombia's government is trialling a more peaceful remedy to its enduring narcotics crisis – offering payments to farmers to uproot coca crops, the primary ingredient in the drug. Alirio Caicedo and his son Nicolas are among the latest beneficiaries. A decade ago, they planted their fields with coca, staking their livelihoods on the persistent demand from criminal gangs. Now, the Caicedos are digging up those same crops, uncertain of what the future holds. They are joined by about 4,000 other Colombian families who have entered into agreements with the government to replace coca with cocoa and coffee. The initiative forms part of a $14.4m effort aimed at reducing the supply of a substance blamed for inflicting immeasurable misery on the country. Colombia's rural communities are often coerced by armed groups into cultivating coca, with forests cleared to make way for the illicit crop. Authorities are aiming to eradicate coca on 45,000 hectares (111,000 acres) in three of Colombia's most conflict-ridden regions, including the southwestern Micay Canyon. For farmers like the Caicedos, the transition is fraught with risk. There is no guarantee their new crops will thrive, nor that guerrillas and other armed groups – whose revenues are tied to cocaine – will leave them in peace. With coca, the Caicedos say they could count on earning approximately $800 a month. Under the new scheme, they have received an initial payment of about $300 to begin cultivating coffee, with more in the pipeline. Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first left-wing president, assumed office in 2022 with a pledge to shift his country away from the United States-led 'war on drugs' – a campaign widely blamed for the double victimisation of rural Colombians living under the shadow of violence. Since then, cocaine production in Colombia – the world's largest exporter – has soared to record levels, driven by sustained demand in Europe and the US. Previous attempts at crop substitution have failed, often undermined by the disruptive actions of armed groups and the eventual drying up of government support. Gloria Miranda, who heads Colombia's illegal crop substitution programme, cautioned that it would be naive to believe the new initiative could end drug trafficking 'as long as there is a market of 20 million consumers and it (cocaine) remains illegal'. President Petro, in his pursuit of 'total peace', has prioritised negotiation with armed groups over military confrontation, rolling back forced coca eradication. However, most talks have faltered, and the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January has intensified pressure on Bogota. The Trump administration is reassessing Colombia's status as a partner in the anti-drug campaign, threatening to curtail millions of dollars in military aid. Given the high stakes, observers are concerned the crop replacement scheme may be exploited. Some farmers may 'try to deceive' by accepting state funds while continuing to cultivate coca, warned Argelia's government secretary, Pablo Daza. Without rigorous oversight, 'the chances are quite high that we are wasting money,' said Emilio Archila, who oversaw a similar, ultimately unsuccessful, programme under former President Ivan Duque. Miranda insists that 'meticulous' satellite monitoring will ensure compliance, promising that anyone found in breach will be expelled from the programme. While coca is best known as the raw material for cocaine, its leaves are chewed as a stimulant in Andean cultures and brewed as a tea believed to alleviate altitude sickness. Colombia has repeatedly called for coca leaf to be removed from the United Nations list of harmful narcotics in order to license its use in alternative products, such as fertilisers or beverages – appeals which, for now, remain unanswered.
CBS News
21-05-2025
- CBS News
6 bystanders killed in crossfire of armed clashes near resort city of Acapulco
Clashes between two armed groups left six civilians dead near Mexico's crime-plagued beachside city of Acapulco, authorities said Tuesday. The violence erupted on Monday night in a town called Kilometro 30 located on a highway to Mexico City, the Guerrero state prosecutor's office said in a statement. The victims were five men and an elderly woman who were caught in the crossfire, said municipal commissioner Adan Casarrubias. Three people were injured. Soldiers and police found weapons in an armored vehicle in the town, where several cars were set ablaze. Armed men in at least three vehicles were involved in the confrontation, which terrified residents, Casarrubias said. "Even if it's with pans, sticks, or whatever, we're going to fight for our town," he said. Officials said a long-barreled weapon, magazines, cartridges, seven vehicles (including an armored truck), tire-puncturing weapons and five improvised explosive devices were seized during the investigation. Once-thriving beach resort now blighted by violence In its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, Acapulco was a playground of the rich and famous. Today the city once known as "the pearl of the Pacific" is engulfed by violence linked to drug cartels. On Thursday, the administrator of a Facebook news page was gunned down in Acapulco. Lst December, a judge was shot dead in his car outside an Acapulco courthouse. In May 2024, 10 bodies were found scattered around the city. A month before that, the head of traffic police was shot to death when assailants opened fire on him on a street relatively far away from the resort's beaches. In February 2024, two men were found dead on a popular beach in Acapulco, and prosecutors said the men's bodies bore "signs of torture around the neck." That same month, three people were shot dead on beaches in Acapulco, one by gunmen who arrived -- and escaped -- aboard a boat. Acapulco is part of the state of Guerrero, one of the worst affected by drug trafficking in the country. It is among six states in Mexico that the U.S. State Department advises Americans to completely avoid, citing crime and violence.
Asharq Al-Awsat
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Syria Sets Deadline for ‘Small Groups' to Join Defense Ministry
Syria's defense minister has called on small armed groups that have yet to merge with the security apparatus to do so within 10 days or face unspecified measures, in a bid to consolidate state authority six months after Bashar al-Assad was toppled. A plethora of weapons outside government control has posed a challenge to interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa's efforts to establish control, as groups that both back him and oppose him remain armed. Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, in a statement late on Saturday, said "military units" had now been integrated into "a unified institutional framework", calling this a great achievement. "We stress the need for the remaining small military groups to join the ministry within a maximum period of 10 days from the date of this announcement, in order to complete the efforts of unification and organization," he said. He did not say which factions he was talking about. The statement did not seem aimed at the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a large Kurdish-led force in the northeast that signed an agreement with Sharaa earlier this year aimed at integration with state institutions. Damascus received a big diplomatic boost last week when US President Donald Trump met Sharaa and announced sanctions on Syria would be lifted. Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab has said the decision would support efforts "to consolidate security and stability and promote civil peace in Syria and the region". Armed opposition groups, like Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, fought Assad during the war agreed in December to dissolve into the Defense Ministry. Syria has faced several outbreaks of violence this year. In March, gunmen killed hundreds of members of the Alawite minority in revenge killings prompted by what the government described as deadly attacks by Assad-loyalists on its forces in the coastal region. The Syrian authorities conducted raids on Saturday targeting ISIS cells in Aleppo.
