Category: Politics

{A UK parliamentary report has severely criticised the intervention by Britain and France that led to the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.}

The foreign affairs committee accused the then PM David Cameron of lacking a coherent strategy for the air campaign.

It said the intervention had not been “informed by accurate intelligence”, and that it led to the rise of so-called Islamic State in North Africa.

The UK government said it had been an international decision to intervene.

The action had been called for by the Arab League and authorised by the UN Security Council, the Foreign Office added.

An international coalition led by Britain and France launched a campaign of air and missile strikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in March 2011 after the regime threatened to attack the rebel-held city of Benghazi.

But after Gaddafi was toppled, Libya descended into violence, with rival governments and the formation of hundreds of militias, while so-called Islamic State, also known as Isil, has gained a foothold.

Mr Cameron has defended his handling of the situation, telling MPs in January action was needed because Gaddafi “was bearing down on people in Benghazi and threatening to shoot his own people like rats”.

But the foreign affairs committee said the government “failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated”, adding that it “selectively took elements of Gaddafi’s rhetoric at face value”.

The government also failed to identify the “militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion”, the MPs said.

“The possibility that militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from the rebellion should not have been the preserve of hindsight,” the committee said, adding: “UK strategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.”

Crispin Blunt, chairman of the committee, told the BBC: “We were dragged along by a French enthusiasm to intervene, and the mission then moved from protecting people in Benghazi, who arguably were not at the kind of threat that was then being presented…

“Indeed, on the basis of the evidence we took, the threat to the people of Benghazi was grossly overstated.”

The committee said “political options” were available once Benghazi had been secured – including through ex-PM Tony Blair’s contacts with Gaddafi – but the UK government “focused exclusively on military intervention”.

By the summer of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change, the committee said.

“That policy was not underpinned by a strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya.

“The result was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil in North Africa.

“Through his decision-making in the National Security Council, former prime minister David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.”

The MPs said Libya had been the “first test ” for the NSC, which was set up in 2010 to coordinate responses to security threats and integrate the work of various relevant government departments.

The committee said there should now be an independent review of the operation of the NSC, which is chaired by the prime minister, to see if it had succeeded in addressing the weaknesses in government decision-making identified in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The Foreign Office defended the intervention.

“Muammar Gaddafi was unpredictable and he had the means and motivation to carry out his threats,” a spokesman said.

“His actions could not be ignored and required decisive and collective international action. Throughout the campaign we stayed within the United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

“After four decades of Gaddafi misrule, Libya undoubtedly faces huge challenges. The UK will continue to play a leading role within the international community to support the internationally recognised Libyan Government of National Accord.”

{Edgar Lungu inaugurated as president, after court bid by opposition leader fails to block swearing-in ceremony.}

Zambian President Edgar Lungu has been sworn into office after the country’s top court rejected a petition by the opposition to block his inauguration as “illegal and unconstitutional”.

Lungu, re-elected last month in a closely contested vote, called for national unity in his speech on Tuesday at the event held at a stadium in the capital, Lusaka, and attended by regional leaders.

“Now that the elections are over, we must say as a people that we stand as united as ever,” Lungu told tens of thousands of spectators, vowing to prioritise reviving the country’s stumbling economy.

“There is no time and latitude to settle scores. We have work to do,” he said. “It is our duty that as citizens of this country we are on this journey together and be peaceful.”

Al Jazeera’s Tania Page, reporting from Lusaka, said the National Heroes stadium was packed with people and police had to use tear gas outside the venue to control members of the crowd pushing each other to get inside.

“But overall the situation has been very calm and there’s a very happy and excited crowd here, along with half a dozen heads of state and government leaders from across the continent,” she said.

Lungu, 59, won the August 11 election by about 100,000 votes, but his opponent, Hakainde Hichilema, went to court alleging that the result was riddled with irregularities.

After the supreme court rejected his petition on Monday, Hichilema, a wealthy businessman who has run five times for president, accused Lungu, the election commission and judges of all being guilty of fraud.

“This inauguration is illegal and unconstitutional,” Hichilema said in a statement sent to the AFP news agency.

“There has been no [court] ruling that President Lungu has been validly elected. We are drifting to the law of the jungle. The truth is that our election was stolen.”

Hichilema stopped short of calling for street protests but urged Zambians to “fight for your rights.

“You can’t have free, fair and transparent elections in this country under this leadership,” he said.

Lungu first took office last year after beating Hichilema in a snap election. He has since faced a number of challenges, including falling prices for copper – the country’s key export – soaring unemployment and inflation rising to more than 20 percent.

{A report has revealed how South Sudanese politicians and their families have managed to accrue wealth as citizens continue dying due to persistent war and hunger.}

The report by The Sentry, a watchdog group co-founded by Hollywood actor George Clooney, on Monday said that large sums of money have moved through accounts in Kenyan banks held by major figures in South Sudan.

Also, President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar maintain family homes a short distance from one another in a wealthy Nairobi neighbourhood.

A compound occupied by members of President Kiir’s family sits inside a gated community in Lavington, “one of Nairobi’s most upscale neighbourhoods”, states the 65-page report titled War Crimes Shouldn’t Pay and released in Washington, DC.

The extensive property was found to include a two-storey, pale yellow villa that is more than 5,000 square feet in size.

Dr Machar, the leader of South Sudan’s armed opposition, also has family members living in a luxurious home in Lavington.

The property includes “a large backyard with a large stone patio and in-ground swimming pool”, The Sentry reveals.

It further indicates that the property “is located a short drive from the Kiir home”.

Machar’s family previously lived in an elegant villa with six bedrooms and five bathrooms in a gated community in Runda, located in Nairobi’s outskirts, the report adds.

Four of President Kiir’s grandchildren attend a private school in a Nairobi suburb that costs about Sh1 million ($10,000) a year, The Sentry adds citing a “knowledgeable” anonymous source.

“President Kiir officially earns about Sh6 million ($60,000) per year.”

Posts on social media show Kiir family members “riding jet skis, driving in luxury vehicles, partying on boats, clubbing and drinking in the Villa Rosa Kempinski — one of Nairobi’s fanciest and most expensive hotels — all during South Sudan’s current civil war”, it says.

The war has forced 1.6 million of South Sudan’s 12 million people to flee their homes for UN-protected compounds or refugee camps in neighbouring countries.

{{Massive theft }}

The UN estimates that 5.2 million South Sudanese are in urgent need of food and other forms of humanitarian assistance.

Gen Paul Malong Awan, chief of staff of South Sudan’s army, “has been the architect of immense human suffering” in the course of the conflict, The Sentry says.

It reports that his family owns a villa in an upscale community within Nyari Estate in Nairobi.

“The home includes marble floors throughout, a grand staircase, numerous balconies, a guest house, an expansive driveway and a large in-ground pool.”

When visited by investigators from The Sentry, the home’s driveway was occupied by five luxury cars including three new BMW sport utility vehicles.

“Three independent sources told The Sentry that Gen Malong owns the house, with one source saying that the Malong family paid $1.5 million in cash for the home several years ago,” the report adds.

It notes that Gen Malong is likely to have earned the rough equivalent of Sh4.5 million ($45,000) a year in official salary.

“Gen Malong also has two large and luxurious homes in Uganda,” the report continues.

“One of these homes sits inside a walled compound located just off Kawuku-Bwerenga Road, halfway between Kampala and Entebbe. Built in 2012, this two-story home is a massive, rose-coloured mansion with dozens of large, ornate windows and appears to be well over 7,000 square feet.

“The interior is spacious, elegant, and well-maintained, with several portraits of Gen Malong hanging throughout the home.”

Massive corruption lies at the core of South Sudan’s crisis, the report says.

It cites a leaked letter written by President Kiir stating that “an estimated $4 billion are unaccounted for or, simply put, stolen by former and current officials, as well as corrupt individuals with close ties to government officials”.

The Sentry observes that “none of these funds has been recovered — and the kleptocratic system that allowed the looting in the first place remains completely intact”.

Governments of Kenya and other countries should investigate whether “laws are being violated by banks that process suspicious transactions on behalf of South Sudanese political and military figures”, The Sentry urges.

It adds: “These banks should already be conducting enhanced due diligence” in regard to South Sudanese officials’ accounts in accordance with international financial monitoring recommendations.

QUESTIONS UNANSWERED

In the course of a two-year investigation, The Sentry reviewed documents which it says show Sh300 million ($3 million) moving through a personal account at Kenya Commercial Bank held by Gen Malek Reuben Riak, the South Sudan army’s deputy chief of staff for logistics, between 2012 and 2016.

He is in charge of military procurement, and earns an annual salary of about Sh3.2 million ($32,000), according to the report.

“The transactions recorded include more than $700,000 in cash deposits and large payments from several international construction companies operating in South Sudan,” the report says.

“Additionally, over this four-year period, $1.16 million in cash was withdrawn from the account.”

Gen Gabriel Jok Riak, an army field commander subject to United Nations financial sanctions, received transfers of at least Sh37 million ($367,000) to his personal account at Kenya Commercial Bank in 2014, the report says.

It notes that Gen Jok Riak is paid a government salary of about $35,000 a year.

A large share of the transfers to Gen Jok Riak came from Dalbit International, a Kenyan multinational petroleum corporation operating in South Sudan, the report says.

Dalbit told Sentry investigators that its transfer of Sh31 million ($308,524) was reimbursement for a fuel supply deal with the South Sudan army that had fallen through.

“This was neither a business transaction nor relationship between Dalbit and the General,” the company is quoted in the report as saying.

Some transactions for Gen Jok Riak “were apparently processed even after he became subject to a United Nations-imposed asset freeze in March 2015”, the report states.

“When presented with the information obtained by The Sentry, KCB did not reply to requests for comment”, the report adds.

“The hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from multinational oil and construction companies that apparently passed through the accounts of Gen Malek Reuben Riak and Gen Gabriel Jok Riak raise serious questions; whether they know it or not, companies that make payments to those responsible for looting and killing in South Sudan play an integral part in facilitating the violent kleptocracy,” The Sentry states.

“The banks that processed the transactions, meanwhile, also play a role. These banks, either wittingly or unwittingly, have facilitated the apparent ability of government officials to divert significant sums that could be used to benefit some of the poorest people in the world.”

The Sentry, sponsored by the Washington-based Enough Project and two other NGOs, suggests that South Sudan’s civil war is mainly a product of “competition for the grand prize — control over state assets and the country’s abundant natural resources — between rival kleptocratic networks led by President Kiir and Vice President Machar”.

The Sentry’s report adds: “The leaders of South Sudan’s warring parties manipulate and exploit ethnic divisions in order to drum up support for a conflict that serves the interests only of the top leaders of these two kleptocratic networks and, ultimately, the international facilitators whose services the networks utilize and on which they rely.”

{South African President Jacob Zuma has paid back $542,000 of public money spent refurbishing his private home, his office said Monday, in a controversy that has dominated his second term in office.}

The country’s highest court found earlier this year that Zuma had violated the constitution by defying an order to repay some of the funds used to renovate Nkandla, his traditional homestead.

It ordered him to pay back funds spent on non-security upgrades — including a chicken coop, swimming pool and amphitheatre — valued by the treasury at 7,814,155 million rand ($542,000).

“President Zuma has paid over the amount… to the South African Reserve Bank as ordered by the Constitutional Court of South Africa,” the presidency said in a statement.

It added that the president raised the money through a home loan.

The treasury confirmed separately that the payment had been received.

The Nkandla scandal has dogged Zuma’s presidency, becoming a symbol of alleged corruption and greed within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party and triggering several unsuccessful impeachment bids by the opposition.

A 2014 report by the public ombudswoman, Thuli Madonsela, found that Zuma and his family had “unduly benefited” from the upgrade work — valued in 2014 at 216 million rand (then $24 million) — and ordered him to pay back some of the money.

The president reacted by ordering two government investigations that cleared his name, including a report by the police minister which concluded that the swimming pool was a fire-fighting precaution.

In March, the Constitutional Court ruled Zuma had “failed to uphold, defend and respect the constitution as the supreme law of the land”.

The ANC suffered historic losses in South Africa’s local elections last month, garnering less than 54 percent of ballots cast — an eight-point drop from the last local poll in 2011 and its worst showing since the fall of white-minority rule in 1994.