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Before June 2017, when Qatar’s neighbors severed diplomatic and trade ties, the oil-rich Arab gulf state imported nearly all its food through the Saudi border crossing at Salwa, and by ship from Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port.

Doha food distributor Ahmed Al-Khalaf remembers the first stressful days after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain imposed a blockade.

“It was a big surprise for Qatar to wake up and find that the border was closed,” said Al-Khalaf, the CEO of International Projects Development Company, a food importer and investor in local greenhouses.

Egypt, which has the biggest army in the Arab world and 20,000 nationals working in Qatar, quickly joined the embargo, accelerating a sense of shock and vulnerability.

“We had more than a thousand trucks waiting to come inside waiting at the Salwa Border gate and five thousand containers in Jebel Ali, most of them containing foodstuffs,” Al-Khalaf said.

Qatar continues to refuse the blockading states’ demands that it shut down broadcaster al-Jazeera, reduce diplomatic and economic ties with Iran, and send back the nearly 3,000 Turkish troops stationed in the emirate.

But even without an embargo, Qatar’s harsh climate, sandy soil, and water scarcity challenge its food security, especially when it comes to growing greens and vegetables or producing milk.

“This all happened during Ramadan when everybody is consuming three times more than normal. I had to fly from Qatar to Iran and other countries to buy food, and we paid twice, sometimes three times the usual price to bring it here by airplane and ships,” Al-Khalaf recalls.

Those difficulties are tackled at Al-Khalaf’s farm in Al Khor, where hydroponic greenhouses are yielding cherry tomatoes, chard, mushrooms, and eggplants.

“Today Qatar is covering almost 30 percent of the demand for vegetables,” said agronomist Fahd Bin Salah. “The irrigation is computerized; this is an organic farm where we don’t use chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Our aquaponic system uses fish waste to feed the plants, and we use beneficial insects that feed off harmful pests.”

With desalination plants, Qatar can supply enough drinking water for its population. Still, when it came to milk, it relied for 80 percent of it on product trucked in from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia’s Almarai Dairy is double the size of the largest dairy farm in the U.S. It produces more than 58 million gallons of milk yearly. It also receives financial support from the government in Riyadh.

“Before 2017, it wouldn’t have been worth the marketing costs to compete with Saudi brands,” said Mouatz Al Khayyat, Chairman of Power Holding International, which founded the Baladna dairy with the inception of the blockade.

The company has over 40,000 employees on its payroll, mostly in the construction business.

Before the blockade, Power Holding was best known locally as the builder of the Khalifa International Stadium, one of the main venues for the 2022 FIFA’s World Cup.

“When the embargo came, we worked with our government to bring in 4,000 American cows by air and another 16,000 by boat,” Al Khayyat said. “Our dairy began producing milk 35 days after the blockade started, and today, we have one of the biggest state-of-the-art farms in the Middle East.”

Keeping the cows fresh and fed is expensive.

Between March and October, the average high temperature in Doha hovers around 37 degrees C. Industrial fans cool Al Hayyat’s herd with a constant breeze and a massive network of mist-producing water pipes.

Even though Qatar dedicates 54% of its cropland to producing animal fodder, there is still not enough hay for the country’s growing herds of cattle, goats, and sheep.

“We are spending up to $100 million a year to import feed from the U.S.,” added Al Hayyat.

It’s a reciprocal relationship.

The U.S. airbase at Al Udeid is now relying on Baladna for its dairy requirements instead of trucking it in from Saudi or flying it from Germany.

The embargo and the resulting self-sufficiency drive have not only expanded Qatar’s agricultural landscape. It’s also reconfiguring the country’s financial markets.

Qatar’s government-run sovereign wealth fund is valued at around $320 billion. But it’s vested almost entirely in holdings outside the country. A growing stock exchange is listing more companies that produce for the local market.

“We are encouraging family-owned companies to come to the stock exchange,” said QSE CEO Rashid Bin Ali Al Mansoori. “These companies are mainly in the non-oil sector, such as health care, construction, and consumer products.”

In November, the Al Khayyat family put up 75 percent of their dairy company on the Qatar stock exchange.

“Listing our shares will help make Baladna more sustainable, to prepare it for the future after the blockade ends,” said Al Khayyat.

The November IPO for Baladna was oversubscribed, a positive sign for the Qatar stock exchange looking to attract international investors.

But Qatari consumers are simply relieved by their nation’s newfound food self-sufficiency.

“It’s better to feel independent and have your own products in your country,” said 41-year-old homemaker Aman Qadodora. “You feel safer.

 

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The Arab League called Tuesday for efforts to “prevent foreign interference” in Libya in the wake of military and maritime agreements signed by Turkey with the U.N.-recognized government in Tripoli.

Permanent representatives of the pan-Arab organization, in a meeting at its Cairo headquarters requested by Egypt, passed a resolution “stressing the necessity to prevent interference that could contribute to facilitating the arrival of foreign extremists in Libya.”

They also expressed “serious concern over the military escalation further aggravating the situation in Libya and which threatens the security and stability of neighboring countries and the entire region.”

On Monday, the U.N.’s Libya envoy, Ghassan Salame, said the deals signed by Turkey and the Tripoli government represented an “escalation” of the conflict wracking the North African country.

Libya has been mired in conflict since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with rival administrations in the east and the west vying for power.

In November, Ankara signed a security and military cooperation deal and also inked a maritime jurisdiction agreement with the Government of National Accord (GNA) based in the capital.

In addition, Turkey is preparing to hold a vote in parliament on deploying troops in support of the GNA which is battling forces of eastern military strongman Khalifa Haftar, who is backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

Egypt, in a letter sent to the United Nations last week, said it considers the Ankara-Tripoli agreements “void and without legal effect,” adding that foreign military involvement in Libya amounted to a violation of a U.N. arms embargo in force since the uprising.

 

 

 

 

 

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Thousands of Taliban prisoners jailed in Afghanistan as insurgents see a peace deal being hammered out between the United States and the Taliban as their ticket to freedom.

They know a prisoner release is a key pillar of any agreement that brings an end to Afghanistan’s 18-year war, Washington’s longest military engagement.

A list of about 5,000 Taliban prisoners has been given to the Americans and their release has been written into the agreement under discussion, said a Taliban official familiar with the on-again, off-again talks taking place in Qatar. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. U.S. and Afghan government officials have said a prisoner release is part of the negotiation.

But some analysts say freeing prisoners could undermine peace in Afghanistan.

“There’s a need for Afghan and U.S. officials to do their due diligence on any Taliban prisoners they’re planning to release, in order to minimize the likelihood that they’ll set free jihadists that can do destabilizing things and undercut a fledgling peace process,” warned Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson Center.

The Associated Press interviewed more than a dozen Taliban prisoners inside the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison on the eastern edge of the capital, Kabul. Several of them were nostalgic for the Taliban’s Afghanistan, ruled by the mighty hand of their previous leader, the reclusive Mullah Mohammed Omar, who died several years ago.

But they also insisted that they accept it would not be the same now and that, though they still wanted what they call Islamic rule, they no longer call for some of their strict edicts, like the ban on education and on girls and women working.

“We want women to be educated, become engineers, we want women to work in every department,” said one prisoner, Maulvi Niaz Mohammed, though he said the work must be “based on Islam.” He said young Afghans should not fear the Taliban, “it is they who will build our country and develop it.”

Taliban negotiators have taken a similar tone in the talks. But there is a deep distrust on both sides of the conflict and many in the public worry what will happen if the Taliban, who ruled for five years until they were toppled in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, regain authority.

On Sunday, the Taliban ruling council agreed to a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan, providing a window in which a peace agreement with the U.S. can be signed, Taliban officials said. They didn’t say when it would begin.

The Taliban have well-organized communication networks inside Afghan prisons that record the latest arrests, province by province, as well as who is sick and who has died. It all gets delivered to a prisoners’ commission, devoted to their release and headed by Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who during the Taliban rule served as justice minister and the “virtue and vice” minister in charge of religious police.

During that time, he was widely feared. Turabi was known to personally enforce the movement’s dictates, snatching music tapes from taxi drivers disobeying a ban on music and television, and stalking offices and businesses to search for violators who trimmed their beard or missed one of the five daily calls to prayer.

Once in 1996, just days after the Taliban took control of Kabul from warring mujahedeen groups, when the AP was interviewing a Taliban fighter, Turabi slapped the hulking, 6-foot-tall fighter in the face for talking with a foreign woman journalist.

Built in the 1970s to house 5,000 prisoners, Pul-e-Charkhi now has 10,500 prisoners, according to the warden, Akhtar Noorzoi. They are packed in 11 cell blocks surrounded by turrets, guard towers and walls topped with razor wire.

The around 3,000 prisoners classified as Taliban are in their own block. The caution, even fear, felt by the guards and the administrators was unmistakable as they entered the Taliban’s cell block, protected by a phalanx of guards in armored vests and helmets, carrying bulky weapons that fire tear gas shells. Behind them on the dimly lit stairs were another half dozen guards, also in vests and helmets, automatic weapons at the ready.

The prisoners had free rein in a room where they could mingle, pray and study.

The room was lined with small desks at which the Taliban sat on the carpeted floor in traditional style.

The AP interviewed the prisoners in a nearby room, unshackled and with no guards or administrators present. The prisoners decided among themselves who among them would be interviewed, without interference — at least none visible — from the administration.

 Still, they spoke in whispers as they complained of maltreatment by guards, some of whom they said wanted revenge for personal losses blamed on Taliban attacks, while others fear a Taliban return.

Maulvi Niaz Mohammad emerged as the leader among the prisoners, although no one identified him as such. He was convicted to 15 years. During the Taliban rule, he served with Qari Ahmadullah, a Taliban intelligence commander who controlled much of northern Afghanistan.

 He said barely 1,000 of the prisoners in the block are actually Taliban. The rest were accused of being sympathizers or members of the group, often to settle old scores; others were criminals.

 One, Noorullah, 34, was sentenced to 20 years for killing his wife. He said that in prison he’d found comfort with the Taliban and sees their rule as preferable to the current government — though under the Taliban, he likely would have been sentenced to public execution at the hands of a relative of his wife.

He said that sentence would have been better, since now his family fears revenge attacks by his wife’s relatives. 

“Why is it better now? I have to pay the judge, pay to the police, just so my family is not bothered.”

One Taliban prisoner who gave his name only as Maulvi Sahab, saying he feared reprisals, said Taliban prisoners were beaten and taunted by guards. Dozens of prisoners were still in prison even after their sentences have been completed, sometimes for one week, one for a year, he said.

Medicine and medical treatment are often slow in arriving when they are for Taliban prisoners, he said. Every concession the Taliban have won has come through protests — refusing to return to cells or comply with orders until eventually some of their demands are met, including the use of mobile phones, which he and several others had in their hands as they spoke.

The prison warden, Noorzoi, rejected the Taliban litany of complaints. He said they promptly receive medical treatment, have access to literacy classes, religious schools and even a gymnasium and are served meat at least three times a week. He said a hospital is under construction.

Treatment, he insisted, was “better than some of them would get in their villages.”

Pul-e-Charkhi prison is Afghanistan’s most notorious, with a disturbing history of violence, mass executions and torture. Mass graves have been uncovered dating back to the purges carried out by Kabul’s Soviet Union-backed governments of the late 1970s and 1980s. Torture cells and underground holding areas have been unearthed.

Prison authorities said today the prison is monitored by an Interior Ministry human rights commission and the International Committee of the Red Cross makes regular visits.

“Torture, mistreatment that’s all a thing of the past” said Najeeb Nangyal, the Interior Ministry’s director of media and public affairs.

Still, violent outbreaks are not uncommon.

In November, a riot broke out after authorities tried to confiscate cell phones and narcotics. When it ended, 16 prisoners were dead, many of them Taliban. The Taliban said they were targeted.

Analysts and even the United States’ own Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko said neither Afghanistan nor the U.S. is ready for the Taliban prisoners’ release.

Every past attempt at re-integration has been costly and a failure.

A report released in September — one of several “Lessons Learned” treatises done by Sopko’s team during America’s 18-year and $1 trillion involvement in Afghanistan — said Afghans on both sides of the conflict need to avoid the missteps of the past.

Sopko said Congress should consider funding reintegration only if a peace deal provides a framework for reintegrating ex-combatants, there is strong monitoring of the process and violence is dramatically reduced.

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Erik Prince, a major Republican donor and founder of controversial security firm Blackwater, has been referred to the U.S. Treasury Department for possible sanctions violations tied to his recent trip to Venezuela for a meeting with a top aide of President Nicolas Maduro, two senior U.S. officials said.

There’s no indication that Prince, whose sister is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, will be sanctioned for the meeting last month in Caracas with Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.

But the fact the visit was flagged underscores the concern of officials in the Trump administration over what appeared to be an unauthorized diplomatic outreach to Maduro. This, as support for opposition leader Juan Guaido inside Venezuela — if not Washington — appears to be waning.

The U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

 Little has been revealed about Prince’s surprise trip to Caracas last month. But the mere presence in Venezuela of a businessman with longstanding ties to the U.S. national security establishment prompted questions about whether he was there to open a secret back channel to Maduro on behalf of the Trump administration, something the State Department has strenuously denied.

 It also marks something of a reversal for Prince, who earlier in 2019 was thought to have been pitching a plan to form a mercenary army to topple Maduro.

A person familiar with Prince’s visit said he had been asked to travel to Venezuela by an unidentified European businessman with longstanding ties to the oil-rich nation. The person said Prince did not discuss any business nor receive anything of value during his trip — actions that would’ve violated U.S. financial sanctions on Maduro’s socialist government.

The purpose of the trip was to meet key players in the crisis-wracked nation, not to serve as an emissary for the Trump administration, according to the person, who isn’t authorized to discuss the visit and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The person said Prince, a former Navy SEAL, continues to support the Trump administration’s goal of removing Maduro but believes State Department efforts to reach that goal have failed and new alternatives — which the person did not specify — need to be tried.

Before traveling, Prince notified the National Security Council and Treasury Department about his plans and received no objections, the person said.

In a statement, Prince’s attorney didn’t provide any details about the trip or whom his client may have alerted in the U.S. government.

“Before traveling to Venezuela as a private citizen, Erik Prince received clear legal guidance, which he scrupulously followed,” Matthew Schwartz said in the statement. “There is nothing unlawful about simply visiting Venezuela and participating in non-business discussions, which is all that Mr. Prince did. We would be better served by focusing on measures that might actually restore peace and prosperity to Venezuela rather than worrying about who paid a visit to whom.”

Neither the National Security Council nor the Treasury Department responded to a request for comment.

Rodriguez is a key aide to Maduro and also one of more than 100 Venezuelan government insiders who have been slapped with sanctions by the U.S. In addition, the Trump administration this year has imposed sweeping sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry and a ban on U.S. companies and individuals from doing business with the Maduro administration.

While in Caracas, Prince also met members of the opposition, although the person familiar with his trip declined to say whom.

An aide to Juan Guaido said no such meeting with anyone in the opposition took place. But the aide was unable to provide the same assurances for a small faction of minority parties that recently split from Guaido and initiated negotiations with Maduro that the U.S. considers a time-wasting sideshow.

A year after the U.S. recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president, arguing that Maduro’s re-election was fraudulent, the 36-year-old lawmaker is under increasing pressure from friends and foes alike to articulate a fresh vision for unseating the socialist leader, who has grown more confident as the economy stabilizes under a flood of black-market U.S. dollars.

Another person familiar with the visit said Prince, in his late November dinner at Rodriguez’s home, urged the release of six executives of Houston-based Citgo held for more than two years on what are widely seen as trumped-up corruption charges. Two weeks later, the six men — five of them dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizens — were granted house arrest. The person also spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivities surrounding the trip.

Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy to Venezuela, said Dec. 20 that Prince was not a messenger for the U.S. government, nor was the U.S. engaging in any secret talks with Maduro.

“I have yet to find an American official who says he or she was briefed by Mr. Prince, and I have asked,” Abrams told a press briefing. “So, I don’t know if he briefed an American official, and if so, who it was.”

Prince has been accused of acting as a back channel on behalf of Trump before. In 2017, he met with an official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles, islands off the coast of east Africa. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his Russia investigation said the meeting was set up ahead of time with the knowledge of former White House aide Stephen Bannon.

Prince soared to notoriety after Blackwater employees in 2007 shot and killed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square during the Iraq war. After the scandal the company’s name was changed and Prince sold his shares to a private equity fund. Today he heads a private equity fund focused on investments in emerging markets.

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The Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City is celebrating its second baby giraffe of the year, already as tall as a full-grown human.

The female giraffe was unveiled last week after a mandatory quarantine period following her Oct. 23 birth. She will be named via a public vote to generate empathy with the little cow, zoo director Juan Carlos Sanchez Olmos said Sunday.

The 96-year-old zoo on the grounds of the capital’s central park has a knack for breeding creatures in captivity: This year it welcomed 170 baby animals, including six Mexican gray wolves, which are in danger of extinction.

“A new birth of a character as unique, as charismatic as a giraffe becomes emblematic – a flag for conservation, for the prestige of the zoo,” said Sanchez Olmos while four grown giraffes happily munched branches and leaves behind him.

Giraffes are considered “vulnerable” because the species faces significant habitat loss in the 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where they reside.

Unlike the wolves, which will be released into the Sierra de San Pedro Martir National Park in Baja California, the giraffes are expected to spend their lives under observation in a dusty patch of the Chapultepec Zoo.

A team of professionals – including nutritionists, veterinarians and biologists like Sanchez Olmos_ takes care of more than 1,000 animals in the zoo, which sits under the flight path of jetliners that roar overhead.

As Sanchez Olmos detailed the zoo’s mission to not just educate and amuse, but also conserve species, caretaker Alejandro Gonzalez offered long branches from a pomegranate tree to four hungry giraffes. The tallest of the pack eagerly yanked the branches from Gonzalez’s hands.

“What did I tell you?” the caretaker said, looking the tall giraffe square in the eyes. “Take it easy, please.”

If Gonzalez had his way, the new addition to the herd of giraffes would be called Sarita. At least, that’s what he calls her.

The long-necked creatures are a favorite fixture at the zoo. The public voted in April to name the first baby giraffe of the year Jirafifita, which translates as Uppity Little Giraffe – a play on the president’s favorite word for dismissing critics.

“Fifi” is slang for uppity or posh. Populist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador frequently uses the word to describe opposition politicians and others who question his decisions.

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A Turkish military plane arrived in Mogadishu on Sunday to evacuate those gravely wounded in a devastating bombing that killed 79 people and overwhelmed local health services, in the latest attack on a city dogged by insecurity.

The aircraft also brought doctors to help treat the some 125 people injured in Saturday’s blast, which happened when a vehicle packed with explosives detonated at a busy security checkpoint.

No group has claimed the bloody attack, however Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo has blamed Islamist group Al-Shabaab which regularly carries out car bombings and other attacks on the capital, in their decade-long bid to topple the internationally-backed government.

Saturday’s bombing was the deadliest since truck exploded in 2017 near a fuel tanker, creating a fireball that killed over 500 people.

Farmaajo pinned the attack on the “terrorist organization Al-Shabaab” in a televised message and slammed it as an attempt to “intimidate and terrorist the Somali public and to massacre them at every opportunity available”.

At least 16 of those killed were students from the capital’s private Banadir University, who had been traveling on a bus when the car bomb detonated at a busy intersection southwest of the Somali capital.

The director of the private Aamin Ambulance service, Abdukadir Abdirahman Haji, told AFP around 125 people were injured, a number which has overwhelmed health services in the capital.

Somali police chief Abdi Hassan Mohamed said Saturday that 79 had died, but the toll could increase.

“There are still rescue operations going on to assist those who have been massacred by the terrorists while going about their business,” Somalia’s Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Heyr told journalists.

“We have received this morning doctors and medicine sent by the Turkish government and we are working to separate people seriously wounded from others in order to send them outside the country and the rest will be treated by the doctors,” he added.

The minister said about 24 doctors specializing in trauma had arrived from Turkey — a key ally of Somalia — while Qatar was sending a similar aircraft on Monday to assist.

“At 5:30am this morning the first flight to evacuate the wounded from yesterday’s… bombing arrived from Turkey. Along with it came Turkish medical doctors and emergency medical supplies,” Somalia’s deputy police chief Zakia Hussein said in a tweet.

She said the plane would evacuate about 15 people who had been seriously wounded in the blast.

‘Life-threatening injuries’

Dozens of ambulances were carrying wounded people from various hospitals in the city to the Turkish-run Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital from where they would be taken to the airport.

Abdukadir Moalim, a Mogadishu resident, said his family was feeling desperate because his cousin had sustained serious head wounds in the blast.

“The problem with the blast is that even if you escape death, you can sustain life-threatening injuries like my cousin, who has injuries in the head and medical doctors here could not treat him inside the country,” he said.

“Thank God, he will be taken to Turkey now and we are expecting that with time he gets well.”

Two Turkish citizens were killed in the blast and according to medical sources, another two who were wounded will be among those airlifted home.

Since 2015, there have been 13 attacks in Somalia with death tolls above 20. Eleven of these have been in Mogadishu, according to a tally of AFP figures. All of them involved car bombs.

 

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The French government and a key trade union on Sunday exchanged bitter accusations over who was to blame for France’s over three-week transport strike against pension reforms, as the stalemate showed little sign of relenting.

Deputy Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari accused the hardline CGT union of a “systematic opposition to any reform” while the union’s chief Philippe Martinez charged the government with strewing “chaos” in the conflict.

The strike — now longer than the notorious 22-day strike of winter 1995 — has now lasted 25 days and is on course to surpass the longest transport strike in France which lasted for 28 days in 1986 and early 1987.

Aside from two driverless lines, the Paris metro was again almost completely shut down on Sunday while only a fraction of high-speed TGV trains were running.

The government and unions are only due to hold their next talks on January 7, two days ahead of a new day of mass demonstrations against the reform which is championed by President Emmanuel Macron.

In an interview with the Journal de Dimanche newspaper, Djebbari angrily accused the CGT of “attitudes of intimidation, harassment and even aggression” against railway workers who had opted not to down tools.

He accused the CGT of showing a “systematic opposition to any reform, of blocking and sometimes intimidation”.

“The CGT wants to make its mark through media stunts. But the French are not going to be duped by the extreme-left politicisation of this movement,” he added.

‘Like Thatcher’

But in an interview with the same newspaper, Martinez accused the government of trying to ensure the conflict deteriorated further.

“Emmanuel Macron presents himself as a man of a new world but he is imitating Margaret Thatcher,” he said, referring to the late British prime minister who sought to break the power of the unions in 1980s standoffs.

“There is real anger. Of course, not being paid for 24 days is tough. But the conflict is the result of two-and-a-half years of suffering,” Martinez added.

He said he was awaiting concessions from Macron in a New Year’s address Tuesday evening as well as recognition that “most people are not happy and that he [the president] was wrong”.

The French president, elected in 2017 on pledges to reform France, has remained virtually silent on the standoff, save for a call for a Christmas truce that went unheeded and a vow not to take a presidential pension.

This will intensify attention on December 31 address, with all eyes on whether Macron offers steps to defuse the conflict or indicates he is ready for a long, grinding standoff.

The unions are demanding that the government drops a plan to merge 42 existing pension schemes into a single, points-based system.

The overhaul would see workers in certain sectors — including the railways — lose early retirement benefits. The government says the pension overhaul is needed to create a fairer system.

But workers object to the inclusion of a so-called pivot age of 64 until which people would have to work to earn a full pension — two years beyond the official retirement age.

 

 

 

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