US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian forces were locked in fierce fighting on Sunday in their final push to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in the last pocket it holds in eastern Syria.

The group overran large parts of the country and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, but various military offensives have since reduced that territory to a patch on the Iraqi border.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by a US-led coalition, announced a final push to retake the pocket in the village of Baghouz late on Saturday.

The announcement came after a pause of more than a week to allow some 20,000 civilians to flee, according to SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali.

An SDF field commander said fighting was ongoing on Sunday morning.

“There are heavy clashes at the moment. We have launched an assault and the fighters are advancing,” he told AFP news agency.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, said coalition planes and artillery bombarded ISIL positions.

“The battle is ongoing. There were heavy clashes this morning, with landmines going off,” said SOHR head Rami Abdel Rahman.

Backed by air raids by the US-led coalition against ISIL, the Kurdish-Arab alliance has in recent months cornered the remaining ISIL fighters in a final patch of territory in the eastern province of Deir Az Zor.

The Kurdish-led alliance has since whittled down ISIL-held territory to a scrap of just four-square-kilometres on the eastern banks of the Euphrates.

Up to 600 fighters could still remain inside, most of them foreigners, according to Bali.

US withdrawl 

On Saturday, Bali said he expected the battle for the last patch of territory held by ISIL to be over in days.

The group, however, retains a presence in Syria’s vast Badia desert, and has claimed a series of deadly attacks by sleeper cells in SDF-held areas.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump predicted ISIL will have lost all the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria by next week.

In December, Trump announced the withdrawal of 2,000 US troops from Syria in a surprise move, saying ISIL had been defeated.

Syria’s Kurds have largely stayed out of the country’s civil war, instead building semi-autonomous institutions in northern and northeastern regions they control.

While the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have been a key US ally in the fight against ISIL, Turkey views them as “terrorists”.

SDF-held areas make up a third of the whole country, and Damascus has repeatedly said it would eventually see them revert to government control.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – African Union leaders are meeting in Addis Ababa for their annual summit.

The pan-African body, comprising 55 member states, was founded in 2001 and launched a year later to much funfair and lofty ambitions.

The continental body replaced the Organisation of African Unity, established in 1963 to end colonialism in Africa.

AU leaders promised African solutions to African problems.

But has the organisation been successful?

Democracy

At the time of launching, one of its objectives was to “promote democratic principles and institutions”, a tall order then and today.

In December 2018, when election results were disputed in DR Congo, the AU was caught flat-footed.

Felix Tshisekedi was named winner. The AU said there was serious doubts about the outcome of the vote and called on Kinshasa to suspend the final results. The call was flatly rejected.

In 2015, Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza went against his country’s constitution to run for a third term in office in a vote boycotted by the opposition.

Deadly violence followed. AU said it will send in 5,000 peacekeepers but Bujumbura said he will consider the move an invasion.

The bloc backed down and said it will send observers instead.

AU’s current chairperson is Rwanda’s Paul Kagame who has been in power since 2000.

Following a referendum in 2015, Kagame can rule landlocked Rwanda until 2034. Uganda and Congo have also removed term limits for their long-serving leaders.

Africa boasts six of the world’s top-10 longest serving non-monarch leaders.

At the AU summit in Addis Ababa, Kagame is expected to be succeeded by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who overthrew Egypt’s democratically elected government in 2013.

Corruption

Africa loses more than $140bn to corruption annually. That figure is equivalent to a quarter of the continent’s average GDP, according to the AU.

Transparency International’s 2018 corruption perception index revealed six of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world are in Africa.

But the AU has vowed to crackdown on graft. The bloc’s 2018 summit theme was fighting corruption.

“Every year, the African continent loses close to $150bn to corruption,” Moussa Faki, AU commission chief, said during last year’s summit.

“This is unacceptable and must be addressed with immediate effect. Otherwise, the vision of achieving an Africa that is self-sustaining and prosperous will remain nothing but a dream.” 

Security

Conflict still affects many countries on the continent, from Mali in the west to Somalia in the east and South Sudan and DR Congo in the centre.

AU agreed to form African Standby Force (ASF) shortly after it was formed. 

The force was created in order to be deployed in times of crises and to avoid reliance on the outside world when it came to maintaining peace in Africa. 

In 2007, the AU sent troops to Somalia to back the government in Mogadishu fighting an al-Qaeda-linked rebel group.

The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) pushed the armed group al-Shabab not just from the capital Mogadishu but from most parts of Somalia.

But AMISOM’s successes will not have been possible without the financial backing of the European Union and the United States. In 2015, the AU said it will fund 25 percent of its peace and security operations.

The AU also sent peacekeepers to Sudan’s southwest Darfur region in 2004 following conflict between the government in Khartoum and rebel groups.

But after failing to contain the violence and facing financial difficulties, the operation was merged with a UN mission in 2007. 

Last week, the AU sponsored talks that led to a peace deal between the Central African Republic government and 14 rebel groups.

The AU also averted political crisis in Madagascar and Comoros last year.

Reforms

One of the biggest challenges that continues to face the AU is lack of money to finance its big ambitions and pledges.

Currently, 72 percent of the AU’s budget is funded by external partners.

“Promoting peace and security is one of the core functions of our union. However, up to this point, we have lacked a credible mechanism to fund our priority operations in this domain. We depended too extensively on external resources,” President Kagame said last year.

Free trade

An area that the bloc has seen relative success is the planned creation of a Continental Free Trade Area. Since last year, 19 countries have signed up to the agreement and turned it into a domestic law.

South Africa, the continent’s second largest economy is also onboard. Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, is yet to sign up to the agreement.

But the agreement needs signatures of at least 22 countries to take effect. 

Me too

Sexual harassment is a major issue for women working at the AU, according to an internal investigation which found that interns, youth volunteers and short-term staffers were “exploited for sex in exchange for jobs”.

The investigation was launched in May 2018 after more than three dozen female staff complained anonymously about pervasive sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

In a statement following the investigation, the AU said that Moussa Faki, AU commission chair, will take “immediate action on urgent issues” such as acting appointments and will appoint a committee to look into 44 cases that the inquiry considered.

But increasing number of experts and charity groups have called on the bloc to publicly release the report’s full findings.

“The report should not be an internal one. It should be made public because the AU is a public institution,” Apollos Nwofor, Pan Africa director for Oxfam International, told Al Jazeera.

“It is important that the report does a thorough job in calling out those responsible. They should be purged from the system. This is not about just coming to the office, it’s about people’s lives.”

The AU leaders meeting in Addis Ababa will be in agreement that they have a long way to go before they achieve the tall ambition they set themselves more than 15 years ago.

British MPs have called for the Transport Secretary Chris Grayling to resign or be sacked after a controversial contract awarded to a ferry firm with no ships was cancelled.

Grayling had awarded Seaborne Freight with a contract of £13.8m ($18m) to run ferries between Ramsgate and Ostend in the event that the United Kingdom leaves the European Union without a Brexit divorce deal next month.

But the UK Department for Transport said it ended the contract because an Irish firm that was backing Seaborne Freight, Arklow Shipping, had withdrawn its support.

MPs from the opposition Labour Party called on Prime Minsiter Theresa May to sack the transport secretary, including Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald, who described the news as “humiliating” and “damaging to our country’s reputation”.

David Hanson MP described the collapse of the deal as a “complete shambles”.

Only Chris Grayling could award a £14 million contract to a shipping company with no money, no ships, no track record, no employees, no ports, no working website, no sailing schedule and only one telephone line. pic.twitter.com/W3fC2zXwHF

— Andy McDonald MP (@AndyMcDonaldMP) 8 gennaio 2019

Seaborne had been contracted to provide services between Ramsgate in southeast England and the Belgian port of Ostend to ease pressure on the busiest cross-Channel route between Dover, England, and Calais, France.

Criticism of the deal increased when it was discovered that part of Seaborne’s website appeared to have been copied from a food delivery firm.

The transport secretary also faced calls to step down from within the Conservative party.

Anna Soubry, a former minister, told the UK’s Observer newspaper that Grayling “should be quietly considering his position.”

The UK is due to leave the EU on March 29 but British legislators have not agreed on a divorce deal outlining departure rules and future trade terms.

British businesses worry that leaving the bloc without a deal would cause gridlock at British ports by ripping up the trade rulebook and imposing tariffs, customs checks and other barriers between the UK and its biggest trading partner.

Despite the criticism, Downing Street said late Saturday Theresa May had expressed her full confidence in Grayling, while pro-Brexit MPs defended the minister.

“The department was right to award this and right to take action now. The important thing is that both Calais and the department are working extremely hard to keep trade moving,” said former Brexit secretary David Davis, as reported by the Observer.

South Korea has signed a new deal with the United States on how much Seoul should pay for the US military presence on its soil after a previous deal lapsed amid President Donald Trump’s call for Seoul to pay more.

The new deal, signed on Sunday, awaiting parliament approval in Seoul, would boost South Korea’s contribution from 960 billion ($850m) won in 2018 to 1.03 trillion won ($890m).

Unlike past agreements, which lasted for five years, this one is scheduled to expire in a year, potentially forcing both sides back to the bargaining table within months.

“It has been a very long process, but ultimately a very successful process,” South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told reporters before another official from the foreign ministry initialled the agreement.

While acknowledging lingering domestic criticism of the new deal and the need for parliamentary approval, Kang said the response had “been positive so far”. 

Timothy Betts, US State Department senior adviser for security negotiations and agreements, met Kang before signing the agreement and told reporters the money represented a small but important part of South Korea’s support for the alliance.

“The United States government realises that South Korea does a lot for our alliance and for peace and stability in this region,” said Betts.

Sharing the bill

About 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea, where the US has maintained a military presence since the 1950-53 Korean War.

The allies struggled to reach a breakthrough despite 10 rounds of talks since March, amid Trump’s repeated calls for a sharp increase in South Korea’s contribution.

South Korean officials have said they had sought to limit its burden to 1 trillion won ($889.7m) and make the accord valid for at least three years.

Last month, a senior South Korean ruling party legislator said negotiations were deadlocked after the US made a “sudden, unacceptable” demand that Seoul pay more than 1.4 trillion won ($1.2bn) per year.

But both sides worked to hammer out a deal to minimise the impact of the lapse on South Korean workers on US military bases, and focus on nuclear talks ahead of a second US-North Korea summit, Seoul officials said.

In his annual State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump said he would meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on February 27-28 in Vietnam, following their unprecedented meeting in June 2018 in Singapore.

After last year’s summit, Trump announced a halt to joint military exercises with South Korea, saying they were expensive and paid for mostly by the US.

Major joint exercises have been suspended, but some small-scale drills have continued, earning rebukes from North Korea’s state media in recent months.

Seoul contributes around 70 percent to cover the salaries of some 8,700 South Korean employees who provide administrative, technical and other services for the US military.

Late last year, the US military warned Korean workers on its bases they might be put on leave from mid-April if no deal was agreed.

“It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping the inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alternation between excitement and disappointment, doubt and revelation, to such an extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. It was an intricate stew of truths and mirages that convulsed the ghost of Jose Arcadio Buendia with impatience and made him wander all through the house even in broad daylight.” – One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Marquez

Were the ghost of Gabriel Garcia Marquez to come back for a one-off special appearance, he would have plenty to work with.

Imagine a bloated autocrat with a penchant for bathing in oranges, floating in the air; the inhabitants of a small country surrounded by water and drowning in amnesia; an army captain from an Amazonian country who rises to power after sending a swarm of WhatsApp messages to gain followers.

We live in strange times when it comes to truth and fiction, so The Listening Post’s Marcela Pizarro thought a closer look at a writer who straddled both would be interesting.

In the 1960s, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ novels elevated the literary genre of magical realism and turned it into a Latin American export.

His novels wove history together with myth, reality with fantasy – mixed literary modernism with the oral traditions of his native Colombia and produced stories of social realities, political upheaval, the search for Latin American identity, landing him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.

Garcia Marquez is mostly known for his literature, but he always considered himself a journalist.

The son of the telegraph operator of his home town, Aracataca, Garcia Marquez was just 12 years of age he launched his first newspaper: “El Comprimido” – a reference to those small pieces of paper crammed full of condensed facts that students use to cheat in exams.

The newspaper lasted just six days; his journalistic career spanned decades. He began as a reporter in the early 1950s in a period known as La Violencia (“The Violence”) which led to a period of civil conflict in Colombia that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

He went on to narrate the story of a continent that underwent military coups, dictatorships, guerrilla insurgencies and drug wars, with perspective typically silenced by official accounts.

His dream of owning a paper materialised on several occasions, launching news magazines like El Alternativo, El Otro and a newspaper, Cambio as well as a TV news channel – QAP – which lasted until its licence was not renewed: a thinly veiled move by authorities in a country where power bristles at anything that fails to tow the political line.

“Garcia Marquez used to say that the journalist should be like a mosquito, which is there to irritate those in power, buzzing incessantly,” says Juanita Leon, director at La Silla Vacia, one of the few independent news outlets in Colombia that operate outside the auspices of big private media organisations.

Leon studied at the Journalism Foundation School (Fundacion Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano) set up by Garcia Marquez and whose journalism was heavily influenced by the writer’s insistence on celebrating the Latin American literary tradition, “La Cronica”.

“‘The Chronicles of the Indies’ is the genre from which much of Latin American journalism was born, they were the first stories written about America after the conquest, where the Spanish started to describe America (which they thought was India – hence the name),” according to Leon.

“They were super-detailed, full of life and anecdotes about what was going on in this new world that they had just started discovering. Garcia Marquez wanted us to use that genre to narrate our continent.”

Journalist Maria Jimena Duzan elaborates, “the ‘cronica’ is the cousin of reportage. Latin Americans aren’t like Anglo Saxons, who have very fixed categories about things are. A chronicle has colour, has flavour, has feeling. It’s a story told with embellishments. And Gabo knew how to tell them.”

Duzan has spent decades covering the conflict in Colombia and was the first journalist to gain the trust of The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

At a time when facts have become precarious commodities in the market of information, and have become all the more reified by the traditional news outlets, it may seem out of key to spotlight the work of a man who was often caught out for embellishment and exaggeration. But to concentrate on empiricism is to miss the point.

“Garcia Marquez’s journalism distanced itself from the positivist gaze – that need for the dry fact, for precision,” says Leon. “I was once at a workshop organised by his school, it took place in Mexico City and Rychard Kapuchinski was there with Gabo and we were talking about some elements they’d put in their stories which really had nothing to do with reality.”

“And for some of us, we were around 25-years old, we thought it was a bit shocking. But Garcia Marquez had this great expression, which was that ‘if to speak the truth you need to put one tear more in, then what’s the problem?’ Clearly, we shouldn’t be making facts up, but there is something important we can learn from these writers.”

Contributors

Juanita Leon – Director, La Silla Vacia

Jaime Abello – Director, New Ibero-American Journalism Foundation

Maria Jimena Duzan – Journalist, Semana

Source: Al Jazeera

A Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy after spending eight years on death row in Pakistan has been transferred from a secret location near the capital to another in Karachi, but is still unable to leave the country to join her daughters in Canada, a friend said on Saturday.

Aman Ullah, who spoke to Aasia Bibi by telephone Friday, said the 54-year-old Bibi is being held in a room in the southern port city.

He said Bibi, who still faces death threats, is frustrated and frightened, uncertain of when she will be able to leave Pakistan.

“She has no indication of when she will leave … they are not telling her why she cannot leave,” said Ullah.

He fled the country on Friday after receiving threats from those angered by his assistance to Bibi, which began while she was on death row.

Ullah has been a liaison between Bibi and European diplomats, who have sought to assist her. The Associated Press news agency spoke to Bibi by telephone with Ullah’s assistance following her October acquittal, which was upheld last month.

Bibi’s ordeal began in 2009.

She was arrested after being accused of blasphemy following a quarrel with two female Muslim farm workers who refused to drink from a water container used by a Christian.

Locked in one room of a house

The Supreme Court judges said there were widespread inconsistencies in the testimony against Bibi, who has steadfastly maintained her innocence.

The acquittal should have given Bibi her freedom, but Ullah said diplomats were told that her departure from Pakistan, where she feels her life would be in danger, would come not in the short term, but “in the medium term”.

He said Bibi told him she is locked in one room of a house.

“The door opens at food time only,” said Ullah, and she is allowed to make phone calls in the morning and again at night. He said she usually calls her daughters.

Bibi’s husband is with her, he said.

“She is living with her family and given requisite security for safety,” Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said in an email.

He said the government was responsible for taking “all possible measures” to protect her and her family, adding that “she is a free citizen after her release from jail and can move anywhere in Pakistan or abroad.”

Bibi told Ullah the security detail assigned to her refuses to explain why she is still confined.

Bibi’s case has brought international attention to Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which carries an automatic death sentence for a conviction of insulting Islam.

Settling scores

There have been widespread complaints that the law is used to settle scores and intimidate religious minorities, including Shia Muslims.

The mere suggestion of blasphemy can incite mobs to kill. After Bibi’s October acquittal the far-right Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party called its followers onto the streets, where they protested for three days demanding Bibi’s immediate execution as well as the death of the judges who acquitted her.

The party leadership also advocated overthrowing Prime Minister Imran Khan‘s government and incited the military against the army chief.

Since then the party’s leadership has been arrested along with dozens of their supporters for inciting violence.

Ullah, a rights activist, first began aiding those falsely charged with blasphemy when his wife was wrongly accused and has since helped several people gain their freedom.

Bibi’s case brought him unwanted attention.

In recent months, he has been physically assaulted and gunmen have opened fire on his home. Ullah said he fears being attacked again or charged with blasphemy.

Bibi hopes to be able to join her daughters in Canada, where they have been granted asylum.