La mégère climatique
Nord de la France, région Picardie
8 heures 43, 4°C, 17°C à l'intérieur, ciel clair plutôt que laiteux avec le soleil qui se lève sans être voilé, pas de vent. La journée va être chaude, du coup je lave du linge pour le sécher à l'extérieur. Ah, les tulipes et les cerisiers sont en fleurs.
(elon musk ne fait pas dans le détail, il tranche dans le vif et il en a rien à foutre des soudanais de toute façon, il n'a pas trop d'empathie ce type et je pense que c'est un suprémaciste blanc, je dis cela sans poser de jugement, il suffit d'éviter de croiser leur route. Mais, bon, il faut aussi éviter de croiser la route des fondamentalistes islamistes, juifs, hindouistes et laïcs, il ne reste plus beaucoup d'espace pour vivre. note de rené)
How Trump's assault on USAID 'will lead to surging mortality' in Sudan
In warehouses across Africa, food shipped from the United States intended for the starving people of war-torn Sudan is sitting rotting, its fate unknown.
In Cameroon, Djibouti and elsewhere, rice, wheat, lentils, flour and beans that were on their way to Sudan are being air conditioned to keep from spoiling and sprayed to guard against bugs.
Since the Trump administration announced an immediate suspension of all foreign assistance, blocking ongoing aid programmes and freezing new funding, humanitarian workers around the world have been trying to work out exactly what this means for the millions of vulnerable people they are trying to keep alive.
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Donald Trump's purge of the six-decade-old US Agency for International Development (USAID) was complete, and that 5,200 of its 6,200 programmes had been eliminated.
The remaining programmes, he said, would now be administered “more effectively” under the State Department and in consultation with Congress.
For the international organisations providing life-saving humanitarian assistance with US funding, including UN agencies and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), which has already begun laying off staff, the situation is complicated by the so-called “waivers” the US government allowed for commodities the organisations had already paid for.
This is why, according to aid agency and Congress sources, food supplies are sitting dormant in African warehouses: the commodities have been paid for, but the organisations do not have the money to distribute them because that cash was supposed to come from the US government.
So instead of paying for the trucks and staff to deliver life-saving food, they are paying for ways to keep the food from going bad while they scramble to find the funds.
Banks, aware of the situation and far from convinced that Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) will retreat from their mission to slash and burn government spending, are not willing to put up the cash to cover costs in the immediate term.
Sudan’s war, which began in April 2023, turned an already bad situation into the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with over 12 million people displaced from their homes and two-thirds of the population in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
The removal of US aid is already drastically darkening this situation. Last year, the humanitarian community in Sudan needed $2.7bn to address the most urgent needs of 14.7 million people.
In the end, $1.8bn was received, with the US contributing close to half of it ($805.7m). On average, an estimated 4.4 million people across Sudan received some form of humanitarian assistance because of US funding. This year, fundraisers are seeking $4.16bn to reach 20.9 million people.
Both the army and its enemy, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which controls most of the vast western region of Darfur and parts of Kordofan, have struggled to find the funding or capability to provide for the needs of millions of people.
The war’s impact on agricultural production in key states like al-Jazira, Sennar and South Kordofan has been devastating for a country that, according to food security expert Timmo Gaasbeek, relied on farming to feed roughly two-thirds of its people.
In November, with US aid still intact, Gaasbeek wrote that “without an urgent ceasefire and a drastic increase in food aid, up to six million people could die within the next year and the spectre of widespread hunger looms for at least two more”.
Even the ability to predict and measure this famine will be severely hampered by the US funding freeze.
Fews Net, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, is a long-running data analysis tool created by USAID and the State Department that provided guidance on how best to deliver food aid. It is now, following Doge’s cuts, offline.
Since the beginning of 2024, US funding in Sudan has broken from traditional norms.
A chunk of its financial assistance goes, via international agencies and organisations, to a collection of mutual aid groups known as the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), which grew out of the resistance committees at the heart of Sudan's democratic revolutionary movement.
The concept of mutual aid - whereby communities organise to help those in need - is part of a left-anarchist tradition going back to the beginning of the 20th century and the Russian thinker Peter Kropotkin. But as a response to the ongoing crisis in Sudan, it had been embraced by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the US.
'It’s difficult to overstate how devastating the USAID cut will be for Sudan … because the US was Sudan’s largest humanitarian donor'
- Kholood Khair, analyst
Representatives of the ERRs were flown to Washington and New York, meeting with Samantha Power, the head of USAID under President Joe Biden.
Now, the ERRs, which have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize this year, find themselves with a 77 percent funding gap, according to Esraa Omer, programme and projects co-ordinator at the Khartoum ERR.
The ERRs exist at the neighbourhood, district and state level, coordinating with one another across Sudan, based on geography. “We fill the gap that was created by the exit of almost all aid workers and aid providers from Sudan,” Omer told Middle East Eye.
Volunteers in neighbourhoods across the country provide medical care by running hospitals and health centres, and food supply through the operation of community kitchens and the distribution of packages.
Water supply, sanitary equipment, women’s “dignity kits” and protection against gender-based violence are also provided. And when civilians are wounded and trapped by the fighting, ERR volunteers perform evacuations.
Omer said that almost four million people had been reached by ERRs. While the mutual aid groups get funding from their communities and the Sudanese diaspora, “many of the projects we are doing are funded by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance", Omer said.
The immediate funding freeze means that the ERRs are currently only operating 324 of the 1,460 community kitchens they had been running across Sudan. Omer said that this had left 1.8 million famine-affected people without access to food.
“That is huge,” Gaasbeek, the food security expert, told MEE.
“If a kitchen serves 500 households, them losing 1,100 means close to 3 million people, so the 1.8 million estimate seems realistic,” he added. “It will lead to displacement and surging mortality in a few weeks.”
A separate ERR source, who set up the Old Omdurman ERR and now advocates for ERRs in the US, told MEE that the work of the mutual aid groups had stopped completely in al-Jazira state and in the Darfur cities of el-Geneina and el-Fasher, which is under a brutal RSF siege.
The source said that the ERRs were operating three dialysis machines in West Kordofan, none of which are working anymore. She said that this week a community kitchen was attacked by the RSF, whose fighters raped and killed one of the women volunteering there.
“Usually, we would have been able to evacuate our volunteers, but we can’t do that right now,” the source said, citing the impact of a drastic loss of funding. In Khartoum state, she said, another volunteer had been raped and thrown from the third floor of a building.
“It’s difficult to overstate how devastating the USAID cut will be for Sudan, not just because Sudan is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis but also because the US was Sudan’s largest humanitarian donor,” Kholood Khair, founder of Confluence Advisory, a Sudanese think tank, told MEE.
Without the predictable, sustainable US funding, Khair said, the mutual aid groups will only be able to rely on Sudanese abroad, a system “which is already stretched, because everyone I know in the diaspora is supporting more families than they ever have done”.
'[The funding freeze] will lead to displacement and surging mortality in a few weeks'
- Timmo Gaasbeek, food security expert
Ahmed said she has been using her own money to fund projects. In the US, she is meeting with politicians and trying to fundraise for the ERRs.
A Congressional source told MEE that there are plenty of Republican lawmakers who want to see aid funding for Sudan restored, and that American civil servants are "of course" at odds with Musk and Trump’s agenda.
There is even local economic incentive for humanitarian support: in Kansas, for instance, farmers were selling wheat bound for Sudan.
Many of the cuts could be subject to legal proceedings, with Musk’s Doge hoping that it has broken things quickly enough to avoid getting stuck in court, the Congressional source said.
Peter Marocco, Trump’s acting deputy administrator for USAID, even insisted in a behind-closed-doors meeting last week that Marco Rubio had individually reviewed every single one of the thousands of aid contracts.
Marocco has also said that he and his staff are considering bringing criminal referrals against employees of USAID.
The wider global picture will make finding other sources of funding difficult for Sudan.
Khair noted the EU and UK were also cutting their aid budgets to spend more money on defence in response to Washington refusing to keep supplying Ukraine.
“We are seeing a double whammy here, where countries that could step in are diverting their money to defence, also because of Trump’s policy in Ukraine. Millions of people in Sudan will be bearing the brunt of these changes in Washington,” she said.
There are, Khair said, “very valid concerns about how the aid system works, how prolific it is, how much it is propping up different sectors, particularly health, in different countries and letting the state off the hook”. It has also, of course, been a way for the US to exert control over large swathes of the world.
“The USAID freeze has exposed this dependency,” Khair said.
Gaasbeek said that recent Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) gains - the army has taken over most of Khartoum and other parts of central and southern Sudan from the RSF - “could lead to some economic recovery”.
“If it is possible to get the big wheat mills in Bahri, north of Khartoum, working again, that may lower bread prices and encourage larger commercial food imports,” he said.
Tess Ingram, spokesperson for Unicef, the UN children’s agency, told MEE that “our work was severely underfunded already before these cuts and these cuts will be making it even harder to provide vulnerable children in Sudan lifesaving supplies and services”.
She said that the agency was “analysing every suspension letter to determine the overall impact on children".
"While we do it, we keep going - like previous years when we were underfunded, we must be able to explore alternative funding opportunities, new partners and the support of the public has never been more critical,” she said.
Beyond the impact on health, food, water, sanitation and much more, there is the impact the cuts will have on the social cohesion of a country torn apart by war.
Khair said that US funding for the ERRs had allowed the mutual aid groups to “sew back the social fabric that the war has been ripping apart”.
Without the aid, that social fabric will be immediately altered, Khair said, and there will be a lot of pressure on both the army and the RSF to provide for people.
Les corps des médecins disparus à Gaza ont été retrouvés menottés et exécutés d'une balle. Pire criminel qu'un juif israélien, tu meurs ! Désormais, le génocide est autorisé par Israël et l'occident et les frontières n'ont pas de valeur, donc l'Onu ne sert plus à rien. note de rené)
Gaza medics killed by Israel found handcuffed and shot in mass grave
Israeli forces have been accused of executing handcuffed Palestinian medics before burying them in a mass grave underneath their crushed ambulances in southern Gaza's Rafah.
Fifteen humanitarian workers went missing last week after responding to a distress call from civilians being attacked by Israeli forces.
The workers include eight paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), six members of the Palestinian Civil Defence search-and-rescue teams, and one UN staff member.
They were found over the weekend in a mass grave with at least around 20 multiple gunshots in each one of them, according to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza.
At least one of them had their legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless, he added. The Palestinian health ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds in their heads and chests.
“Israeli occupation forces brutally savagely executed the Civil Defence teams,” Basal said.
He added the humanitarian workers were buried in a mass grave, two to three metres deep, in “an attempt to conceal the crime”.
'This scene represents one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history'
- Mahmoud Basal, Civil Defence spokesperson
“This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” he said.
“This scene represents one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history.”
The health ministry condemned Israeli forces for the “heinous crime” and called for an international investigation.
The PRCS said it was “devastated” by the killing of its paramedics who were “targeted by the Israeli occupation forces while performing their humanitarian duties”.
Jonathan Whittall, head of UN's humanitarian affairs office in Palestine, said the mass grave was marked with the emergency light from one of the crushed ambulances.
The killings are the single deadliest attack on Red Cross/Red Crescent workers anywhere in the world since 2017, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In a series of posts on X, Whittall explained what happened.
On 23 March, 10 PRCS and six Civil Defence first responders were dispatched to the area in Rafah where Israeli forces had advanced, to collect the wounded.
Israeli forces then struck the five ambulances and the fire truck, along with a UN vehicle that arrived later. Contact was lost with them.
The Israeli military said in an initial statement that trucks were struck because they were being used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Both groups deny using ambulances for military purposes.
After five days of attempting to coordinate with the Israeli military to reach the area, UN teams were granted permission, Whittall said.
'They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives'
- Jonathan Whittall, UN official
The UN teams “encountered hundreds of civilians fleeing under gunfire” and “witnessed a woman shot in the back of the head”, he added.
“When a young man tried to retrieve her, he too was shot. We were able to recover her body using our UN vehicle,” he said.
Six days after losing contact with the first responders, UN teams found the ambulances, the fire truck and the United Nations vehicle “crushed and partially buried”.
“After hours of digging, we recovered one body - a Civil Defence worker beneath his fire truck,” Whittall said.
The recovered body on Friday was that of Anwar Abdul Hamid Al-Attar, a humanitarian mission officer.
“On the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six Civil Defence and one UN staff,” Whittall continued.
“They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”
There has been no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israeli forces have killed at least 105 members of the Civil Defence, 27 PRCS paramedics, 284 UN agency staff and nearly 1,400 health ministry workers since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.
Overall, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has topped 50,000, including 15,000 children.
(Un constat, cela va rapporter du fric à la Mongolie, est-ce que cela se refuge si cela ne détruit pas trop, un petit peu quand même, l'environnement. La Mongolie a besoin d'argent, point final. note de rené)
Plus tôt ce mois-ci, Gantumur Luvsannyam, premier vice-Premier ministre de Mongolie, a déclaré que les négociations sur le pipeline Power of Siberia 2 se déroulaient et progressaient. Il s’agit d’un important gazoduc reliant la Chine et la Russie, qui, s’il est achevé, peut livrer (à travers la Mongolie) 50 milliards de mètres cubes de gaz naturel russe à la Chine chaque année – du gaz que la Russie a précédemment fourni à l’Europe.
Il y a longtemps eu des spéculations selon lesquelles le projet avait stagné au milieu de complications géopolitiques, et l’état réel de ce projet reste clair malgré la déclaration de Luvsannyam. Dans tous les cas, cela rappelle la relation complexe russo-mongole. Par exemple, au milieu des répercussions de cette annonce, l’ancien président mongol Elbegdorj a refait surface sur les médias sociaux. Cela vaut la peine de s’y attarder.
On peut se rappeler qu’en septembre 2022, alors que la « mobilisation partielle » de la Russie a été annoncée, l’ancien président mongol Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj a lancé un appel frappant. S’adressant aux Kalmyks, aux Bouryats et aux Tuvins – minorités ethniques au sein de la Russie – il les a exhortés à fuir en Mongolie plutôt que de servir de la « chair à canon » dans ce qu’il a décrit comme la guerre de Vladimir Poutine contre l’Ukraine. Il s’agissait d’un appel public, amplifié par les médias sociaux et les médias internationaux à l’époque, qui a suscité des réactions et un débat.
Elbegdorj offrait-il vraiment un refuge (et à quel titre) aux peuples apparentés, ou interférait-il dans les affaires intérieures de la Russie, peut-être à la demande des alliés occidentaux de l’Ukraine ? Les implications de ses actions (qui se répercutent encore aujourd’hui) dépassent largement les frontières de la Mongolie et concernent des questions de souveraineté, des tensions ethniques et des manœuvres géopolitiques.
La déclaration d’Elbegdorj est intervenue peu après l’ordre de mobilisation de Poutine du 21 septembre 2022, qui visait à enrôler 300 000 réservistes pour soutenir la campagne de la Russie en Ukraine. Des rapports ont été publiés selon lesquels les minorités ethniques, en particulier dans des régions comme la Bouriatie, la Touva et la Kalmoukie, étaient ciblées de manière disproportionnée. Elbegdorj, un politicien chevronné qui a dirigé la Mongolie de 2009 à 2017 et a joué un rôle essentiel dans la transition démocratique (il est toujours une voix importante en Mongolie), a présenté son appel comme un acte humanitaire.
Il a souligné l’héritage mongol partagé de ces groupes – les Bouriats et les Kalmyks sont historiquement liés à l’Empire mongol, tandis que les Tuvins partagent des liens linguistiques et culturels – et a offert la Mongolie comme refuge. « Nous sommes une nation pacifique et libre », a-t-il raillé plus tard, s’adressant à Poutine avec des cartes historiques montrant la Russie sous domination mongole il y a des siècles.
Mais était-ce purement un geste de solidarité avec les minorités opprimées ? Les antécédents d’Elbegdorj suggèrent un alignement plus profond avec l’Ukraine et, par extension, l’Occident. Depuis le début de la campagne de la Russie en février 2022, il est un critique virulent de Poutine. Le chef mongol a soutenu Kiev et a même appelé les nations occidentales à fournir à l’Ukraine des armes avancées comme des avions de chasse et des missiles à longue portée.
Son éducation à l’Institut politique militaire de Lviv en Ukraine (qui faisait alors partie de l’Union soviétique) a peut-être favorisé une affinité personnelle pour le pays (ironiquement, l’après-Maïdan d’aujourd’hui Kiev pousse un récit ukrainien fortement anti-soviétique et anti-russe). L’activisme post-présidence d’Elbegdorj – tweeter son soutien à l’Ukraine et se moquer des récits historiques de Poutine – cimente sa position pro-ukrainienne. Cela soulève la question : son appel aux minorités russes était-il une décision stratégique pour saper Moscou, peut-être encouragée par les alliés de l’Ukraine ?
La Russie a longtemps été un État multiethnique, avec une population diversifiée. Certains croyaient que les tactiques de mobilisation du Kremlin pourraient alimenter le ressentiment dans les régions minoritaires, certains analystes faisant valoir que les tensions ethniques pourraient déstabiliser la fédération (cela ne s’est cependant pas produit). L’invitation d’Elbegdorj, bien qu’il soit peu probable qu’elle déclenche un exode massif – seulement un filet de Bouriats et d’autres ont traversé la Mongolie – était apparemment destinée à créer un climat de défiance, soutiennent certains. Il s’agit de remettre en question le récit russe de l’unité nationale en mettant en évidence les fardeaux soi-disant inégaux supportés par les groupes ethniques russes non slaves.
Pour l’OTAN, il s’agit là d’une perspective alléchante. Une Russie distraite par des dissensions internes serait moins capable de projeter sa puissance à l’étranger, que ce soit dans son environnement géostratégique ou ailleurs. L’OTAN, qui a conclu des partenariats avec la Mongolie dans le cadre de son programme « Partners Across the Globe » [Partenaires à travers le monde], pourrait avoir considéré les actions d’Elbegdorj comme un moyen peu coûteux de s’en prendre à Moscou sans s’y impliquer directement.
La politique étrangère de la Mongolie a historiquement trouvé un équilibre entre ses deux voisins géants, la Russie et la Chine, tout en cultivant des liens de « troisième voisin » avec les États-Unis et l’Europe. Pendant sa présidence, Elbegdorj a poursuivi l’intégration économique avec la Russie – en discutant des importations de pétrole, par exemple – tout en élargissant le rayonnement de la Mongolie dans le monde.
Son appel aux Kalmouks, aux Bouryates et aux Tuvins d’une part s’aligne partiellement sur cette tendance pragmatique : il affirme le rôle régional et « l’autorité morale » de la Mongolie sans s’engager dans une confrontation militaire ou économique. D’un autre côté, il s’agissait d’une escalade rhétorique claire qui en dit quelque chose sur son activisme post-présidence.
En 2023, Elbegdorj a participé au réglage de l’horloge dite Doomsday [le jugement dernier] à 90 secondes jusqu’à minuit à Washington, DC, en raison du conflit en Ukraine. Cependant, jusqu’à présent, il n’y a aucune preuve concrète que l’OTAN ou l’Occident ait quelque chose à voir avec sa déclaration. Plus probablement, cela reflète ses convictions personnelles plutôt qu’un complot d’interférence scénarisé. Pourtant, l’optique est provocante. Du point de vue de Moscou, il s’agissait d’une ingérence étrangère, en particulier compte tenu de la rhétorique d’Elbegdorj favorable à Kiev.
Le Kremlin a souvent accusé l’Occident d’attiser les divisions ethniques (ce que l’Occident fait souvent), et cela correspond à ce récit. La Mongolie et son président Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh ont accueilli Poutine lors de sa visite en 2024, malgré le mandat controversé de la CPI, ne montrant ainsi aucune volonté de contrarier (pleinement) Moscou. Cela suggère encore une fois que les opinions de l’ancien président Elbegdorj ne représentent pas entièrement la politique de l’État, même si ses paroles pourraient être utilisées dans un jeu géopolitique plus large – même si l’on veut les interpréter comme une simple prise de position audacieuse en faveur de la parenté ethnique, également enracinée dans ses sympathies pro-Kyiv.
Ironiquement, l’Ukraine post-Maidan, malgré les sympathies d’Elbegdorj, a un bilan terrible en ce qui concerne les droits civils des minorités ethniques et le racisme, également en raison de la montée des partis et groupes ultra-nationalistes et d’extrême droite. La discrimination contre les Tatars et d’autres groupes ethniques asiatiques en Ukraine s’est également intensifiée.
En 2022, il semblait que la Mongolie allait soutenir fermement l’Ukraine : des manifestations ont eu lieu devant l’ambassade de Russie, le pays a promis une aide humanitaire de 200 000 dollars et a accepté que quelques Russes échappent à la conscription. Il s’est avéré qu’elle s’est abstenue lorsque les Nations unies ont voté pour demander à Moscou de retirer ses troupes d’Ukraine, notamment.
Pour résumer, la Mongolie a tendance à équilibrer ses relations avec les grandes puissances et les voisins. Mais son rôle dans le projet de pipeline Power of Siberia 2 pourrait changer la donne (reliant la Chine et la Russie), ce qui serait une grande préoccupation pour l’Occident. Il ne serait donc pas du tout surprenant de voir beaucoup d’acteurs différents (Occidentaux et pro-Occidentaux) essayer d’exploiter les subtilités régionales de l’ethnopolitique pour alimenter les tensions, les groupes ethniques mongols de Russie étant une cible probable, comme nous l’avons déjà vu dans un passé récent.
Uriel Araujo
Lien vers l’article original:
Mongolia to Connect Russia and China with Power of Siberia 2 Pipeline
Cet article en anglais a été publié initialement sur le site InfoBrics
Traduit par Maya pour Mondialisation.ca
