Two Major African Countries Have Become Bloodlands

 By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

Two of Africa’s largest and heterogenous states, Nigeria and Sudan, are experience massive internal violence.

Nigeria’s population of 220 million is split almost equally between Christians and Muslims. Since 2009, Islamist extremists in northern Nigeria have destroyed more than 18,000 churches and killed over 50,000 Christians nationwide. And another five million have been displaced within the country.

Who is doing this? The country has long faced insecurity from the Boko Haram extremist group, which seeks to establish its radical interpretation of Islamic law and has also targeted Muslims it deems not devout enough. They have killed tens of thousands of people since being founded in 2002.

Though Western media coverage of the persecution of Nigerian Christians has been sparse, that may be changing. U.S. President Donald Trump on Nov. 1 ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria as he stepped up his criticism that the government is failing to rein in the persecution of Christians. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria,” Trump posted on social media.

The warning came after Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had earlier pushed back after Trump announced that he was designating Nigeria “a country of particular concern” for allegedly failing to rein in the persecution of Christians.

Tinubu insisted that the characterization of Nigeria as a religiously intolerant country does not reflect the national reality. “Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so,” he stated. “Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”

But U.S. defence secretary Pete Hegseth Nov. 21 called on the government to “take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians, during talks with the Nigerian national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.

Faith-based organizations are amplifying claims of a Christian “genocide.” They point to the wave of attacks on churches and Chrisitan communities across the central and northern parts of the country -- though others assert that the violence cuts across faiths and that it is driven as much by land disputes, climate change, poverty and weak governance as by religion itself. 

Security, especially in the predominantly Muslim north, has been deteriorating for years. About 10,000 people have been killed and hundreds abducted since Tinubu became president in mid-2023. More than 7,000 Nigerian Christians have been slaughtered by Islamists so far in 2025. The violence has pushed as many as three million people out of their homes.

Meanwhile, of all the wars raging across the world right now, Sudan’s is the deadliest. More than 150,000 people are dead. Twelve million have been displaced. Women have been raped and children are conscripted as soldiers. Mass graves line Khartoum’s streets. Of the population of 51 million, around 14 million have been displaced. Famine is widespread, as is cholera and other diseases.

The conflict involves the government-controlled Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as “Hemedti,” who leads the broader Janjaweed coalition, notorious due to the Darfur genocide earlier in the 21^st century.

The RSF are allegedly supported by arms deliveries from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through neighbouring Chad. The UAE denies the allegations, though evidence in the form of UAE-produced arms indicate the opposite. The SAF, on the other hand, is backed by Egypt and Qatar.

The Janjaweed militia became known for its extreme violence in Darfur between 2003 and 2005. At the time, the Arab-origin militia of then-president Omar al-Bashir killed around 300,000 civilians, whom they considered not Arab but African. The UN and many states determined that genocidal acts were committed in early 2003.

After recently seizing the city of El Fasher, the RSF’s territorial control now covers Darfur and parts of the south, whereas the SAF controls the country's capital, Khartoum, and the country’s north and centre. International organizations have demanded that the RSF establish humanitarian corridors for the approximately 177,000 people who have been unable to leave El Fasher.

In March, the RSF and other armed groups formed the Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS). It has been tasked with establishing a “Government of Peace and Unity” " for Darfur and parts of the south where the RSF holds sway.

The French author Bernard-Henri Lévy, who has reported from the country, on Nov. 5 warned that Sudan’s war could destabilize the entire region into a geopolitical crisis stretching from the Red Sea to Libya. “In this region of the planet where great civilizations intersect and where, today, the empires of death make common cause, Sudan holds a distinct and essential geopolitical place. To refuse to hear what is happening there would be not only a disgrace, but also a mistake.”

 Prime minister Mark Carney brought up the issue of UAE arms sales to the RSP forces while on a visit there in November, though groups like the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights question Ottawa’s friendly relations with the UAE. Control over gold-mining operations and trade has become a central driver of the civil war, the report said, with 50 to 80 per cent of the 70-million tonnes produced annually smuggled abroad, principally to the UAE.

 

Argentina’s Milei Wins Big in Midterm Elections

 By Henry Srebrnik, Moncton Times & Transcript

Javier Milei, the libertarian economist who is the current president of Argentina, won a decisive victory in the Oct. 27 midterm elections, significantly outperforming his polling numbers and dealing a crushing defeat to what remains of the country’s left-wing Peronist establishment.

The result solidifies Milei’s grip on power and ensures his ability to push forward his market-reform agenda, locking in his “chainsaw revolution” against big government waste. It also vindicates the Trump administration’s public bet on Milei, whom it has identified as one of its key allies in the Western hemisphere. 

After defining the first two years of his presidency with radical spending cuts and free-market reforms, Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, won nearly 41 per cent of the vote, taking 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of the 127 lower-house Chamber of Deputies seats that were contested. His gains will make it easier for Milei to slash state spending and deregulate the economy.

The elections were the first national test of President Milei’s popularity since he took office in 2023, pledging to shrink state spending by taking a metaphorical “chainsaw” to it. He brandished a real one during his campaign rallies. He has since cut budgets for education, pensions, health, infrastructure, and subsidies, and laid off tens of thousands of public sector workers.

Milei told cheering supporters that “We must consolidate the path of reform we have embarked upon to turn Argentina’s history around once and for all” and “make Argentina great again.”

U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Milei on social media. “He’s making us all look good,” Trump remarked. Before the vote, Trump had made it clear that a $40 billion lifeline for Argentina by Washington would depend on Milei keeping political momentum. “If he wins, we’re staying with him. If he doesn’t win, we’re gone,” Trump had threatened.

The Trump administration has identified Milei as a key ally in a region where anti-Americanism has long been a powerful political force. As with the Bolivian election earlier this year, which ended nearly 20 years of socialist rule, the result is a victory not only for Milei but also for pro-American forces throughout the region. 

Specifically, Washington sees Argentina as a testing ground for its efforts to roll back Chinese influence in the Western hemisphere, going so far as to condition some U.S. aid to Argentina on Milei’s willingness to switch from Chinese to U.S. telecom providers.

To shore up American support, a framework agreement between the two countries signed Nov. 13 will see Argentina expand market access for a swath of U.S. products, including medicine, chemicals, machinery, and agricultural products. Washington will eliminate reciprocal tariffs for “certain unavailable natural resources” as well as non-patented materials used for pharmaceutical production. Imports from Argentina currently face a baseline 10 per cent tariff rate.

Prior to the elections Milei’s party had just seven Senate seats and 37 seats in the lower house. That meant his program of spending cuts and reforms faced various political obstacles. His vetoes of bills to boost funding for state universities, people with disabilities and children’s healthcare were all overturned by opposition lawmakers.

Milei needed to win at least one-third of the seats in Congress’ lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, or its upper house, the Senate, to prevent his decrees from being blocked by a two-thirds vote.

“This is the problem he was having in the last few months,” Daniel Di Martino, an economist at the Manhattan Institute of Policy Research in New York, told The Scroll website. “The leftists were proposing bills to raise government spending on popular things, like bonuses to pensioners or university students. Milei would veto, and then they would override his veto, and he would have to cut spending elsewhere. Their goal was to create a budget deficit so that markets would freak out and Milei would lose the election.”

That didn’t work. “He’s veto proof now, which is what the markets really needed to understand,” Di Martino said. “The deficit is never coming back, and now the expectation that he will be re-elected is much higher.” The uncertainty was always about whether the opposition would let Milei go through with his reforms. Because Milei is so much more popular now, Di Martino pointed out, “even the moderates now have a big incentive to say, Hey, if we don’t negotiate with this guy, we’re also going to lose our seats in two years.”

While supporters, including Trump, hail Milei for taming inflation, which hit triple figures annually before he took office, by cutting the deficit, and restoring investor confidence, his critics argue that the price has been job losses, a decline in manufacturing, crumbling public services, a fall in people’s purchasing power and an imminent recession.

“You see a lot of poverty,” one opponent reported. “It’s very hard for retirees, for people with children with disabilities, for young people. There’s a lot of unemployment. Many factories have closed.”

The election turnout was 67.9 per cent, the lowest in a national election in decades, representing widespread apathy with politicians of all stripes. Still, “It’s a great victory for the coalition of pro-freedom parties in the Americas who are trying to stop the narco-socialists, which is this alliance of criminals which was started by Cuba and Venezuela,” Di Martino contended.

 

Gaza Peace Plan is not a Done Deal, but an Opening

 

By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

As negotiations continue among the United States, Arab states, Israel, and the UN about the fate of Gaza, much of the focus has been on establishing an international security force, reconstruction, and the disarmament of Hamas.

At the same time, Egypt is trying to negotiate a deal between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas that would pave the way for the setting up the “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” that, according to U.S. President Donald Trump’s twenty-point plan, would be responsible for the “temporary transitional governance” of Gaza. The committee itself would be under the supervision of the Board of Peace, an international body whose members would include Donald Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The second phase of the agreement will be far more difficult to implement. It envisages an international stabilization force for Gaza, a further pullback of Israeli forces and the demobilization and reintegration of Hamas and other militant groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The idea that Hamas will voluntarily disarm, that international forces will deploy in the Gaza Strip, and that the process of building a Palestinian government by people like Tony Blair, in which a disarmed Hamas does not participate, are false hopes, if not fantasies. But does this mean Trump’s peace plan was useless? Of course not.

Hamas is participating in the Egyptian-led process because it sees it to legitimize its role in the future of Gaza and Palestinian politics generally. Even if the group does not directly participate in Gaza’s governance, its formal participation in creating and authorizing the committee is itself a political achievement, casting the terrorist organization as a legitimate actor in postwar Gaza and Palestinian politics. The PA, for its part, is wary of Hamas participation but is not in a strong enough position to prevent it.

Trump understood the necessity of bringing the war to an end. But he also believed that endless debate among experts or, worse, historian and lawyers, would never produce an agreement. He presented an offer – actually, an ultimatum – to Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas that neither could refuse: immediate, unconditional and complete release of all hostages and missing persons, something the Israeli public longed for, in exchange for a final end to the war, which a humbled Hamas needed.

Two years of war has left Hamas weaker than it had been in decades. Israeli bombardments had shattered the group’s military capabilities and depleted its arsenals. In many neighborhoods, control had drifted to local clan networks and tribal councils. To prevent this, Hamas has been ruthlessly murdering all potential rivals in the areas of Gaza it still controls. They have publicized photographs and videos of their forces murdering the victims.

 

Hamas still has more soldiers and weapons than all its rival factions in Gaza combined. It has managed to redeploy approximately 7,000 militants to reassert control over the territory.

The ceasefire is a temporary reprieve for Hamas: a chance to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round of fighting. In Islamist political thought there’s a word for it, hudna -- a temporary truce with non-Muslim adversaries that can be discarded as soon as the balance of power shifts. Then the time for jihad will arrive again. Hamas was established in 1987 and isn’t going to disappear.

In fact, Hamas also wants an interim authority to hire 40,000 Hamas employees, and Hamas spokesman Basem Naim said he expects its fighters to be integrated into a post-transition Palestinian state.

Still, Trump has succeeded in ending the current war in Gaza, where Joe Biden failed. Instead of sitting Israelis and Arabs in a room and expecting them to negotiate an outcome, Trump’s approach has been to exert leverage through other players in the region, especially, Egypt, Turkey, and – most importantly – Qatar.

In Jerusalem, they call Qatar “the spoiler state.” Israelis describe the emirate as two trains running behind the same engine. One, led by the Qatari ruler’s mother and brother, supports the Muslim Brotherhood and is an unmistakable hater of Israel. The other, led by the prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, and other notable figures, seeks rapprochement with the West.

The Qataris were shocked when Israeli jets on Sept. 9 conducted an airstrike in Doha targeting the leadership of Hamas. They then signed onto Trump’s peace plan at a meeting in New York Sept. 23, hosted by Trump and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Ibn Hamad Al Thani, and attended by the leaders of eight Arab states, along with members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Netanyahu was then browbeaten into accepting the plan and also forced to apologize to the Emir for the airstrike. It was somewhat ironic that the airstrike made the peace plan possible. As well, Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June gave this negotiation some very sharp teeth.

In a sense, both Israel and Hamas had accomplished their goals. Israel had broken the Iranian axis of terror by eliminating Hezbollah and Hamas as a fighting force, along with the Iranian nuclear threat. Hamas had succeeded in luring Israel into a trap that led it to become hated and isolated around the world. This included the labelling of Israel as genocidal and the global call for a Palestinian state.