Development – harryjohnstone

Making Dreams a Reality

The Role of Civil Society in Mozambique

An ASMOG employee selecting plastic waste in front of the ASMOG offices, Pemba, northern Mozambique. ASMOG collects around 10 tonnes of rubbish in Pemba each month.

Marques Joao steps uneasily over the pile of plastic which extends like a glacier in front of his work building. Searching for little brown bottles, he picks them out, fills his bucket, then descends the morass. Joao works for ASMOG, an NGO operating in Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique, whose mission is to gather plastic waste and sell it to recycling companies.

‘The government doesn’t recycle or sell plastics,’ says Eugidio Gobo, who leads ASMOG in Pemba. The Pemba municipality generates around 130 tonnes of plastic each month. ASMOG collects about 10 tonnes during that time, mostly off beaches. It is filling a gap. But it operates in a context that is extremely challenging.

ASMOG coordinator for Pemba, Eugidio Gobo, holding packs of processed plastic in front of the ASMOG office, Pemba. ASMOG collects around 10 tonnes of rubbish in Pemba each month.

Located 1,500 miles north of Maputo, Cabo Delgado is one of Mozambique’s poorest regions, with higher illiteracy and infant mortality rates alongside scarce public services. Cyclones, intensified by climate change, batter the province annually. And an ISIS-linked insurgency has torn it apart, displacing 700,000 people since 2017. As needs grow, aid is shrinking. In this environment, civil society organisations (CSOs) are vital. But they must be positioned to operate sustainably.

‘I feel like our feet are being cut,’ says Abdul Tavares, who works for CDD, a democracy and rights-focused organisation currently being squeezed by aid reductions. ‘We were funding business cooperatives, legal assistance and advocacy on public policy. Without resources, none of these activities are possible,’ he says. CDD recently downsized to a smaller office in Pemba.

Globally, Mozambique is one of the countries most affected by international aid cuts. Reports indicate that U.S. funding alone was slashed from US$ 820 million in 2024 to US$ 240 million last year. While humanitarian assistance is diminishing, other sectors are even more vulnerable.

‘USAID was providing a lot of support to 25 de Junho,’ says Bashiruna Bakar, referring to his village in Cabo Delgado. ‘The assistance was focused on healthcare, farming and food,’ he says. But that was before. Now, this aid has gone. ‘The farmers are crying,’ says Bakar. ‘There is no food.’

But walking towards the edge of his village, Bakar finds cause for optimism. He points to a solid grey house made of breeze blocks. ‘This is a sign of development’, he says. The house is owned by one of the 9,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who have settled in this village. It is evidence of both inclusion and prosperity.

‘Three months after the displaced people arrived, the farmers gave them land,’ says Bakar. This decision, to maintain stability, was made through the 25 de Junho Village Development Organisation (VDO). ‘We discussed not identifying people on religious or political grounds. Just on our common humanity,’ he says.

Community leader Bashiruna Bakar standing over the 25 de Junho ‘dream map’
surrounded by the members of the Village Development Organisation. This group are working to navigate local tensions and promote development within their community. Photography by Harry Johnstone

In an old school building, I observe Bakar and the VDO members gathered around their ‘dream map’. It illustrates the village, with public goods they have (e.g. a mosque) and what they would like (e.g. a bridge). As such, VDOs identify what their village needs. And through a series of letters, they lobby local government to direct funds towards their ‘dreams’.

Community Bashiruna Bakar standing on a broken bridge near his village, 25 de
Junho. He is desperate to get a new bridge built, to allow farmers to travel more
easily from the village to their fields and back.

Since 2000, the Aga Khan Foundation has helped over 100 communities establish their own VDOs across northern Mozambique, covering Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Niassa provinces. Starting with a grant of 38,000 Meticals (£430), these bodies thereafter sustain themselves. Some lack capacity or commitment. But many flourish.

Another CSO in Mozambique called MASC adopts the same approach. It supports 30 VDOs and 80 women’s saving’s groups around the country. ‘There’s a magic to these groups,’ says MASC’s representative in Cabo Delgado, Návia Glória. ‘They differ in age, culture and geographic area, but they work.’

During my time in Cabo Delgado, I learn that, rather than replacing local authorities, good CSOs become their extension. They form a collaborative dynamic. As Manuel Teodoro, a Metuge district official, says: ‘The VDOs are the right hand of the local government.’

In other countries, equally ‘networked’ CSOs pursue a similar model. The Rural Support Programme Network in Pakistan or BRAC in Bangladesh are two examples of CSOs whose community-centred approach became so effective that their number multiplied over the years, ultimately forming national programmes.

‘It is often CSOs who are closest to communities, who understand the nuances of poverty, exclusion, and opportunity, and who remain when projects end and headlines fade,’ states Lisa Kurbiel, Director of the UN’s Joint Sustainable Development Goals Fund. Kurbiel believes these CSOs catalyse development when embedded within supportive financial and political structures.

With many governments across the Global South stretched and donor budgets shrinking fast, international partners should trust such CSOs, offering flexible, long-term financing. These small investments respond to political concerns like insurgency and displacement. For years, donors have talked the talk on localisation. Now, like Bakar and his village, it’s time to walk the walk.

A version of this article was first published in The Independent on Thursday 16 April.

The race to protect Mozambique from the next deadly cyclone

The government and its partners are piling resources into protecting coastal communities from recurring catastrophes

Muanema Timam (in blue) and other volunteers in the Community Fisheries Council of Namau, planting mangroves in the pouring rain. The Council is restoring mangrove forests in the area as well as promoting livelihoods to strengthen resilience against climate change.

As the rain pours down, Muanema Timam digs a hole in the watery sand and plants another mangrove seedling. Her cobalt blue veil is drenched, but there is work to do.

With air and ocean temperatures rising, deadly cyclones and flooding are overwhelming entire districts across Mozambique, including her community in Namau, a small fishing village.

While there are some climate change adaptation projects – like planting mangroves – the government’s resources are being stretched thin by aid cuts, and whether enough is being done to shield the population from recurring catastrophes is an open question.

“When the storm started,” says Timam, “there was an unusual sound. The roof was shaking. I ran to take shelter in my neighbour’s house with my husband and children.”

She is remembering cyclone Chido, which struck her province, Cabo Delgado, in December 2024. When the storm was over, she returned to her house and found it was gone. In a matter of minutes, she says, her life had disappeared.

Situated 1,500 miles north of the capital Maputo, Cabo Delgado is historically marginalised and consistently ranks amongst the poorest and most vulnerable provinces in Mozambique.

Since 2017, the province has been torn apart by an Isis-linked insurgency, forcing 1.3 million people to flee their homes, according to provincial authorities.

Then there’s climate change: in this region, cyclones are another source of terror.

Metacani village, on the coastline of Mecufi district, was almost completely blown away by Chido. Only the strongest houses remain standing, though many have been stripped of their roofing and now lie abandoned. The water tower collapsed. Large trees lie awkwardly where they fell, their bare branches twisted in rigor mortis.

Fernando Neves, a local administrator, says 95 per cent of all the houses in the district, some 14,000 homes, were “completely destroyed”.

For hundreds of villages along the Mozambican littoral, cyclones pose an existential threat. Mozambique’s national meteorological institute has observed that over the last 70 years, the frequency of these massive storms hitting the country from the Indian Ocean has been increasing. Mozambique is likely to experience both stronger category 4-5 tropical cyclones and more frequent and intense rainfall, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The government and its partners are racing to help communities adapt. Following the floods in 2000, which killed 800 people, Mozambique developed a national strategy on disasters. Donors reportedly disbursed $480 million (£358 million) towards strengthening the country’s capacity to manage cyclones, floods and droughts. Since then, amongst other responses, Mozambique developed a much more robust national early warning system to prepare for these dangers.

Evidence of this appears in a demonstration by Agostinho Severino and his disaster management committee in Namuapala.

Agostinho Severino, holding a megaphone, with other members of the Committee for Managing Risks and Disasters, in Namuapala village. Across the country similar teams, operating under the National Institute for Disaster Management, are helping communities prepare for cyclones and flooding.

When cyclone warnings air on the radio, the team raises colour-coded flags in village centres. A red flag means the cyclone is arriving that day. Volunteers then cycle through villages with a megaphone, urging residents to take shelter. Operating under the National Institute for Disaster Management and Reduction, these voluntary groups exist across the country.

Mangroves are another pre-emptive measure.

“The mangrove forests act as a barrier to the wind,” says Asani Armiye, leader of the Bandar village community fisheries council. “They protect around a quarter of the village.”

The council has been protecting and planting mangroves in the area for 20 years.

We walk over the sandy estuary to inspect a nursery. Between our footprints, fiddler crabs scuttle over the sand.

Community-led mangrove forestry in Cabo Delgado is being supported by the Aga Khan Foundation.

Mangroves growing along the coastline near Namau, Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique.

As well as becoming a buffer against the wind, mangroves sequester nearly nine tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare each year.

Mangroves are also used as hives for bees and their waterways become breeding grounds for fish – vital livelihoods for Mozambique’s coastal communities.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development and UNEP are delivering similar activities in three central and southern estuaries: Bons Sinais, Zambezi, and Limpopo.

In Impire, a Norwegian Refugee Council project is addressing the effects of both the insurgency and cyclone Chido.

The village is a hive of activity: Hundreds of people are registering for aid. Sheets of pristine corrugated iron are being unloaded from a truck.

Sheets of corrugated iron being laid out in Impire village. These items are part of a package of assistance provided by Norwegian Refugee Council, which is helping communities respond to the challenges posed by the ISIS-linked insurgency in Cabo Delgado as well as the effects of cyclones.

Iron roofs are more robust against cyclones. But they can be lethal. Raging 150 mph winds tear them off houses and they have been known to kill children caught out of shelter.

Throughout Cabo Delgado there is a lack of resilient housing and infrastructure, though the situation is improving.

In Natuko, white USAID-branded tarpaulins are strapped over parts of the thatch roofs, resembling giant plasters.

But its health centre has been rebuilt with help from Swiss charity Helvetas. Positioned to minimise exposure to high winds, it also has fortified beams to secure the roof.

In Chokwe district, meanwhile, UN-Habitat, the UN’s agency promoting sustainable urban development, is building climate-resilient infrastructure to relieve flood risks.

It has helped to construct a cyclone shelter and radio station that are both raised on stilts. These offered support to some of these tens of thousands left homeless in January this year.

In Beira city, too, the World Bank has been supporting numerous infrastructure projects aimed primarily at protecting the population from floods.

But it is not enough. For Muanema Timam, and others like her who live in these coastal communities, piecing a life back together is one thing, but living in a state of constant vulnerability is another.

With each massive cyclone here, people can lose their homes – like snakes and ladders, they go back to square one. For some, it’s worse – they will lose loved ones.

Timam digs another hole in the sand. The rainy season is here and there is much still to do.

This article was originally published in The Telegraph on 20 March 2026.

The Aleppo souk, crucible of memory

Mohamed Aqad, 65, hands me a glass of cardamom-infused tea, lights another Marlboro Red and sits back in his plastic chair. Ensconced in his handicraft shop in Aleppo’s souk, he’s in no rush. ‘Time stopped 15 years ago,’ he says.

‘When I was a boy in this area, all the shops would sell spices – cumin, cinnamon, black pepper, white pepper – also pistachios, chestnuts, desiccated coconut,’ Aqad says. ‘It was full of life.’

The souk is Mohamed Aqad’s life. He has worked there since the 1960s. But in August 2012, Aleppo became a battleground between regime and opposition forces. Like everyone else, Mohamed had to avoid the medina. A month later, he tried to return to his shop. Reaching his destination, he found two dead bodies on the ground. They were shot by regime snipers installed at the citadel. He hurried home, counting 18 bodies on the way. ‘I felt so afraid,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t come back again. I didn’t want to lose my life for my shop.’

The war in Syria nearly destroyed Aleppo’s medina. The debris, blackened buildings and pock-marked walls reveal the physical damage this World Heritage Site has suffered. I can only imagine the conflict’s emotional scars. But life must go on. Restoration projects are underway. The sense of juxtaposition between the past and future is dizzying.

I visited Aleppo’s old city once before, in 2003. It was wonderful: a maze of covered streets and vaulted arcades hosting thousands of cavernous shops selling everything from pomegranates, fresh ricotta, mutton with entrails dangling on display, to gold jewellery, kilims, textiles and dresses. Donkeys would trot along paved alleys carrying sacks of fresh mint. There were mosques, madrassahs, hammams and cafés where old men played backgammon, nursing hookah pipes.

What was then a fluid circuit of labyrinthine passages is now broken. Today, a third of the medina lies in monochrome: a tableau of grey stones piled up against walls charred by the fire which funnelled through the souks in September 2012 – the result of shelling and gunfire between government forces and opposition rebels. The Khan al-Olabeyya, for example, an area of the medina containing medieval palaces (hosting the Italian merchant Marcopoli family), caravanserai and covered souks is now rubble and dust, the size of four football pitches, exposed to the sky.

While I stand there, surveying the scene, an Erk Sous vendor appears, tapping his metal cups, creating a loud percussive jingle. He offers me some liquorice juice. The brown liquid is bubbly from the long pour. It tastes cool, sweet and bitter. With his red, embroidered fez and waistcoat, replete with giant brass vessel, he brings colour, levity and a touch of the surreal to this desolate space.

Liquorice was likely imported from Egypt thousands of years ago. Trade was the making of Aleppo, whose origins stretch back to the Neolithic period. Situated on the western flank of the Fertile Crescent, between the mediterranean sea and the Euphrates River, it later became a hub along the Silk Road, connecting the Fertile Crescent with China and Europe.

The Madrassa al-Halawiyah, in the al-Jalloum souk, reflects Aleppo’s many layers of history. After Alexander the Great arrived, during the Hellenistic period, it was a temple. In the Byzantine era, it became the Cathedral of Saint Helena. Then in the 12^th century CE, during the crusader siege, Ibn al-Khashan converted the building into the Mosque of the Saddlemakers. Inside, the first thing I notice are its Corinthian columns. Then the cupola, darkened by smoke. Today, it survives the war, just. Major restoration work is needed.

Fortunately, the new Syrian government and international organisations are restoring elements of Aleppo’s old town. In 2025, the new government began installing water pipes as well as new lighting around the Citadel. The Municipality of Aleppo and the Directorate-General for Antiquities and Museums are also active in rehabilitating parts of the historic centre, including the Citadel and Grand Umayyad Mosque.

Ali Hamedi, 36, is hammering a steel chisel into a wall on the first floor of the Khan el-Sabun, a district in the medina where Aleppo’s famous soap was once manufactured and sold. He is remodelling some archways that look down onto a courtyard. Hamedi’s work is part of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s (AKTC) restoration programme, which supports the government’s broader efforts. As we speak, Ali shows me a shahuta, an ancient tool still deployed today. It renders stone flush, yet its steel incisors leave little striations across the surface.

‘Working here is fascinating,’ says Hamedi. ‘Everything in the old city has a soul. It is alive. I’m connecting with people from the past.’ Since 2018, AKTC has repaired eight key areas of the medieval souk, with more rehabilitation planned. Other international organisations such as UNESCO, UN-HABITAT and UNDP have also been involved in efforts to restore the city’s historic centre.

On my final evening, I meet a group of Aleppians in the Beit Achiqbash, an ornate former residence in the Christian al-Jdayde neighbourhood. Under the stewardship of trainers, 40 purposeful conservationists move around an extravagant 18^th-century Mamluki-Rococo courtyard, applying digital engineering tools like Total Station. Under this Junior Chamber International project, these young architects and engineers are using technology to re-imagine building designs and restore their city’s architectural heritage.

Beyond the construction work, though, I reflect on the traumas that Aleppo’s residents must repair. ‘The souk holds a lot of memories for Aleppian people,’ says Ammad Qaynouz. He had to vacate his father’s spice shop during the war. Coming back, he says, has helped him recall his happier memories before the conflict. The shop sells medicinal herbs and natural remedies. As such, it is healing not just the bodies of its customers, but also Qaynouz’s mind.

Another trader, Rahaf Houri, 33, describes the stress and anxiety she felt during the fighting. Her brother was killed by a sniper. She says she can barely remember anything before the war. But the vibrancy within the souk is helping her to recover. ‘There’s a lot of positive energy,’ she says. ‘Every day it feels better to be here.’

Rahaf’s shop is in the souk al-Hibal, one of the restored parts of the medina. These covered streets with new shops are immaculate. You can smell the paint and plaster. There is some dissonance, aesthetically, with the ancient walls elsewhere. This sense, I reflect, is also metaphysical: for merchants like Houri, as well as the returning customers, it will take time to fully ‘land’ within Aleppo’s post-war reality. But a feeling of cautious optimism is everywhere.

On my final morning in Aleppo, I walk into the souk for the last time. There are just a few shopkeepers opening their shutters. I can hear dovecotes warbling in the vaulted dome above me. There’s a voice reverberating. It sounds disembodied, ghostly. There are spirits in these streets. Lives, buildings, memories – they are formed and lost and revived in the old souks of Aleppo.

To Farm or Flee

The Climate Challenge Facing Syria’s Farmers

Rezak al Said pulls on a water pipe leading down to his well. Suddenly, there’s noise. A thrum of feathers flapping. Some birds burst out of the well, chirping as they pass. We smile. But Rezak’s situation is worrying. His well has been empty for months. “We never felt heat like this,” he says. “The area is becoming a desert. We are at a point of no return.”

This year, Syria has faced a historic water and food security crisis. The livelihoods of 14.5 million people – two thirds of the country’s population – were threatened by reportedly the worst drought in over 60 years. With international efforts supporting the new transitional government, there are signs of hope. But the challenge is immense.

“We used to have cows, sheep, turkey, duck, pigeon, vegetables, wheat and herbs,” says Rezak. “Then circumstances forced us to change.” He talks about the war, the extreme heatwave and the drought. Rezak has stopped trying to grow wheat himself, leasing out his land to others, and losing money in the process. Now he has sold off nearly all his poultry and livestock, including 230 sheep. With his grey hair and haggard face, Rezak seems older than his 47 years.

Rezak’s farm is in Jadoua village, a scattering of houses 20 km northeast of Salamieh, in Hama Governorate, central Syria. The landscape is flat and bone-dry; a patchwork of sand-coloured plots and occasional olive groves. It’s late afternoon when I visit, and the temperature has climbed above 40° Celsius.

Syria’s unbearably hot summers are being exacerbated by climate change. Since 1901, annual temperatures in Syria have increased by about 2°C, nearly 1 degree higher than the global average. By the end of this century, temperatures are projected to be as much as 6 °C higher compared with current levels.

Around the villages I visit, people remember greener times. Outside Lemsaraa, Hasan Yaghi recalled hyenas and deer roaming the land. Fadel Istanbuli described two streams near Bargan, as well as vineyards and abundant food. As a child, he would go for walks through natural forests of saf saf (willow) and zeuzafoon (linden). “It was like a heaven,” he said, raising his hands to the sky.

So much has changed. Under the Assad governments, intensive irrigation and thirsty cash crops like cotton were introduced, depleting the country’s groundwater. Today, Syria’s extreme heat means higher rates of water evaporation. With limited law enforcement, groundwater resources are being overexploited throughout the country. Illegal wells are everywhere. Annual average rainfall is expected to diminish by 11 percent over the next three decades. The outlook is desperate. Though some communities are trying to adapt to these challenges.

Aymen Qasem is wading waist-high through a sea of pepper plants. They grow voluminously in a 50-metre long polytunnel greenhouse. He starts picking the bright green fruits. Soon, there are too many to hold. Grinning, he offers me a handful.

Aymen is based in Taldara, located between Hama and Salamieh. Along with 7,000 other farmers in Syria, Aymen and his cooperative are being supported by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) with various assets and skills. In addition to the greenhouse, they now use solar power to pump water from a well, as well as drip irrigation and organic fertiliser. “Greenhouses are the future”, Aymen says, “they reduce heat and retain moisture”. I can see the benefits: the pepper plants inside the polytunnel are twice as tall as those in a field outside, yet they only require half the amount of water.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is working with the government to restore over 45,000 hectares of irrigation systems across Syria, helping nearly 70,000 households have access to water. Picture networks of canals once again channelling water into farming areas. “We have seen increases in cultivated land and improvements in food security,” says Jameson Zvizvai, the FAO project manager. His colleague, irrigation specialist Wael Al Derwish, adds that these measures have reduced tensions over water in areas such as Aleppo Governorate.

The FAO project, funded by the UK, is also providing trainings, cash vouchers for agro-processing activities and stronger early warning systems. These activities are supporting tens of thousands of farmers across Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Latakia and rural Damascus. “The project is really a beacon of hope,” says Jameson.

Syria’s government is being supported by other organisations, like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), on water and energy. President al-Sharaa’s nascent administration is also trying to tackle overexploitation of water reserves by amending legislation. But after the 14-year civil war, sanctions and a devastating recent earthquake, the Syrian state is at ground zero. To address the needs will take decades. There is little time.

Many are fleeing the countryside. “Migration is a hot topic,” says Ziad Ghaibor, from Al Qareb, east of Salamieh. “Our nightmare is that the situation continues like this year. If so, I think maybe a third of the village will leave in the next two years.”

Towards the end of my time with Rezak, we discuss the future and what hope there is for his children. I ask him a question: what helps him escape the stress. He falls silent. Then he pinches his nose. I realise he is crying.

To clear the air, we go out into Rezak’s back yard. His pigeon tower, with pipes splayed out from conical earthen walls, glows orange against the setting sun. Inside the tower, Rezak gathers up a slender white pigeon. Its breast bulges in his firm hand. He smiles.

I wonder now, if his pigeons, capable of flight and oblivious to the human condition, were the answer to my question.

Feeding The Hungry

Advocacy and blame in the global fight against hunger

Michelle Jurkovich

Band Aid’s platinum-bestselling song of 1984–5, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, may have ignited a cosmopolitan sense of compassion, but its central plea to “Feed the World” is as vague as the problem of hunger is entrenched. Feed the world? Who is responsible? How should it be done? In Feeding the Hungry, a concise and insightful analysis of anti-hunger advocacy, Michelle Jurkovich explores this conceptual problem.

Most would agree that the existence of chronic hunger in the world is undesirable. But states and anti-hunger organizations diverge over how it should be tackled. Jurkovich conducts a survey of a dozen organizations, including Action Against Hunger, Care, FIAN International, Oxfam and the
Rockefeller Foundation, asking them who is “to blame” for chronic hunger? And what is the solution?

For the first question, answers include transnational corporations, national governments, outside governments, price speculators and “lack of capacity”. For the second, respondents proposed agricultural development, food aid, safety nets, gender equality, regulation and climate action. In other words, there is no consensus on either matter.

There is no “norm” when it comes to addressing hunger, Jurkovich emphasizes. When hunger exists, no single actor can be blamed and shamed, which helps to explain the global stasis. This problem is confirmed by the flimsiness of the “right to food”. Promulgated into international law in 1966, the right to food should help advocacy efforts: it gives governments responsibility for ensuring populations do not go hungry. But governments are rarely pursued or held to account on the point. In part this is because organizations fear being kicked out of countries by angry governments or becoming embroiled in lengthy and expensive legal processes. And so,
little changes, and most people continue to see hunger as a development shortcoming rather than a rights violation.

Policy makers, activists and academics must construct a shared understanding of hunger as a human rights issue if we are to get beyond this impasse, Jurkovich concludes. The extraordinary public reaction to Band Aid’s song showed the moral purchase of hunger. With a common framing of the problem, campaigns could pressure governments to tackle hunger more effectively. That way, we really might feed the world.

Times Literary Supplement

Can Libya’s Migrant Detention System Be Reformed?

Following the cessation of hostilities in Libya and the efforts of Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha to decriminalize the country’s security sector, there are grounds for considering whether there is now scope for reform of Libya’s migrant-detention system. But, given the involvement of militia groups in the detention centres and Libya’s post-conflict politics, what are the prospects for reform?

On the night of 2 July 2019, an airstrike hit the Tajoura detention centre outside Tripoli, killing 53 migrants. The outcry for the closure of such centres in Tripoli was immediate. Observers asked why hundreds of migrants were being held at such a site, with the conflict raging around the country’s capital. Governments called for immediate changes to Libya’s policies on holding migrants. Yet, over a year later, little has changed. Detention centres continue to operate adjacent to military sites, and these centres are secured by militias, some of whom fought in the 2019–2020 conflict to control Tripoli.

There are 34 detention centres holding an estimated 3 200 migrants in Libya, 20 of which – at least nominally – fall under the authority of the Department for Combating Illegal Immigration (DCIM). The fact that all detention centres in the country are secured by militias is problematic, not only because this enables abuse against detainees but also because the militias are active in armed conflict. In the Tariq al-Sikka centre, for example, many of the guards fought on the side of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord against the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) during the 2019–2020 conflict. Another militia, the Abu Salim Central Security (ASCS) force, guards the Abu Salim detention centre. That militia was heavily involved in the conflict, taking many casualties in the area around Tripoli International Airport.

Investigation and Deportation Units (IDUs) are another element in Libya’s detention system. Their emergence has coincided with increasing numbers of unauthorized migrant releases at disembarkation points. These migrants can end up in an IDU before being transferred to a detention centre. IDUs are also run by militias, despite their semi-formal status under the DCIM.

How Militias Benefit From Involvement In Detention

Militias benefit from detention centres through their involvement in human smuggling or trafficking networks, by using detainees for labour, by diverting goods intended for detainees, or posturing as state security services to boost their legitimacy.

In the Souq al-Khamis area near al-Khoms, where human smuggling has escalated, there are several armed groups, and the Souq al-Khamis detention centre lies within their web of operations. Militias bribe or extort migrants for money. The 2017 UN Panel of Experts report found that the al-Nasr Battalion and its commander, Mohammed Kushlav, were complicit in human-smuggling operations around the Zawiya littoral. The guards at the al-Nasr centre are likely to have profited from extortion or bribery, along with unauthorized releases of migrants for payments, a form of human trafficking.

Some militias exploit detained migrants for labour. The work migrants are forced to do often involves cleaning weapons and loading ammunition, which risks detention centres being regarded as viable military targets – as was the case with the airstrike on the Tajoura centre in 2019.

Militias in several detention centres also profit by diverting and reselling goods meant for use inside the centres. As militias are not subjected to any meaningful state supervision, they are free to act as ‘gatekeepers’, siphoning off goods in return for the security they provide.

Some armed groups meanwhile present themselves as an extension of the state’s law enforcement. The Subul al-Salam militia, for example, has promoted its credentials as an anti-smuggling actor (despite allegations that it is involved in people smuggling). These tactics are often driven by a desire to gain state backing and legitimacy. Such arrangements potentially offer a safer and more lasting form of job security and income, particularly if any national stabilization or security sector reform processes are realized.

The Effects of the Conflict

In June 2020, the LAAF were pushed back from Tripoli – a victory for the GNA and its aligned armed groups. Winning the battle for Tripoli has thrown the balance of power in Tripolitania into renewed flux as politicians and militia leaders vie with one another and between themselves for the upper hand in the post-conflict context.

Bashagha is faced with a division of authority between the DCIM’s head, Mabrouk Abd al-Hafiz, and the undersecretary for migration, Mohammed al-Shibani, who has close links to Usama al-Juweili, the commander of the Western Military Region. This division is more than administrative and points towards the interdependence of militia leaders and public officials in the distribution of power.

In July 2020, for example, al-Hafiz removed Mohammed al-Khoja, the leader of the Tripoli militia running the Tariq al-Sikka detention centre. By September, however, it was clear al-Khoja had ignored this instruction and was still in Tripoli. One source said that al-Khoja’s influence had increased within the DCIM because of his role during the Battle for Tripoli. Removing al-Khoja would have increased Bashagha’s authority over the detention system, an effort that has failed.

In another example following the end of the fighting, one of the leaders of the armed group that runs the Mabani IDU was appointed in July by Libya’s prime minister to a senior position in the government’s intelligence service – despite the fact that his militia is known to extort detainees.

Prospects for Security Sector Reform

These developments hint at the contest at play between politicians vying for militia loyalty, and indicate the powerful influence militias exert over state officials and resources. They point to the fact that power in western Libya is still measured by military strength. Even though the conflict has subsided, armed groups continue to retain the power to shape national politics.

This has two worrying consequences. The first is that government officials are forced to formalize ad hoc power arrangements based on whichever armed group happens to hold martial advantage in a given area. The part-formalization of IDUs, where militia-run holding sites are given a veneer of legitimacy through the presence of DCIM officials, suggests as much. This effectively creates a path for individuals involved in armed organized crime, such as al-Khoja and others, to become part of the official state apparatus, whether military, intelligence or government.

Secondly, the fact that competing militia groups control the detention centres and their surrounding areas helps create resistance to a unified central authority. For example, the Abu Salim area of Tripoli, and its detention centre, is controlled as if it were a quasi mini-state by the ASCS.

This is an immensely challenging context in which to pursue security sector reform. Bashagha, the interior minister, has had limited success in pursuing this and he has faced opposition from politically connected militia elites.

In Bashagha’s favour, there have been protests around the country of late demanding better governance. Moreover, some of Libya’s key international partners maintain a particular interest in strengthening the country’s migration governance. Reforming the detention system is an area where several parties’ interests overlap. Delivering such a programme would heed those calls that followed the Tajoura airstrike, avert criminality and do a service to the thousands of migrants currently at risk of abuse. The question remains whether the GNA, faced with these internal divisions, can forge such a path.

Published for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime

‘The Dates Are Drying’: Climate Change and Water Scarcity in Tunisia

Mansour Rajeb is wrapping a plastic protective sheet around a branch of dates in his oasis near the village of Bchelli, in southern Tunisia. Tying it up, he lingers.

“I’m worried,” he says. “The quality is getting worse. The dates are getting drier.”

Like thousands of farmers across the region, the effects of the climate crisis and water scarcity are threatening his livelihood. “When the quality is poor, we receive lower prices. I’m earning less. This year, I’ll earn a third of last year, which was an average year.”

On the road out of Bchelli, a gust of wind makes the sand rise like steam. Beyond the palm trees lies desert; a flat, barren terrain of scrub, rock and sand. Communities have survived here for thousands of years, but their changing environment and practices may soon make it uninhabitable.

Overall temperatures here have risen by about 1C since 1988, according to data collected by the meteorological office in Tozeur, the capital of the region’s western district. This far exceeds average global warming levels.

“Temperatures used to peak in August and then fall, but now the heat persists until October,” says Taieb Foudhaili, of South Organic, a date exporting company based in Kebili. Given this pattern of warming, humidity levels are falling. The plants adapt by releasing water. The result, says Taieb is a drier, poorer product. His company must now do more sorting to maintain quality standards.

Global heating has also created shorter periods where date palms can flower and pollinate, according to Nabila el Kabri, an agronomist based in Kebili. As a consequence, Nabila has observed a decline in the productivity of dates per hectare.

But it’s not just rising temperatures causing anxiety. Over the past few decades, and particularly after Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, unlawful plantations have spread like blots across the white landscape. The state has failed to exert proper controls. There are now 38,000 declared hectares of palm tree across the Kebili region, though the real figure is probably as high as 50,000 hectares. Two thirds of the entire country’s dates are produced here.

Tunisia’s population has trebled since 1960, while gross national income per capita has fallen since 2010. In a region where almost half of young people are underemployed, agriculture offers a lifeline for many. After olive production, dates are Tunisia’s second most valuable agricultural export. The sector is worth more than US$ 200m. This revenue is vital, sustaining more than 600,000 people.

But a consequence of ever more palm plantations is water scarcity. Date palms are thirsty. On each hectare there are between 100 to 140 palm trees. Each tree requires the equivalent of 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water each year. Neither the old natural springs nor base groundwater can meet this demand.

Farmers are resorting to drilling and pumping water from aquifers. There are now about 30,000 wells, hundreds of metres deep, across the country. Half of these were drilled illegally, according to a 2017 report by Tunisia’s Ministry of Agriculture. Water levels are being increasingly overexploited across southern Tunisia. Half of this water is not renewable.

“If we keep creating these new oases, with thousands of hectares of new trees, then over 10 to 15 years we won’t have any water left. It’s a question of sustainability,” says Nabila El Kabri.

From the 13th century, water systems and inter-cropping practices meant Tunisians were masters in managing their scarce resources. However, modern palm plantations are essentially monocultures, producing the valuable Deglet Noor variety of date and little else. When this crop fails, farmers have little to fall back on.

Some are already suffering. Mansour said he has farmer friends who have already sold their trees from the new, poorly irrigated oases, because their crop was “so feeble”. Nabila says it is only a matter of time before date production as a whole will have to migrate north to Gafsa.

Ultimately, both problems Tunisia’s date farmers face – climate change and water scarcity – arise from a similar myopia; a common failure to see things holistically. “We are only thinking about the product,” said Taieb, “when we should be thinking about the air, the tree and the soil. We need to change the way we think.”

Lying in the shade of a palm tree in Chebika, 71-year-old Younes Belgasim is an unlikely figure of hope. His oasis is thriving. Younes is one of 18,000 people benefitting from a US$ 5.7m World Bank project that launched in 2014. The project provided Younes with seeds for vegetables and fruit trees, it improved his land’s soil and irrigation, and he got better fencing (protecting his plot from local wild boars).

The World Bank initiative supported Younes in restoring the traditional ‘three levels’ inter-cropping system. On his oasis, the date palms give shade to vines, banana, pomegranate and fig trees, while vegetables and wild grasses grow beneath.

This system demands more from farmers, and it may deliver less immediate commercial pay-off than exclusive Deglet Noor date production.

Both factors deter those farmers looking to work less and earn their revenue in one date harvest season. Inter-cropping can use more water, though it preserves water by maintaining humidity levels within the oasis ecosystem. Crucially, it improves the soil quality and strengthens biodiversity. And it diversifies farmers’ assets. This ecosystem-based farming can be a win-win: it protects farmers from climate, economic or disease-related shocks, while also preserving the natural environment.

“It is getting hotter,” says Younes, “but I’m not worried about climate change”. In a situation that’s becoming seriously worrying, perhaps his sense of security, as well as year-round earnings, will persuade others to farm in this way.

The Guardian

Ghosts of the Thar Desert: On the frontline of climate change in Pakistan

Ebu squints and her face creases into a dozen lines. She is peering down into her well but the act is pointless. She knows there is nothing down there. In moments of despair, life in Mal Nor, her drought-stricken village in the Thar Desert, seems equally senseless. With the climatic changes under way here, her ancestral lands in this part of south-eastern Pakistan are becoming almost uninhabitable.

“It used to rain a lot before,” she says, speaking in the Marwari language that is specific to this region. “It doesn’t now. It has drastically stopped.”

We stand by her well, near a couple of thatched huts and six sleepy goats that are tethered to a post. Her son and two young women look on; her small grandson, chapatti in mouth, stares, then breaks into tears. The surrounding landscape is sparse: sand, shrubs, the odd teak tree.

Ebu and her family are from an indigenous tribe called the Meghvars, who have lived in the Thar Desert for thousands of years. The land is full of such tribes; pastoral people whose livelihoods have mostly depended on goats and cattle.

Camels, peacocks, snakes and blackbucks share the arid 200,000 sq km expanse, most of which lies across the border in Rajasthan, India’s north-western state.

Scarce rainfall is not new here. Many of the elders describe their age in relation to a chapano (drought). Ebu says she has survived several chapano, at times eating merely grass and ants. These people are born survivors but their days in Tharparkar, as the district is called, might be numbered.

Farmers are losing their crops, cattle and goats because of the drought. Children are starving to death. Villagers are taking their own lives. Near Mithi, Tharparkar’s main town, several locals tell me that rainfall has halved in this region over the past two decades.

And it’s getting hotter. Across a range of indices, the Nasa Earth Exchange (NEX) has found that, over the past 50 years, temperatures in Sindh province, south-eastern Pakistan, have risen by more than 1.5C, around double the global average. Something has changed.

For a decade, I worked as a policy analyst for the UN and other organisations around the world. Reading countless reports at my desk in Rome, I became familiar with Pakistan’s particular vulnerability to natural disasters.

Over a 20-year period between 1998 and 2017, it experienced more than 140 climate-related events, such as hurricanes, flooding and heatwaves, causing more than 10,000 deaths and $3.8bn in losses each year through damage.

When I left the UN a few years ago, it was to write independently about hunger, climate change and other development challenges. In January, I decided to visit Pakistan to try to learn more about the lives of some of those most vulnerable to global warming.

The road that I take from Digri to Mithi shimmers in the heat. It was improved recently, with coal money, though the funds mostly went into constructing an open-cast coal mine and power station, located 70km away. The complex, known as Thar Coal Block II, was developed as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $60bn energy and infrastructure scheme that is under way across Pakistan. It began supplying electricity to Pakistan’s national grid in June.

Despite the asphalt-softening heat, which is now killing animals and people in southern Pakistan, the country’s efforts to extract fossil fuels from the ground are accelerating, generating ever higher carbon emissions.

For years, Pakistan’s population and manufacturing industries have suffered blackouts. CPEC offers a means to resolve the country’s energy crisis and, like all developed countries have done in the past, it helps both Pakistan and China pursue their fossil-fuelled industrial growth.

Banaras Khan, who is supporting climate-smart agriculture in Pakistan for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Islamabad, tells me the recurrent drought phenomenon in Tharparkar “gained momentum after 2013 and is becoming more frequent”. He says that a recent climate analysis the FAO conducted for Sindh province shows this can be attributed to climate change.

On the ground in Tharparkar, the land is so barren that even pasture cannot grow. Along the roadside, there are carcasses of animals, abandoned and atrophying, their skin caved-in between their bones. Locals here say “your livestock are like your diamonds” — a coping strategy when all else fails. When their animals starve, the owners are crushed.

A local historian called Bharomal Bheel tells me he visited a village called Jorvu, and saw a man who had just lost 300 sheep. Starving and dehydrated, they were killed by diseases. He was “completely broken”, crying in despair, says Bheel.

Alexander More, a climate historian at Harvard University, says Pakistan exemplifies how climate change can drive existing weather patterns to new extremes. “When we think of climate change, we usually think of global warming. But the reality is that, while temperatures are going upwards, with it also comes a pattern of increasing climate extremes. Southern Pakistan is an example of a place that is experiencing increasing droughts.”

Across the whole country, the risks are growing. The Himalaya, Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountain ranges in the north of the country hold 5,000 glaciers. Temperature rises or earthquakes can trigger what are called glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOF, which threaten populations living in the valleys and plains below.

In 2010, the Booni Gol outburst killed almost 2,000 people and destroyed 1.6 million homes. Thousands of acres of farmland were damaged. Today, analysts say seven million people in Pakistan are vulnerable to such floods.

The effects of rising temperatures are equally ominous for Pakistan’s lowland populations. The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report described how a global rise of 2C would have appalling consequences for South Asia’s megacities. By 2050, Karachi will have an estimated population of 24 million, and be likely to experience “deadly heatwaves” of 49C on an annual basis.

Sindh province was once at the heart of the great Indus Valley civilisation, which emerged more than 6,000 years ago, and thrived by channelling water via canals and dykes.

Today, high population levels and poor water management mean that Pakistan is running out of fresh water. The Indus River Basin Authority believes the country will suffer a shortage of 37 billion litres by 2025. These concerns will be intensified by potential “water wars” between India and Pakistan, should current tensions between the neighbouring countries escalate.

In the Thar Desert, communities already face an existential threat: there is nowhere near enough food to go round. Hundreds of thousands of people in Tharparkar, more than half the district’s population, face acute food insecurity, meaning they experience hunger but can go entire days without eating anything. Some 400,000 children under five are acutely malnourished, according to the FAO. More than 500 children died from hunger-related causes last year.

As crops fail, and livestock wither and die, the communal nature of life that has bound people in the Thar Desert together for so long is breaking apart. Villagers can no longer afford to stay on their lands. Ebu says that “most healthy men” have had to migrate to cities or towns where they hope to find work as day-labourers. “When they return,” she says, “they only bring things for their own family.”
Others complain in similar terms. Bheel calls it a “drought in community”. Perhaps it is this — the sense of togetherness evaporating — that causes most unease. “We are constantly worried,” says Ebu. “We’re in a constant state of anxiety. It’s as if we are drowning.”

As with most slow-motion humanitarian crises, the issue is not that there are no solutions — but that they require political will, finance and attention. For dry-land communities like those of the Thar Desert, technologies such as land terracing, drip irrigation and mulching can save water and preserve soil quality, sustaining the livestock and crops on which people depend. Such steps would mean major financing as well as government and international support.

The broader need to meet Pakistan’s energy requirements is also not unattainable; billions of dollars of investment are pledged at climate conferences every year. Some of this money could and should be invested in developing countries like Pakistan, enabling them to shift their fossil fuel-powered growth models towards renewable energy alternatives. Overall, it is a massive project and, in relative terms, there is very little time. It’s hard to feel optimistic.

One evening, Bheel tells me several tales, from legend and personal experience, recalling djinns (ghosts) and deos (spirits) and the alarming feats of the goddess Aver Devi. “My grandmother’s ghost stories were the worst,” he says, “because they seemed so true.”

Reality is beginning to attain something of these stories.
Late one night, with a guide, I visit a village in the desert. The moon and stars are bright enough to reveal our shadows on the sand. In the monochrome light, the landscape resembles a blackish sea. In silence, we come across some abandoned thatched huts; black shapes in the darkness.

We find other huts. Two figures emerge. A man says his eight brothers and their families have left this village. His is the last family left. It is a ghost village. Soon, because of climate change, places like these will be uninhabited, and the desert wind will be the only sound; a long, drawn-out gasp of what once was.

Financial Times Magazine

Journey Through Southern Tunisia

In the cool interior of his troglodyte cave, Ali Diglish is speaking at full tilt. The 26-year-old guide from Chenini barely draws breath. Like much of the country these days, this Berber village in southern Tunisia doesn’t get many visitors, so Diglish is seizing his chance.

This article featured in the Travel section of the Financial Times Weekend edition. The full article can be found by clicking on the link here.

FT Weekend

Transforming the Fisheries

“Fence now meets fence in owners’ little bounds, / Of field and meadow, large as garden grounds, / In little parcels, little minds to please, / With men and flocks imprisoned, ill at ease”. These dispirited lines were written by the “anti-enclosure” poet John Clare at the turn of the nineteenth century. “The thorns are gone, the woodlark’s song is hush, / Spring more resembles winter now than spring”, he wrote in another verse, ruing the stark “emptying” that enclosure wrought upon the natural world.

Clare is quoted in the conclusion to Patrick Bresnihan’s elegantly written book, Transforming the Fisheries. As an academic text, filled with social research, it seems far removed from the rural poetry of Clare. But despite their different forms and periods, their subject, and lament, is similar. Both champion the richness that they perceive lies in the “commons”.

Today’s seas and oceans, Bresnihan recognizes, are subject to enclosure of a less visible form: through regulatory regimes imposed by governing bodies that seek to manage fish stocks for economic gains. This phenomenon is associated with “biopower” – a Foucaultian term denoting capitalism’s power over the sphere of “reproduction” (i.e. nature) since the eighteenth century. Bresnihan assesses the efforts of Irish government officials, worried about “the crisis of overfishing” and “scarcity”, who seek to protect and improve the industry. He considers policies designed to “rationalise” fisheries towards economic and environmental goals. The LEADER programme, the Maximum Sustainable Yield, individual transferable quotas and community-based resource management initiatives have all been proposed by policymakers to push fishermen towards greater profitability and sustainable, “locally-managed” fish stocks, in line with the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy.

Transforming the Fisheries is partly ethnographic. Bresnihan spends eighteen months living in the fishing community of Castletownbere, Ireland. He helps out on big, commercial fishing trawlers, as well as smaller, inshore boats. In these places, he realizes that fishermen live within a respectful, complex and unpredictable “collectivity” between humans and non-humans. These environments are described as the “more-than-human commons”, where “resources [are] circulated and shared rather than accumulated, owned or controlled”. As such, the everyday activities of fishermen do “not translate easily into the terms of political economy or liberal frameworks of governance”. Instead, Bresnihan sees their behaviour more as “commoning”, denoting the continuous making and remaking of relationships with society and nature. With this notion he challenges certain neoliberal assumptions about human ways of being in the world.

Times Literary Supplement