Greece may extend North Africa asylum ban if migrant flow resurges
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Arab News
4 hours ago
- Arab News
After busy first 100 days, Germany's Merz faces discord at home
BERLIN: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has driven sweeping changes in security, economic and migration policy during his first 100 days in office, but faces widening cracks in his uneasy coalition. On election night in February, a jubilant Merz promised to bring a bit of 'rambo zambo' to the post – using a colloquialism that can evoke a wild and joyous ride, or chaos and mayhem. Having achieved his life's ambition at age 69 to run Europe's top economy, Merz lost no time to push change, mostly in response to transatlantic turbulence sparked by US President Donald Trump. 'Germany is back,' Merz said, vowing to revive the economy, the military and Berlin's international standing after what he labelled three lackluster years under his center-left predecessor Olaf Scholz. Even before taking office, Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and their governing partners from Scholz's Social Democratic party (SPD) loosened debt rules and unlocked hundreds of billions of euros for Germany's armed forces and its crumbling infrastructure. Merz vowed to build 'Europe's largest conventional army' in the face of a hostile Russia and keep up strong support for Ukraine in lockstep with Paris and London. A promise to ramp up NATO spending endeared Merz to Trump, who greeted him warmly at a White House meeting in June, only weeks after a jarring Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. When Israel bombed Iranian targets, Merz, with a penchant for strong and often controversial one-liners, praised it for doing the 'dirty work' – but last Friday he took the bold step of freezing arms exports to Israel over its Gaza campaign. On the home front, Merz has pressed a crackdown on irregular migration, a sharp departure from the centrist course of his long-time party rival Angela Merkel. He has said he must address voter concerns about immigration to stem the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which won a record 20 percent in February's election. Merz's heavy focus on global events has earned him the moniker of 'foreign chancellor' – but trouble looms at home, where his SPD allies have often felt overshadowed or sidelined. To many of them, Merz's right-wing positions have been hard to swallow in the marriage of convenience they entered following the SPD's dismal election outcome of 16 percent. German voters have not yet fallen in love with Merz either. His personal approval rating slipped 10 points to just 32 percent in the latest poll by public broadcaster ARD. In an early sign of trouble, Merz's inauguration on May 6 turned into a white-knuckle ride when rebel MPs opposed him in the first round of the secret ballot. He was confirmed in the second round, but the debacle pointed to simmering resentment in the left-right coalition. Many have chafed at his hard line on immigration, his vow to slash social welfare and his limited enthusiasm for climate protection. Merz also sparked controversy when he dismissed plans to hoist an LGBTQ rainbow flag on the parliament building by saying the Reichstag was 'not a circus tent.' The biggest coalition crisis came last month, sparked by what should have been routine parliamentary business – the nomination of three new judges to Germany's highest court. Right-wing online media had strongly campaigned against one of them, SPD nominee Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, calling her a left-wing activist on abortion and other issues. The CDU/CSU withdrew support for her and postponed the vote, sparking SPD fury. The issue looked set to fester until Brosius-Gersdorf withdrew her candidature on Thursday. Other trouble came when the CDU's Bavarian sister party demanded sharp cuts to social benefits for Ukrainian refugees, a position the SPD opposes. Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil of the SPD warned the conservatives to refrain from further provocations, telling Welt TV that 'we already have far too many arguments in this government.' Both coalition partners know that open squabbling will turn off voters after discord brought down Scholz's three-party coalition, and play into the hands of the AfD, their common foe. For now Merz and most other politicians are on summer holidays, leaving unresolved issues lingering. Merz will need to pay attention, said Wolfgang Schroeder of Kassel University. 'The chancellor's attitude is: I think big-picture and long term, I'm not interested in the small print,' he said. But Schroeder added that all the coalition's big troubles so far – from the judge row to Ukrainians refugees – 'have been about the small print.'
Arab News
15 hours ago
- Arab News
Greece air-drops food aid over Gaza: PM
ATHENS: Greece on Saturday joined EU countries in dropping food aid over Gaza, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.'This morning, two aircraft of the Hellenic Air Force dropped 8.5 tons of essential food supplies in areas of Gaza,' Mitsotakis said on Facebook.'The operation was organized in collaboration with countries from the European Union and the Middle East, aiming to support the basic needs of people in the afflicted region.''Greece will continue to undertake initiatives for the immediate cessation of hostilities, the release of hostages, and the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. It is the duty of all of us to put an end to human suffering immediately,' he countries including Britain, France, and Spain have recently partnered with Middle Eastern nations to deliver humanitarian supplies by air to the Palestinian the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees Philippe Lazzarini has warned that airdrops alone would not avert the worsening UN estimates that Gaza needs at least 600 trucks of aid per day to meet residents' basic has escalated about the situation in the Gaza Strip after more than 21 months of war, which started after Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a deadly attack against Israel in October Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces mounting pressure to secure a ceasefire to bring the territory's more than two million people back from the brink of famine and free the hostages held by Palestinian early Friday, the Israeli security cabinet approved plans to launch major operations to seize Gaza City, triggering a wave of outrage across the globe.
Arab News
15 hours ago
- Arab News
Libya: How to govern around fragmentation
Libya has since become a brutal case study in the consequences of institutional and governance collapse. The 2011 rebellion shattered Muammar Qaddafi's hyper-centralized state but failed to replace it with a functional alternative. Instead, the international community's fixation on centralized power-sharing deals with warlords and loose militia coalitions continues to neglect the crucial work of subnational institution-building. Thirteen years of political limbo have not yielded a single coherent local governance framework, enabling parallel power structures to metastasize. To date, Libya remains split between the Tripoli-based, UN-recognized Government of National Unity and a rogue eastern fiefdom dominated by the warlord Khalifa Haftar and his sons. These, in turn, also compete with more than 100 autonomous militias, including tribal-affiliated groups exploiting administrative vacuums. A conspicuous absence of well-defined, legally enforceable administrative boundaries is the principal accelerant. Law 59 of 2012 envisaged governorates as intermediaries between municipalities and the state, but zero have been operationalized. Proposed maps, like the Government of National Unity's 2022 blueprint for 19 provinces, remain theoretical amid venomous disputes over territorial jurisdiction. Meanwhile, tribal councils fill service-delivery voids in regions like Fezzan, where public structures have simply vanished. Elsewhere, municipalities consequently shoulder functions spanning healthcare, policing and infrastructure without budgets or coordination mechanisms, resulting in woeful outcomes such as crippled hospitals and extremely high dropout rates in schools. Such an operational vacuum is now fueling resource predation as local factions continue to seize parts of Libya's petroleum sector. Tribal and militia leaders have also become adept at exploiting institutional ambiguity, converting geographic influence into lucrative monopolies. Illicit economies and networks are now generating sums close to one-tenth of Libya's pre-2011 gross domestic product via ports and desert crossings administered by de facto warlords. At the same time, boundary disputes between Zintan and Gharyan municipalities have frozen $120 million in reconstruction funds for three years. Such paralysis is not incidental; it is structural. The persistent failure to establish legitimate subnational governance structures, particularly resolving the question of administrative boundaries, entrenches division and dims prospects for a unified, sovereign state. Delaying the resolution of this cartographic standoff means that Libya's fragmentation risks becoming irreversible at the cost of more than 2 million Libyans who require humanitarian aid in a country that once boasted high life expectancy, literacy rates and per capita income. There is some precedence to the depth of the challenge Libya faces now. The country's territorial administration has always been unstable, from the Ottoman sanjaks designed for tax extraction, to Italy's colonial divisions, to King Idris' short-lived federal experiment (1951-1963) balancing Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan. Qaddafi's 1969 coup replaced provinces with 'people's districts,' eviscerating local capacity. Post-Qaddafi, the 2012 Local Administration Law envisioned governorates, municipalities and sub-municipal tiers, yet the critical governorate level remains non-existent. This absence cripples coordination on regional transport, resource management and security, overburdening a weak central authority and leaving municipalities isolated. Current proposals for administrative boundaries reveal crippling tensions. Advocates of three regions (Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Fezzan) invoke historical legitimacy but ignore perilous realities. Similar 'federalizations' around the world with minimal regional units, e.g. Bosnia (two entities), Comoros (three) and Pakistan (1973: four) all exhibit chronic instability. In addition, Nigeria's post-independence shift from three to 36 states deliberately diluted ethnic domination. Libya's three-region model risks entrenching the very divisions that fueled past civil strife: Fears of secessionism, resource-hoarding by dominant cities like Benghazi or Misrata, and the marginalization of smaller tribes within macro-regions. Alternative frameworks, for instance, 12 provinces or 13 units based on electoral districts, aim for balance but face legitimacy deficits. Electoral districts, drawn for technical convenience, often ignore deep-seated tribal animosities or socioeconomic ties. Proposals for 'economic regions' coordinating multiple governorates require robust planning institutions and fiscal autonomy that Libya lacks. Crucially, all models stumble on the core political schism: Federalists demanding regional autonomy vs. centralists fearing state fracture. This deadlock paralyzes reforms while illicit economies flourish; fuel-smuggling alone generates at least half a billion annually for militias, entrenching rule-by-gun-barrel. However, there is still some hope yet. South Africa's post-apartheid boundary delimitation offers curious parallels. Facing similar risks of ethnic polarization, it established a technocratic Commission on Demarcation and Delimitation guided by clear criteria: Historical boundaries, economic viability, infrastructure and cultural realities. Crucially, it embedded this within a Multi-Party Negotiating Forum, separating technical work from political bargaining. Four months of consultations yielded 780 written submissions and 157 oral testimonies, with hearings translated into 11 languages. The result: Nine provinces replacing apartheid's racial Bantustans, validated through inclusive participation. Libya's path demands a similarly structured process, not just a map. A boundary commission must integrate multidisciplinary expertise, such as demographers to quantify population distributions, economists to model resource allocation and geographers to assess topographical constraints, as seen with South Africa's commission, which included 16 specialists across seven fields. Crucially, such a body must derive its mandate from an inclusive political forum representing Libya's fragmented power centers, ensuring decisions reflect negotiated consensus rather than unilateral imposition. Historical continuities must be weighed alongside contemporary realities: Tribal land claims governing 65 percent of southern territories, hydrocarbon reserves concentrated in three basins and population disparities where Tripoli hosts 2 million residents while southern municipalities average 30,000. Resource distribution formulas must be codified to prevent rent-seeking, particularly given Libya's lucrative oil revenues. Public consultations require robust methodologies, not tokenism. Besides, imposing boundaries without tribal and community buy-in guarantees rebellion. Yet Libya's context demands added safeguards: Independent dispute-resolution mechanisms and explicit rejection of referendums, which magnify polarization in fractured societies. Lastly, dispute resolution necessitates permanent architecture. Nigeria's National Boundary Commission, operational since 1987, offers a template: A neutral technical body empowered to adjudicate inter-provincial conflicts and manage cross-boundary resources. However, in Libya, where 40 percent of proposed boundaries overlap with militia territories, such a commission will require authority to deploy verification teams and impose binding arbitration, backed by international guarantors to prevent politicization. A tall order, given the current context, but the cost of inaction escalates daily. Libya's chief export — oil, remains hostage to blockades by armed groups, even as 1.5 million people lack healthcare access, while municipalities, starved of funds and authority, cannot provide basic services. Each year of fragmentation deepens kleptocratic networks, radicalizes marginalized populations and erodes faith in public institutions. Strangely, the 2011 rebellion demanded dignity and equitable development. Redrawing administrative boundaries should therefore not be a mere cartography exercise but the very foundation for dismantling militias, redistributing resources and rebuilding social contracts. Without this, Libya's sovereignty will remain a fiction sustained only by foreign patrons and kleptocrats. • Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. X: @HafedAlGhwell
