The Capitals brings you the latest news from across Europe, through on-the-ground reporting by EURACTIVs media network. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

Before you start reading todays edition of the Capitals, we invite you to read the Special Report Europes new Climate Law: Leaving no-one behind?.

Regarding the latest developments at the Greek-Turkish border take a look at the following stories:

Erdogan drops the human bomb on EU

Migrants clash with Greek police, diplomatic efforts underway

EU calls extraordinary foreign ministers meeting on Syria conflict

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SOFIA | ZAGREB | BELGRADE

Following the chaos at the Greek-Turkish land borders, leaders from the Balkan region have urged the EU to take immediate action to prevent a repeat of the 2015 migration crisis.

In Sofia, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov is today preparing to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan in Ankara. He called on the EU to do everything and quickly to give Turkey the money it needs to readmit and take care of the refugees.

In Zagreb, Domestic Affairs Minister Davor Bozinovic has said Croatia is ready for another migrant wave at its borders. We have plans in case of escalation, but this is an issue that needs to be addressed diplomatically, he said, adding that the current migration wave is exactly the same as the one in 2015. The EU has not learned its lesson, he emphasised.

In Belgrade, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic promised on Sunday that Serbia would continue to treat migrants fairly, but warned it would not let them remain trapped in Serbia in large numbers.

Read the full story by Krassen Nikolov, Karla Junicic and EURACTIV Serbia

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BERLIN

SPD and Greens call for concrete actions after racist attack. In light of the 19 February shooting in Hanau, Germanys Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens proposed over the weekend concrete steps to address racism in the country. Both parties wish to create an independent Racism Commissioner, and the SPD intends to put the matter on the agenda for the next Grand Coalition committee meeting on 8 March. EURACTIV Germanys Sarah Lawton has the detail.

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VIENNA

Gender quota effective for supervisory boards but fails to trickle down. The Austrian quota system came into force in January 2018: All market-listed companies and some non-listed with over 1,000 staff had to have at least 30% of men or women respectively, meaning that not more than 70% could be of the same gender. However, no fines are levied in case of non-compliance; if no fitting candidate had been put into place, the seat would just remain empty. What are the results though? Philipp Grll has more.

Also read: Austria says it will stop any migrants trying to rush its border

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PARIS

Surprise on retirement law. In the midst of a coronavirus crisis, the French government surprised MPs by resorting on Saturday to a procedure that allows a law to be passed in parliament without a vote: Article 49.3 of the Constitution, concerning the law on pensions. EURACTIV France has the story.

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BRUSSELS

Coronavirus crisis talks. Over the weekend, a ministerial emergency meeting convened by Belgian PM Sophie Wilms (MR) to examine measures to be taken in response to the coronavirus crisis. Alexandra Brzozowski reports.

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HELSINKI

Million euros to find a sustainable solution. Helsinki has launched a competition to find a sustainable urban heating system. The solution must not rely on fossil fuel or biomass fired heating. The aim is to get rid of coal as the main source of district heating for good. Pekka Vnttinen digs deeper.

UK IRELAND

LONDON

Bullying row overshadows Johnsons baby. Home Secretary Priti Patel is at the centre of a bullying row after the top official in her department, Sir Philip Rutnam, resigned on Saturday citing a vicious and orchestrated campaign against him by Patel.Benjamin Fox has the story.

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DUBLIN

Coronavirus school closure. An unnamed secondary school in the east of Ireland is to close for 14 days following the first case of coronavirus in the area. Contact tracing has assessed that close contacts of this patient includes pupils and teachers of a secondary school, Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health said.

Public health doctors are in direct contact with pupils, their parents and the staff involved. Patient confidentiality in this case, and in all cases, should be respected. The Department of Health will provide updated information as necessary.(Samuel Stolton | EURACTIV.com)

EUROPES SOUTH

MADRID

New coronavirus cases but citizens still not concerned. As coronavirus cases continue to soar in the EU, Spanish Health authorities reported on Sunday a total of 73 new confirmed cases in the Iberian country, EURACTIVs partner EFE reported.Read more in English.

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LISBON

After decades of debate over the best location for a second airport in the Lisbon region, the start of work on the new Montijo airport was scheduled for this year, but a law giving the local authorities involved the right to veto the project threatens to put a brake on the work.

The association of airlines in Portugal (RENA) has recently asked the government and the Lisbon airport concessionaire (ANA) to immediately complete the urgent infrastructure work, in addition to the development of the new airport at Montijo. (Carla Jorge and Jorge Eusbio, Lusa.pt)

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ROME

Commissions competition watchdog wants to find out if the Italian governments December decision to loan national airline Alitalia 400 million was illegal state aid. Romes 400m loan was ostensibly meant to help Alitalia streamline its operations so that the carrier could find a potential buyer. Sam Morgan has the story. (EURACTIV.com)

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ATHENS

Charles Michel heads for Greece. EU Council chief Charles Michel expressed yesterday his full support for Greek efforts to protect the European borders. Closely monitoring the situation on the ground. I will be visiting the Greek-Turkish border on Tuesday, he tweeted.

VISEGRAD

WARSAW

Opposition rallies. On Saturday, three main opposition candidates held rallies as part of their presidential campaigns. Magorzata Kidawa-Boska (PO), who is closest in the polls behind the incumbent Andrzej Duda, promised to undo many PiS reforms, and restore the rule of law and be a true president, because it is time for Poland to have a female president. EURACTIV Polands ukasz Gadzaa reports from Warsaw.

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BRATISLAVA

The art of losing. What would others give for 18%, said Smer-SD party leader and ex-PM Robert Fico in what was supposed to be acknowledgment of his defeat. There are three losers, one winner. You (media) have lost, the third sector has lost and Smer has lost, he added. Fico is not considering leaving the partys chairmanship. However, he might be challenged by the ousted PM Peter Pellegrini, who got more preferential votes than Fico.

Opposition leader wins parliamentary election. The conservative movement Ordinary People (OaNO) party won Saturdays (29 February) parliamentary elections in Slovakia and will be the dominant player in a likely government coalition of opposition parties. Its leader Igor Matovi promises zero tolerance for corruption. Full story here. (Zuzana Gabriov | EURACTIV.sk)

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PRAGUE

Not having it. Czech MEP Tomas Zdechovsky (Christian Democrats) will take legal steps to defend himself against PM Andrej Babi who called him and another Czech MEP, Mikulas Peksa, traitors. Babi said that Zdechovsky and Peksa act against the Czech government by opening the topic of his suspected conflict of interest in the European Parliament. The PM criticised the two in connection with the fact-finding delegation of the EP, led by Budgetary Control (CONT) chair Monika Hohlmeier, that visited some authorities in order to check Babis conflict of interest in Prague last week. [Full story here]. The suspicion is based on last years European Commission audit report on subsidies from the EUs structural funds.

Coronavirus infection arrives. The health minister has confirmed the first three cases of coronavirus in the Czech Republic. Cases seem not to be connected, but all three patients, one of them a travelling American student, were in Italy recently. Babi has already proposed a ban on direct flights from Milan and Venice. (Ondej Plevk | EURACTIV.cz)

NEWS FROM THE BALKANS

BUCHAREST

Transition Fund eligibility. Six counties in Romania are eligible for Just Transition Fund projects, according to a preliminary analysis of the European Commission, cited by MEP Siegfried Muresan. Hunedoara, Gorj, Dolj, Prahova, Galati and Mures are the counties that could need the largest support to comply with the targets of the European Green Deal, said Muresan, Parliament rapporteur on the funding for the Green Deal. The Commission plans to allot some 10% of its proposed 7.5 billion Just Transition Fund for Romania projects. (EURACTIV.ro)

More details here

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LJUBLJANA

Corona-free area. Slovenian government announced at noon on Sunday that no coronavirus infection has been confirmed in the county. So far, 201 tests have been completed.

Surplus of 11 million in the state budget in January. Slovenias state budget had revenues of 904.5 million in January and expenditure of 893.6 million. The surplus reached 11 million, while last year there was a hole in the budget of 52.4 million. Taxes totalled 839.7 million in January, up 8.4% from last year. (eljko Trkanjec | EURACTIV.hr)

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BELGRADE

Parliamentary elections in Serbia to be called on 4 March. President Aleksandar Vucic said he would call parliamentary elections in Serbia on 4 March, immediately upon his return from Washington, where he is attending a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Vucic said on 29 February that the election campaign will last 50 days.

When the campaigns last for that long, it is necessary not to rush, you cant reach the campaign peak if you dont have a strategy for that, everyone will have time to prepare one. I hope that the list Im leading will make a good result, he said. (EURACTIV.rs)

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SARAJEVO

Independence Day that Bosnian Serbs dont recognise.As in previous years, ever since the country declared its independence in 1992, only half of BiH is marking Independence Day on 1 March, as the holiday is celebrated mainly by ethnic Bosniaks and Croats and their administrative half of the country. In the other, Serb-dominated half, 1 March is just a regular working day. Republika Srpska instead celebrates 9 January, the date when it was established in 1992. (eljko Trkanjec | EURACTIV.hr)

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PRITINA

Urgent parliament session.Kosovo Parliament is set to convene today after opposition MPs asked for an urgent session to discuss the governments proposal on abolishing tariffs with Serbia. The initiative came from former PM Ramush Haraidnajs Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), who continue opposing revocation of tariffs. As PM, Haradinaj introduced in November 2018, a 100% tax on all Serbian imports. Speaker Vjosa Osmani, a member of the LDK, a coalition partner in Albin Kurtis government, said Kosovo cannot hinder its relations with the US only because of the tariffs. Haradinaj has also been criticised by Albanian PM Edi Rama. (eljko Trkanjec | EURACTIV.hr)

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[Edited by Sarantis Michalopoulos, Zoran Radosavljevic, Benjamin Fox]

See original here:

Balkans brace for another migration crisis, urge EU to wake up - EURACTIV

A fresh humanitarian crisis on Europe's doorstep: A dramatic surge of migrants has arrived on Greek shores in recent days, after Turkey abandoned a 2016 deal with the EU under which it has housed some 3.7 million Syrian refugees in exchange for billions of euros in aid. Ankara took this step after a dangerous flare up last week in Syria, where Turkish troops are trying to halt a Syrian assault on Idlib province that's driving more refugees across the Turkish border. Some 10,000 migrants have since tried to breach the Greek border in recent days, leading Greek police to use tear gas and other riot control methods. One child died after a makeshift boat capsized off the Greek island of Lesbos, a main destination for migrants. Meanwhile, Greece's prime minister announced Tuesday that all asylum applications would be frozen while Athens deals with the emergency. Brussels has pledged emergency aid.

Netanyahu wins, but how big? With about 90 percent of votes in from Israel's parliamentary election, its third in less than a year, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party came out victorious, winning four more seats than its rival Blue and White party. At the time of this writing, Netanyahu is still two seats short of a 61-seat parliamentary majority. If Netanyahu, who is set to face a corruption trial on March 17, gets to 61 seats by merging with his allies on the right, he could seek parliamentary immunity from graft charges. But if the tally is a 60-60 split with the opposition, Netanyahu might need to entertain some sort of unity government with Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz. While much will be determined in the days ahead, one thing is clear: Netanyahu has won an election that was essentially a referendum on whether his legal troubles ought to disqualify him from leadership.

Putin isn't giving up any ground, literally: Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted a flurry of proposed constitutional amendments, including measures that would effectively ban same sex marriage, criminalize blasphemy, and prevent Russia from giving any part of its territory to a foreign power. That last measure will directly affect two major territorial disputes: one with Japan over the fate of islands occupied by Soviet forces during World War Two, and another with Ukraine over the fate of Crimea, which Moscow has politically and economically integrated into Russia since illegally annexing the peninsula in 2014. It seems that even for the country with the largest land territory on earth, every hectare counts.

Continue reading here:

What We're Watching: Europe's migrant crisis, Bibi's win, and Russians standing their ground - GZERO Media

The row over border checks is, however, about more than a quick flash of a passport. The response to the migrant crisis has been for governments to reassert their position at a nation-state level, thereby enfeebling the EU rather than strengthening it. It provides a marked contrast with the Eurozone crisis, which highlighted significant weaknesses with the EUs system of economic and monetary union. Back then, the states pulled together to deal with the problem (largely at Greeces expense, of course), introducing the European Stability Mechanism and instigating a banking union. What didnt kill the EU, made it stronger.

In comparison, governments have been willing to jettison Schengen and with it the fundamental EU principle of free movement, for national reasons. It turns out sovereignty matters in countries other than the UK, after all. The migrant crisis could have provided the impetus for member states to seek out ever closer ties, but instead they have ridden roughshod over what was meant to be a core value of EU integration. Little wonder that federalists are so concerned: in 2018, the President of the European Parliament wrote that the situation threatens to destroy the EU.

2020 was supposed to be the year when the Schengen crisis came to an end, with the EU hoping that the border checks would at last be removed. But now we have coronavirus. For France, Germany and the others, this would seem like a dangerous time to belatedly allow people to move without checks. In numerous other states that have continued to adhere to the Schengen rules even in the midst of the migrant crisis, border controls may be introduced for the first time in decades.

See the article here:

The coronavirus outbreak shows the real limits of a borderless EU - Telegraph.co.uk

CNN host Michael Smerconish warned on Saturday that both Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the coronavirus could have unpredictable impacts on the 2020 presidential election.

Can either coronavirus or Bernie Sanders be stopped? Smerconish said. A CNN chyron with the same question stayed on-screen while Smerconish discussed factors impacting the race.

A list of intangibles which included the impact of impeachment, a large Democratic field, congested candidate lanes and the looming prospect of no one getting the majority of delegates needed to secure the nomination before the convention, now includes the spread of a deadly virus, he said.

CNNS CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE CRITICIZED: TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME STRIKES AGAIN

CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

His comments came during South Carolinas Democratic primary.

Sanders has already beat out Biden, the presumptive frontrunner, in the previous three contests raising concerns about Democrats chances in the general election.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

President Trump, Smerconish argued, faceshis first national and international crisis while in office in the coronavirus.

Its unclear how Smerconish came to this conclusion given that many have suggested that the southern border experienced a migrant crisis under Trumps presidency.

Read more:

CNN host compares Bernie Sanders to coronavirus: Can either 'be stopped?' - Home - WSFX

Tourist wearing a protective respiratory mask tours outside the Colosseo monument (Colisee, Coliseum) in downtown Rome on February 28, 2020 amid fear of Covid-19 epidemic.

Andreas Solaro | AFP | Getty Images

The coronavirus pounded the European Union this week with the biggest test of its political, economic and social fabric since the refugee crisis of five years ago.

The ripples from the European migrant crisis of 2015 continue until today with its dual shock to the EU's unity and domestic politics. It triggered a wave of populism and nationalism, the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU, and Germany's political fragmentation behind the weakening of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Most dramatically, the Turkish government this week backed off from its commitment made in 2016, in return for 6 billion euros in EU funds, to prevent Syrian refugees from entering Europe. That followed a Thursday airstrike by Russian-backed Syrian forces in Syria's Idlib province, killing at least 33 Turkish troops.

Even as Turkey ordered police, coast guard and border security officials to allow would-be refugees to pass into the EU, Bulgaria responded by sending an extra 1,000 troops to the frontier with Turkey and Greek police launched smoke grenades at one crossing to dissuade migrants.

Containing pathogens is a much different business than managing waves of refugees. However, what unites the two issues is how dramatically the European Union's response will shape public attitudes about the institution's relevance, responsiveness, and effectiveness at a crucial historic moment.

The impact of coronavirus on Europe's future has the potential to be even more significant than the migrant crisis, particularly as it unfolds in almost biblical fashion atop a plague of other European maladies.

They include, but by no means are limited to: economic slowdown and possible recession (made more likely by coronavirus), the rise of populism and nationalism (stoked as well by the virus), disagreements about how to handle trade talks with a departing United Kingdom (which start Monday), internecine fights over the European budget, and ongoing German leadership crisis and French social upheaval.

The coronavirus morphed this past week into an increasingly global phenomenon that experts agree can no longer be contained. The hit to stock markets was $6 trillion, the biggest weekly fall since the 2008 financial crisis. By Friday, the WHO reported more than 78,000 cases and more than 2,790 deaths ion China and 70 deaths in 52 other countries.

In Europe, what began as northern Italian phenomenon where there have been more than 800 infections has now reached Spain, Greece, Croatia, France, the UK, Switzerland, Romania, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, North Macedonia, and San Marino.

Italians have cancelled their carnival celebration in Venice and Milan Fashion Week. European hotels in Austria, France, and the Spanish Canary Islands have been locked down in quarantine.

On 28, February 2020, migrants and refugees from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan boarded buses bound for the Greek border in a parking lot in the Zeytinburnu suburb of Istanbul, Turkey.

Diego Cupolo | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Though individual EU member states set their own health policies, the EU is responsible for coordinating response to the disease and providing advice regarding its still-open borders.

In most countries, citizens turn to national leaders for response in such situations. In a borderless European Union, which prides itself on free movement of people and travel, crisis response becomes a test of the institution itself and the philosophies behind this unique grouping of 27 member states with about 445 million citizens and $16 trillion GDP.

Thus, much attention this week was paid to whether and how individual EU countries or the EU itself might abandon the 1985 Schengen Agreement that brought 26 of its nations into a passport-free zone of travel.

This has been one of the greatest sources of EU pride and identity. At the same time, the agreement is designed to be far more flexible at moments of crisis than is generally known. The rules allow for the temporary reintroduction of border controls for reasons that include migrant surges, terror attacks and crucial now health emergencies.

"Paradoxically," argues Benjamin Haddad, director of the Atlantic Council's Future Europe Initiative, "one might argue that moments like these are made for the European Union."

That's because, Haddad explains, such moments require the level of technical cooperation and shared decision-making among countries that is the very basis of the European Union. The EU acts as a regulatory superpower through the "normative" power of its trade deals and other instruments that impose standards, which often become global, in areas including digital, health, environmental, and all manner of industrial sectors.

Yet, if imposing regulatory norms is an EU strength, rapid response at times of crisis remains a weakness.

When it comes to scenarios such as the refugee crisis or coronavirus outbreak, member states often take back control, as they did in 2015.The coronavirus will give new ammunition to those who want national border controls tightened or restored.

Marine Le Pen, the right-wing French nationalist, has called for border closures with Italy. In Switzerland, not an EU member but part of the border-free zone, right-wing political leader Lorenzo Quadri said it was "alarming" that the open borders' "dogma" would be considered a priority at such a time.

Health officials in Trieste airport measure the body temperature of incoming passengers. Trieste, 28th of February 2020.

Jacopo Landi | NurPhoto | Getty Images

As the number of coronavirus cases grows in Europe, it seems unlikely that EU and national officials will be able to avoid the greater imposition of border controls. On Sunday evening, for example, Austria halted some train connections at the Brenner pass with Italy after officials reported that two passengers had been stopped who were infected with the virus.

If the EU and its member states respond smoothly and in a coordinated fashion, the coming days could reinforce the collective value of the European Union.

Should the EU appear ineffective as the virus spreads, that will color European attitudes for decades to come.

In his classic 1945 novel The Plague, the French writer Albert Camus writes, "I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."

"The virus, alas, has so far been tackled by a divided continent, just like the plague isolates people in Camus's plot," Gianni Riotta, a visiting professor at Princeton University, tells Judy Dempsey at Carnegie Europe. "Austria scrapped trains from Italy, Italy broke with the European Union, too hastily grounding flights from China, only to see the disease spread faster with passengers arriving unchecked from other airports."

It's not too early to ask whether Europe itself will fall victim to the virus or emerge healthier from the challenge.

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Op-Ed: Coronavirus could be a bigger test for the EU than the refugee crisis - CNBC

KASTANIES, Greece With tear gas clouding the air, thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe clashed with riot police on the Greek border with Turkey on Saturday morning, signaling a new and potentially volatile phase in the migration crisis.

The scene at Kastanies, a normally quiet Greek border checkpoint into Turkey, rapidly became a tense confrontation with the potential to worsen as dozens of Greek security officers and soldiers fired canisters of tear gas. Riot police with batons, shields and masks confronted the migrants through the wire, yelling at them to stay back.

About 4,000 migrants of various nationalities were pressed against the Turkish side of the border. An additional 500 or so people were trapped between two border posts, but still on the Turkish side, at the long and heavily militarized land border that has turned into the flash point of the tug of war between Turkey and Europe.

Some people had climbed onto the limbs of trees or were crouching against the thick loops of barbed wired placed on the ground by the Greek army. They cheered, booed, and screamed to be let through.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey declared on Saturday that he had opened his countrys borders for migrants to cross into Europe, saying that Turkey could no longer handle the numbers fleeing the war in Syria.

What did we do yesterday? he said in a televised speech in Istanbul. We opened the doors. His comments were his first to acknowledge what he had long threatened to do, push some of the millions of Syrian refugees and other migrants in Turkey toward Europe in order to cajole the European Union to heed Turkeys demands.

He accused European leaders of not keeping their promises to help Turkey bear the load of millions of Syrian refugees.

Mr. Erdogan has also called for European support for his military operations against a Russian and Syrian offensive in northern Syria that has displaced at least a million more Syrians toward Turkeys border. He has also sought more support for the displaced and the 3.6 million Syrian refugees already in Turkey.

The migrants at the border had heeded Mr. Erdogans call and rushed to Turkeys borders with Europe, some on Friday taking free rides on buses organized by Turkish officials. But once at the Europes doorstep, they were met with a violent crackdown.

Migrants were also heading by sea to the Turkish coast, from where they hope to reach Greek islands, facilitated by the Turkish authorities, but officials reported few arrivals Saturday, perhaps because of poor weather at sea.

The mini-exodus was live-streamed by Turkish state television in scenes reminiscent of the 2015 migrant crisis that Europe had solve only with Turkeys help. Syrians shared information, some joking about the Turkish facilitation, suggesting they should publish the telephone numbers of people smugglers, too.

The International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, said that as many as 10,000 were making their way through Turkey to the northern land borders, in hopes of reaching Europe.

The Greek authorities said on Saturday that they had intercepted some 4,000 people attempting to cross at various spots of the 50-mile border overnight, and only a few had been successful and made it to Greece.

The frontier is heavily militarized on both sides, and is closed off with barbed wire only for about seven miles, running through fields, valleys and forests, and partly demarcated by the Evros River and its delta, where migrants have long perished because of choppy waters.

Even if the Greek officials succeed in holding back the hundreds at the small border chokehold in Kastanies, it will be hard to secure the entire border as migrants become dispersed and try their luck farther afield.

Most on the front line of the confrontation at the Kastanies crossing were men, but children were heard screaming farther back, and women were hanging on the side of the group stuck between the Turkish and Greek officials.

The ground was strewn with empty Turkish tear-gas canisters, rocks and burned-out tree branches, and the Greek guards pledged a standoff for as long as it took into the cold night and beyond.

Greece came under an illegal, mass and orchestrated attempt to raze our borders and stood up protecting not only our frontiers, but those of Europe too, said Stelios Petsas, the Greek government spokesman. He added that 66 migrants had been arrested crossing the land border illegally, and none have anything to do with Idlib.

Our government is determined to do whatever it takes to protect our borders, he said.

Mr. Erdogans comments on Saturday came after Turkey suffered heavy losses from Russian or Syrian airstrikes in northwestern Syria on Thursday and as Turkey seeks American and European support for its Syrian operations. The death toll from the strikes has risen to 36, Mr. Erdogan said. More than 30 soldiers were wounded in the strikes.

The Turkish leader has avoided accusing Russia directly of carrying out the airstrikes, and has spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia by telephone. But he said Turkey was retaliating with strikes of its own, including on a Syrian chemical weapons site south of the city of Aleppo. Turkey has deployed thousands of troops in recent weeks into the Idlib Province to try to stem the Russian-backed advance.

Mr. Erdogan is struggling to handle the growing crisis in Idlib, the last Syrian province held by the rebel forces his government has supported. Turkey has lost more than 50 soldiers in the past two months in Syria, which has angered many Turks, while domestic resentment toward Syrian refugees has grown amid an economic downturn.

The Turkish president called on Mr. Putin to get out of our way in Idlib and allow Turkey to push back Syrian forces to positions agreed under a 2018 de-escalation agreement.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff reported from Kastanies, Greece, and Carlotta Gall from Istanbul. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut.

Read more from the original source:

Erdogan Says, We Opened the Doors, and Clashes Erupt as Migrants Head for Europe - The New York Times

We live in a world of displaced populations. Nearly one out of seven people alive today is a migrant. Over a quarter of a billion are classed as international migrants, while over three-quarters of a billion are migrants within the borders of their own countries. Worldwide, by mid-2019, there were over 70 million refugees people who have been forced by war, persecution and environmental crisis to leave their homes. A vast majority of these refugees are from Muslim nations, including Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Yemen. Contrary to perceptions that these Muslim migrants are flooding the West, the biggest recipients of refugees are also Muslim nations like Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. While global migration is primarily motivated by economic reasons and may also be an indicator of the global economy's success, refugee data represents only tragedy and it is clear that the Muslim world bears more than its fair share of that.

This fact, combined with the teachings of Islam, both mandate that Muslims should be especially active in addressing the global refugee crisis. Facing the challenge is not a question of Sadaqa or charity aid alone. It includes mobilization and activism against war, the promotion of peacebuilding, restoration, taking care of victims, ensuring the protection and return of refugees, and rehabilitation of devasted cities and villages across nations. We need to end existing conflicts, prevent those which are imminent and then rebuild nations so people can go back to their homes. Yes, the challenges are numerous and Muslims, a community of 55 nations and nearly 2 billion people, must at least do their fair share.

It is common knowledge among Muslims that Islam is a religion of refugees and migrants. Indeed, the Islamic calendar starts not with the first revelation of the Quran in A.D. 61, but with the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions from Mecca to Medina in A.D. 622. The Prophet Muhammad and his companions are erroneously labeled as migrants in Islamic literature, although in truth they were refugees forced to flee after a decade of religious persecution in Mecca. Given the historical origins of the first Muslim community, it is surprising that Muslims have not made the care, protection and advocacy of refugees a pillar of their faith.

Maybe it is time for American Muslims to reinforce the fact that Muslims do not engage in religious persecution akin to what the prophet suffered; nor will they stand by while there is religious persecution anywhere on Earth. We, as American Muslims, should be the first to come to the aid of refugees forced to leave their homes like Muhammad and his companions.

The story of the Prophet Muhammads migration has another side that is often neglected: The story of the Ansar (or "Helpers") the people of Medina who received and accepted the refugees from Mecca. While the story of the migrants ("Mahajirs") is a tale of faith, persecution and suffering, the story of the Medinans (the Ansar) is one of sacrifice, giving, tolerance and openness. While the people of Mecca had no choice but to migrate, the those in Medina chose to provide refuge. In my latest book, "Islam and Good Governance: A Political Philosophy of Ihsan," I argue that a society based on the concept of "Ihsan" (doing beautiful things) would be motivated not by self-regarding politics but by other-regarding interests. The Muhsins ("those who perform Ihsan") will act not in self-interest but in the interests of others like the Ansar of Medina. Nothing can be more virtuous than what the Ansar did. The Quran records their concern for others:

"They love those who emigrated to them and find not any want in their breasts for what the emigrants were given but give (them) preference over themselves, even though they are in privation," Quran verse 59:9.

The Quran places a lot of importance on the plight of migrants and refugees, making them eligible for zakat (deserving of distribution). It also commands Muslims to provide protection for refugees even if they are nonbelievers.

And if any disbeliever seeks your protection, then grant him protection so that he may hear the words of Allah. Then deliver him to his place of safety, Quran verse 9:6.

The Prophet Muhammad, who was himself a migrant/refugee, understood their plight firsthand and so he too commanded Muslims to help those in need.

Whoever grants respite to someone in difficulty or relieves him, Allah will shade him on the Day of Resurrection when there is no shade but his, says Al-Tirmidhi 1306.

Some American Muslims, 68% of whom are immigrants and refugees, have a unique opportunity to be both Mahajir and Ansar. We came here as immigrants seeking a better life, and now that we have found our American dream, it is our time to be Ansar; to advocate, to fight for and to support those who are forced to leave their homes. Fighting for those who are in need is the best sunnah, a true way of bringing Ihsan into our lives.

Allah loves the Muhsineen ('those who do good')," Quran verse 2:295.

* Professor at the University of Delaware and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy

Read this article:

Goodness in the age of displacement - Daily Sabah

Approximately 10,000 people marched in the town of Hanau, Germany, Sunday to mourn the deaths of nine victims who were killed by an anti-immigrant gunman last Wednesday, AP reports.

Catch up quick: The attacker killed the nine people five of which were reportedly Turkish citizens in Hanau, a suburb of Frankfurt, before turning the gun on his mother and himself. He left behind racist videos and texts in which he called for genocide and claimed that he'd been surveilled since birth.

The big picture: Per AP, this was Germany's third deadly attack inspired by far-right views in just a few months. Since Chancellor Angela Merkel permitted a wave of over 1 million refugees to enter the country during the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, Germany's far-right, anti-immigrant AfD party has seen historic electoral success. It now has representation in all 16 regional parliaments.

Go deeper: Hate crimes reach 16-year high, according to FBI report

Original post:

Thousands gather in Germany to mourn 9 killed in racist shooting - Axios

Saturday, 22 February 2020

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, called on Greece to act regarding the unsustainable situation for refugees on the Greek islands on Friday.

These refugees are mainly living on the islands opposite Turkey. Grandi said Greece would have support from Europe.

The living conditions on the islands are shocking and shameful, Grandi said, adding they had gotten worse since his last visit in November.

The High Commissioner also appealed for European solidarity and requested that the responsibilities be shared. This could involve relocating non-accompanied children and other vulnerable people to other EU countries and speeding up family reunions.

Around 36,000 people are currently living in over-crowded and unsanitary camps in five islands on the Aegean Sea (Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Kos, Leros) which are only designed to hold 6,200.

Many people are living without electricity, or even running water, in filth and waste, Grandis press release says.

Asylum seekers difficulty in accessing healthcare is also a big concern: the risks incurred by the most vulnerable people are among the worst seen in refugee crises across the world.

Grandi says the situation must be resolved quickly by relocating refugees to the Greek mainland, where extra capacity to house refugees must be found radiply.

The Greek government transferred 9,000out of the planned 20,000 asylum seekers last year. The delay is due to the lack of accommodation and increasing opposition from local authorities.

Five years after the 2015 migrant crisis, the situation Greece finds itself in as the migrant gateway to Europe has led to slightly xenophobic demonstrations (which have been marred by incidents) on the Aegean islands and several cities on the mainland.

Sarah Johansson

The Brussels Times

Continued here:

Greece has to act regarding "unsustainable situation" for refugees on the islands - The Brussels Times

Milson, from Honduras, sits with his 14-year-old daughter, Loany, on the reedy riverbank beside the bridge connecting Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, with downtown Brownsville, Texas, across the Rio Grande.

On the far reach a few yards but another world away is a vast tent (officially a soft-sided facility) erected to cope with the sheer numbers seeking asylum in the US. In a few weeks time, on the date stipulated on their notice to appear document, the people staying here will have their credible fear interview by video link.

On the Mexican side, clinging to the bridge like barnacles, are hundreds of smaller tents, where roughly 1,000 people are gathered for safety, in fear of the mafia that has kidnapped, murdered or disappeared hundreds of migrants over the past decade. It is a tent city where, says Milson, time passes very, very slowly. Almost all are from Central America.

Upriver at Ciudad Acua, about 250 people are encamped in the ecological park, staring across at the lights of Del Rio, Texas. Most are from Cameroon, Angola or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Further west, at Ciudad Jurez, a mix of Cubans, Central Americans, a Ugandan and an Indian kill the endless time in the yard of a Methodist-run shelter. On the borders far western edge, in Tijuana, Haitians trade on the streets a community of hundreds who came to cross, but remained in Mexico.

Ten years ago, most people trying to cross into the US from these various places were Mexicans, in flight from poverty or violence.More recently, though, there had been a lull, with Mexicans nowhere to be seen at some crossing points. But 2019 figures show a renewed rise in Mexican asylum seekers, as the narcotraffic cycle of violence returns to record levels. Roughly half the asylum-seekers on the border are now Mexican.

As the migration crisis on the US-Mexican border becomes a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe and the centrepiece of Donald Trumps re-election campaign, one thing is clear to those who have supported migrants over decades: the world has converged here. Such are the historical and geopolitical layers of migration to the busiest border in the world, gateway to the globally ubiquitous American dream a dream now twisting into a nightmare.

Woody Guthrie wrote his song Deportee about migrants working and dying in Americas deserts in 1948. It remains resonant, but the cast has changed.

Mass migrations began with poor Mexicans crossing to work in Americas farms, and continued with the bracero programme a Spanish term for a labourer initiated in 1942, which gave limited access to American jobs. The scheme ended in 1964, yet vast numbers of Mexicans continued to cross, legally and illegally.

During the 80s, when civil wars erupted across Central America, tens of thousands tried to cross, many finding a place in the US thanks to the sanctuary movement, which gave a path to legality.

All the while millions of Mexicans came to the border not to cross but to live on it, in maquiladora assembly plants, producing goods exported duty-free to the US.

From 2006, as the cartel wars devoured Mexico, more fled, seeking safety in the north. The demographics changed again.

Methodist pastor Juan Fierro Garca, who runs the shelter in Jurez, says: More people than ever are on the move from generalised violence all over the world, seeking safe places for themselves and their children. And if anyone thinks this is going to stop, think again this is just the beginning.

The Trump administration has met this surge in arrivals with a policy of deterrence based on fear and brutality.

The separation of children from their parents for incarceration outraged the world. The policy was ruled illegal by US courts and abandoned, though hundreds of children remain separated after their parents were deported. Internal documentation leaked from US Customs and Border Protection shows full knowledge of the traumatic affects of child separation. Unaccompanied minors crossing the border continue to be detained in appalling conditions. In December, ProPublica published CCTV footage that appears to show a Guatemalan teenager left to die in a concrete cell.

An internal report from last July, seen by the Guardian and written by Jennifer Costello, the inspector general of homeland security, to acting director Kevin McAleenan, warned that at-risk populations are subject to overcrowding and prolonged detention. But Trump intends to expand the number of those detained rather than deported under migrant protection protocols (MPP).

Under MPP, non-Mexicans from Spanish-speaking countries cannot remain in the US to await their credible fear interview, as is mandated under the 1939 Montevideo treaty on asylum. They must instead wait on the Mexican side, with the result that 57,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Central America, are now encamped south of the border in unsanitary conditions, prey to kidnap and extortion.

Under another policy, called metering, daily asylum applications are limited, so that unofficial waiting lists, thousands-long, are drawn up on the other side. The Trump administration announced in January that it plans to extend the MPP to Portuguese-speaking Brazilian asylum seekers.

The policies are working: US Customs and Border Protection report that the number of arrests for illegal crossings fell 75% from May to November last year, from 132,000 to 33,510. The reason is simple: word reaching the Mexican side of how appalling conditions are.

The chapel at the Methodist Buen Pastor shelter in Jurez has become a dormitory for young mothers and children, among them Marisela del Carmen Espinosa, who lays her seven-year-old son, Diego, on a blanket; the child is running a fever. Marisela fled El Salvador when the MS-13 gang demanded she join them the problem being that Diegos father was among them.

They came to my house, armed, saying they needed me to do tasks for them, and if I didnt theyd kill me and the boy, she says. Marisela has spent the past year on trucks and railway cars, crossing Mexico, paying $8,000 (6,211) to coyotes and other people smugglers. To her horror, Diegos father has traced her to Jurez, and Im scared when I go out for food, because he said his contacts here would take our son and kill me. I know that the police and gangs are friends if I go to them for help, Ill be killed.

In the mens dorm, Evian Mvouba, from DRC, prepares to cross and make his asylum claim. He stands a better chance than his Central American companions since MPP does not apply to Africans. But he does fall under the metering system, and more than 2,000 people are ahead of him on the list.

Evians village was attacked by government forces 18 months ago. He has since journeyed through Angola, Brazil, Colombia and Central America, with no word of many of his family members. It is limbo, he says, not knowing where I live, and whether they are alive. Most of my fellow Africans have moved on, and a few have been successful because they are politically persecuted more than the people here from Guatemala and Honduras.

In all these shelters the Cubans look different better clad and fed, escaping not violence or desperation, but a regime they fear or despise.

Pedro Ruz Tamayo is an opposition leader, educated and erudite. Youll not find a Cuban in Jurez who supports the regime, he says, but youll not find many who contest it. They just want to try their luck in the US.

Pedro commutes between the shelter and an emerging Little Havana in Jurez, consisting of people waiting to cross or refused asylum and returned.

Ariel Busquet kneads burritos in the Llenadora caf. He was number 13,527 on the waiting list to cross. After hearing from a friend who returned following three months incarceration on the other side, he elected to remain in Jurez. We Cubans left our country to work for a wage something we cannot do there, he says. But thats what Im doing here in Jurez! My relatives call themselves Cuban-Americans; I call myself a Cuban-Mexican.

In El Paso, Ruben Garca has seen each migration wave arrive since 1978, when he first opened Annunciation House, which is now a network of shelters for migrants. The shelters have been vital to current efforts to abate the suffering.

Without radical Catholicism of the kind that inspires Garca, far less would happen on the migrants behalf. To overlook the faith of those who do this is to not accurately report what is happening.

Forty years ago, a group of us started this work, he says. We made a decision to offer hospitality to undocumented migrants.

But we also talked to reporters, universities, hoping we could bring about change for the better. And 40 years later, we have Mr Trump as president and below him very capable officials whose sole task is to make life unbearable for refugees. It makes me think of Lazarus, restored to life by Jesus, who turned to the community and said: Unbind him. In this situation, it is the refugees who unbind us, sharing their stories, their struggles. Thereve been days when weve received hundreds of people.

One night, up to 1,000 migrants were released on to the streets around El Paso bus station. TV coverage showed Garca, arms wide, saying to a group: Bienvenidos! welcome and it seemed the first kind gesture they had encountered in months.

Garca has seen generations of migrants flee death squads in the 1980s, when war was war, and you knew who the sides were, to this new kind of undeclared war, where no one knows the rules, and you live in a state of permanent insecurity. Plus drought and crop failure.

You either give up your children to those realities back there, or you pay the coyote, subjecting yourself to debt bondage and whatever risk, and leave.

Migrants need guidance through a system designed to fail, says Molly Molloy, up the road in Las Cruces. Molloy worked as an archivist at New Mexico State University, but has retired to work with migrants, something she first did in the 80s. She is now a paralegal, translator and researcher for immigration lawyer Nancy Oretskin.

In the civil wars in the 1980s migrants were mainly people who had never been to school or left their hamlet and, with successive waves of migrants, blocks have been laid in response, says Molloy. September 11 2001 was a dividing line, after large numbers, mainly Mexican men, fled poverty as the result of the North American Free Trade Agreement and clearance of subsistence farms. Then came two further push factors: Mexicans fleeing violence after 2006, and the great recession, after which there were just fewer jobs for these people.

And now climate change, and in Central America, violence of gangs that were initially deported from Los Angeles. A level of violence more extreme, on a daily, monthly basis more people killed even than during the civil wars.

Oretskins family were migrants. I was raised by crazy Jewish entrepreneurs raised to think: dont you ever forget.

Handling 10-15 asylum cases a year, she works in the immigration courts where 90% lose, affording a second bite at the cherry to the Board of Immigration Appeals, where 99.9% of the 90% lose.

The evidence required by an applicant is often impossible to produce, says Oretskin. If you dont have a doctors report, it did not happen. If you are attacked in El Salvador, the gang will say: Go to the doctor and well kill you. We have reports of doctors in cahoots with gangs.

Occasional successes are usually among Africans. Oretskin shows a wedding photo of one client, from Cameroon, permitted to stay after being kept in a gym in Ciudad Jurez for three weeks, and staying at my house when she had nowhere else to go.

What sets Trump apart, even in an environment systematically stacked against refugees, is the brutality of the manner in which rules applied. Former secretaries of homeland security, she says, had some idea of what cannot be done because it is illegal. But the people there now are there just because someone has to be. We do not even have due process, let alone justice.

Night is eerie in the ecological park at Ciudad Acua, where the Rio Grande is shallow enough to wade to Texas. Many do it to surrender to the Border Patrol and apply for asylum, but as metering limits the numbers and the wait lengthens, so the temptation rises to slip across illegally.

Charly and Loreley, a father and daughter from Cameroon, have travelled on foot, by ship and bus, via Nigeria, Brazil, Ecuador and Central America, paying $6,000 to smugglers.

Charly, a schoolteacher, says his community was continually harassed by militias of the French-speaking government, until one raid last year incinerated dozens of houses, and he was arrested, detained and tortured.

This cannot be the end of our long road: lavatories that leak into the ground, rubbish piling up that no one collects, he reflects.

Not all migrants want to cross. Some are stung by experiences on the other side, others just tired of waiting.

On the borders far western edge, Tijuana has become home to thousands of people who once intended to cross, but have remained.

Robenson Metellus is among the hundreds who arrived from Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, having travelled through Belize, Guatemala and Mexico only to be refused asylum in the US. Rather than return, he proceeded from the Casa del Migrante shelter to selling souvenirs to tourists.

After a year, Robenson got a job in a coffee house and by night started a food delivery service Mexican and soul food. He is now arranging for a sister and son to join him from Port-au-Prince.

Robenson is part of a singularly successful assimilation, says the citys prosecutor, Jos Alberto lvarez: Theyve been largely welcome; people find them interesting, and admire their work ethic. Do you know how many Haitians Ive indicted on a serious felony since they arrived? Zero.

At the Zacazonapan bar in the red light district of Tijuana, thick with marijuana smoke and packed with Tijuaneros plus gringos in town for cheap drink, a Norteo band is playing. Resistencia Migrante was formed in the Espacio Migrante shelter. On keyboard is Olivr, who spent two years travelling from El Salvador and seven months in Tijuana. He has given up trying to cross the border; his flight from gang threats was insufficient for entry to the US, so he tried to cross illegally but was caught. Weve abandoned the American dream as a nightmare, he says, and its OK here. We are survivors.

In Tijuana, lawyers and volunteers are mostly concerned with what Nicole Ramos, at the Al Otro Lado migrant resource centre, calls trying to get the US authorities to abide by their own laws, which they dont. Though, she adds, terrifying numbers of our people just disappear in this city.

The Mexican state is nowhere to be seen in all this. Grupo Beta, an organisation formed by the Mexican government to help migrants, has been withdrawn from some areas after allegedly taking bribes to move people up the waiting list. Almost all in Matamoros are from Central America, awaiting their credible fear interview on the other side. Conditions here are so bad that migrants blocked the bridge to Brownsville in protest in October.

Milson and Loany sit by the river. Lack of fresh water makes them tempted to wash, with others, among the same eddies and whirlpools that drowned another father and daughter recently as they tried to swim to the far bank. Milson and Loany come from Tegucigalpa. This is Milsons third attempt to cross, and we joke about a hit song by Los Tigres del Norte, Tres Veces Mojado three times wet (from swimming the Rio Grande).

Milson made it in 2014, but was deported. Before his second attempt, he was kidnapped by a gang, Los Zetas, and held in the desert for eight days. He is coy about how he was released, suggesting payment by a cousin in St Louis. They told me that if I ever came back, theyd kill me, he adds. He crossed, was again deported, and returned to Honduras for good, he thought. But then the MS-13 informed me: Were having your daughter. I said: Come on my love, were leaving.

Father and daughter were separated for a week on the US side. They kept us in the heat by day, and as cold as the air-conditioning would go by night, with filthy blankets and toilets, says Loany. When we asked them to turn the cold air off, they refused.

Milson is clear. I know some of the parents whose children have left [to go to the US alone]. Theyre devastated, whether they knew or not. Id never let Loany go without me thats why we are here, so she can be safe with me. It has to be legal, and together or not at all.

Loany concurs: Im staying with my Papa.

The conviviality in such extreme hardship is remarkable; there is almost no friction. They line up for breakfast in respect of priority for women and children, served by a group called Team Brownsville from across the river, founded by Michael Benavides, a former bomb disposal soldier, now Mormon missionary.

People disappear. Its so scary, he warns. Youll agree to meet someone next day, come back, ask around, and no one knows where they are. They cannot do everything to defend against the mafia, but they look after each other. Watch them, he says, as volunteers hand out plates of beans, not a push or shove.

Benavides has the names of two teenagers who died in US government custody on two crosses, tattooed above his heart.

Team Brownsville started out cooking in a tiny kitchen a block from the border, then expanded raising money and buying tents, driven by a belief, explains Benavides: that this is what America should be. My grandparents came from Mexico, and raised me to think of America as a country of compassion and open arms to those in need. This is my idea of patriotism. The operation feeds more than 600 people, we just need to keep raising the funds to keep it going, he says.

Lining up for breakfast are Jocelyne Flores and her daughter, Imena, four, sent back under migrant protection protocols. Pregnant Jocelyne left San Salvador after Imenas father who beat her - threatened to kill them both. It has been explained to her that domestic violence is no longer grounds for asylum, but Jocelyne is confident theyll make an exception. Glady Caas Aguilar takes her under her wing and makes an arrangement with the local hospital.

Glady runs the list of those waiting to cross. La lista, la lista! - how I hate it, she says, as they call out names of those due to cross at 4am.

Fork lightning and rain break over the camp. Night falls, and a group sits among the puddles, as torrential water lashes the concrete, singing they all know the lyrics a hit by Tropa Vallenata, called The Roads of Life:

Los caminos de la vida / No son como yo pensabaComo los imaginaba / No son como yo crea

(The roads of the life / Theyre not as I thought / Not as I imagined them / Not as I believed)

Read more:

How the American dream died on the world's busiest border - The Guardian

Wuhan walks back an announcement that it will ease a lockdown.

The announcement was striking: Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the coronavirus epidemic, would begin easing a sweeping lockdown imposed by officials in late January by allowing some people to leave.

But just hours after news of the change on Monday, the authorities backtracked, saying the announcement had been made in error.

The reversal prompted anger and confusion in China and added to fears that the government was mishandling its response to the virus. The government in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, has previously come under attack for acting too slowly and concealing information about the outbreak.

I just went to the bathroom and the policy was changed when I came out, one user wrote on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media site. Who is Wuhan listening to?

In the initial announcement, the authorities in Wuhan said that healthy people who did not reside in the city, as well as locals who required specialized medical treatment, would be eligible to leave.

Such a decision the first relaxation of a lockdown that has kept millions of people indoors for weeks would most likely have required approval from the central government in Beijing.

But a few hours later, the government reversed course, deleting the original announcement.

In a fresh statement, the authorities in Wuhan said that the original directive had been issued without the approval of top leaders, and that it would seriously criticize the people responsible for the error.

Death toll in Iran rises to at least 12, drawing fears of further spread in the Middle East.

The outbreak has killed at least 12 people in Iran as of Monday, state news outlets reported the largest number of coronavirus-linked deaths outside China.

Experts have said that, based on the number of dead, the total number of cases in Iran is probably much higher, as the illness linked to the virus appears to kill about one of every 50 people infected.

Iran said just days ago that it was untouched by the virus, and the sudden increase in cases has raised concerns that it may be experiencing a significant outbreak. The countrys health ministry said on Saturday that 43 people had tested positive, with eight deaths, state-run Press TV reported. Tehran announced a weeklong closure of schools, universities and cultural centers across 14 provinces in an effort to curb the coronavirus.

Updated Feb. 10, 2020

Amid evidence that the virus may be spreading elsewhere in the Middle East with cases confirmed in both Bahrain and Kuwait linked to Iran neighboring nations have put measures in place to try to limit transmissions. Pakistan and Turkey temporarily closed their borders with Iran on Sunday.

Pakistans 596-mile border with Iran is mostly porous, and controlling a potential spread of the coronavirus poses a major challenge.

Afghanistans National Security Council said on Sunday that all travel to Iran would be reduced to essential humanitarian needs, and the first case of the disease was confirmed in the country on Monday.

Within Iran, long lines have formed outside pharmacies, and there is a shortage of masks and disinfectants, according to health officials and people in Iran. Officials have warned that hospitals are overstretched and said that people should refrain from going to the emergency room unless they have acute symptoms.

Although the origin of the outbreak in Iran is unclear, the Fars news agency on Sunday quoted the countrys health minister as saying that Chinese carriers of the virus were a source of the outbreak in the country.

Ahmad Amir-Abadi, a lawmaker who represents Qom in the Iranian Parliament, criticized the governments response and said that the death toll was much higher than reported, according to Irans Labor News Agency. He said that 50 people with the virus had died in his constituency.

But Eraj Harirchi, Irans deputy minister of health, called those claims false and vowed to resign if they proved to be true.

We reject the death of 51. No one has the authority for announcing such news, Mr. Harirchi said, according to state-run Fars news agency, maintaining the death toll was still at 12.

South Korea on Monday reported 231 more cases of the virus that causes the disease Covid-19, bringing the nations total to 833 cases and seven deaths.

President Moon Jae-in on Sunday put South Korea on the highest possible alert in its fight against the coronavirus, a move that empowers the government to lock down cities and take other sweeping measures to contain the outbreak.

The coming few days will be a critical time for us, he said at an emergency meeting of government officials to discuss the outbreak. The central government, local governments, health officials and medical personnel and the entire people must wage an all-out, concerted response to the problem.

Many of South Koreas coronavirus cases are in the southeastern city of Daegu, which has essentially been placed under a state of emergency, though people are still free to enter and leave the city.

More than half of the people confirmed to have been infected are either members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive religious sect with a strong presence in Daegu, or their relatives or other contacts.

On Monday, the United States Forces Korea confirmed that a dependent of a member of the armed forces living in Daegu was among those who tested positive for the virus.

Europe confronts coronavirus as Italy scrambles to contain spike in cases.

As Italy scrambled on Sunday to contain the first major coronavirus outbreak in Europe, a new nervousness pervaded the continent, with officials in nearby countries pledging to keep the outbreak from spreading further.

The virus presents Europe with perhaps its greatest challenge since the 2015 migration crisis, which radically altered the politics of the European Union and exposed its institutional weaknesses. If the virus spreads, the fundamental principle of open borders within much of Europe so central to the identity of the bloc will undergo a stress test, as will the vaunted but strained European public health systems, especially in countries that have undergone austerity measures.

A European commissioner said the European Union was in constant contact with the authorities in Italy. And Frances health minister, Olivier Veran, said at a news conference on Sunday that the country was watching the problematic situation in Italy closely.

The spike in Italy has already prompted an aggressive response from Italian officials. The country locked down more than 50,000 people in 10 towns in the northern Lombardy region, where a sizable cluster of coronavirus infections has emerged, and passed emergency measures that apply throughout the country.

Residents on lockdown were supposed to leave or enter their towns only with special permission. Police and armed forces personnel were deployed to monitor the entrances to the towns. Officials closed schools and canceled the last two days of the Venice carnival, which draws thousands of people from around the world, and canceled trade fairs, opera performances and soccer matches.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Italy rose to 152, officials said on Sunday, from three on Thursday. More than 100 of those cases are in the Lombardy region. At least four people have died, including a 77-year-old woman and a 78-year-old man, and at least 26 are in intensive care, officials said.

Markets fall in response to outbreaks spread.

European and Asian markets fell on Monday as investors worried that the economic disruption already seen in China because of the coronavirus outbreak might have impacts elsewhere.

In Europe, most stock markets were down more than 3 percent. The FTSE MIB index, which measures stocks on the Borsa Italiana in Milan, fell 4.3 percent. Italy locked down at least 10 towns over the weekend in response to an outbreak of the virus.

Oil prices also slid, and futures markets suggested Wall Street was headed to a rough opening.

In Asia, the South Korean market slumped nearly 4 percent after a surge in cases of the coronavirus confirmed there over the weekend. The Australian market dropped over 2 percent, while the Hong Kong market fell 1.8 percent.

The Shanghai stock market was down only slightly, while shares in Shenzhen rose. The worse the virus outbreak, the better the chance the central bank will release more money into the financial system, which would tend to support share prices, said Hao Hong, the research director for the international operations of Chinas Bank of Communications.

The stock market in Japan was closed on Monday, a public holiday there in honor of the emperors birthday.

The coronavirus epidemic in China has already severely curtailed economic growth in the country. Factories have been slow to reopen, partly because mass quarantines have prevented many employees from returning to their jobs but also because demand in China has at least temporarily collapsed for a wide range of goods. Auto sales plummeted 92 percent in the first two weeks of February compared to the same time last year.

One of the big questions facing investors now lies in whether economies elsewhere will be similarly affected. In addition to the reports in Italy, South Korea also now faces a rapidly growing number of cases as well, and President Moon Jae-in on Sunday put the country on its highest level of alert.

Samsung, the worlds largest smartphone maker, said on Monday that it had restarted operations at a factory in South Korea that was shut down over the weekend after an employee there tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Also on Monday, the fellow South Korean gadget maker LG Electronics said it had closed a research facility in Incheon after an employees family member was confirmed to have contracted the virus. The facility is expected to reopen on Tuesday, an LG spokesman said.

Samsungs plant, in the southeastern city of Gumi, is not far from the city of Daegu, which South Korean officials have essentially placed on lockdown after discovering a large number of infections there.

Disease control experts are watching South Korea closely, concerned that it could become another hot zone for the new virus outside of China. South Korea has so far reported 763 infections and seven deaths. President Moon Jae-in put the nation on the highest possible alert on Sunday, empowering the government to lock down cities and restrict peoples movements.

Samsung, a pillar of the South Korean economy, manufactures mobile devices in Vietnam and India in addition to its home country.

An employee at the Gumi complex was found to be infected with the new virus on Saturday, Samsung said, and the facility was shut the same day. A company spokeswoman said the floor where the infected employee worked would remain closed until Tuesday.

Afghanistan on Monday declared a state of emergency in the western province of Herat after health officials confirmed the countrys first case of coronavirus, in a region that shares a porous border with Iran.

The case was identified right away and measures taken the patients health is under control and there isnt concern about the individuals health at this point, Health Minister Ferozuddin Feroz said.

Mr. Feroz said it was estimated that over the past few weeks, more than 1,000 Afghans from Herat had traveled to Qom, Iran, a place of pilgrimage for Shia Afghans because of its many shrines, and the site of the first coronavirus cases in that country. He said officials were identifying those people for more screening and tests. Five were staying in an 80-bed quarantine center that had been established in Herat, he added.

The patient was among five Afghan citizens who had been in Qom, where the first cases and fatalities were reported in that country. They transited through Dubai before coming to Herat in Afghanistan, where they are now in quarantine, Mr. Feroz said.

On Sunday, Afghanistans National Security Council announced that the country had suspended air and ground transport to neighboring Iran and asked for consular services to be limited to essential humanitarian needs. Usually, huge numbers of Afghan migrant workers travel back and forth across the border.

Beyond that, the border between the two countries is punctured by extensive smuggling routes, leaving concern even after official measures to limit formal movement.

Reporting and research was contributed by Choe Sang-Hun, Raymond Zhong, Russell Goldman, Javier C. Hernndez, Albee Zhang, Elisabetta Povoledo, Austin Ramzy, Motoko Rich, Makiko Inoue, Salman Masood, Mujib Mashal, Steven Lee Myers, Claire Fu and Amber Wang.

Continued here:

Coronavirus Live Updates: Outbreaks Around the World Raise Fears of Pandemic - The New York Times

By ANA February 18, 2020

SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras. (Photo by Eurokinissi/ Andrea Bonetti)

ATHENS Main opposition SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras attacked the government over its handling of the refugee issue in an interview with Alpha TV on Tuesday.

Our criticism of the government relates to how it addresses the crisis, not who is to blame for it. They said that SYRIZA is responsible for the refugee arrivals, and when New Democracy came into power more refugees arrived. When we left Moria hotspot had 5,000 people and now there are 25,000, said Tsipras.

He explained that the major problem with the governments management is that they said before the general elections two contradictory things: decongestion of the islands and no foreigner on the mainland. How this can be done? It is impossible, its like trying to square the circle, he said. He added that the problem will not be resolved with authoritarianism, only through serious planning of the relocation of the vulnerable migrant segment to the mainland, noted Tsipras, adding that the islands must not be abandoned to their fate.

The main opposition leader said that if the government brings to parliament a serious plan on the relocation of the population, he will support it.

On matters referring to his party and its enlargement he said that SYRIZA has accumulated experience because it is not enough to have a will, you must also know how to implement your governmental plan.

Continue reading here:

Tsipras: Greek Gov't Is Trying to Square the Circle in the Migration Crisis (Vid) - The National Herald

The deadly terrorist shooting in the German town of Hanau represents the latest in a string of far-right attacks and plots in what has long been considered one of Europes most stable countries.

The murderous actions of the gunman, identified in the German media as Tobias Rathjen, came only days after a dozen German men were arrested for allegedly plotting armed attacks on mosques around the country.

Their extraordinary suspected goal was to kill Muslims in commando style attacks with the explicit intention of provoking revenge, and even civil war. Each member was expected to contribute 50,000 to fund the operation.

Part of the inspiration was global: German prosecutors say the plotters were influenced by the violent attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which a gunman killed 51 people, streaming some of it live on Facebook.

But there are also local factors. In the period since the migration crisis of 2015, when large numbers of often desperate people arrived in the country from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, far-right activity appears to have increased.

German police said last week they were monitoring 53 potentially violent individuals associated with the extreme right, up from 22 in 2016, and the domestic intelligence and security agencies are under intense pressure because of the growing number of plots and incidents.

Part of the problem is that until now the German security community doesnt seem to have been very good at dealing with the situation, said Patrik Hermansson, of the far-right monitoring group Hope Not Hate. In some cases, extremists have had links with the police and the military.

Last June it emerged that a group of rightwing extremists called Nordkreuz (Northern Cross) had used police data to compile a death list of leftwing and pro-refugee targets. Some of the 30 or so group members had security links, with at least one still employed in a special commando unit.

The group had ordered body bags and quicklime to dispose of their potential victims, but despite the plot, Nordkreuz was not even noted as a threat by the BfV, the countrys domestic intelligence agency, in its annual report.

More recently, an antisemitic gunman, Stephen Balliet, used an improvised homemade shotgun to kill a 40-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man outside a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle. The attack, in October, could have been even worse: the gunman had tried and failed to enter the place of worship, where a congregation was marking Yom Kippur.

As in Christchurch, the attacker streamed the episode online from a head-mounted camera, saying at one point: Nobody expects the internet SS. The mosque plotters arrested last week allegedly tried to acquire similar slam gun shotguns.

Last summer Stephan Ernst, a 45-year-old with a string of convictions for violent anti-migrant crime, was arrested for allegedly shooting dead a conservative politician, Walter Lbcke, at close range outside his house in Istha, central Germany.

Lbcke was well known for his pro-migrant stance, and videos of his comments had circulated among far-right circles on YouTube. Ernst, whose DNA was recovered from the crime scene, was allegedly incensed by his opinions.

Last month Germany banned the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, with which Ernst was believed to be in contact. Founded in Britain in the early 1990s as a militant wing of the British National party, the organisation had found a new life in a country that, on the whole, remains particularly sensitive about its fascist past.

Around 200 police officers carried out raids in six German states, seizing phones, computers, weaponry as well as Nazi keepsakes from members of the group which Horst Seehofer, Germanys interior minister, said enjoys great respect within the far-right extremist scene because of the countrys history.

British investigators say there are links between British, German and Nordic far-right groups online, where most people are radicalised, connecting with like-minded individuals across national boundaries using specialist social media networks such as Telegram.

Originally posted here:

Local and global factors fuelling far-right violence in Germany - The Guardian

The governments plans to deny visas to low-skilled workers are going to affect many industries, but arguably none more so than the construction sector.

Thats because the building industry has, since the last recession, relied heavily on migrant workers. That downturn meant when construction projects were curtailed and domestic workers left the industry, foreign-born labour was easily accessible once business picked up again, because of the skills shortages that existed in the UK-born workforce. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that EU nationals now comprise a crucial part of the construction workforce, accounting for around 8 per cent of all construction workers in the UK, 28 per cent in London.

This migrant labour source has also helped the industry counter the shortfall of apprentices. According tothe Construction Industry Training Board, the industry needs to fill some 168,500 new jobs over the next five years, and grow much more of its own domestic workforce, given the limits on future access to migrant workers after Brexit. But the latest government figures show the number of people starting an apprenticeship in England (overall, not just in construction) fell to 125,800 between August and October last year, down 4.7 per cent from 132,000 in the same quarter a year earlier.

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At the same time, the sector is being squeezed at the other end. ONS figures show that in 2011, one in every five UK-born construction workers was aged over 55 meaning that by 2021, those people will nearly have reached retirement age, about the same time that any limits on migrant workers will kick in. Restricting access to all-important migrant labour could sound the death-knell for many construction companies.

The government also has little understanding of what constitutes a skilled worker in the construction sector. Immigrants recruited into the industry from abroad today are highly skilled tradesmen and women far removed from the Brexiteers stereotype. On the upside, the government is proposing that theshortage occupation list the official list of occupations for which there are not enough resident workers to fill vacancies will now include carpenters and plasterers. Bewilderingly, however, the list will still not include many of the other trades that are crucial for fulfilling a building project, such as bricklayers, plumbers and electricians.

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Without migrant workers, Boris Johnsons promises of new homes and HS2 will remain a fantasy - The Independent

Among the most vulnerable of those crammed into Greeces squalid refugee camps are the unaccompanied minors.

When the Taliban ramped up their attacks in Afghanistans Jaghori district last year, Abdullahs mother told him to flee to Europe. He was nine and his journey was brutal, but now, trekking through Moria, a squalid and overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, Abdullah is concerned about his fate.

Can I go to England? he asks, adjusting his blue-and-white striped football jersey. I want to become a famous football player.

There are more than 1,000 unaccompanied minors in the Moria camp

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The 10-year-old Afghan boy is among a growing number of unaccompanied minors left to fend for themselves because European Union member states have dragged their heels on resettling them. The number of cases in Greece has

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Greek migrant crisis: 6000 child refugees fend for themselves - The Times

Last week, Greece announced a pilot plan to install a floating wall in the Aegean Sea. A system of floating dams off the coast of Lesbos, spanning 1.7 miles and rising 50cm (20in) above the water, the barrier is intended to block the primary sea route to Greece from Turkey, and deter migrants from attempting the journey. But in a country with a maritime border roughly 500 nautical miles long, the floating barrier is primarily symbolic. Like Trumps wall, it will signal the intent to keep out migrants; and like Trumps wall it will fail to do so.

Europes refugee crisis no longer dominates headlines. According to the European commission, the reason is simple: the crisis is over, solved by a step change in migration management and border protection. The situation in Greece, however, tells a different story. Migrants still arrive at its shores, even if the rest of the world is hardly paying attention. Last year, 74,613 distress migrants fleeing conflict and destitution entered Greece, bringing the total number in the country to 112,000.

And with ongoing conflict and destitution in Syria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, arrivals show no sign of abating. Greece, a small country still recovering from a devastating economic crisis and with high levels of domestic unemployment, is not the migrants destination of choice. But with onward migration to wealthier countries blocked by an increasingly xenophobic European Union, the country has become the blocs primary buffer state, carrying the humanitarian burden for the whole of Europe.

The consequences in Greece are increasingly harsh. Close to 20,000 people are being held on Lesbos, an island of 86,000 people, crammed into a camp with a holding capacity less than 3,000. There, thousands spend months fending for themselves in flimsy tents erected in olive groves, uncertain about how and when their asylum claims will be determined, with inadequate access to medical care and education. Meanwhile a host community that provided a generous welcome in 2015 is increasingly dismayed by the failure of European migration policies, and the impact on their daily life, including the dramatic drop in their key source of revenue, tourism.

Migrants should have the option of safe channels, such as humanitarian visas, that afford orderly exit strategies

This situation is clearly untenable, with tension on the island leading to recent clashes and violence. But a wall wont be the solution. People fleeing war, persecution, violence, famine and poverty do not abandon their plans just because of new obstacles; they persevere, if necessary by more dangerous or costly means. Despite the 654-mile physical barrier between the US and Mexico, almost a million distress migrants arrived at the USs southern border last year.

Rather than putting up more barriers, the answer to the current situation is to address two of the key underlying problems: first, the factors that drive thousands to flee their home countries; and second, the lack of effective policies to manage humanitarian migration in a humane and efficient manner. These problems are not easy to fix and they are certainly not the responsibility of the Greek government. But as the situation in Greece so poignantly illustrates, the costs of ignoring them are unsustainable, in human, economic and political terms. The worlds richest regional union could do much better.

A starting point would be vigorous, multifaceted investment in migrants home countries to strengthen the rule of law and enhance economic and social development. Though complex and expensive, much could be achieved at a fraction of the what is already being spent on excluding migants and border control. Consider the EUs current plan to double migration spending and quadruple border control expenditure for the next seven years, dedicating a total of 34.9bn to border and migration management.

Change will take time, and people will always have reasons to flee, particularly as the climate crisis worsens: in 2018 alone, 764,000 people were displaced by drought. Migrants should have the option of safe channels, such as humanitarian visas, that afford orderly and regulated exit strategies. For those deemed not to qualify for these visas, well-staffed and efficient asylum procedures should be available. Delays are not natural, they reflect a political decision about the value of some lives over others. Europe demonstrated those priorities across centuries of colonial domination and exploitation; it is tragic to witness that legacy in action again today.

The EU, with its enormous human and technical resources, has the means to deliver on both these challenges it just needs political vision and leadership. Without them, we will continue to erect futile but costly walls, on land and sea.

Vasileia Digidiki and Jacqueline Bhabha teach at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health

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Greeces proposed floating wall shows the failure of EU migration policies - The Guardian

BERLIN, GERMANY - FEBRUARY 07: German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the course of a special faction meeting, on February 07, 2018 in Berlin, Germany.

Florian Gaertner

The German government's smaller coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), has said it could quit the alliance if Chancellor Angela Merkel is forced out of office by the new leader of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The politician seen as Merkel's successor as leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, announced on Monday that she would step down from the CDU chair, creating a leadership vacuum at the top of the party and setting in motion a new leadership contest that's set to take place by the summer.

Merkel was expected to remain chancellor of Germany until her term in office ends in 2021 but if one of her political rivals is elected to the CDU leadership, it could be difficult for her to see out the full term.

The secretary general of the SPD, which is in a coalition with the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said Wednesday that if Merkel is forced from the chancellorship, the party could pull out of the so-called "Grand Coalition." That could trigger a full general election, ahead of a vote scheduled to take place before October 2021.

"Angela Merkel is the incumbent chancellor. We went with her into this coalition. And with her we will also leave this coalition regularly for the next election date," SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil said, according to Der Spiegel.

"We want to continue working together with the (Grand) Union in the federal government. This government is elected until autumn 2021," he said.

Klingbeil's comments come amid heightened uncertainty in the CDU over its future leader and whether he or she (although all the favorites for the job are men) will continue Merkel's more centrist approach to government or will take a more traditional, conservative position to try to counter a loss of voters to the right-wing Alternative for Germany party.

One of the favorites for the CDU leadership is Friedrich Merz, who is seen as a rival of Merkel. He is supported by party members that want a change from Merkel's centrism and were unhappy at some of her more liberal policies, such as her open-door policy during Europe's migrant crisis in 2015.

Armin Laschet, the premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and Health Minister Jens Spahn are also main contenders for the role and are both seen as continuing Merkel's centrist stance.

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If Merkel is forced out by her successor then German government will fall, coalition party warns - CNBC

The last time Libyas war had the worlds full attention, it was being fought mainly by Libyans.

For much of 2011, young revolutionaries in mismatched fatigues clamored on anti-aircraft guns, and the narrative driving events was the Arab Spring, an uprising that promised to place the power in the hands of citizens long subjugated by despots.

Though Libyans shaped the ebb and flow of battle, they were hardly alone, even then: circling high above were foreign warplanes from the NATO-led coalition that kept at bay fighters loyal to Muammar Gaddafi. And contrary to some official denials, there were also boots on the ground in the form of foreign special operations forces and intelligence personnel, from France, Britain, the U.S., the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, who discretely channeled weapons and training to fractious anti-Gaddafi groups. In such meddling, there were already signs of a proxy rivalry that would explode into open warfare years later.

A vehicle burned during fighting in northwestern Gharyan on June 28, 2019.

Emanuele Satolli

Still, Libyans had a sense of owning their destiny, for better or for worse. After French fighter jets and a U.S. drone struck the dictators convoy in October 2011, it was a mob of his countrymen that dragged him from a drainage pipe and killed him. And in the months that followed, the Obama administration and its allies wanted to let the Libyans determine their own path after Gaddafi, avoiding the imperious occupations of Iraq and Afghanistana light-footprint approach that has since been criticized for enabling the strife that followed.

That conflict, which will enter its tenth year on Feb. 17, has recently morphed into an internationalized war where foreign governments openly provide the weapons, money and lately even the fighters. It is no longer framed, at least by some in the media, by high-minded goals like freedom, but by cynical outside interests, which have little to do with ordinary Libyans.

The U.S., now largely on the sidelines in Libya, nominally supports one side the Government of National Accord (GNA), a rickety administration that holds the capital and is beholden to corrupt militias. But President Donald Trump has also talked admiringly about the GNAs main enemy, a septuagenarian warlord who is on record saying Libya is not ripe for democracy.

This renegade would-be strongman, Khalifa Haftar, is backed by a raft of Arab monarchies and authoritarian statesthe Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordanplus France and, significantly, Russia, which last fall dispatched hundreds of contract fighters from the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group to boost Haftars assault on Tripoli. I was on the front when these fighters arrived, and I saw firsthand how their precision artillery strikes and lethal snipers eroded the morale of GNA fighters. For the first time since his offensive started, Haftar was slowly gaining territory. Faced with a potential collapse, the Tripoli government turned to Turkey, the one country backing it with more than rhetoric. Starting in late December, Turkey flew in more than 2,000 militiamen from Syria, hardened veterans of another regional civil war, along with air defense systems and artillery.

A fighter loyal to the GNA inside a building partially burned during a fight on the Yarmouk front line in Tripoli on July 1, 2019.

Emanuele Satolli

The range of foreign powers involved in the battle for Libya might make it seem from afar like an abstract game of geopolitical chess. Up close, its a deeply visceral war. One afternoon last summer at the front, I followed a group of government militiamen down the staircase of a shell-pocked villa, tracing a trail of dried bloodthe handiwork of a sniper. We passed through a shattered bedroom where an anti-tank round had punched through the walls. Everything was coated with dust; clothes spilled from an open closet. A woman had died here, the fighters said, along with her child. The intimacy of the violated scene was unsettling: on a dresser, someone had left a bottle of perfume and an open Quran.

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Its hard to overstate the impact of nine years of violence on the social fabric and psyche of a nation. In the past year alone, about 2,000 people have died, including hundreds of civilians, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced from their homes, according to the UN. Our hearts are dead, says a Libyan humanitarian worker whose daily work involves prying corpses from rubble and fishing drowned migrants from the sea. In Libya, the physical war is matched in intensity by battles on satellite TV and social media, where Libyan trolls and provocateurs are stirring up tensions between the countrys east, where Haftars rise began, and west, which includes Tripoli. Some wonder whether the country of 6 million will ever be whole again.

The fighters I meet show me their scarsgouges from shrapnel, a bullet hole, a missing limbfrom battles they list on their fingers. Over the years, a militia can become a fraternity and a culture.

A man stands near damaged belongings after an airstrike hit a detention center, killing 53 people and injuring about 130 people, near Tripoli on July 3, 2019.

Emanuele Satolli

The fighters sacrifices have also bestowed a worrying sense of entitlement, one that often upstages Libyas elites at lofty international summits like the one Germany hosted on Jan 19. In Berlin, every major foreign meddler in Libyas war publicly pledged to build on a provisional truce. They also promised to finally abide by a U.N. arms embargo that has been widely ignored for almost a decade.

But after the meeting, the intervening states intensified their shipments of weapons to their Libyan proxies; the Emirates in particular stepped up their support to Haftar, in what appears to be a preparation for a renewed assault. Buoyed by this influx of arms, Haftars forces in recent weeks have shelled Tripolis airport and blockaded oil terminals, causing national output to drop by 75 percent, which only adds to the suffering of everyday Libyans who depend on this revenue.

Although U.N.-backed mediation attempts continue, the provocations are yet another blow to any hope that this deeply wounded society might heal. In an empty school one morning in the anti-Haftar western city of Misrata, I met a group of women, members of a charity, who cook meals for the frontline fighters and provide them with donated clothes. Rolling date paste in semolina dougha delicacy called magrooda middle-age psychologist in a polka-dot robe scoffed at the idea of a truce.

Clothes hang inside a school, which became a shelter for those fleeing their homes, on the front line in Tripoli.

Emanuele Satolli

The campaign on Tripoli that began last April was in a sense the latest round of a civil war that began before Gaddafis death. But its also the project of one man and his remarkable, almost film-worthy rise to the global stage.

Born in 1943, Haftar allied himself with a young captain named Muammar Gaddafi to topple the Libyan monarchy in 1969. He served Gaddafis regime until its ill-fated invasion of Chad in the 1980s, when, after a humiliating battlefield defeat, Haftar defected with some of his men to the opposition. His army of exiles received training from the CIA before being evacuated from Africa. Haftar settled in northern Virginia, where he lived for roughly 20 years before returning to Libya in 2011, proclaiming himself the man who could lead the rebels military campaignonly to be shunted aside.

His moment finally came in 2014, when he launched a war against jihadists, Islamists and political opponents in the violence-wracked city of Benghazi. The battle was long and bloody, with human rights abuses on both sides. One of Haftars officers was issued with a warrant for war crimes by the International Criminal Court; he remains under the generals protection. It also marked the start of Haftars military backing from the Emirates, Egypt, and France support that stems, in varying degrees, from ideological affinity with his anti-Islamist and anti-democratic leanings, and his counterterrorism aims. After victory came in 2017, he turned his gaze on Tripoli.

Haftar is a tall, mustachioed man who favors epauletted uniforms resplendent with medals, though for international meetings he dons a dark tailored suit. When I interviewed him in the summer of 2014, he exalted the moral supremacy of the military while disparaging civilian-led politics. Like all absolutists, he is a great simplifier, reducing Libyas economic and political problems to abstractions like terrorism and security. Like other nativists, he defines the nation in solipsistic terms, in opposition to its enemies, real and imagined.

Fighters loyal to the GNA sit under a makeshift tent on the international airport front line in Tripoli on July 4, 2019.

Emanuele Satolli

When he launched his attack last year on Tripoli, he claimed to be cleansing the GNA of corrupt militias and radical Islamists. The pretext collapses under scrutiny. Theres no doubt the GNA was in the grips of predatory armed groups, but Haftars forces are themselves comprised of irregular militias who are also deeply corrupt.

As for his charge of a terrorist infestation in the capital, U.S. defense officials recently told me that is a vast exaggeration. At any rate, many Western diplomats say the GNA have been helpful counterterrorism partners. Some of the commanders fighting Haftar today received U.S. support during the months-long battle against ISIS in the Libyan city of Sirte in 2016.

Still, Haftar has attracted support from diverse swathes of Libyans who have grafted their grievances onto his campaign, despite deep reservations about his ambitions. Some just wanted him to restore order, whatever the cost. Some have since questioned his war and his autocratic vision. But breaking openly with the general is fraught with peril; many who have done so have disappeared.

An anti-Haftar poster in Tripoli on July 1, 2019.

Emanuele Satolli

Haftars latest offensive has seen possibly one of the largest ever wartime deployments of armed drones, piloted on one side by personnel from the Emirates, and on the other by Turks. Emirati-supplied drones alone have conducted 850 strikes for Haftars side, often killing civilians. In late November I stumbled across a bombed-out biscuit factory where 10 workers, including several migrants, were killed. Scattered across the factory grounds were impact craters strewn with human remains.

The victims of the strike hold one answer to the question: Why should anyone in the West care about Libya? Among the injured workers were those from Niger and Bangladesh, migrants trying to earn enough money to buy a place on a smugglers boat to Italy, 290 miles across the Mediterranean. The movement of labor from the globes poorer south to its richer north may be a natural part of globalization, but anti-immigrant sentiments are remaking Western politics.

Gaddafi suppressed the flow of migrants in exchange for Italy paying reparations. But in the lawlessness since 2011, Libya has become the back door to Europe that Turkey was for Syrian refugees. Italy has once again tried to quarantine the flow of people in Libya, backing a deal under which Tripoli has paid off militias to do so, directly bolstering their power. The migrant crisisalong with the broader civil warhas been further abetted by a divided European Union, an ambivalent America, and active backing for Haftar by France, Russia, and regional Arab states.

The Tripoli war has been a strange, seemingly post-modern type of combat, waged until recently by all-seeing drones in the sky and hired guns on the ground. A war with very few warriors, the U.N. special representative for Libya, Ghassan Salame, called it in a speech, accurately enough. But its also a brutally human battle, fought by young Libyans who hurl insults at one another across the frontlines, desecrate corpses and mistreat prisoners, just as soldiers have always done. Here, when death comes, it comes quickly and sometimes from the air, for fighters and civilians alike.

The city feels on edge. Afternoon rains lash the fraying facades of the Italianate quarter; traffic builds up and power goes out for 16 or 20 hours at a time. Half-finished high-rises loom on the horizon. There are shortages of fuel and cash: residents queue for hours outside banks for a daily allotment of dinars, herded by militiamen in lizard-stripe fatigues. Archipelagos of garbage line the roads.

A woman on a road near the old city in Tripoli on July 5, 2019.

Emanuele Satolli

In a garage that serves as a studio, a 24-year-old street artist and muralist named Mohammed Shandoul flips through cell phone photos of his artwork. He got his start as an artist like so many others in the aftermath of Libyas 2011 revolution, when the streets of Tripoli saw an explosion of vivid graffiti. He was just 15 then, painting first on the ruins of Gaddafis bomb-shattered palace. And while hes since refined his style, won a prize, and even makes some money on his art, those heady, electric days seem a distant memory.

Shandoul wants to move his family to Tunis, where his art graces nightclub walls, but hes leery: the costs are too high and societal differences between Libya and Tunisia make adjusting hard for the older generation. His family is crowded into a small apartment, but others have it far worse. They live in makeshift shelters like classrooms or factory dorms, enduring daily humiliations like contaminated water and disrupted schooling, amid a war with no end in sight.

The artist paints mostly at night now, artillery booming in the distance. The resumption of fighting means that some of the militias that used to prowl the streets and harass him are otherwise occupied, deployed once again to the front.

Chaos is better for me, he tells me dryly.

Frederic Wehrey is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya.

The author is grateful for the reporting assistance of Muath Mustapha

Contact us at editors@time.com.

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Our Hearts Are Dead. After 9 Years of Civil War, Libyans Are Tired of Being Pawns in a Geopolitical Game of Chess - TIME

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg addresses the press in Brussels ahead of the ministerial. (Photo: NATO)

(CNSNews.com) NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels on Wednesday will discuss a Trump administration push for more help from allies in Iraq, and in the wider Middle East region.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Tuesday the ministers would discuss the future of the NATO mission in Iraq, where both the alliance and the broader U.S.-led coalition to defeat ISIS suspended training missions amid escalated U.S.-Iraq-Iran tensions early last month.

Our aim is to resume that training as soon as possible, he said.

Beyond Iraq, Stoltenberg said, the ministers will consider what more NATO can do in the wider region to build long-term stability and security.

He underlined the need for greater NATO involvement, saying that violence and instability in the Middle East were driving the refugee and migrant crisis, and fueling the threat of terrorism.

Flying to Brussels for the meeting, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters that the U.S. wants NATO allies to do more to help in the Iraq training mission, saying that as allies deploy more forces, that would over time allow us to bring some forces home.

The U.S. has some 5,000 troops in Iraq, whose parliament has been calling for their withdrawal since the early January U.S. airstrike that killed Irans Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

Asked what incentives the U.S. could offer NATO allies to commit more forces in Iraq, Esper said its not a case of offering incentives but of recognizing the shared interest of ensuring the continued defeat of ISIS.

Esper said the U.S. is also looking to NATO for more help in the broader Mideast region, for instance to help partners, including but not limited to the Saudis, whom he said need additional air defenses to deter Iranian bad behavior.

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia blame Iran for a cruise missile and drone attack on Saudi oil infrastructure last September that temporarily knocked out half of the kingdoms oil production. The Iranian regime denies responsibility.

After that attack, Esper recalled on Tuesday, he had called at least a half dozen of our NATO partners who have compatible air defense systems, asking for help. And so I want to continue that dialogue in Brussels this week.

The U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS) is focused on great power competition with China and Russia, and in line with that Esper is reviewing ways to adjust the U.S. military footprint, assessing one theater of command at a time.

If NATO allies put more forces in in the Middle East, he explained, the U.S. will be able to reduce its forces, allowing troops to return to the U.S. to increase their readiness, or to redeploy elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region.

I want to implement the NDS, and the NDS means right-sizing our forces in every theater, he said. Esper acknowledged, however, that China and Russia are also in the Middle East, so it would not be a case of the U.S. completely moving out.

Train local forces, enabling them to fight terrorism themselves

In Brussels, Stoltenberg was asked whether he had a clear understanding of what President Trump actually wants NATO allies to do in Iraq and the Middle East.

He said Trump had sent two very clear messages from day one a call for greater NATO defense spending where Stoltenberg said the 29-member alliance was making significant progress and the need for NATO to do more fighting terrorism.

NATO allies and NATO already play a role in the region and in the fight against terrorism, but we can do more, he said. President Trump has expressed a clear wish for more support from NATO. We have a good dialogue among NATO allies and, of course, also with the countries concerned, for instance, Iraq, on how we can do this, how we can do more.

Stoltenberg said it was too early to announce any specific decisions, but we believe that one of the best weapons we have in the fight against terrorism is to train local forces, enabling them to fight terrorism themselves.

Other issues on the agenda for the NATO ministerial on Wednesday and Thursday include the training mission in Afghanistan, and arms control issues including concerns about Russias deployment of a nuclear-capable ground-launched cruise missile, the SSC-8. The deployment violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF Treaty) and prompted the U.S. to withdraw from it last year.

Stoltenberg stressed that NATO allies have stood united on Russias breach of the treaty.

The defense ministers will also meet with their Ukrainian counterpart to review defense reforms being undertaken by that country. The former Soviet republic has long aspired to join the transatlantic alliance, a move firmly opposed by Moscow.

After the two-day meeting in Brussels, Esper is scheduled to take part in an international security conference in Munich, Germany.

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Esper: A Bigger NATO Role in Iraq, Mideast 'Would Over Time Allow Us to Bring Some Forces Home' - CNSNews.com

Ninety migrants have been intercepted while trying to reach the UK, including women and children.

It is the biggest surge of migrants intercepted in the English Channel and Dover in any one day.

The Home Office said 15 of the 90 migrants claimed to be minors.

They arrived off the Kent coast on several boats and a large-scale search and rescue operation was launched by British and French patrol boats.

Witnesses said some were carried off on stretchers to waiting ambulances, while others wrapped in blankets were checked over by paramedics.

HM Coastguard told Sky News it responded to "a number of incidents" off the coast, along with Kent Police, Border Force and other agencies.

Footage from the scene showed people being escorted off the Home Office's patrol cutter Searcher.

Border Force said in the first incident, at around 2:15am, one of its vessels intercepted a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) which was carrying a group of five males who presented themselves as Senegalese, Malian and Guinean nationals.

The force said in the second incident, also at around 2:15am, one of its vessels intercepted an RHIB which was carrying a group of 21 males who presented themselves as Syrian, Yemeni and Egyptian nationals.

Border Force and partner agencies said dealt with a further six small boat incidents today.

In one incident, at around 7:40am, a vessel intercepted a boat which was carrying a group of 12 males and females who said they were from Iraq and Iran.

In another incident, also at around 7:40am, a Border Force vessel intercepted a boat that was carrying 16 men who also said they were from Iran and Iraq.

A boat intercepted an RHIB carrying 12 people around an hour later, with the nationalities of those on board yet to be established.

In another incident, at around 10:20am, an RNLI vessel intercepted a boat that was carrying a group of 14 people - 12 men and two women, who said they were Iranian and Iraqi nationals.

Kent Police officers detained five suspected illegal migrants in Dover town centre at around 11:20am, with no further details currently available.

Border Force officers detained a group five people at Shakespeare Beach and Samphire Hoe who said they were Iraqi and Yemeni nationals.

The Home Office said all of those found, apart from the group detained by Kent Police, were taken to Dover where they were medically assessed before being transferred to immigration officials to be interviewed.

Home Office director Tony Eastaugh said: "We have extra patrols on French beaches, drones, specialist vehicles and detection equipment which has been deployed to stop small boats leaving European shores.

"And it's working. Last year one hundred people smugglers were convicted for a total of 320 years."

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency told Sky News while the interceptions were taking place: "HM Coastguard is co-ordinating a search and rescue response to a number of incidents off Kent this morning, working with Border Force, Kent Police and other partners.

"Border Force vessels Searcher, Speedwell and Alert have been sent, along with RNLI lifeboats from Dover and Littleston, a fixed wing aircraft and an HM Coastguard Search and Rescue Helicopter from Lydd.

"HM Coastguard is only concerned with preservation of life, rescuing those in trouble and bringing them safely back to shore, where they will be handed over to the relevant partner emergency services or authorities."

It comes after nearly 200 migrants risked their lives to try and cross the Channel to the UK in just one week last month - despite repeated warnings about the dangers of making the trip.

It is the world's busiest shipping lane, with between 500 and 600 vessels passing through the narrow strait every day.

In December, 69 migrants were intercepted attempting to cross the Channel in small boats, while Border Force officials in November intercepted four boats in one day carrying 39 Iranian migrants.

The government has previously described the surge in migrant crossings as a "major incident".

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90 migrants intercepted trying to reach UK - highest number in one day - Sky News