RABAT: Residents angered by persistent water shortages in southern Morocco have taken to the streets in a series of “thirsty protests” that has grabbed the attention of the country’s king.
Since the start of the summer, inhabitants in the region of desert town Zagora have been left parched and furious as water supplies are cut off for hours — or even days — at a time.
“The situation is critical. It means daily suffering for the people in this region,” Jamal Akchbabe, head of an environmental group in the town, told AFP by phone.
“Families are going for days without tap water, while others don’t have any for several hours each day. And this water is undrinkable.”
In a bid to express their discontent over the crisis, residents began organizing regular peaceful protests in the town of some 30,000, around 700 kilometers from the capital Rabat.
At first they were tolerated by the authorities, but then on Sept. 24 security forces stepped in to break up a rally and arrested seven people for taking part in an “unauthorized demonstration,” local rights activist Atmane Rizkou said.
The situation only got worse when residents tried again to march on Oct. 8, activists said.
The attempt descended into violence as police boxed in the town and used force to break up the gathering and detained 21 people, said Akchbabe.
“The protesters were subjected to repression, insults and humiliation,” he said.
“The town is in a state of siege.”
Residents put the shortages roiling this arid region down to the overuse of sparse resources for agriculture, especially the cultivation of watermelons.
Akchbabe says locals accuse the Ministry of Agriculture of allowing this water-intensive production “which provides profit for big farmers to the detriment of the inhabitants.”
Abdelmalek Ihazrir, a university professor, who has written about Morocco’s water policy, said that rare rains have led to the overexploitation of ground water across the country.
“The rains are scarce and strong heatwaves lead to evaporation from water at the source, above all in the south,” he told AFP.
“We need to develop a new, more rational policy and alternative measures.”
Officials appear to have heeded the anger — but so far their response has entailed mainly just words.
At the end of September, Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El-Othmani promised “emergency measures” after the national water and power authorities admitted there were “constraints” hindering the system.
A few days later King Mohammed VI called for the establishment of “a commission that will look at the issue with a view to finding an adequate solution in the coming months.”
The protests come at a sensitive time for Morocco as the authorities are desperate to avoid a repeat of social unrest that has seen months of demonstrations rock the long-marginalized Rif region in the north. But the water issues roiling the country are common across North Africa and the Middle East where access to the precious resource has long been a problem.
The World Bank estimates that over 60 percent of people there live in areas that suffer from a scarcity of water, compared to a worldwide figure of just 35 percent.
In neighboring Algeria to the west, water shortages in 2000 and 2013 erupted into violence clashes.
Meanwhile in Tunisia, where residents are especially reliant on winter rainfall to fill up dams, droughts caused supplies to be cut in summer 2016 for periods that sometimes lasted weeks at a time.
‘Thirsty protests’ hit Morocco over water shortages
‘Thirsty protests’ hit Morocco over water shortages
Qatar reiterates support for two-state solution after Trump calls for moving Gazans
Foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari did not reveal details of conversations with US officials, but said Qatar often didn’t see “eye to eye” with its allies.
“Our position has always been clear to the necessity of the Palestinian people receiving their rights, and that the two-state solution is the only path forward,” Ansari told a regular media briefing when asked about Trump’s comments.
“We don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things with all our allies, not only the United States, but we work very closely with them to make sure that we formulate policy together,” he added.
Qatar, the US and Egypt jointly mediated the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal that went into effect a little over a week ago, halting more than 15 months of fighting sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
On Monday, Trump repeated his wish to move Gazans to another country, after earlier saying he wanted to “clean out” the devastated Palestinian territory.
The US president told reporters he would “like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much.”
Ansari said Qatar, which hosts the region’s biggest US military base, was “engaging fully with the Trump administration and with envoy (Steve) Witkoff,” the president’s special representative for the Middle East.
“I’m not going to comment on the type of discussions we are having with them right now, but I would say that it is very productive,” Ansari said.
“We have been working very closely with the Trump administration over the regional issues as a whole, including the Palestinian issue.”
Turkiye says it killed 15 Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq
ISTANBUL: Turkiye said on Wednesday it had killed 13 Kurdish militants in northern Syria and two in Iraq, a sign that Ankara has pressed on with its campaign against fighters, some with possible links to US allies, since Donald Trump took office in the White House last week.
The Turkish defense ministry said the Kurdish fighters it had “neutralized” in Syria belonged to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.
Turkiye considers the PKK and YPG to be identical; the United States considers them separate groups, having banned the PKK as terrorists but recruited the YPG as its main allies in Syria in the campaign against Islamic State.
Turkiye has long called on Washington to withdraw support for the YPG, and has expressed hope that Trump would revise the policy inherited from the previous administration of President Joe Biden.
Tuesday’s report of major clashes was the second within days: Turkiye also reported having killed 13 Kurdish militants on Sunday.
Turkish forces and their allies in Syria have repeatedly fought with Kurdish militants there since the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Assad last month.
Turkiye has said that the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed umbrella group that includes the Kurdish YPG, must disarm or face a military intervention.
Under the Biden administration the United States has had 2,000 troops in Syria fighting alongside the SDF and YPG.
Israeli, US strike on Iran nuclear program would be ‘crazy’: FM
- Abbas Araghchi: Such an attack ‘would be faced with an immediate and decisive response’
- ‘Lots of things should be done’ by Washington to bring Tehran to negotiating table
LONDON: Israel and the US would be “crazy” to strike Iran’s nuclear program, the latter’s foreign minister has said.
“We’ve made it clear that any attack to our nuclear facilities would be faced with an immediate and decisive response,” Abbas Araghchi told Sky News in his first interview since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.
“I don’t think they’ll do that crazy thing. This is really crazy. And this would turn the whole region into a very bad disaster.”
In the interview, Araghchi addressed concerns over his country’s nuclear program. Trump’s first term as president saw the US pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which had eased sanctions on Tehran in exchange for limited uranium enrichment.
Iran claims that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, but its return to high levels of enrichment in recent years has alarmed Western governments.
Trump has said he prefers a diplomatic solution, and a new deal with Iran would be “nice.” But Araghchi said credible US guarantees would need to be provided to Iran for negotiations to begin.
“The situation is different and much more difficult than the previous time,” he added. “Lots of things should be done by the other side to buy our confidence … We haven’t heard anything but the ‘nice’ word, and this is obviously not enough.”
Russian delegation arrives in Syria: state media
DAMASCUS: A Russian government delegation has arrived in Damascus for the first time since Moscow's ally President Bashar al-Assad was toppled, Russia's TASS state news agency reported on Tuesday.
The delegation, which is expected to hold talks with Syria's new rulers, includes Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Alexander Lavrentiev, the Kremlin's special envoy for Syria.
Russia was a longtime Assad ally and intervened militarily to help him recapture territory from rebels during the more than decade-long war that erupted in 2011 after his crackdown of protests against his rule.
But a lightning rebel offensive late last year pushed Assad to flee Damascus in December — first to the Russian-run Hmeimim Air Base in northern Syria then to Moscow.
Days later, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Bogdanov as saying that Russia’s contacts with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham — the Islamist rebel group that spearheaded the offensive that ousted Assad — were “proceeding in constructive fashion.”
Bogdanov said Russia hoped to maintain its two bases in Syria — a naval base in Tartous and the Hmeimim base near the port city of Latakia.
But this month, Syria’s new administration canceled a contract with Russian firm STG Stroytransgaz to manage and operate the Tartous port, according to three Syrian businessmen and media reports.
The contract had been signed under Assad.
Syria’s interim defense minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, told Reuters in an interview in Damascus this month that negotiations were under way with Russia to determine the nature of the future relationship between the two states.
“We as a state are committed to the agreements that were present in the past but there may be some amendments in the negotiations that would achieve Syria’s interests,” Abu Qasra said.
Turkiye arrests talent manager over trying to overthrow the government
- In 2013, small demonstrations against plans to build a shopping mall in Gezi Park, in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, swelled into hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the government nationwide
- According to the court, Barim had “intensive communication” with defendants in the Gezi Park trial at the time of the protests
ISTANBUL: A Turkish court arrested a well-known talent manager over the charge of attempting to overthrow the government in an investigation connected to nationwide protests in 2013, a court document seen by Reuters showed.
Ayse Barim was initially detained on Friday and eight actors were summoned to give statements to the court as witnesses in her file.
According to her statement to the prosecutor, Barim denied the charges and said she had been to the area of the 2013 protests a few times individually as an observer and to accompany the people she worked with.
Barim denied the charges and said she did not coordinate actors she is working with or request them to support the protests, the court document showed.
“My job as a manager is to manage the career of the actors I work with and represent them in the best possible way. These artists have their own ideas, wills and decisions. I did not organize anything by directing their ideas,” Barim said, according to transcript of her statement.
In 2013, small demonstrations against plans to build a shopping mall in Gezi Park, in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, swelled into hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the government nationwide — and prompted a harsh crackdown.
According to the court, Barim had “intensive communication” with defendants in the Gezi Park trial at the time of the protests. These defendants include businessman Osman Kavala, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in April 2022.
Kavala has faced various charges, including espionage, financing the Gezi Park protests and involvement in a failed coup against Erdogan’s government in 2016. He has been in prison since November 2017.
Human rights groups say 11 people were killed and more than 8,000 injured in the state response, and more than 3,000 were arrested.
President Tayyip Erdogan’s government said the crackdown was warranted given threats to the state, and he has called the protesters “looters” who were partly funded from abroad, a claim denied by defendants and civil society groups.
