Water crisis in the former oasis of Tunisia

Even after the Arab Spring stormed thru the little country of Tunisia, people there are still having trouble getting access to basic services.  This summer the people of Tunisia had to suffer thru mandated water cuts. The government says the official reason is because of short supply, but the people blame the Phosphate industry. Residents say that the industry uses most off the water, and contaminates whatever is left over. This is one of the reasons why experts say there may soon be a war caused by water scarcity in Africa.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Ihsan Bouabid looks into the water management issue.

Local people say the water issue has been an everyday reality for decades, ever since the creation of the Compagnie des Phosphates de Gafsa (CPG) in 1897.

“Tap water is contaminated by chemicals produced by the phosphate plants,” Hayat Benrejeb, who lost her husband to lung cancer three years ago and lives in Gafsa’s old quarters, tells IPS.

Benrejeb says the problem is a “time bomb waiting to explode” because school children are suffering increasingly from asthma and pneumonia, illnesses that could only be explained by the presence of sulfuric fumes.

CPG’s mining operations are mainly based around the deposits in the Gafsa basin located in the south of the country, north of Chott el Jerid. The company produces eight million metric tons of merchant-grade phosphate annually.

This production is also vital for the domestic industry for phosphoric acid and fertiliser production through the Groupe Chimique Tunisien (GCT) headquartered in the Mediterranean port Sfax, 190 km from Gafsa city.

“Water supply and pollution issues alike have deepened over the years after high volumes of water started being pumped for the local chemical industries,” says Benrejeb. “Our region did not benefit from any profit made by these companies. We only inherited the ills left behind.”

Now, most people have to buy mineral bottled water for daily consumption, she says.

Pro-democracy protests to begin in Swaziland

The pro-democracy uprisings that began in Tunisia and Egypt are starting to make their way into Sub-Saharan Africa. Protests are being organized in Swaziland for Tuesday, April 12th but any demonstrations have already been banned by the country's prime minister.

All Africa has a great analysis of the upcoming protests and what they mean for the nation's economy and government. This analysis includes statements from the groups planning to participate on what changes they want to see in Swaziland. For our snippet, we have the introduction to the piece.

Economic crisis coupled with the conspicuous luxury of an absolute monarchy committed to repression make the parallels obvious. Over 7,000 protesters marched in demonstrations three weeks ago to oppose salary cuts for civil servants. But the regime has banned Tuesday's demonstrations, organized by labor, student, and civic organizations as well as through social media.

Social media will likely make only a marginal contribution to the turnout, as only 7% of the Swazi population is estimated to have Internet access, with only about 16,000 Facebook users (1% of the population according to http://www.internetworldstats.com/).

The campaign does benefit from strong support from Swazi labor, student, and civic organizations as well as by a support campaign in South Africa organized by COSATU and other groups.

With public attention from South Africa, the Swazi regime may hesitate in using open force against the demonstrators. But King Mswati III, who has already ruled for 25 years, is the heir of a dynasty that dates back to 1921. His father, King Sobhuza II, suspended the constitution on April 12, 1973, five years after the country's independence. In addition to state repression and popular mobilization, the strength of traditional loyalty to the monarchy is one factor that will weigh heavily on the outcome.

Video: New Transit Camp Addition in Tunisia

From the Associated Press, a video about a baby born at a Tunisian transition camp with an uncertain future.

Video: Post-uprising Tunisia still struggling

From Al Jazeera, a video about how Tunisians have seen little change one month after President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced out of office.

Italy sees increase in Tunisian refugees

Italy has long struggled with refugees crossing the ocean from North Africa. The people leave from ports of  Africa hoping to survive the trip in rickety boats. They hope to arrive to Italy to seek more economic opportunity. The rash of protests and revolutions throughout North Africa has helped to increase the number of people appearing on Italy's shores.

From the Times of Malta, this AFP article says that Italy is asking for emergency assistance from the EU to help with the increase of refugees. Italy is asking for the EU to patrol the Tunisian coast to intercept people who hope to land in Europe.

“We are asking for an immediate response from the European Union to a situation that Italy cannot deal with on its own,” it added.

Weary-looking immigrants were given blankets and checked out by health officials yesterday as they stepped off dilapidated fishing boats on the tiny island of Lampedusa – some 110 kilometres from Tunisian shores.

Nearly 1,000 immigrants have been brought to the Mediterranean island by coast guards in the past 24-hour period and more boats have been spotted. Most of the new arrivals are sleeping out in the open on the pier in Lampedusa.

“There are people fleeing the strikes and poverty. Some have made asylum requests, others just want to wait and see what happens in Tunisia,” said Federico Fossi, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Ms Fossi said a total of around 1,700 Tunisian immigrants including 50 children have arrived in the 20-square-kilometre island since the fall of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14 and the ensuing weeks of unrest.

“There is a risk of a real humanitarian emergency,” Interior Minister Roberto Maroni warned, saying that the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia had triggered a “mass flight” by immigrants towards Italian shores.

Cutting food prices to avoid more protests in the Middle East

Some of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa that are seeing protesters are making efforts to decrease food prices. Lack of economic opportunity and the high cost of food is foremost on the protesters minds when they hit the streets.

From Reuters Alert Net, writers Asma Al Sharif and Martin Dokoupil explain some of the steps and if they have worked.

Food costs are among the grievances of demonstrators around the region as global food prices hit record highs in December, above levels that prompted riots in 2008, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation, which warned prices of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar are set to climb.

Arab attention is keenly focused on Egypt, as wheat prices, already up on supply shortages caused by drought in Russia and floods in Australia, continue to climb to multiyear highs on futures markets closely watching unrest in the region.

"The government has to take care, monitor prices and improve salaries so that they avoid what happened in Tunisia and spread to Algeria and Cairo," said Raeda al-Farooki, a mother of four, at a large supermarket in Saudi Arabia's port city of Jeddah.

"Onions were about 5 riyals ($1.3) per kilo two years ago and now are around 10. Imported food is even more expensive, but the worst part is that there is no increase in salaries," said Farooki, who lives on six thousand riyals ($1,600) per month.

Algeria, Libya and Jordan have either relaxed food taxes or duties on food imports or cut prices of staple food, and Kuwait recently introduced a generous stipend and free food for its citizens until March 2012 to ease the pain of higher costs.

There is also simmering unrest in Yemen, the poorest Arab country, where 40 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day.

Poverty as a cause of the Middle East protests

All of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa engulfed with protests have many things in common. The protests were all started because the people have no jobs and no money. They see an elite ruling class grabbing all of the wealth for themselves. This leads the people to the streets, and any success seen in other countries helps their resolve.

From this Associated Press article that we found at MSNBC, writer Brian Murphy offers this analysis on why being poor is a major cause of the protests.

Just days before fleeing Tunisia, the embattled leader went on national television to promise 300,000 new jobs over two years.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak did much the same Saturday as riots gripped Cairo and other cities: offering more economic opportunities in a country where half the people live on less than $2 a day.

The pledges-under-siege have something else in common: an acknowledgment that the unprecedented anger on Arab streets is at its core a long-brewing rage against decades of economic imbalances that have rewarded the political elite and left many others on the margins.

With startling speed — less than two months since the first protests in Tunisia — underscored the wobbly condition of the systems used by some Arab regimes to hold power since the 1980s or earlier. The once formidable mix of economic cronyism and hard-line policing — which authorities sometime claim was needed to fight Islamic hard-liners or possible Israeli spies — now appears under serious strain from societies pushing back against the old matrix.

Mubarak and other Arab leaders have only to look to Cairo's streets: a population of 18 million with about half under 30 years old and no longer content to have a modest civil servant job as their top aspiration.

One protester in Cairo waved a hand-drawn copy of his university diploma amid clouds of tear gas and shouted what may best sum up the complexities of the domino-style unrest in a single word: Jobs.

"They are taking us lightly and they don't feel our frustration," said another protester, homemaker Sadat Abdel Salam. "This is an uprising of the people and we will not shut up again."

The narrative of economic injustice has surrounded the protests from the beginning.

"The regimes and the leaders are the ones under fire, but it's really about despair over the future," said Sami Alfaraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. "The faces of this include the young man with a university degree who cannot find work or the mother who has trouble feeding her family."

Tunisia's mutiny that ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was touched off by a struggling 26-year-old university graduate who lit himself on fire after police confiscated his fruit and vegetable cart in December. Apparent copycat self-immolations quickly spread to Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere.

Tunisian inspired protests spread into Yemen

The government protests continue to spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Tunisia is still in the middle of it as protesters demand more reforms. The rioting in Egypt has entered a second day. Now the protest begin in a new country, this time in Yemen the Middle East's poorest country.

From this Associated Press article that we found at WTEN, we find out more about the opposition demands.

"We will not accept anything less than the president leaving," said independent parliamentarian Ahmed Hashid.

Opposition leaders called for more demonstrations on Friday.

"We'll only be happy when we hear the words 'I understand you' from the president," Hashid said, invoking a statement issued by Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali before he fled the country.

Saleh has tried to defuse simmering tensions by raising salaries for the army and by denying opponents' claims he plans to install his son as his successor.

After the Tunisian turmoil, he ordered income taxes slashed in half and instructed his government to control prices. He deployed anti-riot police and soldiers to several key areas in the capital, Sanaa, and its surroundings to prevent riots.

That hasn't stopped critics of his rule from taking to the streets in days of protests calling for him to step down, a red line that few dissenters had previously dared to cross.

Nearly half of Yemen's population lives below the poverty line of $2 a day and doesn't have access to proper sanitation. Less than a tenth of the roads are paved. Tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes by conflict, flooding the cities.

The government is riddled with corruption, has little control outside the capital, and its main source of income - oil - could run dry in a decade.

Video: Tunisian politicians meet amid protests

From Al Jazeera, a video on politician efforts to calm the protesters in Tunisia.

Video: Tunisian Protests Spread to Algeria, Yemen

From the Associated Press, a video on the protests from Tunisia spreading into other countries.

Video: Birthplace of Tunisia's revolution

From Al Jazeera, a video that shows some of the reasons why the people of Tunisia began to protest for political change.

Video: Tunisia Protesters Vow to Overthrow Government

From the Associated Press, a video on the continued protests in Tunisia.

Video: New Clashes With Police in Tunisia

From the Associated Press, a video on more clashes between police and citizens in Tunisia.

Video: New dawn for Tunisia

It seems like Al Jazeera is the only organization reporting on this story. Here is a video on the change in leadership in Tunisia. The video has violent footage of the riots sparked by high unemployment and food prices.

Video: Tunisia protests continue

From Al Jazeera, a video update on the riots in Tunisia.

Tunisia closes schools to slow rioters

Tunisia has closed down all schools and universities in a step to stop the recent rioting. Students and the unemployed are doing most of the rioting as they are becoming fed up with the lack of jobs and rampant poverty.

Some of the orchestrating of the riots have taken place over Facebook and Twitter. The Tunisian government has been asking internet service providers to hack into suspected protester accounts. This online hacking has drawn criticism from the US State Department.

From this New York Times article that we found at Press Democrat, writer David D. Kirkpatrick describes the response to the rioting.

At least 14 people have died in the riots, according to the official Tunisian news agency, which also reported the school closings. Opponents of the government contend that riot police officers have shot and killed many more since the riots broke out three weeks ago.

President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, in a televised address, promised to create more jobs, but also to stamp out any violence. He blamed unspecified enemies abroad for the rioting.

“The events were the work of masked gangs that attacked at night government buildings and even civilians inside their homes in a terrorist act that cannot be overlooked,” he said, according to Al Jazeera.
...

The riots began about three weeks ago after a 26-year-old man with a college degree, in despair at his dismal prospects, committed suicide by setting himself on fire. He had been trying to sell a container of fruits and vegetables, and the police confiscated his merchandise because he had no permit.

His self-immolation unleashed the pent-up anger of Tunisia’s educated and underemployed youth, and soon that of others as well.

On Monday, security forces surrounded a university where hundreds of students were trying to protest, according to Reuters. The rioting showed signs of spreading from provincial towns toward the cities of the Mediterranean coast which are central to the tourist industry, Reuters reported.

Video: rioting in Tunisia

From Al Jazerra, a video on the rioting Tunisia.

Riots in Algeria and Tunisia

A couple of poverty wrecked nations have seen riots over the past week. Algeria and Tunisia have long seen oil revenues being sunk into corruption, a large gap between rich and poor, but what set the people over the edge was increased in food prices. The two Arab nations have long been applauded by the west for making economic improvements.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Emad Mekay details what has sparked the rioting.

At least three Algerians have died and hundreds have been injured in four days of protests over housing shortages, rising food prices and failing economic policies that only three months ago won praise by the International Monetary Fund and other Western financial institutions.

The protests in Algeria come as similar demonstrations continue unabated in the neighbouring North African nation Tunisia, also hailed previously as an economic success story by Western banks and investors.

At least four Tunisians have died during the ongoing protests against the poor economic performance of Western-backed autocratic ruler President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

The protests in both Arab countries were initially ignored by the Western media and Western governments but as the protests escalated Washington began to take note.

A Middle East advisor to former U.S. president George W. Bush and leading neo-conservative Elliott Abrams said on his blog at the Council on Foreign Relations that Tunisia was an "unimportant" country, but expressed concern that the fallout from the demonstrations could be dangerous for other Arab nations.

The spillover from Tunisia was quick to come in neighbouring Algeria, a country that provides Europe with 20 percent of its gas needs and is the world’s sixth largest natural gas producer after Russia, the United States, Canada, Iran, and Norway.
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More specifically, the trigger for this week’s riots in Algeria came at the beginning of the month when staple food prices such as flour, cooking oil, milk and sugar averaged a 30 percent increase in the four days prior to the break-out of the protests.

Algerians, who had admiringly watched Tunisians shrug off their decades- long image of meekness during weeks of protests, also took to the streets venting their frustration at several government offices, mail offices and some banks.

Algerian Trade Minister Mustafa Benbada was forced Saturday to act to bring down rising food prices. He announced that the government will cut food prices by 14 percent, the official Algerian News Agency said.