KFAR-TIBNIT: On the outskirts of this southern Lebanese village, workers in a pickup truck parked at a nature reserve named after a fallen fighter of the militant Hezbollah group. They took two large eucalyptus tree seedlings out of the truck and planted them.
The men are from Green Without Borders, a non-governmental organization that says it aims to protect Lebanon’s green areas and plant trees.
But Israel, the United States and some in Lebanon accuse the NGO of being an arm of Hezbollah to hide its military activities. They say the organization has been setting up outposts for the militant group along the border with Israel. Last month, residents in the southern Christian village of Rmaych near the border said they encountered armed men at an outpost of the organization that was blocking them from farmlands.
Green Without Borders denies any link to Hezbollah, which also says it is not connected to the environmental group.
“We are not an arm for anyone,” the head of Green Without Borders, Zouher Nahli, told The Associated Press. “We as an environmental association work for all the people and we are not politicized.” He spoke at the Bassam Tabaja Nature Reserve, named for a Hezbollah fighter killed in Syria in 2014, where the NGO has planted hundreds of trees.
He said the organization’s funding comes from the ministries of environment and agriculture as well as from wealthy Lebanese who care about the environment and municipalities, mainly in the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon. He said he is an Agriculture Ministry employee.
Since it began operations in 2009, the group has helped plant about 2 million trees, Nahli said.
Israel and Hezbollah are archenemies and have fought several wars over the past decades, the last of which ended in August 2006. The 34-day conflict killed 1,200 in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
The UN Security Council resolution that ended that war said the border area should be free of “any armed personnel, assets and weapons,” other than those of the government and UN peacekeepers. After the war, thousands of Lebanese troops were deployed in the border zone and the UN peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, which has been present there since 1978, was beefed up.
In a November report, UNIFIL said shipping containers and prefabricated buildings, some of them with visible Green Without Borders markings, had been set up at 16 sites along the border. In several instances, UNIFIL patrols were prevented from nearing the locations, it said.
The Israeli military says Green Without Borders outposts on the border are used by Hezbollah to gather intelligence information.
At a Security Council meeting in September, the US deputy UN ambassador, Richard Mills, said the proliferation of the group’s outposts along the border obstructs UNIFIL access and “is heightening tensions in the area, further demonstrating that this so-called environmental group is acting on Hezbollah’s behalf.”
At the meeting, the council unanimously approved a resolution strongly condemning harassment, intimidation, attacks and restrictions on UNIFIL.
Last month, an Irish UN peacekeeper was killed and several others were wounded when attackers opened fire on a UNIFIL convoy in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah denied any connection to the attack.
Nahli said he was not aware of any shipping containers or buildings being set up by his organization. “All we do along the border is protect forests and all the claims are illogical and baseless,” he said.
Residents in border Shiite villages that support Hezbollah praise the organization. “It is doing good for the environment and planting trees along the border. We are very happy with their work,” said Salah Rammal, a shop owner in the border village of Odaisseh.
Residents of the Christian village Rmaych, however, have complained for years about a position set up by Green Without Borders on farmland belonging to village families in a nearby valley. They say the organization did not plant any trees there and actually chopped down trees and cut a 1.5-kilometer (1-mile) dirt road on their land.
“It is a cover for Hezbollah to have positions. We have no problems with Hezbollah, but it should be outside our lands,” said Bassam Al-Hajj, a Rmaych schoolteacher.
In December, Al-Hajj and other residents went to the outpost and confronted the men there. Al-Hajj said some of the men at the site were masked and armed, and that the outpost included several rooms, a tent and a fence that blocked off village farmland.
The residents and the men argued, he said. One resident who was videoing the encounter was told by one of the men, “We will crush you if you don’t delete the photos that you took,” Al-Hajj said.
Days after the confrontation, a Hezbollah official and members of the organization visited the village and met residents at the mayor’s office, said Father Najib Al-Ameel, a priest from Rmaych who attended the talks.
The mayor and residents asked that the post be removed, he said. Al-Ameel said he told the Hezbollah official, “We will not accept anyone but the Lebanese army to protect us.” A few days later, Green Without Borders removed the post and now residents can freely access their land, he said.
Nahli said the media had blown the incident in Rmaych out of proportion and refused to discuss details. In the past, Hezbollah has blamed frictions at Rmaych on members of the Christian Lebanese Forces party, which is among Hezbollah’s harshest critics.
When asked if peacekeepers could visit the organization’s sites, UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said, “We had the possibility, of course, to monitor the whole area of operations and also areas and places where Green Without Borders operated.”
He said there has not been “a breach of 1701,” the Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war.
Nahli argued that Green Without Border’s work is sorely needed. Over the past few decades, Lebanon has experienced one of the world’s worst deforestation rates, which he said has accelerated since the economy collapsed, starting in late 2019, as poor people cut trees to use the wood for heating. The forested area has dropped from 25 percent of the country’s territory to only around 3 percent now, he said.
“We are trying by all our means, in coordination with all concerned authorities, to prevent more deforestation,” he said.
Lebanese environmental group accused of being Hezbollah arm
https://arab.news/66y4u
Lebanese environmental group accused of being Hezbollah arm
- Israel, the United States and some in Lebanon accuse the NGO of being an arm of Hezbollah to hide its military activities
- Green Without Borders denies any link to Hezbollah, which also says it is not connected to the environmental group
Leaders of Jordan and Pakistan call UAE president to express concern about effects of severe storm
- Leaders passed on their best wishes to the country as it recovers from the storms
DUBAI: The president of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, received telephone calls from King Abdullah of Jordan and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday, during which they expressed concern about the effects of the severe weather, including unusually heavy rainfall, that battered parts of the country this week.
They also passed on their best wishes to the country as it recovers from the storms and “conveyed their heartfelt hopes for the safety and prosperity of the UAE and its people, praying for their protection from any harm,” the Emirates News Agency reported.
Sheikh Mohammed thanked both leaders for their warm sentiments, and emphasized the strong bonds between the UAE and their nations.
The UAE and neighboring Oman were hit by unprecedented rainfall and flooding on Tuesday, with more than 250 millimeters of rain falling in parts of the Emirates, considerably more than is normally seen in a year. Dubai International Airport was forced to close temporarily when runways were flooded.
Peshmerga fighter dies in Turkish strike in north Iraq
JEDDAH: A member of the Kurdish Peshmerga security forces was killed on Friday in a Turkish drone strike in the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.
Ankara regularly carries out ground and air operations in the region against positions of the outlawed PKK, the Kurdish separatist group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
The victim of Friday’s attack died in a drone strike on his vehicle, said Ihsan Chalabi, mayor of the mountainous Sidakan district near Iraq’s borders with Turkiye and Iran.
For decades, Turkiye has operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq in its war against the PKK, which Ankara and its Western allies consider a terrorist group.
Both Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government have been accused of tolerating Turkiye’s military activities to preserve their close economic ties.
At the beginning of April, a man described as “high-ranking military official” from the PKK was killed in a Turkish drone strike on a car in the mountainous Sinjar region, according to the Kurdistan counterterrorism services.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to visit Baghdad on Monday on his first official visit to Iraq since 2011.
Iraq’s Defense Minister Thabet Al-Abassi in March ruled out joint military operations against the PKK, but said that Turkiye and Iraq would “work to set up a joint intelligence coordination center.”
Middle East in ‘shadow of uncertainty due to regional conflicts’
WASHINGTON: Economies in the Middle East and North Africa face a “shadow of uncertainty” from ongoing tensions in the region, a senior IMF official said.
“We are in a context where the overall outlook is cast into shadows,” Jihad Azour, the International Monetary Fund’s director for the Middle East and Central Asia department, said in an interview in Washington.
“The shadow of uncertainty on the geopolitical side is an important one,” added Azour, a recent candidate for the next Lebanese president.
In the face of the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Sudan and a recent cut to oil supplies by Gulf countries, the IMF has pared back its growth outlook for the Middle East and North Africa region once again.
FASTFACT
Economic activity in Gaza has ‘come to a standstill’ and the IMF estimates that economic output in the West Bank and Gaza contracted by six percent last year.
The IMF expects growth in MENA of 2.7 percent this year — 0.2 percentage points below its January forecast — before picking up again next year, the IMF said in its regional economic outlook report.
The risks to growth in the MENA region remain heightened, the IMF said, pointing to the danger of greater regional spillovers from the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.
“We have concerns about the immediate and lasting impact of conflict,” Azour said.
The IMF report said that economic activity in Gaza has “come to a standstill” and estimates that economic output in the West Bank and Gaza contracted by 6 percent last year.
The IMF said the report excludes economic projections for the West Bank and Gaza for the next five years “on account of the unusually high degree of uncertainty.”
The IMF cannot lend to the West Bank and Gaza because they are not IMF member countries.
However, Azour said it has provided the Palestinian Authority and the central bank with technical assistance during the current conflict.
“When we move into the reconstruction phase, we will be part of the international community support to the region,” he added.
Azour also discussed the situation in Sudan, where thousands have been killed in a civil war that has also devastated the economy, causing it to contract by almost 20 percent last year, according to the IMF.
“The country is barely functioning, institutions have been dismantled,” he said.
“And for an economy, for a country like Sudan, with all this potential, it’s important to stop the bleeding very quickly and move to a phase of reconstruction,” he added.
The recent Houthi attacks have particularly badly hit the Egyptian economy on Red Sea shipping, which caused trade through the Egypt-run Suez Canal to more than halve — depriving the country of a key source of foreign exchange.
Egypt reached an agreement last month to increase an existing IMF loan package from $3 billion to $8 billion after its central bank hiked interest rates and allowed the pound to plunge by nearly 40 percent.
A key pillar of the current IMF program is the privatization of Egypt’s state-owned enterprises, many of which are owned by or linked to the military.
“This is a priority for Egypt,” Azour said. Egypt needs to have a growing private sector and give space for the private sector to create more jobs.”
“We have an opportunity to re-engineer the state’s role, to give the state more responsibility as an enabler and less as a competitor,” he said.
Oxfam director urges global support for refugees in Jordan
- Dmitry Medlev speaks of impact of over 3m people from neighboring areas
LONDON: Oxfam’s country director in Jordan said on Friday the global community had a responsibility to support refugees, especially in light of unrest in the Middle East.
In an interview with the Jordan News Agency, Dmitry Medlev described how an influx of over 3 million refugees from neighboring areas had stretched Jordan’s economic resources, disrupted local communities, and burdened public services.
He described the refugee’s experience as harrowing, often involving the painful process of abandoning the individual’s homeland and everything they held dear.
He said: “We are sending a message to the world not to overlook the refugee problem and to keep its focus on the new global disasters created by humans or caused by natural disasters, and the conflicts that have emerged in several countries recently, because the refugee problem is draining host countries and imposing additional burdens on them that they may not be able to bear in the future.”
Medlev called for enhanced international cooperation and adherence to international humanitarian law in supporting refugees, underscoring the need for long-term solutions to the ongoing crisis.
He also spoke of Oxfam’s initiatives in Jordan, such as the Waste to Positive Energy project in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, and the EU, and executed with the German Corporation for International Cooperation. The project focuses on waste management and recycling in Zaatari Camp and Mafraq Governorate, processing about 30 tonnes of waste per day.
Medlev also pointed out Oxfam’s efforts in promoting economic and climate justice through grants aimed at empowering local projects led by women and youngsters. These grants help enhance project efficiency, ensure sustainability, and connect beneficiaries with supportive institutions.
He outlined Oxfam’s five-year strategy in Jordan, which focuses on gender justice, climate justice, and economic justice, and aims to bolster the country’s preparedness for disasters, enhance employment opportunities, and provide humanitarian support for refugees.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II told the UN General Assembly in September that the world must not abandon Palestinian refugees to the forces of despair.
Sudanese rue shattered dreams as war enters second year
- Bashir’s ouster in April 2019 ushered in a civilian-led transition that saw an outpouring of “hope, inspiration and vibrancy” among young Sudanese, said Samah Salman, who worked in corporate venture capital then
DUBAI: Lawyer Omar Ushari still remembers the hope that gripped Khartoum after the uprising that overthrew President Omar Bashir in 2019. Now, after a year of war between rival generals, much of the Sudanese capital lies in ruins.
The 46-year-old, then detained for his activism, celebrated behind bars when Bashir was toppled in a palace coup.
In the heady days that followed, as the army promised a transition to elective civilian rule, Ushari was released and set to work on his dream project: a literary cafe near the banks of the Nile.
Named Rateena, his cafe swiftly became known as a safe haven for young activists eager to contribute to building a “better Sudan.”
But on April 15 last year, the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces went to war, and Ushari watched both his project and his dreams for the country “fade, bit by bit.”
BACKGROUND
Omar Bashir’s ouster in April 2019 ushered in a civilian-led transition that saw an outpouring of ‘hope, inspiration and vibrancy’ among young Sudanese, says Samah Salman, who worked in corporate venture capital then.
For months, he braved raging street battles to visit Rateena, “sit in the dark, take stock of what had been looted since my last visit, and reminisce.”
He did not understand how “the music that filled the space, the lectures and debates people shared, had been replaced with stray bullets strewn around me and the sound of tank fire outside.”
Now, as the war has entered its second year, with thousands dead and millions more driven from their homes, Ushari says he is “only one of the thousands of dreams shattered” — a microcosm of “a stolen revolution.”
Bashir’s ouster in April 2019 ushered in a civilian-led transition that saw an outpouring of “hope, inspiration and vibrancy” among young Sudanese, said Samah Salman, who worked in corporate venture capital then.
Startups were “springing up all across Sudan,” she said from the US, “all building extraordinary solutions to real needs ordinary Sudanese people were facing.”
Salman reviewed over 50 startups in telehealth, agritech, renewable energy, logistics, and fintech solutions, crediting the boom to “the energy of the revolution.”
According to Ushari, “hopes were high that Sudan was finally on the right path, out of the shadows and heading toward democracy, toward freedom.”
Like countless others, communications expert Raghdan Orsud, 36, wanted to play her part.
She co-founded Beam Reports to investigate disinformation in Sudan — “out of the belief in the role media can play in democratic transition,” she said from London.
But that transition ended in October 2021, two months after Beam Reports launched.
The same generals who would later go to war — army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his then-deputy RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo — ousted civilians from the transitional administration.
“Nothing was the same after the coup,” Ushari said.
“It was a painful time. They were killing protesters every week, but still, we had hope.”
Then, one fateful Saturday at the end of Ramadan, the people of Khartoum awoke to the sounds of air strikes and shelling as their worst fears came true: the erstwhile allies had turned their guns on each other.
Bodies began piling up on the streets as vicious urban warfare drove millions to flee.
Orsud had just bought studio-grade recording equipment, “still in their boxes,” when RSF paramilitaries seized and looted her offices.
Ushari was piecing together a life in Cairo when he received a video message showing a massive fire.
“That’s how I found out Rateena had burned down,” he said.
Countless Sudanese in the diaspora — who had spent decades saving up to build their Khartoum homes — have been forced to watch from afar as the RSF looted them.
“At some point, he was praying for an airstrike to hit the house,” pastry chef Shaimaa Adlan, 29, said in Cairo, referring to her father in Saudi Arabia.
“He would have rather seen it destroyed than know his life’s work was being used as a paramilitary base.”
Adlan had started a catering business in Khartoum before finding herself in Egypt — uprooted and jobless.
But barely a year later, she sprints through a bustling kitchen in Cairo, shouting orders to her staff and fussing over dishes.
Back home, Salman says the war has not crushed Sudanese entrepreneurialism, just redirected it.
She said tech entrepreneurs now crowdsource real-time safety updates instead of protest plans and optimize evacuation paths instead of delivery routes.
The same young people organizing demonstrations now coordinate aid, becoming what the UN calls “the front line” of humanitarian response.
And in displacement centers and the diaspora, the dream of a new Sudan has not been forgotten.
“No matter where we’ve been exiled or what remote Sudanese state we’ve ended up in, there’s still a spark of the revolution left in every heart,” Ushari said.
“Sudan is ours, it’s all of ours,” said Orsud, whose fact-checking team has resumed operations from Nairobi.
“What else would we do besides rebuild it, over and over?“
