OUAGADOUGOU: Militant attacks in Burkina Faso have inflamed accusations against the Fulani community, sparking warnings the troubled country may spiral into ethnic conflict — even civil war.

The impoverished Sahel state is battling a seven-year-old insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and prompted nearly two million to flee their homes.

The militants have drawn some of their recruits from the Fulani minority, causing the group as a whole to be stigmatized, say specialists.

Audio messages posted mainly on WhatsApp have urged “native” Burkinabe to attack the Fulani, especially in the southwest region bordering Ivory Coast.

The government last Thursday issued a fierce condemnation.

It likened the posts to Radio Mille Collines — a notorious radio station in Rwanda that in 1994 urged its Hutu listeners to slaughter “Tuti cockroaches.”

The calls amount to “active and direct calls for murder, mass killings, ethnic cleansing and sedition — the tone and words used send shivers down the spine,” said government spokesman Lionel Bilgo.

The country had to act “firmly and resolutely” against “speech that is hateful, subversive, dangerous and unacceptable in a country as rich and diversified as Burkina Faso,” he said.

The Fulani, also known as Peul, account for around 1.5 million out of Burkina Faso’s 20.5 million people.

They have been singled out in the past for association with massacres.

On Jan. 1, 2019, unidentified assailants attacked the village of Yirgou in northern Burkina Faso, killing six people, including the village elder.

The attack triggered instant reprisals against Fulani that led to 50 deaths, according to the official toll, while civil society groups say fatalities numbered at least 146.

Three months later, at least 116 unarmed men, accused of supporting or housing militants, were believed to have been killed by the security forces in the village of Arbinda, Human Rights Watch said.

“With few exceptions, the victims were members of the Fulani ethnicity,” it said, after sending investigators to the location.

Other massacres in 2020 in the villages Dinguila and Barga left dozens of dead, most of them also Fulani.

Last month, a man was arrested for allegedly distributing an audio message directed at two Fulani traditional and religious leaders.

“Your community is behind the insecurity which is rampant in our country,” it said.

“Out of the 60 ethnic groups (in Burkina Faso), yours is the one which is behind the massacres.”

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will urge the international community to cooperate on tackling climate change at the United Nations later this month, the foreign minister said on Saturday, as the South Asian nation grapples with catastrophic floods that have covered a third of the country and killed around 1,400 people.

Monsoon rains and melting glaciers in mountains in Pakistan’s north triggered floods that have swept away homes, key infrastructure, livestock and crops, affecting 35 million of Pakistan’s 220 million people.

Officials put the cost of flood-related damage at $30 billion as the government and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres blamed the devastating deluge on climate change.

Guterres, who is visiting the country to raise awareness of the disaster, has appealed for “massive” help from the international community, and has invited Pakistan to participate in a special roundtable on climate change he is hosting, which will take place during the 77th UN General Assembly session this month, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari told Arab News.

“This is an international issue and this all is happening due to the whole world, so we hope that we will come out of this problem collectively with the cooperation of the international community,” Bhutto-Zardari said in an exclusive interview.

“During that roundtable, the prime minister will get a chance to speak about the adverse impacts of climate change on Pakistan and highlight the destruction and damage inflicted by floods caused by climate change.”

Despite contributing less than one percent of global carbon emissions, Pakistan is eighth on the Global Climate Risk Index published by Germany-based non-governmental organization Germanwatch, which lists the countries most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.

The government will also highlight the extent of losses caused by the floods and raise awareness of Pakistan’s “immediate and long-term needs for the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase,” Bhutto-Zardari said.

With many areas of the country still inundated with water, authorities are struggling with rescue and relief efforts, especially in southern Sindh and southwestern Balochistan provinces, which officials say looked “like the sea.”

The government is also bracing for the emergence of waterborne diseases and is concerned about the potential impact of the flooding on more than 600,000 pregnant women who may face issues should they require immediate medical care, Bhutto-Zardari said.

The UN has launched an appeal for $160 million in aid to help Pakistan cope with the disaster, but the foreign minister said the amount — 45 percent of which has so far been pledged by UN member states — is “insufficient for this scale of damage.”

Officials are working with international agencies to produce a joint assessment to determine the funds needed for reconstruction and rehabilitation of the flood victims, Bhutto-Zardari said.

With help from the UN chief, Pakistan will then “arrange a donor conference to generate those funds by mobilizing the international community,” he added.

As he toured the affected areas on Saturday, Guterres appealed for the world to “stop the madness,” taking to social media to urge investment in renewable energy.

“Pakistan and other developing countries are paying a horrific price for the intransigence of big emitters that continue to bet on fossil fuels,” he wrote on Twitter. “End the war with nature.”

NEW DELHI: The withdrawal of Indian and Chinese troops from an undemarcated border area in the western Himalayas creates a “diplomatic opening” but does not end the two-year dispute between the two countries, experts said on Sunday.

Soldiers from the two nuclear-armed neighbors clashed in the Galwan area of the Ladakh region in June 2020, when at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand fighting. The incident escalated tensions between the Asian giants and was their worst border clash since 1967.

India and China share an undemarcated 3,800-kilometer border, and their senior military commanders have held 16 rounds of meetings since the 2020 clash, which prompted New Delhi to move some 50,000 troops along contested areas in Ladakh to match China’s military deployments. Some of the areas are at altitudes of over 4,572 meters, where scarce oxygen and freezing winter temperatures can be life-threatening.

The two countries announced earlier this week that their troops would withdraw from the area of Gogra-Hotsprings. The latest agreement will also see “all temporary structures in the area erected by both militaries” dismantled by Sept. 12, India’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a statement.

The pull-out comes ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Uzbekistan next week, which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to attend.

The disengagement is “symbolic,” Delhi-based foreign policy expert Mohan Guruswamy told Arab News, and conveyed the “intention of both sides to create a better condition for discussion.”

“This is just to create a diplomatic opening for Modi and Xi Jinping to happily meet or politely meet,” Guruswamy said.

Gogra-Hotsprings is an area where both sides have conducted patrols, he explained, and the disengagement means that the troops will no longer be face-to-face with one another.

“Overall it does not change anything, the border is disputed,” Guruswamy said. “There are many more steps to be taken for full disengagement. There’s a long way to go before the trust deficit is addressed. This is just a first step.”

Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Program and a China Studies fellow at Bangalore-based think tank Takshashila Institution, said this week’s disengagement is “not de-escalation,” as tens of thousands of troops remained at the disputed border.

“What we have today is simply a step back from eyeball confrontation,” Kewalramani told Arab News. “We are far from any sense of normalcy.

“I see this as a positive development in that, today, both sides have disengaged from friction points, but this is not a return to normalcy and nor is it a return to the status quo ante,” Kewalramani continued. “The disengagement, however, does create some room for both Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi to engage politically at the SCO summit.”

Dr Manoj Joshi of Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation told Arab News that the troops’ disengagement will “create (a) no-patrol zone,” but said the development would have been more significant if disengagement took place in Depsang — which covers thousands of kilometers — rather than the smaller Gogra-Hotsprings area.

“If this decision is to facilitate a meeting between Modi and Xi, then it’s a good idea,” Joshi said. “Political issues can be resolved by political leaders. So far, they have not been able to talk to each other. If this is a pretext to talk, then it’s fine.”

LONDON: The state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II will be held at Westminster Abbey in London at 11:00 a.m. (1000 GMT) on Monday Sept. 19, royal officials said on Saturday. Buckingham Palace also confirmed that the queen, who died on Thursday aged 96, will then be taken to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, west of London, for a committal service. “We will carry out our duty over the coming days with the heaviest of hearts, but also with the firmest of resolve to ensure a fitting farewell to one of the defining figures of our times,” said the Earl Marshal, Edward Fitzalan-Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. The queen’s body is currently in an oak coffin covered by the Royal Standard for Scotland, with a wreath of flowers on top, in the ballroom of Balmoral Castle, in northeast Scotland. Royal officials called it “a scene of quiet dignity.” The queen’s coffin will be taken on a 180-mile (290-kilometer) trip by road from the remote estate to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on Sunday. In the Scottish capital, the coffin will be taken from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St. Giles’s Cathedral to lie at rest until Tuesday. It will then be taken by air to Buckingham Palace in London, before lying-in-state at Westminster Hall from Wednesday. (With AFP and Reuters)

TIRANA, Albania: Albania’s Interior Ministry said Saturday that one of its border systems was hit by a cyberattack that came from the same Iranian source as an earlier attack that led the country to break diplomatic relations with Iran. It said in a statement that the previous evening an Albanian police transmitting system was found to be “under a cyberattack similar to the one that (government portal) e-Albania suffered in July.” “Preliminary results show the attack was committed by the same hand,” the statement said, adding that authorities temporarily closed down all the systems, including the Total Information Management System (TIMS), which records entries and exits at the border crossing. Local media reported long queues in at least two border crossings in the south. Albania, a NATO member, cut diplomatic ties with Iran and expelled its embassy staff this week. It was the first known case of a country cutting diplomatic relations over a cyberattack. “Another cyberattack from the same aggressors already exposed and denounced by Albania’s allies and friendly countries, was seen last evening on the TIMS system,” Prime Minister Edi Rama tweeted on Saturday, adding that officials are coordinating defensive work with allies. The Albanian government has accused Iran of carrying out the July 15 attack, which temporarily shut down numerous Albanian government digital services and websites. Microsoft, the FBI and other cyber experts helped Albania following the July attack. Microsoft said in a blog post Thursday that it was moderately confident the hackers belong to a group that has been publicly linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The US government on Friday imposed sanctions on Iran’s intelligence agency and its leadership in response to the attack on Albania. NATO and the European Union also denounced the attack and supported Albania’s move.