World

Indonesia has called off its bid to salvage a military submarine that sank off the coast of Bali, killing all 53 crew aboard, the navy said Wednesday. 

The KRI Nanggala 402 disappeared in April while it was scheduled to take part in live torpedo training exercises.

An underwater rescue vehicle later spotted the German-built sub lying on the sea floor more than 800 metres (2,600 feet) deep, broken in several parts and confirming there was no hope of finding survivors.

Chinese salvage ships were sent to help with efforts to haul up the vessel.

But Indonesia’s military said Wednesday that it was ending the operation after a meeting with Chinese naval counterparts.

In a brief statement, the Indonesian navy said the salvage was “not an easy task” and “very risky”, without elaborating.

A month-long effort had already hauled up “important materials” from the cracked submarine, it added, but the decision to halt the operation meant there was no chance of retrieving the sailors’ bodies.

“Our family is hoping they can lift it,” Sudarmaji, the father of one crew member, told AFP on Wednesday before the announcement.

“It doesn’t matter if it takes a while or we have to ask for more help from other countries,” added the man, who goes by one name.

Earlier, the military had said high-powered magnets and air balloons were among the options to lift the submarine.

It was unclear when, or if, a report on the cause of the accident would be made public. 

After the vessel disappeared, search teams spotted an oil spill where it was thought to have submerged, pointing to possible fuel tank damage.

The military has yet to offer an official explanation for the sinking of the decades-old submarine, which was delivered to Indonesia in 1981.

It has said, however, that the reconditioned vessel was seaworthy and discounted the possibility of an explosion.

The submarine may have suffered a blackout that left the crew unable to perform emergency measures as it sank to depths far below what the KRI Nanggala’s hull was built to withstand, the military has said.

The vessel’s former commander earlier told local media that a so-called internal solitary wave could have been to blame. 

The natural phenomenon occurs when different sea depths come together, creating forces that could have dragged the vessel down.

The disaster was among a string of fatal submarine accidents in the past few decades. 

Among the worst was the 2000 sinking of Russia’s Kursk, which was on manoeuvres in the Barents Sea when it sank with the loss of all 118 aboard. An inquiry found a torpedo had exploded, detonating all the others.

Most of its crew died instantly but some survived for several days before suffocating.

As they gathered to witness US President Joe Biden’s historic visit to the site of a racist massacre that devastated a thriving community, Black Tulsans said they hoped his presence means the long-ignored injustice will finally receive recognition.

The Tulsa district of Greenwood — nicknamed “Black Wall Street” — was devastated in 1921 by a mob of armed white people. Hundreds are thought to have died in the violence sparked by a false accusation against a young Black man.

Biden is the first sitting president to attend the annual commemorations. Now, locals say, he needs to give economic help to a community that 100 years later has still not recovered its prosperity.

“It’s a wound,” said Betty Anderson. “It still hurts.”

But the 70-year-old welcomed Biden, calling his visit “phenomenal” and expressing hope that his presence would help educate white Americans about events in Oklahoma state that have lain hidden for too long.

– So-called ‘riots’ –

Up to 300 people were killed in the attack, and some 10,000 were left homeless when the district was set ablaze, leaving a vibrant economy in ruins.

No one was ever convicted for the destruction, and insurance companies, claiming that the unrest was the result of riots, refused to reimburse Black victims.

“Twenty years ago, nobody said it was a massacre, people said it was a riot,” a woman in the crowd cried out, as people clapped in support.

Never discussed even in parts of Tulsa’s Black community, for years the brutal acts of violence were not taught in schools.

But on Tuesday Biden said he wanted to “fill the silence,” and went on to recognize that “there was a clear effort to erase” the event from the nation’s memory.

The president told the audience, among them three survivors of the massacre, “we will shine a light on your history.”

The Greenwood district never managed to recover. 

“It even affected the way us Black people look at white people,” said 13-year-old Colece, who was born in Tulsa.

– ‘He knew how things had been’ –

Her 63-year-old grandmother Celestine Polk nods, and described how her family struggled in the aftermath.

“My father especially,” she said, “because he knew how things have been.”

“But it’s not as if we could go back and change what happened, we have to live with it,” the teenager said, adding that “maybe people will feel better if they feel the government cares about what happened.”

A bit further away, near a booth offering t-shirts to commemorate the massacre and under a “Black Lives Matter flag,” Anthony Hutton thinks it will take a lot to heal the pain.

Biden’s visit is “a kind gesture,” said the 46-year-old, but it wasn’t enough.

As an engineer Hutton said he can not find work in the area, and said that Black Tulsans still face racial discrimination.

“We’re looking for economic opportunities, the same opportunities they have elsewhere, all around town,” he said.

“We’re tired of talking, marching, we want results.”

Russia’s upper house on Wednesday overwhelmingly backed legislation expected to be used to ban allies of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny from running in elections, the latest move in a crackdown on the opposition.

The bill, overwhelmingly approved by the Federation Council, would make it impossible to run in parliamentary elections for leaders, sponsors and rank-and-file members of “extremist” groups.

A Russian court is considering whether to designate Navalny’s political network an extremist organisation and could make a decision as early as next week.

Critics of President Vladimir Putin say Russian authorities are widening a campaign against the opposition ahead of parliamentary elections in September.

After Navalny was jailed and many of his allies arrested, two more political activists, Dmitry Gudkov and Andrei Pivovarov, were detained over the past two days.

Pivovarov, the former executive director of Open Russia, a just disbanded pro-democracy group, was pulled off his Warsaw-bound flight on Monday. 

The 39-year-old faces up to six years in prison for his involvement in an “undesirable” organisation. A court was expected to decide whether to remand him later Wednesday.

On Tuesday, police detained Gudkov after conducting raids on homes of his allies and relatives.

The 41-year-old former opposition lawmaker faces up to five years in prison for allegedly failing to pay a debt under an old lease agreement.

Gudkov is likely to be formally charged on Wednesday, said human rights association Agora whose lawyer represents him.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the detentions were a purely legal matter.

“The charges put forward by law enforcement have nothing to do with politics,” he told reporters.

Russian authorities had for years tolerated opposition groups including Navalny’s political movement but Kremlin critics say authorities are moving to remove any vestiges of dissent.

– Yanked off plane –

Navalny, who barely survived a near fatal poisoning with a Soviet-designed nerve agent last summer, was imprisoned for two-and-a-half-years on old embezzlement charges in February.

A total of 146 senators backed the bill approved on Wednesday, while one voted against and one abstained. The legislation will have to be signed by Putin to become law.

“Not a single civilised country allows extremists in its official organs,” senator Andrei Klimov said ahead of the vote.

The bill, which has already been backed by parliament’s lower house, can affect not only senior members and activists of Navalny’s political network but tens of thousands of Russians who supported its work with donations.

Leaders of such groups will not be able to run in parliamentary elections for five years while members and those who helped finance their work will be banned from running for three years. 

Pivovarov was detained just days after Open Russia, founded by self-exiled Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formally disbanded to shield its members from possible prosecution.

The group was designated an “undesirable” organisation in Russia in 2017 in line with a law targeting foreign-funded groups accused of political meddling.

Pivovarov was yanked off the plane after authorities in Russia’s ally Belarus on May 23 diverted an EU airliner to Minsk to arrest a dissident on board, provoking an international outcry.

A burnt-out container ship that has already caused Sri Lanka’s worst maritime environmental disaster was sinking fast Wednesday with nearly 300 tonnes of oil still in its fuel tanks.

The MV X-Press Pearl, carrying hundreds of containers of chemicals and plastics, burned for 13 days just outside the Colombo harbour before rescue workers finally extinguished the blaze on Tuesday.

Dutch salvage firm SMIT attempted to pull the still-smoking wreckage of the 31,600-tonne vessel further into deeper waters on Wednesday but the effort stalled, navy spokesman Indika de Silva told AFP.

He said the stern had sunk to the bottom at a depth of 22 meters (72 feet), six nautical miles (11 kilometres) from the coast of Pamunugama, just north of Colombo.

“The bow is still afloat, but the stern is submerged and resting on the sea bed,” de Silva said. “As a result, the towing of the ship has been stopped.”

A huge amount of plastic debris has already inundated beaches, and authorities now fear an even greater disaster should the 278 tonnes of bunker oil and 50 tonnes of gas in the Singapore-registered ship’s fuel tanks leak into the Indian Ocean.

Some oil was already visible near the beaches of Negombo, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Colombo, an AFP photographer said, although it was not clear if it was from the stricken ship.

International shipping academic and lawyer Dan Gunasekera said there were no immediate signs of bunker oil leaking, but said divers may have to be used to pump it out safely.

Navy spokesman de Silva said an Indian coastguard vessel was in the area with specialised equipment to deal with any oil slick.

An official involved in the operation said some of the vast amount of water sprayed on the fire to put it out had made the vessel unstable.

“Much of that water has settled in the stern,” the official told AFP.

– Oil disaster –

Officials believe the blaze destroyed most of the nearly 1,500 containers onboard. 

The inundation of microplastic granules from the cargo has already forced a fishing ban and prompted concern for wildlife and the marine environment.

Marine Environment Protection Authority chief Dharshani Lahandapura said the ecological damage was still being assessed, but he believed it was the “worst ever in my lifetime”.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa asked Australia on Monday to help evaluate the ecological damage to the island, one of the most bio-diverse countries in South Asia.

– Call to sue –

The head of Sri Lanka’s Roman Catholic church, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, called for legal action against the authorities for allowing the ship into local waters.

He said that the livelihoods of thousands of fishermen, most of whom were from the Catholic minority, was now under threat.

Sri Lanka has already launched a criminal investigation.

Authorities believe the fire was caused by a nitric acid leak which the crew apparently knew about from May 11, nine days before the blaze started.

The 25-strong crew was evacuated last week. One was admitted to hospital with minor injuries.

Police said three officers from the ship, two Russians and an Indian, had been questioned and their passports had been impounded.

The ship was heading to Colombo from Gujarat in India when the blaze started, having previously visited Qatar and Dubai where the containers of 25 tonnes of nitric acid were loaded.

A giant panda loaned to Malaysia from China has given birth to a rare third cub during its stay in the Southeast Asian country, wildlife officials said Wednesday.

The cub was born Monday at Kuala Lumpur zoo to Liang Liang, who has been on loan to Malaysia since 2014 along with a male panda, Xing Xing, said the country’s wildlife department.

As it can be difficult to get pandas to breed in captivity, three cubs is a rare success.

Officials have been unable to get a close look at the new cub, and do not yet know its sex as it is being closely cared for by its mother.

The first cub, Nuan Nuan, was born in August 2015 and was sent to China in 2017 as part of Beijing’s agreement with Malaysia over cubs born in captivity. The second, Yi Yi, was born in January 2018, but has not yet been sent to China due to coronavirus restrictions, wildlife officials said.

Liang Liang and Xing Xing came to Malaysia on a 10-year loan.

Their arrival was held up by a month after the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 — carrying mostly Chinese passengers — caused tensions between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

It’s estimated that there are around 1,800 giant pandas left in the wild, living mainly in bamboo forests in the mountains of China, according to environmental group WWF.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies giant pandas as “vulnerable”.

The World Health Organization on Tuesday approved the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use — the second Chinese jab to receive the WHO’s green light.

The UN health agency signed off on the Beijing-based firm Sinovac’s two-dose vaccine CoronaVac, which is already being deployed in several countries around the world.

“I’m happy to announce that the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine has been given WHO emergency use listing after being found to be safe, effective, and quality-assured,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference.

“The easy storage requirements of CoronaVac make it very suitable for low-resource settings,” he added.

“It’s now crucial to get these life-saving tools to the people that need them quickly.”

The WHO said the emergency use listing (EUL) gives countries, funders, procuring agencies and communities assurance that the vaccine has met international standards.

Last month Sinopharm became the first Chinese vaccine to be approved by the WHO.

The organisation has also given EUL status to vaccines being made by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and the AstraZeneca jab being produced in India, South Korea and the EU, which it counts separately.

WHO’s listing paves the way for countries worldwide to approve and import a vaccine for distribution quickly, especially those states without an international-standard regulator of their own.

It also opens the door for the jabs to enter the Covax global vaccine-sharing facility, which aims to provide equitable access to doses around the world, particularly in poorer countries.

Currently only AstraZeneca and some Pfizer jabs are flowing through the scheme.

“The world desperately needs multiple Covid-19 vaccines to address the huge access inequity across the globe,” said Mariangela Simao, the WHO’s assistant director general for access to health products.

“We urge manufacturers to participate in the Covax facility, share their know-how and data and contribute to bringing the pandemic under control.”

– Efficacy rate –

“WHO recommends the vaccine for use in adults 18 years and older, in a two-dose schedule with a spacing of two to four weeks,” the agency said in a statement.

“Vaccine efficacy results showed that the vaccine prevented symptomatic disease in 51 percent of those vaccinated and prevented severe Covid-19 and hospitalisation in 100 percent of the studied population.”

The Sinovac vaccine contains an inactivated form of coronavirus that cannot cause the disease. It also has a substance that helps strengthen the immune response to the vaccine.

When given the shot, the immune system identifies the inactivated virus as foreign and makes antibodies against it, which will then recognise the active virus and defend the body against it.

Few people aged over 60 took part in the clinical trial of Sinovac’s jab.

However, the WHO said there should be no upper age limit on the vaccine as there is “no reason to believe it has a different safety profile” in older generations.

The Sinovac jab is already in use in 22 territories around the world, according to an AFP count.

Apart from China, the countries using Sinovac include Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and Turkey.

Chen Xu, China’s ambassador in Geneva, said CoronaVac’s EUL status expanded the number of global tools to fight the pandemic.

“China will continue to work with the international community to promote the accessibility and affordability of Covid-19 vaccines especially in (the) developing world,” he said in a tweet.

The coronavirus pandemic has claimed thousands of lives in his impoverished district of Mexico City, but Edgar Alonso is still determined to go out and vote in Sunday’s midterm elections.

The 48-year-old, who runs a small electronics business in a market in densely populated Iztapalapa, home to 1.8 million people, said he is keeping his faith in the electoral process.

“Covid is fate. We cannot control it,” he said.

“We have to go to vote and exercise our rights as citizens,” he added.

For Alonso and others like him in Iztapalapa, poverty and the daily struggle to survive are what motivate them to vote for candidates they hope will make a difference.

“If we just sit here doing nothing, things will stay the same our whole lives,” he said.

“What we want is a real change.”

Yet not everyone shares his enthusiasm in Iztapalapa, one of Mexico City’s poorest neighborhoods, where the coronavirus has killed nearly 6,600 people — more than in the whole of Israel or Ireland.

Alejandra Gomez, a 62-year-old preschool teacher, said she felt despair when one of her children fell ill with Covid-19.

She wonders how many people died because they could not find an oxygen tank.

“Why are we going to vote? To all be there like useless objects,” she said as she strolled the neighborhood’s steep streets, though she did not rule out casting her ballot. 

– ‘Die of hunger’ –

Although pandemic lockdown measures paralyzed much of Mexico’s economy for months, life in Iztapalapa never stopped completely. 

“People had no choice but to go out to work. They told us ‘either we die of the pandemic or we die of hunger,'” said Jazmin Pille, a 35-year-old candidate for the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Accompanied by supporters, including her mother and one of her daughters, she distributed campaign flyers and shared her political proposals with anyone willing to listen.

On Sunday, Mexicans will elect 500 members of the lower house of Congress as well as 15 of the 32 state governors and thousands of local politicians.

Midterm elections have had an average participation of 51 percent in Mexico, compared with 65 percent in the presidential elections, according to official figures.

The question is whether more people will stay home this year due to the coronavirus.

– ‘Natural disaster’ –

Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll of more than 227,000 is the fourth highest in the world, but infections and fatalities have been trending lower for several months.

In May, only 13 percent of Mexicans considered the pandemic to be the main problem facing the country, compared with 56 percent in April 2020, according to a survey by the newspaper El Financiero.

In another poll by Consulta Mitofsky, the fear of being a victim of crime (44.7 percent of respondents) far exceeded that of being infected with Covid-19 (17.8 percent).

Behind this apparent lack of concern for the pandemic lies the reality of a country where half the population lives in poverty and is more worried about just surviving.

“It looks like it’s a natural disaster, something where there wasn’t much that could be done,” said Maximo Jaramillo-Molina, founder of the Institute for Inequality Studies.

Up to 9.8 million more Mexicans have fallen into poverty due to the pandemic, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy estimated in February.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a left-wing populist, has kept a tight grip on the government purse strings, saying it would be imprudent to increase the national debt.

Mexico’s public spending rose by just 0.3 percent in 2020 from the previous year, compared with 23.8 percent in Brazil and 20.1 percent in Argentina, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

“They haven’t helped us at all. They closed many businesses. Many people were left without work,” said Arturo Reyes, a 54-year-old butcher who plans to vote for the PRI, a harsh critic of the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Oil majors are under growing pressure to stop drilling for crude to help curb climate change, but companies say they will wean themselves off fossil fuels at their own pace.

The demand for change is coming from many sides: lawsuits, shareholders and the International Energy Agency have all turned up the heat on firms recently.

Last week alone, a Dutch court ordered Shell to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, and investors used shareholder meetings to install activist board members at US oil giant ExxonMobil and demand deeper emissions cuts at rival Chevron.

The IEA sent shockwaves through the industry last month when it declared that no fossil fuel exploration or new oil and natural gas fields are needed, thanks to the “rapid drop” in demand.

The intergovernmental organisation made the suggestion in a report warning that all future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The agency, which advises developed countries, has been criticised by environmentalists in the past for being too timid while calling for oil investments to ensure supply.

BP chief executive Bernard Looney told the Columbia Global Energy Summit that the report was “very much in line” with the British energy company’s strategy.

But Looney also noted that while the report sees much lower investment in fossil fuels, it is “still investment in oil and gas”.

“At the end of the day,” he said, the report “is a scenario on a piece of paper and what the world needs more than anything is maybe less scenarios and maybe less debate… and more action.”

BP plans to reduce oil and gas production by 40 percent within the next decade, Looney said.

– ‘Lagging behind’ –

“It’s really a question of rhythm,” said Nicolas Berghmans, an energy research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations think tank in Paris.

Companies “are not going as fast as the IEA thinks is needed” and they “are lagging behind” in their transition, he said.

Last year, investments in clean energy accounted for just one percent of capital spending by the oil and gas industry, according to a new IEA report published Wednesday.

But this could rise to four percent this year for the entire industry — and even higher, to 10 percent, among leading European firms, the IEA said.

“There are signs in the latest data that spending by some global oil and gas companies is starting to diversify,” the report said.

Oil and gas exploration has recently slowed down but this is due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Huge fields were discovered last year in Russia, Turkey and Suriname.

A report by the consultancy Westwood Global Energy Group found “no evidence of a systematic change in industry exploration strategy” with regards to energy transition.

The group expects dozens of exploration drilling operations this year, including in Mexico, Brazil, Suriname and Guyana.

– ‘Prices will rise’ –

The chief executive of TotalEnergies, the French energy group which changed its name last week, has bluntly said that the company is not going to give up oil overnight.

“In energy transition there is the word ‘transition’ and I would like to remind everyone that today… our economy functions on 80 percent fossil fuel energies,” CEO Patrick Pouyanne said last week, warning against “radicalism”.

He said it will take time to switch to other sources of energy for transport or heating while oil demand rises in countries such as China and India.

“It’s nice to say that we need to stop producing oil, but if there are no longer enough projects or production, what will happen? Prices will rise,” Pouyanne told Europe 1 radio.

Following the IEA’s recommendations would cause the prices of oil to surge to $100 per barrel in the next few years, he said. Prices are currently under $70.

BP, Shell and TotalEnergies are betting on gas in their transition, as it is cleaner than oil and coal. 

The IEA, however, has also called for a 55 percent reduction in gas consumption by 2050.

China said Wednesday a flight by 16 military aircraft over hotly contested waters off Malaysia was routine training, after the Southeast Asian nation accused Beijing of breaching its sovereignty. 

Malaysia scrambled fighter jets Monday to intercept the Chinese air force transport planes that appeared off Borneo over the South China Sea, where it has overlapping territorial claims with Beijing.

The Malaysian foreign minister criticised the flight as an “intrusion” and said the government would lodge a protest with Beijing and summon the Chinese ambassador. 

But a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur said the “activities are routine flight training of the Chinese air force and do not target any country”.

“According to relevant international law, Chinese military aircraft enjoy the freedom of overflight in the relevant airspace,” he said.

The planes had not entered any other country’s territorial airspace, the spokesman added in a statement.

The aircraft came within 60 nautical miles (110 kilometres) of the Malaysian part of Borneo, and did not respond to attempts to contact them, prompting Malaysia to scramble jets, according to the country’s air force.

They turned back before entering Malaysian airspace over its territorial waters.

But Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said they had entered the country’s “maritime zone” — an area that extends much further from the coast — and described the incident as a “breach of the Malaysian airspace and sovereignty”.

China has laid claim to nearly all of the South China Sea and has built numerous military outposts on small islands and atolls, angering other countries with competing claims to the waters.

Malaysia-China relations are usually warm but Monday’s incident comes after a build-up in tensions over the sea, which is home to key shipping lanes and is believed to harbour rich oil and gas deposits.

Last year, a Chinese survey ship had a long stand-off with a Malaysian oil exploration vessel off Borneo.

Other claimants in the sea include Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan.

The United States has also sent warships through the waters to assert international rights to freedom of navigation, angering China.

The African Union announced it was suspending Mali with immediate effect and threatened the impoverished country with sanctions, after a second military coup in nine months. 

The putsch has sparked deep concerns over stability in the volatile Sahel region and warnings of economic penalties from across the international community.  

The AU “decides… to immediately suspend the Republic of Mali from participation in all activities of the African Union, its organs and institutions, until normal constitutional order has been restored in the country”, the body’s Peace and Security Council said in a statement late Tuesday.

The move follows a similar suspension on Sunday from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

In its statement, the AU called for the military to “urgently and unconditionally return to the barracks, and to refrain from further interference in the political processes in Mali”.

It warned that if the military did not hand back power to civilian transitional leaders, “the Council will not hesitate to impose targeted sanctions and other punitive measures”. 

Condemning the coup “in the strongest terms possible”, it added it was “deeply concerned about the evolving situation in Mali and its negative impact on the gains made thus far in the transition process in the country”. 

Strongman Colonel Assimi Goita was at the ECOWAS crisis summit in Ghana on Sunday to argue the military’s case but has now returned to Mali. 

Goita last August led army officers who overthrew elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, following mass protests over perceived corruption and a bloody jihadist insurgency.

After the takeover, the military agreed to appoint civilians as interim president and prime minister under the pressure of ECOWAS trade and financial sanctions.

– Elections pledge –

But in a move that provoked diplomatic uproar, soldiers last week detained transitional president Bah Ndaw and prime minister Moctar Ouane, releasing them on Thursday while saying that they had resigned.

Mali’s constitutional court completed Goita’s rise to full power on Friday by naming him transitional president.

With the junta going back on its previous commitment to civilian political leaders, doubts have been raised about its other pledges, including a promise to hold elections in early 2022.

The junta said this week it would continue to respect that timetable, but added that it could be subject to change.

The United States and Mali’s former colonial master France had both threatened sanctions in response to the second coup. 

But ECOWAS, at a crisis summit in Ghana on Sunday, refrained from reimposing sanctions — a move it had adopted after the first coup.

The 15-nation bloc still pushed for Mali to transition to civilian rule under a previously agreed timetable.

The bloc suspended Mali from ECOWAS until February 2022, “when they are supposed to hand over to a democratically elected government,” Ghana’s Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said after the meeting.

Mali is among the world’s poorest countries, and the previous ECOWAS sanctions hit hard. 

It is also battling a jihadist insurgency which first emerged in the north of the country in 2012 and has since spread to Burkina Faso and Niger, leaving swathes of the vast nation of 19 million people outside government control.