Which are the armed groups Iran and Pakistan have bombed — and why?
Iran and Pakistan have carried out air attacks on each other’s territories, targeting armed groups near their 900km-long (559-mile) volatile border, which they say were meant to ensure their respective national security. Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted an armed group in Panjgur town of Pakistan’s Balochistan province late on Tuesday, prompting Pakistan to bomb hideouts of armed groups in the Sistan-Baluchestan province of Iran early on Thursday. Let’s take a look at why the neighbours have resorted to direct military strikes, who the targets were, and what the attacks tell us. (Al Jazeera) What has happened so far? The IRGC, an elite force which is a vital part of the Iranian establishment but separate from Iran’s army, hit the Jaish al-Adl armed group with missile and drone strikes in a mountainous region in Pakistan close to the Iranian border. Iran said it targeted the Iranian “terrorist” group it blamed for recent attacks in the Iranian city of Rask in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan. “The group has taken shelter in some parts of Pakistan’s Balochistan province. We’ve talked with Pakistani officials several times on this matter,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Tuesday from the Swiss city of Davos. Videos from the scene showed what appeared to be a precision strike on a building, and Iranian media celebrated the destruction of a “terrorist” site. The Pakistani government said two children were killed in the attack, believed to be the first such attack by Iran on Pakistani soil. Pakistan launched several air attacks using drones and rockets on a border village in Saravan town, about 1,800km (1,100 miles) from the Iranian capital, Tehran, saying it hit Baloch “notorious terrorist” separatists. Tehran said nine people, including seven women and children, were killed in the attacks. Both countries’ foreign ministries released statements to say they respected the other’s territorial integrity but took measures to safeguard their national security. The Iranian attack came hours after Iran and Pakistan held a joint naval exercise, and the two countries’ foreign ministers spoke in Davos on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. Both summoned their respective envoys, but there has been no talk of cutting diplomatic relations. Iran on Thursday held a large-scale military exercise in its southeastern areas near Pakistan, deploying a range of aircraft and missile systems. Who are the ‘terrorists’ targeted? Iran’s target inside Pakistan was the ethnic Baloch and Sunni group known as Jaish al-Adl, meaning Army of Justice, which surfaced around 2012. It purports to fight for better living conditions in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province, which is Iran’s most impoverished and the longstanding scene of border tensions. Tehran considers it a “terrorist” group due to numerous deadly assaults on Iranian outposts and security forces near the border over more than a decade. Officials call it Jaish al-Zulm – the Army of Injustice. The group was born out of Jundallah, another Iranian Baloch group, which Tehran accused of having direct links with the United States and Israel. It was responsible for a string of deadly attacks, including one in 2009 which killed dozens, including senior IRGC officials. The leader of Jundallah, Abdolmalek Rigi, was captured in a dramatic operation by the Iranian army, with fighter jets forcing the landing of a passenger aircraft taking him from the United Arab Emirates to Kyrgyzstan in 2010. He was executed in Tehran the same year. Pakistan, for its part, said its targets were the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) and Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), armed separatist groups which have launched numerous attacks inside Pakistan. The BLF claimed in a statement on Thursday that none of its fighters – known as Sarmachar – were killed, dismissing as fake an earlier statement that had quoted one of its members as confirming air strikes had hit BLF positions inside Iran. The latest cross-border strikes come against a backdrop of months of border attacks, with the latest attack by Jaish al-Adl on an Iranian border outpost launched from inside Pakistan in December killing 11 police officers. What do the Iranian attacks tell us? Even though the strikes come after years of border tensions, they are happening within the context of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has pitted the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” against Washington and its allies. This was the first time that Iran and Pakistan launched direct assaults on each other’s territory, and the first time since the end of the eight-year invasion of Iran by Iraq in 1988 that Iranian soil was targeted by a missile. Iran’s attack on Pakistan came a day after it launched 24 missiles from three different Iranian provinces on Iraq and Syria in a military show of force amid US and United Kingdom attacks on Yemen and Western support for the Gaza war. The attacks in the Levant were also framed as revenge for twin bombings in Kerman earlier this month that killed at least 90 civilians, serving to assuage domestic calls for retaliation. Yet they also showcase the capabilities and precision of the largest and most varied missile arsenal of the Middle East. In Iraq, Iran claims to have hit a Mossad-linked target in what appeared to be a precision strike. A wealthy Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee was confirmed killed. Images from the area show that only the villa of the Dizayee was destroyed and it was located in the vicinity of the US consulate and the international airport in the regional capital, Erbil, where US and other foreign forces are stationed. For ISIL (ISIS)-linked targets in Syria’s Idlib, the IRGC made a point of saying that it used its brand new Kheibar Shekan ballistic missile with a stated range of 1,450km (900 miles). Even though the missiles could have been launched from a province closer to Syria, their stated launch site was in Khuzestan, which is several hundred kilometres farther. This means that the missiles travelled close to 1,300km (807 miles) to hit precise targets. That puts the entirety of Israel and occupied Palestinian territories within
What is the UK’s ‘Safety of Rwanda’ bill and why are MPs fighting over it?
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has succeeded in pushing his asylum and immigration bill through the House of Commons after an expected rebellion by Conservative Party MPs came to nothing. Some MPs from Sunak’s own party had threatened to vote against the “Safety of Rwanda” deportation bill on the grounds that government plans to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda were not robust enough to survive legal challenges. But in the end, only 11 hardline Conservatives rebelled and the legislation passed on Wednesday evening by a 320-276 vote. What is the ‘Safety of Rwanda’ bill? Sunak has made his anti-immigration “Stop the Boats” campaign central to his government’s legislative programme as he seeks to deter asylum seekers from trying to reach the United Kingdom across the English Channel. But the Rwanda deportation bill, which seeks to deport refugees and migrants to Rwanda to have their asylum claims heard and for resettlement, has been anything but plain sailing. In November, the Supreme Court struck down Sunak’s original Rwanda bill after it ruled that the landlocked African republic was not a safe country for asylum seekers, prompting the Conservative Party leader to introduce his so-called Safety of Rwanda bill. This new bill was intended to make it harder for the courts to challenge his legislation by asking the House of Commons to declare by majority vote that Rwanda is indeed a safe country for asylum seekers. Sunak presented his Safety of Rwanda bill to parliament in December but had to contend with hard-right MPs from his own party who asserted that the bill was still not “sufficiently watertight”. In the end, the Conservative Party leader secured a comfortable majority in favour of his bill after rebels, many of whom abstained, decided to let the legislation pass in the hope of holding Sunak’s feet to the fire at the final stage. How long has the government’s Rwanda policy been in the pipeline? The Rwanda legislation was first announced by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in April 2022. Two months later, on June 14, 2022, the first Rwanda-bound flight from Britain was due to depart with asylum seekers on board. It was halted after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which decreed that one of the asylum seekers, a man from Iraq, was at “real risk of irreversible harm” should he end up in the East African nation. Legal battles over the government’s policy ensued. The issue came to a head when the Supreme Court made its ruling two months ago, but Sunak has nevertheless managed to drag his party kicking and screaming to Wednesday’s final vote. Members of staff board the first plane due to transport asylum seekers to Rwanda at MOD Boscombe Down base in Wiltshire, UK, on June 14, 2022, before the flight was halted by a court order [Henry Nicholls/Reuters] What happened to the expected Conservative rebellion? Rebel Conservatives, including MP Robert Jenrick, who resigned his role as immigration minister in December after accusing Sunak of presiding over defective legislation, tried to make changes to the Safety of Rwanda bill ahead of Wednesday’s vote. This included a Jenrick-drafted amendment designed to stop 11th-hour injunctions from the ECHR against deportations. But this was voted down easily. “In the end, the hardcore rebels – those who wanted both to toughen the bill and to use it to force a change of leader – just didn’t have the numbers that might have persuaded their other rather less zealous colleagues to join them,” Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera. “They shot and missed.” Analysts said most rebel Conservatives were forced to accept that it was better to have some kind of legislation than to have no legislation at all. Among the 11 Conservative MPs to vote against the government were Jenrick and former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, whose hard-right credentials have led her to become something of a hate figure for leftists. After the vote, Braverman wrote on X: “The Rwanda Bill will not stop the boats. It leaves us exposed to litigation & the Strasbourg Court. I engaged with the government to fix it but no changes were made. I could not vote for yet another law destined to fail. The British people deserve honesty & so I voted against.” The ECHR is in Strasbourg, France. What happens next? The bill will now move on to Britain’s second chamber, the House of Lords, which will debate and vote on the legislation. The Lords, Bale said, “could still stymie or at least delay the bill”, so Sunak is far from home and dry. Indeed, Bale said that Wednesday’s success could turn out to be little more than a pyrrhic victory for the prime minister, who, according to opinion polls, is heading for an electoral wipeout in the next general election, which is likely to be held in the second half of this year and must be held no later than January 28, 2025. “Sunak has won a victory of sorts – but possibly only a temporary one,” the British academic said. “And he’s not come away completely unscathed: The divisions within the Conservative Party have been laid bare and his authority seriously questioned yet again.” Adblock test (Why?)
DR Congo’s shambolic election should be a wake-up call for the SADC
On January 9, the Constitutional Court of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) confirmed incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi’s landslide victory in the hotly disputed December 20, 2023 election, but failed to pull the Central African nation out of its full-blown electoral crisis. According to the DRC’s Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) and highest court, Tshisekedi legitimately won a second and final five-year term in office with an impressive 74 percent of the vote, ahead of Moise Katumbi and Martin Fayulu, who placed second and third respectively. However, in the eyes of many, including failed presidential contenders Fayuli and Katumbi, the country’s synchronised presidential, local, provincial and national polls were a complete “farce”, and perhaps even less trustworthy and legitimate than the shambolic 2011 and 2018 elections. The joint observer mission from the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ of Congo (ECC) said they documented 5,402 cases of serious irregularities at polling stations. The churches said these alleged anomalies – malfunctioning voting devices, unopened polling stations, vote buying, plundering of polling materials, shoddy electoral lists, and ballot stuffing – could have compromised “the integrity of the results”. On Christmas Eve, while the shambolic election was still ongoing in many localities where the state failed to open polling stations on election day, the Archbishop of Kinshasa Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo voiced the feelings of countless angry voters in the country when he said: “What should have been a great celebration of democratic values quickly turned into frustration for many.” Indeed, it was extremely frustrating to see the DRC repeat the mistakes of the past, ignoring insistent warnings. Last April, for example, Fayulu, who many independent observers believe won the country’s controversial December 2018 presidential poll, published an opinion piece on this very page warning his country was “heading towards another sham election” and encouraging CENI to change course and ensure a “free and fair” presidential poll before it is too late. Denis Kadima, the president of CENI, however, chose to ignore this and other similar counsel. Confident as ever, he even launched a thinly veiled attack on the opposition a few days before the polls opened, claiming there were “political groups in this country that are not ready for elections” who “discredit the process, no matter what we do’’. When the sheer scale of the electoral fiasco became obvious in late December, Kadima went on to call Fayulu and other candidates who understandably demanded a rerun “bad losers”. In the end, Fayulu and others refused to challenge Tshisekedi’s win in court, saying state institutions were not trustworthy or independent. Now, the Congolese people are forced to accept the results of a clearly bungled poll and a leader with a crisis of legitimacy for the second time in five years. It is time to admit that electoral malfeasance and incompetence have become a substantial menace to societal cohesion, peace and development in the DRC. And regrettably, this is a widespread and deep-rooted problem across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Take Zimbabwe, which has failed to hold a single truly free, fair and transparent election since its independence from British colonial rule in April 1980. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has won two disputed elections – in July 2018 and August 2023 – over his chief rival, Nelson Chamisa, leader of the main opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party. Last year’s polls, for example, were deemed a colossal failure after many polling stations opened late or failed to open at all. The anomalies were particularly prevalent in Harare and Bulawayo, traditional strongholds of the opposition, raising suspicion the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) wanted to suppress votes there and give the ruling Zanu-PF party a helping hand. Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and Election Resource Centre (ERC) stated Zanu-PF actors were engaged in voter intimidation tactics throughout the country. Understandably, Chamisa asserted the polls were a “blatant and gigantic fraud”, while his party called for a rerun. And just like the DRC’s Fayulu, he refused to challenge Mnangagwa’s corrupted triumph in court, alleging Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court was “captured”. Meanwhile, a SADC electoral observer mission (SEOM), led by Dr Nevers Mumba, the former vice president of Zambia, delivered a scathing preliminary analysis of the August 2023 poll. Among others, the SEOM criticised aspects of ZEC’s Delimitation Report of 2022, and highlighted the contentious decision to exclude Saviour Kasukuwere, a former Mugabe-era Zanu-PF minister, from the presidential race. In this regard, the mission found that “some aspects of the Harmonised Elections, fell short of the requirements of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, the Electoral Act, and the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections (2021)”. A plethora of delays, it added, had “a knock-on effect as they dissuaded voters from voting in the first place” and effectively had “the unfortunate effect of creating doubts about the credibility of this electoral process”. Harare denounced SEOM’s objective assessments and demanded revisions to the preliminary report. At the same time, government-owned media launched a vicious smear campaign against Mumba, accusing him of being on a Western-sponsored “regime change mission”, all without offering a shred of evidence. Meanwhile, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa came to Harare’s defence, as he usually does, by declaring that other countries, like the US, also have electoral challenges – as if millions of frustrated and disfranchised Zimbabweans care at all whether such problems are also experienced to some extent in Washington. This is not a problem only for Zimbabwe, or the DRC, or whatever country that experiences the latest election debacle either. It is important to uphold SADC electoral standards, in every single member country, as Mumba boldly advocated for in his preliminary report, to improve our shared wellbeing in Southern Africa. SADC leaders have failed us all. The ability to deliver peace, stability and socioeconomic change through the ballot box has been turned into a mere pipe dream in most SADC countries. Zimbabwe has extensive socioeconomic problems, including an underperforming economy, a dilapidated health sector, and high unemployment for many decades.
Maghazi residents left reeling after Israeli forces withdraw
Central Gaza Strip – Palestinians in Gaza’s smallest refugee camp have once again found themselves digging the bodies of their relatives out from under rubble, hours after Israeli forces announced their withdrawal from the area. Witnesses in the Maghazi refugee camp say many of the residents were shot at close range by Israeli soldiers “in cold blood”. Piles of broken concrete and scenes of widespread destruction are evidence that homes were not spared in Israeli attacks, which included missile strikes and heavy artillery shelling. Israeli soldiers have been conducting ground operations in northern, central, and parts of southern Gaza, for more than three months. Maghazi camp has come under Israeli attack several times over the last few weeks. In one of the deadliest attacks last month, more than 100 people were killed, mostly displaced women and children. Dozens more have been reported killed in the camp in the past several days. Ambulances have been unable to navigate destroyed roads and infrastructure in order to recover the bodies. The camp normally houses about 30,000 people, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA). But the population of the camp rose to at least 100,000 as thousands more frightened Palestinians came there seeking shelter from Israel’s relentless bombardment in other parts of the besieged enclave. Attacks on refugee camps and civilian infrastructure have become common since October 7. Nuseirat and Bureij camps in central Gaza have also been targeted several times, as well as the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. The attacks have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. Adblock test (Why?)
Somalia rejects mediation with Ethiopia gov’t over Somaliland port deal
The Ethiopia-Somalia feud continues with Mogadishu claiming its territorial integrity has been violated by the deal. Somalia said on Thursday there was no room for mediation in a dispute with Ethiopia unless Addis Ababa cancelled a controversial deal with the breakaway region of Somaliland. Tensions in the Horn of Africa have escalated after landlocked Ethiopia reached a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland on January 1 that gives it access to the sea. “There is no space for mediation unless Ethiopia retracts its illegal MOU and reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somalia,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its official social media accounts. The comment comes after the African Union’s conflict resolution body on Wednesday discussed the crisis and called on the two countries “to exercise restraint, de-escalate and engage in meaningful dialogue towards finding a peaceful resolution of the matter”. The eight-country trade bloc Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is also holding an extraordinary summit in Uganda on Thursday on the Ethiopia-Somalia feud, as well as the conflict in Sudan. All four countries are part of the bloc, along with South Sudan, Djibouti, Kenya and Eritrea. Access to the sea Somalia says its sovereignty and territorial integrity have been violated by the pact and has appealed for international support. Somaliland is a former British protectorate facing the Gulf of Aden which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991, a move not recognised by the international community. Under the January 1 deal, Somaliland agreed to lease 20 kilometres (12 miles) of its coast for 50 years to Ethiopia, which wants to set up a naval base and a commercial port on the coast. For years, Ethiopia, with a population of approximately 100 million people, has sought access to the sea after Eritrea broke away from Addis Ababa and formally declared independence in 1993 following a three-decade war. The Horn of Africa country currently relies on neighbouring Djibouti for most of its maritime trade. In Ethiopia, where for much of 2023 the government stressed the economic need for a seaport and even subtly hinted at possibly invading Eritrea for access to the Red Sea, the deal is being portrayed as a victory. Adblock test (Why?)
Why does the US act as Israel’s lawyer?
Former US diplomat Aaron David Miller says prospects for a ‘conflict-ending solution’ have entered ‘a long, dark tunnel’. President Joe Biden’s failure to demonstrate the same regard and sympathy for Palestinian suffering as he has shown Israel has turned the United States into “Israel’s lawyer,” says former US State Department official Aaron David Miller. Miller tells host Steve Clemons that Israel has lost the Western perception of being David in the story of “David v Goliath,” and its image will be further damaged the more its people veer to the right. US officials “don’t have any better answers right now than the Israelis do”, Miller says, adding that there will be no “open breach” in relations with the Netanyahu government. Adblock test (Why?)
Pakistan attacks ‘terrorist hideouts’ in Iran
NewsFeed Pakistan has launched retaliatory air strikes on Iran, saying it attacked several ‘terrorist hideouts’, a day after Iran says it struck ‘terrorist headquarters’ in Pakistan. It’s the first missile attack on Iranian soil since the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. Published On 18 Jan 202418 Jan 2024 Adblock test (Why?)
US launches new strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen
On fourth day of strikes, the US military says it targeted 14 Houthi missiles that were ‘loaded to be fired’ from Yemen. The United States military says its forces launched strikes on 14 Houthi missiles “that were loaded to be fired” from Yemen in the fourth day of direct attacks on the Iran-aligned group in less than a week. The missiles posed a threat to commercial ships and US Navy vessels in the region, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Wednesday. The group, which controls most of Yemen and has been attacking ships in the region since November, said it will not stop its strikes on shipping routes despite increasing assaults by the US military. “We will not give up targeting Israeli ships or ships heading towards ports in occupied Palestine … in support of the Palestinian people,” the group’s spokesperson, Mohammed Abdelsalam, told Al Jazeera on Thursday. “These missiles on launch rails … could have been fired at any time, prompting U.S. forces to exercise their inherent right and obligation to defend themselves,” CENTCOM said on X. The strikes are meant to degrade the Houthis’ “capabilities to continue their reckless attacks on international and commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden”, it added. U.S. CENTCOM Strikes Houthi Terrorist Missile Launchers In the context of ongoing multi-national efforts to protect freedom of navigation and prevent attacks on U.S. and partner maritime traffic in the Red Sea, on Jan. 17 at approximately 11:59 p.m. (Sanaa time), U.S. Central… pic.twitter.com/MMCQbzr1f7 — U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 18, 2024 The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said the US and the United Kingdom launched the strikes in the provinces of Hodeidah, Taiz, Dhamar, al-Bayda and Saada overnight. However, CENTCOM did not mention any involvement of the UK in the latest attacks. “It is an open war, and they must endure the earth-shattering, powerful, and crushing strikes and responses, God willing,” Houthi official Ali al-Qahoum wrote on X after the latest strikes. The US on Wednesday redesignated the Yemeni group as a “terrorist” organisation in response to its continuing attacks and threats to shipping and imposed sanctions on it. The designation does not go into effect for 30 days. The Houthis said the designation will not affect its operations to prevent Israeli ships or vessels heading to Israel from crossing the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Rights advocates and analysts say the US move may negatively affect Yemeni civilians. The Houthis, who support the Palestinian armed group Hamas, launched their attacks in response to Israel’s war on Gaza. Their strikes have slowed trade between Asia and Europe and alarmed major world powers. Earlier on Wednesday, CENTCOM said a drone launched from areas controlled by the Houthi rebels in Yemen struck the US-owned ship Genco Picardy in the Gulf of Aden. It inflicted some damage, but no injuries, it said. Adblock test (Why?)
Israel’s war on Gaza: List of key events, day 104
EXPLAINER Medical aid enters Gaza while deadly Israeli strikes continue on the south of the enclave. Here’s how things stand on Thursday, January 18, 2024: Latest updates Five trucks carrying medical aid for hospitals and 45 Israeli captives entered Gaza on Wednesday, announced Qatar, which mediated a deal between Hamas and Israel. The United States has redesignated Yemen’s Houthis as a “global terrorist” group in response to their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, the White House’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said in a statement on Wednesday. Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called for Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and said that Palestinians should be “encouraged” to leave the territory in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 news on Wednesday night. Human impact and fighting At least 16 Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli shelling of a house east of Rafah in the Gaza Strip overnight, according to local sources and video footage verified by Al Jazeera. An estimated $15bn will be required to rebuild just the homes in Gaza, the head of the Palestine Investment Fund, Mohammad Mustafa said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said that it targeted 14 missiles “that were loaded to be fired” in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on Wednesday. Diplomacy Australian foreign Minister Penny Wong said the country is “deeply concerned by ongoing settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank”, in a post on X after visiting the territory on Wednesday. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron met Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on the sidelines of the Davos Summit on Wednesday. In a post on X, Cameron said he made “clear” to Amirabdollahian that “Iran must cease supplying the Houthis with weapons and intelligence”. On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, urged Iran and Pakistan to “avoid actions that would lead to an escalation of tension”. Israeli raids in the West Bank Israel arrested 46 people from one family in Tuqu village near Bethlehem overnight, according to Al Jazeera Arabic. A military raid on the occupied West Bank’s Tulkarem continued into a second day on Thursday. Six Palestinians have been killed in Tulkarem, according to Al Jazeera correspondent, Hamdah Salhut. On Wednesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an independent investigation into the Israeli military amid deadly Israeli air strikes on Nablus and raids in Tulkarem refugee camp. Adblock test (Why?)
Protests erupt in Tunisian town as search continues for 37 missing migrants
Tunis, Tunisia – A boat said to be carrying some 37 migrants and asylum seekers has gone missing off the coast of Sfax in Tunisia. Relatives described receiving final phone calls at around 2:30pm on January 11, as the boat was setting out to sea. By around 10pm the same night, all contact with the boat and its passengers had been lost. Other than three or four people from elsewhere in Tunisia, all of the boat’s passengers are reported to be from the small village of El Hencha in the Sfax Governorate. They range in age from about 13 to 35 years old. Frustrated by the lack of news since the boat’s disappearance, the families of the missing migrants erected roadblocks and burned tyres around the village yesterday, only withdrawing when the government authorities assured the public that search efforts would continue. Mohammed Jlaiel’s 25-year-old brother Ali is among the missing. “We haven’t heard anything about him. Nothing! It’s torturous,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera by phone. “We’re desperate for a piece of news on them,” he continued. ”They were all our neighbours and friends. The whole [of] Hencha is in pain. My mom is in a terrible state.” Migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea on October 6, 2023, are rescued by a boat from the group Doctors Without Borders [File: Paolo Santalucia/AP Photo] The Tunisian National Guard released a statement on Tuesday saying “all field units”, including maritime vessels and helicopters, have been mobilised to find the 37 passengers Maltese and Italian units were also reported to have been involved in the search. On Tuesday, the Italian news agency Agenzia Nova indicated that the ongoing search efforts were focused on the coastline between Sfax and the coastal town of Mahdia, some 80 miles (129km) north. Nevertheless, within Tunisia, politicians and the family members of the missing passengers have voiced disquiet about how long it is taking to receive concrete news. “Imagine not knowing anything about a brother for six days. They sent planes, boats, all sorts of things to look for them, but there’s no trace of them whatsoever,” Jlaiel said. “Tunisians, Italians, Libyans … Everyone is searching, and yet they can’t find anything. It’s so strange.” Majdi Karbai, a member of parliament responsible for Tunisians overseas, told Al Jazeera that the missing migrants and asylum seekers were “the latest victims of Europe’s migration policies”. He criticised the European Union’s efforts to control irregular migration along its southern border as endangering lives. The coastal town of Zarzis, Tunisia, is an occasional departure point for boats carrying migrants and asylum seekers [File: Angus McDowall/Reuters] Karbai added that he was in contact with family members in El Hencha. The continued absence of information about the lost boat was troubling to residents there, he explained. He worried that the situation could trigger unrest, as happened after another vessel sank in 2022. The southern Tunisian town of Zarzis lost 18 inhabitants in that shipwreck, leading to protests denouncing the speed of the rescue effort and the economic conditions that prompted the fatal voyage. Tunisian President Kais Saied eventually intervened to help quell ill feelings. “This is bad,” Karbai said of the current situation in El Hencha. “This could be very bad, like Zarzis.” Poverty and the absence of employment prospects within Tunisia often drive locals to depart for new lives in Europe. Other migrants, however, arrive on Tunisia’s coasts from elsewhere across the globe, particularly from impoverished and conflict-stricken areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Both Tunisia and neighbouring Libya are key departure points for those looking to travel irregularly by boat to Europe. However, despite its popularity, the migration route is also one of the world’s deadliest. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2,498 migrants and asylum seekers are known to have drowned while crossing the central Mediterranean Sea in 2023. The true figure is likely far higher. In the first 11 months of 2023, Tunisia’s National Guard intercepted almost 70,000 irregular migrants and asylum seekers. Of those, 77.5 percent had travelled to Tunisia from across Africa. The remainder came from Tunisia itself. Migrants and asylum seekers rest in the port city of Ben Gardane, Tunisia, after being rescued from the waters of the Mediterranean by the Tunisian navy on July 7, 2021 [File: Hamadi Sehli/AP Photo] Ali Jlaiel from El Hencha was as typical a passenger as any. His brother Mohammed described the missing 25-year-old as someone who struggled to settle down after a series of low-wage jobs, none lasting any great length of time. “He felt cornered,” Mohammed Jlaiel said. “He had no hope of a good future.” Ali’s last job was as an overnight security guard at the Mall of Sfax. But even with a steady wage, his budget barely covered his expenses, Mohammed explained. “He got 600 dinars [$193] as a salary [a month]. Ten dinars [$3] would be spent on daily transportation from Hencha to Sfax. Add to that the cost of his cigarettes and coffee. Nothing would be left. It’s depressing.” “There’s nothing in Hencha. And he’s not a special case. The boat was full of our neighbours. Even kids as young as 13 and 14,” he said. “They all didn’t find any chance here.” Adblock test (Why?)