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News_Naija

Navy Busts Illegal Refineries, Arrests Pipeline Vandals In Delta

The Nigerian Navy says the troops of Operation Delta Sanity and its units have apprehended six suspected crude oil thieves in a series of simultaneous operations conducted from April 20 to April 22. This is contained in a statement by the Director of Naval Information, Commodore Aiwuyor Adams-Aliu, on Thursday in Abuja. Adams-Aliu said the Nigerian Navy Ship SOROH had on Sunday, apprehended four suspected pipeline vandals around Renaissance Africa Energy Coy Pipeline at River-Kolo Creek in Bayelsa. He said the Forward Operating Base ESCRAVOS, on Monday, discovered and deactivated two illegal refinery sites in Oteghele, Obodo Omadino Community, Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta. According to him, the site contained two refining ovens and 10 dugout pits laden with large amounts of stolen crude oil. He added that the Nigerian Navy Ship SOROH also intercepted and impounded two vehicles laden with several sacks of illegally refined products in Olodo Community, Bayelsa. “On Tuesday, Naval Outpost ONITSHA apprehended suspects with a locally made rifle and 10 machetes. “The suspects were in the process of attacking the SEEPCO oil facility in the Oguikpele Community, Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra. “Investigation revealed that these suspects were allegedly involved in the attack and killing of three Soldiers on June 11, 2024. “On Tuesday, Nigerian Navy Ship DELTA discovered and deactivated two illegal refinery sites in Bernnet Island and Obodo Omadino Community in Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta. “The site had nine dugout pits, several sacks, and drums laden with large amounts of illegally refined AGO and stolen Crude Oil,” he said. Adams-Aliu said the 3-day coordinated anti-crude oil theft operations underscored the Navy’s resolve to rid the maritime domain of thieves and other nefarious elements. He said the resolve was in line with the directive of the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Adm. Emmanuel Ogalla. (NAN)

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Worldnews

The Ethiopian Bookbinder Connecting A Citys People With Its Forgotten Past

For three decades, Abdallah Ali Sherif has been on a mission to explore Harar’s once-repressed cultural identity. Harar, Ethiopia – When Abdallah Ali Sherif was growing up in eastern Ethiopia, his parents never spoke about the history of his city. “When I asked my parents about our history, they told me we didn’t have one,” the kind-faced 75-year-old recalls as he reclines on a thin mattress on the floor of his home in Harar’s old walled city. Shelves of dusty cassettes line the walls and old newspapers lie scattered about the floor. The father of five and grandfather of 17 pauses to pluck some khat leaves to chew as he explains: “Our parents were afraid to teach us about our culture or our history.” For centuries, Harar, with its colourful clay houses and narrow cobblestone streets, was a centre of Islamic scholarship and home to a thriving manuscript culture producing Qurans, legal texts and prayer books in Arabic and Ajami, a modified Arabic script used to write Indigenous African languages. Nestled atop a plateau that overlooks deserts and savannas linking the coastal lowlands and central highlands of Ethiopia and Somalia, in the 16th  century, Harar became the capital of the Adal Sultanate, which at its height controlled large parts of modern-day Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. Governed by powerful Muslim rulers, it was situated along trade routes that traversed the Red Sea to connect the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. Then, in 1887, Harar’s military was defeated by the forces of Menelik II, and the city was forcefully absorbed into a Christian empire. The following decades were shaped by state repression, social discrimination and the erosion of the city’s Islamic culture and institutions. Arabic street signs were replaced with Amharic ones, Harar’s largest mosque was turned into an Ethiopian Orthodox Church and numerous Islamic educational centres were demolished. Severe restrictions were placed on religious practices and education – once a central part of Harar’s identity. It was against this backdrop that Sherif grew up. “We learned from a young age that if we expressed our culture or talked openly about our history, then we could end up in the prisons,” he explains, smacking his wrists together to mimic handcuffs. Then, in 1991, ethnic federalism, which organised and defined federated regional states by ethnicity, was implemented throughout the country, allowing newfound religious and cultural freedom. The Harari people now belonged to the Harari region, with Harar as its capital. Ever since, Sherif has been on a mission: To explore his city’s cultural identity by collecting artefacts, from old music cassettes to minted coins and, most importantly, manuscripts. After years of painstaking searches going from household to household, he collected enough items to open Ethiopia’s first private museum, Abdallah Sherif Museum, 14 years ago in the hope of reconnecting Harar’s people with their history. The collection of hundreds of old manuscripts has become a particular passion. “Each book I find, it feels like I am peeking through a window into a beautiful and rich culture that was almost forgotten,” he says. To preserve these manuscripts, Sherif has also revitalised the ancient tradition of bookbinding. By tracing the last Hararis with knowledge of this art form, he has brought a once-extinct practice back to life. The production of manuscripts – as a way of sharing and safeguarding religious knowledge – was an important aspect of Harar’s culture, says Nuraddin Aman, an assistant professor of philology at Addis Ababa University. Manuscript making is believed to have emerged in the city in the 13th century, when an Islamic scholar, known colloquially as Sheikh Abadir, is said to have come from what is today Saudi Arabia and settled in the area with about 400 followers. According to Sana Mirza, a researcher at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University who specialises in Islamic art, Harari scripts were influenced by Indian Gujarati, Yemeni, and Egyptian Mamluki styles. “The Indo-African relationship was very deep,” explains Ahmed Zekaria, an expert in Islamic and Harari history. “There was a strong linkage between India and Africa for centuries before the British arrived.” Some Qurans found in Harar use a unique cursive calligraphic script said to have been developed in India’s northern Bihar region at about the 14th century and rarely seen outside India. Manuscript makers developed their own style that merged local creativity and outside influences. Within families, manuscripts were considered sacred heirlooms passed down through generations. Each Harari house had at least two or three manuscripts – often, the Quran, Hadiths, or other religious texts – Zekaria says. According to Aman, the structured production of manuscripts made the city unique. Artisans were required to get permission from a local Islamic scholar – someone descended from Sheikh Abadir or one of his followers – to produce each religious manuscript. Then, before circulation, they needed approval from the incumbent emir. Still, full-time scribes were rare. “Most of them were farmers and produced manuscripts in their free time,” says Zekaria. Harar also grew into a centre for bookbinding with artisans making leather covers to protect manuscripts, and people travelling to the city to learn the craft. When Harar was absorbed into the Ethiopian empire, education centres, once responsible for manuscript production, were shut down or destroyed. Without new manuscripts, bookbinding disappeared. Meanwhile, madrasas (religious schools) were shuttered, and children were forced to attend government schools teaching only Amharic. Sherif was born into a middle-class Muslim family in 1950. He grew up during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, who ruled Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 and under whom repression of Muslims escalated. In the 1940s, Harari elites united with their Somali neighbours inside Ethiopia to organise a rebellion, advocating for Harar to join Somalia. When Selassie caught wind of this, he deployed thousands of soldiers into Harar. Mass arrests followed, leading to dozens of Hararis being imprisoned for years without charge or trial. Selassie’s forces confiscated the properties and belongings – including cherished manuscripts – of residents believed to be rebellion supporters. An estimated 10,000 Hararis fled to other Ethiopian cities or Somalia and Middle Eastern countries. While Sherif says he grew up knowing he was Harari, he did not know what that meant outside of being Muslim and speaking the Harari language. Fearing state repression, Harari families were forced to hide their histories from their children. But as a teenager, Sherif could no longer suppress his curiosity about his identity. In high school, he remembers asking his teacher if the city ever had Muslim leaders. “The teacher responded that we had no leaders outside the Ethiopian Christian ones. After this, the other [Christian] students began teasing me about not having a history,” he recounts. “I was taught that Haile Selassie was our king, and there was one country, one history, one language, and one culture,” he continues. “Our community was too afraid of the state to challenge this or to teach us about our real history. They feared we would become angry over it and fight against the state.” In 1974, when Sherif was in his 20s, the Derg, a Marxist-Leninist military group, overthrew Selassie. The group brutally suppressed any opposition. Half a million Ethiopians were killed and thousands were crippled as a result of torture. When the 1977-1978 Ogaden War broke out, with Somalia attempting to annex Ethiopia’s Ogaden region that is inhabited by ethnic Somalis, the Derg accused Hararis of collaborating and carried out massacres of civilians in Harari neighbourhoods of Addis Ababa. In their region, Hararis were still the land-owning class, and many were completely dispossessed of their livelihoods as the Derg sought to eradicate private land ownership. Harari youth – like young men from all communities – were forcibly conscripted into the army. When an anti-Derg resistance movement emerged in Harar, the repression increased, while more Hararis moved abroad to escape it. Today, Hararis are a minority in the Harari region, with more living abroad than in their home region. Like many Harari families, when Sherif graduated from high school, his parents began educating him on who he really was. He was bewildered to discover that what he’d been taught in school was a lie. “My whole life, I have suffered from a severe identity crisis,” says Sherif, sighing loudly and tossing a leafless khat stalk to the side. “I have always felt like there were pieces of myself that were missing – and I couldn’t feel peace until I found them.” After high school, Sherif began a science degree in Addis Ababa, but dropped out within a year when he found out the woman he loved, who was his then-girlfriend, was being forced by her family to marry another man in Harar. “There was nothing in my life more important to me than her,” he says, with a wide, bashful smile. He returned home to marry this woman, Saeda Towfiqe – today his most enthusiastic supporter – and began working in the family business. It wasn’t until 1991, when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), overthrew the Derg and implemented a system of ethnic federalism designed to promote minority ethnic and religious rights, that Hararis, along with various other groups, suddenly found themselves with the freedom to develop and express their cultures and histories. “I became mad to understand my history,” explains Sherif, the tone of his speech rising sharply as he smacks his head. “I really became mad.” Taking advantage of this opening, Sherif began collecting hundreds of old cassettes of traditional Harari music. But he quickly realised that the history he sought existed in the old manuscripts still owned by many families in Harar. Through these religious and legal manuscripts, Sherif was able to glimpse the rich intellectual life of his ancestors. “Each manuscript I found added a missing piece to a puzzle,” he explains.​​ Over centuries, families had developed a practice of conserving and transmitting manuscripts to the next generation, Aman explains. Manuscripts were inherited or given at significant life events, such as weddings, the birth of a child, or during religious ceremonies. Scholars and religious leaders also gave them to students as a token of appreciation, “thereby fostering an environment of knowledge sharing and manuscript mobility”, says Aman. People kept the manuscripts wrapped in cloth and would only uncover them on special occasions. At first, Sherif, who was 40 when he began his project, purchased the manuscripts. “Eventually, when the community saw the importance of what I was doing for our heritage, they started donating manuscripts and other artefacts to me.” But Sherif found that the covers and bindings of many manuscripts he acquired were in disarray. The last bookbinder in Harar was Kabir Ali Sheikh, a local Quran teacher who learned the craft from elders and kept the tradition alive until his death in 1993. The ancient art of Harari bookbinding died with him. But Sherif was able to learn the traditional process from a few of Ali’s former students. He also went to train in Addis Ababa and Morocco. “If you don’t bind the books, then you will lose them,” Sherif says. “Collecting manuscripts is useless if you do not also work on their restoration and preservation. If you lose just one page, you can lose the whole book. Beautiful things need to be protected and covered.” It took Sherif two years of practice to perfect the art. He is now considered one of the best bookbinders in Africa, Zekaria says. Sherif has strictly adhered to the traditional Harari way of bookbinding by using old ornamental stamps retrieved from around Harar – which are also displayed at his museum – to block-press motifs onto the front and back of covers, in the same way his ancestors did. In 1998, Sherif opened his private museum in his house. But, in 2007, a year after Harar’s old town with its unique architecture was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the regional government provided Sherif with the double-storey former residence of Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, the father of Selassie who served as governor of Harar under Menelik II, to use for his museum. The museum reopened to the public in 2011. Sherif’s museum now houses the world’s largest collection of Islamic manuscripts from Harar, numbering about 1,400. Almost half are Qurans, one of which is more than 1,000 years old. There are also more than 600 old music recordings, tools, swords, coins, and items of jewellery, basketry, and weaponry. Over time, Sherif’s museum has transformed from a space showcasing Harar’s cultural heritage to one actively revitalising it. In a side room of the museum is a manuscript conservation room with locally assembled tools and equipment for restoring manuscripts, with a particular focus on bookbinding. Scholars are still tracking down various manuscripts from Harar that are scattered around the world, Zekaria says. Most of them left with European travellers, especially in the 19th century, when colonialists were expanding into the Horn of Africa. Many of these manuscripts are preserved in Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In the US, the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC alone has 215 manuscripts from Harar. In the meantime, Sherif continues to look after the manuscripts he acquires. “When I first get a manuscript, I carefully clean it,” he explains. He removes dust and dirt, adds new pages to damaged manuscripts, and fills in the missing text. He covers the paper in transparent paper and has bound and digitised almost all the books. “Each new piece of information I get about my history, it opens up a new world for me and I realise how far we still have to go to preserve our culture,” Sherif says. About a decade ago, Sherif began training dozens of youths around Harar in bookbinding and has also led training in neighbouring Somaliland. One of his students was Elias Bule, a soft-spoken 31-year-old, who was first hired as a security guard at Sherif’s museum. After a few months, “Sherif asked me if I wanted to learn the Indigenous way of bookbinding,” explains Bule, as he sorts through scattered pages of an old manuscript in the museum’s conservation workshop. “Of course, I accepted immediately.” Bule is now employed full-time at the museum, supporting Sherif’s various endeavours and giving tours to visitors. “I feel very happy that I can give this to the future generations,” Bule says, with a proud grin, gesturing at the papers on the table. “With each manuscript that is bound, we are ensuring that knowledge is preserved and that our culture and heritage will continue to survive.” Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Worldnews

'Hunger Doesn't Care About Tigers'

A fisherwoman's travails in Bangladesh. Gabura island, Bangladesh - The sun is fierce and the air hot and sticky when Mahfuza Begum steps onto the riverbank one late morning in March. Her bare feet sink into the cracked mud as she reaches for her narrow, black boat. Her fingers quickly check her net for tangles. Then two women and a man help her push the boat into the water. With no upstream current to fill the riverbank, they strain under the weight of the task. After several minutes, the boat finally drifts free. Without a word, Mahfuza slides into it, grips her oar with calloused hands and begins to row. Each stroke carries Mahfuza forward, carving a path through the river’s gleaming surface. She glides past dense green Sundri mangrove canopies. A humid river breeze tugs at her headscarf. The 52-year-old pulls it back into place with a practised hand and keeps rowing. Beads of sweat trace a slow line from her temple to her jaw. After about five minutes, she stops in the centre of the river, stands, and with a graceful motion, casts her net wide over the water. The heavy mesh unfurls, then sinks. Fifteen minutes pass. Then she pulls the net, and as the mesh rises, a wide, triumphant grin blooms across Mahfuza’s face. The net is filled with shrimp. The air has the earthy smell of mud, and the only sounds are of the river’s gentle movement and the rustling of leaves. Dense mangrove roots twist out of the water at the river’s edges. In the places where thick tree canopies block out the sun, it casts deep shadows, while beyond the riverbank, the forest hides what moves within. Mahfuza has lived her entire life on the edge of survival. For years, she has rowed her boat alone in the rivers that snake through the Sundarbans, one of the world’s largest mangrove forests, in Bangladesh's southwestern Khulna region. The river system Mahfuza navigates is a complex network of wide, slow-moving waterways that split into smaller, narrower channels winding through the forest. The water darkens as the canopies grow closer, and the sunlight that penetrates casts dappled patterns. As a fisherwoman travelling through these quiet waterways, she is familiar with the ever-present dangers that lurk in the forest and the murky waters. Crocodiles glide just beneath the surface while tigers roam near the riverbanks. Mahfuza knows how to read the signs for their presence – the way the water moves, the quiet. "The water can look calm, but it hides a lot," she says. Over the years, animal sightings have increased. They are being pushed into the fishers’ paths as the forest shrinks and human activity expands. "The animals are getting bolder," Mahfuza explains. "We’ve taken over their land, so they’re taking back ours." Crocodiles have slid alongside her boat. They move fast when they strike, and she knows to always avoid the edges of her boat. She sees crocodiles often, especially in the dry season when the water level is low. She has seen more tigers than she can count, though most encounters are fleeting - a rustle in the forest, a pair of glowing eyes. One morning in 2019, as she hauled in her net, she noticed that the birds had fallen silent. Animals, she says, feel the presence of a tiger. She turned and saw a tiger watching her from the edge of the river several metres away. Slowly, she grabbed a metal pot and banged it against the boat. But the animal didn’t budge. For a moment, they stared at each other, and then it turned and disappeared into the forest. She has learned that making noise - talking, singing or banging on the boat - can scare tigers away, but not always. And if a tiger attacks, there is nothing one can do. She learned that brutal lesson 17 years ago. It was late one afternoon when Mahfuz, her oldest son Alamgir, her older brother Shahadat and his wife set out on two boats. The sun had begun to set when Mahfuza and Alamgir, who was on his mother’s boat, turned to go home to fetch a new fishing net as theirs was broken. While rowing towards the shore near her home, she heard a roar. By the time they turned back to her brother’s boat, it was too late. Shahadat had been close to the shore near the forest, fixing a net on his boat. A tiger had lunged at him, sinking its teeth into his neck before he could make a sound. His wife screamed as the animal dragged her husband away, leaving blood on the boat. Mahfuza was in shock as she tried to console her devastated sister-in-law and bring her home. “Before I could even react, he was gone – dragged into the depths of the forest,” Mahfuza recounts sadly. That night, about 150 villagers ventured into the forest carrying torches. Tigers don’t usually hunt at night and fear fire. They were able to recover Shahadat’s remains and bring them back to Mahfuza’s house. The next morning, she stood on the riverbank, her heart pounding with fear. But fear is not a luxury she can afford. "If I get hungry, there is no one to feed me. My hunger doesn't care about tigers. It doesn't care about a tiger's hunger. It takes me to the river to fish,” Mahfuza explains. "If it is my fate, then a tiger will take me too," she says firmly. Before setting out on her boat that day in March, Mahfuza had squatted by the water’s edge, the cotton fabric of her red sari sticking to her damp skin, to catch small fish. In her village, there are about eight fisherwomen. Aged between 40 and 60, they usually fish with their family members. That morning, they were on the shore, but the heat kept them from venturing onto the water where they would be more exposed to the sun. Instead, three watched while others polished boats and fixed nets under the shade of a tree. With a deliberate movement, Mahfuza cast her net into the river. There was no pause, no wasted effort. Mahfuza was used to the heat, used to the work. One of the younger women standing under the tree called out to Mahfuza. "Don’t you feel the heat? It's unbearable out here." Mahfuza didn’t look up. She pulled the net in with a smooth, practised motion, her muscles flexing. "It's hot. Sure," she called back, her voice even. "But fish don’t care. And neither do I." The women exchanged looks. Some of them laughed, others looked at Mahfuza with respect. Mahfuza emptied the small fish into a bucket of water, which she handed to the women to look after while she fished on the river. She paused and stood, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. "You coming?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder. "Or are you waiting for the sun to stop shining?" One of the women chuckled. "You really don't mind the heat, do you?" Mahfuza flashed her a brief grin. "Heat’s just a part of it," she said, tossing the net back into the river. "Fish don’t wait around for perfect conditions." Mahfuza grew up in Ward No. 9, a fishing village on Gabura island - one of about 200 islands in the Sundarbans - surrounded by the Kholpetua River. It is the same village where she lives today. Home to about 34,000 people, it is one of several villages on Gabura. Families in Ward No. 9 fish and collect honey and wood to sell, but can’t farm due to salinity from the river water affecting the soil. Mahfuza was born into one of the poorest households in her village. Her father worked as a daily labourer and fished when he had enough money to rent a small boat. "My father was the poorest of the poorest. That's why I started begging when I was very little, maybe six or seven - I don't even remember the age,” she recalls. “I used to be a maid at people's houses around the same age, washing the dishes and clothes of other people." The fourth of six children, Mahfuza never went to school, and begged from people who themselves came from families barely able to make ends meet. She remembers hunger being a constant presence, there only being rice, water and salt to eat and wearing the torn clothing that people gave her. But Mahfuza was always curious when she saw her father returning from the river and would play with his net and the fish he occasionally caught. “He never showed me how [to fish],” she says matter-of-factly. "It wasn’t because he didn’t want to - he just didn’t know that women could fish like men." When she was eight, she encountered a stranger, a man from a different part of the village who looked to be in his mid-40s, catching shrimp by the river. "He looked like my father, so I thought to reach out to him and ask him to teach me how to fish,” she explains. She remembers he was surprised by her request. Women, let alone girls, didn’t fish in her village. But she told him she wanted to fish to feed her family and he agreed to show her how. "It's dangerous. If you really want to learn, you need to be dedicated,” he told her. Over a few months, he showed her how to row a boat and how to look for signs that fish are close, like bubbles or ripples on the water’s surface. "The fish follow the current," he explained. "When the water’s calm, the fish are hiding deep. When it moves, they come up to feed." "He never treated me like I was different," says Mahfuza. She would then practise fishing on the riverbank. "It was difficult at first,” she says. Men from her village would come up to her, she recalls, and say, "You are very small. Girl, why do you want to fish? You belong to the stove and firewood. Go and cook now.” But Mahfuza stood her ground. "Give me food if you don't want me to go fishing," she told them. “The men in my village fear me now,” she adds with a laugh. Mahfuza’s parents supported her pursuit, as their daughter now brought fish home for the family to eat. She spent time learning how to handle the creatures she caught and trying to understand them. By 12, Mahfuza could row a boat, cast a net, and catch fish to bring home and sell in the market. “After that, I was able to eat with a belly full," she says, a hand dangling over a bent knee as she sits on the floor of her home. "I no longer had to beg from other people. I could eat well and feed my parents. My mother could finally eat sardines; it was her favourite fish. It made me so proud." Today, Mahfuza shares a small tin-roof hut constructed from salvaged wooden planks painted red, blue, and green with her grandson, Lavlu. Since there are no paved roads on Gabura, a five-minute ride by engine-powered boat from the mainland, the only way to reach Mahfuza’s house on the other side of the island is by motorcycle or bike along an uneven track with the river on one side and houses on the other. Mahfuza’s hut sits just metres from the water, surrounded by palm trees. Boats lie nearby on elevated ground, some tethered to trees. Like most women in her village, she was married before the age of 16. Then, 22 years ago, her husband, a day labourer, left her and their three young children for another woman. "I brought my children into this world. I raised them, I fed them, I married them off. I did everything I could for them. Nothing could stop me," explains Mahfuza, tucking the fabric of her headscarf behind her ear. When there is no man in a family, she believes a woman has to be both mother and father to their children. But her voice quivers as she says this. Today, her two sons, both daily wage labourers, and her daughter, who divorced and remarried, live elsewhere, unwilling or too stretched financially to house or support Mahfuza. "They forgot all these years of care right after they got married,” she says with frustration, her eyebrows furrowed. “It eats me up from inside." Mahfuza helped Lavlu, the son of her daughter from her first marriage, study until class five. But her fishing alone could not support the two of them. So she was forced to make the difficult decision to send Lavlu to work when he was 10 years old. The now 15-year-old carries clay to turn into bricks at a factory. Mahfuza worries about his future. “My grandson is my only family here, my everything,” she says. Mahfuza’s day begins at 5am. She wakes for dawn prayer and quickly gets ready to head out. There’s no time for a proper breakfast, just a cup of tea or maybe some leftover fish if she’s lucky. Usually, by the time the sun starts to rise, she’s already out on her boat, gliding over the river. At the end of the day, her hair flecked with sand from the river and dust from the road, she comes home and bathes in the pond close to her house. Sometimes she swims for fun. Mahfuza catches about five kilos of fish a month. She keeps 1kg for herself and Lavlu and sells the rest, earning about 10,000 taka ($10), which the two must survive on. Some fish, like sardines and mola carplet, are found all year round. But her work otherwise changes with the seasons. In warmer months, she catches shrimp and hilsa, and in the cooler months, she goes after bigger fish and crabs. “The seasons dictate everything,” she says. "You have to keep up with the water, or you’ll fall behind." On a good day, she makes a few hundred taka, enough to cover her expenses, which include the constant burden of renting her boat. The work is always unpredictable. "Some days are good, some are empty," she shrugs. The seasons pose other challenges. Annual government bans lasting a total of five months during fish breeding seasons to prevent over-extraction make things harder. In those months, Mahfuza and Lavlu are often forced to borrow rice or money or sometimes go hungry. "If the government wants to protect the species, then they should protect us too," she says. From May to October, the monsoon season, Mahfuza risks being caught in a cyclone. She is adept at reading the weather, relying on the wind, the colour of the sky and the patterns of the waves to gauge whether a storm is coming. "The sky darkens, the wind shifts - then I know I need to get back to shore," she says. Sometimes the weather turns quickly. "You can feel it in the air before you see it," she explains, "but there are times when the wind changes and you know it’s already too late." When she’s been caught in a storm, she has had no choice but to hunker down in her boat and wait for it to pass, bobbing helplessly in the churning waters. Mahfuza has been caught on the water in some of the worst storms, including Cyclone Aila in 2009, which killed more than 100 people and caused tidal surges and flooding, displacing half a million people. Sometimes she has had no choice but to fish, even when the weather doesn’t look promising. "The sea doesn't wait for you to feel ready," she says. "I have to fish to survive - cyclone or no cyclone.” Pirates also prey on small fishing boats in the remote waterways, especially those with lone fishers like Mahfuza. They often demand money and fish, and though raids aren’t daily, they’re enough to keep villagers on edge. Sometimes, they hold fishers for ransom. “They usually are here for money. They think that we have money. How foolish they are!” says Mahfuza. Seven years ago, Mahfuza and her older brother Alamgir were fishing when they were surrounded by five unmasked men in boats armed with guns. They demanded 12,000 taka ($98). Mahfuza and Alamgir said they didn’t have it, so the pirates forced them onto another boat close to the shore. “They are very dangerous. They kidnap and sometimes even kill people if they refuse to pay money. I was very scared,” she says. They were held for hours until a coastguard vessel appeared in the distance, and the panicked raiders pushed Mahfuza and her brother into the shallow shore waters. To this day, sudden noises in the water from another fisher make her jumpy. But as the sole provider for her children since the age of 30, she has had no choice but to fish. "When my children cried for food, I did not care about the pirates," she says. She now jokes about that experience, but her laughter is brief. Even now, she hides her earnings in different places and rows faster when the sun starts to go down and raiders tend to strike. For the last 44 years, she has braved tigers, crocodiles, cyclones and pirates and stood up to her own community to provide for her family. "I need no man. I row the boat on my own. I go to the forest alone. I can fish and bring wood from the forest. I need no man," she says, laughing, her voice tinged with pride. When Mahfuza returned from fishing around noon, her close friend and neighbour, Nur Nahar, visited her on the shore with a few other women. Nur, in her 60s, often fishes with her nephews. Amidst their everyday struggles and dangers, Mahfuza has found strength in the friendships she has built with the other fisherwomen from her village. "We look out for each other," Mahfuza says with a grin. "If I get a big catch, she gets a share. If she catches more, I get mine." “Mahfuza is my friend,” says Nur, her grey hair tied under a scarf. “She shares fish with me when I don’t catch any, even though she’s poor too.” And when there is no fish, “I tell her, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll fish again tomorrow,’” Nur adds. The fisherwomen have only themselves to rely on. They warn each other of approaching storms if they’ve encountered bad weather on the water on the way home. They whisper about the latest pirate sightings, speaking quietly because in a village where people struggle to earn a living, the pirates could be known to them. When one woman's boat breaks, the others help repair it. During the government seasonal bans, they share what little they have to try to make sure no one goes to sleep hungry. These women have built a support system that’s all their own. They’ve learned that they can’t rely on anyone else, so they’ve created their own kind of family. Five years ago, Nur’s husband died of a heart attack. The same year, her sister was killed by a tiger. “When I lost my husband, I didn’t want to go on,” Nur confesses, speaking softly. “But these women ... they carried me when I couldn’t stand.” "No one else understands the weight of the water on your back,” says Mahfuza, her voice low but steady, referring to their hardship. “But we do. We carry it together. "We fight, we laugh, and we fish," she says with a big smile. "That's just how it is." Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Gunmen Kill Three Police Officers In Southern Russias Dagestan Region

Assailants open fire on police in Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, leaving several dead and injured. Three police officers have been killed and at least four others injured after gunmen opened fire on traffic police in southern Russia’s Republic of Dagestan, according to regional authorities. The attack took place on Monday in the capital, Makhachkala, when police attempted to stop a car, Dagestan leader Sergei Melikov said. The shooting began at about 14:20 local time (11:20 GMT), the Interior Ministry confirmed. Two assailants were shot dead at the scene. Local officials identified the men, both born in 2000, but did not say how many others were involved. State media reported that additional attackers fled in a vehicle, prompting a wider manhunt. Footage circulating on Telegram, verified by the Reuters news agency, showed bodies lying on the road beside a police car. Gunshots could be heard in the background as onlookers gathered at the scene. At least two other attackers, alongside injured officers and civilians – including a 17-year-old girl – were taken to hospital. One later died, state media reported. Officials have launched a criminal investigation. Dagestan, a majority-Muslim region bordering the Caspian Sea, has witnessed a number of deadly attacks in recent years. In March, Russian security forces said they killed four alleged ISIL (ISIS) fighters who were planning to attack a local Interior Ministry office. The latest violence in Dagestan follows a separate security operation last week, when Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed to have killed a man suspected of planning bombings on the Moscow metro and a Jewish religious site in the capital region. In June 2024, at least 20 people were killed after armed men attacked a synagogue, churches and police in the Dagestan region. That attack came three months after at least 133 people were killed in a March 2024 attack on a concert in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall. While the Afghanistan-based ISIL affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP) claimed responsibility for the worst attack to hit Russia in years, Moscow at the time claimed without evidence that Ukraine had a played role. Though both Russia and the United States declared the territorial defeat of ISIL (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria by 2019, offshoots of the group – especially ISKP – have re-emerged, posing renewed threats across Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. Follow Al Jazeera English:...