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I really hate “sub-Saharan African countries” used as a code expression for Black African countries.Someone rightly put it : Sub-Saharan Africa neither exists linguistically (Afro-asiatic languages), ethnically (Tuareg), politically (African union, Arab League), in terms of religion (Islam), economically (CEN-SAD, COMESA), [nor ecologically (the Nile Basin Initiative]. I will also add that by 1879, Imperial Egypt was really huge. It controlled Sudan, South Sudan, portions of Eritrea as well as northern Uganda and northeastern DRC. Egyptians had control over the Upper Nile region along the Congo-Nile Divide.Some people continue to use the expression just to make a statement : Blacks in North Africa are a minority. They mostly live in southern regions, rural areas and and isolated communities in the north and center.Yes, there are a number of groups in North Africa who have lookalikes in “sub-Saharan” Africa. The Nubians of Egypt, the Tebu of Libya, the Korandje speakers of Algeria are not sub-Saharan people and yet, they are North African Blacks.Others continue to use the expression just to create the illusion of a Saharan “racial” divide. North Africa is full of “White Afro-Mediterraneans” whereas Africa south of the Sahara is full of “Black “Sub-Saharans”.This is just an illusion. North Africa is not just the coastal regions along the Mediterranean Sea inhabited by light skinned North Africans with a lot of Eurasian admixture and the descendants of Eurasian settlers and slaves. No continental region has been reduced to its coastal regions along the Mediterranean Sea. Why is it done in North Africa? Anti-black racism so that the lie of a “White North Africa” continues.All North African countries are also Saharan countries, including Tunisia.Southern Tunisia is a desert zone, the Tunisian Sahara. It is very difficult to whitewash Saharan people. The Sahara is one of the driest and hottest regions on earth with average temperatures over 30°C and in the summer time, temperatures can go as high as 40°C.All Saharan regions of North Africa are inhabited by indigenous Blacks. North African Blacks who are indigenous populations are called the “Southerners” because of that.Saharan countries like Chad, Mali, Niger and even Eritrea are inhabited by Blacks up to 90%. Saharan Sudanese are black people. Actually, Sudan means a country of Blacks. Mauritanian Fulani are black people.The Sahara was not always a desert.It used to be a green, fertile and humid region of Africa full of animal and human life. There were rivers, lakes and farming communities. As someone noted : It is in the humid Neolithic Sahara that lies the key to the birth of Egyptian civilization and at the same time that of the cultural unity of Africa.North Africa is satured with black genes from its earliest inhabitants who were migrants from the Horn of Africa and the Saharan regions. The average North African is dark skinned with visible and well documented black ancestry dating back to prehistoric times. Countless North Africans complain about racial profiling in Europe because they look part black.Les noirs de l'Afrique - Maurice Delafosse - Hachette Livre BNFCourtesy of Google TranslateIt is also possible that the same cause must be attributed to the very ancient traces of black blood found both among the Egyptians of the time of the Pharaohs and among modern Abyssinians and among many Berber or Arab-Berber tribes. irrespective of the crossbreeding produced later by unions with black slaves.And let there be no mistaking it: the "Ethiopians" of which we have just spoken were indeed Negroes and not the ancestors of the present-day Abyssinians, to whom we commonly give the name of Ethiopians. Herodotus himself specifies this detail a little further (same Book, § LXX) by designating the Abyssinians as "Eastern Ethiopians" and observing that they differed from other "Ethiopians" in that they had straight hair, while Negroes or Western Ethiopians, whom he calls "Ethiopians" or "Ethiopians of Libya", had "more frizzy than all other men." He adds that they both spoke different language.The written word of ancient time is crystal clear as to what ancient Egyptians and ancient Berbers, the Moors, looked like.Strabo: Geography, c. 22 A.D., XVII.iii.1-11And I have heard this man say that beyond the country which he ruled there was no habitation of men, but desert land extending to a great distance, and that beyond that there are men, not black-skinned like the Mauretanii.6th A.D. – Procopius in his History of the Wars book IV contrasting the Germanic Vandals who had settled in North Africa with the Moors claimed the Vandals were not “black skinned like the Maurusioi.Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) Greek philosopher, scientist, and tutor to Alexander the Great. Aristotle is said to have written 150 philosophical treatises."Too black a hue marks the coward as witness Egyptians and Ethiopians and so does also too white a complexion as you may see from women, the complexion of courage is between the two." (Physiognomics, Vol. VI, 812aGreek historian Diodorus Siculus. From his own statements we learn that he traveled in Egypt around 60 BC. His travels in Egypt probably took him as far south as the first Cataract."They say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, Osiris ["King of Kings and God of Gods] having been the leader of the colony . . . they add that the Egyptians have received from them, as from authors and their ancestors, the greater part of their laws……All Africa is linked and North Africa is bound with the rest of Africa by geography and destiny.North Africa Is Still Africa: Time To Stop Excluding The Region When We Talk About The Continentby Matt Grahamn 4th June 2019Matthew Graham stresses the importance of including North Africa in any analysis of the African continentWhat is ‘Africa’? This is an easy one you shout. Finding a map of the world, you point to the easily identifiable contours of the continent, and you have correctly established the location of Africa. Next question please! If only the answer was so easy. In fact, the simple response conceals a number of intense public and academic debates about the nature and composition of the continent, which can often obscure its diversity, magnitude, and complexity. Consequently, a reductive, simplistic and often misleading public narrative of the continent is perpetuated (re: ‘Africa is a country’).In reality, the biggest challenge I faced before I started writing Contemporary Africa was conceptualising this very question: ‘what is Africa?’. I spent many agonising months weighing up the various options, reading as much literature as I could, and grappling philosophically with this dilemma, mindful that whatever choices I made at this stage would shape the entire framing and direction of the book. It was far from an easy process.Therefore it might come as a surprise that when tackling this question I decided to include the North African nations in my analysis of the continent. For many people, the concept of not including the Maghreb when examining the continent might appear like a ludicrous suggestion; the North African states of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt, are quite clearly on the continental landmass, and ‘Africa’ even comprises part of the regions designation.Image credit: 'Koutoubia Minaret, Marrakech' by russavia. Available on Wikimedia Commmons via CC BY-SA 2.0Ask different people from across the world and you will be given a variety of answers as to whether North Africa is ‘African’ because, fundamentally dependent on the specific context, it represents different things for different people, including its inhabitants. However, the common response is that the region is regarded as distinct and separate from the rest of Africa; for example you only have to look at World Bank reports in which the organisation is clear in only looking at sub-Saharan Africa in its analysis to see this sharp north-south distinction being made. There are many good reasons for this perspective, which is driven by the cultural, historical, religious and political differences between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara therefore marks the delineation between two very different worlds.Indeed, the academic consensus has by and large adopted such an approach too, by solely focusing upon sub-Saharan Africa; you’ll find that the vast majority of books on Africa will exclude the north. In fact, in the early stages of writing this book, I was strongly advised by the anonymous reviewers that I should jettison all mentions of North Africa because by doing so the book wouldn’t fit in with the status quo. They argued that these nations belonged with Middle Eastern rather than African history, and any discussion of developments in this region would ‘complicate’ the continental narrative.The reality is that people across the region certainly don’t see a solid dividing line on the ground.After an existential crisis, I stuck by my decision to include North Africa in the book for several reasons. The first is that there are many historic and contemporary links between the north and south, such as the spread of religion, the migration of peoples, and the interconnected economic systems, which criss-cross the Sahara Desert. The reality is that people across the region certainly don’t see a solid dividing line on the ground. If you ignore this, it has a direct effect on our understanding of developments and trajectories of the nations either side of the Sahara. Moreover, by establishing such an artificial division, it is doing so on the basis of race and religion: a predominantly Arabic, Muslim north standing in contrast to the majority Black, Christian south. There is, however, no neat split on the map, and these overarching assumptions and generalisations based on race and religion do not bear historical scrutiny. Finally, the African Union (AU) categorically and officially identifies the north as being part of the continent, with all these states included within the structures of the institution, many of whom play active and enthusiastic roles in pan-continental affairs.Therefore this book sets out to provide different ways of thinking about Africa and to highlight the diversity and multitude of differences across the continent. Africa provides a fascinating canvas from which to study a range of political, historical, economic, societal, and cultural themes, and an omission of the North of the continent would, I argue, inhibit a deeper and more nuanced understanding of its complexities and the influential roles played by nations such as Algeria and Libya which have shaped pan-continental affairs. For example, following its independence in 1962, Algeria became a beacon for African liberation movements from across the continent. Furthermore, the former Libyan President Colonel Gaddafi was a keen advocate of Pan-Africanism, and he played a crucial role in pushing forward the idea of a transformed continental bloc in the shape of the new AU in the late 1990s, as well as actively interfering in the domestic politics of many sub-Saharan nations. These nations identified with, and sought to influence the rest of the continent and not to isolate themselves from the political, economic, or social developments to the south. Ignoring North Africa from our analysis obscures the realities and the myriad linkages that cross the Sahara. Therefore by including the region in this book, a clearer perspective of the subtly and detail of contemporary African developments can be reached that encompass the whole continent.….http://www.leadershipandsocieties.com/index.php/lds/article/view/96/79#:~:text=Pan%2DArabism%20is%20best%20defined,of%20Arab%20States%20(LAS).Reconciling Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism: The North African Leadership DilemmaBy Radwa SaadNorth-African leaders have been highly instrumental in shaping and advancing both Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism. Pan-Arabism is best defined as efforts to achieve one single political and economic unity that serves the higher interests of Arab states and populations. The ideology was instrumental in shaping post-colonial state-building process in North Africa and has led to the construction of the League of Arab States (LAS). Similarly, Pan-Africanism, best defined as ‘the determination to promote unity, solidarity, cohesion and cooperation among the peoples of Africa and African States’, has led to the development of the Organization of African Union (OAU) and its successor the African Union (AU). 1 Adherence to both ideologies has bestowed North-African leaders with diverging aspirations and commitments. A common policy that serves the higher interests of Arabs can be incompatible with a common policy transcending race, ethnicity, and religion to serve the interests of the African continent.Wedged between their Pan-Arab and Pan-African commitments, NorthAfrican leaders have struggled to demonstrate a genuine commitment to African affairs. At best, they are viewed as gateways to wider alliances outside the African continent, particularly the Middle East and parts of Asia.2 At worse, they are perceived as a homogenous entity with ongoing ‘family quarrels’ utilizing Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as a geographic arena to contest their ideological rivalries through the manipulation of conflicts and political processes. 3 This claim is often supported by the reality that in almost every state where Arab and African identities intermingle, conflict is ripe.The Arab-African politics behind the protraction of the civil war in Somalia, the conflict between North and South Sudan, the enslavement of black Africans in Mauritania and the general discrimination against African minorities in predominantly Arab states, all give weight to the claim that Afro-Arab unity is a fallacy. Whereas a clear tension between Arab and African identities persists throughout Africa, it is often overlooked and understudied by scholars. There remains a need to deconstruct the nature of Afro-Arab relations and investigate under what conditions Arab and African interests can be synchronized. Such understandings can enhance cooperation within the African continent by allowing North-African leaders to engage in more constructive and defined relations with the remainder of the continent.……..Pan-Arab and Pan-African Unity: A Paradox?Pan-Arabism is best summarised as the belief in the cultural and political unity of Arab states. It is a corollary of Arab nationalism, the belief that all Arab people share a unique bond based on a shared language, history and religion. It was started by a small class of mobile intellectual elites seeking autonomy from the Ottoman Empire during the early 20th century but reached the peak of its popularity in the 1950’s/1960’s. Spearheaded by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who quickly became the de facto leader of the Arab word following the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, Arab political elites constructed a plan to solidify a common Arab culture. 24 Through the penetration of the Arabic language and the use of national broadcasting systems and radio programs, Pan-Arabism became an embedded cultural phenomenon. 25 As articulated by El Amrani: ‘Arab states... put culture at the service of politics (giving rise to such terms as Arab national culture, national identity culture, Islamic identity culture, resistance culture, the ruling party culture and centralized official culture) rather than putting politics at the service of culture.’26The humiliating defeat of the Arabs in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the dissolution of the short-lived United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1971, the feebleness of the LAS and the appallingly low-level of integration among Arab states highlight Pan-Arabism’s failure to translate into a viable political project. Nonetheless, its strength as a cultural movement has enabled its resilience despite incessant political defeats. In 2011, the Arab Research Centre published the results of a comprehensive public opinion survey accounting for 80% of Arabs across 11 states including Egypt, Sudan, Morocco and Algeria. The survey revealed that over 71% of correspondents still believe in the existence of a united Arab nation, over 81% could identify threats to ‘Arab national security’ and 75% were in favour of adopting integration formulas to support greater unification. 27 The cross-border solidarity, coordination and exchange of influence on behalf of youth leaders and civil society organizations during the ‘Arab spring’ uprisings is yet another reflection of Pan-Arabism’s resilience. 28This strand of PanArabism, however, embodies a more bottom-up grassroot dimension anchored on demands for democratic reform, inclusivity and good governance. 29 If Pan-Arabism is a parochial cultural movement anchored on a shared language and ethnic identity, then Pan-Africanism’s is a more ambitious ideology transcending ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious affiliations. Pan-Africanism was first articulated as a movement that sought to restore pride, independence and dignity ‘among all those of Negro stock’, by establishing a greater sense of solidarity and oneness that can connect the displaced people of the diaspora with their descendants in Africa. 30However, it has since evolved to five dimensions each of which speak to contestations over whom is entitled to an African identity: Sub-Saharan; Trans-Saharan; Trans-Atlantic; West Hemispheric; and Global PanAfricanism. Others view these dimensions as part of an evolutionary sequence demonstrating the growth and inclusivity of the movement. 31 Collin Legum derived nine key objectives from Pan-Africanism as it was articulated in the mid-20th century: ‘Africa for Africans’ and independence of the whole of Africa; United States of Africa: through a series of interlinking regional federations; African renaissance of morale and culture; African regeneration of economic enterprise; African Nationalism to transcend regional and tribal affiliations; Belief in democracy; Rejection of violence as a method of struggle; Solidarity of black peoples everywhere; Positive neutrality: but ‘neutral in nothing that affects African interests’.32 When viewed in light of these objectives, Pan-Africanism appears to be making notable institutional progress.The AU is now the most formally acknowledged advocate of Pan-Africanism and is assuming increased leverage in international affairs. Its progressive and robust mandate for intervention in crimes against humanity; the deployment of AU troops in peacekeeping operations such as AMISOM; the increased number of democracies emerging across the continent; the ratification of Agenda 2063; and the growing role of regional economic communities (RECs) in fostering integration and managing conflict, all point to a slow but dynamic process of realizing longstanding Pan-African ideals. This process is indisputably ridden with challenges, the most conspicuous being the AU’s inability to finance its own peace-keeping operations, to act in the face of wide-spread human rights abuses and to exercise authority over despotic leaders who pursue self-interest at the detriment of regional interest.Nonetheless, the organization has left its mark on the continent by making notable progress towards change, particularly when compared to its counterpart, the LES. Attempts to merge Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism involved more compromise from the side of the latter. It was not until Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser put forward a series of initiatives in the 1950’s to increase Arab-African cooperation that Pan-Africanism was expanded to include North-Africans. 33 This, however, was not achieved without opposition. Many leaders at the time insisted that unifying Black Africa should remain the priority and that Arab internal quarrels would add unnecessary frictions in the Pan-African movement, a claim that still bears truth to date.34 Nonetheless, the fight against colonialism required wider alliances among ‘peoples of other colours’ who were also victims of white supremacy, hence DuBois’s famous statement that ‘the problem of the 20th Century’ is ‘the problem of the colour line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and AfricaPan-Africanism’s expansion into a racially inclusive process anchored on elements of humanitarianism and democratic regionalism can account for why the AU has enjoyed relatively greater success in establishing a viable political project. At the core of the AU is a desire to produce an ‘African personality to recast African society into its own forms, drawing from its own past what is valuable and desirable’. This indefinite approach allows space for the African identity to be continuously negotiated while simultaneously embarking on political reforms that complement and strengthen this process of identity formation. 36Pan-Arabism, on the other hand, remains a linear ideology that advances Arab thought and processes without much consensus of what constitutes an Arab in the modern world and a refusal to negotiate its political shortcomings. 37 This reality makes it difficult to identify Africa’s role in North-African affairs. For example, when an attempt was made by the OAU to intervene in the Algerian-Moroccan border conflict, Arabs rejected African intervention deeming the conflict ‘an internal Arab affair’.38 This paper’s subsequent case studies examine the extent of which power possessed by North-African states is translated into influence in Africa and attempts to extract conditions under which the PanAfrican and Pan-Arabism can be synchronized.……EDIT # 1A return to Africa: Why North African states are looking southSUMMARYNorth African countries, each for their own reasons, are increasingly turning their attention towards sub-Saharan Africa.Morocco is pursuing a comprehensive campaign to increase its influence and win support with regard to Western Sahara.Algeria may be showing new flexibility in its response to security threats to its south.Tunisia is beginning to look for new economic opportunities in Africa.Egypt is responding to a series of strategic concerns, particularly over the waters of the Nile.Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are also all dealing with increased migration flows, with migrants seeking to work on their territories or pass through it to reach Europe.This North African turn to sub-Saharan Africa offers opportunities for European cooperation. But the EU should be aware of the distinctive agendas of North African countries and the reservations that their initiatives engender in some countries.INTRODUCTIONEuropean policymakers have generally looked at North Africa through a Mediterranean lens. Since at least the Barcelona process of Euro-Mediterranean partnership was launched in 1995, European nations have seen the countries on the Mediterranean’s southern shore, from Morocco to Egypt, primarily in the context of their own neighbourhood. Behind this approach rests a history of close links stretching back through the colonial period as well as deep economic relations; Europe is the most important trading partner and investor for the majority of these countries.But this vision of North Africa, which was always too simplistic, is increasingly at odds with the reality of how these countries see themselves. Across the region, North African countries are turning their focus towards their own continent and stepping up their engagement with sub-Saharan Africa.The North African turn towards Africa is driven by several factors. Some countries are engaged in an effort to win diplomatic support on significant questions of national interest: for Morocco and Algeria, the dispute over Western Sahara and their broader strategic rivalry; in the case of Egypt, its concern about the giant dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile. Beyond this diplomatic effort, the focus is also a response to the rising security threats and flow of migration reaching North African countries from the south.Finally, the shift is driven by economic concerns. North African countries are searching for new markets and seeking to position themselves for the economic and demographic growth expected in sub-Saharan Africa in the coming years. This has been given new impetus by the continuing slow growth rates of North Africa’s traditional European trading partners. The turn to the south is also a reaction to the failure of regional integration within North Africa, where trade between countries remains low. Economic and political cooperation, for example through the Arab Maghreb Union, is held hostage in particular to the Algerian-Moroccan stand-off over Western Sahara.The impact of covid-19 is likely to impose some short-term limitations but also offer new areas of focus for this process. At the time of writing, Africa has seen a lower death toll and infection rate than other continents, with 8,630 reported deaths. Many African countries have responded effectively and innovatively to the crisis. Nevertheless, the peak of the disease may not yet have arrived in Africa. In any case, the economic and social impact of the coronavirus on the continent is likely to be profound, with widespread job losses, difficulties in meeting debt payments, and a possible food crisis. At the same time, these effects could spur a transformation of African economies towards greater self-sufficiency, including in the production of food and medicines. They could also lead to a bigger emphasis on renewable energy and greater digitalisation. Such a transformation could offer further opportunities to those North African countries that have well-developed technology, health, and renewable energy sectors.At a time when the EU is also seeking to deepen its relationship with sub-Saharan Africa, based around a joint communication of the European Commission and the High Representative unveiled in March 2020, the North African turn southwards deserves greater European attention. EU policymakers could benefit from understanding North African engagement in sub-Saharan Africa in two ways. Firstly, they should recognise that North African partner countries have their own policy agendas in areas like migration, trade, and investment that are not directed towards Europe, and that EU-North Africa cooperation will be more successful if it takes this into account.Secondly, an understanding of North African strategies could also lead to a greater awareness of where Europe and North African countries could cooperate in sub-Saharan Africa. However, even as they look for synergies, Europeans should also remember that not all North African initiatives are welcomed, or accepted at face value, by sub-Saharan countries. Europeans should be aware that accepting North African offers of triangular cooperation may in some cases have drawbacks that outweigh the advantages they offer.This policy brief offers a stock-take of the African strategies of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt. It excludes Libya – which had an intensive engagement with sub-Saharan Africa and with the African Union (AU) in the years before 2011 – because the political crises and civil war that the country has witnessed in the last few years have left it unable to pursue any far-reaching African strategy at the state level for the moment.MOROCCO: REJOINING “THE FAMILY”Morocco rejoined the AU in January 2017 after an absence of 33 years. The step was a key symbolic moment, illustrating the determined way that the country has tried to reinforce its ties with sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. Morocco had quit the AU’s predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, in 1984 to protest against the body’s admission of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as a member. The SADR is the state declared by the Polisario Front in the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, which Morocco claims as its territory and most of whose territory it controls. Morocco regards the dispute over Western Sahara as a vital question of national interest. Its return to the AU represented a shift in its strategy to win backing for its control of the territory.But Morocco’s ambitions in sub-Saharan Africa extend beyond the search for support over Western Sahara. It also has economic and security goals, and is seeking to establish itself as a major player on the continent. King Mohammed VI said when Morocco rejoined the AU: “At a time when the Kingdom is among the most developed African nations … we have decided to join our family again.”Morocco’s decision to enter the AU without securing the SADR’s expulsion marked a recognition that its “empty chair” approach was not working. After Morocco’s readmission, the AU agreed in July 2018 to set up a troika consisting of the current AU chairperson as well as the previous and incoming chairs. This troika aims to support the UN process on Western Sahara, and effectively removed the subject from discussion in the AU’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) in Addis Ababa by kicking it up to head of state level. This move bracketed AU disagreements on Western Sahara but did nothing to resolve them. The AU remains “blocked” on the topic. At the same time, Morocco has made little secret of its ultimate ambition to force the SADR out of the AU.Morocco has also continued to try to normalise its control of the territory by persuading African countries – primarily, but not entirely confined to, its traditional francophone supporters – to open consulates in the territory. Ten have done so in recent months. Nevertheless, South Africa, Algeria, Kenya, and other influential African countries continue to support the Polisario Front and uphold the AU’s traditional position in favour of the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people.Morocco’s diplomatic push on Western Sahara has been matched by an economic drive to expand its investment and business operations in Africa. Since Mohammed VI became king in 1999, he has made a series of high-profile visits to African countries. These include business delegations and the visits are often accompanied by the announcement of large-scale investments. Between 2003 and 2017, Moroccan foreign direct investment in Africa totalled 37 billion dirhams (roughly €9 billion), making up around 60 per cent of the country’s overseas investment. By 2017, Morocco had become the leading African investor in West Africa and was second only to South Africa as the largest African investor across the continent as a whole.Investments have been particularly concentrated in the banking and telecommunications sectors, led by large enterprises such as Attijariwafa Bank, Banque Centrale Populaire, and Maroc Telecom. Initially focused on Morocco’s traditional West African francophone allies like Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, the country has more recently expanded the range of its investments. Among other agreements, the phosphate conglomerate OCP signed a deal for a giant fertiliser production plant with Ethiopia in 2016. In the same year, Morocco also agreed a major project to build a gas pipeline from Nigeria to its Mediterranean coast.Morocco’s increasing ties with non-francophone African countries that have traditionally opposed its policies on Western Sahara reflect a shift in the continent from ideological to more pragmatic approaches, according to African analysts. But there is still a good deal of suspicion of Morocco’s ambitions in Africa. This has been evident particularly in the reaction to Morocco’s application in 2017 to join the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). West Africa absorbs the majority of Moroccan exports within Africa, yet, since goods from Morocco still make up only a small proportion of West African imports, there is evidently room for Morocco to expand its market share.However, although Morocco’s bid was approved in principle in 2017, progress towards full membership has stalled. The question was not even on the agenda at the two most recent ECOWAS summits. Some ECOWAS members are worried that Morocco’s competitive economy could lead to the erosion of domestic manufacturing, and that Morocco’s free trade agreements with the EU and the United States could open a “back door” for goods from these regions to enter West Africa. West African economic lobbies see the bid as “a predatory move by companies in the kingdom to compete unfairly in their markets”. There is also concern among anglophone West African countries that Morocco’s accession could undermine the position of Nigeria, the dominant country in ECOWAS, and tilt the balance of power in favour of the francophone group of countries within ECOWAS. Finally, many ECOWAS member states question whether Morocco is ready to implement the provisions allowing the free movement of people across the bloc.Morocco’s Africa strategy also incorporates a large soft power element, based around development cooperation, education, and religious training. According to Mohamed Methqal, the head of the Moroccan International Cooperation Agency (AMCI), Morocco’s “long history of links with the rest of the continent means it is well placed to help other African countries replicate the development story of Morocco”.[1] Through its cooperation agency, Morocco has developed partnerships with 46 other African countries. It provides both humanitarian assistance and capacity building in a range of development fields, including public administration, health, education, power generation, and rural electrification. Morocco has focused particularly on bringing students from across Africa to the country for higher education; since 1999, 23,000 students from Africa have graduated from Moroccan universities or technical programmes, and 11,000 were registered in 2018-19, with most receiving Moroccan financial support.Morocco has also focused on religious diplomacy and education, drawing on the country’s moderate tradition of Islam and the traditional networks of Sufi orders such as the Tijaniyya, which link Morocco and West Africa. In 2015, Morocco established the Mohammed VI Foundation for African Ulema to promote a tolerant vision of Islam among partner countries, with an emphasis on West Africa. It has also trained hundreds of African imams in Morocco through the Mohammed VI Institute in Rabat. In the words of one analyst, Morocco’s religious diplomacy is now a structured and comprehensive policy that aims to build on the Moroccan-African joint spiritual heritage “in consolidating the establishment of long-term vital strategic partnerships with African countries”. Moroccan officials also argue that the programme plays a security role, helping provide a counterpoint to Islamist radicalisation in the Sahel, and represents a distinctively “soft” alternative to the counter-terrorist approach that Morocco’s arch-rival Algeria has promoted through the AU. At the same time, Morocco has also offered training and financial support to members of the G5 Sahel joint force, a French-backed security initiative in which Algeria does not participate.Finally, Morocco has attempted to position itself as a leader in Africa on the topic of migration. King Mohammed VI was given a lead role on migration issues within the AU and in 2018 Morocco secured AU agreement to host a new African Observatory on Migration, which will track migration dynamics and coordinate government policies on the continent. Morocco’s approach to migration can be seen as an attempt to turn a complex policy challenge to its advantage. Long a source of migrants itself, Morocco has also become a transit and destination country for migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, with the number of immigrants rising from 54,400 in 2005 to 98,600 in 2019, according to government figures.Eager to show itself as a reliable partner for Europe in restricting irregular migration from its territory to the EU, Morocco has also tried to move beyond a repressive approach. Following past accusations of violating migrants’ rights and evidence of racism towards African migrants in Moroccan society, the country launched a comprehensive migration reform drive in 2013 and has offered legal status to nearly 50,000 migrants, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, there is evidence that Morocco continues to face difficulties in integrating African immigrants and offering them economic opportunities, and there may be a risk that these problems could come to damage relations with sub-Saharan countries.The Moroccan authorities like to say that their growing engagement with Africa presents an opportunity for Europe. Mohamed Methqal of AMCI argues that Europe’s future depends on sustainable development in Africa and that the EU should partner with Morocco to promote this, since the country “has relevant expertise that is adapted to local realities”.[2] Morocco also promotes itself as an economic bridge between Europe and Africa, and established the Casablanca Finance City to offer international firms a base for operations on the continent; Casablanca is now ranked as the leading financial centre in Africa. In many areas of development, such as renewable energy or health, there may be advantages in coordinating international cooperation. But Europeans should also recognise that Morocco’s strategic agenda in sub-Saharan Africa is, unsurprisingly, geared towards its own interests and complex relationships, and that its engagement with African partners involves continuing tensions as well as goodwill.ALGERIA: THE PURSUIT OF LOST INFLUENCEAlgeria has a long history of ties with sub-Saharan Africa. Following its independence in 1962, Algeria became a beacon of inspiration to anti-colonial and revolutionary movements across the continent. During the 1990s, the Algerian civil war lowered the country’s diplomatic profile. But by the early 2000s, Algeria had regained influence in Africa, particularly within the AU and on issues of peace and security. Algeria built on its own experience of the “black decade” to position itself as a leader in confronting international terrorism.Algerian officials played an influential role in designing the African Peace and Security Architecture that underpins the AU’s security policy. Algerians have also occupied the key role of AU Commissioner for Peace and Security continuously since the AU was set up in 2002. The first two holders of the office were Saïd Djinnit and Ramtane Lamamra, two of Algeria’s most senior and internationally recognised diplomats. Algeria hosts the Africa Centre for Studies and Research on Terrorism and ensured that counterterrorism was included as one of the areas of responsibility of the PSC. Beyond security, Algeria was also central to the setting up of the AU’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development in 2002. Algerians’ confidence of their influence within the AU led one diplomat to claim in 2012: “Algeria can sway the AU in its direction without, however, putting great pressure.”In recent years, however, Algeria’s influence across the continent has weakened. After President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was largely incapacitated by a stroke in 2013, his engagement with other African heads of state faded away and Algeria’s bilateral ties with sub-Saharan countries were eroded. Guided by a vision of national self-sufficiency, Algeria chose not to set up a sovereign wealth fund that could purchase overseas assets with the revenues from its gas and oil reserves. The fall in hydrocarbon prices after 2014 then dealt a major blow to Algeria’s economy, but any hopes of diversification through expansion into African markets were limited by regulations that constrained overseas investment. Under rules that were updated in 2014, private companies are only allowed to invest abroad for activities that are complementary to their domestic business, and transfers of capital still require official authorisation.A high-profile conference organised in Algeria in 2016, the African Forum for Investment and Business, was overshadowed by feuding between members of the elite, as the prime minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, walked out in protest at the role taken by the influential businessman Ali Haddad. Nevertheless, some observers believe the forum helped lay the ground for increased commercial ties in the future.Algeria has long seen itself as playing a dominant role in the Sahel, but here too its place has been somewhat eclipsed as the jihadist threat has escalated in recent years. Algeria’s army is the most powerful in Africa after Egypt’s, yet the country has long had a commitment to the principle of non-intervention. This stance is formally enshrined in Algeria’s constitution, which states that “Algeria does not resort to war in order to undermine the legitimate sovereignty and the freedom of other peoples.” As a result, Algeria has pursued an approach in the Sahel based on coordinating the responses of regional states to security threats. In 2010 Algeria established a regional security organisation, the Comité d’État-Major Opérationnel Conjoint (CEMOC), which brings together Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger to cooperate and share intelligence in the fight against armed groups. Yet CEMOC and the associated Fusion and Liaison Unit have largely proved ineffective. Algeria’s commitment to non-intervention led it to resist sending troops to push back armed groups in Mali in 2013, when domestic forces were unable to manage the threat, though Algeria did allow French forces to use its airspace.Even within the AU, Algeria may have lost some of its dominant influence over the security portfolio. The current Algerian PSC commissioner, Smaïl Chergui, was only narrowly re-elected to a four-year term in 2017, and some observers believe that Algeria may no longer hold the position after next year’s vote. Algeria was also unable to prevent its rival Morocco from gaining a seat on the PSC in 2018.Algeria has also deployed a largely security-focused response to the increase in migration into the country over the last few years that seems to pay little heed to sub-Saharan sensibilities. Migration into Algeria rose after 2015 as the civil war in Libya diverted migrants who might previously have sought work in Libya or used it as a staging post to try to reach Europe. The increasing visibility of sub-Saharan immigrants in Algerian cities provoked some hostile reaction, including a public campaign in 2017 under the slogan “No to Africans in Algeria”.While the government pushed back against this campaign, and promised to start work on a plan for regularisation, it has also forcibly deported large numbers of irregular migrants to Niger and Mali, including some from other African countries. Many have reportedly been abandoned in Algeria’s southern desert and left to make their way across the border on foot. In a protest against their treatment, a group of Malians who had been deported from Algeria attacked the Algerian embassy in Bamako in 2018. In the words of one Algerian specialist, the Algerian authorities never treat the reception of migrants as a diplomatic or geopolitical opportunity to improve relations with sub-Saharan African countries.Against this backdrop, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who was elected president in December 2019, has said he wants to lead a policy of re-engagement with Africa. Tebboune became president through a process that was rejected by Algeria’s large protest movement, and he is seen by domestic critics of the Algerian regime as a compromised leader. Nevertheless, he has set out an ambitious programme to rebuild Algeria’s continental profile. Tebboune attended the AU summit in February this year and used his speech to announce Algeria’s return to Africa, both in the context of the AU and in bilateral relations. In particular, the president announced that Algeria would set up an international cooperation agency focused on Africa and the Sahel (and evidently modelled on Morocco’s AMCI). Late in 2019, Algeria also ratified the agreement for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). In June 2020, it completed construction of a key part of a projected trans-Saharan highway that is designed to connect Algiers and Lagos, with links to Chad, Mali, Niger, and Tunisia.Finally, in May, Tebboune unveiled proposed amendments to Algeria’s constitution that would allow the country to send military forces overseas to take part in multilateral peacekeeping or peace-enforcement operations, and to restore peace in countries at the invitation of the host government. The change is evidently designed to help restore Algeria’s role as the leading power in providing security in its neighbourhood.It will be some time before the success of these moves can be assessed. Some commentators have suggested that the new international cooperation agency is an outdated method of trying to gain influence, harking back to a time when sub-Saharan Africa was seen as a collection of poor countries needing help, and when Algeria had the wealth to undertake large and expensive projects. One observer of Tebboune’s speech to the AU commented that it did not seem to resonate with its audience.[3] Rather than dangling large projects that it cannot afford, Algeria might be better advised to make it easier for its firms to trade and invest in Africa by improving transport links, particularly flight connections, and loosening regulations governing foreign investment.Meanwhile, in the field of security, the impact of any revision to Algeria’s doctrine of non-intervention will depend on the country also changing its strategic culture. That culture has tended to adopt a rigid approach and rejected support for any missions that are not conducted on Algeria’s terms. There have been signs recently of a shift in this direction, including renewed talks on regional issues between Algeria and France, and Algeria’s recent announcement of the provision of military aid to Mali, including the offer of 53 military vehicles. Such a shift would complement the role that Algeria has continued to play in promoting and supporting negotiations between the government and armed groups in Mali.TUNISIA: UNTAPPED ECONOMIC POTENTIALTunisia is unique among North African countries in that its growing interest in sub-Saharan Africa has no obvious geopolitical motive. Tunisia is not seeking to deepen its engagement with the rest of the continent because of any strategic rivalry or security concerns, but essentially for economic reasons. The outgoing prime minister, Youssef Chahed, hosted a US-Tunisian event to promote investment in Africa in February this year, and said that Tunisia wanted to launch a privileged partnership with African countries. The new prime minister, Elyes Fakhfakh, who took office soon after, has promised a strategic investment plan for Tunisia’s future that is also based on opening new markets in Africa.Tunisia starts from a low base in trying to expand its reach into sub-Saharan Africa. President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled the country for 23 years before the 2011 revolution, tried to orientate Tunisia towards Europe rather than Africa. While the first post-revolutionary president, Moncef Marzouki, visited several African countries, Tunisia’s governments since 2011 were more focused on addressing socioeconomic problems through subsidies and public employment than on seeking new markets overseas. In 2018, only 3.1 per cent of Tunisia’s exports went to sub-Saharan Africa, representing little increase from a share of 2.8 per cent ten years earlier. Tunisia suffers from a shortage of diplomatic and infrastructure links with the continent. Beyond the North African coastal countries, it has only 12 embassies to cover 49 African countries. The national airline, Tunisair, only serves eight sub-Saharan destinations, all in West Africa.Tunisia took a step towards greater trade integration with sub-Saharan Africa when it joined the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) in 2018. However, Tunisia only began trading under COMESA rules in January 2020 and its exports to COMESA countries remain for the moment overwhelmingly focused on North African neighbours Libya and Egypt. In the meantime, Tunisia also received observer status with ECOWAS in 2017 (its position in the centre of North Africa makes it eligible for both eastern and western regional economic organisations). However, after Tunisia signed up to the AfCFTA, the Tunisian parliament failed to ratify the agreement when it was put to a vote in March 2020. The agreement can be resubmitted to parliament after an interval of three months, but the rejection seems to show that Tunisia’s political class has not yet embraced the idea of engagement with Africa.The head of the Tunisia-Africa Business Council, Anis Jaziri, says that Tunisia’s commercial potential on the continent is held back by burdensome foreign exchange regulations and the weak international links of the country’s banks, as well as the shortage of transport connections. At the moment, Tunisian exports to Africa are mainly in industrial goods, including building materials, cables, and medical equipment. Some Tunisian firms, like the construction company Soroubat, have made successful investments in West Africa. But Jaziri argues that Tunisia has enormous potential in other higher-value areas of goods and services, ranging from higher education and medical services to information technology. Tunisia’s success in handling covid-19 may increase the appeal of its health sector to the continent. With better transport links, Tunisia also has potential as a base for European and other international companies that are looking for local African partners in sectors like health or IT.Migration is also a factor in Tunisia’s relations with sub-Saharan Africa. According to official figures, there are around 7,500 sub-Saharan Africans living in Tunisia, but, when undocumented immigrants are included, many people believe the true figure could be around 20,000. The majority of these are from West Africa – particularly Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, Cameroon, and Nigeria. Until recently, the number of sub-Saharan Africans trying to use Tunisia as a base to reach Europe was minimal. According to the researcher Matt Herbert, only 401 out of the 4,678 irregular migrants apprehended by Tunisian authorities in 2018 trying to leave for Europe were non-Tunisian citizens. The deterioration of conditions in Libya has led to an increase in the proportion of foreigners trying to use Tunisia as a transit country, but the number of migrants trying to reach Europe from Tunisia remains low.Many African immigrants in Tunisia have complained that they face racism and discrimination. A detailed study released recently by the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights found that migrants consistently said they felt unwelcome in the country. There is no formal asylum system. Most migrants are only able to work in the informal economy and they have suffered badly from the impact of covid-19. According to the UNHCR, 53 per cent of refugees and migrants in Tunisia have lost their jobs because of coronavirus restrictions. Tunisia adopted a landmark law against racial discrimination in 2018, but activists complain that there is no political commitment to follow through on it. Tunisia’s failure to integrate African migrants more effectively seems to indicate a continuing sense of detachment from sub-Saharan Africa.EGYPT: PROTECTING NATIONAL INTERESTSFrom February 2019 to February 2020, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi served as chair of the AU. This was the first time Egypt had been chosen for the position (which rotates annually between different African regions) since the body’s creation in 2002. Sisi’s selection underlined the increasing attention that Egypt has given to Africa and the AU in the last six years. Under the presidencies of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s foreign policy was focused on the Middle East, and its relations with the US and Europe overshadowed its engagement with its own continent. After Sisi seized power in 2013, overthrowing the popularly elected president Mohammed Morsi, the AU went so far as to suspend Egypt’s membership for a year. But since then, Sisi and Egypt have made a concerted effort to repair their ties to Africa.The shift reflects the changing nature of the security risks that Egypt faces. Since 2011, the spread of jihadist groups across North Africa and the Sahel, and the civil war in Libya, have led Sisi to see potential threats across Egypt’s African borders. At the same time, Sisi’s campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood at home has led him to identify all offshoots of the Brotherhood as allied to terrorism, and to orientate Egypt’s foreign policy towards preventing the spread of political Islam across the region. The overthrow of Sudan’s long-time president, Omar al-Bashir, after massive popular demonstrations also raised the spectre of instability in a neighbouring country. Most significantly, Ethiopia’s decision in 2011 to begin building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile close to its border with Sudan threatened Egypt with the disruption of the water supply on which it overwhelmingly depends. Ninety per cent of Egypt’s fresh water comes from the Nile, and the river has been central to Egyptian life and identity for thousands of years. Sisi told the United Nations in 2019 that the water of the Nile was “a matter of life and an issue of existence for Egypt”.Egypt’s size and wealth guarantee that it has influence in Africa when it chooses to engage. It has the third-largest economy on the continent after Nigeria and South Africa, and its 2019 growth rate of 5.6 per cent was much the highest of the three. Egypt has an experienced and skilled diplomatic service and an extensive network of 40 embassies across sub-Saharan Africa. During its period as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2016-17, it won friends in Africa by working to coordinate the activity of the African members of the UNSC and the PSC. Observers of the body say that Egypt has been careful to put high-quality officials into the AU, including the organisation’s legal counsel, Namira Negm.[4] Egypt is particularly active within the AU on security questions and won agreement to host the AU’s Centre for Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development in Cairo. According to news reports, Egyptian diplomats describe these efforts as part of an attempt to increase its influence within the organisation.Nevertheless, during its period chairing the AU, Egypt did not focus the organisation on its own most pressing regional challenges, which it prefers to address in other ways. Egypt’s ambassador to the AU cites the coming into force of the AfCFTA, improving the efficiency of the AU, infrastructure development, and progress on the Centre for Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development as the signal achievements of its term. But, because it has taken positions that diverge from the majority view within the organisation, Egypt has not promoted AU involvement on the crisis in Libya, the transition in Sudan, and the Ethiopian dam. It sought the AU chair as part of a general campaign to build influence rather than as a way of directly pursuing its strategic goals.On Libya, Egypt has strongly supported the renegade general Khalifa Haftar, which renders it unfit to lead any mediation effort, in the view of other AU member states. Egypt has also been at odds with the majority of AU countries over the transition in Sudan. In the belief that Sudan’s army provides the best foundation for national stability, Egypt has joined its Middle Eastern allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in backing the Sudanese military in their continuing power struggle against civilian officials. Sisi met with the influential general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (widely known as Hemeti) in Cairo last July and emphasised Egypt’s desire to support “the stability and security” of Sudan. But the AU has been more favourable to the pro-democratic civilian movement. Against Sisi’s opposition, the AU suspended Sudan for three months in June 2019 after a military attack on protesters. And the AU weighed in behind Egypt’s rival, Ethiopia, in its mediation efforts last summer, leading to a power-sharing deal and a transitional roadmap.The Ethiopian dam remains Egypt’s most important regional priority. Work on the GERD is more than 70 per cent complete and Ethiopia says it will be ready to start filling the reservoir behind it this year. It has been estimated that if the reservoir were filled over seven years, Egypt would lose 22 per cent of its annual water budget. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan signed a declaration of principles in 2015, but since then technical negotiations on the details of an agreement have stalled. The remaining points of disagreement between Egypt and Ethiopia concern the legal status of any agreement, mitigation measures in case of drought, and how to handle disputes. The World Bank and, more recently, the US have tried to mediate, but Ethiopia rejected a US-crafted deal earlier this year. Instead, Ethiopia has sought to involve the AU and its current chair, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, in a new round of mediation. In late June, the parties met under AU auspices and announced that they hoped to resolve the outstanding issues within two weeks. If the discussions are successful, this would represent an instance of Africa resolving its own disputes and help dispel Egyptian doubts about the AU’s fairness on this topic.Like other North African countries, Egypt has also tried to increase its economic ties to sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. Egypt has been a member of COMESA since 1998 and was one of the first countries to ratify the tripartite free trade area linking COMESA with the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community that was agreed in 2015. Egyptian trade with fellow COMESA member states increased by 32 per cent between 2018 and 2019. Egypt has also undertaken a series of large cooperation projects with Nile basin countries in recent years, above all in irrigation and water management, and organised a series of investment forums in Cairo. Nevertheless, Egypt’s trade with sub-Saharan Africa remains comparatively low, accounting for only 5.7 per cent of its exports and 1.5 per cent of imports in 2018. The impression persists that Egypt treats its security interests in Africa as a priority, and sees economic links, at least in part, as a way to promote its strategic goals.CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONSNorth Africa’s “return to Africa” has been a striking feature of the region’s foreign policy in recent years. All four of the countries analysed in this policy brief have stepped up their engagement with sub-Saharan Africa, recognising it as both a leading emerging market and a region whose influence in international politics is likely to increase in the coming years. But this report has also shown how North African countries are pursuing distinctively national agendas in Africa and have met with a correspondingly mixed response from sub-Saharan African countries. North African countries have returned to Africa for their own reasons, and their initiatives have often left existing tensions with sub-Saharan countries unresolved.Morocco and Egypt, in particular, have brought a strong sense of their strategic interests into their engagement with Africa. Many sub-Saharan countries have maintained their wariness of these positions even as they welcome the attention to African institutions and processes. North African countries have also continued to equivocate about their position in Africa. In what has been called a “double pursuit”, they are committed to maintaining their privileged relationships with the EU even as they deepen their ties to their own continent. North African countries have shown no interest in being associated with negotiations between the EU and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific group of states about a successor to the Cotonou Agreement, which expires at the end of this year. North African development cooperation with sub-Saharan Africa offers benefits to the continent but can also provoke resentment if it is cast in a tutelary form, with North African countries seeming to offer the benefit of their more advanced status.The EU should take account of the complex nature of North African engagement with sub-Saharan Africa in its relations with the continent. Firstly, it will get better results from its cooperation with North African countries on migration if it understands the African context of its partners’ policies. As Tasnim Abderrahim has argued for ECFR, the EU and its member states should appreciate that migration is a sensitive issue for North African countries as well as European ones. European and sub-Saharan African interests can be in tension, and any impression that North African countries are acting as Europe’s enforcers or gendarmes will complicate their relations with source countries. Cooperation on border management, and supporting the integration of migrant communities, is likely to be more effective than pushing North African countries to accept migrants intercepted at sea.In the field of security, the EU and its member states should welcome signs that Algeria is re-engaging in the Sahel and encourage it to build links with the G5 Sahel and to contribute actively to stabilisation and development. The EU should also be prepared to step up its involvement in efforts to resolve the Nile dam dispute if the current round of talks falters. Europe may be better able to present itself as a neutral power than the US, which is seen as close to Egypt.As the EU looks to deepen its relationship with Africa, it should naturally seek to coordinate where possible with North African continental initiatives. Commercial ties between Maghreb countries and the Sahel could help European objectives of promoting stability. Supporting African economic integration is one of the goals mentioned in the guidelines for a new EU-Africa strategy. This could be promoted by helping to create better infrastructure links between north African countries and the rest of the continent.There is also scope for Europe to pursue triangular cooperation with North African countries in sub-Saharan Africa, joining together on projects in areas where North Africa has relevant experience to share. Morocco, in particular, has sought to promote this idea, which was endorsed in a joint EU-Morocco declaration in June 2019. Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia have international cooperation agencies that have carried out many projects in third countries in association with international institutions and developed countries, and Algeria has announced the creation of an international cooperation agency. In several areas, includingpublic health, rural electrification, renewable energy, and digitalisation, North African countries are pursuing similar development cooperation goals as Europe and have relevant experience, and it would make sense for efforts to be coordinated.At the same time, the EU should remain cautious about aligning itself too strongly with North African strategies in Africa. Triangular cooperation is only valuable to the extent that all parties genuinely share objectives and the arrangement offers added value. As the EU tries to move towards a more reciprocal partnership approach with Africa, it should remember that many sub-Saharan countries look at the posture of North African states with some distrust. Where North African countries are thought to approach the rest of the continent with a sense of their own more advanced status, it may not help Europe to ally with them. Above all, European policymakers should be aware of the interests, tensions, and rivalries that underlie North African policies on the continent. Sub-Saharan Africa’s stance towards North Africa is increasingly pragmatic. A correspondingly pragmatic approach – that looks for convergence where possible but remains alive to the national agendas of powerful North African countries – would provide the best foundation for Europe’s own relationship with Africa.ABOUT THE AUTHORAnthony Dworkin is a senior policy fellow at ECFR. He works on North Africa and also on a range of subjects connected to human rights, democracy, and the international order. He is also a visiting lecturer at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po and was formerly executive director of the Crimes of War Project.

Yes there is. And there could be present day life on Mars. Up to 2008, and for a few years afterwards, many scientists thought there couldn’t be life on the surface of Mars. That all changed, starting with the Phoenix lander’s discovery of what seemed to be droplets of liquid forming on its legs. Sadly, it couldn’t analyse them, as it wasn’t set up for remote analysis of that sort. But they behaved like droplets that can form on salt taking up liquid water from humidity in the atmosphere by deliquescing. They grew gradually, merged, disappeared (presumed to have dropped off the leg). Although the Mars atmosphere is very thin and very dry it gets so cold at night that it reaches 100% relative humidity at night.That surprised just about everyone. The Mars surface is in a near vacuum and water should boil at either just above 0 C or in most cases below it, meaning that ice would just evaporate straight into the atmosphere. However, if you have salts, then the salt can keep the water liquid - but it has to be very salty.Still, some forms of life can withstand very salty brines and could perhaps survive on Mars depending on the mix of salts, how cold the brines are there, and how salty they are. Phoenix also found indirect but strong isotopic evidence that Mars either has a fair bit of liquid water now, or had it in the very recent geological past as the atmosphere showed evidence of chemical movement of oxygen atoms from the surface into the carbon dioxide, which could only really happen in liquid water (hard to think of other liquids that could do this on Mars).We now have many possible habitats on Mars. Roughly in order of how likely they seem. Links are to sections in my book OK to Touch Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps?Nilton Renno's droplets that form where salt touches ice - his "a swimming pool for a bacteria"Recurring Slope LineaeLichens and cyanobacteria able to take in water vapour directly from the 100% night time humidity of the Mars atmosphereMicrobes could find tiny oases of water inside micropores in salt pillarsLiquid brines beneath the surface of sand dunes at night - beneath the sand that Curiosity drives over - that one was reported as uninhabitable but Nilton Renno was not so sure, biofilms might make it habitableTransgressing sand dunes bioreactor - a way that you could get life in the sand dunes in the equatorial regionsDesert varnish - very speculative but we don’t know how it forms on Earth and it forms on Mars too, is it some form of life?Then there are a couple more that get hardly any publicity but I think they seem rather promising myself as they permit not just salty but fresh water due to the solid state greenhouse effect. This causes layers of liquid water beneath clear blue ice in Antarctica. If there is any clear ice in the Mars polar regions, it should have a similar solid state greenhouse effect which would cause liquid water to form below the surface - and as thick as cms thick according to the calculations. If all the ice is opaque these habitats can’t exist. But why might it not have clear ice? We simply have never been there to check and can’t tell from orbit. Fresh water on Mars would seem very habitable even in polar regions, these would be amongst the most habitable locations there, for microbes, if they exist. With rock / dust / granite etc.Sun warmed dust grains embedded in iceSouthern hemisphere flow-like features - these may involve fresh water!Then, there is a potential risk. Joshua Lederberg was amongst the first to draw attention to this, and Carl Sagan.We've never encountered extra terrestrial life. Yes, it won't be adapted to attack us. However the flip side of this is that Earth life won't be adapted to defend itself against it either. Our bodies and the bodies of other creatures, plants etc on Earth have never encountered an extra terrestrial microbe and may have no defenses against it.Carl Sagan, who was a physicist with a long term research interest in biology, who wrote a thesis on the origins of life already as an undergraduate, put it like this on page 162 of his "Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective" (emphasis mine)"Precisely because Mars is an environment of great potential biological interest, it is possible that on Mars there are pathogens, organisms which, if transported to the terrestrial environment, might do enormous biological damage - a Martian plague, the twist in the plot of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, but in reverse. This is an extremely grave point. On the one hand, we can argue that Martian organisms cannot cause any serious problems to terrestrial organisms, because there has been no biological contact for 4.5 billion years between Martian and terrestrial organisms. On the other hand, we can argue equally well that terrestrial organisms have evolved no defenses against potential Martian pathogens, precisely because there has been no such contact for 4.5 billion years. The chance of such an infection may be very small, but the hazards, if it occurs, are certainly very high."…The likelihood that such pathogens exist is probably small, but we cannot take even a small risk with a billion lives."Joshua Lederberg was a Nobel winning microbiologist, and microbe geneticist, and closely involved in early searches for life on Mars, summarizes it like this (emphasis mine):"If Martian microorganisms ever make it here, will they be totally mystified and defeated by terrestrial metabolism, perhaps even before they challenge immune defenses? Or will they have a field day in light of our own total naivete in dealing with their “aggressins”?That’s in his "Paradoxes of the Host-Parasite Relationship"And in more detail in Parasites Face a Perpetual Dilemma:"Whether a microorganism from Mars exists and could attack us is more conjectural. If so, it might be a zoonosis to beat all others."On the one hand, how could microbes from Mars be pathogenic for hosts on Earth when so many subtle adaptations are needed for any new organisms to come into a host and cause disease? On the other hand, microorganisms make little besides proteins and carbohydrates, and the human or other mammalian immune systems typically respond to peptides or carbohydrates produced by invading pathogens. Thus, although the hypothetical parasite from Mars is not adapted to live in a host from Earth, our immune systems are not equipped to cope with totally alien parasites: a conceptual impasse."So, he is saying that our immune system and defenses are keyed to various chemicals produced by Earth life. such as peptides and carbohydrates. It's entirely possible that Mars life doesn’t use those chemicals at all.However there’s much more to it than whether it attacks us and our immune systems and defenses might just be naive and not notice anything except the trauma.They might not be attacking us at all. Or not designed to do so. It’s just an accidental side effect.That was the subject of this study, lead by David Warmflash of the NASA Johnson Space Center: Assessing the biohazard potential of putative martian organisms for exploration class human space missions.First the authors look at the ways that Earth microbes harm us. They can beInfectious, causing damage only if they multiply inside the host - either invasive throughout the host or local in their effectToxic - hazardous components of the cells, or the products of their metabolism may harm other organisms incidentally - not targeted at us but still can kill us.Those two categories are not exclusive - an infectious organism might also produce toxic byproducts.Now, most microbes on Earth are absolutely harmless to humans. They may live on our skin, and even if not at all adapted to us, they cause us no harm at all - unless of course you have a wound and they get inside the wound. Our bodies are well able to cope with them.However, there are a few that are harmful to us, and those are not necessarily adapted to humans or even to macro organisms. One of the best known diseases of this type is Legionnaire's disease. Normally it lives inside amoebas, inside the cellular fluid. However, it can also live independently without any host in biofilms. Yet it can also live inside the lungs of human beings. It uses the same adaptations that let it live inside a biofilm, or an amoeba, to live inside our lungs.This could easily be duplicated on Mars. A similar organism could survive in a biofilm on Mars just as Legionnaire's disease does on Earth. Or it could survive inside a single cell larger microbe on Mars. All that it needs to be a potential risk to humans is to live naturally in an environment similar to what it might encounter later in a human host. As they say in the paper:"The causative bacterium, Legionella pneumophila, is a facultative, gram-negative rod that is one of several human pathogens now known to be carried in the intracellular environments of protozoan hosts. Additionally, L. pneumophila can also persist, even outside of any host, as part of biofilms. In essence, all that a potentially infectious human pathogen needs in order to emerge and persist in an environment is to grow and live naturally under conditions that are similar to those that it might later encounter in a human host. On Mars, these conditions might be met in a particular niche within the extracellular environment of a biofilm, or within the intracellular environment of another single-celled Martian organism.".Next, they give an example of an organism that produces a toxin. Their example is the anaerobe Clostridia, which often lives as spores in soils. Some of its species are locally infectious in wounds. and can release life threatening toxins at times, including C. tetani which causes Tetanus, and C. perfringens.As another example, they mention another species of Clostridia, botulinum, contaminates food stored in anaerobic conditions, which releases a toxin that interferes with the way our nerves work. This microbe can lead to the fatal paralysis of Botulism when ingested. Of course it is not adapted in any way to paralyse humans - there is no evolutionary advantage in that. This is just a byproduct of its metabolism that happens to be harmful to humans. So the same could be true for Mars microbes, they might produce byproducts that happen to interfere with our metabolism in ways that harm us.Photomicrograph of Clostridium botulinum bacteria. Though it is not adapted to humans, it produces a toxin which coincidentally is a nerve toxin which causes the rare but serious Botulism disease. This toxin is paralysing if ingested, and can be fatal. This is one way in which Mars microbes could be harmful to humans directlyAnother example is Clavicepts purpurea which produces ergot disease, in crops. When humans eat those diseased crops, it can lead to limb loss, convulsions and hallucinations, and again there is of course no evolutionary advantage in this for the microbe. There is no need for the Mars life to be related to us in any way for it to produce coincidentally toxic substances like this.Here is another example of my own to add to the list. Aspergilliosis, a frequent cause of hay fever in humans. It's a fungus which is capable of surviving in extreme conditions. For most people, it's no trouble at all. For others it's a minor nuisance. It's not adapted to be virulent, and is normally easily kept out by our immune system, However, it can be harmful and even deadly to people with a damaged immune system.It seems an interesting example, seems to me because of Joshua Lederberg's "On the other hand, microorganisms make little besides proteins and carbohydrates, and the human or other mammalian immune systems typically respond to peptides or carbohydrates produced by invading pathogens." which I mentioned above in Why we can't prove yet that Mars life is safe for Earth and his .If some microbe from Mars for some reason is able to adapt to survive in our lungs, and if it is only remotely related to Earth life, our immune system might not recognize it as harmful. If so, we might all respond as if we had damaged immune systems, like the patients who die from Aspergilliosis. So perhaps this may give us an idea of what to expect.Another example comes from Chris Chyba: cyanobacteria killing cattleLake Eyrie in October 2011 during its worst cyanobacteria bloom for a long time. The cyanobacteria produced microcystins which is a liver toxin and can cause sudden death in cattle within hours, also often kills dogs swimming in the water and is a skin irritant for people.As Chrys Chyba summarizes the situation in his abstract:"It is unlikely that these cyanobacteria evolved the toxins in response to dairy cows; rather the susceptibility of cattle to these toxins seems simply to be an unfortunate coincidence of a toxin working across a large evolutionary distance"This is of no advantage at all to the cyanobacteria. Cows are neither predators on them, nor do they eat cows. It's just a coincidence that they happen to produce a chemical that is toxic over a very wide evolutionary distance.In the same paper he gives the example of Serratia marcenscens, a bacterium which is found in water and soil, as a free living microbe - and is an "opportunist pathogen" of animal species as widely diverse as humans and elkhorn coral.This sort of "poisoning by coincidence" is quite common, and you may be able to think of many more examples for yourself.For instance, cocoa plants produce theobromine which kills dogs if they eat too much chocolate. The cocoa plant doesn't need to defend itself against dogs. Cyanobacteria also produce BMAA which is implicated in Alzheimer's. Again there is no advantage to the cyanobacteria to give humans Alzheimer's. It is just a chemical that happens to resemble one of the amino acids L-serine, and so gets misincorporated into proteins causing Alzheimer's. Even life that is based on a different biochemistry from Earth might easily, through near coincidence, produce chemicals that Earth life misincorporates in this way.So, in the same way microbes from Mars could quite easily produce deadly toxins for Earth life and would not need to be adapted to us in any way at all to do that.They could harm our biosphere too. My favourite example there - suppose that Mars life has developed more efficient methods of photosynthesis than Earth photobionts in the sea? It might do, having evolved in such low light conditions. Well - maybe it has only a slight edge, but a slight edge would be enough for exponential growth so that after some years or decades, the only algae in the sea are martian in origin - and maybe they are inedible or poisonous to many creatures in the marine sea chains. The whole marine food chain might collapse.In many ways a microbe from Mars might harm our biosphere.For another example. So far there are no Earth microbes able to reproduce in freezers below -20 C, or if they do (there are some controversial suggestions they do) then they reproduce so slowly they are harmless. That’s why they are designed to operate at those temperatures. Temperatures lower than that are very rare on Earth so there is no need to evolve to adapt to them. But on Mars such conditions happen everywhere every night. Any life able to survive and reproduce, e.g. in salty brine, at temperatures below - 20 C would have a huge evolutionary adaptation.So maybe just a nuisancy microbe that means we have to design freezers to operate at temperatures of -40 C or even - 80 C. Though not an environmental disaster for Earth it would be a major nuisance.Sample return needs to take account of the possibility of life in the sample even if it is a low probabilityThe European Space Foundation (ESF) study, which carried out the most recent study of a Mars Sample Return, says that it is generally agreed that the probability that any martian micro-organism is biohazardous is low. However they also said that, as no life forms outside of Earth have yet been studied or characterized, it is impossible to do a standard probability assessment. This is covered in their section 4.2 Approaching the unknown and considering consequences in the ESF report, under unknown unknowns:"This lack of knowledge, or uncertainty, prevents definitive conclusions from being reached on major factors that would allow for a real assessment of the risk of contamination posed by an MSR mission, including:• Whether life exists on Mars or not• If there are living organisms on Mars, it is not possible to define the probability of a sample (with a given size and mass) actually containing organisms• If there are living organisms in the sample, it is not possible to definitively assess if (and how) a Mars organism can interact with the Earth’s biosphere."So, we start from a position where we don't know if there is life on Mars. If there is, we have no way to know what the probability is of finding life in the sample. And if there is life in the sample we don't have any way to assess what the effect would be on Earth's biosphere. With so many unknowns, how can you make a start at carrying out a risk assessment? There's no way at present to assign probabilities to any of those.They concluded that risk assessment has to be carried out by combining knowledge of Earth life with knowledge of Martian geology. They did come to the conclusion that it is possible to establish the risk as low, as a consensus of the beliefs of the experts in the field as represented by their experience."On the latter point, there is consensus among the scientific community (and among the ESF-ESSC Study Group, as presented above) that the release of a Mars organism into the Earth’s biosphere is unlikely to have a significant ecological impact or other significant effects. However, it is important to note that with such a level of uncertainty, it is not possible to estimate a probability that the sample could be harmful or harmless in the classical frequency definition of probability (i.e. as the limit of a frequency of a collection of experiments). However it is possible to establish the risk as low, as a consensus of the beliefs of the experts in the field as represented by their experience."Risk assessment survey of microbiologistsThe ESF study didn't actually quote a survey of astrobiologists, so it's a little hard to know what they meant by "it is possible to establish the risk as low, as a consensus of the beliefs of the experts in the field as represented by their experience." It seems likely to be an informal study as they didn't give any statistics or cite any research papers on the topic.I thought I'd try to find out more about this. I don't know of a recent attempt to assess this, but I did find one study from back in 1998, the ecologist Margaret Race of the SETI Institute with Donald MacGregor of Decision Research carried out a survey of microbiologists attending a special five-session colloquium titled “Prospecting for Extraterrestrial Microorganisms and the Origin of Life: An Exercise in Astrobiology”.Asked if they thought there is life on Mars, 40.3% agreed and 32.3% said “don’t know".Asked whether life on Mars could pose a biological threat to Earth, 42.8% said “don’t know.”, 34.4% disagreed, and 22.9% agreed.Asked about our ability to predict with reasonable certainty how life elsewhere would impact our environment, 71.2% disagreed and 10.4% said "I don't know".Asked about various quarantine proposals, approximately half of respondents said that the (then) current proposed methods of quarantine of the samples are either moderately or highly adequate. About a third said “don’t know,”Asked if materials returned to Earth from Mars should be considered hazardous until proven otherwise, all agreed except for 1.5% saying “don’t know,”Asked about the potential for in situ experiments done on the Martian surface to sufficiently determine the safety of Mars samples; 58.2% disagreed, and 21.9% said "Don’t know.”The authors caution however"We have at present no evidence that life exists on other planets or bodies in our solar system, thus the cautious views expressed by respondents in the present study reflect the professional responsibility that most members of scientific groups would express when faced with a paucity of real data.We now know that Mars is far more habitable than it seemed back then. Also of course technology for sample containment has moved on, but so also has our awareness of extremophiles and very small organisms and gene transfer agents. Our in situ technologies have also moved on hugely so the answers about the potential for in situ experiments would surely be far more optimistic nowadays too.So we can't really use this to gauge the opinion of present day microbiologists. I think this survey is perhaps most interesting for the diversity of views amongst microbiologists, when asked for opinions on, for instance, whether there is life on Mars, and whether it could pose a threat to Earth. With the caveat that they were showing professional caution given the responsibility in absence of real data, 22.9% thought that it could present a biological threat to Earth, and all except 1.5% said materials returned should be considered hazardous until proven otherwise.It's the only survey I can find.If anyone reading this knows of a more recent survey, do say! It might be interesting to see how those opinions have changed as a result of new discoveries from Mars.At any rate, everyone with the exception of Robert Zubrin and his keen followers are agreed Earth needs protection from Mars microbes.Zubrin's arguments in: "Contamination from Mars: No Threat"There is only one dissenting voice here as far as I know, in the entire published literature on sample returns from Mars. That's Zubrin, in an article he wrote for the Planetary Report in July / August 2000, also available online here:"Contamination From Mars: No Threat".He also expresses similar views in this transcription of a tele-conference interview with ROBERT ZUBRIN.The November / December 2000 edition of the Planetary Report has the replies to him, by specialists in planetary protection, under the title "No Threat? No Way":A Case for Caution by John Rummel (NASA'S planetary protection officer at the time)Hazardous Until Proven Otherwise, by Margaret Race, a biologist working on planetary protection and Mars sample return for the SETI Institute and specialist in environment impact analysisPractical Safe Science by Kenneth H. Nealson, Director of the Center of Life Detection at NASA's JPL.His arguments get enthusiastic support from the Mars colonization community. If you have heard them, and been convinced by his arguments, it is possible that, you may well think that there is no reason to take any precautions at all. Why do we even discuss this? Surely all those astrobiologists must just be wrong in their views?That's certainly what Zubrin says, saying"The kindest thing that can be said about the above argument is that it is just plain nuts.".In more detail, he says:"The story goes like this: no Earth organism has ever been exposed to Martian organisms, and therefore we would have no resistance to diseases caused by Martian pathogens. Until we can be assured that Mars is free of harmful diseases, we cannot risk exposing a crew to such a peril, which could easily kill them or, if it didn't, return to Earth with the crew to destroy not only the human race but the entire terrestrial biosphere.The kindest thing that can be said about the above argument is that it is just plain nuts....".He then outlines his main arguments against it, which are (this is my paraphrasing of his main points)That diseases are keyed to their hosts, and so Mars life would not be able to survive on, or in a human body. That if there were indigenous Mars host organisms, they'd be as distantly related to us as elm trees, and Dutch elm disease can't infect humans. Also, there's no evidence for macroscopic hosts on Mars anyway, so how can Mars microbes harm humans?Any Mars life that could survive on Earth is already here, transported on meteorites - we receive half a ton of meteorites from Mars every year, and so Earth life is already exposed to Mars life.That Mars life would not be able to survive on Earth because the environment is so different here.That to sterilize a Mars sample would be like sterilizing a dinosaur egg, a terrible loss to science.That every time you turn over the soil you are returning past Earth life to the present which could potentially harm us. So since we don't take precautions when we do that, we don't need to take precautions for samples returned from Mars.As Margaret Race put it in her response:"When I read the opinion piece by Robert Zubrin .... I didn't know how to react. As a biologist working on planetary protection and Mars sample return at the SETI institute, I wondered how an engineer and Mars enthusiast like Zubrin could make such irresponsible and inaccurate statements. Obviously, Zubrin is entitled to his opinion, even if it's based largely on misuse of facts. But what about the readers of The Planetary Report? Don't they deserve more than op-ed humour?" (emphasis mine)Some highlights from the rebuttals of Zubrin by astrobiologists in "No Threat? No Way"To read the articles themselves you need to join the Planetary Society for a year, and then you can download them here. Sorry, I can't share them. But I can mention a few quotes:John Rummel, planetary protection officer for NASA opens out with"There are days when I ask myself, "Is it worth it?" After all, given the heightened awareness about Earth organisms newfound capabilities in extreme environments - to say nothing of the troubles that immune-compromised patients face with normally benign microbes - I figure the need for contamination controls for missions to places possibly harboring life should be obvious. So I sometimes wonder if I as Planetary Protection Officer, can really make a difference. ""I want to thank Bob Zubrin for providing this week's job satisfaction. His opinion piece in the July/August 2000 issue The Planetary Report was so off the mark that I found renewed joy in simply contemplating an answer. "He goes on to make the point that microbes that have not co-evolved with humans can be dangerous and uses Robert Zubrin's Dutch Elm disease example as a reminder that microbes which are not human pathogens can still cause damage.He makes a rather telling point when he uses the example of Radiodurans - the microbe which is able to survive in reactor cooling ponds, as an example to show that microbes can survive in environments that they couldn't have evolved in. There is no way radiodurans could have evolved in reactor cooling ponds. Yet it is able to survive in them just fine.'One canard to point out, however, is Bob's assertion that "microorganisms are adapted to specific environments," and thus Mars microbes would refrain from living on Earth. This is not a reliable speculation. A notable counterexample from Earth is Deinococcus radiodurans, an organism first isolated from nuclear power plants environments that did not exist prior to the 1940s. Where did this microbe come from? Deinococcus radiodurans has since been found in natural environments (dry lakebeds) quite unlike Three-Mile Island. ' (emphasis mine)Margaret Race talks about the basis for planetary protection in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and the recommendations of the study by the National Research Council, "hardily an alarmist group". She also mentions a previous survey for the Planetary Report that found that out of 4,300 members of the Planetary Society, an overwhelming majority agreed to the statement:"all materials brought to Earth from Mars should be considered hazardous until proven otherwise."She likens our precautions for a Mars sample return to installing smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in a building, saying:"He's confident in our impressive technological prowess; he's raring to go and doesn't want anything to slow down or stop our exploration of Mars - especially not burdensome regulations based on very small risks and scientific uncertainty. Yet when he suggests that there's no need for back contamination controls on Mars sample return missions, he's advocating an irresponsible way to cut corners. If he were an architect, would he suggest designing buildings without smoke detectors or fire extinguishers?" (emphasis mine)Kenneth Nealson says that the technology for containing biohazards is not out of reach, and he also, already back in 2001, predicts that in the future we will be able to use in situ searches, writing"Second, a number of measurements could be made onsite (on Mars) that would help in the search for life. The technology of in-situ life detection has lagged behind many other efforts; now may be the time to push for the development of instruments capable of detecting without ambiguity the presence of life at a given site, or more particularly, in a given sample. Sending data back should be a major part of the planetary program, especially as we venture farther from Earth to where sample return is more difficult and expensive. To become more expert in this procedure while on Mars would seem a reasonable and useful endeavor. Why not be safe, have pristine samples to study, and take on our duty as responsible scientists and citizens? I believe that is not too much to ask; in fact, it is prudent and wise to follow such a course.""Doing solid science in a clean and safe way will help ensure the future of the space program. Alternatively, denigrating those who would argue for safe measures regarding the unknown is ultimately irresponsible." (emphasis mine)The arguments are rather easy to demolish, but the details are interesting I think, so it is worth going into it in some depth. You can read them in my book under:Many microbes harmful to humans are not "keyed to their hosts"Zubrin's meteorite argument for safety of a sample returnWhy Mars life would be expected to survive the warmth, and oxidative stress of EarthBut we unearth ancient life all the timeWhy sterilizing a sample from Mars is not like sterilizing a dinosaur eggSO WHAT DO WE DO?So what do we do if we want to return a sample from Mars? Well first, astrobiologists see the sample return as just a technology demo, likely to return materials that are as ambiguous to astrobiology as the samples we already have. That’s becauseMars should have a lot of abiotic organics from comets, meteorites etc. The organics Curiosity found so far are thought to be from meteorites.Any organics from past or present day life is likely to be very hard to find unless you know where to look.For past life we probably need to drill and not just in one place, in many places to have a chance to find it.For present day life, there could be spores anywhere, and some think Viking found life already in the 1970s, but most would say that probably we need to approach the liquid brines such as the RSLs and other habitats to find it. Curiosity 2020 is not going to those places and is not sterilized sufficiently to go there.We don’t know where to look. So probably the sample return will have no life in it past, or present. But we can’t be certain enough of that to say it is safe to return. But the chance of life is low enough so it’s not worth the huge expense of millions of dollars per gram to return as an astrobiological sample given the very high risk that it is as ambiguous as the Mars meteorites and essentially tells us little new.So my own suggestion would be - sterilize the sample if it returns to Earth. With gamma radiation. Similar effect to sterilization on Mars of surface samples.The ESF and NRC say to return it to a hugely expansive facility, half a billion dollars for a less than half kilogram sample. Also vast numbers of new laws to pass, both domestic and international and possibly domestic laws of other countries too as potentially everyone could be impacted in the worst case that it harms the environment of Earth. If you look at Margaret Race’s sketch of what is needed by way of legislation to permit an unsterilized potentially life bearing sample, you’d be astonished. We should have started on the process already to have a chance of a sample return in the 2030s I think. For my summary:Legal requirements in detailFor her paper, see hereWhy go to all that bother for what is probably a technology demo for astrobiology? Doesn’t harm any of the geology to sterilize it. And if you think there is a chance of astrobiology, keep half the sample above GEO, sterilize the rest, go to GEO to study telerobotically for astrobiology. Also, you’d have many traces of extant life after sterilization if there was any.Astrobiologists generally don’t see the point in a sample return for their discipline, not at that huge expense, more expensive than the worlds most expensive diamonds to return something not much different for them from the Mars meteorites we have already. They’d much rather the money was spent on in situ searches on Mars to look for life there. Because returning a sample based only on organics and geochemistry - and even chiral signatures (which meteorite organics have) is very very unlikely to return life in their view. Not with the desert conditions, reactive surface chemistry and the ionizing radiation that destroys dormant life over time periods of millions of years, and erases the signal of life pretty much totally over hundreds of millions to billions of years. Eventually just to gases and water vapour. Unless it is deep below the surface, but then it has to be buried quickly too, in just the right conditions. We can find life there, but they think the only way is in situ searches.For present day life also, often one rock has life and another right next to it doesn’t. Even a sample from a rock that bears life could easily have no trace of it, if you drill in the wrong place, as you are very likely to do if you don’t know what you are looking for and where it is. But Curiosity2020 won’t even target present day life.This is based on extracts from my book:OK to Touch Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps?

I’m in a weird position because I’m a moderate Eisenhower Republican but not a Trump supporter and even in my Republican echo chamber, I rarely find rabid Trump supporters. It’s not because Trump supporters are shy and live in fear of bleeding heart liberals looking down on them, it’s just because they’re really regional. The reason you don’t encounter many is because you likely aren’t in their region or age demographic. Trump supporters are largely rural people and are in the minority on the coasts, university towns, and large cities.My mother lives in a small town in Indiana that I’d guess is about 90% Trump supporting and no one there is the least bit shy about it or ashamed of anything the man has said or done. They still have Trump/Pence 2016 signs in their yards and red MAGA hats on their heads. Most communities in rural Indiana are like that as are, I’d guess, most rural communities across the south and Midwest.I’ve never done a survey but I’d even guess that Trump has better than 50% support among Democrats in these areas because of his stance on trade. These people lot their jobs to globalization/free trade and they pretty much despise corporate Democrats like the Clintons.I remember a line from The Handmaid’s Tale, “Better isn’t better for everyone.” Free trade was great for Wall Street and the investment class but it decimated the manufacturing sector and the union workers that relied on those manufacturing jobs to put food on the table. Many of the factories that were lost because of free trade were lost in those same rural areas that now support Donald Trump. The people that in the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s made televisions, clothing, furniture, and toys were left unemployed by free trade and Donald Trump promised them their lives back. While some enjoyed higher stock prices and cheaper consumer goods, others were left unemployed with no hope of having the same standard of living again. These are the people that support Trump pretty much no matter what.As to how he won the 2016 presidential election. I’m no expert but I was amazed by Hillary Clinton’s lack of campaigning in the Great Lakes states during the summer and fall of 2016. I thought Clinton had a certain victory because Trump was a terrible campaigner but, somehow, Clinton managed to be worse. I don’t think that she made an appearance at a single state fair in Midwest during the 2016 campaign and I don’t remember ever seeing a candidate just ignore those state fairs before. Personally, I’d planned on attending one of her rallies at either the Indiana or Ohio state fairs and I don’t think she ever had one.In my opinion, it’s impossible to win in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin without actually campaigning there and Mrs. Clinton either didn’t at all or just barely did. And, in my opinion, it’s not possible to become president without winning at least a few of the Great Lakes states. There just aren’t enough electoral votes on the coasts to win.