Misurata rebels show ingenuity in Libya war

Los Angeles Times: World: Misurata rebels show ingenuity in Libya war

Reporting from Misurata, Libya—

The five rebel gunmen crept tensely along the side road's shuttered storefronts, past the dark furniture shop with the broken windows and the streetlamps decorated with plastic flowers. Perpendicular to them was Tripoli Street, the heart of Misurata, where Moammar Kadafi's snipers hide in office buildings and rake the city with bullets.

Their feet crunched the concrete and metal debris scattered on the ground, but the men were otherwise silent. They'd done this before.

At the intersection with Tripoli, one of the men darted into the traffic circle, now filled with sand berms, truck frames, tires and a torched tank. He lunged to one knee and began firing, shooting again and again at a building down the block.

His four colleagues pivoted around the corner and sprayed protective fire, not wincing at the bullets whistling by.

Shielded, the first man raced back to the side street. His companions quickly swung back around the corner, all of them temporarily out of harm's way. There, they pumped their fists and hoisted their weapons, all of them buzzed by the skirmish.

The men of the so-called Shahid group had just fought another small battle in the ongoing guerrilla war in Misurata, the sole western city holding out against Kadafi's forces. This band, and others like it, has been integral to the city's defense.

When eastern Libya erupted into anti-Kadafi protests in mid-February, Misurata and other cities in the west quickly followed. But when Kadafi answered with gunfire, crushing protests in the smaller western city of Zawiya, Misurata residents vowed not to suffer the same fate.

By March, this city of 500,000, the third-largest in Libya, had mobilized, with its own secretive city leadership and the emergence of young gangs to guard Misurata's neighborhoods.

The bands, each with a commander, have quickly evolved, coordinating the supply of weapons and trucks, defending Misurata's rebel-held neighborhoods and answering emergency battle calls. In their David-vs.-Goliath fight, they have shown aplomb and ingenuity, sneaking up on a tank and attaching a bomb to its bottom or side, ambushing soldiers from rooftops with heavy machine guns, even burning small buildings with Kadafi's snipers lurking inside.

Their most inventive act may have been partitioning Tripoli Street with sand-filled trucks into three sections. Now Kadafi's snipers are holed up in a life insurance building, post office and a trade bank; from there they open fire on the surrounding areas.

But with daily shelling and with the city isolated, Misurata and its gangs fear they are living on borrowed time. The pressure builds by the day. Bread and fuel lines grow longer, and more and more Libyans are thinking of leaving the city. The city's pool of men is limited. Streets have been unofficially renamed for those who have died on their pavement.

All of the fighters know that, at some point, their hand-me-down and captured weapons could run out and the shrinking number of fighters could be overrun. They wish NATO troops would help them flush out Kadafi's fighters and destroy the antiaircraft guns, mortars and artillery that hammer Misurata. They've asked. Except for a blunt "no" from the U.S., the response has been equivocal.

So they fight on.

These improvised gangs devoted to the community's survival are the equivalent of neighborhood watch groups on steroids. Many are family members and longtime friends, with ties that go back years; others are strangers who have coalesced over the last five weeks into fighting units. Most are in their teens, 20s and 30s.

The weapons they own are a treasure won by looting abandoned Kadafi militia barracks in Misurata and by plundering the assault rifles of defeated Kadafi fighters. When one rebel wins a better weapon, he hands down his old rifle to a new recruit. If a foot soldier dies, his weapon is passed on to another fighter. Every bullet and every life counts in this war, a war in which the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against the people of Misurata.

Here off Tripoli Street, the Shahid group is intent on harassing Kadafi fighters ensconced in buildings. Like each militia, the Shahid group goes by the name of its leader, Khalid Shahid. His fighters describe him as a 37-year-old who gathered weapons and vehicles in the early days of the fighting and quickly gained a following.

Like other bands roaming the streets of Misurata, the Shahid men have proved quick studies of guerrilla tactics. They coordinate by word of mouth and by radio with other militias, most ranging from 20 to 60 men, and with the city's military operations room. One militia on Tripoli Street is called the Head, another Khatiba and another Abu Jihad. The militias have developed radio code names for the enemy: Tanks are "cockroaches," Kadafi's fighters are "ants."

It is the family and neighborhood ties that keep the Shahid group and other units together — that and the camaraderie forged in the trenches.

Radwan Bilal, 19, is typical of the fighters in Misurata. He found like-minded men who wanted to take on Kadafi after the demonstrations began. Soon he was one of the original seven who gathered around Shahid. The group quickly ballooned to more than 30.

At the beginning of March, Bilal joined Shahid and an informal group of rebels stalking a Kadafi paramilitary unit that had stopped to buy supplies on Tripoli Street. The rebels blocked the intersections and overpowered the men, taking them captive; Bilal was given his first Kalashnikov.

He's now a cross between seasoned rebel fighter and restless neighborhood kid. Showing his youth, he bragged that, during the rebellion, he had seen through night-vision goggles a Kadafi sniper kissing a mercenary. He hails from the center of Misurata, around Tripoli Street; this is his home.

Others came to Tripoli Street at the beginning of March because they saw it as the biggest battleground in the city. They stayed, and now the men there are family in this fight. They patrol the streets around the clock, slipping away to their homes every few days for a shower and to assure relatives of their safety.

Abu Bakr Zain joined the Shahid group on Tripoli Street in this way. First he trailed another fighter, offering him help with supplies. When his friend took a rocket-propelled grenade from a Kadafi fighter, he offered his old weapon to Zain. From there, Zain's skills grew. Soon after, he said, he used a borrowed machine gun to kill four Kadafi fighters from a roof.

Kadafi's loyalists fired off a tank round at the building, but he was already on the move. "Street fighting taught me never stay in one place too long," Zain said.

Two of his cousins recently joined him on the front. Tripoli Street is his post now, he says, and he will live or die here.

Protests in North as Nigerian Incumbent Leads in Vote Tally

Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean. The three largest and most influential ethnic groups in Nigeria are the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. In terms of religion Nigeria is roughly split half and half between Muslims and Christians with a very small minority who practice traditional religion.

The people of Nigeria have an extensive history. Archaeological evidence shows that human habitation of the area dates back to at least 9000 BCE. The area around the Benue and Cross River is thought to be the original homeland of the Bantu migrants who spread across most of central and southern Africa in waves between the 1st millennium BCE and the 2nd millennium.

The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country. This name was coined by Flora Shaw, the future wife of Baron Lugard, a British colonial administrator, in the late 19th century.

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, the seventh most populous country in the world, and the most populous country in the world in which the majority of the population is black. It is listed among the "Next Eleven" economies, and is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The economy of Nigeria is one of the fastest growing in the world, with the International Monetary Fund projecting a growth of 9% in 2008 and 8.3% in 2009.

Nigeria's human rights record remains poor and government officials at all levels continue to commit serious abuses.[109]

According to the U.S. Department of State,[109] the most significant human rights problems are: extrajudicial killings and use of excessive force by security forces; impunity for abuses by security forces; arbitrary arrests; prolonged pretrial detention; judicial corruption and executive influence on the judiciary; rape, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners, detainees and suspects; harsh and life‑threatening prison and detention center conditions; human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution and forced labor; societal violence and vigilante killings; child labor, child abuse and child sexual exploitation; female genital mutilation (FGM); domestic violence; discrimination based on sex, ethnicity, region and religion; restrictions on freedom of assembly, movement, press, speech and religion; infringement of privacy rights; and the abridgement of the right of citizens to change the government.

Under the Shari'a penal code that applies to Muslims in twelve northern states, offenses such as alcohol consumption, homosexuality, infidelity and theft carry harsh sentences, including amputation, lashing, stoning and long prison terms.

There are 521 languages in use in Nigeria. English is the official language, but most tribes prefer to use their own language, and thus find it difficult to communicate with other tribes or the outside world.

The New York Times: Protests in North as Nigerian Incumbent Leads in Vote Tally
Amid violent protests from his main opponent’s supporters, the incumbent Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, appeared set for an easy election victory after a weekend poll judged by analysts to be perhaps the country’s fairest ever.

Mr. Jonathan, a mild-mannered former vice president and zoologist, was leading his opponent, the former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, by over 10 million votes, or around two-to-one, according to a leading civil-society group which based its analysis on results from the country’s top electoral body.

While analysts applauded an absence of the kind of fraud, ballot stealing and violence that have plagued elections since the country’s return to democracy 12 years ago, Saturday’s vote was darkened by what has happened since.

In the northern city of Kano, thousands of youths carrying blades, daggers and sticks marched through the streets on Monday, setting bonfires, tearing down billboards belonging to Mr. Jonathan’s party and burning the house of the former speaker of the lower house of the Nigerian parliament. They shouted, “Only Buhari!”

Mr. Buhari, whose mid-1980s military regime was noted for its stern repression of dissent, was refusing to accept the result Monday afternoon, and his supporters had taken to the streets in northern Nigerian cities to protest, set alight tires and burn down buildings and houses linked to Mr. Jonathan’s ruling People’s Democratic Party.

The results split along regional, religious and ethnic lines, with Mr. Jonathan scoring big totals in the largely Christian south and southwest, and Mr. Buhari leading in the Muslim north of Nigeria.

In Kaduna, there were numerous deaths, and mosques, churches and houses of PDP members were burned down. A police station was also attacked, said Shehu Sani, a leading Nigerian human rights activist who lives there and whose organization has representatives all over the city. He said the electoral commission headquarters in Kaduna had also been burned down by a pro-Buhari mob.

“They are moving street by street, house by house, looking for ruling party members,” Mr. Sani said. “I am holed up in the house here. I can see the smoke, and I can hear the gunfire. There is a state of confusion everywhere,” Mr. Sani said.

Even before the outbreak of Monday’s violence, analysts had warned that Mr. Buhari’s campaign — unlike Mr. Jonathan’s — had not done enough to distance itself in advance from the endemic violence that has plagued every Nigerian election since the return to democratic rule in 1999.

“He has been asked to condemn violence, and he has not,” said a western diplomat in Abuja, of Mr. Buhari. “He is saying, ‘We don’t trust the system, take the system in your own hands.’”

Despite the outbursts of violence on Monday, the implications of the clean vote, for a new democracy still struggling to establish itself after years of dictatorship, are big. Analysts noted that the winner would most likely have a legitimacy denied to predecessors elected under murky circumstances, including ballot stealing, a fraudulent polling list and the violent intimidation of voters, all features of the last presidential election, the widely denounced 2007 vote.

None of those flaws appeared to be a significant part of the electoral landscape on Saturday.

Compared with earlier years, relatively few people, about 39, were killed in pre-election violence, according to the Election Situation Room, a Nigerian civil society group. There have been several bomb blasts as well, notably in the north, home to a militant Islamic sect. But the systematic manipulation that plagued previous elections appeared to be absent, experts said.

Nigeria, which is America’s fourth biggest supplier of crude oil, Africa’s most populous country and home to major investments by American energy companies, is considered by the United States to be “one of the two most important countries in sub-Saharan Africa,” Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson said in a conference call with reporters from Nigeria and elsewhere last month. The other major country usually cited is South Africa.

This year’s election was being closely watched by American officials because, despite shaking off military rule in 1999, Nigeria has maintained an ambiguous, less-than-democratic status, undermined by large-scale corruption, fraud and an elections agency that appeared to increase rather than combat those flaws.

Even more than the outcome, with Mr. Jonathan’s victory largely assumed, the process has been under scrutiny. Already, with Mr. Jonathan’s appointment of a respected political scientist, Attahiru Jega, last year to run the Independent National Electoral Commission, a will to reform appeared evident. Mr. Jega has received high marks for the expeditious cleaning of a voter list that included thousands of illegitimate names — of dead people and celebrities — using a computer registration system deployed at thousands of polling places in the vast country of 150 million, and taking electronic fingerprints of every voter.

Already, before Saturday’s vote, the parliamentary elections last week were “peaceful and credible in most parts of the country,” said Peter Lewis, a Nigeria expert at Johns Hopkins University. “This is the first poll they’ve had under a civilian administration where they’ve had a reasonable degree of organization,” Mr. Lewis said.

Nigerian analysts concurred. “At this stage we’re satisfied so far,” said Clement Nwankwo, the executive director of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Center in Abuja. “For a lot of Nigerians it was really a relief to see the elections go as peacefully as they did last Saturday.”

Body of kidnapped activist found in Gaza City

Palestine was a conventional name, among others, used between 450BC and 1948AD to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.

The boundaries of the region have changed throughout history, and were first defined in modern times by the Franco-British boundary agreement (1920) and the Transjordan memorandum during the British Mandate for Palestine. Today, the region comprises the country of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Today, the term Palestine is also used to refer to either the Palestinian territories or the State of Palestine.

Other terms for the same area include Canaan, Zion, the Land of Israel, Syria Palaestina, Southern Syria, Jund Filastin, Outremer, the Holy Land and the Southern Levant.

Los Angeles Times: Body of kidnapped activist found in Gaza City
The body of a pro-Palestinian activist from Italy is found after a small Islamist group said it was holding him in exchange for its leader. The group later retracted its claim of responsibility but defended the killing, which Hamas condemned.

Reporting from Gaza City—

The body of kidnapped Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni was discovered in an abandoned house just hours after a radical Islamist group announced that it was holding the pro-Palestinian advocate in exchange for the release of its leader, Gaza officials said Friday.

The slaying drew immediate expressions of shock and condemnation from Palestinian leaders, Gaza Strip residents and Arrigoni's colleagues, who said the 36-year-old had come to the Gaza Strip in 2008 with the advocacy group International Solidarity Movement to help Palestinians in the impoverished coastal territory.

It was the first abduction of a Westerner in Gaza since 2007 and, human rights officials said, the only instance of such a kidnapping victim being slain.

On Thursday, a small Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda posted a video of a bloodied, blindfolded Arrigoni. The Tawhid and Jihad group set a late Friday deadline for the release of its leader, who had been arrested by Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has controlled Gaza since 2007.

On Friday, the group retracted its claim of responsibility but defended the killing, saying it was the result of Hamas policies.

Hamas police officials said they discovered Arrigoni's body in Gaza City long before the deadline. They also said they had arrested two suspects.

"This crime will not remain unpunished," said senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. In a statement, the Hamas Interior Ministry condemned the slaying as a "heinous crime that does not reflect our values."

Hamas, which itself is labeled a terrorist group by Israel and the United States, is increasingly under pressure from smaller, more extreme groups that complain it has become too moderate in its battle against Israel. During the last 18 months, Hamas police have arrested several members of such rival groups and killed one top spiritual leader during an armed clash in August 2009.

Zahar suggested that Israel might be responsible for the slaying in an attempt to scare off international activists from coming and working in Gaza, though he offered no evidence. Next month, he noted, a protest ship of international activists is expected to attempt to break Israel's naval blockade around Gaza.

Since arriving in Gaza in 2009, Arrigoni had been involved in various projects, his friends said, including assisting Gaza fishermen. Bassam Massri, a friend, said he was saddened by the possibility that Arrigoni was killed at the hands of the people he was trying to help.

"I'm ashamed and every Palestinian should feel ashamed too," Massri said. "We are sorry, Arrigoni. We let you down. You are a brave man."

Bigger stars, stronger industry to boost Cannes

Cannes, France. Cannes is pronounced Cahn.

Cannes is located on the Cote d'Azure. It is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Communes of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department.

Reuters: Bigger stars, stronger industry to boost Cannes

(Reuters) - Bigger stars on the carpet, a stronger film industry and the much anticipated comeback of U.S. director Terrence Malick are set to give this year's Cannes Film Festival a boost after a subdued 2010.

Among the most hotly anticipated titles in competition at Cannes this year is "The Tree of Life," a period drama starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn and directed by Terrence Malick, who makes a comeback at Cannes after failing to finish his movie on time last year.

Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, known for stark and emotional movies like "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark," is also back in the running with "Melancholia," a science fiction drama starring Kirsten Dunst and Kiefer Sutherland.

Pedro Almodovar, the Spanish director known for his colorful images, takes a new tack with "The Skin That I Inhabit," a revenge story featuring Antonio Banderas about a surgeon on the hunt for the men who killed his daughter.

Unveiling the list of nominated movies for the festival, an oasis for independent filmmakers, organizer Thierry Fremaux told journalists that the movie business was almost fully recovered from a year marked by financing woes for art-house productions.

Last year's competition on the French Riviera lacked buzz with fewer Hollywood A-List stars than normal and a backdrop of economic gloom -- as well as a volcanic ash cloud that created chaos for air travel across Europe just before the gathering.

"The official selection this year bears witness to the good health of the market for cinema," Fremaux told a news conference ahead of the May 11 to 22 festival.

"The Festival has been through some tough years but we can now see that movie production is making a comeback."

Taking care to watch every film submitted for a place in the competition, volunteer screeners whittled down 1,715 films -- some 60 more than last year -- to a list of 49 full-length features, 19 of which will be in the main competition.

WOODY ALLEN MEETS NICOLAS SARKOZY

Other titles in competition for the Palme d'Or, or Golden Palm, top prize include "Ishimei," a 3-D samurai movie directed by Takashi Miike, Nanni Moretti's "Habemus Papam," a film about the relationship between a pope and his therapist, and Lynne Ramsay's "We Need to Talk About Kevin" about a boy who goes on a shooting spree at school.

As always in Cannes, much attention is given to movies which are not nominated for any award but shown during the festival to drum up some buzz ahead of their box office release.

That is the case with Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris," a romantic comedy shot on location featuring Owen Wilson, Kathy Bates and a cameo appearance from France's first lady Carla Bruni, which will open the festival on May 11.

Another movie sure to catch the attention of the French public is "L'Exercise de l'Etat," which tells the story of President Nicolas Sarkozy trying to find his wife the day after he won the 2007 presidential election.

In a sign the sometimes arcane festival is warming to technology, titles were submitted over the internet for the first time, many of them shot on cheap digital cameras, with an increase in movies using 3-D imagery, Fremaux said.

The festival's jury, presided by U.S. actor Robert De Niro, has already awarded an honorary Palme d'Or prize to Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director of classic films such as "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Last Emperor."

"The tone is somewhat lighter this year," said Fremaux, to which festival director Gilles Jacob replied: "Within reason."

Belarus metro blast kills 11, Lukashenko sees plot

Belarus provinces
Belarus and surrounding countries

Belarus and surrounding countries

Reuters: Belarus metro blast kills 11, Lukashenko sees plot
(Reuters) - A blast tore through a crowded metro station in the Belarus capital Minsk in evening rush hour on Monday, killing 11 people in what President Alexander Lukashenko said was an attempt to destabilize the country.

The blast occurred on a platform at around 6 p.m. at the Oktyabrskaya metro station -- one of the city's busiest underground rail junctions -- about 100 meters (yards) from the main presidential headquarters.

Witnesses said it tore through a crush of waiting passengers just as a train pulled in. "There was blood everywhere, in splashes and in pools. I saw pieces of flesh. It was terrible," a 47-year-old man, who gave his name only as Viktor, said.

"Prosecutors qualify this as a terrorist act," a source in Lukashenko's administration told Reuters.

As police placed the capital on high alert, Lukashenko, the autocratic leader who has led the ex-Soviet country since 1994, linked the explosion to a previous unsolved blast in 2008, saying: "These are perhaps links in a single chain."

"We must find out who gained by undermining peace and stability in the country, who stands behind this," he said in televised remarks.

Lukashenko, who is at odds with Western governments over a police crackdown on an opposition rally against his re-election last December, said: "I do not rule out that this (the blast) was a gift from abroad."

He was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying 11 people had been killed and 100 injured. A presidential administration source later said 126 people had been injured.

The European Union and the United States have imposed a travel ban on Lukashenko and his closest associates because of the December 19 crackdown. He himself has said the opposition rally was an attempted coup financed by the West.

Lukashenko, in his remarks, referred back to July 2008 when a home-made bomb wounded about 50 people at an open air concert he was attending. The crime was never solved.

TIGHTLY POLICED STATE

Despite this, acts of deliberate violence are unusual in Belarus, a tightly policed ex-Soviet republic of 10 million people which shares borders with EU members Poland, Latvia and Lithuania and with Russia and Ukraine.

One opposition figure said he feared Lukashenko would use the incident to crack down even more harshly on his political rivals.

"Regardless of who organized and ordered the blast, the government will be tempted to use it as an excuse to tighten the screws ... I am afraid they will use it," said Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the opposition United Civic Party.

Victims were carried out of the station and the injured were given on-the-spot medical treatment by ambulance workers before being taken to hospital. Reporters saw at least one dead person lying under sheeting outside the station.

A 52-year-old man who gave his name as Igor said a train was coming into the station when the blast occurred on the platform.

"The doors (of the train) opened and then there was an explosion," he said. "I saw people lying on the floor without moving. There was a lot of blood."

Alexander, 23, said: "All we saw in the metro was a big flash, everything started to shake, people were lying everywhere with torn-off arms and legs."

"We were lucky to be close to the escalator and the explosion was behind us," one girl told Reuters television.

Passengers, some bleeding from cuts to the face, groped their way through clouds of smoke to find a way out to the street.

Police, civilians reported dead in Protests in Syria

News.Xinhaunet.com: Police, civilians reported dead in Protests in Syria
BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhuanet) -- A mass protest in the southern Syrian city of Deraa turned bloody Friday, with the government and protesters both claiming to have sustained heavy casualties.

Thousands of people took to the streets in Deraa, which has been a focus for anti-government rallies.

State television reported armed groups had killed 19 policemen, while activists and residents said security forces had opened fire on the protesters, killing at least 17 people.

There were reports of similar protests taking place in several other cities throughout the country

Ivory Coast

The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire is a country in West Africa. It is commonly known in English as Ivory Coast.[It has an area of 322,462 km2, and borders the countries of Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be 20,617,068 in 2009.

Prior to its colonization by Europeans, Côte d'Ivoire was home to several states, including Gyaaman, the Kong Empire, and Baoulé. There were two Anyi kingdoms, Indénié and Sanwi, which attempted to retain their separate identity through the French colonial period and after Côte d'Ivoire's independence. An 1843–1844 treaty made Côte d'Ivoire a "protectorate" of France and in 1893, it became a French colony as part of the European scramble for Africa.

Côte d'Ivoire became independent on 7 August 1960. From 1960 to 1993, the country was led by Félix Houphouët-Boigny. It maintained close political and economic association with its West African neighbours, while at the same time maintaining close ties to the West, especially to France. Since the end of Houphouët-Boigny's rule, Côte d'Ivoire has experienced one coup d’état, in 1999, and a civil war, which broke out in 2002.

A political agreement between the government and the rebels brought a return to peace.

Côte d'Ivoire is a republic with a strong executive power invested in the President. Its de jure capital is Yamoussoukro and the biggest city is the port city of Abidjan. The country is divided into 19 regions and 81 departments. It is a member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, African Union, La Francophonie, Latin Union, Economic Community of West African States and South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone.

The official language is French, although many of the local languages are widely used, including Baoulé, Dioula, Dan, Anyin and Cebaara Senufo. The main religions are Islam, Christianity (primarily Roman Catholic) and various indigenous religions.

Through production of coffee and cocoa, the country was an economic powerhouse during the 1960s and 1970s in West Africa. However, Côte d'Ivoire went through an economic crisis in the 1980s, leading to the country's period of political and social turmoil. The 21st century Ivoirian economy is largely market-based and relies heavily on agriculture, with smallholder cash crop production being dominant