������Ƶ

CASABLANCA: Flocks of sheep once quilted Morocco’s mountain pastures, stretched across Algeria’s vast plateaus and grazed along Tunisia’s green coastline. But the cascading effects of climate change have sparked a region-wide shortage that is being felt acutely as Muslims throughout North Africa celebrate Eid Al-Adha.

Each year, Muslims slaughter sheep to honor a passage of the Qur’an in which the prophet Ibrahim prepared to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, who intervened and replaced the child with a sheep.

But this year, rising prices and falling supply are creating new challenges, breeders and potential buyers throughout the region say.

At a market in suburban Algiers last week, breeders explained to angry patrons that their prices had increased because the cost of everything needed to raise sheep, including animal feed, transport and veterinary care, had grown.

Slimane Aouadi stood watching livestock pens, discussing with his wife whether to buy a sheep to celebrate this year’s Eid.

“It’s the same sheep as the one I bought last year, the same look and the same weight, but it costs $75 more,” Aouadi, a doctor, said.

Amid soaring inflation, sheep can sell for more than $1,200, an exorbitant amount in a country where average monthly incomes hover below $270.

Tradition meets reality

Any disruption to the ritual sacrifice can be sensitive, a blow to religious tradition and source of anger toward rising prices and the hardship they bring.

So Morocco and Algeria have resorted to unprecedented measures.

Algerian officials earlier this year announced plans to import a staggering 1 million sheep to make up for domestic shortages. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI broke with tradition and urged Muslims to abstain from the Eid sacrifice. Local officials across the kingdom have closed livestock markets, preventing customers from buying sheep for this year’s celebrations.

“Our country is facing climatic and economic challenges that have resulted in a substantial decline in livestock numbers. Performing the sacrifice in these difficult circumstances will cause real harm to large segments of our people, especially those with limited incomes,” the king, who is also Morocco’s highest religious authority, wrote in a February letter read on national television.

Trucks have unloaded thousands of sheep in new markets in Algiers and the surrounding suburbs. University of Toulouse agro-economist Lotfi Gharnaout told the state-run newspaper El Moudjahid that Algeria’s import strategy could cost between $230 and $260 million and still not even meet nationwide demand.

Thinning pastures

Overgrazing has long strained parts of North Africa where the population is growing and job opportunities beyond herding and farming are scarce. But after seven years of drought, it’s the lack of rainfall and skyrocketing feed prices that are now shrinking herds. Drought conditions, experts say, have degraded forage lands where shepherds graze their flocks and farmers grow cereals to be sold as animal feed.

With less supply, prices have spiked beyond the reach of middle class families who have historically purchased sheep for slaughter.

Moroccan economist Najib Akesbi said shrinking herds stemmed directly from vegetation loss in grazing areas. The prolonged drought has compounded inflation already fueled by the war in Ukraine.

“Most livestock farming in North Africa is pastoral, which means it’s farming that relies purely on nature, like wild plants and forests, and vegetation that grows off rainwater,” Akesbi, a former professor at Hassan II Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine, said.

For breeders, he added, livestock serve as a kind of bank, assets they sell to cover expenses and repay debts. With consecutive years of drought and rising feed costs, breeders are seeing their reserves drained.

Pressed herders

With less natural vegetation, breeders have to spend more on supplemental feed, Acharf Majdoubi, president of Morocco’s Association of Sheep and Goat Breeders said. In good years, pastures can nourish nearly all of what sheep flocks require, but in dry years, it can be as low as half or a third of the feed required.

“We have to make up the rest by buying feed like straw and barley,” he said.

Not only do they need more feed. The price of barley, straw and alfalfa – much of which has to be imported – has also spiked.

In Morocco, the price of barley and straw are three times what they were before the drought, while the price of alfalfa has more than doubled.

“The future of this profession is very difficult. Breeders leave the countryside to immigrate to the city, and some will never come back,” Achraf Majdoubi said.

DENVER: A man who told investigators he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people” when he threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators raising awareness of Israeli hostages appeared briefly in federal court for the first time Friday to face a hate crime charge.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, sat in the jury box in a Denver courtroom handcuffed and dressed in a green jail uniform, a US Marshal sitting in the row behind him. Listening to the proceedings in Arabic through an interpreter, he answered “yes” and “I understand” in Arabic as Magistrate Judge Timothy P. O’Hara explained his rights.
Before the brief hearing started, Soliman mostly looked away from the crowded gallery, but after the proceedings he nodded and smiled as his lawyers spoke to him.
A conviction on a hate crime charge typically carries a penalty of no more than 10 years in prison, but Assistant US Attorney Melissa Hindman said if the crime involves an attempted killing, the sentence can be as long as life in prison.
Soliman is represented by public defenders who do not comment on their cases to the media. He is scheduled to appear in federal court again June 18 for a hearing in which federal prosecutors will be asked to show they have enough evidence to prosecute Soliman. He’ll face a similar hearing in state court July 15.
He is accused in Sunday’s attack on the weekly demonstration in Boulder, which investigators say he planned for a year. The victims include 15 people and a dog. He has also been charged in state court in Boulder with attempted murder and assault counts as well as counts related to the 18 Molotov cocktails police say he carried to the demonstration.
Investigators say Soliman told them he had intended to kill all of the roughly 20 participants at the weekly demonstration on Boulder’s popular Pearl Street pedestrian mall, but he threw just two of his 18 Molotov cocktails while yelling “Free Palestine.” Soliman told investigators he tried to buy a gun but was not able to because he was not a “legal citizen.”
Federal authorities say Soliman, an Egyptian national, has been living in the US illegally.
Soliman did not carry out his full plan “because he got scared and had never hurt anyone before,” police wrote in an arrest affidavit.
Not all of the victims were physically injured. Some of them are considered victims because they were in the area and could potentially have been hurt in the attack, 20th Judicial District Michael Dougherty said Thursday.
Three victims remained in the hospital Friday, UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital spokesperson Dan Weaver said.
The dog was among the injured, which resulted in an animal cruelty charge being filed against Soliman, Dougherty said.
Soliman told investigators that he waited until after his daughter graduated from school before launching the attack, according to court documents.
Federal authorities want to deport Soliman’s wife and their five children, who range from 4 to 17 years old, but a judge issued an order Wednesday halting deportation proceedings until a lawsuit challenging their deportation can be considered. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin has described their claims as “absurd” and “an attempt to delay justice.”
US immigration officials took Soliman’s wife and children into custody Tuesday. They are being held at a family immigration detention center in Texas.
According to a court document filed Friday by the family’s lawyers, law enforcement had arranged for Soliman’s wife and children to stay in a hotel while their home was searched following the attack. After two nights, Homeland Security Investigations agents told the family they had to move to another hotel for their safety and were then met by between 10 and 20 plainclothes officers who took them into custody, the filing said.
According to the document, one of them allegedly told Soliman’s wife, “You have to pay for the consequences of what you did.”