Cape Verde's Historic World Cup Debut

The Economist . Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bl or . Today on the show, will America keep supporting Africa's counter-terrorism efforts? And as the World Cup approaches, Cape Verde is competing for the first time . First up though It would be an understatement to say that Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, is a political survivor. Though the collapse of Israel's government has repeatedly been predicted in the past couple of years, and many have wished for it. Only now begins the campaign and the fight for Netanyahu's future. The Knesset Isles Parliament will begin voting on a dissolution bill . Answer Pfeffer is our Israel correspondent and the author of a biography of Binjamin Netanyahu . This may bring the election forward perhaps to the beginning of September. As it is, the election is supposed to take place at the latest by the end of October. So whatever the date turns out to be, it 's already need the in election season. As so many Israeli elections over the last decade or so, this will also be yet again a referendum on Netanyahu as Prime Minister. So his career, his political future is on the line . Just tell me what's triggered this vote now. So the most immediate trigger of the vote is a dispute between Atania o and the ultra-orthodox parties of his coalition. He promised them four years ago that this government would pass a law exempting students of religious seminaries from national service, serving in the army mainly. He's failed to do that so far and they've finally given up on waiting. And this also may be the end of his very long and very strong alliance with those auto orthodox parties, though it's We've got a campaign coming. Gaza is obviously going to feature hugely. What impact do you think it will have a bigger as far as Israelis are concerned, Gaza still means one thing, and that's October 7, 23, the surprise attack by Hamas, the massacre of over 1200 Israelis on that day, and everything that led up to it, the failures of intelligence, the policy that Netanyahu had of basically allowing Hamas to entrench themselves in Gaza, those are still things that greatly concern Israelis why it happened, how to prevent it from happening again. Natanya was so far refused to even set up a national commission of inquiry and that is something that all the opposition parties are demanding. So I think that will almost certainly dominate a large part of the election campaign. You say that Netanyahu has refused to set up a commission of inquiry. Essentially what I think you're saying there is that there has been no reckoning about what's happened in Gaza. There's been no proper discussion about the conduct of the war. You're talking here now about two things. You're talking here about what happened on October 7 and everything that led up before October 7.th Then you're talking about the conduct of the war, which is everything that's happened in Gaza over the past two and a half years. And that's something that obviously the world is much more focused on, the fact that over 70,000 people, the majority of whom were civilians had been killed in Gaza, the destruction of much of the area, the fact that the population there were brought to the brink of starvation. And that I don't think we'll be very much in this election because Israelis are still so fixated on what happened on October 7th. And also because Israelis regard the war in Gaza. And it doesn't matter whether these Israelis are pro-Natanyao or anti-Natanyao, overwhelmingly regard the war in Gaza as a war that Israel had to fight because of what happened, because of the Hamas attacks. The debate on how that war was conducted and all the bad things that happened, the the destruction, the death in Gaza, I think it somet'hings which will play out in Israel for years to come and it needs both a different government that is capable of starting this national reckoning. And I think also for all of Israelis a processing of the trauma of what happened, and that's if at all, it's only starting now. And will Lebanon or the conflict in Iran play a part? So the fact that Israel is still fighting, or there are just brief lulls, perhaps in the two inconclusive wars, one in Leban against Hezbollah and one with Iran, where Israel was fighting together with America. They will also overshadow the election. A majority of Israelis believe that it was justified to go to war against Hezbollah and Lebanon and against Iran over the nuclear and ballistic missile programs. But they at the same time don't see what these wars have achieved because those threats still exist. So the criticism is not so much of Netanyahu going to war, but failing to prosecute that war in a decisive manner. We should remind ourselves that even before October the 7th, Netanyahu was very controversial, not least for the judicial reform s he was pushing through. Remind us about those. So very quickly, when the Natanial government came to power in December 2022, they pushed a raft of what they called the judicial re form, which was basically a series of laws aimed at weakening the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal establishment that sparked many months of very bitter and large protests in Israel. That still, I think, will be an issue in this election. And I think there is also a broader issue in this election where it's a referendum of not just on the Tanyao, very much will be that, but also on this coalition of religious and far right parties which set out to achieve these radical changes in Israel and which at least half of Israelis are against. And I think they'll be voting on that as well when this election is held. And Shell, a basic but important question. Will Netanyahu himself stand? Well there are rumors swirling around of Netanyahu both for hell threes and because he's facing corruption charges which Nathaniel denies. He perhaps will try and find a plea bargain and part of that will be resign and not stand again. Those rumors are around. I I'm not convinced that Nathaniel is even capable of resigning. This is a man who's been for 40 years now in frontline politics. This will be his 12th election campaign as a leader of his Likud party. He'll be 77 when the election finally comes. I don't think he has a life outside of this and I'll be surprised if he resigns, but the rumors are there. And what's your prediction? Who will win this election? Anybody who's covered Israeli politics for any length of time and sadly I've had to dedicate my entire career to covering them. Knows that you never bet against Netanyahu. He's lost before, he's failed to win elections, but he's also achieved some unimaginable comeback, so I'm not gonna put any money on that. But it certainly is a tall order. Almost all the serious polls says are very clear that his coalition doesn't have a majority, but he does have an advantage in the fact that he's going in and serving prime minister. So it means that not only does the opposition have to win in a majority, they have to be able to build a coalition around another prime minister who will then receive the confidence of the case and replace him and that is much more difficult than just winning a majority in total. Answer, thank you very much. Thank you for having me, Rosie . I was in Jacquesville by the sea in Ivory Coast. Tom Gardner is our Africa correspondent. It was a grey foggy morning just after sunrise and I was peering through the undergrowth out towards the sea where a motorboat was coming to shore. A dozen or so men were on board dressed in army fatigues, their faces covered by badaclav as . And I watched them as they leapt onto the shore, disembarks and began prowling through the thick forest, firing their guns . Eventually they reached the building which I was standing near and broke down the door . I had to cover my ears as they shot their guns inside the building . Each room one by one they cleaned of terrorists, to use the word that they chose and rescued the hostages . Tom, what was going on? Well this was ANCSO training exercise. It's held annually in Africa and it's called Operation Flintlock. It's run by the American Special Forces, and they train dozens of mostly West and North African special forces and have done every year practically since 2005. It's sort of a mixture of a boot camp and a networking event. So as countries in the region are threatened by jih adist militant groups in particular, this is an opportunity for these special forces under American guidance to train, swap ideas, build relationships. And the Americans provide much of the funding and logistics with the support as well of several NATO It's interesting to hear that this is run and part funded by the Americans, given all that we've heard about cuts in overseas aid from the Trump administration. Is this going to continue? It did feel for me a bit like a throwback. I think a lot of the budgeting came from before the Trump administration returned to office. So whether it continues long into the future, given NATO rivalries and the general pullback from much of the African continent on the Americans part, remains to be seen. But for now, it was certainly bill toed me by the officials and officers I spoke to as an opportunity for America to continue to demonstrate its strength as a security partner, particularly in comparison to rivals such as Russia and China. So who is actually involved in this exercise? Well there's about one thousand five hundred soldiers. What was interesting for me, covering the crisis in West Africa and the Sahel region, where jihadist groups have been running a mock for sort of best part of a decade now, the three countries most affected by jihadism, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger , they declined to participate. And that's despite recent American efforts to restore security cooperation with their ruling military government . So they were invited. They chose not to attend. Aaron Powell And why didn't they attend? Well, starting from 2020, these three countries cut ties with Western government. So they booted out in particular French troops who'd been aiding the fight against jihadism, but also American ones, also UN peacekeepers. So there's a lot of frankly bad blood really between these three governments who've drawn much closer to Russia in recent years and in general the West and Western aligned countries. And of those that were there, you've already mentioned the amphibious mission, but what else are they learning? Well Flintlock has evolved over the years. This year a course on using drones with surveillance and reconnaissance was introduced. That was definitely a big thing. Apparently, it was very popular with the African militaries that were present. Drones are currently being used by jihadist militant groups to great effect. So there was a lot of interest in skilling up in that regard. The Americans as well, they say they've been putting more resources into countering jihadist online propaganda. That's something that has become a real ugba, particularly that there is this evidence and a sense that a lot of this has also been amplified by the Russians, so that's become a key priority. And so for the first time, local social media influencers were invited. So all of this to me seem ed in a way as you know like a something of a relic of a kind of bygone era of American led multilateralism. In terms of content or in terms of its mere existence? It's mere existence, t certainly. But also I mean, elements of the exercise that were emphasized to me by American officers included, you know, training local armies in human rights, the rule of law, for example. There was one American officer who gushed about the work they were doing to engage with local communities. Another one mentioned to me that this was an opportunity to get thirty plus countries into a room to talk to each other. Sounding rather like the UN, not really like a member of Trump's so called Department of War. So in that respect as well, I think it felt a little bit out of sync with the times. So Tom, what impact did training exercises like this have on Africa's efforts to counter terrorism? Well, I mean the short answer is they have not been massively effective. I mean if you consider that these exercises began in two thousand and five and over the subsequent two decades a huge amoun ofts resour ces and money have been invested by the US and other Western allies, particularly the French, in counterterror, in training. But at the same time, over that period, jihadism has continued to spread. Not just in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, which are really fragile these days, but also some of the coastal nations, including Ivory Coast, which has experienced attacks on its northern border, Togo, Benin as well. So I think the evidence today is that this approach has not worked quite as well as America had hoped. Tom, thank you very much. Thank you, Rosie. Yes. On a sunny Sunday in East London, a group of young men from Cape Verde have gathered for football training. John Fazman, our senior culture correspondent, is counting down to this summer's FIFA World Cup by introducing us to ten of the teams taking part. Like really and truly we are none of those, but at this point, we've already put ourselves in that position and just hope that they do well. That's what it is. I'm not really aiming for them to win the cup because that sounds a bit extreme, right? But if we get at least like quarter semis , everyone will know about them. We're representing Africa as well, not just our country, because if a nation so small like Cape Verde can qualify for the World Cup, it just shows other small African nations, whether it's African, Caribbean, Asian, that you know it's possible. Cape Verde is tiny with a population of just over half a million people . It's an archipelago comprising ten volcanic islands located 350 miles off the coast of West Africa. The closest countries are Senegal and Mauritania . Uninhabited until Portuguese explorers found the islands in the mid-15th century, Cape Ver de has been independent and relatively stable since 197 5. This is its first World Cup. Being such a small nation, a lot of people don't know even where KVD is. They don't even know KVD is a country, so. I'm excited. That first time seeing my country in that World Cup. Like I actually have someone to actually Their men's national team came together in 1978, just a few years after the country gained independence from Portugal. Their World Cup squad is a mix of homegrown talent and players pulled in from the diaspora, many of whom play for European clubs. Kate Baird have qualified for the World Cup. Let that sink in. An astonishing achievement for the island nation. Recruiting this squad has given rise to some unlikely origin stories . Roberto Lopez is an Irish-born defender who plays for the Shamrock Rovers, a Dublin-based team in Ireland's Premier League. He got his invitation to join the team through a LinkedIn message. Initially, he ignored it, because it was in Portuguese, but after some help from translation apps, he joined the team and helped secure qualification last October. So to do this, to be the first Cape Belgian team here to lift all the people, the nation, to put them on that stage. There's no better feeling in that. Now, Cape Ver de will find it hard going to get out of the group stage. They'll play against Saudi Arabia, Uruguay, and Spain. Still, their supporters are optimistic that a sea of blue will be in the stadiums , on the beaches, and in the bars for the blue sharks . They're gonna do fairly well. Obviously we've got Spain. We're playing against Spain in the first match, which is not gonna be easy but I've got faith in them and I think we can put up a good game. There's a lot of uh convenience in America to be honest like especially Boston so I think there will be a good crowd representing us there and pushing the team. But at this football pitch in East London, there's more on these players' minds than just watching the games. This whole journey to the World Cup has been inspiring. I feel like it's more than just the people of Cape Verde, it's the entire world. You have people in villages that don't even have shoes that are playing football. Football is just a way that we can connect with one another. Even if we speak different languages, it's just a wonderful sport. It's the best sport. And now these young players have a new goal. To play for their country. It would mean everything. It's a dream. It's a dream come true. Hopefully I get better and each day will get better and hopefully they see me and I can play for that. So this is a message to the world that there. Just know that we're coming and we're coming to show ourselves. We're not the underdogs and I'll let you guys know that for now. That's it . That's all for this episode of the intelligence. See you back here tomorrow .