Cuba Takes ‘Hunger Blockade’ Claim to UN Security Council, Accuses US of Deepening Crisis

…Havana says fresh sanctions are obstructing food, medicine supplies as Washington tightens pressure on Cuban economy

By: Michael Mike

Cuba has taken its escalating confrontation with the United States to the United Nations Security Council, accusing Washington of worsening hunger and humanitarian hardship on the island through its long-standing economic embargo and fresh sanctions against Cuban companies and officials.

The Cuban government, in a statement to the Security Council on Tuesday, August 25, warned against the use of hunger as a weapon of war and argued that conflicts, economic inequalities and unilateral coercive measures were aggravating global food insecurity.

Havana specifically linked the worsening food situation in Cuba to the impact of the United States’ economic, commercial and financial restrictions, which it refers to as a blockade.

The intervention came only days after Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez launched a fresh attack on Washington over new sanctions imposed on Cuban state entities and officials, accusing the administration of US President Donald Trump of deliberately squeezing the Cuban economy and undermining the government’s capacity to provide basic services.

Rodríguez said the latest measures were particularly affecting the movement of containers carrying food, medicines and medical equipment, including supplies acquired by Cuba’s private micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

The latest US measures reportedly targeted nine Cuban state-owned entities operating in mining, metals, construction, trade, imports and related industrial activities. Senior officials of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), including its president Fernando González Llort, were also sanctioned.

Rodríguez accused US Secretary of State Marco Rubio of pursuing a policy designed to damage Cuba’s economy and prevent Havana from guaranteeing essential services to its population.

The Cuban government’s latest diplomatic offensive therefore represents a shift from its traditional condemnation of the US embargo to a broader humanitarian argument before the international community — that economic pressure is having consequences beyond government finances and is reaching food supplies, healthcare, energy and ordinary economic activity.

The controversy comes as Cuba battles a severe economic crisis characterised by shortages of fuel, electricity, food and medicines. The Associated Press reported last week that US sanctions were complicating Cuba’s efforts to attract private and foreign investment even as Havana undertakes economic reforms designed to give private businesses a larger role.

According to the AP report, Cuba has introduced measures allowing greater space for private businesses, imports and exports, foreign investment and private banking. Cuban officials, however, argue that Washington’s continuing sanctions are undermining the very reforms the US has demanded from Havana.

The confrontation has also extended beyond conventional trade sanctions. A January 2026 US executive order sought to tighten pressure on Cuba’s access to fuel, a move UN human rights experts subsequently described as having severe human-rights implications and amounting to “energy starvation.”

For Havana, the combination of the decades-old embargo, intensified sanctions and restrictions on energy supplies has created a crisis with direct consequences for civilians.

But the US maintains that its Cuba policy is intended to pressure the Cuban government rather than deliberately deprive the population. US officials have continued to defend additional sanctions as a means of closing what Washington considers loopholes through which the Cuban government can obtain revenue.

The dispute has consequently produced a striking contradiction: Washington is pressing Havana to reform its centrally controlled economy and open more space for private enterprise, while Havana argues that the same US sanctions are making those reforms harder to implement.

Cuban Ambassador to the UN Ernesto Soberón Guzmán recently questioned why Washington continued imposing new sanctions as Havana opened sectors of its economy to private participation and foreign investment. He said shortages of fuel and electricity were discouraging investors and tourists.

The latest Cuban appeal at the Security Council now places the food crisis at the centre of the confrontation, turning what has historically been a dispute over sanctions and sovereignty into a sharper international debate over the humanitarian consequences of economic warfare.

For Cuba, the central question is no longer simply whether Washington should maintain its embargo, but whether economic pressure that affects the movement of food, medicine, energy and other essential supplies can be justified when its consequences are increasingly being felt by the wider population.

The United States and Cuba have remained locked in their decades-long confrontation, but the latest escalation comes at a particularly difficult moment for the Caribbean nation, with Havana simultaneously attempting economic reforms while confronting mounting shortages and pressure from Washington.

Cuba’s appeal to the Security Council is therefore likely to intensify the diplomatic battle over whether the country’s deepening hardship should be attributed principally to US sanctions, domestic economic policies, or a combination of both.

Cuba Takes ‘Hunger Blockade’ Claim to UN Security Council, Accuses US of Deepening Crisis

Liberia: How Nigeria’s Soldiers Paid the Price for West Africa’s Peace

By: Michael Mike

For Nigeria, the war in Liberia was never just another foreign conflict.

It became a war fought at a distance but paid for in Nigerian blood, as hundreds of soldiers were deployed into one of West Africa’s most brutal civil wars in an attempt to stop the violence from engulfing the region.

More than three decades after the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) entered Liberia, Nigeria’s Defence Minister, Christopher Musa, has reopened the chapter, revealing the personal cost of an intervention that transformed ECOWAS from an economic organisation into a major regional security actor.

Musa disclosed that he lost 10 of his coursemates from the Nigerian Defence Academy during the operations, a revelation that brought home the human price behind Nigeria’s leading role in the regional peace effort.

He spoke in Abuja on Thursday at the unveiling of Fighting Bushfires: ECOWAS and Peacemaking in West Africa – The Experience and Learning Curves, a book by Prof. Amadu Sesay documenting ECOWAS interventions in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau.

The minister’s account offered a stark reminder that the peace eventually achieved in Liberia was built not only through diplomatic negotiations but through years of military operations in which West African troops faced combat, disease, difficult terrain and an unpredictable enemy.

Nigeria became the backbone of ECOMOG after the force was deployed to Liberia in 1990 following the outbreak of civil war.

The conflict, which began in 1989, rapidly developed into a regional crisis, threatening to destabilise neighbouring countries and generating massive refugee movements.

For Nigeria, Musa said, allowing Liberia’s instability to fester was never an option because insecurity in neighbouring countries inevitably creates consequences for Nigeria.

He identified refugee flows, disruption of trade, organised crime and cross-border insecurity as some of the dangers that made regional intervention a matter of national security.

But behind the strategic calculations were individual soldiers who left their families and careers to enter a war zone.

Musa recalled the case of a young officer who was advised to remain in Nigeria because he was considered too junior to participate in the operation.

The officer insisted on going with his colleagues.

About a year later, he was killed.

“Those are the sacrifices that have been made and that will continue to be made,” Musa said.

For the minister, remembering those sacrifices is not merely an exercise in military history. It is a warning that the region must not allow the conditions that produced the wars to return.

“What we owe them is to make sure that we unite, and not allow Africa to fall. Other than that, they will not achieve what they died for,” he said.

The Liberian intervention also exposed the limits of military power.

ECOMOG’s involvement in Liberia was marked by intense fighting, shifting alliances and the difficulty of achieving peace in a conflict involving multiple armed factions.

Yet its intervention demonstrated that African countries were willing to assume responsibility for a security crisis in their own neighbourhood at a time when external intervention could not be taken for granted.

The experience later shaped ECOWAS’s response to Sierra Leone, where ECOMOG again became a critical component of efforts to defeat rebel forces and restore constitutional government.

Musa said the lessons from those operations remain relevant to today’s security crises across West Africa, particularly the growing threat of asymmetric warfare.

“Under no condition should an army allow asymmetric warfare to take root in your country, because it’s a very, very difficult situation,” he warned.

He urged countries to act before insurgencies and other forms of irregular warfare become entrenched.

“It is important for countries not facing it, please don’t allow it to take root. Nip it in the bud as quickly as possible,” he said.

The minister also argued that military force alone could not deliver lasting peace.

According to him, kinetic operations account for only about 30 per cent of the solution to insecurity, while the remaining 70 per cent depends on non-kinetic measures.

That lesson, he suggested, should be central to how ECOWAS responds to today’s conflicts.

The Abuja ceremony also recognised another group that paid heavily for the Liberian war—the journalists who entered the conflict zones to report the fighting.

Krees Imodibie of Vanguard and Tayo Awotusin of Champion, two Nigerian journalists killed while covering the Liberian conflict, were posthumously honoured with the Peace of the Rose Award.

Their deaths highlighted the dangers faced by journalists who documented the war and ensured that events taking place far from the world’s major news centres were recorded.

The recognition of the soldiers and journalists at the same ceremony therefore presented a broader picture of the Liberian conflict: a war in which West Africans not only fought to restore peace but also risked their lives documenting and defending the region’s future.

As ECOWAS marks its 50th anniversary, the Liberian experience has assumed renewed significance.

The conflict demonstrated that instability in one West African country could rapidly become a regional problem—and that collective security required more than declarations.

It required troops, resources, political will and, ultimately, human sacrifice.

For Nigeria, the legacy of Liberia is therefore not simply the story of a foreign intervention.

It is the story of soldiers who did not return, journalists who never made it home and a generation of West African leaders who concluded that the region could not leave its security entirely to outsiders.

Musa’s account has brought that forgotten cost back into focus—and with it, a question for today’s ECOWAS: will the region learn from the sacrifices that bought its previous peace before the next war demands another generation of lives?

Liberia: How Nigeria’s Soldiers Paid the Price for West Africa’s Peace

Navy commissions 3 solar-powered boreholes in Gombe community in honour of retired senior officer

By Hajara Leman

The Nigerian Navy on Thursday commissioned three solar-powered boreholes in Jekadafari Community in Gombe Local Government Area of Gombe State to honour retired Rear Adm. Shehu Usman.

The project was executed under the Chief of the Naval Staff’s special intervention scheme, to foster community development and improve water access.

In his speech, the Chief of Naval Staff , Vice Adm Idi Abbas, said the project comprised three solar-powered boreholes, each with a 10,000-litre overhead water tanks and perimeter fencing.

Represented by Rear Adm . Mohammed Dahiru, Director of Projects Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Naval Headquarters, Abbas said the scheme was part of the nigerian Navy ’s Civil-Military Cooperation initiative.

He said that the project demonstrated the Navy ’s commitment to support communities beyond its traditional role of securing lives and property.

He said the special quick impact project was launched in 2024 to strengthen the nigerian Navy’s civil-military cooperation mandate and contribute to the federal government’s Renewed Hope Agenda .

The chief of Naval staff described the jekadafari project as another milestone in the Navy’s ’s civil-military cooperation efforts and said it aligned with the vision of President Bola Tinubu, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Nigeria.

In his remark, Gov. Inuwa Yahaya, commended the Nigerian Navy and the facilitator of the project, who he described as a true son of Gombe.

Yahaya was represented by the Commissioner for Special Duties and Regional Integration, Alhaji Shehu Yarima-Abdullahi,.

The governor reiterated government’s commitment to partner with initiatives that promote meaningful development.

He called on residents of the community to take ownership of the facilities by ensuring their proper utilisation.

Speaking at the event, Usman  said the initiative was his modest way of giving back to his community.

He apologised for not maintaining a close connection with his people over the years due to his military career.

He disclosed that he initially planned to provide 12 solar-powered boreholes in Jekadafari but was able to complete three projects.

The Emir of Gombe, Alhaji Abubakar Shehu-Abubakar the III, represented by Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed, the  Dawakin Gombe, commended the retired Admiral for giving back to his community.

He urged members of the Emirate council who are residents of the area to ensure that the facilities remained functional.

Navy commissions 3 solar-powered boreholes in Gombe community in honour of retired senior officer