Mediaboss Marketing

Earlier this month, the US military announced it had ended its combat role in Iraq.

The move comes just a few months after a July meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafaal-Kadhimi and US President Joe Biden. Afterwards, the leaders issued a statement announcing that "there will be no US forces with a combat role in Iraq by December 31, 2021."

Experts said the two had come to this agreement in order to ease pressure on al-Kadhimi's government. It was being targeted by Iran-backed militias known as thePopular Mobilization Forces(PMF) in Iraq, who are opposed to any US presence in the country at all. The same groups are suspected of being behind ongoing drone and rocket attacks on US logistics convoys and bases as well as an assassination attempt on al-Kadhimi himself.

The plan to change the status of US troops was completed ahead of schedule. On December 9, Iraq's national security adviser Qasim al-Araji announced that the transition to a mission to "advise, assist and enable" was now complete.

Most of the US troops in Iraq are there as part of the International Coalition for Operation Inherent Resolve, whose aim is to fight the extremist group known as the "Islamic State" (IS).

Despite the fanfare with which they were announced, the changes are not huge in a physical senseand are certainly far from the wholesale withdrawal seen in Afghanistan recently.

The US invaded Iraq in 2003looking for weapons of mass destruction, and the number of American soldiers in the country has steadily decreased since then, from a peak of around 160,000 in 2008. The situation has evolved from having the American military as an invading force welcomed by some Iraqis, despised by others to the establishment ofa series of agreements between the US and Iraqi governmentsthat allowed troops to remain under certain conditions.

In 2011, under President Barack Obama, these agreements saw US troop numbers decrease. In 2014, US troops returned to Iraq again, at the country's request, to lead an international coalition against the "Islamic State"group, which had taken control of large parts of northern Iraq. Since the Iraqi government officially declared victory over IS in 2017, troop numbers have fallen again.

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, 130,000 American soldiers were sent into the country

Today, there are around 2,500 US soldiers in Iraq, along with about 4,500 Department of Defense contractors. There are also around 1,000 soldiers from the other coalition countriesstationed in Iraq. About 130 are from Germany.

Even after the recently announced transition, US troop numbers are unlikely to change much, US Department of Defense spokesperson John Kirby confirmed at a press conference earlier this month. "This is a change in mission, not necessarily a change in physical posture," Kirby told journalists. It was a "natural evolution" based on agreements made with the Iraqi government and work that had already been going on for months, he explained.

There wasn't going to be any sort of ceremony to celebrate the transition, Kirby added, and there wasn't currently any end date for the new training mission.

"The US has been in a non-combat capacity in Iraq for some time now, if not a number of years," Ranj Alaaldin, a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based think tank, Brookings Institute's foreign policy program, said recently.Alaaldin pointed out that announcements like this have been made several times already.

Iraqi PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi (left) has been under pressure from both the US and Iran

But there have been some changes, and these have been ongoing.US troops pulled out of eight bases that they thought might be vulnerable to attack by the PMF,Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at the Washinton-based think tank, Newlines Institute, told DW:"We saw a series of base transfers, but they were kept quite quiet."

According to a November report to the US Congress on the mission in Iraq, one command post was moved from Iraq to Kuwait in November and another was recently downgraded in terms of seniority in military leadership.

Some US contractors, such as those involved in maintaining Iraq's fleet of F-16 fighter jets, have been relocated and are now working remotely.Most Americans are now based in either Baghdad or the northern city of Erbil. Two thousand military vehicles were recently handed to local staff, and US funding for some aspects of the military cooperation hasbeen gradually decreased; the Iraqi government is expected to take these costs over eventually.

The international coalition fighting the IS group has handed equipment on to local partners

The report prepared by the US military also noted thatof 426 anti-IS group operations carried out by Iraqi counterterrorism forces between July and September, only 13 involved a partnership with coalition forces. The international coalition also conducted fewer airstrikes against IS group targets in those months than it previously had.

The report also suggested that the US' rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan had an impact on how quickly Iraqi officers were moving to become more independent.

"In practical terms, we still need US forces here, particularly when it comes toair cover and combat aircraft," a senior source inside the Iraqi government recently told DW; they had to remain anonymous as they did not have permission to speak to media.

"The Iraqi air force is comparatively weak, and if it wasn't for the US Air Force, the country would be far more vulnerable to external drone attacks, and it would also have difficulty mounting aerial attacks on the IS group," the source said. "The Iraqi military also needs the US' intelligence on the IS terrorists."

The report to US Congress confirmed this several times. For example, it said, "[US] aircrafts' better sensors allow them to fly at higher altitudes. Iraqi [planes] fly at around 10,000 feet during their missions, potentially alerting surveilled targets."

US planes are likely to continue to fly sorties against IS, as well as undertake surveillance.

Supporters of the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political party won recent elections, in Baghdad

In other ways, the change in status of US troops is indicative of the ongoing change in US policy toward Iraq, especially when compared with the Trump administration, Brookings Institute analyst Alaaldin said. "With this current [Biden] administration, the Iraqis are hoping for a more delicate, more moderate approach to the country, and understanding that the security climate in Iraq is tied heavily to the domestic political dynamics in Iraq," Alaaldin argued.

While it is an important partner in Iraq, helping to balance internal and external political forces, the US cannot solve all of Iraq's complex and pressing problems, Sarhang Hamasaeed, director of Middle East Programs at the Institute of Peace in Washington, wrote in a July analysis. Some of the country's biggest concerns right now are economic, Hamasaeed explained.

"Even if it may be more limited than what the Iraqis want, an Iraq-centric policy may evolve under the Biden administration that's not seeing Iraq purely through the lens of Iran and IS issues," he argued.

"I think that the [IS group] will always play a role in US policy in Iraq, as will the quiet understanding that US troops provide a counterweight to Iran," Rose, the Newlines Institute analyst, concluded. She addedthat there had been a recent and worrying uptick in extremist activity. "But the other aim is capacity building in areas like law and order to ensure that Iraq doesn't devolve into a power vacuum, a situation that the IS group could exploit."

Read more from the original source:
The end of the US combat mission in Iraq: A meaningful change? - DW (English)

Students sit in a math class at the Sharqiyah Preparatory School in Karradeh neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021. (Marcus Yam, Los Angeles Times/TNS)

BAGHDAD (Tribune News Service) He was 9 years old and needed a pencil. He ran down the road to a shop on the corner. He knew the neighborhood, the familiar faces; his friend was the shop owners son. But what Amir Jewi didnt know was that the man sitting outside in the car was an Islamic State suicide bomber.

The ground shook, the car was hurled into the air. Shrapnel scythed in all directions, turning the intersection into a tangle of perforated corpses and singed flesh. A placard of a cleric shielded Amir from the blast. He lived. The shop owners son didnt, another child folded into the carnage of a Baghdad afternoon. The blood was washed away, and life went on, as it did time and time again, in the Amin al-Thaniya neighborhood.

Amir recounted the story with little emotion one recent afternoon during class at the Sharqiya Preparatory School for Boys in Baghdads Karada neighborhood. The bombing was another episode in the deadly lottery he had always faced; a legacy of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that had defined his life even before it began.

Eighteen years after American soldiers first stepped on Iraqi soil, Jewi and his classmates members of whats known here as the PUBG generation, a reference to the online battle royale shooting game wildly popular among Iraqi youths now grapple with a country still shattered by turmoil. Their graduation is months away. They wonder what theyll amount to, if theyll ever have the careers they imagine: engineer, police officer, tennis coach.

Im studying, but what does it help? Work hard, exhaust myself with all this, and then end up a taxi driver? said Mujtaba Rubaie, a 17-year-old with an inchoate mustache riding on his upper lip.

One of Sharqiyas star students, he hoped to become a doctor. We cant leave. We cant go anywhere; our passports are a disaster. Even when we play PUBG online people are surprised were from Iraq. They all think were Islamic State, that were extremists, he said.

Ahmad Qazzaz is a tall 17-year-old who, like many of those interviewed, also wanted to be a doctor. But he felt the same way: Were going to graduate soon and theres no work. What are we going to do? he asked.

For much of the world, Iraq is a distant tragedy. But for its young, its a restless, unreconciled home. Their memories comprise a chaotic accounting of Iraqs contemporary history; their lives marked less by birthdays or special occasions than by whom they lost in spasms of violence. Many of the boys speak of a childhood punctuated by close calls. Death was always present, like a swath of sky, or the legions of pigeons swarming the Ahrar Bridge over the Tigris River. If it wasnt car bombs, it was snipers, robbers or roving militias.

Born into conflict, inured to both upheaval and endemic national corruption, the children of the invasion face a perilous future: In 2019, tens of thousands of them marched in the streets, demanding not only jobs and opportunity but also the uprooting of the post-2003 political class. Those protests gave way under COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that further disrupted a school life hollowed out by war. The students now have to contend with what their prospects will be in a country where a quarter of those slightly older than themselves (those under age 25, who account for almost two-thirds of Iraqs 41 million people) have no job this despite Iraq possessing the worlds fifth-largest oil reserves.

Its getting worse. Ive been here for 11 years, said Adel Jaberi, Sharqiyas principal. Every year, the coming generation is worse than the generation that is before it.

Some of the boys boasted of their brushes with death, speaking over their classmates to tell their story. They recalled Al Taefiya, the blood-soaked era bookended by the U.S.-led invasion and before 2010, when sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunni Arabs peaked. One student, 17-year-old Ahmad Dulaimi, told of cousins killed and an uncle kidnapped. Walking down a street in Zafaraniya, the southeast Baghdad neighborhood where he lived, brought back memories of children warning one another of an unclaimed jitheh, or body, hidden around the corner.

Whats a jitheh? Ahmad remembered asking.

Iraq became a land of jithehs. The militant group Islamic State swept much of the country in 2014, swatting away U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and almost reaching the gates of Baghdad. They didnt break through. But the car bombs did: In July 2016, an Islamic State militant drove a refrigerator van loaded with explosives down Karadas main thoroughfare, less than a mile from the school. When he triggered the bomb, its fireball made infernos out of shopping centers, killing 324 people. It was one of the extremist groups deadliest bombings.

All over Karada there were martyrs, said Ahmad Salim, 17, a once-diminutive boy made tall by a growth spurt over the last two years. He hoped to become an engineer. Our street alone had five people killed in that explosion. One of them even had a pregnant wife.

It had been months since the last car bomb in Baghdad, but he had other concerns these days: the ongoing tensions between the U.S. and Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary groups. The latter had on occasion fired rockets in the direction of the U.S. Embassy compound, not far from where the teen lived in the Jadriya neighborhood. During one of the attacks, the amateur photographer (Its my favorite thing to do. I enjoy it more than football or any other hobby, he said in a recent interview), scrambled outside as he heard the buzz of the rocket defense system, catching the lance of tracer fire arcing across the night sky over his house.

You just have this constant fear, that all this will take us back again to another siege on the country, to war and destruction, he said.

Behind the children are parents worried that something as simple as a trip to the market could mean death. Amirs father, Fuad, was in his apartment when the bombing in Amin al-Thaniya happened in 2012. He ran out barefoot into the street to find his son.

I thought he was dead. Then I saw him walking towards me, said Fuad Jewi, still incredulous after all these years. There wasnt a single drop of blood on him.

It took Jewi weeks before he let Amir set foot out of the house again. It was part of the mental game parents learned to navigate raising their children in Iraq, where more than 200,000 civilians have perished over 18 years, according to Iraq Body Count, a group that tallies civilian and combatant deaths in the country.

Fear is planted in our hearts. Its always there now, 24 hours a day, he said. Your enemy isnt clear. Youre just afraid.

For Jewi and the other parents, that fear started with the suqoot. The word in Arabic literally means the fall. For Iraqis its the collapse of Saddam Husseins rule.

Hassanein Haleel wasnt even born when President George W. Bushs shock and awe campaign rained missiles on the Iraqi capital. His father, Mohammad, covered his pregnant wifes ears for fear of her miscarrying. That trauma seeped into the sons early upbringing. Until Hassanein was 6, his father wouldnt let him outside to play and would instead bring video games or cartoons to distract his eldest child away from the street.

I regret this. But I took this step without knowing how it would affect him in the future. I can see the consequences now, Haleel said, adding that it wasnt until seventh grade that his son knew how to speak and behave around children his age.

If it was normal, I would let him go in the street. But it was so bad. ... Do you know how bad, how crazy the suqoot was? But you just dont know how it would affect him in the future, Haleel said.

It was worse during major holidays. Families would crowd into shopping areas, making them prime targets for suicide bombers.

You want to get your children clothes for Eid al-Fitr, but we always had to rush and hurried everyone, Haleel said, referring to the celebration that comes after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. We just wanted to get away before any explosion.

It was quiet on a recent, warm Friday when he and his son played tennis at the University of Baghdad, where Haleel is on the physical education faculty.

Unlike many of his classmates, Hassanein was less worried about what to do after graduation: Ill be a tennis coach like my father, he said with a hint of the awkwardness his father spoke of.

He already looked more grown up than most of his peers, with a mustache and errant white hairs already coiling among the black. His father had gotten sick during the pandemic. It had fallen to Hassanein, as the eldest, to take care of him and get the shopping done for the house. Further COVID-related closures as well as studying for the end of year state-administered exams meant it was the first time he had played tennis in six months, and it took him time to get back to form. But a few strokes later he limbered up, striking the ball with increasing force across the net.

Soon youll see me on the national team, he said, smiling.

The burden of dealing with the childrens trauma in a country where at least 1 million children are thought to require psychological-social services, according to UNICEF, the United Nations children agency has often fallen to a school system in crisis.

Not only are teachers untrained in counseling, but the repeated waves of violence have also left thousands of schools destroyed. Iraq is short of 7,000 schools, UNICEF says. Teachers often deal with class sizes as large as 40 or 50 students, or are forced to accommodate two, maybe even three shifts per day assuming students and faculty could come in the first place.

Every time you had an explosion, especially since they were often close to schools, you couldnt have class because only a quarter of the children would show up, said Jaberi, the principal at Sharqiya.

A few days ago, Jaberi, an energetic man in a suit several sizes too big, bounced among a screen displaying camera feeds from each classroom, his perpetually ringing smartphone and a coterie of visitors streaming into his office. During the 2019 protests, he fought to keep his school open despite repeated threats. Still, students lost many days. The coronavirus kept students out of classrooms for all but one month.

Teachers are playing catch up. When students reach the last grade, theyre supposed to have been through the wringer, to be prepared, said Jaberi. So now you have a generation that is held back even further. Its completely ruined.

Over the years, Sharqiya reflected the tumult in Iraq. Standing on a quiet but run-down street in central Baghdad, the school was founded in 1932, taking over what had been a synagogue and orphanage for Jewish children, said Wafaa Jaffar, an administrator. She reached into a closet and pulled out Binder No. 1, which contained the schools first student roster; she had recently started on Binder No. 116. Thumbing through the yellow pages of the binder, she spoke of Sharqiyas past: It had up-to-date labs for physics and chemistry and was the first school to incorporate computers into its curriculum. Teachers were respected in an education system once considered to be the best in the Middle East.

Today, pupils arent even able to get school books. Much of the lab equipment was looted; it was replaced, but hardly up to the schools previous standards.

The morale of the students is destroyed, with no ambition left in them. You see lawyers, doctors, technology or oil graduates none of them have jobs, Jaffar said, adding that the teachers had fared little better, their salary during the suqoot barely covering the price of a carton of eggs.

If the teacher has no rights, how can they teach?

The government, meanwhile, allocated almost 10% of state expenditure to education in 2019, a third below the average for nations with similar income. Almost all of it goes toward salaries, leaving little funds for development.

The beggaring of the education system has forced those who can afford to do so to supplement their learning by enrolling in private education centers, which often siphon off the best teachers from the public school system. Both Ahmad Salim and Amir attended only a few days a week in Sharqiya. Most afternoons, they made their way to a center in the Zayouna area.

But the solution for many students across Iraq has been to quit. The country has some of the worst high school completion rates in the region, with a little under half of the richest students never graduating, according to figures from the U.N.; among the poorest, only 1 in 10 graduate.

What is felt from students is that there arent many skilled jobs in Iraq. There is a huge proportion of unskilled young people not in education, employment or training, which hampers their transition to decent jobs, said Miguel Mateos Munz, UNICEFs chief of communication in Iraq. He added that the most affected are the vulnerable, including young women, youths with disabilities and those facing extreme levels of poverty.

Thousands of Iraqis most of them young traveled last month to Belarus in the hope of crossing into Poland and, later, elsewhere the European Union. But, as if a metaphor for their lives, the migrants were beaten back by border guards. Their savings and borrowed money spent, many were forced to return to Iraq. Even for those who never left, the future seems no less fraught.

Ahmad Salim and Amirs generation was born into the broken country they now inherit. They have found ways to cope, but there is little joy in it. Still, they try. This year, Ahmad Salim gave up playing PUBG: Battlegrounds. It took too much time, and he had to focus on his finals: Im a student, he said. The game wont serve me at this point.

But PUBG for others in his class is at once an escape from and a reminder of the war and conflict that have marked them. In the game, players scavenge for weapons and fight to be the last person standing. The ground around them shrinks, the circle tightens. Their parents fear that what their children have already endured is a prelude to worse times.

I have the money to make him educated, but what would it help here? said Jewi, Amirs father.

Sometimes I get up at night, and go to their room and look at my children. And all I think is its a shame they were born in this place.

2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Read more here:
Invasion Generation: Iraq's children of war come of age with little hope - Stars and Stripes

BAGHDAD Protesters in Baghdad hold a sit-in demanding that U.S. troops leave Iraq. Counterterrorism troops patrol streets. A federal court ponders whether to certify results of parliamentary elections two months ago.

But at the Baghdad International Fair grounds, almost no one cares about all that.

Inside is the Baghdad International Book Fair. Its not even the bigger book fair of the same name that the Iraqi government has sponsored for decades. But its a book fair nonetheless.

There, patrons savor the chance to browse aisles of paperbacks and hardcovers stacked on tables in pavilions from different countries. To pose for selfies in front of the fake volumes glued together and arranged to spell the word book. To revel in what to many Iraqis is the true, enduring character of Baghdad, far removed from political turmoil and security concerns.

There is a big gap between the people in the street and the political elite, said Maysoon al-Demluji, a former deputy minister of culture who was visiting the fair. People in the street are not that interested in what happens in politics.

Ms. Demluji, an architect, described a mini-renaissance in Baghdad culture fostered by improved security and young people eager to connect with the world.

New generations are exposed to ideas that were denied previous generations, she said. So much is happening here.

At the fairgrounds in the fashionable Mansour district of the city, some of the pavilions normally used for trade shows have been transformed to look like old Baghdad. Buses disgorge children in school uniforms on class trips. Groups of friends sit in the winter sunshine drinking Arabic coffee and espresso at outdoor cafes.

Inside, the pavilions have offerings from printing houses across the Arab world and beyond. An Iranian publisher features luxurious coffee table books of the countrys cultural wonders.

At the stall of a Kuwaiti publishing house, Zainab al-Joori, a psychiatrist, paid for books about ancient Mesopotamia and a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson translated into Arabic. Most of the books at the stall were paperbacks.

Reading is my therapy, said Dr. Joori, 30, who works at a psychiatric hospital.

Paperbacks are a distant second to the feel and the scent of the old books that Dr. Joori loves best. But still, she looks forward to the book fair for months.

Just visiting this place is satisfying even if I dont buy any books, she said.

Iraqis love books. Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads, goes an old saying.

In the 1990s, my first reporting assignments to Baghdad were to a closed country. It was Saddam Husseins Iraq difficult to get into and, once you were there, difficult and dangerous to explore beneath the surface.

The United States had just driven Saddams forces from Kuwait and the United Nations had imposed sweeping trade sanctions on Iraq. In a formerly rich country, the shock of sudden poverty gave the city and its inhabitants a harder edge.

But in those rare glimpses behind the closed doors of peoples homes, there were often books in some houses, beautiful, built-in wooden shelves of them, all of them read and almost every book treated by its owner as an old friend.

Iraqis are proud of their ancient legacy as heirs to the worlds first known civilizations, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The earliest known form of writing, cuneiform symbols inscribed in clay, emerged in southern Iraq more than 5,000 years ago.

In the ninth century A.D. in Baghdad at the time the biggest city in the world translators at the Bayt al Hikma, or House of Knowledge, a huge library and intellectual center, were tasked with translating all important works in existence into Arabic and furthering intellectual debate. Scholars from across the Abbasid empire, stretching from Central Asia to North Africa, traveled to the institution, engaging in research and fostering scientific advancement.

Twelve centuries later, on al-Mutanabi Street, the love of books and ideas lives on in the Friday market where sellers lay out used books for sale on the sidewalk in a tradition that is the beating heart of Baghdads traditional cultural life.

At the Baghdad book fair, two booksellers sat under fairy lights draped from the ceiling, near a huge inflatable plastic snow globe with Santa Claus inside.

Hisham Nazar, 24, has a degree in finance and banking but works, by choice, at the publishing house Cemetery of Books. Prominent on the shelves of the publishers offerings at the fair is American Nietzsche, about the German philosophers impact on the United States.

Mr. Nazar declared Nietzsche the second greatest mind in the whole of human history. The first, in his estimation, is Leonardo da Vinci.

He said the publishers best-selling books were by the Iraqi writer Burhan Shawi, who has written a nine-part series of novels, including Baghdads Morgue, set against the backdrop of violence in postwar Baghdad. Iraqs turbulent and violent history since the U.S. invasion in 2003 has provided rich fodder for writers.

The war has given Iraqis a lot of material, said Dr. Joori, the psychiatrist, adding that most of the customers at the fair were young.

In the worst of times in Iraq, books have proved a comfort.

When the Islamic State took over parts of Iraq in 2014 and declared the city of Mosul the capital of its caliphate, life as Iraqis knew it in the countrys second-biggest city essentially stopped. Almost all books were banned, along with music. Women were essentially confined to their homes. In the almost three years that ISIS occupied the city, many people stayed home and secretly read.

In the first reading festival after Mosuls liberation from ISIS, thousands of residents came to the event in a park once used to train child fighters. Families with children, older people, young people all hungry to be able to read openly again.

Mr. Nazar, the bookseller at the Baghdad fair, said that while many people now read digital books, he and many others prefer to hold books in their hands.

When you open a paper book it is like entering into the writers journey, he said. A paper book has the soul of the writer.

Originally posted here:
Reveling in the Joys of Books, and Reading, at a Baghdad Book Fair - The New York Times

Sergeant Celiz, 32, was helping to clear an area of Afghanistan on July 12, 2018, when a large enemy force attacked. He exposed himself to enemy fire, including from heavy machine guns, to retrieve and use a heavy weapons system and help American forces regroup and treat a wounded partner. He shielded the wounded person on the way to a medical helicopter, then put himself between the cockpit and the enemy, suffering and returning heavy fire, to help the helicopter lift off.

He was wounded by the enemy fire, but he motioned for the helicopter to take off anyway.

He knew he was hit, but he waited for the aircrew to depart without him, Mr. Biden said. In the face of extreme danger, he placed the safety of his team and his crew above his own.

Christopher Celiz was courage made flesh.

Sergeant Plumlee was taking a quick photo at his base in Afghanistan on Aug. 28, 2013, when insurgents detonated a car bomb that blew a hole in the base wall. He jumped into a car, raced to the blast with five other soldiers and found 10 enemy fighters pouring into the base wearing explosive vests. His group took rocket fire, and he ran toward it, firing back with his pistol. He killed one insurgent with a grenade and another with a sniper shot that set off the fighters explosive vest.

He used his body as a shield and continued moving closer to enemy fighters, despite suffering injuries when they detonated their vests. One blast threw him into a wall, injuring his back. But Sergeant Plumlee still carried a wounded fellow soldier to safety and administered first aid, before helping to organize others to clear and secure the area.

On Thursday, he stood as Mr. Biden clasped the ribbon that hung the Medal of Honor around his neck.

This recognition has been too long in coming, Mr. Biden said in honoring him, delayed for you and your family as well. And no one, no one will forget how you sprang into action when the enemy attacked our base.

Mr. Biden at several points paused to thank the families of all three honorees for their strength and sacrifice. So did Maj. Gen. Thomas Solhjem, the Armys chief of chaplains, who opened and closed the ceremony in prayer.

Bless Master Sergeant Plumlee, the Cashe and Celiz families, as the names of these men are etched into our nations proud history, he said. May their leadership and legacies mark the truest north for us to seek, and may we all strive to be strong and courageous in the face of challenges that life may bring.

Continue reading here:
Biden Awards Medals of Honor for Bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan - The New York Times

The activities are part of a nation-wide campaign to tackle the worst forms of child labour in the country.

Baghdad, Iraq, 19 December 2021 - The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the International Labour Organization kicked off a series of activities that support a nation-wide campaign to tackle the worst forms of child labour in the country.

The campaign, which will target over 10,000 children, their families and guardians, teachers, employers, and the media, includes awareness raising sessions in schools and districts where child labour is widespread and school drop-out is common.

A team composed of representatives and experts from the Ministry has been established to undertake the activities in Baghdad and other cities across the country, in efforts to highlight the increasing dangers of child labour and the importance of education.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, under the supervision of His Excellency Minister Adel Al-Rikabi, has launched this campaign to combat the worst forms of child labour, in collaboration with the ILO and which is being implemented jointly with various partners including civil society organizations, said Raed Jabbar Bahedh Director General of the Department of Labour and Vocational Training at the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. We are ready to cooperate with all entities involved in this campaign to raise awareness on this important issue, among children and families but also among employers in sectors where child labour is most prevalent.

The first visits took place at schools in Baghdads Sadr City, where leaflets, hats and T-shirts were distributed among young students and discussions were held to shed light on the importance of staying at school.

In recent years, Iraq has witnessed an increase in child labour, including its worst forms, which has continued to interfere in childrens education, causing harm on many levels, including mental, physical and social, said Maha Kattaa, ILO Country Coordinator in Iraq. For the ILO, tackling the worst forms of child labour is a critical priority in Iraq and joining forces with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and social partners in this campaign will ensure that we spread awareness on the dangers and consequence on child labour to the heart of communities most affected by the rise of child labour in Iraq.

Other activities will include workshops with the media and stakeholders on national and labour standards and practices related to child labour, and the production of a series of videos, radio and TV programmes to raise awareness among students, teachers, parents, and the general public on the role they can play in addressing child labour.

Iraq has ratified the ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), which are central to the fight against child labour. In December 2019, the ILO signed and launched a Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP) in Iraq in partnership with the Government and social partners for the period 2019-2023. Under the programme, the ILO is working with government, worker and employer organizations to support national initiatives on employment promotion, rights at work, social dialogue and social protection, including developing an effective framework to address child labour.

For more information please contact:

Nisreen Bathish

Communications Consultant

International Labour Organization (ILO)

Email: bathish@iloguest.org

Read the original:
Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, and ILO launch activities to combat child labour in Iraq [EN/AR] - Iraq - ReliefWeb