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Iraqs economy is so riddled with corruption that minor border post jobs are changing hands for as much as $100,000, Iraqs deputy prime minister, Ali Allawi, has admitted.

In an extraordinarily frank speech about his governments efforts to introduce reforms, he said there were no quick wins, adding the economy would probably remain in existential crisis so long as oil does not reach $70 a barrel for a sustained period and called for cuts in public spending as its revenues fall short.

Allawi said only a tenth of the $8bn due annually to the Iraqi treasury arrived from border customs, in contrast to Jordan, where 97% was received. He said border customs are riddled with corruption to the point where minor clerks jobs in some outposts change there for $50,000 to $100,000 and sometimes it goes up to multiples of that.

He likened Iraqs situation to the coming of the dry season at a lake in Africa where the fish become more frenzied as the oxygen levels reduce many of these people did not know how to extract rent from this dwindling pool.

The new government of Mustafa al-Kadhimi, in which Allawi is also the finance minister, came to power in May following extended and sometimes violent street protests. It has introduced a massive economic reform white paper ahead of elections due next year.

Allawi said: On the assumption that oil prices dont move up, something somewhere has to give either we follow a sort of Venezuela course and become an oil economy that goes belly up, or we tighten our belts.

He said nobodys going to be for belt-tightening, but claimed there was a subliminal recognition that things had to change. Current levels of public spending were unsustainable, he said.

It requires, I must say, that somebody has to say no at some point and now, I suppose this has fallen to me to say no but you can only say no, up to a point, or then they will say no to you.

Allawi said: A lot of the countrys problems are interlocking and whenever there is an issue that requires resolution, theres bound to be some vested interest, sometimes extremely powerful, that stop this from happening.

People say, Why not go after low-hanging fruit. There really is no such thing as low-hanging fruit if the entire environment around you is to a large extent devastated.

Iraq, Opecs second largest producer, has been struggling to pay public salaries due to dwindling oil revenues as the coronavirus pandemic hits crude prices. In October, the federal government earned only $3.45bn (2.58bn) in oil export revenues, which is not enough to cover salaries, benefits and other essential expenses.

Iraq has also failed for most of this year to adhere to its Opec+ quota due to its financial and political struggles.

If Iraqs Kurdistan region is included, Iraq pumped out 3.842m barrels a day in October, up from Septembers 3.6m and exceeding its Opec+ quota of 3.804m.

Allawi said Iraqs acceptance of the Opec model of one size fits all allocating output cuts without taking into account member countries economic and political conditions was close to breaking point, suggesting Iraq may leave the network.

Discussing the role of US troops in Iraq, he said: In terms of the significance of US presence, its moved from being sort of essential to stability to being somewhat ornamental. The US has 3,000 troops in the country, but the numbers are set to fall to 2,500 in January, before Joe Bidens inauguration.

Iraqs national security adviser, Qasim Al-Araji, said US policies had pushed armed groups in Iraq to escalate. The killings of the Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and the leader of the Iranian Quds force, Qassem Suleimani, had undoubtedly made the situation worse. Iraq has been a victim of these regional conflicts and disputes.

Read more from the original source:
Iraqi deputy PM says economy in crisis and 'riddled with corruption' - The Guardian

The Defense Department recently announced troop withdrawals by Jan. 15 that will reduce American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to 2,500 each from their one-time highs of some 170,000 and 100,000 troops, respectively. This drawdown makes explicit what those of us who served in the military have long realized: We lost.

War is evil even when it is necessary but our inability to win has stolen even the possibility that the ends might justify the means. For the roughly three million service members whose boots touched soil in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 19 years, our defeat is a uniquely personal loss.

When I was sent to Iraq in 2009 it was to safeguard our withdrawal. During our entire deployment in the once treacherous Sunni triangle we discovered and disposed of a single roadside bomb on the main highway outside Falluja, where they had once been as common as potholes. I returned home wishing I could have done more but was glad to see how much progress had been made by the regiments whod fought so hard before me.

When I read a few years later that the Islamic State had overrun that same area I began to sense that our efforts had been in vain. But it was my Afghanistan deployment in 2010-2011 that cemented their futility for me.

My company defended a labyrinthine cluster of mud-walled villages set amid fields of poppy and corn in the Musa Qala District of Helmand Province. As the northern tip of the Marine campaign in Helmand we held a line alongside battalion after battalion of Marines that extended south through the river valley to the district center, where the bazaar and the governor were, and then down past Sangin to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, and further to Marja and Garmsir.

People often ask me what Afghanistan was like but I can never really answer: Each district might as well have been its own war for the Marines who fought, with victories and defeats known only to them.

I often think back on the moments in my deployments when the crack of a gunshot or the deep thud of a large roadside bomb suddenly infused my life at war with a clear and tangible purpose. I remember the kids lining up the first day after the school reopened, the first time the partners we trained in the Afghan Army took the initiative to patrol without our assistance, and the rare smile on a villagers face after wed provided the first aid that had saved the life of his father, who had been shot in crossfire.

I try to remember those small decencies instead of the casualties and the killing but they do little to assuage the overwhelming senselessness of the greater war.

Shortly after I returned from Afghanistan in 2011, President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed during a raid on his compound in Pakistan, where he was living after fleeing Afghanistan years before. As I watched people celebrating outside the White House and outside ground zero I hoped that the war was finally over, but even then it didnt feel like victory.

The conflict had grown so much bigger since the attacks of Sept. 11 that his death felt like a footnote. The execution of a single dethroned sheikh suddenly paled in significance to my own recent experience at war. Later that night I tried to recall the circumstances surrounding the death of each man wed killed and count how many there had been but there were too many to remember.

The Afghanistan war was finally lost for me in August 2015, several years after my own deployment ended, when the Taliban recaptured Musa Qala, which five men in my company had died defending. After the Talibans seizure, allied airstrikes bombed the same government center wed sacrificed so much to hold.

A member of Parliament from Helmand Province later described that building as completely vanished from the earth. Along with it was buried any hope there might have been that the sacrifices I, and so many others, have made in service to our country would not be in vain.

The cost of these wars has been astronomical: Roughly $6 trillion in government spending, with the Defense Department spending alone costing each American taxpayer an estimated more than $7,000. Additionally, todays young veterans face a legacy of psychological and physical injury, as well as illness from our wars Agent Orange: the toxic burn pits whose smoke we inhaled.

Even more costly are the approximately 515,000 people killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, including more than 260,000 civilians. And for what? Iraq remains a tenuous democracy teeming with militias while Afghanistan is locked in a conflict with a resurgent Taliban, and peace talks are in deadlock.

Both countries fail to meet the objectives of freedom and democracy set when President George W. Bush started those wars. They fall short of President Obamas goals when he sent me and 30,000 other troops to Afghanistan and of the claims he made when declaring an end to combat operation in Iraq only to see the Islamic State undo those gains. President Trump does not seem to even have a purpose for those 5,000 troops who will remain in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Like many service members I wrote a letter in case I was killed during my deployment. It began with an assurance to the friends and family I would have left behind: It was worth it. I believed then that we had a moral obligation to not only protect my fellow Americans but to leave the Afghan and Iraqi people with a chance to live in peace.

That obligation remains even though it cannot be fulfilled. Instead I am resigned that these wars will finally enter the history books not only as defeats but as stains on our national honor.

The political theorist and philosopher Michael Walzer writes in Just and Unjust Wars that it still seems important to say of those who die in war that they did not die in vain. And when we cant say that, or think we cant, we mix our mourning with anger. I would add that we also mix it with shame.

I recognize that shame is not a very American trait but with it comes humility. Sadly, my generation had to relearn the lessons of Vietnam in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in coming to grips with our defeat, we have a chance to ensure that we do not sacrifice future generations to such folly.

And by so doing we may yet salvage some purpose from this tragedy: to do everything in our power to avoid more wars, and to ensure that if and when the next war does come, it is worth it.

Timothy Kudo (@KudoTim), a former Marine captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is working on a novel about the Afghanistan war.

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Originally posted here:
The Truth That Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Know - The New York Times

Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 16:02

This month marks fiveyears since the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar, home to the country's Yazidi minority, was liberated from the Islamic State group. Thousands of those forced to flee during the jihadists' reign of terror are now returning home but the place they're returning to is riddled with political tension and instability. The recent decision to let the semi-autonomous administration of Iraqi Kurdistan take control of security in Sinjar is unlikely to be a silver bullet. Our correspondentsJack Hewson and Lucile Wassermann report.

Also, could Saudi Arabia become the latest Arab country to normalise ties with Israel? Israeli media are reporting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to the kingdom for secret landmark talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

And with Cairo's 42nd Cairo International Film Festivaljust around the corner, we meet some of the young Egyptian directors determined to use their work to challenge the status quo.

Original post:
Middle East matters - Thousands of Yazidis head back to Iraq's Sinjar despite tensions - FRANCE 24

Missing in any debate about whether it is wise for the United States to reduce our troop numbers in both Afghanistan and Iraq, as the Trump administration has ordered, down to 2,500 Americans in each country (a number, let it be noted, that is too few to fight and too many to die), is the question members of Congress and policymakers invariably choose to duck: How did we get into the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan and the second-longest in Iraq?

Of course, we know, it was in response to Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida operatives hijacked four commercial U.S. airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000. None of the 19 hijackers was an Afghani their leader was Egyptian and 15 were from Saudi Arabia but Afghanistan had been the attackers base. Congress overwhelmingly voted to give President George W. Bush, through the authorization of the use of military force, the green light to use force against those responsible for the attacks of 9/11.

By August 2002, at a national convention of the Veterans of Foreign War, Bushs vice president, Dick Cheney, after stating his conviction that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon, made the case for war: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. Hussein did not have then, and never would have, any weapons of mass destruction, nor was he ever anywhere remotely close to obtaining nuclear weapons. But the U.S., just seven months later, under false pretenses and disinformation, would send 130,000 Americans into harms way to invade Iraq.

Ignored was the doctrine stating that the U.S. should commit men and women to combat only as a last resort and only after all policy options have been exhausted and then only 1) when a vital security interest of the nation is at stake; 2) when the U.S. force employed is overwhelming and disproportionate to the force of the enemy; 3) when the mission and the military action are both understood and supported by the American people, and the mission has international support; and 4) when there is a clear and plausible exit strategy for the U.S. troops sent risking their lives.

War, as the conservative historian Michael Barone has written, demands equality of sacrifice. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were the only wars longer than three months since the Mexican-American War in 1846 that the U.S. has fought without a military draft and without a tax increase. There would be no homefront shortages nor civilian sacrifice requested, only Republican administrations enacting massive tax cuts, tilted to the most advantaged, while the costs of the two wars reached an estimated $5 trillion.

In his landmark book on the American infantryman, George Wilson quoted Col. Steve Siegfried, a combat veteran: Armies dont fight wars. Countries fight wars. I hope to hell we learned that in Vietnam a country fights a war. If it doesnt, then we shouldnt send an army.

But lets be brutally frank: We at home who did not have a loved one in uniform have borne no burden. We have paid no price. These are wars when all the sacrifice and all the suffering which have been considerable have been borne by our fellow Americans who volunteered and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. And 20 years later, there still is no clear and plausible exit strategy for the U.S. troops sent to risk their lives. Shame on us.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.

See original here:
Shields: Afghanistan and Iraq: When will we ever learn? - Standard-Examiner

Children's safety is at risk without adequate accommodation, Save the Children warns; parents say they have come back to destruction and bomb remnants.

Thousands of children and their families are forced to live in badly damaged houses in abandoned areas with unexploded bombs, dead bodies and rubble, after the sudden closure of several camps for displaced people in Iraq, Save the Children has witnessed.

Save the Children teams spoke to parents who had been forced to leave the camps. They told harrowing accounts of finding unexploded bombs and corpses in buildings and under rubble in the areas they now reside in. Families are in urgent need of basic services such as electricity, clean and safe drinking water, food and transport.

Ali*, 47, a father of four who returned to Mosul from Yahyawa camp in Kirkuk,said: When we came back here, the area wasn't cleared; there were explosives. I brought down a non-exploded bomb from the rooftop of my house. Children were holding bullets but didn't know what they were. My son came to me with a non-exploded grenade in his hand. He said; 'Father, what is this?' People also found a corpse in one of the destroyed houses.

This area was the last shelter for ISIS in Ninewa, so most of our houses were destroyed during the conflict. Our children are not safe here. They need safety, they need awareness about landmines and unexploded bombs, mental health support, toys, winter clothes and food.

The camp closures are part of the return of around 250,000 people to their areas of origin, including 48,000 people who will be affected by camp closures before the end of November.[1]

Some of the 303 families who have been moved out of the Yahyawa camp have arrived in Mosul, Eiyadiah and Tal Afar in Ninewa governorate, only to discover there was no safe shelter, Save the Children said. Yahyawa camp used to shelter nearly 2,000 people, including around 1,000 children. According to Save the Children's volunteers who were forced from the camps as well, families are particularly worried about girls getting kidnapped.

With winter approaching, families face spending the harshest season without adequate shelter or heating, Save the Children fears.

Shahad*, who volunteered with Save the Children in Yahyawa camp before it was closed, said: "I wish we didn't come back here, because our houses were destroyed. It's too cold and there are no adequate services like drinking water, electricity or cleaning. Most of the people refurbish a room for the whole family to live in. Children and their families are in desperate need of fuel and heating to keep them warm during the cold winter. They also need beds and blankets.

There are many risks to children's lives here, such as explosives, rubble, COVID-19, scarcity of food, dead bodies and skulls among the rubble, and the cold winter.

Save the Children's Country Director in Iraq Ishtiaq Mannan said: "Whats happening now is deeply concerning. Up to 49 percent of the affected people are children who have lived in difficult camp conditions for over three years, and are now forced to live in places no child should live in: in the midst of debris and among dead bodies. This is a desperate situation for thousands of children in the middle of a pandemic, made worse by the looming start of winter. This is why we are calling on the government to provide alternative shelter for families who do not wish to return to their areas of origin.

Teams from Save the Children are conducting an assessment in several areas of return, to understand the immediate needs of families and children. The organisation is calling on the international community to work with the Iraqi government to come to a long-term plan for the closures of the camps in line with international standards to ensure the protection of vulnerable families and children.

*Name changed to protect identity

[1] https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2020/11/5fae43084/unhcr-ramps-suppor...

Notes to editors:

We have photo content available here.

For more information or interview requests, kindly reach out to:

Ahmed Bayram, Ahmed.Bayram@savethechildren.org / +961 71 562 855

Faiz Jamil (London), faiz.jamil@savethechildren.org / +44 7542 596542

Out-of-hours (GMT) and weekend: Media@savethechildren.org.uk / +44 7831 650 409

See the rest here:
Iraq: Children forced to live among corpses, unexploded bombs and rubble after camp closures strand thousands - Iraq - ReliefWeb