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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

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 of 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.

Mark Shields is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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More:
Afghanistan and Iraq: When will we ever learn? - Marshalltown Times Republican

FILE: President Abdelfattah Al-Sisi

CAIRO - 26 November 2020: President Abdel Fattah El Sisi asserted Egypt's keenness on cooperating with Iraq in the various spheres, especially the military field as part of Egypt's unwavering policy in support of Iraqi security and stability to help it achieve cherished progress and prosperity.

Presidential Spokesman Bassam Radi said, President Sisi discussed, during a meeting Thursday with Iraqi Defense Minister Juma Anad Saadoun, bilateral military cooperation including joint drills and programs to enhance capabilities, exchanging expertise, as well as an array of Arab and regional issues of mutual concern.

Defense Minister Mohamed Zaki took part in the meeting.

President Sisi sent his greetings to Iraqi President Barham Salih and Prime Minister Mustafa al Kadhimi.

On his part, Saadoun said Iraq is looking forward to boosting cooperation with Egypt, especially under President Sisi's leadership.

The Iraqi minister extended to President Sisi's the Iraqi president's and the Iraqi prime minister's greetings, asserting the Iraqi people's appreciation of Egypt's continued support to Iraq on the various levels.

See the article here:
Sisi asserts Egypt's keenness on cooperation with Iraq in various domains - Egypttoday