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On a bright spring day, Ayyad Mohmmed Ali stood at the edge of his farm, facing a row of about a dozen new construction sites nearby. A river separated his farm and the buildings.

Its really painful to see this, he said. In Iraq, we dont like to build vertically and now, youre seeing all these lands being turned into buildings.

Mohmmed Ali has planted date palm trees and vegetables at his boostan, which is Arabic for grove, for the past three decades.

This green bit of land is his sanctuary, he explained. Its where he comes to escape the noise and pollution of the capital Baghdad, a city of roughly 8 million people.

In the early 1980s, Iraq had an estimated 30 million palm trees. It used to be among the top producers of dates in the world. But war, construction and the impact of climate change have taken a toll. By 2009, there were fewer than 9 million date palms left in the country.

This is like the hair of the Iraqi desert and were watching the Iraqi landscape go bald with the stresses of war,

This is like the hair of the Iraqi desert and were watching the Iraqi landscape go bald with the stresses of war, said Kali Rubaii, who teaches anthropology at Purdue University, and has researched the environmental impacts of war in Iraq.

As part of her research, Rubaii interviewed date farmers who were displaced after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and she said the lack of date farming told a story of dispossession.

Palm trees need consistent care: watering, pruning and fertilizing. And when farmers had to leave, the trees suffered.

So many people are forced to sell their land for very cheap and, oftentimes, farmers have found themselves working on land that they used to own, Rubaii explained.

Iraq has also been getting hotter and drier. According to the UN, it is the fifth-most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change.

Theres a section of the southern part of Baghdad, if you drive through, you can see a lot of trees that look like theyve been decapitated, Rubaii added, because sometimes when trees die, they keel over or, if theyre not surviving, sometimes they get cut from the top.

Making matters worse is Iraqs construction boom especially in bigger cities like Baghdad. It means that more farmers are choosing to cut down palm trees entirely to make way for building projects.

The farms have a problem, explained Labeeb Kashif al-Gitta, there is no water, there is no commercial income from this farm, so I cut the palm trees and I build buildings instead and get more profits.

And the concept was this: homeowners with palm trees on their land could sign a contract with Nakhla to have the company take care of the trees.

Many times, Gitta said, people just cut down the trees because they are too much work to maintain.

Palm trees, for them, is [a] very heavy project. They need to take care of it four times per year, he said.

Nakhlas team waters, prunes, fertilizes and vaccinates palm trees to protect them from things like fungus.

Come harvest time, Nakhla either packages and hands over the dates to the tree owner or takes the product to market, depending on the type of contract.

These types of services are not common in Iraq, but Gitta said the company is growing.

It is expanding its client base and recently signed a contract with the municipality of Baghdad to take care of the citys many palm trees.

Last year, in houses, we had 300 palm trees, in farms, we had 1,000 palm trees, and in the street, we had 6,000, Gitta explained.

The Iraqi government is also funding reforestation projects.

But biologist Ayyad Wajeh al-Shahwany explained that to truly bring back Iraqs palm trees, a lot more needs to be done.

Private projects like Nakhla and others are good, he said, but they need more support from the government and international organizations.

Kali Rubaii, from Purdue, said that many Iraqis see the value in helping to save the countrys iconic palm trees.

People are stubborn and they are not going to stop. They are finding different grassroots tactics to keep their trees alive and also to keep the date economy alive, and maybe even grow it back.

Iraqi date palms are incredibly resistant plants, she added. They can cope with all kinds of environmental stress, like storms, wind and drought.

They just need a little help to thrive.

Related:'It's a mass ecological crisis': Extreme weather in Iraq hits those already struggling the hardest

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This startup is fighting to keep Iraq's palm trees alive - The World

(Beirut) The reconstruction of the Sinjar district in northern Iraq, which was heavily damaged in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), is being held up by a political dispute over its administration, Human Rights Watch said today.

In April 2023, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered the government to open a reconstruction campaign for Sinjar and announced the allocation of 50 billion Iraqi Dinars (IQD) (US$34.2 million) to do so. But a political dispute between the federal government Baghdad and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has prevented other previously allocated funds from being used, while damaged infrastructure and poor essential services have hindered the return of over 200,000 people who have been displaced from the district since 2014, including 85 percent of Iraqs minority Yazidi population.

The allocation of funds is a positive development, but only if those funds are actually invested in services and infrastructure to improve access to health care, electricity, water, and housing for Sinjars residents, said Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch. Political infighting is preventing the use of available funds while Sinjaris remain in limbo.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations migration agency, 80 percent of public infrastructure and 70 percent of homes in Sinjar Town, the largest city in the district, were destroyed during the conflict against ISIS between 2014 and 2017. Residents said that electricity and water are not consistently available, and many education and health facilities remain damaged or destroyed, with gaps in staffing where they do exist.

Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of Sinjaris living in displacement camps in Duhok governorate; three Sinjaris who had returned to Sinjar; officials of the Kurdistan and Baghdad governments; the former mayor of the Sinjars self-administration; the head of the Sinjar general hospital; representatives of six civil society organizations; and two Western diplomats.

Sinjar is a disputed territory between the KRG and federal Iraq. The mayor of Sinuni, in northern Sinjar, is temporarily serving as acting mayor of Sinjar, based out of Dohuk, where Sinjaris currently must travel for administrative and civil documentation services. The Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a Yazidi-led militia with perceived links to the Kurdistan Workers Party, established a self-governing local administration in Sinjar in 2017 and elected a mayor, who is not officially recognized by the KRG or federal Iraq.

Under the 2020 Sinjar Agreement, Iraq committed 28 billion IQD ($18 million) to the Sinjar Reconstruction Fund. The governor of Ninewa, Najim al-Juboury, said that Erbil and Baghdad are unwilling to spend the funds without first agreeing on who will be responsible for the local administration of Sinjar, but discussions have stalled. They have been unable to agree upon a suitable candidate for mayor, and proposed candidates are frequently rejected by local Sinjaris who feel marginalized and excluded from the process.

The Sinjar Agreement also calls for the creation of a joint committee with representatives from the KRG and federal Iraqi government to distribute these funds, but the committee has not yet been formed, al-Juboury said. There are no provisions to ensure local participation in decision-making processes, which Sinjaris said exacerbated their feelings of exclusion.

Everyone interviewed cited the lack of adequate public services as a barrier to return in addition to the unstable security situation and the governments failure to provide compensation for destroyed homes and businesses.

They said that public education is not readily available, in part due to damage or destruction of schools. Even where it is accessible, the quality of education is undermined by overcrowding, with some schools accommodating students from multiple villages, and staffing shortages as thousands of teachers remain displaced. An IOM survey found that 58 percent of residents lack access to a functional secondary school within five kilometers of their residence.

In Sinjar, there are 206 schools, but only 96 of them are currently operational due to a variety of factors, such as a lack of academic staff, the continued displacement of families, and destroyed school buildings, said Hassan Salih Murad, head of the Sinjar Education Department. Due to a shortage of teachers and school facilities, one school has between 600 and 1,000 pupils enrolled in it, although it can only accommodate a maximum of 400 students.

Three schools are being used by armed groups as military bases, Murad said, undermining access to education and putting school infrastructure at risk of attack. Twelve armed groups are competing for control of Sinjar, and government attempts to regain administrative control of the area have resulted in violent clashes and further displacement, most recently in May 2022. The presence of the YBS has exposed the area to Turkish airstrikes, including one that struck a hospital in August 2021. Human Rights Watch documented military use of schools in Sinjar and recruitment of children by armed groups, including at schools, in 2016.

Waad Abdo, who was displaced from Gormuz village in 2014, said that the school in his village was destroyed by fighting, and anyway there are no teachers. Kids from my village and three villages around it all must travel to the same school, and it is very crowded.

The Sinjar Health Department also faces overcrowding, a lack of qualified professionals, and damage to physical infrastructure. Two general hospitals serve the district, one in Sinjar town and one in Sinuni, a town north of Mount Sinjar.

The general hospital in Sinjar was damaged during military operations, said Dr. Dilshad Ali, head of the Sinjar general hospital We are operating in a tiny alternative location now, and we only have 53 hospital beds instead of the 130 we once had. The original location of Sinuni Hospital is still operational. Out of 26 primary health centers, all are operating except for two in Sinuni sub-district, which need to be rebuilt.

Both hospitals have limited capacity to treat complex cases, given shortages in specialists, so people with medical emergencies or complex diseases must travel two to three hours to Dohuk or Mosul for care. People interviewed said that a lack of access to health care is a major barrier to return, particularly with pregnant women and those with chronic illnesses.

I have many chronic illnesses and there is no hospital there to help me, said Eidi Chichi, a displaced person in Khanke informal settlement. Why would I return to Sinjar if I needed to come back to Dohuk every week for health care? There are no men in my household. It is difficult for me to make that journey alone.

People also said that neither electricity nor water are consistently available, with returnees reporting that electricity is available from between 2 and 10 hours per day. According to IOM, 90 percent of Sinjar residents report relying on water trucking sometimes or always, and 76 percent reported issues related to the taste, appearance, or smell of drinking water.

Mohammed Majeed, director of the Sinjar Electricity Department, said that Station 132, Sinjars primary power plant, and Station 133, a backup station, were damaged during military operations and have not yet been rebuilt. We are currently able to serve 18 hours of electricity per day because it is spring and the weather is not too hot, but once summer arrives, we will only be able to do so for 12 hours each day, he said.

Majeed said that some repairs to the electricity network have begun, using the Emergency Food Security Fund. The Emergency Food Security Fund was passed in June 2022 to allow the government to meet urgent needs like food, energy, and paying salaries of public sector employees as months of political deadlock left the country without a budget.

Souad, a returnee from Khanasour village said, only those who can afford it have generators, and they have to pay 20,000 IQD ($15) per ampere of electricity. We pay 15,000 IQD ($11) per day for drinking water, and we had to dig a borehole to have enough water for washing.

International human rights law and the Iraqi Constitution guarantee citizens rights to health, education, housing, and an adequate standard of living. The right to an adequate standard of living includes everyones right to water and electricity, among others as Human Rights Watch has concluded. Iraq has ratified numerous human rights treaties that contain obligations related to these rights.

To enable displaced people to return home and respect all Sinjaris economic rights, the government needs to take an integrated approach to Sinjar, which includes reconstruction, rehabilitation, reparations, administration, and security, Sanbar said. Returnees will continue to struggle in the absence of government services as displaced people remain stuck in limbo.

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Iraq: Political Infighting Blocking Reconstruction of Sinjar - Human Rights Watch

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The Iraqi government is working to end the displacement issue and tackle problems affecting hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqis because of the ISIS occupation of their areas from 2014 to 2017, in governorates such as Nineveh, Kirkuk, Diyala, and Salah Al-Din.

The Iraqi government announced in mid-April the closure of the last refugee camp in Nineveh governorate in northwestern Iraq.

With the announcement of the Iraqi government, all camps housing displaced people in the country are closed except the ones located in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

There are 26 refugee camps in northern Iraq, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displaced.

The Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displaced continues to provide successive financial grants to displaced families returning to their homes. The financial grant per family is 1.5 million Iraqi dinars (equivalent to $1,500).

The step aims to encourage and help the displaced people return to their homes and start their lives once again in their areas of origin.

The Minister of Migration and Displaced, Ivan Jabru, revealed during a field visit to Salah Al-Din governorate in northern Iraq on Sunday that the ministry will offer new grants in the coming days.

The last of these financial grants was offered by the Iraqi ministry in early May to nearly 7,000 families returning to their areas of origin.

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Iraq offers grants to help displaced people return to their homes - Iraqi News

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The Iraqi Minister of Oil, Hayan Abdul-Ghani, announced that Iraq decided to extend the oil production cut of 211,000 barrels per day until December 2024 as a necessary protective measure, in coordination with member states in the OPEC+ agreement.

Abdul-Ghani indicated that countries taking part in the OPEC+ agreement announced last April that they were intending to reduce oil production, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Oil.

Member countries in OPEC+ agreed on a voluntary oil production cut during their 35th ministerial meeting held on Sunday in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Russias Minister of Energy revealed his countrys intention to extend its voluntary oil production cut of 500,000 barrels per day until December 2024.

The OPEC+ alliance approved reducing the level of oil production to 40.46 million barrels per day, starting in 2024.

Saudi Arabia will make a deep cut to its output in July on top of a broader OPEC+ deal to limit supply into 2024 as the group seeks to boost flagging oil prices, according to Reuters.

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Iraq extends daily oil production cut until end of 2024 - Iraqi News

Iraq has announced an ambitious plan for the construction of a 1,200-km railway line and parallel motorway that will link its ports on the Arabian Gulf with Europe through neighbouring Turkey.

Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani announced the $17 billion project dubbed Development Road during a gathering of Transport Ministry representatives from several neighbouring countries on 27 May.

The implementation of this strategic project will consolidate regional economic cooperation in the interest of its countries and peoples, Al-Sudani wrote in an article published in a Saudi newspaper a few days before the launch.

There are few details about the massive infrastructure project or its foreign and economic feasibility, but it may be related to Iraqs intentions to strengthen its partnerships throughout the Middle East.

Motivated by the countrys pressing domestic and foreign challenges, successive governments in post US-invasion Iraq have battled to reintegrate the country fully into the region and shield it from outside interference.

But as has so often been the case over the last two decades, Iraqs repeated efforts to reconnect with the region have been met by its neighbours pressing geopolitical concerns and economic interests.

Iraqs initiative to build the railway line and road that will link the country with Turkey will likely focus on neighbouring and foreign powers that have stakes in emerging multi-modal corridors that could eventually link East Asia with Europe.

The project, which will start from the southern Al-Faw Peninsula in Iraq, also includes the construction of around 15 train stations along the route, including in the major cities of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, and end up at the Turkish border.

Once it is completed, Iraq hopes the duel route will turn the country into a regional commercial transit hub. It will give it access to the Turkish port of Mersin and then Istanbul and Europe.

Iraq also hopes the new route will improve international trade by shortening the time taken to cover the distance between East Asia and Europe by half.

Iraqi officials have said the project will be awarded to Frances transport giant Alstom, which is also expected to build Baghdads first elevated metro line. The Italian company Progetti Europa & Global has worked as a consultant on different stages of the project and is supervising its timetable.

The Al-Faw Port on the northern tip of the Arabian Gulf is the logistical linchpin of the project. South Koreas Daewoo is constructing Phase 1 of the port under a $2.65 billion contract awarded in 2020. Work is to be completed in 2025, when the port will begin operations at a capacity of 20 to 45 million tons of goods per year.

The construction of the port has raised tensions with Kuwait, which had started building its own Mubarak Al-Kabeer Port on the other side of the Gulf. The multi-billion megaproject is an essential part of Kuwaits Vision 2035 Strategy, and the emirate hopes to link it with Chinas Belt and Road Initiative projects.

With its container docks, deep-water harbour, free-trade zone, rail network, and resort, the port will make Kuwait into a leading financial and trade centre in the region.

Iraq fears that the Kuwaiti project will turn into a pivotal financial and trading hub at the expense of its own Development Road, which it also hopes will be part of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative.

There has been no word from Turkey on the plans, even though the country has its own strategy regarding east-west connectivity. Turkey is also seeking to be an energy hub and a transit distribution centre serving Europe.

Turkish Ambassador to Iraq Ali Riza Guney, who attended the Baghdad meeting where the Iraqi project was announced along with officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jordan, Iran and Syria, said that the Iraqi Development Road will boost interdependence between the countries of the region.

Iran, meanwhile, is devising its own regional strategic corridor linking East Asia and Europe through a railway line connecting the Arabian Gulf to the Mediterranean. The Islamic Republic has announced ambitious plans to build a railway line that would run from its southern port city of Khorramshahr across Iraq to Syria.

With a strategic coastline on the Mediterranean and having just re-emerged out of the diplomatic cold, Syria also wants to be part of the new Middle East connectivity. Its Transport Minister Zuhair Khuzaim, who also attended the Baghdad meeting, has suggested that the Iraqi Al-Faw Port should be linked with Syrian ports on the Mediterranean.

He said this would shorten the overall distance to the Mediterranean Sea by some 900 km.

Saudi Arabia has also unveiled an infrastructure programme that includes building a vast road network and a railway line that will connect the Saudi coastline on the Gulf with its ports on the Red Sea.

Saudi Minister of Transport Saleh bin Nasser Al-Jasser, who represented the Kingdom at the Baghdad meeting, said an international consortium led by Chinese companies was taking part in the projects.

Saudi Arabia has also signed a number of agreements to boost economic cooperation and develop a special economic zone with Iraq. Among them are plans to expand and effectively utilise the newly opened Arar crossing point with Iraq and to open a new one in Jumaimah further south.

Jordan has always been a key partner of Iraq, whether through bilateral business deals or as a gateway for international trade via its Aqaba Port on the Red Sea, which connects with the Mediterranean. It has struggled to offer a more appealing vision of cooperation, including through a strategic tripartite partnership with Egypt.

Driven by fears that it will be marginalised by Beijings drive to establish a new Eurasian corridor through its Belt and Road Initiative, India has been contemplating its own corridor to the Mediterranean that would radically reconfigure trade patterns between the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and Europe.

Plans for the new Arab-Mediterranean connectivity are also the result of the diplomatic normalisation between some Arab Gulf nations and Israel, which is giving rise to the creation of a UAE-Israel railway network via Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Israels Haifa port on the Mediterranean.

Israel has already showed great interest in all the connectivity projects, and it has proposed a new train route linking Haifa to the Saudi Gulf port of Dammam, the UAE, and Bahrain.

The Israeli media says that the proposals, dubbed Tracks for Regional Peace, have undergone a preliminary feasibility study and could gather steam alongside a major infrastructure project.

Egypt has also recently showcased a gigantic high-speed rail link from Al-Sokhna at the northern tip of the Red Sea to Al-Alamein on the Mediterranean. Thanks to the Suez Canal waterway that can handle container ships carrying over 20,000 containers, Egypt will be able to provide a duel corridor with the fastest outreach to Europe.

However, all these ambitious initiatives hinge on the progress made by China to establish a foothold in the Mediterranean through its Belt and Road Initiative. The mammoth $1 trillion Chinese Initiative, slated for completion in 2049, is intended to link Asia to Europe via the Middle East.

Whether Iraq becomes a regional leader in forging its new commercial architecture will therefore depend on several geopolitical and economic considerations, including competition over influence and Iraqs ability to manage its foreign and regional partnerships to participate in the Development Road corridor.

Even before becoming an independent state in 1922, Iraq had anchored itself in the Middle East as crucially important for regional and world geopolitics.

Before World War I, Germany contemplated building a railway line to connect Berlin to Baghdad and Basra on the Gulf through the Ottoman Empire. The Germans were hoping the line would give them access to the Gulf and circumvent the Suez Canal, then controlled by Britain.

Even with a post-independence history checkered with political upheavals, military coups, and wars, Iraq has remained strategically important, whether as a result of its having the worlds fifth-largest proven crude oil reserves or because of its position at the heart of the Levant with connections to Iran and the Gulf.

Yet, with a region crowded with so many ambitious projects and sometimes conflicting interests, the Iraqi plans for a regional commercial corridor are coming under scrutiny. Al-Sudani has proudly launched the plans, but he has not presented the initiative for analysis at expert level or even for public discussion.

While many critics point to Iraqs present financial crunch due to government dysfunction, economic inefficiency, and rampant corruption, others have voiced concerns about the projects feasibility. Still others say its successful implementation is unlikely due to political reasons.

For all the talk about the vast scope of the Development Road project and its being a connectivity node for Iraq to be a vital part of any future Middle East, the centrality of the initiative to Iraqs sense of its regional destiny remains an open question.

* A version of this article appears in print in the8 June, 2023 edition ofAl-Ahram Weekly

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