NEW YORK, Apr 11 (IPS) – The resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the Saudis’ diplomatic overtures toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, are part and parcel of the Saudis’ overall reassessment of their geostrategic interests, which rest on three distinctives goals: regional stability, exerting greater regional and international influence, and uninterrupted oil exports. These three fundamental goals are tightly linked and are within the Saudis’ reach.
Regional stability
The resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran mediated by China was central to its strategy. Both countries have come to the conclusion that notwithstanding their enmity and regional rivalry, they have to coexist in one form or another.
They realized that the eight-year-long war in Yemen has done nothing to improve their regional standing. It was a lose-lose proposition. Iran failed to establish a strong and permanent foothold in the Arabian Peninsula and although Iran continues to support the Houthis, they have no illusion about converting Yemen into an Iranian satellite.
Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, having prevented Iran from dominating Yemen, no longer feels that the continuation of the war will yield any further benefit regardless of how much more money and human resources they pour into the war effort.
This explains why they have agreed on the ceasefire and further extended it until they could find a mutually accepted solution. The resumption of diplomatic relations would accelerate this reconciliation process.
This, needless to say, is not guaranteed because the adversarial relations between the two countries run deep, but their national interest resulting from their rapprochement overrides, for the time being, those concerns.
Both sides know that it will take time to fully normalize relations while testing each other’s true intentions as well as their conduct.
For the same reason, the Saudis decided that Syria’s President Assad is not going anywhere. He has weathered the most devastating war since the last World War, albeit at the expense of destroying half of the country while inflicting massive suffering on nearly half of Syria’s population.
Millions are still refugees languishing in camps in many countries in the region, especially in Turkey, and millions more are still internally displaced. Thus, mending relations with Syria will be a win-win for the Saudis as this would only enhance its influence.
Regional influence
The Saudis fully understand that they cannot boost their regional influence by remaining disengaged from their neighbors. Given Iran’s nuclear weapons program and the Saudis’ extreme concerns, the resumption of diplomatic relations could potentially ease those apprehensions.
How the Saudis can help change the dynamic of Iran’s nuclear program remains to be seen. One thing, however, is certain: the Saudis have placed themselves where they can potentially bring Iran back to negotiating with the US, albeit indirectly. Whether or not they succeed, they can still exert greater influence in this area by engaging Iran, which they did not have before.
And to further exert regional influence, the Saudis wisely decided to invite Syria’s Assad to the Arab League summit that Riyadh is hosting in May. Syria was suspended from the organization in 2011, and was sanctioned by many Western powers and Arab states because of Assad’s fierce onslaught against protesters that led to a long, drawn-out civil war during which more than 600,000 lost their lives.
The Saudi invitation certainly signals an extremely important development that will bring about the reintegration of Syria into the Arab fold—a move that would lead to the resumption of full diplomatic relations between the two countries.
There is no doubt that other Arab states will follow suit, which only strengthens Saudi Arabia’s leadership role among its fellow Arab countries.
By reopening diplomatic relations with both Iran and Syria, the Saudis will have a say about any future settlement to the Syrian conflict, where Iran still exerts considerable influence.
Given that the Saudis have deep pockets and the Syrian regime is dire economic strains and needs tens of billions to rebuild, the Saudis can do a great deal more than Iran to provide financial aid to Syria. And, of course, with financial aid comes influence.
President Assad is more than eager to cooperate not only for the critically important financial aid, but also to begin the process of ending Damascus’ isolation. Restoring diplomatic relations between Syria and the other Arab states will contribute significantly to calming the region and making it possible for Saudi Arabia to sustain its ability to supply oil in huge quantities without interruption.
Uninterrupted oil export
For the Saudis, continuing to export oil in enormous quantities and the revenue it generates is central to its objective to becoming a regional player to be reckoned with. Having the largest reservoir of oil gives the Saudis significant advantages, as many of its oil customers know they can rely on the Saudis for energy supplies for many years to come.
Thus, its resumption of diplomatic relations with Iran and Syria and financially aiding other Arab states like Egypt, would invariably contribute to stabilizing the region and in turn allow the Saudis to continue its oil exports with the least interruptions.
None of the above however will impact adversely the Saudis’ relationship with the US nor its tacit relations with Israel. The Saudis are fully aware of how critical the US’ role in both, as the main supplier of weapons to the kingdom and the region’s ultimate security guarantor.
Moreover, regardless of its discord with Israel regarding the Palestinian conflict, Saudi Arabia’s tacit cooperation with Israel on intelligence sharing and transfer of Israeli technology are and will remain an integral part of its geostrategic objective.
Riyadh wants to develop inroads into both its past adversaries including Iran and Syria while maintaining its current relations with the US and Israel, regardless of the occasional ups and downs between them.
At the same time, Riyadh is cementing its bilateral relations with China, the world’s second-largest superpower to which Saudi Arabia exports one quarter of its annual oil output ($43.9 billion’s worth in 2021, out of $161.7 billion in total exports), while becoming the de facto leader of the Arab states.
To be sure the Saudis have, thus far, been able to successfully utilize its wealth to its advantage.
Needless to say, however, many external and regional occurrences could directly and indirectly impact Saudi Arabia’s new geostrategic calculus, including the Ukraine war, the growing tension between the US and China and Russia, and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However, under any circumstances the Saudis stand to gain as time and circumstances are on their side.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.
Egypt plans to sell shares in 32 state-owned businesses, including three banks. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS
by Hisham Allam (cairo)
Inter Press Service
Cairo, Apr 06 (IPS) – Egypt intends to sell shares in 32 state-owned businesses within a year, including three banks, two military-owned businesses, and numerous businesses in the energy and transportation sectors. This is part of the administration’s efforts to reduce the role of the state in the economy and attract foreign capital.
That also follows the government’s December USD 3 billion deal with the IMF to resume privatization initiatives.
The IMF approved the USD 3 billion loan to strengthen the private sector and reduce the state’s footprint in the economy.
Egypt planned to sell 23 state-owned enterprises in 2018, but the plan was postponed due to the worldwide crisis.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has put pressure on the Egyptian economy and currency, making the proposal more urgent.
According to Rashad Abdo, head of the Egyptian Forum for Economic Studies, Egypt had already received sovereign loans from many donors, including international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and Gulf countries, and these parties either set harsh lending conditions or would be reluctant to lend due to increased risks.
The State Ownership Policy Plan, adopted by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in December, outlines how the government would participate in the economy and how it would increase private sector involvement in public investments. Egypt wants to increase the contribution of the private sector to the nation’s economic activity from 30 percent to 65 percent within the next three years. One-quarter of these enterprises will be listed by the government within six months.
Egypt announced the offering of these companies, intending to sell them to strategic investors, specifically Gulf sovereign funds. Egypt is expected to sell enterprises worth USD 40 billion within three years, including those held by the army.
Attracting foreign investment requires strengthening the investment climate, lowering inflation rates, and expanding anti-corruption efforts, Abdo told IPS.
The State Ownership document states that 32 Egyptian state companies will be listed on the Egypt Exchange (EGX) or sold to strategic investors within a year, beginning with the current quarter and ending in the first quarter of 2024. Stakes in three significant banks, Banco du Caire, United Bank of Egypt, and Arab African International Bank, are among the scheduled transactions. Insurance, electricity, and energy companies, as well as hotels and industrial and agricultural concerns, will also be on the market. Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly announced that the first stakes would be offered in March and a quarter by June, and more businesses could be added over the next year.
Abdo pointed out that the Monetary Fund affirmed the Egyptian government’s commitment to implementing the State Ownership Document when it agreed to grant it this loan and the Egyptian government saw it as a favorable opportunity to implement the terms of the document set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Mohamed Al-Kilani, professor of economics and member of the Egyptian Society for Political Economy, said the privatization effort seeks to eliminate the dollar gap in Egypt and thus provide indirect compensation in the form of services and benefits from the International Monetary Fund’s debt.
The state would also send a message to foreign investors that it responds to the private sector and is willing to withdraw from certain sectors to benefit the private sector.
“The state is attempting to exploit this proposal to stimulate and revitalize the Egyptian Stock Exchange while taking into account the fair valuation of these companies in comparison to the global market. However, the state was unclear about the details of this offering and whether it is a long-term or short-term investment, and it has not clarified the size of employment or the percentages offered in terms of ownership and management,” Al-Kilani told IPS.
“The state is trying to create new types of foreign investment to attract foreign currency due to the fluctuation in exchange rates and high-interest rates,” Al-Kilani added.
According to external debt data published on the central bank’s website in mid-February, Egypt’s external debt fell by USD 728 million to USD 154.9 billion at the end of last September, but its foreign exchange reserves remain low, prompting renewed demand for state assets. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has further pressured the economy and local currency, prompting the proposal for new urgency.
Despite its relatively modest improvement in the latest data from the central bank at the beginning of February (USD 34.2 billion), it lost about 20 percent of the level of USD 41 billion at the end of February last year.
Last January, the IMF suggested that the volume of the financing gap in Egypt would reach about USD 17 billion over the next 46 months in light of its decline in foreign exchange resources and the high cost of its imports as one of the largest countries in the world to import its food and the first importer of wheat in the world.
LONDON, Apr 05 (IPS) – Europe’s current approach to facilitating refugee returns and containing new arrivals from Syria is based on wishful thinking. Europeans have come to terms with the fact that a political settlement for Syria’s 12-year conflict is not on the horizon.
In conversations with diplomats, one hears a reoccurring theme these days: Syria is not a priority anymore. Notoriously hesitant to lead and busy with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europeans want to keep things as calm as possible.
But what stands in the way of this old-fashioned wait-and-see approach is the issue of refugees. Not only are significant numbers not returning to Syria, but tens of thousands more continue to set out to the EU each year.
Against this background, Europeans have indicated to president Bashar al-Assad that concessions on the ‘refugee issue’ could prompt them to re-think their policy of ostracising the Syrian dictator and his regime.
Notably, discussions on refugee return have almost exclusively been about their return to regime-held Syria. Much of the official thinking on the matter, which includes that of the UN envoy, envisages Assad conceding to taking back refugees in return for the normalisation of relations with other Arab countries and Western political and financial inducements.
Putting refugee return on the negotiating table with Assad makes sense from a diplomatic expediency angle. And it is certainly attractive: if voluntary and dignified returns can be realised, this would please the domestic audience in Europe and foreign ministries as well as EU institutions could sell it as an indicator that political progress is being achieved.
However, Europe’s current approach to facilitating refugee returns and containing new arrivals is based on wishful thinking.
Assad’s ‘population warfare’
First of all, Europe falsely assumes that Assad wants his people back. Apart from the crippling pressures that any sizeable refugee return would place on resources in regime areas – water, electricity, fuel, food, etc. – there is the more important matter of security.
The regime considers all Syrians who have fled to neighbouring countries to be at best cowards and at worst traitors. By placing themselves out of the reach of the regime’s military conscriptors, they are seen as having voted with their feet in Syria’s civil war.
‘We will never forgive or forget’ echoes a longstanding view among regime supporters of those perceived to have skipped the war but now want to return once the fighting is over.
The testimonies of those who have returned only to see their loved ones arrested and killed suggest that it is not an empty threat. Those connected to rebels or their families by blood or marriage, or those that have been reported as having anti-Assad views by informants, immediately fail the regime’s security check for returning refugees, as will most that hail from former rebel strongholds.
Additionally, living in a neighbouring country for many years and establishing roots there, as most refugees have done, enables the regime to brand them as ‘politically suspect’. Syria’s Foreign Minister claims that refugees can return ‘without any condition’, but this magnanimity is only voiced when around Western reporters.
‘Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the Syrian regime’s discourse on refugees is that there barely is one’, a study on the matter finds. This should not come at all as a surprise.
Syria’s mass population displacement has for too long been seen as an unfortunate secondary effect of the war rather than an intended goal. But in civil wars that take on an ethnic or sectarian nature, de-population becomes a strategic goal in itself.
According to one study, ‘combatants displace not only to expel undesirable populations but also to identify the undesirables in the first place by forcing people to send signals of loyalty and affiliation based on whether, and to where, they flee.’
In Syria, population displacement was at the heart of Assad’s counter-insurgency strategy. Moreover, Assad’s use of chemical weapons and its wider war effort are inextricably linked – tactically, operationally and strategically.
Whether it be artillery strikes, barrel bombs, or sarin gas, the overall war strategy was collective punishment of the population in opposition-held areas.
Assad’s ‘population warfare’ doctrine aims to ensure the population balance of pre-war Syria – so nearly fatal to his family and clan – cannot be recreated. ‘Two-thirds of the population was Sunni and half of it has been scattered to the winds, as refugees or internal exiles’, writes one observer – a favourable outcome for the Alawite president.
For Assad, the country has now gained a ‘healthier and more homogenous society’. With that in mind, it is understandable that most Syrians reject returning to areas under the control of his regime.
Working with Turkey
Does this mean that Europeans should remove the ‘refugee file’ from the negotiating table? Not quite. But they would be well advised to be sober about their goals. If they try to utilise the refugee file as an entry point for advancing a moribund political process, it would be ethically irresponsible.
In fact, EU diplomats have already signalled that credible steps allowing refugee returns could pave the way for gradual engagement with the Assad regime. This is concerning given that turning refugees into a diplomatic currency to trade concessions with Assad hardly passes the ‘do no harm’ test.
If the goal is to get results where refugees actually return to Syria in large numbers and fewer people leave the country, Europeans should be talking not with Damascus but with Ankara.
The inconvenient truth about refugee return is that it will only work if enough refugees are willing to return voluntarily, given realistic conditions and a serious partner on the ground with an active interest in seeing returns happen.
Right now, only Turkey and a share of its Syrian refugees can tick both boxes, given the connectivity between populations on both sides of the border and Turkey’s ability to assure relative security.
According to UNHCR figures, about 800 Syrian refugees are returning to Syria from Turkey every week despite the UN agency’s assessment that conditions are not suitable for a large number of voluntary returns.
Moreover, of the nearly 750,000 refugees that have returned to Syria since 2016, most of them (500,000) have returned from Turkey to opposition-controlled areas in the north and northwest of Syria. In contrast, only 10,766 refugees returned to regime-controlled areas between January and October 2022. A greater number have fled Assad’s Syria in the same period.
The absence of security hurdles to return and compulsory military conscription (both major push factors in regime areas and those controlled by the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces) and the fact that Sunni internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees feel relatively safe under Turkey’s protection are solid foundations on which to build a realistic returns policy.
Perhaps most important for European policymakers, Turkey controls the territory in northern Syria through which large numbers from regime and SDF areas are passing through to enter Turkey and continue to Europe, all for vast sums of money.
Dealing with Ankara on a programme for voluntary refugee return would create a firebreak in the logistical chain of the people traffickers that ends in Berlin and Amsterdam but begins at the M4 Highway.
In sum, Europeans should recognise that significant refugee returns to areas currently controlled by the Assad regime cannot precede a political settlement. Talk of ‘post-conflict reconstruction’ and investments in local development labelled as ‘Early Recovery assistance’ will not change that fact.
This also applies to limiting new refugee movements. Any sort of minor concession from the regime has the purpose of maintaining the momentum of normalisation, but it cannot alter the calculus of Syrians who have no illusions about the regime’s unalterable nature.
The facts support the case for European engagement with Turkey both on returns and border security. Europeans are of course entitled to take a critical stance on Ankara’s Syria policy. Notwithstanding their condemnation of Turkey’s incursions into Syria, new realities have emerged that require a nuanced position rather than blissful ignorance.
Unless Europeans adapt to the reality that Syria is now a de facto divided country, their policy response will remain poor. If areas outside of the regime’s control continue to be seen as not being part of Syria proper, and therefore not integral to any credible nationwide refugee return programme, there will be much more talk but no delivery.
Individual diplomats may be very much aware of this reality, but as long as this realisation does not translate into actual policy, the EU will continue to deceive itself.
Malik al-Abdeh is a conflict resolution expert focused on Syria. He is managing director of Conflict Mediation Solutions, a consultancy specialized in Track II work.
Lars Hauch works as a researcher and policy advisor for Conflict Mediation Solutions, a London-based consultancy specialising in Track II diplomacy.
Source: International Politics and Society (IPS) Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 31 (IPS) – The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an organisation whose motto is ‘For democracy. For everyone’, just held its global assembly in a country with a mock parliament and not the slightest semblance of democracy.
For Bahrain’s authoritarian leaders, the hosting of the IPU assembly was yet another reputation-laundering opportunity: a week before, they’d hosted Formula One’s opening race.
The day after the race, Ebrahim Al-Mannai, a lawyer and human rights activist, tweeted that the Bahraini parliament should be reformed if it was to be showcased at the assembly. His reward was to be immediately arrested for tweets and posts deemed an ‘abuse of social media platforms’.
That same week, the Bahraini authorities revoked the entry visas for two Human Rights Watch staff to attend the assembly.
Rather than opening up to host the event, Bahrain further shut down.
A mock parliament and no democracy
Bahrain is member of the IPU, which defines itself as ‘the global organization of national parliaments’, because, on paper at least, it has a parliament. But its parliament is neither representative nor powerful. Bahrain is an absolute monarchy.
The king has power over all branches of government. He appoints and dismisses the prime minister and cabinet members, who are responsible to him, not to parliament. The two prime ministers the country has had so far – the first served for over 50 years – have been prominent members of the royal family, and many cabinet ministers have been too.
The king appoints all members of the upper house of parliament, along with all judges. Parliament’s lower chamber is elected – but everything possible is done to keep out those who might try to hold the government to account.
Political parties aren’t allowed; ‘political societies’, loose groups with some of the functions of political parties, are recognised. To be able to operate, they must register and seek authorisation, which can be denied or revoked.
In recent years the government has shut down most opposition political societies, arresting and imprisoning their most popular leaders. All members of dissolved groups and former prisoners are banned from competing in elections. And just in case new potential opposition candidates somehow emerge, voting districts are carefully gerrymandered so the opposition can’t get a majority.
In November 2022 Bahrain once again went through the motions of an election. A large number of eligible voters were excluded from the electoral roll as punishment for abstaining in previous elections – a tactic used to ensure any boycott attempts wouldn’t affect turnout. Exactly as it was meant to, the election produced a legislative body with no ability to counterbalance monarchical power.
No space for dissent
In 2018, the king issued a decree known as the ‘political isolation law’. It banned members of dissolved opposition parties standing for election. It also gave the government control of the appointment of civil society organisations’ board members, limiting their ability to operate, and has been used to harass and persecute activists, including by stripping them and their families of citizenship rights.
In 2017, Bahrain’s last independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, was shut down. No independent media are now allowed to operate. The government owns all national broadcast media outlets, while the main private newspapers are owned by government loyalists.
Vaguely worded press laws that impose harsh penalties, including long prison sentences, for insulting the king, defaming Islam or threatening national security encourage self-censorship. Many people, including journalists, bloggers and others active on social media, have been detained, imprisoned and convicted.
This has turned Bahrain into a prison state. It’s estimated that almost 15,000 people have been arrested for their political views over the past decade, at least 1,400 of whom are currently in jail. Most have been convicted on the basis of confessions obtained under torture. Appallingly, 51 people have been sentenced to death.
An advocacy opportunity
Given the IPU’s evident lack of interest in the human rights records of host states, civil society focused its advocacy on parliamentary delegations from democratic states.
Ahead of the assembly, two dozen civil society groups published a joint statement addressed at parliamentarians who would be attending, urging them to publicly raise concerns over Bahrain’s lack of political freedoms, including violations of the rights of parliamentarians, and to ensure their presence wouldn’t be used to legitimise the authoritarian regime.
Civil society’s calls for the freedom of political prisoners were loudly echoed by parliamentary delegations from countries including Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands, among several others.
The director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy described the event as ‘a PR disaster for the Bahraini regime’, a failure of its image-laundering plan.
The response of the Bahraini authorities was however far from encouraging. They reminded foreign parliamentarians they shouldn’t interfere in Bahrain’s domestic affairs and continued to deny evidence of imprisonment and torture.
Sustained international pressure is needed to urge the Bahraini regime to free its thousands of political prisoners and allow spaces for dissent. That, rather than high-level image-laundering events, is what will fix the country’s well-deserved bad reputation.
Opinion by Shivan Fazil, Alaa Tartir (stockholm, sweden)
Inter Press Service
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 24 (IPS) – Over the past two decades Iraq has been affected by several waves of intense conflict and violence. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition led by the United States and United Kingdom toppled the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein.
It also ushered in years of chaos and civil war, as a variety of armed groups vied for power and territory and targeted coalition forces and the fledgling post-Ba’athist Iraqi Army.
A period of relative calm in the early 2010s was broken by the rise of the extremist Islamic State group, which occupied large parts of the country from 2014 until it was largely defeated by Iraqi forces with the support of a US-led international coalition in 2017.
Today Iraq is enjoying its most stable period since 2003. Armed violence persists in different forms, but it is sporadic, fragmented and localized. However, the country remains fragile and divided, and its people face an array of deepening challenges that the state is struggling to address. This Topical Backgrounder aims to provide a snapshot of the situation in Iraq 20 years since the invasion.
A fragile, oil-dependent economy
Crude oil exports accounted for an estimated 95 per cent of federal revenues in 2020. Successive governments have done little to wean Iraq off this heavy dependency on oil rents and diversify the economy. This has led to a bloated public sector characterized by patronage and to a shortage of jobs for new graduates—especially those without the necessary connections and networks.
The dependency on oil rents also exposes the Iraqi economy to fluctuations in global oil prices. Not only does this make long-term development planning difficult, but in 2020, when global oil prices plunged, the government was left unable to fund basic services or even pay public-sector salaries and pensions.
Despite having large natural gas reserves, Iraq currently relies on gas imports from Iran. The US and Iraq’s European partners are keen to end this dependency and to help Iraq become energy-independent.
However, the political and economic turmoil of the past few years in Iraq have stalled investment in capacity to separate and process gas from Iraqi oil fields, and instead vast quantities of gas associated with oil extraction are flared off.
This leaves Iraq still dependent on Iranian gas and electricity imports, greatly increases its climate footprint and creates acute air pollution in parts of the country. The situation is a prime illustration of the complexity of Iraq’s security challenges and governance failures, which interact in complex ways with its oil-dependent economy, tumultuous regional dynamics and environmental issues.
The changing face of armed violence
Today, Islamic State is thought to be unable to recruit more members in Iraq and only an estimated 500 fighters are still active in the country. Major military operations against Islamic State have thus ended.
In 2020, the US began reducing its military footprint in Iraq—which had risen sharply in response to the rise of Islamic State—and only around 2500 US military personnel remain in the country, at Iraq’s invitation, in an advisory role.
A key task as the threat from Islamic State dissipates is to deal with the Popular Mobilization Forces (an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization comprising a number of predominantly Shia militias, some supported by Iran) as well as smaller militia groups linked to ethno-religious minorities in the country’s north that were formed in the name of community self-defence.
One of the goals of successive Iraqi governments has been integrating these forces into the Iraqi security forces, but progress has been slow. Most of the militias are nominally under the Ministry of Defence.
However, many seem to act independently of government and outside institutional jurisdiction. Some have been accused of human rights violations and abuses against civilians, particularly during the mass anti-government protests in 2019.
Another task, being urged by the US and the anti-Islamic State coalition, is to improve how the Peshmerga—the armed forces of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI)—and the Iraqi Armed Forces interact.
A lack of coordination and intelligence-sharing has undermined the efficiency of security operations, particularly in the disputed territories of Iraq. Prior to the emergence of Islamic State in 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government in Baghdad were jointly administering security in these territories.
Iraq has also suffered from the spillover of civil conflicts and counterinsurgency in neighbouring countries, especially in some of its more remote regions. Iran and Türkiye have both launched missile strikes or armed incursions against opposition forces on Iraqi territory in recent years.
Identity politics and worsening state-society relations
The United States and other members of the coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 and supported its transition to post-Ba’athist democracy lacked a long-term vision. They often failed to anticipate the consequences of major decisions, such as the disbanding of the Iraqi Army in 2003 or several initiatives put forward by the transitional authorities.
One of the most consequential of these initiatives was the establishment of Muhasasa Ta’ifia, a form of consociationalist elite bargain that was adopted after 2005. Under Muhasasa Ta’ifia, government posts, sinecures and departments are shared out among the Kurdish, Shia and Sunni political elites after an election—often after a lot of fraught inter-factional horse-trading.
Voters are offered a choice of parties within a given ethnosectarian bloc, but no choice of policy platforms. There is no parliamentary opposition to hold the government accountable.
Muhasasa Ta’ifia was conceived as a way to stop Iraq fracturing and divisions along the major ethnosectarian faultlines, to encourage the groups to collaborate and to avoid one group becoming too dominant. While it has arguably succeeded to an extent in those aims, it has also given rise to ineffective governments, lack of accountability, and a public sector rife with corruption and patronage.
As a result, a major new faultline has emerged, with ordinary citizens united across ethnosectarian lines by grievances against the governing class. Along with corruption, citizens complain of economic mismanagement, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, weak public services and more. Largely youth-led anti-government protests in 2019 expressed their feelings of alienation from the political elite with the slogan ‘We want a homeland’.
Mass protest has been growing since 2015. The October Protest or Tishreen Movement that began in 2019 was large enough to topple the government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in early 2020 and was violently suppressed by state forces and militias.
Muhasasa Ta’ifia caused another political crisis in 2021–22 when elites were unable to agree on a new government for over a year after a general election in October 2021. Voter turnout in that election fell to a record low of 44 per cent, illustrating the growing popular disillusionment and frustration with the political system.
Muhasasa Ta’ifia seems unlikely to change in the near term, but there are some signs that it is slowly breaking down, and perhaps even starting to make way for a more issue-based politics. For example, political factions have recently been forming alliances beyond their ethno-sectarian blocs.
Following the 2021 election, Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shia Sadrist movement, proposed forming a majority government with a sizeable parliamentary opposition—although this was rejected by other factions.
More positively, the Tishreen Movement spawned its own political candidates, some of whom won seats. Their potential to influence federal politics is negligible, but they may be able to push forward change in subnational politics.
The Kurdistan Region in federal Iraq
The Kurdistan Regional Government has a peaceful, if occasionally fraught, relationship with the federal government in Baghdad. The KRG enjoys a high level of autonomy, which includes maintaining its own military forces, the Peshmerga.
Early on in the transition process after 2003, Kurdistan was recognized as Iraq’s most stable region, and its leaders as having valuable experience of government that the other transitional authorities lacked. This was also partly due to the no-fly zone and other measures to protect the Iraqi Kurds from Iraqi government attacks implemented by the United States and European partners after the first Gulf War in 1991.
The Kurds in Iraq have largely distanced themselves from the Kurdish independence movements in neighbouring Iran, Syria and Turkey, to the extent that Peshmerga forces have even clashed with Turkey’s Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) forces operating on Iraqi soil.
Relations between the KRG and the federal government are complicated by long-standing disagreements over oil revenue sharing and control of the disputed territories, which include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The KRG brought these territories under its control after Iraqi security forces withdrew in the face of Islamic State advances in 2014. Resolving the status of the disputed territories should have taken place a decade earlier, according to the 2005 constitution.
When the major military operations to defeat Islamic State came to an end in 2017, tensions between the federal government and the KRG were intensified by the KRG’s push for greater autonomy. The KRG organized a referendum for independence that also included the disputed territories that were then under its control (including Kirkuk).
The federal government rejected the referendum and retook the disputed territories with military force, supported by the Popular Mobilization Forces, and implemented other punitive measures against the KRG.
The KRG and state-society relations in the KRI have similar problems to those found at the federal level. The KRG budget relies heavily on independent oil exports and on budget transfers from Baghdad, removing the incentive to diversify the economy. And the two main Kurdish factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have been in a power-sharing agreement since the unification of two Iraqi Kurdish enclaves in 2006.
This agreement sees government and administrative posts shared between the two parties—an arrangement not dissimilar to Iraq’s Muhasasa Ta’ifia. As in the rest of Iraq, residents of the KRI complain of corruption, patronage and mismanagement by the Kurdish authorities. Many have left Iraq to seek asylum in Europe and elsewhere.
Relations with Iran and the US
In the field of diplomacy, Iraq’s strongest relationships and ties are with Iran and the US. Nevertheless, Iraq has sought to diversify its diplomatic and economic relations in recent years, including with Arab Gulf states as well as Egypt and Jordan.
Iran is Iraq’s largest trading partner, although Iraq’s imports from Iran—worth around $9 billion in 2018—vastly outweigh trade in the other direction. Iraq and Iran have also cooperated extensively in the fight against Islamic State.
Iran’s influence in Iraq, much of it exercised through Shia political factions, has been a source of anger among protesters, especially as Iranian-backed militia groups have been involved in violence against anti-government protests.
In addition to having guided the post-invasion political transition, the USA remains Iraq’s main source of security support and of military and development aid. The USA has recently increased pressure on Iraq for tighter control of dollar sales in order to stamp out potential money laundering that benefits Iran and Syria.
Steps taken to do this contributed to a significant drop in the dollar value of the Iraqi dinar, leading to soaring inflation in early 2023 and the replacement of the central bank governor.
Iraq has been caught in the middle of regional tensions, particularly due to its diplomatic and geographic closeness to Iran. In recent years Iraq has tried to take an active role in resolving these tensions. For example, with French support Iraq has organized two regional summits—one in Baghdad the other in Amman, Jordan—aimed at de-escalating regional tensions. In 2021 Iraq hosted talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a prelude to the China-brokered détente announced in March 2023.
The situation for Iraq’s minorities
State failure to protect Iraq’s many ethno-religious minorities is a long-standing problem. Since 2003, many minorities have been displaced due to insecurity, often migrating to the KRI—which was seen as calmer, safer and more tolerant—and in many cases out of Iraq altogether.
The Islamic State group targeted minorities, particularly those of non-Abrahamic faiths. The worst of this was in Nineveh Province, known for its mosaic of ethnic and religious diversity. The Islamic State attacks on the Yezidi group in Sinjar district were so devastating that they have been recognized as a genocide.
Many of the minorities who were displaced during the Islamic State occupation have not returned—partly down to the presence of the many militias still active in their areas of origin and a general sense of insecurity, but also because they feel they can make a better life in their new homes.
A UN-brokered agreement between the KRG and the federal government in 2021 that was aimed at normalizing the security situation in Sinjar has had little effect on the ground that would encourage the internally displaced Yezidis to return.
Although minority citizens in Iraq are experiencing lower levels of armed violence based on their identity, discrimination against them seems to have worsened in the wake of the Islamic State occupation. SIPRI has been working in the Nineveh Plains region on ways to improve intercommunal relations and help minorities to re-establish their cultural practices and social relations.
Multiple civil society and grassroots groups are pushing for a reimagining of Iraq, where ethnicity and sect play a much smaller role. However, Iraq’s powerful political blocs are keen to maintain the current power-sharing arrangement, even though it does not seem likely to bring prosperity or lasting peace.
The legacy of the invasion still runs through many of the challenges that Iraq faces, but no longer defines them. Gradually, Iraq is shaping its own destiny—hopefully to the benefit of all its citizens.
Shivan Fazil is a Researcher with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Dr Alaa Tartir is a Senior Researcher and Director of SIPRI’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.
Israel’s separation barrier as seen from Al Ram.. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS
Opinion by Joseph Chamie (portland, usa)
Inter Press Service
PORTLAND, USA, Mar 02 (IPS) – Israel of today as a Jewish and democratic state is a contradiction of terms and as such may possibly become transformed into a genuinely democratic Israel tomorrow with justice and equality for all.
In Israel today, citizens who are not Jewish are treated differently than those who are Jewish, who benefit from certain rights and privileges. In a national opinion poll, most Jewish Israelis, about 80 percent, say Jews should get preferential treatment in Israel. Also, nearly half of Jewish Israelis say that Arab Israelis should be expelled or transferred from Israel.
In addition, several years ago Israel passed the “nation-state law”, which among other things, states that the right to exercise national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people and also established Jewish settlement as a national value. While embraced by many Jewish Israelis, the nation-state law was considered apartheid by the country’s non-Jewish population, ostensibly making them second-class citizens.
In a democratic Israel, in contrast, all Israelis irrespective of their religious affiliation would have the same rights and privileges. In such a state, justice and equality would prevail across the entire country’s population, not just for a single dominant religious group.
A democratic Israel would be similar in many respects to Western liberal democracies such as the United States. In that democracy, all religious groups, including Jewish Americans, have the same rights, privileges and equality under the law.
Most Jewish Israelis, some 75 percent across the religious spectrum, continue to believe that Israel can be a Jewish state and a democracy. In contrast, non-Jewish Israelis, including the majorities of Muslims, Christians and Druze, generally do not believe Israel can be a Jewish state and a democracy at the same time; it’s simply viewed as inconsistent.
Further complicating political, legal and human rights matters for Israelis as well as Palestinians are the new government’s recent proposals for judicial reform, which would impact the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court.
Many Israelis have gone to the streets to protest the proposed reform. Objections to the reforms are being raised by former government officials, military officers, business investors and others. Foreign allies, especially officials, Jewish leaders and journalists in America, have also expressed concerns over the proposals. In addition, the majority of Israelis, about two-thirds, oppose the proposed judicial reform.
Turning to demographics, Israel’s population stood at 9.656 million at the end of 2022. The composition of the population was 74 percent Jewish, 21 percent Arab (largely Christian and Muslims) and 5 percent others (Figure 1).
Source: Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
In 1948 when Israel was established, the country’s proportion Jewish was 82 percent of its population of 806 thousand. By the 1960s the proportion Jewish reached a record high of nearly 90 percent. Since that high, the proportion Jewish in Israel has been steadily declining to its current level of 74 percent.
In addition to Israel’s changing demographics, the Jewish Israeli population has not been confined to its 1948 borders. Large numbers have expanded to settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Israel’s Jewish settler population in the West Bank, for example, is now estimated at more than half a million. Many of the estimated 700 thousand Jewish Israelis now living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are motivated by their religious mission to restore historic Israel to the Jewish people.
The Jewish settler population is continuing to increase rapidly in the West Bank, which is a top priority of ultranationalist parties who oppose Palestinian statehood.
The Israeli government has also pledged to legalize wildcat outposts and increase the approval and construction of settler homes in the West Bank.
In contrast, the United Nations Security Council and much of the international community of nations, including the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, continue to support the idea of an independent Palestinian state. However, the changing demographics in the West Bank have virtually eliminated the possibility of the two-state solution.
Without the two-state solution, Jewish Israelis face a major challenge affecting their majority status, namely the possibility of the one-state solution.
The one-state solution would involve the entire Israeli and Palestinian populations now living between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. In such a population numbering approximately 15 million inhabitants, the Jewish population would become a ruling minority of approximately 47 percent, a fundamental change from the sizable Jewish majority of 74 percent in Israel today (Figure 2).
Source: Times of Israel.
Even today the Israeli government is confronting human rights issues with its expansion throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. International, Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations as well as independent observers have found Israeli authorities practicing apartheid and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories.
According to those human rights organizations, Israeli government policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians as well as the abuses and discriminatory policies against Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
Israel rejects those accusations, saying it is a democracy and committed to international law and open to scrutiny. The government cites security concerns and protecting the lives of Israelis for its imposition of travel and related restrictions on Palestinians, whose violence in the past included suicide bombings of Israeli cities and deadly attacks against Israelis.
Many have come to the conclusion that given the policies of the current Israeli government, a political path for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully is simply wishful thinking. For some the two-state solution is effectively dead and it is simply waiting for its formal funeral.
In addition, the human cost of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been high and is rising. So far in 2023, the conflict has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 63 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
From 2008 to 2020 the numbers of killed and injured from the conflict among Israelis and Palestinian documented by the UN were 251 and 5,590 deaths, respectively, and 5,600 and 115,000 injuries, respectively. In brief, over that time period approximately 95 percent of those killed and injured due to the conflict were Palestinians (Figure 3).
Source: UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
It is evident that the Israeli government and many Israelis would like to continue the Jewish settler expansion in the West Bank. That expansion clearly has serious consequences for the resident Palestinian population and the Israelis as well as the prospects of an independent Palestinian state.
The demise of the two-state solution and the possible one-state solution also creates a major foreign and domestic dilemma for the United States, Israel’s major political, military and economic supporter and biggest ally.
Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, estimated at more than 3 billion dollars annually and more than 150 dollars cumulatively. Also, America has vetoed scores of United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1973.
Given America’s commitment to democratic values, freedom of religious beliefs and equality of citizenship, the White House, U.S. Senators, Congressional Representatives as well as the nation’s citizens will be faced with how to respond to the absence of a possible Palestinian state and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
In the absence of the two-state solution, it will become increasingly difficult for the United States to continue its unwavering commitment and unequivocal support in light of Israeli policies and treatment of the Palestinians. Perhaps, consistent with its values and laws, America will decide to support the one-state solution with equality of all inhabitants, regardless of religious identities.
More importantly, in the absence of a truly independent Palestinian state, Israel may slowly come to embrace the one-state solution. Eventually then, especially given the unavoidable demographic realities strikingly visible on the ground, Israel may possibly come to realize that it’s time to transform the Israel of today into a truly democratic Israel of tomorrow with justice and equality for all.
Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.
Shahd, a 12-year-old girl with a hearing disability, stands in front of a window facing her father, in the house her family live in, Azaz, Aleppo, Syria. Credit: Human Rights Watch.
Opinion by Emina Cerimovic (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Feb 28 (IPS) – Emina Cerimovic is a senior disability rights researcher at Human Rights Swatch.A few days ago, I saw a photo shared to Twitter of Sham, a young Syrian girl rescued from under the rubble in northwest Syria, sitting upright in her hospital bed, According to the Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer humanitarian group also known as the White Helmets, Sham will lose both her legs because of injuries from the quake.
Looking at her photo, I couldn’t help but think of the additional human rights abuses Sham will experience on the basis of her disability. She will join the ranks of all the children with disabilities who are surviving the 12-year-conflict in Syria without equal access to humanitarian aid.
And so will others who experienced traumatic physical and psychological injuries in the wake of the earthquakes: a girl who had spent 30 hours under the rubble in the heavily affected town of Jindires in northwest Syria and who had lost both her legs; a 3-year-old boy in Jinderis who was trapped for 42 hours and whose left leg was amputated; a young Syrian man living in Gaziantep, Turkey, whose right hand was amputated.
As issues of humanitarian aid access to various affected parts of Syria dominatethe news, relief efforts should not overlook the short and long-term needs of people with disabilities and the thousands of earthquake survivors who have sustained physical and psychological injuries that could lead to permanent disabilities.
As two more powerful earthquakes struck the region on February 20, panic and fear spread among earthquake survivors in both Syria and Turkey, bringing into sharp focus the psychological trauma caused by the natural hazard and, for Syrians, by over 12 years of war.
In Syria, approximately 28 percent of the current population – nearly double the global average – are estimated to have a disability, and their rights and needs are largely unmet. As I found in my September report on the greater risk of harm and lack of access to basic rights for children with disabilities caught up in the Syrian war, the design and delivery of humanitarian programs in Syria are not taking into account the particular needs of children with disabilities. In some cases, such programs explicitly exclude them.
As an example, some educational activities and child-friendly spaces excluded children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Children with disabilities are growing up without safety, basic necessities, education, assistive devices, or psychosocial support, in ways that put their lives and rights at risk.
They experience stigma, psychological harm, and higher levels of poverty. The situation is no better for adults with disabilities who also face systematic challenges in accessing humanitarian services on an equal basis with others.
This crisis should serve as a wake-up call for UN agencies, donor states, humanitarian organizations, and charities to properly respond to all children’s rights by ensuring the rights and needs of children with disabilities are also met.
They should develop and implement their response and recovery action plans with people with disabilities at their core. The attention and investment in children – like Sham – and adults with disabilities will enhance human rights for everyone.
Gilad Sade, in white, with Itamar Ben Gvir, to his left, during Gvir’s visit with alleged recruits during a trial in 2004. All the minors were convicted. Credit: Ilan Mizrahi.
by Karlos Zurutuza (rome)
Inter Press Service
ROME, Feb 21 (IPS) – Harassing Palestinians, vandalizing their cars and houses, occupying their lands: Gilad Sade, a 36-year-old Israeli, recalls his day-to-day life when he belonged to a Jewish supremacist organization.
“I was first jailed at thirteen and would go back to prison many times. During those years, Itamar Ben Gvir and I were thick and thin,” Sade tells IPS from Rome, Italy.
Itamar Ben Gvir is Israel´s newly appointed Minister of National Security.
His party, Jewish Power, won six seats in the November 2022 legislative elections. Today, it forms a far-right government considered the most extremist in the country’s history, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Raised in a family of secular Jewish immigrants from Iraq, Ben Gvir, 47, joined the Kach movement —an ultra-Orthodox organization designated as a terrorist group in the nineties by Israel, the US, the European Union, Canada and Japan— as a teenager. In 1995 he became famous for threatening then-Prime Minister Isaac Rabin three weeks before he was assassinated.
“When he first moved out of his family house, he hung a photo of Barouch Goldstein in his new residence in Kiryat Arba,110 kilometres southeast of Tel Aviv,” recalls Sade. Also known as the “Butcher of Hebron,” Goldstein was a medical doctor from New York who murdered 29 Palestinians with an assault rifle in 1994.
Sade recalls that, as a child, he was often in the care of Ben Gvir. He was in primary school when he received his first assignment.
“We used to distribute leaflets calling for the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel or the demolition of the al Aqsa Mosque. Ben Gvir asked me to hide them under my shirt. As a child, the police would not search me.”
A school day in Hebron, one of the cities hardest hit by violence in Israel Credit: Mikel Ayestaran.
At the age of 14, Ben Gvir asked him to bring a ski mask and handed him a wire cutter to break into the United Nations compound in Jerusalem to vandalize UN cars and spray anti-UN graffiti on walls.
“He would never take risks. I could easily get in trouble or even get killed while he waited in his car listening to Hasidic music,” says Sade
Ben Gvir, he explains, recruited young people from broken families. “He boasted that he kept them away from the streets and drugs but actually paid them cash to commit these kinds of crimes. The boys sought the approval of the group by spitting on the Palestinians, pushing them to the ground, pepper-spraying them,” he recalls.
Contrary to what one might think, Sade says that there was no room for improvisation. “They trained us to deal with all sorts of situations: from occupying the home of a Palestinian family to handle a police interrogation,” explains Sade.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 7, Ben Gvir said he had been arrested “hundreds of times” — the first time at 14 —and bragged about having been accused “in only just eight occasions.” At 18, his criminal record exempted him from military service.
Before launching his political career, he was convicted for “incitement to racism and support of terror,” by calling for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.
“Today he has moderated his speech, at least in public, in order to reach parliament. But everyone knows that he is still the same racist influencer he´s always been,” says Sade.
Sade quit the extremist movement at 21.
“It was a very long and painful process to be able to overcome, among other things, the hatred towards myself for the damage inflicted,” he admits. He also regrets that many of his former colleagues “did not manage to break the walls of that mental prison.”
36-year old Gilad Sade has been forced to live in exile by threats he constantly receives from Israeli far-right movements. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza
Sade would become an adventure travel guide, and his fondness for photography would open the doors to journalism. As a freelance reporter working for both Israeli and international media, he works in places like Nagorno Karabakh and Kosovo. However, part of his job has focused on exposing those who, he insists, ruined his life and the lives of hundreds of young people.
But the price to pay was exile. The frequent target of threats, he cannot return to Israel. Especially today, when those who were his mentors are in power.
Itamar ben Gvir ‘s spokesman declined to answer to questions forwarded by IPS. He told this news agency that any accusation of hate crimes against the minister is “not serious” and “just jihadist propaganda.”
Domination
Last November, weeks before the new government was formed, Palestinian Authority officials warned that Itamar Ben Gvir´s appointment could have a “potentially catastrophic impact.”
Their concern appears to have been well-founded. In a report released by Amnesty International on February 1, the London-based NGO denounced the death of 35 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces during January alone.
“The killings help sustain the Israeli apartheid regime and constitute crimes against humanity as well as other measures such as administrative detention or forced displacement,” the Amnesty report said.
On January 27, seven people were killed in a synagogue and a dozen seriously injured in two attacks on Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. Two weeks later, two Israelis were killed, including one child, in an intentional car-ram attack in Jerusalem.
The recent violence under the new administration continues a worrying trend. In its World Report 2023, Human Right Watch points to “a policy to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians” under a new government which, the New York based NGO underlines, “includes Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted by an Israeli court for incitement to racism and support of a terrorist organization.”
Show of force in Jerusalem during Israel’s Independence Day. Credit: Mikel Ayestaran.
For Alberto Spectorowsky, an Uruguayan-Israeli citizen and professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, the current climate of violence in the country is related to corruption charges against the prime minister.
“There is a conflict unleashed between those who defend a democracy with liberal institutions and those who want to take away the power and independence of the Court of Justice,” Spectorowsky told IPS from Tel Aviv over the phone.
The current prime minister was sworn into office immersed in an open process for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. “Without this pending trial, Netanyahu would be another defender of liberal democracy,” claims the political scientist.
As for Ben Gvir, Spectorowsky points to “an open scenario”:
“Netanyahu has no interest in setting the Middle East on fire, and that is why he tries to contain Ben Gvir. However, the latter announced that he will leave the coalition if they take away his authority,” the expert underlines.
In an interview given to Israeli Channel 12, on February 4, the senior minister gave the government a period of three months to implement measures such as the death penalty for terrorists or the creation of a security body made up of armed civilians.
“As long as I continue to have influence, I will not overthrow the government,” said Ben Gvir. His most recent measure has been to increase by 400% the number of weapons permits that can be granted monthly.
Sade believes Ben Gvir is seeking to create his own armed militia.
“Now he wants to arm everyone to contain these attacks, which, however, have increased since he took office,” he adds. “What could you possibly expect from a country whose National Security minister asked me and others to commit hate crimes?”
Israel has become a trap, he says, “not only for the Palestinians, but also for anyone who thinks differently.”
Somaya Faruqui, Education Cannot Wait Global Champion and Captain of the Afghan Girls Robotics Team speaking during the Spotlight on Afghanistan at the ECW High-Level Financing Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Credit: ECW/Michael Calabrò
by Busani Bafana (geneva & bulawayo)
Inter Press Service
GENEVA & BULAWAYO, Feb 16 (IPS) – Education Cannot Wait’s Director Yasmine Sherif said that about USD 70 million had gone to education in Afghanistan, and nearly 60 percent of that funding has gone to supporting girls; more funding was on its way. “We have an ongoing program that has continued—it did not stop.”It has been more than 500 days since the Taliban regime in Afghanistan shut down schools and shattered the education dreams of girls and women like Somaya Faruqi, who has been forced to leave her homeland to continue her education.
Faruqi, a student and engineer, has appealed for global intervention in securing the right to education for the millions of girls and women stopped from attending school and university after the Taliban regime that took power in the war-scarred nation in September 2021 closed girls out of school.
“Exactly 514 days ago, my heart was shattered along with the dreams of millions of girls in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country; they unleashed terror upon us, tearing apart families and our homes and leaving us hopeless and in a world that no longer feels like our own,” Faruqi, a Girls’ Education Advocate and Captain of the Afghan Girls Robotics Team, said at the Education Cannot Wait (ECW) High-Level Financing Conference in Geneva, Switzerland this week, calling on the world to take decisive action against the Taliban.
ECW, the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, convened a two-day conference to marshal support to raise $1.5 billion to roll out its four-year strategic plan to support children and adolescents affected by crises to learn in safety and without fear. The conference seeks to mobilize the resources to meet the educational needs of the 222 million children and adolescents in crisis.
International correspondent and author Christina Lamb, who moderated a panel discussion on Afghanistan, highlighted that war and natural disasters posed a challenge to children’s education and dominated the news agenda. Today Afghanistan was one country that has dropped out of the headlines where girls and women need help more than any other place on earth.
“Two decades of educational progress has literally been wiped out in 18 months by the return of the Taliban and the devastating restrictions that have been imposed on women and girls,” remarked Lamb, who has been reporting on Afghanistan for over 30 years as a foreign correspondent.
“Afghanistan today is the only place on earth today where girls are banned from high school … one Afghan girl recently told me, ‘Soon they will say there is a shortage of oxygen, so only men are allowed to breathe.’”
Speakers at the Spotlight on Afghanistan session asked the world not to forget the plight of girls in the country. They were speaking at the ECW High-Level Financing Conference in Geneva. Credit: ECW/Sandra Blaser
Describing education as the key to unlocking the limitless potential in every child, Faruqi—now a refugee in the United States— lamented that millions of children are today deprived of their basic right to education because of the Taliban’s quest to suppress women’s rights.
Calling the denial of education a “tragedy beyond measure,” Faruqi says girls and women in many parts of the world are in a predicament—from the banned education in Afghanistan to child marriages in Ethiopia to the insecurity of girls in schools in Nigeria.
“222 million children are missing the opportunity of education, and it means that we are missing 222 million for incredible talent; future leaders, the scientists, the writers and the doctors, the engineers, and many more,” she said, adding that, “We can’t afford to waste any time and the hope of all these children is on you the leaders and donors to support and help to fund the education system in every crisis-affected country … solidarity without action cannot do anything.”
Pakistani education activist and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai recalled the time she was unable to attend school when the Taliban banned education in her country and fears that the world will forget the plight of Afghan women and girls.
“We should not accept the excuses given by the Taliban; what is the justification given by the Taliban … it is time for world leaders to unite and become one voice for Afghan women and girls. It is time we find ways in which we ensure that the Afghan people and children are not left behind,” Yousafzai said in a video message to the ECW conference.
ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif told a press conference that ECW was committed to ensuring that girls’ education continued in Afghanistan. Credit: ECW
?Education Cannot Wait’s Director Yasmine Sherif said that about USD 70 million had gone to education in Afghanistan, and nearly 60 percent of that funding has gone to supporting girls.
“We have an ongoing program that has continued—it did not stop,” Sherif said at a press briefing, noting that there was a short suspension after the Taliban issued the decree banning education for girls, but the education program had now resumed.
“We have informal discussions with the de facto Ministry of Education, and we are able also at the local community level, through our partners, to continue delivering education to girls, and we will not stop,” said Sherif, adding that the program to support secondary girls education was soon to launch a USD 30m investment.
“We have informal discussions with the de facto Ministry of Education, and we are able also at the local community level, through our partners, to continue to deliver education to girls, and we will not stop.”
Fawzia Koofi, a Women’s Rights Activist and Former Deputy Speaker in the Afghan National Parliament, called on the world to put pressure on the Taliban to respect transformation in Afghanistan and secure the rights to education for girls and women.
“We should take the situation of Afghanistan as a global humanitarian crisis,” Koofi urged, requesting the international community to provide study opportunities to Afghan women and girls outside Afghanistan.
Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of ECW’s High-Level Steering Group, said the fight for girls and women in Afghanistan must not be lost.
“It is absolutely fundamental that no regime nor religious order nor dictator should prevent a girl having a right to an education; that is why we must turn words into action now,” Brown said, urging the world to stand in solidarity with all the girls demonstrating against the Taliban and support community schools.
Faruqi appealed to the global audience: “We have to work together and fund the education system because every child and every girl deserves to live a life at least by having the simplest human right, which is education. Words without action are not enough. This is a real and meaningful action that can make a positive difference.”
“A street of local markets in a residential area in North Syria that has been blocked by the ruins of collapsed buildings.” Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
by Sania Farooqui (new delhi, india)
Inter Press Service
NEW DELHI, India, Feb 13 (IPS) – Almost over 33,000 people have been killed and thousands injured by the 7.8 earthquake which struck south-eastern Turkey and Syria in the early hours on Monday, February 6th. The first images that came out were of collapsed buildings, rubble strewn across streets, people trapped under rubbles, screaming for help. What followed was the unusually strong aftershock – including one quake which was almost as large as the first.
Rawan Kahwaji was fast asleep in her apartment in Gaziantep, in Turkey when she woke up to the sounds of people screaming. The first two minutes, she says, did not make sense to her. “It was a nightmare, I remember waking up not knowing what was going on. My apartment was shaking really hard and it went on for sometime, we didn’t expect it to be this bad, we just thought we would get out of the apartment for a few hours because earthquakes happen quite regularly. But this time with each hour that we spent waiting outside, following the aftershocks, we realised the situation was much worse,” Kahwaji said.
War in Syria had displaced Kahwaji and her family once, before they moved to Gaziantep in 2015. For many displaced like her, documents which included ID, educational degrees and travel documents meant more than anything for survival. “In the middle of that chaos, we realised we needed our documents in case we had to leave the city. Our apartment was full of cracks and everything inside was destroyed, we somehow managed to get our documents.
“A street of local markets in a residential area in North Syria that has been blocked by the ruins of collapsed buildings.” Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
After spending two days in a shelter in Gaziantep, Kahwaji and her family were amongst the few who managed to get to Ankara safely, but she describes the experience as something she has never seen before. “There were people on the road screaming, we could hear people crying for help, I saw people collapsing because they were having heart attacks. I don’t know if they made it through or not, but it was complete chaos. We lost a lot, we lost our business, our lives, physically we are safe, but mentally we are not fine. I am still imagining the earth shaking and we are all simply sitting, waiting in anticipation that something is going to happen to us again,” Kahwaji said.
It has been almost a week of relentless search and rescue operations, as workers across these regions are still trying to pull survivors from the rubble – there have been some harrowing stories of success and also of heartbreak. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced a three-month state of emergency in 10 provinces worst-affected by the earthquake.
“Buildings in North Syria completely destroyed.” Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
Syria Civil Defence – also known as White Helmets have been in news since the beginning of the earthquake for their immediate call to action to rescue those trapped under rubbles and for saving lives.
Almost 3000 White Helmet volunteers have been on the ground searching for survivors and pulling the dead from collapsed buildings. It’s been a race against the clock, those who have made it through for them the challenge has been to survive the cold weather, toxic smoke as people burnt plastic to stay warm, lack of water and basic necessities.
“A small truck loaded with a family’s basic items, who are seeking shelter after they lost their home amidst the disastrous earthquake in North Syria.” Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
Cities closest to the epicentre of the earthquake, as per this report, when the temperatures rose on Sunday and it became warm, “odour of rotting bodies became discernible. It was the smell of death.”
“The situation has been very catastrophic, both personally and also collectively,” says Muzna Dureid, Senior Program Manager, White Helmets in an interview given to IPS said, “One of the worst impacted regions is North West Syria, home to almost 4.5 million people who have been forcefully displaced multiple times, they have witnessed the siege, the chemical attacks, bombardments, all types of suffering and now this earthquake.
“A muddy road in North Syria with, and a car damaged by the ruins.” Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
“Unfortunately the situation has been beyond the capacity of our team, we are working with very limited resources as cities and villages have been completely destroyed. Families have been destroyed, so many are living on the streets in dire weather conditions,” Dureid said.
The possibility of finding survivors continues to decrease as the hours pass. A UN liaison officer warned that the two countries are nearing the end of the search and rescue window. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates up to 23 million people could be affected by the earthquake across both the countries.
“People gathered around the search and rescue team, trying to help them rescue families stuck under the rubble, in one of the neighborhoods that was completely destroyed in North Syria.” Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has been working on the ground across Syria providing relief, water, and support to those affected by the earthquake. In a statement issued here, NRC says, “The quake happened at the worst time of the night at the worst time of the year. The destructive extent of the shock hit a number of cities in Syria, including Aleppo, Idlib, Homs, Hamah and Lattakia, including internally displaced people across Syria’s north.”
“We are now entering a new phase with search and rescue operations largely coming to an end. The real scale of the disaster will start to crystallise in the coming days,” says Emilie Luciani, Country Director, Syria Response Office, Norwegian Refugee council in an interview to IPS.
“Syrians waiting for the search and rescue team to help people stuck under the rubble, where an entire flattened by the earthquake in North Syria.” Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
“Thousands of families are without shelter in open areas or seeking refuge in damaged buildings, existing internally displaced people’s (IDP) sites, reception centres, collective centres or beings temporarily hosted by other families. Communication has been very difficult, and roads around the main affected areas are damaged.
“People in North West Syria are in a desperate situation. They have already spent many years displaced and reliant on humanitarian assistance, and now unfortunately, the aid reaching them is also restricted as the United Nations can only utilise one crossing-point to reach them from Turkey which only just reopened – 5 days after the earthquake,” says Luciani.
According to this report, the Syrian government in Damascus has been receiving aid from international donors, but there is a lot of uncertainty about whether that will be equitably distributed to all the affected parts of Syria including the rebel held North West.
“People trying to help the search and rescue team in rescuing families buried under the rubble in North Syria.” Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
The Red Cross has called for urgent access in Northern Syria to help people who need urgent support. “Impartial humanitarian assistance should never be hindered, nor politicised,” it says.
Avril Benoit, Executive Director, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) USA said: “The massive consequences of this disaster will require an equally massive international response. People urgently need shelter, food, blankets, clothes, heating materials, hygiene kits, and medical assistance – including access to mental health support. For Syrians living the earthquake zone, this is catastrophe layered on top of crisis after crisis. People have endured more than a decade of war, an economic crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and a recent cholera outbreak, benoit said.
UNHCR has warned that according to its preliminary data, as many as 5.3 million people in Syria may have been affected by the recent earthquake and will need some form of shelter assistance. A huge number and this destruction comes to a population already suffering mass displacement.
“We are really worried, as we have seen in the past, the world has the habit of replacing a crisis with a new crisis and so on. Right now everyone is opening their doors, giving donations, opening relief camps and emergency response which is needed, no doubt but what after that? We are worried that after a week or so when everyone goes back to their routine life, we will forget about those impacted by the earthquake, especially women and children, says Anila Noor, Managing Director of Women Connectors and a policy expert on refugees and migration.
“These are poor people, who have suffered due to war, they live with very limited resources especially in Syria. Emergency response is the first step, but we need to see how we can help them later, make an ecosystem and a system of accountability to track where the money and aid goes, and also see the local efforts,” says Noor.
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed called for the Taliban to reverse its decisions that have limited women’s and girls’ rights. CREDIT: UN
by Naureen Hossain (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 31 (IPS) – Recent visits to Afghanistan by senior-led UN delegations underscore the urgency to protect the rights of women and girls, including their access to humanitarian aid and their right to work.
The first delegation was led by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, who called for the Taliban to reverse its decisions that have limited women’s and girls’ rights.
The delegation, led on behalf of the Secretary-General, also included senior leaders from the UN; Executive Director of UN-Women, Sima Bahous; and the Assistant Secretary-General of the Department of Political, Peacebuilding Affairs, and Peace Operations, Khaled Khiari.
The delegation completed a four-day visit to Afghanistan to appraise the current situation and to engage with Taliban authorities. This visit followed the recent decree by the Taliban to ban women from working in national and international non-governmental organizations. This is among the latest in a series of decrees that have further stripped women and girls of the rights and means to actively participate in society.
In this mission, Mohammed and Bahous met with affected communities, humanitarian actors, and civil society in the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat.
“My message was very clear: while we recognize the important exemptions made, these restrictions present Afghan women and girls with a future that confines them in their own homes, violating their rights and depriving the communities of their services,” Mohammed said.
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed called for the Taliban to reverse its decisions that have limited women’s and girls’ rights. CREDIT: UN
Mohammed later told Al-Jazeera that some work had been resumed by three NGOs in Afghanistan, particularly in the health sector. “I think that’s because the international community, and particularly the partners who are funding this, were able to show the implications and the impact of woman-to-woman services, particularly childbirth,” she said.
“What is happening in Afghanistan is a grave women’s rights crisis and is a wake-up call for the international community,” Bahous said. “It shows how quickly decades of progress on women’s rights can be reversed in a matter of days. UN-Women stands with all Afghan women and girls and will continue to amplify their voices to regain all their rights.”
The recent bans on women working in NGOs have forced these organizations to temporarily suspend their operations, which can no longer be delivered safely or meaningfully.
“The effective delivery of humanitarian assistance is predicated on principles that require full, safe, and unhindered access for all aid workers, including women,” said Mohammed in the UN’s official statement.
On the other hand, statements from Taliban spokespersons and senior government officials have stated that the current authorities would respond to issues according to the principles of Islamic law, so they claim.
“The international community, countries, and involved parties should also respect the principles, traditions, and spirituality of our country,” said Bilal Kamiri, a deputy spokesperson for the Taliban following the DSG’s meeting.
The de facto authorities in Afghanistan have acknowledged that they are reliant on international aid in order to revitalize a country where over 28 million, more than half of their population, are in need. These authorities must, therefore, also be aware that this aid would come with the basic stipulation that all the people of Afghanistan must have their rights and dignities respected, including women and girls.
How the UN will proceed in its ongoing negotiations with the Taliban will remain to be seen while they continue to reiterate their solidarity with the women and girls of Afghanistan.
The UN delegation led by the Deputy Secretary-General also met with its partners, civil society, and Government leaders, including the leadership of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Islamic Development Bank.
It was understood between partners and countries that the UN’s efforts must continue and be intensified to reflect the urgency of the situation and the immense pressure that humanitarian aid workers already face.
On Tuesday, UNESCO dedicated the International Day of Education to the women and girls of Afghanistan. In a statement, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay noted the international community’s responsibility to ensure the restoration of their rights immediately. “The decisions made by the de facto authorities of Afghanistan threaten to wipe out the development gains made over the past twenty years.” She said in an official statement.
Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator for OCHA was in Afghanistan meeting with Taliban authorities to reconsider the edict to ban Afghan from working in NGOs.
In an interview with the BBC, Griffiths shared that he was receiving “encouraging responses” from Taliban ministers, stating that there was “a consistent pattern of Taliban leaders presenting us with exceptions, exemptions, and authorizations for women to work.”
“I think they’re listening, and they told me they will be issuing new guidelines in due course, which I hope will help us reinforce the role of women,” he said.
He added, “If women do not work in humanitarian operations, we do not reach, we do not count, the women and girls we need to listen to. In all humanitarian operations around the world, women and girls are the most vulnerable.”
The sentiments from UN officials and those publicly shared by the Taliban are at clear odds with one another. Meanwhile, humanitarian aid organizations have been prevented from providing the full capacity of their services, leaving millions of Afghans more vulnerable than before. Meanwhile, women and girls cannot openly protest or object to the loss of their basic right to education without risking violence and imprisonment.
The UN and the international community must continue to listen to and amplify the voices of the vulnerable communities and prioritize them in the coming weeks and proposed meetings. For these promised countermeasures, let us hope they do not wait for the next ban on women to put them into action.
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 (IPS) – The long-delayed salvaging of an abandoned tanker, the FSO Safer off the Yemeni coast, has been described as a humanitarian disaster waiting to happen.
The rusting vessel, according to the UN, has remained anchored for more than 30 years. But off-loading and maintenance of the vessel ceased back in 2015, following the start of a devastating civil war in Yemen.
Greenpeace International Project lead Paul Horsman told IPS: “We are staring a major disaster in the face.”
It is unacceptable, he argued, that UNDP, the UN body in charge of facilitating the Safer salvage operations, is creating delays through their internal bureaucracy, potentially adding massive increase in costs, jeopardising an agreement that took years of negotiations to reach, and putting at risk people of Yemen and the Red Sea.
For over a year, everyone has been warning of the imminent danger presented by the Safer. The solution is clear, the technology and expertise are available, ready and able, and the money is there, he added.
“If the Safer leaks or, worse, explodes, it is the UNDP that will carry the blame. They should just get out of the way and allow those who do know what they are doing to get on with the job,” declared Horsman.
Asked for a response, Russell Geekie, Senior Communications Advisor to the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, told IPS under the leadership of the UN Resident Coordinator, UNDP has been working with other UN specialized agencies and partners to urgently implement the UN-coordinated plan to prevent a massive oil spill from the FSO Safer, off Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
The salvage operation, he said, will take place within the context of the crisis in Yemen, which greatly complicates the work to prepare and implement the operation.
“The salvage operation can only begin once a suitable vessel is in place to receive the oil from the FSO Safer”.
At present, he said, the main challenge to the start of the operation is the limited availability of suitable vessels to store the oil. The price in the global market for these vessels has sharply increased – largely as a result of the war in Ukraine.
“UNDP is working with a maritime broker and other partners to find the most suitable solution, fast-tracking processes whenever possible”, he added.
At a UN press briefing last September, David Gressly, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, said the long-delayed salvage operations can begin, now that more than $75 million had been pledged to carry out the vital operation.
The briefing, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. was co-hosted by partners in the proposed rescue effort, namely, the Netherlands, the United States, and Germany.
Gressly said that once the pledges are fully converted into cash for the initial salvage operation, with more than $77 million promised from 17 countries, an extra $38 million was still needed for phase two – the installation of safe replacement capacity to secure the one million barrels of oil on board.
The UN plan is for this to be done through transferring the oil to a secure double-hulled vessel, as a permanent storage solution, until the political situation allows it to be sold or transported elsewhere, said Gressly.
But Greenpeace International has remained sceptical because the issue of the FSO Safer, it says, should have been dealt with months ago, before weather conditions deteriorated.
Last autumn, all seemed set fair for the salvage operation, and Smit Boskalis, one of the world’s most experienced salvage companies, was all set to get the operation underway, Greenpeace said.
“But this momentum appears to have now ground to a halt as the UNDP, who are supposed to be coordinating the operation, are creating serious and more expensive delays through their internal bureaucratic processes”.
Greenpeace said it has been campaigning for over two years to get the UN to deal with the FSO Safer and avoid a devastating oil spill in the area.
“We understand the UN FINALLY has the money, but UNDP (who are supposed to be coordinating the multi-donor effort but have no expertise in the oil/shipping issue) are going through internal bureaucratic processes which are creating serious delays and more expense due to daily inflating costs,” Greenpeace said.
According to the UN, fears have grown that unless the vessel is secured, it could break apart causing a devastating oil spill and other environmental damage, which the UN estimates would cost at least $20 billion just to clear up, as well as devastate the fragile economy of war-torn Yemen – triggering a humanitarian catastrophe.
Geekie said donors have generously deposited $73.4 million for the project, with another $10 million pledged. While preparatory work has begun, additional funds are still needed to fully implement the operation, which has the support of both the Government of Yemen in Aden and the Sana’a authorities.
Ensuring that the right team of experts is in place is critical to the operation’s success.
He said UNDP has already procured all the services of relevant experts and operational partners including a top-rated marine management consultancy company, a salvage operation company, a shipbroker, a maritime legal firm, an insurance broker company and oil spill experts for contingency planning to support this crucial mission.
Other UN agencies are also providing technical support to the operation.
Given the high potential environmental and humanitarian risks, the United Nations, including UNDP, is sparing no effort to address the challenges faced off the coast of Yemen and is dealing with this situation with the utmost urgency, he declared.
Some Afghan women put their lives at risk by migrating to Europe. Along the way, and even at the destinations, they face sexual violence at the hands of traffickers, but they often take the risk so that they can live free from the constraints of the Taliban. This photo shows a woman from the Hazara minority in Bamiyan. She used to be a singer and appeared on local TV but is now forced to stay at home. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS
by Sara Perria (kabul & athens)
Inter Press Service
KABUL & ATHENS, Dec 22 (IPS) – Maliha looks confident in a café in Athens as she tells the story of her journey from Afghanistan to Europe. But as she starts recounting how a smuggler assaulted her in Turkey two years ago, she pauses, looking the other way and fiddling with her loose hair.
It makes her anxious when she remembers it. She was traveling alone and soon realized she was the only woman on board a bus to the border with Greece.
“[The smuggler] told me to get off. He wanted me to himself.” With unusual strength, the young woman managed to escape as the man was trying to rape her. Still shaken, she tried to report the crime to the local police, but she felt they were more concerned about her status as an illegal migrant than the attempted rape. “Luckily, I had a contact on Facebook a cousin who I knew lived in Turkey but whom I never met.” He happened to live near that police station, and he convinced the officials to let her go.
Afghan refugees picnic in a park in Athens. Their journeys to Europe are often dangerous. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS
Now Maliha lives in Athens as a “free woman” – a fact that she remarks upon while wearing leggings and no head covering.
The violence experienced by Mahila is not an isolated case. An investigation into the journey of Afghan women from their home country to Europe carried out in Afghanistan, Turkey and Greece has revealed a pattern of systematic violence throughout, their vulnerability heightened by lack of documents and money. Women, some traveling alone or only with their children, pay to get to Europe only to become victims of trafficking and sex slaves.
According to 31-year-old Aila, an Afghan refugee and former Médecins sans Frontières worker in refugee camps in Athens, “some 90% of women suffer a form of violence during the journey.”
“When your life is in the hands of smugglers,” continues Aila, “it’s not up to you to decide whom to stay with, what to do, where to go: it’s the smuggler who decides. Even if you are with your family or the members of your family, he can still threaten you with a weapon, and if he wants to separate you from them, he’ll do it”.
Afghans are now the second largest group of asylum seekers in the EU after Ukrainians, but the flow of asylum seekers started well before the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021. According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 77,000 women and girls were registered at arrival by sea and by land in Europe between 2018 and 2020, making up 20 percent of total arrivals. Women make up an increasing percentage of asylum requests globally, all facing gender-based risks.
The reasons behind Afghans’ search for a safe place run deep in a country torn by decades of war. Social and financial restrictions within a deeply patriarchal society and the hope for a better life abroad had already pushed many to leave the country even before the arrival of the Taliban.
However, the challenges of the journey can be harrowing. “I remember traveling with a 10-year-old and her grandmother,” Aila recalls. “During the journey, her grandmother died, and she was handed over to the trafficker,” says Aila, describing one of the most traumatic episodes she witnessed.
“Was she raped? Of course. For them, she was a woman”.
Women escaping from the increasingly restrictive Taliban regime in Afghanistan find their journeys to freedom are fraught with dangers. This week the Taliban banned women from universities. They are increasingly forced to remain at home. Credit: Credit: Sara Perria/IPS
The risks are so stacked against women that word of mouth has led to the development of ‘survival’ techniques, such as dressing up as a man. Aila says she put on a similar short jacket, jeans, and sneakers to that of other boys. “I kept my hair hidden under my cap. And when the trafficker gave me his hand to get on the boat, he said, “Hey, boy.” I didn’t answer. “Never talk to traffickers,” is the second ‘tip’ dispensed by Aila.
Acceptance rates of Afghan asylum seekers are now high, especially in countries such as Spain and Italy, with 100% and 95% in 2021, respectively, and 80% in Greece, the first EU frontier for the many who come after spending months or years in Turkey or Iran.
Yet getting adequate assistance after suffering abuse, rape and forced prostitution is a different story. The violence suffered often doesn’t get denounced by the police due to cultural or linguistic barriers and the stigma surrounding rape or forced prostitution. Lack of adequate protection in Europe is also a reason, so NGOs set up by fellow Afghans try to step in.
Months of interviews with Afghan asylum seekers in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Europe expose the extent of the danger for women who embark on a journey organized by smugglers. Direct witnesses’ accounts and NGO transcripts, seen exclusively by this reporter, reveal a pattern of how women – and in particular Afghans belonging to ethnic minorities – fall into a ‘trap’ of violence.
Freshta spent years between Iran and Turkey with a sick brother before eventually succeeding in reaching a refugee camp in Greece and then a place in Athens hosted by a friend. However, her attempts to find a job and become independent soon turned into a prolonged series of tortured experiences. The possibility of asking for help was radically reduced by her illegal status and lack of documents.
“One day, I was in a café with my friend, and she introduced me to this man. We only knew that he was a trafficker of Iraqi nationality.” He, himself a refugee, knew very well how vulnerable women like Freshta are. “He started following me and kept saying that I should go with him.” Her constant rejections didn’t work. On the contrary, he threatened to kill her brother, who was still in the refugee camp – a sign of the long reach of influence traffickers can call upon.
One day, despite attempts to protect herself, hiding for days at a friend’s house, the man managed to kidnap her and take her to her apartment. He then hit her on the head, threatening her with a knife pointed at her stomach and forcing her to get into his car. At that moment, Freshta became a slave, first suffering violent rape, with beatings that made her pass out because she also suffered from asthma.
“When I woke up, he wasn’t there. I was full of pain and didn’t know what to do; I was in shock. I went to the bathroom, got washed, dressed, and cried.”
Upon his return, the trafficker told her that she now belonged to him. If she went out and told anyone what had happened, then he would kill her.
Freshta managed to hide at her friend’s again, but again the man managed to take her by force, beating her and locking her up at home for weeks, repeatedly raping her. Freshta got pregnant. “He told me I couldn’t do anything because he had become a Greek citizen, and I was nothing; I didn’t have any document.”
It took many weeks and the help of an association to allow her to report the incident. She had an abortion. The woman has since been moved by the Greek government to a secure facility in an undisclosed location.
To add to Freshta’s tragic testimony is the fact that, as the operator of an NGO in Athens explains, “There are many cases of sexual slavery like this, which are not reported by the victims because they are afraid of being stigmatized and of their lack of documents.” The perpetrators of the violence can be fellow nationals, generally belonging to a different ethnic group and, to a lesser extent, other nationalities.
The lack of support is accentuated by a form of class distinction within the refugee community and by the way resources are thus distributed, according to some of the Afghan women interviewed in Athens. “The refugees who arrived in Europe through the evacuation program consider themselves ‘different’ from those who arrived here on foot, with the traffickers. And they are also treated differently by the authorities,” says Aila.
While for men, the lack of documents, money, and a family network leads more easily to labor exploitation, women can often fall victim to sexual exploitation. Some women are “passed from trafficker to trafficker,” says Aila, while the local association also reports cases of forced prostitution just outside the camps. But even in the aftermath of a violent attack, NGOs are worried about the short time women are allowed to spend in safe structures, as well as the limited space available there. Resources do not meet the seriousness and extent of the problem.
“When they asked me if I wanted to report the man , I said yes, but only if I had a safe place to stay first,” says Freshta. “I was so desperate that I left behind everything I had.”
This project on trafficking has been developed with the financial support of Journalismfund.eu
Wind and solar energy are behind a major project to transport electricity from Egypt to Greece. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS
by Hisham Allam (cairo)
Inter Press Service
Cairo, Dec 01 (IPS) – As Europe braces for an unusual winter due to a global energy crisis, Greece is embarking on one of Europe’s most ambitious energy projects by connecting its electricity grid to Egypt’s.
An underwater cable will transport 3,000 MW of electricity to power up to 450,000 households from northern Egypt to Attica in Greece.
In October, the two countries agreed to construct the Mediterranean’s first undersea cable to transport electricity generated by solar and wind energy in North Africa to Europe. The project’s total length is 1373 kilometres.
The Copelouzos Group is in charge of the project, and its executives met with Egyptian leaders in October to speed up the process.
The agreement comes at a time when Greece, Cyprus, and Israel want to invest $900 million in constructing a line connecting Europe and Asia that will be the longest and deepest energy cable across the Mediterranean.
At a ceremony in Athens, Greek Energy Minister Costas Skrickas and his Egyptian counterpart Mohamed Shaker signed a memorandum of understanding on the project.
“This connection benefits Greece, Egypt, and the European Union,” Skrickas said.
He explained that the project would help to build an energy hub in the eastern Mediterranean and improve the region’s energy security.
Besides boosting the share of renewable energy sources in the energy mix and lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector, the project is anticipated to enable the export of renewable energy from Egypt to Greece in periods of high renewable energy generation and vice versa.
According to Dr Ayman Hamza, spokesman for the Ministry of Electricity, the Egyptian-Greek electrical connectivity project has significant technical, economic, environmental, and social benefits. The project aims to establish a robust interconnection network in the Eastern Mediterranean to increase the security and dependability of energy supplies, as well as to assist in the event of transmission network breakdowns, interruptions, and emergencies, and to raise the level of security of electrical supplies.
The project, scheduled to start in 2028, is a significant component of the two nations’ ongoing strategic relations and cooperation. It will speed up the development of the energy corridor by increasing the supply of electricity to Egypt and Greece while balancing energy demand, encouraging responses to the challenges of climate change, and reducing emissions, all of which will contribute to the corridor’s continued growth, Hamza told IPS.
“We have 16 memorandums of understanding related to green hydrogen,” he explained, adding that “there is a great demand from investors to invest in renewable energy, whether the sun or wind.”
“On the margins of the COP27 climate conference, it is expected that extremely major agreements on the level of green hydrogen and others, with great experience, will be signed,” Hamza elaborated.
The possibility of Egypt increasing its reliance on renewable energy, he continued, is made possible by a large number of investors pouring money into solar and wind energy. He stated that Egypt would become a regional renewable energy hub.
Egypt has electrical interconnection lines with Libya and Sudan, and we are collaborating with other African organizations to take significant steps to connect Africa and Europe through electrical interconnection. Because Africa is a major energy source, this will benefit both continents, the spokesperson continued.
According to Dr Farouk Al-Hakim, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Society of Electrical Engineers, Egypt’s export of electricity indicates a surplus, which generates a significant economic return, strengthens Egypt’s political position, and transforms Egypt into a regional energy hub, in addition to the numerous job opportunities created in operation and maintenance.
Al-Hakim told IPS that Egypt has a significant surplus due to the installation of three enormous power stations in the past several years in the administrative capital, Burullus, and Beni Suef, as well as solar plants, including the Benban facility, which is the biggest in Africa and the Middle East.
The electrical connection currently offers many benefits, he continued, particularly given that Europe, like most other nations worldwide, is experiencing an energy crisis due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Therefore, it is a good idea to start with two nations that have shared a history with Egypt, such as Greece and Cyprus, he added.
Water scarcity in the Middle East is impacting on lives and causing diplomatic tensions in between countries. The Turkish dam project, which includes the large Ataturk and Ilisu dams, has reduced water flow to the Tigris River’s natural channel impacting Syria and Iraq. Pictured here is Koctepe – a village covered by water in the Ilisu dam project. Credit: Mustafa Bilge Satkın/Climate Visuals Countdown
by Hisham Allam (sharm el sheikh)
Inter Press Service
Sharm El Sheikh, Nov 17 (IPS) – The Middle East and North Africa are the world’s most water-scarce regions – with 11 of the 17 water-stressed countries on the globe.
According to UNICEF, nine out of 10 children live in areas with high or very high-water stress, resulting in significant consequences for their health, cognitive development, and future livelihoods.
Now climate change is resulting in less rain for agriculture and a decline in the quality of freshwater reserves due to saltwater transfer to fresh aquifers and increased pollution concentrations.
Maha Rashid, Middle East managing committee member for Blue Peace, which works for water cooperation among borders, sectors, and generations to foster peace, stability, and sustainable development, says the situation in the region is dire.
“More than 60% of this region’s population lives in areas of high or very high-water stress, compared to the global average of about 35%. While the Middle East and North Africa have continued to experience water scarcity for thousands of years, several interconnected challenges today threaten environmental sustainability and security for the region’s water supply.”
Water scarcity is expected to impact development in the Middle East. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS
As COP27 negotiations continue at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, people in the Middle East are dealing with the impacts of climate change. Rashid explained that Iraq relies on water from Turkey and Iran, as well as rain and snow, to feed its rivers, especially in the spring. Water revenues to Iraq’s rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, dropped for the third season in succession. The current season has experienced a more severe and unprecedented fall not seen for several years, and water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers declined, and drought conditions are experienced in the rivers and lakes in Diyala Governorate.
The Turkish dam system, which includes the large Ataturk and Ilisu dams, has reduced water flow to the Tigris River’s natural channel. It will result in a 10 billion cubic metre annual reduction in water flow for downstream countries – like Syria and Iraq.
Despite having large amounts of arable land, Iraq will not be able to achieve food and water security. Instead, over the long term, water will confine development, plans, and programs and not bring food or water security, says Rashid, who is also a professor at Tigris University, told IPS.
Water insecurity in the region had also impacted international relations, with tensions arising over Ethiopia’s building of the Renaissance Dam for irrigation and electricity generation without considering the significant effects on Egypt and Sudan. Now the threat of water scarcity is growing for the two countries, followed by food security and potential future natural disasters.
The Middle East is now experiencing rising temperatures, which is one of the effects of climate change. As a result, North Africa is now experiencing drought in some regions and torrential downpours in others.
According to Rashid, since 2010, which set new temperature records in 19 countries, many of which were Arab nations, countries are experiencing summertime temperatures of up to 54 degrees Celsius, including in Iraq and Morocco, where two-thirds of the oases have vanished as a result of decreased precipitation and increased evaporation. Saudi Arabia and Sudan are also experiencing fierce sandstorms.
These climatic changes are predicted to get worse unless the inhabitants and governments of the area deal with them properly and urgently over the course of the next fifty years.
Rashid contended that doing this calls for more prudent resource management as well as adjustments to sectoral and economic models, mindsets, and behaviours. While she is optimistic about the outcome of the climate negotiations, most countries have not committed to implementing the recommendations and reducing carbon emissions since the COP 26 climate summit in Scotland.
“I believe that COP27 will address climate change issues and, in the end, will insist on finding a method that works to save poor communities.”
Prime Minister Yair Lapid of Israel addresses the UN General Assembly’s seventy-seventh session. September 2022. He told delegates a two-State solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “the right thing” for Israel, but he cautioned that a future Palestinian state must not be “another terror base”. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak
Opinion by Alon Ben-Meir (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Oct 07 (IPS) – By all accounts Israel is considered a democratic country, but a close look at its domestic political combustion sadly reveals that Israel’s democracy is in tatters and is tearing at the seams. This is due to the political leaders’ dismal failure to summon their collective resourcefulness and energy to respond to the call of the hour
Righting the Wrong
Israel is now in the midst of its fifth election in four years. None of the coalition governments that were formed during this period has lasted more than a year. Why is that? The answer is fairly simple but extremely troubling.
Although the political parties are broadly divided into two camps, left vs. right, nearly fifteen political parties are running for 120 seats in the Knesset (Parliament). Most, but not all, will pass the threshold of 3.25 percent to qualify for the minimum of four seats.
The country’s political squabbles are centered around personalities and not policies: who gets what position in the government, how to lure or bribe this or the other party’s leader to join the government, which ministry the numerous contending politicians want to hold (regardless of qualifications), the financial appropriations promised for pet projects, and the list goes on.
And to cap it all, just about every head of each party feels they are the most qualified to become the prime minister, yet none can clearly articulate a national agenda to set the nation on a steady course to safeguard its democracy and political stability.
The gravest threat to Israel’s democracy, however, is the sheer failure of all party leaders to grasp that the country is polarized and divided almost evenly between the anti-Netanyahu and pro-Netanyahu blocs (which largely but not exclusively align with left and right), and that neither of the political blocs has been able to form a functioning coalition government that enjoys a stable majority in the Knesset.
Presently, numerous polls which are conducted almost daily show that the result of the coming election will not be much different. The competing two blocks are hovering around 57 and 59 seats, and the country may well have to endure another exhausting cycle of elections and still end up with roughly the same configuration.
One would think that under such circumstances—when the country is existentially threatened by Iran which is racing toward acquiring nuclear weapons, when the West Bank is simmering with violence and Palestinian casualties are mounting, when the prospect of a Palestinian uprising of unprecedented scale is becoming increasingly plausible, when extremist groups such Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah pose an omnipresent danger, when social cohesiveness is sourly lacking, when poverty is rampant and debilitating the social fabric—the leaders of all parties would come to their senses and put the nation’s interest above their own and their party’s.
Together, one would expect that they would seek common ground and reach a consensus to address the urgent issues facing the nation. But that is not the case.
The extent of Israel’s political malaise and the erosion of its democracy cannot be better exemplified by any other than the despicable former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No prime minister in Israel’s history has been as corrupt or would stoop so low to get his way like Netanyahu.
His lust for power knows no bounds. He faces three criminal charges and is willing to destroy the judiciary to make these charges disappear. He is willing to sell the soul of the nation to the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the fascist, Kahanist leader of Otzma Yehudit who is known to seek the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel, as long as he could help Netanyahu form the next government.
So, when you have a country that has been governed consecutively for more than 12 years by a bigot like Netanyahu who potentially can still form the new government, you know that Israel’s democracy is suffering from an endemic malaise and needs major political remedies.
Just like here in the US, if the Republican party manages to cheat its way through the electoral college and Trump, the most morally bankrupt former president, wins the next presidential election in 2024, our democracy will be shattered and the American dream will wither and die. Israel could face the same fate under Netanyahu.
Thus, if Netanyahu is left with an ounce of dignity and a shred of concern for the nation’s future, he should step aside, face the court with poise, and ask for forgiveness and President Herzog may well pardon him for his service to the nation. This will pave the way for the establishment of a stable wide-based coalition government that can endure and attend to the urgent business of the country.
More than any time in its history, Israel today is in desperate need of a decent, honest, courageous, visionary, and decisive leader to meet the call of the hour. Yair Lapid meets some of the above attributes. He has demonstrated exemplary capability of making the necessary compromises to reach a consensus for the sake of the country.
He is politically savvy and has shown that in his meetings and dealings with global leaders. He demonstrated courage when he stated at the UN General Assembly that the a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the only viable option.
He bravely spoke time and again against the occupation and its demoralizing effect on the entire country. He passionately advocated for equality among Israeli Jews and Arabs, and called for lifting the poor out of their miserable existence. And finally, he strived to nurture a healthy and cohesive society which is the beating heart that sustains democracy.
This round of elections may well be one of the most consequential since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967. Every political leader, regardless of his or her political leanings, should ask themselves what kind of a country Israel should be in 10 to 15 years. The Israelis want unity of purpose, they want to preserve their democracy, prosperity, security, and peace.
Normalizing relations with more Arab countries is of paramount importance and it should be pursued, but it will not save Israel’s democracy. Nor will using Israel’s remarkable new technologies to buy political influence abroad, however desirable that may be.
Nor will multiplying its trade with foreign nations, which is extremely vital to Israel’s economy and should be further expanded. Nor will maintaining its military prowess and credible deterrence, which is critical to the country’s national security.
Nor will making remarkable advances in just about every sphere of endeavor, including medicine, agronomy, chemistry, military innovations, engineering, electronics, and so many other fields, which are outstanding achievements that every Israeli should be proud of. Indeed, regardless of how crucial all of the above are to the country, none will preserve and safeguard Israel’s democracy.
Israel cannot secure and sustain its democracy unless the political leadership engenders social cohesiveness and equality with a functioning political system that offers political stability and where the national interests come first.
Moreover, Israel cannot and will never be a free nation and a true democracy until it ends the infamous occupation which dishonors Israel at every turn. It is, to be sure, the Achilles’ heel that will eventually make or break Israel’s democracy.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.
