English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For March 20/2023
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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15 آذار/2023

Bible Quotations For today
Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
Letter to the Ephesians 05/03-13: “But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. Entirely out of place is obscene, silly, and vulgar talk; but instead, let there be thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be associated with them. For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible,

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 19-20/2023
St. Joseph’s Day Annual/Compiled By: Elias Bejjanii/March 19/2023
The Healing Miracle of the Paralyzed Miracle & The Significance Of Praying For Others/Elias Bejjani/March 19/2023
Amer Fakhoury Foundation: Hostage taking will continue to take place if there are no consequences.
Patriarch Al Rahi: Christian community cannot practice politics in isolation from dialogue
Archbishop Elias Aoudi: Our country is suffering under the yoke of a mighty cross, and if everyone does not join hands, it will fall on their heads
Sehnaoui, Abi Khalil & Atallah visit Al-Rahi, commissioned by Bassil
Dar al-Fatwa announces Saturday, March 21 as first day of Ramadan
Al-Makari sponsors graduation ceremony at "Nour Tripoli" Association
In absence of a political solution & money injection, we are on the verge of a health disaster," warns Abdallah
Berri, Nassar tackle issue of Wazzani River recreational parks' closure
Druze Sheikh Al-Aql meets with "Kaysid" delegation: For preserving a homeland of pluralism, citizenship that embraces diversity
Hajj Hassan underlines importance of electing a new president
Nasrallah meets with senior Hamas delegation
As economy worsens, Lebanese juggle dizzying rates for devalued pound

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 19-20/2023
Israel carries out an assassination operation in Damascus
Syria's Assad in UAE to mark ongoing thaw in relations
Syrian President Assad begins official visit to the UAE
Iran foreign minister says to meet Saudi counterpart in near future
Iraq and Iran sign deal to tighten border security
Israel, Palestinians agree to establish 'mechanism' to curb violence
Palestinians: 1 killed by Israeli army fire in West Bank
Israeli soldiers row to prime minister’s villa as protests over 'end of democracy' continue
Russian President Putin visits occupied city of Mariupol
Russia Signals It Will Take More Ukrainian Children, a Crime in Progress
Black Sea drones show U.S. involvement in conflict against Russia, says Kremlin
South Africa aware of legal obligations regarding Putin visit
UAE, China review boosting joint investment opportunities in new economic sectors
Egypt’s El-Sisi meets Russian envoy in Cairo, vowing closer ties
More US Democrats have sympathy with Palestinians than Israelis, says Gallup poll
Kuwait court nullifies 2022 parliamentary vote: state media

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 19-20/2023
What Will Tehran’s Rulers Choose: To Reform the Fundamentals of the Regime or to Modify and Camouflage its Conduct?/Raghida Dergham/March 19, 2023
The ugly truth about Iraq’s miserable situation/Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/March 19/2023
Russia returns to the graveyard of empires/Nikola Mikovic/Arab News/March 19/2023
20 years on from US-led invasion, Iraq still matters/Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/March 19/2023
Turkiye, Syria more interested in point-scoring than talks/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/March 19/2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 18-19/2023
St. Joseph’s Day Annual
Compiled By: Elias Bejjani
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/73094/elias-bejjani-saint-annual-josephs-day/
The feast day of St. Joseph is celebrated annually on March 19/Our Bejjani family has proudly carried this name generation after generation for centuries and still we do. May God and His angles safeguard our caring and loving son Youssef, and our grandson Joseph, who both carry this blessed name.
It is worth mentioning that St. Joseph’s Day is a Maronite – Roman Catholic feast day that commemorates the life of St. Joseph, the step-father of Jesus and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
People with very strong religious convictions among which are the Lebanese Maronites celebrate St. Joseph’s Day on March 19 and believe that this day is St. Joseph’s birthday too.Back home, in Lebanon St. Joseph is considered the Family Saint and looked upon as a family and hardworking father role model because of the great role that Almighty God had assigned him to carry. His duty was to raise Jesus Christ and take care of Virgin Mary. God has chose him to look after His begotten son and Virgin Marry. He fulfilled his Godly assignment with love, passion and devotion.
May Al Mighty God bless all those that carry this name.

The Healing Miracle of the Paralyzed Miracle & The Significance Of Praying For Others
Elias Bejjani/March 19/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/73457/elias-bejjani-praying-for-others-and-the-healing-miracle-of-the-paralyzed-miracle/
On the fifth Lenten Sunday the Catholic Maronites cite and recall with great reverence the Gospel of Saint Mark ( 02/1-12): “The Healing Miracle of the Paralytic”
This great miracle in its theological essence and core demonstrates beyond doubt that intercessions, prayers and supplications for the benefit of others are acceptable faith rituals that Almighty God attentively hears and definitely answers. It is interesting to learn that the paralytic man as stated in the Gospel of St. Mark, didn’t personally call on Jesus to cure him, nor he asked Him for forgiveness, mercy or help, although as many theologians believe Jesus used to visit Capernaum, where the man lives, and preach in its Synagogue frequently. Apparently this crippled man was lacking faith, hope, distancing himself from God and total ignoring the Gospel’s teaching. He did not believe that the Lord can cure him.
What also makes this miracle remarkable and distinguishable lies in the fact that the paralytic’s relatives and friends, or perhaps some of Jesus’ disciples were adamant that the Lord is able to heal this sick man who has been totally crippled for 38 years if He just touches him. This strong faith and hope made four of them carry the paralytic on his mat and rush to the house where Jesus was preaching. When they could not break through the crowd to inter the house they climbed with the paralytic to the roof, made a hole in it and let down the mat that the paralytic was lying on in front of Jesus and begged for his cure. Jesus was taken by their strong faith and fulfilled their request. Jesus forgave the paralytic his sins first (“Son, your sins are forgiven), and after that cured his body: “Arise, and take up your bed, and walk”.
Like the scribes many nowadays still question the reason and rationale that made Jesus give priority to the man’s sins. Jesus’ wisdom illustrates that sin is the actual death and the cause for eternal anguish in Hell. He absolved his sins first because sin cripples those who fall in its traps, annihilates their hopes, faith, morals and values, kills their human feelings, inflicts numbness on their consciences and keeps them far away from Almighty God.
Jesus wanted to save the man’s soul before He cures his earthy body. “For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?” (Mark 08:/36 & 37).
Our Gracious God does not disappoint any person when he seek His help with faith and confidence. With great interest and parental love, He listens to worshipers’ prayers and requests and definitely respond to them in His own way, wisdom, time and manner.
“Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened”. (Matthew 07/07 &08)
Is any among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praises. Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will heal him who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up”. (James 05:15)
In this loving and forgiving context, prayers for others, alive or dead, loved ones or enemies, relatives or strangers, are religiously desirable. God hears and responds because He never abandons His children no matter what they do or say, provided that they turn to Him with faith and repentance and ask for His mercy and forgiveness either for themselves or for others. “ There are numerous biblical parables and miracles in which Almighty God shows clearly that He accepts and responds to prayers for the sake of others.
Jesus cured the centurion’s servant on the request of the Centurion and not the servant himself. (Matthew 08/05-33 )
Jesus revived and brought back to life Lazarus on the request of his sisters Mary and Martha. (John 11/01-44)
Praying for others whether they are parents, relatives, strangers, acquaintances, enemies, or friends, and for countries, is an act that exhibits the faith, caring, love, and hope of those who offer the prayers. Almighty God, Who is a loving, forgiving, passionate, and merciful Father listens to these prayers and always answers them in His own wisdom and mercy that mostly we are unable to grasp because of our limited human understanding.
“All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” (Matthew 21/22)
Almighty God is always waiting for us, we, His Children to come to Him and ask for His help and mercy either for ourselves or for others. He never leaves us alone. Meanwhile it is a Godly faith obligation to extend our hand and pull up those who are falling and unable to pray for themselves especially the mentally sick, the unconscious, and the paralyzed. In this realm of faith, love and care for others comes our prayers to Virgin Mary and to all Saints whom we do not worship, but ask for their intercessions and blessings.
O, Lord, endow us with graces of faith, hope, wisdom, and patience.
Help us to be loving, caring, humble and meek. Show us the just paths.
Help us to be on your right with the righteous on the Judgment Day.
God sees and hears us all the time, let us all fear Him in all what we think, do and say.

Amer Fakhoury Foundation: Hostage taking will continue to take place if there are no consequences.
On March 19, 2020 the US sent special forces to rescue the late US hostage, Amer Fakhoury, from Lebanon. Three years later and we have yet to see any type of accountability take place for what happened. Lebanon has yet to pay the price for the killing of an American citizen. Advocating for hostages includes talking about those who lost their lives due to captivity. Hostage taking will continue to take place if there are no consequences.

Patriarch Al Rahi: Christian community cannot practice politics in isolation from dialogue
NNA/March 19/2023
Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Beshara Boutros Al-Rahi, indicated that political officials should not forget that “political work is a service to all human beings,” considering that political power is a function of strengthening interdependence and integration among citizens.
During the Mass of Consecration of Families and the Church, with the intercession of St. Joseph in Bkirki, the Patriarch pointed out that "the Christian community cannot practice politics in isolation from dialogue and mutual listening, discerning the decision that must be taken without imposing opinion and without hidden calculations."Al-Rahi stressed that "all our political, economic and moral crises lie in the failure to provide for the public interest, and this is the main reason for obstructing the election of a president for the republic, and herein lies the chaos and disintegration of the state."

Archbishop Elias Aoudi: Our country is suffering under the yoke of a mighty cross, and if everyone does not join hands, it will fall on their heads
NNA/LCCC/March 19/2023
In his sermon today Archbishop Aoudi  said, Anyone who loses his hope in the Lord and in eternal life will suffer greatly, and no longer see meaning in his life, so he decides to end it. We hear of many suicides, due to the bad state our country has reached, and the great and accelerating deterioration that no official with a degree of responsibility and humanity was able to transform Despite this, suicide is not a solution, but rather an escape from reality and pain, and carrying the cross with hope and patience.The Apostle Paul says: (We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulations produce patience, and perseverance is chastening, and chastening is hope) (Romans 5: 3-5). Of course, no one realizes the situation in which a person decides to end his earthly life, but we must not forget that Christ came on this earth to save the tired and give them rest if they turn to Him, He said: (Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke. You, and learn from me, because I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls, because my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11: 28-30). It is for the Lord). These words are the result of a spiritual experience with Christ, faith in Him, and great hope in His promises. Christ was not crucified. Except for our salvation, so that we do not despair of waiting for the truly coming salvation. Despair generates emptiness, and emptiness brings death. As for the one who fills himself with Christ, looking at the cross with the hope of resurrection, he does not despair, and he does not think of ending his life, but rather rushes to the bosom of Christ, to his body - the Church, where he finds the cure for every disease that afflicts his soul. Therefore, every believer must return to his life resorting to the sacrament of repentance and confession, which has witnessed stagnation in recent times, because by doing so he will remove from himself the mountains of worries and sins that burden him and exhaust him to the point of death, so that the light will return to where the darkness was, and there will be no place for despair. later".
He pointed out that "our country is suffering under the yoke of a great cross, it has become ruins, and if everyone does not unite to restore it, it will fall on everyone's heads. Our country has become a house without a roof, its walls are cracked, its children are desperate, and the officials are scattered and do not make a useful movement to rectify the situation. As for those who have to dare They are still far apart, fighting each other over everything that leads to the election of a president.Distancing between the components of the nation is an evil that afflicts a society, and with our certain knowledge that electing a president will not work wonders if it is not accompanied by other necessary steps, but it is the first step in the long rescue march that spares the country.
A wider collapse and contribute to addressing the various challenges facing the country. Therefore, we hope that the deputies will transcend their differences and disagreements, and that they will converge and dialogue and reach a solution to a long-running crisis. Everyone should prioritize the goal of saving Lebanon over the goal of reaching power, and that the language of reason, dialogue and wisdom will prevail over intransigence and confrontation. Our internal unity is the strongest weapon in the face of any problem, interference or crisis, and learning from the mistakes and conflicts of the past is typical of the wise, aware of the seriousness of the situation. Doesn't every country do what suits its interest? What prevents us from making our destiny with our own hands? Aren't we responsible for solving our problems? And do those in the hands of the decision realize that time is very precious and that it passes and opportunities are lost?” Odeh concluded: “Our call today, in one of the prostrations to the honorable and life-giving cross, is to trust in Him who sacrificed himself for our salvation, sacrificing us with his pure blood, trampling death, because it is inevitable To establish us with Him, and to save us from our sins first, and from all pain and harm. May the Lord bless your life with the power of his Life-giving Cross, Amen.

President Aoun from Haret Hreik: "Today we will not talk about politics, we will only talk about memories"
Lebanon Debate websit/LCCC/ Sunday, March 19, 2023
The former President of the Republic, Michel Aoun, celebrated the Mass of St. Joseph's Day in Haret Hreik. After the mass, Aoun said in a speech to the audience: "Today we will not talk about politics, we will only talk about memories," expressing our love for this church in which we prayed today. On the occasion of Mother's Day, Aoun said: "We must not forget and always remember." What did the mother teach us?” Aoun sent greetings to all mothers.

Sehnaoui, Abi Khalil & Atallah visit Al-Rahi, commissioned by Bassil
NNA/March 19/2023
MPs Nicolas Sehnaoui, Cesar Abi Khalil and George Atallah visited Sunday Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Beshara Boutros Al-Rahi, in Bkiriki, commissioned by Free Patriotic Movement Chief, MP Gebran Bassil, where they informed him of the movement’s deputies' positive response to the spiritual retreat invitation sent out by the Patriarch. "We hope that this gathering will be an occasion to be inspired by Christian teachings and values in approaching all national entitlements," the deupities said. Following the meeing, the three visiting MPs joined the Patriarch for lunch.

Dar al-Fatwa announces Saturday, March 21 as first day of Ramadan
NNANNA/March 19/2023
The Dar al-Fatwa announced on Sunday that the holy month of Ramadan will start on Tuesday, March 21, 2023.

Al-Makari sponsors graduation ceremony at "Nour Tripoli" Association
NNANNA/March 19/2023
Caretaker Minister of Information, Ziad Al-Makari, sponsored the "Nour Tripoli" Association's celebration of the graduation of the first batch of trainees of the "Capacity and Skills Building" Center entitled "Preparation and Presentation of Radio and Television Programs and the Production of Short Films", in the Cultural Association Lecture Hall - Tripoli. During his tour, Al-Makari gave a speech in which he talked about his tours in Tripoli to keep up with a number of interests from the point of view of the joint struggle. He saluted the believers in the state, even if what is happening now does not bear his responsibility because it is the result of accumulations. The Minister regretted the low budget of the Ministry of Information, "but the competencies in it work with determination and effort," warning against immigration and its dangerous consequences. Finally Al- Makari revealed "improvements in the Information ministry, Lebanon TV, radio and all directorates."

In absence of a political solution & money injection, we are on the verge of a health disaster, warns Abdallah
NNANNA/March 19/2023
MP Bilal Abdallah confirmed today in an interview with "Voice of All Lebanon 93.3" Radio Channel, that "dialogue is the only solution to get out of the impasse of the presidential election, as it is not possible to remain in this vortex."He highlighted the "necessity of learning from the regional transformations which showed that Lebanon is not a priority for the outside world during this period," emphasizing the need for internal dialogue. Regarding the spiritual retreat called for by Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Beshara Boutros Al-Rahi, MP Abdallah affirmed that "limiting consensus to the Christian parties alone is not enough, for there must be an understanding between all the components, because we are talking about the fate of the whole country and not only the Christians."Asked about the visit of Progressive Socialist Party Chief, Walid Jumblatt, to Kuwait, the MP explained that the aim was to confirm the historical relationship between the two countries and Lebanon's relations with the Arab world. In response to a question about the investigations with Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, Abdallah indicated that "the basis of the crisis we are going through are the wrong economic and financial policies that made people feel imaginary affluence," considering that "Salameh bears part of the responsibility, as do successive governments and parliaments," leaving the matter up to the local and foreign judiciary. On the public health dossier, Abdallah considered that patching and subsidy policies are not enough, saying: "Without a political solution and injecting money, we are on the verge of a health disaster in the country. He believed that "the health system is the most affected by the repercussions of the prevailing economic crisis."The MP indicated that "the Parliamentary Health Committee is trying as much as possible to exert pressure to maintain the minimum standards of the hospital sector, in light of the absence of legislation in Parliament."

Berri, Nassar tackle issue of Wazzani River recreational parks' closure
NNANNA/March 19/2023
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, followed up Sunday on the issue of closing the tourism parks along the Wazzani River. For this purpose, he contacted the Caretaker Minister of Tourism, Walid Nassar, whereby it was agreed that Minister Nassar would meet tomorrow with the owners of the parks to take the necessary measures to reopen them.

Druze Sheikh Al-Aql meets with "Kaysid" delegation: For preserving a homeland of pluralism, citizenship that embraces diversity
NNANNA/March 19/2023
Druze Sheikh Al-Aql, Sami Abil-Muna, called today for “preserving Lebanon as a model of pluralism and citizenship that embraces diversity," adding that "this is the message of the Druze unitarians who do not have any factional projects, but rather their project is the unifying homeland and the one human being.”
He also stressed on “common values that unite religions and their preservation.”Abil-Muna's words came during his reception at the Druze Dar El-Taefa in Beirut, the delegation of the "Arab Dialogue Platform" affiliated with the "Kaysid" Center - King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Center for Dialogue of Religions and Cultures. The visit was an occasion to welcome the delegation to the “Dar Al-Muwahhidun Al-Druze," which endorses dialogue and convergence between all, and is the mediation place for caring and connecting between members of all sects. He said: "This is our history since our Arab Muslim ancestors came to this country, to protect the Arab-Islamic frontiers since the eighth century AD and afterwards, on a defensive mission, and they made many sacrifices, and our message was and still is communication, openness, and steadfastness in the land."Addressing the delegation, Abil-Miuna continued, "Welcome to this country, which is a model of pluralism and diversity in unity, and we have called it citizenship that embraces diversity, and this is our message: respect for citizenship and upbringing on its values, and we have participated in carrying this message to the forums, especially since the monotheists do not have any factional projects at the national or religious level, but rather their goal is the homeland and the people.”

Hajj Hassan underlines importance of electing a new president
NNANNA/March 19/2023
Caretaker Minister of Agriculture, Abbas Hajj Hassan, received today at his home in Shaat, popular delegations and agricultural associations from the Baalbek-Hermel region. He raised with the delegations a number of their demands and concerns, emphasizing that "the situation has become very critical at the economic and social levels, which makes it imperative for everyone to take a step to solve the crisis, which begins with the election of a president of the republic and then the formation of a government, to begin the journey of advancement in this country, which is rich in its people, economic components and promising oil wealth."Hajj Hassan also contacted Higher Relief Commission Head, Major General Mohammad Khair, with whom he discussed the issue of compensating farmers affected by the storm that has recently hit Lebanon.

Nasrallah meets with senior Hamas delegation
Naharnet/March 19, 2023 
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has met with a senior Hamas delegation led by Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of the Palestinian movement’s political bureau, Hezbollah said on Sunday. According to a Hezbollah statement, Nasrallah and the delegation discussed “the latest developments in occupied Palestine, especially the heroic and brave resistance in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”They also tackled “the domestic events in the usurper Israeli entity, the political developments in the region and the responsibilities of the resistance movements and the entire Axis of Resistance in this historic period,” the statement said.

As economy worsens, Lebanese juggle dizzying rates for devalued pound
Reuters/March 19, 2023
BEIRUT: When Caroline Sadaka buys groceries in the Lebanese capital Beirut, she keeps her phone in hand – not to check her shopping list but to calculate the spiralling costs of goods now priced at volatile exchange rates that vary by store and sector.As Lebanon’s economy continues to collapse, an array of exchange rates for the local pound has emerged, complicating personal accounting and dimming hopes of fulfilling a reform requirement set out by the International Monetary Fund. The government’s official exchange rate was set at 15,000 pounds to the US dollar in February, a nearly 90 percent devaluation from the longtime peg of 1507.5. But the Central Bank is selling dollars at a rate of 79,000 to the greenback while the finance minister intends to calculate tariffs for imported goods at 45,000 pounds. The parallel market rate is meanwhile hovering around 107,000 pounds and changing daily. Supermarkets and fuel stations are required to post signs with the value they’ve adopted for the day, but the rate is changing so fast that many are pricing in the relatively stable USdollar instead. Examining a can of tuna, Sadaka illustrated the daily quandary faced by shoppers. “This doesn’t have a (logical) price. If you look, it’s in Lebanese pounds, so is this the price? Or is this an old price, and there’s now a price in dollars?,” she wondered. She quit her job as a school teacher which paid her in local currency, the value of which has decreased by more than 98 percent against the dollar on the parallel market since 2019.
That’s when the economy began unraveling after decades of unsound financial policies and alleged corruption.
To solve the exchange rate confusion, the government needs to implement one unified rate. This is among pre-conditions set by the International Monetary Fund nearly a year ago for Lebanon to get a $3 billion bailout. But the lender of last resort says reforms have been too slow. They have met resistance from politicians who are shielding vested interests and dodging accountability. In the meantime, the country has been moving toward a cash-based and dollarized economy given spiralling inflation and restrictions by banks on transactions. Shop owner Mahmoud Chaar told Reuters the exchange rate was changing so fast that his business was losing money overnight. Like many business owners, Chaar has to pay in US dollars to import goods but sells in Lebanese pounds. One day, he had sold all his goods based on one rate but woke up the next to find it had jumped nearly 10,000 pounds per US dollar.
“Basically, we lost in the exchange rate difference what we had made in profit,” Chaar told Reuters. Economist Samir Nasr said the varying rates across sectors were making personal accounting “messy” for Lebanese and unifying them was more urgent than ever. “What is required is a full group of reforms and steps that will allow for the economic situation to stabilize in general — and would then allow the exchange rate to be unified,” he said.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 19-20/2023
Israel carries out an assassination operation in Damascus
Al-Arabiya/March 19/2023
This Sunday morning, the leader of the "Quds Brigades" movement, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Ali Ramzi Al-Aswad, was assassinated in the Damascus countryside. The "Quds Brigades" in Syria mourned "Ali Ramzi Al-Aswad (31 years old), who was assassinated this morning in the Damascus countryside, following an assassination carried out by the Israeli Mossad." The Al-Quds Brigades accused the Israeli intelligence of assassinating Al-Aswad by shooting him.

Syria's Assad in UAE to mark ongoing thaw in relations
BEIRUT (AP)/Sun, March 19, 2023
Syrian President Bashar Assad arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, his first visit to the wealthy Gulf country since the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria last month. Assad, who arrived with his wife, Asma, and a delegation of Syrian officials, was received by UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, according to a statement from Assad’s office. Sheikh Mohammed said in a statement on Twitter that the two “held constructive talks aimed at developing relations between our two countries.”The visit marks a continuation in the ongoing thaw of relations between Syria and other Arab countries, more than a decade after the 22-member Arab League suspended Damascus' membership over Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters and later on civilians during the war. International sympathy following the quake appears to have sped up the regional rapprochement that had been brewing for years. Before the tragedy, the UAE had already reestablished ties with Damascus. Assad’s first visit to the UAE since the 2011 outbreak of the Syrian civil war was last year, followed by another visit in January of this year. After the earthquake, the UAE’s foreign minister visited Damascus, and the Gulf country sent dozens of aid shipments to Syria. Damascus hopes that the regional reconciliation will unlock long-awaited funds to rebuild the battered country. However, analysts said it is unlikely to happen on any large scale for now. One key barrier: Syria has not implemented U.N. Security Council resolution 2254 adopted in December 2015 as a road map to peace in Syria. Acceptance of the road map is a key demand of the U.S and the European Union for normalizing relations with Damascus. The World Bank said Sunday that Syria’s real gross domestic product is expected to contract by 5.5% in 2023 following the earthquake, with physical damages estimated at $3.7 billion and economic losses at $1.5 billion, bringing the total estimated impact to $5.2 billion. That's on top of the preexisting damages from 12 years of war. “Economic growth may contract further if reconstruction progress is slower than expected, given limited public resources, weak private investment, and limited humanitarian assistance reaching the affected areas,” the Bank said in a statement.

Syrian President Assad begins official visit to the UAE
Naharnet/March 19, 2023
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived at noon Sunday in the United Arab Emirates for an official visit. He was welcomed at Abu Dhabi’s airport by UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. Assad and Sheikh Mohammed later headed to the al-Watan Palace to hold an official round of discussions. Assad is accompanied by his wife Asma and the Syrian ministers of economy and foreign commerce, presidential affairs and information. The delegation also comprises the assistant foreign minister and the Syrian charge d’affaires in Abu Dhabi.

Iran foreign minister says to meet Saudi counterpart in near future
Arab News/March 19, 2023
RIYADH: Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday he will meet his Saudi Arabian counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan “in the near future”, adding that three locations have been proposed for the meeting. Amirabdollahian made it clear that based on the latest messages exchanged with Saudi Arabia, Iran also announced its readiness to reopen the two embassies. “We agreed with Saudi Arabia on visits by technical delegations for both embassies in preparation for their opening,” he added. Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed on March 10 to re-establish relations and re-open embassies within two months after years of hostility, following talks in China. On Yemen, the Iranian minister said that the situation in Yemen is an internal matter, but added that “we are working to stabilize the region in cooperation with Saudi Arabia.” “We will not accept any threat to our security from neighboring countries,” he said.

Iraq and Iran sign deal to tighten border security
Ahmed Rasheed/BAGHDAD (Reuters)/Sun, March 19, 2023
Iraq and Iran signed a border security agreement on Sunday, a move Iraqi officials said aimed primarily at tightening the frontier with Iraq's Kurdish region, where Tehran says armed Kurdish dissidents pose a threat to its security. The joint security agreement includes coordination in "protecting the common borders between the two countries and consolidating cooperation in several security fields", a statement from the Iraqi prime minister's office said. Iran's Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani signed the deal with Iraq's National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji, in the presence of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani, the prime minister office said. "Under the signed security deal, Iraq pledges it would not allow armed groups to use its territory in the Iraqi Kurdish region to launch any border-crossing attacks on neighbour Iran," said an Iraqi security official who attended the signing. The frontier came into renewed focus last year when Iran's Revolutionary Guards launched missile and drone attacks against Iranian Kurdish groups based in northern Iraq, accusing them of fomenting protests that were sparked by the death of a Iranian Kurdish woman while she was being held in police custody. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, speaking in Tehran, said "Shamkhani's current trip to Iraq has been planned since four months and is focused on issues related to the armed groups in northern Iraq". The Islamic republic of Iran will in no way accept threats from Iraqi territories, he added. Iran has also accused Kurdish militants of working with its arch-enemy Israel and has often voices concern over the alleged presence of the Israeli spy agency Mossad in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region. Last year, Iran's Intelligence Ministry said a sabotage team detained by its security forces were Kurdish militants working for Israel who planned to blow up a "sensitive" defence industry centre in the city of Isfahan.

Israel, Palestinians agree to establish 'mechanism' to curb violence
CAIRO (Reuters)/Sun, March 19, 2023
Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed on Sunday to establish a mechanism to curb violence during a meeting aimed at preventing already surging violence from escalating further when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins later this week.
In a statement issued at the end of a meeting in Egypt that was also attended by U.S., Egyptian and Jordanian officials, the parties also emphasized the necessity of both Israelis and Palestinians preventing any actions that would disrupt the sanctity of Holy Sites in Jerusalem during Ramadan. The parties reaffirmed the necessity of de-escalation, and reconfirmed commitments made at a previous meeting in Aqaba last month. These included an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months, and to stop authorisation of any outposts for six months.

Palestinians: 1 killed by Israeli army fire in West Bank
JERUSALEM (AP)/Fri, March 17, 2023
The Israeli military said troops shot a Palestinian who approached soldiers on Friday and pulled a knife near the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian authorities said the man died of his wounds a short while later. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man as Yazan Khaseeb, 23. The military said the man refused to identify himself and drew a knife, prompting the soldiers to open fire. It published a photo of the alleged knife on the ground. It was the latest bloodshed in the current round of violence, one of the worst between Israelis and Palestinians in years. The escalation began a year ago after a series of Palestinian attacks against Israelis that triggered near-nightly Israeli raids in the West Bank. Friday's death brings the number of Palestinians killed since the start of the year to 85. Palestinian attacks against Israelis have killed 14 people in 2023. According to an Associated Press tally, about half of the Palestinians killed this year were affiliated with militant groups. Israel says most of the dead were militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions, some in their early teens, and others not involved in confrontations, including three men over 60, have also been killed. Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, making it the deadliest year in those areas since 2004, according to the leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Palestinian attacks against Israelis during that same time killed 30 people. Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their future independent state.

Israeli soldiers row to prime minister’s villa as protests over 'end of democracy' continue
Abbie Cheeseman/The Telegraph/March 19, 2023
Protests by Israel’s reserve forces took an unusual turn over the weekend as navy veterans donned wetsuits and tried to reach Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private seaside villa by rowing. With their kayaks draped in Israeli flags, and others snorkelling alongside them, the reservists took to the water in the 11th consecutive week of nationwide protests to stop the government from a planned judicial overhaul that critics say will spell the end of democracy. While their approach was somewhat light-hearted, some 650 volunteer military reservists on Sunday began a strike saying that they will only return to duty “when democracy is safe”.
Weeks of protests
Mr Netanyahu has faced weeks of protests over his controversial legal reforms, which critics say will weaken the supreme court's ability to strike down legislation and increase the government's influence over judges. Mr Netanyahu, who is currently on trial over corruption charges that he strongly denies, says the reforms are a necessary step as the judiciary has too much control over government policy. A growing number of military reservists, who have long been a cornerstone of Israeli society, have been threatening to refuse duty if called up over the reform proposals. Their strike is going ahead despite condemnations from both the far-Right coalition that Mr Netanyahu leads and the opposition, who have warned that national security cannot be put at risk over internal politics. In a letter circulated around Israeli media, organisers of the group said the striking members included 450 officers and soldiers from the Military Intelligence’s Special Operations Division and 200 from cyber warfare units, including from the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies. "We have no contract with a dictator. We would be happy to volunteer when democracy is safeguarded," the letter said. "When a country stands on the threshold of dictatorship, we are likely to see a break-down of the security agencies," former Shin Bet director Nadav Argaman told Channel 12 TV. "It is extraordinarily terrifying."The group urged other reservists to join their ranks, though caveated that in the event of a wartime callup they would suspend their strike. A group of 300 reservists and officers in the Air Force – including drone operators, crews, and air traffic control operators – were later reported to have said they would not show up for training this week. The scale of the protest movement has caused some alarm in the Israeli military leadership. While military conscription typically only lasts two to three years, many troops continue as reservists until their 40s making them a significant bulk of the manpower in many squadrons. Also on Sunday, an Israeli man was shot and seriously wounded by a Palestinian attacker in the flashpoint West Bank village of Huwara. According to Israeli media reports, the Palestinian shooter was arrested shortly after his victim returned fire. Huwara, which sits on a major highway connecting Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, was also the scene of a similar attack on Israelis three weeks ago. In response to that attack, settlers rampaged through the village, burning dozens of buildings and killing a Palestinian man.

Russian President Putin visits occupied city of Mariupol
Associated Press/March 19, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the occupied port city of Mariupol, Russian state news agencies reported on Sunday morning, in his first trip to the Ukrainian territory that Moscow illegally annexed in September. Mariupol became a worldwide symbol of defiance after outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces held out in a steel mill there for nearly three months before Moscow finally took control of it in May. Earlier, on Saturday, Putin traveled to Crimea, a short distance southwest of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula's annexation from Ukraine.
The visits came days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader accusing him of war crimes. Putin arrived in Mariupol by helicopter and then drove himself around the city's "memorial sites," concert hall and coastline, the Russian reports said, without specifying exactly when the visit took place. They said Putin also met with local residents in the city's Nevskyi district. Speaking to the state RIA agency Sunday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnulin made clear that Russia was in Mariupol to stay. He said the government hoped to finish the reconstruction of its blasted downtown by the end of the year. "People have started to return. When they saw that reconstruction is under way, people started actively returning," Khusnulin told RIA. When Moscow fully captured the city in May, an estimated 100,000 people remained out of a prewar population of 450,000. Many were trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. Relentless bombardment left rows upon rows of shattered or hollowed-out buildings. Mariupol's plight first came into focus with a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital on March 9 last year, less than two weeks after Russian troops moved into Ukraine. A week later, about 300 people were reported killed in the bombing of a theater that was serving as the city's largest bomb shelter. Evidence obtained by the AP last spring suggested that the real death toll could be closer to 600. A small group of Ukrainian fighters held out for 83 days in the sprawling Azovstal steel works in eastern Mariupol before surrendering, their dogged defense tying down Russian forces and coming to symbolize Ukrainian tenacity in the face of Moscow's aggression. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world denounced as illegal, and moved on last September to officially claim four regions in Ukraine's south and east as Russian territory, following referendums that Kyiv and the West described as a sham.

Russia Signals It Will Take More Ukrainian Children, a Crime in Progress
Marc Santora and Emma Bubola/The New York Times/March 19, 2023
Ukraine — Russia’s abduction and deportation of Ukraine’s children since its invasion of the country was so well-documented and terrifying that when Russian forces prepared to withdraw from the southern city of Kherson last fall, doctors at a hospital there hurriedly hid babies and falsified their records.
When Russian soldiers arrived, the staff at Kherson Regional Hospital said the infants were too critically ill to move, Olha Pilyarska, head of its neonatal anesthesiology department, recalled in an interview Saturday. “They put lung ventilation devices near all the children,” she said.
The efforts saved 14 babies from being swept up in a campaign that has systematically transferred thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia to be resettled in foster families and put on track to become Russian citizens. When the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Friday over the forcible deportation of children, it was a powerful recognition of actions that have not only been carried out in full public view, but continue today. The arrest warrant adds Putin’s name to a notorious list of despots and dictators accused of humanity’s worst atrocities. But this case is unusual in that the charges were announced not years after the abuses began, but effectively in real time. The judges at The Hague cited the need for urgent action because the deportations are “allegedly ongoing.”Although the court has issued arrest warrants quickly before — against Moammar Gadhafi of Libya, for example — war crimes investigations often take years, meaning that charges are not announced until long after atrocities occur. President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan was charged in 2009 with war crimes that began in 2003. But the Russian authorities, far from disguising the deportations, have put the children on display in Red Square photo-ops and at lavish concerts celebrating the war. They have also signaled that more deportations are on the way. Across southern Ukraine, local Russian proxy leaders are issuing new “evacuation orders” before an expected Ukrainian military offensive this spring. Such orders have often been a prelude to stepped-up deportations. And about a month ago, Russian forces closed all roads leading from occupied areas into the rest of Ukraine, making it much harder for people to escape. Now, the only open roads head deeper into occupied territory or into Russia.
“Russians are deporting more and more people from the temporarily occupied districts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson,” the Ukrainian National Resistance Center, the government agency that monitors events in occupied Ukraine, said Friday, noting public statements by the local Russian authorities.
More than a year into a war that has turned into a bloody endurance contest, Ukrainian and allied leaders are contending with wavering — though still strong — support for continuing to supply Ukraine with military equipment. Ukrainian officials said the arrest warrant highlighted the moral imperative of the conflict.
“World leaders will think twice before shaking his hand or sitting with Putin at the negotiating table,” Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, said of the arrest warrant. “It’s another clear signal to the world that the Russian regime is criminal.”
Russia, which like the United States is not a party to the international court, dismissed the warrant as meaningless. Its leaders have made clear that they intend to continue deporting children to Russia in what they have billed as an act of humanitarian compassion.
The court in The Hague also issued an arrest warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, the Kremlin’s commissioner for children’s rights, who is the public face of the deportation program. She has spoken proudly about organizing a large-scale system for shuttling children out of Ukraine. After the arrest warrant, she vowed “to continue to work.”Putin, in a televised meeting with Lvova-Belova last month, noted the work approvingly. “The number of applications from our citizens regarding the adoption of children from the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, from the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions is also growing,” he said. The scale of the deportations in Ukraine over the past year is something not witnessed in Europe in generations.
The United Nations estimates that 2.9 million Ukrainians have moved to Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion, but it is impossible to quantify how many might have gone willingly and how many were forced. That number includes about 700,000 children, according to both Russians and Ukrainians, and most are believed to be with their families. The exact number of children separated from their parents or orphaned is not known. Russia has acknowledged transferring 2,000 children without guardians; Ukrainian officials say they have confirmed 16,000 cases, although some of them might be with a relative. “The real, full number of deportees may be much higher,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said in a statement Friday after the announcement by The Hague.The court has identified “at least hundreds of children taken from orphanages and children’s care homes,” said Karim Khan, the court’s chief prosecutor. He said these deportations, done with the intention to permanently remove the children from their own country, were a violation of the Geneva Convention and amounted to war crimes. The court in The Hague acted unusually fast in the case. It has been under intense scrutiny since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when 43 countries — a third of the court’s members — almost immediately demanded that it intervene. Key donors, including the European Union, sent money and dozens of prosecutors to speed up what is often seen as a plodding bureaucracy. And the court’s investigators, who often are thwarted by hostile governments, received total cooperation from the Ukrainian authorities. Forcibly transferring children from one national group to another with the intention to destroy the group can also amount to genocide, a charge that Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer at the Regional Center for Human Rights, a Ukrainian organization that investigates the abduction of children, said she hoped would be the next step.
Russia has carried out the deportations under the guise of rescues, medical rehabilitation initiatives and adoption programs. But the facts have been brought to light by witness accounts, reports by The New York Times and other Western outlets, the Ukrainian news media, independent investigators, the United Nations, and a host of government and rights organizations. “They committed the crime in plain sight and expressed pride in doing it,” Stephen Rapp, a former ambassador-at-large who headed the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the State Department, said in an email. The Kremlin has repeatedly used Ukrainian children as part of its campaign to bolster support for the war. When children from a group home fled the Russian bombing of Mariupol early in the war, for example, they were stopped at a Russian checkpoint. Pro-Russian news media crews rushed to the scene, witnesses said, and cameras followed the children as they were whisked deeper into Russia-held territory.
It was portrayed as a rescue operation. “All the Russian channels showed that Ukrainians are bad,” said Oleksandr Yaroshenko, a volunteer who witnessed the incident at the checkpoint. In Kherson, local officials and witnesses described an orchestrated nature to the Russian abductions. Soon after Russian forces seized the city, they worked with local collaborators to compile lists of children in hospitals, orphanages and schools, according to Ukrainian prosecutors and witnesses. Security camera footage showed armed Russian soldiers entering an orphanage in October, and local officials said that 50 children were taken from the facility. Some of them, according to residents of Kherson, were later paraded before the cameras on Russia’s state news media. The deportations have echoes of one of the more sinister chapters of Russian history, when Stalin used deportations to solidify the Kremlin’s control. From 1936 to 1952, at least 3 million people were rounded up from their homes along the Soviet Union’s western borders and other regions, and dumped thousands of miles away in Siberia and Central Asia, according to estimates by the United Nations refugee agency. The Kremlin referred to these people euphemistically as “special settlers.” At the neonatal hospital in Kherson, the staff managed to save most of the children, but two were taken, said Inna Kholodnyak, the hospital’s director. “Some of children from Kherson are still in Crimea. We can sometimes see them in Russian media,” she said by telephone from the hospital, which had come under shelling in recent days. “The others just disappeared, and we don’t know anything about them.”
c.2023 The New York Times Company

Black Sea drones show U.S. involvement in conflict against Russia, says Kremlin
(Reuters)Sun, March 19, 2023
U.S. drone flights over the Black Sea are a sign of direct U.S. involvement in conflict with Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying on Sunday. Last week, a U.S. drone crashed into the sea after being intercepted by Russian Su-27 fighter planes in the first known direct military encounter between the two sides since Russia launched its war in Ukraine last year. "It is quite obvious what these drones are doing, and their mission is not at all a peaceful mission to ensure the safety of shipping in international waters," Interfax news agency quoted Peskov as saying in a TV interview. "And in fact, we are talking about the direct involvement of the operators of these drones in the conflict, and against us." The United States said the Russian planes harassed the drone in Tuesday's incident and sprayed fuel on it before one of them clipped its propeller and caused it to crash while on a reconnaissance mission in international airspace. Russia said the drone had violated airspace restrictions and lost control after manoeuvring sharply. Russia's defence minister has presented awards to the airmen involved, in a rejoinder to U.S. accusations that the incident showed recklessness and possible incompetence on the part of the pilots. Moscow says the United States and its allies are using Ukraine to wage war on it and inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia. Washington says it is helping Ukraine to defend itself against an unprovoked Russian invasion.

South Africa aware of legal obligations regarding Putin visit
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters)/Sun, March 19, 2023
South Africa is aware of its legal obligation, a spokesperson for President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Sunday, referring to a proposed visit by Vladimir Putin after an international court issued an arrest warrant against the Russian leader. Russian President Putin was expected to visit South Africa in August to attend a BRICS summit."We are, as the government, cognisant of our legal obligation. However, between now and the summit we will remain engaged with various relevant stakeholders," spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said. While there has been no official confirmation of Putin's visit, he has been expected to attend the 15th BRICS summit, as he did in 2013. But such a visit would place Ramaphosa's government, which has not condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in a precarious position after the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday. "We note the report on the warrant of arrest that the ICC has issued," Magwenya said. "It remains South Africa's commitment and very strong desire that the conflict in Ukraine is resolved peacefully through negotiations."

UAE, China review boosting joint investment opportunities in new economic sectors
Arab News/March 19, 2023
DUBAI: Abdullah Ahmad Al Saleh, undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy in the UAE, met Zhang Xiangchen, China's deputy international trade representative, on the sidelines of the economic forum in Dubai. The two talked about expanding joint investment opportunities in new economic sectors, trade, logistics, real estate, financial services, technology, and insurance, the Emirates News Agency reported. Al Saleh said that ties between the two countries were historically based on strategic partnership and cooperation, and that they had seen significant development over the last four decades in all fields, particularly in the economy and trade, which served development goals and promoted the growth and sustainability of both economies. He said: “The UAE is China’s first Arab and Gulf trade partner during 2021. China is also the UAE’s first trade partner, as the value of non-oil intra-trade between the two countries amounted to more than AED 264.2 billion ($72 billion) in 2022, achieving a growth of 18 percent compared to AED 223.8 billion in 2021. “The mutual investments between the two countries are witnessing continuous growth in various economic and commercial sectors, most notably real estate, logistical transportation, storage, financial services, insurance activities, manufacturing and information technology. “Bilateral investments between the UAE and China reached nearly AED 44 billion until early In 2021.
“China is also the third-largest foreign investor in the UAE at the global level, with a balance of foreign direct investments that amounted to $9.3 billion until the beginning of 2021, and achieved a growth of 514.5 percent compared to the beginning of 2013.”
Al Saleh briefed the Chinese side on the UAE’s economic policies, which are aimed at enabling and improving the competitiveness of the investment environment and its growth, such as providing incentives and supportive enablers to encourage the private sector to invest and expand in the country’s markets, amending the Commercial Companies Law to allow 100 percent foreign ownership, and supporting increased labor mobility and modernizing residency systems in the country.

Egypt’s El-Sisi meets Russian envoy in Cairo, vowing closer ties
Arab News/March 19, 2023
CAIRO: A senior Russian delegation met on Sunday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Cairo, his spokesman said, with the parties committing to “continuing to strengthen bilateral relations.”El-Sisi’s spokesman Ahmed Fahmy said in a statement the visiting delegation was led by Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy to the Middle East, and included Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov.The two sides committed to strengthening ties across multiple sectors, Fahmy added, including Egypt’s first nuclear power plant being built by Russia’s state atomic energy corporation Rosatom. The visit came two days after the Hague-based International Criminal Court announced an arrest warrant for Putin on the war crimes accusation of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children. In a visit to Cairo in January, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed “Egypt’s votes in the United Nations to condemn Russia’s invasion” as a show of support for Ukraine.But along with many other Arab states dependent on Russian imports, Cairo sought to avoid straining relations with Moscow. Before the war, which has entered its second year, 85 percent of Egypt’s wheat imports were sourced from both Russia and Ukraine. Since the February 2022 invasion, food prices have skyrocketed in the North African country, contributing to a punishing economic crisis.

More US Democrats have sympathy with Palestinians than Israelis, says Gallup poll
Arab News/March 19, 2023
LONDON: Democrats in the US are sympathizing more with Palestinians than Israelis for the first time since 2001, according to a Gallup poll released on Thursday. The survey, based on the most recent update of Gallup’s annual world affairs poll, found that 49 percent sympathized with Palestinians and 38 percent with Israelis. Views of Republican voters on the issue were unchanged, with 78 percent of those surveyed sympathizing more with the Israelis, while 11 percent sided with Palestinians. Lydia Saad, director of US social research at Gallup, said: “The most consequential changes in public opinion on this question have occurred in the past five years, as support for the Palestinians has ticked up and support for Israel, as well as ambivalence about the conflict, have each declined. “The escalation of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities over the past year, resulting in a high number of Palestinians killed, could partly explain the most recent shift in Democrats’ perspective.” Betty McCollum, a member of Congress, expressed the hope that an increasing number of Americans would oppose their government’s complicity in Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians.She tweeted: “More than ever before, Americans do not want the US to be complicit in Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian children and families. “Not $1 of US aid should be used to imprison Palestinian children in military detention facilities, or used to tear down their homes.”

Kuwait court nullifies 2022 parliamentary vote: state media
AFP/March 19, 2023
Kuwait's constitutional court on Sunday nullified last year's legislative elections and ruled in favour of reinstating the previous parliament, state media said, as a political crisis roils the oil-rich Gulf state. The September polls -- the most inclusive in a decade -- had seen opposition members clinch 28 out of 50 seats, giving them a parliamentary majority. The vote marked a victory for opposition figures, many of whom had stayed out of elections in the past decade over what they saw as alleged meddling by the executive authorities over parliament. "The Kuwaiti Constitutional Court issued a verdit on Sunday annulling the results of the 2022 National Assembly elections," due to discrepencies in the decree dissolving the previous parliament, the official KUNA news agency said. It also ruled to reinstate the parliament that was elected in 2020 but dissolved following orders by the crown prince in June, KUNA said.
Lawyer Nawaf Al-Yassin said the ruling followed several electoral appeals. "The appeals relate to the invalidity of the electoral process, the decrees calling for elections, and the decree dissolving the previous National Assembly," he told AFP. Kuwait is the only Gulf Arab state with a fully elected parliament. One of the world's biggest oil exporters, it adopted a parliamentary system in 1962. But repeated political crises have led to state paralysis and regular disputes with cabinet. In January, Kuwait's government resigned only three months after it was sworn in due to disputes with lawmakers, the sixth government in just three years.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 19-20/2023
What Will Tehran’s Rulers Choose: To Reform the Fundamentals of the Regime or to Modify and Camouflage its Conduct?
Raghida Dergham/March 19, 2023
Some of the most important questions regarding the implementation of the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, sponsored by China, include the following: First, how much is the regime in Tehran willing to either reform or modify its regime and ideology, in order to deliver on its pledges contained in the trilateral document affirming respect for states’ sovereignty and non-interference in their internal affairs and to activate a security agreement between Tehran and Riyadh, affirming the three countries’ keenness to enhance regional and international stability and security? Second, what will be the fate of the China-Russia-Iran Troika in the light of this crucial development at the level of Saudi-Iran relations, as a result of the Chinese diplomatic initiative as well as given the Iranian involvement in the Ukraine war with Russia? Third, why does the United States seem to not mind much for China to take on a completely new role in the Middle East and the Gulf? Does this relieve the United States or is it thinking of watching for now then retaliating in the future? Fourth, how could the Iranian interior be affected by the Saudi-Iranian agreement in terms of divisions within the ruling class and within the popular uprising? And fifth, what will happen to Iran’s regional proxies, a cornerstone of the Iranian regime?
Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Moscow next week. Most likely, the specific date will not be announced, at Beijing’s wishes. This is a sensitive visit that will be carefully watched in Washington and the European capitals, to understand its implications amid the fierce battles taking place in Ukraine. For the West, Ukraine remains the priority, not China’s Middle Eastern initiative, except perhaps insofar as it concerns the fate of the China-Russia-Iran Troika.
According to the information available, China and Russia’s discussions ahead of the visit will tackle the issue of the strategic troika, “which is alive and well” according to a former Russian official familiar with the trilateral relations. That is, the Chinese leadership could reassure Iran from the Russian capital that the strategic pact between them will not be affected by China’s pivot to the Arab Gulf states. Beijing could also reaffirm the importance of strategic relations with Moscow against the West, in a subtle way that does not directly antagonize the United States.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will urge his Chinese counterpart to help offset Russia’s losses from Western sanctions, especially after NATO successfully pressured Turkey to restrict exports to Russia. The two leaders will likely discuss projects for new pipelines between their countries and the scenarios of the Ukraine war, address the strategic and military alliance between Moscow and Tehran extending from Ukraine to Syria, and discuss enhancing long-term strategic agreements between the three countries.
There are two scenarios: The first involves a major shift having taken place in the Chinese position, where the pivot to the Arab Gulf states represents a warning to Tehran that China’s interests require a reconfiguration and that Iran’s leaders must accommodate this and reconsider the core of their regional ideology. Those who believe in this scenario are optimistic that China’s leverage over Iran could induce a shift in its behavior vis-à-vis its neighbors and the region, and its proxies in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
The other scenario follows from the premise that the China-Iran-Russia Troika is a lasting strategic alliance against the West led by the United States. Those who believe in this scenario doubt there has been any fraying of Chinese-Iranian relations, and believe the Iranian leadership is reassured by its alliance with both China and Russia, regardless of what happens to their relations with the Arab Gulf states.
Let’s begin with the second scenario before tackling the first, to try and identify the thinking of the Iranian leadership that follows as they remain on alert to defend the survival of the regime.
There is a fundamental difference between for the regime to reform or modify its behavior, especially in the region. Those familiar with the thinking of the heads of the Iranian regime are adamant that the rulers of Iran will never agree to real reform because reform would entail abolishing the regime’s raison d’etre and dismantling its rulers’ political and personal gains, including the huge wealth some of them have amassed. These men will never abandon their partnership with their proxies given the extraordinary personal benefits and financial gains they reap from them, including revenues from trafficking contraband; and the ideological, security, and political gains from using these militias to intimidate and subjugate states and peoples in countries crucial for the regime’s project, namely Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon.
The rulers of the regime in Tehran will thus not agree to reorganize it in line with the commitment to respect states’ sovereignty and to refrain from interfering in their internal affairs. The regime will not shed its skin and alter the mechanisms of the state built after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, including mechanisms for exporting the revolution to Gulf States and exporting the IRGC model to Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon.
In this scenario, what the men of the regime in Iran could do is create a new status quo with a gentler façade and less provocation and open confrontation. They would not alter the essence of the regime and would only soften its conduct. They would adopt enough flexibility to press ahead with their projects covertly rather than overtly. They would create new obscure proxies to sustain the regime’s plans from Yemen to Lebanon, without being openly linked to them and without flexing muscles.
The men of the regime in Tehran would update their ‘game of puppeteering’, as a source friendly to those men described it, so that Iran’s foreign policy becomes more sophisticated, “not carrying the axe with their hands, but with pockets full of bombs”. The IRGC would not suffer. Hezbollah in Lebanon would not worry. It is the tactic that would change but not the strategy or essence of the Iranian regime and its projects.
All there is to it is that we would see Iran less publicly belligerent. An Iran that would continue its nuclear program without threats or bombast. An Iran that understands that its arrogant rhetoric is not useful, and that it is better for its positioning to be subtle, a more sophisticated Iran.
The question here is: Would China agree to such circumvention and subterfuge, or would it truly commit to respect for the sovereignty of states, which would require Iran to roll back the deployment of paramilitary forces loyal to it in sovereign countries like Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen?
Is China really serious about guaranteeing Iran’s pledges to de-escalate and stop encroaching on other states through proxies and militias? Is Beijing willing to pressure the rulers in Tehran until they prove they have stopped interfering in Yemen and using the Houthis to strike at Saudi national security? Would China push for respect of Lebanon’s sovereignty, for example, and endorse the call for Hezbollah to shift from being a military arm of Iran undermining Lebanon’s sovereignty into a political force with full rights but only as a Lebanese entity?
There is no clear answer yet to these important questions that will now be put to the test. For this reason, it is premature to talk of giving a Nobel peace prize for China for sponsoring a Saudi-Iranian agreement, despite its importance. Instead, expectations for a quantum leap that changes the features of the region should be tempered and should not be overhyped, just because a statement was issued after years of negotiations between Riyadh and Tehran in Iraq, Oman, and finally Beijing.
The Saudi official position has avoided hyperbole albeit was cautiously optimistic. The Saudi council of ministers made a brief comment, welcoming the pledges made in accordance with the conditions set by the joint statement of China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Pledges that Iran will not pursue any ambitions that impact security relations between the two countries and will stop its expansionism at the expanse of the sovereignty of states in the region.
Going back to the optimistic scenario hoping for a major shift as a result of the Chinese initiative: Among the leading reasons for the belief China would guarantee the implementation of pledges made is its strategic Belt and Road initiative, and its keenness to maintain strategic relations with Saudi Arabia, the GCC states, and the countries of the Levant.
China’s grand strategy is to replace the US strategic influence in the region, but not displace it as the leading security partner of the region’s states. But China’s economic priorities are not limited to securing energy at good prices from Saudi Arabia and Iran, rather it is building ports from the Arabian Sea to the northern Gulf and from Djibouti in the Red Sea, to access European shores. China will benefit greatly, strategically and economically, by building up its reputation as a guarantor of pledges and conflict resolution. Yet all this depends on Iran’s commitment to its pledges without deception.
The optimistic camp sees the change in Iran’s positions as resulting from necessity following its international isolation, with dwindling European support and protection for Iran following its involvement in the Ukraine war alongside Russia. In addition, Iran’s efforts at the Vienna nuclear negotiations have failed to secure its nuclear ‘rights’, meaning developing its capabilities without building nuclear weapons while securing sanctions relief. Moreover, domestic unrest continues to haunt the regime.
Today, the regime could have to the belief that survival requires modifying its logic and putting to one side the principles of the Islamic Revolution. This is how the optimistic camp perceives the shift in the positions of the Iranian regime, as having been forced to bend to pragmatic calculations to protect itself even at the cost of discarding its ideology. The view of this camp is that this is a fundamental shift that will also impact Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon, and curtail Iran’s ability to impose its will in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.
Why would the men of the regime in Iran agree to all that? The optimistic camp believes that they have been compelled to change tack not just because of their economic dire straits, but also because Iran faced the prospect of a war with the United States and Europe through Israel because of its nuclear program. The Chinese initiative thus could have come to reassure these powers that Beijing is committed to upholding UN resolutions and principles which preclude nuclear arms proliferation to Iran, through peaceful rather than military means.
Possibly for this reason, the US administration has welcomed China’s diplomatic demarche. Indeed, it could spare the United States having to use military power against Iran and to put further pressure on Tehran to stop it from moving closer to a military nuclear program. Washington would also be spared from Israeli pressuresto become involved in a war with Iran, if China guarantees Iran will stop enriching uranium at weapons grade levels.
Some in Washington may not be happy that the Saudi-Iranian agreement has dispelled the myth that an Arab Gulf-Israeli military axis could be created against Iran, although the idea was already fundamentally in doubt in many corners. Moreover, the United States does not see China as an adversary to Israel, and thus does not believe China’s move encourages a Saudi-Iranian partnership against Israel.
Finally, we will not know yet how the Iranian interior will be affected by the agreement, because this also depends on how the Iranian leadership plans to implement it. If the men of the regime really overturn the principles and ideology of their revolution that has set back Iran and its great people by half a century, this would be a great achievement for the Iranian people and their prospects. But if the men of the regime plan to resist serious reforms and avoid change by temporary softening of their conduct as a form of diversion, then the Iranian people will pay part of the heavy price paid by the peoples of the region.

The ugly truth about Iraq’s miserable situation
Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/March 19/2023
Twenty years have passed since the controversial US-led invasion of Iraq to free its people from their leader’s atrocities. However, Iraqis continued to suffer due to the actions of successive governments, which have, unfortunately, made them miss the horrible days of the dictator Saddam Hussein, who brought Mesopotamia to what it is now.
What has happened since 2003? And why did the ruling class fail to build an institutional state that respects the law and defends human rights, as the Iraqi opposition preached for years prior to the fall of the Baath Party regime?
Saddam dragged his country into endless wars. He imposed severe punishments on his people and dealt with his opponents and critics with an iron fist that knew no mercy, causing millions of citizens to flee their homeland in fear of his tyranny. Therefore, it is logical that Iraqis and the international community were divided over regime change and its repercussions, regardless of their political or religious affiliation.
A large number of those who suffered from the injustices of Saddam and his Baathist regime supported the American intervention, not out of hatred for Iraq but because they genuinely believed that, in a police state, a regime change process from within was nearly impossible.
Even those not personally affected by the arbitrary nature of the regime dreamed of helping their fellow citizens live a decent and free life. As for those who opposed the intervention of the US, they also had their reasons, even if the majority were motivated by personal factors.
So, who were the naysayers?
On the top of the list were the Baath Party and Saddam loyalists, who committed crimes against their own people and reported many of their fellow citizens to the security forces for even cracking a joke about the nation’s leader. If the oppressive regime collapsed, they would lose what little power they had and be prosecuted by the new government.
Then came the leftists, who still believed in communism and socialism even though these ideas had failed in their own origins. This group hated everything that came from the West and instead supported the Chinese, Russian and North Korean models, disregarding the loss of dignity and rights of the people in these countries. This makes us question the ideology and goals of the Iraqi Communist Party, which opposed the Baathist regime back in the 1970s and many of whose members fled to communist Eastern Europe.
Third were the people who believed Saddam’s stunts and slogans in the name of Arabism. However, they had no objection when the former dictator invaded an Arab and Muslim country, cheering the naming of Kuwait as Iraq’s 19th province. The nationalists literally worshipped Gamal Abdel Nasser’s ideology, which was the core of the Egyptian collapse.
Only the Iraqis themselves bear responsibility for the miserable situation in their country.
The last group contained the very few Iraqis who were ready to die to change the regime. However, after several failed attempts to assassinate the former dictator, they continued to oppose the Baathist regime in silence.
Having said that, the US — while being ill-advised by some of the Iraqi opposition’s key players — made fatal post-invasion mistakes that paved the way for the pro-Iran elements to take over.
Independent Iraqi American opposition figures who lived in Washington, including me, warned of the consequences of the last group. Still, the US administration ignored our concerns.
The dissolution of the Iraqi Army and the creation of the Supreme National Debaathification Commission were not wise measures in the people’s interest. Rather, they granted absolute power to the opposition parties to decide the fate of the people without restrictions or conditions.
This was the main reason that the Iraqis who celebrated the tyrant’s fall and welcomed the liberating forces with flowers and gratitude ultimately changed their stance and blamed the US for their misery.
Iraq today is better than it was under the rule of the Baath Party, even if it is only moving slowly toward democracy and human freedoms.
As an American of Iraqi descent, I thank the US for liberating my motherland and pulling it out of its long, dark tunnel. However, I blame the Iraqis who failed to run the country effectively and stole the nation’s wealth before the eyes of the citizens, who continued to reelect them in every parliamentary session.
Today, the Iraqis that applauded Saddam for decades are now applauding the corrupt murderers just the same.
America did not tell them to steal from or loot their country instead of building a prosperous and bright future for their children. A strong, democratic and developed Iraq would have become the greatest ally of the US and the West, which would have given them a source of great strength.
Only the Iraqis themselves bear responsibility for the miserable situation in their country. So, they should stop throwing blame on others. Unfortunately, this is the ugly truth.
• Dalia Al-Aqidi is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. Twitter: @DaliaAlAqidi

Russia returns to the graveyard of empires
Nikola Mikovic/Arab News/March 19/2023
Even as Russia struggles to achieve military and political success in Ukraine, its leaders have turned their attention to another regional objective: restarting business in the so-called graveyard of empires.
Six months ago, Moscow inked a deal with the Taliban to supply gasoline, oil and wheat to Afghanistan. Some of those commodities are now arriving by road and rail from Central Asia, providing Afghans with much-needed supplies — and Russia with much-needed customers.
The Taliban-led government has also created a consortium of companies, including some in Russia, to fuel investments in power, mining and infrastructure. The group plans to allocate up to $1 billion for infrastructure and energy projects, and Russia is expected to act as a key investor and contractor.
For the Kremlin, key economic goals in Afghanistan include the construction of coal-fired power plants and a facility for turning coal into oil products. Currently, Afghanistan produces only 30 percent of the electricity it consumes and remains heavily dependent on energy imports.
Kabul has made it clear that it wants 1 million barrels of oil from Russia, and would prefer to trade for it — with minerals, raisins and medicinal herbs. If that does not suit Russia, Kabul can also pay with money, said Haji Nooruddin Azizi, the Taliban-appointed minister of commerce and industry.
There is no doubt that closer economic cooperation with Russia would help the Taliban-led government ease the international isolation that has cut it off from the global banking system. To a certain extent, it would also help Russia, especially now that the country is living under the weight of Western sanctions.
The trouble is, the Taliban is not ready to manage foreign investment. Although Afghanistan is one of the world’s most resource-rich countries, political unpredictability and economic unreliability are impeding major foreign actors, including Russia, from launching large-scale business projects in the country.
Last month, top security officials from Russia, India, Iran, China and across Central Asia met in Moscow to discuss what could be done to improve the situation in Afghanistan. Tellingly, the Taliban was not even invited.
Russia labeled the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003. While the Kremlin held numerous meetings with the Afghan group in subsequent years, the first official contact between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Taliban in the post-9/11 era was in 2015. More recently, Russia’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, visited Kabul in January to discuss the prospect of recognition of the Taliban by the international community, including Russia.
However, that does not mean the Kremlin will delist the Taliban as a terrorist organization anytime soon. As Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council of Russia, stressed at the recent summit in Moscow, the socioeconomic situation in Afghanistan is “rapidly degrading,” chaos that he blamed on the “current Kabul authorities.”
The Russian ambassador to Tajikistan, Semyon Grigoryev, offered a similar view in January, noting that “practically all the promises that the Taliban made when they came to power have not been fulfilled.” In his view, Afghanistan is riddled with terrorists and led by a divisive government that fuels the global drug trade. The “plight of the Afghan people completes this sad picture,” Grigoryev said.
For the Kremlin, key economic goals in Afghanistan include the construction of coal-fired power plants and a facility for turning coal into oil products.
His statement could be viewed by Tajikistan — Afghanistan’s smallest neighbor and the poorest country in Central Asia — as reassurance that Russia will not allow Afghanistan to be used to destabilize the former Soviet republic, where the Russian Federation has a large military base. Tajikistan hosts several Afghan leaders who oppose the Taliban’s rule, including the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan leader Ahmad Massoud, making it a ripe target.
Aware of this vulnerability, Emomali Rahmon, the Tajikistan president, has called for a “security belt” to be built around Afghanistan to protect neighboring states. Despite being Moscow’s ally in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Tajikistan represents a relatively easy target not only for the Taliban, but also for other radical groups operating in Afghanistan.
And yet, given how poorly Russia has conducted its war in Ukraine, it is not clear that Moscow could uphold its security commitments if called upon to do so. It is also doubtful that the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization could protect Tajikistan in the event of a cross-border attack.
For now, Russia will continue to balance its military and political alliance with Tajikistan as it plans to strengthen its economic position in Afghanistan. But it will do so slowly, painfully aware that Moscow’s involvement in Afghanistan has not always gone to plan.
Still, unlike most Western nations, Russia did not close its embassy in the Afghan capital after the American withdrawal from the country in August 2021. That gives Moscow a leg-up on efforts to turn the Taliban into a reliable trading partner.
* Nikola Mikovic is a political analyst in Serbia. His work focuses mostly on the foreign policies of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, with special attention on energy and pipeline politics.
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20 years on from US-led invasion, Iraq still matters
Sir John Jenkins/Arab News/March 19/2023
Mesopotamia has always been a place where imperial fantasies go to die — and are just as perpetually reborn. As it happens, this year is not only the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, on Sunday to be exact. It is also the 2,354th anniversary of the defeat of the Achaemenids by Alexander the Great at the Battle of Gaugamela; the 2,076th anniversary of the defeat and death of the Roman Triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus at the hands of the Parthians at the Battle of Carrhae; the 1,660th anniversary of the defeat and death outside Samarra of the Roman Emperor Julian at the hands of the Sassanians; the 879th anniversary of the collapse of the Crusader state of Edessa at the hands of Nuruddin Al-Zengi; and the 106th anniversary of the capture of Baghdad from the Ottomans by Gen. Stanley Maude, on March 11 to be exact.
Over the past month or so, there has been a deluge of commentary on the aftermath of 2003. I have read most of them. And I have now just finished reading perhaps the most startling of them all — an article in The Interpreter by Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2003, entitled, “What Went Right in Iraq.” It is a list of what Bremer believes to have been his and the CPA’s great achievements. It is only a pity, I suppose, that we lack similar reflections from Darius, Crassus, Julian, Count Joscelin or Enver Pasha.
I am not going to relitigate the actions of the CPA, such as the way in which the Iraqi armed forces and police were disbanded, the de-Baathification decree and its implementation, the efforts to establish advanced financial and other institutions, the drafting of a constitution so full of holes you could drive a coach and horses through it, the hasty recruiting of thousands of Americans and others — with only the haziest notion of where and what Iraq was — to staff the CPA, and the basic policy confusion in Washington and London about what could realistically be accomplished with the tools to hand.
I was not there then; I was in Jerusalem instead, dealing with an entirely different set of challenges. And in any case, the ground has been thoroughly covered by the reporting of the Congressional Budget Office and Research Service, the Departments of State and Defense in the US, the Chilcot Report in the UK (the terms of reference for which I helped draw up and to whose deliberations I contributed), and a vast library of detailed and sometimes excellent books written by journalists, academics and other observers.
My direct involvement with Iraq dates from 2007, when I became director for the Middle East and North Africa in the Foreign Office in London, through my time as ambassador in Baghdad, to 2011. Four years. But there has not been a moment since 2011 when I have not reflected on the lessons we should have learned.
The fundamental problem with Bremer’s claims is not that they are untrue. It is that they are irrelevant to what has happened to Iraq since 2003. And they ignore history. Saddam Hussein was a savage dictator, with a brutal and grotesquely entitled family, who relied on kinship, tribal and minority religious groups for support in the face of widespread fear. There were reasons why he launched an attack on Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran in 1980. But he and his generals badly mismanaged the war. And his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 — designed to compensate for imagined Iraqi financial losses — was another spectacular misjudgment.
The international community compounded that misjudgment after his defeat both by allowing his army to take its revenge on the Shiites of the south and — for a time — on the Kurds of the north, but also by failing to agree through the UN how to manage Saddam’s inevitable and foolish defiance. That led to one of the longest and most damaging sanctions regimes of modern times, the impoverishment of large slices of Iraqi society and the corruption and criminalization of Iraq’s economy — and indeed parts of the UN. Saddam could have avoided all of this simply by complying with the terms of successive UN Security Council resolutions. He refused to do so, just as he refused to admit that he had no weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to 2003.
This was folly. But it was also folly to believe that an Iraqi social fabric that had been ripped apart by Saddam and by sanctions could simply be stitched back together again by military force, provincial reconstruction teams — often with little local knowledge — and the edicts of imperial proconsuls. On May 1, 2003, President Bush famously declared “Mission Accomplished.” That was folly too. What followed was a vicious civil war, as a result of which Iran, which had originally been intimidated by the US show of force, emerged as the ultimate victor.
It was folly to believe that an Iraqi social fabric that had been ripped apart by Saddam and by sanctions could simply be stitched back together.
The irony is that a plurality of Iraqis in early 2003 had, in varying degrees, welcomed the US-led military intervention. They wanted something better — and they certainly wanted an end to the socially destructive isolation in which they had lived for more than a decade. Even in 2010, the year that Nouri Al-Maliki stole the elections from Ayad Allawi, with US acquiescence, there was still a chance to salvage something from the wreckage. But having arrived in Iraq proclaiming the virtues of democracy, when Iraqis actually voted for change, the US decided that change was too risky. So much for liberal pieties.
This has, of course, had a damaging impact on the region. Whatever the virtues of successive Iraqi prime ministers (and virtue is often lacking), they do not govern the country. Hidden half out of sight, Iran and its ideological allies do. The corruption of sanctions has been replaced by the exploitative and extractive corruption of its neighbors, Iran and Syria. And the new Iraqi elites — often strangers to their own country in 2003 — control the only instruments that matter: the bureaucracy and the army. If a new conflict with Iran happens, they will drag Iraq, like Lebanon, into it.
It has also had a massively damaging impact on Western politics. The cumulative loss of confidence in the inevitability of progression has caused a dramatic loss of faith in governments everywhere, notably in the US and the UK, but in practice more widely. Iraq was not the only cause: the financial crisis of 2007/8, the rise of China, the consequences of unchecked migration and the explosion of social media have all contributed. But the high hopes of the millennium, with the end of the Balkan Wars and the apparently inexorable global diffusion of social liberalism, have given way to a much darker mood. The catastrophe of Iraq is exhibit No. 1 for those who claim that governments should never be trusted.
Perhaps in the long run we shall see this simply as a welcome return to realism and a salutary humility about the possibility of shaping the world in our own image. Recent developments in the Gulf show that regional governments are beginning to make their own arrangements for security in the face of Western uncertainty.
If we hold our nerve, there is still much that we can do together. For Iraq is not yet so far gone that it cannot recover. There is deep resentment among many Iraqis about the way in which Iran has instrumentalized their weakness. And Iraqis also know that their country, whatever its origins, remains central to the region as a whole. Mesopotamia is where the Arab, Persian and Turkish worlds meet. It is a gateway to the Indian Ocean and to Transcaucasia. All the great Abrahamic faiths belong there. It is the desert and the sown, the shrine cities of the south and the mountains of the north, all watered by the great river systems of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
The distinguished Iraqi social scientist Ali Al-Wardi wrote of the duality of Iraqi identity. It is now more like a plurality. And that makes Iraq special. But it needs support. Reintegrating Iraq into the wider Arab world, where it belongs, needs to take account of — and celebrate — that plurality. And it will take time and patience.
If others wish to loot Iraq and supply weapons to their proxies, those with Iraq’s best interests at heart should instead build schools, hospitals, clinics, power plants and businesses. Make people’s lives better, not worse. It will take decades. But it will be worth it. And that is the only way to give Iraq back its independence and its position as the keystone of regional security.
After all, there has always been a reason that empires fought over Mesopotamia. It matters.
*Sir John Jenkins is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. Until December 2017, he was corresponding director (Middle East) at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in Manama, Bahrain, and was a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He was the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia until January 2015.

Turkiye, Syria more interested in point-scoring than talks
Yasar Yakis/Arab News/March 19/2023
As a matter of routine, a summit at the ministerial level is preceded by a lower-level meeting to identify the subjects to be debated. The Turkish Foreign Ministry announced earlier this month that the deputy foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia, Syria and Iran would meet on March 15-16 ahead of planned talks at the ministerial level. However, the initial meeting was postponed “for technical reasons.”
All preparations were completed, but it appears that Syrian President Bashar Assad asked that “the relations should reach a stage where Turkiye is clearly and unambiguously ready for the full withdrawal of the Turkish military from Syrian territory, for the cessation of supporting terrorism and restoration of the situation to the state it was before the start of the Syrian war.”
As these comments came after Assad had a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, we may presume that they had Putin’s blessing.
This attitude does not, however, preclude the holding of preparatory meetings at the level of ministers or deputy ministers. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Ayman Sousan has in fact said that the Moscow meeting is “still under discussion.”
Putin has been trying to push Turkiye and Syria to revive their relations. It was common knowledge that the side that was dragging its feet was Damascus, but it was still thought that preliminary talks could be held.
On the Turkish side, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has never given up on his plan to carry out a new military operation in Syria. He has been repeating it for more than a year, but now it has become like a political commitment that has to be met before the forthcoming elections. Whether such a promise can be fulfilled under the present circumstances is another issue. Even if it does take place, it would be a symbolic act to give the impression that Erdogan had fulfilled his promise.
Turkiye and Syria are aware that their present relations are harming the interests of both sides, but it was Erdogan who used harsh rhetoric against Assad, referring to him as a murderer and a terrorist. He previously demanded Assad’s removal before UN-sponsored talks on Syria could take place in Geneva.
As time went by, Erdogan gave signals that he was willing to talk with the Syrian leader, saying that there should not be enmity between the two neighbors.
Another issue is the number of Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkiye. Their number is estimated to be about 3.7 million, but more realistic predictions put this figure much higher. To send them back to their country would raise a number of problems. Many Syrian refugees have invested in or established business in Turkiye. To undo their businesses would cause several problems. Furthermore, they may have committed crimes in Syria and the Syrian authorities may not be prepared to pardon them. Even if they were to be pardoned, to transfer their business to Syria may also cost money.
Turkiye and Syria are aware that their present relations are harming the interests of both sides.
The opposition coalition parties in Turkiye claim that they will be able to persuade the bulk of the refugees to return, but a more realistic guess is that millions of Syrians will find a way to stay in Turkiye. Many of them were born and have grown up in Turkiye. Some may not speak Arabic. Therefore, there will be a lost generation.
Some 18,000 Syrians are estimated to have returned home as a result of last month’s earthquakes in Turkiye. This trend may continue, but the number of those leaving may not reach the millions, as the Turkish government was expecting. The remains of about 1,600 Syrian earthquake victims have been sent back to Syria to be buried in their family cemeteries.
At the end of a ministerial Cabinet meeting last May, Erdogan said that the Turkish government, in cooperation with international aid organizations, would build 200,000 briquette houses in 13 different locations in northern Syria, complete with hospitals, schools and industrial and agricultural areas.
On the same lines, the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority announced in September that the Ankara government had completed the construction of 68,000 briquette houses — out of 86,000 planned — in 284 locations in Syria, again with the financial support of international aid organizations.
Now that Turkiye is in dire need of dwellings as a result of the cataclysmic earthquakes that devastated 10 southern provinces of the country last month, we will have to wait and see how the government copes with such problems on the threshold of the elections. As if that was not enough, hundreds of tents were flooded last week as a result of heavy rains.
Any measure that is taken by the government will be harshly criticized by the opposition parties in the pre-election weeks and months.
A mountain of problems waits to be negotiated between Turkiye and Syria, but both sides are more focused on scoring points.
• Yasar Yakis is a former foreign minister of Turkiye and founding member of the ruling AK Party. Twitter: @yakis_yasar