Region

BAGHDAD — As if life was not bad enough for Adnan Kadhim — he lives in a slum where municipal authorities dump Baghdad's rubbish — now someone is setting the waste on fire, making his children sick.

As the United Nations marks World Environment Day on Wednesday, Iraq is suffering a pollution crisis, with trash piling up across the country and thick clouds of smoke produced by inefficient factories hovering above Baghdad.

"The dirt, our children are sick, our families are sick. My daughter has asthma, and I had to take my family to the hospital last night. We had to go at 2am to give her oxygen. What have we done wrong to deserve this?" asks the 48-year-old, with mountains of rubbish behind him.

No one in his unplanned neighbourhood within Baghdad's south-eastern Zaafaraniya district knows who is setting the rubbish on fire and their complaints to government and municipal authorities have fallen on deaf ears because they are technically not supposed to be living in the area.

"For about a week or ten days now we haven't been able to sleep or work. We just sitting around because of this smoke,” said Jabbar, a builder.

"Every day, it starts at sunset and doesn't stop until the morning. You can see the tractors [shovelling trash] in front of you. We are being destroyed. We implored the government, and no one did anything, we went to the municipality and still nothing," he added.

Officials say Iraq suffers from the lack of a formal waste management system, but that they are working on introducing one which they hope will alleviate the country's numerous environmental hazards which also include pollution from oil production — Iraqis OPEC's second-largest producer of crude oil — and other industries.

"I am sorry to say there are no hygienic official landfills. All what we have are unorganised areas for waste collection," said Deputy Environment Minister Jassim Humadi.

"We are working hard today to issue legislation establishing the national centre for waste management."

Increasing pollution rates and other "environmental challenges" could be linked to rising rates of chronic diseases such as cancer and respiratory issues, as well as birth deformities, he said. 

Iraq is working with the international bodies on a plan to help it clean up, he added.

Change is costly 

Business owners say they are doing what they can to operate in a more environmentally-friendly manner but that it is too costly. The government needs to help them do so, they argue.

At a brick factory in Nahrawan, east Baghdad, ovens running on crude oil are releasing thick smoke, making it hard to breath, or see anything.

"Crude oil, if burned in an incorrect way, the way we burn it, of course has emissions. The new ovens which we are upgrading to will reduce these emissions by 60 per cent, but that should not be the ceiling of our ambitions," says Ali Rabeiy, the factory owner.

More environmentally-friendly ovens can fashion bricks and produce only 5 per cent of the current harmful emissions, and some even produce none, he said, but they cost anywhere between 4 and 6 billion Iraqi dinars ($3.2-4.8 million), which is not financially feasible for a business like his.

KHARTOUM — The deadly crackdown by security forces on protesters in Sudan follows a building standoff between the ruling military and demonstrators demanding civilian rule.

The unrest started in December 2018, when citizens revolted against a tripling of the price of bread.

In April demonstrators launched a sit-in in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum to demand the departure of the regime of long-time president Omar Al Bashir.

He was ousted by the army a few days later, but the protesters remained in place in their thousands to press their demand for the military to cede power.

On June 3 security forces broke up the sit-in, launching a crackdown that left more than 100 dead in just a few days.

Here is a summary of events leading up to the military's move to end the long-running protest.

Talks break down 

On May 20, after several breakthroughs, talks between the ruling military council and protest leaders reach a deadlock over who should head a new governing body which should oversee a three-year transition to civilian rule.

Protest leaders insist a civilian must head the new sovereign council and that civilians should make up the majority of its members, proposals rejected by the ruling generals.

Islamist movements back the military in the hope it will keep Sharia, Islamic law, in place since a 1989 coup.

On May 28-29, thousands of workers in both the public and private sectors strike across the country to pressure the military rulers.

Bloody crackdown 

On June 3, men in military fatigues move in on the protest camp outside the army headquarters and disperse the thousands gathered there with force.

More than 100 have been killed and hundreds wounded since the start of the crackdown, according to the central committee of Sudanese doctors, close to the demonstrators.

Internet connectivity is disrupted.

A day later the military announces that all previous agreements with protest leaders on the transition are scrapped and that elections will be called "within a period not exceeding nine months".

Protesters denounce a putsch.

In Khartoum and across the country, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — paramilitaries with origins in the 16-year-old war in the western region of Darfur — are thought to have been behind the crackdown.

They are accused of atrocities, including attacks on hospitals.

The international community demands an end to the violence and resumption of dialogue.

 Civil disobedience 

On June 5, as gunfire crackles across the capital, the army says it is open to negotiations "with no restriction".

Protest leaders turn down the call for talks with the military council "that kills people".

Saudi Arabia expresses "great concern" at developments and calls for a resumption of dialogue.

Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy chief of the ruling military council and head of the RSF, says the country will not be allowed to slip into "chaos".

Opposition figures are arrested on June 8, a day after meeting Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who had travelled to Khartoum as a mediator.

On June 9, police fire warning shots and tear gas to disperse demonstrators building roadblocks in the capital, in response to a call by protest leaders for "civil disobedience" across the country.

Markets and shops are closed in several Sudanese towns and cities. 

NAIROBI — A new app launched in South Sudan on Friday aims to help aid workers reunite thousands of children with their families after they became separated during a five-year war and identify other vulnerable children.

The app was developed by the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) and the charity Save the Children to allow the hundreds of field workers tracing families in South Sudan to share information on their phones or tablets. 

"Case workers are the backbone of everything we do. They walk for hours and hours under the scorching sun, wade through mud, travel for days on bumpy dirt roads to knock on doors," said Rama Hansraj, head of Save the Children in South Sudan. 

"They are in every corner of South Sudan, yet until now have found it difficult to communicate with other case workers on the other side of the country. With this new app, we're bringing their work into the 21st century."

South Sudan, the world's newest country, has been ravaged by civil war since 2013 after clashes erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.

The government signed a peace agreement with rebels in September, but the war has had a devastating impact. At least 50,000 people have been killed and one in three South Sudanese have been uprooted from their homes. 

Children have borne the brunt of the violence, said aid workers, with more than 19,000 registered as missing, unaccompanied or separated from their families. 

While more than 6,000 children have been reunited with their families, thousands are still living with temporary foster families or in care centres.

Many were abducted by armed factions to be used as child soldiers, informants or porters. Others were separated from their parents after an attack on their villages.

Some separated children are also migrants from poor families forced to look for work, or runaways who were facing physical or sexual abuse at home, said aid workers.

Child protection case workers — who come from various charities as well as the government — will now be able to directly input data on separated children into the app so that other field workers can easily access it.

The app is connected to a database featuring children's pictures and bio-data, as well as details on circumstances leading to separation and where their family used to live.

"The app will be vital in a poorly connected South Sudan. It can be synced before the case worker heads out and allows them to access the necessary files while in remote areas," said Helene Sandbu Ryeng from UNICEF in South Sudan.

The app has photo and sound features, which is crucial — especially when parents and their children have been separated for years, which is often the case in South Sudan, added Ryeng.

It will also help identify minors who need help such as counselling for trauma.

Field workers will be able to input data on their apps, according a level of priority so that it can be quickly followed up by child protection teams based in their offices.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The US ambassador has claimed that Israel has the right to annex at least "some" of the occupied West Bank, in comments likely to deepen Palestinian opposition to a long-awaited US peace plan.

The Palestinians have rejected the plan before it has even been unveiled, citing a string of moves by US President Donald Trump that they say show his administration is irredeemably biased.

They are likely to see the latest comments by US ambassador to Israel David Friedman as a new nail in the coffin of a peace process that is already on life support.

In the interview published by the New York Times on Saturday, Friedman said that some degree of annexation of the West Bank would be “legitimate”.

"Under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank," he said.

The establishment of a Palestinian state in territories, including the West Bank, that Israel occupied in the Six-Day War of 1967 has been the focus of all past Middle East peace plans.

Failed state helps nobody 

"The absolute last thing the world needs is a failed Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan," Friedman said in the Times interview.

"Maybe they won't take it, maybe it doesn't meet their minimums.

"We're relying upon the fact that the right plan, for the right time, will get the right reaction over time."

Friedman, a staunch supporter of the Israeli settlements, told the Times that the Trump plan was aimed at improving the quality of life for Palestinians but would fall well short of a "permanent resolution to the conflict".

He said he did not believe the plan would trigger Palestinian violence.

Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said in a statement on Saturday that Trump should remove Friedman from his post if he wanted to retain any credibility for his peace efforts.

“The American president, if it is his intention to be an honest broker, must instruct Friedman to pack his bags tonight,” the NGO wrote in Hebrew on Twitter.

“With friends like US Ambassador David Friedman, who needs enemies?” it said.

Publication of the plan looks set to be further delayed after the Israeli parliament called a snap general election for September, the second this year.

The plan is regarded as too sensitive to release during the campaign.

During campaigning for the first general election in April, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to annex West Bank Jewish settlements, a move long supported by nearly all lawmakers in his alliance of right-wing and religious parties.

Earlier, in February, Netanyahu told lawmakers he had been discussing with Washington a plan that would effectively annex settlements.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said at the time that such a move would be tantamount to “US complicity with Israeli colonial plans”. 

In a rare public show of disunity between the close allies, the White House then flatly denied discussions on the subject.

Following persistent expansion of the settlements by successive Netanyahu governments, more than 600,000 Jewish settlers now live in the West Bank, including annexed East Jerusalem, among some three million Palestinians.

The international community regards the settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace.

KHARTOUM — Sudanese security forces have arrested two prominent rebels and an opposition leader, their aides said Saturday, just days after a bloody crackdown crushed hopes for a swift democratic transition. 

The three men were arrested after meeting Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Khartoum Friday as he sought to revive talks between Sudan's ruling generals and protest leaders on the country's transition.

That came days after men in military fatigues smashed up a weeks-long protest sit-in on Monday, leaving dozens of demonstrators dead.

Witnesses say the assault was led by the feared Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who have their origins in the notorious Janjaweed militia, accused of abuses in the Darfur conflict between 2003 and 2004.

On Saturday, RSF members and soldiers cleared major Khartoum streets of roadblocks put up by protesters.

Demonstrators had used tyres, tree trunks and rocks to erect the makeshift barricades, which the generals had warned would not be tolerated.

Sudan's military council seized power in April after ousting Omar Al Bashir on the back of months-long protests against his three-decade rule.

Since then, it has resisted calls from protesters and Western nations to transfer power to a civilian administration.

Several rounds of talks with the demonstrators finally broke down in mid-May.

In a bid to revive the negotiations, the Ethiopian premier flew to Khartoum on Friday and held separate meetings with the two sides.

“The army, the people and political forces have to act with courage and responsibility by taking quick steps towards a democratic and consensual transitional period,” Abiy said in a statement after the meetings.

“The army has to protect the security of the country and its people and political forces have to think about the future of the country.” 

Call for international probe 

But three members of an opposition delegation that met the Ethiopian premier were later arrested, their aides said Saturday.

Opposition politician Mohamed Esmat was detained Friday, while Ismail Jalab, a leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), was taken from his home overnight.

“A group of armed men came in vehicles at 3:00am (1:00 GMT) and took away Ismail Jalab... without giving any reason,” one of his aides, Rashid Anwar, told AFP.

He said SPLM-N spokesman Mubarak Ardol was also detained.

Esmat and Jalab are both leading members of the Alliance for Freedom and Change, an umbrella of opposition parties and some rebel groups.

The Alliance was a key organiser of mass protests since December that led to Bashir’s ouster.

The arrests threaten to further complicate efforts to reconcile the protest movement and the generals.

Following Monday’s brutal crackdown, chances of a quick democratic transition appear remote as protest leaders now insist that talks with the generals can resume only under certain conditions.

“The Transitional Military Council has to admit the crime it committed,” Omar Al Digeir, a prominent protest leader told reporters on Friday after meeting Abiy.

He called for all military forces to be removed from streets across the country and demanded an international probe into “the massacre at the sit-in”.

Digeir said the military council should also restore access to the internet and allow public and media freedoms.

Deserted streets 

Britain’s ambassador to Khartoum Irfan Siddiq tweeted that “in diplomacy, dialogue is everything and pre-conditions for dialogue are generally not a good idea”.

But, he continued, “after what happened on June 3, these... conditions for returning to talks seem eminently reasonable”.

Since the crackdown, Khartoum residents have mostly been sheltering indoors and the streets have been deserted.

RSF chief and deputy head of the military council, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has warned he will not tolerate “any chaos”.

Some barricades remained in place, witnesses said on Saturday, but the protest site at military headquarters was out of bounds.

Troops and RSF paramilitaries surrounded it from all sides to keep demonstrators at bay.

The protest slogans that once rang across Khartoum — “freedom, peace, justice” and “civilian rule, civilian rule” — were nowhere to be heard.