https://arab.news/zwmes
BEIRUT: “Lebanon is in a very dangerous situation,” the International Monetary Fund warned on Thursday, a year after authorities in the country committed to a program of reforms they have failed to implement.
The financial agency urged “the Lebanese government to halt borrowing from the central bank.” And the IMF’s mission chief to Lebanon, Ernesto Rigo, said during a news conference in Beirut that authorities must accelerate their efforts to meet the conditions required for a $3 billion bailout plan.
“One would have expected more in terms of implementation and approval of the legislation” relating to economic reforms, he said, noting that progress has been “very slow.”
Members of the IMF mission have spent nearly a month in Lebanon, during which they met many Lebanese officials and diplomats in an attempt to persuade them to step up efforts to introduce the reforms they had promised.
“We were expecting more in terms of adopting and implementing legislation aimed at reforming Lebanon’s financial system,” said Rigo. “The final draft of the Capital Control Law does not meet the objectives and needs to be amended.”
Lebanon signed an agreement with the IMF nearly a year ago but has yet to meet the conditions necessary to secure the full financial assistance program that is widely viewed as crucial to the country’s recovery from one of the worst economic crises the world has ever seen.
The economy has been crippled by the collapse of the nation’s currency, which has lost about 98 percent of its value against the US dollar since 2019, resulting in triple-digit inflation, soaring levels of poverty, and a massive wave of emigration.
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati was among the Lebanese officials who met the IMF team. “The mission presented the outcome of the consultations it carried out in Lebanon,” his office said.
During a meeting with Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, on Thursday, Mikati stressed the need for swift emergency action to save the country.
“The government cannot play its role amid a presidential vacuum and a dysfunctional parliament,” Mikati said. Politicians have been unable to agree on a replacement for President Michel Aoun, whose term ended on Oct. 31.
The Lebanese public took to the streets again on Wednesday to protest against the continuing deterioration in their finances and living conditions. Retired soldiers, who staged demonstrations this week because their pensions are no longer worth enough for them to live on, said they will resume their protests on Monday if their demands for assistance are not met.
On Thursday, employees of state-owned telecoms company Ogero decided to strike, raising fears that communications services and the internet could be crippled in the country.
After a meeting with Sheikh Abdel Latif Derian, Lebanon’s Grand Mufti, Prime Minister Mikati said: “We are fully aware of the difficult living situation that all of Lebanon is experiencing. We sent all draft laws to parliament for approval to initiate a practical workshop and major reforms in order to restore the active economic movement so that we can save what we can still save despite these difficult circumstances.”
However, the political squabbling continues over the election of a new president and other issues.
MP Ziad Hawat appeared on Thursday before First Investigative Judge Nicolas Mansour, after Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun accused Hawat of libeling, defaming and threatening a judge.
Hawat said he was waiving his parliamentary immunity to “challenge the politicized judiciary at its own game.”
In February, he accused Judge Aoun of violations he said could destroy the country’s banking institutions. “The entire banking system cannot be at the mercy of a judge’s mood,” Hawat said at the time, stressing his support for a fair and impartial judicial investigation into the operation of the country’s banks.
Burhan says the Sudanese army will be under the leadership of a new civilian government
TEHRAN: Tehran has condemned US airstrikes on Iran-linked forces in Syria that reportedly killed 19 people, which Washington said it carried out following a deadly drone attack on US forces.
The Iranian foreign ministry late Saturday condemned “the belligerent and terrorist attack of the American army on civilian targets” in the eastern Syrian region of Deir Ezzor.
Washington said it launched the retaliatory raids after a US contractor was killed — and another contractor and five military personnel wounded — by a drone “of Iranian origin” that struck a US-led coalition base in Syria on Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor has said at least 19 people, most of them Syrian, were killed in the following US strikes launched early Friday morning.
The US strikes triggered further rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias, the Observatory said.
The Syrian government, which is closely allied with Iran, has accused the United States of lying about the targets of its air strikes to justify its “act of aggression.”
The United States has about 900 troops in posts across northeastern Syria to keep pressure on the remnants of the Daesh group and support the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control most of the northeast.
US personnel in Syria have frequently been targeted in attacks by militia groups that Washington says are backed by Tehran.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the US troops’ presence was “illegal” and a “violation of international law and the national sovereignty” of Syria.
In contrast, Kanani said Iranian forces were in Syria at the behest of Damascus.
“The military advisers of the Islamic Republic of Iran are present in Syria at the request of the Syrian government,” he said, adding that they will continue to support Damascus to “help establish peace, stability and lasting security.”
MUQDADIYAH: Hussein Maytham and his family were driving past the palm tree grove near their home after a quiet evening shopping for toys for his younger cousins when their car hit a bomb planted on the moon-lit road.
“I only remember the explosion,” Maytham, 16, said weakly from his hospital bed, his pale arms speckled brown by shrapnel. The attack took place earlier this month in the Shiite-majority village of Hazanieh. The force of the blast hurled the teenager out of the vehicle, but his family — his parents, an aunt and three cousins — perished in the fiery carnage. Residents say gunmen hidden nearby in irrigation canals opened fire, killing two others.
This is the latest in a series of attacks witnessed over the last month in the central Iraqi province of Diyala, located north and east of Baghdad. Security officials say at least 19 civilians have been killed by unidentified assailants, including in two targeted attacks.
The violence is pitting communities against each other in the ethnically and religiously diverse province. It also raises questions whether the relative calm and stability that has prevailed in much of Iraq in the years since the defeat of Daesh can be sustained.
Iraq as a whole has moved on from the conditions that enabled the rise of Daesh and the large-scale bloody sectarian violence that erupted after the US-led invasion 20 years ago, according to Mohanad Adnan, a political analyst and partner at the Roya Development Group.
But some parts of the country, including Diyala, remain tense, with occasional waves of violence reopening old wounds. “There are a few villages, especially in Diyala, where they have not overcome what happened in the past,” said Adnan.
Officials, residents, and analysts say at least one instance of violence in Diyala appears to be a sectarian reprisal by Shiites against Sunnis over a Daesh-claimed attack. But they say other killings were carried out by Shiites against Shiites, as rival militias and their tribal and political allies that control the province struggle over influence and lucrative racketeering networks. Diyala, bordering both Iran and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, is a prime conduit for smuggling, including drugs.
The violence is pitting communities against each other in the ethnically and religiously diverse province. It also raises questions whether the relative calm and stability that has prevailed in much of Iraq in the years since the defeat of Daesh can be sustained.
The Iranian-backed Badr Organization, a state-sanctioned militia within the Popular Mobilization Forces with a political wing, wrested control of the province from Daesh in 2015. Since then, it has asserted its dominance over several Shiite political parties and their associated paramilitaries, as well as Sunni groups.
Although most Sunni residents displaced during the war against Daesh have returned to the province, they say they are often viewed with suspicion by authorities and neighbors due to their perceived affiliation with the extremists.
When remnants of the group stage attacks on civilians or security forces, it often prompts a spiral of retaliatory attacks.
In the Sunni village of Jalaylah, nine people, including women and children, were killed in a gruesome attack in late February, two months after they were blamed for allowing a Daesh attack on a neighboring village, according to security officials.
The attackers moved openly through the area, said villager Awadh Al-Azzawi. “They didn’t wear masks. Their faces were clear,” he said.
Residents accuse members of the nearby Shiite village Albu Bali, where Daesh killed nine in December, of carrying out the attack in revenge. They say the perpetrators belong to local militias using weapons given to them by the state. Security officials affiliated with the armed groups declined to comment.
CAIRO: Two days of tribal violence in western Sudan’s long-troubled Darfur region killed at least 5 people, tribal leaders and a rights group said on Friday.
The violence between African Masalit tribesmen and Arab shepherds in West Darfur erupted on Thursday after two armed assailants fatally shot a merchant in a remote area, leaders from both groups said.
In a statement, Masalit tribesmen accused Arab militia of being behind the killing. The slaying sparked a series of targeted attacks that killed at least four more people, the tribal leaders and the rights group both said.
Five victims were later identified by the Darfur Bar Association, a Sudanese legal group focusing on human rights in the western province. The group called on both sides to de-escalate tensions.
The violence comes as wrangling cross-party talks continue in Khartoum over how the African country will usher in a civilian government following 17 months of military rule.
Sudan has been steeped in chaos after a military coup, led by the country’s top Gen. Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, removed a Western-backed government in October 2021, upending its short-lived transition to democracy.
But last December the country’s ruling military and various pro-democracy forces signed a preliminary agreement pledging to reinstate the transition.
Last week, signatories to December’s agreement vowed to begin establishing a new civilian-led transitional government April 11. However, many major political forces in the country remain opposed to the deal.
Since the military takeover, Sudan has also seen a spike in inter-tribal violence in the country’s west and south.
Analysts see the violence and growing insecurity in Sudan’s far-flung regions as a product of the power vacuum caused by the military takeover.
The Darfur crisis was sparked in 2003 by armed opposition groups who accused the central government of excluding their regions and people from wealth and power-sharing as well as development processes.
Over 2.7 million people have been displaced and are living in camps across Darfur. About 300,000 Darfuri refuges are now living in neighboring Chad.
The UN estimates that around 4.7 million people are still affected by the situation, denied basic human rights and relying on humanitarian aid.
BEIRUT, OTTAWA: The death toll from retaliatory US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria following a deadly drone attack has risen to 19, a war monitor said on Saturday.
President Joe Biden said that the US would respond “forcefully” to protect its personnel.
Further rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias took place late on Friday, prompting more strikes by coalition warplanes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Washington carried out the initial strikes after the Pentagon said a US contractor died — and another contractor and five military personnel were wounded — by a drone “of Iranian origin” that struck a US-led coalition base near Hasakah in northeastern Syria on Thursday.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that, at President Joe Biden’s direction, he had ordered the “precision airstrikes … in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
On Saturday, the Britain-based Observatory, which has a wide network of sources on the ground, said 19 people were killed in the first wave of US strikes — three Syrian regime soldiers and 16 members of Iran-backed forces, including 11 Syrian nationals. Hours after the strikes, 10 rockets were fired at American and coalition forces at the Green Village base in northeast Syria, the US Central Command said.
There were no injuries or damage to facilities at the base, but one rocket struck a home around five km away, causing minor wounds to two women and two children, CENTCOM added.
Iran-backed militias later on Friday targeted a base in the Conoco gas field, prompting retaliatory strikes from coalition warplanes on targets in Deir Ezzor city, the observatory said.
The war monitor said rocket fire then targeted coalition facilities at the Al-Omar oil field base and in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor, “causing material damage.”
A “cautious calm” returned to the Deir Ezzor area in the early hours of Saturday morning, the observatory said.
The Pentagon said two F-15 fighters launched the retaliatory attack — which spokesman Pat Ryder said was to protect US personnel.
The strikes “were intended to send a very clear message that we will take the protection of our personnel seriously and that we will respond quickly and decisively if they are threatened,” he said.
They were “proportionate and deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation to minimize casualties,” he said.
Two of the US service members wounded on Thursday were treated on site, while the three other troops and one US contractor were evacuated to Iraq, the Pentagon said.
“We will always take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” said CENTCOM chief Gen. Michael Kurilla.
In January, the US military said three one-way attack drones were launched against the Al-Tanf garrison in Syria, with one breaching its air defenses and wounding two allied Syrian fighters. Last August, Biden ordered similar retaliatory strikes in Deir Ezzor province after several drones targeted a coalition outpost, without causing any casualties.
“We know that these groups are sponsored by Iran,” Ryder said.
“So Iran certainly plays a role in terms of ensuring that this type of activity doesn’t happen,” he said.
Meanwhile, Biden said: “The United States does not, does not seek conflict with Iran,” Biden said in Ottawa, Canada, where he is on a state visit. But he said Iran and its proxies should be prepared for the US “to act forcefully to protect our people. That’s exactly what happened last night.”
Biden, speaking during a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, expressed his “deepest condolences” to the family of the American killed and well-wishes for the injured.
US Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the top US commander for the Middle East, warned that its forces could carry out additional strikes if needed. “We are postured for scalable options in the face of any additional Iranian attacks,” Kurilla said in a statement.