Official data: Saudi wastes $13.3bn of food each year
Posted by Ammaar ibn Walid in Arabia, Arabian Peninsula, Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News on January 26, 2016
Saudi Arabia wastes nearly 50 billion riyals ($13.3 billion) of food per year, new data has revealed.
Alriyadh newspaper yesterday reported the Saudi Minister of Agriculture, Abdulrahman Al-Fadhli, saying Saudis waste a staggering 49.833 billion riyals of food per year, equivalent to 30 per cent of the local agricultural output and food imports.
Al-Fadhli explained that "Saudis waste nearly 250 kilograms of food per year, the highest in the world."
He presented a report during a workshop in Riyadh which explained that there are 795 million hungry people around the world, noting that saving "only a quarter of the food wasted annually can provide food for 870 million people, and help eradicate hunger in the world."
He stressed on the need to enact laws that limit food waste and appealed to the concerned authorities to punish those who deliberately waste food.
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/23532-official-data-saudi-wastes-133bn-of-food-each-year.
Arabia, Arabian Peninsula, Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News
Iran: 'We have no intention of restoring relations with US'
Posted by Ammaar ibn Walid in Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News, Iran on January 22, 2016
Iran has no intention to restore relations with the United States, adviser of the Iranian Shura Council Chairman Hussein Shaykh Al-Islam said, noting that there are mediators seeking to normalize Iranian-Saudi relations, the Anadolu Agency reported.
Al-Islam said that the reason that Iran does not want to restore relations with the US is that there are "very big problems between the two countries." He described these problems as "bigger than the nuclear issue."
Relations between Washington and Tehran severed at the end of the 1970s after a number of university students stormed the American embassy in Tehran in the wake of the Iranian Revolution.
On 16 January, the EU and the US lifted economic sanctions placed on Iran due to its nuclear program. This came as a result of a commitment by Tehran to the demands of the nuclear agreement reached on 14 July 2015.
Regarding relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Al-Islam said: "Saudi Arabia is our neighbor and it severed the ties, not us," noting that there are "initiatives being done by a number of countries, including Pakistan and China to normalize our mutual relations."
Link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/23456-iran-we-have-no-intention-of-restoring-relations-with-us.
China's Xi to visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran
Posted by Ammaar ibn Walid in Arabia, Arabian Peninsula, Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News, Iran on January 19, 2016
Beijing (AFP)
Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran next week, Beijing's foreign ministry said Friday, as the world's second-largest economy seeks greater diplomatic heft in a crucial and tense region.
Spokesman Lu Kang said in a statement that Xi would visit the three Middle Eastern countries over five days from Tuesday.
The trip, Xi's first to the region as president, comes amid mounting tensions over the war in Syria and after protesters ransacked and burned the Saudi Embassy in Tehran over the execution of a Shiite cleric.
China depends on the Middle East for its oil supplies but has long taken a back seat in the region's diplomatic and other disputes, only recently beginning to expand its role, especially in the Syrian crisis.
"China is the biggest importer of Middle Eastern oil," Zhu Feng, professor at Peking University's School of International Studies, told AFP. "So stability in the Middle East is what China would most like to see."
As China's economy has grown, its dependence on imported oil and natural gas has increased, making the Middle East a crucial part of Beijing's strategy as it seeks to expand its influence through Xi's signature foreign policy initiative, known as "One Belt One Road".
The massive investment scheme aims to increase China's footprint from central Asia to Europe through the use of loans to build infrastructure and transport networks.
Touted as a revival of ancient Silk Road trade routes, the initiative underscores China's ambition to wield geopolitical power to match its economic might.
"Xi Jinping is very committed to projecting China's image overseas, to boosting China's international footprint to a level which is commensurate with its fast-growing economic and military power," Willy Lam, professor of politics at Chinese University of Hong Kong, told AFP.
Beijing was trying to project power and influence in the Middle East, seeing an opening in the troubled region as US policy "hasn't been very successful under (US President Barack) Obama", he said.
China was presenting itself as "a mediator with no strings attached", added Lam, in contrast to Washington, which has "vested interests in that part of the world going back four, five decades".
– 'Rare opportunity' –
This week a Chinese diplomat urged "calm and restraint" between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but Xi's trip was most probably organised before the discord erupted between Riyadh and Tehran, Zhu said.
"Clearly now there are tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, so he will be going there in the role of persuader" seeking cooperation against in the fight against the Islamic State jihadist group, Zhu said.
"China will try and do what it can, but it still won't play a main role."
In a commentary, the official Xinhua news agency said: "Although China never takes sides, it will be a rare opportunity for China to call for calm and restraint from both sides."
In the past month, Beijing has hosted high-level members from both the Syrian regime and its opposition.
It has consistently urged a "political solution" to the Syrian crisis, despite being seen as having long protected President Bashar al-Assad, and four times vetoed UN Security Council measures aimed at addressing the conflict.
Last year, China helped broker a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, which has begun to emerge following years of international isolation.
Days after the signing of the historic framework agreement, Iran was approved as a founding member of the Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is expected to provide funding for One Belt One Road.
On Wednesday, China published its first official Arab Policy Paper, claiming a "broad consensus on safeguarding state sovereignty and territorial integrity, defending national dignity, seeking political resolution to hotspot issues, and promoting peace and stability in the Middle East".
Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Chinas_Xi_to_visit_Saudi_Arabia_Egypt_Iran_999.html.
Arabia, Arabian Peninsula, Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News, Iran
Iraqi troops advance in battle for IS-held city of Ramadi
Posted by Ammaar ibn Walid in Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News, Iraq on January 18, 2016
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi forces on Tuesday reported progress in the military operation to retake the city of Ramadi from the Islamic State group, saying they made the most significant incursion into the city since it fell to the militants in May.
Losing Ramadi — the capital of sprawling western Anbar province and Iraq's Sunni heartland — was a major blow to the Iraqi government. It was the government's biggest defeat since IS militants swept through areas in the country's north and west, including Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul, in the summer of 2014.
Iraqi forces announced a counteroffensive shortly afterward Mosul fell but progress has been sluggish and clawing territory back from IS has proven more difficult than expected. Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, said there are 250 to 350 Islamic State fighters in Ramadi, as well as several hundred outside the city on the northern and western perimeter.
"I think the fall of Ramadi is inevitable," Warren told Pentagon reporters. "But that said, it's going to be a tough fight … it's gonna take some time." He said American military advisers remained outside the city at al-Taqaddum, a desert air base that is serving as a training site. It was a U.S. military hub during the 2003-2011 war.
Iraqi spokesman Sabah al-Numan said troops crossed the Euphrates River north of the city and its Warar tributary to the west and pushed into downtown Ramadi. From the south, troops led by the counter-terrorism agency made progress in the Dubbat and Aramil neighborhoods, about 3 kilometers (less than 2 miles) from the city center, Gen. Ismail al-Mahallawi, the head of operations in Anbar province, told AP.
Sporadic clashes broke out and advancing Iraqi forces were forced to remove roadside bombs planted by the extremists, al-Numan added. On Tuesday, the Dubbat neighborhood saw heavy fighting, with one soldier killed and 14 wounded, said an official in the Anbar operations room, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Warren said U.S. officials found a pamphlet in Fallujah that was distributed to IS fighters, calling on them to disguise themselves as Iraqi security forces and then film themselves committing atrocities, such as killing and torturing civilians and blowing up mosques.
According to a copy of the document distributed to reporters, it said the video clips should be distributed to television outlets "to depict the conflict as if it is a sectarian war." It was signed by a security and military official named Abou Hajer al-Issawi and dated early October.
Warren said he believed the document is legitimate, but so far there were no reports of IS fighters posing as Iraqi forces. Al-Numan said no paramilitary forces — a reference to pro-government Shiite militias whose actions have raised concerns in Sunni territory — were taking part in the operation. The Iraqi air force and the U.S.-led international coalition were providing air support to troops on ground and bombing IS targets, he said.
Since overrunning Ramadi, just 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Baghdad, the Islamic State group has destroyed all the bridges around the city. It also demolished the Anbar operations command and fanned out into the city's residential areas to set up less conspicuous centers of command.
As the military operation continues, Ramadi's civilian population — estimated to be between 4,000 and 10,000 — remains mostly trapped inside the city. Iraqi officials say they believe civilians will be able to get out, but coalition officials report that so far they have only witnessed small groups doing so.
Warren said Iraqi forces had dropped leaflets telling residents what routes to use to escape. Ramadi, like the rest of Anbar province, is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, the minority community that complains of discrimination by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. Some Sunnis in other parts of Anbar and in northern Iraq welcomed IS rule, at least initially.
Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News, Iraq
Iraqi family braves perilous journey to new life in Germany
HEIDELBERG, Germany (AP) — The Qasus do not normally cry, but this felt nothing like normal. Like hundreds of thousands before them and untold more to come, the Iraqi family had just completed a disorienting dash across Europe and found refuge in Germany.
Settling down in the city of Heidelberg, the parents comforted their four children as the reality of what they had just endured struck like a thunderclap and the tears flowed freely. They were tears of trauma, loss — and flickering hope.
"We used to have a home. A fine life. We used to have money and never needed anyone," said the mother, Bessi Qasim, who uses her father's surname. Dabbing at her eyes, the 42-year-old homemaker said her job now was to make a new home.
"I just want my children to be happy and see them growing up. I want to be able to replace the bad memories with new good ones."
Those bad memories include at least three brushes with death: with murderous invaders, the fear of drowning, a daughter's cancer.
Had they not left Iraq so quickly, the Qasus might well be dead or abducted now. They are Yazidis, a religiously distinctive ethnic group within Iraq that has been singled out for persecution by Islamic State miltants, who have slain thousands, particularly in and around Sinjar, where the Qasus are from.
The Qasus escaped as IS forces seized the city on Aug. 3, 2014. All six — Bessi, husband Samir, daughters Delphine and Dunia, sons Dilshad and Dildar — climbed aboard a truck heading north for the Turkish border. They soon heard word of wholesale slaughter, rapes and kidnappings back home as thousands behind them retreated without food or water to Mount Sinjar.
"We took nothing with us. I didn't need to see IS to know how horrifying they are," said Samir, 45, who abandoned his convenience store in Sinjar. He said cousins who stayed behind have vanished.
For 15 months, the Qasus existed on the fringe of Turkish society. As a refugee, Samir was barred from working legally and said his children faced intimidation at school because of their Yazidi identity.
"We had a miserable life," said Samir, who kept his family out of Turkish refugee camps and rented an apartment, but struggled to pay bills by working illegally part-time in construction jobs. "I reached a point where I couldn't take it anymore. We had no dignity. I just wanted my children to live in a safe, peaceful place."
The smuggler in Istanbul demanded $10,000 for the six of them to join 26 others on a cabin cruiser designed to carry perhaps a quarter that many. They left the Turkish coast before dawn on Dec. 3 bound for the island of Lesbos, the first port of EU call for nearly 400,000 asylum seekers this year. Scores have drowned as boats, typically helmed by novice refugees, are swamped or overturned.
Samir paid in part with money provided by his brother, who had already made it to Sweden. The boat appeared more substantial than the typical rigid inflatables that smugglers deploy as one-use throwaway items. That didn't stop the engine of the overloaded boat from breaking down midway, leaving the Qasus to bob helplessly on the choppy Aegean.
"I was 95 percent certain that death would take us," said Samir, who said he prayed for God to claim him and save his loved ones.
Greek rescue officials spotted their dying craft and towed them close to shore, where aid workers waded knee-deep to carry the Qasu family the final few meters into Europe. This was the moment The Associated Press met the Qasu family: struggling to remove their knotted life vests and caressing each other with shaking hands, emotions overwhelming them.
An AP photographer spent that week following the Qasus as they nimbly hopped from border to border. Their rapid progress reflects Europe's concession that German-bound asylum seekers should not be left pointlessly stranded for days outdoors in the bleak Balkans winter.
Within two days, the Qasus had traveled by midnight ferry from Lesbos to Athens and then by bus to Greece's northern border with Macedonia. They slept chiefly on trains, buses and benches while passing through registration centers in four Balkan countries, getting their first proper sleep in a bed in a massive tent holding hundreds of asylum seekers near the Austrian city of Salzburg on Dec. 7.
Life has been a German whirlwind since then: ID photographs and fingerprints, housing in a former development for U.S. Army families that now holds 5,500 refugee applicants, distributions of free food and clothing — and most importantly for the Qasus, the most thorough medical check in years for 13-year-old Dunia.
In February 2012, Turkish doctors performed a life-saving liver transplant on the girl, removing a cancerous section and replacing it with a liver portion donated by her mother. The liver is the only human organ able to regenerate in this way, but Dunia remains vulnerable to infections and must take daily injections to block antibodies from attacking her mother's donated tissue. Underscoring her vulnerability, she wore a surgical mask throughout December's odyssey from Turkey to Heidelberg.
"I want to be cured and grow up. I love Germany and the people here," Dunia said.
Samir said the German doctors at the Heidelberg camp "have been so kind to us. As soon as they learned about her situation, they went through all the proper procedures to check her and told us that she is fine."
Dildar, 10, now dreams of becoming a soccer star in Germany. As he kicks a ball outside with siblings Dilshad, 17, and Delphine, 18, their talk turns to the possibility of school in January and of using one of their first German words: "Danke" — thank you.
Delphine says she hopes to train to become a doctor and continue the cycle of aid to others less fortunate.
"I dream of helping people, the ones who need the most," she said.
The parents watch from a park bench, pleased to be in a land that offers a future now unimaginable where they came from.
"Iraq is destroyed, shattered into millions of pieces," Samir said. "It's no longer my home and no longer a home for my family. … Home is where your family is safe and happy."
Muheisen, the Associated Press' chief photographer for the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, followed the Qasu family from Greece to Germany on Dec. 3-10. Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this report.
Iraq: Turkey troops near Mosul violating international law
BAGHDAD (AP) — The presence of Turkish troops near the Islamic State-held city of Mosul in northern Iraq is a "violation" of international law, Iraq's president said Saturday.
President Fuad Masum called the move a "violation of international norms, laws and Iraq's national sovereignty," and said it was contributing to increased tensions in the region. Hakim al-Zamili, the head of parliament's security and defense committee, went a step further, calling on Iraq's prime minister to launch airstrikes against the Turkish troops if they remained in Iraqi territory.
Turkey has said a military battalion equipped with armored vehicles has been in the Bashiqa region close to Mosul in the northern Ninevah province for the last five months as part of a training mission to help forces fighting the Islamic State group. Mosul fell to the extremists in June 2014 amid a stunning collapse of Iraqi security forces.
Plans to try to retake Mosul last spring were sidelined as the extremist group advanced on other fronts. The founder of the training camp outside Mosul, former Ninevah governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, told The Associated Press that the Turkish trainers were at his base at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi. He said the Turkish forces are training but not arming Sunni fighters.
"They didn't give us any weapons even though we asked them to," he said. "We equipped this force from the black market with our own money and we believe they're the best force to liberate Mosul… These people will be very effective to hold ground because they are from there and there'll be no resistance to them from local people."
Sunni fighters in Ninevah and the western Anbar province say the Shiite-dominated government has failed to provide them with the support and weaponry needed to defeat the IS group. The government fears that arming Sunni tribes and militias could backfire. Sunni grievances were a key factor fueling the rise of the IS group, and many Sunnis initially welcomed the extremists as liberators.
The U.S.-led coalition launched 12 airstrikes on IS targets in Iraq on Friday, including two near Mosul targeting tactical units and fighting positions.
Associated Press writers Susannah George in Baghdad and Balint Szlanko in Irbil, Iraq contributed to this report.
Qatari housing project in Gaza concludes 1st stage
Posted by Ammaar ibn Walid in Arabian Peninsula, Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News, Qatar on January 18, 2016
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 1,000 Palestinian families took possession of new apartments Saturday as part of a large Qatari-funded housing project in the Gaza Strip.
The units are the first batch of a 3,000-apartment complex that was announced when the former Qatari ruler, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, became the first head of state to visit Hamas-ruled Gaza in 2012.
Hamad City sits on dunes that were part of the former Jewish settlement of Gush Katif. They started before the Israel-Hamas war in 2014 that damaged or destroyed nearly 100,000 homes. The construction of the residential city is separate from the post-war rebuilding, but being the largest housing project ever makes it significant for the 1.8 million residents of the coastal enclave, who live under Israeli and Egyptian blockade and travel restrictions.
Israel restricts building materials to Gaza for fears that the coastal strip's Islamic Hamas rulers may use them in building its attack tunnels. To overcome the restrictions, Qatar arranges with Israel and the Palestinian Authority directly to deliver the needed materials for its projects.
Qatar allocated $145 million for Hamad City. The Qatari envoy overseeing the project, Mohammed al-Amadi, says Gaza needs 130,000 housing units. "We are replenishing parts of Gaza's needs," he said. On Saturday, Qatari and Palestinian flags adorned the complex as buses dropped hundreds of people who will receive the apartments. Posters of the former Qatari emir, his succeeding son and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hung from the buildings.
The families received certificates at the event, but won't move in for another two months due to minor infrastructure work, such as paving the roads to the city and connecting it with water network. Among those who received certificates was Samia al-Nakhala, 39, who lives with her husband and son in a home that costs $250 a month in rent. Now she will pay the cost of the house in monthly installations of $170. "Instead of throwing my money in the air every month, now I will be paying for my own home," she said.
Ismail Haniya, Hamas' chief in Gaza, described the opening of the first part of the city as "a historic moment." Hamas still holds control of Gaza despite ceding power to a transitional government it formed after a reconciliation deal with Abbas' Fatah party in 2014.
Arabian Peninsula, Atmariar Gulf, Atmariar News, Qatar
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