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Iraq’s Sistani Calls for Fresh Faces to Run for Premiership

Iraq’s supreme religious authority Ali al-Sistani calls for fresh faces to run for prime minister. (AFP)
Iraq’s supreme religious authority Ali al-Sistani calls for fresh faces to run for prime minister. (AFP)
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Iraq’s Sistani Calls for Fresh Faces to Run for Premiership

Iraq’s supreme religious authority Ali al-Sistani calls for fresh faces to run for prime minister. (AFP)
Iraq’s supreme religious authority Ali al-Sistani calls for fresh faces to run for prime minister. (AFP)

As the deadline looms for the Iraqi parliamentary blocs to submit their candidate for the position of prime minister, supreme Shiite authority in al-Najaf, Ali al-Sistani, implied that he supports the nomination of fresh faces for the post.

Media affiliated to Sistani denied lawmaker claims that he had named a number of candidates for the position. The nomination is within the jurisdiction of the largest parliamentary bloc.

They added that he had not vetoed any potential candidate, but he will oppose a candidate who is from the political class that has run the country during the past few years because the people have lost their faith in them.

On Monday, MP Sabah al-Saaedi, of the Sairoun alliance of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, revealed that he had received information that Sistani had vetoed the nomination of five candidates. They are former PM Nouri al-Maliki, current PM Haidar al-Abadi, Hadi al-Ameri, Faleh al-Fayyad and Tareq Najm.

Commenting on the Sistani’s stance, Shiite cleric Farhan al-Saaedi told Asharq Al-Awsat: “The supreme religious authority has long left it up to the people to decide their fate.”

“Abadi’s term witnessed successes on the ground, which is important for the people. The people also, however, demand basic services, such as water and electricity. They will grow frustrated if their demands are not met, especially since there are no radical solutions for the crises,” he continued.

This is what the supreme religious authority wants to explain to the people: their choices determine their fate, he added.

Badr organization member Karim al-Nouri told Asharq Al-Awsat that based on Sistani’s criteria, the majority of politicians are not qualified for the position of prime minister.

Sistani had stipulated during one of his recent sermons that the candidate should be “firm, brave and strong,” he added.

“Based on these qualifications, then we believe that Hadi al-Ameri still has the greatest chance of becoming premier given his parliamentary work and his fight against ISIS for three years,” he added.

He also cited his success when he served as minister of transportation.

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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

For a week, eight-year-old Mohamed has suffered the pain of shrapnel stuck in his arm. But he is one of the lucky ones in Sudan’s western city El-Fasher, which is under paramilitary attack.
“One of our neighbors used to be a nurse. She helped us stop the bleeding,” Mohamed’s father, Issa Said, 27, told AFP via satellite connection under a total communications blackout.
Like an estimated one million more people trapped in the city under a year-long siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Said cannot get to a hospital for emergency care.
With only the most meagre supplies remaining in El-Fasher, his family is among those whose only medical help has come from neighbors and family members who improvise.

In its quest to seize the North Darfur state capital — the only major Darfur city it has not conquered during two years of war with Sudan’s army — the RSF has launched attack after attack, which have been repelled by army and allied forces.

Even if people were to brave the streets, the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fasher after getting shot in the thigh during an RSF attack days ago on the nearby famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp, estimates hundreds of injured civilians are trapped in the city.
According to aid sources, hundreds of thousands have fled Zamzam for the city, which is already on the brink of mass starvation according to a UN-backed assessment.
Yet the people of El-Fasher have “opened their homes to the wounded,” Mohamed told AFP, requesting to be identified by his first name for safety.
“If you have the money, you send someone to buy clean gauze or painkillers if they can find any, but you have to make do with what you have,” said Mohamed, whose leg wound meant he had to be carried the 15 kilometers from Zamzam to the city, a journey that took hours.

In crowded living rooms and kitchens, civilians with barely any medical training cobble together emergency first aid, using household items and local medicinal plants to treat burns, gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries.
Another victim, Mohamed Abakar, 29, said he was fetching water for his family when a bullet pierced his leg.
The limb immediately broke underneath him, and a neighbor dragged him into his home, fashioning him a splint out of a few pieces of wood and cloth.
“Even if it heals my broken leg, the bullet is still inside,” Abakar told AFP, also by satellite link.

By Monday, the RSF’s recent attacks on El-Fasher and surrounding displacement camps had killed more than 400 people, according to the UN.
At least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on Earth” in the city and its environs, the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
The people of El-Fasher have suffered a year of RSF siege in a city the Sudanese military has also bombed from the air.
Residents have taken to hiding from the shelling in makeshift bunkers, which are often just hastily dug holes topped with bags of sand.

But not everyone makes it in time.

On Wednesday, a shell broke through Hanaa Hamad’s home, shrapnel tearing apart her husband’s abdomen before they could scramble to safety.
“A neighbor and I treated him as best we could. We disinfected the wound with table salt and we managed to stop the bleeding,” the 34-year-old mother of four told AFP.

But by morning, he had succumbed to his injuries, too severe for his wife and neighbor to handle.