Iraq Summons Turkish Ambassador over Refugee Camp Strike
A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter on the outskirts of Makhmour, near Erbil in northern Iraq. (AP file photo)
Iraq summoned on Friday Ankara’s ambassador to Baghdad, Fatih Yildiz, after a Turkish drone strike against a refugee camp east of Mosul.
The strikes on the Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq were carried out by a Turkish military drone that was detected by Iraq’s air defense, a statement from the foreign ministry said. Two refugee women were killed.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Hakim stressed to Yildiz “the need to stop such serious violations and respect the principles of good neighbourliness,” according to a statement.
Yildiz was handed a letter of complaint, with the ministry expressing “condemnation in the strongest possible terms over these Turkish attacks”, saying they “constituted a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”
The Turkish government claims the refugee camp is a hotbed of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, an outlawed group in Turkey that is fighting an insurgency against Ankara.
Turkey has repeatedly struck PKK positions in northern Iraq in efforts to cut the group’s supply routes.
Jordan Army: 3 Iranian Missiles Fell Inside Country
The Jordanian capital, Amman. Petra file photo
Jordan's army said Sunday that three Iranian missiles fell on the kingdom's territory at dawn amid renewed hostilities between Iran and the United States.
"Three missiles fired from Iranian territory fell at dawn in several locations across the kingdom, without causing any casualties. The damage is limited to minor material losses," said a military source quoted in an army statement.
The US attacked Iran early Sunday morning over an Iranian attack on a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, setting the container ship ablaze and forcing its crew to abandon it.
In retaliation, Iran fired missiles on several Gulf countries and Jordan.
US Proposes 90-Day Sudan Truce Followed by talkshttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5294996-us-proposes-90-day-sudan-truce-followed-talks
Massad Boulos expresses concern over conditions in El Obeid (File photo: AFP)
The leak of documents exchanged between the US administration and Sudan’s government has revived hopes of a humanitarian truce while raising questions over whether the country is closer to ending the war or facing another failed peace initiative.
Reuters quoted senior Sudanese officials as confirming the contents of the leaked documents, which showed broad agreement on the proposal’s general principles but a fundamental dispute over the future of the Rapid Support Forces deployed in cities.
The Sudanese government conditionally accepted the idea of a truce, while US statements initially suggested Khartoum had rejected the proposal before later describing it as having accepted it. A final agreement, however, remains out of reach.
According to Reuters, the United States proposed an immediate 90-day humanitarian truce to allow aid deliveries, strengthen civilian protection and pave the way for negotiations on a permanent ceasefire, followed by a civilian-led political transition and elections.
The army-led Sudanese government made its approval conditional on the RSF’s withdrawal from all cities it has controlled since May 11, 2023, rather than carrying out the limited withdrawals stipulated in the US proposal.
A document attributed to the Sudanese government and dated June 25 showed agreement with several key principles, including recognition that there was no military solution to the conflict, a nationwide truce and the formation of a US-led coordination committee including the United Nations, the African Union and the Arab League.
It also proposed a UN mechanism to oversee and monitor implementation, guarantee humanitarian access and protect civilians.
The Sudanese response, however, demanded that the RSF withdraw from all cities under its control. Subsequent security arrangements would include the withdrawal, demobilization, disarmament and reintegration of RSF personnel under UN supervision.
The Sudanese Armed Forces would remain the country’s unified national army, with other military formations incorporated into it.
The dispute may appear limited to one provision, but it goes to the core of the initiative.
The US proposal calls for an immediate ceasefire followed by limited withdrawals and troop redeployments to facilitate aid access, particularly in North Darfur and North Kordofan. Broader military arrangements would be negotiated later as part of a permanent ceasefire.
The Sudanese response instead makes a complete RSF withdrawal from cities and a change in the military control map a precondition for the truce.
The two sides also differ over the future army. The US initiative calls for a unified national military accountable to an independent, elected civilian government, while the Sudanese response links the armed forces to the Sudanese government.
Reuters also said the US proposal called for excluding the Muslim Brotherhood and militia members accused of serious abuses. The Sudanese document used the broader term “violent extremist groups” without naming specific organizations.
At a UN Security Council meeting on June 26, Massad Boulos, senior adviser to the US president on Arab and African affairs, said Sudan’s Sovereignty Council had rejected the latest version of the proposal.
After Sudan’s representative said Sovereignty Council Chairman Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had submitted a response including a withdrawal timetable and a peace plan, Boulos welcomed what he described as Burhan’s acceptance of the initiative.
“I am pleased to hear that Burhan has apparently accepted the latest peace proposal rather than rejected it,” Boulos said.
He added that the initiative had been prepared in consultation with Sudan’s foreign minister and members of the Sovereignty Council, coordinated with Egypt and welcomed by Saudi Arabia.
The difference appears to reflect conflicting interpretations of acceptance rather than an outright rejection.
Khartoum regards its approval of the general framework, subject to an RSF withdrawal, as conditional acceptance. Washington views that condition as altering the substance of its proposal, which is based on an immediate ceasefire without preconditions.
The two sides, therefore, remain far from agreeing on a final formula.
In a public appearance in Omdurman on Friday, Burhan did not say whether he accepted or rejected the initiative and did not disclose the substance of his government’s response.
Addressing worshippers, he said the armed forces would not accept arrangements imposed upon them or any arrangement that failed to achieve security and peace for the Sudanese people. He said military operations would continue until those he described as “aggressors and rebels” were defeated.
The leak coincided with controversy over an undisclosed meeting reportedly held in Cairo between Sovereignty Council member Shams al-Din Kabbashi and Boulos.
One account said Kabbashi met Boulos without Burhan’s knowledge and did not brief him on the discussions. Al Arabiya cited sources close to Kabbashi as saying the meeting took place at Boulos’ request, with Burhan’s knowledge, and that Burhan was informed of what was discussed.
Neither the Sudanese nor the US side has officially confirmed either account.
Khalid Omar Youssef, a senior figure in the Civil Democratic Alliance of Revolutionary Forces, known as Somoud, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the quartet’s roadmap was “the most important, comprehensive and well-structured initiative.”
He ruled out an imminent breakthrough unless pressure increased on the party obstructing the truce.
RSF position
The RSF has not issued an official statement on the US initiative or the response attributed to the army.
A senior RSF official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters that the force had received the proposal, welcomed it and submitted a written response, without disclosing its contents or its position on withdrawal.
Another senior RSF source told Asharq Al-Awsat that withdrawal from cities under the force’s control was “not open for discussion.”
Any truce should freeze both sides’ positions, the source said, while redeployment and disarmament should be addressed in negotiations on a permanent ceasefire.
Political analyst Mohammed Latif said US and regional pressure, the worsening humanitarian crisis, growing doubts among the sides’ regional backers over the possibility of a military victory, rising civilian demands and fears of Sudan’s division and institutional collapse could improve the prospects for a truce.
He warned, however, that fighting in strategically important areas, disputes over monitoring and concerns that a truce could be used for recruitment, rearmament or military repositioning could undermine the initiative.
Latif also said the widespread deployment of forces made it difficult for both leaderships to control all fighting formations, meaning that a limited violation by a small group could bring an agreement down.
Domestic and foreign actors benefiting from the war could also derail a truce that conflicted with their interests, he said.
The available information suggests Sudan has entered a more substantive negotiating phase involving written proposals, official responses, continuing contacts and growing international pressure.
But an end to the war does not appear imminent.
The army insists that an RSF withdrawal from cities must be a condition for a truce, while the RSF has not formally stated its position, although unofficial indications suggest it rejects the demand.
Sudan, therefore, appears closer to a more serious round of negotiations than to a final ceasefire agreement.
Success will depend on whether mediators can reach a phased formula for withdrawals, establish enforceable monitoring mechanisms and persuade both sides to accept a truce that gives neither an advanced military or political advantage.
South Lebanon Caught Between Ali al-Taher and Strait of Hormuzhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5294987-south-lebanon-caught-between-ali-al-taher-and-strait-hormuz
South Lebanon Caught Between Ali al-Taher and Strait of Hormuz
A building reduced to rubble by Israeli bombardment (Asharq Al-Awsat)
These small stones were once walls and roofs that made those beneath them believe they were protected from summer heat, winter cold and treacherous winds.
Under those roofs, mothers held their children close and cooked meals to stave off hunger. Children left for school and grew up under their parents’ eyes, amid their grandparents’ smiles and photographs hanging on the walls.
That was before the hurricane. It is no longer.
These stones were once apartment buildings whose residents imagined they were permanent homes and safe shelters.
A colleague explains the ruins. A gutted, burned apartment means a drone struck it in an assassination operation. A mound of rubble means a fighter jet tore down the building, burying those who failed to escape.
You stare at debris tangled with electricity cables. Here are the remains of a balcony where someone once drank tea and rested after working in a field or garden. There are the remains of beds made for sleep, and perhaps for dreams. A coffee pot has lost its purpose forever. The windows died with their walls.
How difficult it is to live near a man named Benjamin Netanyahu. It became harder after the “Sinwar Flood.”
Destruction is seen at a site bombarded by Israel in southern Lebanon (Asharq Al-Awsat)
A Lebanese army soldier advised us not to go farther. The road leads to Ali al-Taher hill, he said. The occupation has turned it into a killing zone and spares nothing that moves.
In the south, people say the hill, whose outskirts the Israeli army has approached, contains tunnels and operations rooms used by Hezbollah fighters. They say Israel is preparing to seize it as soon as the restraints Donald Trump imposed on its movements begin to loosen.
Ali al-Taher has acquired unusual symbolic importance. Experts believe Israel may be willing to bear the losses required to capture it.
We followed the soldier’s advice and settled for inspecting the city’s wounds, including its commercial markets, which the occupation army had condemned to death, leaving what resembled a mass grave.
Then came a buzzing sound from the sky.
My colleague Thaer Abbas said it was an Israeli drone. It circled overhead as if reminding those below that they lived at its mercy, that it could erase them whenever it chose, monitor their movements and count their breaths.
I had heard drones over Beirut before. But near Ali al-Taher, the sound was like knives moving through arteries.
It reminds those beneath it that the occupation’s reach is long. It reminds them they lost the war.
A building that became rubble (Asharq Al-Awsat)
In Nabatieh, people say that what the city endured, despite its horror, was far less severe than what happened to the border villages now in the Israeli army’s grip.
The Israeli army perfected their complete or near-complete erasure, making the return of residents impossible. It left no roof and no wall. It did not spare the trees or electricity poles.
It is frightening to hear that dozens of border villages now resemble Gaza.
Bodies are said to remain beneath the rubble of crushed villages. Drones strike at bulldozers whenever they try to approach, preventing families from recovering their loved ones and shrouding them with handkerchiefs soaked in tears and handfuls of soil.
How cruel for a homeland to become a grave, or a grave in the making.
A man familiar with the map began listing the villages and what remained of them. He feared another round in which Israeli forces would advance towards Ali al-Taher, perhaps encouraging them to move towards other hills.
Israel’s ambitions in Lebanon, he reminded us, are old, particularly its ambitions over the country’s water.
A visitor may hear that the fate of the “Ali al-Taher Strait” is tied to that of the Strait of Hormuz.
Anyone following events needs no reminder of the Iranian thread linking southern Lebanon to the region’s wider crisis. The issue goes beyond Lebanon’s appearance in the first clause of the US-Iranian memorandum of understanding under the heading of a ceasefire.
Extensive destruction in front of Jabal Amel hospital in southern Lebanon (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The Iranian connection did not begin with the memorandum. It is deeper and older.
On the road to Tyre and from there to Nabatieh, portraits tell the story: Hassan Nasrallah and his comrades, Khomeini, Khamenei senior with Khamenei junior, and Qassem Soleimani.
There are also portraits of Nabih Berri. We passed near his stronghold in Msayleh, where we had previously visited and interviewed him.
I felt sorrow as I watched Lebanese army soldiers. The Israeli army had destroyed the military’s positions south of the Litani River and killed dozens of its troops.
The army’s story is a tragedy within a country whose story is itself a tragedy.
How difficult it is for an army to be strong in a fragile country, one accompanied by division since its birth and unable to escape it at every major national juncture.
The Lebanese army does not lack competence or courage. What it has always lacked is the firm backing of a unified political decision.
It is repeatedly called upon to carry out difficult missions beyond its capabilities and equipment, without a clear and unambiguous political mandate.
The editor-in-chief in front of the rubble of destroyed buildings (Asharq Al-Awsat)
The story did not begin in recent years.
It began when the late Lebanese army commander, General Emile Boustany, signed the Cairo Agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Lebanon’s authorities were forced to surrender part of the country’s sovereignty to avoid a civil war that would come later.
Lebanon was effectively assigned the role of an open front against Israel while the other fronts fell silent, particularly the Syrian Golan front after the 1973 war.
Southern Lebanon was left suspended on the high-voltage line of military conflict with Israel.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and occupied Beirut. The Lebanese National Resistance Front, known as Jammoul, emerged.
In the mid-1980s, Hafez al-Assad ordered it removed in favor of the “Islamic Resistance” represented by Hezbollah.
The Lebanese-Israeli border was transformed into an Iranian-Israeli border, with the 2006 war becoming one episode in that confrontation.
For decades, Lebanon’s tragedy was marked by collapses and assassinations.
The grave of Kamal Jumblatt. The grave of BaShir Gemayel. The grave of Rene Moawad. The grave of Rafic Hariri.
Everyone who tried to reclaim Lebanese decision-making was beheaded, despite their different positions and methods.
The removal of rubble of destroyed buildings (Asharq Al-Awsat)
On the return journey, I remembered a southerner with whom I had maintained a dialogue for more than three decades.
He was Mohsen Ibrahim, the former secretary-general of the Organization of Communist Action and the Lebanese National Movement.
Ibrahim acknowledged that “the National Movement burdened Lebanon with more than it could bear when it went too far in embracing the Palestinian resistance.”
One day, he surprised me by saying: “Hezbollah is also burdening Lebanon with more than it can bear.”
He spoke years after the assassination of Rafic Hariri and Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria to save Bashar al-Assad’s government.
On the way back, we saw a UNIFIL convoy leaving, never to return.
The international presence along the Lebanese-Israeli border was sometimes useful but always powerless.
The force operated amid Israeli violations it could not prevent and above Hezbollah tunnels being prepared for the next war, which it could do little but ignore.
Lebanon today faces a predicament more difficult than any it has known.
After the “Sinwar Flood,” Hezbollah chose to enter the battle in “support of Gaza.” After the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, it chose to wage a war of “revenge.”
The results of both wars can be seen in the occupation of parts of southern Lebanon.
Israel changed its military doctrine after the “Flood.” It no longer accepts living alongside what it calls threats across its borders.
It chose instead to enter the territory of others and establish “safe zones.”
It has clearly decided to remove Lebanon from the military side of its conflict.
That has coincided with international pressure on Lebanon to extend its authority across all its territory through its legitimate forces alone.
That means disarming Hezbollah, or restricting its weapons, as the softer formulation puts it.
Neither Hezbollah nor Iran accepts this.
Hezbollah’s insistence on retaining its weapons has deepened estrangement and prompted talk of other formulas for coexistence, or of a softer form of divorce.
Southern Lebanon hangs from a rope stretching between the situation at “Ali al-Taher” and the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz.
Lebanon itself hangs over a crisis among its constituent communities, threatening to confirm that it lost the war in the south and is preparing to lose it in the capital as well.
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