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Baghdad Govt Accused of Violating Country’s Borrowing Law

Protests against delayed payment of salaries in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan region, last Friday. (AFP)
Protests against delayed payment of salaries in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan region, last Friday. (AFP)
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Baghdad Govt Accused of Violating Country’s Borrowing Law

Protests against delayed payment of salaries in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan region, last Friday. (AFP)
Protests against delayed payment of salaries in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan region, last Friday. (AFP)

Parliamentary pressure is building against the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi over allegations that the country’s borrowing law has been violated. This coincides with Kurdish officials going into fierce negotiations with Baghdad to acquire much needed funds to dispense unpaid public sector workers.

Headed by Kurdistan Region Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, the Kurdish delegation has been in Baghdad since Thursday in pursuit of a settlement to the financial disagreements between Erbil and Baghdad.

The Kurdish delegation met on Sunday with Finance Minister Ali Allawi, Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar and officials from Iraq’s State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO).

Implementing the new budget deficit law, they attempted to estimate the value of oil produced in the Kurdistan region and determining non-oil revenues.

Even though Iraqi blocs at the parliament passed the budget deficit law last month without the Kurds, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has agreed to fully comply with it in order to show goodwill in its negotiations with Baghdad, and leave no excuses for the federal government.

Talabani’s spokesperson Samir Hawrami said the KRG wants an agreement with Baghdad and will implement all its constitutional obligations to that end.

“The amount of oil exported from the Kurdistan region and the total non-oil imports will be determined according to the law on financing the budget deficit approved by the Iraqi parliament,” Hawrami said on deciding the KRG’s share of state funds.

The delegation’s visit to Baghdad is taking place against the backdrop of raging public protests sweeping the Sulaymaniyah province and other parts of the Kurdish region.

The demonstrations have been triggered by civil servants who haven’t received their salaries for months now.

Pressured by riots, the KRG was forced to show great flexibility in negotiations with Baghdad, especially with respect to the financial borrowing law which was rejected by Kurdish lawmakers.

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US Warns Sudan Famine on Pace to be Deadliest in Decades

Displaced Sudanese children stand at Zamzam camp, in North Darfur, Sudan, August 1, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal Jebrel
Displaced Sudanese children stand at Zamzam camp, in North Darfur, Sudan, August 1, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal Jebrel
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US Warns Sudan Famine on Pace to be Deadliest in Decades

Displaced Sudanese children stand at Zamzam camp, in North Darfur, Sudan, August 1, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal Jebrel
Displaced Sudanese children stand at Zamzam camp, in North Darfur, Sudan, August 1, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal Jebrel

The newly confirmed famine at one of the sprawling camps for war-displaced people in Sudan’s Darfur region is growing uncontrolled as the country's combatants block aid, and it threatens to grow bigger and deadlier than the world’s last major famine 13 years ago, US officials warned on Friday.

The US Agency for International Development, the UN World Food Program and other independent and government humanitarian agencies were intensifying calls for a cease-fire and aid access across Sudan. That's after international experts in the Famine Review Committee formally confirmed Thursday that the starvation in at least one of three giant makeshift camps, holding up to 600,000 people displaced by Sudan's more than yearlong war, had grown into a full famine, The Associated Press reported.

Two US officials briefed reporters on their analysis of the crisis on Friday following the famine finding, which is only the third in the 20-year history of the Famine Review Committee. The US officials spoke on the condition of anonymity as the ground rules for their general briefing.

The last major famine, in Somalia, was estimated to have killed a quarter of a million people in 2011, half of them children under 5 years old.

The blocks that Sudan’s warring sides are putting on food and other aid for the civilians trapped in the Zamzam camp are realizing “the worst fears of the humanitarian community,” one of the US officials said.

War in the northern African country erupted in April 2023.

As most of the world paid attention to conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the larger Middle East, the Sudanese war quickly grew into the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with 11 million displaced. Unlike the earlier war, acute hunger is almost countrywide.

Aid workers were last able to get humanitarian relief to the trapped civilians at the camps in Darfur in April. The Rapid Support Forces have the area under siege and is accused of attacking hospitals, camps and other civilian targets.

World Food Program director Cindy McCain urged the international community in a statement after the famine declaration to work for a cease-fire. “It is the only way we will reverse a humanitarian catastrophe that is destabilizing this entire region of Africa,” she said.
USAID Director Samantha Power stressed the famine was entirely man-made. Both sides, “enabled by external patrons, are using starvation as a weapon of war,” she said in a statement.
The US officials Friday pointed to Washington as the largest source of aid — the little that gets through — for Sudan. They countered questions about why the Biden administration was not using air drops or any of the other direct interventions by the US military to get food to people in Darfur that they were in Gaza, saying the terrain in Sudan was different.