Iraq Seeks Role as Mediator with Regional Summit

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi (L), seen here with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is trying to position Baghdad as a regional mediator. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office via AFP)
Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi (L), seen here with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is trying to position Baghdad as a regional mediator. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office via AFP)
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Iraq Seeks Role as Mediator with Regional Summit

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi (L), seen here with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is trying to position Baghdad as a regional mediator. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office via AFP)
Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi (L), seen here with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is trying to position Baghdad as a regional mediator. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office via AFP)

After decades of conflict, Iraq will pitch itself as a regional mediator as it hosts a leaders’ summit this week -- despite foreign influence on its territory and a grinding financial crisis.

The meeting in Baghdad on Saturday seeks to give Iraq a “unifying role” to tackle the crises shaking the region, according to sources close to Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II have said they plan to attend, as has French President Emmanuel Macron, the only official expected from outside the region.

Leaders from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran have also been invited.

Kadhimi came to power in May last year after months of unprecedented mass protests against a ruling class seen as corrupt, inept and subordinate to Tehran.

The new premier had served as the head of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service for nearly four years, forming close ties to Tehran, Washington and Riyadh.

His appointment prompted speculation he could serve as a rare mediator among the capitals.

“In the past, under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a state that was feared and despised in the region and everyone saw it as a threat,” said Iraqi political expert Marsin Alshamary.

After the 2003 US-led invasion, it became “a weak state”, prone to external influences and meddling.

But Saturday’s summit, she said, could be “a positive thing for Iraq”.

‘Not just a playground’
Renad Mansour of Chatham House said the aim was to transform Iraq from “a country of messengers to a country that is leading negotiations”.

Organizers have been tight-lipped on the meeting’s agenda.

Iraq has been caught for years in a delicate balancing act between its two main allies Iran and the United States.

“The ambition is for Iraq to not just be a playground but actually have a role potentially as a mediating force,” Mansour said.

Iran exerts major clout in Iraq through allied armed groups within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a powerful state-sponsored paramilitary network.

Since the 2019 anti-government protests, dozens of activists have been killed or abducted.

Some say the killers are known to the security services and despite government promises of arrests, remain at large -- due to their ties to Iran.

Shiite factions operating under the PMF are also accused of dozens of attacks this year against US interests in Iraq.

Kadhimi is under pressure from pro-Tehran armed factions, who demand the withdrawal of 2,500 US troops still deployed in Iraq.

‘Take back control’
Turkey is another regional power with an outsized presence in Iraq.

Ankara regularly targets Iraq’s northwest in operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

The Kurdish separatists, who have waged a decades-long insurgency against Ankara, have bases in the rugged mountains on the Iraqi side of the border.

The Turkish operations, have sometimes killed civilians and have irked Baghdad, but it remains reluctant to alienate a vital trading partner.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been invited to Saturday’s conference, though his attendance has not yet been confirmed.

By convening the summit, Kadhimi is also taking a gamble on the domestic front, less than two months before general elections.

Though he is not facing re-election himself, he will have much at stake.

“There will be another coalition government and the different parties will have to settle on a compromise prime minister,” Alshamary said.

Iraq, long plagued by endemic corruption, poor services, dilapidated infrastructure and unemployment, is facing a deep financial crisis compounded by lower oil prices and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Iraqis are struggling,” said Mansour, adding that many were facing “the brunt of corruption”.

“It has been the summer of hospital fires and lack of electricity, drought... and more generally a political system that neither responds to the needs of Iraqis nor represents Iraqis,” Mansour said.

But Saturday’s conference is mainly about the country’s standing in the region.

“Iraq wants to take back control of its trajectory,” said one foreign observer on condition of anonymity.

“Above all, it no longer wants to be subjected to the effects of regional tensions on its territory.”



Water Crisis Batters War-Torn Sudan as Temperatures Soar

People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
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Water Crisis Batters War-Torn Sudan as Temperatures Soar

People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)

War, climate change and man-made shortages have brought Sudan -- a nation already facing a litany of horrors -- to the shores of a water crisis.

"Since the war began, two of my children have walked 14 kilometers (nine miles) every day to get water for the family," Issa, a father of seven, told AFP from North Darfur state.

In the blistering sun, as temperatures climb past 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), Issa's family -- along with 65,000 other residents of the Sortoni displacement camp -- suffer the weight of the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

When the first shots rang out more than a year ago, most foreign aid groups -- including the one operating Sortoni's local water station -- could no longer operate. Residents were left to fend for themselves.

The country at large, despite its many water sources including the mighty Nile River, is no stranger to water scarcity.

Even before the war, a quarter of the population had to walk more than 50 minutes to fetch water, according to the United Nations.

Now, from the western deserts of Darfur, through the fertile Nile Valley and all the way to the Red Sea coast, a water crisis has hit 48 million war-weary Sudanese who the US ambassador to the United Nations on Friday said are already facing "the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet."

- No fuel, no water -

Around 110 kilometers east of Sortoni, deadly clashes in North Darfur's capital of El-Fasher, besieged by RSF, threaten water access for more than 800,000 civilians.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday said fighting in El-Fasher had killed at least 226.

Just outside the city, fighting over the Golo water reservoir "risks cutting off safe and adequate water for about 270,000 people", the UN children's agency UNICEF has warned.

Access to water and other scarce resources has long been a source of conflict in Sudan.

The UN Security Council on Thursday demanded that the siege of El-Fasher end.

If it goes on, hundreds of thousands more people who rely on the area's groundwater will go without.

"The water is there, but it's more than 60 meters (66 yards) deep, deeper than a hand-pump can go," according to a European diplomat with years of experience in Sudan's water sector.

"If the RSF doesn't allow fuel to go in, the water stations will stop working," he told AFP, requesting anonymity because the diplomat was not authorized to speak to media.

"For a large part of the population, there will simply be no water."

Already in the nearby village of Shaqra, where 40,000 people have sought shelter, "people stand in lines 300 meters long to get drinking water," said Adam Rijal, spokesperson for the civilian-led General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.

In photos he sent to AFP, some women and children can be seen huddled under the shade of lonely acacia trees, while most swelter in the blazing sun, waiting their turn.

- Dirty water -

Sudan is hard-hit by climate change, and "you see it most clearly in the increase in temperature and rainfall intensity," the diplomat said.

This summer, the mercury is expected to continue rising until the rainy season hits in August, bringing with it torrential floods that kill dozens every year.

The capital Khartoum sits at the legendary meeting point of the Blue Nile and White Nile rivers -- yet its people are parched.

The Soba water station, which supplies water to much of the capital, "has been out of service since the war began," said a volunteer from the local resistance committee, one of hundreds of grassroots groups coordinating wartime aid.

People have since been buying untreated "water off of animal-drawn carts, which they can hardly afford and exposes them to diseases," he told AFP, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Entire neighborhoods of Khartoum North "have gone without drinking water for a year," another local volunteer told AFP, requesting to be identified only by his first name, Salah.

"People wanted to stay in their homes, even through the fighting, but they couldn't last without water," Salah said.

- Parched and displaced -

Hundreds of thousands have fled the fighting eastward, many to the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea -- itself facing a "huge water issue" that will only get "worse in the summer months," resident al-Sadek Hussein worries.

The city depends on only one inadequate reservoir for its water supply.

Here, too, citizens rely on horse- and donkey-drawn carts to deliver water, using "tools that need to be monitored and controlled to prevent contamination," public health expert Taha Taher told AFP.

"But with all the displacement, of course this doesn't happen," he said.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, the health ministry recorded nearly 11,000 cases of cholera -- a disease endemic to Sudan, "but not like this" when it has become "year-round," the European diplomat said.

The outbreak comes with the majority of Sudan's hospitals shut down and the United States warning on Friday that a famine of historic global proportions could unfold without urgent action.

"Health care has collapsed, people are drinking dirty water, they are hungry and will get hungrier, which will kill many, many more," the diplomat said.