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Disputes over Security Portfolios Impede Formation of Iraq Govt

Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Shia al-Sudani meets with deputy parliament Speaker Mohsen al-Mandalawi. (AFP)
Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Shia al-Sudani meets with deputy parliament Speaker Mohsen al-Mandalawi. (AFP)
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Disputes over Security Portfolios Impede Formation of Iraq Govt

Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Shia al-Sudani meets with deputy parliament Speaker Mohsen al-Mandalawi. (AFP)
Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Shia al-Sudani meets with deputy parliament Speaker Mohsen al-Mandalawi. (AFP)

Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is facing difficulties in forming a new government due to the insistence of Shiite factions on obtaining the main security portfolios in the country, revealed sources concerned with the formation process.

The sources said that meanwhile, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was holding side talks aimed at restructuring the military leaderships that would take place after the formation of a new cabinet.

The pro-Iran Shiite Coordination Framework said on Saturday that it had held talks with Sudani over the formation of a strong government.

The hurdles Sudani is facing from Shiite parties have raised fears that he will fail in forming a government.

He issued a statement on Sunday to underscore that a committee of advisors is holding meetings with potential ministerial candidates from various political blocs.

The name of the candidates will be revealed after the committee completes its work.

A source told Asharq Al-Awsat that Shiite factions had even offered to Sudani relinquishing their shares in the government in return for assuming control over security agencies.

The possibility has raised some concerns among some factions of the Framework.

Maliki, meanwhile, wants the formation of a strong government that would win over the masses and prevent the eruption of new anti-government protests, similar to what happened in October 2019, revealed a source close to the Dawa party.

The former PM is holding side negotiations to form a government, focusing on the restructuring of top senior posts with the ultimate aim of changing military leaderships and replacing them with figures who are loyal to him.

His moves have sparked tensions among his allies in the Framework, which is also concerned that Sudani may also be allied to him.

The ties between Maliki and Sudani have come under close scrutiny. Sudani is believed to be opposed to Maliki’s goal for reclaiming his position in power, but seems incapable of stopping his drive forward.

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Arab World

As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
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As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)

Long-horned cattle wade through flooded lands and climb a slope along a canal that has become a refuge for displaced families in South Sudan. Smoke from burning dung rises near homes of mud and grass where thousands of people now live after floods swept away their village.
“Too much suffering,” said Bichiok Hoth Chuiny, a woman in her 70s. She supported herself with a stick as she walked in the newly established community of Pajiek in Jonglei state north of the capital, Juba, The Associated Press said.
For the first time in decades, the flooding had forced her to flee. Her efforts to protect her home by building dykes failed. Her former village of Gorwai is now a swamp.
“I had to be dragged in a canoe up to here,” Chuiny said. An AP journalist was the first to visit the community.
Such flooding is becoming a yearly disaster in South Sudan, which the World Bank has described as “the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change and also the one most lacking in coping capacity."
More than 379,000 people have been displaced by flooding this year, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
Seasonal flooding has long been part of the lifestyle of pastoral communities around the Sudd, the largest wetlands in Africa, in the Nile River floodplain. But since the 1960s the swamp has kept growing, submerging villages, ruining farmland and killing livestock.
“The Dinka, Nuer and Murle communities of Jonglei are losing the ability to keep cattle and do farming in that region the way they used to,” said Daniel Akech Thiong, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
South Sudan is poorly equipped to adjust. Independent since 2011, the country plunged into civil war in 2013. Despite a peace deal in 2018, the government has failed to address numerous crises. Some 2.4 million people remain internally displaced by conflict and flooding.
The latest overflowing of the Nile has been blamed on factors including the opening of dams upstream in Uganda after Lake Victoria rose to its highest levels in five years.
The century-old Jonglei Canal, which was never completed, has become a refuge for many.
“We don’t know up to where this flooding would have pushed us if the canal was not there,” said Peter Kuach Gatchang, the paramount chief of Pajiek. He was already raising a small garden of pumpkins and eggplants in his new home.
The 340-kilometer (211-mile) Jonglei Canal was first imagined in the early 1900s by Anglo-Egyptian colonial authorities to increase the Nile’s outflow towards Egypt in the north. But its development was interrupted by the long fight of southern Sudanese against the Sudanese regime in Khartoum that eventually led to the creation of a separate country.
Gatchang said the new community in Pajiek is neglected: "We have no school and no clinic here, and if you stay for a few days, you will see us carrying our patients on stretchers up to Ayod town.”
Ayod, the county headquarters, is reached by a six-hour walk through the waist-high water.
Pajiek also has no mobile network and no government presence. The area is under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, founded by President Salva Kiir’s rival turned Vice President Riek Machar.
Villagers rely on aid. On a recent day, hundreds of women lined up in a nearby field to receive some from the World Food Program.
Nyabuot Reat Kuor walked home with a 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag of sorghum balanced on her head.
“This flooding has destroyed our farm, killed our livestock and displaced us for good," the mother of eight said. “Our old village of Gorwai has become a river.”
When food assistance runs out, she said, they will survive on wild leaves and water lilies from the swamp. Already in recent years, food aid rations have been cut in half as international funding for such crises drops.
More than 69,000 people who have migrated to the Jonglei Canal in Ayod county are registered for food assistance, according to WFP.
“There are no passable roads at this time of the year, and the canal is too low to support boats carrying a lot of food,” said John Kimemia, a WFP airdrop coordinator.
In the neighboring Paguong village that is surrounded by flooded lands, the health center has few supplies. Medics haven’t been paid since June due to an economic crisis that has seen civil servants nationwide go unpaid for more than a year.
South Sudan’s economic woes have deepened with the disruption of oil exports after a major pipeline was damaged in Sudan during that country's ongoing civil war.
“The last time we got drugs was in September. We mobilized the women to carry them on foot from Ayod town,” said Juong Dok Tut, a clinical officer.
Patients, mostly women and children, sat on the ground as they waited to see the doctor. Panic rippled through the group when a thin green snake passed among them. It wasn't poisonous, but many others in the area are. People who venture into the water to fish or collect water lilies are at risk.
Four life-threatening snake bites cases occurred in October, Tut said. “We managed these cases with the antivenom treatments we had, but now they’re over, so we don’t know what to do if it happens again.”