BAGHDAD: The flashpoint in the independence stand-off between the Kurdistan Region and the Iraqi government shifted to Kirkuk on Tuesday, as Baghdad moved to take control of the area’s lucrative oil wells.
The Kurdistan Regional Government exports 550,000 barrels of Iraqi oil per day through a pipeline linking Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Turkey, of which 400,000 barrels come from Kirkuk. If Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi’s government took control of the oil it would deprive the KRG of about 75 percent of its daily revenue, and separate the Kurds from the most valuable part of their proposed independent state.
“Baghdad intends to regain its legal and constitutional role in Kirkuk and all the nearby disputed areas, including the oil fields,” Abbas Al-Bayati, an Iraqi politician who is close to Al-Abadi, told Arab News. “We, as legislative and executive authorities, are working to regain control of those areas.”
A senior security official told Arab News: “The situation is very cloudy and anything is possible relating to Kirkuk, but we know that the government wants to secure the oilfields.
“It is an open area. There will be no need for large numbers of troops; actually the operation can be carried out by airborne forces.”
Kirkuk, the fifth Iraqi city in terms of population, is a mixed area. Only Basra has larger oilfields. The KRG seized control of the city and its oil wells in the summer of 2014, when the Iraqi army fled in the face of an onslaught by Daesh militants.
On Tuesday, Iraq stopped selling dollars to leading banks in Kurdistan and banned foreign currency transfers to the autonomous region.
The financial sanctions follow a ban on direct international air travel to the region imposed by the central government on Friday.
Iraq’s central bank informed the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that it would stop selling dollars to four major Kurdish banks and stop all foreign currency transfers to the region, banking and government sources told Reuters.
“The condition for ending the dollar sale prohibition is to have the Kurdish banks under the central bank’s control,” an Iraqi official told Reuters.
Meanwhile, Kurdistan announced on Tuesday it was calling presidential and parliamentary elections for Nov. 1.
The November polls are for the Parliament and presidency of the region, not for an independent state, said a report by Reuters.
Kurds voted for independence last month in a controversial referendum in the Kurdistan Region and the disputed areas, including Kirkuk, seized by the peshmergas.
The Iraqi Parliament views the referendum as an illegal and unconstitutional threat to Iraq’s unity and integrity, and has approved punitive measures against the Kurdistan Region and Kurdish leaders, including regaining control of the disputed areas and the oil wells in Kirkuk.
Thousands of Iraqi security forces, including Shiite paramilitaries, are taking part in a major military operation to dislodge Daesh militants from Hawija, a town in Kirkuk province 45km west of the city. The campaign was launched only a day before the referendum, and many view it as a pretext by Al-Abadi to deploy more troops near Kirkuk.
Military sources told Arab News said that not all the Iraqi troops near Kirkuk were taking part in the fighting. Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, a prominent Shiite armed faction supporting the Iraqi government in the fight against Daesh, was assigned by Al-Abadi to be ready to move to secure the oilfields.
“The decision was made (by the Parliament and the government), (and) the authority of the federal government has to be imposed in all the disputed areas, including Kirkuk,” Asa’ib spokesman Na’aim Al-Abodi told Arab News. “There are large numbers of troops near Kirkuk to participate in the battle to retake Hawija,” he said, and any “childish or reckless act” by Kurdish leaders “will have serious consequences.”
Baghdad wants the referendum to be annulled as the main condition for talks with Irbil. The KRG said on Tuesday it was not authorized to do so.
“Cancelling the results of the referendum would not be as easy as officials in Baghdad think,” a spokesman said. “It related to the people of Kurdistan, and those people have decided what they want pertaining to this issue.”
The KRG has deployed more Kurdish troops in Kirkuk over the past two weeks. On Monday, Al-Abadi warned of the consequences of such “military mobilization procedures,” which he described as “risky and not acceptable.”
Al-Abadi asked Kurdish troops to withdraw beyond the areas where they were deployed before Oct. 18, 2016, before military operations to recapture Nineveh. “Imposing reality by force in the disputed areas is rejected,” he said.
New Kurdish flashpoint as Baghdad eyes Kirkuk’s oil
New Kurdish flashpoint as Baghdad eyes Kirkuk’s oil
Lebanese ‘orphaned of their land’ as Israel blows up homes
- Aerial footage shows simultaneous explosions rock a cluster of buildings on a lush hill
- Israeli troops dynamited buildings in at least seven border villages last month
BEIRUT: The news came by video. Law professor Ali Mourad discovered that Israel had dynamited his family’s south Lebanon home only after footage of the operation was sent to his phone.
“A friend from the village sent me the video, telling me to make sure my dad doesn’t see it,” Mourad, 43, said.
“But when he got the news, he stayed strong.”
The aerial footage shows simultaneous explosions rock a cluster of buildings on a lush hill.
Mourad’s home in Aitroun village, less than a kilometer from the border, is seen crumpling in a cloud of grey dust.
His father, an 83-year-old paediatrician, had his medical practice in the building. He had lived there with his family since shortly after Israel’s 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon ended in 2000.
The family fled the region again after the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted on September 23 after a year of cross-border fire that began with the Gaza war.
South Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, has since been pummeled by Israeli strikes.
Hezbollah says it is battling Israeli forces at close range in border villages after a ground invasion began last month.
For the first 20 years of his life, Mourad could not step foot in Aitroun because of the Israeli occupation.
He wants his two children to have “a connection to their land,” but fears the war could upend any remaining ties.
“I fear my children will be orphaned of their land, as I was in the past,” he said.
“Returning is my right, a duty in my ancestors’ memory, and for the future of my children.”
According to Lebanon’s official National News Agency, Israeli troops dynamited buildings in at least seven border villages last month.
Israel’s Channel 12 broadcast footage appearing to show one of its presenters blow up a building while embedded with soldiers in the village of Aita Al-Shaab.
On October 26, the NNA said Israel “blew up and destroyed houses... in the village of Odaisseh.”
That day, Israel’s military said 400 tons of explosives detonated in a Hezbollah tunnel, which it said was more than 1.5 kilometers (around a mile) long.
It is in Odaisseh that Lubnan Baalbaki fears he may have lost the mausoleum where his mother and father, the late painter Abdel-Hamid Baalbaki, are buried.
Their tomb is in the garden of their home, which was levelled in the blasts.
Baalbaki, 43, bought satellite images to keep an eye on the house which had been designed by his father, in polished white stone and clay tiles.
But videos circulating online later showed it had been blown up.
Lubnan has not yet found out whether the mausoleum was also damaged, adding that this was his “greatest fear.”
It would be like his parents “dying for a second time,” he said.
His Odaisseh home had a 2,000-book library and around 20 original artworks, including paintings by his father, he said.
His father had spent his life savings from his job as a university professor to build the home.
The family had preserved “his desk, his palettes, his brushes, just as he left them before he died,” Baalbaki said.
A painting he had been working on was still on an easel.
Losing the house filled him with “so much sadness” because “it was a project we’d grown up with since childhood that greatly influenced us, pushing us to embrace art and the love of beauty.”
Lebanon’s National Human Rights Commission has said “the ongoing destruction campaign carried out by the Israeli army in southern Lebanon is a war crime.”
Between October 2023 and October 2024, locations “were wantonly and systematically destroyed in at least eight Lebanese villages,” it said, basing its findings on satellite images and videos shared on social media by Israeli soldiers.
Israel’s military used “air strikes, bulldozers, and manually controlled explosions” to level entire neighborhoods — homes, schools, mosques, churches, shrines, and archaeological sites, the commission said.
Lebanese rights group Legal Agenda said blasts in Mhaibib “destroyed the bulk” of the hilltop village, “including at least 92 buildings of civilian homes and facilities.”
“You can’t blow up an entire village because you have a military target,” said Hussein Chaabane, an investigative journalist with the group.
International law “prohibits attacking civilian objects,” he said.
Should civilian objects be targeted, “the principle of proportionality should be respected, and here it is being violated.”
Lebanon PM says expanded strikes suggest Israel’s ‘rejection’ of ceasefire
- Mikati said in a statement after overnight raids hit Beirut’s southern suburbs
- US asked Lebanon to declare unilateral ceasefire with Israel, two sources say
Beirut: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday criticized Israel’s “expansion” of its attacks on his country, saying they indicated a rejection of efforts to broker a truce after more than a month of war.
“The Israeli enemy’s renewed expansion of the scope of its aggression on Lebanese regions, its repeated threats to the population to evacuate entire cities and villages, and its renewed targeting of the southern suburbs of Beirut with destructive raids are all indicators that confirm the Israeli enemy’s rejection of all efforts being made to secure a ceasefire,” Mikati said.
Mikati’s statement came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met visiting US officials to discuss a possible deal to end the war in Lebanon.
The Lebanese premier added that Israel’s diplomatic behavior suggested it was rejecting a ceasefire.
US asked Lebanon to declare unilateral ceasefire with Israel
A US envoy this week asked Lebanon to declare a unilateral ceasefire with Israel as part of an effort to help negotiations to reach a resolution for the more than year-long conflict, a senior Lebanese political source and a senior diplomat said.
The sources said the effort was communicated by US Lebanon Envoy Amos Hochstein to Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
But such an announcement was seen as a non-starter in Lebanon, the sources said, where it would likely be equated with a surrender.
“Israeli statements and diplomatic signals that Lebanon received confirm Israel’s stubbornness in rejecting the proposed solutions and insisting on the approach of killing and destruction,” Mikati said in a statement.
Since fighting in Lebanon escalated on September 23, the war has killed at least 1,829 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures.
On Wednesday, Mikati said US envoy Amos Hochstein had signalled during a phone call that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war was possible before US elections are held on November 5.
The same day, Hezbollah’s new leader said the group would agree to a ceasefire with Israel under acceptable terms, but added that a viable deal has yet to be presented.
During talks on Thursday, Israeli leader Netanyahu told US envoys Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk that any Lebanon deal must guarantee Israel’s longer-term security.
In east Lebanon, looming winter hints at stretched aid response
- Supplies running tight in Deir Al-Ahmar in eastern Lebanon
- Winter snow likely to cut off only safe route
Lebanon: Nerjes Hassan was so worried her children would fall ill from bathing in the frigid water of a displacement shelter in northeast Lebanon that she drove back into her hometown to give them a hot bath and pick up food preserves.
While at home on Wednesday morning in the town of Buday, near the eastern city of Baalbek, an Israeli air strike killed her, her husband and her two children, according to her coworkers and neighbors.
Hassan, who worked for the Lebanese Organization for Studies and Training (LOST) aid organization, was among thousands seeking refuge from Israeli strikes in the mountainous Christian town of Deir Al-Ahmar in eastern Lebanon.
The town was already hosting more than 10,000 displaced people before Israel escalated its strikes on predominantly Shiite Muslim Baalbek and nearby towns starting on Wednesday this week.
Thousands more are flowing into Deir Al-Ahmar as Israel’s bombardment continues. The needs are growing, temperatures are dropping, and supplies in the town are getting tight.
In one school now serving as a shelter, aid groups that once served two meals have cut breakfast to feed more at lunch. Townspeople have put together donation drives for winter clothes and blankets but are facing shortages, leaving displaced sharing blankets overnight.
“If we flee the bombing, are we meant to die of cold?” said Suzanne Qassem, a mother of two at one displacement center, whose home in Buday had been destroyed.
“I’m sick, I’ve been taking medicine for a week and I’m still coughing... If my son gets sick, am I going to be able to get him medicine?“
'Like a siege'
Temperatures in Deir Al-Ahmar are dropping to 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight even before winter fully sets in and the schools have no diesel to run central heating systems.
“At night, we’re shaking. I put my mattress up next to my daughter and tell her to hug me so that we can keep warm. But we’re not keeping warm,” said Neyfe Mazloum, 69.
Most families fled with just the clothes on their backs, rushing out of their homes after Israeli evacuation warnings for Baalbek and surrounding towns on Wednesday and Thursday.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israeli strikes on Lebanon over the last year in its campaign against militant group Hezbollah. That includes nearly 190,000 who have sought refuge in shelters. Others are staying with relatives, have rented out homes, or are sleeping in the streets.
Lebanon’s crisis management cell says that out of 1,130 accredited shelters, 948 have reached maximum capacity. Most of the displaced are in the districts of Mount Lebanon and Beirut — easy to reach for most aid organizations.
But Deir Al-Ahmar is much further afield.
The quickest routes run through the massive area that the Israeli military says must evacuate. To avoid it, aid groups planning to deliver supplies this week will travel further north through mountain peaks before cutting back down to the town.
Imran Riza, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, told Reuters that aid deliveries to the Baalbek region had to be postponed this week due to Israeli air strikes. Other deliveries of medical aid to Lebanon from foreign countries have been delayed due to strikes near the airport.
“Access is becoming more and more difficult. The needs are growing in Deir Al-Ahmar. It’s up to us to try to get there, and to plan a way to be able to access in it a way that is reasonably safe,” he said.
Local volunteers are worried that the looming winter will cut off the only safe route into Deir Al-Ahmar, leaving them stranded.
“That road will close with the first snow. It will be like a siege,” said Khodr Zeaiter, a volunteer with LOST. Displaced himself, he is now helping to organize aid in Deir Al-Ahmar.
Beyond the immediate concerns of food and fuel, Zeaiter is worried about the education ministry’s directive that public schools — now hosting displaced — will need to reopen for students in three weeks.
Volunteers are studying the possibility of refurbishing an abandoned school to host morning and evening classes, he said.
“We’re grateful to the people of Deir Al-Ahmar so much. It’s their solidarity that has gotten us through this. But how long that will last — who knows.”
Colm McLoughlin, Irishman who led Dubai Duty Free to become an airport retail giant, dies at age 81
- Colm McLoughlin ran Dubai Duty Free from 1983 until he retired earlier this year
- He helped lead Dubai Duty Free into becoming an airport retail behemoth generating billions of dollars
DUBAI: Colm McLoughlin, an Irishman who landed in the deserts of the United Arab Emirates and helped lead Dubai Duty Free into becoming an airport retail behemoth generating billions of dollars, has died. He was 81.
McLoughlin ran Dubai Duty Free from 1983 until he retired earlier this year, a span of over 40 years that saw Dubai grow from a creekside trading port into a modern metropolis, home to the world’s tallest building and other attractions.
And all the millions of passengers coming into Dubai International Airport, now the world’s busiest for international travel, saw the rows of electronics, cigarettes, cigars, alcohol and other goods available duty-free at his stores, hawked by a salesforce in green suit jackets, yellow ties and conversing in multiple languages.
“It’s a very Middle Eastern kind of thing,” McLoughlin told the Los Angeles Times in 1987 as he showed off its gold market. “We have to cater to a lot of tastes.”
Dubai Duty Free said in a statement that McLoughlin died Wednesday after a short illness, without elaborating. The operation’s new managing director, Ramesh Cidambi, praised McLoughlin for steering its “growth to a $2 billion dollar business with over 6,000 employees at the time of his retirement.”
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the CEO of long-haul carrier Emirates and chairman of Dubai Duty Free, offered his condolences.
“His passion, commitment and pioneering spirit have left a lasting legacy,” Sheikh Ahmed said in a post on the social platform X.
Born in Ballinasloe, Ireland, in 1943, McLoughlin joined Shannon Airport’s first-in-the-world duty-free operation in 1969. In July 1983, he came with a 10-man team to Dubai to set up the sandy airport’s duty-free operation. His six-month contract ended up stretching into 40 years.
Like the rest of the aviation industry, Dubai Duty Free took a hit during the years of the coronavirus pandemic and airline groundings. But sales have since bounced back. In 2023 alone, under McLoughlin, Dubai Duty Free sold 6 million cans of beer, 2.3 million bottles of whiskey, 2.3 million cartons of cigarettes, 10.2 million cigars and 3.3 million bottles of perfume.
One big segment has been Chinese travelers, after Dubai Duty Free worked to accept their credit cards, had staff speaking Mandarin and put in goods they wanted.
“We would be silly if we didn’t take advantage of it and try to serve them,” McLoughlin told The Associated Press in 2012.
And many a bleary-eyed traveler in Dubai’s cavernous airport tried their luck at the constant raffles being offered, whether for $1 million, a luxury automobile or a racing motorcycle.
McLoughlin also was known for Dubai Duty Free’s sponsorship of tennis and golf tournaments, as well as his work supporting Dubai’s Irish community. He received the Irish Presidential Distinguished Service Award in 2014.
“Colm McLoughlin has been an integral part of the Irish community in the UAE,” his award citation read. “Both in his highly successful professional career with Dubai Duty Free and in his leadership roles across almost every Irish organization, Colm McLouglin has played a hugely positive role in the promotion of Irish interests in the UAE.”
McLoughlin is survived by his wife Breeda, son Niall, daughters Tyna and Mandy, and their families.
Urgent need for South Sudan food aid: WFP
- WFP said it would have to rely on expensive airdrops later in the year to reach isolated communities who are most at risk
- Funds received before the end of this year would enable WFP to transport food by road during the dry season
Nairobi: The UN World Food Programme made an urgent appeal Friday for donors to provide early funding for South Sudan, where millions are on the brink of starvation.
WFP said its stores of food supplies in South Sudan were empty and that it needed $404 million to prepare assistance for 2025 amid “spiralling operational costs and hunger.”
Without early funding, WFP said it would have to rely on expensive airdrops later in the year to reach isolated communities who are most at risk.
“It can take months to turn pledged donor funds into food in the hands of hungry people in South Sudan. The country’s limited road networks are impassable for much of the year — particularly in the east and central parts of the country where food insecurity is highest,” said Shaun Hughes, WFP’s acting country director for South Sudan, in a statement.
Funds received before the end of this year would enable WFP to transport food by road during the dry season from December to April.
“Airdrops are always (a) last resort for WFP. Every dollar spent on planes is a dollar not spent on food for hungry people,” said Hughes.
WFP said it had to double deliveries by airdrop in 2024, adding $30 million to its operational costs.
It said more than half — 56 percent — of people in South Sudan face crisis levels of hunger.
This is expected to worsen due to high inflation, flooding and people fleeing conflict in neighboring Sudan.
Since gaining independence in 2011, South Sudan has remained plagued by chronic instability, violence, economic stagnation and climate disasters.
Like other aid agencies, WFP’s resources have been stretched thin by multiple global crises.
It said only 2.7 million of the 7.1 million hungry people received assistance during South Sudan’s lean season in 2024, and most received half rations.
