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Erbil, Iraq and Damascus, Syria 13 June 2020: The World Health Organization (WHO) today finalized the dispatch of more than 80 tons of health commodities and life-saving supplies, urgently needed in Syria.

The three-cargo consignment was part of the humanitarian response to support the health system in North-East Syria (NES). It was airlifted through Erbil International Airport, Kurdistan Region of Iraq to Damascus International airport in three consecutive shipments from 10-12 June.

I commend the endeavor of all colleagues who worked hard to ensure the successful delivery of this lifesaving health supplies; it will certainly support the provision of health in crisis-affected areas northeast Syria and avail hundreds of thousands of in need population there a better access to essential and first line health care services, said Dr Adham R. Ismail WHO Representative in Iraq. WHO Iraq has been active in coordinating cross-border support to Syria for more than a year now and we will continue to assist any request from our colleagues in WHO Syria Office aimed at relieving the suffering and saving lives in neighboring Syria despite the immense challenges, Dr. Ismail added.

I am proud to be part of WHO, the Organization that works across the globe and can bring its full force to support those in need. These shipments demonstrate the collaborative work across our offices in Iraq and Syria, guided by our Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. I would like to thank all colleagues who contributed to the successful delivery of these shipment which will boost the provision of essential health service delivery in conflict affected areas of the northeast Syria, said Dr. Akjemal Magtymova, WHO Representative and Head of Mission in Syria. Also immense thanks to WFP team for airlifting the shipment. This joint intercountry collaboration reflects the great teamwork and humanitarian spirit that spans across the UN system, the spirit which we all share and work hard towards maintaining, she added.

The cargo includes a variety of health kits ranging between trauma kits sufficient to manage 4,300 cases; as well as 11 Cholera kits (IDDK), 30 non-communicable diseases (NCD) kits, 26 surgical kits and 478 inter-agency emergency health kits (IEHK) providing medicines, medical supplies and consumables enough to treat over one million cases. The timely arrival of these supplies has provided a glimmer of hope for people in need and boosted the efforts of health facilities in NES to deliver health care services to as many patients as possible. It will satisfy the essential health needs of more than 1.6 million people there.

The consignment is part of the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis funded through the generous contribution of the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO).

For more information, please contact:Ajyal Sultany, Communications Officer, +964 7740 892 878, sultanya@who.int

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WHO airlifts over 80 tons of emergency medical supplies from Iraq to meet the increasing health needs in north east Syria [EN/AR] - Syrian Arab...

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Even as both countries confront the coronavirus pandemic, the United States and Iran are competing for influence in Iraqboth seeking inroads with the newly formed government of Iraqi prime minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi and the general populace. In fact, Iran has sought to increase its influence in Iraq ever since the United States chose to topple Saddam Husseins regime in 2003 (ironically, Hussein was a counterweight to Iran in the region). As Iraqs neighbor and a Shia Muslim country (Iraq is majority Shia), Iran and Iraq will always have geographic, ethnic, cultural, religious, and economic (trade between the two countries is estimated at $12 billion with plans to expand to $20 billion) ties. The salient question is: Does Irans influence in Iraq jeopardize U.S. national security? The answer is: no.

First, Iran is not a direct military threat to the United States. The Pentagons fiscal year 2020 budget is $738 billion, which is more than one-and-a-half the size of Irans total economy ($463 billion in 20192020). Military spending is even more lopsided. The United States eclipses Iran ($13 billion in 2018) by more than 50-to-1.

In terms of actual military capability, Iran pales in comparison to the United States. The United States. has 1.3 million active-duty military personnel compared to Irans just more than five hundred thousand. The U.S. Air Force has more than 1,400 fighter aircraft compared to 350 for Iran. The U.S. Navy consists of more than four hundred ships, including aircraft carriers, cruisers, and destroyers. Iran has about four hundred ships, but nothing like a U.S. aircraft carrier. Its largest ship is a frigate (six total), which is smaller than the U.S. Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (more than sixty in the fleet), and the majority of ships in the Iranian navy are small patrol craft.

But its more than differences in numbers. The U.S. military is the most modern military in the world and is technologically more advanced and sophisticated. For example, many of Irans aircraft include decades-old former Soviet fighters and even former U.S. aircraft dating back to the 1970s. Whereas the U.S. Navy is a blue water navy that can operate anywhere in the world, Irans navy is a green water navy that can only operate regionally. In other words, Irans military is simply outmatched by the United States. Moreover, Iran does not have a power projection capability for its military to reach America.

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But what if Iran becomes a nuclear power?

Though Iran recently put a military satellite into orbit and is making progress towards having intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability, its longest-range operational ballistic missile is the Shahab-3 with a range of thirteen hundred kilometers (about eight hundred milesfar short of the more than three thousand miles needed for ICBM range).

Second, even if Iran is eventually able to build a nuclear warhead that can be deployed on an ICBM (not a trivial feat), that does not mean it is an existential threat to America. Just as is currently the case vis--vis North Korea, the larger U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal is a powerful deterrent. Iran knows that using a nuclear weapon against the United States would likely be met with a devastating retaliation. In other words, the mullahs in Tehran would have to be suicidal. Despite often bold and blustery rhetoric towards the United States, they have demonstrated they are much more interested in survival and maintaining power.

But isnt Iran a terrorist threat?

Iran supports Hezbollaha Shiite terrorist organization that threatens Israel but is not a direct threat to the United States (Hezbollah has not attacked U.S. targets since the 1980s, when it bombed the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon in retaliation for the U.S. military presence there). But Iran is not a natural ally of either Al Qaeda or ISIS, which are both Sunni extremist organizations. At best, Iran has had a tenuous relationship with Al Qaeda, but not a formal alliance and has not sponsored Al Qaeda attacks against the United States and Iran actually worked to expel ISIS from Iraq.

If Iran is not a threat to U.S. national security, then neither is its influence in Iraq. As such, whatever one thought of the wisdom of the original U.S. mission to invade Iraq in 2003, there is no compelling reason for the U.S. military (about five thousand troops) to remain in Iraq. The subsequent mission of denying ISIS a caliphate in Iraq has been accomplished. Even Trump agrees its time to hand the fight against ISIS over to Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Charles V. Pea is a senior fellow with Defense Priorities. He has more than twentyfive years of experience as a policy and program analyst and senior manager, supporting both the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Pea is the former director of defensepolicy studies at the Cato Institute and author of Winning the UnWar: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism.

Image: Reuters

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Iranian Influence in Iraq Is not a Threat to U.S. National Security - Yahoo News

Baghdad, Iraq; 14 June 2020 - The Government of Australia has provided AUD 866,000 to support the work of UNFPA in Iraq. The funding will provide assistance to 38,000 women and girls, in Duhok and Nineveh Governorates over the next year.The new contribution will primarily support Syrian refugees who arrived in Iraq in 2019 as a result of the military operations in north-eastern Syria. Women and girls, survivors of genderbased violence; and men, as allies of the prevention and response to gender-based issues, will benefit from prevention and response services, such as psychosocial support and case management.The funding will also allow UNFPA to procure and pre-position 8,000 dignity kits for women and girls of reproductive age, in particular, refugee and internally displaced populations. Australia is pleased to continue to work with UNFPA to ensure the reproductive health needs of women and girls affected by conflict are being met, and work towards a world where women and girls can live free from violence, said Dr Joanne Loundes, the Ambassador of Australia to Iraq.Acknowledging the contribution, Dr Oluremi Sogunro, UNFPA Representative to Iraq, said: Australia has been a consistent and reliable partner for UNFPAs work in Iraq. Australia has given UNFPA women and girls in Iraq, through UNFPA, to a total of AUD 16.8 million since October 2014. We couldnt be more grateful for this trust in our work. With this new commitment, Iraq is a step closer to ensuring no woman or girl is left behind in Iraq.

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, delivers a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young persons potential is fulfilled.For more information or media inquiries please contact: Salwa Moussa, Communications Specialist, smoussa@unfpa.org

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Australia contributes AUD 866000 to UNFPA Refugee Interventions in Iraq [EN/AR] - Iraq - ReliefWeb

LOREAUVILLE Sgt. Edward Gaddison III was welcomed back home to Loreauville Sunday afternoon with a parade of family, friends and members of the community after he returned from an 11-month tour with the Army National Guard in Iraq.

A steady stream of cars rolled down Main Street in Loreauville, led by a fire truck with siren blaring. Cars honked their horns with passengers leaning out of windows or standing up through sunroofs to greet Gaddison and family.

Gaddison's wife Calandra, 29, said she and their children son Royal, 4, and daughter Kenzley, 3, missed him and were glad to see him again. The family picked Eddie Gaddison, 29, up at the airport on Wednesday.

"Most definitely (the kids missed him)," Calandra Gaddison said. "Very much."

Gaddison said the unit's mission was basically rebuilding a base. He had volunteered to go with a different unit than his for the mission, and that unit won't be redeployed for five years. His unit is set to be deployed in July. He hasn't learned yet where he stands as far as being deployed again in July or if the time he served already means he won't have to be deployed.

For now, Gaddison is happy to be back home with his family.

"Yes, really glad," he said as the parade of cars reached Loreauville High School, where he and his wife and children watched and greeted those driving by slowly.

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Parade of cars welcomes soldier back to Loreauville after tour in Iraq - The Daily Iberian

We know that a bad economy tends to hurt the electoral prospects of incumbent presidential candidates. But what about a crisis of national security or American safety? Although the coronavirus pandemic is unprecedented in most ways, as is the Trump presidency itself, there may be historical lessons from other situations.

Im thinking of one in particular: The American experience in Iraq leading up to the face-off of 2004 between George W. Bush and John Kerry. It provides a cautionary note for those who assume that because President Trump has made numerous mistakes during the coronavirus crisis, he will be the underdog come the fall.

In spring 2004, it looked like a tight race, and the challenger led the incumbent in some early polls. Yet Mr. Bush ultimately won the fall election by some three million popular votes and by an Electoral College tally of 286 to 251. The economy was not in collapse at that time, as it is today. But the nations top national safety and security problem the Iraq war was in a bad state and getting worse. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in early April 2003 and Mr. Bushs infamous mission accomplished speech aboard the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier on May 1, Iraq spiraled consistently downward over the months leading up to Election Day.

By the summer of 2003, it was becoming apparent that resistance forces in Iraq were not just what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called dead enders leftovers from the Hussein inner circle who would soon be rounded up. The first big car bombings took place in August, taking the lives of a top Iraqi cleric and the United Nations special representative to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. U.S. fatality rates remained stubbornly in the range of about 30 to 40 troops a month. Earlier predictions by Bush administration officials that most American forces would soon be home were recognized as fantasies. As the year ended, U.S. monthly troop fatality rates climbed into the 40s, even after Mr. Hussein was captured.

Then 2004 hit, with a vengeance. The defining moment was the April fighting in Falluja and Ramadi a month during which 131 American troops lost their lives, and four contractors were killed and dismembered for all the world to see. Through the rest of the year, until Election Day in the United States, American troop loss rates ranged from 50 to 70 or more each month. The estimated size of the resistance, as we tabulated in Brookingss Iraq Index, quadrupled to 20,000 in the course of the year though no one knew the actual numbers. American troop numbers in country, having declined modestly to 122,000 over the course of the year from about 150,000 in the spring of 2003, returned to 140,000 in 2004.

The official U.S.-led and U.N.-approved occupation of Iraq ended in June 2004. But any sense of liberation among Iraqis did not produce stability in the months that followed.

Yet Mr. Bush won the U.S. election. He did so after 18 straight months of bad news in what was his signature foreign policy initiative. The invasion of Iraq was a war of choice started with poor preparation for the likelihood of chaos and violence after the overthrow of Mr. Hussein. How could this happen, and what are the implications for today?

First, although virtually everything the Bush administration had tried up to that point had failed, the president did not give up in Iraq. New theories of the case were developed for salvaging a very bad situation or at least minimizing the American role going forward. Even if we knew by then that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction or clear ties to any of the Sept. 11 hijackers, the administration increasingly justified the Iraq mission as part of a larger democracy-and-freedom agenda. Nor was Iraq without some hopeful signs that could be trumpeted in a political campaign. Electricity production was back up to prewar levels, with reasonable flows of oil resuming as well. Three Iraqi votes were being planned for 2005 first to create an interim government, then to bless a new constitution, then to elect a regular government.

I believe that John Kerry would have handled Iraq much differently and more effectively if he had been president in 2003 and 2004. But that was not the question before voters in November 2004 just as what Joe Biden might have done differently to date about the coronavirus will not be the main question in November. Debates about the past are fair political game, but they are rarely conclusive in the middle of a crisis. Americans want to know about the plans going forward, not so much the mistakes already made. And Mr. Kerrys ideas about Iraq going forward in late 2004 were not radically different from Mr. Bushs.

By Election Day, Mr. Kerry had been tarred with the flip-flopper image. The Bush team sowed doubt about Mr. Kerrys leadership skills and his ability to take Iraq in a better direction come 2005.

What should this historical analogy instruct the Biden team to do in 2020? At least one thing seems clear: In choosing a vice-presidential candidate, Mr. Biden should prioritize how his political partner will help him develop, articulate and ultimately carry out a forward-looking, comprehensive plan for the chief threat facing the country today.

Michael E. OHanlon is a senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

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Joe Biden Needs to Learn an Urgent Lesson From the 2004 Election - The New York Times