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COLUMBUS, Ga. A pair of doctors from Columbus traveled to Iraq on a medical mission earlier this year. What made it even more special, the doctors are father and son.

Its not often that you get to hear a presentation from a pair of doctors who are father and son. Folks at St. Francis Hospital got such a treat last week.

When Orthopedic Surgeon Lee McCluskey and his son, Dr. Leland McCluskey, Jr. Talked about their recent medical mission trip to Iraq. They left in late January and spent over two weeks in war-torn city of Mosul. Thats where the Christian-based organization Samaritans purse has a field hospital.

Samaritans Purse has been in country in Iraq for several years doing food distribution and other ministries. But the medical ministry came as a result of the fighting in Mosul, says Dr. Leland McCluskey.

The McCluskeys thought they would be treating military patients, but that wasnt the case.

Most of them were women and children, citizens that were in Mosul and were injured either as human shields or were just injured from mortar wounds where ISIS had targeted that group of people, says Dr. Lee McCluskey.

Lee says the experience opened up the door to friendship.

We had some really sweet times just being able to interact with the patients and people we worked with over there. It was just a big opportunity to really show Gods love to people, saysDr. Lee McCluskey.

The McCluskeys have been back now for about three months, and its given them time to reflect.

It changed me in that Im much more grateful for just how safe we are here in the U.S. We dont have to drive down the road and worry about an IED going off or a mortar hitting our house, saysDr. Leland McCluskey.

Leland says the chance to go on this mission trip with his dad was one hell cherish the rest of his life.

Dad has been a better example than I could ever imagine. Hes not to mention a great orthopedic surgeon, but as a father and a Christian hes a great mentor to me as well. So I know I have big shoes to fill. I would like to continue to do the same work that he is doing overseas when Im done with my training, saysDr. Leland McCluskey.

Excerpt from:
Columbus doctor and son travel to treat patients in Iraq - WRBL

BAGHDAD Just over 10 years ago, Qasim al-Araji was being arrested a second time by American forces in Iraq. The charges were serious: smuggling arms used to attack U.S. troops and involvement in an assassination cell at the height of sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq following the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Now, he heads of one of Iraq's most powerful ministries.

With credentials that include training from Iranian special operators known as the Quds force and time spent as a guerrilla and militia commander, Iraq's Interior Minister al-Araji is now trumpeting his respect for human rights and support for the U.S.-led coalition in the fight against the Islamic State group. But the forces he now commands have a long history of Shiite domination and abuse, factors that partially contributed to the rise in support for IS in Iraq.

Back in 2007, al-Araji was held by the United States for 23 months. He spent most of his captivity at Bucca prison, including long periods in solitary confinement.

Today, at the head of one of Iraq's most powerful ministries, al-Araji laughs off questions about lingering hostility toward U.S. forces.

"That's life," he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press, his manner boisterous and unpolished as he shuttled between meetings at a small Interior Ministry office inside Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone. "I was their prisoner and now I meet with their ambassador."

Al-Araji's office confirmed that he met with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq within days of taking office to express his support for the U.S. role in the fight against IS and to request additional support for his ministry and forces.

Following a controversial March 17 strike in Mosul that killed more than 100 civilians, al-Araji took a rare public position for an Iraqi politician: he defended the U.S.-led coalition and the use of airstrikes in Mosul on the floor of Iraq's parliament.

"My most important goal is to bring security to Iraq," al-Araji said, "and (to achieve that) Iraq is in need of the friendship of the Americans."

Under al-Araji, the Interior Ministry has already received more support from the U.S.-led coalition.

In the fight for Mosul, greater coalition air and ground support for Iraq's federal police who fall under the command of the Interior Ministry have allowed them to take a lead role in the city's west.

The U.S.-led coalition is also training and arming local and border police across Iraq, other forces that now fall under al-Araji's command.

But Iraq's police are some of the same forces who were accused of using excessive force, carrying out mass detentions of Sunni males and routinely torturing detainees in the lead-up to the summer of 2014, according to human rights groups and a 2013 State Department report on human rights practices in Iraq. The abuses contributed to Sunni resentment of central government rule and fueled support for IS extremists in Iraq's Sunni north and west.

Al-Araji, who spent years in exile in Iran, first traveled there as a teenager in the 1980s and was trained by Iranian special forces as a guerrilla fighter to resist Saddam Hussein's regime. In the Iran-Iraq war, he fought on Iran's side. Al-Araji describes his years in Iran as a fighter as formative.

After the fall of Baghdad in 2003, al-Araji and thousands of other fighters poured across the border into Iraq.

"We didn't have any military activities," he said of his first days back in Iraq, "but we were supporting the overthrow of the regime. The Americans didn't understand, we were both working for the same end."

On April 19 that year he was arrested by U.S. forces on suspicion of commanding militia forces, held for 85 days and then released on insufficient evidence. In 2004, following the fall of Saddam, al-Araji said he fully transitioned to politics, running for local office in Baghdad's Wasit province.

But three years later he was arrested again by U.S. forces. A secret cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Jan. 19, 2007 published by WikiLeaks stated that U.S. forces "had good information based on multiple sources," that al-Araji was "involved in smuggling and distribution" of explosives that were being used to target U.S. forces and that he was "also suspected in involvement in an assassination cell."

After nearly two years, al-Araji was again released on insufficient evidence.

"I believe every difficult stage leaves something inside a human being," al-Araji said. "Being a prisoner taught me patience, it made me stronger."

Al-Araji returned to local politics, rose through the ranks of the Badr organization and became a parliamentary bloc leader.

After the fall of Mosul, Badr's military wing closely supported by Iran racked up a string of high profile victories against IS in 2014. In the months that followed, Badr and the group's leader Hadi al-Amiri rode the wave of those victories for political gain in Baghdad and secured de-facto control of the country's Interior Ministry.

Badr member Mohammed al-Ghabban was appointed to lead the ministry in October 2014, but was forced to resign in July 2016 amid mounting anger following a massive truck bombing claimed by IS in central Baghdad that killed more than 300 people.

Al-Araji appointed in January takes over the ministry at a critical time for the country's security forces who are under increasing pressure to eliminate the last pockets of IS control, prevent an insurgency from bubbling up in the wake of territorial victories, and repair their reputation in Iraq's Sunni heartland.

British Ambassador to Iraq Frank Baker told the AP he talks to al-Araji regularly. He described him as an "an Iraqi patriot" who "faces many challenges but is doing a very good job for Iraq and the Iraqi people."

Looking back at his career, al-Arajii says some things about him have changed.

"With my current position comes great responsibility," he said, explaining that because of that he considers the choices he makes carefully.

"But as a person, I have not changed, I'm the same."

Link:
Former US prisoner now leading Iraq's Interior ministry - Fox News

Financial Times

Iraq fears for its future once Isis falls Financial Times Nineveh, Iraq's second-largest province, is rich in oil and fertile land. But its complex ethnic make-up means conflicts, many of which predate Isis, are hard to resolve and relatively easy to reignite. When, almost a century ago, British officer TE ... Whatever Happened to Trump's Plan to Defeat ISIS?Slate Magazine all 7 news articles »

Read the original:
Iraq fears for its future once Isis falls - Financial Times

By Ahmed Aboulenein | SOUTHWEST OF MOSUL, Iraq

SOUTHWEST OF MOSUL, Iraq The Islamic State fighters herded a group of civilians into a house in the city of Mosul and locked them inside as Iraqi forces advanced. Moments later, the militants entered through a window, lay low for a few minutes, then fired their weapons.

The plan was simple. They would draw attention to the house by firing from the windows, then move to an adjacent building through a hole in the wall, in hope of goading coalition jets flying above to strike the house.

What the militants did not realize was that U.S. advisers partnered with Iraqi troops were watching the whole thing on an aerial drone feed. No air strike was called - and the propaganda coup Islamic State would have reaped from the deaths of innocent people was averted.

"We automatically knew what they were trying to do. They were trying to bait us into destroying this building," said U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel James Browning. "This is the game that we play, this is the challenge that we go through every day."

The challenge is only increasing as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces squeeze the militants into a smaller and smaller area of Mosul, where they are now trapped along with several hundred thousand civilians.

"There is nowhere to go.... the battlefield is much more complicated with the amount of civilians that are moving," Browning said.

The risks are high: more than 100 civilians were accidentally killed in a single airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in March.

FINAL PHASE

After opening up a new front in northwest Mosul last week in order to stretch the militants' defenses, Iraqi forces say the battle for Mosul is now in its final phase.

U.S. servicemen are visible near the frontlines advising the Iraqis as they advance into the last handful of districts controlled by Islamic State, facing a barrage of suicide car bombs and sniper fire.

Browning, a battalion commander from the 82nd Airborne Division, is one of more than 5,000 U.S. service members currently deployed in Iraq to "advise and assist" security forces that collapsed when Islamic State overran Mosul nearly three summers ago.

It is a much smaller footprint than the 170,000 troops deployed at the height of the nine-year occupation that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, during which more than 4,000 American soldiers were killed.

Having extricated U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, the White House is loath to re-enter a costly conflict that would prove unpopular with the public.

For Browning, who was deployed to Iraq in 2008, the nature of the U.S. role is clearly different.

"Whereas before it was me leading fights and I would ask my Iraqi partners to come with me, now... he leads the fight and I follow him," he said. "The biggest difference is that we are no longer in a combat role."

Since the Mosul offensive began last October, the U.S. role has evolved so that American forces are now partnered with Iraqi troops at a lower level, reducing the time it takes them to respond to Islamic State.

That means company commanders under Browning are also partnered with brigade commanders who report to his Iraqi opposite number, Lieutenant General Qassem al-Maliki.

They hold daily discussions on operations and determine what U.S. forces can do to help, which may involve providing imagery, intelligence, air strikes, or ground fire.

The Iraqis also provide human intelligence that the U.S. forces will corroborate in order to identify targets and determine the best approach to attacking them.

Browning lives on the same base as Maliki, commander of the Iraqi 9th division, making it easier to finetune battle plans.

"Everything I am trying to do is try to shape the battlefield for him".

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Isabel Coles and Mark Trevelyan)

CAIRO The Egyptian air force destroyed a group of vehicles that crossed into Egypt from Libya loaded with smuggled weapons, the military said on Monday.

ALGIERS Libya's neighbors and the United Nations on Monday voiced their support for a meeting held last week between the North African country's main rival figures, the head of the U.N.-backed government, Fayez Seraj, and eastern commander Khalifa Haftar.

TUNIS Protests over jobs and development in southern and central Tunisia have halted production at or shut the fields of two foreign energy companies in a new challenge to the country's Prime Minister Youssef Chahed.

Continue reading here:
Civilians complicate final phase of Mosul campaign: US commander - Reuters

Diego Ibarra Snchez/MEMO

Portrait of 11 year-old Abdulrahman at the MSF Post-Op Hospital, south of Mosul, Iraq. He was injured by shrapnel when an explosion occurred in the street as he was going to a food distribution point.

While MSF continues to provide lifesaving emergency and surgical care to men, women and children wounded in the ongoing battle for Mosul, northern Iraq, our teams are now extending their response in order to cover gaps in hospital care, left by the severe destruction of the local health system.

Most hospitals in Mosul have been damaged or destroyed, said Marc van der Mullen, MSF Head of Mission. In West Mosul, medical services are severely disrupted and the ongoing fighting is causing many injuries and deaths. In East Mosul, medical facilities slowly get back on their feet but there are gaps in medical services such as post-operative care, mother and child care, and inpatient care so MSF is working on addressing them.

MSF is currently working in six medical facilities in and around Mosul, providing lifesaving emergency and surgical care, including mother and child health care as well as providing long term post-operative care to those in need of follow up and rehabilitation following major surgery. The teams are also providing care for children suffering malnutrition, as well as primary healthcare and mental healthcare in the newly established camps for people fleeing Mosul.

Through a strategy of advanced medical posts, which can be quickly opened and moved according to the rapidly changing medical needs, MSF has so far worked to provide life-saving stabilisation and emergency care to people wounded in fighting in west Mosul. During April, MSF has received 175 patients in our two posts in western Mosul, and referred them to other medical facilities with surgical capacity, such as the MSF trauma hospital in Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul.

MSF is working on broadening its medical services and setting up facilities with surgical capacity, including for emergency maternal care, as well as an inpatient paediatric department. The objective is to fill urgent gaps in medical services to provide for the most vulnerable population groups until health authorities resume services.

Hundreds of thousands of people are still trapped in West Mosul. The patients who make it to our facilities tell us that water and food is running low, that the few supplies available are extremely expensive, and that access to health care is almost impossible.

In East Mosul, MSF is working in a former retirement home transformed into an emergency room, operating theatre, and maternity and inpatient departments. Since the hospital opened at the beginning of March, the team has seen 4,376 patients, over half of whom were emergency cases, and performed 93 caesarean sections.

Also in East Mosul, MSF opened a 15-bed maternity unit on 19 March to provide basic emergency services allowing women to deliver safely. Since opening, the team has safely brought 130 babies into the world.

In a third facility in eastern Mosul hospital, MSF has opened a 24/7 emergency room, that has so far received 336 patients. The team is currently setting up a surgical unit and a 32-bed ward.

Diego Ibarra Snchez/MEMO

MSF staff member Patricia changes 5 year old Faten's bandages at the MSF Post-Op hospital south of Mosul, Iraq. Faten was injured when she was playing in a garden.

Since its opening, 1,904 patients have been received in MSFs field trauma hospital in Hammam al-Alil, which was the closest surgical facility to West Mosul for more than a month. Fifty five percent of the patients were women and children, and 82% were war-wounded. To date the MSF team has performed 160 major surgical procedures. MSF has also begun supporting the primary healthcare centre in Hammam al-Alil, carrying out about 500 consultations per day both for the local population as well as for the people displaced from Mosul hosted in a nearby camp.

At the hospital in Qayyarah, MSF treats medical and surgical emergencies. Since January, more than 5,657 patients were admitted to the emergency room. The team in the emergency room sees patients wounded in airstrikes and explosions or by mortar fire. A four bed intensive care unit was recently opened to provide care for burns victims, patients in shock, and other critical cases.

As the Iraqi army advanced into west Mosul, families were able to escape. MSF teams started seeing children with acute malnutrition, as a result of food shortages in besieged West Mosul. To treat malnourished children, mainly babies under six months, MSF has set up a 12-bed intensive therapeutic feeding centre in Qayyarah hospital. In Hammam al-Alil, MSF is running an ambulatory nutrition programme and refers the most severe malnutrition cases to Quayyarah hospital.

With thousands of people severely wounded in the fighting, many are going to face long months of convalescence and rehabilitation. Long-term post-operative care will therefore be one of the main medical needs for the next weeks and months.

A persons recovery does not end with their trauma surgery. They often need many months of therapy, both physical and psychological to allow them to rebuild their shattered lives. Our patients will bear the scars of the battle of Mosul for the rest of their lives but our team is helping them to adjust to their new reality, and hopefully return them to their families as healthy as possible, said Chiara Burzio, MSFs Medical Coordinator.

In Hamdaniya, southeast of Mosul, MSF is providing long-term post-operative care with rehabilitation and psychosocial support in the hospital, in collaboration with Handicap International. Since 15 March, MSF has admitted 100 patients, about 45% of whom are women and children. This 40-bed facility is the only facility providing such a package of long- term post-operative care in all of Ninewa province.

According to the UN, over 500,000 people have been displaced from Mosul. In 17 sites hosting such displaced people, to the west of Erbil, MSF mobile teams are providing primary health care, treatment for chronic diseases (mainly diabetes and hypertension) as well as psychological and psychiatric care. The mental health programme focuses on severe cases and its activities include psychological and psychiatric consultations, group therapy sessions, psychosocial counselling and therapy for children. Since the beginning of the year, the team has carried out 14,098 medical consultations and 8,238 mental health consultations.

Originally posted here:
Iraq: Crisis update Mosul - May 2017 - Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) International