Mediaboss Marketing

It got real for his newlywed wife when Tim Darms showed her plans for the ward set aside for ISIS terrorists in the Iraq field hospital he would help build.

It got real for him on his first day at the site, 15 kilometers outside siege-wracked Mosul, when he felt the percussion of two bombs exploding in the city.

"You didn't feel the explosion," he said. "It was more like a sound you could feel." He turned to see smoke mushrooming in the sky.

Darms, 28, is a project engineer for Water Mission, the North Charleston-based nonprofit dedicated to providing safe drinking water to people in developing countries and disaster areas. The organization was asked by Samaritan's Purse to support construction of its emergency facility in Mosul, Iraq.

The Purse, like the Mission, is a Christian international relief organization. The hospital is treating civilians and soldiers from all sides. Darms' job was to engineer safe water equipment and lines.

Mosul was a city of more than 1 million people when the deadly terrorist group overran it in 2014. Iraqi troops, supported by coalition forces including U.S. military, have battled to re-take it since October, in a campaign considered the largest since the Iraq war and the largest under way anywhere on the planet.

On Thursday, the coalition made a significant gain, wresting control of the airport.

About half of all casualties so far have been civilians. The first ones to come to the hospital as Darms worked were a woman with her grade-school-age daughter. The girl had been disemboweled by an IED, an improvised explosive device.

The engineers' escort was a tough Iraqi who could fend for them. Darms remembers the hurt in the man's eye as he rushed to find supplies that doctors were calling for to help the girl. She later died.

Another mom came in with two daughters. Each girl had her left side laced with shrapnel. They had been sitting on the same side at a dinner table when a car bomb went off outside.

Despite the executions, other atrocities and refugees fleeing, more than a half-million people still live in Mosul. Darms was struck when he arrived how the highway was busy with commerce and travel in and out of the city. The day before, ISIS forces fired on a gravel truck supplying the construction.

"Everything is more complex than portrayed," Darms said. "There's still an economy. People are still living their lives," he said. But "in a moment you could lose half your family."

Madisson and Tim Darms had been married half a year when operations vice president Seth Womble, his low-key boss, came into the engineering room at the North Charleston headquarters last fall, and began his usual spiel, "What about this..." Then he said, "Who wants to go to Mosul for Christmas?"

The risks were as daunting as they were obvious. But a job that entails responding to disasters is inherently risky. Part of the hiring process at the mission is to instill that expectation, Womble said. Darms, like all his people, was ready. They work at Water Mission because of a calling to help where they are needed most.

Still, "Iraq was a little different. It was our first time in a war zone," Womble said. He told Darms, "you might want to check with your wife before you miss your first Christmas."

Madisson Darms, though, is a physical therapist, and the calling is mutual for the West Ashley couple. She said if God could send his son to help at Christmas, she could send her husband.

"She's awesome. She's a wonderful wife," Darms said.

The month in Iraq wasn't easy. Darms, quiet-voiced and even-keeled, tried to share when the couple communicated, but at first he couldn't bring himself to tell her a few details: how a car bomb had gone off a mile from the Erbil, Iraq, site where they prepped to build the hospital or how he was asked to redesign the specs to include a chemical weapon decontamination shower.

When he returned home, though, the couple sat together as he shared it all, showed her photographs of the people who had befriended him, the faces of the two Iraqi engineers one Muslim and one Christian who had worked side by side with him. And the horrors.

"Just being sad about it," he said. While Darms trained his replacement the day before he left, a drone flew overhead. The security forces fired at it but missed. The next day, he heard after he returned home, two rockets exploded in an empty field about a quarter mile from the hospital and the friends he left behind.

"Being home and hearing that was the first time I was overwhelmed by fear," he said.

Would he go back? The nod is understated, businesslike. "Yeah." Madisson and he both plan to go overseas, somewhere with the greatest need and the best fit for their skills, he said. "The Lord leading."

Reach Bo Petersen Reporter at Facebook, @bopete on Twitter or 1-843-937-5744.

See the rest here:
North Charleston engineer helps build hospital in war-wracked Mosul, Iraq - Charleston Post Courier

KIRKUK, Iraq Four bombs went off on Saturday near a minor pipeline from an oilfield close to the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, security and oil industry sources said.

The pipeline delivers crude from the Bai Hassan oilfield to a degassing station in Kirkuk, though pumping had been halted for maintenance at the time of the blasts, security sources and officials at the state-run North Oil Company said.

"Four bombs blew up near a pipeline in Bai Hassan oilfield this morning, causing a fire. Firefighters are trying to put out the blaze," said an oil engineer.

One member of the Kurdish security forces was killed and two were wounded when three more bombs exploded as they approached the location of the first blast, a Kurdish security member said.

(Reporting by Mustafa Mahmoud; writing by Ahmed Rasheed; editing by David Clarke)

BEIRUT Militants attacked two Syrian security offices in the western city of Homs on Saturday with guns and suicide bombers, killing at least 42 people including a senior officer, a war monitor said.

North Korea is evading international sanctions with a sophisticated network of overseas companies, enabled partly by its continued access to the international banking system, says a forthcoming United Nations report seen by Reuters.

SHANGHAI A fierce blaze at a hotel in southeastern China killed 10 people, the official Xinhua news agency said in a post on its official microblog on Saturday.

View original post here:
Bombs target oil pipeline in Iraq's Kirkuk, one killed - Reuters

After decades of conflict, Iraq is now one of the most contaminated countries in the world. Since early January, Handicap International's weapons clearance teams have identified, collected, and destroyed more than 1,000 explosives in the governorates of Kirkuk and Diyala, areas severely affected by the war.

We have trained several specialized teamseach containing about thirty peopleto destroy explosive remnants of war in two areas of Iraq, explains Alberto Casero Gmez-Pastrana, Handicap Internationals chief of operations for mine action in Iraq.

Our teams conduct several types of operations and determine the safest way to destroy explosive devices. For example, we do grouped disposals when destroying dozens of explosive devices in areas identified and secured in advance, Alberto explains.

But some explosive devices cant be moved and have to be destroyed where they were originally placed. These situations end up being a long process because we have to destroy the devices one-by-one.

Despite the outstanding progress our teams have made since starting operations, the village of Basheerin the governorate of Kirkukis still highly contaminated. In 2015, the Islamic State captured Basheer, and six hundred families fled.

In May 2016, the army retook the village and since then, some 60 families have returned to their homes. Our teams are committed to giving the land back to the people of Iraq, and in the meantime, keep them safe in their local communities by educating both children and adults on the dangers of explosive weapons through risk education.

Learn more about Handicap International's work in Iraq and read the latest Syrian/Iraqi Crisis Situation Report (Feb. 2017).

Visit link:
Clearing land in Iraq - Reliefweb

O n the night of April 12, 2003, Australias military commander in the Middle East, Brigadier Maurie McNarn, was woken by a phone call telling him that a RAAF Hercules would soon fly into Baghdad airport to deliver medical supplies for the Iraqi capitals looted hospitals.

The caller was his boss, then Chief of the Defence Force General Peter Cosgrove. Nevertheless, McNarn protested, saying the airport was not secure and there was no safe way to distribute the supplies to 40 hospitals across the crumbling capital. Cosgrove, now Sir Peter, the nations Governor-General, told him to make it happen. It was being announced to the press in 30 minutes.

Operation Baghdad Assist went ahead and became a media triumph for then prime minister John Howard and Sir Peter amid a deeply unpopular war. The Hercules, carrying three journalists and 13 commandos to provide protection, was the first Australian plane to land in Baghdad after the invasion a month earlier.

But the medical supplies never made it out of the airport. They rotted. A second planeload was diverted to the city of Nasiriyah, whose hospitals were already relatively well stocked. McNarn would go on to dismiss the whole thing as a photo opportunity. Special forces commander Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Burr, who learned of the operation on CNN, was equally upset, writing in his diary that the operation made a mockery of our approach.

Its one of many startling revelations in a 572-page, declassified internal report on the Iraq War obtained by Fairfax Media under freedom of information laws. Written between 2008 and 2011 by Dr Albert Palazzo from Defences Directorate of Army Research and Analysis, it is by far the most comprehensive assessment of our involvement in the war. Originally classified Secret, it was finally released last week after more than 500 redactions.

The report concludes that Howard joined US president George W. Bush in invading Iraq solely to strengthen Australias alliance with the US. Howards and later Kevin Rudds claims of enforcing UN resolutions, stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction and global terrorism, even rebuilding Iraq after the invasion, are dismissed as mandatory rhetoric.

Advertisement

Howard and Sir Peter, facing domestic political pressure, ensured that Australian lives were exposed to as little risk as possible. The result was a contribution that was of only modest military use and, in many cases, made little sense. Politically, delivering the right force was secondary to the vital requirement of it just being there but it led some American military officers to grumble that Australia was providing a series of headquarters.

It was managed from the top with a keen eye for the politics and the public relations, yet frustrated commanders often asked what they were doing in Iraq and many took to writing their own mission statements. One commander wryly summed up his time in Iraq thus: We did some shit for a while and things didnt get any worse.

The report, which Defence says is an unofficial history that represents the authors own views, is the product of three years work and includes more than 75 interviews with military figures, correspondence with other sources, and full access to classified documents.

Palazzo planned it as an unclassified book to be published by the Army History Unit, aimed at teaching junior officers about the Iraq War, but it grew into a larger, classified project that Palazzo hoped would be distributed internally, including to senior Defence leaders.

That did not happen. Instead the report was shelved.

Its release comes as Australia once again ponders the US alliance in the era of Donald Trump, with Australian troops back in Iraq, and with the Pentagon poised to release a new game plan to defeat the Islamic State terror group that could involve asking for more help from Canberra.

Prime Minister John Howard and President George W. Bush in 2003. Photo: AP

See more here:
Planning for war - The Sydney Morning Herald

LONDON OPEC has so far surprised the market by showing record compliance with oil-output curbs and could do so further in coming months as the biggest laggards - the United Arab Emirates and Iraq - pledge to catch up quickly with their targets.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has pledged to curb its production by about 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from Jan. 1, the first cut in eight years, to boost prices and get rid of a supply glut.

Compliance with output restrictions has often been problematic in OPEC's history but this time the group has delivered reductions amounting to as much as 90 percent of the target in the first month alone.

That prompted the International Energy Agency (IEA) to call it one of the deepest cuts on record.

Iraq and the UAE have delivered smaller portions of their pledged reductions, based on their own figures and OPEC production estimates by government agencies, consultants and industry media.

Still, officials and industry sources say the UAE will try to move closer to its OPEC target in coming months, improving average compliance during the six-month duration of the supply cut rather than focusing on month-by-month performance.

"The UAE is fully committed to the OPEC cuts and is undertaking the necessary measures that will ensure it is fully compliant over the six-month period with the OPEC agreement," the UAE's OPEC governor, Ahmed Al Kaabi, told Reuters in a statement.

The UAE, among the core Gulf OPEC group that traditionally shows high compliance with output agreements, has focused on expanding its production capacity in the last few years, rather than on limiting output.

It doubled the capacity of its Ruwais refinery last year to more than 800,000 barrels per day to feed rising domestic demand.

Oilfield maintenance could also help to push compliance higher. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co has work planned at fields producing Murban and Das light crude in March and May, people familiar with the matter said.

OPEC's average compliance is put by the IEA at a record 90 percent in January, and based on a Reuters average of production surveys it stands at 88 percent.

Top exporter Saudi Arabia cut production by even more than called for in the OPEC deal, helping to push compliance higher, according to its own figures and those of independent analysts.

IRAQ 'RESPECTS' OPEC COMMITMENT

The UAE and Iraq's own figures suggest they have further to go than other big OPEC producers to reach targeted output.

According to data the countries reported to OPEC, while both cut production substantially in January, they did so from higher levels than the supply baselines used in the agreement, meaning that technically they are not complying at all.

Iraq had initially been reluctant to limit supply. In negotiations last year on the supply cut, Iraq argued that it should be exempt due to a need for cash to fight Islamic State militants.

Baghdad also pushed to be allowed to cut production from a higher level than estimated by the secondary sources OPEC uses to monitor its output. Eventually, to get a deal, it accepted a cut from a lower baseline.

Iraq's OPEC peers are privately urging Baghdad to make further reductions, sources say, and there are indications compliance may at least not worsen. Partial export figures for February suggest no increase in shipments, and March allocations were reduced sharply.

"Iraq's allocations in March are low due to OPEC cuts, mainly," a source familiar with the matter said. "Iraq respects its commitment."

The table below is based on OPEC production in January as estimated by OPEC secondary sources, OPEC members themselves, news agencies Reuters and Bloomberg and bank Goldman Sachs.

OPEC's six secondary sources are oil-pricing agencies Platts and Argus, the IEA, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, consultancy Cambridge Energy Research Associates and industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly.

OPEC UAE Iraq

compliance compliance compliance

high low high low high low

94 82 100 negative 62 negative

(Editing by Dale Hudson)

NEW YORK/HOUSTON Traders are turning the spigots to drain the priciest storage tanks holding U.S. crude stockpiles as strengthening markets make it unprofitable to store for future sale and cuts in global production open export opportunities.

LONDON Oil prices fell one percent on Friday after U.S. crude inventories rose for a seventh week, showing that the market is still struggling to ease oversupply despite many producers' efforts to rein in production.

LONDON It's time to talk about the London Metal Exchange (LME).

See the original post:
OPEC compliance seen growing as laggards Iraq and UAE pledge action - Reuters