Iran: How close is it to building its own nuclear bomb?

The International Atomic Energy Agency recently warned that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make an atomic bomb within several weeks. But that's not what Iran really wants to do.

Currently negotiators are trying to revive a 2015 deal that saw Iran

 curtail nuclear weapons activities

Could it be that Iran's nuclear program is actually meant for military purposes? That's the suspicion that the International Atomic Energy Agency seemed to raise in a report presented last week.

Iran had continued enriching uranium beyond the limits set by the 2015 nuclear deal, which it had agreed upon together with China, France, Russia, the UK, the United States, Germany and the European Union, the agency report said. But by late August, Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium totaled an estimated 3,940 kilograms, That is more than 19 times the contractually agreed limit, the report said.

The IAEA said it was "not in a position to provide assurance that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively peaceful." It had been asking Iran about nuclear material at undeclared sites and the IAEA's director Rafael Grossi was "increasingly concerned that Iran has not engaged with the agency on the outstanding safeguards issues during this reporting period and, therefore, that there has been no progress towards resolving them."

The IAEA pressed Iran to adhere to the 2015 nuclear agreement it had signed. In another earlier report, the agency also said it regretted Iran's decision to remove 27 surveillance cameras that had allowed inspectors to monitor the country's nuclear activities from afar. This had reduced the IAEA's ability to guarantee that Iran's nuclear program was not military, the Vienna-based agency said.

According to the IAEA, Iran had continued to accumulate enriched uranium even while it restricted access to the agency's monitors. In Vienna, diplomatic insiders have suggested that it would now only take Iran between three and four weeks to make enough enriched uranium to create a nuclear weapon.

No point in just one nuclear bomb

But that doesn't necessarily mean that it will.

It is true that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb, said Mohammadbagher Forough, a researcher at the GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies in Hamburg.

"However that is just enough to make one single bomb, not a series of bombs," he told DW. "A single bomb makes no sense militarily. The world's nuclear powers don't rely on just a single bomb. No war could be fought like that. A single nuclear bomb is not enough because you would assume that other nations will have multiple nuclear bombs that they would use against you to much more serious effect," he argued.

There are also other reasons why Iran is far from making its own nuclear bomb, Forough continued. The country doesn't have the right ingredients to make one — that includes the lack of materials for a detonator.

"The history of nuclear powers indicates that it actually takes years to build a bomb from nuclear weapons grade materials," he pointed out. "The IAEA has certainly described the seriousness of the current situation well. But from that you cannot conclude that Iran is really on the verge of having its own nuclear bomb."

Iran manufactures many of its own weapons, tanks and other

 military equipment

It is certainly worrying that Iran has more enriched uranium than was permitted under the 2015 nuclear agreement, agreed Oliver Meier, a senior researcher at Hamburg University's Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy. At one stage the country also had a heavy water nuclear reactor, that would have been capable of producing plutonium, which can also be used to make  a nuclear bomb.

"But that path is closed [to them] at the moment," Meier noted.

What Iran does have though are centrifuges inside its nuclear reactors that are more advanced than would have originally been permitted under 2015's nuclear deal — this is also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

"Centrifuges raise serious nuclear weapons proliferation concerns because exactly the same machines that are used to enrich uranium for a nuclear reactor can enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb," the Federation of American Scientists explains on its website. "In general, a nuclear reactor needs a small degree of enrichment of a large amount of material, and a bomb needs a large degree of enrichment of a small amount of material." 

Iran has also exceeded the amount of uranium it has, and the levels at which it has been enriched, Meier said.

"There, all the limits have been exceeded," he told DW. "So technically, they would be able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon within a few weeks."

Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said he ready for "serious"

 talks on Iran's nuclear program at the beginning of his tenure

But Meier also confirmed that the Iranians needed more than this to build a nuclear bomb.

"Iran has been working on that as well," he conceded. "There has also apparently been research into making warheads for the missiles. However, as far back as 2009, there is no indication that this research has continued, or that it has resumed."

Political pressure 

In that case then, why is Iran enriching uranium at such a fast pace?

For Tehran it's all about political pressure, Forough said. From the perspective of Iranian leadership, the conditions set out in the JCPOA were voided after the US government, when it was being led by the Donald Trump administration, pulled out of the deal unilaterally in 2018.

Since Joe Biden became president, the US has been leading the push to renegotiate a new version of the JCPOA.

"So uranium enrichment is primarily a means to get the US and other players to sign the agreement, which has almost been fully negotiated in Vienna," Forough said.

That political pressure counts even more as the midterm elections approach in the US, when members of Congress and some in the Senate will be chosen.

"It is not impossible that the Democrats, led by US President Biden, will lose their majority in Congress," Forough said. "In that case, the [new JCPOA] agreement will never be signed. That's another reason why Tehran is putting so much pressure on."

For the Iranian government, the agreement is about ending the crippling sanctions regime imposed on their country because of attempts to potentially make nuclear weapons. If the renegotiated JCPOA is signed by all parties, then sanctions would ease.

On the other hand, GIGA's Meier said, Iran is getting in the way of the negotiations itself: The negotiations are currently being complicated by the fact that the IAEA can't verify what's going on inside Iran's nuclear program.

"That's why the IAEA has now said more clearly that an agreement on the restoration of the JCPOA requires additional measures to better verify Iran's nuclear program," he told DW. "There are many outstanding issues and it's important to resolve them quickly."

This story was originally published in German.

Iran-Belgium prisoner swap: Belgian Court to decide on controversial exchange treaty

In a controversial move, Belgium wants to swap an Iranian diplomat convicted of terrorism for one of its own citizens, an aid worker being held in Iran. Critics say Belgium is giving in to Iranian blackmail.

Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele has been held prisoner in Iran

 since February 2022

"It's been more than 203 days since I last saw my best friend," said Olivier Van Steirtegem as he runs his fingers swiftly across his piano in his home in Brussels, playing a mesmerizing jazz tune. It's a tribute to his friend, Olivier Vandecasteele, who was arrested on February 24 by Iranian authorities on charges of spying.

"This song I'm playing is 'John Boy' by Brad Mehldau. It was the last one Olivier and I listened to together, before he was arrested by Iran," Van Steirtegem, 42, who is the owner of an office furniture store, told DW. "He is now in complete isolation in a cell and in a poor psychological state. He isn't eating well, has an infection and has lost a lot of weight." 

Vandecasteele, a 41-year-old humanitarian aid worker, had been living and working in Iran since 2015. He had been exploring options to move out of the country and eventually start a new project.

"But the Iranian authorities had different plans for him," said Van Steirtegem.

Olivier Van Steirtegem, right, has started a petition asking the Belgian

 government to take action to free his friend

Flipping through an album of pictures together, he remembered the fateful day in February when he got the phone call about Vandecasteele's arrest.

"The neighbors said he was in his apartment in Tehran and was waiting for a pizza delivery. But when his doorbell rang, instead of the pizza delivery person, Iranian authorities forced themselves into his flat and arrested him," Van Steirtegem said.

'We are sending a message that we are weak'

In order to get him released, on July 21, the Belgian government ratified a prisoner exchange treaty with Iran. According to the treaty, Iranians imprisoned in Belgium, would be allowed to serve their sentence in Iran and vice versa. 

But the treaty has been slammed by some members of the Belgian parliament, including some Iranian dissidents, critics of the regime in Teheran, as well as human rights groups who fear that this would lead to the release of Assadollah Assadi — an Iranian diplomat who has been serving a 20-year prison sentence in Belgium for trying to plot a bomb attack on a rally organized by rivals of the Iranian regime, in France in 2018.

They also say that the accord will give Iran a free pass to continue engaging in terrorism and taking people hostage in Iran and around the world.

"If Belgium appeases the regime in Iran in this manner, we are sending across a message that we are weak and are ready to give them what they want," Darya Safai an Iranian-Belgian Member of the Belgian Parliament, from the Flemish nationalists party, told DW.

"I have been imprisoned in Iran myself for fighting for women's rights. I completely understand what Olivier's family is going through. But this is not the only isolated case. There are other European hostages in Iran and we need a better solution to ensure they're all released," she said.

'Not fair to keep an innocent man in jail'

Vandecasteele was arrested and imprisoned in Iran on espionage charges 

which the Belgian government  says are baseless

Besides Vandecasteele, Swedish-Iranian academic Ahmadreza Dijalali and French tourist Benjamin Briere are some of the other Western nationals being held hostage in Iran.

Out of 131 Belgian parliamentatians, 79 voted in favor of the prisoner-exchange treaty, while 41 rejected it and 11 abstained from voting. 

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo acknowledged that it was a tough decision, but said it was not "blackmail" and Belgium had to consider the pleas of Vandecasteele's family.

"Whar do you say to his family, that we will let him rot in his cell?" he said in response to criticisms of the treaty.

According to AFP, a lawyer representing the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an Iranian opposition group in exile, said the Brussels appeal court had agreed to cross-examine the case before allowing the swap.

The court is legally challenging the Belgian government's decision at a hearing that began on September 19.

'Negotiate with force'

Prisoner swaps often takes place between autocracies and democracies where the latter is keen to bring their citizens back home, and the former is keen to use this tactic to achieve their political goals.

Exchanges can take place by either exchanging people held captive, or by exchanging money as in the case of British Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, where the UK transferred money to Iran in order to guarantee her release.

But Belgian parliamentarian Safai believes that prisoner swaps don't work with Iran, and the only true way to negotiate with the country is with force.

"That is the only language that the Ayatollahs understand. So solutions in the form of sanctions could work better. It is important for the West to take a united stance in confronting Iran. That's the only way that you can ensure security in Europe and stop the process of Iran taking people hostage," she told DW.

A man protests outside the Antwerp Criminal Court, during the trial of 

Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, who was sentenced to prison in Belgium

 last year for his role in a bomb plot.

At a press conference in Brussels last week organized by the NCRI, John Bercow, a former British politician who was speaker of the House of Commons, shared a similar view and highlighted that such a prison swap would not prove fruitful in the long run.

"If you give the beast what the beast wants, then the beast will repeatedly follow the same tactics. We have to look at the wider picture and not just focus on isolated cases," he said.

Van Steirtegem understands the complexity of this case since it involves swapping an innocent person in exchange for a terrorist. But he believes it is the only way to get his friend released.

"I might be biased but I think right now, Olivier needs all the support from the Belgian government. This will also give Belgians the impression that their government cares for innocent people like Olivier," he said.

Van Steirtegem has also started a petition asking the Belgian government to enable the prompt release of his friend. More than 25,000 people have signed it so far.

Could the Iranian nuclear deal provide an opportunity?

While a final decision is still pending from the court, Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a British lecturer in international politics at the University of Cambridge specializing in Iran, told DW that the Iran nuclear talks could also provide an opportunity for the West to negotiate with the Islamic republic.

"The Americans have advised Belgium not to proceed with this prison swap since they wish to add on to the nuclear negotiations a larger swap of prisoners, which would involve prisoners from a number of European countries as well as Americans,” she told DW.

Three members of US Congress — Randy K.Weber, Louie Gohmert and Brian Fitzpatrick — have sent a letter to the Belgian prime minister asking him to oppose the treaty.

"I think Belgium feels as though the time is right and there is no guarantee that the negotiations with the nuclear deal will go through. So they don't want to wait and make their citizens in Tehran wait until something on a larger international scale takes place," Farmanfarmaian added.

Irrespective of how the law and politics shape the future of the treaty, Van Steirtegem has not lost hope.

"I know it is going to be a long fight, but I hope to get a call from the government telling me, okay, listen, everything has been cleared and Olivier will be back before Christmas," he said.

"That's what his family and I are looking forward to right now," he added.

Edited by: Sonia Phalnikar

SHIA WAR ON KURDISTAN

UPDATED

Iran hijab protests: Young woman's death puts Tehran under pressure

Mass protests have broken out across the Islamic nation amid public rage over the death of a young woman who had been arrested by the "morality police."

Mahsa Amini's death triggered mass protests and discussions over the compulsory

 wearing of the Islamic headscarf in Iran

The recent death of a young woman who had been detained by Iran's "morality police" for violating the Islamic nation's conservative dress code has sparked mass protests across the country. 

Mahsa Amini, 22, died last week after she was arrested for allegedly not complying with strict rules on head coverings for women. 

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, who departed for New York on Monday to address the UN General Assembly, has ordered an investigation and vowed to pursue the case in a phone call with Amini's family. He also offered his condolences, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. "Your daughter was like my daughter," the president reportedly said.

Widespread anger and grief

The incident has caused outrage and grief in Iran and across the globe.

The hashtag #MahsaAmini has been trending on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.

Mass protests flared up in Amini's home province of Kurdistan and other parts of the country. In the capital, Tehran, thousands of people took to the streets to express their anger and grief, chanting slogans such as "Death to the dictator."

Security forces tried to disperse the crowds using water cannon and batons. 

Some protesters were also arrested, Iran's Fars news agency reported.

Media outlets worldwide have reported extensively about it.

When Iran's president meets with journalists on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, as planned, the death of Mahsa Amini will dominate the press conference

The Iranian government has come under increasing pressure to carry out a proper and transparent investigation and bring the culprits to justice.

A spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for those responsible for Amini's death to be held accountable and for the fundamental rights of all people in Iran to be protected — including those of prisoners.

Human Rights Watch demanded the abolition of the morality police and religiously based laws such as those on the proper wearing of headscarves.

A tragic end

The 22-year old from the small town of Saghes in the western province of Kurdistan had been on a visit to Tehran with her brother last week.

She was arrested by the authorities last Tuesday, for allegedly not covering her hair with the Islamic headscarf, known as hijab, which is mandatory for Iranian women.

Just a couple of hours after her arrest, she was hospitalized. 

Police said on Thursday that Amini was taken to a hospital after she allegedly had a heart attack while in custody.

They have denied the allegations that she was physically abused after her arrest, saying "there was no physical encounter" between officers and Amini.

On closed-circuit footage — also released by police — Amini can be seen falling over after getting up from her seat to speak to an official at a police station. She is then shown being carried away on a stretcher.

Her family says she had no history of heart trouble.

A photo that went viral on the internet shows the bedridden Amini with swollen black eyes and bleeding ears. Many Iranian women, both young and old, could relate to it as they face daily humiliation and abuse in the hands of authorities because of the mandatory hijab.

Amini was officially declared dead on Friday, three days after she was admitted to the hospital. The Kasra Hospital, where Amini was admitted, said in a statement on Instagram on Saturday that the patient had  been brain-dead on arrival. The statement was later deleted.

Opposing the compulsory hijab

The hijab has been compulsory for women in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the morality police are charged with enforcing that and other restrictions. The force has been criticized in recent years, especially for its treatment of young women.

Millions of Iranian women oppose the rules. In recent years the protests have become increasingly louder and more visible.

Many women wear their headscarves loosely and let them fall onto their shoulders, accepting the risk of being arrested.

The government under Raisi and religious hard-liners in parliament have been trying for months to enforce Islamic laws more strictly.

Numerous videos are currently circulating on the internet, showing women being beaten and abused by the authorities during arrests. The videos often show violent blows to the head as the women are dragged into the police car by their hair.

Mass protests flared up not only in Amini's home province of Kurdistan 

but also in other parts of the country

Doubts over investigation

State media reported that authorities had opened an investigation to determine the cause of the death. The judiciary has launched a probe, and a parliamentary committee is also looking into the incident.

But many Iranians doubt that the probe will be carried out in an objective and transparent manner.

Amini's body, which was transported to her hometown of Saghes without an autopsy, was buried on Saturday morning.

Protests over the death began on the same day in her home province.

At the funeral, thousands demonstrated in front of the governor's office. According to the Fars news agency, clashes with security forces also occurred. Police used tear gas to disperse the crowds.

Security forces intervened during demonstrations in Sanandash, the capital of the Kurdistan province, on Sunday evening. Warning shots were fired, and several people were injured, reports from the province stated. A Kurdish human rights organization reported four deaths during the demonstrations.

In solidarity, businesses in Kurdistan announced that they would close their stores on Monday.

On Tuesday, the UN also decried Amini's death and called for the repeal of all discriminatory laws and regulations that impose mandatory hijab.

"Acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif today expressed alarm at the death in custody of Mahsa Amini ... and the violent response by security forces to ensuing protests," the rights office said in a statement.

"The authorities must stop targeting, harassing and detaining women who do not abide by the hijab rules."

This article was originally published in German.

Concern mounts at ‘lethal’ Iran crackdown on protests

• AFP
•  September 20,22

The firecest clashes so far have been in Iran’s northern Kurdistan province

Paris – The United Nations and rights groups expressed concern Tuesday over what activists described as a lethal crackdown in Iran against protests over the death of a young woman after her arrest by Tehran’s notorious morality police.

Mahsa Amini, 22, died on Friday three days after she was urgently hospitalised following her arrest by police responsible for enforcing Iran’s strict dress code for women.

Activists said she suffered a blow to the head in custody but this has not been confirmed by the Iranian authorities, who have opened an investigation.

There have been protests in Tehran but the fiercest clashes so far have been in Iran’s northern Kurdistan province where Amini was from, with rights groups saying up to four protesters have been killed so far and dozens more wounded and arrested.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said that witness accounts and videos circulating on social media “indicate that authorities are using teargas to disperse protesters and have apparently used lethal force in Kurdistan province.”

“Cracking down with teargas and lethal force against protesters demanding accountability for a woman’s death in police custody reinforces the systematic nature of government rights abuses and impunity,” said Tara Sepehri Far, HRW’s senior Iran researcher.

In Geneva, the UN said acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif expressed alarm at Amini’s death and the “the violent response by security forces to ensuing protests.”

She said there must be an independent investigation into “Mahsa Amini’s tragic death and allegations of torture and ill-treatment.”

– ‘Stop further state killings’ –

The Kurdish human rights group Hengaw, which is based in Norway, said it had confirmed a total of three deaths in Kurdistan province — one apiece in the towns of Divandareh, Saqqez and Dehglan.

It added that 221 people had been wounded and another 250 arrested in the Kurdistan region, where there had also been a general strike on Monday.

A 10-year-old girl — images of whose blood-spattered body have gone viral on social media — was wounded in the town of Bukan but was alive, it added.  

Images posted on social media have shown fierce clashes especially in the town of Divandareh between protesters and the security forces, with sounds of live fire. 

The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group said that four people had been killed in protests where people shouted slogans including “Death to the dictator” and “Woman, life, freedom”.

“The international community shouldn’t be silent observers of the crimes the Islamic Republic commits against its own people,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

“We call on countries with diplomatic relations with Iran, the EU in particular, to stop further state killings by supporting the people’s demands to realise their basic rights.”

IHR said security forces used batons, teargas, water cannons, rubber bullets and live ammunition in certain regions “to directly target protesters and crush the protests.”

The UN statement said at least two people have reportedly been killed and several injured.

– ‘Systemic persecution’ –

The death of Amini has caused international consternation, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling Monday “on the Iranian government to end its systemic persecution of women and to allow peaceful protest.”

The Islamic headscarf has been obligatory in public for all women in Iran since shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the shah.

The rules are enforced by a special unit of police known as the Gasht-e Ershad (guidance patrol), who have the power to arrest women deemed to have violated the dress code, although normally they are released with a warning.

In rare published criticism from within Iran, Jalal Rashidi Koochi, a member of parliament, told the ISNA news agency that “Gasht-e Ershad is wrong because it has had no result except loss and damage for the country,” adding that “the main problem is that some people resist accepting the truth.”

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi plans to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly this week where he is set to face intense scrutiny over Iran’s human rights record.

French President Emmanuel Macron is to hold a rare meeting with Raisi later Tuesday in a final attempt to agree a deal reviving the 2015 nuclear accord.

UN calls for probe into Iranian woman's death in morality police's custody

Issued on: 20/09/2022 - 

In this September 19, 2022 photo taken by a person not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, a police motorcycle is burning during a protest over the death of a young woman who had been detained for violating the country's Islamist dress code, in Tehran. AP

Text by:NEWS WIRES

A top United Nations official on Tuesday demanded an independent investigation into the death of an Iranian woman held by the country's morality police as authorities acknowledged making arrests at protests over the incident.

The woman's death has ignited demonstrations across the country, including the capital, Tehran, where demonstrators chanted against the government and clashed with police.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said Iran's morality police have expanded their patrols in recent months, targeting women for not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf, known as hijab. It said verified videos show women being slapped in the face, struck with batons and thrown into police vans for wearing the hijab too loosely.

A similar patrol detained 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last Tuesday, taking her to a police station where she collapsed. She died three days later. Iranian police have denied mistreating Amini and say she died of a heart attack. Authorities say they are investigating the incident.

“Mahsa Amini’s tragic death and allegations of torture and ill-treatment must be promptly, impartially and effectively investigated by an independent competent authority,” said Nada Al-Nashif, the acting U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

Iran's government did not immediately comment on the statement but has previously criticized the work of U.N. investigators examining rights issues in the country.

The police released closed-circuit video footage last week purportedly showing the moment Amini collapsed. But her family says she had no history of heart trouble.

Amjad Amini, her father, told an Iranian news website that witnesses saw her being shoved into a police car.

“I asked for access to (videos) from cameras inside the car as well as courtyard of the police station, but they gave no answer,” he said. He also accused the police of not transferring her to the hospital promptly enough, saying she could have been resuscitated.

He said that when he arrived at the hospital he was not allowed to view the body, but managed to get a glimpse of bruising on her foot.

Authorities then pressured him to bury her at night, apparently to reduce the likelihood of protests, but Amini said the family convinced them to let them bury her at 8 a.m. instead.

Amini, who was Kurdish, was buried Saturday in her home city of Saqez in western Iran. Protests erupted there after her funeral and police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators on Saturday and Sunday. Several protesters were arrested.

The protests spread to Tehran and other cities on Monday. A news website affiliated with state TV said 22 people were arrested at a protest in the northern city of Rasht, the first official confirmation of arrests related to the protests.

State TV showed footage of protests on Monday, including images of two police cars with their windows smashed. It said the protesters torched two motorbikes as well, and that they burned Iranian flags in Kurdish areas and Tehran.

The state-run broadcaster blamed the unrest on foreign countries and exiled opposition groups, accusing them of using Amini's death as a pretext for more economic sanctions.

Iran has seen waves of protests in recent years, mainly over a long-running economic crisis exacerbated by Western sanctions linked to the country's nuclear program. Authorities have managed to quash the protests by force.

(AP)

New Iran protests over woman's death after 'morality police' arrest

Iranians took to the streets of the capital on Monday to protest the death of a young woman who had been detained for violating the country’s conservative dress code. Negar Mortazavi is an Iranian-American journalist and commentator, she tells us more about how Iranian authorities have been responding to the protests.

Twilight of the Tigris: Iraq's mighty river drying up


Aymen HENNA
Mon, September 19, 2022 


It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilisation itself.

But today the Tigris is dying.

Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where -- with its twin river the Euphrates -- it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago.

Iraq may be oil-rich but the country is plagued by poverty after decades of war and by droughts and desertification.

Battered by one natural disaster after another, it is one of the five countries most exposed to climate change, according to the UN.

From April on, temperatures exceed 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and intense sandstorms often turn the sky orange, covering the country in a film of dust.

Hellish summers see the mercury top a blistering 50 degrees Celsius -- near the limit of human endurance -- with frequent power cuts shutting down air-conditioning for millions.


The Tigris, the lifeline connecting the storied cities of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, has been choked by dams, most of them upstream in Turkey, and falling rainfall.

An AFP video journalist travelled along the river's 1,500-kilometre (900-mile) course through Iraq, from the rugged Kurdish north to the Gulf in the south, to document the ecological disaster that is forcing people to change their ancient way of life.
- Kurdish north: 'Less water every day' -


The Tigris' journey through Iraq begins in the mountains of autonomous Kurdistan, near the borders of Turkey and Syria, where local people raise sheep and grow potatoes.

"Our life depends on the Tigris," said farmer Pibo Hassan Dolmassa, 41, wearing a dusty coat, in the town of Faysh Khabur. "All our work, our agriculture, depends on it.

"Before, the water was pouring in torrents," he said, but over the last two or three years "there is less water every day".

Iraq's government and Kurdish farmers accuse Turkey, where the Tigris has its source, of withholding water in its dams, dramatically reducing the flow into Iraq.

According to Iraqi official statistics, the level of the Tigris entering Iraq has dropped to just 35 percent of its average over the past century.

Baghdad regularly asks Ankara to release more water.

But Turkey's ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Guney, urged Iraq to "use the available water more efficiently", tweeting in July that "water is largely wasted in Iraq".

He may have a point, say experts. Iraqi farmers tend to flood their fields, as they have done since ancient Sumerian times, rather than irrigate them, resulting in huge water losses.

- Central plains: 'We sold everything' -

All that is left of the River Diyala, a tributary that meets the Tigris near the capital Baghdad in the central plains, are puddles of stagnant water dotting its parched bed.

Drought has dried up the watercourse that is crucial to the region's agriculture.

This year authorities have been forced to reduce Iraq's cultivated areas by half, meaning no crops will be grown in the badly-hit Diyala Governorate.

"We will be forced to give up farming and sell our animals," said Abu Mehdi, 42, who wears a white djellaba robe.

"We were displaced by the war" against Iran in the 1980s, he said, "and now we are going to be displaced because of water. Without water, we can't live in these areas at all."

The farmer went into debt to dig a 30-metre (100-foot) well to try to get water. "We sold everything," Abu Mehdi said, but "it was a failure".

The World Bank warned last year that much of Iraq is likely to face a similar fate.


"By 2050 a temperature increase of one degree Celsius and a precipitation decrease of 10 percent would cause a 20 percent reduction of available freshwater," it said.

"Under these circumstances, nearly one third of the irrigated land in Iraq will have no water."

Water scarcity hitting farming and food security are already among the "main drivers of rural-to-urban migration" in Iraq, the UN and several non-government groups said in June.

And the International Organization for Migration said last month that "climate factors" had displaced more than 3,300 families in Iraq's central and southern areas in the first three months of this year.

"Climate migration is already a reality in Iraq," the IOM said.
- Baghdad: sandbanks and pollution -

This summer in Baghdad, the level of the Tigris dropped so low that people played volleyball in the middle of the river, splashing barely waist-deep through its waters.

Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources blame silt because of the river's reduced flow, with sand and soil once washed downstream now settling to form sandbanks.


Until recently the Baghdad authorities used heavy machinery to dredge the silt, but with cash tight, work has slowed.

Years of war have destroyed much of Iraq's water infrastructure, with many cities, factories, farms and even hospitals left to dump their waste straight into the river.

As sewage and rubbish from Greater Baghdad pour into the shrinking Tigris, the pollution creates a concentrated toxic soup that threatens marine life and human health.

Environmental policies have not been a high priority for Iraqi governments struggling with political, security and economic crises.

Ecological awareness also remains low among the general public, said activist Hajer Hadi of the Green Climate group, even if "every Iraqi feels climate change through rising temperatures, lower rainfall, falling water levels and dust storms," she said.
- South: salt water, dead palms -


"You see these palm trees? They are thirsty," said Molla al-Rached, a 65-year-old farmer, pointing to the brown skeletons of what was once a verdant palm grove.

"They need water! Should I try to irrigate them with a glass of water?" he asked bitterly. "Or with a bottle?"

"There is no fresh water, there is no more life," said the farmer, a beige keffiyeh scarf wrapped around his head.

He lives at Ras al-Bisha where the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates river, the Shatt al-Arab, empties into the Gulf, near the borders with Iran and Kuwait.

In nearby Basra -- once dubbed the Venice of the Middle East -- many of the depleted waterways are choked with rubbish.


To the north, much of the once famed Mesopotamian Marshes -- the vast wetland home to the "Marsh Arabs" and their unique culture -- have been reduced to desert since Saddam Hussein drained them in the 1980s to punish its population.

But another threat is impacting the Shatt al-Arab: salt water from the Gulf is pushing ever further upstream as the river flow declines.

The UN and local farmers say rising salination is already hitting farm yields, in a trend set to worsen as global warming raises sea levels.

Al-Rached said he has to buy water from tankers for his livestock, and wildlife is now encroaching into settled areas in search of water.

"My government doesn't provide me with water," he said. "I want water, I want to live. I want to plant, like my ancestors."

- River delta: a fisherman's plight -

Standing barefoot in his boat like a Venetian gondolier, fisherman Naim Haddad steers it home as the sun sets on the waters of the Shatt al-Arab.

"From father to son, we have dedicated our lives to fishing," said the 40-year-old holding up the day's catch.

In a country where grilled carp is the national dish, the father-of-eight is proud that he receives "no government salary, no allowances".

But salination is taking its toll as it pushes out the most prized freshwater species which are replaced by ocean fish.

"In the summer, we have salt water," said Haddad. "The sea water rises and comes here."

Last month local authorities reported that salt levels in the river north of Basra reached 6,800 parts per million -- nearly seven times that of fresh water.

Haddad can't switch to fishing at sea because his small boat is unsuitable for the choppier Gulf waters, where he would also risk run-ins with the Iranian and Kuwaiti coastguards.

And so the fisherman is left at the mercy of Iraq's shrinking rivers, his fate tied to theirs.

"If the water goes," he said, "the fishing goes. And so does our livelihood."

vid-tgg-gde/dp/fz/fg

Somalia's children face death by starvation as famine takes hold

MATT GUTMAN, ANGUS HINES, ROBERT ZEPEDA and MICHELA MOSCUFO

GMA
Tue, September 20, 2022 

At an encampment in Baidoa, Somalia, Garan Hassan tugged at a reporter’s sleeve. Her 18-month-old daughter Malaika was too sick to eat, too weak to cry.

Staff at a Save the Children pediatric nutrition center quickly determined that this toddler had severe acute malnutrition, like more than 500,000 other children in Somalia, according to the U.N. This diagnosis means they could die without immediate treatment.

MORE: Millions could die without 'urgent' funding as 'catastrophic famine' looms in East Africa, IRC says

Malaika’s arm was as thick as a man’s thumb, and she weighed little more than an infant. Her body was shutting down and if left untreated she would likely die.

Somalia, like Ethiopia and Kenya, is suffering a record drought which, coupled with soaring food prices and plummeting donor funding to humanitarian groups, has left more than 22 million people starving, according to the U.N.’s World Food Programme.

A 2011 famine in Somalia killed nearly 260,000 people, half of them children.

PHOTO: Drone footage of the aid encampment in Baidoa, Somalia. (ABC News)

More than half of the country’s children face acute malnutrition, Save the Children revealed in a report released on Monday.

The hunger has dislocated over a million Somalis, like Garan Hassan and her family, many of them seeking food and support in the once-small town of Baidoa. It is now a massive sprawl of thousands of tattered tents and home to 600,000 internally displaced people.

Many of them, like Hassan, had to travel through territory controlled by the Islamic fundamentalist group al-Shabab to get there.

Hassan told ABC News her husband died from starvation “at the beginning of the famine.” He was just 32. She is now the sole provider for little Malaika and her six siblings, which is why she told Save the Children staff she could not take Malaika to the hospital — she had to ensure that her other children were cared for.

MORE: Nutrition center providing help as famine looms in Somalia

“For me the declaration of famine is irrelevant. Look around you,” Ebrima Saidy, Chief Impact Officer at Save the Children, told ABC News at the nutrition center where over 200 women with acutely malnourished children hoped to get support, “what is this if this is not famine?”

A famine has not been officially declared in Somalia since 2011.

Aid groups say that after the 2011 famine they had built up the infrastructure to help, but now with donor attention on the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, they lacked the funds.

PHOTO: Ebrima Saidy, Chief Impact Officer at Save the Children, speaks with ABC News reporter Matt Gutman. (ABC News)

Famine prevention efforts by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization go to a million Somalis, but the agency tells ABC News its projects here are only 24% funded.

The next day Save the Children staff visited Garan Hassan and Malaika. They found that another of her siblings had severe acute malnutrition and both children, Malaika and her 3-year-old brother Nadifa, had multiple complications. They had suffered fevers, but were now disturbingly cold to the touch.

MORE: Millions of lives at risk as famine stalks Horn of Africa

The staff warned Hassan they could die if they didn’t get treatment. After a terrifying night, Hassan quickly agreed to go to the hospital.

The children were whisked through the camp to a van that took them along streets broken by neglect and war to the Save the Children stabilization center– basically a hospital for the acutely malnourished.

Hospital staff determined the children suffered from malaria, whooping cough and measles – a result of their immune systems cratering from malnutrition.

PHOTO: Garan Hassan smiles as her child Nadifa finally drinks at the hospital. (ABC News)

During the admission process, as the two children were weighed, and measured and prodded with needles, Nadifa whimpered that he was thirsty. A few minutes later he was propped up on a nurse’s knee and given nutritional formula.

Nadifa drank one cup, then two. A milk mustache formed on his face, and on his mother’s face, for the first time in a long time, a smile.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Center for International Disaster Information (USAID)

Save the Children

Somalia's children face death by starvation as famine takes hold originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Too weak to cry: famine looms over Somalia's children


Mustafa HAJI ABDINUR
Mon, September 19, 2022 


As flies buzz over his tiny body, two-year-old Sadak Ibrahim barely whimpers, too weak to cry or shoo them away -- a heartbreaking glimpse of the hunger crisis gripping Somalia.

The Horn of Africa nation is on the brink of a second famine in just over a decade, enduring its worst drought in 40 years after failed rainy seasons since late 2020 wiped out crops and livestock.

With a fifth monsoon forecast to fail, the United Nations warned this month that time was running out to save lives as it urged donors to contribute more to the relief effort.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said the situation was worse than the 2011 famine when 260,000 people died in the country, more than half of them children under the age of six.

Aid is slowly making its way to Somalia following delays caused by the war in Ukraine, which also sent the cost of transport and emergency supplies soaring.


But many fear the help will arrive too late for the country's youngest victims like Sadak, with around 730 children already reported dead in nutrition centres between January and July this year, according to UNICEF.

At De Martino Hospital in the capital Mogadishu, Sadak's anxious mother Fadumo Daud sat vigil by the toddler's bedside, a feeding tube dangling from his face, as she prayed for a miracle.

"He is the only child I have, and he is very sick as you can see," the young woman told AFP, recounting the three-day journey that brought her to Mogadishu from Baidoa -- one of the epicentres of the crisis.
- 'Dramatic increase' -

In recent years, climate disasters have increasingly become the main driver of migration in Somalia, which is also grappling with a brutal 15-year Islamist insurgency.

Every day, dozens of people stream into camps set up for displaced families in Mogadishu.


The International Rescue Committee (IRC) non-profit runs seven health and nutrition centres in and around the capital, but their resources are sharply stretched with the crisis showing no signs of abating.

"The number of new arrivals has increased dramatically starting from June this year," IRC nutrition officer Faisa Ali told AFP.

Most of the children turn up malnourished, she said, with their numbers trebling from a maximum of 13 a day in May to 40 now.

A mother of 10, Nuunay Adan Durow fled her home and travelled 300 kilometres (200 miles) to find medical help for her three-year-old son Hassan Mohamed, his limbs swollen due to severe malnutrition.

"For the last three years, we have not harvested anything due to lack of rain," Durow told AFP, describing how she was forced to trek for two hours daily to find water for her family.

"We faced a terrible situation," the 35-year-old said, cradling Hassan in her arms as they awaited medical attention at an IRC centre on the outskirts of Mogadishu.
- 'The worst cases' -

The drought has also affected parts of Kenya and Ethiopia but the risks for Somalia are particularly grave, with 200,000 people in danger of starvation and around 1.5 million children facing acute malnutrition by next month, the UN says.


The crisis has not spared even traditionally fertile regions such as Lower Shabelle, where drought-stricken communities would seek refuge in the past, hoping to find sustenance there.

"We used to farm and get vegetables to feed our children before the drought affected us," Fadumo Ibrahim Hassan, 35, told AFP.

Now "we live on whatever God gives us", the widowed mother-of-six said.

A recent arrival in Mogadishu, her two-year-old daughter Yusro's condition had deteriorated to the point that the IRC staff could no longer care for her.

Weighing just 5.8 kilogrammes (12.8 pounds) -- half that of a healthy girl the same age -- Yusro was dangerously malnourished, according to the IRC medical team, who told AFP she urgently needed to be admitted to a hospital.

At De Martino Hospital, doctor Fahmo Ali told AFP that each day brought more sick, malnourished children into her care.

"The ones we are receiving here are the worst cases with complications," she said.

"Sometimes those we have treated come back.