‘Permanent contraception procedures’ soared after Dobbs decision: Research

BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELL-DOMENECH

The Hill's Headlines - April 12, 2024


Rates of people seeking permanent contraception spiked after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, new research shows.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Boston University looked at rates of tubal ligations and vasectomies among 18- to 30-year-olds between 2019 and 2022 using the TriNetX platform and compared them with 2022 to 2023 rates.

That platform largely gathers data from academic medical centers and related clinics across the country.

The findings were published Friday in a JAMA Health Forward research letter.

Researchers found that tubal ligations had increased by 2.84 procedures per 100,000 visits per month for women before the Supreme Court’s decision and by 1.03 procedures per 100,000 visits per month for men.

After the decision, researchers found that the trend for tubal ligations increased to 5.3 procedures per month among female patients but there were no significant changes in the number of procedures per month for men, according to the letter.

On top of this, researchers found that the average rate of women undergoing tubal ligations post-Dobbs increased to about 58 procedures per 100,000 visits, while the average rate for men increased to about 27 procedures per 100,000.

The study, however, did not provide the average rate of these procedures before the Dobbs decision was handed down. The Hill has reached out to the authors for more information.

This disparity reflects “the unequal burden of unwanted pregnancy,” said Jaqueline Ellison, assistant professor at The University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and lead author of the letter.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, 21 states have banned or imposed increased restrictions on abortion access.

“What we see is reflecting increases in fear and anxiety among young people about restricted access to abortion after Dobbs,” said Ellison said about her research.

“These changes in permanent contraception rates are really important to understand because they show how abortion bans affect people’s reproductive autonomy beyond abortion access.”

While most people who undergo sterilization are happy with their decision, a small portion regret the decision later in life.

About 5 percent of men who undergo vasectomies regret their decision in the future, according to the U.S. Centers and Disease Control and Prevention.

There is not a clear consensus on how many women regret choosing permanent contraception. The CDC estimates that between 1 and 26 percent of women who choose sterilization regret their decision, with younger women more likely to have second thoughts than older women.

One 1999 study found that about 20 percent of women who choose to be sterilized at 30 or younger regret the decision, compared to about 6 percent of women who underwent sterilization after age 30.

China helping Russia’s ‘most ambitious’ war machine expansion since USSR

BySteve Holland and Susan Heavey
April 13, 2024 — 11.29am

Washington: 

China is backing Russia’s war effort in Ukraine by helping Moscow in its biggest military build-up since the Soviet era, providing drone and missile technology, satellite imagery and machine tools, senior US officials said.

The American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said US President Joe Biden raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping in their recent phone call and that it is a topic of discussion with US allies in Europe and around the world.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping declared a no-limits friendship in 2022. Russian technology is being used to improve the stealthiness of Beijing’s submarine fleet while Chinese parts help Russia’s war in Ukraine.CREDIT:AP

One official said Chinese materials were filing critical gaps in Russia’s defence production cycle and helping Moscow undertake its “most ambitious defence expansion since the Soviet era and on a faster timeline than we believed possible early on in this conflict”.

“Our view is that one of the most game-changing moves available to us at this time to support Ukraine is to persuade the PRC [China] to stop helping Russia reconstitute its military industrial base. Russia would struggle to sustain its war effort without PRC input,” the official said.

Some of the information provided by the American officials in a small briefing with reporters on Saturday (AEST) was based on declassified intelligence. They sketched a wide array of ways China is helping Russia’s two-year war against Ukraine without providing lethal assistance.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US said it has not provided weaponry to any party, adding that it was “not a producer of or party involved in the Ukraine crisis” and that normal trade between China and Russia should not be interfered or restricted.

“We urge the US side to refrain from disparaging and scapegoating the normal relationship between China and Russia,” Liu Pengyu said.

Biden has been pressuring Republicans who control the House of Representatives to approve a major infusion of funding for providing weapons to Ukraine as it struggles to fend off the Russians.

The US and its allies have also been more blunt about confronting Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and against self-ruled Taiwan.


China complained about what it viewed as anti-China rhetoric emanating from Biden’s talks this week with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines, prompting a denial from the White House.

Russian has likely used imported machine tools from China to increase its ballistic missile production, the officials said. They cited Dalian Machine Tool Group, one of China’s leading machine tool manufacturers, as one company supplying Russia.

In 2023, 90 per cent of Russia’s microelectronics imports came from China, which Russia has used to produce missiles, tanks and aircraft, the officials said.


They said that Chinese companies such as Wuhan Global Sensor Technology Co, Wuhan Tongsheng Technology Co Ltd and Hikvision were providing Chinese optical components for use in Russian systems, including tanks and armoured vehicles.

Russia has received military such optics made by Chinese firms iRay Technology and North China Research Institute of Electro-Optics manufacture, they said.


China has also provided drone engines and turbojet engines for cruise missiles, and that Chinese and Russian entities have been working to jointly produce drones inside Russia.

Chinese companies are likely providing Russia with nitrocellulose to make propellants for weapons, helping Russia rapidly expand its capacity to make key munitions like artillery rounds, they added.


The US officials also said China was helping Russia improve its satellite and other space-based capabilities for use in Ukraine, increasing the Russian threat across Europe. And they said the US has information China

Aadujeevitham: The migrant story shining a light on Gulf states' exploitation of workers

By Meryl Sebastian

BBC News, Kochi

Aadujeevitham tells the story of an Indian emigrant to Saudi Arabia, who goes missing and is forced into slave-like labour

A Malayalam-language film that depicts the plight of impoverished Indians seeking jobs in the Middle East has been drawing throngs to cinemas.

Aadujeevitham (Goat Life), adapted from the bestselling 2008 Malayalam book, stars Prithviraj Sukumaran as Najeeb, an Indian immigrant in Saudi Arabia who is kidnapped and forced into slave-like labour as a goat herder in the desert. The story is inspired by the real-life ordeal of a man with the same name, who was abducted in the country in the 1990s and managed to escape after two years.

Written as a gripping thriller, the book has become a cultural cornerstone in the southern Kerala state, with its 250th edition released this year. Its widespread acclaim had sparked a conversation on the harsh realities of migrant life in the Gulf.

The three-hour film has also done exceedingly well, grossing over 870 million rupees (£8.23m, $10.4m) worldwide in the first week of its release. Critics have called it a "stunning survival drama" and a much awaited "cinematic portrayal of brutal struggle".

Aadujeevitham shows Najeeb isolated from the world, alone with his master and his animals, facing extreme heat in a harsh desert, miles away from the nearest road, with no access to a phone, paper or pen to write with, and no one to call a friend. He drinks water from the same trough as his animals.

Aadujeevitham

The film is inspired by the real-life ordeal of a man, who was abducted in Saudi Arabia

"Please let me go back," he pleads in a a heart-wrenching scene, tears streaming down his face as he recounts selling everything and leaving his family behind, all in pursuit of a promised job.

His words in Malayalam mean nothing to his boss, who only speaks Arabic.

Among the 2.1 million people from Kerala living abroad, nearly 90% migrated to the Gulf countries, drawn by the state's longstanding relationship spanning over five decades with nations such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates in the Arabian Peninsula.

Many of these workers from impoverished families have toiled under the kafala system in these countries, where their stay and mobility are controlled by their sponsor, leaving them susceptible to abuse and exploitation. The pay the workers have sent back to Kerala has powered its economy - a government think tank index showed that the state has the lowest poverty rate in India.

Much has been written about the oppressive working conditions in the Gulf countries.

"Your passport is taken away, you cannot return, you are constantly under the threat of death," says Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil of Manipal Centre for Humanities, who has researched labour migration.

In a conversation on YouTube, Najeeb, on whose life the book and the film are based, says he could never return to the places described in the story.

The film has grossed over 870 million rupees (£8.23m, $10.4m) worldwide in the first week of its release

"I had left [Kerala] in 1991 with a lot of dreams. The experiences I had there, the horrible master and the life among goats - I lost my self-consciousness, I lost my mind," he says.


In 2008, film director Blessy acquired the rights to adapt the book. Sukumaran told the BBC that he believed he knew everything about the book when the director handed him a copy next year.

"I knew all the events in the story. That was how much people were talking about it, especially in the film industry. Even then, it blew me away."

"A standout feature of this story is this diffusion of identities between man and animal - this one man slowly losing his identity as a species, as a human, and becoming one among the animals. I had never read anything like it."

In the film, Najeeb gradually stops speaking in Malayalam, only making guttural sounds like the animals he tends to. From time to time, he dips into a jar of mango pickle he'd brought from home for a taste of comfort.

After a 16-year wait, Aadujeevitham hit screens, overcoming obstacles like high costs, production setbacks, and the pandemic, with the director investing his savings to make the film

Blessy, who called the film a passion project, said he chose to adapt just 43 pages from the novel "to capture the essence".

On the weekend of its release, people either talked about having watched the film or booking tickets to watch it. YouTube channels showed people leaving the cinema in tears, with many saying it was an extraordinarily emotional experience.

"I know the story well but almost felt like I shouldn't have watched the film - that's how painful it was," one woman said.

Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule set to direct movie about Japan’s first Black Samurai

Francis Akhalbey

April 12, 2024    

Blitz Bazawule is set to direct and produce a movie about Japan's first Black Samurai -- Photo Credit: Nadira.2154

Blitz Bazawule, the Ghanaian filmmaker best known for directing The Color Purple and The Burial of Kojo, has been tapped by Warner Bros. to spearhead a movie about Japan’s first Black Samurai, Yasuke.

Sources informed Variety that Warner Bros. was among four studios that keenly expressed interest in landing the 41-year-old’s upcoming movie. Bazawule is also lauded for co-directing Beyoncé’s Black Is King feature-length visual album.

As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Yasuke was an enslaved African believed to have been born in Mozambique around 1555. He served as a slave under the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano.

Valignano, who was in charge of the Jesuit missions (a scholarly religious congregation of the Catholic Church which originated in sixteenth-century Spain) in East Africa, South and East Asia, travelled to Japan with Yasuke in 1579.

The presence of the Black man who was taller than the regular Japanese and believed to have the strength of ten men caused a stir and gave Yasuke an audience with the Japanese hegemon and warlord Oda Nobunaga.

According to a 1581 letter written by Jesuit Luís Fróis to Lourenço Mexia, Yasuke was presented to Nobunaga who suspected his skin was coloured with black ink. He had him strip and scrub his skin to prove his claim. This was also recorded in the 1582 Annual Report of the Jesuit Mission in Japan.


Nobunaga took a keen interest in Yasuke when he was convinced his skin was in fact black. He added him to his servants and enjoyed talking to him, according to many Japanese books.

The archives of the Japanese Maeda Samurai clan noted that “the black man was given his own residence and a short, ceremonial katana [Samurai sword] by Nobunaga. Nobunaga also assigned him the duty of weapon bearer.”

In 1582, Yasuke fought alongside the Nobunaga-led forces in the tribal battle called the Battle of Tenmokuzan. Nobunaga was attacked and he was forced to commit seppuku [Japanese ritual suicide].


After Nobunaga’s death, Yasuke was eventually captured by the rival clan which described him as an animal and not Japanese. His life was spared and he was returned to the Jesuits.

There is no account of the rest of Yasuke’s life and how he died. However, he has been depicted in many artworks by 16th-century Japanese artists who painted him in service and also in sumo wrestling matches.

Chinese-American family donating $5M to Black community to thank Black couple who rented to them in 1939

Dollita Okine

April 12, 2024

Today, the Dongs possess the Thompsons' original home at 832 C Ave. as well as an eight-unit apartment building next door, with a combined value of $8 million, according to family members. Photo Credit: NBC News

Gus and Emma Thompson, a black couple, are being recognized for their courageous decision to rent their Coronado, California, property to Lloyd Dong Sr. and his wife in 1939, despite widespread racial restrictions on home ownership and rental at the time.

Today, the Dongs possess the Thompsons’ original home at 832 C Ave. as well as an eight-unit apartment building next door, with a combined value of $8 million, according to family members.

In appreciation, Lloyd Dong Jr. and his elder brother, Ron Dong, the sons of Lloyd Dong Sr., are giving $5 million of their share of the property’s sale earnings to Black college students around the U.S.

The family is also attempting to rename the Black Resource Center at San Diego State University in honor of Emma and Gus, who were born into slavery in Kentucky.

Lloyd Dong Jr., now 81 years old, told NBC News that the Thompsons gave their family a start with the land, and now it’s their turn to give others the same opportunity. He said, “Without them, we would not have the education and everything else.”

His 86-year-old brother Ron Dong and his wife Janice Dong, retired educators, are happy that the funds will support education because they believe it has the power to transform lives. “It’s just exactly what’s appropriate,” Ron went on to say.

According to the publication, the Dong family has been in California since the late nineteenth century. Formerly a farmer in the Central Valley, Lloyd Dong Sr. went to Coronado to work as a gardener. His son Ron recounted that his father put in extra effort even on the seventh day of the week to support his American-born children’s education, professional development, and real estate investing.

Then, in 1939, Gus and Emma Thompson provided the Dong family with a place to live, a commitment to sell them the land, and the opportunity to build a better life.

Not by accident, though, as Gus Thompson’s boarding house on the upper floor of his barn was the only place in Coronado at the time where immigrants and members of minority groups could stay.

Gus Thompson had come from Kentucky to California to work at the Hotel Del Coronado. He was not restricted from constructing the house and barn on C Avenue in 1895 because the city’s racial housing covenants had not taken effect at the time. Thompson turned his barn into a boarding home for the vulnerable.

According to Kevin Ashley, a Coronado historian, Emma Thompson sold the Coronado home and adjacent barn to the Dongs in 1955, making them the first Chinese-American family to acquire real estate in Coronado.

The Dong family stayed at the house at 832 C Ave. until 1957, when they replaced the barn with an apartment complex. Ron Dong went on to become a high school teacher, while Lloyd Dong Jr. worked in a variety of fields, including tax preparation. The brothers relocated from Coronado to various parts of California, managing the houses on C Avenue from afar.

Ed Dwight: America’s first Black astronaut candidate will finally get his flight to space at 90

Dollita Okine

April 12, 2024

Ed Dwight next to his sculpture work. (Photo courtesy of www.eddwight.com)

90-year-old Ed Dwight will at long last be able to fly into space. Jeff Bezos’s space venture company recently revealed that Dwight, the nation’s first black astronaut candidate, will be one of the six members of the crew on Blue Origin’s planned New Shepard trip beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

Blue Origin said in a statement, “[Dwight] was selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 as the nation’s first Black astronaut candidate but was never granted the opportunity to fly to space.”

POCIT reported that Dwight’s inclusion in the six-person crew for the NS-25 mission offers him the opportunity to become the oldest person to accomplish this feat—beyond even Wally Funk’s record from her Blue Origin flight.

While the first seat’s ticket cost $28 million in 2021, Space for Humanity and the Jaison and Jamie Robinson Foundation will fund Dwight’s voyage.

Dwight joined the United States Air Force in 1953 and served as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. In 1961, the 35th president selected the Kansas native to train under the U.S. Air Force training program that would later produce NASA’s first astronauts, known as the Mercury 7, according to history.

He had a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering, three consecutive “outstanding” evaluations from military superiors, and held a time of 1,500 hours of jet aviation flying at the time. But when he became one of 26 people recommended to NASA by the Air Force to become astronauts, the agency did not select him.

The first African American to travel to space was Guion Bluford, and he didn’t do it until 1983.

According to History Makers, Dwight eventually quit in 1966, without having gone into space, and went on to work as an engineer, in real estate, and for IBM.

In the mid-1970s, he became interested in art and enrolled at the University of Denver, where he learned how to operate the university’s metal casting foundry. He earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1977 and became a popular sculptor.

Among his creations are the Black Patriots Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C.; the Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial in Denver’s City Park; the International Monuments to the Underground Railroad in Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario; and more.

Ed Dwight Studios in Denver became one of the largest privately held production and marketing facilities in the Western United States.

The date of the upcoming flight has yet to be announced. The other members of the Blue Origin six-person crew are Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura.

TRANSHUMANISM BY ANY OTHER NAME

NATO Releases First International Strategy On Biotechnology And Human Enhancement Technologies

 April 13, 2024  

By Eurasia Review

NATO Allies broke new ground by adopting the first international strategy to govern the responsible development and use of biotechnologies and human enhancement technologies at a meeting of Allied Defence Ministers in February. On Friday (12 April 2024), NATO released a public version of the strategy. 

Faced with the exponential growth of biotech breakthroughs and their anticipated impact on defence and security, NATO has positioned itself as an ethical leader on biotech and human enhancement technologies by adopting an informed, value-based and gender-aware strategy. 

The aim is to embrace these emerging solutions lawfully and responsibly, while developing a trusted relationship with innovators and the public and protecting the Alliance against misuse of these technologies by strategic competitors and potential adversaries. Implementation of the strategy will be carried out in full respect of international law and existing protocols and practices, especially for bioethics. Application of biotech-related solutions will be in line with NATO’s defensive nature. It can range from the possible use of biosensors to enhance the detection of biological and chemical threats; to the development of health tech wearables; and other biomaterials that can help protect and heal servicemen and women. 

Expert research on opportunities and challenges linked to such an application will start in the months to come.

Biotechnology and Human Enhancement technologies were identified as a priority emerging, disruptive technology in 2019. 

Congo-Cameroon: Sustainable Solutions to the Human-Elephant Conflict? (English)


ENGLISH

Project
Human and Wildlife Conflicts in Central Africa
READ MORE ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Country:
CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE) CAMEROON

Author:


Jean Pierre Ndinga
CONGO BASIN RJF GRANTEE


An English summary of this report is below. The original report, published in French in Africa News, follows.

In Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon, as in many other countries in the Congo Basin, the cohabitation of humans and elephants is anything but peaceful. NGOs and public authorities are now working together to find effective and, above all, sustainable solutions.
A solitary male in the Conkouati-Douli National Park. Image courtesy of Africa News.

Devastation of crops, attacks on humans... In Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon, as in many countries of the Congo Basin, cohabitation between humans and elephants is anything but peaceful coexistence. NGOs and public authorities are now selling their jobs in search of effective, but above all sustainable, solutions.

In Cameroon, the problem arises in the localities of Campo, in the south of the country bordering Equatorial Guinea, and Messok-Ngoyla in the east. In recent years, these areas have been seen as epicenters of this conflictual coexistence between humans and wild beasts.

This is due to the animals of the Campo Ma'an and Nki National Parks, which abandon their natural areas to enter villages in search of food, destroying fields and plantations and sometimes even attacking humans.




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Among the animals implicated are elephants, rodents including hedgehogs and primates including gorillas and guenons. As if the leaves and wild fruits were not enough, these animals, in order to meet their colossal needs for food, attack the crops of humans: bananas, cassava, cocoa trees, pistachios,....Almost all crops now end up in their voluminous stomachs.

Several factors are mentioned. The case of the increase in the animal population, the result of "successful" conservation, according to Nkouom Metchio Cyrus, municipal councillor of Ngoyla and the proximity to the parks. "This would push the animals out of the boundaries of protected areas to go elsewhere, especially in peasant plantations," says the local elected official.

Congo-PNCD: Noah or the ark of the new insurance?


The situation is the same in the Conkouati-Douli National Park (PNCD), in the department of Kouilou, in the extreme south-west of Congo-Brazzaville.

Here, the 30 or so villages in the districts of Madingo-Kayes and Nzambi struggle to live together with wild animals, including elephants. With an estimated population of nearly 1,000 individuals, pachyderms make incursions into human environments by ravaging their farms.

Attacks on humans have also been reported, such as the accident recorded last August in the village of Sialivakou (Nzambi district) where a female elephant disemboweled the hunter Ngoma-Loemba. Other attacks have claimed the lives of humans.

But the lines seem to be moving. In particular, thanks to protected agricultural areas (ZAP). Initiated by the French NGO Noé, the program consists of grouping households within a perimeter protected by an electric barrier. The first experiment was launched last December.

"For the time being, the fields of this ZAP are spared, since elephants no longer enter this space," says Alphonse Makosso, secretary general of this coastal locality. And Noé intends to extend the experiment to other villages "especially if it continues to produce these positive results", promises Modeste Makani, head of community development at the NGO installed in 2021 after the departure three years ago of the American WCS.
Congo-Odzala-Kokoua: the best-shared experience in Central Africa

In the Odzala-Kokoua National Park, the experiment with electric barriers through the "Élanga" project implemented by the American NGO Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is already starting to produce encouraging results. In the village of Bomassa, for example, 59 families now enjoy this anti-elephant fortress. "Before, we suffered for our plantations, which were often devastated by elephants. With the arrival of the Elanga project, today in the village of Bomassa we have cassava, groundnuts, bananas and many other fruit trees...", says Louise Ngouengué, a mother in her late sixties.

Bomassa's initiative has been taken up in other localities of the Park such as Ntokou-Pikounda. At the level of the Central African sub-region, at the meeting of the three protected areas of Lobeké in Cameroon, Dzanga-Sangha in the Central African Republic and Nouabale Ndoki in Congo, held from 7 to 11 June 2022 in Bayanga (CAR), it was recommended that Bomassa's experience should be documented and then shared with other protected areas so that they too can see how they could, depending on their context, apply it.

Already at the level of the TRI-National Sangha (TNS), the process is underway. "We always receive calls and emails from friends of Djanga-Sangha with whom we share information about the Bomassa model, about the design we are developing here. We get a lot of calls and messages," says Cisquet.

This work was carried out with the support of the Rainforest Journalism Fund in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

First attempt to catch orphaned orca calf in Canadian lagoon is unsuccessful





The Ehattesaht First Nation deployed a canoe and other resources to try and rescue an orphaned orca, but were unsuccessful, at a lagoon near Zeballos, British Columbia, Friday, April 12, 2024. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press via AP)

April 12, 2024


ZEBALLOS, British Columbia (AP) — An orphaned killer whale stranded in a remote Vancouver Island lagoon is proving difficult for rescuers to catch, an official at the site said Friday.

Ehattesaht First Nation Chief Simon John said the capture operation is in the “demobilization stage” after an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the 2-year-old orca that began before dawn.

He said they plan to try again in a couple of days, and that rescuers were “standing down.”

The 2-year-old calf has been alone in Little Espinosa Inlet for about three weeks after its pregnant mother was beached at low tide and died on March 23.

The pair got into the lagoon by swimming through a narrow and fast-moving channel connecting it to the ocean.

The First Nation said earlier that the rescue was launched at 5 a.m. because of favorable weather conditions.

The rescue plan involves trying to corral the female calf into a shallow part of the 3-kilometer lagoon, using boats, divers and a net, before she would be placed in a large fabric sling and hoisted onto a transport vehicle.

 

Can The US And Iraq Move Beyond Military Ties? – Analysis

Iraq's Mohammed Al-Sudani. Photo Credit: Mehr News Agency

 April 13, 2024  

By James Durso

Twenty-one years ago, the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in the erroneous belief that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction and was allied with al-Qaida, the terror group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. 

The U.S. created an occupation authority, but failed to restore order and helped spawn the insurgency that bedeviled it by dismissing the entire Iraqi military and the most experienced civil servants. Coalition troops fought a losing battle, regained their footing with the 2007 troop surge, and finally departed in 2011. U.S. troops returned in 2014 to fight the Islamic State and they remain there to this day, though ISIS was largely eliminated by 2019.

In January 2020, Iraq’s parliament voted on a nonbinding measure to remove the U.S. troops from Iraq, but the Americans remain at the request of the Iraqi government. However, in response to the parliament’s 2020 vote, Iraq and the International Coalition changed the mission of the troops from a combat mission to one of advisory and training.

Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani, will meet U.S. President Joe Biden on April 15, primarily to discuss the U.S. troop presence. 

Though the U.S.-Iraq Higher Military Commission is reviewing the troop presence issue, will the U.S. side stall fearing it may have to agree to a smaller presence and constrained operations? Possibly, so Sudani may want a public commitment from Biden to force the march to a constructive, timely decision.

Aside from the troops issue, Sudani wants to strengthen Baghdad’s ties with Washington, which he considers Iraq’s top bilateral relationship, and to add an economic dimension to Iraq’s ties with America.

When Americans think of Iraq in economic terms it’s all about the oil, but in November 2023 ExxonMobil, America’s biggest oil company, exited Iraq with nothing to show for a decade-long effort. The departure will lower the expectation of other U.S. companies, but Sudani wants to revitalize economic ties, and he will be accompanied by many of the country’s top businessmen.

U.S.-Iraq trade has room for growth. In 2022, the U.S. exported $897 million in goods, the top product being automobiles. Iraq, in turn, exported $10.3 billion in goods, most of it crude oil.

A key economic objective of Iraq is the $17 billion Development Road, an overland road and rail link from the Persian Gulf to Europe via Turkey, that will host free-trade zones along its length.

Biden and Sudani should consider the shape of the future U.S.-Iraq relationship, which has to now been governed by military considerations, and has become the best example of The Meddler’s Trap, “a situation of self-entanglement, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels they can solve it, and values solving the new problem more because of the initial intervention. …A military intervention causes a feeling of ownership of the foreign territory, triggering the endowment effect.” 

Iraq is the only real democracy in the Arab world, and many young Iraqis want a separation of religion and state, something that should resonate with Americans and, Iraqis hope, cause the U.S. to deal with Iraq as Iraq, not a platform for operations against Syria and Iran, or to support Washington’s Kurdish clients.

Washington damaged itself in Iraq by killing Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in January 2020. Baghdad had moved the PMF, once a militia, into the government in 2016 (no doubt with American encouragement), so the killing of Muhandis, then a government official, increased popular support the PMF.

What are some clouds on the horizon for the U.S. and Iraq?

Corruption. Pervasive corruption in Iraq has slowed economic development and subjected Iraqi citizens to ineffective governance. The 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International ranked Iraq 154 of 180, a slight improvement from 2022 when it ranked 157 of 180.

Iraq was previously described by TI as: “Among the worst countries on corruption and governance indicators, with corruption risks exacerbated by lack of experience in the public administration, weak capacity to absorb the influx of aid money, sectarian issues and lack of political will for anti-corruption efforts.”

Sudani has not ignored corruption, calling it one of the country’s greatest challenges and “no less serious than the threat of terrorism.”

Elizabeth Tsurkov. Tsurkov is a Russian-Israeli academic who was kidnapped in 2023 by Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-influenced Iraqi militia. Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University in the U.S., entered Iraq with her Russian passport and did not disclose that she was an Israeli citizen and Israeli Defense Forces veteran. (A 2022 Iraqi law criminalized any relations with Israel.)

Tsurkov’s family wants the Biden administration to designate Iraq a state sponsor of terrorism for failing to secure her release. Sudani’s office announced an investigation into the matter and the issue may arise when Sudani meets Biden, though the best outcome for Iraq and the U.S. is a Russia-brokered deal between Israel and Iran.

If Biden designates Iraq a state sponsor of terrorism that will irreparably damage the relationship and open the door for China.

China. The U.S. is Iraq’s top relationship, but not its only relationship. China will respond to the ostracism of Baghdad by extending invitations to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, the latter of which can fund infrastructure projects through the New Development Bank. PetroChina replaced ExxonMobil in West Qurna 1, one of Iraq’s biggest oil fields, and is ideally positioned for further expansion. And Iraq was the “leading beneficiary” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative investment in 2021.

Sudani has said Iraq should not be a cockpit of conflict for the U.S, and Iran, but when Iran is concerned it, in Washington, is always 1979. Though Sudani has many challenges to face, Biden has more: he must reorient his government away from its colonial mentality in West Asia, recognize that Baghdad must reach a modus vivendi with Tehran that may not be to Washington’s pleasure, and not smooth the way for Beijing’s greater penetration of West Asia.

This article was published at Responsible Statecraft

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James Durso (@james_durso) is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Central Asia.