Region

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Nearly a week ago, Iraqi Kurd Barham Hama Ali found himself in the unimaginable position of being aboard a deportation flight set to take off for Kigali, thousands of miles from home.

The 25-year-old was among a handful of asylum seekers who were due to be the first of many sent from the United Kingdom under a controversial resettlement deal with Rwanda.

“We were seven migrants, each one of us was escorted by four guards,” Ali said. “They put us on the plane by force.”

“We were all crying. We faced psychological and physical pain,” he said.

But he and his fellow passengers got a reprieve when the flight was cancelled at the 11th hour, thanks to an “urgent interim” ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.

Like thousands of Kurds, Syrians, Afghans and others fleeing war-torn or impoverished homes, Ali had arrived in Britain from France in the spring.

“The economic situation is bad and unemployment is rampant” in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, he told AFP in a phone interview from a detention centre outside London.

He said he was also fleeing “attacks by foreign forces” — namely Turkey, which has launched successive offensives in the Kurdistan region targeting insurgents from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), at times causing civilian casualties.

He left his small town of Sayyed Sadiq, “taking many risks” by trekking north to Turkey, then making his way to France and the UK.

“I spent about $15,000 on my trip,” he said.

But the journey would prove to be only the first of his hardships. Once he arrived on May 23, British authorities placed him in a camp.

“I stayed there for two days, after which they... asked us to appoint a lawyer with whom to discuss our situation and the issue of asylum,” Ali said.

He was later transferred to Colnbrook migrant detention centre, close to Heathrow Airport.

‘Demand to stay’ 

Early this month, he was handed “a ticket to Rwanda”, unwittingly becoming one of the first contingent of irregular migrants that the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seeking to send to the tiny East African country.

The deal between London and Kigali has drawn sharp criticism from rights groups, the UN refugee agency and church leaders in England.

Rwanda, which suffered a genocide in 1994, has won praise for rapid economic development in recent decades. But the government has also repeatedly been accused by rights groups of widespread abuses, extending to targeting exiled dissidents.

Rwanda insists that it is a safe country for migrants.

On June 14, Ali was aboard the Rwanda-bound plane with six other migrants at a UK military base, when the European court order arrived and the “voyage was cancelled”.

“Aside from me, there was another Kurd from Sulaimaniyah [in Iraqi Kurdistan], two Iranian Kurds, one Iranian, one Vietnamese and one Albanian,” he recounted.

The migrants were returned to Colnbrook, where Ali remains.

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel later slammed the ECHR ruling as “politically motivated” and vowed to introduce legislation to override some of the court’s orders.

Nearly a week after the planned flight, Ali said he demands “to stay in Great Britain”.

“We asked for asylum in the United Kingdom because our lives were not safe, and yet they want to send us to a country destroyed by conflict,” he said.

“I fear it will all end with a decision to send us to Rwanda” after all, he added, noting that such a move “spells death” for his family’s hopes of making a viable living.

GAZA CITY  — Hamas is working to restore ties with Syria's government, a senior official within the Palestinian Islamist group said on Tuesday, following a decade-long rupture after Hamas backed the Syrian opposition.

"Communication with Syria is improving and is on its way to being entirely restored to what it used to be," the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Hamas leaders have made multiple recent visits to Syria, the official said, adding: "Syria supports the Palestinian people and cause, and Hamas is devoted to its relationship with Syria and all Arab countries."

Syrian President Bashar Assad's government declined to comment on reports of warming ties.

Assad's regime and Hamas, both staunch foes of Israel, had been firmly allied until the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, when the Palestinian group publicly backed those fighting to overthrow the government in Damascus.

The rupture that followed saw Hamas abandon its headquarters in the Syrian capital, where the group's former chief Khaled Meshal had lived for many years.

Top Hamas officials subsequently relocated to Doha and Istanbul.

Hamas has voiced anger over a recent diplomatic rapprochement between Turkey and Israel.

The breakdown of Hamas-Syrian relations also angered their common ally Iran, which remains a major backer of armed groups in Gaza, a Palestinian territory of roughly 2.3 million people blockaded by Israel since 2007.

Meanwhile, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Beirut on Tuesday, for meetings aimed at “strengthening cooperation and fraternity between the Palestinian and the Lebanese people”, a Hamas statement said.

There was no immediate indication that Haniyeh’s visit to was tied to the Syrian outreach.

TUNIS (AFP) — Tunisian President Kais Saied on Tuesday urged the International Monetary Fund(IMF) to take into account the social impact of any economic reforms it may demand as part of a bailout package.

The North African country has been in preliminary discussions with the global lender for a new loan to save an economy ravaged by years of high unemployment, inflation and public debt even pre-dating its 2011 revolution.

Saied met the IMF's regional chief Jihad Azour on Tuesday, telling him he "recognised the need to introduce major reforms" but insisted that such changes must "take social impacts into account", according to a statement from the president's office.

People "have certain rights, such as to health and education, which cannot be made subservient to measures of profit and loss", he added.

Ahead of formal negotiations that are expected to start soon, the government has presented a reform plan to the global lender that includes a freeze on the public sector wage bill, some subsidy cuts and a restructuring of state firms.

Tunisia’s powerful UGTT trade union, which staged a nationwide public-sector strike last week to demand pay rises, has warned against “painful reforms” made to please the IMF.

In a video message published by the presidency, Azour said he and Saied had discussed “aspects of cooperation and liaison between the IMF and the Tunisian government as well as future economic developments in Tunisia, the region and the world”.

Tunisia’s central bank chief said in May that a new IMF deal — the third in a decade — was “indispensable” given Tunisia’s public debt and gaping budget deficit, exacerbated by a spike in energy and food prices due to the war in Ukraine.

An IMF team said in March that the country faced “major structural challenges”, with low growth and investment along with high unemployment and gaping inequality.

TRIPOLI — Rival sides in Libya's long-running conflict concluded their latest round of United Nations-led talks on Monday without reaching a deal on rules for long-delayed elections, the UN said.

The presidential and parliamentary elections, originally set for December 2021, were meant to cap a UN-led peace process following the end of the last serious round of violence in the country from 2019-2020.

But the vote never took place due to the presence of contentious candidates and deep disagreements over the polls' legal basis between rival power centres in the east and west of the country.

Representatives of the Tripoli-based High Council of State and of the parliament, based in eastern Libya, began meetings in Cairo more than a week ago, but without success.

"The third and final round of negotiations between the Joint House of Representatives and High Council of State Committee on the Libyan Constitutional Track drew to a close in the early morning of 20 June," said Stephanie Williams, the UN's top official on Libya.

“Differences persist on the measures governing the transitional period leading to elections,” she said in a statement.

She insisted that the sides had “achieved a great deal of consensus on the contentious articles in the Libyan Draft Constitution” and thanked them for their “efforts to resolve their differences on a number of complex issues”.

She urged the two sides to meet again within 10 days “to bridge outstanding issues”.

Williams noted that some 2.8 million of Libya’s nearly 7 million people had registered to vote amid a rare period of optimism following a landmark October 2020 ceasefire.

The political standoff has deepened since March, when parliament appointed a new administration to replace that of interim leader Abdulhamid Dbeibah, arguing that his mandate has expired.

But Dbeibah has refused to hand over power to anything other than an elected government.

After failing to enter Tripoli in an armed standoff in May, the rival administration has taken up office further east in Sirte — hometown of dictator Muammar Qadhafi, whose fall in a 2011 NATO-backed revolt plunged the country into years of often violent chaos.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinian Authority on Sunday called on Israel to hand over the gun that allegedly fired the shot which killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

Abu Akleh was shot and killed on May 11 while covering an Israeli forces’ operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

A Palestinian probe said that an Israeli soldier shot dead the veteran Palestinian-American reporter, echoing findings by Al Jazeera and several other major news organisations.

Israel has asked the Palestinian Authority to provide the bullet extracted from her body so Israel can conduct its own ballistic investigation. Israel has offered to do so with Palestinian and American representatives present.

"We have refused to hand over the bullet to them, and we even demand that they hand over the weapon that murdered Shireen Abu Akleh," Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said at a ceremony in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Sunday to mark 40 days since her death.

Israel's army has said that it has not concluded whether Abu Akleh — who was wearing a bullet-proof vest marked "Press" when she was shot — was killed by one of its troops or stray Palestinian gunfire.

The army has maintained that no Israeli soldier fired at Abu Akleh knowing she was a journalist.

The Palestinian probe concluded that Abu Akleh was killed using a Ruger Mini-14, a semi-automatic weapon.

Israel's army has said its investigation into her killing has centred on one soldier who fired near the area where Abu Akleh was killed.

Abu Akleh's brother Anton told the Ramallah ceremony — where photos of the reporter were displayed — that the family was "only seeking justice for Shireen".

Israel's army has said it has not yet concluded whether one of its soldiers will face criminal charges over Abu Akleh's killing.

But the army's top lawyer has said such charges would be unlikely given the circumstances surrounding her killing that, according to the military, amounted to active combat.

NABK, Syria — A Syrian desert monastery that was once a hub for interfaith dialogue, attracting tens of thousands, has reopened to visitors after more than a decade of war and isolation.

“We yearn for people to return. We want to see them pray and meditate with us once more, so that they may find here a space for calm, silence and contemplation,” Father Jihad Youssef told AFP, his voice echoing through the dark, empty halls of the monastery he heads.

In 2010, 30,000 people visited Deir Mar Moussa Al Habashi (St Moses the Ethiopian), a 7th century monastery perched atop a barren, rocky hill about 100 kilometres north of Damascus.

But the onset of civil war in 2011 and the disappearance of Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, who had led and revived the community since 1982, scared away visitors for nearly a decade.

With security having improved in surrounding areas, the monastery reopened its doors to visitors this month.

They must climb 300 steps to reach the stone monastery, built on the ruins of a Roman tower and partly carved into the rock.

It has an 11th century church adorned with icons, ancient murals and writing in Arabic, Syriac and Greek that says “God is love” and “in the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful” — a phrase that serves as Muslim praise to God.

Symbol of coexistence

Dall’Oglio hosted interfaith seminars at the monastery, where the Christian minority and Muslims used to pray side by side, turning it into a symbol of coexistence that attracted visitors and worshippers for three decades.

The Italian Jesuit priest was expelled from Syria in 2012 for supporting a mass anti-government uprising, but returned a year later.

He disappeared in the summer of 2013, on his way to the headquarters of the group that later became known as Daesh in the city of Raqqa, where he had gone to plead for the release of kidnapped activists.

Dall’Oglio’s practice of inter-religious coexistence was the exact opposite of the intolerant, murderous extremism of Daesh.

He was reported to have been executed and his body dumped in a crevice soon after his capture, but his death was never confirmed by any party.

“IS [Daesh] most likely kidnapped him. We do not know for sure whether he is alive or dead,” Youssef said, adding that no one contacted the monastery to demand ransom. 

An escape

In 2015, the monastery came under Daesh gunfire after the extremists began two years of control in the nearby Homs countryside.

“We were scared we would be kidnapped or killed at any moment,” especially after Daesh reached the nearby village of Al Qaryatain and kidnapped groups of Christians there, Youssef said.

Daesh abducted the monastery’s former chief Jacques Mourad from Al Qaryatain for several months in 2015.

The group razed a monastery in the nearby village and locked hundreds of Christians in a dungeon. They were later freed, but a Christian community which once numbered hundreds in Al Qaryatain has now fallen to fewer than two dozen. 

“We experienced all kinds of fear,” Youssef said, adding that they felt isolated in the desert monastery at the height of the fighting, and later because of the COVID-19 pandemic.