Region

BRUSSELS — International donors pledged $6.7 billion for conflict-wracked Syria at a conference in Brussels on Tuesday, insisting the crisis had not be forgotten even as the Ukraine war grips world attention.

"This event today comes at a particularly difficult time," said EU neighbourhood commissioner Oliver Varhelyi. 

"Our societies and economies, including the key donors are still struggling to recover from the pandemic while coping with the impact of the war in Ukraine."

The $6.7 billion pledged outstripped the $6.4 billion raised last year, with the money to go to helping Syrians and to neighbouring countries struggling with refugees — not to the Damascus government.

"Despite all the war in Europe, despite the COVID pandemic, donors are sending now a very strong signal to Syria and its region that we are ready to do even more than before," Varhelyi said.

Much of the money will go to help Syrians who have taken refuge in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, as well as Egypt and Iraq.

Aid organisations have warned that the hit to global agricultural supplies from the war in Ukraine could exacerbate food insecurity in Syria. 

The United Nations had said it was looking for $10.5 billion for 2022 to implement its humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis. 

The UN special envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, told the Brussels conference that "Syrians have never needed your support more than they do right now".

He said massive Syrian population displacement continues with little progress from Damascus on meeting international demands for political reform.

"The economic crisis continues and violence continues, with constant risk of escalation — even if there is something of a military stalemate," he said.

He added that diplomacy had been made "even more difficult than it was before" by the effects of the war in Ukraine.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell ruled out a normalisation of ties with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s government or a rebuilding programme for Syria, saying “if you go and spend money reconstructing Syria, it is going to support the Syrian regime”.

The conference brought together around 70 countries and international institutions, including UN agencies. Russia, targeted by the West for its invasion of Ukraine, was not invited.

Borrell announced an extra one billion euros ($1.1 billion) covering 2022, bringing its total to 1.56 billion euros — the same as it pledged last year.

Overall the EU and its member states vowed 4.8 billion euros, or 75 percent of the entire total, according to Varhelyi. 

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Washington was giving $800 million.

“Given the focus... we have on Ukraine, I thought it was important for me to come here from New York to say that we have not forgotten the Syrian people,” she said.

Humanitarian organisation Oxfam welcomed the money that had been pledged but said that donors needed to refocus their priorities. 

“For over a decade, there has been too much focus on emergency aid with limited focus on long-term solutions to problems like lack of food and water,” Moutaz Adham, Oxfam’s Syria country director, said in statement. 

“What the Syrian people need is schools and hospitals, homes that can stand and are cleared of rubble and old bombs, and jobs, so they can feed their families and stop relying on aid.”

The Syrian war started in 2011 and is now in its 12th year, with more than half a million people estimated to have been killed. 

The forces of Assad, with backing from Russia and Iran, have been battling rebels opposed to his rule, most of them in Syria’s northwest.

According to UNHCR, 5.7 million Syrians have registered as refugees, while UNICEF says 9.3 million Syrian children need aid both inside the country and in the wider region around Syria.

CAIRO — Five Egyptian soldiers and seven extremists were killed early Wednesday when the army was attacked in the Sinai region, the military said, the second such deadly attack in days.

Extremist fighters attacked at dawn, an army spokesman said in a statement.

"One officer and four soldiers were killed and two other soldiers were wounded," the statement read, adding that seven terrorists were killed.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s attack.

But it came four days after an ambush on the Sinai Peninsula claimed by the Daesh terror group killed 11 Egyptian soldiers, the military’s highest loss of life in years. 

The military said Saturday’s “terrorist” attack was against a water pumping station.

Daesh claimed responsibility the following day, announcing on its Amaq propaganda site to have seized the weapons of soldiers it killed and to have torched a military post.

Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has been gripped for more than a decade by an armed insurgency, which peaked after the ouster of late Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013. 

More than a thousand suspected militants and dozens of security personnel have been killed since the start of operations, according to official figures.

CAIRO — A stage, lights, a mesmerised audience: It looks like an Egyptian folkloric concert but Umm Sameh is singing to heal the sick by driving out the demons that possess them.

The music and dance ritual known as "zar", with centuries-old roots in Ethiopia and Sudan, is traditionally performed to ward off or exorcise jinn or evil spirits.

"We're not quacks or witches," said Umm Sameh, aged in her 70s, with kohl-lined eyes, large hoops swaying in her ears and gold bracelets tinkling on her arms.

"The singing is spiritual and brings out negative energies," said the lead singer of the Mazaher ensemble, adding that they also perform prayers from Islam's mystic Sufi practices.

Traditionally, the zar ritual would last several days and include animal sacrifices. But no blood is spilled at Cairo's Makan Cultural Centre, where the group performs to the delight of foreign and local guests.

The audience is bewitched by Umm Sameh's voice and nod their heads to the drumbeat. 

In a patriarchal society where women face frequent discrimination, zar ceremonies are among the few cultural practices in which they take centre stage.

Umm Sameh said she learned the ritual from age 11 from her mother and grandmother. 

Six decades later, she recites the same lyrics to the same tunes — all from memory, she adds proudly, because she has "inherited them and grown up with them".

'Old healing ritual'

"Zar is a very old healing ritual, a bit like medical treatment," said Ahmed Al Maghraby, founder of Mazaher, which he says is Egypt's last group to perform zar in public.

He set up the Makan performance space 22 years ago "to preserve this cultural heritage and archive local music from all over Egypt".

It was a tough feat, he said, because zar has historically been derided by devout Muslims as a pagan practice, and rejected by modernising state authorities as a backward rural tradition.

"Middle Eastern and Egyptian society regards everything local with disgust," lamented Maghraby. 

He said it was foreign tourists who first brought Egyptians to the shows, who he remembered used to say "No! There's jinn and blood!'"

"For them, the zar was always something sinful."

Ensemble member Abou Samra said "people have a very negative idea of zar because of the movies", in Egypt, long regarded as the Hollywood of the Arab world.

In one of them, 1987 horror movie "Al Taweeza" (The Curse), superstars Youssra and Tahia Carioca contorted themselves, drenched in fake blood, and emitting shrill cries.

But zar is "an art like all other arts", said Abou Samra, who plays the tanboura, a six-string lyre. "We have to let go of these stereotypes."

New generation

Times are indeed changing. The ensemble, whose musicians and dancers were all over 60, have brought in a new member.

Azza Mazaher, who grew up watching her mother Umm Hassan do percussion, now also drums and energises the show as she dances across the stage.

Azza said the group now performs in both the old and new ways.

"If someone feels sick and the doctors can't find a treatment, we can hold a ceremony," she told AFP.

"But here, we're performing a light piece of folklore, so people can discover it, understand it and enjoy it."

Mazaher has taken part in several European festivals, and more Egyptians are flocking to their Cairo performances, appreciative of the home-grown artform.

Mariam Essawi, an audience member in her 20s, said: "They look like us, they represent us. Zar is part of our history and our cultural heritage. It's very strange that we don't know it."

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli occupation authorities demolished a residential building in occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday, leaving 35 people, the majority of them children, homeless.

The demolition of the three-storey building in the neighbourhood of Silwan was carried out because the owners lacked the required permits, the 

authorities said.

Israel regularly razes homes built by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank if they lack the relevant construction permits.

The catch, according to an UN study, is that such permits are "virtually impossible" to obtain, and the result is a chronic housing shortage.

"Municipality personnel came at 9:00 am, broke the doors, expelled us and didn't let us take any belongings," said Faris Rajabi, 35, who lived in the building.

Palestinian youths looked on in the presence of Israeli forces as heavy machinery was used to tear down the structure, an AFP photographer reported from the scene.

Rajabi said his family had gone to great lengths and paid over $100,000 in fines and fees in order to settle the issue in the courts.

The building included five apartments and housed 35 members of the Rajabi family, Faris Rajabi told AFP.

Silwan, adjacent to Jerusalem’s Old City, is the site of a campaign by Jewish settler groups to expand Israeli presence there.

Palestinians have decried the influx of settlers, accusing them of seeking to push them out of their own neighbourhood.

The demolition was “political, not legal”, said Rajabi, adding that “they anyway don’t give us permits, and this is a policy of dispossession and ethnic cleansing”.

The Palestinian Red Cross said five Palestinians, including a journalist, were beaten by Israeli forces at the site of the demolition, adding one was hospitalised.

Nearly 40 structures have been razed in occupied East Jerusalem this year, displacing about 100 people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs.

Some owners prefer to raze their homes themselves to avoid being charged thousands of shekels for the demolition, by the city’s demolition crews.

Israel occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the June War of 1967. It later occupied East Jerusalem in a move never recognised by most of the international community.

AMMAN — The floating storage and offloading (FSO) facility “Safer”, an ageing oil tanker off Yemen’s Red Sea coast, will cost approximately $20 billion to clean up if oil spills, according to United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen David Gressly.

The 45-year-old FSO Safer, long used as a floating oil storage platform with 1.1 million barrels of crude on board, has been moored off Yemen’s western Red Sea port of Hodeida since 2015, without being serviced, according to AFP news agency. 

During a media briefing at the UNDP Regional Hub Office for Arab States in Amman, Gressly emphasised the threat the vessel poses.  

It is a “catastrophe waiting to happen”, he said.

Gressly noted that the vessel has not had any maintenance “for years” and is “rapidly getting worse every day”, which may lead to a major humanitarian, economic and environmental catastrophe.

“The impact of any spilled oil will be catastrophic,” he said. The vessel holds four times the amount of oil than the Exxon Valdez, which spilled in 1989.

If oil were to spill from the vessel, it would have a “tremendous” effect on the environment, as well as would damage shipping, tourism, fishing, and the livelihoods of people who are already suffering, Gressly said. 

He noted that the damage could potentially also reach other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Djibouti and Somalia, as well as potentially impact tourism in Egypt and Jordan.

However the civil war and conflict in Yemen makes it very difficult because “we need all parties to cooperate”, who are currently in conflict, said Gressly. 

“It is necessary to find an agreement and also extremely important to have everyone on board for the initiative,” he said. 

He indicated that the government of Yemen and the Sanaa-based authorities have committed to facilitating the success of the project.

Gressly noted that during the meeting a two-step plan was agreed upon. While working to replace the existing FSO with one of equivalent storage capacity, which can take up to 18 months, the oil will be placed in a temporary vessel, so it does not pose a threat to the environment any longer, he said. 

The budget for the two-track operation is $144 million, including $79.6 million for the emergency operation, which is higher due to the “highly insecure” environment, according to Gressly. 

“Our operational plan is now completed, and we are moving forward with the contracting. Once the work begins it will take approximately two months to do the work on the existing vessel, and secure the oil to avoid any spilling, which is the first part of the operation, then the long-term replacement will start,” he said.

Gressly noted that on Wednesday, the Netherlands and the United Nations will co-host a pledging event to support the UN-coordinated plan to address the threat.

“Implementation of the plan cannot begin without donor funding,” he said, noting that they will reach out to the private sector for funding as well, as the only issue is mobilising resources.

“We are aiming to complete the operation no later than September of this year, as it cannot wait, and in hopes of avoiding work during winter months and the harsh weather,” Gressly said.

Gressly indicated that selling the oil is “complicated” due to legal ownership and who controls the oil.

According to a statement from UNDP, a major spill would devastate fishing communities on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, as the half a million people who work in the fishing industry there have 1.7 million dependents. Two hundred thousand livelihoods could be instantly wiped out and whole communities would be exposed to life-threatening toxins.

The environmental impact of a major spill on water, reefs and life-supporting mangroves on Yemen’s coast and potentially across the Red Sea would be severe. Desalination plants on the Red Sea coast could also be closed, cutting off a water source for millions of people, the statement said.

ZAKHO, Iraq — Iraqi policeman Jundi Khodr Kalo was among thousands of Yazidis again forced to flee their homes this month, after fierce clashes between the army and local fighters in their Sinjar heartland.

“Last time we were displaced because we were afraid of the Daesh” group, said Kalo, 37, from the non-Arab, Kurdish-speaking minority.

The Yazidis are a monotheistic, esoteric community who were massacred by Daesh when the extremists swept across Iraq in 2014.

Two days of fighting broke out on May 1 in northern Iraq’s Sinjar region between the army and Yazidi fighters affiliated with Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

A local official said the violence forced more than 1,700 families, or over 10,200 people, to flee.

Some 960 families have settled in a displacement camp in the neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan region, while others have sought shelter with relatives, according to the United Nations.

Kalo, his wife and their five children took refuge in the crowded Chamisku camp, home to more than 22,000 people, near the city of Zakho.

‘Not an ideal solution’

Like many Yazidis, the Kalo family suffered long years of displacement after IS overran swathes of their country.

“We lived in a camp for six years,” he said, only returned to their home village two years ago.

Going back “was not easy... but we managed to get by”.

“But lately, the situation got worse,” he told AFP.

Sinjar is the site of sporadic skirmishes between Iraqi security forces and the Sinjar Resistance Units — local fighters allied with the PKK separatists.

“Every day we would hear the sound of shooting and explosions. We were afraid for our families,” Kalo said.

But life in Chamisku, like in other camps, is tough, too.

Residents take shelter in tarpaulin tents, where foam mattresses line the ground.

AFP journalists saw dozens of people queueing for handouts of rice, tea, sugar, flour and milk.

“The situation in these camps is crowded,” said Firas Al Khateeb, a spokesman for the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR).

He cited “a risk of limited access to basic services due to a reduction of humanitarian funding”.

Living in displacement camps “for long periods of time is not an ideal situation”, he added.

“But any return [home] must be voluntary, maintain human dignity”, and be to a “peaceful environment”, Khateeb said.

‘Need security, stability’

Iraqi authorities say calm has returned to Sinjar following the fighting, which killed an Iraqi soldier.

Each side has blamed the other for starting the clashes in the region, the scene of simmering tensions and multiple actors. 

The army is seeking to apply an agreement between Baghdad and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region for the withdrawal of Yazidi and PKK combatants.

The deal is seen as crucial for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which has been looking to restore its former influence in Sinjar.

It is also key to facilitating the return of Yazidis displaced years ago by IS.

But the Yazidi fighters, who are affiliated with the Hashed Al Shaabi — a pro-Iran former paramilitary organisation — accuse the army of trying to take control of their stronghold.

Iraqi security forces said military reinforcements were dispatched to Sinjar to “impose state authority”.

“We will not allow the presence of armed groups,” the forces said in a statement on Thursday.

The Sinjar region has also been a target of Turkish air strikes on rear bases of the PKK, which Ankara considers a terrorist organisation.

In such a complex and dangerous atmosphere, Yazidi civilians say they feel like collateral damage.

“We need security and stability, otherwise we will not go back to Sinjar,” said labourer Zaeem Hassan Hamad.

The 65-year-old took refuge in Chamisku with more than a dozen family members, including his grandchildren.

Daesh forced him to flee once before, and he said he did not want to keep repeating that traumatic experience.

“We cannot go home and be displaced again,” he said.

“If the Hashed, the PKK and the army remain in the region, the people will be afraid,” he added.

“No one will ever go back.”