Region

BEIRUT — Barely two hours after Lydia landed from Marseille in France, friends and relatives flocked to her apartment to collect drugs that have vanished from Lebanese pharmacies because of crippling shortages.

They started knocking on her door as early as 7:30 am, before she even had a chance to unpack two suitcases and a backpack stuffed with medicine she had purchased from France for more than $1,000.

"I didn't even have a chance to sleep, but I understand because there's nothing worse than running out of medicine," especially if you have a chronic illness, the woman in her sixties said from her home in Baabdat, north of Beirut.

Lydia, like many other Lebanese expats, has become a courier for family and friends grappling with a raft of shortages due to what the World Bank has termed one of the world's worst financial crises since the 1850s.

As pharmacies run out of hundreds of medicines, including over-the-counter pain killers, the suitcase of a Lebanese expat, once teeming with gifts and duty-free purchases, now resembles a portable pharmacy.

"I brought everything: antibiotics, medicine for hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes, Parkinson's and cancer as well as many antidepressants," Lydia told AFP.

Her parents also recently flew in from Marseille carrying medicine for 12 people in four large suitcases, she said.

The expat deliveries, Lydia said, remind her of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.

"The crisis has revived wartime reflexes, especially a sense of social solidarity," Lydia said.

But "what is happening today is unprecedented and surreal," she added. "We have never seen such shortages in medicine or fuel... We have never felt this suffocated."

Lebanon’s foreign currency reserves are fast depleting and the cash-strapped state has started to gradually reduce subsidies on key imports including fuel and flour.

Medicine importers say hundreds of drugs have disappeared from the market, as the central bank owes suppliers abroad millions of dollars and they can no longer open new lines of credit.

For its part, the government accuses importers of hoarding medicine with the aim of selling it at a higher price once medicine subsidies are reduced by the state and drugs become more expensive.

For the Lebanese people, the shortages have triggered a worldwide drug hunt. As for pharmacies, they staged a nationwide strike Friday protesting the lack of supplies.

In the neighbouring island of Cyprus, pharmacists can now spot Lebanese customers scouring for supplies to take back home.

Tracy Najjar made a trip to Cyprus last month with her husband Paul to temporarily escape Lebanon’s crisis, but also to stock up on medical supplies.

“The pharmacist immediately guessed we were Lebanese,” she said.

“He told us that another Lebanese couple had come in two days earlier to buy a tonne of drugs,” she added.

Tracy, who lost her three-year-old daughter Alexandra in the Beirut port blast that killed more than 200 people last summer, said she bought some of the most basic supplies.

They included eye drops, powdered milk, antidepressants and drugs for high blood pressure.

Apart from family and friends, beneficiaries often include strangers who reach out over social media, now a key platform for buying and exchanging medicine.

Certain death 

President Michel Aoun this month pledged to continue subsidising medication and medical supplies selected by the health ministry on a priority basis.

The central bank has for months urged the health ministry to identify priority drugs, but a list has yet to be finalised.

The central bank said last week it would earmark $400 million to support key products including medicine and flour.

The head of the medicine importers’ syndicate said the bank had promised it $50 million a month in subsidies for medicine — just half of importers’ current bills for that period.

Expecting shortages only to worsen, Ahmad, a 58-year-old parking attendant, warned that the situation is turning deadly.

The 58-year-old father of three suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes but can’t find the pills prescribed by his doctors.

“I can not even find the generics,” he said.

He tried to do without for a few weeks but his blood pressure quickly climbed.

He reached out to a cousin in Istanbul and a friend in the United Arab Emirates to secure the medication, at a cost much higher than the subsidised prices he would have paid if available in Lebanon.

“We either die because we can’t find medicine or we die because we have run out of money after spending it all on drugs brought in from abroad,” he said.

“Either way, they are killing us,” he added, referring to Lebanon’s under-fire political class.

By Dawood Al Yaseen and Salam Faraj 
Agence France-Presse


BASRA, Iraq — As Iraq bakes in the blistering summer heat, its hardscrabble farmers and livestock herders are battling severe water shortages that are killing their animals, fields and way of life.

The oil-rich country, scarred by wars and insurgencies over the past four decades, is also one of the world's most vulnerable to climate change and struggles with a host of other environmental challenges.

Upstream dams in Turkey and Iran have diminished the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which are also heavily polluted with sewage, waste and agricultural runoff as they flow southeast through Iraq.

Drought has hit the Mesopotamian marshes, said to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden, where water buffalos and their owners once found respite from summer heat above 50 degrees Celsius.

In southern Iraq, where the two big streams merge into the Shatt Al Arab, the reduced flow has caused saltwater intrusion from the Gulf, degrading the waterway that is shaded by lush palm groves on its banks.

"Everything we plant dies: the palm trees and the alfalfa which normally tolerates salt water," said Rafiq Taufiq, a farmer in the southern riverside city of Basra.

The saline water encroaching ever further upstream has already destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland.

This year, the trend has worsened again, said Alaa Al Badran, an agricultural engineer in Basra province.

"For the first time the salt entered as early as April, the start of the farming season," he said.

'Risk of displacement' 

The problems are exacerbated as decades of military conflict, neglect and corruption have destroyed irrigation systems and water treatment plants.

According to the United Nations, only 3.5 per cent of Iraq's farmlands are watered with irrigation systems.

Rivers are meanwhile often polluted with viruses and bacteria, oil spills and industrial chemicals.

In Basra, where freshwater canals are clogged with garbage, more than 100,000 people were hospitalised in 2018 after drinking water polluted with sewage and toxic waste.

The heat and the water shortages have been a blow to Iraq's agricultural sector, which accounts for five percent of the economy and 20 per cent of jobs, but provides only half of the food needs of Iraq, which relies heavily on cheap imports.

In a nation of 40 million people, "7 million Iraqis have already been affected by the drought and the risks of displacement that it entails", President Barham Saleh wrote recently.

In Chibayish, in Iraq's marshlands, buffalo herder Ali Jasseb said he now has to travel great distances to keep the animals producing milk, his family's only income.

"Every two or three months, we have to travel to find water," he told AFP. "Because if the buffaloes drink salty water, they get poisoned, they stop producing milk and sometimes they die."

Raad Hmeid, another buffalo herder, pointed to the sun-cracked ground below his feet.

"Until 10 days ago this was mud, there was water and even greenery," he told AFP.

Years of drought 

In Iraq's east, cereal farmer Abderrazzaq Qader, 45, said he had seen no rain "for four years" on his 38 hectare (94 acre) farm in Khanaqin near the Iranian border.

The years of drought, he said, had led many local farmers to abandon the land to take jobs as labourers.

In total, "69 per cent of agricultural land is threatened with desertification, meaning it is being rendered unfit for cultivation," Sarmad Kamel, a state forestry official working on the issue, told AFP.

Iraq's agricultural lands are shrinking further as farmers are selling their unprofitable plots to developers, said economist Ahmed Saddam.

"On the one hand, there is more and more demand for housing, while on the other hand cultivating land no longer creates sufficient income," he said.

Rather than continue their back-breaking work for little pay, many farmers near Basra have sold their plots, often for "between 25,000 and 70,000 euros ... huge figures for farmers," he says.

At this rate, "every year, 10 per cent of agricultural land disappears to become residential areas", he added.

This accelerates a rural exodus into towns and big cities, piling huge pressure on the economic, social and environmental fabric of life in Iraq.

There is little respite in sight, warned Saleh in a recent statement that said "climate projections for Iraq foresee a rise of about two degrees Celsius, and a drop in rainfall of 9 per cent by 2050".

Another worrying projection says that, by mid-century, Iraq's population will have doubled to 80 million.


JUBA — South Sudan will mark 10 years of independence on Friday with little fanfare as the troubled country battles economic chaos and a desperate hunger crisis after a bloody civil war.

The world's newest nation was born on July 9, 2011, after a decades-long fight for statehood from Sudan, but was plunged into a brutal conflict two years later from which it has struggled to recover.

There will be none of the riotous scenes in the streets of Juba that accompanied that historic moment a decade ago. The anniversary has been marked only a few times since, with the last formal celebrations in 2014.

Government ministers on Wednesday raised concerns at a cabinet meeting about anniversary events being held in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

"His Excellency [President Salva Kiir] directs that the public, the citizens of South Sudan, celebrate in their own houses," Deputy Information Minister Baba Medan told reporters.

The minister said Kiir is scheduled to address the public "so everyone will see it on his own TV, or hear through your own radio, so that we also be avoiding any health issue".

A ceremony to swear in the MPs has been cancelled, without any official explanation.

The only formal event appears to be a fun run in the capital Juba. Medan said it would commence at 5 am (02:00 GMT) and encouraged people to take part.

Kiir blamed international sanctions for keeping South Sudan poor and depriving the state of revenue.

"This is why we are not celebrating the 10th anniversary the way the people would have wanted it to be," he told Kenyan broadcaster Citizen TV on Wednesday.

South Sudan enjoyed immense international goodwill and billions of dollars in financial support when its people voted overwhelmingly in a 2011 referendum to secede from the north.

But in late 2013, the country collapsed into a bloody civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people and forced millions more to flee their homes.

The conflict ruined the nascent country's economy and basic services for its 12 million people are in short supply, and financed almost entirely by foreign aid.

The young country faces its worst hunger crisis since independence, with some 60 per cent of the population enduring severe food shortages, some close to famine, the UN World Food Programme says.

Kiir and his deputy, former rebel leader Riek Machar, rule in a fragile unity government created after the historic foes signed a peace deal in 2018 that ended the war.

BEIRUT — The French and US envoys to Lebanon are to visit Saudi Arabia, France's embassy said on Wednesday, an unusual move amid international pressure to lift Lebanon out of a roiling political and economic crisis.

The visit on Thursday comes as Lebanese battle shortages and price hikes on basic goods in what the World Bank has called one of the world's worst economic crises since the 1850s.

World powers have demanded a new government before any financial aid to the cash-strapped nation, but for around 11 months Lebanese politicians have failed to agree on a line-up.

"The [French]ambassador will explain how urgent it is that Lebanese officials form a credible and effective government to work on implementing necessary reforms," the embassy said.

The French envoy would, "with her American counterpart, express France and United States' desire to exert pressure on those responsable for the deadlock", it said.

Last month the top diplomats of the United States, France and Saudi Arabia jointly urged Lebanon's squabbling leaders to come together.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held an impromptu meeting with his Saudi and French counterparts in Italy on the sidelines of talks of the Group of 20 major economies.

They discussed "the need for Lebanon's political leaders to show real leadership by implementing overdue reforms to stabilise the economy and provide the Lebanese people with much-needed relief," Blinken wrote on Twitter.

Saudi Arabia has remained largely out of the current Lebanese political crisis, in contrast with past approaches.

Lebanon's economic crisis has slashed more than 90 per cent off the value of the local currency against the dollar on the black market, and more than half the population now face poverty.

In April, France imposed sanctions against Lebanese figures it says are responsible for the political crisis, banning them from entering its territory.

The European Union has also threatened sanctions against Lebanese leaders unless they work together.

The government resigned after a deadly port blast last summer that killed 200 people, but has stayed on ever since in a caretaker capacity.

BAGHDAD — Rocket and drone attacks on Wednesday targeted bases in Iraq and Syria hosting US forces that are part of an international coalition fighting the Daesh terror group.

Fourteen rockets were fired at an air base hosting American troops in Iraq's western province of Anbar, causing minor injuries to two personnel, the US-led coalition said.

It was the latest in a spate of attacks on US military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq, blamed on pro-Iranian armed groups within a state-sponsored paramilitary force.

US forces, who have 2,500 troops deployed in Iraq as part of the anti-Daesh coalition, have been targeted almost 50 times this year in the country.

A Shite militant group called Revenge of Al Muhandis Brigade claimed responsibility and vowed to defeat the "brutal occupation", according to the US-based SITE intelligence group which monitors extremist groups.

The militant group is named after Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis of Iraq's Hashed Al Shaabi paramilitary alliance, who was killed in a US drone strike early last year along with the revered Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, SITE said.

Late last month, the US carried out deadly air strikes against pro-Iran fighters in both Iraq and Syria.

On Wednesday, the Ain Al Assad base was attacked by 14 rockets that "landed on the base and perimeter," coalition spokesman Wayne Marotto wrote on Twitter.

"Two personnel sustained minor injuries," he said, adding that the attack also damaged local homes and a mosque.

Iraqi security forces said the rocket launcher had been hidden inside a truck carrying bags of flour.

US forces on Monday night shot down an armed drone above their embassy in Baghdad, according to Iraqi security officials.

American defence systems fired rockets into the air in the capital, said AFP reporters, with Iraqi security sources saying the salvos had taken out an explosive-laden drone.

Just hours earlier, rockets had also been fired towards Ain Al Assad.

Across the border in Syria, where pro-Iran fighters have fought alongside the Damascus regime in the decade-old civil war, Kurdish-led forces also reported attempted attacks near a coalition base.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said they repelled drone attacks near the base in the Omar oil field in the country’s east, in the second such operation in days.

“Our frontline forces against IS [Daesh] and coalition forces in the area of the Omar oil field dealt with drone attacks,” it said, adding that the drones had caused no damage.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor with sources inside Syria, said pro-Iran militias had probably launched the drones from a rural area outside the town of Al Mayadeen southwest of the oil field.

It was the second such attack in days, after the SDF reported “two unidentified rocket-propelled grenades landed on the western side of the Al Omar oil field” late Sunday, which had caused no casualties.

Pro-Iranian militias also fired several shells at Al Omar on Monday last week, causing damage but no casualties, the observatory said.

The United States had launched air strikes the previous night against three targets it said were used by pro-Iran groups in eastern Syria and western Iraq.

The observatory said at least five “Iran-backed Iraqi militia fighters” were killed in the strikes on the Syrian side of the border.

CAIRO — Ethiopia has started the second phase of filling the reservoir of its mega-dam on the upper Blue Nile, Egypt and Sudan said, raising tensions Tuesday ahead of an upcoming UN Security Council meeting on the divisive project.

Both Cairo and Khartoum said they had been notified by Addis Ababa that the second phase of filling had begun at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Egypt's irrigation ministry late Monday expressed its "firm rejection of this unilateral measure" and Sudan's foreign ministry on Tuesday followed suit, labelling the move a "risk and imminent threat".

In Addis Ababa, the offices of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Irrigation Minister Seleshi Bekele did not respond to AFP's requests for comment.

The huge dam, set to be Africa's largest hydroelectric project when completed, has sparked an almost decade-long diplomatic stand-off between Addis Ababa and downstream nations Egypt and Sudan.

Ethiopia says the project is essential to its development, but Cairo and Khartoum fear it could restrict their citizens' water access.

Both governments have been urging Addis Ababa to ink a binding deal over the filling and the dam's operations, and calling on the UN Security Council to take up the matter.

Thursday's Security Council meeting was requested by Tunisia on behalf of Egypt and Sudan, a diplomatic source told AFP.

But France's ambassador to the UN said last week that the council itself can do little apart from bringing all the sides together.

"We can open the door, invite the three countries at the table, bring them to express their concerns, encourage them to get back to the negotiations and find a solution," he told reporters.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said in a note to the UN that negotiations are at an impasse, and accused Ethiopia of adopting “a policy of intransigence that undermined our collective endeavours to reach an agreement.”

Relations between Cairo and Addis Ababa have been icy over the past decade. Tensions have also risen between Ethiopia and Sudan as the Tigray conflict has sent refugees fleeing across the border into Sudan.

Shoukry and his Sudanese counterpart Mariam Al Mahdi met in New York ahead of the Security Council talks and reiterated their “firm rejection” of Ethiopia’s move, Cairo said.

Addis Ababa had previously announced it would proceed to the second stage of filling in July, with or without a deal.

Ethiopia argues that adding water to the reservoir, especially during the months of July and August which typically enjoy heavy rainfall, is a natural part of the construction process.

“Filling goes in tandem with the construction,” said a senior official at the water ministry. “If the rainfall is as you see it now in July, it must have begun.”

The Nile, which at some 5954 kilometres  is one of the longest rivers in the worl, is an essential source of water and electricity for a dozen East African countries.

Egypt, which depends on the Nile for about 97 per cent of its irrigation and drinking water, sees the dam as an existential threat.

Sudan hopes the project will regulate annual flooding but fears its own dams would be harmed without agreement on the Ethiopian operation.

The 145 metre tall mega-dam, construction of which began in 2011, has a reservoir with a capacity of 74 billion cubic metres.

Filling began last year, with Ethiopia announcing in July 2020 it had hit its target of 4.9 billion cubic metres — enough to test the dam’s first two turbines, an important milestone on the way to producing energy.

The goal is to add 13.5 billion cubic metres of water this year.

Reaching that target would be a political boon for Ethiopia’s Abiy as he strains to end the brutal war in Tigray, said Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, a public policy expert at Addis Ababa University.

“This is a unifying factor for Ethiopians in the middle of so many ethnic conflicts you see here, and therefore it’s important for the country and the leadership of the country to complete the dam in accordance with the schedule,” Costantinos said.

Egypt and Sudan wanted a trilateral agreement on the dam’s operations to be reached before any filling began. But Ethiopia says it is impossible to postpone.

Last year, Sudan said the process had caused water shortages, including in the capital Khartoum — a claim Ethiopia disputed.

Costantinos dismissed the notion that further reservoir-filling would be harmful.

“I don’t think it will have an impact. If anything it will have a positive impact as it will prevent flooding in Sudan, and this water is going to be available to them. It is not going to be withheld permanently,” he said.