As bombs shatter Gaza, boxing coach emboldens girls
As bombs shatter Gaza, boxing coach emboldens girls/node/2548691/middle-east
As bombs shatter Gaza, boxing coach emboldens girls
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Girls train for boxing under Palestinian boxing coach Osama Ayoub near a tent camp sheltering displaced people, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 10, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Palestinian boxing coach Osama Ayoub trains girls on boxing near a tent camp sheltering displaced people, amid Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 10, 2024. (REUTERS)
As bombs shatter Gaza, boxing coach emboldens girls
Gaza offered playgrounds, football, tennis, karate, and other sports before terrifying bombs began dropping from the skies, flattening entire neighborhoods
Updated 12 July 2024
Reuters
GAZA: Israel’s offensive in Gaza has pulverized most of its sports facilities and equipment, but that has not stopped boxing coach Osama Ayoub from training Palestinian girls in a tent camp that offers no protection from airstrikes or shelling.
The boxing club where girls once learned to jab, build their stamina, and make friends has been demolished.
There are no protective equipment, ring, or punch bags in the open-air sandy space between the tents where displaced girls now practice — a mattress and pillow will have to do — but Ayoub says the training has helped them overcome their fear of war.
“They started going out on the street. They started going out at night. Their personalities became much stronger, and even their families saw they were stronger,” he said.
It’s all about improvization. One young girl unleashes barehanded punches and weaves left and right to dodge imaginary fists. “Throw a right,” yells the coach, who puts up his fists for the girls to punch.
“They have determination, they have contentment, they have courage. At first, they were afraid of the war we are living in, but through boxing, they have benefited a lot,” he said.
Gaza offered playgrounds, football, tennis, karate, and other sports before terrifying bombs began dropping from the skies, flattening entire neighborhoods.
Attempts to restart sports are risky, even when played outside. On Tuesday, an Israeli missile slammed into a football match at a tent encampment, killing at least 29 people, Palestinian officials said.
Yet the boxers dream of international competitions overseas worlds away from Gaza. This tiny, densely populated enclave suffered from poverty and high unemployment even long before Hamas triggered the war on Oct. 7.
“I hope that this war will end and that our message will reach everyone in the name of the girls of Gaza,” said one of the boxers, Bilsan Ayoub.
The chances of that happening soon are slim. Months of mediation by the US, Egypt, and Qatar have failed to secure a truce between Israel and its arch-enemy Hamas, never mind a permanent ceasefire.
So, all the boxers can do is keep practicing as each side demands concessions from the other, and the conflict rages.
“We do not have anything left, being displaced. We do not have clips, gloves, teeth protection, said Ayoub, who has to improvise daily to keep her dream of international competition alive.
“The tools are very simple, but we want to continue in this game until we achieve our dream and end the war,” she said.
ICC prosecutor urges world to ‘stem the bleeding’ in Sudan before region spins out of control
Karim Khan warns this part of Africa is ‘reaching a tipping point, in which a Pandora's box of ethnic, racial, religious, sectarian (and) commercial interests will be unleashed’
Since the war in Sudan began in April 2023, 19,000 people have been killed, more than 10m are displaced internally, and more than 2m have fled to other countries
NEW YORK CITY: Violence in Sudan has continued to escalate in the past six months, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said on Monday, with reports of rapes, crimes against children and persecution on a massive scale.
“Terror has become a common currency,” Karim Khan told a meeting of the UN Security Council, “and the terror is not felt by the people with guns but by people who are running, very often with nothing on their feet, hungry.”
War between rival military factions has been raging in Sudan for more than a year. Since it began in April 2023, about 19,000 people have been killed. More than 10 million are displaced within the country and more than 2 million have fled to neighboring countries as refugees, making it the largest displacement crisis in the world.
The country is on the brink of famine as a severe food crisis looms, with many families reportedly already often going days without food.
Khan said the ICC is prioritizing investigations into allegations of crimes against, and affecting, children, and gender crimes. These “profound human rights abuses, mass violations of personal dignity” continue to be fueled by the “provision of arms, financial support from various sectors, and political triangulations that lead to inaction by the international community,” he added.
His comments came during the latest semi-annual briefing to the Security Council on the court’s Darfur-related activities. Almost 20 years after the council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC, arrest warrants issued by the court against former president Omar Al-Bashir, former ministers Ahmad Mohammed Harun and Abdel Raheem Mohammed Hussein, and the former commander-in-chief of the Justice and Equality Movement, Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain, remain outstanding.
Khan said that such failures to execute arrest warrants for indicted individuals have contributed to several unwelcome consequences, including “the climate of impunity and the outbreak of violence that commenced in April (2023), and that continues today, (in which) belligerents think they can get away with murder and rape; the feeling that the bandwidth of the (Security) Council, the bandwidth of states, is too limited, it’s too preoccupied with other epicenters of conflict, hot wars in other parts of the world; that we’ve lost sight of the plight of the people of Darfur, we have somehow forgotten our responsibilities under the UN Charter; (and) the feeling that Darfur or Sudan is a law-free zone in which people can act with abandon, based upon their worst proclivities, their worst base instincts, the politics of hate and power, the opportunities to profit.”
He called on council members to “back in substance” the call for justice.
In comments directed toward both of the warring factions, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, as well as “those who are funding them, supplying them with weapons, giving orders, gaining certain advantages,” Khan said his office is investigating and “using our resources as effectively as we can to make sure that the events since April of last year are subjected to the principle of international humanitarian law and the imperative that every human life must be seen to have equal value.”
He said that after “a great deal of difficulty,” Sudanese authorities are finally cooperating with ICC investigators who have been able to enter Port Sudan, collect evidence and engage with Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the country’s de facto leader.
“But one swallow does not a summer make,” Khan added as he underscored the need for “continuous, deepening cooperation with the Sudanese Armed Forces, with Gen. Al-Burhan and his government moving forward.”
He said that “one concrete way in which that commitment to accountability, and this lack of tolerance for impunity, can be evidenced is by properly enforcing court orders,” including the arrest of former minister Harun and delivering him to the court.
However, Khan said that the most recent significant efforts to engage with the leadership of the Rapid Support Forces have so far proved to be fruitless.
Meanwhile, he said, ICC investigators have visited neighboring Chad several times and collected “very valuable testimonial evidence” from displaced Sudanese citizens living there as refugees.
They have met representatives of Sudanese civil society in Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Europe, he added, “to get and preserve their accounts and their stories, to analyze it and to piece it together, to see what crimes, if any, it shows and who is responsible for the hell on earth that is being unleashed so stubbornly, so persistently against the people of Darfur.”
Khan said his office has used technological tools to gather and piece together various forms of evidence from phones, videos and audio recordings, and that this is “proving to be extremely critical to pierce the veil of impunity.”
The collective efforts by investigators, analysts, lawyers and members of civil society have resulted in significant progress being made, he added, and he expressed hope that he will soon be able to announce that arrest warrants have been requested for individuals believed to be most responsible for the crimes in the country.
Meanwhile, Khan sounded a broader alarm over what he described as “a trapezium of chaos in that part of the continent.”
He continued: “If one draws a line from the Mediterranean of Libya, down to the Red Sea of Sudan, and then draws a line to Sub-Saharan Africa, and then all the way to the Atlantic, with Boko Haram causing instability, chaos and suffering in Nigeria, and then back to Sudan, (we) see the map and the countries that risk being unsettled or destabilized by this concentration of chaos and suffering.”
He warned the members of the Security Council that in addition to the concerns about the rights of the people of Darfur, “we’re reaching a tipping point in which a Pandora’s box of ethnic, racial, religious, sectarian (and) commercial interests will be unleashed.”
He added that “they will no longer be susceptible to the political powers of the great states of the world, or even of this council. It requires some real action now to stem the bleeding … in Sudan.”
Sudan’s government denies famine exists in Zamzam camp in Darfur
Updated 43 min 52 sec ago
AP Reuters
KHARTOUM: Sudan has denied the existence of famine in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp for internally displaced people.
In a statement, Sudan’s Federal Humanitarian Aid Commission said talk about famine in the camp was inaccurate and conditions were “not consistent” with those that must be met to declare famine.
On Sunday, an aid group said that malnourished children at the camp were at risk of dying, because it was forced to ration treatment due to a blockade imposed by a notorious paramilitary group
Doctors Without Borders said the Rapid Support Forces, which have besieged El-Fasher city as part of its war against the Sudanese military, have blocked three trucks carrying lifesaving medical supplies, including therapeutic food, for the city and the nearby Zamzam camp where famine was confirmed last week.
Sudan plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and the RSF developed into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, before spreading across the northeastern African country. Darfur saw some of the worst and most devastating bouts of fighting in the war.
The conflict has killed thousands of people and pushed many into starvation. It created the world’s largest displacement crisis with more than 10 million people forced to flee their homes since April 2023, according to the UN migration agency. Over 2 million of those fled to neighboring countries.
International experts on the Famine Review Committee confirmed Thursday that starvation at Zamzam camp, where up to 600,000 people shelter, has grown into full famine.
International experts use set criteria to confirm the existence of famines. A famine is declared in an area when one in five people or households severely lack food and face starvation and destitution that would ultimately lead to critical levels of acute malnutrition and death.
In Zamzam camp, which has swelled with the arrival of new displaced people, many children are in critical condition, Doctors Without Borders said, adding that the malnutrition ward at its field hospital in the camp is overcrowded with a 126 percent bed occupancy rate.
The group said RSF fighters have blocked the trucks in the town of Kabkabiya for over a month, adding that it was forced to limit the number of children receiving therapeutic food in the overcrowded camp as its stock of medicine covers only two weeks.
“Deliberately obstructing or delaying humanitarian cargo is putting the lives of thousands of children at-risk as they are cut-off from receiving life-saving treatment,” it said on social media platform X.
There was no immediate comment from the RSF.
The RSF has imposed a siege on El-Fasher in its monthslong attempt to take it from the military and its allied rebel groups. The city, the provincial capital of North Darfur, is the last stronghold for the military in the war-torn Darfur region.
Putin ally holds talks in Iran as Middle East teeters on brink of wider war
Shoigu is scheduled “to meet with the president, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and the head of the General Staff,” according to Zvezda TV
Updated 38 min 28 sec ago
Reuters
MOSCOW: A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tehran on Monday for talks with Iranian leaders including the president and top security officials as the Islamic Republic weighs its response to the killing of a Hamas leader.
Russia has condemned the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Iran last week and called on all parties to refrain from steps that could tip the Middle East into a wider regional war.
Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s security council, was shown by Russia’s Zvezda television station meeting Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who serves as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
Shoigu, who was Russia’s defense minister before being moved to the security council in May, will also meet President Masoud Pezeshkian, Zvezda said.
“In Tehran, the secretary of the Russian Security Council is scheduled to meet with the president, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and the head of the General Staff,” according to Zvezda TV.
Though Putin has yet to comment in public on the recent escalation of tensions in the Middle East, senior Russian officials have said that those behind the killing of Haniyeh were seeking to scuttle any hope of peace in the Middle East and to draw the US into military action.
Iran has blamed Israel and said it will “punish” it; Israeli officials have not claimed responsibility. Iran backs Hamas, which is at war with Israel in Gaza, and also the Lebanese group Hezbollah whose senior military commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut last week.
Russia has cultivated closer ties with Iran since the start of its war with Ukraine and has said it is preparing to sign a wide-ranging cooperation agreement with the Islamic State.
Reuters reported in February that Iran had provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. The US said in June that Russia appeared to be deepening its defense cooperation with Iran and had received hundreds of one-way attack drones that it was using to strike Ukraine, something Moscow denies.
Russia said last Friday it joined Iran in condemning the assassination of the Hamas leader and pointing out “the extremely dangerous consequences of such actions.”
Washington said it did not have any expectation that Russia would play a productive role in de-escalating tensions in the region.
“We haven’t seen them play a productive role in this conflict since Oct. 7. They have, for the most part, been absent. Certainly we’ve seen them do nothing to urge any party to take de-escalatory steps,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a daily briefing.
The US did not know why exactly Shoigu’s trip took place now, Miller said, but said one possibility might have been to further Moscow’s relationship with Tehran to seek support for its invasion of Ukraine.
“Certainly we have seen that with the security relationship between Iran and Russia before,” he added.
How a spate of terrorist attacks by a ‘resurgent’ Daesh threaten to push Syria deeper into chaos
Five years since its territorial defeat, there are fears Daesh could be about to stage a comeback in Iraq and Syria
Economic hardship, national fragmentation, and spillover from Gaza could create conditions for a new insurgency
Updated 36 min 57 sec ago
ANAN TELLO
LONDON: Just when Syrians thought they could finally put the horrors of the past decade behind them, the first half of 2024 bore witness to a series of savage attacks by an Islamist group that many hoped had been vanquished for good.
Daesh claimed responsibility for 153 terrorist attacks in Syria and Iraq in the first six months of this year, according to US Central Command — already surpassing the 121 attacks reported over the entirety of 2023.
At its peak in 2015, the terrorist group controlled roughly 110,000 sq. km of territory — a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq, including major cities like Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, according to the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh.
It also commanded an army exceeding some 40,000 militants and had at its disposal a formidable arsenal captured from local forces. However, after an international effort, Daesh met its territorial defeat in the village of Baghuz, eastern Syria, in March 2019.
Al-Hol camp in Syria's northeastern Al-Hasakah Governorate. (AFP/File)
Five years on, and on the 10th anniversary of the group’s 2014 blitzkrieg of Iraq and Syria, there are fears that Daesh could be about to stage a comeback, at a time when the world’s attention is distracted by crises elsewhere.
On July 22, Geir Otto Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, told the Security Council that the “resurgence” of terrorist activities posed a significant threat to Syrian civilians, especially amid a deepening, country-wide humanitarian crisis.
Highlighting that Syria “remains in a state of profound conflict, complexity and division,” he said the country is “riddled” with armed actors, listed terrorist groups, foreign armies and front lines.
Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies and the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Arabian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told Arab News the group’s lack of territory meant its militants had to content themselves with low-level insurgent activity.
“(Daesh) has remained a threat in Syria and the number of people that ISIS has killed and the number of attacks in 2024 has risen compared to last year,” said Landis, using another acronym for the group.
Daesh “is also trying to reconstitute itself, although it remains without territory and must carry out hit-and-run attacks and assassinations,” he added.
Ian J. McCary, deputy special envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh, confirmed in March that the threat of Daesh continued to lurk in Syria and Iraq.
“We continue to see a real threat in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS at one point controlled a region with a population of approximately 10 million people,” he told the Washington Institute.
“We have seen the emergence of ISIS affiliates — the so-called ISIS Khorasan inside Afghanistan, which poses a clear external threat — and in Sub-Saharan Africa where several ISIS affiliates have emerged.”
Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. (AFP/File)
Established in early 2015 as the regional branch of Daesh in South-Central Asia, the Islamic State — Khorasan Province, also known by the acronym IS-K, initially focused on transferring fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Syria, according to the Warsaw-based Center for Eastern Studies.
The group has a history of attacks that extended far beyond Afghanistan, including one that targeted the Crocus City Hall in Russia’s capital Moscow on March 22 this year, killing at least 133 people and injuring more than 100.
In January, IS-K also claimed responsibility for twin blasts in Iran that killed at least 100 people and injured 284 more during a memorial for the slain Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
In Syria, the group has staged attacks in central and northeastern Syria, targeting both the armed forces of the Bashar Assad regime and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s semi-autonomous region.
Throughout much of 2020 and 2021, Daesh sleeper cells in the northeast were building an intelligence network and raising money through theft, extortion and smuggling, according to a 2022 report by the International Crisis Group.
However, analysts are particularly concerned about northeast Syria’s prisons and detention camps, where militants and their families have been held since their capture in 2019.
Women and children evacuated from Baghouz, a Daesh holdout in 2019, arrive in Deir Ezzor. (AFP/File)
Some 50,000 Daesh suspects and their family members are currently held by the SDF across 27 detention facilities, CNN reported in June. With local forces overstretched, many inmates have either escaped or been released.
According to Landis, the SDF “has amnestied a lot of detainees and converted many death sentences to 15-year prison terms. This means that many detainees are being freed from prisons in northeastern Syria.”
Human Rights Watch reported last year that there remain some 42,000 foreign Daesh supporters and their family members, the majority of them children, from 60 countries detained in northeast Syria.
The New York-based monitor said the children in those camps are “held in conditions so dire they may amount to torture, and face escalating risks of becoming victims of violence or susceptible to recruitment by (Daesh).”
Local authorities warn these detention camps have become breeding grounds for radicalization, potentially contributing to a Daesh revival. Such a reemergence would be devastating for a country already brought to the very brink.
Thirteen years of civil war and sanctions, the twin earthquakes of February 2023, and the spillover of the Gaza conflict have traumatized and impoverished the Syrian people.
In early 2024, the UN said some 16.7 million people in Syria — nearly three-quarters of the population — required humanitarian assistance. This came at a time when international aid budgets were already stretched to their limit.
Some 50,000 Daesh suspects and their family members are currently held by the SDF across 27 detention facilities. (AFP/File)
According to a July report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Humanitarian Response Plan for Syria remains significantly underfunded, with just $871 million of its $4.07 billion budget secured as of July 25.
Ramesh Rajasingham, director of the OCHA Coordination Division, described the situation in Syria as the “worst humanitarian crisis since the start of the conflict,” made worse by ongoing clashes among various armed actors in northeast Syria.
“Another reason that (Daesh) has grown is because of the infighting in northeast Syria between the Arab tribes and the SDF and Kurdish militia,” said Landis.
“The chaos and internecine fighting in northeast Syria have been replicated by infighting inside Syrian government-controlled territory and northwest Syria, which is ruled by opposition militias under Turkish sponsorship and protection.
“The general poverty in Syria and declining humanitarian aid combined with ongoing sanctions is having a bad impact on stability.”
He added: “So long as Syria is divided and suffers from a shrinking economy, (Daesh) will find recruits in Syria. Police forces in all the various regions have been weakened by the lack of funds, bad government, and poverty.”
Syria has experienced a sharp economic decline since 2022, according to the World Bank’s Syria Economic Monitor for Spring 2024. The report projects that the real gross domestic product will contract by 1.5 percent this year, exceeding the 1.2 percent decline of 2023.
Bashar Assad’s Syria has experienced a sharp economic decline since 2022. (AFP/File)
According to UN figures, more than 90 percent of the Syrian population lives below the poverty line, and more than half lack access to nutritious food, resulting in more than 600,000 children suffering from chronic malnutrition.
Despite growing concerns of a Daesh resurgence in the region, Karam Shaar, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, does not foresee the terrorist group regaining control over large areas in Syria and Iraq as it did a decade ago.
“Because of the deterioration in living conditions and the fact that the grievances of many Sunni Muslims in that region remain unanswered, there will always be an appeal for (Daesh),” he told Arab News.
“Yet, I don’t think they could ever control large swathes just because of the current situation on the ground and them being too weak to do so.”
One reason for this is that Daesh’s “modus operandi has actually changed,” he said. “They are now a borderline criminal group as opposed to being a terrorist group. The distinction between the two is whether there is a political message to their activities or not.”
He said Daesh leaders “know full well that if they decide to control large areas, there would be a serious response from multiple actors on the ground, including the Kurds backed by the US, the Syrian regime backed by Russia and Iran.”
In Iraq, the group may be deterred by “the Iraqi army, also backed by the US,” he added.
Daesh has targeted both the armed forces of the Bashar Assad regime and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. (AFP/File)
Both Shaar and Landis believe a redeployment of foreign troops to eliminate Daesh insurgents is unlikely. “I don’t see this happening given the current circumstances,” said Shaar.
Landis concurred that “more foreign troops are unlikely to be sent to Syria” to combat a resurgence. “Turkiye is seeking a deal with Assad. The US is likely to want to withdraw from Syria in the future, not increase its military position there.”
And far from involving itself in fighting Daesh, “Israel is likely to continue, if not increase, its regular attacks on state military forces in order to decrease their capabilities” as part of its shadow war with Iran and its proxies.
Iran says it does not want regional escalation but must ‘punish’ Israel
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson calls on the US to stop supporting Israel
International community failed in duty to safeguard stability in region, Kanaani says
Updated 05 August 2024
Reuters
DUBAI: Iran is not looking to escalate regional tensions but believes it needs to punish Israel to prevent further instability, the foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday, following the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week.
“Iran seeks to establish stability in the region, but this will only come with punishing the aggressor and creating deterrence against the adventurism of the Zionist regime (Israel),” Nasser Kanaani said, adding that action from Tehran was inevitable.
Kanaani called on the United States to stop supporting Israel, saying the international community had failed in its duty to safeguard stability in the region and should support the “punishment of the aggressor.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ top Commander Hossein Salami on Monday reiterated the elite group’s threat that Israel “will receive punishment in due time.”
Tehran and Iran-aligned groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have accused Israel of killing Haniyeh on 31st July.
Israeli officials have not claimed responsibility.
