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In late May, the commander of the Lebanese Army, Joseph Aoun, was received in Paris by the French president Emmanuel Macron. The singular nature of the meeting – presidents don’t normally receive army chiefs from small countries – underlined the importance that France gives to Lebanon’s armed forces as an agent of stability at a time when Lebanon is collapsing economically and socially.
There appears to be a consensus among foreign governments that the army must not be allowed to fragment because of the Lebanese state’s bankruptcy. Indeed, an international conference has been scheduled in Paris for June 17 to support the institution. Soldiers’ salaries are now worth almost nothing because the Lebanese pound has lost around 93 per cent of its value. Last March, Gen Aoun made a much remarked address in which he stated: “The people are hungry, the people are poor and the members of the military are also suffering and are hungry”.
On Sunday night, this family of five – including Madiha Salman, 44, her husband Salman Afzaal, 46, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna Afzaal and Afzaal s 74-year-old mother – were on their daily walk when the man mounted the curb and ran over them in what police described as a premeditated hate crime that targeted them because of their Muslim faith.
What does a 20-year-old know of life to hate so thoroughly, to murder with such abandon? To plan for and enact such cruelty? To reflect and ponder and then destroy?
We probably will not reflect sufficiently on those questions. But we should, because the condemnations and the “we stand by you”s and the “this is not us”es all ring hollow. They always have. Every shooting at a mosque, every mass murder at a black church, every bombing and defacement of a synagogue, is a product of hatred, of social media and technology companies profiting off this rage, of trans-nationalist political ideology that weaponises racism and inequality
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Iraq has been buffeted by ill-winds over the past 40 years. Wars, sanctions, terrorism and domestic conflict have threatened its stability and the well-being of its citizens.
But by far the most serious long-term threat the country faces is from the potential economic impact and environmental devastation of climate change. According to the UN Environment Programme, Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable country in the world to the consequences of changes in the climate.
Evidence of growing climate risks is all around us. Very high temperatures are becoming more common, drought more frequent, and dust storms more intense. Desertification is affecting 39 per cent of Iraq’s territory, and 54 per cent of our land is threatened with the loss of agriculture because of increased salination. Dam building on the headwaters and tributaries of the historic Tigris and Euphrates rivers – the lifeblood of our country – has reduced water flow, leading to a migration of the salt wedge from