Iraq and Syria strengthen ties with reopening of key border crossing
Iraq and Syria reopened the main border crossing for travellers and goods on Saturday, Iraqi authorities announced.
The move is the latest sign of warming relations between Baghdad and Damascus, after months of strained ties following the ousting of the Bashar Al Assad regime from Syria.
Al Qaim border crossing, about 400km west of Baghdad, in Anbar province, was closed when Hayat Tahrir Al Sham-led Syrian rebels took control of Damascus in December.
'The crossing has been reopened after obtaining the necessary approvals from the high-ranking authorities,' the Iraqi Border Points Commission said in a statement. It added that the first Syrian lorry and passengers had entered Iraq.
Resuming traffic at Al Qaim border crossing 'marks a significant step in enhancing economic co-operation, which will meet the needs of both countries and contribute to achieving economic stability and development', the statement added.
When HTS took over, Iraq cautiously welcomed the regime change in Damascus and called for an inclusive political process.
It has since expressed concern over the situation in Syria, warning of the danger of a resurgent ISIS. Iraqi officials have said the number of extremist group militants has increased and they have seized more weapons.
ISIS overran large parts of Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014, declaring a caliphate that took in substantial areas in both countries. During that time, it led a campaign of widespread and systematic abuse of international human rights and humanitarian law.
Iraqi troops, backed by a US-led international coalition, reclaimed all ISIS-held territory in Iraq in late 2017, after three years of fighting. However, ISIS fighters still carry out sporadic attacks, mainly in rural areas.
In recent weeks, relations have warmed with senior delegations visiting Baghdad and Damascus. The Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani invited Syria's President Ahmad Al Shara to the Arab Summit meeting in Baghdad last month.
However, Mr Al Shara did not attend due to widespread objections from Iraqis for his past links to Al Qaeda in Iraq. He served as a field leader for the extremist group fighting American and Iraqi troops after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
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The National
13 hours ago
- The National
Back in the crossfire: Iraq's Tehran-backed militias prepare to support Iran if US intervenes
An air of uncertainty surrounds US President Donald Trump and potential American involvement in Israel's war against Iran. While Tehran has long been an adversary of Washington and a source of international concern over its nuclear ambitions, Middle East governments and the broader international community have warned the Americans that joining and fuelling the conflict could have catastrophic consequences. As Mr Trump considers whether or not to directly involve US forces, one of Iran's largest support networks remains deeply embedded in Iraq. Powerful militant groups, tied to Tehran through years of military and strategic co-operation, are watching developments closely and escalating their threats of military action to back their ally. It is a big risk and Iraq would pay a heavy price, which it cannot afford. It just started rebuilding its security and stabilising the country Iraqi government source Sources close to the Iraqi government said some of the most prominent militant groups have confirmed this week that US military intervention to support Israel would trigger a retaliatory response. 'They told the government that they would go in and that they disagree with the decision to stand by,' one source said. That is a reference to Baghdad's decision, at the start of this war, not to be part of it. The government does not want to turn Iraq into another battlefield for a regional conflict. One source said that the Iraqi government has 'warned the militias against any involvement,' fearing that it would result in further escalation. 'It is a big risk and Iraq would pay a heavy price, which it cannot afford,' the source added. 'It has just started rebuilding its security and is stabilising as a country.' Iraqi militant factions operate on their own terms, but military action to support Iran would not be straightforward and could result in severe consequences, the government sources added. 'The US know where those factions are based and can easily eliminate them if they chose to,' one source said. 'They can target them one by one.' Hassan Janabi, a former Iraqi ambassador and minister, told The National: 'It is clear that armed factions will see US involvement as an opportunity to carry out attacks on US sites, including the embassy in Baghdad.' Although direct American involvement would not be a surprise, it would 'increase the anger of the Iraqi public, which is hostile to Israel and America, as well as the Iran-aligned armed factions that are ideologically and strategically tied to Tehran,' Mr Janabi added. He added that the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani is attempting to portray 'solidarity with Iran by condemning the Israeli aggression, because it is ultimately unable to confront the military escalation taking place'. The threat of a full regional war is more serious now than at any point in the past two years. If Mr Trump sends warplanes to support Israel, Iraqi militias are unlikely to be passive. While the threat isn't entirely new and the scale and potential impact of this type of involvement is uncertain, these Iraqi factions, known as Fasael, have undoubtedly been adopting a more serious tone as the conflict intensifies and enters a second week. Powerful Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr said on Friday that any decision to attack at any time and against any country "is entrusted to the decision issued by the American president present at any given time. 'This means that the unjust decision will, by divine wisdom and divine power, bring calamity and loss upon the man who issued this decision,' he said. 'It will bring calamity and loss upon him, as has already happened.' On Thursday, the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq vowed to attack US military bases across the Middle East if the US enters the war. 'We affirm, with greater clarity, that if the United States enters this war, the 'crazy' Trump will lose all the trillions he dreams of seizing from this region,' militia leader Abu Ali Al Askari said in a statement. He added that operational plans had already been drawn up. The escalating threats come after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Mr Trump will make a decision 'within the next two weeks' and would depend on the outcome of more talks with Iran. 'In light of the substantial chance that negotiations with Iran may or may not take place in the near future, the President will make his decision within the next two weeks.' Just 24 hours earlier, Mr Trump said he had not yet made up his mind, continuing to project an air of strategic ambiguity and avoiding firm public commitments. 'I may do it,' he told reporters. 'I may not do it.' For now, all the indications suggest that Washington is 'reluctant to get directly involved,' one source told The National. 'Trump has repeatedly stated his desire to de-escalate conflicts in the region and end foreign entanglements.' 'Survival mode' Baghdad's view may not align with other capitals in the region, where concern is mounting over a potential US strike on Iran and subsequent retaliation that would make American bases a target. Another Tehran-backed armed faction in Iraq, the True Promise Corps, has also threatened to join the war, intensifying fears that the conflict could spread rapidly across the region. The group, part of a shadowy coalition known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, issued a warning Monday that it would strike Israeli targets and its regional allies. 'We declare that all the sites and camps of the entity [Israel] and anyone who supports it in the region are targets for us,' said the group's leader, Mohammed Al Tamimi, in a statement posted on X. Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at London's Chatham House, believes Iraq's armed factions are in 'survival mode'. 'The situation has gone beyond their control,' he said. 'They don't know where it's going or where it will end, and it's about surviving effectively.' Baghdad does not want to create instability following years of calm. However, 'what's happening now is risking the equilibrium that Iraq has enjoyed,' Mr Mansour added. 'So for this reason, armed groups – certainly senior PMF groups – have tried to rhetorically signal their support for Iran and condemn Israel.' Meanwhile, Iran has also warned of unleashing 'hell' in the region if the US intervenes militarily. So far, Baghdad believes Washington has little appetite for a direct war. Iraq's powerful militias played an active role early in the Israel-Gaza war, launching attacks on US bases and claiming that they fired rockets towards Tel Aviv. But that momentum shifted following a quiet, unannounced truce that led Iran-backed factions to halt attacks on US forces. The truce, involving Washington, Baghdad and Tehran, was reached in February 2024. It remains to be seen whether or not the US will stand by and watch Iranian missiles continue to strike Tel Aviv. Standing by runs counter to the US government's recent rhetoric about 'hitting hard' and its repeated warnings over Iran's nuclear threat, especially following five failed nuclear talks.
Khaleej Times
a day ago
- Khaleej Times
'I just couldn't watch anymore': Former CNN anchor on the emotional cost of bearing witness
By the time Hala Gorani was ten, she had already delivered her first news report. But it wasn't on television or to an audience of millions. It was to her father, who was returning home after work, unaware that President Ronald Reagan had just survived an assassination attempt. Gorani, who had been glued to the special coverage on TV, relayed every detail she could remember. There were no phones then, no Internet. Just her childlike curiosity and the instinct to inform. 'I essentially reported it to him,' she recalls. 'And I was only ten.' That moment planted a seed. For Gorani, it was the start of a calling. One that would eventually span more than two decades at CNN, take her to the frontlines of conflict, and establish her as one of the most trusted faces in international news broadcasting. Today, Gorani is also a published author, with her recent memoir But You Don't Look Arab exploring identity, belonging, and the politics of perception through the lens of her own upbringing between Washington and Paris as a Syrian-American woman navigating the world. A childhood of contradictions Born to Syrian parents, Gorani grew up between Washington D.C. and Paris. Her childhood, like her identity, was a jigsaw of places, languages, and expectations. 'I have all these overlapping identities,' she says. 'And that made me, for a long time, feel out of place everywhere.' Her parents divorced early, splitting her upbringing across continents. Home was a fluid concept for Gorani, one not necessarily rooted in a postcode but in the rituals of constant movement and readjustment. 'My origin didn't match where I lived,' she adds. 'But now, more people than ever are in this situation. You're born in one country, raised in another, work in a third. So, where do you belong?' In cities like Dubai, where over 90 per cent of the population is non-Emirati, Gorani's sense of hybrid identity resonates deeply. 'You build your own definition of home,' she says. 'That's what I've learned to do.' Coming full circle Gorani's memoir isn't simply a personal reckoning but also a broader cultural reflection on what it means to live between identities, and how the label 'Arab' has been shaped, flattened, and misread by Western and even Middle Eastern societies alike. 'Even the title, 'But You Don't Look Arab', came from something I heard countless times,' she says. 'It speaks to the assumptions people make about how you're supposed to look, speak, or behave based on where you're from.' The book marks a new chapter in her career, but also reveals the same rigour that defined her journalism trajectory. She has previously covered the war in Iraq, the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, among others, always gravitating towards stories that humanise those on the margins. However, in 2022, after years of anchoring at CNN, a role widely viewed as the summit of broadcast journalism, Gorani chose to walk away from it all. 'You become a journalist because you want this sense of purpose, of telling stories, being where things happen,' she reflects. 'Anchoring a show, while prestigious, became more and more removed from that. I wanted to reconnect with why I started this journey.' Writing the memoir offered her that reconnection. It was a way of tracing the line through generations of her family — of women who moved, fled, or were uprooted, often without choice. 'I realised one generation after another, for one reason or another, migrated or felt displaced,' she adds. 'From the fall of the Ottoman Empire to Syria to France to the US, my great-great-grandmother was forced to move to a place she'd never seen before. I'm just one more stop on that long journey.' The cost of bearing witness With such deep-rooted displacement comes an instinct to bear witness and Gorani has done that, often at great personal cost. During the early days of the Syrian revolution, she watched harrowing videos daily: graphic footage of violence against demonstrators, scenes she now associates with post-traumatic stress. 'I became incapable of watching such videos anymore,' she admits. 'I'd take my earpiece out when anchoring if I knew the story was too hard. I just didn't want to hear children crying.' Recognising those emotional boundaries was, she says, an act of strength. 'You're not supposed to be desensitised to people getting killed. It's not a weakness to say 'I can't'. It's strength.' And even now, she draws her limits. 'I've never watched an ISIS execution video. I don't care who's in it. The thought is enough.' Gorani is also acutely aware of journalism's precarious future. 'The media industry is in flux. Legacy platforms are shrinking. Local papers are shutting. Social media has taken over but it doesn't pay journalists for their work,' she adds. 'I spent three and a half weeks fact-checking a story on Syria. That's what people don't see. Journalism takes time, and that's what makes it journalism.' Still, she understands why Gen-Z might hesitate to enter the field. 'You're competing not just with other networks now, but with TikTok, YouTube, everyone.' What keeps us from breaking? Her memoir contains a powerful line: 'As a journalist, I record the time, the place and the facts. As a human being, I want to know why some people don't break'. She pauses when asked where that resilience comes from. 'I don't know. I'm still observing,' she says. 'Some people are just born with more resilience. I've interviewed journalists in Gaza recently. Some are cracking, others are joking and smiling. Is it upbringing? Is it temperament? Maybe both.' And as for her? 'Oh, I break all the time,' she says, candidly. 'I'm emotionally porous. I cry often, just not on TV. I'd be worried if I didn't feel anything. That would mean something's wrong.' The introspection that shaped her memoir has also helped her make peace with belonging, she admits. Not by finding a single place to call home, but by returning to her purpose. 'For me, fieldwork is a higher calling. It takes me out of my own head,' she says. 'Some people find it through parenting, others through service. For me, it's this.' And in journeying back to the roots of her purpose, not a place, Gorani reminds us that belonging isn't always tied to geography. Sometimes, it's about doing the thing that anchors you, even when the ground beneath you keeps shifting.
The National
2 days ago
- The National
Assad-era general asks Iran for funds to launch anti-Israel front in Syria
A top military figure under Syria's former president Bashar Al Assad has contacted Tehran for financial support to rebuild Iran's influence in the country and strengthen its position as it comes under attack by Israel, a Syrian security official and former regime operatives has told The National. Iran is unlikely to divert resources from its current war effort but re-establishing a proxy presence in Syria could help it strategically in future, the sources said. The proposal to Tehran came from Ghiath Dalla, a brigadier general in elite Fourth Division, the praetorian guard of the former Iran-backed regime and the military unit closest to Iran, within the past 10 days. He is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars to create a militia drawn from former members of Mr Al Assad's now disbanded army that would fight Syria's new government led by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham and launch attacks on Israeli targets, the sources said. Mr Dalla, like most of his peers and the deposed president, is from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, that dominated Sunni-majority Syria after a coup in 1963. He is among thousands of Alawite security personnel who have been on the run after the Assad regime fell to HTS-led rebel forces on December 8. Hundreds of Alawite officers, including Mr Dalla, are believed to have fled to Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah group still wields significant influence, despite heavy losses in its war with Israel last year. 'He thinks that the [Israel-Iran] war is a golden chance to unite the Alawites and form a resistance force supported by Iran,' said the security official, who requested anonymity. Mr Dalla commanded the 42nd Armoured Brigade, regarded as among the best-equipped and best-trained formations in the former military. During the 2011-2024 civil war it operated in southern Syria, from where proxy groups backed by Iran launched rocket attacks on Israel in the final year of the Assad regime. 'The south has remnants of Iranian proxies whom Dalla can re-activate to resume the attacks,' the security official said. The official said the seizure by authorities of Grad rockets at a warehouse in the southern Deraa province this week, and a rocket attack on June 3 on an Israeli-occupied area of the Golan Heights by a splinter Hezbollah group, were signs of the potential for destabilisation that could be boosted by Iranian money. The official, who was a rebel fighting the regime in the northern province of Idlib, said the threat from Mr Dalla and his followers could not be underestimated. 'We were like him, hiding in the woods of Idlib, bereft of support. Once support [from Arab countries and Turkey] started coming, the game changed quickly,' he said, referring to the early years of the civil war. The official would not be drawn on whom Mr Dalla has been in contact with in Iran, citing ongoing intelligence gathering. The contact was made directly, not through Hezbollah, he said. A prominent figure in the Alawite community said Mr Dalla's obvious recruiting pool comprises at least 100,000 former Alawite security personnel. Many of them, associated with atrocities under the former regime, have sought refuge in the Alawite Mountains in Syria's coastal region, the ancestral homeland of the minority sect. However, widespread killings of Alawites in the area by pro-government forces have raised fears that the community might not survive under the new government led by HTS, a group once affiliated with Al Qaeda. An estimated 1,300 Alawite civilians were killed over two days in March after gunmen from the sect resisted, mainly through ambushes, an HTS-led incursion into the Alawite Mountains. The security operation was aimed at cleansing the coastal provinces of regime remnants, according to the government. Mr Dalla's loyalists, called the Military Council for the Liberation of Syria, led the ultimately failed resistance. The Alawite figure said Mr Dalla and his men, who are believed to number several thousand, still have an underground arsenal consisting mainly of light weapons but also significant amounts of medium weaponry, such anti-aircraft guns mounted on pickup trucks. 'He has been depleted cash-wise. But he is counting on the spreading fears that the Alawites have no home and the only path is resistance to create an Alawite province.' He said many Alawites still see a future in acquiescing to the new order and do not want to be associated with Iran, and added that he himself had declined requests for money by insurgents associated with Mr Dalla. A former Syrian intelligence operative, who is also Alawite, said Mr Dalla was trying to fill the leadership vacuum in the community created by the fall of Mr Al Assad, who fled to Moscow. Unlike the former regime, Mr Dalla is, in the main, not viewed as corrupt. He is also religious, unlike the secular Assads, which would make him more trustworthy to Iran. In contrast to the Assads, who have 'sacrificed the Alawites' for their own survival, Mr Dalla is a more ideological figure who believes that the only way for the community to survive is a long-term fight supported by Iran to a break away from Syria, the former intelligence operative said. Observers are split on how much advantage a Iran would have had in the war with Israel had the Assad regime survived the civil war. After Israeli attacks on Syrian security personnel and military infrastructure in 2023-2024, signs emerged that Mr Al Assad viewed his alliance with Iran as too costly for the regime. It remains an open question whether the former president was willing, or able, to stop Iran from using Syria as a conduit for weapons and supplies to Hezbollah, once considered Tehran's first line of defence against Israel. The Israeli military had already largely destroyed Syrian air defences by the time Mr Al Assad was ousted, giving its air force freedom to operate over Syria. However, Iran would be striking at Israel from short range with missiles and drones launched from Syria, instead of relying solely on long-distance attacks, had the former regime remained, a former member of Mr Al Assad's military said. 'It would have made a difference had they not lost Syria,' the source said. 'But nowhere near enough to gain a decisive advantage'.
