CHALLENGES

6 REGION GO
OMANDAILYOBSERVER SATURDAY l JANUARY 28 l 2017
JUBILATION OVER VICTORY
Morocco to rejoin African
Union after 33 years
Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al Saadi (C) celebrates with Iraqi people as they raise the Iraqi flag in the same place where IS militants raised their flag two years ago in
Mosul on Friday. — Reuters
RABAT: After leaving the pan-
African organisation three decades
ago, Morocco is set to rejoin the
African Union during its 28th African
summit scheduled for January 30-
31 in Addis Ababa. Morocco in
1984 decided to withdraw from the
Organisation of African Unity, which
later became the AU. Morocco has
since then refused to be part of the
organisation, but recently it changed
its policy, making the re-admission
to the AU on the top of its agenda,
Xinhua news agency reported.
King Mohammed VI in July last
year sent a message to the 27th AU
summit in Kigali, saying his country
“should not remain outside its African
institutional family, and it should
regain its natural, rightful place within
the AU”.
Explaining the reasons for
returning to the pan-African
organisation, the king cited “the
repeated call of many African friends
of the kingdom as well as a thorough
reflection”. He also stressed that from
within, “Morocco will contribute
to making the AU a more robust
organisation, one that is both proud
of its credibility and relieved of the
trappings of an obsolete era”. Two
months after the king’s message to the
Explaining the
reasons for returning
to the pan-African
organisation, the
king cited ‘the
repeated call of many
African friends of the
kingdom as well as a
thorough reflection’
African leaders, the North African
kingdom in September formally
submitted a request to re-join the
continental body. The request was
submitted after it received the support
of a group of 28 AU member states,
representing more than the majority
of the 54 African Union member
states required for admission.
Following this request, the Moroccan
king toured numerous African
countries. Consequently, the kingdom
raised the total of supporters to its bid
to 40 as was announced by Moroccan
Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar
during a parliamentary session to
review constitutive act of AU a week
earlier. — IANS
Trump plans stronger
campaign against IS
BATTLE-READY
WASHINGTON: US President
Donald Trump is expected to order
up a new plan for defeating the IS
group with expanded US military
involvement as he was scheduled to
make his first visit to the Pentagon on
Friday.
Trump, who pledged to eradicate
the extremist group during the
presidential campaign, is reportedly
preparing to direct new Defence
Secretary James Mattis to more
aggressively attack IS positions with the
aim of defeating them more quickly.
That could mean more US forces and
military hardware moving into Iraq
and Syria, according to analysts.
“We have to get rid of ISIS. We
have no choice,” Trump told Fox
News’s Sean Hannity in an interview
broadcast on Thursday, using another
acronym for the group.
“This is evil. This is a level of evil
that we haven’t seen.”
After his predecessor Barack
Obama took a longer term view
of the anti-IS fight, with a more
cautious commitment of US forces,
“President Trump might be looking
for something with quicker results,
that could put some more options on
the table,” retired general David Barno
told National Public Radio on Friday.
The Wall Street Journal reported
Last week, General
Joe Dunford,
Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said he would
present Mattis with
options to “accelerate
the campaign”
against IS
that Trump will give the Pentagon
30 days to come up with a new set
of options for a tougher campaign
against IS.
The United States currently has
5,000 troops in Iraq and 500 in Syria as
“advisers” — but also US artillery and
aircraft to help in the fight.
They have provided substantial
support to the assault led by Iraqi
forces on IS’s hold on the key city of
Mosul.
The slow, steady assault has driven
IS fighters out of the part of the city on
the east bank of the Tigris River, and
forces are now preparing an assault on
IS-held Mosul neighbourhoods on the
river’s west bank.
According to reports, an escalation
of the US role could involve more US
armour and helicopters involved in the
assaults on IS positions together with
Iraqi, Turkish and Kurdish forces.
Trump “could elect to put
American boots on the ground on
larger numbers,” Barno said. “That all
entails new uses of military power....
and that opens the prospect of a deeper
involvement with more casualties.”
Trump promised during his
presidential campaign to eliminate IS,
saying he had a secret plan to quickly
defeat the group.
Last week, General Joe Dunford,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said he would present Mattis with
options to “accelerate the campaign”
against IS. “What is really important is
first that we have a conversation about
what we are doing today, why we are
doing it, and what other things might
be done and why we haven’t done it
to date,” Dunford told reporters in
Brussels.
Trump is also open to conducting
joint operations with Russia against
the IS in Syria, his spokesman said
earlier this week. “If there’s a way we
can combat ISIS with any country,
whether it’s Russia or anyone else, and
we have a shared national interest in
that, sure, we’ll take it,” press secretary
Sean Spicer told reporters. — AFP
TEHRAN: A senior Iranian firefighter
paid tribute on Friday to rescuers’
bravery tackling a blaze last week that
triggered the collapse of Tehran’s oldest
high-rise, killing 26 people.
The 15-storey Plasco building
toppled on January 19 while emergency
services were still evacuating people
from it, four hours into the inferno.
Amir Mahdiani, a fire department
commander, addressed worshippers at
Friday prayers in Tehran’s vast Mosalla
mosque as the search for those still
missing in the collapse neared its end.
“If it wasn’t for the sacrifice of the
firemen, maybe the building would
have collapsed two hours earlier and
hundreds would be buried,” he said,
before bursting into tears.
His leg was in a splint due to an
injury sustained during the fire.
Mahdiani said the death toll
could have been lower if people had
cooperated with the authorities and left
the building more promptly.
He urged the government to help
import modern firefighting equipment.
The Plasco building was Iran’s oldest
high-rise and contained a shopping
centre and hundreds of clothes shops
and workshops.
The bodies of 15 firefighters and
four civilians had been recovered from
the rubble by Friday while six were still
missing, the fire service said. Another
firefighter died in hospital.
Bulldozers had removed 1,600
truckfuls of rubble from the site by Friday
reaching underground floors after nine
days of searching with sniffer dogs.
A member of East
Libyan forces holds
his weapon in
Ganfouda district in
Benghazi, Libya.
— Reuters
Tehran fire chief praises bravery in tower blaze
Some of the bodies recovered were
unidentifiable and awaited DNA testing.
Authorities said the firefighters
would be buried as “martyrs” next to
those killed in a stampede during the
2015 hajj pilgrimage.
The last body was recovered late on
Thursday and officials hoped to clean up
and lift traffic restrictions near the site by
Saturday.
A deputy mayor said crews removing
the rubble were set to complete the job
by around 5 pm (1330 GMT) on Friday.
The damage was estimated at 15,000
billion rials ($390 million) and some
3,500 workers lost their jobs as a result of
the blaze.
The government announced a relief
programme to help businesses and
uninsured workers. — AFP
Aleppo traders clear debris from war-scarred souq
ALEPPO: In Syria’s Aleppo, men throw rubble
into the courtyard of a historic inn as merchants
gather below to oversee the resurrection of
their war-battered shops.
The shopkeepers have returned for the first
time to clear the debris left behind by years of
fighting after their century-old trading ground
became a front line.
“I was so happy to see my shop still standing
amid the trash despite a little damage,” says
Antoun Baqqal, 66, one of the traders in the
Khayr Beyk Khan.
Once famous for its bustling souqs and old
citadel, Aleppo’s Old City has been rendered
almost unrecognisable by some of the worst
violence in Syria’s nearly six-year conflict.
After years of fighting, many of the city’s
famed souqs have been completely destroyed.
But the shops of Khayr Beyk have largely
survived, even if some stores inside the twofloor
inn, known in the region as a khan, have
seen their facades ripped off in the fighting.
I was so happy to see
my shop still standing
amid the trash despite a
little damage
ANTOUN BAQQAL
One of the traders
“I sent my friends pictures of their shops
to encourage them to come back, until they all
returned one by one,” Baqqal says.
Rebels overran east Aleppo in the summer
of 2012, effectively dividing the city into a
regime-held west and opposition-controlled
east. “The army was here. They used to sleep
upstairs and downstairs in the shops,” Baqqal
Mohammed Nour Mimi (R) walks through Aleppo’s historic souq on Friday as he returns to his store,
alongside other shopkeepers, for the first time to clear the debris left behind by years of fighting
after their century-old trading ground became a front line. — AFP
says. But after regime forces seized east Aleppo
in December, retaking the whole city, he
was able to return to the cloth workshop he
inherited from his father.
When he found his father’s photo lying on
the ground, he dusted it off and hung it back up
on the wall. “I’m going to tidy up the workshop
so my son can take over, so he can put my photo
next to my father’s one day and remember me
fondly.”
In the courtyard, Zakaria Aziza, 55, scrolls
through his phone, comparing old pictures of
the more than a dozen shops he owns to their
appearance today.
Customers used to flock from across the
Arab region to admire the shopping venue’s
textiles, he says. “The khan once overflowed
with material. You could hardly walk between
the shops for all the customers,” Aziza says.
“Today it’s also hard to walk around — but
this time it’s because of all the rubble and trash.”
— AFP