Day: September 4, 2022

China has approved Livzon Pharmaceutical Group’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, local media reported on Saturday.

Livzon’s protein-based vaccine is the eighth domestically developed vaccine that will be used as a booster shot in the country where nearly 90% of the population have received their primary vaccinations, according to Caixin Global’s website.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Iraq’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad al-Halbousi on Sunday called for setting a date for early elections amid tension over failure to form a new government.

The call came one day after Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi urged the country’s political parties to hold a new round of national dialogue on Monday to resolve Iraq’s months-long political crisis.

“Setting a date for early parliamentary elections and provincial polls by the end of next year” should be on the agenda of the national dialogue, al-Halbousi said in a statement.

He also called for “electing a new president and a government agreed upon by the people and political powers.”

Tension has been running high across Iraq in recent weeks over failure of Shia groups to agree on a new prime minister since the country’s last elections Oct. 10, 2021.

More than 30 protesters were killed on Monday when supporters of influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stormed the Republican Palace, where the government is seated in Baghdad after the firebrand leader said he was stepping down from politics.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Recent hopes for peace in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have largely been dashed, with armed conflict resuming last week between Ethiopian government troops and rebel forces as one scholar says the war is “sponsored by the West.”

Tewodros Zewdu Asfaw, a researcher on mixed identities in Ethiopia who is pursuing a doctorate degree at York University, argues that the West is behind the conflict in the Horn of Africa nation, where fighting broke out in November 2020 when forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked bases of the federal army stationed across the northern region.

In March this year, the Ethiopian government announced a humanitarian truce, which was broken on Aug. 23 when heavy fighting erupted again between the two sides.

“The war in the north, I believe, is sponsored by the West,” Tewodros told Anadolu Agency, tracing the friendship between the TPLF and US government back to 1991, when the guerilla force, enjoying widespread support in Ethiopia, reached the capital Addis Ababa after defeating the regime of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam.

He accused the West of helping the TPLF establish and consolidate its power in Ethiopia, adding that before the main rebel factions arrived at a London peace conference in 1991, then-US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Herman Cohen, who was chairing the meeting, told the sides: “No democracy, no cooperation.”

“While democracy needed to be conducted on a one-man-one-vote basis, the ethnic system they constituted did not allow for this in practice because an ethnically fragmented society was created in which the TPLF represented a constituency of 5 million people,” Tewodros explained.

“Hence the TPLF, being the victim of its own ethnic-driven policy, had to opt for force at any given time to stay in power. That is at the root of the conflict in northern Ethiopia today,” he said.

According to Tewodros, for peace to prevail in Ethiopia, an all-inclusive national dialogue should be conducted, with the elites demonstrating due “honesty” in the process, and he wished to be part of that national conversation to try and contribute to that.

The TPLF ruled Ethiopia for 27 years at the head of a four-party coalition called the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Its ouster in 2018 followed successive years of anti-government protests waged mostly by the youth across the country.

After the formation of the now-ruling Prosperity Party in December 2019, the TPLF retreated into Tigray, where it re-established itself, as it rejected becoming a part of the new political bloc led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and comprising of the other three parties in the EPRDF.

Grim realities of war

Amid the humanitarian decline that northern Ethiopia today faces, both the government and rebels are trading blame for the fresh fighting that erupted immediately after the UN’s World Food Program accused the TPLF of looting 570,000 liters of fuel in Tigray’s capital Mekele that was meant for humanitarian aid distribution efforts.

On Wednesday, the Ethiopian government claimed that the TPLF had opened new war fronts in northwestern parts of the country, a significant expansion of the conflict that was limited to just the Kobo front in the eastern Amhara region to areas bordering Sudan.

“The battles are fierce and the TPLF mobilized children and teens,” an eyewitness told Anadolu Agency, requesting not to be identified.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who himself hails from the restive Tigray region, told a media briefing in Geneva: “I will tell you my own story. I have many relatives there. I want to send them money, but I cannot.”

He has been vocal in his criticisms of the Ethiopian government for the past couple of years. For its part, Addis Ababa has accused him of breaching the responsibility of a UN high office in an “unethical” manner.

There had been a lull in the war since March after the government declared a unilateral truce following nearly two years of fighting.

The TPLF rejected talks under the mediation of the African Union, while the government insists that this remains the only avenue for dialogue.

Thousands of people, mostly civilians, have been killed and millions other displaced since the armed conflict began in November 2020, with the UN blaming both sides for the deaths.

The UN has warned that Tigray “stands on the edge of a humanitarian disaster,” with more than 40% of the region’s estimated 6 million people in need of emergency assistance, while millions in the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions have been left homeless and in need of food aid.

Source: Anadolu Agency

A multi-national military exercise kicked off in Jordan on Sunday, according to the Jordanian military.

Forces from 29 countries, including the United States, are taking part in the Eager Lion 2022, military spokesman Mustafa Hiyari told a press conference.

He said the 10-day training aims to raise preparedness and gain field expertise for forces of the participating countries, he added.

According to the spokesman, 4,300 military personnel and 1,000 civilian officers are taking part in the training.

The Eager Lion exercise started in Jordan in 2011 and includes ground, naval and air military trainings. The drill was mainly carried out between the Jordanian and US armies but recently it was conducted with the participation of forces from other countries.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Massive floods caused by deluges of water falling from the sky have wreaked unprecedented havoc across Pakistan, inundating a third of the country and killing nearly 1,300 people since mid-June.

Apart from massive human and infrastructure losses, the South Asian nuclear nation risks losing its archaeological treasure, which includes remnants of the thousands-year-old Mohinjo Daro and Mahargarh civilizations.

Mohinjo Daro, located in the Larkana district of the southern Sindh province, has been hit particularly hard by the country’s most destructive monsoon spells and floods in recent history.

The floodwaters surrounding the 5,000-year-old iconic site have damaged several excavated portions, with water seeping through and creating furrows.

Rain and flood waters seeping into the ground are tilting the walls of the heritage site’s prehistoric houses, which date back to 2,500 BC and are the last surviving remnants of the Indus Valley Civilization.

This alarming development, according to archaeologists, could potentially lead to the walls completely crumbling and collapsing.

Apart from Mohinjo Daro, Sindh is strewn with heritage sites, only a few of which have been spared by the ravaging floods.

The 18th century Kotdiji Fort and Faiz Mahal (palace) built during the Talpur dynasty’s reign over the then-independent state that is now the district of Khairpur, located some 450 kilometers (280 miles) from Karachi, have also conceded considerable damage from the unprecedented rains and floods.

Makli, one of the world’s largest necropolises, roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Karachi, is also submerged.

Located on a Makli foothill and listed on UNESCO’s list of protected heritage sites in 1981, the necropolis contains over 20,000 tombs, pavilions, and open graves of rulers, army generals, poets, architects, and unidentified warriors going back to the 14th century.

Many other centuries-old graveyards, tombs, structures, and forts, notably the Ranikot Fort, known as the Great Wall of Sindh because of its structural resemblance to China’s Great Wall, have also been flooded.

Several Buddhist and Hindu sacred sites have also been damaged across the province.

According to Hamid Akhund, secretary general of the Endowment Fund Trust, a semi-government organization involved in the preservation of heritage sites in Sindh, not a single heritage property survives intact outside of Karachi.

“The damage is massive due to the Biblical proportions (of the flood). A similar flood, I believe, decimated Mohinjo Daro thousands of years ago,” Akhund told Anadolu Agency.

“The rains and floods almost damaged everything in days that we had restored for years,” he added.

Furthermore, major damage to the archaeological treasure has occurred in the southern Balochistan province, which is home to several archaeological sites over 5,000 years old, as a result of weeks-long torrential rains and floods.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Panah Baloch, a researcher and historian based in the provincial capital of Quetta, observed that the latest floods have ruined many “already neglected” archaeological sites across Balochistan.

He noted that the most recent floods worsened the damage that soil erosion had already done to the 9,000-year-old Mahargarh site in Balochistan’s eastern Naseerabad district.

Several historic forts and tombs dating back over 4,000 years, including Perak and Noshehra, have also been damaged in the districts of Naseerabad, Khuzdar, Saurab, and Naal, he said.

In contrast, archaeology sites across the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KP), which borders neighboring Afghanistan, remain largely safe despite massive rains and flash floods.

“There are no major losses to the archaeology and heritage sites in KP with the exception of the destruction of roads leading to these sites,” said Fawad Khan, an official with the provincial archaeology department.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, he said that unlike in Sindh and Balochistan, the floods have basically damaged the population and infrastructure located near the rivers and streams.

The province is home to 70% of the sites in the country sacred to Sikhs and Buddhists.

Once known as the heart of the Gandhara civilization, Takht-i-Bhai (throne of origins), a small scenic town located some 160 kilometers (99 miles) from the capital Islamabad, is the most visited site by Buddhists, who flock to see the ancient monastery dating back to the 1st century AD.

For centuries, the region in northern Afghanistan and Pakistan served as the center of Gandhara civilization.

Uphill task

The South Asian Muslim state of Pakistan is home to a plethora of revered pilgrimage sites, some of which date back 5,000 years, for followers of not only Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, but also some pre-historic faiths such as the Aryan, Barhaman, and ancient Iranian and Greek religions.

Archaeologists consider restoring damaged heritage sites to be an “uphill task.”

“There is no doubt that this is an uphill task. “The government must take this seriously,” said Akhund, a former secretary of Sindh’s Culture and Heritage Department.

Several heritage buildings have developed normal cracks and damages that are repairable, he asserted.

However, he added that frescoes in several buildings, most notably the 18th-century Shahi Mahal (Royal Palace) and White Palace in Khairpur, are “irreparable.”

“This kind of art no longer exists,” he added, explaining that the craftsmen who did the job were brought to Sindh from parts of India.

The task is still doable to a large extent, according to him, but will cost “a lot.”

In Sindh alone, he estimated that at least 500 million rupees (approximately $2.28 million) would be required for the re-restoration exercise.

Echoing Akhund’s view, Baloch, the Quetta-based researcher, urged the government to “immediately” appoint supervisors to contain the “archaeological theft.”

“Local people may steal or pick up and sell the archaeological treasure while taking advantage of floods as these sites are unsupervised,” he worried.

“The actual damage has yet to be estimated as many of the (inundated) heritage sites are still unreachable because of the massive floods sweeping away roads and bridges,” he said.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Bangladesh on Sunday summoned Myanmar’s ambassador to Dhaka for the third time in two weeks in protest against the growing border tension and violation of the Bangladeshi airspace.

Myanmar’s Ambassador in Dhaka U Aung Kyaw Moe was summoned to the State Guest House Padma in the capital Dhaka after two mortar shells fired by Myanmar’s forces landed inside Bangladesh on Saturday.

“We summoned Myanmar’s ambassador over the recent landing of Myanmar’s mortar shells inside Bangladesh. We strongly condemned the violation of airspace and shelling along the border areas,” Miah Md. Mainul Kabir, a Foreign Ministry official, told Anadolu Agency.

The two shells fell inside the no-man’s land in the northeastern district of Bandarban. However, no injuries or property damage was reported.

Earlier, two shells landed in the same district on Aug. 28 and the following day the Foreign Ministry summoned Myanmar’s envoy to lodge a protest.

Following the incidents, Bangladesh directed its border forces to extend monitoring and safety measures throughout the tension-gripped borders. Border residents have been instructed to remain vigilant.

Tension also mounted inside Bangladesh as heavy gunfights between the Myanmar army and the Arakan Army fighters intensified recently.

Bangladesh currently hosts over 1.2 million Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State following a brutal military crackdown in August 2017.

Source: Anadolu Agency

AC Milan defeated Inter with a 3-2 score in Saturday’s derby in the Italian Serie A.

Marcelo Brozovic scored the opener in the 21st minute for the visiting side but Rafael Leao leveled the match after seven minutes at San Siro stadium.

AC Milan took the lead with a goal from French forward Olivier Giroud in the 54th minute.

Portuguese striker Leao netted again with a classy close-range finish in the 60th minute, making it 3-1.

In the 67th minute, Inter Milan’s second goal came from Bosnian star Edin Dzeko but it was not enough to topple AC Milan.

First-place AC Milan increased their points to 11 while fifth-place Inter collected nine points after five matches so far.

In another Serie A match, Juventus had a 1-1 draw with Fiorentina at Artemio Franch stadium.

Arkadiusz Milik scored for Juventus while Christian Kouame produced a goal for Fiorentina.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest remarks on Greece were widely covered in the Greek media on Saturday.

Earlier in the day, Erdogan cautioned Greece against going too far and said Türkiye will do what is necessary when the time comes.

“If you go too far, the price will be heavy. We have one thing to say to Greece: Remember Izmir,” he said at Türkiye’s largest technology event, Teknofest, in the province of Samsun.

Izmir is a province on Türkiye’s western Aegean Sea coast that Ankara liberated from Greek occupation in 1922 as part of its War of Independence.

Erdogan warned Greece, saying that Athens’ “occupation” of Aegean Sea islands “does not bind us.”

“When the time comes, we will do what is necessary. As we say, all of a sudden, we may come suddenly one night,” he added.

Greece’s public broadcaster ERT asserted that Erdogan questioned Greece’s sovereignty over the Aegean islands in his speech.

Pro-government Kathimerini daily interpreted the remarks as “direct threats against Greece.”

The daily pointed out that Erdogan’s comments came on the centenary of the Turkish victory over the invading Greek army.

Central-right Ta Nea daily said: “The Turkish president directly challenged Greek sovereignty over the Aegean islands while asserting that Ankara is ready to do whatever is necessary when the time comes.”

Ethnos weekly claimed that the Turkish president and politicians insist on “inflammatory rhetoric” against Athens.

Efsyn new outlet claimed that Erdogan “threatened to occupy” the Aegean islands.

Pro-Greek Communist Party (KKE) 902 website said: “Erdogan reiterated that Greece has no value for NATO,” the outlet said.

Türkiye, a NATO member for over 70 years, has complained of repeated provocative actions and rhetoric by Greece in the region in recent months, saying such moves frustrate its good faith efforts for peace.

Tensions between the two neighboring countries rose after Greece lodged a complaint with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to delete a tweet by the NATO Allied Land Command (LANDCOM) to mark Türkiye’s 100th Victory Day, which commemorates the resounding defeat of occupying Greek armies at the hands of Turks in the 1922 Battle of Dumlupinar.

LANDCOM on Tuesday tweeted a post to mark the 100th Victory Day. However, it tweeted a new post on Thursday congratulating Ankara, saying: “We are thankful to have Türkiye as our host nation.”

Türkiye criticized NATO for deleting the tweet, calling it “unacceptable,” and saying that the alliance “has greatly discredited its corporate identity and prestige” by deleting the tweet upon a “baseless request” by Greece.

Source: Anadolu Agency