By Reuters – Feb 06,2017 – JORDAN TIMES
Displaced Iraqi children who fled the Daesh stronghold of Mosul with their families play at Khazer camp, Iraq, on Monady (Reuters photo)
BAGHDAD — The World Bank plans to offer Iraq financial support in parallel with projects to foster reconciliation after Daesh’s defeat, its regional director said on Monday, to ensure that reconstruction after years of conflict is sustainable.
US-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces have dislodged Daesh from most cities that the extremist group captured in 2014 in Iraq, and they are now fighting the militants in their last major stronghold, Mosul, in the north.
While mainstream Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish forces are taking part or supporting the battle to dislodge Daesh from Mosul, their politicians are yet to heal rifts that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“The Mosul battle is keeping all these forces together,” World Bank director for the Middle East Ferid Belhaj told Reuters by telephone. “When the fight is over, we don’t know what kind of pressures … will be in place; that’s why it is very important for the Iraqis to start this exercise right now.”
“We will try as much as we can to make sure that the incentives … for reconciliation would be more appealing than the incentives for each of these factions … to go it alone.”
The World Bank approved in December a new loan of $1.485 billion to help Iraq lessen the impact of low oil prices on its economy and shoulder the cost of the war on Daesh, bringing its total support to the nation to nearly $3.4 billion.
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Iraq, The Muslim Times
Come on! Oil countries should be able to manage their finances without outside help.