Azernews.Az

Saturday April 20 2024

U.S. agency to help Iraq recover from IS despite Trump aid cuts

11 December 2017 12:15 (UTC+04:00)
U.S. agency to help Iraq recover from IS despite Trump aid cuts

By Trend

The United States is committed to helping Iraq recover from three years of war against Islamic State despite President Donald Trump cutting the foreign aid budget, a senior official in its main government aid agency has said, Reuters reported.

Thomas Staal, the Counselor of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said the agency would continue to provide basic humanitarian services and additional support for minority groups such as psychosocial support to those who suffered genocide, slavery, and gender-based violence.

“The budget that the president submitted included a 30 percent cut, but for Iraq actually we are looking at additional funding, especially for the victims of Islamic State,” Staal told Reuters in an interview at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

Trump staked out his position on foreign aid on the campaign trail, casting it as a waste of U.S. tax dollars. The White House proposed slashing the budget for foreign aid by a third.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared final victory over Islamic State on Saturday after Iraqi forces drove the last remnants of the group from the country, three years after the militants captured about a third of Iraq’s territory.

The war has had a devastating impact on the areas previously controlled by the militants. About 3.2 million people remain displaced, the United Nations says.

The last estimate by Abadi put the cost of post-war reconstruction at $50 billion, a figure calculated before Iraqi forces retook Mosul, which severely damaged the biggest city in northern Iraq.

The U.S. government has provided nearly $1.7 billion in humanitarian assistance for Iraq since the Islamic State takeover of the north in 2014, Staal said.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

Loading...
Latest See more