Sunni leader warns against giving donation money to Iraqi gov’t

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region- In light of donation pledges from western countries the Iraqi council of ministries has started forming a special team to oversee the rebuilding of war damages while a Sunni politician warns against giving any money to the government and rather deal directly with local authorities.

According to Sunni politician Mashaan al-Juburi, the government was put under a lot of pressure to rebuild the cities, mend the streets and bring back public services to places such as Salahaddin province and Anbar.

The Sunni leader complained that the government has not done much for those displaced by the war either. “The government has not offered the refugees a piece of bread or water.”

Al-Juburi told Rudaw that he didn’t trust the Iraqi government was serious about bringing life back to liberated areas and that countries that have promised to help must work directly with city officials instead.

“Any country that aims to participate in the renovation project should not send sums of money to the central government,” he said. “They should rather invest the money directly through a company.”

Al-Juburi’s comments came the same time as member states of the anti-ISIS coalition pledged $2billion of assistance to Iraq at a meeting in the US on Wednesday.

“Today our coalition raised over $2 billion to support areas in Iraq liberated from ISIL terrorists,” said Brett McGurk, US special envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, in a tweet.

Earlier this week, the Canadian government announced a donation of $358 million to Iraq to help deal with the humanitarian crisis caused by large scale displacements and assist the government and army in their push for the city of Mosul.

“Canada’s assistance will help meet the urgent health, shelter, protection, education and food needs of hundreds of thousands of affected civilians,” said Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development and La Francophonie at a conference Tuesday.