Seven days after the attack ordered by the Catholic Joe Biden on the Syrian border with Iraq, Pope Francis arrives this Friday (5) in Baghdad, “as a penitent pilgrim, to implore forgiveness and reconciliation”.
This is what he says in a video posted on social media with Arabic subtitles, among other languages:
In the United States, which has occupied the country for 18 years, newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported critically, noting that the Pope has decided to travel “despite the pandemic and the security concerns” , which he “could draw crowds”.
Christians, the NYT notes, are “reduced to a third of the million and a half who lived there in the last years of Saddam Hussein’s government.”
At the end of the long text, the newspaper notes that “the Iraqi Christian population was once a vibrant community, but it was slaughtered by a decade of war after the US invasion of 2003”.
THE DEFEAT
As the 20th anniversary of the invasion of the country approaches, this week’s New Yorker presents the detailed “Last Out of Afghanistan” report (above), anticipating the pullout that would begin in April.
And the Washington Post stresses in one column that “Biden must accept defeat”, warns of a Taliban offensive about to begin, and says “the only option” is to sign the negotiated deal, to evacuate the troops Western countries and the “doomed government”.
BOLSONARO AGAINST THE WORLD
In an editorial that echoes a statement by Brazilian doctor Miguel Nicolelis to his correspondent, the WP takes the title that “Brazil’s fertile ground for variants is a threat to the whole world”.
He says that “Jair Bolsonaro’s leadership vacuum has given the virus an opening to spread”, facilitating mutations, and ends with a warning: “What happens in Brazil does not stay in Brazil”.
SPUTNIK IN EUROPE
From Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda to Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the European press has paid attention to the news that the Sputnik V vaccine is being tested, after all, by the European Union’s health agency.
Already used by some countries in the region, the vaccine was approved Thursday (4) by the 45th country in the world, Iraq.
CHINESE CONCERN
Vaccination in China reached 52 million, just behind the United States, reported Caixin – stressing, however, in the headline, that “pace is big concern, expert alert” in Shanghai.
The financial site devotes more attention to the effort to accelerate China’s vaccination, with four vaccines and others on the way, than at the start of the legislative “two sessions” in Beijing, which concentrate coverage even in the West, in the case of WSJ, with the image below.
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