Baghdad. Iraqi forces regained ground from Islamic State militants in western Iraq on Sunday, advancing towards the city of Ramadi one week after it fell to the insurgents.

A police major and a pro-government Sunni tribal fighter in the area said they had retaken the town of Husaiba al-Sharqiya, about 10 kilometers east of Ramadi, with the help of Shi’ite paramilitaries.

Shi’ite militias, Iraqi security forces and pro-government Sunni tribal fighters launched a counter-offensive on Saturday against the insurgents, who have pushed east towards a key military base after overruning Ramadi.

“Today we regained control over Husaiba and are laying plans to make more advances to push back Daesh fighters further,” said local tribal leader Amir al-Fahdawi, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, also known in English as ISIS or ISIL.

“The morale of the fighters is high after the arrival of reinforcements and loads of ammunition.”

Planes were bombing Islamic State positions on the opposite bank of the Euphrates river, where the militants were launching mortars and sniper fire to prevent the pro-government forces advancing, Fahdawi and the police major said.

The fall of Ramadi last Sunday was the biggest setback for Iraqi forces in almost a year and has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the US-led strategy for fighting the Sunni militant group.

A US-led coalition is bombing Islamic State positions from the air after the group seized swathes of Iraq and Syria and proclaimed a caliphate last year to rule over all Muslims.

Iraqi government forces and Iran-backed Shi’ite militia advanced against the Sunni militants north of Baghdad in the Tigris river valley earlier this year, recapturing former dictator Saddam Hussein’s home city of Tikrit. But the insurgents responded by going on the offensive west of Baghdad in the valley of Iraq’s other great river, the Euphrates.

Reuters

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Regardless of a person’s status or place in the hierarchy within a nation, to call a change of their citizenship a scandal is an exaggeration in a real sense, if not a scandal in itself.

Within this globalized world, changing from one citizenship to another for whatever reason should be seen as a usual and common occurrence.

In fact, it is all part of exercising a person’s basic human rights and their freedom to decide their fate.

So we should see the case of former Miss Indonesia Kristania Virginia Besouw’s decision to change her Indonesian citizenship to American as a normal case, rather an extraordinary occurrence — much less a scandal.

She has the right to change her citizenship even if it is to get a financially better life.

As pragmatic as it gets, this has nothing to do with her lack of nationalism.

She probably just wants to feel secure and she sees Indonesia as being unable to provide it.

This case should even be seen as a criticism of our failure to provide security and prosperity for our own citizens.

This a quid-pro-quo world. This incident should act as a warning for us all over the waning of love for the country and the nation — because we rarely have anything to feel proud of as Indonesians.

We all should see this as a challenge to make Indonesia better and greater, to make us proud and grow the love we have for the country, rather then blasting those who probably only want to seek a better life.

We should now bury a sense of narrow-minded nationalism of who can the shout loudest to criticize Kristania while doing nothing for the betterment of Indonesia and its people.

The post Editorial: Don’t Criticize Those Seeking a Better Life appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.