Iraq

By IPS World Desk | (Inter Press Service) | – – ROME/GENEVA (IPS) – Between 2010 and 2015, nearly half of all civilian war deaths worldwide occurred in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, a major independent, neutral organisation ensuring humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of war and armed violence informs. According to a new report […]

Iraq

Iraq Deployed Shiite Volunteers to defeat ISIL, but now has a Militia Problem

contributors

Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) |. – The Iraqi government’s next big problem is coming into view: The group of powerful Shiite Muslim militias loyal to Iran seem to want to keep the country enmeshed in regional turmoil. As the extremist group known as the Islamic State is driven out of the country, the […]

Displaced and Refugees

Civilian Casualties Mount in Battle to Re-take Mosul

contributors

By Mark Lattimer | (Inter Press Service} | – – LONDON (IPS) – East of Mosul, many of the lands liberated from ISIS stand empty. Driving through the Nineveh plains, traditional homelands of Iraq’s minority communities of Yezidis, Christians, Shabak and Turkmen, you pass one ghost town after another, peopled only by members of the […]

Arab World

Trump’s Ally: Saudi Arabia’s drive for Aristocratic Hegemony in the Middle East

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Saudi Arabia is making a drive to become a regional hegemon. It has long used its oil wealth to achieve a great deal of influence among neighbors, of course. But it is now flexing military muscles. From a Saudi point of view, they have suffered decades […]

Featured

Baghdad and Manchester: Let’s Commemorate ISIL Victims in Both

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – ISIL (ISIS, Daesh) lashed out at the civilian population in Iraq on Tuesday with three bombings and over 60 casualties. With its signature warped sadism, the organization sent a suicide bomber with a truck into a crowded square in the upscale, largely Shiite shopping district of […]

Iraq

Mosul curses ISIL corpses: “Beguiled by promises of Virgins, you’re Garbage now”

contributors

Special Correspondent | (Mosul) | (Niqash.org) | – – NIQASH’s Mosul correspondent left the city shortly after the extremist Islamic State group took over. But most of his family remained. After 34 months, he returned home. This is what he found. When I left Mosul on July 1, 2014 – fearing for my life because […]

Dissent

Iraq Parliament Mulls ending Freedom of Assembly

contributors

By Afef Abrougui | ( Globalvoices.org) | – – When armed men in civilian clothes kidnapped journalist Afrah Shawqi from her home on 26 December 2016, journalists and activists quickly took to the street to demand that the government take action to ensure her safety and her immediate release. Iraq's parliament is currently reviewing a […]

Iraq

Revival of Iraqi Communism among Youth alarms Shiite Militias

contributors

Mustafa Habib | (Niqash.org) | – – Last week’s kidnapping of seven activists in Baghdad could be another sign of increasing tensions between secular parties in Iraq and the country’s ruling religious groups. Is history repeating? Last week, an unidentified armed group kidnapped a number of younger civil society activists from their small apartment in […]

Donald Trump

Mosul on My Mind: What It Really Means to Be on a Flattening Planet

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The closest I ever got to Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was 1,720.7 miles away — or so the Internet assures me. Although I’ve had a lifelong interest in history, I know next to nothing about Mosul’s, nor do I have more than a glancing sense […]