Sunnis

VICE News | – “Last summer, the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swept from Syria into northern Iraq, routing Iraqi security forces and seizing the city of Mosul. Soon afterward, the group declared the establishment of a dubious “caliphate” in the area it controls and rebranded itself the Islamic […]

Iraq

The Other Sinjar Massacre: As Iraq’s ISIL driven Back, Reprisals against Sunni Collaborators

contributors

Khales Joumah | Mosul | (Niqash.org) – As extremists from the Islamic State group are slowly driven out of northern Iraq, members of one of the groups that suffered at their hands – the Yazidis – began to take revenge on locals they say collaborated with them. This week several villages were looted and burned […]

Iraq

Iraq has Worst Year since Bush Invaded, is a Ghost of Former Self

contributors

By Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) — The past year in Iraq is not easy to review. The assorted crises, both in security and politics, are well known around the world and for many Iraqis it’s been one long nightmare. NIQASH went to gather ordinary Iraqis’ opinions on the year gone by and ended […]

Iraq

Iraq Faces Women’s Crisis: 1 Mn. Widows, Extremist Captives, Child Brides

contributors

By Alaa Latif | Sulaymaniyah | (Niqash.org) Bayan Nouri has a tough job over the next four years – the new Minister for Women’s Affairs in Iraq must try to improve the economic lot of Iraq’s women, prevent systemic domestic violence against females and work on problems like female genital mutilation and underage marriage as […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

Yemen in 2014: 1500 Killed as Extremist Shiites took over Gov’t, battled al-Qaeda: What Next?

contributors

SANAA, December 2014 (IRIN) — After a negotiated transfer of power agreed in early 2012, the annual death toll dropped to about 1,100 and nearly halved again in 2013 to fewer than 600, according to the International Crisis Group. The uptick in violence in 2014 is the result of a number of distinct but inter-related […]

Featured

The Year Iraq Ceased to Exist: Will it ever Again?

Juan Cole

In 2014, Iraq was said to lose 42% of its territory to Daesh (the Arabic acronym for what our press calls ISIS or ISIL). This statistic refers to the loss of the mostly Sunni Arab provinces of al-Anbar and Ninewah, as well as parts of Salahuddin and Diyala. It is a little bit misleading, since […]

Iraq

Daesh/ ISIL close to Taking al-Anbar Province as Tribal Levies lack Ammunition, Funding, Unity

contributors

By Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) | — Last week, fighters from tribes in Anbar were forced to give up their hold on the town of Wafaa to extremists from the Islamic State because they ran out of ammunition. And they ran out because apparently the Iraqi government won’t supply them. The steady defeat […]

Iraq

Iraq Fail: Shiite Gov’t asks Sunni tribe to fight ISIL, but Sentences Politician from Tribe to Death

contributors

By Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) While members of the Sunni Muslim al-Bu Ulwan tribe were fighting extremists in the Anbar province, alongside the mostly Shiite Muslim military, judges in Baghdad sentenced a politician from the tribe to death. The tribe says it feels like Baghdad has stabbed it in the back. Other Anbar […]

Featured

Iraq: Daesh/ISIL executes 26 Sunni Tribesmen in Campaign to Take Ramadi

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole: Daesh (the Arabic acronym for ISIS or ISIL) has mounted a major offensive in a bid to take Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar Province in western Iraq. Ramadi is due west of Baghdad past Fallujah. Iraqi eyewitnesses told the al-Arabiya satellite news channel that Daesh had taken over some of the neighborhoods […]