niqash | Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | How can a country like Iraq – with its different sects, religions and ethnicities – be governed appropriately? Some are now suggesting that giving all of Iraq’s provinces the powers they were granted by a law amended mid-2013 could be a way out of the current crisis. Local […]
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Sunnis
The Pretender-Caliph and Islamic History: The Truth about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
By Asma Afsaruddin So Muslims of the twenty-first century have a caliph, do they? According to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 has now been reversed and the institution has been revived after an interregnum of ninety years. The new caliph is even called Abu Bakr, […]
5 Most alarming Developments in Iraq
By Juan Cole 1. Airstrikes killed 7 and wounded 30 in Mosul on Sunday. But it isn’t clear who was flying the planes! The US denies it was Americans, and the spokesman for the Baghdad government said he did not know anything about it. The Syrian and Iranian air forces are other possibilities. It is […]
Shiite Volunteers: Asset for Iraqi Army or Drawback?
By Daoud al-Ali | Baghdad | niqash | Volunteers on the streets of Baghdad who have responded to the call to defend Iraq. Thousands of Shiites have volunteered to fight Sunni extremists in Iraq. But in the clashes between extremist groups and volunteers, the illegal Shiite militia groups are proving by far the best fighters […]
How are Iran’s Special Forces intervening in Iraq?
By Golnaz Esfandiari To help Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government battle militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Iran could potentially offer significant assistance through its powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which reportedly has been active in Iraq during the past decade, analysts say. What Can Iran Offer? Afshon […]
Uneasy Caliphate: Inside Hawija in Iraq
By Shalaw Mohammed | Hawija NIQASH visited Hawija, a large northern Iraqi town near Kirkuk, which is currently controlled by Sunni Muslim extremists and local tribes. The town is dominated by ISIS’ black flags and ISIS’ rules. And on the way into town, everybody gets a free Koran. The area south of the Iraqi city […]
The Debacle of the Caliphates: Why al-Baghdadi’s Grandiosity doesn’t Matter
By Juan Cole Ibrahim al-Badri, a run-of-the-mill Sunni Iraqi cleric, gained a degree from the University of Baghdad at a time when pedagogy there had collapsed because of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and international sanctions. After 2003 he took the name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and turned to a vicious and psychopathic violence involving blowing up […]
Baghdad Strikes Back: Al-Maliki Launches Battle for Tikrit
By Juan Cole Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki is fighting for his political life as well as for the territorial integrity of Iraq. On Saturday he launched a large military operation in an attempt to take back control of Tikrit (the capital of Salahuddin Province) just to the north of the capital, Baghdad. Al-Maliki has lost […]
Sunni Radicals of ISIS seek showdown with Lebanon’s Hizbullah
By Radwan Mortada The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has decided to instigate a full-scale conflagration in Lebanon. All indications show that the al-Qaeda offshoot is resolved to bring back suicide bombings en masse to the country of the cedars. After all, Lebanon is within the borders of ISIS’ coveted emirate, yet its […]