Two people died in Baghdad on Friday and more than 350 people were injured as Iraqi security forces used teargas and stun grenades to repel crowds marching towards the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone, protesting against corruption and economic hardship. The authorities have struggled to address protesters' grievances since unrest erupted in Baghdad on 1 October, spreading to southern cities. Demonstrators blame corrupt officials and political elites for failing to improve their lives.
Continue reading...Category Archives: Iraq
Protests rage around the world – but what comes next?
Unrest is seemingly everywhere. We look at the some of the reasons for and responses to it in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Catalonia and Iraq
In Lebanon they are against a tax on WhatsApp and endemic corruption. In Chile, a hike in the metro fare and rampant inequality. In Hong Kong, an extradition bill and creeping authoritarianism. In Algeria, a fifth term for an ageing president and decades of military rule.
The protests raging today and in the past months on the streets of cities around the world have varying triggers. But the fuel is familiar: stagnating middle classes, stifled democracy and the bone-deep conviction that things can be different – even if the alternative is not always clear.
Continue reading...Spread the word: the Iraqis translating the internet into Arabic
Ameen al-Jaleeli and a team of student translators are working to empower people with knowledge
When Islamic State overran the Iraqi city of Mosul, human life was not the only thing in peril. Knowledge was, too.
Fortunately, Ameen al-Jaleeli understood this. He used a friend’s wifi to transfer a vast batch of Wikipedia files for offline usage. When the militants cut the cables in July 2016, he was ready.
Continue reading...In Iraq, religious ‘pleasure marriages’ are a front for child prostitution
BBC investigation exposes Shia clerics in Baghdad advising men on how to abuse girls
I’m walking through the security cordon that leads into Kadhimiyah, one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites. I’m in a queue, along with dozens of pilgrims who have come from all over the world to pay their respects to the shrine of Imam Kadhim. At the gate, a female security guard pats me down and looks into my handbag, a reminder that the story I’m reporting on here isn’t going to be easy.
As I walk around the market stalls surrounding the shrine, I notice the many “marriage offices” dotted around the mosque, which are licensed to perform Sharia marriages. I’d received tips that some clerics here were performing short-term mutaa [pleasure] marriages, a practice – illegal under Iraqi law – whereby a men can pay for a temporary wife, with the officiating cleric receiving a cut.
Continue reading...Iraq protests: police open fire on demonstrators as death toll rises – video
Security forces in Iraq opened fire on protesters in Baghdad despite the prime minister's plea for calm and promise of reform. The protests, which have been fuelled by rage over poor living standards and alleged corruption, have escalated by the day since they first erupted on 1 October.
On Friday, hundreds of people, including members of the security forces as well as demonstrators, were wounded when police opened fire on protesters. The death toll has now risen to more than 40 dead
- Iraq death toll rises as police open fire on protesters in Baghdad
- Corruption will not be solved by 'wishing it away', Iraqi government warned
Iraqi cleric appeals for calm as forces face off with protesters
At least 44 dead and hundreds injured after four days of anti-government demonstrations
Protesters have defied nationwide curfews in parts of Iraq, taking to the streets in increasing numbers and facing off with security forces in ever more deadly confrontations that had killed at least 44 people by Friday night.
As the country was paralysed by a fourth day of anti-government demonstrations, the country’s top Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a stark warning to both sides to end the violence “before it’s too late”.
Continue reading...Corruption won’t be solved by ‘wishing it away’, Iraqi government warned
Iraq PM’s adviser claims violent protests can only be addressed by tackling corruption head-on
A head-on confrontation with institutionalised corruption among Iraqi politicians is the only way to address the protests gripping the country, a senior adviser to the country’s beleaguered prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, has warned.
But admitting that Mahdi may not have the political capital to fight the corruption, Laith Kubba said: “We have problems with those political groups who have their grip over money, banks and power, and rooted to corruption. It is a problem and there is no real answer to it.
Continue reading...Iraq protests intensify amid ‘near-blackout’ of internet – video
People have been protesting in Baghdad and southern cities over poor services, unemployment and corruption and have urged the government to resign. Hundreds of heavily armed security forces and riot police have been deployed to try to quash the unrest and internet access has been restricted. So far, 19 people have been reported killed, including one police officer
Continue reading...At least seven killed as Iraqi security forces fire on protesters
More violence marked second day of angry rallies against unemployment and corruption
At least seven people have been killed and dozens wounded in clashes across Iraq, as security forces fired live ammunition and teargas for the second day to disperse anti-government protesters demanding jobs, improved services and an end to corruption.
The deaths brought the overall number of protesters killed in two days of violence to nine. Protests on Tuesday had left two dead – one in Baghdad and another in the city of Nasiriyah – and over 200 wounded.
Continue reading...Joseph Wilson obituary
Diplomat who disputed the US intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003
Joseph Wilson, who has died aged 69 of organ failure, was the American diplomat whose first-hand questioning of the rationale behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq earned him the enmity of the George W Bush administration, and saw his wife Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative exposed publicly in retaliation.
In 2002, with the administration building its case for war with Iraq, the CIA sent Wilson, usually known as “Joe”, to investigate whether the Iraqis had sought to buy yellowcake uranium ore, which might be enriched for use in nuclear weapons, from Niger.
Continue reading...How the battle of Mosul was waged on WhatsApp
In an extract from his new book, James Verini gives his first-hand view of the bizarre, bleak conflict with Isis in 2016
• ‘Guilt and shame’: journalist James Verini on the US role in the destruction of Iraq
In Mosul, it was obvious, the jihadists would make their grand last stand. Smaller fights would follow, but this would be the showstopper. It would be not just the biggest and most devastating battle of this war, but the biggest battle, in a sense the culminating battle, of what was once known as the war on terror. When it was only half done, a Pentagon spokesman would call the fighting in Mosul “the most significant urban combat since WWII”. I was in Mosul when I read that. I had gone to Iraq for the first time in the summer of 2016, to write about life in the Islamic State’s wake. I got a month-long visa. I ended up staying the better part of a year.
Every CTS [Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service] position I saw in Mosul was as insecure as the one in Zahra [in the east of the city]. No checkpoints, no regular sentries, sometimes not even a perimeter. Locals wandered in and out. The soldiers were usually obliging. Near the triage station in Gogjali, on a slope overlooking east Mosul, was a nascent neighbourhood, a scattering of freestanding structures, half-finished homes, cinderblock foundations. Some were inhabited by their owners or refugees, others abandoned. One of the latter, a modest one-storey house that once aspired to two storeys, had held enemy fighters or served as a stopping place for them as they tried to escape the city. On the cement floor of the small courtyard was a discarded Rhodesian ammunition chest rig and by that, in a sink, a pile of hair of what had once been a beard. Occasionally you came upon just such perfect tableaux.
Continue reading...Trump says US response to oil attack depends on Saudi Arabia’s assessment
US secretaries of state and energy both explicitly blamed Iran for the attack but Trump suggests US did not have definitive evidence
Donald Trump has said the US response to the attack on Saudi oil facilities will depend on the assessment in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and downplayed US dependence on Middle East energy supplies.
The US secretaries of state and energy both explicitly blamed Iran for the attack. Unnamed US officials were also quoted in US media outlets as saying Iranian cruise missiles were used in Saturday’s attack on an oil field and processing plant. Estimates of the number of missiles used ranged from “nearly a dozen” to “over two dozen”.
Continue reading...My young cousin fled the bombs … only to be held in a camp alongside Isis supporters
A 15-year-old girl from my family was among thousands of traumatised innocents dumped at the notorious al-Hawl displacement facility in Syria
In April, a 15-year-old female relative of mine attempted to escape from al-Hawl camp, the displacement facility in eastern Syria that hosts families of Islamic State fighters. My cousin was one of thousands of civilians displaced from areas previously held by Isis and kept at the camp as they fled the group’s last strongholds.
My relative never joined the organisation, nor did any member of her family. But when she was caught, the guards noticed she was wearing a burqa, the face veil that Isis imposed on women living under its so-called caliphate. Since she was no longer living under Isis, the Kurdish interrogators accused her of being a “Daeshiyah” – a pejorative word to describe female Isis sympathisers. Rather than defending herself as a civilian with no association or sympathy to Isis, she opted for a defiant tone: “This is Islam, like it or not.”
Continue reading...Carol Guzy’s best photograph: a little girl in the war-ravaged ruins of Mosul
‘It was innocence amid war – this tiny girl who should have been enjoying her childhood trapped in this catastrophic battle’
I was one of the last photographers left in Mosul during the final days of the battle to liberate the Iraqi city from Islamic State in July 2017. I have covered the humanitarian consequences of war for three decades, but the sheer horror I witnessed during this conflict felt different.
There was no end to the cruelty. The stream of suicide bombs, grenades, car bombs, and snipers was relentless. People were forced to watch their loved ones die in front of them. And when civilians did reach the point of escape, Isis would use them as human shields.
Continue reading...Israel risks becoming the fall guy in Donald Trump’s ‘shadow war’ with Iran | Simon Tisdall
Benjamin Netanyahu is counting on fear of conflict with Iran to win crucial election votes
Donald Trump’s offer to talk peace with Iran sent a shiver of alarm through Israel’s political and security establishment last week. With a too-close-to-call general election looming on 17 September, Benjamin Netanyahu is counting on his hardline anti-Tehran alliance with Washington – and fear of conflict – to win him crucial votes. A North Korea-style Trump tryst with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, was the prime minister’s “ultimate horror scenario”, one analyst noted.
Yet after a recent series of escalatory strikes against Iran-linked forces in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, Israel’s voters may reflect that if one thing is worse than peace with Iran, it’s war with Iran. Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Tehran, strongly backed by Netanyahu and fellow Tel Aviv hawks, is placing Israel squarely in the firing line. The intensifying confrontation is also sucking in regional states, notably Iraq.
Continue reading...Drone attacks in Middle East raise fears of escalating conflict
Multiple attacks in region suggest drone warfare could extend to distant battlefields
A spate of drone attacks in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and now Lebanon has raised the spectre of a new era of conflict in the region, due to the ability of stealth-like weapons to penetrate distant battlefields and hit closely guarded targets.
Drone warfare has become an instrumental factor in the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, now being fought over both sides of the Israeli border and in skies across the region.
Continue reading...Iraq’s burning problem: the strange fires destroying crops and livelihoods
Fires in northern Iraq have reduced a potentially bumper harvest to ashes. The government blames mischance – but is something more sinister afoot?
Plumes of smoke shroud the summer sky of Iraq’s northern plains, creating an ominous veil of grey. Fires in Nineveh province have broken out on a scale that farmers here describe as unprecedented, turning tens of thousands of acres of wheat and barley fields into barren patches of black.
“Look at that, the livelihood of the people is destroyed,” says Jalal Muamah as he picks up a handful of charred barley spikes that pepper his field near the town of Sinjar. “We won’t have a harvest better than this year, not even in the next hundred years.”
Continue reading...New wave of terrorist attacks possible before end of year, UN says
UN report warns threat from Islamist extremist groups remains high
The United Nations has warned that a recent pause in international terrorist violence may soon end, with a new wave of attacks possible before the end of the year.
In a report, specialist monitors at the UN security council paint a worrying picture of a global Islamist extremist movement that continues to pose a significant threat despite recent setbacks.
Continue reading...Awkward exchanges as Trump meets religious persecution survivors – video
Donald Trump has had some awkward exchanges with survivors of religious persecution during a meeting with them in the Oval Office on Wednesday. When the Nobel laureate and Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad requested aid for the Yazidis, the president replied: ‘And you had the Nobel prize? That's incredible. They gave it to you for what reason?’ When asked by a Rohingya refugee about the plan to help his people, Trump replied: ‘Where is that exactly?’
Continue reading...Turkish diplomat shot dead in Iraqi city, officials say
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vows to find those behind attack on restaurant in city of Erbil
A gunman has killed a senior Turkish diplomat and a civilian in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, in a daytime attack inside a restaurant.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, vowed to find whoever was behind the “treacherous” attack. The dead man was identified by Iraqi media as the deputy consul for the region.
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