Once a magnet for would-be jihadists worldwide, Islamic State’s dominion collapsed amid infighting and paranoia
On a midwinter night in early January, the most wanted man in the world entered a home in a forsaken town near the Syrian border for a rare meeting with his surviving aides.
Continue reading...20 March 1991: Kurdish forces have almost completed the capture of the northern Iraqi oil town of Kirkuk
Kurdish rebels have almost completed the capture of the northern Iraqi oil town of Kirkuk, a Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) spokesman said last night.
Related: Kurds lay claim to oil riches in Iraq as old hatreds flare
Continue reading...Four years ago, Bashir Shikder’s wife Rashida flew from Florida to Syria with the couple’s young children to join Isis, ignoring anguished Bashir’s repeated pleas for her to return home. Now, after hearing news of his wife’s death, and that his children – Yusuf now nine, and Zahra, five – are being held by jihadists in the last corner of the terror group’s lands, Bashir travels to Iraq in the hope of crossing the border into Syria and rescuing them.
Continue reading...The final unravelling of the Islamic State’s evil caliphate exerts a horrible fascination. The jihadis committed many appalling crimes in Syria and Iraq – exploiting the chaos caused by the Syrian civil war – and were responsible, directly or indirectly, for murderous attacks in Britain and several other European countries.
Most people expect a reckoning. It is only right that Isis fighters who have been captured alive, and those who gave them aid and succour, should face justice as soon as possible.
Continue reading...RAF says 4,315 Isis fighters were killed or injured in airstrikes and just one civilian
The Ministry of Defence claim that the RAF killed only one civilian in thousands of airstrikes against Isis has been dismissed as ludicrous and “stretching credibility”.
According figures released by the MoD following a freedom of information request by the charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the RAF strikes between 2014 and January this year killed or injured 4,315 of the group’s fighters. It said 90% of those were killed.
Continue reading...Hawar was healthy but I felt nothing but guilt for bringing him into the world
I was nine months pregnant when Islamic State came. It was 2014 and I was living with my husband, Ferhad, and one-year-old son, Haval, in the village of Tal Qasab in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. My husband and I had been childhood sweethearts. We led a simple life, and were very happy.
For a couple of months, we had been worrying about an attack; Isis were targeting the Yazidi people in our region. Then, one August morning, we woke to the news that they had attacked Tuazar, the neighbouring village. We had just sat down to breakfast when a bullet hit our window. I looked outside and realised our neighbours were running for their lives.
Continue reading...You see these gravity-defying quiffs everywhere in Iraq’s capital: on reception staff in the secure hotels, on waiters in cafes and on the youths who gather in Zawra amusement park on Friday afternoons. Often teamed with drainpipe trousers and a fitted jacket, the flashy, ostentatious haircut requires care. It says something of the city’s new confidence: a rejection of the long years of sanctions and war
Continue reading...The collapse of the Isis caliphate’s last stronghold in Syria is sending shockwaves across the region, changing the calculations of the major powers as they jockey for advantage. Triumphalism in Washington, Moscow and Damascus risks obscuring the human cost of a “victory” that may quickly prove transitory.
Of immediate concern is the fate of civilians, mainly women and children, displaced from formerly Isis-controlled areas where many were held against their will. The independent International Rescue Committee says up to 4,000 people are fleeing towards the al-Hawl refugee camp in north-east Syria.
Continue reading...Facts on the ground as much as ethical and legal factors may come into play in repatriating
US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria have almost completely dismantled Islamic State’s once sprawling “caliphate”, with Isis fighters making their last stand in an area smaller the one sq km in the eastern desert near the border with Iraq.
Wives and children of Isis fighters, along with thousands of civilians unconnected to the group, have left for al-Hol refugee camp, where dozens of people, mostly children, have died in squalid and freezing conditions in recent weeks.
Continue reading...Ben Wallace says ‘actions have consequences’ as schoolgirl who joined Isis is found in Syria
The security minister, Ben Wallace, has said he would not put officials’ lives at risk to rescue UK citizens who went to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State, insisting “actions have consequences”.
“I’m not putting at risk British people’s lives to go looking for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Continue reading...Youssef heard the shots that killed his boyfriend. Resettled in Australia, his is one of four stories told in a new documentary
“I tried to escape, and then one of them hit me. Hazem never allowed anyone to lay a hand on me.”
Youssef’s breath shortens with each word, his face disguised from the camera as he relives the moment his partner sought to shield him from a group of men on a Baghdad street.
Continue reading...Simon Tisdall’s denunciation of the US-led western involvement in Afghanistan as “17 or so years of ultimately pointless, criminal mayhem” (The US ruined Afghanistan. It can’t simply walk away now, Opinion, 8 February) is about as far wide of the mark as it is possible to be, unless you are Donald Trump. Even more curious, Tisdall then enjoins the US, presumably the “criminals” in this enterprise, not to scuttle away.
I served in Iraq and Afghanistan and am not naive enough to believe that one was the “good war”, while the other one wasn’t. But Tisdall seems to forget why we intervened in Afghanistan in the first place: to remove a monstrous regime, the Taliban, that had allowed the perpetrators of 9/11 to set up camp in their country and also terrorised its own people. Destroying the Taliban regime was the right thing to do.
Continue reading...A Labour MP’s grotesque take on Yemen war casualties serves only to show the sordid and politicised nature of body counts
Counting the bodies in conflicts is a necessary, confusing and too often sordid business.
Body counts are necessary for obvious reasons. Numbers supply a moral reference point. They tell us about the scale of a conflict as well as if civilians were targeted and how. They provide evidence for different kinds of human rights advocacy in an international setting, and assist in setting policy for emergency assistance.
Continue reading...Comments come after Donald Trump suggested US forces in Iraq were monitoring activity in Iran
Iraq’s president has hit back at comments made by Donald Trump, saying that the US president did not ask Iraq’s permission for US troops stationed there to “watch Iran”.
A day after Trump said US soldiers in Iraq would be tasked with monitoring Iran, Barham Salih told reporters at a forum in Baghdad that the US military presence in the country was the result of a bilateral agreement with the specific goal of fighting terrorism.
Continue reading...Trump said he wanted to maintain a military presence, despite saying the invasion of Iraq was ‘one of the greatest mistakes’
Donald Trump wants to keep US troops in Iraq, in order to “watch” Iran.
Related: Super Bowl: Donald Trump would have 'hard time' letting son play football
Continue reading...Pope Francis’s visit to the United Arab Emirates this week will be greeted enthusiastically. Some 120,000 people are expected to turn out for his mass in a sports stadium in Abu Dhabi – as many as turned out in Dublin when he travelled to historically Catholic Ireland last year. The first visit by a pontiff to the Arabian peninsula, the birthplace of Islam, highlights the complications of the religious situation in the Middle East, and more widely the issues of Christian-Muslim relations.
There may be as many as 2 million Christians in the Middle East today. Despite nearly 16 years of war and sometimes brutal persecution in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, many remain in the lands that were the cradle of Christianity. In part this is because it is still made as hard as possible for them to leave the region. The Christians of Iraq have largely been driven from their homes by persecution, as have some of the Christians of Syria, where a number have taken the side of the Assad dictatorship. But they have ended up in refugee camps rather than reaching notionally Christian Europe.
Continue reading...Christopher Pyne says the deaths, which occurred during operations between Iraqi and allied forces, are ‘deeply regrettable’
Australian Defence Force officials have admitted between six and 18 civilians were killed in a Mosul airstrike involving Australian jets, but said they could not determine if Australian or allied missiles caused the deaths.
The defence minister, Christopher Pyne, described the deaths as “deeply regrettable” but said the 12-month investigation into the strike on 13 June 2017 could not come to a conclusion over who was at fault.
Continue reading...The ‘mind-boggling’ request came after two incidents in Iraq last September when militia mortar and rockets exploded near US diplomatic facilities
The White House asked the Pentagon to draw up options for military strikes against Iran in the wake of two incidents in Iraq last September when mortar shells and rockets fired by militias exploded near US diplomatic facilities, it was reported on Sunday.
Related: US will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, says Mike Pompeo
Continue reading...Nearly two years after raising the alarm, Human Rights Watch report reveals continued allegations of electric shocks and beatings on boys aged 14 to 17
Kurdish security forces in Erbil are continuing to torture children to confess their involvement with Islamic State, according to allegations in a report released by Human Rights Watch.
According to the organisation, which first raised the alarm about the mistreatment of child detainees by Kurdish security forces nearly two years ago, it has collected claims of the continued regular use of beatings and electric shocks to extract confessions, often prior to trials lasting a handful of minutes.
Continue reading...Guardian photographer Sean Smith captures Iraqis at leisure, from students taking selfies in the park to families on fairground rides
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