Category Archives: Iraq

Iran suspends scheduled round of talks with Saudi Arabia – report

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A day after Iraq said it would host a fresh round of talks between the regional rivals, Iran announced they would not go ahead

Iran has suspended the latest round of talks with regional rival Saudi Arabia, a website affiliated with Iran’s top security body has reported.

Iraq’s foreign ministry had announced on Saturday that it would host the talks on Wednesday. The Iraqi foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, revealed the development during remarks at a diplomatic forum in Antalya on Turkey’s southern coast cited by local media. A foreign ministry spokesperson confirmed the comments to Reuters.

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Ericsson admits breaking DoJ deal over Iraq corruption claims

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Telecoms group’s admission comes days after revelations about alleged bribes given to Islamic State

The Swedish telecoms group Ericsson broke a formal agreement with US prosecutors by withholding evidence about its involvement in corruption, the firm has announced.

The US Department of Justice had notified Ericsson that the firm has failed, as required, to hand over details of alleged corruption in Iraq to DoJ prosecutors.

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Revealed: leaked files show how Ericsson allegedly helped bribe Islamic State

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Telecoms giant’s internal investigators uncover allegations it was involved in corruption in at least 10 countries

Confidential documents have revealed how the telecoms giant Ericsson is alleged to have helped pay bribes to the Islamic State terrorist group in order to continue selling its services after the militants seized control of large parts of Iraq.

The leak of internal investigations at Ericsson, which also found that the firm had put its contractors at risk and allowed them to be kidnapped by the militants, is potentially damaging for the multinational.

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‘A symbol of new beginning’: Mosul’s university library reopens

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The institution suffered a devastating attack by Islamic State in 2014. Eight years on, an international effort has seen it reopen as ‘a lighthouse of knowledge’

The university library in Mosul, which was bombed by Islamic State militants, has opened its doors again, describing itself as a “lighthouse of knowledge” which is “once again burning bright”.

Founded in 1921, the library was ransacked and bombarded by missiles during the IS occupation of the city, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 books and manuscripts destroyed. It was reopened on 19 February by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with financial support from Germany and book donations from around the world, including over 20,000 from the UK.

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‘I feel free when I run’: the young women enjoying a sense of freedom in Iraq

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Displaced Iraqi girls stuck in camps are getting a taste of independence by running, hiking and kickboxing, thanks to a programme teaching them about sport and confidence

The mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan are edged with a tangerine glow as our minibus drives past them. We set off earlier from Erbil, the region’s capital, and are driving to Shaqlawa, a historic city about 50 minutes away, to hike up the nearby Safeen mountain. Inside the minibus, a group of teenage girls are playing their favourite songs.

The teenagers live with their families in one of Erbil’s two main camps for internally displaced people (IDPs), Baharka and Harsham, having fled Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and surrounding towns such as Tal Afar and Sinjar, when the area was captured by ISISsis in 2014. The hike has been organised by Free to Run, an NGO that supports and empowers women and girls in regions of conflict through sport, offering them life-skills training, and creating safe spaces for them to develop confidence and friends, and to reclaim public space in a country where women’s rights are lacking.

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Kurdish transgender woman shot by brother had been hiding from family

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Friends of Doski Azad said the 23-year-old makeup artist had received repeated death threats from male family members

The Kurdish transgender woman Doski Azad shot dead by her brother last month, had been living in hiding from her family after repeated death threats, friends have said.

According to friends, Azad had had to move home regularly after several death threats by male members of her family.

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There Will Be No More Night review – chilling meditation on modern warfare

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Éléonore Weber’s documentary, air-strike footage of pilots on night missions, could work well in a gallery

This hypnotic meditation on modern warfare from Éléonore Weber is an experimental cine-essay that feels closer to a gallery installation than a documentary. Watching it is a bit of a test of concentration: 75 minutes of helicopter airstrike footage from American and French missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clip after clip of pilots following what’s on the ground hundreds of metres below. Who is that in their crosshairs: a Taliban fighter holding a Kalashnikov or a farmer with a rake? Farmers know that they get mistaken for fighters, so run and hide their tools when they hear helicopters. Which of course makes them look suspicious.

In the cockpit, we hear American voices: “Request permission to engage.” “We got a guy with an RPG.” This is the notorious video WikiLeaks dubbed Collateral Murder, a US airstrike filmed from an Apache helicopter in 2007. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher turned out to be a camera tripod belonging to a Reuters photographer, who was one of a dozen civilians killed in the attack. It’s impossible to watch and not think of computer games. “Kill! Kill! Kill” we hear in another video – you can almost feel the itch to shoot everything that moves.

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Islamic State attacks prison in Syria and military base in Iraq

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‘Dozens of IS fighters’ were freed from the jail and the attacks raise fears of the terror group’s resurgence

Islamic State has attacked a Syrian prison housing its suspected members and a military base in Iraq in near-simultaneous deadly operations that have revived fears of the terror group’s resurgence.

IS has yet to comment on the attacks and there is no indication that these were coordinated, but according to analysts they strongly suggest IS is trying to boost its ranks and arsenal in an attempt to reorganise across both countries.

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At least 16 dead after third migrant boat in three days sinks in Greek waters

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People still missing despite major rescue effort as smugglers switch to more perilous route from Turkey

At least 16 people have died after a migrant boat capsized in the Aegean Sea late Friday, bringing to at least 30 the combined death toll from three accidents in as many days involving migrant boats in Greek waters.

The sinkings came as smugglers increasingly favour a perilous route from Turkey to Italy, which avoids Greece’s heavily patrolled eastern Aegean islands that for years were at the forefront of the country’s migration crisis.

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‘Gushing oil and roaring fires’: 30 years on Kuwait is still scarred by catastrophic pollution

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Oilwells set alight by Iraqi forces in 1991 were put out within months, but insidious pollution still mars the desert

For 10 months in Kuwait, everything was upside down. Daytime was full of darkness from the thick smoke, and nights were bright from the distant glow of burning oilwells.

When Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the occupation of Kuwait in August 1990 in an attempt to gain control of the lucrative oil supply of the Middle East and pay off a huge debt accrued from Kuwait, he was fairly quickly forced into retreat by a US coalition which began an intensive bombing campaign.

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Kurdish woman is first victim of Channel tragedy to be named

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Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin from northern Iraq was messaging her fiancé when dinghy started sinking

A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq has become the first victim of this week’s mass drowning in the Channel to be named.

Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin was messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating on Wednesday.

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Channel drownings unlikely to slow exodus from Iraqi Kurdistan

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As officials grapple with crisis, even more Kurds are preparing to make dangerous journey to Europe

Were they driven to the freezing shores of Europe by desperation, or did several thousand Kurds instead make the dangerous journey in search of opportunity?

As officials in Iraqi Kurdistan grapple with what is driving a crisis that is thought to have led to scores of citizens drowning in the Channel on Wednesday, and thousands of others to brave precarious migrant routes to Europe, even more are preparing to leave.

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Call to British Airways might have averted 1990 Kuwait hostage crisis

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Ambassador warned Foreign Office an Iraqi invasion was under way but this was not passed on to airline

Hundreds of British passengers might have avoided being taken hostage by Saddam Hussein in 1990 if a call by a British ambassador regarding Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had been relayed to British Airways, the Foreign Office has disclosed.

The revelation of the phone call and the decades long cover-up was made on Tuesday under the 20-year disclosure rule, but was known to ministers and diplomats since 1990. The current foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has apologised for the omission.

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Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland

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Tourist visas and flights from Syria – the route to Europe via Belarus

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Travel agents in Middle East and migrants who have reached Poland describe how thousands are making the journey

On a dark forest road last month, Polish police were in pursuit of a speeding car that had skipped a checkpoint. The car’s driver was a people smuggler, and his passengers three Syrians who had paid thousands for him to take them to Germany, the final leg of their journey from the Middle East via Belarus. A truck coming in the opposite direction tried to dodge them but could not. Ferhad Nabo, 33, a married father of two from Kobane, was killed instantly in the crash.

“He left Syria, like many others, to reach Europe,” said his cousin Rashwan Nabo, a Syrian humanitarian worker. Ferhad had boarded a direct flight to Minsk from Erbil, in northern Iraq. “In Raqqa, Damascus and Aleppo, word has been spreading for months that the easiest and fastest way to reach Europe is a direct flight to Belarus,” his cousin said.

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Poland-Belarus crisis volunteers: ‘Border police can be very aggressive’

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Grupa Granica strives to bring supplies to stranded migrants and help them deal with border officers

The call came in at about 1.30pm in the afternoon. A group of 15 people, all Iraqi Kurds, had been found in the woods of Narewka after managing to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. One woman could barely walk. Others had early signs of hypothermia.

The young volunteer who answered the phone – one of about 40 members of Grupa Granica, a Polish network of NGOs monitoring the situation on the border – knew they had to act quickly.

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Drone attack by militants on Iraqi PM ‘marks escalation’ in power struggle

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Officials see strike on premier’s home as assassination attempt by Iran-backed groups trying to overturn election result

Senior figures in Iraq believe a brazen drone attack on the home of Iraq’s prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, marks an unprecedented escalation between the country’s leaders and Iran-backed militant groups attempting to overturn last month’s election.

The overnight attack is seen by Iraqi officials as an assassination attempt, and the first of its kind against a prime minister since the US-led invasion to remove Saddam Hussein nearly 19 years ago.

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Exploding drone assassination attempt on Iraqi PM fails

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Mustafa al-Kadhimi was unhurt when drone targeted his residence inside the fortified Green Zone, says government

An exploding drone aimed at the Iraqi prime minister’s house has failed to kill him, the government has said. Mustafa al-Kadhimi was reported by the government to be unharmed.

In a statement released early on Sunday, the government said the drone tried to hit al-Kadhimi’s home in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and government offices. Residents of Baghdad heard an explosion followed by gunfire in the area.

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‘The court of God will be waiting for him’: Iraqis react to Colin Powell’s death

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A country still struggling with the aftermath of a disastrous occupation has a mixed opinion of the former general

For many Iraqis, Colin Powell was the face of the US invasion which caused an estimated 200,000 deaths, unleashing nearly two decades of domestic chaos and precipitating turmoil throughout the region.

His death, at the age of 84, was unlamented by many in a country still grappling with the aftermath of a disastrous occupation and an Islamist insurgency that followed the 2003 war – a conflict that Powell himself was later to acknowledge as a stain on his legacy.

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