Iraq Archives - Page 5 of 115

The Wages of Corruption From Iraq to Britain

21Dec

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iraq, United Kingdom

The Wages of Corruption From Iraq to Britain

BY PATRICK COCKBURN View of downtown Baghdad, March 2017. Photograph Source: MohammadHuzam – CC BY-SA 4.0 I used to consider myself something of a specialist on corruption in Iraq, so I was not too surprised when I read of Iraq’s “theft of the century” when $2.5 billion was stolen from the tax authorities in Baghdad in a well-planned operation in which several senior officials were clearly complicit. This is all in the rich tradition of Iraqi kleptocracy. For further details see Middle Easy Eye magazine which has been particularly good on this story. But the Iraqis are not correct in claiming “the theft of the century” for themselves because Britain may be out-competing them. For evidence of this, look no further than the headline from a report from the Ho...

Iran Attacks Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan

23Nov

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iran, Iraq

Iran Attacks Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan

Iran claims heavy damage on Kurds by Jason Ditz After weeks of relative calm on the border, Iran has once again struck Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming them to be separatist elements.One Peshmerga was confirmed killed, and a Kurdish political leader said several were slain. Iranian semi-official media claimed 26 killed.Iran has accused several foreign factions of fueling unrest, and has targeted the Kurds over this several times, likely because they’re conveniently close. The US, predictably, faulted Iran’s strike and claimed it was threatening Iraq’s stability.Iraq said that it “strongly” condemned the Iranian strikes as a sovereignty violation, as well as Turkish airstrikes that targeted Iraqi Kurdistan a day earlier.Unrest in Iran recently has...

Chomsky: 20 Years After Iraq War Vote, US Continues to Flout International Law

6Nov

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iraq, USA

Chomsky: 20 Years After Iraq War Vote, US Continues to Flout International Law

Anti-war demonstrators march during a protest against war in Iraq and Iran outside the White House on January 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C. BYC.J. Polychroniou, Truthout This week marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. congressional vote to authorize the deadly war on Iraq, which according to some estimates, killed between 800,000 and 1.3 million people. In the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows, Noam Chomsky shares his thoughts on the causes and ramifications of this appalling crime against humanity. Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT and laureate professor of linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. One of the w...

Should we be worried by the possibility of a Shia civil war in Iraq?

1Sep

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iraq

Should we be worried by the possibility of a Shia civil war in Iraq?

Supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr chant slogans as they gather outside the local government headquarters in the city of Nasiriyah in Iraq's southern Dhi Qar province on August 29, 2022 [ASAAD NIAZI/AFP via Getty Images] Raed Ahmed There is usually a lot of competition between near-equal armed groups in Iraq. Resisting the 2003 US-led invasion provided a good opportunity for emerging groups from Sunni and Shia communities across the country to do just that. Such groups became the main protagonists in the bloody civil war, which declined after 2008 when the Sunnis resisted Al-Qaeda's presence. Thereafter, the main armed groups were Shia, but the withdrawal of US forces in 2010 politicised them, and they started to engage more in politics. Shia militias gained offic...

The Destruction of Iraq’s Christian Community: Another Legacy of George W. Bush’s Invasion

13Jul

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iraq, USA

The Destruction of Iraq’s Christian Community: Another Legacy of George W. Bush’s Invasion

Those who, in the words of John Quincy Adams, go "abroad in search of monsters to destroy" very often create new monsters that cause even greater harm. By Doug Bandow Republican politicians have worked assiduously to win votes by posing as defenders of religious liberty. They aren’t always faking. However, the GOP’s military interventions in the Middle East have been singularly destructive, doing much to drive Christians and other religious minorities from the region. Ultimately, President George W. Bush, along with his Republican followers and Christian fans, did more harm to religious minorities in the Middle East than did the Islamic State. Indeed, the latter would not exist but for Bush & Co.’s malign activities. A new report from the American Founda...

How Kurdish independence underpins ‘Israel’s’ plan to reshape the Middle East

5Jul

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iraq, Middle East, ZIO-NAZI

How Kurdish independence underpins ‘Israel’s’ plan to reshape the Middle East

By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth Palestinians and Israelis watched last week’s referendum of Iraq’s Kurds with special interest. Israeli officials and many ordinary Palestinians were delighted – for very different reasons – to see an overwhelming vote to split away from Iraq. Given the backlash from Baghdad and anger from Iran and Turkey, which have restive Kurdish minorities, the creation of a Kurdistan in northern Iraq may not happen soon. Palestinian support for the Kurds is not difficult to understand. Palestinians, too, were overlooked when Britain and France carved up the Middle East into states a century ago. Like the Kurds, Palestinians have found themselves trapped in different territories, oppressed by their overlords. Israel’s complex interests in Kurdish ...

Iraqis Bid Farewell To The Poetic Icon, Muzaffar Al-Nawab

15Jun

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iraq, Literature

Iraqis Bid Farewell To The Poetic Icon, Muzaffar Al-Nawab

With great sadness and sorrow, Iraqi people and politicians received the body of poet Muzaffar al-Nawab, who died aged 88 in the UAE after a long battle against illness, at Baghdad International Airport. Nawab was renowned for his poems filled with revolutionary fervor criticizing dictatorial regimes for decades. His stances against the Iraqi regime led to his exile. People on social media sadly interacted with his death, posting thousands of photos of Nawab and many of his poetry. https://youtu.be/rAk4OTq76RI Following the announcement of his death, Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kazemi decided to send a presidential plane to transport Nawab’s body from the Emirates to his homeland. When the body arrived at the airport, the honor guard carried the coffin, which was d...

Operation Desert Storm: 25 Years Since the First Gulf War

3Jun

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iraq, Middle East, USA, ZIO-NAZI

Operation Desert Storm: 25 Years Since the First Gulf War

ALAN TAYLORJANUARY 14, 2016 On January 16, 1991, President George H. W. Bush announced the start of what would be called Operation Desert Storm—a military operation to expel occupying Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which Iraq had invaded and annexed months earlier. For weeks, a U.S.-led coalition of two dozen nations had positioned more than 900,000 troops in the region, most stationed on the Saudi-Iraq border. A U.N.-declared deadline for withdrawal passed on January 15, with no action from Iraq, so coalition forces began a five-week bombardment of Iraqi command and control targets from air and sea. Despite widespread fears that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might order the use of chemical weapons, a ground invasion followed in February. Coalition forces swiftly drove Iraq from Kuwait, ad...

Iraq to dispatch a delegation to Tehran to discuss gas supply

26Apr

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Iran, Iraq

Iraq to dispatch a delegation to Tehran to discuss gas supply

By: VT Iraq’s PM Kadhimi orders the dispatch of a working team to Iran to discuss gas supply issues. FULL DISCLOSURE: Sourced from Iranian State-Controlled Media An Iraqi delegation will travel to Iran to resolve gas supply issues amid efforts to prevent a shortage of electricity in the Arab country over the warm summer months. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi ordered the country’s Electricity Ministry on Sunday to assign a delegation for the trip to Tehran, said reports in the local Iraqi media. Khadhimi’s office said in a Twitter post that trip will be aimed at finding a solution to problems hampering the supply of natural gas from Iran. Iraq relies on Iranian gas for a significant part of its electricity generation needs in thermal power plants. The country als...

From Mosul to Raqqa to Mariupol, Killing Civilians is a Crime

23Apr

By Shoah - The Palestinian HolocaustNo Comments

Human Rights, Iraq, Middle East, Syria, USA

From Mosul to Raqqa to Mariupol, Killing Civilians is a Crime

BY MEDEA BENJAMIN - NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES Photograph Source: Sgt. Curtis G. Hargrave, U.S. Army – Public Domain Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine. As we recently reported, the U.S. and its allies have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles, or 46 per day, on nine countries since 2001 alone. Senior U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers told Newsweek that the first 24 days of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine was...