Irak

A mural by Faiq Hasan in al-Tayaran Square, Baghdad, Iraq, June 2024. Nabil Salih

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1. The ghost of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra may still prowl Princesses’ Street by night, but hardly anyone in this affluent neighborhood in western Baghdad would recognize him. Born in 1919, Jabra was displaced from Palestine in the Nakba and relocated to the Iraqi capital, where he lived until his death in 1994. In his adopted city he became a prolific writer, painter, publisher, and university lecturer; in 1951 he cofounded the Baghdad Group for Modern Art.

A flâneur since childhood, Jabra had crisscrossed the fields of Jerusalem reflecting on “the relations between things, between abstract ideas”, as he recalled in Princesses’ Street: Baghdad Memories .…  Seguir leyendo »

Commemorating Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq, January 2025 Ahmed Saad / Reuters

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Ever since its revolution in 1979, Iran has cultivated a network of proxies and friends throughout the Middle East. For years, this strategy proved successful. Slowly but surely, Tehran’s “axis of resistance” gained influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, where it railed against Israel and the United States. In September 2014, Iran-backed Houthi militants captured Yemen’s biggest city. Shortly thereafter, an Iranian parliamentarian boasted that his government controlled four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, and Sanaa.

But events over the past year have upended the regional order. Today, Iran has largely lost control of two of those four Arab capitals. Israel’s war in Lebanon has decimated Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed militant group that dominated Beirut.…  Seguir leyendo »

A UNITAD team during exhumations at a mass grave site in 2023. Photo: © UN photo / Unitad

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In 2017, following a request from Iraq, the UN Security Council (UNSC) passed the Resolution 2379 establishing the Investigative team to promote accountability for crimes committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) to support domestic efforts to hold the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) accountable. Headquartered in Baghdad, with guaranteed freedom of movement and unhindered access to places, materials and people considered necessary for the fulfillment of its mandate, UNITAD was a very special team among the UN investigative bodies and had an excellent starting point.

UNITAD operated for seven years with an annual budget of 22 million US dollars. However, its mandate ended prematurely as, in September 2023, Iraq, without consulting the survivors nor the civil society, requested from UNSC to renew UNITAD’s mandate for one year without the possibility of extension.…  Seguir leyendo »

UNITAD has unearthed 68 mass graves and recovered the bodies of over 900 victims of the Islamic State organization in Iraq, but the UN team has only contributed to 15 indictments. Photo: © UN Photos / Unitad

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The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged in June 2014 from the ashes of unsolved political, religious and sectarian conflicts in the Middle East, conflicts which motivated many extremists around the globe to join their actions, notably by using their self-interpretation of Quran. It began by invading considerable territories in Iraq and Syria and was singled out by human rights organisations as a group which was committing most international crimes, including the crime of genocide against Yazidi community, war crimes, crimes against humanity, including sexual and gender-based violence, abduction, extrajudicial killings, torture, recruitment of children, attacks against religious and ethnic groups, and displacing civilian people.…  Seguir leyendo »

A vehicle part of a US military convoy drives in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on Sept. 17. Safin Hamid/AFP/Getty Images

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The United States is once again preparing to leave Iraq.

Reports indicate that Baghdad and Washington have agreed to wind down Operation Inherent Resolve. The remaining 2,500 American troops in Iraq will withdraw in two phases over the next two years, marking the end of the decade-long counter-Islamic State mission. Under this agreement, a contingent of U.S. forces will remain in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region to support operations in Syria.

Since engaging in the first Gulf War, the United States has never really left Iraq. Desert Storm gave way to military and humanitarian operations that established no-fly zones, monitored Iraqi forces, and enforced sanctions.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Ten years ago, I started interviewing women and girls who had escaped ISIS captivity. From 2014 to 2017, that terrorist organization swept through northern Iraq, tore girls and women from their families, took them to the Caliphate, and forcibly married all those who were nine or older. Under the group’s perverse laws, all this was deemed legal—including subjecting a minor to sexual assault. In fact, the ISIS fighters insisted they were performing God’s will.

The Iraqi government is at war with the Islamic State. Yet members of Iraq’s parliament are now pushing a law that parallels ISIS’s practices. The proposed legislation, an amendment to the 1959 Personal Status Law (PSL), would effectively legalize child marriage, endorsing the same brutal patriarchy under which the captives I spoke to had suffered.…  Seguir leyendo »

« Non aux mariage des mineures », peut-on lire sur une pancarte brandie par une Irakienne lors d’une manifestation contre un projet d’amendement de la loi sur le statut personnel, le 8 août 2024, à Bagdad. Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP

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Les efforts déployés actuellement en Irak pour modifier la loi sur le statut personnel du pays et donner plus de pouvoir aux communautés religieuses reflètent l’institutionnalisation croissante du confessionnalisme comme base de la refonte de la société irakienne.

Si dans les années qui ont suivi la chute du Baas en 2003, la plupart des groupes islamistes du pays, en particulier les groupes chiites, se sont principalement occupés à consolider leur pouvoir et se sont contentés d’une vague disposition constitutionnelle stipulant que « l’islam est la religion officielle de l’État et une source principale de la législation » ; la volonté d’affirmer leur vision du monde au sein de la société et d’« islamiser les lois » a pris de l’ampleur ces dernières années.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iraqi soldiers at a military parade in Baghdad, January 2024. Iraqi Prime Minister Media Office / Reuters

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Most Iraqi prime ministers serving in the past two decades have at some point asked the U.S. military to leave their country. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made the first public call for a U.S. withdrawal in 2005, followed by Nouri al-Maliki in 2008, Adel Abdul-Mahdi in 2020, and Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the current incumbent, in December 2023. For much of this period, these requests have originated with the Iranian-backed Islamist militia groups operating in Iraq, which have pushed the country’s political leaders to demand a drawdown of U.S. forces.

Bilateral negotiations over the past 15 years or so have dramatically reduced the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iraqis gather in the capital Baghdad's Tahrir square for a solidarity march with the Palestinians, on 15 May, 2021. (Photo by Ahmad AL-RUBAYE / AFP)

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It has been 20 years since the United States and United Kingdom invaded Iraq with the promise of peace and stability. ‘The removal of Saddam Hussein is an integral part of winning the war against terror,’ said President George W Bush, adding that ‘a free Iraq will make it much less likely that we’ll find violence in that immediate neighbourhood. A free Iraq will make it more likely we’ll get a Middle Eastern peace.’

But instead of stabilizing, Iraq fell back into cycles of conflict, with violence becoming part of everyday life for ordinary citizens. The ripple effects shook the region too, and events in Israel and Palestine today remind us that the US-led invasion did not create a more peaceful neighbourhood.…  Seguir leyendo »

Elizabeth Tsurkov in Istanbul in 2017. Ahmad Mohamad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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It’s a beautiful summer day at my in-laws’ house in Los Angeles. The sun is out. My kids are playing on the grass with their grandparents, a rare treat since we live in Jerusalem. But I can’t enjoy it. One of my oldest friends, Liza —  Elizabeth Tsurkov — is being held by a militia in Iraq, and I’m terrified.

“She’s still alive”, the news reports and the Israeli government both say.

Still.

Liza, a Russian-Israeli doctoral student at Princeton University, traveled to Iraq this winter to conduct field work for her research into human rights and sectarianism in the Middle East.…  Seguir leyendo »

Qais al-Khazali, leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, speaking in Baghdad, January 2022. Ahmed Saad / Reuters

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On the surface, Iraq appears to have achieved a measure of stability. The country finally has a functioning government after a yearlong political vacuum. Terrorist violence has fallen to its lowest rate since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Even the country’s Iran-backed militias—long a source of tension with Washington—have significantly reduced their attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military sites. In a May 4 speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan credited a U.S strategy built on the “twin pillars of deterrence and diplomacy” for the decrease in attacks on U.S. interests.

As Sullivan’s speech illustrates, President Joe Biden’s national security team sees a quiet Middle East as an end unto itself—including in Iraq.…  Seguir leyendo »

Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator for Iraq, Baghdad, June 2003. Foreign Affairs Illustration / Reuters

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The history of Iraq was already being rewritten by L. Paul Bremer on his flight into Baghdad. It was May 2003, and Bremer, an experienced former ambassador and bureaucratic player—he’d served as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s chief of staff—was just weeks into his new role as presidential envoy to the freshly liberated country. After a flurry of briefings in Washington and a final Oval Office meeting with President George W. Bush, “Jerry”, as everyone called Bremer, had flown into Qatar and on to Kuwait and then Iraq. Bremer’s diplomatic career had taken him to most Middle Eastern capitals, but this was the first time he’d ever seen Baghdad.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iraqi Kurdish men carry fire torches, as they celebrate Nowruz Day, a festival marking the first day of spring and the new year, in the town of Akra near Duhok, in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq March 20, 2019. REUTERS / Ahmed Jadallah

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Nowruz, the new year for Persians, Kurds and many others, marks the arrival of spring, a time of joyous renewal. For Iraqi Kurds, the occasion is bittersweet, because it was springtime 35 years ago, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq war, when the Iraqi army swept through the Kurdish countryside, razing villages and massacring the inhabitants. Some 100,000 men, women and children were systematically murdered at sites in Iraq’s southern desert during what Saddam Hussein’s regime called the Anfal counter-insurgency operation. Today, twenty years after the U.S. invasion, the Kurds are free of such repression, and rural communities are slowly coming back to life.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Siento vergüenza ajena cuando se acusa al Gobierno de España, entonces presidido por Aznar, de intervenir en la «ilegal guerra de Irak» y «contra la ONU» Recientemente se ha vuelto a escuchar en el Congreso de los Diputados siguiendo la habitual trampa del Gobierno de hacer oposición a la oposición. ¡Y retrocediendo veinte años! Señalaré hechos que desmontan esa manipulación tan reiterada.

La II guerra de Irak de 2003 era una reedición de la I guerra del Golfo de 1990-1991. Se produjo porque Sadam Husein no cumplió las condiciones impuestas por la coalición vencedora. El paraguas de la ONU estaba vigente durante el periodo 1990-2003.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman counts Iraq dinars at the headquarters of the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad's Shorja district on 9 March 2023. Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images.

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Iraq has once again been hit by US financial restrictions, this time aimed at restricting specific banks and individuals from trading in the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI)’s daily currency auctions. The timing of these economic measures can in part be attributed to increased tensions between the US and Iran, that are once again being played out in Iraq. However, the elites targeted by the sanctions are finding ways around them, while the real impact is being felt by ordinary Iraqis, whose lives are made even more difficult as currency fluctuations make essential goods, like food and medicine, more expensive and less accessible.…  Seguir leyendo »

Relying on weak intelligence for invading Iraq has had a negative impact on US and UK credibility with several consequences that persist to this day.

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20 years on from the fateful decision to invade Iraq, it is generally accepted that the US and UK governments overstated the evidence available for them to justify military action. The central claim to defend invading Iraq was that the country had continued its illicit nuclear weapons programme and had retained illegal stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. None of these claims supported an imminent threat justification nor could any hidden caches of WMD be found by the US Iraq Survey Group after the invasion.

In the US, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney hinted at additional evidence which could not be shared publicly to suggest that if only people knew what the government knew, they would agree that Iraq posed a significant threat to the West and needed to be disarmed.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The American-led invasion of Iraq, which took place 20 years ago this week, set in motion a series of commitments to the Middle East, which have shaped the limits and tempered the expectations of American policy in the region and beyond. The 2003 invasion, a tactical success, gave way to a second act that laid bare how unprepared the United States was to win the peace. It managed the problem, which grew increasingly intractable, through a series of uninformed (or misinformed) decisions, the way it always has: by throwing resources at the problem.

Burdened by this history, and facing the need to reshape foreign policy in the light of challenges posed by China’s increased engagement in the region and the raw aggression of Russia, the Biden administration has a new vision for policy in the Middle East.…  Seguir leyendo »

U.S. President George W. Bush announcing the start of the Iraq War, Washington, D.C., March 2003. Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

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Twenty years ago this month, President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, the most important foreign policy decision of his eight years in office and, arguably, the most significant since the end of the Cold War. The U.S.-led invasion—and the insurgency, counterinsurgency, and sectarian strife that followed—led to the deaths of over 200,000 Iraqis and the displacement of at least nine million. More than 9,000 U.S. soldiers and contractors sacrificed their lives in the war and it cost U.S. taxpayers over $2 trillion. The invasion besmirched the United States’ reputation, fueled a sense of grievance among Muslims, complicated the "global war on terror”, divided the American people, and sundered trust in government.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the mismanagement of what followed significantly diminished American power, making our security and prosperity more difficult and costly to sustain. They were mistakes of historic proportions. Yet they were not America’s first significant foreign-policy debacle, nor the first time the United States has been a flawed beacon of its values. In many ways, the failures of the Iraq war mirror some of those of the Vietnam war, and have already had significant repercussions in domestic debates and international attitudes. But, just like Vietnam, they have not meant, and they do not mean, an end to America’s global dominance.…  Seguir leyendo »

Supporters of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr protesting the US occupation, Baghdad, 2008. Moises Saman/Magnum Photos

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I first visited Iraq in October 2002, barely a year after the United States attacked Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I went there as a photojournalist, invited by the government of Saddam Hussein to cover the presidential referendum in which, according to Iraqi officials, 100 percent of the population voted to extend his rule. It was my first experience working under the supervision of government minders, without freedom of movement, only allowed to cover pro-regime events. The US invasion already seemed inevitable after the passage that month of the joint resolution authorizing “use of military force against Iraq”.

Over the next two decades I covered conflicts big and small in Afghanistan, Haiti, Nepal, the former Soviet Union, Lebanon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I spent more time working in Iraq than anywhere else.…  Seguir leyendo »