Tag Archives: Iraq

Erica C D Hunter, SOAS, University of London ISIS conquests across northern Iraq have been comprehensive in recent weeks. Taking control of large parts of the region, they declared a Caliphate last month. And one group who have especially suffered at their hands are the Christians that have been a part of the region’s landscape for almost two millenia. Following …

Lily Hamourtziadou, Birmingham City University Recording casualties during a conflict can provide a body of evidence of how violence has affected particular communities or groups, such as the Yazidis in Iraq and the Kurds in Syria. When the Islamic State entered Iraq in 2014, they immediately started committing gross human rights violations and displayed violence of an increasingly sectarian nature …

Lorena De Vita, Utrecht University and Amir Taha, University of Amsterdam It was a short message to end a short war. On February 26 1991, Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz put his signature to a letter addressed to the United Nations Security Council: I have the honour to notify you that the Iraqi Government reaffirms its agreement to comply fully …

Yasin Duman, Coventry University A spate of attacks in Turkey on Syrian refugees and Kurdish internal migrants and displaced people in recent months have put both communities on edge. In July, a Syrian teenager working as a market seller in Bursa, northwestern Turkey, died after he was attacked by a group of men. Another Syrian teenager who worked in a …

The podcast Caliphate explored the war on terror and ISIS on the ground in Syria and Iraq. In this March 12, 2020 photo, a man rides a motorcycle in northwestern Syria the current focus of the 10-year civil war. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) Peter Klein, University of British Columbia The latest scandal to hit United States news media involves Rukmini Callimachi, …

People look at the remains of an exploded vehicle that the Islamic State used as a suicide bomb, on display in Iran in September 2020. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images Brian Glyn Williams, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth One common claim by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has been that his administration beat IS, or what’s formally known as the Islamic …

A surface coal mine in Gillette, Wyoming, photographed in 2008. Greg Goebel/Flickr, CC BY-SA Bradley Handler, Colorado School of Mines; Matt Henry, University of Wyoming, and Morgan Bazilian, Colorado School of Mines These are very challenging times for U.S. fossil fuel-producing states, such as Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota. The COVID-19 economic downturn has reduced energy demand, with uncertain prospects …

GettyImages Sioux McKenna, Rhodes University International rankings of universities are big business and big news. These systems order universities on the basis of a variety of criteria such as student to staff ratio, income from industry, and reputation as captured through public surveys. Universities around the world use their rankings as marketing material and parents and prospective students make life …

Paul Collins, University of Oxford Within days of Islamic State (IS) releasing a video showing their destruction of sculptures in the Mosul museum and the ancient city of Nineveh, reliable reports emerged that the obliteration of Iraq’s past had expanded to include the architectural treasures of Nimrud and, most recently, Hatra. Lying to the south of the modern city of …

Bamo Nouri, City, University of London Iraq’s recent wave of protests against poverty, a lack of basic services, unemployment, and the interference of Iran in the country’s domestic affairs showed a country at the end of its tether. Official figures put the number killed in the violent crackdown of protesters at 157. Since 2011, protests and popular movements that challenged …