Tag Archives: Iraq

Dream of a caliphate as an Islamist homeland is receding. Mohammad Bash via Shutterstock Elisa Orofino, Anglia Ruskin University A “proto-state”, a “socio-political movement, the ”beast“ – all names given to a single group that, at its height, seemed to embody the west’s worst nightmare. You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here. Islamic State …

Mohamed-Ali Adraoui, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) Ten years after people rose up against their leaders in country after country around the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunisia to Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain, what can we say about how society, politics and religion have changed in the region? To put it mildly, the social, cultural, religious, political …

Balsam Mustafa, University of Birmingham When Muhanad Habib, a 22-year-old Iraqi from the Sadr City district of Baghdad, posted on Facebook in late September, he probably didn’t imagine that his demands for a better life and basic rights would be met with bullets. It will be a huge and angry public revolution in Baghdad … We will take to the …

Johan Franzen, University of East Anglia Following his capture by American troops, Saddam Hussein made a startling admission to George Piro, the FBI investigator tasked with interrogating him. The reason he had played cat and mouse with UN weapons inspectors for over a decade was not because he was trying to hide Iraqi production of weapons of mass destruction from …

Unrest over food prices is growing. EPA Bamo Nouri, City, University of London Iraq has been seeing protesters take to the streets as food prices spiral upwards because of the Ukraine war. Around 500 people protested in Iraq’s southern city of Nasiriyah a few days ago as flour suddenly rose in price by nearly a third. With food-related protests subsequently …

Myriam Benraad, Leiden University La problématique des rapports entre le baasisme et l’État islamique en Irak n’en finit pas de tarauder les esprits. Depuis 2014, deux principaux narratifs se font ainsi face : l’un dépeignant le groupe djihadiste comme une sorte d’incarnation néo-baasiste, l’autre réfutant au contraire toute influence du régime défunt de Saddam Hussein. Dans l’ensemble, ces approches ne sont …

Chamu Kuppuswamy, University of Hertfordshire The genocide verdict brought recently by a German court against an Iraqi member of Islamic State for crimes including the murder of a five-year-old Yazidi girl is a landmark decision which will clear the way for similar prosecutions. That this verdict was even possible was thanks to a detailed (and remarkably speedy) report in 2016 …

Mariagiulia Giuffré, Edge Hill University At least 27 people have drowned in the English Channel attempting to cross in a small boat. There were three children, seven women, one of whom was pregnant, and 17 men. Although a joint search and rescue operation was seemingly launched in the narrow maritime area between the UK and France (which is only 20 …

Liana Semchuk, University of Oxford The migrant crisis on Belarus’s western border has escalated rapidly in recent days, forcing Poland and Lithuania to declare a state of emergency and close the borders with their neighbour. With 15,000 Polish border security personnel on one side of the barbed wire fence and an estimated 4,000 migrants desperately trying to get through into …

LEONID SCHEGLOV/ BELTA / HANDOUT / EPA Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann, University of Canberra For months, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has been accused of using illegal migrants as a tool to punish the European Union for imposing sanctions on his regime. In July, Belarus loosened its restrictions on visas and increased flights on its state-run airline from the Middle East, allowing …