Iraq

By Raed Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – 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 […]

Climate Crisis

19 Years ago America Really Wanted Iraq’s Basra for its Oil, which is now Making it Uninhabitable

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Poet Robert Frost asked if the world would end by fire or ice. It turns out that it is both, the fire of global heating and the melting of earth’s surface ice and resultant biblical floods. Nowhere is this more clear than in Iraq. Not everyone will suffer equally from […]

Afghanistan

Pact Act is Vindication for Vets after US Denied for Years that Burn Pits in Afghanistan and Iraq made them Ill

The Conversation

By Jason A. Higgins, Virginia Tech | – During a 13-month stint in Iraq that began in 2006, Heath Robinson served as a medic with the Ohio National Guard. Like thousands of others soldiers stationed there, he was routinely exposed to toxic smoke emanating from what are known as burn pits. Located near military bases, […]

Dissent

Why the Storming of the Iraqi Parliament is no Moment of Liberation

Middle East Monitor

By Haifa Zangana | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Why does the occupation of the Iraqi Parliament building in the Green Zone in Baghdad, not arouse feelings of enthusiasm, as it did in the case of the protesters’ occupation of the presidential palace in Sri Lanka, enthusiasm towards which reached the Arab nations […]

Agriculture

Environment: Iraqis and Iranians continue to oppose Turkey’s hydroelectric projects on the Tigris River

Global Voices

By Roman Shemakov | – The following story is part of series on Turkey’s Ilisu Dam project and the flooding of Hasankeyf. The Ilisu Dam, completed as part of Turkey’s Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi (Southeastern Anatolian Development Project or GAP for short in Turkish) in 2019, has faced heavy criticism from both local as well as […]

Featured

Bin Salman: US Whitewashed Israeli Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, so why is Biden so upset about Khashoggi?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, pulled back the curtain for the Alarabiya news channel (Saudi-owned but based in Dubai) on what transpired at the meeting between President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: Al-Jubeir confirmed that Biden, as he had pledged, quickly […]

Donald Trump

Imperial Detritus: Henry Luce’s “American Century” Comes Undone

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – “The American Century Is Over.” So claims the July 2022 cover of Harper’s Magazine, adding an all-too-pertinent question: “What’s Next?” What, indeed? Eighty years after the United States embarked upon the Great Crusade of World War II, a generation after it laid claim to the status of sole superpower following the […]

Arms Sales

Unlike SCOTUS, Iraqi Kurds are Rethinking Lax Gun Laws after Shootings; Will even Iraq be Safer than the US?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Other countries can just adopt rational policies to deal with severe social problems. The United States is locked into various weird metaphysical dogmas that make reasoning about such issues difficult. The second amendment, for instance, has nothing to do with universal gun ownership, whatever ideologues on the Right assert. The […]

Afghanistan

War as Terrorism: Conflicts We Can’t Win, Suffering We Don’t See

Andrea Mazzarino

( Tomdispatch.com) – Anyone who grew up in my generation of 1980s kids remembers G.I. Joe action figures — those green-uniformed plastic soldiers you could use to stage battles in the sandbox in your backyard or, for that matter, your bedroom. In those days, when imagery of bombed-out homes, bloodied civilians, and police violence wasn’t […]