Middle East Near You

Iraq’s southern city of Basra — the “Venice of the East” — is on high alert. Citizens in their thousands have been admitted to hospital with undiagnosed illnesses after...

Prominent Iraqi human rights activist Jabbar Abdul Karim Bahadli, famous for defending the rights of wrongfully convicted protesters and activists, was assassinated early on Monday by unknown assailants in...

Decades of pent-up grievances blew up, as predicted, across Iraq’s oil-rich south. Motivated by the government’s unfulfilled reform agenda, a brewing electricity crisis and obscene summer heat, protesters took...

The wanton destruction of life in Iraq has extended into the country’s southern hinterland where state developers are bulldozing date palm groves for commercial development purposes. In the last...

America’s imperial seizure of Baghdad fifteen years ago altered Iraq’s military landscape irrevocably. As “liberation” morphed into occupation, US-issued decrees promising reform dismantled Iraq’s security institutions. Undermining their own...

Sarah Idan, Miss Iraq 2017, is the newest voice in the chorus of advocates calling for coexistence between Israel and Palestine. Speaking before international and Israeli officials at the...

Generals from Syria, Iran and Russia convened at the joint-intel centre (JIC) inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone last week to discuss matters of national security and cooperation. The meeting...

Daily reminders of Iraq’s tragic state of affairs are brought up across online spaces daily. The trending video of a dishdasha-clad Iraqi citizen, wading through what is left of...

Celebrations that lit up Baghdad’s Liberation Square on the eve of the country’s parliamentary elections on 12 May have faded, replaced by the embers of old and new constitutional...

Throughout the nine months from the beginning of military operations to liberate Iraq’s north-western province in October 2016, thousands of men, women and children, as well as fighters, perished....

Iraqi populist leader Muqtada Al-Sadr’s climb to fame has eclipsed the predictions of his inevitable demise heard over the past decade. Once described as an afterthought in the celebrated...

Twenty-four hours after Iraq’s fourth parliamentary election concluded, global commentators and Iraqis together celebrated what they view to be “big developments”. The victory sealed by the Sairoon alliance between...

With less than 24 hours to go before Iraqis cast their votes in their country’s fourth parliamentary elections, people on the street are divided on whether to take part...

As Iraq’s Election Day approaches, political campaign posters adorned by smiling candidates — secular and religious zealots alike — crowd the landscape. It seems that the masses do not...

It was on 31 March 2004 that America’s occupation of Iraq turned a year old. The date also marked the beginning of the grisliest chapter of America’s unwelcome stay...

A military incursion ordered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the plains of Sinjar to thwart Kurdish rebels belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is stoking old...

Fifteen years ago today America remade the Iraqi Republic in its own image but the democratic mould pressed on the country has proven incompatible with the behaviour of Baghdad’s...

Commitments that Kurdish leaders made to a new Iraq 15 years ago are unravelling quicker than they were formed as the noose of budgetary matters tightens. The newest trigger,...

Inside Baghdad’s Ibn Rushd hospital are wards populated by male patients, old and young, battling drug and substance addictions. The hospital provides recovery services, but the misery of sufferers...

Relations between Iraq and the Russian Federation are warming visibly. That much is clear when looking back at the past eighteen months of recurrent diplomatic visits, intergovernmental conferences and...

An unquantifiable number of Iraqi towns, villages and encampments are flooded with wastewater following three days of fierce rain storms on Valentine’s Day last week. Heavy rainfall paralysed segments...

Iraq’s troubled reconstruction timeline entered a new chapter as representatives from 70 states poured into Kuwait in attendance of The International Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq, the first...

Iraq’s southern province of Muthanna has been up in arms over the arrest of local celebrity dissident Basim Khazaal Khashan last Wednesday. An electrifying display of solidarity spilled onto...

There was a time that I remember vividly in which videos of fierce gunfire exchanges within the grounds of Iraq’s neutral and protected spaces would elicit shock. In the...

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi dreams of securing a second term in office, but will have to joust with his predecessor Nouri Al-Maliki for the job. What binds both...

A dazzling self-help guru, feminist and billionaire is the general view held of Oprah Winfrey worldwide. Rarely have her credentials been on trial as they were this week following...

Wildly circulating rumours first published December last year posit the birth of a new armed Kurdish faction, dubbed, the “the bearers of White Flags” (WF). As the name suggests,...

For the fourth consecutive day, unrest has gripped Erbil, the largest city in Iraq’s semi-autonomous north. In Sulaymaniyah, protesters have been on the streets for six days, marching defiantly...

According to a senior researcher at the Foreign Relations Bureau, “Everyone wants to polish their image using Palestine.” The London-based Iraqi opposition organisation’s Ahmad Mahmoud made his comment following...

The flare up between Baghdad and the Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRI) over the past two months has revealed that loyalty towards the capital comes first. The actions of...

Compared to Iraq, elections elsewhere in the world are relatively bland. The patterns of foreign meddling have long animated electoral cycles not only in Iraq, but also in neighbouring...

President of the Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRI) Masoud Barzani is stepping down, but a month prior to his resignation he set in motion the impossible; Kurdistan’s bid for...