Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Nazli Tarzi
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Iraq and Kuwait are at loggerheads over conflicting maritime border claims
Efforts to resolve a slow-burning maritime boundary dispute between Iraq and Kuwait hit a dead end last month. Renewed political differences over Khor Abdullah, a narrow corridor with shared sovereignty, are bubbling beneath the surface of what appear to be cordial relations between the Gulf neighbours. The issue is...
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Baghdad comes to Stratford in RSC-commissioned play
Theatre as an act of re-imagining and storytelling is an approach displayed masterfully in the new Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production A Museum in Baghdad. In conversation with MEMO, playwright Hannah Khalil describes “Iraq” as the object of focus, adding that the performance throws out universal questions unresolved by...
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More gloom or an investment boom for Iraq?
The Iraq Britain Business Council (IBBC) held its annual Spring Conference in London on 10 April entitled ‘Iraq – Financing a Modern Economy’, hosting officials from the UK and Iraqi Government and delegates from the major companies operating in Iraq...
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Basra’s overstretched health sector faces a water crisis with no help from Baghdad
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 drinking contaminated water. The province’s water pollution has reached catastrophic levels, most noticeably over the past two weeks, health officials told...
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Iraq’s southern rebellion defies defeat in the face of state violence
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 Al-Hadi district of Basra Province. The killing was verified by Qasim Al-Otaibi, president of Basra’s Bar Association, after he expressed...
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Iraq’s southern uprising could ignite the largest revolt the country has witnessed in recent memory
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 to the streets to make their voices heard. “Down with religious parties” – “out with the illegitimate” – “down with...
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The private sector takeover of Iraq's date palm groves
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 week of June, things came to a head in the district of Al-Madinah, with the uprooting of as many as...
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Sadr City arms depot explosion sparks national disarmament debate
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 designs of a secure Iraq, America’s de-Baathification spree responsible for the dissolution of the Iraqi army cleared the road for...
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Miss Iraq is a false prophet of peace and coexistence
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 American Jewish Global Forum in Jerusalem last week, the 28-year-old social media influencer spoke of the urgency to “seek a new...
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Strange bedfellows are cooperating and sharing intelligence in Iraq
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 was held in response to an official invitation from Iraqi intelligence director Saad Al-Alaq. Fifteen months after the so-called Islamic State’s...
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Iraq walks a dangerous tightrope to relieve hydropolitical tension with neighbours
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 the River Tigris – which is now ankle-deep – is just the latest. It shows, for the first time in...
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Optimism fades as election results in Iraq are annulled
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 disputes that burn brightly. The air of cool optimism that supporters of the victorious Sairoon — Islamist-Sadrist alliance — felt,...
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Like heavy fog, the stench of death fills the air in Mosul
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. The Pentagon refers to the ancient city of Mosul’s fallen civilian population as “unintentional” casualties, but locally they are still...
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Muqtada Al-Sadr has had a less than conventional journey into politics
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 Sadr family’s long line of revered scholars, his rise is as much a surprise today as it was in 2003...
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The ever-shifting landscape of Iraq's electoral results
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 the Sadrist Movement and the Iraqi Communist Party has been the hottest trending topic since polls closed. Big parties came out on...
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Calls for a boycott reach a crescendo a day ahead of Iraq's parliamentary vote
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 or abstain. Perhaps more than any other age-group, disillusion runs highest among Iraqi youth. Those aged 25 and below are accustomed...
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Disgruntled citizens deface Iraq's billboard men
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 share the political elite’s merriment, though, with a growing trend of posters of defacing the billboard men. Political heavyweights stand...
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Remembering the first battle of Fallujah
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 in Fallujah. Iraq’s occupier felt justified entering the city days after the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries by members of Iraq’s...
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Contradictions abound in Turkey’s military incursions in Iraq and Syria
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 tensions and prompting new questions over Turkey’s partnership with its Arab neighbours. “We said we would go into Sinjar,” Erdogan told...
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Behind the mask of democracy Iraq is a failed state
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 rogue elite. The political process occupying forces made nourishes this behaviour and allows punishable actions to slide. The association between Iraq’s...
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Mutual resentment and distrust hardens as Baghdad shrinks Kurds’ share of budget
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, the passing of Iraq’s much delayed budget last week, left relations more frayed than before with Baghdad having offered no...
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Iraq's drug habit is a threat to its stability
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 is kept out of sight and few possess the faith to let their tales be heard. The lasting imprint of...
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Baghdad cosies up to Moscow as America's regional footprint fades
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 new pacts between them. High ranking officials and representatives of Iraq’s political process who have visited the Russian capital are Vice...
