Patrick Cockburn. Posted on Independent on line on September 19, 2017. The Kurdish leadership is coming under intense international pressure to postpone the referendum on independence due to…
Bryant Harris Posted on al-Monitor on September 15, 2017. A little-noticed provision to arm Iraqi Christians in the House version of a must-pass defense bill is inadvertently fueling unrest…
The medical journal Lancet (volume 390, number 10100, Sep 16, 2017, p 1083-1464) has published a series of articles on global health 2016 that shows the changing pattern…
Kilian Fox Posted on The Guardian/Observer on September 10, 2017 Guardian journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s drawings have helped him cope with reporting from the frontline. Now they will illustrate…
Patrick Cockburn. Posted on London Review of Books vol 39 no 16, August 17, 2017 . On 22 May, Ahmed Mohsen, an unemployed taxi driver, left his house…
Haifa Zangana, First posted on Weekly Worker on 10th August 2017. Firstly, a few words about the recent history of Mosul, so we can understand the context of…
Omar Sabbour. Posted Huffington Post 22 July, 2017 In the past year or so, much has been made of the Assad regime’s victories in different areas of Syria….
Patrick Cockburn. First posted on Counterpunch on July 24, 2017. The catastrophic number of civilian casualties in Mosul is receiving little attention internationally from politicians and journalists. This is in…
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. This article frist appeared on London Review of Books volume 39, number9, May 5, 2017. On the morning of 5 March a group of soldiers belonging…
Posted Amnesty International May 24, 2017. The US Army failed to keep tabs on more than $1 billion worth of arms and other military equipment in Iraq and…
Tam Hussein, Joshua Landis blog. Posted by Tam Hussein on Friday, April 14th, 2017 @tamhussein I entered Najiyeh, a small town of no consequence, without their permission. The…
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Al-Jumhurya. Even though the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or Da’esh) emerged in Syria in 2013, its structure can be traced back to…
Ali Mamouri, Al Monitor. Some factions of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are less than satisfied with the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to Washington on March 19-23,…
Mehdi Kia: In an earlier interview with Barabari television station you talked about the apparent change of direction in Trump administration’s foreign policy which you called “going beyond…
Paul Rogers. This report first appeared in Open Democracy on March 10, 2017 The west’s military focus has shifted towards covert use of special forces. Both the human…
Zaid Alisa, Open Democracy. This article first appeared in Open Democracy on March 10, 2017. The highly unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections sent…
Mohammad Ja’far, Libcom.org. Text of a talk by Mohammed Ja’far on the development of the Arab ruling classes during the 1960s and 1970s, their integration into the world…
Patrick Cockburn, London Review of Books. The nadir of Western media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Syria has been the reporting of the siege of East…
Charles Davis, Pulse. With right-wing authoritarians ruling in Moscow and Washington, leftists should find it easy to oppose these evil empires — but some, poisoned by pre-election contrarianism,…
Ardeshir Mehrdad. This article first appeared in iran-bulltin-Middle East Forum in November 2004. Despite its age, the arguments laid out are equally valid to day in the context…
David Bush, Counterfire. However confusing the situation in Syria, the anti-war movement provides political clarity, argues David Bush in his latest online post. There is major disorientation on…
Alan Woods, In Defence of Marxism. The saying goes that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. To this list we must add diplomacy, which is lying raised…
Tony Iltis, Green Left. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of an assault to recapture Mosul, the most important Iraqi city held by ISIS, on October…
Annia Ciezadlo, Souciant. As ISIS comes under increased attack in some of the region’s most fertile lands, Middle East agriculture researcher Eckart Woertz discusses how the militant group…
Owen Bennet-Jones, London Review of Books. Isis: A History by Fawaz A. Gerges Princeton; Isis: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, Regan Arts;…
Joseph Daher, New Politics. The last terrible terrorist attack by the so-called “Islamic State” (also known as Daech) killed at least 300 people in Baghdad’s central shopping district…
Semir Amin, Monthly Review. The political chaos that has recently dominated the scene in the Middle East is expressed, among other ways, by the violent resurgence of the…
Kim Dean, Middle East Eye. Erbil, Iraq – A small range of hills outside of Kirkuk has been the frontline with the Islamic State since the group fled…
Karim El-Bar, Middle East Eye. In wake of Arab Spring, Iran’s backing of foreign militias has drawn much attention. Why is this support so central to Iranian foreign…
International Crisis Group, Jadalyya. Beset by political dysfunction, endemic corruption and a jihadist threat, Iraq is squandering its greatest asset: its youth. By failing to provide a vision…
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