Irak

„Iraqi civilians and officials have voiced concern over the humanitarian situation in the country’s western cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. ‚The situation is deteriorating every day – the shortage of food is becoming worse,‘ a member of the Anbar Province’s security committee, Rajeh Barakat al-Issawi, told Al Jazeera. ‚ISIL fighters are banning all and any aid from entering the city…

„‚Wir wussten sofort, dass es Daesh war.‘ Die ganze Nacht über habe es Kämpfe gegeben, erzählt die in ein schwarzes Kostüm gekleidete Jesidin Linda. Wie ein Lauffeuer hätte es sich an jenem 3. August 2014 bei den 40.000 Einwohnern der nordirakischen Stadt Sinjar herumgesprochen, dass die Dschihadisten des ‚Islamischen Staates‘ – alias Daesh – anrückten. … 842 Frauen und Mädchen…

„Even as religious minorities face genocide at the hands of Muslim extremists in Iraq, officials in one part of the country are actively courting Jews to return to the land of their ancestry. The government of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north, eager to counter the devastating effects of Islamic State’s religious and ethnic cleansing, is making clear to…

„In Halabdscha betreiben nun Flüchtlinge ihr eigenes Radioprogramm. Das Team besteht nur aus Frauen. Es ist ein Pilotprojekt in der Region. Das Programm ‚Flüchtlinge für Flüchtlinge‘ begann am 1. Februar 2016 und erfreut sich seitdem großer Beliebtheit. Weil es Radios fast überall gibt, kann man auf diesem Wege auch Menschen in den Flüchtlingslagern erreichen, wo das Leben einerseits sehr langweilig,…

Von Thomas von der Osten-SackenEine Nachricht, bei der sich Saddam Hussein wutentbrannt im Grabe umdrehen dürfte: Ausgerechnet im Irak, genauer in Irakisch-Kurdistan, wurde erstmalig seit Jahrzehnten in einem Mitgliedsland der Arabischen Liga ganz offiziell der Holocautsgedenktag begangen.„In a historic ceremony in the Kurdistan capital Erbil, Kurds with Jewish roots together with Kurdish officials and foreign dignitaries remembered for the first…

Von Thomas von der Osten-Sacken „Die subventionierte Aufrüstung des Irak ist ein besonders schmutziges Kapitel deutscher Wirtschafts- und Nahostpolitik, über dessen Beteiligte in den Ministerien und Diensten der BRD nach wie vor nicht vollständig aufgeklärt wurde. … Noch schäbiger als das damalige Irakgeschäft ist nur der Umgang der Bundesrepublik mit den Opfern selbst. Bis heute hat es kein Eingeständnis der…

„After the Shi’ite militia Hashd al-Shaabi militants attacked Peshmerga in Tuz Khurmatu last night at 11:00 pm, heavy clashes broke out between the two sides in the city which resulted in the death of a Kurdish commander and a civilian. On April 23, a militant group linked to Hashd al-Shaabi, directly affiliated with the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,…

„The Islamic State, notorious for its brutality, has reportedly executed 250 girls in northern Iraq for refusing to become sex slaves, according to a media report. The girls had been ordered to accept temporary marriages to the terrorists and were murdered, sometimes alongside their families, for their refusal to be sex slaves in Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul. ……

„Hezbollah Brigades fighters in Iraq have threatened to attack the American soldiers stationed in the country, following the decision by the US army to send reinforcements to Iraq to support the international coalition in its fights against ISIS. In a statement released Sunday, the Iranian-backed organization active in Iraq and in the Syrian civil war, claimed: ‚the United States increasingly…

„IS is in many respects a project of Saddam Hussein’s now-outlawed Baath Party, but with a different ideology. Former agents or officers of the former Iraqi president’s regime dominate its leadership. … The ex-Baathists shape the group’s jihadist ideology, handle its security (weeding out infiltrators or possible putschists) and military operations, and ensure its resilience.They represent a battle-hardened and state-educated…

„The group now known as ISIS was founded in early 2000 with Al-Qaeda seed money at a camp in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. ISIS’ founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not formally swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden until 2004, but the two pooled resources, notably on the Millennium Plot, which was meant to target Zarqawi’s Jordanian homeland and Los Angeles International Airport.…

„The northern city of Kirkuk and its surrounds are well known for their oil producing abilities. And locals know that thousands of barrels of oil are being extracted and exported from their area. But nobody seems to be seeing any kind of revenues from that oil. The Kirkuk authorities say they have received none of Iraq’s ‚petrodollars‘ for almost two and…

„According to Kurdish media reports, the jihadist group that has captured wide swaths of Syria and Iraq beheaded a 15-year-old boy in Mosul for the crime of listening to Western pop music. Reports cite officials in the northern Iraqi city as saying that the boy, Ayham Hussein, was discovered by ISIS henchman as he was listening to a portable compact…

„When the morality police belonging to the extremist group known as the Islamic State arrested him in Mosul, Sadoun didn’t know what to expect. He thought he might be flogged for his crime of selling cigarettes, fined, imprisoned or, worst of all, put to death. But none of this happened. Instead after spending three weeks of November in a prison…

„The Islamic State (ISIS) has executed four women in the city of Mosul in Iraq‘s northwestern Nineveh province, after accusing them of ‚committing adultery‘, local sources reported on Thursday. ‚The four victims were arrested earlier on wednesday [sic] in a raid by ISIS jihadis,‘ said Raafat Zarari, spokesman of the Nineveh media center. ‚The jihadis claimed to have captured the…