Irak

„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…

War das Regime Saddam Husseins ein Faktor der Stabilität im Nahen Osten?„Jeden Tag Bombenanschläge und Entführungen – Ende 2005, mehr als zwei Jahre nach dem Einmarsch der ‚Koalition der Willigen‘, war die Situation im Irak desaströs. Von Journalisten der Welt mit der bangen Frage konfrontiert, ob denn nun mit einem permanenten Krieg zu rechnen sei, gab der irakische Intellektuelle Kanan…

Wenn heutzutage vom Kampf gegen den Islamischen Staat im Irak die Rede ist, werden neben der Armee der Kurdischen Regionalregierung im Nordirak immer wieder die verschiedenen schiitischen Milizen erwähnt. Jonathan Spyer, Direktor des Rubin Centers for Research in International Affairs in Herzliya/Israel und Gastautor der MENA-Analysen 2014/2015, hat im Sommer die Frontgebiete im Irak bereist und basierend auf seinen Interviews…