Schlagwort: Irak

„Although the eruption of popular protest, regime violence, and civil war created conditions under which jihadist militancy could thrive, Syria had already been fertile ground for Sunni extremism. For many years prior to 2011, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had maintained a consistently flirtatious relationship with Sunni jihadists.…

„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…

„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…

„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…

„The Romans had a word for it: principiis obsta, meaning ‚resist the beginnings‘ to avoid an unpleasant end. Syria is a perfect case study. Obama drew his vaunted ‚red line‘ over the use of chemical weapons in Syria before Bashar al-Assad massacred civilians with sarin, a nerve gas, in 2013.…

„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…

„A combination of war fatigue, the financial crisis, energy self-sufficiency, and a desire to shift focus to Asia contributed to a scaling-back of American strategic engagement in the region. This was demonstrated most concretely by what regional allies saw as a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and by…

„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…

„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.…

„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…

Jedes Jahr ist es ausgerechnet der Valentinstag, in Europa und den USA bestenfalls für die Kulturindustrie relevant, um ein wenig mehr Profit zu machen, an dem im Nahen Osten regelmäßig ein Kulturkampf ausbricht. Schon Tage im Voraus hatte die iranische Regierung erklärt, wer diesen Tag begehe, werde schwer bestraft, und…

Was bislang in das Ressort der deutschen Friedensbewegung fiel, kommt mehr und mehr im Mainstream an: die Forderung, der Barbarei des Islamischen Staates mit internationaler Anerkennung zu begegnen, da anders ein Frieden in Syrien nicht zu erreichen sei. So formulierte der ehemalige ORF-Korrespondent Friedrich Orter im ZiB24-Interview am 5. Februar…

Bei der internationalen Geberkonferenz in London wurden Milliardenbeträge für Hilfe für syrische Flüchtlinge in Aussicht gestellt. Obwohl die Summen beeindruckend klingen mögen, handelt sich angesichts der schieren Größe des Problems um kaum mehr als einen Tropfen auf den heißen Stein, meint Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, Geschäftsführer der deutsch-irakischen Hilfsorganisation WADI,…

Von Florian MarklIn den vergangenen Tagen waren in etlichen Medien Bilder der Zerstörung zu sehen: verwüstete Stadtviertel, von Schutt und Trümmern bedeckte Straßenzüge und Menschen, die in all dem Elend zu überleben versuchen. Die Bilder stammten allerdings nicht, wie man auf den ersten Blick vermuten konnte, aus der Kriegshölle in…

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…