​A vicious cocktail of addiction, extremism, state failure and unbearably hot summers has turned Basra into a powder keg.

​In a tennis court-size hall, dozens of young men sway to the rhythms of a Shia eulogy singer. Red and blue lighting bathes their shirtless torsos and murals of Imam Hussain in purple, and ceiling fans don’t do enough to combat the 45-degree Celsius (113 F) heat of the night.
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This communal Shia mourning ritual was banned under Saddam Hussein. But these rave-like self-flagellation sessions, during which Shia Muslims hit their backs, chests, and heads in a trance-like state for several hours, are now a nightly occurrence in Basra. The practice memorialises the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Hussain, whose death galvanised the emergence of Shia Islam.

Those attending this Hussainiya are sober, but not all of Basra is this pious. For Ibrahim, the ritual is a way to escape the crushing reality of life in this sweltering, dangerous city – and to stay away from crystal meth, the other thing that used to help.

On a hot summer day in downtown Baghdad when the temperature reached 45 degrees Celsius, Ahmed Saad, 10, stood on the sidewalk of the al-Rasheed Street, selling bottled water and small bags of ice cubes to passers-by and nearby shop-owners.

Saad wakes up every morning in the poor al-Fadhil neighborhood in the Iraqi capital to work to earn money for his family.

It is not uncommon to see underage girls and boys, such as Saad, selling goods in Baghdad's crowded streets and markets, pushing carts to deliver goods, or unloading the trucks.

This is just part of the rising child labor problem in the war-torn Iraq, where the number of children forced to work is increasing due to the decline in Iraqi families' incomes caused by the political chaos and economic woes. ​

China has made significant inroads, in the oil-rich nation of Iraq, upending Western dominance in industries ranging from energy to construction, despite concerns that debt-laden infrastructure projects may put Baghdad in the red.

According to John Calabrese of the Middle East Institute in Washington, after decades of strife, Iraq “badly needs international investment, and notably investment in energy sector infrastructure.”
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With its enormous energy demands, China has stepped in to close the gap and is growing its involvement in Iraq as part of an “oil for building” contract for 2019.

According to prime ministerial adviser Muzhar Saleh, Beijing has emerged as one of the country’s major buyers of Iraqi petroleum, accounting for 44% of the country’s oil shipments in 2021.

The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, Brigadier General Esmail Qaani briefly met with prominent Shia Iraqi cleric, Moqtada Al-Sadr, to discuss the future of Iraq's political sphere and Iran's "dominant" role in it, Reuters reported on Tuesday citing four Iranian and Iraqi officials.
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According to the report, the meeting took place on 8 February at Al-Sadr's home in the city of Najaf and lasted half an hour, during which Al-Sadr received the general in his trademark brusque manner.
The meeting didn't go well.

According to the Iraqi and Iranian officials, Al-Sadr wore a black-and-white Arab headdress and brown robe, a deliberate look to identify with the local Arab population and not the usual all-black vestments and Shia clerical turban he generally wears in public.
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​People in Basra lived through hell during the Anglo-American occupation, suffering from lawlessness and economic disruption. Now they face the ravages of the climate emergency.

​Poet Robert Frost asked if the world would end by fire or ice. It turns out that it is both, the fire of global heating and the melting of Earth’s surface ice and resultant biblical floods. Nowhere is this more clear than in Iraq.
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Not everyone will suffer equally from the challenges of global heating. Among those who will suffer worst are the people of Basra in southern Iraq, and the ordeal has already begun. Iraq has suffered this summer from extremely high temperatures, a series of unprecedented sandstorms, and low river levels. The Tigris and the Euphrates wend their way south through Iraq until they meet up north of Basra, forming a single large body of flowing water, the 124-mile-long Shatt al-Arab, which flows past Basra on its way into the Gulf.

Basra has seen temperatures as high as 122°F this month (50°C). Scientists believe that a combination of 122°F and 80% humidity is fatal to human beings, Luckily for the people of Basra, in August it is very dry, so humidity is probably in the mid-30s. Well, enduring 122°F with no air conditioning because of brownouts isn't actually maybe very lucky, but it is better than being killed. The problem is that the temperatures will continue to rise as long as we put into the atmosphere billions of tons of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels like petroleum and by releasing methane from oil drilling sites.

See, there's the irony. Basra is a major oil-producing and exporting region, but the CO2 its product produces is blowing back on the city.

Iraq's Ministry of Interior believes the painting is worth millions of dollars

​A painting believed to be by Pablo Picasso has been found during an anti-drugs raid in Iraq's province of Diyala.
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The work, which when authenticated could be worth millions of dollars, was found in the possession of three people arrested for their involvement in the trade and transport of narcotics.

The condition of the artwork is unclear and details of its size and the subject matter have also not been disclosed.

The Ministry of Interior announced that the painting's discovery was part of security operations that have been ongoing since July.

​Iraq has been experiencing an ongoing water crisis for years and has largely placed the blame on its neighbour Iran for aggravating its water conditions and supply.

​An Iraqi minister has accused Iran of increasing the salinity of the Shatt Al-Arab waters in a scathing statement, according to Arabi21, amid a series of escalating water-related tensions between the two neighbours.

Minister of Water Resources Mahdi Rashid Al-Hamdani said high levels of salt found the tide of the river’s waters are a consequence of Iran allegedly cutting off all tributaries that flow into the body of water, which is mostly located in the Basra governorate, in the country’s south.
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He made the statement following an inspection of ongoing work taking place during the first phase of the Basra pipeline project.

The Iraqi Ministry of Electricity says it is in talks with Iran to increase natural gas imports from its eastern neighbor.

According to Ahmed al-Ebadi, a ministry spokesman, the volume of gas imports from Iran is currently at 43 million cubic meters a day, while Iraq requires about 60 mcm of gas, Tasnim News Agency reported.

Iraq's electricity production has increased by 22% compared to the previous year, he added. 
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However, as new power plants are set to be launched in Iraq in the coming months and they rely on natural gas as feedstock, the Arab country needs to increase its gas purchases from Iran. 


Source (Click Here)

“When people can’t change the political system through legal means it pushes them toward violence.”

​What Iraq needs is good leaders, not another election, Michael Knights, a researcher at Washington Institute for Near Eastern Politics told Kurdistan 24 on Tuesday.   

“Iraq is over a crossroads; we have something a little bit different happening down in Baghdad,” said Knights. “We had a coup at the start of the year when the Shiite Coordination Framework took over the judiciary and now, we have a coup of a different kind when Muqtada al-Sadr takes over the parliament; so, we are in a deadlock again and we might be heading to elections.”
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Knights pointed out that elections can’t necessarily save Iraq, emphasizing that “what Iraq needs is good leaders and that will take some time to be able to come through any set of elections because right now good leaders are not allowed to lead the political parties in Iraq.”

The country is in the grip of corrupt and self-serving elites. We need a new constitution to break its grip.

​When the Iraqi Parliamentary elections of October 2021 recorded the lowest-ever voter turnout in the post-2003 era, it was clear the incoming government would face a legitimacy crisis. Almost 10 months later, Iraq’s political elites are no closer to forming a government or selecting a new head of state. Instead, the latest developments from July 27-31, 2022 have witnessed protestors storm Iraq’s so-called safe Green Zone before occupying the nation’s parliament. This is proof that Iraq’s political system is in an irreversible crisis.
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These events are the latest part of a crisis after Muqtada al-Sadr, a powerful cleric and political leader whose party won the most seats in Iraq’s parliament, withdrew his MP’s from the political process. These developments have not occurred in a vacuum and are symptomatic of a failed political system that may finally be about to collapse, however long it is taking to die.

The roots of the crisis

The latest events should not shock or surprise us, given the numerous attempts from the parties in Iraq’s political framework to delegitimise the elections and threaten violence against opponents. These include rocket attacks on a Kurdish party in Erbil and a formal attempt to assassinate the current Iraqi PM, Mustafa Khadhimi. It should also be noted that post-2003, the Iraqi elites have a history of publicly being at war with each other and then later forming consensuses and governing blocs. So anything is possible in Iraq, even when hostile escalations are at their height.
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