How a Rare Effort to Compensate Iraqi Airstrike Victims Failed

THE CHILDREN WERE running around the yard playing games next to the family car, when Ashwaq Abdel Kareem heard the roar of a jet plane that foretold an airstrike.
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It was near midnight on June 1, 2015. Ashwaq, her husband, and five children were in the backyard of their half-built house in the northern Iraqi town of Hawija. The night sweltered with an oven-like dry heat during an Iraqi summer in which temperatures could soar to 120 degrees in the daytime. Hawija was under ISIS occupation, which meant the entire town had been cut off from electricity, in addition to the general brutality of political rule by the radical group. There was no escape from the temperature except to go outside where a breeze might cool the air.

Far above Ashwaq and her family, a Dutch F-16 fighter jet released a bomb that whistled down to hit a car-bomb factory in the center of Hawija’s industrial district. The F-16’s mission was coordinated by the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS and was planned by the U.S. military. From 2014 to the present day, between 8,000 and 13,000 civilians have died as a result of bombing by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, according to the monitoring organization Airwars; the coalition only acknowledges the deaths of 1,417 civilians. At the height of the bombing in 2017, as the coalition bombed tightly packed urban areas like Mosul, at least 9,000 civilians died, according to The Associated Press. Yet only one civilian received compensation, although the U.S. military did distribute a limited number of condolence or “ex gratia” payments — which are voluntary payments and not an admission of legal liability — reportedly to the families of around 14 victims.

Experts say the country's rich history is being lost at 'unprecedented rates' due to conflict

​Iraq has filed a complaint with Interpol as it seeks to mount pressure on several states to return looted artefacts, the Ministry of Culture said on Monday.

The country, the birthplace of the world's earliest civilisation in recorded history, is home to thousands of artefacts. Some have been lost over the years have yet to be found.
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“The case is ongoing and we have had excellent achievements in favour of returning Iraqi antiquities,” said ministry spokesman Ahmed Al Alawi.

Following years behind bars, he was finally released, but he found no mother to take care of him, no brother to protect him, and no one to give him a warm welcome. He was released from prison two weeks ago into the old streets of Baghdad. He slept on sidewalks and in public parks, and fed on just enough bread to fulfill a small portion of his nutritional needs. He would sit down and think about what he had done, and would feel nothing but regret, sorrow, and fear of the future that awaited him.

The story of Mohammad Kamel, 33, from Baghdad, began when he was a university student and wanted to try out some drugs. After only a few months, he had become addicted to it, and could not quit it or rid himself of the constant need for it. He fell behind in his studies, and no longer had the physical ability or the money to go to university.

At the time, Kamel turned to the person selling him the drug, and asked him to help find him a job. The person offered him the job of promoting crystal meth inside the university, in exchange for free drugs and a small amount of money. He did not hesitate. All he wanted was to take drugs, so he began selling drugs at the university to a number of male and female students. But he was caught when he tried to sell drugs to one of the students who later turned out to be a member of the security forces.
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Kamel tells Raseef22, "I will live my whole life regretting what I’ve done. I lost my family, my city, and my studies. And after I got out of prison, I became homeless, with nothing to rely on," adding, "After the sins I have committed, my current ambition is to just find a job that will secure my basic needs of food and shelter."

​​Iraq’s parliament approved a new government last week, bringing an end to the year-long political deadlock that followed the country’s 2021 parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who previously served as Iraq’s human rights minister as well as labor and social affairs minister, will head the new government, which replaces the caretaker Cabinet led by Mustafa al-Kadhimi. Al-Sudani was backed by the Coordination Framework, a political coalition dominated by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as well as parties representing Iran-backed Shiite militias.
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The new government in Baghdad has nevertheless been welcomed by Iraq’s international partners, including the U.S., the U.K., the United Nations and Saudi Arabia. But despite last week’s breakthrough, which put an end to months of political infighting that paralyzed governance in the country, the composition of Iraq’s new government and the broader context within which it will be forced to operate suggest that Iraq’s deep-seated challenges have not abated.

Unlike its predecessor government, there are no ministers from the Sadrist movement in the new Cabinet. After winning the single largest number of seats in last year’s parliamentary elections, albeit shy of a majority, Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement aimed to install a Cabinet dominated by its members and allies. But his effort to do so was blocked by his political opponents, who sought to maintain the practice of power-sharing along sectarian lines, known as the muhasasa system.

​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.