Canadians reported seeing videos of potential atrocities shot by Iraqi security forces

​Canadian soldiers who saw videos depicting possible war crimes by Iraqi security forces are now being interviewed by military police investigators, CBC News has learned.

The country's acting top military commander said he wants to find out precisely what happened almost three years ago during a military training mission in the northern part of the war-torn country before deciding what comes next.

"When I heard the allegations of this, it gravely concerned me," Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre told CBC's chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton in an interview being broadcast today. "I've ordered an investigation into it to determine the facts."

Sources with knowledge of the case tell CBC News that some of the Canadian soldiers who were training Iraqi police in the finer points of counter-terrorism operations, including the laws of armed conflict, were interviewed by military police investigators last week.

The arrest of a prominent commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces has triggered a tense standoff between the Iraqi government and Iran-backed militias.

​The Iraqi federal government and pro-Iran Shia militias are engaged in a high-stakes deadlock after the government ordered the arrest of a senior commander in the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) on terrorism charges. 

While neither side looks ready to budge in this staredown, previous attempts by the authorities to curtail militia activities have resulted in government capitulation and the release of Iran-backed extremists.

The reignited protest movement, first beginning in 2019, serves as the backdrop to this standoff. Iraqi protesters are returning to the streets after years of unfulfilled promises of investigations and accountability. So far, no senior militiamen have been held accountable for the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators.

With elections looming, civil society groups are now increasingly calling for people to boycott the polls, which would further delegitimise an already frail Iraqi political process.

Sectarianisation of Iraq’s governance has already become a powerful driver of conflict. Left unaddressed, it can become irreversible. Here, ambassadorial appointments are used to underline the depth of sectarian divisions within the legislative and executive institutions, and offer ways forward.

​Introduction

Despite on-going attempts, dozens of ambassadorial positions still remain vacant for more than a decade within Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Reasons for the failure to fill these critical posts include many, ranging from administrative, legal and political barriers to poor quality of candidates and the MFA’s inability to validate the candidates’ suitability to represent their country internationally.  However, like all other senior government appointments, the biggest barrier for progress relates to disagreements among political and institutional leaders over the exact apportionment of the ambassadorial positions along ethno-sectarian lines.

It is no secret that Iraq’s politics and governance are highly sectarianised, and sectarian apportionment (Muhasasa Altaifiya) is increasingly institutionalised. Obviously, this practice is benefiting a minority at the expense of the state and the majority of Iraqis. It has been most detrimental to the functionality of the state institutions and the quality performance expected from professional leaders, more so since many challenges facing Iraq are intertwined and complicated. This phenomenon has already become a powerful driver of conflict and, if left unaddressed, can reach the point of no return.

In this report, ambassadorial appointments are used as a case study to illustrate the depth of sectarianisation of Iraq’s legislative and executive institutions. The legal, political and historic aspects of the appointment process are analysed and key policy recommendations are presented to policy- and decision-makers.

​Iranian energy ministry asserts the payments would go towards the purchase of vaccines from the World Health Organisation-sponsored global COVAX vaccine-sharing plan, state news agency IRNA reported.

​Iraq has agreed to transfer $125 million of frozen Iranian funds to a European bank for the purchase of 16 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian was quoted as saying by state media on Saturday.

Iran, the hardest hit Middle Eastern country by COVID-19, has complained that US sanctions were preventing it from making payments to buy vaccines.

Ardakanian said the payments would go towards the purchase of vaccines from the World Health Organisation-sponsored global COVAX vaccine-sharing plan, state news agency IRNA reported.

There was no immediate confirmation by Iraqi officials of the reported release of Iran’s funds to buy the vaccines.

UN Iraq mission documents lack of accountability for wave of targeted killings aimed at protesters and activists

Investigations into the killings of political activists in Iraq since the start of the latest round of protests have failed to produce a single trial or prosecution, the UN has found.

Arrest warrants have been issued against suspects in limited numbers, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq – known as Unami – said in the report, which covers the anti-government protests which began in October 2019.

“The rights of many victims and their families to truth, justice, redress and reparation have not been fully respected,” the report said.

The Ministry of Agriculture in Iraq said on Monday 50 percent of Iraq’s territory is subject to desertification and called Baghdad an “unlivable” city, due to the decline in green spaces.

Ministry spokesperson Hamid al-Nayef explained to the state-owned newspaper al-Sabah that confronting the desertification by cultivating green belts requires huge sums of money and a clear strategy, stating the amount currently allocated to the ministry is not sufficient.

“Baghdad is an unlivable city, especially in its Rusafa district, due to the lack of green spaces,” Nayef said.

Iraq faces multiple climate threats, including water shortages, desertification, and rising temperatures. Despite these, Baghdad is just beginning to develop a climate strategy. In September, the parliament voted to accede to the Paris Agreement.

 Introduction

The Theoretical Framework

The nexus of administrative structures, organisations, laws, customs, and ideas are at the heart of economic transactions. They directly affect transaction costs and impinge on the efficiency of markets.

The formal rules of a society (laws and regulations), informal constraints (conventions and codes of conduct), and the enforcement mechanisms of both are the boundaries inside which human beings interact.

Administrative structures and formal rules are then expressed through organisations that include political bodies, economic units, social and religious bodies, and educational institutions.
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In my view, based on personal experience in multilateral institutions, private business and government, these structures are one of the key determinants of economic growth and development.

Since 2019, the Iraq protest movement, dubbed the “Tishreen (October) Revolution,” has revealed the lengths to which both state and non-state actors are willing to silence dissent and free speech. Iraqi activists and protestors have been subjected to vicious and persistent hate speech campaigns, both online and offline, that aim to discredit them and the movement. Iran-affiliated militias and media outlets have been using the term “jokers” as a label to delegitimize activists and protestors, falsely accusing them of being foreign agents hellbent on destruction. As the protest movement gained widespread support despite such efforts to silence it, Adel Abdul Mahdi’s then-government enforced a series of internet blackouts to prevent online coverage. Nevertheless, activists persisted. All throughout, policing Iraqi voices and bodies has become a way of governance, through both legislative and physical suppression. 

Physical repression

While Iraq has witnessed protests on an annual basis for over a decade, protests erupting throughout the country in early October 2019 were the most expansive and gained widespread support from professional guilds, academic unions, and student bodies. While protests initially erupted in the Shia-majority center and south of the country (where protesters are more organized and experienced), they were followed by protests in the Kurdish Region and Sunni-majority governorates, where local security forces swiftly arrested activists. Thousands of protestors filled public squares and blocked roads in their cities to peacefully demonstrate. In the following months, violence against protestors and journalists covering the demonstrations was common practice. In addition to live ammunition and rubber bullets, state forces fired tear gas canisters directly at protesters, killing many. Gruesome videos of dead protestors with tear gas grenades permeating their skulls circulated on the internet. Among those killed was prominent Baghdad activist Safaa’ al-Sarray. In a matter of months, state security forces—primarily riot police—and paramilitaries’ snipers killed over 700 protestors, and injured over 20,000, permanently handicapping dozens. Numbers have continued to rise since, and as of March 2021, 1,035 protestors are reported to have been killed, and 26,300 injured. Meanwhile in the Kurdish Region of Iraq, Kurdish security forces killed at least six protestors and arrested 400 in December 2020. 
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As state and non-state forces continue to target protestors with systemic, fatal violence, enforced disappearances—a longstanding tactic—have also been weaponized. According to the International Commission on Missing Persons, somewhere between 250,000 to one million Iraqis have been forcibly disappeared since 2003. Among the most notable abduction was that of 150 academics and staff at the Ministry of Higher Education in November 2006. Rounded up by armed men and loaded onto trucks, most have not been seen since. Enforced disappearances have long been weaponized by Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other militant groups in Iraq to silence critics, dissenters, and other citizens for their ethnoconfessional identities. Iraq’s recent governments have been doing the same. Despite calls from human rights organizations on this matter, there has been no progress. Iraq’s High Commission for Human Rights cites around 7,663 enforced disappearances in the past three years alone. Enforced disappearances have particularly become a weapon of choice for militias and state institutions to silence protestors and activists since October 2019. In recent months, many activists and protestors have gone missing, likely in secret prisons. Among the most notable disappearances are those of Sajjad al-Iraqi, Abdul Masih Romeo Sarkees, and Ali Jaseb Hattab. The later assassination of Hattab’s father, who was vocal in his search for him, sent a resounding and terrorizing message to silence all missing persons’ families.