When Ali Thanoon lost more than 50 members of his family in a U.S. airstrike during the battle against Islamic State in Mosul in the spring, he turned to the Iraqi government for compensation.

But officials required Thanoon to prove his loved ones had been killed: He could get the necessary death certificates only by digging up their bodies from a mass grave.

That would take time. Thanoon had been trapped for five days under the rubble, then hospitalized for weeks. By the time a cousin was able to take Iraqi officials to unearth Thanoon’s two wives, seven children and other relatives, all they found were “meat and bones,” Thanoon said.

“What’s this?” said one of the officials. “We need to see faces”. But there was another hard fact: The Iraqi government’s compensation program for victims of the Mosul campaign, even those with death certificates, had no money.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi rejected the description of the Popular Mobilisation Forces as militias yesterday stating that they were an armed force that has become a part of the Iraqi security forces. He added that a law was passed in this regard.

In a speech during his visit to the Najaf province yesterday, Al-Abadi condemned the presence of armed individuals outside the framework of the authority and state.

He added that the first steps to fighting corruption began in the military and security institutions, stressing that building the army is ongoing on sound foundations, far from corruption.
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Two days ago, in a written statement issued on the 97th anniversary of the founding of the Iraqi army, Al-Abadi stressed that Iraq is in the process of building a strong national army capable of defending the country.

Source:  www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180109-iraq-popular-mobilisation-forces-are-part-of-the-security-system/

The Iraqi photographer considers his photographic preservation of a long-vanished Iraq, his preoccupation with beauty, and the desire to share his country’s pain with viewers

by ANGERIA RIGAMONTI di CUTÒ
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In 1957, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper described Iraq as “efficient, energetic, prosperous, complacent: a Levantine Switzerland”, a description that is now almost impossible to fathom given the later succession of atrocities beleaguering the country – sectarian violence, chemical warfare, a US-led invasion waged on spurious evidence, and Islamic State’s subsequent onslaught.

With the photography of Latif Al Ani (b1932), to some extent, seeing is believing, in a series of images presenting scenes of what is often referred to as Iraq’s “golden age” of cosmopolitanism, enabled by the flourishing oil industry, a crucial factor in the country’s burgeoning prosperity.

​Al Ani’s photographs recall Pathé’s earlier documentary Ageless Iraq, with its similarly halcyon images of horseracing, music, and boats languidly sailing along a canal in Basra. Al Ani’s early photographs were commissioned by the Iraq Petroleum Company and, like Pathé’s film, convey an apparently untroubled process of modernisation: shepherds strolling with their flocks alongside electricity pylons, dam-building, women with heads uncovered playing sports, studying and working.

​This was also a country of ethnic and religious accord, as attested to in images of Yazidis, Kurds and Mandeans. Architecturally, international modernism co-existed with remnants of Iraq’s past as a cradle of civilisation, the Arch of Ctesiphon incidentally having also been photographed aerially in 1940 by Roald Dahl while flying solo in a biplane. 

To what extent “modernisation” was synonymous with “westernisation” in this context is debatable, as is the extent to which Al Ani’s images, like the Pathé documentary, can be considered propagandistic.

Regardless of the formal nature of the Iraqi photographs, their very existence conjures a quasi-miraculous aura given the grievous unfolding of Iraq’s history, including the looting of the Ministry of Culture’s photographic archive in 2003. When Saddam Hussein’s regime made it impossible to photograph in public, Al Ani abandoned his work entirely, but scrupulously conserved his extensive archive, now a musée imaginaire of a lost country.

Angeria Rigamonti di Cutò: A crucial aspect of your photographs is their recording of a lost world, an especially poignant loss given the grim fate of Iraq. At the time, did you sense an urgency to document something that would be destroyed and, if you had a kind of premonition, how did itaffect your work?
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Latif Al Ani: I didn’t have a premonition, I was documenting for the sake of archiving. I never thought Iraq would arrive at what it has today.

ARC: Several of your images recording the modernisation of Iraq – whether architectural or socio-cultural – frame remarkable contrasts that recall Sergei Eisenstein’s “dramatic principle”, produced by the collision of contrasting visual elements. In your case, did the formal impact of the image take precedence over the documentary aspect?
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LAA: It did as far as wanting to ensure that each image was beautiful, in addition to being documentary. I was always preoccupied with beauty.

ARC: At the same time, within these visual contrasts, there appears to be considerable harmony, in terms of architecture, gender, ethnicity, or even between past and present. The period you documented is often referred to as a “golden age”, but how selective were you in the framing of your images – were there situations that you excluded?

LAA: I was selective as far as wanting to show a scene that the viewer would enjoy; I always thought about the viewer. What I excluded were things that I considered ugly or backward.

ARC: You also experimented with aerial photography, and the formal impact of those images is quite different. For example, you shot the Arch of Ctesiphon from a bird’s eye view, but also in closeup with a shepherd and his flock, and again with a Rabab player and an urbane American couple, with all three photos creating different meanings. Did an aerial viewpoint affect your way of seeing apart from, obviously, the visual result?
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LAA: It enhanced my sense of beauty, because everything looks more beautiful from above. You are far from the earth and cannot see as much ugliness.

ARC: As part of an Iraqi press team, you accompanied Saddam Hussein to Paris in 1972. What were your impressions of him? Did you have a sense of how bad things could become? 

LAA: He gave me the impression of being an able leader, and I never imagined that things could become as bad as they did.
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ARC: In the 60s, you also photographed the German Democratic Republic and various North American cities. In formal terms, those images are similar to your Iraqi ones. How did you experience those places, and were your photographic priorities the same?

LAA: They are always the same. I am a photographer and I cannot be two different people in different places. My priorities are the same.

ARC: You stopped photographing completely when taking pictures in public was no longer permitted under the regime. It must have been very difficult to end such an important part of your life, having produced such a remarkable body of work. Were you ever tempted to leave Iraq?
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LAA: I was revulsed by the fact that holding a camera became a dangerous act, and I didn’t want to be a photographer any more. I left Iraq briefly, but came back because it is my home.

ARC: Your work has recently received considerable international attention following its showing at the Venice Biennale in 2015. What do you hope the impact of your photographs might be on viewers accustomed to images of devastation in Iraq?

LAA: I think viewers are surprised or shocked when they see them in contrast to what they see of Iraq today. I hope that they make people think and feel the pain we feel, and get inspired to help Iraq have another “golden age”. I’m happy that my work has had the interest it has had, this late in my life.
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A selection of Latif Al Ani’s photographs was exhibited at the end of last year, for the first time in the UK, by the Rüya Foundation at Coningsby Gallery, London.

Source: www.studiointernational.com/index.php/latif-al-ani-interview-photographer-i-never-thought-iraq-would-arrive-at-what-it-has-today

AMRIYAT AL-FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces are forcibly returning civilians from refugee camps to unsafe areas in the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, exposing them to death from booby-traps or acts of vigilantism, refugees and aid workers say.

Managing more than two million Iraqis displaced by the war against Islamic State is one of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s most daunting tasks. But critics say he is more interested in winning elections in May than alleviating the suffering of displaced Iraqis and returning them safely home.

Authorities are sending back people against their will, refugees and aid workers say, to ensure that the election takes place on time. People must be in their area of origin to vote and if they do not get home, this could delay the election.

Abadi is riding a wave of popularity after defeating Islamic State in Iraq and is anxious the election should not be held up.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Algerian state energy company Sonatrach will study possible investments in oil exploration and natural gas projects in Iraq, the Iraqi oil ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The statement cited comments by Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi and Algerian Energy Minister Mustapha Guitouni, who arrived in Baghdad on Sunday.

The Algerian delegation will hold meetings with Iraqi energy companies “to achieve concrete steps toward sealing a cooperation agreement with Sonatrach”, said Luaibi, mentioning specifically projects to develop Iraq’s gas wealth.
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Iraq continues to flare some of the gas extracted alongside crude oil at its fields because it lacks the facilities to process it into fuel for local consumption or exports.

A federal judge in Michigan has ordered the government to give bond hearings in preparation for releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants from Iraq into the community, saying the Constitution protects them from indefinite detention in the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Mark A Goldsmith, an Obama appointee, earlier had halted deportations for nearly 300 Iraqis, saying that although they had long been ordered removed, conditions on the ground in Iraq had changed and they deserved new hearings.

His latest ruling Tuesday evening goes further, certifying some of the Iraqis as a class-action lawsuit and saying most of them should be “allowed to return to their productive lives” while they wait for new hearings — meaning they must be released from detention unless the government can prove they are a major risk to public safety.
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“Our legal tradition rejects warehousing human beings while their legal rights are being determined, without an opportunity to persuade a judge that the norm of monitored freedom should be followed,” Judge Goldsmith wrote. “This principle is familiar to all in the context of the criminal law, where even a heinous criminal — whether a citizen or not — enjoys the right to seek pre-trial release.”

A Russell Group university has been accused of colluding with the Government’s “hostile environment” policy on illegal immigration after it immediately removed a PhD student from his studies when he was detained by the Home Office.

Ahmed Sedeeq, who is originally from Mosul in Iraq, where he was in danger due to being an atheist, was in the final year of his computer science doctorate at the University of Sheffield when he was detained by visa and immigration officers during a routine reporting session at the Home Office on 18 December.

The 30-year-old had initially come to the UK on a student visa, but following miscommunication with the Home Office – which had reportedly told him his visa was still valid – he ended up overstaying it without realising.

When Mr Sedeeq alerted the University of Sheffield about his detention at Morton Hall immigration centre, he was withdrawn from his PhD studies, despite having paid his tuition fees for this academic year.

On 9 December 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the forces of the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS. According to a tweet on Abadi’s official Twitter account, the Iraqi military – supported extensively by the US-led coalition and Iran-backed Shia jihadists – had “secured the entire length of the Iraq-Syria border”. Other tweets by the Iraqi leader suggested that ISIS had been defeated everywhere in the governorates of Ninawa and Anbar, both of which share borders with Syria.

However, not days later, western journalists and analysts sympathetic to the post-2003 “Green Zone” order were reporting a newly emerging threat in the very same areas that Abadi had just declared secured. Ben Van Heuvelen, editor-in-chief of the Iraq Oil Report website, tweeted an apparent exclusive story about “mysterious militants” who were taking on ISIS alumni, and recruiting them and other insurgents into a new group called the “Steadfast Ones with White Flags”. According to the report, this was sparking fears of a fresh insurgency under the leadership of an offshoot faction.

As is usually the case in Iraqi political and security affairs, a lot of noise is made about a lot of nothing with the intention of obfuscating the extent of the severe structural flaws that the Green Zone regime is propped up on. Many western journalists and analysts – who have made careers off of the back of Iraqi suffering – were keen to hype up Abadi’s “victory”, and to peddle the lie that ISIS had been defeated by Iraqi forces under his command and direction. The aim behind this, of course, is to help him secure a second term in the upcoming elections, particularly as he was installed as prime minister in 2014 without having actually been elected by the people he claims to represent.
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The reality of the issue is actually quite simple. The “White Flags” are pro-Baghdad propagandists’ attempts to make it appear that this is an entirely new group with some former ISIS members in their ranks, when in reality it is simply vanilla ISIS. There are no “White Flags” and ISIS has not undergone any rebranding – ISIS are still ISIS, and the only difference with the extremist group is that they have transitioned from a strategy of holding territory to a guerrilla warfare strategy in order to capitalise on their strengths and exploit the Iraqi government’s weaknesses. In essence, they have reverted back to their pre-2014 strategy, making this business as usual for the terrorist organisation.

TEHRAN, Jan. 03 (MNA) – In his meeting with Speaker of Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad Salim al-Jabouri on Tuesday, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Baghdad Iraj Masjedi called on enhancing bilateral ties between the two countries.

The two sides also exchanged their views on the political and security developments in Iraq and region as well as bilateral cooperation in all arenas.

Organizing Parliamentary Union of Islamic Countries (PUIC) meeting in Tehran was the main topic of discussion in this bilateral meeting, the report added.
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For his part, Salim al-Jabouri Speaker of Iraqi Parliament pointed to the reconstruction of the Iraqi cities freed from ISIL terrorist group and returning refugees in the shortest time possible as the two important objectives of Iraqi government.

Iraqi children have been the victims of the country’s dire political situation even before the start of the war led by the U.S. The negative effects on children started with the harsh United Nations sanctions against the regime of Saddam Hussein, and were considerably aggravated by the war, whose consequences are still felt.

Even now, hardly a week passes in Iraq without signs of violence leaving both children and adults with permanent physical and mental scars. Experts such as Dr. Haithi Al Sady from the Psychological Research Center at Baghdad University have warned of the high number of children suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

PTSD can have devastating effects on children’s brains, negatively affecting their development. It can lead to a decrease in the area of the brain known as hippocampus, which is critical for memory processing and emotion. In addition, if not treated, PTSD can lead to a wide variety of mental health problems later in life.
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Most Iraqi children with mental health problems will be untreated, since the number of child psychiatrists in the country is insufficient to deal with those who need assistance. Dr. Haidr al-Maliki, who was an army psychiatrist during Saddam Hussein’s regime, now works as a child psychiatrist at Ab Ibn Rushed Hospital in Baghdad. He is one of the very few remaining child psychiatrists in the country.