Australian Report on US-led Coalition A Positive Step, but Questions Remain

​It is well known that civilians have been killed during the US-led coalition’s military operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since 2014, but almost two years on from some of the heaviest bombing in the cities of Mosul and Raqqa, the coalition’s own estimates of civilian deaths are far below public estimates.

One coalition member deserves praise for choosing transparency over the normal wall of silence. As it has done in previous incidents, on February 1, 2019, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) acknowledged it might have caused between 6 and 18 civilian casualties in a strike on a Mosul neighborhood on June 13, 2017.

Australia has come a long way from March 2017 when the ADF admitted it did not track data on civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria.

​One day after Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh complained that Iraq has not paid billions of dollars for its imports from Iran after the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions, Iran's Central Bank Governor told reporters that he has reached an agreement with his Iraqi counterpart about the payments.

The chief banker Abdolnasser Hemmati arrived in Baghdad Tuesday evening for negotiations regarding bilateral banking relations and the payment of Iraq's debts for the electricity and natural gas provided by Tehran.

Hemmati told Tasnim news agency on Wednesday that a mechanism for the payments has been finalized thanks to an agreement he signed with his Iraqi counterpart Ali al-Alaq. The agreement, Hemmati said, also covers payments for Iraq's other imports from Iran.
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He said that based on the arrangements made, payments for natural gas, electricity and other commodities sold to Iraq by Iran will be made based on "payment orders" issued by the Central Bank of Iran. Iran’s Tasnim news agency quoted Hemmati as saying that the central bank will create accounts in Euros and Iraqi dinars to facilitate payment for exported natural gas and electricity.

Iraqis attack 'cheap and low' policy of shooting unarmed civilians by British occupation forces made public by MEE earlier this week.

​For Iyad Salim, revelations that British forces had in some circumstances allowed soldiers to fire at unarmed civilians during their occupation of the southern Iraqi province of Basra hardly came as a surprise.

“It’s all true,” he told Middle East Eye. "The British harmed us a lot.”

On Monday, MEE revealed that the British army had implemented rules of engagement in Iraq - as well as Afghanistan - that at times had allowed soldiers to shoot unarmed civilians who were suspected of keeping them under surveillance.

The report, based on the testimonies of former soldiers, has further cast a shadow on the legacy of the British forces’ conduct during the occupation of Basra, which lasted between 2003 and 2007 and saw numerous allegations of abuse against the province’s residents.