In 2008, a dramatic failure in Iraq finally set the force on a path of improvement.

​This is a story about the nadir, the end of days. Monday, March 24, 2008, marked five years to the month after the British army arrived in Iraq, preaching to the Americans their apparent expertise in counterinsurgency operations and understanding of the manifold ways of, in the historical British upper-class vernacular, “the Arab.” This is the story of how that complacency—the claimed legacy of imperial policing and Belfast; of Greece-to-your-Rome and barely disguised Anglo-American contempt—became apparent.

The British army committed that bafflingly common 21st-century failing: It exuded superiority toward an exterior entity, then felt genuine surprise when that mean-spiritedness did not generate admiration and fellow feeling in return.

And as the British army in Basra, southern Iraq, experienced what some observers would later describe as the greatest British military disaster since Suez in 1956, or the fall of Singapore in 1942—though others dispute the drama of those comparisons—the institution itself would, on a wider level, start to engage in a wholesale (and needed) program of reform.

In 2008, for the British army, the paths of failure and improvement crossed.

This week in march was meant to be Brigadier Julian Free’s rest and recuperation slot, a mid-tour opportunity to go back to Europe for the 45-year-old commander of the British army’s 4th Mechanised Brigade. However, Major General Barney White-Spunner, in charge of the division and Free’s boss, asked to swap with him, and, well, White-Spunner outranked Free. So on March 24, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki inbound from Baghdad to Basra with half his government in tow, it was Free who stood waiting for him, while White-Spunner was in the Austrian ski resort of Zürs.

The administration’s measured response to a rocket attack in Erbil sharply contrasts with a Trump-era campaign against Iran that, more often than not, caught Iraq in the crossfire.

​After a rocket attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad late last year, the Trump administration renewed its threats of withdrawing diplomats from Iraq. A military retaliation against Iran was discussed, and the White House warned of a drastic response “if one American is killed.” None was.

Nor were any Americans killed in a similar strike this week on a United States military base at the airport in Erbil, in northern Iraq, that officials blame on an Iranian-backed militia. One foreign contractor died, and an American service member and several contractors were wounded, prompting Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to describe the United States as “outraged” and another official to sternly promise “consequences for any group responsible.”

But the Biden administration’s otherwise measured response to the rocket fusillade in Erbil stood in sharp contrast with President Donald J. Trump’s pitched campaign against Iran — one that often caught Iraq in the crossfire.

The Iraqi government is finally starting to make progress in its attempt to curb the influence of Kataib Hezbollah.

​Five months after its charismatic leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed by a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport, the Iran-backed group Kataib Hezbollah’s influence on Iraq may be quietly eroding.
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Despite an institutional void since widespread protests across Shiite-majority central and southern Iraq forced the previous government to resign late in 2019 and the international coalition’s recent withdrawal from several Iraqi bases, moves are afoot to more fully integrate some Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) factions into government chains of command and structures that existed prior to 2014.

​If Iraq’s new government manages to do so, it could reduce the influence of powerful armed groups with questionable loyalty to the Iraqi state.

​NATO is planning to scale up its mission training Iraq’s security forces with thousands of new personnel as the military alliance seeks to help keep the Islamic State group at bay, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday.

​“The size of our mission will increase from 500 personnel to around 4,000. And training activities will now include more Iraqi security institutions, and areas beyond Baghdad,” Stoltenberg told reporters after chairing a meeting of NATO defense ministers.

NATO’s training mission was launched in 2018 to help the conflict-ravaged country develop new academies and military schools for its armed forces. It was initially confined to the capital, Baghdad, and in neighboring Jordan.
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​The mission was temporarily suspended last year after a U.S. drone strike killed Iran’s top general at Baghdad airport, angering the Iraqi government.

Rockets hit US base and airport in Erbil after defense systems failed to activate

​The attack on the US military base at Erbil – in the Kurdistan region of Iraq – and the nearby Erbil airport illustrates once again that US defenses against rocket attacks are inadequate and, for the most part, don’t work.

As far as can be determined, Erbil was defended by a US Patriot air defense system and a C-RAM rapid fire gun system there to protect the Patriot.

There is no information to suggest that either system was activated when a number of rockets slammed into the base and airport. The US and Iraq say they can account for 14 rockets that hit the airport and base; the terrorist group allegedly responsible says 22 rockets were fired.

Iraq’s crude oil exports jumped in the first half of February even after OPEC’s second-biggest producer pledged to cut production this month.

The group and partners including Russia are restraining supply with the coronavirus pandemic still raging. The alliance, known as OPEC+, is seeking to ensure a 66% rally in crude prices since the start of November -- driven by vaccine breakthroughs -- isn’t reversed.

Baghdad pledged to pump below its quota in February to make up for past overproduction. Still, the pace of its crude exports in the first half of the month, if maintained through the rest of February, indicates the country may exceed its self-imposed production target of 3.6 million barrels a day and perhaps even its OPEC+ cap of around 3.85 million.
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Iraq derives almost all its income from oil and, like many other petrostates, is experiencing an economic crisis after the pandemic caused energy demand to collapse last year.

February 18, 2021: The financial situation is very bad, so bad that it has the attention of senior government officials as well as populist religious leaders who have supported the continuing public, and sometimes violent, protests again corruption and misrule in general. The government budget for 2021 includes 20 percent deficit that is covered by expensive loans. Government income fluctuates depending on the sale price for oil and how much Iraq can produce. Because of the global covid19 recession the oil price fluctuated from the $33 to $43 a barrel in 2020. Iraq had to cut production to about three million BPD (Barrels Per Day) for much of 2020 to maintain its membership in OPEC (the oil cartel) and to make up for several instances of overproduction since late 2019.
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Iraq is more dependent on oil income than any other Gulf nation. Because of lower oil prices and lower oil demand the Iraqi GDP shrank eleven ten percent in 2020. The monthly government payroll is $4.5 billion and in 2020 oil income has only been able to cover about half of that. Much of the payroll spending is stolen and the government is under a lot of pressure to save money by making a serious effort to shut down the scams that steal as much as a third of the payroll costs. For most of 2020 the government was able borrow money to cover the monthly budget shortfall. But by late 2020 that the government was out of credit and millions of Iraqis were not getting paid on time. The situation improved a bit at the end of the year when oil price in December reached $48 a barrel.

The 2021 government budget avoided major spending reductions or reducing corruption and mainly depends on higher ($60 a barrel would be nice) oil prices to work. For too many Iraqi politicians that is seen as a more realistic solution than taking on the corruption problems involving who gets paid what by the government. Because of the continued corruption and deficit spending, recovery from the recession will take longer. GDP is expected to grow by 1.2 percent in 2021 and about four percent in 2022 and 2024. Before covid19 (2019) GDP was growing at 4.5 percent a year. The continued reluctance of government officials to deal with the corruption means the popular protests will continue.
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Dealing with problems involving Iran or Turkey are also being avoided. Iranian sponsored violence in Iraq or interference in the economy are opposed by most Iraqis. This does not motivate Iraqi politicians to act and that is causing more and more popular discontent. That’s fine with Iran because a government collapse would provide Iran with more opportunities to expand it control in Iraq.

Ramita Navai has been reporting for years on the rise of Shia militias in Iraq, their links to Iran and allegations of abuses carried out against Sunni civilians. In her latest documentary for FRONTLINE, Iraq’s Assassins, Navai investigates accusations that these militias have unleashed a wave of assassinations against activists and critics. In the runup to the film’s February 9 premiere, FRONTLINE spoke with Navai about her past reporting and what had changed when she returned to Iraq in September 2020.

What she found surprised her: “When I first covered [the militias], even though we were exposing Shia militia abuses, they were still very much seen as heroes, especially by the Shia population,” Navai said. “That has completely changed.” She says she wasn’t expecting “how, in these few years, they’re now viewed with absolute fear and they’re viewed as villains. They’re no longer seen as the heroes they once were.”
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Below, Navai discusses the mass protests in Iraq, the Iran-backed Shia militias now accused of killing their critics and why the militias view activists as a threat.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Since the formation of the new system of governance in Iraq in 2003 immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein there have been a slew of problems between the Federal Government of Iraq (FGI), centred in Baghdad, and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), governed in large part by its government (the KRG) based in Erbil. Back then in 2003/4 it was broadly agreed that the KRG would export a certain volume of oil from its own fields and Kirkuk via the FGI’s State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) and would absolutely not independently sell oil from the fields on the international markets.

In return, the FGI from Baghdad would disburse a certain level of payments to the KRG from Iraq’s central budget. From that point to this there has been near constant dispute over this arrangement but the latest one seriously threatens the decisive splitting of the FGI ad KRI into two completely separate regions, as had also been promised to the KRI by the U.S. in exchange for its army (the Peshmerga) agreeing to be the West’s boots-on-the-ground fighting force against the Islamic State insurgence from 2014.

According to reports from Iraq, the KRI’s government, the KRG, is currently in the process of preparing its own separate annual budget for the first time since a new working budget agreement was agreed in November 2014 between it and the Baghdad-based government of the FGI. The November 2014 agreement required that the KRG would agree to export up to 550,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from its own fields and Kirkuk via SOMO and, in return, Baghdad would send 17 per cent of the federal budget after sovereign expenses (around US$500 million at that time) per month in budget payments to the KRG.

​This would allow the KRG to pay the expenses of the semi-autonomous government, most notably the salaries of the large number of direct and indirect KRG employees, plus all other expenses. This 2014 agreement, which functioned properly only sporadically, was then superseded by an understanding reached between the KRG and the new government of the FGI formed in October 2018 centred on the 2019 national budget bill. This required the FGI in Baghdad to transfer sufficient funds from the budget to pay the salaries of KRG employees along with other financial compensation in exchange for the KRG handing over responsibility for the export of at least 250,000 bpd of crude oil to SOMO. Shortly thereafter, though, the FGI – nominally headed at that point by Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi but controlled behind the scenes by radical cleric Moqtada a-Sadr – started to deliver the funding for the salaries of the KRG employees on a monthly basis, and after that he KRG started to deliver the agreed upon volume of oil to SOMO on a more ad hoc basis. This has been the pattern ever since.

Refugees at Jedaa Camp say they are being forced to evacuate as nearly 24,00 families stare down an uncertain future amid a pandemic.

​​Thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq are worried they will be forced to leave their camp in the northern Nineveh province, which hosts nearly 2,400 families, rights groups and refugees have told Al Jazeera.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis took shelter in refugee camps in Nineveh province, forced from their homes by the war against the ISIL (ISIS) armed group. ISIL was defeated in 2017 nearly three years after it took over large swaths of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

​Most of the camps in the province have since been shut down but Jedaa Camp, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) south of Mosul city, still hosts refugees who are afraid to go back to their homes because of the security situation.