In response to today’s publication of the Iraq Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot’s much-awaited report on the UK’s involvement in the 2003 Iraq war, Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International said:

“In the lead-up to the invasion, Amnesty International urged that the potentially grave consequences of military action be carefully assessed. And on the eve of the US-led invasion we urged full respect for international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

“Tragically, our fears about the safety of the civilian population were well-founded. Thousands of civilians were killed and injured, including in unlawful attacks; millions of people were forced from their homes; and the whole country was thrown into chaos as the occupation forces failed to fulfil their obligation to maintain security.

​Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International
“While the Chilcot Report did not strictly focus on human rights, any meaningful assessment of the US-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath cannot ignore the devastating human rights legacy it has left for millions of Iraqis. The UK and US governments cynically used Saddam Hussein’s appalling human rights record – as documented in Amnesty International reports – to help build public support for going to war. Their conduct during the occupation soon laid bare their hypocrisy in exploiting human rights rhetoric.

Almost 24 hours after the massacre of civilians in Baghdad by so-called Islamic State, young men were digging frantically through the basement of one of the shopping centres that was destroyed.

They were looking for human remains. But all they found were some shoes and a pile of black ash. It was hot in the basement. The fire was still smouldering. Warm, scummy water dripped from the ceiling.

Outside, hundreds of people had gathered. Being there was a form of defiance. In the Iraqi capital, any crowded, dark street is a potential target for a suicide bomber.

Perhaps sharing infinite sadness makes it easier to bear. Many people cried, or prayed. I saw a Christian clergyman lighting candles and making the sign of the cross as well as young people chanting a Shia Muslim anthem for the dead.

​Basra – Basra governorate suffers from Iranian occupation to all its political, social, and security institutions given there are hundreds of centers for “charitable” purposes.

Occupation of Basra, 560 Km south of Baghdad, has been set since Khomeini’s reign in Iran.

During several interviews with Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, many Iraqis said that Persian language is now spread in Basra. They added that it has become somehow normal with many streets named after Iranian mullahs.

This, according to Iraqis, has driven many residents to leave Basra while many Shi’ites from nearby villages are arriving.

Editor's note: The following is an opinion piece. The writer is not employed by Military Times and the views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Military Times or its editorial staff.

From time to time, American troops fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq find themselves working alongside not only U.S.-trained Iraqi military personnel but also militias aligned with and reportedly armed by Iran.

These militias, most of them Shia Iraqis, have been part of the ISIS problem, not the solution. The atrocities they have committed against Sunni Iraqis — torture, summary executions, forced displacement, on top of mass arbitrary arrests by the government — helped push some Sunnis to welcome ISIS in the first place as an alternative to Baghdad’s heavy-handed and highly sectarian rule.
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From a human-rights perspective, the issue now is not whether these militias are aligned with Iran; rather, it's their long and continuing record of abusive behavior toward Sunni Iraqis — and a tendency by some U.S. officials to downplay those abuses, especially in public.

​​No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?

The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.

For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy.

It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.

As history tells us, there are reasons to be cautious about the claims that the Iraqi city of Fallujah is freed from Isis control.

There’s a truism long held in the Arab world:  when the bad guys proclaim victory, they’re probably telling the truth.  When the good guys proclaim victory, there’s usually just a little bit more fighting to be done before the promise is fulfilled;  meaning another few days’ fighting, another week, another month…  So when the Iraqi commander tells the people of Iraq that Fallujah has been “liberated” – for the fourth time in a decade, by my count – it’s time to use the critical faculties that politicians and armies so often lack.
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Fallujah, you may remember, was the "city of mosques" whose Sunni people liberated themselves from Saddam’s rule a few days before their American liberators turned up in 2003 to tell the world they had themselves freed Fallujah from the evil Saddam. 

​Then the city decided it didn’t want the American version of liberation and its resistance forces began attacking US troops who found themselves fighting – you guessed it – “terrorists” in Fallujah.

Chilcot report ignored as Iraqi media focus on chaos and violence still devastating Iraq, Eid celebrations across region.

While British media reflect on the Iraq War with the publication of the long-awaited Chilcot report, Iraqi media are busy concentrating on the daily chaos the war has left in its wake.

Four issues are dominating Iraqi media this morning: the ever increasing death toll of the Karrada bombing, popular anger at the government, regional responses to the suicide attack on the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, and of course Eid-ul-Fitr celebrations across the Arab and Islamic world.

Like much of the Arab world, satellite television is the main source of news for many Iraqis.

The UN has accused militias in Iraq of kidnapping and executing civilians. ​A Shia militia that fought alongside Iraqi forces against the Islamic State group (IS) may have kidnapped 900 civilians and executed at least 50, some by beheadings and torture, the UN said on Tuesday.

The initial phase of Iraq's vast offensive to retake the city of Fallujah from IS was supported by several Shia militia, which raised fears of reprisals against the area's Sunni Muslim population.

UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said there was strong evidence that one group, Ketaeb Hizballah, perpetrated atrocities after telling civilians that they were there to help.

"This appears to be the worst - but far from the first - such incident involving unofficial militias fighting alongside government forces," Zeid said in a statement.

The Chilcot report, the UK government’s official report on the catastrophic decision to invade Iraq, was released on Wednesday morning, seven years after it was initially convened. The report delivers a pretty devastating verdict on the war, concluding that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the West and war was avoidable.

But from an American point of view, the most striking part of the report is how foreseeable the disaster that unfolded after the invasion was.

When you read the British government’s intelligence assessments, they predict, plus or minus a few details, exactly what happened after the war. The UK had ample warning that Iraq would collapse after the invasion and make the problem of terrorism worse — but it went to war anyway.

Why? Basically, the report suggests, because the US decided to. Then-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair decided that the UK couldn’t afford the hit to the US-UK relationship that would come from seriously challenging the Bush administration’s rush to war, so he decided to back America to the hilt.

Iraqis in the 120-degree heat of Basra were in no mood for rolling blackouts. When the power failed, taking down their air conditioners, many called authorities to complain.

But this was no accident. Three Turkish electricity barges in the harbor had just cut their feeds to the Basra power grid. 

Iraq has rented electricity barges from Turkey for nearly a decade. Operated by the Karkey Company, the barges burn oil pumped in Basra to generate up to 400 megawatts of power to augment Iraqi power plants. The rental generators help authorities keep up with electrical demand, which can be especially high in the summer.

Basra Governorate, at the center of Iraq's oil industry, does not run its own power plants, nor does it get to decide what becomes of the oil it pumps. That's the purview of the Iraqi central government in Baghdad. And it was Baghdad's failure to pay Karkey's $85 million bill that caused the company to pull the plug on Basra the last Monday in June.