Reuters report says ex-member of Iran-backed paramilitary group sent to Egypt for year-long training to become an Iraqi military officer.

​The Iraqi military is training a former member of an Iran-backed paramilitary group, who is under sanctions imposed by the United States for killing protesters, to become a high-ranking officer in the army, according to six government, security and group officials.
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They said Hussein Falih Aziz, known as Abu Zainab al-Lami, had been sent to Egypt with Iraqi officers for a year-long training normally reserved for the country’s military personnel.

​A defence ministry document seen by the Reuters news agency showed his name, with the rank major general, on a list of officers attending the training until next summer.

Children's safety is at risk without adequate accommodation, Save the Children warns; parents say they have come back to destruction and bomb remnants.

​Thousands of children and their families are forced to live in badly damaged houses in abandoned areas with unexploded bombs, dead bodies and rubble, after the sudden closure of several camps for displaced people in Iraq, Save the Children has witnessed.

Save the Children teams spoke to parents who had been forced to leave the camps. They told harrowing accounts of finding unexploded bombs and corpses in buildings and under rubble in the areas they now reside in. Families are in urgent need of basic services such as electricity, clean and safe drinking water, food and transport.

Ali*, 47, a father of four who returned to Mosul from Yahyawa camp in Kirkuk,said: “When we came back here, the area wasn't cleared; there were explosives. I brought down a non-exploded bomb from the rooftop of my house. Children were holding bullets but didn't know what they were. My son came to me with a non-exploded grenade in his hand. He said; 'Father, what is this?' People also found a corpse in one of the destroyed houses.

Moscow has said it was willing to meet Iraq’s needs for weapons amid an ongoing debate in the country on the post-Trump phase.

​Speaking at a joint news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein in Moscow on Wednesday, his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov said: "We are ready to provide Iraq with any Russian-made military products."

Lavrov stated that the Russian-Iraqi ties don’t rule out being on good terms with the West and neighboring countries.

He deemed the visit of Hussein as a boost to bilateral ties and the region’s security.

The Commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, General Ismail Qaani, is reported to have visited the Lebanese capital Beirut where he met with the Secretary-General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah in a bid to convince pro-Iran armed factions in Iraq not to launch further attacks on US forces, Arabic Post news site reported.

The site quoted sources familiar with Qaani's visit as saying that the Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi asked the General to intervene as US President Donald Trump has begun to gradually withdraw American soldiers from Iraq.

According to the sources, the meeting between Qaani and Nasrallah was also attended by the leader of the Iraqi Kata'ib Hezbollah, Abdulaziz Abu Al-Fadak.
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The sources explained that Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah agree that no further attacks should be launched against US forces in Iraq in order not to escalate tension with America or  give Trump a reason to commit any "stupid act against Iraq or Iran".

Minor jobs at border posts changing hands for up to $100,000, says Ali Allawi

​Iraq’s economy is so riddled with corruption that minor border post jobs are changing hands for as much as $100,000, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Ali Allawi, has admitted.

In an extraordinarily frank speech about his government’s efforts to introduce reforms, he said there were no quick wins, adding the economy would probably remain in “existential crisis so long as oil does not reach $70 a barrel for a sustained period” and called for cuts in public spending as its revenues fall short.

Allawi said only a tenth of the $8bn due annually to the Iraqi treasury arrived from border customs, in contrast to Jordan, where 97% was received. He said border customs “are riddled with corruption to the point where minor clerks’ jobs in some outposts change there for $50,000 to $100,000 and sometimes it goes up to multiples of that”.

Both Iraq and Iran have been and are being either sanctioned by or else constantly being threatened by the U.S. Government, though neither Iraq nor Iran ever invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States. This is pure aggression against both Iraq and Iran, and the millions of people who are suffering these constant aggressions are the peoples of Iraq and of Iran. Never does the U.S. Government apologize, and never do any of its allied governments (America’s vassal nations) so much as just suggest that the U.S. Government ought to apologize, for its constant wars of aggression against the peoples of those and of other countries that never threatened America. The U.S. is a constant international outlaw, launching wars of aggression routinely, and the rest of the world remains silent about this, decade after decade.

17 years after America’s conquest of Iraq, the “Gallup Global Emotions Report 2020”, which was just issued on November 19th, finds:

Iraq: The Most Negative Country in the World 

After years of posting some of the highest scores in the world on the Negative Experience Index, Iraq topped the list in 2019 with a score of 51. This figure represents a slight increase from its score of 49 in 2018. 
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The country’s 2019 score reflects the turmoil in Iraq amid some of the largest and bloodiest protests in years. In late 2019, Iraqis’ approval of their country’s leadership plummeted from an already low 22% to just 13%. Nine in 10 Iraqis said corruption was widespread throughout their government. ​

Baghdad buys gas and electricity from its neighbour Tehran to supply about a third of its power sector, worn down by years of conflict and poor maintenance.

​Washington has granted Iraq a shortened 45-day sanctions waiver to import Iranian gas that will expire days before US President Donald Trump's term ends, an Iraqi official said Saturday.

Baghdad buys gas and electricity from its neighbour Tehran to supply about a third of its power sector, worn down by years of conflict and poor maintenance.

The US blacklisted Iran's energy industry in late 2018 but granted Baghdad a series of temporary waivers, hoping Iraq would wean itself off Iranian energy by partnering with US firms.

There was little about the man walking through Heathrow Airport to show he held secrets that could bring down some of the most powerful men in Iraq.
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Moustached, olive skinned, hair receding, eyes sharp. His name was Basil Al Jarah. His British passport showed he lived in Hull, an unremarkable town in the north of England, but it bore the stamps of a frequent traveller: London, Baghdad, Basra, Amman, Paris, Istanbul, Kuwait.

Responding to the execution on Monday of 21 individuals in Iraq, including individuals allegedly affiliated to the Islamic State (IS) and convicted of terror-related charges, Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said:
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“It is high time the Iraqi authorities put an end to executing people. Retaliatory executions not only fail to deliver justice to the victims and to their families, they serve to reinforce perceptions of partial justice, at a time when the authorities are mum in regards to other serious violations such as torture and enforced disappearances that are still taking place across the country.

“At a time when the authorities are pressing ahead to close the chapter of the conflict with IS, they should ensure they are not doing so by perpetuating the sort of actions that have been highlighted as the seeds of previous cycles of violence – which yesterday’s tragic execution is a stark example of.”

Vast jet-black plumes of smoke curling upwards into the sky, blocking out the sun. Crude oil flowing through the streets.  These were some of the environmental footprints left by ISIL/Da’esh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in northern and western Iraq.
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Oil wells and mineral stockpiles were torched, particularly during the Mosul offensive in the spring of 2016. Water barrages were blown up. So thick were the clouds of smoke that for the inhabitants day became night.

This lasted for weeks. Locals dubbed it the “Da’esh winter” despite the sizzling mid-summer heat. Nowhere was this more visible than in Qayyarah, a town of about 25,000 beside the Tigris River, some 60 kilometres south of Mosul.

Four years later, residents continue to suffer. Slowly, however, life is on the mend again. A clean-up of these oil-polluted areas is under way with support from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners.