772 suicide cases registered in 2021 against 393 in 2016
​
 Iraq has said that 772 persons committed suicide in 2021, the country's highest rate in recent years.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry said the figure marked an increase of more than 100 persons compared to last year when 663 people were registered to have taken their lives in the country.

“Since 2016, the suicide cases have shown an increase,” the ministry’s spokesman Khalid Al Mahna said. In 2016, 393 suicide cases were registered, hitting 605 in 2019, he told the Iraqi news agency.

Iraqi citizens bear the brunt of escalating medical costs as the government fails to clamp down on the mafias controlling the medical trade in the country or to support the sorely neglected local pharmaceutical industry. ​

​The rising price of medicines in Iraq is leaving many unable to afford what used to be provided free of charge. As mafia-style networks with links to influential political players control the import, distribution and pricing of medicines, Iraqi officials warn that the health ministry is incapable of proposing an effective solution to the humanitarian crisis unfolding.

This year, medicine prices saw a sharp increase due to the dollar's rising exchange rate and the Covid-19 pandemic, among a host of other factors. As a result, scores of deaths were registered in hospitals across the country, as critically ill patients were unable to afford the drugs they needed and had been forced to seek on the black market. 

Despite the severity of the situation, the health ministry has failed to press for concrete proposals to tackle the issue. According to a health official who preferred not to be named, "the ministry is following the matter and plans to tackle the situation through coordinating with the security services. It has also run campaigns targeting pharmacy owners, demanding that they cap the prices of various medicines. However, these campaigns have not yet had much effect on prices."

The devastation caused by man to the environment is no longer a secret; nature is striking back painfully, after decades of warnings by scientists of a catastrophic future that requires quick, radical solutions. There is no more room for procrastination in the face of hurricanes, floods, rising temperatures, desertification, drying up of agricultural lands, forest fires, greenhouse gases and air pollution.
​
In recent years, the dangers of climate change top of the list of problems and preoccupations in most countries, whether in the first, second or third worlds. In the face of the wrath of nature, the borders separating countries are collapsing, with increasing rapidity in third world countries in particular. It is true that the catastrophic repercussions are affecting everyone, but the third world, including Arab states, bears the greatest burden. Not because the wrath of nature chooses it over America and Europe, of course, but for growing domestic and external reasons, through which disasters, whether natural or man-made, interact to increase the impact and size of any crisis affecting the people of the country.

Iraq, along with Palestine, is a clear example of the environmental crisis resulting from war, occupation and neo-colonial policies in the Arab world, which undermine the social and economic basis of life in the region. The effects of this environmental crisis appear in devastating climate change, the pollution of extractive industries, the depletion of natural resources, the scarcity of water, and the pollution of air and soil due to the use of modern munitions, such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous, as has been seen in Iraq and Gaza. It is estimated that the war against Iraq caused the release of 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2003 and 2007. That's more than 60 per cent of the total for all countries in the world.

Despite the availability of this data and its documentation by international human rights organisations, and the fact that the internal environmental situation is largely linked to the outside world, Iraq remained, until recent months, at the bottom of government and public lists of concerns. It is hardly mentioned except on the margins of international conferences or among the lists of "worst" countries in reports and statistics issued by UN bodies and organisations concerned with the environment and its economic and societal repercussions. Only then does it rank in a high position that no one else matches.

Iraqi authorities have arrested more than 11,000 people on charges of trafficking and using narcotics during 2021, a security official revealed yesterday.
​
Local media quoted the Director-General of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Control at the Ministry of Interior, Major General Mazen Al-Quraishi, as saying that the ministry arrested 11,207 people on drug-related charges, including 11,000 males and 156 females, from the beginning of the year to 17 December.

Al-Quraishi explained that the capital Baghdad recorded the highest number of arrests, with about 2,000 people, followed by Basra (1,871 persons) and then Babylon (1,617 persons).

According to the official, smuggling crystal meth and hashish are most common in southern provinces which are transported via Iran from Afghanistan, noting that Basra and Maysan are the provinces most used for drug trafficking. Drugs are then transported by sea to the Gulf states, he explained.

​Drone strikes in Iraq and Syria killed hundreds

​A murderous US ­special forces cell called Talon Anvil massacred hundreds of ­civilians in Iraq and Syria—and top officers systematically ­covered up its crimes.

The cell controlled a fleet of Predator and Reaper drones that bristled with Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs.

A major investigation by the New York Times newspaper says Talon Anvil killed “people who had no role in the conflict—­farmers trying to harvest, children in the street, families fleeing fighting, and ­villagers sheltering in buildings”.

A former Air Force intelligence officer said he saw so many civilian deaths as a result of Talon Anvil’s tactics that he eventually grew jaded and accepted them as part of the job.

Elsewhere, Saudi and Iranian experts hold talks in Jordan and Egyptian help with Gaza reconstruction efforts amid dispute over what should be rebuilt first

Five million orphans - equivalent to five percent of all orphans worldwide - are in Iraq, with nearly the same number of young people living in poverty, data published in a new Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights report has revealed.

​According to the report, covered in Asharq al-Awsat, one million children are working as labourers to support their families, including 45,000 who don't have official identification documents as a result of their parents' affiliation with the Islamic State group. 

Around 4.5 million children are in families living below the poverty line with 25 percent of the total population of Iraq living in poverty and an unemployment rate of 14 percent, the commission found.

The number of missing citizens since 2014, the year the Islamic State group launched its offensive in the country, has reached 8,000. The commission said Iraqi authorities have failed to fulfil their duty to those missing to investigate their whereabouts or compensate their families financially.

The Basra explosion caused by a booby-trapped motorcycle was aimed to assassinate an Iraqi investigative officer in charge of the militia's illegal activities in the province.

In an unprecedented event, a terrorist explosion caused by a motorcycle hit the southern city of Basra on Dec. 7.  At least four were killed and four others were wounded. 

Basra has not been targeted by such attacks for years. Therefore, the attack was read as a significant breach to Iraqi security, especially in this area far from the access of the Islamic State.

A day after the explosion, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi travelled to Basra, straight from his trip to Makhmour in northern Iraq that was targeted by IS several times in the past two weeks.
​
Kadhimi has pointed to the militias in Basra for the responsibility of the attack, while he was accusing IS for the attack in Makhmour. 

Traces of a kleptocrat from Iraq to Delaware to Miami

​​A few blocks from the water, in the heart of Miami’s glitzy South Beach, is a drugstore not like the others. Tourists buying sunscreen and straw hats from the CVS on Washington Avenue are financing a Middle Eastern kleptocrat.

The plexiglass building housing the roughly 12,000-square-foot pharmacy is worth $18.3 million and, because of favorable rent terms negotiated with CVS, should generate significant profit for its landlord. In 2019, based on Miami property records, local press credited a Virginia-based real estate company, KLNB, with purchasing the building. But the Virginia firm’s inclusion in the property registrar was a diversion. “KLNB is not the owner of this property and had no involvement in the transaction,” a company representative said.
​
The actual purchase was made by an anonymous Delaware shell company. Buried in incorporation documents for this Delaware company’s Florida branch is the name of the building’s real owner: Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Officials in Baghdad have accused Tehran of reducing water flows from the Tigris and Euphrates.

​Iraq has completed procedures to sue Iran at the International Court of Justice over Tehran's water policy, an Iraqi official said on Saturday.

Officials in Baghdad have accused Tehran of reducing water flows from the Tigris and Euphrates.

"The ministry of water resources has submitted a letter to the foreign ministry and the cabinet, and completed all technical and legal procedures for the lawsuit," Iraqi Minister of Water Resources Mahdi Rashid al-Hamdani said in an interview with US-funded Al-Hurra TV.

"The decision to take matters further is now up to the foreign ministry and the Iraqi government," Hamdani added.