From the halls of parliament to the lightning-fast rumour mills of social media, pro-Iran factions are demanding US troops withdraw from Iraq in a challenge to the country's fragile government. 

The political wrangling is another indication of Iraq's precarious position as it tries to balance ties between two key allies -- the United States and the Islamic republic of Iran. 

Calls for a US pullout have intensified since President Donald Trump's shock decision last month to  pull troops from neighbouring Syria, while keeping American forces in Iraq. 

In recent weeks, pro-Iran parties have organised protests to demand an accelerated US troop withdrawal while affiliated media outlets published footage of alleged US reinforcements in Iraq's restive west and north. 

The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in Iraq issued a statement on Thursday rejecting allegations made earlier this week by a non-profit organization  there, alleging that personnel had carried out explosive hazard clearance inside two historic churches in Mosul “in a barbaric and arbitrary manner.”

​The allegations, published earlier this week on the website of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization (HHRO), the Iraqi non-governmental organization in question, accused UNMAS of “crimes no less grievous and insolent than the crimes of Daesh,” and claimed that the clearance was conducted without church authorization, “in a barbaric and arbitrary manner with utter disregard for the holy and religious sanctity” of the two churches, located in the Hosh al-Khan area of the Al Maedan district, in Mosul.

Although UNMAS – and its partner for the clearance project, G4S – were not directly named, UNMAS Iraq said in a statement that it was taking the allegations seriously, open to further investigation of the allegations, and continuing to work closely with the Iraqi Government.
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The agency has invited HHRO and officials of the Syriac Catholic Archbishopric in the Nineveh Plains, “as well as other relevant Iraqi authorities, to meet in person to carefully consider the facts relative to their statements and hope they will offer to correct the record when known.”

Donald Trump wanted to seize Iraq’s oil. He has settled for government contracts

​President donald trump thinks America is being ripped off. “We have spent $7trn—trillion with a T—$7trn in the Middle East,” he told a crowd last year, exaggerating slightly. “You know what we have for it? Nothing. Nothing.”

​To right this perceived wrong, Mr Trump has long favoured seizing Iraq’s oil. But after he hinted at the idea with the Iraqi prime minister (who demurred), his aides admonished him. “We can’t do this and you shouldn’t talk about it,” said H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser at the time, according to reports. Still, Mr Trump may be getting what he wants from Iraq in other ways.

When America reimposed sanctions on Iran last year it gave some countries extra time to stop buying Iranian oil before they would lose access to the American market. Most were given 90-day exemptions. In November Iraq, which shares a long border with Iran, was given half that time to cut off electricity and gas imports.

As it negotiated for extensions, American companies made a push for Iraqi contracts. In December, Rick Perry, the energy secretary, led America’s largest trade delegation to Iraq in over a decade. “It was a quid pro quo,” says an oilman. “You give us priority and we’ll give you an exemption.”

Twice last month, the Iraqi parliament blocked the appointment of key ministerial posts by Iraq’s new Prime Minister Dr Adel Abdul Mahdi. The main sticking point with certain party blocs in the parliament has been Mahdi’s insistence on the appointment of Faleh al-Fayadh as Interior Minister.

Major blocs like Saairun, supported by the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have walked out of the parliament, leaving it un-quorate each time Mahdi has tabled Faleh al-Fayadh’s nomination. The issue has left the government in stalemate since the elections in May, with many politicians accusing Mahdi of backtracking on his pledge to appoint a cabinet of independent technocrats. Opposition to al-Fayadh is not surprising.

​He was the brutal security advisor to former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and masterminded the military assaults on the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) refugees in Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty, killing 168 defenceless men and women and wounding a further 1,700. His record of atrocities has earned him the accolade of an indictment by the Spanish Courts for crimes against humanity, limiting his ability to travel in Europe.

Predictably, the venally corrupt and sectarian Maliki has openly rejected the Iraqi parliament’s refusal to nominate al-Fayadh as Interior Minister and has thrown his support behind the pro-Iranian blocs in the dispute. Like his former boss Maliki, Fayadh is a puppet of the Iranian regime. On the orders of the mullahs in Tehran he led the ruthless Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces during the campaign to oust Daesh (Isis) from Iraq, overseeing the almost complete destruction of the ancient cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul in the process and the genocidal ethnic cleansing of the Sunni population. Last Saturday he visited Bashar al-Assad in Syria

Last month, President Trump claimed the defeat of the Islamic State as justification for his decision to withdraw American troops from Syria. In 2014, at the height of its reign, the Sunni insurgent group governed an estimated 10 million people and 34,000 square miles of territory.

The Islamic State no longer controls significant territory in Iraq and Syria. But during a visit to Baghdad in December, the question being asked by Iraqi government officials was not if the Islamic State is making a comeback, but how soon the group will again be strong enough to recapture and hold territory.

How the Iraqi government is fueling anger

In Iraq, the government’s harsh counterterrorism strategy, which is widely perceived as collectively punishing the Sunnis, is generating new grievances that could increase local support for an Islamic State 2.0. More than 19,000 people have been detained on terrorism-related charges since 2014. Over 3,000 have been sentenced to death in rapid-fire trials that are sometimes decided in less than 10 minutes. Convictions are often based on thin and circumstantial evidence, the testimony of secret informants, or confessions induced through torture, making it easy for innocent people to be falsely accused and unfairly punished.
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These injustices are fueling anger, and with it, a new wave of violence. Since 2016, the average number of Islamic State attacks in Iraq — including suicide bombings and targeted assassinations — has risen to 75 per month. In August, U.S. and U.N. reports estimated that the number of Islamic State fighters active in Iraq and Syria might exceed 30,000.

Beatings, Electric Shock to Coerce ISIS Confessions

The Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq is torturing children to confess to involvement with the Islamic State (ISIS), Human Rights Watch said today. 

Children told Human Rights Watch that in 2017 and 2018, security officers, known as Asayish, used beatings, stress positions, and electric shock on boys in their custody. Most said they had no access to a lawyer and they were not allowed to read the confessions Asayish wrote and forced them to sign.

“Nearly two years after the Kurdistan Regional Government promised to investigate the torture of child detainees, it is still occurring with alarming frequency,” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The Kurdistan authorities should immediately end all torture of child detainees and investigate those responsible.”
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Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 boys, ages 14 to 17, charged or convicted of ISIS affiliation, at the Women and Children’s Reformatory in Erbil in November 2018, and three boys who had recently been released. The reformatory, a locked detention center encircled by high walls and concertina wire, is one of three facilities holding children in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Iraq has been granted a 90-day extension to continue critical Iranian energy imports, following the expiration of the original 45-day waiver.

​The Trump administration has granted Iraq a new, 90-day exemption from sanctions targeting Iran, enabling Iraq to continue energy imports that account for about one-third of the country's electricity supply. 

When the sanctions first snapped back into effect, on Nov. 5, the U.S. granted a 45-day waiver, and that grace period has now been extended by another 90 days, according to multiple officials on both sides of the negotiations.

Several key questions remain unanswered, however, including why the extension was granted and what Iraq needs to do in order to earn future waivers.

The new round of US sanctions against Iran has put neighboring Iraq in a tough position. 

Baghdad heavily relies on Iranian electricity and natural gas imports to meet its energy needs. A forty-five-day sanctions waiver granted to Iraq by the Trump administration in early November is set to expire this week.

On November 11, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry attended a two-day conference in Iraq along with a trade delegation of over fifty US energy and security firms. During the visit, he urged Baghdad to wean itself off Tehran and pave the way for American investment in its energy sector. “The time has come for Iraq to break its dependence... on less reliable nations seeking domination and control,” Perry said.

Since the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in late 2017, Baghdad has also been under US pressure to rein in, if not dismantle, Iran-backed armed Shia groups known as Paramilitary Mobilization Forces (PMF). Last year, then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a joint news conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir that Tehran-backed militias and their Iranian advisors who helped expel ISIS from Iraq needed to “go home.”

Fourteen unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed in 2007 shooting that drew scrutiny of role of US contractors in Iraq War.

​A former Blackwater security contractor has been convicted by a court in the United States of murder at his third trial in the 2007 shooting of unarmed civilians in Iraq, an incident that drew worldwide condemnation.

Nicholas Slatten, 35, was on Wednesday found guilty of first-degree murder in Washington for his role in the shooting, which stood out for its brutality and sparked intense scrutiny of the role of US contractors in the Iraq War.

Prosecutors charged that Slatten was the first to open fire and intentionally set off a shooting rampage in the September 16, 2007 massacre that killed 14 Iraqi civilians at a crowded traffic circle in Iraq's capital, Baghdad.

The number of slum dwellers is estimated at 3.3 million people living in 522,000 housing units.

​It has become obvious that corruption has settled in Iraq since its occupation in 2003. Corruption has multiplied and engulfed all aspects of life.

The emergence of slums in the land of Mesopotamia is but one of the manifestations of the disastrous consequences of occupation and the bottomless corruption of the successive administrations in Iraq. It joins phenomena such as hunger, unemployment and poverty to depict a depressing picture of what has befallen this venerable country.

It is a painful paradox that in the post-2003 period we find Iraqi citizens who have become homeless, living like wild animals in the open while historically Mesopotamia was the perfect haven for man.