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From a young age, reporter Shahor Omar's morning alarm was the ear-splitting sound of explosions. The haunting memories mean he still struggles to sleep at night.

Ako Ismail mourns the loss of his colleagues: kidnapped, imprisoned and killed in the warfare that devastated his homeland.

The pair are journalists from Iraqi Kurdistan, who have dedicated their lives to documenting the impact of war on Iraq and the lives of refugees fleeing to their country.

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After years of reporting in an area that carries high-risk for broadcasters, they too have been forced to leave behind all that is familiar to them and flee to another nation, settling in the North East.

27-year-old Ako started out as a journalist at the age of 15, working for several local and international news outlets, and trained with experienced journalists from the BBC and Sky.

He was heavily invested in recording the daily lives of people, especially children, as they were forced into refugee camps in the northern region of Kurdistan after ISIS attacked Iraq in 2013.

He said: "If I didn't do it - who would? It was really important that the world knew what was happening during the invasion.

"I was constantly aware of the dangers, but for me, it was a necessity and I wanted to tell the stories of people forced to flee their homes."

Ako said he never expected to become a refugee himself, but after working on a report that exposed government wrong-doing, his life was under threat.

Transported via lorry without family or friends to support him, he arrived in Birmingham in 2015, before relocating to Sunderland.

He explained: "I had to leave my entire life behind to come here - it's very difficult because I miss my family terribly.

"And since that time, many things have happened to those I love. My brother was kidnapped, recently my father died and one of my friends was put in prison for six years for taking photos.

"I am constantly fearful for my colleagues - this year many more journalists have been put behind bars for trying to broadcast the truth."

Although many refugees feel a profound sense of isolation arriving in a new country, Ako used his story and strong artistic practice to build a network in the North East.

He said: "Each refugee is a survivor, and they have a story. While many choose to keep it to themselves, given my background in journalism, I knew the benefits of sharing my experience.

"It is important we learn from each others' tragedy. So that people come to understand that people don't choose to be refugees, nobody wants to be forced away from all they know and love.

"People associate war-torn countries with bad people. It's not the case, people in Iraq are just trying to get on with their lives, but they have no control."

Ako is currently sharing a photography exhibition with fellow journalist Shahor Omar at Newcastle Central Library, organised by Skimstone Arts.

Shahor is a multitalented documentary-maker, photographer and writer, who covered the war in Iraq and Syria from 2007 onwards.

Growing up Kirkuk, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan, 33-year-old Shahor remembers "waking up every morning to the sights of war."

He told the Chronicle: "I grew up with that trauma, constantly dreaming of peace-time. I became a journalist to help people understand that trauma and to share information so that we could get closer to peace."

That ambition led him to the front line of ISIS' attacks, where he and his fellow reporters would narrowly avoid bombs and gunfire.

"Our lives were constantly under threat - my friends were kidnapped, some lost limbs and others were killed in the street.

"Covering those areas, I saw awful things. People in poverty, dying, taking drugs to escape and so many kids I couldn't help.

"All I could do was document what was happening and try and share the facts as widely as possible.

"I am haunted by those memories, and to this day I struggle to sleep at night. When you're there you think, could I die today? It's hard to get away from that mindset, and the nightmares continue."

Much like Ako, Shahor's attempts to broadcast the reality of the situation, outside of the realms of the state-controlled media narrative, attracted backlash.

He was forced to leave Iraq in 2020, and now lives in Stockton, Teesside.

"Finally I am safe" he said. "I have time to unpack what has happened to me, and the things I've seen."

His photos, which are on display as part of the 'One Day Changes' exhibition are a haunting reminder of the breadth of damage inflicted by war in Syria and Iraq.

He explained: "The media are always keen to highlight human stories, which I understand. But through my photography I wanted to show how everything is impacted, like the natural environment, animals and architecture.

"Everything is a victim of war and nothing is in the right place. For instance, I took photos of kids playing on tanks, because their playgrounds were replaced with military equipment."

Ako's images, meanwhile, are mesmerising depictions of daily life. They show the resilience of children in Iraqi refugee camps as well as those impacted by the Halabja genocide of 1988, a massacre of Kurdish people that took place during the closing days of the Iran-Iraq war.

The exhibition, organised by Claire Webster Saaremets - Artistic Director of from Skimstone Arts, runs until January 20.

The artists will also feature at a Holocaust Memorial Day event organised by Skimstone Arts on January 27 at Bewick Hall, in the City Library.

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Refugee journalists share their harrowing stories - having fled Iraq and settled in the North East - Chronicle Live

This means Iraq has completed the payment of the full compensation amount approved by the United Nations Compensation Committee, in accordance with UN Security Councils Resolution 687 in 1991 following the end of the Gulf War after the invasion of Kuwait.

In 1991, the United Nations Compensation Commission was established in accordance with Security Council resolutions 687 (1991) and 692 (1991) to process claims and pay compensation for losses and damages incurred by individuals, corporations, governments and international organisations as a direct result of Iraqs invasion and occupation of Kuwait (from August 2, 1990 toMarch 2, 1991). The Commission approved compensation claims totaling $52.4 billion in war reparations.

The committee received approximately 2.7 million claims and concluded its review of all claims in 2005. Approximately $52.4 billion was awarded to over 100 governments and international organisations for distribution to the successful 1.5 million claims in all claim categories.

In 2014, Iraq halted paying compensation due to the war against Daesh, which controlled a third of the country, but resumed payments in 2018. However, it asked for an extension of the final $3.8 billion due to its worsening economic crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic that negatively impacted oil prices.

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Iraq pays last instalment of war reparations to Kuwait totaling $52.4bn - Gulf News

Members of 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment look over part of a weapons cache discovered by the Marines and members of the Iraqi Civilian Watch outside of Subyhat, Iraq, March 13, 2008. (Brett Shemanski/U.S. Marine Corps)

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii The Marine Corps will deactivate the Hawaii-based Island Warriors on Friday, casing the colors of a battalion that fought in World War II, the Vietnam War and the Global War on Terrorism.

The storied 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment is slated to deactivate during a ceremony at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

The lineage of 2/3 includes many years of watchful peace, and some of the toughest and bloodiest battles in our history, Lt. Gen. James Bierman, commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, wrote in a memo to the battalion on Jan. 14.

This deactivation brings up understandable feelings of fierce pride and loss in all who have served in the battalion, Bierman wrote.

The deactivation is part of a Corps-wide restructuring under Force Design 2030, which is revamping the service into the lean, island-hopping force it was in the Pacific theater during World War II.

The battalion was originally activated in May 1942, just five months after the Japanese surprise attack on Hawaii that led to Americas declaration of war on Japan and Germany.

Its troops were on the front lines of some of the most ferocious battles of the Pacific, including the Solomon Islands, Guam and Iwo Jima.

Pfc. Leonard Mason was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of Guam on July 22, 1944.

An automatic rifleman, the 24-year-old Marine was credited with saving the lives of his platoon mates by single-handedly clearing out two enemy machine-gun nests while mortally wounded.

With valiant disregard for his own peril, he persevered, clearing out the hostile position, killing 5 Japanese, wounding another and then rejoining his platoon to report the results of his action before consenting to be evacuated, the award citation reads.

The battalion was deactivated in 1945 for six years, followed by more than a decade of noncombat deployments.

The Island Warriors fought in Vietnam from 1965 to 1969, operating out of Danang, Quang Tri and Khe Sanh, among other bases. Three of the battalions Marines were awarded Medals of Honor in separate incidents during that war all posthumously.

The battalion was deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1991, following Iraqs invasion of Kuwait.

It deployed to Afghanistan in 2005-2006, 2009 and 2010-2011 and to Iraq in 2006-2007 and 2008.

Bierman said in the memo that he would forever feel a strong bond with the men and women of the battalion, despite never serving within its ranks, because of its role in Iraq.

In 2007, I deployed with the 1/3 into the Haditha Triad shortly after the Marines and Sailors of the 2/3 broke the back of the enemy insurgency and lifted up the Iraqi people in months of sustained fighting, he wrote.

Bierman described the Island Warriors as one of the finest and most storied battalions currently in the Marine Corps.

There is every likelihood that we have not seen the last of 2/3; it may be the page is only being turned on the latest chapter, he wrote.

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'One of the finest': Marine Corps to deactivate storied Island Warriors battalion in Hawaii - Stars and Stripes

Appearing at a House Veterans Affairs Committee meeting Wednesday, Jon Stewart urged members of Congress to help Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans suffering from exposure to toxic burn pits.

We are a country that loves its veterans, or certainly would purport to, Stewart said during the virtual meeting. We support the troops, and we put on our flag pins and we stand, and they get discounts at Dennys. But the true support of having a veterans back is when they need the support.

The comedian, talk show host and activist has spent the past few years advocating on behalf of veterans suffering from burn-pit-related illnesses.

Jon Stewart testifies during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the reauthorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund in 2019. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

The phrase burn pit refers to an area of a military base devoted to open-air burning of waste, often using jet fuel as an accelerant. The U.S. military used these open-air fire pits to dispose of waste in the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many veterans say they are now suffering debilitating respiratory problems, even rare cancers, because of their exposure.

An estimated 3.5 million veterans may have been exposed to toxic fumes and carcinogens from burn pits, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Last August, VA officials announced for the first time that veterans suffering asthma, rhinitis and sinusitis who were exposed to toxic smoke would be granted presumptive benefit status, allowing them to receive medical and financial assistance without having to prove specific injury details.

Stewart said the fact that it took 15 years for the VA to grant those benefits is unacceptable.

Jon Stewart, at a press conference on Capitol Hill in 2020, calls on Congress to pass legislation to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images)

He also criticized what he called a relative lack of funding for the VAs Airborne Hazards and Burn Pits Center of Excellence, which was established in 2019.

Its funding is 6 to 7 million dollars a year, Stewart said. Just to give a perspective on that, they spend $90 million a year on Viagra.

Stewart has used his celebrity to put a spotlight on the issue. In October, he dedicated the first episode of his new Apple TV show to burn pits. It featured interviews with veterans suffering from toxic exposure as well as a sit-down with VA Secretary Denis McDonough, who told Stewart that he is frustrated by his departments slow pace of expanding benefits for them.

The biggest hurdle is establishing a scientific link, and I will be damned if I dont establish that, he said. We do operate within the context of a series of requirements, and we have not yet been able to meet the requirements.

Last June, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman, introduced bipartisan legislation that would streamline the VAs review process to recognize toxic exposure as a cost of war. The bill, the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, passed out of committee last summer but has yet to receive a full vote in the House.

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Jon Stewart urges Congress to help vets exposed to burn pits - Yahoo News

On October 1, 2019, young Iraqis took to the streets to protest corruption, ineffective government, and a lack of prospects. Initially, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdis government responded with deadly force. Iranian-backed militias fired into the crowds, killing at least 600. Crowds grew alongside Iraqis outrage at such tactics. Ultimately, Abdul-Mahdi resigned.

After several false starts, Iraqi political bosses settled on Mustafa al-Kadhimi, a former human rights researcher and journalist whom Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had appointed to lead the Iraqi National Intelligence Services (INIS) in 2016 against the backdrop of the fight against the Islamic State. For the Iraqi political elite, Kadhimi was a safe choice: He remained clean in a system where corruption predominated, had good ties with everyone from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and, at the INIS, proved himself a competent manager. As important for the political leaders who settled on Kadhimi as a transitional leader, he was boring. In a sea of flamboyant personalities, he was uncharismatic. He was also weak politically and had no permanent bloc of support in parliament.

Kadhimis authority instead rested on a mission: End Iraqs dysfunction, oversee fundamental reforms, and guide Iraq through new elections.

More than a year-and-a-half into his transitional leadership, Kadhimi failed.

Granted, the cards the system dealt him were always poor. Iraqs electoral system was long problematic. Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer and UN officials agreed to elections governed by both proportional representation and candidacy based on party lists rather than constituencies. Their goal: speed. But the long-term instability the system encouraged was obvious: candidates owed political survival to party bosses rather than accountability to constituents. As potential candidates sought to ingratiate themselves to the political bosses who would order the lists, they competed to be more ethnic chauvinist or sectarian than their peers. While Iraqis subsequently tinkered with the system to vote on a governorate rather than national basis, the same dynamic remained.

After the eruption of protests and Abdul-Mahdis resignation, President Barham Salih proposed core reforms that, if implemented, would have helped stabilize Iraq. Kadhimi did not use his bully pulpit or his moral authority to shepherd them through, however; Instead, parliamentarians elected under the old system that encouraged patronage and corruption eviscerated the reforms beyond any real meaning. Today, the same Iraqi political bosses engage in the same horse-trading that enriches and empowers themselves but abandons the Iraqis they claim to represent.

Kadhimi need not have been so weak. Even without a parliamentary bloc, he entered office at a tremendous moment with many ordinary Iraqis backing him as their last hope. At the same time, the traditional political elites backs were against the wall as the protest movement terrified them. He might have used that to his power, but Kadhimi squandered the opportunity as ambition took root. Resignation can be liberating, but Kadhimi wanted to remain. Reforms might antagonize the political leaders whose support he needed to remain in his position post-election and so rather than confront Barzani, for example, he approached him with obsequity. Rather than quash the practices that antagonize ordinary Iraqisfor example, the self-dealing and enrichment that comes with government officials rewarding themselves with land grant bonuses worth millions, Kadhimi continues the practice blind to the optics. Today, he has lost the street. Fully-geared riot police eying idle youth just outside the international zone is not a good look for a reformist.

The White House and intelligence community might appreciate Kadhimis promise to take on Iranian-backed militias but, behind the scenes, he has been nearly as permissive to them as his predecessors were. Demonstrations and even assassination attempts define redlines Kadhimi is loath to cross. The greater problem undercutting Kadhimis efforts to reign in such threats to Iraqi sovereignty is not fear, but ambition: To take on Iran too much would undercut his hope to win the approval of those political movements that Tehran backed. In effect, it was a game of charades in which rhetoric changed, but not reality.

Kadhimi says correctly that he entered office with one of the poorest hands of any recent prime minister. Abadi had focused his tenure on careful reform in order to build a base for investment and growth. Whereas in 2003, Iraq had a population of 25 million, by 2014 when he took over from Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqs population was approaching 35 million. Abadis chief of staff Naufel Alhassan warned presciently about the dangers caused by Iraqs inflated payroll and its inability to provide non-oil sector jobs.

Abdul-Mahdis team did not care. As oil prices increased, he tossed reforms out the window and handed out civil service jobs like candy. In just his single year in office, for example, his electricity minister added tens of thousands of jobs to the permanent payroll, with no sustainable way to pay for them and without any appreciable improvement in services.

Kadhimi had to scramble to make payroll in order to offset the shortfalls left him by Abdul-Mahdis incompetence, if not his teams theft. Today, Kadhimi often brags to visitors that he has increased the proportion of non-oil sector revenue, but his team tightly holds the numbers to back this claim; many Iraqi economists say it is just a line spun to assuage visiting diplomats and analysts. His government did inherit from Allawi and then release a detailed economic white paper which outlined sixty-four separate reform projects and highlighted what each ministry must do and under what timeline to achieve reform. While Kadhimi continues to pay lip service to reform, he hesitates to go further because to do so might antagonize the entrenched interests whose support he now wants as his mission shifts from reform to extending his tenure.

What saves Kadhimiand the system he headsis today not successful reform but high oil prices. Meanwhile, the population continues to grow. By 2025, Iraqi will have more than 45 million; by the end of this decade, it will surpass 50 million. There remains no real sovereign wealth fund nor reduction of the civil service to sustainable levels. Should the price of oil drop from $70 per barrel to $30, the system will crash. The question is now not if but when. Extraction of oil is becoming cheaper and new fields coming online each year. Chinas populationand thirst for oilwill soon peak given the demographic effects of more than three decades of its one-child policy. As Chinas population declines and with it the economic growth the demographic dividend brings, Beijing might also turn inward to fracking and other domestic energy sources. Nor does any of this discussion address the fact that a growing embrace of alternative energies undercuts the energy primacy that Iraq and its neighbors once enjoyed. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are all diversifying their economies; Iraqi leaders prefer to play political games for individual gain.

The events of October 2019 were a warning shot. Outrage motivated the protestors. They claimed Abdul-Mahdi as a victim but were willing to give Iraqs leaders a chance to reform. Kadhimi has now squandered that opportunity. As Iraqs population fast approaches the 50 million mark and Iraqi youth take to the streets again, they will not again accept that the problem was personality rather than system. The next revolution will be violent and will not differentiate much between parties. It will lead to a migration crisis, much like Iraqi Kurdistans kleptocracy faces, and a wholesale ouster of Iraqs current political leadership into early graves or exile. The Biden White House can continue to approach Iraqi politics like a game of musical chairs, but it is today missing the big picture.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. He also regularly teaches classes at sea about Middle East conflicts, culture, terrorism, and the Horn of Africa to deployed U.S. Navy and Marine units. You can follow him on Twitter: @mrubin1971.

Image: Reuters.

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Iraq's Dysfunction Will End in Revolution - The National Interest