Archive for the ‘Iraq’ Category

Billions Spent and a Million Dead: The Iran-Iraq War Was An Enormous Waste Of Everything – Yahoo News

Key Point:Neither country came anywhere near achieving even the most modest of its war aims.

The world awoke to ominous news on September 22, 1980. Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein had launched a massive armored and air attack across the Iraq-Iran border. Believing that his Islamic fundamentalist neighbor to the east had been weakened by the ongoing revolutionary turmoil that in February 1979 had toppled the Shah, Hussein was confident that his forces would win a lightning victory and restore long-disputed territory to Iraqi control. Such a victory, not incidentally, would put Hussein at the forefront of a resurgent Middle Eastern pan-Arabism.

Among the causes of the warthe ruthless ambition of Saddam Hussein; ongoing disputes over control of the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway, a shipping lane formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that created the southern borders of both countries; the struggle for dominance in the Persian Gulf regionthe overriding issue was a centuries-old dispute regarding sovereignty over oil-rich Khuzestan Province in southwestern Iran. Khuzestan was the ancient home of the empire of Elam, an independent, non-Semitic, non-Indo-European-speaking kingdom whose territory spanned almost all of present-day southwestern Iran. Khuzestan had been attacked and occupied many times by various Arab kingdoms of Mesopotamia, the precursors of modern-day Iraq.

A Centuries-Old Rivalry

The rivalry between Mesopotamia and Persia had lasted for centuries. Before the Ottoman Empire, Iraq was part of Persia. This changed when Murad IV annexed Iraq from the weakening Safavids of Persia in 1638, making it the easternmost province of the Ottoman Empire. Border disputes between Persia and the Ottomans persisted. Between 1555 and 1918 Persia and the Ottomans signed 18 different treaties delineating their disputed borders.

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Billions Spent and a Million Dead: The Iran-Iraq War Was An Enormous Waste Of Everything - Yahoo News

Iraq: Calls for ending assassination and kidnapping of activists – Middle East Monitor

Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights called on Friday for the Interior Ministry to put an end to the assassination and kidnapping of activists protesting against the government and its politicians, Anadolu Agency reports.

This came during a meeting in Parliament, with the presence of interior minister, Yassin Al-Yasseri, and commissioner of the High Commission for Human Rights, Aqeel Al-Mosawi.

A statement issued by the commission announced that during the meeting, Al-Mosawi demanded that the security services should protect the protesters, the protest squares and guarantee safety and freedom of expression.

Al-Mosawi also called for the interior minister to put an end to the repeated assassination and kidnapping crimes against the protesters and media activists, as well as to prosecute the perpetrator of these crimes.

Read: Iraqs top Shia cleric condemns killings, kidnappings of protesters

The commissioner stressed on the importance of disclosing the findings of the investigations into these incidents and crimes as soon as possible.

Protesters and activists in the country have been subjected to a harsh crackdown by the security services and lethal attacks by Shia militia. The government has repeatedly pledged to prosecute the perpetrators, but have yet failed to do so.

Since October, there have been unprecedented protests in the country, where 496 protesters have been killed and over 17,000 others wounded, Anadolu Agency reported.

Read: Sistani calls for early elections to avoid chaos and infighting in Iraq

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Iraq: Calls for ending assassination and kidnapping of activists - Middle East Monitor

Calgary father accused of hiding kidnapped daughter in Iraq released on bail – CBC.ca

The Calgary father accused of kidnapping his daughter and hiding her with family in Iraq has been released on bail.

Ali Al Aazawi, 38, is chargedwithinternational kidnapping and parental abduction.

The submissions made during the bail hearing by prosecutor Stephen Johnston and defence lawyer Balfour Der are protected by a publication ban.

The ban includes provincial court Judge Josh Hawkes's reasons for releasing Al Aazawi.

Throughout civil court proceedings, several Calgary judges attempted to place conditionson Al Aazawi in an effort to facilitate the child's return to Canada, which have been unsuccessful.

In June 2018, Al Aazawi took his 12-year-old daughter,Zahraa, to Egypt and then to Iraq, where he left her with family.

He and the child's mother, Zanaib Mahdi, had an agreement that following a three-month trip overseas, Zahraa was to be returned to her mother in September.

It has been a year-and-a-half since Mahdi has seen her daughter.

In 2012, court documents show Mahdisought an emergency protection order, alleging her husband physically and psychologically abused her.

Mahdi told police at the time that Al Aazawihad broken her nose and finger, burned her shoulder and had once given her a black eye.

Al Aazawi, 38, was also charged withcivil contempt but that was dismissed in Octoberby Court of Queen's Bench Justice DavidLabrenz, who found the father complied, to the best of his ability, with an order detailing steps to be taken to get the girl back to Canada.

So far, Al Aazawihas disclosed the location of one of his passports andhis daughter's passport. He has also told authorities his daughter is living with his wife and his sister in Baghdadand has signed atravel consent document.

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Calgary father accused of hiding kidnapped daughter in Iraq released on bail - CBC.ca

I Will Visit Your Grave When I Go to Iraq – The New York Times

Iraqis have been protesting since early October against the dysfunctional and corrupt political system installed by the United States after the 2003 occupation. Unlike previous waves of protests that began in 2011, this protest was spontaneous and not organized by any party.

The most common and passionate slogan throughout these protests has been, We want a homeland. It reflected the anger and alienation Iraqis felt toward a political class beholden to external influence (Iran and the United States) and oblivious to its peoples demands.

The regimes brutal suppression and killing of peaceful protesters fueled Iraqis anger, widening and intensifying the protests and strikes across Iraq. It also radicalized the tone and demands of protesters who have been calling for an overhaul of the entire system, rather than cosmetic change. The resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi on Nov. 29 did nothing to quiet the protesters. And the regimes violence continues unabated.

More than 500 protesters have been killed. I try to find out their names and catch a glimpse of their faces. I cant keep up. Death seizes them in a flash and delivers their bodies to the darkness of the grave. But it also illuminates their names, faces and life stories, making them ever more familiar to those of us who are viscerally connected to Iraq, whether we live there or in a distant country.

I did know Safa al-Sarray, a 26-year-old aspiring poet and amateur artist, very well. He wrote to me nine years ago on social media about one of my novels. We kept corresponding. I loved his wit and sense of humor, and his insightful posts about life and politics in Iraq.

Safa was a precocious, passionate young man and a voracious reader, particularly of poetry. He grew up in a large working-class family in Baghdad. His father had died when he was quite young. He worked hard three days a week as a construction worker and porter while studying at the University of Technology in Baghdad to make ends meet and to support his family.

In 2011, a wave of protests against the corruption and sectarianism of the Iraqi regime swept through the country. Safa, who was 18 at the time, joined his compatriots seeking change. He was at the forefront of every single wave of protests in the years that followed. Despite being harassed and detained several times, he would be back on the street for the next protest.

I worried about him and would check on him every time protests broke out to make sure he was safe. We are staying here in Tahrir, he would write, referring to Tahrir Square in central Baghdad, where the protesters have been gathering. He knew the dangers he faced. He once wrote to me wondering when he might meet the gratuitous death waiting for me in my homeland. He loved Iraq and would go to sleep at night thinking of what he could do to change it.

I met Safa for the first time in February at the Baghdad Book Fair. He came to my book signing and was as charming and charismatic in person. We met again for breakfast on my last day in Baghdad. Safa had an undergraduate degree in computer networking, but like hundreds of thousands of young Iraqis, he couldnt find employment in his field.

Over breakfast he told me that hed recently started working as an ardhahalchi, or a scribe, writing letters and filling out forms for citizens going before courts. He would set up his chair and table every morning outside a courthouse in Baghdad. Were there any interesting stories that you came across? I asked. It is just a traffic court, he said with a smile. The letters he had to write were quite prosaic, mostly about mundane accidents or transfer of ownership.

Safa was 26, but he was using a cane and grimaced with pain when he moved. He spoke of the pain killers he was taking and the costly physical therapy. During the protests in the summer of 2018 he had received messages on social media from regime thugs warning him to stay away. He ignored them at first. A few days later plainclothes security personnel detained him and tortured him to extract information on other protesters. He said that the memory of his mother, Thanwa, and her strength helped him withstand the pain and remain steadfast in moments of weakness.

He was very close to Thanwa, who died of cancer in 2017, and wrote about her suffering and resilience. He called himself Thanwas Son. Shifting the emphasis away from the patrilineal to the matrilineal was an act of poetic resistance against social norms.

Safa was fiercely independent and critical of the intellectual elite and the media personalities who had betrayed the protesters, hijacked previous protests and made back-room deals with political parties.

He was an aspiring poet, an artist. He donated the money from his art to an orphanage. His heart was a garden for all. I have been thinking of some verses he wrote: Peoples sadness is my sadness/Their feasts are mine/Let the wellspring of my life flow onto their deserts/These flowers in my soul are gardens of people.

When the Iraqi uprising began in October, Safa was at the forefront once again. He recited poetry and urged protesters to remain peaceful but never give up.

On Oct. 28 I messaged Safa: I heard you were injured. Let me know youre O.K. There was no response. A tear-gas canister fired intentionally and directly at the crowds by the riot police had pierced his head while he was protesting peacefully in Tahrir Square. He was taken to the hospital. He died a few hours later. I cried when I saw the footage of his coffin circling the square, surrounded by fellow protesters bidding farewell to a hero.

Some years ago, I wrote a poem about those who die for freedom and justice. I never thought that I was writing it prematurely for my friend.

Martyrs do not go to paradiseThey leaf through the heavenly bookeach in their own wayas a birda staror a cloudThey appear to us every dayand cryfor uswe, who are stillin this hell they tried to extinguishwith their blood.

A few weeks ago, I saw a photograph of a white dove perched on the coffin of one of those murdered by the regime near Tahrir Square. Was that you, Safa?

I will visit your grave when I go to Iraq, but I know that you are not only there. Your face is on so many walls, banners, T-shirts, and your spirit is everywhere. Your brothers and sisters, Thanwas children, are still fighting for the new Iraq you dreamed of and loved.

Sinan Antoon (@sinanantoon) is the author, most recently, of the novel The Book of Collateral Damage.

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I Will Visit Your Grave When I Go to Iraq - The New York Times

Rabban Hormizd Monastery in Iraq: Christian temple survives centuries of upheaval, but threat from ISIS is still felt – CBS News

For our series World of Worship, we sent correspondents around the globe to show us how different people celebrate their faith and honor religious traditions. In our first report, we head to the Middle East.

In recent years, Iraq has suffered terrible violence, often inflamed by religious differences. But in a country where worship can come at a heavy cost, CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata discovered an unlikely oasis hidden in the mountains: an ancient Christian monastery.

The Rabban Hormizd Monastery, one of the oldest of its kind in the world, was founded almost 1,400 years ago. Carved into and out of the very rock on which it rests, the temple overlooks the vast plains of northern Iraq.

Its namesake, Rabban Hormizd, traveled from Persia. He lived as a hermit for almost 30 years, living an austere life of isolation in the network of caves that push deep into the mountainside. Over time, more monks made the pilgrimage, settling in its labyrinth.

"Christians are an important part of the community here in Iraqi Kurdistan," said 21-year-old Miriam Salih, who traveled to the monastery with other Iraqi history students. "They've been here for thousands of years."Over the centuries, the monastery has been more than a house of worship. It's been a sanctuary, a safe place in a region that has had more than its fair share of upheaval. The Mongols, the Kurds, the Ottomans and the Turks all overran the territory at one point or another, yet it somehow survived.

But the biggest threat came in modern times. When ISIS rampaged throughout the region in 2014, the Islamic extremists targeted anything to do with Christianity. Churches that stood for centuries were ruined in a matter of seconds. When ISIS overran nearby Mosul, tens of thousands of terrified Christians fled, escaping to other Christian towns in the region. At one point, the terrorist group was just a 10-minute drive away from the Christian town of Alqosh that sits at the base of the mountain. They never made it any closer, but the threat is still felt today.

At the monastery, an armed bodyguard follows the priest everywhere. The head monk, Father Denha Toma, knows they have to plan for the worst. He was in Mosul when ISIS invaded five years ago. "What do you think ISIS would have done if they had reached this place?" D'Agata asked Toma.

"Wherever they saw a cross they smashed it," he said. "They erased any traces of Christianity. Even the Virgin Mary there used to be a statue of her. They chopped the head off and left the rest of the statue standing there. If they had reached here, they would have certainly destroyed this monastery."

Before the U.S.-led invasion, the insurgency and ISIS, there were around 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. There are now barely 250,000. In fact there are now more Chaldean Catholics, the most followed denomination among Iraqi Christians, in the United States than in Iraq.

The regional Archbishop recently described Christianity in Iraq as being "perilously close to extinction," which means one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in existence now remains on a cliff-edge.

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Rabban Hormizd Monastery in Iraq: Christian temple survives centuries of upheaval, but threat from ISIS is still felt - CBS News