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Iraq international Ali Abbas has returned to the Australian top flight.

Wellington Phoenix have signed former Newcastle Jets and Sydney FC star Ali Abbas for a return to the A-League.

The Iraq international's two-season deal completes the Phoenix's squad under new coach Darije Kalezic.

The 30-year-old Abbas already boasts 128 A-League games, having played three seasons with the Jets followed by four at Sydney FC before one-season with South Korean outfit Pohang Steelers.

Abbas, an Australian citizen, was pleased to put his disappointing Korean stint, where he barely played, behind him.

"After Korea there were many offers, a lot from home in Iraq, but I wanted to come back to the A-League," he said.

"Phoenix have many quality players, they've recruited well - I want to do something special this year."

Kalezic hailed the signing as a further sign of willingness of top-tier offshore talent to come to a new regime in Wellington.

"It hasn't always been possible in the past to attract top-quality Australian players to join us here -- that has changed," he said.

Other new signings include Australian defenders Scott Galloway and Daniel Mullen, midfielder Goran Paracki and forwards Andrija Kaludjerovic and Dario Vidosic.

Abbas joins as an injury replacement for versatile defender Louis Fenton, who will be given assistance by the Phoenix to find game time with another club. Fenton will then rejoin the Phoenix on a one-year deal from September 2018.

A technically sound player, Abbas played the first of his six internationals for Iraq at the 2007 Asian Cup and earned a recall last year in two World Cup qualifying games.

Phoenix assistant coach Rado Vidosic, who worked with Abbas at Sydney FC, is excited by what left-footed Abbas can offer down the left flank in a defensive or midfield role.

Goalkeepers: Lewis Italiano, Oliver Sail

Defenders: Andrew Durante, Marco Rossi, Scott Galloway, Tom Doyle, Daniel Mullen, Ryan Lowry, Dylan Fox, Ali Abbas (injury replacement)

Midfielders: Gui Finkler, Michael McGlinchey, Goran Paracki, Matthew Ridenton, Alex Rufer, James McGarry, Sarpreet Singh

Forwards: Andrija Kaludjerovic, Dario Vidosic, Roy Krishna, Hamish Watson, Adam Parkhouse, Logan Rogerson

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Iraq international Ali Abbas joins Wellington Phoenix - ESPN FC

As US-led strikes in Syria and Iraq continue to cause massive civilian deaths, the past is a warning about whitewashing the pain and suffering caused by foreign interventions.

These days, when people talk about Iraq, they tend to conjure up the same mental images that have been pressed home by a careless mainstream media. Iraq is not the country of thousands of years of history, culture and civilizational progress, it is the country of so-called IS terrorists, also known as Daesh. Iraq is the country of jaw-droppingly corrupt politicians. Iraq is the country of sectarian Shia jihadists, who are no better than IS themselves. Iraq is a country on the verge of disintegration, with the Kurds making yet another bid for independence next month.

What the media often overlooks and forgets are Iraqs most important assets that will determine the success or failure of its future Iraqi children. Where children are mentioned, it is often as a number or a figure to be added to the unending stream of emotionally detached statistics. They are also often used for propaganda purposes, or in academic papers designed to absolve the West of its war guilt and the decimation of generations of Iraqis during a historical epoch that can only be termed as the Iraqi Holocaust.

Cherry-picking facts to suit an agenda

In July of this year, two academics from the London School of Economics drew some wild conclusions from a set of reports jointly produced by a collaborative effort between the United Nations and the post-2003 invasion Iraqi Ministry of Health. According to Professor Tim Dyson and Dr Valeria Cetorelli from the London School of Economics, the claim that 550,000 Iraqi children died as a result of US-led and UN-sponsored sanctions was a spectacular lie.

Massive infant mortality in Iraq resulting directly from Western military intervention, sanctions, imperialism and simple base greed is not a spectacular lie at all. What is spectacular is how little context is provided in the research paper, and how little care and attention is paid to the statements of senior US officials at the time, indicating that such needless and wanton killing of children actually occurred.

Dyson and Cetorelli appeared to take particular umbrage with a UNICEF report from 1999 where the 550,000 figure originated. According to the researchers, the regime of former president Saddam Hussein inserted their own researchers into the data collection process, expertly manipulated statistics, successfully deceiving UNICEF researchers and the entire planet along with them, and this lie was not uncovered until after the illegal invasion in 2003.

What the researchers fail to clarify is why researchers employed by the toppled Baathist regime were less trustworthy than researchers employed by the Iraqi health ministry operating under the direct tutelage of the US occupation forces? Dyson and Cetorelli categorically fail to consider how the data may have been affected by people working under US occupation and who may have had an inherent bias towards anything the old regime did good or bad. As the military governors of the new Iraq, the US and its collaborators had an interest in skewing facts to blame a regime that could no longer voice dissent or offer up a defence.

Secondly, the researchers fail to acknowledge admissions made by senior US officials at the time, officials who oversaw the sanctions regime that proved so deadly to Iraqis of all kinds, especially children.

In an Emmy award-winning segment for CBS 60 Minutes show in 1996, veteran reporter Lesley Stahl interviewed then-US secretary of state Madeleine Albright about the sanctions regime. The segment, broadcast years before the UNICEF report that is now being doubted, showed Stahl asking Albright if it was worth imposing sanctions that led to the deaths of half-a-million children in Iraq, adding that the figure was higher than the number of Japanese children that died when the US dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Albrights response was not a denial, but simply, cruelly and coldly, We think the price is worth it.

Whitewashing Western war guilt

What one must really bear in mind is that Albright did not dismiss the astronomical figure of Iraqi deaths, or even deny that they were inaccurate. Albright, who had access to the intelligence assessments of multiple world-leading intelligence agencies including the CIA did nothing to detract from the reporters assertions, or even to deny them outright, but responded to the question candidly and revealingly, showing that the figures at the time when the interview was conducted were likely accurate.

Rather than engage with these realities and the fact that the West, led by the United States, is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children over a period of six years in the 1990s, these LSE academics decided to attack a single report. They did not deem it necessary to consider other sources of data that supported the figures cited by the report, despite alluding to the fact that even former British prime minister Tony Blair referenced the report in 2010.

Again, these are not average members of the public who have limited access to intelligence assessments and reports, primarily relying on open source data. When these senior Western officials and world leaders cite these reports or say that it was worth killing half-a-million children, they do so whilst having access to some of the most advanced assessments produced by some of the worlds most cutting-edge intelligence agencies.

Such a narrow selective use of data demonstrates that Iraqi infant deaths are seen as being of minor importance in the academic fact production industry that provides a handy shield for Western war criminals to hide behind. This gives the impression that no one really cares, as long as the Western conscience is absolved of any guilt, and as long as the victims of these criminal acts are non-Western children, mere numbers to debate over rather than to despair over.

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How the West whitewashes killing children in Iraq - TRT World

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 21, 2017, 12:00 PM CDT

In a bid to increase oil revenues and possibly setting the stage for its own benchmark crude grade, Iraq has told customers it may change the way it prices Basra crude for the Asian market, Reuters reported on Monday, quoting a letter by Iraqs state oil marketing company SOMO it had seen.

According to SOMOs letter, the company is asking customers for input regarding a plan to change the Basra crude pricing for Asia to Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME) Oman futures beginning next year, dropping the average of Oman and Dubai quotes by S&P Global Platts.

In an effort to realize the intrinsic value of our crude exports to Asia as to be in alignment with the recent market perception, we are contemplating a change of the current pricing formula for the Asian market, Reuters quoted SOMOs letter as saying. The letter is dated August 20 and asks for feedback from customers by August 31.

If implemented, the change would concern the pricing of around 2 million bpd of Iraqs exports to Asia, nearly two-thirds of the daily Iraqi exports from the southern port of Basra.

While it is planning a possible pricing change for Asia, Iraq is not expected to alter the pricing to Europe and the U.S. in which it uses the Dated Brent and the Argus Sour Crude Index (ASCI), respectively. Related:Qatar Aims To Ease Its Reliance On LNG Exports

The Iraqi plan is also seen as a breakaway move from the leading Middle Eastern exporter, Saudi Arabia, whose official selling prices (OSP)using S&P price assessments for decades--are usually followed by the other main producers in the region.

Middle Eastern crude benchmarks currently dont include Iraqi crude grades, and this could be one of the reasons for Iraq studying a change.

The Iraqis probably want to get in on the game of being a benchmark grade, a Singapore-based oil trader told Reuters.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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In Breakaway Move From Saudis, Iraq May Change Oil Pricing - OilPrice.com

Some of the best news to come from the Middle East in a long time is the recent and long-overdue improvement in relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It started in February, when Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir visited Baghdadthe first such visit since 1990and continued with a number of subsequent contacts, including a meeting between Iraqi Interior Minister Qasim al-Araji and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) on July 19. Most striking of all was when Iraqs Shiite firebrand cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, traveled to Riyadh for high level talks on improving bilateral ties with the Saudis on July 31.

As an Iraqi leader, Sadr has typically taken a hard nationalistand sometimes even Shiite chauvinistline. And although his relationship with Tehran is complicated owing to his independent power base and occasional appeal to a sense of Iraqi patriotism, he has been a critical Iranian ally for most of the post-Saddam Hussein era. His militia, Saraya al-Salam, continues to receive extensive support from Irans Revolutionary Guard. For all those reasons, his meeting with the Saudis, Irans traditional Arab Sunni nemesis, was a surprise, to say the least.

Although still at an early stage, these meetings have raised the possibility of Saudi willingness to support war-ravaged Iraq, ease commerce and communications between the two countries, and re-open the massive pipelines that run through the Kingdom from Iraq to the Red Seabuilt during the Iran-Iraq War but closed after Saddams 1990 invasion of Kuwait. They also raise the prospect of meaningful Sunni political participation in post-ISIS Iraq.

From the perspective of the United States (and Iraq), this can only be good news. Washington has been trying in vain since 2003 to convince the Saudis and other Gulf states that they have a vital role to play in Iraqs stability and geopolitical realignment, and that dissing the Iraqis would simply drive the countrys Shiites into the arms of the Iranians and its Sunnis into the arms of terrorist

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How Saudi Arabia Is Stepping Up in Iraq - Foreign Affairs

Iraqi security forces launched on Sunday an offensive to take back the city of Tal Afar, their next objective in the U.S.-backed campaign to defeat Islamic State militants, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said.

"You either surrender, or die," Abadi said in a televised speech announcing the offensive, addressing the militants.

A longtime stronghold of hardline Sunni insurgents, Tal Afar, 50 miles (80 km) west of Mosul, was cut off from the rest of the Islamic State-held territory in June.

The city is surrounded by Iraqi government troops and Shi'ite volunteers in the south, and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in the north.

About 2,000 battle-hardened militants remain in the city, according to U.S. and Iraqi military commanders.

They are expected to put up a tough fight, even though intelligence from inside the city indicates they have been exhausted by months of combat, aerial bombardments, and by the lack of fresh supplies.

Hours before Abadi's announcement, the Iraqi air force dropped leaflets over the city telling the population to take their precautions. "Prepare yourself, the battle is imminent and the victory is coming, God willing," they read.

Islamic State's self-proclaimed "caliphate" effectively collapsed last month, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces completed the takeover of the militants' capital in Iraq, Mosul, after a nine-month campaign.

But parts of Iraq and Syria remain under its control, including Tal Afar, a city with a pre-war population of about 200,000.

Tal Afar experienced cycles of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has produced some of Islamic State's most senior commanders.

Waves of civilians have fled the city and surrounding villages under cover of darkness over the past weeks, although several thousand are estimated to remain, threatened with death by the militants who have held a tight grip there since 2014.

Residents who left Tal Afar last week told Reuters the militants looked exhausted.

"(Fighters) have been using tunnels to move from place to place to avoid air strikes," said 60-year-old Haj Mahmoud, a retired teacher. "Their faces looked desperate and broken."

The main forces taking part in the offensive are the Iraqi army, Federal Police and the elite U.S.-trained Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), Iraqi commanders told Reuters.

Shi'ite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), some of which are trained and armed by Iran, said they will also take part in the battle. Their involvement is likely to worry Turkey, which claims an affinity with the area's predominantly ethnic Turkmen population.

The U.S.-led coalition said over the past days it had carried out dozens of air strikes on Tal Afar, targeting weapons depots and command centers, in preparation for the ground assault.

"Intelligence gathered shows clearly that the remaining fighters are mainly foreign and Arab nationals with their families and that means they will fight until the last breath," Colonel Kareem al-Lami, from the Iraqi army's 9th Division, told Reuters earlier this week.

But Lami said Tal Afar's open terrain and wide streets will allow tanks and armored vehicles easy passage. Only one part of Tal Afar, Sarai, is comparable to Mosul's Old City, where Iraqi troops were forced to advance on foot through narrow streets moving house-to-house in a battle that resulted in the near total destruction of the historic district.

The United Nation's International Organization for Migration (IOM), estimates that about 10,000 to 40,000 people are left in Tal Afar and surrounding villages. Aid groups say they are not expecting a huge civilian exodus as most the city's former residents have already left.

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Iraq starts offensive to take back Tal Afar from Islamic State - CNBC