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Iraq's F-16IQ Viper fighter jets armed with laser-guided bombs have become the country's most reliable platforms for carrying out airstrikes against ISIS terrorists, according to the Pentagon. This is at least in part due to a shortage of spare parts for Iraq's Russian-made Mi-28 Havoc and Mi-35 Hind attack helicopters as a result of the war in Ukraine. U.S. and Iraqi authorities are now also looking into the possibility of modernizing the F-16IQ's notoriously limited air-to-air capabilities.

The new details about the Iraqi F-16IQ fleet, as well as its other fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, are contained in a routine report published yesterday jointly by the Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The information about the Vipers is particularly significant given that there were real questions about whether this fleet was at risk of effectively ceasing to exist two years ago.

"Iraqs F-16s continue to be the most reliable shooting platform," according to the report. Iraq "did not use Russian produced Mi-28 or Mi-35 attack helicopters, its Chinese-produced CH-4 armed UAS, or its Czech-produced L-159 light fighters" for strikes, at least against ISIS, between January 1 and March 31, 2023, it adds.

The video below shows Mi-28s and Mi-35s in use circa 2017 during the Battle of Mosul.

Iraq's fleet of 34 F-16IQs a mix of single and two-seat versions are "66 percent mission capable" and "the Iraqi Air Force (IqAF) [can] adequately perform air-to-ground missions with current parts and personnel on hand," the report continues. "Russian-made aircraft in the ISF fleet remain in disrepair due to the inability to acquire parts because of the sanctions related to the war in Ukraine."

Another joint Inspectors General report released earlier this year revealed that Iraq was contending with a shortage of parts for its Mi-17 armed transport helicopters that were also linked to Russia's war in Ukraine. At that time, U.S. officials also disclosed that there were plans in the works to replace those and other helicopters in Iraqi service with new American-made types, as you can read more about here.

The report released yesterday does not elaborate on what issues might be impacting the use of the Chinese CH-4 drones or Czech L-159 light jets. There is no discussion at all about the status of Iraq's Soviet-era Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack jets. There have been reports since 2019 that Iraqi personnel have had trouble operating and maintaining the CH-4s, and that various customers around the world have been less than pleased with the performance of these uncrewed aircraft.

When it comes to the F-16IQs, a 66-percent mission-capable rate is impressive. The U.S. Air Force's publicly disclosed mission capable rate percentages for its F-16C/D Vipers typically hover between the high 60s and the low 70s. However, it is important to note that private contractors continue to be essential for maintaining Iraq's Vipers. Disruption in that support in 2021, when Lockheed Martin withdrew maintenance contractors due to a spike in violence, was a key contributor to fears that the jets would quickly become completely unflyable.

The Inspectors General report also makes clear that Iraqi F-16IQ pilots remain heavily dependent on help from the U.S.-led coalition, officially known as Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), to actually execute strikes on ISIS targets.

"CJTF-OIR reported that the JOC-I [Joint Operations Command-Iraq in Baghdad] conducted an independent strike on February 12 with no support from Coalition resources, using an F-16 to target a suspected ISIS fighter in Salah ad Din province with six precision guided bombs," the report says. "This was the fourth airstrike that the ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] conducted entirely without Coalition support; the first occurred in September 2022. CJTF-OIR said that Coalition advisors enabled all other Iraqi strikes through ISR observation, verbal direction to targets, and terminal guidance of guided munitions."

The report adds that all of the Iraqi F-16IQ strikes were carried out using either 2,000-pound GBU-10/B or 500-pound GBU-12/B Paveway II series laser-guided bombs. Iraq's Cessna AC-208 aircraft and Eurocopter EC635 helicopters also conducted a number of strikes during the reporting period using AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided missiles and 7.62x51mm machine gun pods, respectively.

The current significance of Iraq's F-16IQs, at least according to the U.S. government, is notable for a number of reasons. The most immediate of course is the dramatic turnaround for the Iraqi Vipers, the fate of which seemed somewhat uncertain in recent years.

"On February 5, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Baghdad for a series of talks with Iraqi officials on energy, stability, and food security in view of the Ukraine conflict," the newly released joint Inspectors General report notes. "Lavrov discussed Iraqi debts owed to Russian oil companies, which Iraq is withholding due to U.S. sanctions placed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. ... On February 23, Iraq voted in favor of a UN resolution calling for a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in Ukraine."

Other foreign operators of Russian fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters now look to be moving toward acquiring Western types in light of the state of Russia's defense industry as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. In response, Western companies, such as Bell in the United States, have been reorienting their product lines to be better positioned to meet this new market demand.

The new Inspectors General report also, if indirectly, highlights how Iraq's F-16IQs are the country's main tool for policing its own airspace at present. This reality is perhaps newly relevant given a series of Turkish airstrikes targeting Kurdish groups in Iraq last year, including one that killed eight civilians in July 2022, according to local officials.

The U.S. government's decision to supply F-16s of any kind to Iraq was controversial from the beginning and ultimately went ahead in the early 2010s with the understanding that the capabilities of those aircraft would be significantly limited. This was particularly pronounced when it came to the jets' air-to-air capabilities, with only older AIM-9L/M Sidewinder and AIM-7M Sparrow missiles being provided along with them.

"The AIM-7 air-to-air missiles for use on Iraqs F-16s are at a point of concern because of the lack of replacements or repair vendors for their Continuous Wave Illuminators, which guide the munition to its target," according to the Inspectors General report published yesterday. Now, the U.S. Office of Security Coooperation-Iraq (OSC-I) "is exploring a way to fill this potential capability gap."

While the newer AIM-9X variant of the Sidewinder is still in production, there do not appear to be any producers left of new AIM-7s. The RIM-7 Sea Sparrow surface-to-air version is still in production, but there may be different pressures on that particular supply chain due to plans to send those missiles to Ukraine. European missile conglomerate MBDA also still produces versions of Aspide, a Sparrow derivative, but again primarily for ground-launched and sea-based use.

Altogether, the most readily available replacement for the AIM-7 on the F-16 could be a variant of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). This was, of course, one of the newer missiles the U.S. government explicitly decided against supplying to the Iraqis with the F-16IQs more than a decade ago. There were concerns at the time that arming Iraq's Vipers with AIM-120s, as well as AIM-9Xs, could upset regional power balances and might present technical security risks, especially because of the country's close ties to Iran.

Whether the current global geopolitical climate leads U.S. officials to change their views on all of this regard remains to be seen, as well as what other alternatives to the AIM-7 for the F-16IQs they might explore.

Whatever might be in store for Iraq's F-16IQs in the coming years, the aircraft seem to have found new significance thanks in part to the fallout from Russia's war on Ukraine. On top of that, there are signs that the jets' newfound importance to Iraq's overall national security posture may now grow further still in the future.

Read the rest here:
Iraq's F-16 Fleet Surges In Importance Thanks In Part To War In ... - The War Zone

News last week from Iraq Oil Ministry sources that the first stage of a gas processing facility at the Halfaya oil field is now expected to come online ahead by early 2024, ahead of schedule, is crucial for the countrys future in three respects. First, it will go some way to appeasing repeated U.S. calls for Iraq to end its energy dependence on neighbouring pariah state, Iran. Second, it bodes well for progress on the similar gas capture projects that are part of the four-part US$27 billion deal with Frances TotalEnergies. And third, it highlights that there is still scope for the West to engage in future oil and gas projects in southern Iraq at least, despite Chinas increasing presence there.

Halfaya is one of Iraqs major oil fields, located south-east of Amara in the Maysan province, around 185 kilometres from the southern oil export hub of Basra. With an estimated 4.1 billion barrels of crude oil reserves in place, the current (third and final) phase of the oil development plan is to increase production capacity from 370,000 barrels a day (bpd) to 470,000 bpd. Alongside the oil is associated gas and it is the capture of this rather than just flaring it off that the partners in the field are now addressing. The lead operator of the entire Halfaya project is PetroChina, the parent company of China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Corporation (CPECC), with a 45 percent stake. It was CPECC that in 2019 was awarded the project to capture gas associated with oil at Halfaya. The other partners in the overall Halfaya field are TotalEnergies (with a 22.5 percent stake), Malaysias national oil company Petronas (22.5 percent), and Iraqs state owned Missan Oil Company (10 percent). The plan for the gas project is to capture and process at least 300 million standard cubic feet per day (scf/d).

Related: In A World First, California Bans New Diesel Truck Sales From 2036

Iraq has for a long time been promising to do utilise its abundant associated gas supplies to provide electricity for its power grid, in the first instance, and then to monetise it through exports at some point after that, rather than just burning it off. Baghdad some time ago signed up to the United Nations and World Bank Zero Routine Flaring initiative, aimed at ending by 2030 the routine flaring of gas produced during the drilling of oil. At the time, Iraq flared the second largest quantity of gas in the world (after Russia) some 17.37 billion cubic metres (bcm). To date, not much has changed in these figures. In practical terms, this has meant that Iraq has remained dependent on Iran for around 40 percent of its electricity supplies, provided both directly from Iran and through huge imports of gas by Iraq.

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This has been a constant source of extreme tension between Iraq and the U.S., and has led to the Baghdad Ballet, as analysed in my new book onthe new global oil market order. This was characterised by whoever was Iraqi prime minister at the time going to Washington every year to ask for money to bail out its perennially-beleaguered budget, in exchange for which he would ensure that Iraq would end its energy dependence on Iran. Washington would then send billions of dollars to Iraq, whereupon Iraq would continue to import exactly the same amount or more electricity and gas from Iran as ever. The fanciest moves in the Baghdad Ballet came from the ultra-smooth Mustafa al-Kadhimi. He had danced the usual dance with the U.S. so well that in May 2020 Washington gave him even more money than before and the longest waiver ever given 120 days to keep importing gas and electricity from Iran, on the usual proviso that Iraq stopped doing it soon. Once the money had been banked and al-Kadhimi was safely back on home territory, Iraq signed a two-year contract the longest to date with Iran to keep importing gas and electricity from it.

The U.S. has many fine qualities, but one of them is not tolerance when it is made to look stupid, so after the new gas and electricity supply deal had been signed between Iraq and Iran, the U.S. let the formidable State Department spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, out of her room, and she let fly. Not only was the next waiver to Iraq the shortest ever 30 days but also at the press conference in which it was announced, Ortagus also let it be known that the U.S. was hitting 20 Iran- and Iraq-based entities with swingeing new sanctions. She cited them as being instruments in the funnelling of money to Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) elite Quds Force, which was entirely true. She added that the 20 entities were continuing to exploit Iraqs dependence on Iran as an electricity and gas source by smuggling Iranian petroleum through the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr and money laundering through Iraqi front companies, which was also true. Washington was also extremely concerned that Iraq was continuing to act as a conduit for Iranian oil and gas supplies to make their way out into export markets in southern Europe and, in much greater volume, to Asia, especially China. This was true as well, as additionally analysed in my new book onthe new global oil market order.

China is closely involved in the Halfaya gas project, but so is TotalEnergies, which has acted since Russias invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as a vanguard European company for the Wests securing of new oil and gas supplies, along most notably with the UKs BP and Shell, and Italys Eni. These initiatives have been fully supported by the U.S. both at government and corporate levels. Perhaps the most important early deal in this context was the securing of emergency liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies from Qatar for Germany, led by the U.S., but several other major deals have followed, involving especially TotalEnergies and Eni.

The French oil and gas giants four-pronged US$27 billion deal in Iraq is perhaps the most noteworthy of these recent deals, particularly as one core element of it is to implement capture gas projects at five other supergiant southern Iraq oilfields - West Qurna 2, Majnoon, Tuba, Luhais, and Artawi. Initial comments from Iraqs Oil Ministry last year highlighted that the plant involved in this process is expected to produce 300 million scf/d and double that after a second phase of development. Iraqs then-Oil Minister, Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, also stated last year that the gas produced from this second TotalEnergies project in the south will help Iraq to cut its gas imports from Iran. Whether is intentions were genuine is now an irrelevant question anyway, as he has been superseded by Hayyan Abdulghani and his new team.

The facts that the Halfaya gas capture project is now proceeding at a pace ahead of schedule with TotalEnergies still heavily involved in it, and that the French firm very recently indicated that it would continue with its four-pronged megadeal, appear to offer hope for Western firms looking to continue their dealings under the new Oil Ministry. Aside from the gas capture deal for five of the major oil fields in Iraq, the TotalEnergies deal includes the completion of the Common Seawater Supply Project (CSSP) the most crucial element of Iraqs oil industry, which should enable it to increase its crude oil production to levels way beyond fellow OPEC member Saudi Arabia.

The CSSP involves taking and treating seawater from the Persian Gulf and then transporting it via pipelines to oil production facilities to maintain pressure in oil reservoirs to optimise the longevity and output of fields. The long-delayed plan for the CSSP is that it initially supplies around 6 million bpd of water to at least five southern Basra fields and one in Maysan Province and is then expanded for use in other fields. With its successful completion, Iraq should be able to reach its longer-term crude oil production targets of 7 million bpd, and then 9 million bpd and then perhaps 12 million bpd, as also analysed in depth in in my new book onthe new global oil market order.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

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Iraqs Giant Halfaya Gas Project May Be Finished Ahead Of Time - Yahoo Finance

When I first heard about Surviving the Long Wars, a series of art exhibitions and events that opened with a Veteran Art Triennial and Summit in March, I was both curious and skeptical. Having lived through the events of 9/11 and the structural Islamophobia that intensified in its wake, Im jaded about American portrayals of war and Muslims, and how quickly they fall into a good Muslim, bad Muslim dichotomy. I had never met anyone who was a veteran, let alone a veteran who was stationed in countries where my people came from.

But I trusted one of the co-organizers, Aaron Hughes, who put on an incredible interdisciplinary exhibit at the DePaul Art Museum in the fall that connected policing and militarism around the world, from Guantanamo Bay to Homan Square. So at the same time, I was drawn to attend, to see for myself what veteran art would evoke in me and whether it would feel like propaganda about the necessity of war or critically reflect on U.S. militarism.

I wasnt disappointed. The triennial questioned the origins and impacts of war at home and abroad by bringing together art and artists. By putting a face to the individuals creating pieces intimately linked to their identity, the exhibits moved past reflection and invited artists and attendees to make space for all the hurt that came with bringing up the displacement and violence of war.

The summit took place March 16-19 and was put together with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities Veteran fellows and the three institutions the exhibit will be housed in: the Chicago Cultural Center, Hyde Park Arts Center, and the Newberry Museum. The summit featured performances, speeches, and hands-on arts activities hosted by the artists at all three locations.

The triennial was organized by a group of artists, organizers, and academics, mostly in Chicago, who are well-versed in work and writing around the global war on terror, policing, and the American Indian wars. In addition to Aaron Hughes, an Iraqi War veteran, curator, and anti-war activist, the triennial was organized by Ronak K. Kapadia, an associate professor of Gender and Womens Studies at UIC; Therese Quinn, a professor in Museum Exhibition Studies; Joseph Lefthand, a veteran descended from the Cheyenne-Arapaho, Taos, and Zuni tribes; Amber Zora, veteran and artist from South Dakota; and Meranda Roberts, who recently co-curated the Aspaalooke Women and Warriors exhibit at the Field Museum.

In an interview with the Weekly, Ronak K. Kapadia talked about the internationalist work they were attempting to do by curating this project. It is about putting Arab, Muslim and South Asian diasporic art in conversation with the long, centuries long history of native and black led rebellion against security orders in the US.

This triennial was coming at the twenty year anniversary of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq. The advertising of the summit brought to light the two longest wars in U.S history: the American Indian Wars and the Global War on Terror. Those parallels were explored and made even more apparent throughout the weekend.

There was a palpable discomfort among the viewers of this art; forcing a reckoning about how to hold multiple truths about the war machine.

Its this particular group of people whose lives and communities have also been destroyed by the war machine, trying to have discussions about transformative conversations, healing, justice oriented conversations about the perpetrator, perpetration of violence and some mode of reconciliation or reckoning now, said Kapadia.

The second day of the exhibit, at the Hyde Park Arts Center, featured programming that captured the essence of seventeen artists works while speaking to the themes being navigated during this summit. This space felt more casual than the Newberry from the day before and the Cultural Center would later. There was space to walk around, eat, and drink at your own pace; luxuries not afforded as readily in the more policed arts spaces downtown.

Mahwish Chisty, a visiting artist from Massachusetts who was raised in Pakistan, brought with her a series of pieces called Drone Art. Beautifying the ugliest parts of violence, she created collages in the outlines of the aerial drones used by the U.S. military in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen.

The imagery on these machines is borrowing from the truck art, which is a native tradition of Pakistani truck art culture, where trucks are painted beautifully, elaborately in bright colors, and they have this iconography mixed with text and almost universal visual symbols that require no language in some way, Chisty said during the group tour. So Im using that to show the deadliness of these machines.

The exhibit wasnt remarkable just because of the incredible art. As a fly on the wall in the room, one could expect to overhear the history of the U.S. Annexation of Native land, the Patriot Act, and policing in schools all while breaking bread and sipping a glass of wine. The threads of Chistys work, and how intimate and enmeshed surveillance is in the lives of drone victims, drew parallels to the work of June Carpenter, another exhibit artist.

Carpenter, repatriation specialist at the Field Museum, made visible the violence of the forced expulsion of Native Americans through the creation of hand embroidered shawls. The shawls contained the language of the six most egregious Supreme Court cases that set the precedent for violence against Native Americans. In one such case titled Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the Cherokee nation was deemed a domestic dependent nation, thus establishing the guardian-ward dynamic between Native nations and the American government.

This case, along with many others, set legal precedent for the ways the U.S. government received leeway to intervene in every aspect of Native life through forced separation of families and schooling. This was all portrayed in ornately embroidered woven shawls functioning almost as shrouds and expansive coverings for the abuse done by the American government. Shawls, symbols of beauty and warmth, even wealth, in Carpenters pieces are symbolic of all the covers that have allowed for American violence.

These seventeen stars that are here are the beaded stars. These are seven pointed stars, said Carpenter. They are on the Cherokee seal. And that refers to these 17,000 people, 17,000 Cherokee, who are removed from Georgia after this case was decided.

In a place like Chicago, where indigeneity is understood differently than in states like Oklahoma and South Dakota where reservations are visible and present spaces, it is not by coincidence that Native American art is less seen and visible.

While Native Americans were offered land in neighboring states, they were continuously pushed out of IL, making it one of sixteen statesand one of the furthest westto not have any reservations. This present-day fact is a reminder of the violence that went into that expulsion, and makes the organizing of groups like Chi Nations Youth Council even more significant.

As Kapadia shared, the parallels between these wars lie in the way the war machine aims to disrupt intimate spaces; an idea that many of the artists at the triennial captured.

War violence works by trying to destroy intimate intimacy, to also destroy our sense of our relationship to each other. This is a key idea in my book, which is that counterinsurgency operates by trying to destroy our sense of how we are connected to each other. And so actually, part of what our practice is doing is giving us a sense of solidarity and a sense of intimacy through difference.

Intimacy was a thread that wove together all the pieces across the city, whether through the forms themselves, or the ways artists shared stories of personal and public lives being disrupted and destroyed by war. Saba Elahi, Chicago-based artist, built off the same drone imagery as Chisty and the use of fabric as Carpenter, but instead of capturing the drone, she captured what the drone would see. By embroidering living room scenes, and intimate domestic spaces, she showed what a drone operator might see prior to falling on and destroying a family.

Outside of the context, these pieces could be seen as images of families embroidered, tender moments over a box of pizza or sitting on the couch watching nightly news. Instead, in the context of drones, its violence is even more insidious. Taking it a step further, she uses the form and technique of machine embroidery in some of her pieces to shed light on the mechanization of so much of the warfare industry, whether it be in production or practice.

There was no shortage of mediums used in this exhibit, from performance and paintings to collages, weaving, embroidery, and printmaking. Ruth Kaneko, former combat medic, created paper out of her military uniforms to honor the 38,000 Hawaiians who signed a petition refusing annexation of Hawaii by the United States. The pieces were an homage to her Hawaiian heritage and resistance ancestry, and were poignant in the way they combined form and function to deliver power.

In a tearful explanation because of the recent death of her grandmother, Kaneko explained how she came to these pieces. Both by anonymizing, but showing the sheer volume of individuals impacted by U.S forced annexation, she makes clear what it means to be from a community victimized by the war machine and a veteran.

In the early 1800s, there was 1.2 million Native Hawaiians in Hawaii. By the time that it was illegally annexed by the United States, there were 40,000 native Hawaiians left, said Ruth. So after Hawaii was illegally annexed by the United States in 1893, these women went across Hawaii and they collected 38,000 petition signatures, which basically is the entire population.

The pieces shed light on the organizing work of Native Hawaiians at the time and the power and work it took to collect signatures from all the Hawaiians left after strategic policies of displacement and erasure by the U.S. military. The art was also deeply personal for Kaneko, as her family name was one of the 38,000 featured. Her pieces, as of many Native veterans, captured the tension that I walked into the exhibit anticipating; how could we hold space for veterans and war victims? The reality of which is that war entangles itself deep into communities and there is room for the veterans in this space to share just how insidiously that happens.

In the work of Chitra Ganesh, New York-based artist, on display at the Chicago Cultural Center, we begin to see a reminder of the effect on individual lives that the war on terror had. Her soft art form in the watercolor portraits Seeing the Disappeared highlights individuals disappeared by the U.S government following 9/11 such as Fahd Gazy, a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, or Sami Al- Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian activist held under house arrest from 2008 to 2014 under Patriot Act charges. Form and medium speak especially strongly to this, as instead of stiff sharp portraits with acrylic paint, she chose to do watercolor, softening the edges and the outlines of the portraits to honor lives lost and stolen.

Each space that housed the triennial added something different to the experience. The Hyde Park Art Center was a unique space for this exhibit, miles south from the rest of the installations, in the midst of work and studios of people like Robert Paige and Malika Jackson. The culminating moment at HPAC came with the performance by Hiplito Arriaga III, GOODW.Y.N., and Hussein Smko. On the cusp of Ramadan, on jummah nonetheless, I did not expect to hear the adhan echo through the gallery room at HPAC. But the start of the performance was just that, the creation of a solemn space. From there these three movement artists captured hurt and pain, joy and solidarity, all through the lyrical ways their bodies danced and fell.

In every way the still art (a word for non movement) could not capture emotion, the performance artists delivered, tying all the pieces together with a knot.

The artwork in the Cultural Center evoked a grandeur that the arts center could not, mirroring the art in a different way. Participants walked through the Tiffany dome and the marble engraved ceilings to make their way to the gallery. The lights on Michael Rakowitz portrait-esque collages of Iraq commemorated art stolen and destroyed in Iraq, leaving space for silences, but also grandeur to capture the remains from the Assyrian northwest palace of Kalhu. These wars not only had an impact on people and bodies, but art and the space it occupies.

The pieces throughout this exhibit echo in the trauma and hurt they convey.

Very little attention [in mainstream media] to the ongoing nature of these wars, like these Indian wars never ended, said Kapadia. The War on Terror never ended, even if it was declared mission accomplished a million times. Yeah, the war permeates the lives of so many different kinds of peoples. And so I think part of Surviving the Long Wars was about attending to that not only afterlife, but the ongoing lived presence of war in lots of different kinds of peoples lives.

The exhibit invites viewers to walk away with a global sense of solidarity, a commitment to the internationalist struggle for freedom. In the same way, it can evoke a sense of powerlessness; despite the beautiful community created, these wars still go on.

As Dunya Mikhail said in one of the poems she read on the second day of the exhibit:

Their songs will not save us,

although, in the chilliest times,

they keep us warm,

and when we need to touch the soul

to know its not dead

their songs

give us that touch.

Surviving the Long Wars exhibits will remain open for a few months. Residues and Rebellions at Newberry Library until May 26; Unlikely Entanglements at the Hyde Park Art Center until July 9; Reckon and Reimagine at the Chicago Cultural Center until June 4.

Isra is an advocate at the Children and Family Justice Center and reporter with the Invisible Institute. In her free time she is reading, writing, and contemplating our role in the movement and how we can work to build a better world.

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Chicago Art Exhibit Examines Global War on 20th Anniversary of Iraq Invasion - Southside Weekly

Death of Ali Hussein Jaloud Highlights Harm of Fossil Fuels

( Human Rights Watch) Ali Hussein Jaloud, an Iraqi man barely in his 20s, died April 21 of leukemia, a disease Ali and his family attributed to the pollution from the oil production and constant gas flares that surround their community in the southern Iraqi town of Rumaila, about 50 kilometers from the port city of Basra.

Many of us around the world felt we knew Ali and suffered his death personally, having followed his story in BBC and Unearthed investigations of the human and environmental toll of fossil fuel operations in Iraq, focusing on the devastation caused by flaring.

Flaring occurs when fossil fuel companies burn off excess methane gas from oil operations rather than capturing the gas in pipelines. When burned, the powerful greenhouse gas more than 80 times more potent at global warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period is released into the atmosphere. After Russia, Iraq accounts for the most flared gas in the world.

Flaring also releases toxic pollutants known to harm human health, including benzene, a human carcinogen that can cause leukemia. An Iraq Health Ministry report leaked to the BBC attributed pollution from the oil industry, among other sources, as the cause of a 20 percent rise in cancer in Basra between 2015 and 2018, and revealed cancer cases in the region to be three times higher than publicly disclosed figures.

Iraqi government officials have acknowledged a link between the oil pollution from flaring and cancer. Iraqs former environment minister, Jassem al-Falahi, told the BBC that pollution from oil production is the main reason for increases in cancer rates in Basra. Similarly, Luay Al-Khateeb, Iraqs former oil minister, told Unearthed that unregulated oil operations in southern Iraq and poisonous gases being flared in the air are the link to rising cancer rates.

Flaring is a global crisis with clear solutions. The Iraqi government should start by moving beyond simply acknowledging the problem to enacting and enforcing tight regulations to restrict flaring, providing proper health services to impacted communities, and making polluters compensate those who have suffered, as required by Iraqi law. To address the full harm to local communities and the global climate, the government should transition away from fossil fuels.

Alis was a tragic yet predictable death. I hope in the future that these companies go away, Ali says in the film. That the emissions stop, so children can live in peace.

Via Human Rights Watch

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Iraq Gas Flaring Tied to Cancer Surge - Informed Comment

SALT LAKE CITY Choice Kinchen was among the first U.S. soldiers to cross the border into Iraq in March of 2003.

I'm sure most people would remember the statute of Saddam when he came down," he said. "I was actually around the corner. That was my 21st birthday.

The veteran went straight from high school into the military in the hopes hed be able to go to one day go to college.

I am 100 percent permanent and total," said Kinchen. "A bomb blew up in front of me in Iraq. They gave me a TBI, and a lot of people that found out, you know, they're not quite aware of what PTSD is. They think it's because I went to war, and my PTSD stems more from coming home.

He struggled for years with addiction, gambling and homelessness attempting to pursue his degree, finally returning to the University of Utah in 2018.

If I can make it out of, you know, where I dragged myself out of, then anybody can do it," said Kinchen. "So that's kind of what I want to do, is definitely help veterans realize that there is life after war.

At Thursdays commencement ceremony, Taylor Randall, U of U's president, honored the 41-year-old grad, sharing his journey of perseverance with thousands of students, families and friends.

He was able to find a new road," said Angela Brink, Office Manager at the U of U Veterans Support Center. "I've watched him go from dark to light, and that process for him to find his smile was just amazing to watch.

Kinchen plans to pursue a master's degree in social work, so in the future, he can help veterans like himself work through PTSD.

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Iraq War veteran graduates from college after battling PTSD, addiction and homelessness - FOX 13 News Utah