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Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry held on Tuesday a meeting with foreign ministers of Jordan and Iraq in Cairo, within the framework of the tripartite cooperation mechanism that brings together the three countries.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ahmed Abou Zeid said that the meeting, which was held on the sidelines of Cairos hosting of the meeting of the Arab Liaison Committee on Syria, constitutes an important platform for joint efforts aimed at strengthening the mechanisms of economic cooperation between the three countries in various fields.

It is an opportunity for consultation and coordination on various regional and international issues of common interest, in order to preserve the unity of the Arab world and maintain the security and stability of the countries and peoples of the region.

The meeting was a good opportunity to follow up on cooperation and strategic integration projects between the three countries.

Abou Zeid revealed that the foreign ministers of the three countries agreed to hold a follow-up meeting on the sidelines of the high-level meetings of the UN General Assembly in New York next September, in order to accurately determine the executive position of joint cooperation projects and provide the necessary support and facilities to facilitate their implementation on the ground.

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Cairo hosts tripartite cooperation mechanism meeting between ... - Daily News Egypt

AIFF Media Team NEW DELHI:The Indian senior men's team have been drawn against Iraq in the semi-final of the 49th King's Cup 2023 after the draw ceremony was conducted by the Football Association of Thailand on Wednesday, August 16, 2023.

The match will take place at the 700th Anniversary Stadium in Chiang Mai, Thailand on September 7, 2023. Thailand will take on Lebanon in the other semi-final later on the same day.

The winners of the 49th King's Cup 2023 semi-finals will contest the final on September 10. The losers will meet in the third-place play-off.

As per the draw mechanics, Iraq (as the highest FIFA-ranked team - 70th) and Thailand (as hosts and ranked 113th) were placed in separate match-ups, and drawn against the remaining two teams - India, ranked 99th, and Lebanon, ranked 100th.

India's last meeting with Iraq was a 0-2 defeat in a friendly in Baghdad in 2010.

It will be India's fourth participation in the King's Cup in Thailand, with the most recent one coming in 2019, where the Blue Tigers went down to Curaao in the semi-final before beating hosts Thailand 1-0 for the bronze medal. India also won bronze in their first appearance in the tournament in 1977, defeating the likes of South Korea, Singapore and Indonesia. In 1981, India were eliminated in the group stage.

49th King's Cup 2023 Draw Result: Iraq vs India (16:00 IST, September 7, 2023) Thailand vs Lebanon (19:00 IST, September 7, 2023) Third-place play-off (16:00 IST, September 10, 2023) Final (19:00 IST, September 10, 2023)

All matches will take place at the 700th Anniversary Stadium in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

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India to meet Iraq in 49th King's Cup 2023 - AIFF

DUHOK, Iraq

An Ezidi man, who fled from the Sinjar district of Mosul, Iraq, nine years ago due to the Daesh/ISIS terror groups occupation of the region and settled in a refugee camp in Duhok province, makes a musical instrument and performs his art at a workshop he set up under harsh conditions.

Ilyas Kolo, 68, who lives in the Bersive camp in Duhok, contributes to the livelihood of his family by making baglama, an indigenous Turkish lute-like instrument, in the makeshift structure he built right next to his tent.

Speaking to Anadolu, Kolo said he has been making efforts to hold on to life after migrating from Sinjar to Duhok.

"We were brought to this camp after being freed from captivity of Daesh/ISIS, he said adding that he makes a living by keeping alive the music culture of his ancestors.

Fearing that PKK terrorists in Sinjar will kidnap and kill their children, Ezidis are afraid to return to their hometown.

Daesh/ISIS terrorists attacked Sinjar, a region with an Ezidi-majority population, in August 2014.

The terror group kidnapped and killed thousands of people, including women and children, or detained them in areas under its control.

The PKK terrorist organization managed to establish a foothold in Sinjar in 2014 under the pretext of protecting the Ezidi community from Daesh/ISIS terrorists.

Sinjar has a strategic position, as it is some 120 kilometers (74 miles) from Mosul and close to the Turkish-Syrian border.

An agreement signed between Erbil and Baghdad on Oct. 9, 2020, which is aimed at eliminating the PKK terrorist group in the region, has not been implemented yet.

Estimates put the total Ezidi population across the world at nearly 700,000 people. They are concentrated in northern Iraq, but also live in countries like Syria and Trkiye.

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Unable to return home due to PKK presence in Iraq's Sinjar, Ezidi ... - Anadolu Agency | English

1 Melvyn Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023); and Samuel Helfont, Iraq Against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post-Cold War Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023). See also Marjorie Gallelli, Its Been Twenty Years Time for Historians to Turn to Iraq, Passport 54, no. 1 (April 2023): 63, https://shafr.org/system/files/passport-04-2023-last-word.pdf.

2 Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein; Frederic Bozo, A History of the Iraq Crisis: France, the United States, and Iraq, 1991-2003 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2016); Alexandre Debs and Nuno Monteiro, Known Unknowns: Power Shifts, Uncertainty, and War, International Organization 68, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 131, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43282094; Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005); Peter Hahn, Missions Accomplished?: The United States and Iraq Since World War I (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Hakan Tunc, What Was It All About After All? The Causes of the Iraq War, Contemporary Security Policy 26, no. 5 (2005): 33555, https://doi.org/10.1080/12523260500190492; Steve Yetiv, The Iraq War of 2003: Why Did the United States Decide to Invade, in The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics, and Ideologies, 6th ed., ed. David Lesch and Mark Haas (New York: Routledge, 2018), 25374; and Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside Americas Pursuit of Its Enemies since 9/11 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

3 Ahsan Butt, Why Did the United States Invade Iraq in 2003? Security Studies 28, no. 2 (2019): 25085, https://doi.org/10.1080.09636412.2019.1551567; Andrew Bacevich, Americas War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (New York: Random House, 2016); Jeffrey Record, Wanting War: Why the Bush Administration Invaded Iraq (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011); Frank Harvey, Explaining the Iraq War: Counterfactual Theory, Logic, and Evidence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007); Paul Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); Patrick Porter, Iraq: A Liberal War After All, International Politics 55, no. 2 (March 2018): 33448, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41311-017-0115-z; Lloyd Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970s to the Present (New York: New Press, 2008); Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (New York: Routledge, 2004); Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: Americas Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2006); Stephen Wertheim, Iraq and the Pathologies of Primacy, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/iraq-and-pathologies-primacy; Michael Desch, Americas Liberal Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in U.S. Foreign Policy, International Security 32, no. 3 (Winter 2007/2008): 743, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30130517; Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, Realism, Liberalism, and the Iraq War, Survival 59, no. 4 (2017): 726, https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2017.1349757; Jane Cramer and Edward Duggan, In Pursuit of Primacy: Why the United States Invaded Iraq, in Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? ed. Jane Cramer and Trevor Thrall (New York: Routeledge, 2011), 20145.

4 Major primary source collections that scholars have drawn on to analyze U.S. decision-making on Iraq include the Digital National Security Archive, the Donald Rumsfeld Papers, U.S. Intelligence in the Middle East 1945-2009, and the British Iraq Inquiry, also known as the Chilcott Report.

5 Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).

6 On Iraqi foreign policy and politics in this era, see Helfont, Iraq Against the World; Lisa Blaydes, State of Repression: Iraq Under Saddam Hussein (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018); David Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddams Senior Leadership (Norfolk, VA: United States Joint Forces Command, 2006). On U.N. weapons inspections, see Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer, Cheaters Dilemma: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Path to War, International Security 45, no. 1 (Summer 2020): 5189, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00382; Gregory Koblentz, Saddam Versus the Inspectors: The Impact of Regime Security on the Verification of Iraqs WMD Disarmament, Journal of Strategic Studies 41, no. 2 (April 2018): 372409, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2016.1224764. On the role of U.S. allies and the United Nations on the road to war, see David Malone, The International Struggle Over Iraq: Politics in the U.N. Security Council, 1980-2005 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Alexander Thompson, Channels of Power: The U.N. Security Council and U.S. Statecraft in Iraq (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).

7 For example, see Benjamin Miller, Explaining Changes in U.S. Grand Strategy: 9/11, the Rise of Offensive Liberalism, and the War in Iraq, Security Studies 19, no. 1 (2010): 2665, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636410903546426.

8 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 248.

9 Robert Jervis, Explaining the War in Iraq, in Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? ed. Jane Cramer and Trevor Thrall (New York: Routeledge, 2011), 33.

10 Bozo, History of the Iraq Crisis, 9. See also Tunc, Causes of the Iraq War, 336.

11 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 2840; Jervis, Explaining the War, 30; and Yetiv, Iraq War of 2003, 40001.

12 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 5160; and Hahn, Missions Accomplished, 14243.

13 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 91. See also Jervis, Explaining the War, 34; Debs and Monteiro, Known Unknowns, 34, 17; Tunc, Causes of the Iraq War, 339; Yetiv, Iraq War of 2003, 398408; and Philip Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro, Allies at War: America, Europe, and the Crisis Over Iraq (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004), 83

14 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 15758; and Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, 12023.

15 George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010), 228. See also: Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2011), 435; Douglas Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 5152; and Richard Cheney, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (New York: Threshold Editions, 2011), 369.

16 Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, 23; and Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 85, 167.

17 Interview with Condoleezza Rice, CNN, Sept. 8, 2002, https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/le/date/2002-09-08/segment/00.

18 Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, 11628; and Yetiv, Iraq War of 2003, 40102.

19 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 98. See also Jervis, Explaining the War, 30; and Debs and Monteiro, Known Unknowns, 26.

20 Tunc, Causes of the Iraq War, 342.

21 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 98.

22 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 252.

23 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 252. See also Hahn, Missions Accomplished, 143.

24 Jervis, Explaining the War, 31, 34.

25 Melvyn Leffler, The Foreign Policies of the George W. Bush Administration: Memoirs, History, Legacy, Diplomatic History 37, no. 2 (April 2013): 190216, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44254516.

26 Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (New York: Crown Publishers, 2011), 121.

27 Bush, Decision Points, 229.

28 Rumsfeld, Known Unknowns, 42224; Rice, No Higher Honor, 14749; and Feith, War and Decision, 6.

29 Bush, Decision Points, 223; Rice, No Higher Honor, 147; Feith, War and Decision, 181.

30 Joseph Stieb, Confronting the Iraq War: Melvyn Leffler, George Bush, and the Problem of Trusting Your Sources, War on the Rocks, Jan. 30, 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/01/confronting-the-iraq-war-melvyn-leffler-george-bush-and-the-problem-of-trusting-your-sources/.

31 Scholars in the realist-hegemony school include: Butt, Invade Iraq, 284; Wertheim, Pathologies of Primacy; Gardner, Long Road, 23; Dorrien, Imperial Designs, 18182; Deudney and Ikenberry, Realism, Liberalism, 89; Cramer and Duggan, Pursuit of Primacy, 20103; Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: Americas Quest for Global Dominance (New York: MacMillan, 2007), 1116; and Steven Hurst, The United States and Iraq Since 1979 (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 1920.

32 Butt, Invade Iraq, 251.

33 Butt, Invade Iraq, 271.

34 Butt, Invade Iraq, 25758, 272.

35 Wertheim, Pathologies of Primacy.

36 Deudney and Ikenberry, Realism, Liberalism, 8.

37 Record, Wanting War, 2425. Record explicitly aligns his argument with the realist school of international relations.

38 James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of Americas Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doubleday, 2004); Wertheim, Pathologies of Power; Kinzer, Overthrow, 292; Gardner, Long Road, 4; and Cramer and Duggan, Pursuit of Primacy, 203.

39 Butt, Invade Iraq, 253; Harvey, Explaining the Iraq War, 140; Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, 14041; Deudney and Ikenberry, Realism, Liberalism, 18; and Cramer and Duggan, Pursuit of Primacy, 23037.

40 Walt, Good Intentions, 13, 5464; Andrew Bacevich, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020) 11011; and Patrick Porter, The False Promise of Liberal Order (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2020), 112.

41 Walt, Good Intentions, 2532; John Mearsheimer, Imperial by Design, National Interest, no. 11 (January/February 2011): 1619, https://www.jstor.org/stable/42897726; Bacevich, War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (New York: Random House, 2016), 35863; Desch, Liberal Illiberalism, 79; and Miller, Offensive Liberalism, 3537.

42 Bacevich, Age of Illusions, 114; Record, Wanting War, 4952; and John Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 15051.

43 On oil motives, see Michael Klare, Blood For Oil, in Iraq and Elsewhere, in Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? ed. Jane Cramer and Trevor Thrall (New York: Routledge, 2011), 129145; and Hurst, United States and Iraq, 29. On the Israeli alliance as a motive, see Mearsheimer and Walt, Israel Lobby, 25355. Michael MacDonald effectively rebuts the arguments that oil and Israel were core motives for the Iraq War in Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 2426.

44 Walt, Good Intentions, 76, 110; Porter, A Liberal War, 346; and MacDonald, Overreach, 36.

45 Porter, A Liberal War, 34042; Walt, Good Intentions, 6576; and Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2430, 5963.

46 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, September 2002, introduction, https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/63562.pdf. For first-hand testimony of Bushs commitment to democracy in Iraq, see Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 23944.

47 Porter, A Liberal War, 33942; Desch, Liberal Illiberalism, 2529; Eric Heinze, The New Utopianism: Liberalism, American Foreign Policy, and the War in Iraq, Journal of International Political Theory 4, no. 1 (April 2008): 11617, https://doi.org/10.3366/E1755088208000116.

48 George W. Bush, George Bushs Speech to the American Enterprise Institute, The Guardian, Feb. 27, 2003, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/27/usa.iraq2.

49 MacDonald, Overreach, 3946.

50 Mearsheimer, Great Delusion, 154.

51 Bacevich, Age of Illusions, 11013; and Bacevich, Greater Middle East, 24043.

52 Porter, False Promise, 11213. For similar claims, see Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy, 18; MacDonald, Overreach, 37; and Dorrien, Imperial Designs, 181.

53 Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (New York: Penguin, 2007), 232; Dorrien, Imperial Designs, 13; and Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, 1516.

54 Gardner, Long Road; and Bacevich, Greater Middle East.

55 Excerpts from 1992 Draft Defense Planning Guidance, Frontline, 1992, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html.

56 Scholars who cite the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance include Bacevich, Greater Middle East, 362; Butt, Invade Iraq, 273; and Wertheim, Pathologies of Primacy.

57 Joseph Stieb, The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1990-2003 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 16061; and Project for a New American Century Statement of Principles, in The Iraq Papers, ed. John Ehrenberg et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1920.

58 Record, Wanting War, 15. See also Gardner, Long Road, 12630; Butt, Invade Iraq, 251; Dorrien, Imperial Designs, 18182; Bamford, Pretext for War, 423; and MacDonald, Overreach, 35.

59 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 30508, 322.

60 Scott McLellan, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washingtons Culture of Deception (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), xiii. See also Richard Clarke: Against All Enemies: Inside Americas War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 3032.

61 Michael Mazarr, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and Americas Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy (New York: Public Affairs, 2019), 40607; Justin Vaisse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 1417; and Robert Draper, To Start at War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2021).

62 Stieb, Regime Change Consensus, 113.

63 Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy, 41. See also Butt, Invade Iraq, 25557.

64 Pillar, Intelligence in U.S. Foreign Policy, 1342; Cramer and Thrall, Pursuit of Primacy, 20407; and Bamford, Pretext for War, 26970.

65 Desch, Liberal Illiberalism, 9.

66 Christian Alfonsi, Circle in the Sand: Why We Went Back to Iraq (New York: Doubleday, 2006); Samuel Helfont, The Gulf Wars Aftermath: Dilemmas, Missed Opportunities, and the Post-Cold War Order Undone, Texas National Security Review 4, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 2547, https://tnsr.org/2021/02/the-gulf-wars-afterlife-dilemmas-missed-opportunities-and-the-post-cold-war-order-undone/; and Stieb, The Regime Change Consensus, 411.

67 The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, Public Law 338, 105th Cong., 2nd sess., Oct. 31, 1998.

68 Helfont, Iraq Against the World, 110.

69 For scholars who call the Iraq War a tragedy, see Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 11; and Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein, 252. For scholars who call it a blunder, see Stieb, Regime Change Consensus, 1; and Wertheim, Pathologies of Primacy.

70 Scholars who emphasize continuity include Gardner, Long Road, 2; and John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 8091. Scholars who stress discontinuity include Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, 12223; and Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: MacMillan, 2008), 7475.

71 George W. Bush, Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly, White House Archives, Sept. 12, 2002, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html.

72 Bush, Decision Points, 22930; and Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 110

73 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 109.

74 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 94, 120, 16064. See also Gordon and Shapiro, Allies at War, 9698.

75 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 160.

76 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 184, 191. See also Draper, Start a War, 181.

77 Harvey, Explaining the Iraq War, 7.

78 Debs and Monteiro, Known Unknowns, 34. See also Draper, Start a War, 181; Todd Purdum, A Time of Our Choosing: Americas War in Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2004), 4663; and Anthony Lake, Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War, International Security 35, no. 3 (Winter 2010/2011): 752, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40981251.

79 Bush, Decision Points, 229.

80 Bush, Decision Points, 24445; Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 442; Rice, No Higher Honor, 181; and Feith, War and Decision, 223.

81 Rice, No Higher Honor, 18687.

82 Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 113. See also John Prados, The Iraq War-Part II: Was There Even a Decision? National Security Archive, Oct. 1, 2010, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB328/index.htm; and Mark Danner, ed., The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq Wars Buried History (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006).

83 Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 222.

84 Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 3, 21821; and Stieb, Regime Change Consensus, 21416.

85 Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 245-246; and Prados, Even a Decision?

86 Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 9.

87 Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 292.

88 Stieb, Regime Change Consensus, 23640.

89 Butt, Invade Iraq, 251.

90 Prados, Even a Decision?; and Richard Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 213.

91 Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 238.

92 Prominent works that skip coercive diplomacy include Bacevich, Greater Middle East; and Mearsheimer and Walt, Israel Lobby; Record, Wanting War.

93 William Burns, How We Tried to Slow the Rush to War in Iraq, Politico, March 13, 2019, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/13/bill-burns-back-channel-book-excerpt-iraq-225731/.

94 Thanks to Theo Milonopoulos for this insight about future paths for Iraq scholarship.

95 Report of the Iraq Inquiry, House of Commons, July 6, 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry.

96 Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 10304.

97 Butt, Invade Iraq, 279.

98 Butt, Invade Iraq, 27980; and Mazarr, Leap of Faith, 153.

99 Patrick Porter, Blunder: Britains War in Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 25, 20.

100 Vaisse, Neoconservatism, 12, 221. Vaisse also calls neoconservatives democratic globalists.

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Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? The Debate at 20 Years - Texas National Security Review

The Iraqi authorities must take concrete action towards revealing the fate and whereabouts of at least 643 men and boys who were forcibly disappeared in June 2016 by the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) in the context of military operations to retake Fallujah from the so-called Islamic State, Amnesty International said, marking seven years since the men and boys were abducted.

The PMU are comprised of large, well-established militia groups and are legally considered part of the Iraqi Armed Forces.

It has been seven years since then-Prime Minister Haidar Abadi formed a committee to investigate those disappearances and other abuses committed by the PMU during the Fallujah operations. But so far, the committee has not made any of its findings public and no one has been held accountable, said Aya Majzoub, Amnesty Internationals Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The victims of enforced disappearances are not only those who are missing, but also their families and loved ones who continue to live in agony not knowing the fate of their loved ones. Multiple governments have failed to provide these families with the answers that they deserve and with reparations. In order to end the reign of impunity in Iraq, the government must make the findings of the investigative committee public, ensure that any information on the fate or whereabouts of the missing men and boys is disclosed to their families, and that evidence is shared with judicial authorities so that perpetrators can be brought to justice in fair trials without recourse to the death penalty.

In early June 2016, thousands of men, women and children fleeing the area of Saqlawiya in Anbar Province were met by armed individuals carrying machine guns and assault rifles. They were identified by witnesses as members of the PMU, based on emblems on their uniforms and flags.

As detailed in a 2016 Amnesty International investigation, the armed men put some of the captured men and boys onto buses and a large truck. The fate of those who were driven away in these vehicles remains unknown. Despite multiple attempts by the families of the disappeared over the years to press the authorities for investigations, they have not been given answers.

One woman, who was among those captured by the PMU on 3 June 2016, told Amnesty International that at least six other members of her family were abducted. Her husband and one of her brothers remain missing. She said: There is no bigger of a disaster than losing someone dear to you. We lost our loved ones, husbands, uncles, fathers. Everyone left. I dont remember anything other than sadness.

She was released on the same day of her abduction and four of her brothers were released three days later. She said that her brothers were tortured day and night and that they witnessed the PMU burying people alive and heard the sounds of people being tortured.

Another woman whose loved ones were abducted by armed men in PMU vehicles on 2 June 2016 told Amnesty International that 15 members of her family, including her husband, brother and son, remain missing. Despite her efforts, the authorities have not taken action nor provided the family any redress.

We were living a happy life If they could hear me, I would tell them enough of being gone. We are tired. We need you, because life is not worth it without you. Your children need you and they ask about you. If only you could return I am prepared to forget everything and forget all the pain and start life over again and we live happily, if only.

According to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, Iraq has an estimated range of 250,000 to 1 million missing persons since 1968, making it one of the countries with the highest number of missing persons worldwide.

On 5 June 2016, the office of then-Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi set up a committee to investigate disappearances and other violations committed in the context of military operations to retake Fallujah, including by the PMU. He also tasked the local government of Anbar with setting up a separate investigative committee, which on 11 June 2016 published findings that it sent to the Prime Minister, revealing that 643 men and boys from the area of Saqlawiya were missing. Families of the disappeared claim that the actual number is higher.

Since that date, it is unclear what steps the committee set up by the former Prime Minister has taken to effectively investigate the disappearances, and it has failed to publicly report on any findings. Rights groups and families told Amnesty International that the authorities have not communicated any outcome to the families of the disappeared. To this date, the Iraqi authorities have been silent as to the action they have taken to address and investigate these violations and provide justice and redress to victims.

Since 2016, Amnesty International has repeatedly requested information regarding this investigation, including in letters addressed to the Prime Ministers Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 19 May 2023. To this day, Amnesty International has not received a substantive response detailing the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared.

On 4 April 2023, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances issued a report following its visit to Iraq in November 2022. It urged Iraq to immediately include enforced disappearances as a separate offence. It also called upon Iraq to establish a comprehensive search and investigation strategy for all cases of disappearances, and to strengthen and enlarge the national forensic capacity to ensure that all victims have access to exhumation processes and forensic services.

Enforced disappearance is currently not a crime under Iraqi law and therefore cannot be prosecuted as a distinct offence. As a state party to the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearance, Iraq has an obligation to criminalize enforced disappearances, investigate, bring perpetrators to justice, and ensure reparation for victims.

Al Haq Foundation for Human Rights, an independent civil society organization based in Baghdad, told Amnesty International: The failure to legislate a law to protect persons from enforced disappearance is an indication of the failure to put an end to cases of enforced disappearance. Our organization continues its efforts to support the voices of the victims and their families to together reveal the truth about the fate of thousands.

Amnesty International calls on the authorities to provide redress and reparation, including compensation and rehabilitation, for the families of those disappeared in June 2016 and to pass effective legislation criminalizing enforced disappearances in accordance with international law.

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Iraq: Authorities must act to reveal fate of 643 men and boys abducted by government-linked militias - Amnesty International