Archive for the ‘Iraq’ Category
In Iraq’s summer, residents of Kurdistan’s Arbil ache for water – The Paulding County Progress
In Iraq's summer, residents of Kurdistan's Arbil ache for water The Paulding County Progress
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In Iraq's summer, residents of Kurdistan's Arbil ache for water - The Paulding County Progress
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2024 News items – Members welcome Iraqs return to WTO accession talks after 16 years – WTO Latest News
Mr. Atheer Dawood Salman Al Ghrairi, Iraq's Minister of Trade, led a high-level delegation from Baghdad at the third meeting of the Working Party. Ambassador Saqr Almoqbel of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who chaired the Working Party for the first time since his appointment last year, welcomed Iraq's return to Geneva after many years, highlighting the significance of the formal resumption of Iraq's accession process. The Minister's presence here, the first since 2008, sends a clear signal that Iraq's accession process is now back on track, he remarked. The Working Party held its second meeting in April 2008 and an informal meeting in November 2017.
The Chair acknowledged the tremendous efforts by everyone, of course, starting with Iraq, but also members and partners, as well as former Chair Ambassador Omar Hilale of Morocco, to make today's meeting a reality. He also referred to his visit to Baghdad in January 2024, where he met with senior Iraqi government officials, including President Abdul Latif Rashid.
Minister Al Ghrairi noted the importance of the meeting, which represents a distinctive step for the Government and the people of Iraq towards becoming a full-fledged member of the WTO, a target we seek to achieve as a means to enhance our national economic strategy and integration in the global economy. He further stated that despite ongoing security, political, and regional challenges, the Government of Iraq remains steadfast in its commitment to pursue a reform agenda in terms of enhancing trade policies, boosting the business environment, and creating favourable conditions for foreign investment.
Minister Al Ghrairi highlighted the special importance attached by the Government to aligning its trade policies and regulatory frameworks with international rules and standards and strengthening institutional capacities to meet WTO requirements. The National Committee on Iraq's Accession has intensified efforts and made substantial progress in fulfilling the accession requirements, he said. Ahead of the third Working Party meeting, Iraq submitted key negotiating documents, including its initial market access offers on goods and services.
WTO Deputy Director-General Xiangchen Zhang stressed the significance of this meeting not only for Iraq but also for the Arab region, which still has a large number of accessions under way. As the largest region outside the multilateral trading system, this moment signifies a renewed opportunity for progress and collaboration towards accession for Iraq and hopefully other Arab nations aspiring to join the WTO, enhancing regional and global trade dynamics. He also emphasized the importance of technical assistance and capacity building in the region, especially for Iraq in view of its status as a post-conflict country.
Members highlighted the significance of Iraq's accession for the multilateral trading system. Many Arab members emphasized that Iraq's accession would contribute to regional integration efforts in support of peace and security. Other participants in the meeting included observer governments and international organizations.
Iraq provided an update on its initial contacts with members regarding bilateral market access negotiations, noting that initial offers on goods and services were submitted in early May. The Iraqi delegation expressed readiness to further engage with WTO members.
The Working Party discussed various aspects of Iraq's foreign trade regime based on its revised Memorandum of the Foreign Trade Regime (MFTR) and other supporting documentation. Iraq provided a report on legislative developments, highlighting its latest efforts to conform with WTO-related rules.
The Chair invited Iraq and WTO members to intensify bilateral negotiations on market access, building on the recent contacts.
The Chair invited members to submit specific questions in writing by 15 August. He also asked Iraq to provide replies to members' questions and to submit other requested accession documents. The Chair asked the WTO Secretariat to work with Iraq to revise its MFTR, which will serve as the basis for continuing the examination of Iraq's foreign trade regime at the next meeting of the Working Party.
In addition, the Chair asked Iraq to revise its Legislative Action Plan and submit copies of WTO-related legislation to provide an up-to-date picture of ongoing reforms.
The importance of technical assistance was emphasized, with several members and international organizations offering support. The Secretariat plans to organize a Round Table to discuss Iraq's technical assistance needs to further facilitate its accession process.
The Chair suggested that the fourth Working Party meeting could be scheduled for the first quarter of 2025, contingent on the progress of the outlined steps.
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2024 News items - Members welcome Iraqs return to WTO accession talks after 16 years - WTO Latest News
Is Houthi expansion in Iraq a genuine threat or smoke screen? – Al-Monitor
The decision by Yemens Houthis to expand their influence in Iraq marks a critical juncture in the groups regional strategy, raising significant concerns about regional stability amid ongoing conflicts and geopolitical rivalries, particularly the Israel-Hamas war.
On July 9, Iraqi media reported that Abu Idris al-Sharafi, the Houthi representative in the country, opened headquarters in Baghdad's al-Jadriyah neighborhood, near the Green Zone and close to offices of senior members of Iraqi parties and the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). The latter is a grouping of predominantly Shiite Iran-backed militias whose salaries are paid by the government.
A few days earlier, Sharafi visited the PMU headquarters, emphasizing their unity with the Houthi movement, and toured several southern Iraqi provinces, meeting various tribal and religious leaders accompanied by PMU officers.
In addition to raising questions about the Houthis own strategy, the groups expansion into Iraq threatens Baghdads delicate balance between national interests and regional dynamics, highlighting the potential consequences of this power shift.
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Is Houthi expansion in Iraq a genuine threat or smoke screen? - Al-Monitor
The Yezidi genocide devastated Iraqs community 10 years ago but the roots of the prejudice that fueled it were much deeper – The Conversation…
On the morning of Aug. 3, 2014, the Islamic State group launched a ruthless and swift campaign in Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq. The target was Yezidis: a monotheistic religious group whose members have long been persecuted.
As forces affiliated with the regional Kurdish government fled in disarray, IS fighters captured and enslaved an estimated 6,800 Yezidis, mostly women and children. About 1,500 Yezidis were executed. A similar number lost their lives from excessive heat, thirst or starvation while stranded on Mount Sinjar, before U.S. airstrikes several days later enabled escape to the relative safety of Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq.
The entire Yezidi population of Sinjar, about 250,000 people, lost their homes: around half of all Yezidis across the globe, by my estimate.
Ten years later, it is easy to look back on the massacres as the work of extremist militants. But IS in Iraq recruited heavily among local Sunni Muslims from northwestern Iraq. People who lived alongside Yezidis for many years became their tormentors, rapists, looters and killers.
What explains the ferocity of this genocidal campaign? As a scholar of political violence and Middle East politics, I argue that two main factors led to the anti-Yezidi atrocities.
First, Muslim authorities have historically stigmatized Yezidis and denied their existence as a faith group one of the focuses of my 2024 book, Liminal Minorities. Second, transformations after the U.S. invasion of Iraq fueled resentment, which extremists channeled against this marginalized religious group.
The Yezidi experience reflects a global pattern: a type of marginalization and discrimination against faith groups whom I call liminal minorities.
Liminal minorities have two core characteristics. First, they lack theological recognition in the eyes of the areas dominant religion. In other words, more powerful faith groups do not acknowledge the legitimacy of their religion and denigrate the minoritys beliefs and rituals.
Second, liminal minorities are subjected to widespread stigma transmitted across generations. They are often perceived as a threat to moral order and at times alleged to engage in sexually deviant practices. These patterns of stigmatization beget discrimination.
In addition to Yezidis, liminal minorities include Alevis in Turkey, Bahais in Iran, and Ahmadis in Indonesia and Pakistan. Religious liminality is not exclusive to the Muslim world: For example, Jehovahs Witnesses in a variety of countries and Falun Gong in China are also liminal minorities.
Yezidis marginal status is not new. Under the Ottoman Empire, Christian and Jewish communities were offered a limited degree of protection and autonomy in return for paying a special tax known as the millet system. These groups were recognized as People of the Book: monotheists whose religious faith was accepted by Muslim authorities. Yezidis, however, lacked this status.
Even today, Yezidis are often insulted as devil worshipers. According to the Yezidi faith, God entrusted the world to his lead angel, Taws Melek, which means Peacock Angel. Some Muslim religious authorities, however, conflate this angel with Iblis, the personal name of the devil in Islam.
This misidentification gained widespread acceptance among Muslim clerics by the 16th century. Under Ottoman rulers and Kurdish tribal leaders, the claim was used to justify extreme forms of violence against Yezidis, including mass enslavement and killings.
The stigmatization of Yezidis remained widespread in Iraq throughout the late 20th century. There were no large-scale episodes of religiously motivated massacres targeting Yezidis under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Yet many were forced out of their mountain villages as part of his partys Arabization campaigns: forced deportations aimed at weakening non-Arab minorities in the countrys north.
Iraq is home to people of both major schools of Islam Sunni and Shiite as well as minority faiths such as Yezidis, Christians and Sabaean-Mandaeans, who follow an ancient monotheistic religion. The country is also home to many different ethnic groups, with a large Arab majority and sizable minorities of Kurds, Turkmens and Assyrians.
Sunni Arabs, who make up a minority of the population, formed the backbone of the Saddam regime, while Shiite Arabs and Sunni Kurds were mostly excluded from power. After the U.S. invasion, however, the Shiite majority was able to dominate electoral politics, and many Sunni Arabs complained of being marginalized.
The Kurdish region, meanwhile, consolidated its autonomy. Yezidi votes become crucial to Kurdish claims for additional territory spurring more Sunni resentment of the Yezidis.
My fieldwork, including extensive interviews between 2017 and 2019, suggests that the Islamic States goal of ethnic cleansing capitalized on these feelings of resentment and aimed to undermine Kurdish territorial claims.
Hundreds of Yezidis became victims of violent attacks well before 2014. As the Islamic State group gained power, it further intensified anti-Yezidi stigmas. The group instructed fighters that extreme forms of violence, including systematic rape, were justified by their faith.
The combination of historical hatreds, political resentment and denying the legitimacy of Yezidis faith helped spark the violence that devastated Iraqs Yezidi community in 2014.
In the wake of the genocide carried out by IS, the Yezidis received unprecedented international attention as a persecuted faith group, and several countries, such as Germany, created resettlement programs for Yezidi refugees. Yezidis in the diaspora became more visible and organized, demanding justice and aiming to mobilize public attention.
Nevertheless, their conditions remain dire. Yezidis are unable to return to Sinjar, which is still an insecure zone contested among rival armed forces. Many remain in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, facing an uncertain future.
Others have sought refuge abroad, and some benefited from specialized humanitarian asylum programs like Germanys. The country has been home to part of the Yezidi diaspora since the early 1970s and emerged as a major destination for Yezidis fleeing Iraq after 2014. Today, about 200,000 Yezidis are estimated to live there.
Yet the rise of anti-immigration sentiments in Europe has made the Yezidis situation similar to that of many other migrants and refugees. As public attention to the genocide begins to fade, these newcomers face an increasingly inhospitable political climate.
Facing an existential precarity in their homeland and legal limbo in the diaspora, the Yezidi liminality persists.
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The Yezidi genocide devastated Iraqs community 10 years ago but the roots of the prejudice that fueled it were much deeper - The Conversation...