Every year Iraqis hear that their country’s sovereignty is a red line. The speeches are always good. Then you read what has been reported since this summer, and the red line starts to look more like a suggestion. According to a run of reports published between July and October 2026, a Yemeni armed group has …
Who Is Really in Charge in Iraq? The Houthis, the Militias and a Silent State Read More »
On August 21, 2026, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, stood before a room of businessmen at Iran’s embassy in Baghdad and made his pitch: it was time, he said, for Iraq and Iran to stop settling their trade in dollars and start using their own currencies instead. He called dollar dependence “outdated” …
Jihan Saad remembers the night her husband and her brother became two more names on a list that, a decade later, still has no ending. It was 2016, in al-Bu Akkash, a small village in Iraq’s Anbar province, during the operation to retake the area from the Islamic State. Soldiers ordered families out of their …
Iraq’s Vanished: An Empire Built on Enforced Disappearance Read More »
A country does not get captured by one man. It gets captured by a division of labor — a role for the cleric who lends the operation religious cover, a role for the official who lends it state legitimacy, a role for the gunman who lends it a monopoly on force, and a role for …
The Division of Labor: How Khamenei’s Funeral Exposed the Men Running Iraq Read More »
On the first of October 2019, Iraq erupted. The Tishreen Revolution was not a spontaneous outburst, but the culmination of decades of anger. Citizens took to the streets, exhausted by corruption, unemployment, sectarian exploitation, and foreign interference, demanding accountability, reform, and dignity. The uprising transcended sectarian lines, bringing together youth from all backgrounds in a …
Blood and Protest: Iraq’s Tishreen Uprising Six Years On Read More »
One of the clearest indicators of a failed state is its inability to attain political and economic independence, coupled with its failure to ensure development and social justice for its citizens. In today’s world, it is evident that the morally bankrupt Iraqi government consistently seeks to declare its loyalty not to its own people, but …
It was hardly surprising that the new Iranian president chose Iraq as his first major destination. Iraq serves as the economic lifeline for Iran’s regime, without which the regime would suffocate due to a lack of resources, particularly U.S. dollars. The smuggling of Iranian oil under the guise of Iraqi oil—by blending it with Iraqi …
While Iraq collapses under the leadership of the regressive marja’iyya in Najaf and the corrupt clique in the so-called Coordination Framework, driven by the Iranian Safavid ogre choking Iraq, the Jaafari Shiite militias loyal to Iran are killing and terrorizing the Iraqi people, slowly starving and brutalizing them under the guise of ignorance, backward Shi’ism, …
In my country, a man feels ashamed to openly express his love for his wife, but he boasts about his sinful past with other women. In my country, we are ashamed of love and openly display hatred. We consider deceitfulness to be cleverness, while honesty is deemed worthless. We praise cunning and manipulation, and we …
The emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant foreshadowed the rise of another non-state armed group that has become deeply involved in Iraq’s political and economic landscape. Following the approval of the fatwa by the Iranian Najaf religious authority, the Iraqi government called for militia mobilization as it struggled to combat ISIS …
As time has passed, Iraq’s dreams have been ground to dust, and the spirits of its people are now little more than faded shadows, lost in a sea of years filled with chaos and confusion. They have no shore to cling to, no place to rest. In this era, they wander aimlessly, without shelter, without …
