Kurdish hunger strikers stage protests seeking support against Isis jihadis
Members of the Kurdish diaspora have been staging protests and hunger strikes around the world in support of calls by Kurdish leaders in Syria for weapons to help their forces fighting Islamic State (Isis) in the besieged border town of Kobani, where they fear a massacre if support does not arrive soon. While Kurds have taken to the streets of Europ…
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Ignore Blair's lust for war
Labour leader Ed Miliband should closely examine the views put forward by Tony Blair in a recent TV interview, and have nothing to do with them. Blair, who has hoovered up a personal fortune of up to £60 million since stepping down as prime minister, was unapologetic about the military adventures into which he dragged Britain's armed forces. …
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Syrian conflict settles old scores
Iraqis with old vendettas have taken advantage of the chaos and instability in Syria to pursue Iraqi refugees there, with a string of kidnappings in recent months, according to an official with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). “We’ve seen a rise in serious protection incidents,” said Paul Stromberg, deputy representative of the UNCHR in Syria. “There …
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Suicide bomber kills in northern Iraq
At least three people were killed and 15 wounded on Thursday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a barber's shop popular with police in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police and hospital sources said. The attack is the latest and a wave of bombings across the country in recent weeks which have raised fears that Iraq could slip back into secta…
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Syria’s forgotten refugees
It was 21 February 2006. The date is etched in Samia’s* mind. She was in her kitchen making tea for her brother’s family, who was visiting her at her home in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, when gunfire broke out in the sitting room. “It was as if there was a war in my home,” she recounted. She could not move; could not breathe; could not do anything. …
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Syria: The Shiite Sunni Battleground
In a late 2011 article , I argued that Syria's upheaval thrusts Turkey and Iran into a collision course because they have opposing geostrategic interests in an outcome that neither party can afford to ignore. Four months later, it has become increasingly clear that the Syrian uprising transcends Iran's and Turkey's strategic interests, as it …
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Foreign Fighters Join Syrian Rebels
Abu Rami hails from Lebanon, but his heart is in Syria these days. The 40-year-old is one of hundreds of Arabs who are fighting against the Assad regime at the side of Syrian insurgents. Many of these volunteer fighters are veterans of the Iraq war, who have now brought their holy war to Syria. Abu Rami's last foray into war wasn't much of a…
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In Syria: The Loss of A Last Refuge
In 2008, Iraqi activist and journalist Hana Ibrahim fled from her home in Baghdad to Damascus, taking her two children with her. They had grown up under sanctions and war, and had as such never enjoyed the level of security they found in Syria. But even that has become a thing of the past. “For years my daughter couldn’t go out alone, because the streets h…
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Iraq lets Iran fly arms to Syria
The Iraqi government has refused U.S. requests to stop Iranian cargo flights to Syria, despite being aware of credible intelligence that the planes are transporting up to 30 tons of weapons, according to a U.S. official. The U.S. has made several requests in recent months to the Iraqi government, including directly to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to eit…
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Syria Fears Keep Region on Edge
Abu Ali fled his life as a Shiite cleric and student in Homs, the besieged Syrian city at the center of an increasingly bloody uprising, but it was not the government he feared. It was the rebels, who he said killed three of his cousins in December and dumped a body in the family garbage bin. “I can’t be in Homs because I will get killed there,” he said fr…
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Iraq moves to identify buyers
The Iraqi central bank has enacted measures to identify those who buy dollars, as some are believed to be front men at a time when Iran and Syria are facing foreign currency shortages due to sanctions. Both Iran and Syria have been hit by sanctions from the United States and Europe, the former over its controversial nuclear programme and the latter due to …
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Refugees wait for artificial limbs
Mohammed*, 38, whose right leg is severed above the knee, is one of many Iraqi refugees waiting for prosthetics at the Syrian branch of charity Terre des hommes (Tdh) orthopedic workshop.Nine years ago, Mohammed, a Sunni Muslim, married his Shia wife. Both were schoolteachers and had three daughters. But after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq triggered sectaria…
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