The prominent Iraqi Shia cleric and influential political leader Moqtada Al-Sadr visited Saudi Arabia on July 30 for the first time after 11 years. Al-Sadr, who is categorized amongst the hardliners in Iraq, met the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohamed bin Salman Al-Saud. According to official statements and reports, Saudi Arabia invited Al-Sadr— and…
Conflicting reports have recently claimed that Saudi Arabia called upon Iraq to mediate between itself and Iran. The Saudi News Agency, however, cited a source a few days after this news emerged who vehemently denied its veracity, but it’s important to nonetheless examine why this scenario is not only believable, but would also be very…
Iraqi Kurdish military intelligence reports have estimated that the nine-month-long U.S.-Iraqi siege and bombardment of Mosul to oust Islamic State forces killed 40,000 civilians. This is the most realistic estimate so far of the civilian death toll in Mosul. But even this is likely to be an underestimate of the true number of civilians killed. No serious,…
On 22 May, Ahmed Mohsen, an unemployed taxi driver, left his house in the Islamic State-controlled western part of Mosul to try to escape across the Tigris to the government-held eastern side of the city. He and his mother, along with ten other people, carried rubber tyres down to the river: most of them couldn’t…
Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan appear to have stepped up their armed activities inside Iran in recent weeks, undermining the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) efforts to promote its upcoming independence referendum as a peaceful development. Iranian Kurdish fighters based in Iraq have repeatedly crossed the border into Iran and engaged in numerous clashes…
Muqtada al-Sadr is up to something. In 2004 occupied Iraq, the nationalist leader who later engineered the Sadrist movement was even demonized as America’s number one enemy – briefly dethroning Osama bin Laden. Now, he’s being painted – by the usual Wahhabi-coddling suspects – as some sort of Reconciliator. Last month, al-Sadr flew to Jeddah…
