Iraq

A new report documents the ongoing human, social, economic and environmental toll of the Iraq war, reports Brett Wilkins.

Steve Sweeney writes that Kurdish officials have accused Western powers of complicity in Turkish airstrikes on the United Nations-administered Makhmour Refugee Camp in northern Iraq.

About 13,000 Kurdish refugees from south-eastern Turkey live inside the UNHCR-recognised Makhmur refugee camp, which is being attacked by Turkish forces, reports Peter Boyle.

Hundreds of Kurdish villagers have been forced to flee their homes in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq due to Turkish bombing, reports Steve Sweeney.

Turkey’s system of huge dams is not just about irrigation and generating hydro-electric power, writes Sarah Glynn. It is a source of political power over the whole region.

In mid-June Turkey launched yet another large-scale air and ground operation in northern Iraq aimed at crippling the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), writes Dave Holmes. But they are facing strong resistance.

The current uprising represents a crisis of the Baghdad government and is a striking rejection of the entire post-2003 US-imposed political structure, writes Rupen Savoulian

The Yazidi minority community in Sinjar, Iraq, is still recovering from the horrendous 2014 genocide by Islamic State (IS) terrorists. Yet, on January 15, it was the target of another deadly airstrike by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's dictatorial regime.

Since protests began in Iraq in early October, more than 400 people have been killed and thousands have been injured.

The uprising has escalated, despite the cruelty and brutality used by security forces against demonstrators, which has been strongly condemned by many governments and international humanitarian organisations, including the United Nations.

Louay Alzaher, a member of the Iraqi community in Brisbane, told Green Left Weekly that corruption, food shortages and high levels of unemployment have been the catalysts of the protest movement that has erupted in Iraq.

“The significance of the Iraqi movement is enormous, as it seeks to fight for the freedom of Iraq from control and influence, including the total removal of United States military bases from the country,” said Alzaher.

Since early October, there has been a spontaneous wave of demonstrations in Iraq’s capital Baghdad and other cities against widespread corruption, unemployment and poor public services.

Green Left Weekly’s Susan Price spoke to Sydney-based Iraqi human rights activist Abeer Hasan Abdulazeez about the significance of this movement.

Huge protests have erupted on the streets of Iraq. Green Left Weekly’s Sam Wainwright spoke to Khalil Albawy. Albawy is a member of the Iraqi Communist Party and Secretary of the Iraqi and Australian Friendship Society in Western Australia.

Turkey has begun a new bombing operation on the Maxmur (Makhmour) refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan (Bashur/Southern Kurdistan), which is home to over 13,000 Kurdish refugees.

iraq war 15 years

March 19 marks 15 years since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the US people have no idea of the enormity of the calamity the invasion unleashed.

Greens MP Adam Bandt was forced to apologise twice to new Liberal Senator and renowned fan of British neo-Nazi’s social media work Jim Molan, after Bandt called the former Australian general a war criminal.

Donald Trump devoted a large section of the end of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to North Korea.

Anyone who was paying attention during George W Bush’s State of the Union addresses in 2002 and 2003 would have found Trump’s statements frighteningly familiar: Trump used exactly the same justifications for war with North Korea as Bush had for war with Iraq when standing at the same podium.

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