Ten years ago today in Baghdad a terror attack blasted apart the UN headquarters in Iraq... At the moment of the explosion Gil Loescher and Arthur Helton were sitting down to interview Sergio Vieira de Mello for their joint openDemocracy column....
Everywhere the Arab uprisings have been confronted by the entrenched vested interests of old regimes, the so-called ‘deep state’ in Egypt, and by Islamist populism. The alignment of regional powers, following geopolitical interests, has sharpened the sectarian lines. But these alignments are not s
Women in Iraq bear the brunt of increasing levels of gender-based violence, inadequate infrastructure and poverty. Yet women activists recognize that their struggle for equality and social justice as women cannot be separated from the wider struggle against authoritarianism and sectarianism
These developments in Syria, with the involvement of Iraqis, have intensified and widened the divisions among Iraqis themselves.
Today’s Sunni/Shiite regional war is the direct product of the Bush/Blair war on Iraq. The divide is all the more dangerous because of the Levant’s confessional mosaic. These events are changing the very nature of the states in the region, and the peoples that lie within them. Where do Palestine’s
Our columnist explores the language and the headlines of dying and killing, from Tibet to the United States to Iraq.
The persistence of a sense of "Iraqiness" could still be the foundation of a better future for Iraq's people, says Janan Al-Asady.
New forms of violence have risen out of the vacuum of civil conflict in post-Saddam Iraq. Ten years after the Iraq war, this violent legacy is emerging in the work of the country's artists through film, painting and poetry
On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, former organiser in the Stop the War movement and Iraq hostage negotiator, Anas Altikriti, says Iraq has never been closer to a civil war.
The United States-led "war on terror" has spread not quelled global conflict. The next decade will do the same, unless there is a radical change of direction.
The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is at the heart of Syria's destructive stalemate. This proxy conflict, with Baghdad providing crucial help to Tehran, highlights the scale of the blowback from the United States's war in Iraq.
The only Arab country where protests started from rural areas might find itself facing an internationally funded reconstruction which will award money to urban centres, thus abandoning the very roots of the current crisis. The only solution is to build economic awareness. Starting from now.
