Millions stage world's greatest pilgrimage
Millions of black-clad Shia pilgrims are converging on the holy city of Kerbala for the Arbaeen religious commemoration, the largest annual gathering of people anywhere on earth. Walking in long columns stretching back unbroken for as much as 50 miles, sleeping and eating in tents erected by supporters beside the road, the event has become...
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The Saudis have made themselves even more unpopular after decapitating or shooting 47 prisoners last week. Critics are calling them, “the white ISIS.” The men, Sunni and Shia, had been convicted of “terrorism,” belonging to al-Qaida, drug offenses, or membership in proscribed Shia groups. All but two of them were Saudi citizens. Most prominent among...
Read MoreConflicts among communities that once lived together in peace brings the prospect of a refugee crisis that will continue...
Sectarian and ethnic cleansing by all sides in Syria and Iraq is becoming more intense, ensuring that there are few mixed areas left in the two countries and, even if the war ends, many refugees will find it too dangerous to return to their homes. Communities which once lived together in peace are today so...
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This email from my driver in Baghdad proves it
I used to have a driver called Omar in Baghdad at the height of the Sunni-Shia slaughter between 2004 and 2010. He was a Sunni Arab and, at the peak of the sectarian bloodshed, he fled with his family to Damascus where they stayed for a year. On his return, he found that his house,...
Read MoreIronically, they are the ones who inspire men to fight and who can prevent sectarian division
I spent last week in Karbala and Najaf, the Shia holy cities south-west of Baghdad, which I have always found to be among the wonders of the world. There is something entrancing and even magical about the sight of their golden domes and minarets rising above the roofs of the houses around them. I first...
Read MoreMore influential than any politician, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani wants the West to send Baghdad more weapons to help...
The most powerful Shia religious leader in Iraq has put out a call for the international community to send Baghdad more modern weapons to help it fight against Isis. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, widely considered to have more authority than any of Iraq’s leading politicians, also wants neighbouring countries to close their borders so that...
Read MoreShia militiamen believe the nuclear deal will herald more American help in battle to liberate Iraq
They are home to more than a million of Iraq’s Shia Muslims, and contain the tombs of that faith’s holiest figures. In recent months they have provided thousands of fighters for the militias battling Isis, but their inhabitants have watched in frustration as US air power has been deployed in support of the less effective...
Read MoreBut lack of experience risks heavy casualties
Tens of thousands of Shia militiamen are poised to join the battle for Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, in a bid to recapture it from Isis fighters who seized the city 18 months ago. The battle is likely to be one of the decisive military engagements of the Iraq war as Fallujah has been...
Read MoreThe seven wars in Muslim countries where 'Islamic State' is powerful or growing in strength
There are seven wars raging in Muslim countries between the borders of Pakistan in the east and Nigeria in the west. In all seven – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and north-east Nigeria – local versions of Isis are either already powerful or are gaining in influence. Key to its explosive expansion in Iraq...
Read MoreWho rises if Assad falls? That question, which has bedeviled U.S. experts on the Middle East, may need updating to read: Who rises when Assad falls? For the war is going badly for Bashar Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since Richard Nixon was president. Assad's situation seems more imperiled than at any time in...
Read MoreIraqi government deploys Shia militiamen to assist in counter-offensive to retake city from jihadists
Shia militiamen and Iraqi government forces are preparing to launch a counter-offensive to recapture Ramadi as Isis fighters tighten their control of the city after seizing it in a three-day battle. The loss of Ramadi has discredited the Baghdad government and US policy of relying on the regular army backed by US air strikes to...
Read MoreArab intervention in Yemen risks entrenching Sunni-Shia divide and handing a victory to Isis
Foreign states that go to war in Yemen usually come to regret it. The Saudi-led military intervention so far involves only air strikes, but a ground assault may follow. The code name for the action is Operation Decisive Storm, which is probably an indication of what Saudi Arabia and its allies would like to happen...
Read MoreMahmoud Omar, a young Sunni photographer, is angered though not entirely surprised by the way in which the Baghdad government continues to mistreat his fellow Sunnis. Political leaders inside and outside Iraq all agree that the best, and possibly the only, way to defeat Isis is to turn at least part of the Sunni Arab...
Read MoreThe president's request for the authorization to use military force against the Islamic State has landed in a Congress as divided as the country. That division was mirrored in the disparate receptions Obama's resolution received from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. To the Times, Obama's AUMF is "alarmingly broad. It does...
Read MoreTehran may have formed an unlikely alliance with its sworn enemy, but a policy of open confrontation and covert...
The United States says Iranian F-4 Phantoms have carried out bombing raids against Isis north-east of Baghdad, a claim that appears to be confirmed by film of the aircraft taken from the ground. Iran, however, denies that any of its planes are carrying out combat missions in Iraq. The raids are said to have taken...
Read MoreThe Home Secretary's counter-terrorism Bill is unlikely to make the militants lose any sleep
There have been two interesting initiatives on "terrorism" over the month, both highly revealing in different ways about opposition to Islamic State (Isis). The first is a ludicrous document issued by the government of the United Arab Emirates that lists as "terrorist organisations" no less than 85 groups, coupling well-regarded Muslim charities with violent jihadis...
Read MoreExclusive: CIA has hugely underestimated the number of jihadis, who now rule an area the size of Britain
The Islamic State (Isis) has recruited an army hundreds of thousands strong, far larger than previous estimates by the CIA, according to a senior Kurdish leader. He said the ability of Isis to attack on many widely separated fronts in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that the number of militant fighters is...
Read MoreThe US plan of strengthening local tribes is no match for the brutality of the jihadis
Islamic State (Isis) has a grisly ritual whereby its victims are compelled to chant "the Islamic State remains" in the moments before they are executed. Unfortunately, the slogan remains all too true: five months after Isis defeated the Iraqi army and captured much of northern and western Iraq, it is still tightening its grip on...
Read MoreShia militias 'abducting and killing Sunni civilians in revenge for Isis attacks'
Iraq is descending into savage sectarian warfare as government-backed Shia militias kill, torture and hold for ransom any Sunni whom they detain. Isis is notorious for its mass killings of Shia, but retaliation by Shia militiamen means that Iraq is returning to the levels of sectarian slaughter last seen in the Sunni-Shia civil war of...
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Fighting in Iraq Until Hell Freezes Over
I wanted to offer a wry chuckle before we headed into the heavy stuff about Iraq, so I tried to start this article with a suitably ironic formulation. You know, a déjà-vu-all-over-again kinda thing. I even thought about telling you how, in 2011, I contacted a noted author to blurb my book, We Meant Well:...
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When it comes to dropping bombs on Arabs, American newspapers and TV are usually extraordinarily supportive of whatever the Administration in power wants to do. Witness the pack mentality which led virtually every print journalist and editor in the country to endorse Colin Powell’s bogus UN speech blowing the whistle on Saddam’s nonexistent weapons of...
Read MorePossibility of civil conflict within Baghdad looms as Maliki deploys elite forces and his supporters take to the streets
Iraq’s new President appointed Haider al-Abadi as the Prime Minister today, damaging the hopes of Nouri al Maliki of serving a third term in the position and raising the possibility of civil conflict in Baghdad, even as militants threaten the capital. Mr Maliki is reluctant to give up his ambition despite military defeat and the...
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How America's Policies Sealed Iraq's Fate
For Americans, it was like the news from nowhere. Years had passed since reporters bothered to head for the country we invaded and blew a hole through back in 2003, the country once known as Iraq that our occupation drove into a never-ending sectarian nightmare. In 2011, the last U.S. combat troops slipped out of...
Read MoreWho even knows what to call it? The Iraq War or the Iraq-Syrian War would be far too orderly for what’s happening, so it remains a no-name conflict that couldn’t be deadlier or more destabilizing -- and it’s in the process of internationalizing in unsettling ways. Think of it as the strangest disaster on the...
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A speech by an ex-MI6 boss hints at a plan going back over a decade.
How far is Saudi Arabia complicit in the Isis takeover of much of northern Iraq, and is it stoking an escalating Sunni-Shia conflict across the Islamic world? Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing...
Read MoreTom Malinowski met with leaders of the al-Wifaq party, who claim the order shows that those opposed to reform and...
Bahrain has ordered a top US diplomat visiting the island to leave the country after he met leaders of the main Shia opposition party. The government said that the US assistant secretary for human rights, Tom Malinowski, was “unwelcome” and he should end his official three-day visit to Bahrain “due to his interference in its...
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