By Dr. Rashid Karadaghi: A performance of Macbeth without Macbeth, Hamlet without Hamlet! On January 23rd, a conference of the US-led coalition against ISIS was held in London hosted by the U.S. and Britain and attended by over twenty countries to discuss ways and means of fighting the terrorist organization. What was striking about this…
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Category Archives: Iraq
Kurdish-Jewish Covenant of Friendship Azadi Shalom
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: Winter has arrived in Kurdistan and many babies born in the cold tents of the fugitives from the killers of the “Islamic State” will die. My bodyguard Azad Kardoi and I visited in Erbil a camp of 62 tents within a church compound and are sure that the inhabitants…
Kurdish Voices on Iraq’s Future Must Be Heard
By Aras Ahmed Mhamad: Aras Ahmed Mhamad speaks to Kurds about their views on the Iraqi conflict against the Islamic State. The lighting advance of the Islamic State (IS) in June 2014 remains a direct threat to coexistence in Iraq. Sparking intensified religious conflict, and economic and political disintegration, the sudden surge prompted fears of further destruction in the minds of…
De-islamization in a Free Kurdistan?
Dr. Jan Best de Vries: I am grateful that, as an outsider from Europe, in December 2014 I had the opportunity to relate in broad terms, to staff and students at the Mesopotamia Academy in Qamishlo, the history of the Kurds. When combining all the data from archaeology, history and linguistics at our disposal, one…
Women Gyn Doctors Urgently Needed by Yazidi Refugees
By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Over 400 Yazidi girls and women have escaped from the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria and made their way to Dohuk in northern Iraq. Some have been bought back for ransoms. Since their kidnapping last August 2014 from their homes in Shingal, Iraq,…
The Road to Jerusalem: IS Follows Saladin’s Steps
By Osamah Golpy: A popular Arabic song started to emerge in the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. It glorifies two Palestinians, a father and a son: the boy crying and the father waving, all in the eyes of the whole world, and then a burst of gunfire and dust, after which the boy is seen…
Getting Rid of IS: Back to the Disputed Territories
By Mohammed Hussein: Kurdish forces’ recent advances to retake Sinjar and other northern areas of Mosul have generated discussions about the post Islamic State (IS) era in the territories disputed between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi federal government. Who will control and run the territories after getting rid of IS has become…
Rescue and Abandonment
By Dr. Rashid Karadaghi: In his informative article, “The Fight of Their Lives,” (The New Yorker, September 29, 2014), Dexter Filkins describes the relationship between the Kurds and the United States as “a series of swings between rescue and abandonment, between gratitude and distrust.” In these few perceptive words, Filkins accurately sums up the ups-and-downs…
Yazidi Genocide: How Faisal’s Family Was Massacred
By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: Faisal Mahmud Kharow is an Ezidi from Shingal, Iraq. Twelve members of his family were mercilessly executed and 22 females and a ten-day-old infant boy were kidnapped on August 3, 2014, during the genocidal attack on Shingal by Islamic State gangs. I interviewed Faisal in Germany, where he now lives…
Ezidi Refugees Beaten Back at Turkish-Bulgarian Border
By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: Turkey let 200 Ezidis refugees from Diyarbakir Fidanlik Park camp leave Turkey without any documents. They chartered 3 buses and rode 30 hours to the Bulgarian border arriving on Dec. 21 before dark. By early the next morning, they were imprisoned. Bookmark on Delicious Recommend on Facebook Share on Linkedin…
Iraq: The failed democracy
By Ausama Anwar: The basic rule and principle of democracy is to listen to every voice in the country despite differences. Every individual has the full right to vote for the party he/she desires. But at the same time, the power lies in the hands of the majority. Within this scope Bchara Karam states the…
Saving the Children in Kurdistan and Iraq
By Carla Mufid: On my recent visit to my homeland Kurdistan I decided that, as it was Ramadan, I should give back to my community by helping those who are less fortunate than me. I did this by applying to be a volunteer at a Kurdish charity, which helps children all over Iraq, called Kurdistan…
Carving a Country Called Terroristan in Kurdistan
By Dr. M. Koohzad: What IS in a Name Game of the World’s Worst Islamic Jihadist Terrorists or WWIJT? This article first appeared on CounterPunch Introduction Development of the world’s worst Islamist Jihadist terrorist group began with chaos of the sectarian civil war in Syria. It slowly matured to become the most mighty and dreaded…
The war against Turkey/ISIS
By Dr. Jan Best de Vries: To my friend Salih Muslim “Under the pretense of stopping an ISIS attack on Turkey (for ISIS fighters constantly attack Kobane from Turkey – JBdeV) , the Turkish army bombarded the center of Kobani with tanks and artillery”, Kurdish newspaper Rudaw quoted Anwar Muslim, the co-chairman of Kobani, as saying…
Broken lives
By Dr. Sherzad Al-Khalifa: Just imagine yourself: You have a house to return to every day, you prepare your children in the morning to go to school; you make food for the family; you feed them when they come back home; you have a TV and you wait for your favourite programme; you cover yourself at night with a warm blanket; you…
