When the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr met with a group of his lieutenants at his base in the Shia holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq earlier this month, he had a message he wanted them to convey nationwide.
"If the Sadrist trend is a football (...)
On 23 August 1921, Faisal Bin Al-Hussein, son of the sharif of Mecca, was proclaimed king of Iraq, which had been carved by the British colonial power as a state out of the former Ottoman Empire after World War I.
Faisal was chosen by British (...)
Rhetoric has been used in Iraq to gain broader influence in local politics and to focus attention on special interests. The practice has been instrumental in avoiding commitment to a national agenda and in fuelling discussion on communal aspects of (...)
Underlining the commitment of their countries to further deepening relations, the leaders of Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan met this week for the first time in Baghdad amid efforts to transform Iraq into a stable and functioning country.
Egyptian (...)
Drought is on the verge of becoming Iraq's next crisis, and the immediate question is whether the country's leadership can tackle the severe water shortages it is facing and avoid an impending catastrophe.
Iraq is experiencing one of its worst (...)
Iranian voters are about to head to the polls to elect a new president. Once again, the debate in the Arab world is about whether the elections will bring any meaningful change in the Islamic Republic's policies towards the region.
There is almost (...)
Despite the prevailing peace in Iraq's Sunni-populated provinces today, the thousands of refugees who fled their towns and cities following the Islamic State (IS) group's rise in 2014 are still hesitant to return home.
Those who have done so have (...)
The most frequent buzzwords in Iraq these days are "sovereignty", "prestige" and "respect" for the state. Yet, these are also the most ridiculed concepts. Since he was appointed prime minister last May Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has made reviving the state (...)
It is the "David and Goliath" scenario again, only there has been a role-change from the Biblical text where Saul and the Israelites are facing the Philistines in the Valley of Elah. The underdog, or the smaller and weaker opponent, in the contest (...)
During its standoff with the Lebanese Shia militant group Hizbullah in 2006, Israel responded with an all-out war beginning with a blockade and an intense aerial bombing campaign. The campaign was later developed into a military blueprint called the (...)
If a single impulse has defined Iranian diplomacy over the past decade, it is the smile of Mohamed Javad Zarif. The Iranian Foreign Minister has consistently used charm to try and free his embattled nation of its rigid shell.
Through such smooth (...)
The Palestinian elections next month will be the first since political violence in the 2006 election. It was that violence between the mainstream Fatah faction and the Islamist militant group Hamas – the two forces that have dominated Palestinian (...)
The Arab states that emerged from the end of the Ottomans' rule following World War I have always had uneasy relationships with Turkey, which is largely seen as the continuation of the Ottoman Empire and a troubled Ottoman-Arab history.
Over the (...)
Over the last few months Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have stepped up efforts to enhance cooperation with Iraq, which still relies heavily on neighbouring Iran in energy and other economic domains.
The two Sunni (...)
If the Iraqi government and the United Nations are to be believed, "a national dialogue" among political forces to be held before the October parliamentary elections might help rebuild a stable and peaceful Iraq.
Last month incumbent Prime Minister (...)
Two months into his presidency Joe Biden faces mounting criticism for his Middle East policy. Strategic experts across the region feel it lacks focus, with neither a clear set of objectives nor sufficient engagement with regional power houses.
Even (...)
Over the last two weeks Iraq's lawmakers have struggled to pass legislation that would create a Supreme Federal Court (SFC) to serve as the country's primary constitutional platform, and is also required for endorsing the results of a crucial early (...)
Iraq's Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi is taking credit for bringing Pope Francis to his beleaguered nation this week in the first-ever papal trip to Iraq, taking a moment to bask in warm glow of an event trumpeted by the Iraqi media as a historic (...)
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Al-Ahram Weekly, which was established amidst Desert Storm, the US-led war to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, one of the most momentous events in the 20th-century Middle East. The paper aimed at providing (...)
If there is one country in the Middle East where one should not be surprised to see political violence resulting in brutal murders, it is Lebanon.
With presidents, prime ministers, religious leaders, key political leaders and journalists all having (...)
When twin suicide bombs rocked a busy market in central Baghdad on 21 January, killing at least 32 people and injuring 110 others, many Iraqis went on TV talk shows or online chats to blame the ruling Iraqi groups for the horrific attacks. It was a (...)
When Mustafa Al-Kadhimi assumed office as Iraq's prime minister in May this year, he made a string of reform promises, many of which made headlines and went from weeding out corruption to improving public services and restoring the nation's battered (...)
Next month will mark a decade since the 2011 uprisings that rocked several Arab countries and lead to the collapse of four regimes. But the fallout from the chaos they gave rise to and that rippled through the region has lasted for years after the (...)
The killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran last month has raised the spectre of a major conflict in the Middle East and possibly of a war between the Islamic Republic and Israel, which has been blamed for the (...)
With elections in Iraq only months away, the country's Shia political factions, which have been in control of the government for nearly 18 years, are making preparations for their campaigns, fuelling speculation that the voting will be hotly (...)
