Ali Mamouri – AlMonitor Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has received direct and ongoing support from Iran during the eight years of his mandate, and has maintained excellent relations with Tehran throughout this period. He refrained from criticizing the Iranian regime while he was making scathing comments against [other] countries involved in the situation in Iraq. […]

Mustafa al-Kadhimi – AlMonitor Today, with the country locked in a fateful election, the parties to Iraq’s conflict are using the issue of partition to threaten their opponents — and the electorate. Two key approaches will determine the Iraqi elections and the country’s unity. One is led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who thinks that the current elections […]

Source: Niqash Niqash’s Iraqi editors covered their nation’s general elections from different ends of the country yesterday. Here they write about their experiences on the job on election day. As local media, they say it was difficult to cover the elections properly – let alone vote, in some cases, – because of official restrictions on […]

JENNA KRAJESKI – Newyorker On Wednesday, as Iraqis lined up to vote in parliamentary elections—the first since the withdrawal of U.S. forces, in 2011—many were far from home, scattered across the country by a new wave of violence. For tens of thousands of families from Anbar Province, where fighting between Iraqi security forces and Al Qaeda-inspired […]

(Baghdad) – The Iraqi government is exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in Anbar Province by hindering residents from leaving areas where fighting is taking place and impeding aid from getting in. The government should immediately facilitate safe passage for residents who want to flee the fighting and halt restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid. Eight […]

BY NED PARKER, AHMED RASHEED AND RAHEEM SALMAN Reuters The Sunni militants who seized the riverside town of Buhriz late last month stayed for several hours. The next morning, after the Sunnis had left, Iraqi security forces and dozens of Shi’ite militia fighters arrived and marched from home to home in search of insurgents and […]

An increasingly authoritarian leader, a return of sectarian violence, and a nation worried for its future. BY DEXTER FILKINS, Newyorker On Christmas Day last year, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki appeared on Iraqi television to wish his country’s Christian minority—which has been fleeing by the thousand since the American invasion, in 2003—a happy holiday. Maliki, who is […]

Ali Mamouri – AlMonitor Kadhem al-Haeri, a cleric who has close ties with the Islamic Dawa Party and the Iranian regime, issued a fatwa March 30 banning the election of secular candidates in the upcoming elections. Large banners were hung in many areas of Baghdad and included a picture of the marja (spiritual guide) and the signature of the party’s office. […]

Niqash | Mustafa Habib | Baghdad Campaigning for Iraq’s elections started last week. Almost immediately the nation’s streets were covered in campaign posters. Now locals say reading between the posters’ lines it’s possible to discern hidden messages about new alliances, trends in candidature and the shifting political landscape as well as answer questions like: Why […]