Iraq Archives - Islamic Societies Review

Broken trust: How Iraqis lost their faith in Washington, long before the Kurds did

26/11/2019isrLeave a Comment

by Mieczysław P. Boduszyński, Assistant Professor of Politics, Pomona College In all the hand-wringing that critics and commentators have done since President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria, one of the common refrains emphasizes the breach of trust between Washington and its Kurdish militia partners. Some scholars of international relations […]

Final results of the 2018 elections in Iraq: no real winner

19/05/2018isrLeave a Comment

The results may be disappointing to Iraqi politicians, but it is a positive sign for the process. To form a government, they must work together to form a governing coalition, and the results show that there is no king maker. Here is what we know about the requirements and about the results: available seats 329, […]

A Kurdish referendum, now, is counterproductive

01/10/2017isrLeave a Comment

There is no doubt that the Kurdish people, like any other ethnic and linguistic community of their size, have a legitimate claim to self-determination. The Kurdish people in all five countries where they have a sizable population and in the diaspora, are more than 35 million people. Were they able to form a nation of […]

Why are Western governments angered by those who compare the military campaigns in Mosul and Aleppo?

04/12/2016isrLeave a Comment

Charred bodies of ISIL fighters suggest abuse Over the last weekend of the month of November, Russian military leaders reacted to Western criticism of Russia’s support to the Syrian government to retake eastern Aleppo from armed groups. They countered by accusing the U.S. and its allies of double standard. They suggested, essentially, that what the […]

Will Russia react to Idlib’s incident the same way the U.S. reacted to Fallujah’s?

02/08/2016isrLeave a Comment

The similarities between two events–one took place in Idlib (Syria) on July 31, 2016 and the other happened March 31, 2004 in Fallujah (Iraq)–are eerie. It is reminder of the connections between the two conflicts. Syria’s is a direct result of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Fallujah incident, Americans killed, dragged in […]

The truth is the first and last victim of wars

02/07/2016isrLeave a Comment

Considering the utterly conflicting reports about a single strike, not a battle or a war, it becomes evident that a truthful narrative about war is elusive and indistinguishable from propaganda. This fact was underscored in the wildly divergent reports about a single attack on ISIL’s fighters fleeing the recently liberated city of Fallujah. In the […]

Saudi Arabia’s Impracticable Alliances

25/02/201609/12/2019Prof. SouaiaiaLeave a Comment

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The legacy of the illegal war on Iraq and the burden of befriending the Wahhabi rulers

28/12/201509/12/2019Prof. SouaiaiaLeave a Comment

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The Genealogy, Ideology, and Future of ISIL and its Derivatives

16/11/201517/01/2020Prof. SouaiaiaLeave a Comment

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Syria’s protest movement that gave birth to a World War

02/10/2015isrLeave a Comment

by Ahmed E. Souaiaia* The peaceful protest movement that started in Syria in 2011 was transformed by foreign governments’ involvement into a civil war fueled by sectarian and ethnic dreams. Now, we can see that Syria is no longer ground for a civil or proxy war, it is scene of a world war. There are […]