Tag Archives: iraq

 Stephen Harper is vowing to open Canada’s doors wider to assist refugees displaced by Islamic State fighters Harper used a campaign visit to pledge that a Conservative government would accept 10,000 refugees from Iraq and Syria over the next four years, despite criticism that the government has been slow to welcome the civilians it already promised to take in. he cautioned that …

 By : Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)  Middle East Policy Council   I want to speak with you today about the Middle East. This is the region where Africa, Asia, and Europe come together. It is also the part of the world where we have been most compellingly reminded that some struggles cannot be won, but there are no …

Amnesty International  The full extent of the horror that has unfolded across Iraq over the past year is revealed in an interactive story map published by Amnesty International today, detailing the plight of Iraqi civilians caught in a deadly spiral of horrific crimes by the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) and brutal revenge attacks by the now …

 By: Samer Muscati  Human Rights Watch  The nightmare of 12-year-old “Jalila” began when Islamic State fighters abducted her, along with her family, in northern Iraq. They separated her from her family and imprisoned her in a house in north-eastern Syria with other abducted Yezidi women and girls. Then the jihadist fighters came, one after another, to inspect them. One singled …

On Thursday, the UNHCR released its latest report ” The UNHCR’s annual Global Trends Report: World at War”.  it said that worldwide displacement was at the highest level ever recorded. And the number of people who forced to displaced at 2014 rose to 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year earlier. It also showed that over half the world’s …

By Ramzy Baroud  Are you surprised that there has been little mobilization to help Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, which is overrun by militants, and besieged by the Syrian army? Palestinians – and Syrians – there are killed in a myriad of ways, including starvation. I am not surprised. Even before Palestinian refugees found themselves …

By Jonathan Cook  I watched American Sniper the other night and it really is the most puerile propaganda imaginable. It is not even as though it is simply unfair to the “enemy” – that is, mostly ordinary Iraqis, who are shown to be ruthless and heartless killers filled with irrational hatred for the American soldiers sent to liberate them from …

By Ramzy Baroud Francois Hollande is not a popular president. No matter how hard the ‘socialist’ leader tries to impress, there never seems to be a no solid constituency that backs him. He attempted to mask his initial lack of experience in foreign affairs with a war in Mali, after his country enthusiastically took on Libya. While he succeeded at …

By Ramzy Baroud Writing about and reporting the Middle East is not an easy task, especially during these years of turmoil and upheaval. While physical maps remain largely intact, the geopolitical map of the region is in constant influx. Following and reporting about these constant changes without a deep and compassionate understanding of the region will achieve little but predictable …

Since May, over 22 people have left Switzerland to fight abroad as foreign militants, including eight in the past two weeks, Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service (FIS), said on Monday. According to the agency, 61 Swiss nationals have left to fight overseas since 2001, including 37 who left to Iraq and Syria, and 25 to Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The …