President Donald Trump has called himself the “peace president,” but throughout his second term in office he has demonstrated an ongoing willingness to use the military in overseas operations. Ecuador and Iran represent the latest conflicts the United States has engaged in, but they are just two of several countries to become entangled with the U.S. military once Trump reentered the White House

Ecuador

In March 2026, the Trump administration launched a military operation in another country, though not against its government: The White House “announced it is collaborating with Ecuador to combat ‘terrorists’ in the South American country,” said Al Jazeera. Joint military efforts have already started in Ecuador, with operations launched against “designated terrorist organizations.”

Several questions remain, as “both Ecuador and the United States haven’t specified who they’re targeting, locations of operations or the scope of military actions,” said USA Today. But Trump’s decision to send in the military marks an “embrace of past American strategies fighting drug traffickers in Latin America.”

Iran

Trump has been jawing at Iran since retaking office over the country’s alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon. Following a bombing campaign in June 2025 that destroyed several of Iran’s nuclear facilities, in February 2026 the U.S. “joined Israel and attacked more than 1,000 targets in Iran,” said Reuters. This full-scale assault killed several of Iran’s top officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While Republican officials and members of the Trump cabinet have variously called the Iran conflict a “mission” or “defense operation,” Trump himself has repeatedly used the term “war.” Trump’s calculation “has been that he can launch military operations with the loss of few American lives and minimal disruption to the economy,” said The New York Times, but the “opening days of the war in Iran are challenging that assumption.” No American ground troops “have yet been sent to Iranian soil,” but “the administration has not ruled out deploying soldiers.”

Venezeula

As with Iran, Trump also pushed to remove the leader of Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro, alleging that he was a national security threat. Trump accomplished this goal in January 2026 when the U.S. “launched an incursion” into Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, that captured Maduro and left the “country in a state of uncertainty over its political and economic future,” said Time.

Maduro was brought to the United States to face charges of narco-terrorism, but Trump “has never formally declared war on Venezuela, despite overseeing an aggressive military campaign on the South American country,” said Time. The White House has “justified its attacks using the president’s Article II constitutional powers, which give the president the authority to defend the country against threats.” Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has since taken over Venezuela. Meanwhile, Trump “has offered conflicting statements on the future of U.S. involvement in the country,” said the Council on Foreign Relations.

Syria

In response to an attack by the Islamic State militant group, Trump in January 2026 “carried out large-scale strikes against Islamic State group targets in Syria,” said BBC News. These strikes were “conducted in an effort to combat terrorism and protect U.S. and partner forces in the region.” The initial strike involved more than 90 munitions fired at more than 35 Syrian targets, according to BBC News.

It later came out that the Islamic State’s assault was performed by a “member of Syria’s security forces slated for dismissal over his extremist views,” said the Times, though the Islamic State itself “has not claimed responsibility for the attack.” While White House officials have continued to say they will seek vengeance, the “Syrian leadership has pledged continued cooperation with the United States and its allies to combat ISIS in the country,” said the Council on Foreign Relations.

Caribbean territories

While not an attack against one specific country, more than 40 U.S. strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats “have been carried out in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September 2025,” said NBC News. Democrats in Congress have criticized the strikes, which have reportedly left over 130 people dead, though Trump “has repeatedly argued that the strikes are preventing illicit drugs from entering the U.S.”

Though most Caribbean nations have criticized the use of U.S. military force, at least one has sung a different tune: Trinidad and Tobago “came out strongly on Washington’s side” with a “full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump’s belligerent drug policy in the region,” said Bloomberg. This makes the nation one of the only Caribbean locales to take Trump’s side.

Yemen

From March to May 2025, the United States “launched naval and airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels in what was code-named Operation Rough Rider,” said Time. This was, up to that point, Trump’s largest military operation of his second term. The strikes were aimed at a variety of Houthi targets in the country, including “radar systems, air defenses, and missile and drone launch sites” in response to the Houthi’s attack on international ships in the Red Sea.

At least one of these attacks by the U.S. “caused dozens of civilian casualties and significant damage to port infrastructure,” said Human Rights Watch, and the event should be “investigated as a war crime.” This assault, in the town of Hodeidah, targeted the port through which 80% of Yemen’s humanitarian assistance arrives, Human Rights Watch reported. U.S. officials have denied any wrongdoing.

Iraq

A more minor military incursion took place in March 2025, when the military “conducted a precision airstrike in Al Anbar Province, Iraq,” that killed the Islamic State’s second-in-command, Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rifai, according to the U.S. Central Command. Al-Rifai was “one of the most important ISIS members in the entire global ISIS organization. We will continue to kill terrorists and dismantle their organizations,” Gen. Michael Kurilla of the U.S. Central Command said.

After the Iran conflict broke out in February 2026, Trump administration officials also had discussions “with Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq and northwestern Iran about potentially arming groups opposed to the Iranian regime,” said NBC News. This would be the latest in a decades-long saga of military action between the U.S. and Iraq.

Somalia

Since February 2025, just weeks after taking office, Trump “has been conducting strikes in Somalia to target ISIS and al-Shabaab,” said NewsNation. There have been “more than 100 strikes launched, mostly using drones.” As with Ecuador, Somali officials seem receptive to the military usage.

The operation “reinforces the strong security partnership between Somalia and the United States in combating extremist threats,” Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in a post on X. Somalia “remains resolute in working with its allies to eliminate international terrorism and ensure regional stability.” An “initial assessment by the Pentagon indicated that ‘multiple’ operatives were killed in the operation,” said Deutsche Welle. It also stated that “no civilians were harmed in the strikes.”

War remains an endemic human tragedy, and movies have long been one of the best ways to demonstrate its horrors to those who have never experienced it. With great power tensions rising in the real world, there has never been a better time for audiences to watch these films — if only to remind themselves of why peace is preferable to conflict.

‘Black Hawk Down’ (2001)

With the U.S.-led 1992-1993 intervention in Somalia struggling to relieve the country’s famine due to state failure, Major General Garrison (Sam Shepard) greenlights an operation to capture the warlord Mohamed Aidid in Mogadishu using U.S. Army Rangers dropped from helicopters. The operation goes awry when one of the Black Hawk helicopters is brought down and its crew, including Durant (Ron Eldard), killed or besieged. With journalist Mark Bowden’s book as the “guarantor of a horrendous authenticity,” director Ridley Scott’s film uses “immense technical skill and spectacular photography” to produce a gripping war film that has nevertheless justifiably taken criticism for its context-free depiction of Somalia’s plight, said Philip Strick at Sight and Sound. (Prime Video)

‘Letters From Iwo Jima’ (2006)

Famously conservative icon Clint Eastwood seems like an unlikely choice to make a subtitled film that takes the Japanese view of one of World War II’s closing battles seriously. But that’s exactly what happens in his magnificent “Letters From Iwo Jima,” which depicts the early 1945 American invasion of the strategic island and its airfields, which are about 750 miles from mainland Japan.

Ken Watanabe is General Kuribayashi, who is tasked with defending the island from the impending American assault, and Kazunari Ninomiya plays Saigo, a soldier digging trenches on the beach until Kuribayashi shifts strategy and orders the construction of a network of tunnels and fortifications inland.

The film grapples movingly with how commanders and soldiers understood their predicament, including an unforgettable scene in which a number of soldiers commit suicide. Eastwood’s epic operates in a “poetic mode,” finding a place “where the limitations of a war movie start to vanish” and resulting in the “best of both worlds: an art house combat picture,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Prime Video)

‘The Hurt Locker’ (2008)

So far the definitive statement about America’s decade-long misadventure in Iraq is director Kathryn Bigelow’s deservedly lauded “The Hurt Locker.” Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner, in a career-making performance) is the team leader of an explosives disposal unit whose predecessor (Guy Pearce) gets obliterated by an IED in the film’s opening minutes.

James is a renegade constantly at odds with his rule-bound team, short-timers Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), who worry with some justification that James’ unorthodox, bespoke and often impulsive bomb-defusing tactics are going to get them all killed. A film that “doesn’t engage the politics of the war in Iraq per se,” it is a “totally immersive, off-the-charts high-anxiety experience from beginning to end,” said Amy Taubin at Film Comment. (Netflix)

‘Waltz with Bashir’ (2008)

Based on his experiences as a soldier during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, director Ari Folman voices his character as he interviews fellow veterans of the conflict — most of whom play themselves. The gorgeous, haunting animation allows the filmmakers to precisely recreate the Lebanese battlefield and grapple with the events that led to the infamous massacre of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp outside of Beirut at the hands of Lebanese Christian extremists. Simultaneously a “history lesson, a combat picture, a piece of investigative journalism and an altogether amazing film,” the result is a “work of astonishing aesthetic integrity and searing moral power,” said A.O. Scott at The New York Times. (Prime Video)

‘Hacksaw Ridge’ (2016)

Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) is a religiously devout pacifist who get drafted in 1942 and becomes an army medic but refuses to carry a rifle or engage in combat, drawing intense scrutiny from his peers and superiors in director Mel Gibson’s engrossing film. Based on a true story, “Hacksaw Ridge” follows Doss from childhood through the war, culminating in his heroic rescue of 75 soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa.

Buoyed by a searing performance from Garfield, the film was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards — a triumph for Gibson, whose life and career had been mired in controversy for years. The film, “though corny at times, treads close to madness and majesty alike, and nobody but Gibson could have made it,” said Anthony Lane at The New Yorker. (Disney+)

‘Dunkirk’ (2017)

A structurally daring look at the miraculous evacuation of some 400,000 British expeditionary forces from France who were pinned down by German forces early in the war, “Dunkirk” marked director Christopher Nolan’s departure from his familiar science fiction and fantasy territory. The film is told from three perspectives: Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) is an infantryman making his way to the beach for evacuation; George (Barry Keoghan) joins the crew of an unarmed civilian trawler that heroically volunteers to help transport the fleeing forces; and Farrier (Tom Hardy) is an Royal Air Force pilot helping provide cover for the evacuation.

Unlike many ultraviolent war movies of the contemporary era, Nolan’s film “does not revel in realistic depictions of wartime death, with all its blood and viscera,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. Instead, it creates an “impressive tribute to the survivors and the grand-scale efforts of the British people” during one of the country’s finest hours. (BritBox)

‘1917’ (2019)

Director Sam Mendes’ World War I drama is composed of long, unbroken shots assembled together by cinematographer Roger Deakins to give the illusion of being a “oner.” Late in the war, British Lance Corporals Will Schofield (​​George MacKay) and Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) are ordered by General Erinmore (Colin Firth) to carry a message to a British battalion warning them not to fall into a deadly trap that the seemingly retreating Germans have set for them.

Like “Saving Private Ryan,” it is essentially a road narrative, in which Schofield and Blake see the carnage of war along with the audience. A “ghost train ride into a day-lit house of horror,” the film conveys the “nihilist elation that comes with the moment-by-moment experience of survival, fiercely holding on to life with every eardrum-splitting sniper shot,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (Netflix)

‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ (2022)

Though it divided critics, director Edward Berger’s bold, bleak and propulsive adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s groundbreaking 1929 novel more than serves its purpose as a fierce statement against war. It opens cleverly with the journey of a German uniform, stripped from a dead infantryman and sent to be cleaned, repaired and rehomed onto Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer), an idealistic volunteer pumped full of nationalist propaganda about adventure and brotherhood and thrust instead into an unceasing and pointless nightmare of trench warfare, deprivation, suffering and death. The “vast machinery of total war has rarely been depicted as viscerally or as coldly” as in Berger’s film, which “almost wades into horror territory, helped in no small part by the booming, anachronistic synths of Volker Bertelmann’s score,” said John Nugent at Empire. (Netflix)

“There’s a terrific charm and sweetness in this debut from Iraqi filmmaker Hasan Hadi, a Bake Off-style adventure about a little girl in early-90s Iraq required by her school to make a birthday cake in Saddam Hussein’s honour,” said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. The task sounds innocuous enough but, because the country is in the grip of sanctions, every single ingredient that nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) might use to make her cake is near-impossible to come by. Undeterred, she and her pal Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem) set off to find what they need and, along the way, they meet a string of “vivid characters”, from a “grocer who gives rare treats to a pregnant customer in exchange for sexual favours” to a postman who helps them, declaring cake “the greatest invention in human history”. The film “saunters and meanders along” but, throughout, placards and posters of Saddam pop up, “as if to spoil every happy moment and intensify every sad one”.

At times, the mood of this “sweet tragedy” of a movie is almost larky, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times: Lamia travels everywhere with her cockerel, Hindi, for instance, who is a bona fide “star”. But the actress’s “small, grave face” – she has never acted before, and is superb – is the film’s soul. In this Iraq, not every adult is a monster but fish rot from the head down, and the evil of the president is catching.” At once “a road movie, a magic realist fable and an incisive portrait of the seldom-seen Iraq of the 1990s”, this film feels “distinctly Iraqi”, said Joseph Fahim in Sight and Sound. To its director’s credit, it never slips into “misery porn” but is instead infused with humour, even as it shows how its characters’ transgressions “are inseparable from their declining society”.

As Hollywood gears up for the March 15 Academy Awards ceremony, the film world continues to turn with February releases. Whether these five features will be part of next year’s Oscar conversation is anyone’s guess, but audiences reeling from a particularly brutal winter could certainly do worse than spending an evening with one of them.

‘Honey Bunch’

After Diana (Grace Glowicki) wakes up from a coma, struggling to remember what happened, her husband Homer (Ben Petrie) whisks her off to an eerie, remote rehab facility. As she begins to recover her memories, she also begins distrusting the motives of the staff, including the coldly clinical Farah (Kate Dickie) and even Homer himself.

Directors Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer (“Violation”) deliver a deliberately disorienting slow burn that erupts into chaos in the movie’s second half, delivering a film that is “thrilling but ponderous, darkly comedic but genuinely disturbing, thoughtful but deeply silly, and 100% weird at all times,” said Jim Vorel at Paste Magazine. (Feb. 13 on Shudder)

‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ (Feb 13)

Sam Rockwell is an outstanding actor who rarely gets the chance to headline a project, but in “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” he sizzles as a nameless man from the future who takes a group of strangers hostage in a Los Angeles diner and tries to enlist them to stop what he claims is an impending AI apocalypse. It’s a kind of tongue-in-cheek, sci-fi “Groundhog Day.” As “bold as it is clever,” this time loop thriller from director Gore Verbinski (“The Ring”) is “dizzily ambitious in its gallows-tinged nihilism about the technology ruling and ruining our lives,” said David Crow at Den of Geek. (in theaters Feb. 13)

‘Redux Redux’

Irene (Michaela McManus) uses a device that allows her to jump around the multiverse, hunting iterations of her daughter’s murderer, a serial killer named Neville (Jeremy Holm). She can’t seem to save her daughter, but gladly kills Neville over and over, confronting the limits of vengeance — until she has the chance to save someone else.

Directors Kevin and Matthew McManus (who helmed the 2021 cult classic “The Block Island Sound”) have created a “smart, terrifying” thriller that “takes elements of the serial killer genre, aspects of grief drama and a splash of multiverse storytelling and mixes them into something that feels fresh and new,” said Brian Tallerico at Roger Ebert. (in theaters Feb. 20)

‘The President’s Cake’

A parable about ordinary life under dictatorship has never been more relevant than in 2026, even if the subject matter ostensibly focuses on 1990s Iraq. At the direction of the country’s brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein — who would be overthrown in a 2003 US-led military intervention—ordinary Iraqis are ordered to bake cakes to honor his birthday.

In director Hasan Hadi’s first full-length film, 9-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) is put in charge of gathering the supplies for her school’s offering, a daunting task given the punishing sanctions that were imposed on the country at the time. Lamia encounters corruption and predation at every turn, and her “cake becomes a classic MacGuffin” in this “darkly comic odyssey through scarcity, fear and moral erosion,” said James Murphy at The Scoop. (in theaters Feb. 27)

‘Dreams’

Jessica Chastain plays Jennifer, a socialite and philanthropist whose hush-hush romance with a much younger Mexican ballet dancer named Fernando (Isaac Hernández) spirals out of control when he illegally crosses the border and turns up at her San Francisco condo. Jennifer operates an arts foundation for her ultra-wealthy family and met Fernando on one of many trips to Mexico to distribute grants, but his sudden presence in her carefully curated American life triggers a crisis. A “clear-eyed and detail-focused moral drama” from director Michel Franco (“Sundown”) offers “provocative social critique with an extra-sharp sting in the tail,” said Peter Debruge at Variety. (in theaters Feb. 27)

In the Young Vic’s big opening for December, the “talking ghost of a tiger haunts the streets of the battle-ravaged Iraqi capital while ruminating on the nature of existence”, said Dzifa Benson in The Telegraph. That sounds like a tough sell. And Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer-nominated play – originally staged on Broadway with Robin Williams as the tiger – has taken 14 years to cross the Atlantic.

But in the capable hands of director Omar Elerian, and featuring an astonishing central performance from Kathryn Hunter, this multi-layered and “engrossing” tragi-comedy about the absurdities of war proves to be “funny, profound, must-see theatre”.

Joseph’s “madly surreal” and “quietly humane” play is based on a real event, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. In 2003, a starving Bengal tiger in Baghdad’s zoo was shot by an American soldier after it mauled his comrade’s hand. The playwright takes this as his jumping-off point for an incident-light drama in which the tiger prowls the burning city, haunting its killer and looking for God. The main (human) characters are Kev and Tom, the two US soldiers, and an Iraqi man, Musa, who used to work as a gardener for Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son, Uday – and who is now acting as an interpreter for the invading forces.

The play gets “over-entangled in its philosophising in places”. But Hunter, who stepped into the role at the last minute to replace the unwell David Threlfall, is “superb” – and Elerian’s production “spins on a dime between terrifying violence, quiet reflection and mordant humour”.

“This will undoubtedly be a Marmite show,” said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. I found it “wickedly funny”, and the boldness of its imagery made it possible for me to forgive its bagginess. Joseph, it is fair to say, “makes little concession to normal audience expectations of coherence. But for me this seems a work of massive swings, almost all of which connect with profound force.” I fell on the other side of the fence, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Hunter seizes her moment with the “aplomb of an acerbic stand-up comic”, and there are some “nice lines”. But “mostly, this is Beckettian milling about by desperate people in a ruined world. A strong theatrical flavour, in short, and not one for me.”

Young Vic, London SE1. Until 31 January

Multi-drug antibacterial resistance caused by the war in Ukraine is now “on the doorstep” of western Europe, according to an Australian clinician who has worked in the war-torn country.

Potentially lethal infections in Ukraine have increased 10-fold since the start of the war, Hailie Uren told Vaccines Work, and this “really frightening” level of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) there is on the march beyond its borders.

Invisible threat

Humans are “host” to over a thousand species of bacteria, including some superbugs that are “deemed critical threats”, said The New York Times. Normally, they don’t “become pathogenic in healthy people” but “war changes that”. War “deprives people of food, clean water and sanitary living conditions”, and “when bombs and bullets fly” wounds become “perforated with shrapnel, debris and soil teeming with microbes”. Even before the war, Ukraine had a high rate of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, which can spread even more easily in barracks, bomb shelters and refuge centres.

A “rising number of wounded soldiers” in Ukraine are being infected with microbes that are “extensively drug-resistant” or which “withstand most or all antibiotics thrown at them”, said Vaccines Work. Doctors and scientists in Ukraine are waging a “shadow war” against this rising tide of “pernicious infections”, which have also “begun circulating in the general population”, including children.

The Lviv region, on the “doorstep” of the European Union, has “some of the highest multi-drug resistance levels” in all of Ukraine.

In Estonia, drug-resistant pathogens are already being “brought in” by Ukrainian refugees, said ERR News.

Pernicious threat

A “growing body of research” suggests that the “21st-century way of warfare has become a major driver” of AMR, particularly in the Middle East, said The New York Times. In Syria, “protracted” fighting has “exacerbated existing drivers of antimicrobial resistance and introduced new ones”, representing a “rising threat” to the country’s health system, according to a study published in Nature.

Before the Second World War and the “advent of antibiotics, infections routinely killed more soldiers than combat itself”, said the Financial Times. Today, AMR has become a “different and arguably more pernicious kind of threat” and one that “could continue to claim lives long after conflict is over”.

Last year, England’s former chief medical officer warned that the rise of superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics poses a greater threat to humanity than climate change. A paper published in The Lancet last September estimated that AMR could contribute to the deaths of 8.22 million people per year by 2050 – more than the number currently killed by cancer.

Iraq’s election has been closely watched from way beyond its borders, as the young democracy finds itself in a power struggle between the US, Israel and Iran.

The parliamentary vote, the seventh since the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, ended last night. Although marred domestically by voter disillusionment, the vote could have far wider implications. Israel and the US are increasingly pressuring Iraq to dismantle the powerful Iran-backed groups that hold sway there. Meanwhile, as Iran’s influence “wanes” across the Middle East, its network of proxies decimated by Israel, it hopes to “preserve its power in Iraq”, said Al Jazeera. Iraq is its only close ally that has, since the war in Gaza began, “remained out of Israel’s crosshairs”.

What is the backdrop?

After the US-led 2003 invasion, Iraq suffered years of bloody civil war, sectarian conflict and the rise of Islamist extremist groups. The country adopted a power-sharing agreement: the prime minister is always a Shia Muslim, the speaker of Parliament a Sunni Muslim, and the president (a largely ceremonial role) is a Kurd.

Elections were still often mired in political violence and clashes between supporters of different blocs. But under the tenure of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Iraq has become relatively stable. He came to power in 2022 with the backing of a group of pro-Iran parties, but sought to “balance Iraq’s relations with Tehran and Washington”, said The Independent.

Now, he is struggling to maintain that balance, as tensions grow between the US and Iran. Israel is also threatening strikes, amid fears of another deadly war with Iran.

What does Iran have to do with Iraq?

Iraq represents a “vital sphere of influence” for Iran, which has been severely weakened by Israeli strikes, Western sanctions and the Trump administration, said the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.

In Iraq, a coalition of Iran-aligned militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) dominates parliament. The PMF “forms part of a region-wide network of Iran-aligned armed groups” across the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. This network is “central to the survival” of Iran.

But since Israel declared war on Gaza in 2023, it has “wiped out” Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon and “decimated its rank and file”, as well as “decapitating” the Houthi government in Yemen. In Syria, the regime of key Iran ally Bashar al-Assad has been toppled. Israel’s campaign “could now turn to the PMF” in Iraq, especially if there is a “sequel” to its 12-day war with Iran in June. Against that backdrop, this election “could not be more critical to maintaining Iraq’s status as the lung through which Iran breathes”.

Where does the US come in?

The US still “holds significant sway” in Iraq, said Al Jazeera. Its forces are deployed across the country and are regular targets for pro-Iran groups. The PMF, for example, has a long track record of attacks on US bases in the country.

Washington designates these as “terrorist groups” and is pressuring Baghdad to disarm them. US envoy Mark Savaya recently called for Iraq to be freed “from Iran and its proxies’ ‘malign’ interference”.

How do Iraqis feel?

Voter turnout has been dropping steadily over the past decade, hitting a record low of 41% in the last election in 2021. Citizens have become disillusioned with high unemployment, poor infrastructure and endemic corruption, erupting into mass anti-government protests in 2019.

The popular Sadrist Movement, led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, won the largest number of seats in 2021 but withdrew after failed negotiations over forming a government. He boycotted this election. Pollsters and analysts predicted a record-low turnout after widespread allegations of vote buying. But actually, turnout was reportedly over 55% of the country’s 21 million registered voters. Still, few believe these elections will bring meaningful change. The growing young electorate sees the elections as a “vehicle for established parties to divide up Iraq’s oil wealth”, said Reuters.

What’s going to happen?

Sudani’s bloc is forecast to win the most seats but fall short of a majority. That could mean months of negotiations between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Given the “fragmentation” and divisions within those blocs, Kurdish parties could “play kingmakers”, said Al Jazeera.

However, Sudani is “seen as unlikely to remain prime minister”, said Chatham House. The outcome of this “bargaining could test Iraq’s stability” and shake its “fragile equilibrium”.

“Iraq has so far avoided the worst of the regional upheaval caused by the Gaza war”, said Reuters. But if the next government fails to break Tehran’s grip and dismantle the Iran-backed militant groups, it will face both US and Israeli “wrath”.

“A battle is brewing over who will run the wasteland” of Gaza, as we approach the two-year anniversary of the 7 October attacks, said The Economist. “By rights, no one should want” Gaza, nor the task of running it after being reduced to a “hellscape”, where “half a million” people were forced out of Gaza City last week.

But the figure who has emerged as a serious, if controversial, candidate for post-war leadership is the 72-year-old former British prime minister Tony Blair. Under plans reportedly backed by the US, Blair would take charge of a “supervisory body” called the Gaza International Transitional Authority, to serve as the “supreme political and legal authority” for up to five years, said The Independent.

The former PM has been drafting a “plan for the days after a ceasefire in Gaza with Jared Kushner”, Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Blair met Kushner, along with the US president and his special envoy Steve Witkoff at the White House in August to discuss matters, said The Times. According to reports, this plan involved Blair heading a secretariat of up to 25 people “running the territory”.

What did the commentators say?

With years of experience in the region, acting as a Middle East peace envoy for the “Quartet” (the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia), Blair and his plan “may be Gaza’s best hope”, said The Telegraph.

His position is unique. Critics believe his involvement in the Iraq invasion means he “may not be the obvious name to turn to”, but he is “one of the few international figures to be respected by both sides”. This could be a “fitting final chapter” for Blair, who has long been searching for a “meaningful role” since his time in office ended in 2007.

However, Blair’s impact in the region is far from untainted. His decision to commit British forces to Iraq in 2003 was “heavily criticised” in the official inquiry, revealing that he acted on “flawed intelligence”, carrying out offensives “without certainty about the production of weapons of mass destruction” in the region, said the BBC.

The plan is not without opposition and it will “face an uphill battle getting the extreme-right members of Israel’s cabinet on board”, said The Independent.

Reports suggest the “Blair plan” is “anchored on the dismantling of Hamas”. The Palestinian Authority (PA) would “have a role” in the transitional administration, “albeit a diminished one at the start”.

However, both European and Arab states are against “international trusteeship” in Gaza, fearing it could “marginalise the Palestinians and lack legitimacy in the eyes of Gazans”, said the Financial Times. Instead, Gazans seek a committee run by “Palestinian technocrats”.

What next?

Echoes of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 still ring, said The Economist. Then, British forces “conquered Gaza, quickly… and stayed there for 30 years”. Some Palestinians fear “Britain is repeating the exercise”.

With a reputation that “hardly endears” Blair in the region, gaining approval from PA President Mahmoud Abbas “will be hard”, as authorities anticipate that “another occupation beckons”.

The Blair plan is based on the presumption that there will “be no further Israeli annexations in the West Bank”, said The Guardian. To complicate matters further, “much might rest on the definition of annexation”: unless this can be achieved, we may be left with a “diplomatic mirage” instead of an international “breakthrough”.

Of the executive orders made by President Donald Trump on his first day back in the White House, one generating tons of attention was perhaps the most symbolic: renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, in addition to ordering Alaska's Denali be changed back to Mt. McKinley, after the 25th president. But these are not the only global naming disputes in recent history.

Greece and Macedonia

For over a quarter century, the Balkans were at odds over the name of the Macedonia region, which contains large parts of Southeast Europe. Macedonia "has long existed as a northern region in Greece," said the BBC, and a quarrel began in 1991 when a "new nation, born out of the collapse of Yugoslavia," began calling itself Macedonia.

The Greeks were "fiercely proud of the ancient heritage of Alexander the Great and his father Philip II of Macedon," said the BBC, and felt the former Yugoslavia was encroaching on their territory. A deal was eventually reached in 2019 to name the country North Macedonia, but in 2024 Greece accused the nation's "new center-right government of breaking a historic deal on the country's name," said The Associated Press, potentially reigniting the feud.

Black Sea

Russian politician Denis Bulanov has proposed renaming the Black Sea to the Russian Sea. Bulanov was reportedly inspired by Trump's decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico, and "claimed that the Black Sea was historically referred to as the 'Russian Sea,' mentioned in some ancient Rus' chronicles," said Ukraine's United24 Media.

The name change "would be for domestic use within Russia only. I'm not insisting that other countries bordering the Black Sea recognize the name change," Bulanov said to a translated Russian media outlet on Telegram. It is unclear if Russian President Vladimir Putin supports the change.

South China Sea

Most Westerners understandably call the body of water south of China the South China Sea. But Asian nations have been pressing for the sea's name to be changed. China, Vietnam and the Philippines all have different names for it, and these "are not just semantic; they each advance a nationalist narrative and a historical claim," said The Diplomat.

This "also reflects the geopolitical stakes in the South China Sea, where overlapping maritime and territorial claims have led to rising tensions among nations," said The Diplomat. Countries have feuded over the sea's name in the past; in 2017, Indonesia angered China when it announced it would "refer to the northern areas of its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea as the 'North Natuna Sea,'" said CNN.

India

Indians have long feuded over the name of their country. While the nation is officially called the Republic of India, many have pushed to change its name to "Bharat," the Hindu word for India. In India itself, India and Bharat are "used interchangeably officially and by the public," said Al Jazeera.

Hindus have been pining to change the country's name officially, and the nation's constitution refers to it as "India, that is Bharat." India's president has also referred to herself as the president of Bharat. And "while some supporters of the name Bharat say 'India' was given by British colonizers, historians say the name predates colonial rule by centuries," said Reuters.

Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, separating Iran from the rest of the Middle East, remains embroiled in a naming controversy. Most Iranians call it the Persian Gulf, but "Arabs are angling for it to be called the Arabian Gulf," said The Economist. The naming disagreement reflects "increasingly troubled relations" in the region, given that it is a "natural barrier for centuries of Arab-Persian rivalry."

This debate has been brewing for decades, as "states on the Arab side began calling it the 'Arabian Gulf'" during the 1960s, said The Guardian. Most recently, Iraq stirred anger when it named a 2023 regional soccer tournament the "Arabian Gulf Cup," to the ire of Iran

'Sex, power, money and "Mr. McMahon"'

Jessica Grose at The New York Times

WWE founder Vince McMahon was "able to skate away from accusations against him and his organization for two reasons: He was making boatloads of money for a lot of people, and wrestling is seen as sordid in the first place," says Jessica Grose. It can "feel as if a shocking percentage of Americans simply do not care about sexual assault, especially when the perpetrator is rich and powerful and allows them to feel vicariously powerful."

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'Pro-Palestinian efforts to rally behind Jill Stein will backfire'

Zeeshan Aleem at MSNBC

If the Green Party's "efforts to abandon Harris en masse succeed, then the activists behind it will have done a great disservice to their cause: Trump will undoubtedly lead to more suffering in the Middle East," says Zeeshan Aleem. Harris' "signals on the issue have not been promising for those pushing for change" in the Middle East, "and yet, as frightening as it is to contemplate, things could still get worse if Trump is elected president again."

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'The US must learn to leave Iraq'

Reid Smith and Jason Beardsley at Foreign Policy

The U.S. is "preparing to leave Iraq, in keeping with the concluding mission's changing scope and objectives," but "as usual, the Pentagon is already hedging," say Reid Smith and Jason Beardsley. The "human and financial costs of a continued military presence outweigh the benefits," and a "shift toward diplomatic efforts, intelligence sharing, and the empowerment of local forces would reduce American vulnerabilities." The U.S. "can withdraw from Iraq because the counter-Islamic State mission is largely complete."

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'How hurricanes are a profit center for insurers'

Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect

Even as "climate change has increased the ferocity of storms, the insurance industry has stayed well ahead of the game" by "hollowing out coverage," says Robert Kuttner, and it's "homeowners who will lose big." In "virtually every state, there is no meaningful appeals process" for coverage. It "doesn't make sense to keep rebuilding in areas prone to repeated floods and massive tropical storms," but this is an "issue for public planning, not for unaccountable and self-interested private insurers."

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A proposed amendment to Iraq's family legislation could "hand more power in family matters to clerics" and, alarmingly, "open the door for marriage to be legalised for children as young as nine years old".

Women's rights advocates and their political allies fiercely oppose the proposal, said Middle East Eye. It is backed by Coordination Framework – a coalition made up of conservative, Shia religious factions that have "dominated" Iraqi politics since 2021, said The Guardian.

What is the current law?

This is the latest of many attempts to alter the Personal Status Law of 1959, also known as Law No. 188.

The law, when it was passed 65 years ago, established 18 as the legal age of marriage – though children can be married as young as 15 with permission from a judge or guardian. Unicef reports that 28% of Iraqi girls are married before 18, thousands of them in unauthorised religious ceremonies.

"Several attempts to abrogate the law and revert to traditional Islamic rules have been made since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein," said France 24.

What would change?

The most recent amendment, which threatens to undermine the law's secular nature, was introduced on 4 August. While the bill doesn't explicitly legalise child marriage, it would mandate Muslim couples to select either the Sunni or Shia sect at the time of the registration of their marriage. They then have the choice to have that sect "represent them in 'all matters of personal status' rather than the civil judiciary", said Middle East Eye.

Opponents say this paves the way for the children of these marriages to be married off by their parents according to the doctrine of their sect, potentially bypassing the secular mandatory minimum age.

After youth protests erupted across Iraq in 2019, politicians "saw that the role of women had begun to strengthen in society", Nadia Mahmood, co-founder of the Aman Women's Alliance, told The Guardian. “They felt that feminist, gender and women’s organisations, plus civil society and activist movements, posed a threat to their power and status."

What has the reaction been?

Around 500 women's rights advocates protested the amendment in Baghdad's Tahrir Square on 8 August, and demonstrations have followed in several other Iraqi cities.

Members of Coalition 188, an activist group that led the demonstrations, held signs reading "No marriage of minors" and "There is no Quranic verse that takes custody away from the mother", according to Middle East Eye. Inas Jabbar, who is part of Coalition 188 and sits on the board of the Iraqi Women Network, told the publication that protesters in the Najaf province "were beaten by hardline groups that agree with the amendments".

The independent MP behind the bill, Ra'ad al-Maliki, has denied that it would allow child marriage, describing claims to the contrary as "lies fabricated by some out of hatred for applying the provisions of God’s law to those who want them".

Razaw Salihy, Amnesty International's Iraq researcher, said that the changes should be "stopped in their tracks" immediately. "No matter how it is dressed up, in passing these amendments, Iraq would be closing a ring of fire around women and children," he said.

What happened

A base housing U.S. and allied military personnel in western Iraq was hit Monday by a suspected rocket attack that injured several American personnel, U.S. officials said. At least five troops and contractors were injured, one seriously, when two rockets landed inside al-Asad air base, Reuters said, citing initial estimates.

Who said what

President Joe Biden said he and Vice President Kamala Harris met with national security advisers and discussed developments in the Middle East and steps to "respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and place of our choosing."

Monday's attack "comes at a fraught time in the region, as U.S. and Israeli officials brace for Iran's promised response" to the assassinations of top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, The Washington Post said. But it's not clear if the al-Asad strike was part of that response or a "continuation of ongoing efforts by the Iran-backed groups in Iraq to target U.S. forces," The New York Times said. After Iran-backed militants targeted the same base in mid-July, the U.S. bombed a small drone factory near Bagdad last week, killing three Iraqi fighters and a Houthi commander visiting from Yemen.

What next?

The U.S. and Iraq are in discussions on drawing down the 2,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country.

Passengers and crew of a British Airways flight held hostage in Kuwait during Iraq's invasion in 1990 are launching legal action against the company and the UK government.

More than 300 people were on board the flight to Kuala Lumpur that made a scheduled stop in Kuwait a little after 1am on 2 August 1990 "as Iraqi armed forces were invading" the nation, said the Evening Standard. The plane was evacuated amid rocket fire around the airport, and the passengers and crew detained under armed guard by invading Iraqi forces.

During the ordeal which followed, the hostages were transferred between various sites in Kuwait and Iraq, used as human shields during the Gulf War and "subjected to torture, rape, mock executions, starvation and other abusive practices", said The Guardian.

The final hostages were not released until December 1990, after more than four months in captivity.

Some 94 former detainees have joined a lawsuit claiming the airline and the government "knew Iraq had invaded Kuwait before the plane they were travelling on landed in the country", said the BBC. 

A long-running allegation, denied by the government, is that the plane was allowed to land because it was carrying "a special forces team who could carry out reconnaissance" on the ground.

Passengers and crew later described how nine "military-looking" men on board the plane were "allowed first off the flight on landing at Kuwait Airport and were not seen again by their fellow passengers", The Telegraph said.

"Previous attempts" to sue have been unsuccessful, but in 2021 "secret files" were released by the National Archive suggesting that that the Foreign Office would have had time to divert the flight, but that BA were not informed of the risk.

The claimants also accuse BA of "failing to appreciate the trauma caused by their experiences", arguing that the airline's refusal to offer adjustments for affected employees forced some to retire on medical grounds.

The lawsuit says the claimants "suffered severe physical and psychiatric harm" as a result of the decisions made by the government and BA. Matthew Jury of law firm McCue & Partners, which is behind the claim, said the "off-the-books military operation" put civilians at risk and that there "must be closure and accountability" to truly move on.

Human rights groups have condemned a bill passed by Iraq's parliament that criminalises same-sex relationships, with jail terms of between 10 and 15 years.

According to a copy of the legislation seen by Reuters, the law aims to "protect Iraqi society from moral depravity and the calls for homosexuality that have overtaken the world".

Amnesty International's Iraq researcher Razaw Salihy said that Iraq had "effectively codified in law the discrimination and violence" that members of the LGBTQ+ community have "been subjected to with absolute impunity for years".

What is in the new law?

As well as a penalty of between 10 and 15 years in prison for same-sex relations, the Law on Combating Prostitution and Homosexuality mandates at least seven years in jail for anybody who promotes homosexuality or prostitution, and between one and three years for anyone who changes their "biological gender" or wilfully dresses in an effeminate manner. 

Doctors who perform gender reassignment surgery, men who "intentionally" act like women and those who engage in "wife swapping" will also face prison terms under the new legislation, said the BBC.

Why has it been introduced now?

Iraq had been among the few Islamic nations that did not explicitly criminalise same-sex relations, but "loosely defined" morality clauses in its penal code have been used to "target" LGBTQ+ people, said The Independent.

The new legislation was backed by conservative Shia Muslim parties that form the largest coalition in Iraq's mainly Muslim parliament. It is "a significant step in combating sexual deviancy given the infiltration of unique cases contradicting Islamic and societal values", Amir al-Maamouri, an independent MP, told Shafaq News.

It is indeed "sweeping", said Pink News, although "less extreme than originally planned", after a clause in an earlier version of the bill that called for the death penalty for same-sex acts was removed due to opposition from the US and Europe.

What has the reaction been?

The amended legislation has sparked condemnation from human rights groups and the international community.

It is "dangerous and worrying", said UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron. A statement from the US State Department said the law "threatens those most at risk in Iraqi society" and "can be used to hamper free speech and expression and inhibit the operations of NGOs across Iraq". The law would also weaken Iraq's ability to diversify its economy and attract foreign investment, the department said.

Data collected in 2022, reported by Pink News, suggested that just 2% of Iraq's population support homosexuality, while 55% oppose it. Ordinary Iraqis interviewed on Sunday expressed "mixed views" on the new law, said The Associated Press. 

What was the law before?

"Public perception and morality clauses in its penal code" mean that LGBTQ+ people have been "routinely targeted domestically and institutionally", said Pink News.

A 2022 report by Human Rights Watch said armed groups in Iraq were abducting, raping, torturing and killing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and accused the Iraqi government of failing to hold perpetrators accountable.

The words "homosexual" and "gender" were banned in the media and on social media platforms in 2023. Officials claimed the move would safeguard societal values and maintain public order.

Over the past year, major Iraqi parties have "stepped up" criticism of LGBTQ+ rights, said Al Jazeera, "with rainbow flags frequently being burned in protests by both governing and opposition conservative Shia Muslim factions".

Renewed outbreaks of violence against Iraq's LGBTQ+ community have seen several people killed, including 28-year-old trans blogger Simsim, who was stabbed to death by unknown assailants in the city of Diwaniyah in February.

The new law "rubber-stamps" the country's "appalling record of rights violations", said Rasha Younes, deputy director of the LGBTQ+ rights programme at Human Rights Watch, marking "a serious blow to fundamental human rights".

'Welcome back to the chaos of the Trump era'

David A. Graham in The Atlantic

America just got a "preview of what life will be like if Trump is reelected in November," says David A. Graham in The Atlantic. House Republicans' tried but failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Senate Republicans defeated the bill they negotiated after tying Ukraine aid to an immigration crackdown. And Trump appeared poised to promote an election denier to become Republican National Committee chair. This "wild carnival" was just the start of the madness.

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'Biden makes Americans targets in the Middle East, then campaigns on their deaths'

Doug Bandow in The American Conservative

President Joe Biden left thousands of military personnel "needlessly scattered about the Middle East" facing regular militant attacks, says Doug Bandow in The American Conservative. Now that some are being killed, he's campaigning on their deaths. That's "a new low." America has 2,500 troops in Iraq. They're "not promoting freedom." Instead of deterring Iran-backed militias, they're becoming "targets." It's time to bring them home instead of leaving them to "risk their lives for nothing."

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'When the IRS are the good guys: Increased capacity means the rich pay fair share'

New York Daily News editorial board

The Internal Revenue Service will collect billions from rich tax cheats thanks to the IRS funding boost in President Joe Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, says the New York Daily News editorial board. House Republicans' desperation to claw back the funding shows "they're quite uninterested in the rich paying their taxes." Democrats should take credit for their "historic" IRS investment and explain to the public how it makes the wealthy subsidize health care, roads and more.

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'For Trump, running with a woman would be just another con job'

Pamela Paul in The New York Times

If Donald Trump picks a female running mate, it would mark a step backward for women, says Pamela Paul in The New York Times. In 2016, Trump "was caught bragging about molesting women." His "thuggish sexism" continued in office. Then a jury found him "liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll." As women's rights are "stripped and threatened," a female No. 2 in another sexist Trump administration "is the last vision of womanhood America needs."

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'It's time for the Fed to cut interest rates'

Heather Long in The Washington Post

Economists predicted Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell would spark a recession with aggressive interest rate hikes, says Heather Long in The Washington Post. Instead, "he's presiding over an economic boom," with strong hiring and economic growth. Consumers are still on a "spending spree." Inflation has dropped near the Fed's 2% target. What Powell needs to do now is "cut interest rates." Leaving them near 5.5% would be like "slamming the brakes on the economy."   

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'Our indefensible Mideast military outposts'

Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review 

The United States must strike back against whoever killed three Americans at a U.S. military outpost in Jordan, near the Syrian and Iraqi borders, writes Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review. Washington blames Iran-backed militias, but the Pentagon needs to explain why the Trump and Biden administrations put soldiers "deep and poorly defended among hostiles" in the Middle East. If the justifications "won't fly," we should "bring those troops home and out of harm's way."

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'The border crisis is real. That's why Trump is blocking solutions.'

LZ Granderson in the Los Angeles Times

Former President Donald Trump promised to "drain the swamp," but now he's enlisting the help of "an unauthorized network of individuals embedded in and around government" to "kill a border deal," says LZ Granderson in the Los Angeles Times. "Its passage would hurt his campaign claim that President Joe Biden is neglecting the border." To defeat it, Trump and his cohorts have become the "deep state" he warned about, "redirecting power for their own purposes."

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'Will Congress finally act to protect kids from the harms of social media?'

Kristin Bride and Maurine Molak in the Chicago Tribune

Tech CEOs face questions Wednesday from the Senate Judiciary Committee "about how their addictive products have failed to keep minors safe," say Kristin Bride and Maurine Molak in the Chicago Tribune. "As moms who have lost children" to "online harms that these CEOs failed to prevent," we want action, not "sound bites." Social media platforms, fueled by ads aimed at teenaged users, "turbocharge addictive features that wreak havoc on impressionable brains." Congress must pass real "safeguards."

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'The FTC is wielding fringe antitrust theories with little regard for consumers'

Bloomberg editorial board

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is going after Amazon, says Bloomberg in an editorial, calling the online retail giant "an illegal monopoly." The FTC has filed a complaint saying Amazon uses "'far-reaching schemes' to impede competitors." But Amazon lets customers ferret out bargains, and its prices were 14% lower than its competitors last year, on average. If the FTC cares about "consumer welfare," it's hard to imagine a "worse target for government intervention." 

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'Washington's Kurdish allies have proved battle-tested friends'

Majeed Gly and David Harris in The Wall Street Journal

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish population is "a key barrier to Iran's aims" of making Iraq a satellite state, say Majeed Gly and David Harris in The Wall Street Journal. President Biden is "on the cusp" of reducing their military assistance, which "would send a clear signal to Iran" that he is serious about improving ties. But it "would be a potentially cataclysmic" error leaving "one of Washington's most reliable and trustworthy partners in the Arab world" in the cold.

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'Paying a price for the methane that cows belch'

Noah Gordon in The New Republic

The government isn't "trying to take away your burgers," as some conservatives claim, writes Noah Gordon in The New Republic. Maybe it should. A key goal of climate policy is phasing out "polluting machines" like coal-fired power plants and gas-guzzling cars. What about cows and pigs? These "biological machines" belch methane, a greenhouse gas, while transforming soybeans into "delicious bacon cheeseburgers." Yet most governments are trying to "enable people to eat more meat," not less. 

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'Pay no attention to all those complaints about how much we're spending in Ukraine'

Paul Krugman in The New York Times

Why "do MAGA politicians want to cut Ukraine off?" asks Paul Krugman in The New York Times. They cut it from the deal to avert a shutdown, arguing helping Ukraine fight Russia is too costly. Ukraine aid was a tiny part — $77 billion — of the $9 trillion Washington spent in the last 18 months. The real reason: Republican hard-liners "want Putin to win" because he has qualities they admire in their "wannabe dictator" at home.

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When many thousands of Iraqis turn on their taps “nothing comes out”, said Hayder Indhar for Phys.org.

So dire is the country’s water crisis – 7 million of its citizens have reduced access to water, according to the UN – many villagers are relying on “sporadic tanker-truck deliveries and salty wells” for drinking water.

While Iraq is known in Arabic as the Land of the Two Rivers, split as it is by the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, the water levels of both have fallen markedly. The results have been no less than devastating.

For Firas Mohammed, a former fisherman, life has been totally transformed by the shortage. Gesturing towards a “trickle of lime green liquid nearby”, he told Al Jazeera that “even dogs avoid it”. “If the government decided to move us to a camp with freshwater to cope with this crisis, we would even accept being moved to Ukraine,” he added.

Mou’ad Abel was able to return to his village in 2016 “after the area was liberated from ISIL”, but despite also working as a fisherman in his youth, he was shocked to discover “there are no fish anymore”, the news site added.

The reasons behind the crisis are numerous. Some cite shortages and low river levels in neighbouring countries; others point to the alleged mismanagement of water by local authorities. Regardless of who is to blame, one thing is abundantly clear: the issue must be solved before it becomes too late for the millions of people reliant on a clean water supply.

According to the United Nations, some “90 per cent of the country’s rivers are polluted”. Iraq is facing a “critical climate emergency”, said Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special representative for Iraq, as by 2035 it is thought the nation will have the capacity to “meet only 15 per cent of its water demands”.

Desertification – the process by which fertile land becomes arid – is also a growing concern within the nation. It can be caused by both human factors and climate change.

Haidar Falih Hassan, an environmental official from Najaf, south of Baghdad, warned that desertification “had reached around 70 percent” of Iraqi land, said The New Arab. The country is expected to experience “a 20 percent reduction in water availability” by 2050, the site added.

But matters are also being amplified by the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. Western oil companies are “exacerbating water shortages and causing pollution in Iraq”, The Guardian reported, as they capitalise on higher oil prices caused by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

For each barrel of oil produced “up to three barrels of water are pumped into the ground” to assist with the extraction process. But with oil exports rising, the water available in the nation has “dramatically fallen”, the newspaper added.

The problem is not confined to Iraq. The UN World Water Development Report 2023 warned that there is an “imminent risk of a global water crisis”, with “between two and three billion people” currently experiencing water scarcity. The emergency is predicted to worsen in the coming decades, as the world is “blindly travelling a dangerous path” of “vampiric overconsumption and overdevelopment”, the report added.

Already, the Middle East is feeling the effects of this warning first hand. In Turkey, “alarming meteorological imbalances” are pushing the country to an “avoidable hydrologic crisis”, Asia Times reported. While in Iran, decades of alleged mismanagement “combined with climate change” created “the worst drought in half a century in 2021”, said Time.

Solving Iraq’s, and the world’s, water crisis will take an immense effort. The globe must “go beyond ‘business as usual’”, said the World Bank, as it supports a number of initiatives in countries suffering from water scarcity and poor sanitation, such as Yemen, Tanzania and India.

“Emerging technologies” may hold the solution, said Economist Impact. These include more efficient “energy-intensive desalination plants, improved biological treatment processes… and smart sensors for alerting utilities to leaks in pipes”.

But getting the world to pay attention is an uphill battle. “Water resilience has been an orphan child, and issues like the current drought force us to fundamentally play catch-up,” Claire O’Neill, the former UK minister for energy and clean growth, told the magazine.

For now, the problem continues. In Iraq, “the land is cracked, the sun stings and locals are struggling to cope”, said Al Jazeera. “A trace of toxic waste wafts from the edge of the lake, the stench of putrid water hitting long before it can be seen,” the news site reported.

Noor Haddi, a mother of two from Baghdad, is distraught about the prospects for her country. “It used to be so beautiful. But two rivers have dried up,” she told Al Jazeera. “What hope should we have?”

This article first appeared in The Week’s Global Digest newsletter. Sign up for a preview of the international news agenda, sent to your inbox every Monday.

Decades after Congress cleared the way for the United States government to wage war in Iraq, a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday took the extraordinary step of voting to repeal two Authorizations for Use of Military Force, setting in motion a push that — if successful — would mark the first successful retraction of congressional authority to launch war on a foreign nation in nearly half a century.

By a vote of 66-30, lawmakers approved a measure to repeal the 1991 AUMF and its 2002 counterpart that codified the first and second Iraq wars, launched under presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush. The last time an AUMF was fully repealed was in 1971, when Congress ended the government's 1964 authority to wage war in Southeast Asia. As The Hill noted after Wednesday's vote, the 2002 AUMF has been cited in recent military actions — including the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a 2020 Baghdad missile strike — long after the U.S. drew down its official presence in Iraq.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) heralded the measure as long overdue, saying "the United States, Iraq, the entire world has changed dramatically since 2002, and it's time the laws on the books catch up with those changes."

"Congress passed the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs for specific purposes that were resolved long ago," former Obama administration official and current Just Security editor-in-chief Tess Bridgeman told US News and World Report. "Repealing them not only prevents future abuse of these statutes to engage in unauthorized war but would also show that Congress recognizes our current threat landscape is quite different than the way the world looked in 1991 or 2002"

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), however, came out sharply against the repeal, explaining in a statement that while "it no surprise that Leader Schumer and the Biden Administration would rather debate the history of the Iraq War than grapple with their own recent foreign policy failures," the 2002 AUMF in particular "bears directly on the threats we face today in Iraq and Syria from Iran-backed terrorists."

Crucially, however, a separate 2001 AUMF permitting the government to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism" remains untouched

The repeal now heads to the Republican-controlled House, where Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has indicated he would support the bill so long as the 2001 AUMF stays intact. The Biden administration also came out in support of the repeal, saying that to do so would be "in keeping with President Biden's longstanding commitment to replacing outdated authorizations for the use of military force."

It is 20 years since the US-led invasion of Iraq, and the Foreign Office still advises against travel there, owing to risks including kidnapping. But although the country is “by no means stable”, it is “just about functioning as a rare Arab democracy”, says Sophy Roberts in the FT – and these “green shoots” are now attracting a few pioneering tour operators, such as the US-based Geographic Expeditions.

On one of its trips from Basra to Baghdad, you will visit “thriving” modern neighbourhoods, and some of the world’s greatest archaeological sites. This is not a journey “for everyone” – the horrors of the recent past cannot be ignored; but you do get an impressive sense of cultural “resilience”, and a welcome wherever you go.

Basra is no longer the idyllic city of canals and rambling gardens it once was, but there’s still life and beauty here, from the grand Ottoman mansions of the historic quarter to the main corniche, where fashionable young men pose for photographs among hawkers selling candyfloss. To the north lies Nassiriya, which has an “atmospheric” bazaar selling Iranian saffron, jewellery and scents. And then come the great sites of ancient Mesopotamia, including the 4,000-year-old Ziggurat of Ur, “its central steps etched sharp against the sky”, and Uruk, the Sumerian city that features in The Epic of Gilgamesh. Equally impressive are the “sun-baked” ruins of Ctesiphon, and the 8th century fort of Ukhaidir, an “Escher-esque labyrinth” of vaulted halls and stairs.

At the Shia pilgrimage site of Najaf, the crowd flows between marble pillars, over crimson carpets and under arches covered in tiny mirrored tiles towards Imam Ali’s shrine in the splendid domed mosque. Baghdad has a lively secular life, from buzzing coffee houses and streets full of bookshops to the Iraq Museum, a “world-class” repository of ancient treasures.

An 11-night small-group trip with Geographic Expeditions costs from £8,650pp; geoex.com

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The Iraqi painter Mohammed Sami is a “brilliant” new talent, as this exhibition at the Camden Art Centre shows, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. His path to success has not been an easy one. Born in Baghdad in 1984, he was an artistic child prodigy; his “incandescent talent” was not lost on the Ba’athist regime, which co-opted him into producing murals extolling Saddam Hussein.

In the “chaos” that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Sami fled to Sweden, spending nine months in a refugee camp before eventually settling in London. He now channels his experiences through his “large, sad, haunting pictures” that evoke “nightmarish moments and sensations from his past”.

Frequently incorporating disturbing imagery – from portraits of Saddam to hellish evocations of war – his paintings are “uneasy, dreamlike” scenes, mostly unpeopled but for eerily lifelike shadows and photographs adorning the walls of empty rooms. Bringing together a selection of his recent work, this show demonstrates how thrillingly Sami is “reinvigorating the hoary genre of history painting”.

Sami’s paintings draw on “snatches of memory, sensation and intuition”, said Hettie Judah in The i Paper. He records shafts of light slicing through rooms, the “scuffed texture of a wall”, “splaying electrical wires” or “shadows cast by empty clothes”, all to haunting effect. In The Praying Room, for instance, he gives us a drab little room, “lit by a strong, low light which drives dramatic shadows across the picture”, with a poster of a holy man on a wall almost enveloped by darkness.

The best painting here is One Thousand and One Nights, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. It shows “a vast sky lit with incendiaries, tracers and distant blasts, the clouds illuminated and night turned to day”. The picture evokes the televised attacks during the “shock and awe” campaign over Baghdad in 2003; but you also, disconcertingly, get “lost among the calmness of the trees and their reflections in the river, the lovely sky with its high clouds and the descending lights”.

There are many visual puns and double takes in Sami’s work, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. What initially appears to be a “green meadow of flowers” could also be medals strung across a military tunic. A pile of shirts is entitled Study of Guts. Another canvas seems to show “a body bent double beneath a load”, but turns out to be the shadow cast by an empty pill packet “askew on a stone ledge”.

Perhaps most chilling of all is Meditation Room, a vision of a darkened room in which a “pencil of light steals across an abruptly rucked carpet”. Above it hangs a large photo of a military figure; though his head is blacked out, his “stance, bulk and uniform” leave us in no doubt that we are looking at Saddam. It is just one highlight of an astonishing show by an “outstanding painter”.

Camden Art Centre, London NW3 (020-7472 5500, camdenartcentre.org). Until 28 May

Virgin Atlantic has been fined more than $1m (£870,000) by US authorities for flying in Iraqi airspace.

The US Department of Transportation imposed the penalty after it found a “significant number” of the airline’s flights crossed restricted airspace in Iraq between September 2020 and September 2021.

Virgin Atlantic, which was subject to the restrictions of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at the time due to a partnership with Delta Air Lines, was banned from flying at any altitude in Iraqi airspace because of “heightened militia activities and increased tensions in Iraq”, reported ch-aviation.

The airline said the flights in question were accidental and caused by disruptions and staff shortages brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. In a statement, it said it immediately rerouted flights after learning of the violations.

“We have thoroughly reviewed and strengthened our systems and processes,” a spokesperson told ch-aviation. “The safety and security of our aircraft, customers and crew was never compromised at any point and remains our highest priority.”

To avoid litigation, and without admitting or denying the violations, Virgin Atlantic consented to the order to cease and desist from future violations of the rule and to the fine. Half of the fee – $525,000 (£435,350) – will be waived if Virgin Atlantic avoids similar transgressions for one year, said AP.

To combat any future incursions, Virgin Atlantic said it had invested in Sentinel by Osprey, an automated tool that “dynamically alerts airlines at the flight planning stage or operational stage, of any regulatory restrictions impacting their, or their codeshare partners’ flights”, said Reuters.

A Kansas woman was sentenced to 20 years behind bars for leading an all-female fighting battalion for the Islamic State while living in the Middle East, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, engaged in a variety of terrorist acts in Syria, Libya, and Iraq from 2011 to 2019, the DOJ said. According to The Associated Press, Fluke-Ekren willingly admitted to prosecutors that she was the leader of the Khatiba Nusaybah, a female fighting force made up of around 100 women and girls. The DOJ reported some of these girls were as young as 10 years old.

During her time as the group's leader, the DOJ said Fluke-Ekren trained the group's members on numerous terrorism tactics. This included the use of automatic weapons and assault rifles, as well as the operation of hand grenades and suicide belts.

These illegal acts also extended to Fluke-Ekren's own children, the DOJ said. Two of her children, a daughter and son who are now both adults, told prosecutors their mother had dragged them across the world in a "lust for control and power," and AP reported they had also been sexually and physically abused by Fluke-Ekren.

In a series of letters, the two children denounced their mother and asked the court to give her the maximum sentence — a request the judge granted.

Throughout the trial, Fluke-Ekren's story had been unveiled nearly in its entirety, painting the unique case of how a seemingly typical Kansas mom wound up an Islamic State zealot.

Political leaders and media outlets around the world have been paying tribute to Queen Elizabeth II, who died yesterday at the age of 96.

After reigning for 70 years, Her Majesty died peacefully on Thursday afternoon at Balmoral, her Scottish estate, where she had spent much of the summer.

Newspapers and broadcasters in the UK have been providing blanket coverage of the story, but it is also being followed across the world, not least because of the Queen’s extensive travels during her remarkable reign.

UK’s ‘biggest strength’

“Queen Elizabeth II rarely had a misstep,” said the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper, recalling that “she would tell Canadians she was happy to be ‘coming home’”. It added that “her endurance has been her greatest gift to Canadians and her passing a great sadness, but hopefully for many Canadians, it will not be the end of the story about Canada and the Crown”.

Her long reign “straddled two centuries of seismic social, political and technological upheaval”, said The East African, as “the last vestiges of Britain’s vast empire crumbled”, “Brexit shook the foundations of her kingdom, and her family endured a series of scandals”. But “throughout, she remained consistently popular”, it said.

The UK “has lost its biggest strength – the glue that for so long has bound together the union – just as it is trying to define its place in the world for the decades ahead”, said The Sydney Morning Herald. The Australian paper noted that “in many parts of the Commonwealth, demands are mounting for a re-evaluation of Britain’s colonial past, for apology and atonement”.

The New Zealand Herald said that the island nation will now “move into a state of national mourning”. It noted that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had discovered the Queen had died when she was “woken by a police officer shining a torch into her room at 4.50am”.

An ‘unemotional sovereign’

In France, Le Monde said that the Queen was “revered by the British public” and “the unemotional sovereign who left a lasting imprint on the monarchy”. Le Parisien described the Queen as the “cement, the reassuring figure who embodied the unity of the kingdom”.

German broadcaster DW said that the Queen was “particularly partial to Germany and visited it more often than almost any other country”. It said that the monarch was “marvelled at, criticised, occasionally mocked, but always respected”.

According to The Irish Times, the monarch’s death is an “earthquake” for Northern Ireland’s unionists, a century on from the formation of the province.

“To lose her just as a humiliating centenary year is limping to its end, with the last UK prime minister ostentatiously disregarding them, and Irish nationalists and republicans getting more confident by the day, is just a disaster.”

‘But never Israel’

“Britain prepares for a new era after the Queen’s death,” said The New York Times, recalling that she was “unshakably committed to the rituals of her role amid epic social and economic change and family scandal”.

The New York Post talked about her relations with the US, noting that she “ultimately rubbed shoulders with 13 US presidents, starting with Herbert Hoover”.

In Israel, the Jerusalem Post pointed out that during her 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth “travelled widely and visited many countries” including Jordan, Egypt and others in the Middle East and North Africa – “but never Israel”.

“Her majesty and the Kingdom are a fabric of Iraq’s history,” said Iraqi News, adding that Iraq has a “long and complicated history with the United Kingdom”.

The state-owned Russian news agency Tass recalled that when the Queen met with the first person in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in 1961, she was “easy-mannered and informal during the meeting and did not stick to the strict protocol.

“When Gagarin ate a piece of lemon out of his cup of tea in breach of the protocol, the Queen supported him by following the suit,” it said.

Earlier this week, at least 30 people were killed in Baghdad during clashes between protesters who support the influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, rival Shiite factions backed by Iran, and government security forces. Officials say this was the worst violence in Iraq's capital in years. Here's everything you need to know:

Why are Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters protesting?

During elections last October, al-Sadr's political bloc won the most seats, but he was unable to form a coalition government; in June, all 73 members of parliament in this bloc resigned. Angry over Iraq's worsening economy and high unemployment rates, supporters of al-Sadr started holding sit-ins at the Iraqi parliament in July, demanding everything from early elections to constitutional amendments. Al-Sadr tweeted his approval of the sit-ins, calling them "a great opportunity to radically change the political system, the constitution, and elections."

On Monday, al-Sadr announced he was retiring from politics and closing the political institutions linked to his Sadrist Movement. This declaration led hundreds of his supporters to breach the heavily fortified Green Zone, which is home to government buildings and diplomatic missions. During the chaos, gunshots rang out, with witnesses saying shots were fired by members of a rival Shiite group and government security forces, BBC News reports. Some of the al-Sadr supporters were also armed, with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles. During the violence, which continued overnight, at least 30 people were killed, The Washington Post says.

How did Muqtada al-Sadr react to the violence?

During a televised address on Tuesday afternoon, al-Sadr told his supporters their protest "is not a revolution because it has lost its peaceful character. The spilling of Iraqi blood is forbidden." It didn't matter "who started the sedition yesterday," he added. "I say that my head is down and I apologize to the Iraqi people." He ordered his supporters to leave the Green Zone, giving them an hour to do so. Those who remained behind, he said, should not consider themselves loyal to him.

Hamdi Malik, a specialist on Iraqi Shiite militias at the Washington Institute, told Reuters al-Sadr has "always put himself and his followers in a situation where violence and bloodshed seems inevitable, but then he always turns around and rejects the violence."

Did the protesters leave the Green Zone?

Almost immediately, supporters began to tear down the camps they had set up in the Green Zone and around the parliament building and cleared out of the area. Soon after, the Iraqi military lifted a nationwide curfew put in place on Monday.

Who is Muqtada al-Sadr?

Al-Sadr, 48, is the most powerful Shiite religious figure in Iraqi politics. The son of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Muhammad-Sadiq al-Sadr, he comes from a long line of clerics. He is a nationalist who rebuffs any foreign interference in Iraqi affairs, and during the Iraq War, led a militia that fought against U.S. troops. Because of his anti-corruption stance, he has millions of followers, primarily in the impoverished Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, named in honor of his late father, who was assassinated in 1999. He also still has a militia with thousands of members.

Al-Sadr has threatened to quit politics several times in recent years. Experts say he has various reasons for doing this, including wanting to get leverage and showing his rivals how much control he has over his supporters. On Monday, al-Sadr said his current retirement announcement was spurred by other Shiite leaders and parties not working hard enough to reform Iraq's corrupt political system.

Why does Muqtada al-Sadr have so many supporters?

Many of those who back him revered his father and remember what it was like when Saddam Hussein shut them out of the political system, while others are drawn to al-Sadr's nationalist viewpoint. Sajad Jiyad, a fellow at the Century International think tank, told Al Jazeera that the "Sadrist base is significant in Baghdad and the southern provinces because it represents a Shia underclass that struggled during the previous government but viewed Muhammad al-Sadr as a religious authority who cared for them and preached to them when no one else dared to." His base feels "marginalized," Jiyad added, and while al-Sadr "appeals to them as the heir to his father's position, [they] also feel he is their voice against all other political and religious factions."

What might happen next?

Iraqi President Barham Salih said on Tuesday he believes "holding new, early elections in accordance with a national consensus represents an exit from this stifling crisis" and "guarantees political and social stability and responds to the aspirations of the Iraqi people." Whether or not early elections are held, the Post's Ishaan Tharoor writes that al-Sadr is still involved in an "evolving intra-Shiite rivalry in the country that threatens to destabilize a frail state even further and complicates the equation for Iran's theocratic regime, which has long exercised influence over Baghdad."

At least 12 protesters in Baghdad were shot and killed by government security forces on Monday after they breached concrete barriers around the Green Zone area, Iraqi officials told The New York Times.

The demonstrators were among the hundreds of supporters of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who took to the streets after he announced on Twitter his retirement from politics. The Green Zone is home to the Iraqi Parliament, government offices, the U.S. Embassy, and other diplomatic missions.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said security forces are not allowed to use live fire, and he is launching an investigation into the shootings. A curfew is now in effect in Baghdad and security forces have closed down roads south of the capital. Iran said it is closing all land borders with Iraq and is warning citizens against traveling to the country.

Although candidates aligned with al-Sadr won the largest block of seats in parliament during elections last October, they weren't able to form a government. Iraq's caretaker government has failed to address economic issues, and supporters of al-Sadr and other Shiite groups backed by Iran have been holding sit-ins and protests in the Green Zone, with some storming parliament in July.

Al-Sadr is the most powerful Shiite religious figure involved in Iraqi politics, and his militia fought U.S. troops during the Iraq War. Hassan al-Adhari, a senior aide to al-Sadr, told the Times the cleric intends to go on a hunger strike until "the violence and use of weapons stops." This is not the first time al-Sadr has said he is retiring from politics, and this could be "a way of giving breathing space to all sides," Sajad Jiyad, a fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, told the Times.

Iran has claimed responsibility for a missile attack that struck near a new US consulate complex in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil over the weekend.

The attack on Sunday “injured at least two people, blasted holes in nearby homes, and sent US forces running for cover”, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the target was an Israeli “strategic centre of conspiracy” in Erbil and that the attack was a response to an Israeli strike in Syria last week that killed two of its commanders.

The assault in Iraq “marked a significant escalation between the US and Iran” that threatens ongoing talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the Iran Nuclear Deal, said Associated Press (AP). “Hostility between the long-time foes has often played out in Iraq, whose government is allied with both countries,” the news agency added.

‘Strategic centres’

The attack by Iran’s top paramilitary force has drawn “harsh condemnation from the Iraqi government, which called it a ‘violation of international law and norms’”, said AP. The US State Department described the strike as an “outrageous violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”.

The missile was launched “several days after Iran said it would retaliate for the Israeli strike near the Syrian capital, Damascus”, the news agency continued.

Although Iran claimed its strike was intended to target Israeli operations in Iraq, the bombing represents “a rare publicly declared assault by Tehran against allies of Washington”, said Reuters. The “last time Iran fired missiles directly at US facilities was when it struck the Ain Al Asad air base in western Iraq in January 2020”, in retaliation for the US killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani”.

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad on Sunday to protest at the unprovoked strike on its territory. Israel’s military said it did not comment on reports in the foreign press, and the office of the country’s prime minister also declined to comment.

Escalation of force

US troops “stationed in a section of the Erbil International Airport complex” have previously “come under fire from rocket and drone attacks that Washington blames on Iran-aligned militia groups”, Reuters said. But “no such attacks have occurred in recent months”.

Although the latest missile strike was allegedly aimed at “sites used by Israel”, social media posts showed “missiles hitting the ground and large explosions” near the new US consulate in the northern Iraqi city, The Telegraph reported.

“Local television channel Kurdistan24, whose studios are not far from the US consulate, posted images on social networks of its damaged offices, with collapsed sections of false ceiling and broken glass,” the paper added.

The US, Iraq “and other nations condemned the missile strike as a destabilising act, as the Israeli military stepped up its defences and US officials considered how to respond”, said the WSJ.

The assault is “likely to create more regional resistance to American efforts to strike a new nuclear containment deal with Iran”, the paper continued. The US and Iran “have paused negotiations” amid the diplomatic fallout.

Ambassador Matthew Tueller, America’s top diplomat in Iraq, said that the “Iranian regime elements” behind the attack “must be held accountable for this flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty”.

‘Variety of hurdles’

According to The Times, the “missile barrage” suggests that “Tehran has little hope now of negotiating a nuclear deal to lift Western sanctions”.

The powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards “are determined, if possible, to sabotage any rapprochement with the West” if “fraught attempts” to revive the agreement fail, the paper continued.

Negotiations to breathe life into the Barack Obama-era deal “have barely been worth the weeks and months of intensive negotiations in Vienna”.

“Key elements in Iran’s power structure do not want it” and “those who hoped it would at last bring Iran in from the cold seem increasingly deluded”.

World powers including the UK, France, China, Germany and Russia are involved in the nuclear talks. But the negotiations have already hit a “pause” over “Russian demands about sanctions targeting Moscow for its war on Ukraine”, said AP.

The talks have also “drawn criticism from Israeli and Persian Gulf leaders, who worry that a new deal will allow Tehran to continue to arm allies across the region and carry out its own missile strikes with impunity”, the WSJ reported.

The growing list of “hurdles” was “damping hopes that negotiators would be able to announce a revived deal soon”, the paper said.

France has warned that the missile strike on Iraq will almost certainly “put in danger the efforts to allow a return” to the agreement.

The French Foreign Ministry said that there was “an absolute urgency to conclude the negotiations, which are still open after almost a year, and to cease such irresponsible and dangerous activities”.

The arrest of the Islamic State’s money man is being heralded as a key victory in the battle to prevent the world’s wealthiest terror group from rebuilding following defeats across the Middle East.

Sami Jasim Muhammad al-Jaburi, also known as Hajji Hamid, was apprehended by Iraqi forces in an undisclosed country, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced yesterday.

The US had designated Jaburi a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in 2015 and put a $5m bounty on his head, after he “rose from an al-Qaeda foot soldier” to become former Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s “chief financier of jihad”, The Times said.

Financial lynchpin

Jaburi was arrested in a “complex external operation” planned and carried out by the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, PM al-Kadhimi said in a tweet yesterday.

At the peak of his influence, the detained jihadist oversaw revenues of up to $1bn a year from income streams ranging from “illicit oil transactions” to “extortion, ransoms, human trafficking, antiquities smuggling and donations from sympathisers in the Middle East”, The Times reported.

He served as the deputy leader of Isis under the leadership of al-Baghdadi, who killed himself and two of his children using a suicide vest during a 2019 US raid in Syria’s northwestern Idlib Province.

According to CNN, security experts believe that Jaburi was “the financial supervisor of the terrorist group” from 2015. He was “also second in command in Iraq’s second city, Mosul”, The Times added, and had previously fought under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former chief of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in 2006.

Syrian-born journalist Hassan Hassan, author of a book on Islamic State, told Reuters that Jaburi’s capture was highly unusual as Isis leaders usually “blow themselves up or fight to the end”.

Jaburi was “involved in the day-to-day operations of Isis in Syria and Iraq”, Hassan said, “so strategically and tactically, this is a significant capture for the Iraqis”.

Ramzy Mardini, an analyst with the Pearson Institute at the University of Chicago, suggested that Jaburi may have been arrested in Turkey. A 2018 “sting operation” between Iraqi, American and Turkish intelligence resulted in the capture of ”a handful of Isis leaders” who had escaped from Syria after losing territorial control and been smuggled across the border to Turkey, he told The Times.

“It’s possible that the same deceptive method was used to lure [Jaburi] out of hiding,” Mardini said.

Vital source

Despite having “largely been defeated in Iraq”, said The Washington Post, Isis “still conducts small-scale attacks in the country’s hinterlands”.

Officials “say its members are still hiding out in the cities”, the paper added, and the group last week “claimed responsibility for a car bomb in Ramadi, a city devastated first by the militants’ takeover and then by the battle for its recapture”.

According to BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, Jaburi’s “value to the Iraqi security forces will be not so much his loss to IS - where he will be swiftly replaced - but in what information he yields to his captors about imminent attacks”.

Isis “is estimated to have around 10,000 fighters at large in the Middle East”, Gardner wrote, and “high-level Isis operative” Jaburi is thought to have led “cross-border operations in Syria and Iraq”, where the group “continues to attack police and military bases”.

With the jihadists also posing “a dangerous security threat in countries as far apart as Afghanistan and Mozambique”, Jaburi’s arrest is being heralded by officials as a key breakthrough - and a “significant blow” to Isis, Gardner added.

The Times’ diplomatic correspondent Catherine Philp said that while “no single terrorism arrest or killing has ever dismantled one of the world’s most dangerous jihadist networks”, capturing Jaburi “is a good start”.

“The revenues he channelled helped to build Isis into the richest and most successful jihadist enterprise in history,” she continued, and “it is that status that draws new recruits to the brand, rather than its present standing or wealth”.

“The Western military withdrawal from Afghanistan has provided a fresh opportunity for the group to seek to expand”, an effort already well under way in the Sahel region of Africa. But this arrest will “hobble Islamic State’s comeback attempts”, Philp predicted.

The detention of such a senior Isis figure also handed a boost to Iraqi PM al-Kadhimi ahead of parliamentary elections last week.

“It was not clear when Jasim was detained,” said The Telegraph’s Middle East correspondent Campbell MacDiarmid. But as voters headed to the polls on Sunday, al-Kadhimi “alluded to an impending announcement”, a tactic he has previously deployed when “facing criticism”.

“Tomorrow, Monday, you will hear about a major security achievement,” al-Kadhimi told reporters. “We don’t want to announce today because we want to give a chance to the elections to be the top story.”

Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi political analyst at New York-based think tank The Century Foundation, told the paper that the announcement was “probably timed for al-Kadhimi to stake his claim as remaining PM”.

Combined with a violence-free election, the arrest was tipped to bode well for the incumbent - and for the region as a whole.

Joe Biden has announced the withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq by the end of 2021, bringing 18 years of conflict operations to a close.

Following a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi at the White House, the president told reporters that troops will remain “to continue to train, to assist, to help and to deal [with] Isis as it arises”, adding: “We’re not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat zone.”

Al-Kadhimi responded that he would “like to thank the American people on behalf of all Iraq’s people”, saying: “Today our nation is stronger than ever. I’m looking forward to working with you, Mr President.”

Landmark move

Some of the 2,500 US military personnel in Iraq at present will stay on after the withdrawal of combat troops and will continue to operate in a training and advisory capacity. However, an unspecified number of soldiers will leave following almost two decades of conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 4,500 soldiers since 2003.

The end of conflict operations marks “a landmark for the US”, The Times reports, ending “the invasion that led to the toppling of Saddam Hussein” and has more recently “battled Isis in the country and elsewhere in the Middle East”.

Biden has “vowed to continue counterterrorism efforts in the region”, the paper adds, with the move seen as another step in the president’s effort to shift “more attention to China as a long-term security challenge” and give Al-Kadhimi “an opportunity to prove his administration is capable of providing effective security”.

Withdrawal from combat operations ��is largely symbolic”, The New York Times (NYT) says, as “US troops no longer accompany Iraqi forces hunting remaining pockets of Islamic State fighters”, instead providing behind the scenes support.

However, it does represent the White House’s desire to “dial down its involvement in long-term conflicts in the Middle East”, while also granting al-Kadhimi “a political trophy to take home to satisfy anti-American factions in Iraq”.

The US military focus in Iraq has in recent years “been dominated by helping defeat Isis militants” in the country and neighbouring Syria, Sky News reports, with a senior administration official telling the broadcaster that “nobody is going to declare mission accomplished”.

“The goal is the enduring defeat of Isis,” the official added, but “if you look to where we were, where we had Apache helicopters in combat, when we had US special forces doing regular operations, it’s a significant evolution.

“By the end of the year we think we’ll be in a good place to really formally move into an advisory and capacity-building role.”

Mission unaccomplished?

The end of conflict operations marks an official change in the US role in the country rather than an end to its involvement in Iraq.

As Middle East Eye notes, US troops have increasingly shifted towards training responsibilities in recent years and will remain on the ground to provide “advice, training and support”. In other words, the “withdrawal from Iraq will take place largely on paper”, the site suggests.

Unlike the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has quickly “become a fraught topic in Washington”, the decision to take boots off the ground in Iraq is “unlikely to cause the same headaches”, Foreign Policy says.

This is largely because “the announcement is unlikely, in practice, to remove many of the 2,500 US troops currently stationed there”, the magazine adds, and also because “US counter-terrorism co-operation will continue” uninterrupted, Sky News says.

Al-Kadhimi is “seen as friendly to the United States and has tried to check the power of Iran-aligned militias” operating in Iraq, The Guardian reports. His government did, however, condemn a US bombing raid “against Iran-aligned fighters along its border with Syria in late June, calling it a violation of Iraqi sovereignty”.

With an election scheduled to take place in Iraq in October, the troop removal may “allow some breathing room for al-Kadhimi” who has found himself “caught between both Washington and Tehran – and on the verge of losing balance”, Foreign Policy adds.

Having won election in May 2020, al-Kadhimi has to “placate a large pro-Iran element in parliament” who voted in favour of the expulsion of US troops following the deaths of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Iranian General Qassem Suleimani in a January 2020 air strike by the Trump administration.

The prime minister has also faced “a series of devastating hospital fires” that “left dozens of people dead”, as well as “soaring coronavirus infections – adding fresh layers of frustration for the nation”, Al Jazeera says.

Looking ahead to polling day, “the ability to offer the Iraqi public a date for the end of the US combat presence could be a feather in his cap”, the broadcaster adds.

In early March, as coronavirus swept across Europe, Isis issued a surprising message to its members.

Adopting a safety-first approach, the terror group’s al-Naba magazine stopped encouraging attacks on western nations, instead advising its members not to travel to Europe, which it described as “the land of the epidemic”.

The group also told its followers to “put trust in God and seek refuge in Him from illnesses”, but to also “cover the mouth when yawning and sneezing” and to wash their hands frequently, Politico reports. Terror groups traditionally thrive in areas undergoing disruption and chaos. So how has Isis handled the past eight months?

‘Take no terror-risks’

Isis has “followed the outbreak from the beginning of this year, regularly including updates in the news briefs section of the [al-Naba] newsletter”, US-magazine Homeland Security Today (HST) says.

In January, al-Naba reported on a “new virus spread[ing] death and terror in China”, explaining that “communist China is panicking”.

And as the outbreak became more serious, Isis shifted to “criticising the Chinese government for hiding the scope of the coronavirus outbreak”, which HST speculates may have been linked to a fear the virus “could also pose a threat to their members or supporters”.

Al-Naba linked the outbreak to the persecution of Muslims in China, claiming in February that “many Muslims rushed to confirm that this epidemic is a punishment from God Almighty” for China’s abuse of the Uighurs.

The information campaign culminated in the magazine running a “full-page infographic on the back cover” in March, instructing followers that suspect they had the virus to “stay away from areas under Isis control” to fulfil the holy “obligation of taking up the causes of protection from illnesses and avoiding them”, Politico says.

‘Threats and opportunities’

Extremists first saw the pandemic as an opportunity to “launch new attacks, motivate followers and reinforce their credentials as alternative rulers of swathes of unstable countries”, The Guardian says.

However, as the full threat of Covid-19 became more apparent, “the reaction to the pandemic has evolved within extremist organisations”, the paper continues.

For Isis, the deadly virus has “translated into regional opportunity”, allowing the group to “expand upon the rebuilding effort it began last fall and use the coronavirus to spread its own, more violent flavor of destruction and terror”, writes Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on NBC News.

While the Taliban began releasing images of its public health teams, Isis “moved the fighting from Syria to Iraq [and] is strengthening, both financially and militarily”, Stein Grongstad, head of Norway’s forces in Iraq, told the broadcaster.

Grongstad described the situation in the Iraq as a “paradox”, one in which Covid-19 was weakening nations just as Isis was regaining strength.

The pandemic has also prompted fears that “Islamic militants [may] win support as corrupt, inefficient and poorly resourced governments across Africa and the Middle East fail to provide adequate care for already distrustful populations”, The Guardian reports.

“Few countries hit badly by extremism have effective health systems”, meaning there is a public services gulf that groups such as Isis could look to fill, the paper adds. The group has heightened its efforts to liberate detainees (pictured) and convert refugees who have been left in an increasingly desperate situation by the pandemic.

Rising violence

Iraqi military officials told The Associated Press, that 2020 has seen Isis “shifting from local intimidation to more complex attacks”. The officials attributed the change in tactics to various factors, including “the number of Iraqi military personnel on duty dropping 50% because of virus prevention measures”.

“Before the emergence of the virus and before the American withdrawal, the operations were negligible, numbering only one operation per week,” said a senior intelligence official. “Security forces are seeing an average of 20 operations a month,” AP adds.

As western nations have turned their attention towards dealing with the pandemic at home, their eye has been turned from events abroad. The pandemic caused the US-led coalition in Iraq to halt training ahead of a pullout from a number of bases. These areas have seen “a surge in attacks by Isis”, the Guardian notes.

“It is almost certainly correct that Covid-19 will handicap domestic security efforts and international counter-Isis cooperation, allowing the jihadists to better prepare spectacular terror attacks,” said the International Crisis Group. “The pandemic seems likely to make these agile insurgents more dangerous still, as it further slows and weakens local governments and militaries.”

An army major who has faced eight separate investigations spanning 17 years over the death of an Iraqi teenager has been cleared by a senior judge who concluded that witnesses conspired against the war veteran.

Major Robert Campbell, 47, last night voiced anger over the “witch-hunt” that he has endured, saying: “It finished me, it finished my career.”

Bomb disposal expert Campbell, along with two junior colleagues, was accused of forcing Said Shabram into a river in Basra in May 2003 and leaving the 19-year-old to drown.

But former Court of Appeal judge Baroness Hallett has concluded that Campbell jumped in to try to save the teen, but then became the victim of a conspiracy which “likely began on the day Shabram died”.

Her Iraq Fatality Investigations (IFI) report says that “a number of civilian witnesses” who came forward to give evidence against Campbell were “inherently unreliable”, and the military was aware witnesses “had colluded and were dishonest” as long ago as 2006.

The findings “raise serious questions over why the major’s ordeal lasted a further 14 years”, says The Telegraph.

The 88-page IFI report concludes that it was “most likely” that Shabram “jumped or fell” into the river while trying to escape what he believed would be “dire punishment for looting” electric cables.

The verdict follows previous investigations by “the Royal Military Police twice, the Army Prosecuting Authority, the Aitken Report inquiry, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team and the director of service prosecutions”, The Times reports.

Campbell said yesterday that he felt “cautiously optimistic that it’s over” - despite, as the paper points out, “having been told that numerous times in the past”.

Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer, a former army officer, has also welcomed the verdict, saying: “I hope these findings will bring some closure and reassurance to the family and veterans involved in this process. Nobody wants to see service personnel or veterans facing extensive reinvestigations into the same incident.”

RAF jets have bombed a cave network being used as a base by an Islamic State cell in northern Iraq.

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that “two Typhoon jets used Paveway IV precision-guided bombs to strike all six of the caves” in the joint UK-US operation last week, with ten terrorists reported to have been killed.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “The strikes continue because the Daesh threat is relentless and so will we be.”

Intelligence sources had identified the caves and tunnel complex in the Hamrin mountains as an Isis base, reports The Times.

A “thorough check” of the surrounding area for civilians was carried out before the night-time attack last Tuesday, according to a statement on the MoD website.

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Following the operation, “surveillance confirmed all the weapons struck their targets successfully, removing more Daesh fighters from the battlefield and further downgrading the terrorist movement”, the department said.

The Typhoons flew out of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and were supported by a Voyager refuelling tanker, reports defence news site DefPost.

The attack follows an RAF air strike on 10 April on Iris terrorists holed up in fortified buildings at an isolated site in northern Iraq, adds the Daily Mail.

The RAF began strikes against Isis in 2014 as part of “a wider strategy to promote peace and prosperity in the Middle East and North Africa”, says the air force’s official website.

The US government has placed the new leader of Islamic State (Isis) on its official blacklist of terrorists and offered a $5m reward for information leading to his capture.

After the assassination of the terror group’s founder and former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last October, US intelligence has struggled to obtain information relating to his successor. It initially named Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi as the new caliph of Isis.

But according to The Times, recent investigations by Washington officials have revealed that this was a nom de guerre for Amir Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Mawli, who has now been confirmed as the new leader of the ultra-violent group.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has categorised al-Mawli as a specially designated global terrorist, putting him on an infamous government blacklist.

Pompeo claimed the new leader “was previously active in al-Qa’eda in Iraq and is known for torturing innocent Yazidi religious minorities”. But what else do we know about the new leader of the world’s most feared terrorist group?

Who is al-Mawli?

After previously admitting that they had struggled to paint a clear picture of al-Mawli – chiefly because of his use of pseudonyms – US intelligence personnel have managed to piece together a profile of the new Isis leader.

They have stated that he was born into an Iraqi Turkmen family in the town of Tal Afar, and holds a degree in sharia law from the University of Mosul.

The Counter Extremism Project reports that upon the completion of his studying, he served as an officer in Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s army. But following the US-led occupation of Iraq and the capture of Hussein in 2003, he “turned to violent extremism and eventually took on the role of religious commissary and a general Sharia jurist for al-Qa’eda”.

In 2004 he was detained by US forces in Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq, which is where he is understood to have met al-Baghdadi. Upon his release, he is thought to have rejoined al-Qa’eda before breaking away and pledging loyalty to Isis in 2014.

The Guardian reports that al-Mawli “rose through the ranks helped by his background as an Islamic scholar”, fast becoming “one of the most influential figures in the regime”. The paper also notes that he is one of the few non-Arabs among the leadership of the group.

Genocide of the Yazidis

Following Isis’s rise to prominence in the mid-2010s, it perpetrated a brutal genocide against the Yazidi religious minority group in northern Iraq in 2014, of which al-Mawli is understood to have been the mastermind.

The Times reports that “an estimated 5,000 Yazidis were killed and hundreds of women and girls captured, enslaved and raped as militants rampaged across the Sinjar region of northern Iraq”.

Al-Mawli is said to have led the attacks and later produced Islamic edicts that attempted to justify the massacre.

CNN reports that in 2019, a former Isis “amni” (member of the security apparatus) calling himself Abu Muslim al-Iraqi gave a testimony to controversial independent journalist and researcher Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi. In it, al-Iraqi states that the genocide of the Yazidis – in which he had taken part – was organised and sanctioned by al-Mawla, referring to him using the alias “al-Hajj Abdullah”.

“The attack was carried out on the city of Sinjar and it was conquered and the Yazidis were brought together, and it was said to them: ‘All the men who convert to Islam will be spared from killing, and the women will spared from being taken captive’,” al-Iraqi said.

“And the one who gave them the pact is al-Hajj Abdullah.”

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What will happen now?

Before al-Baghdadi’s death in a US military raid in northwest Syria on 27 October, the US State Department had already put a $5m bounty on al-Mawli’s head and on two other senior members of the group.

But this week, Washington put him on a list created after the 2001 terror attacks that makes any support of him a crime in the US.

In the wake of a significant Kurdish-led offensive against Isis in 2018 and 2019, the group has shrunk significantly and is all but wiped out in Iraq and Syria.

Al-Mawli is now understood to be “trying to consolidate the new Isis leadership, nearly all of whom apart from Salbi [al-Mawli] himself are drawn from a new generation who were too young to play roles in Isis’s founding battles against US forces from 2004 or in the Iraqi civil war that followed”, says the Guardian.

Middle East Monitor reports that currently there is “little knowledge of the new leader’s whereabouts”, with intelligence officials saying that he “most likely did not follow al-Baghdadi to Syria’s Idlib province where he was killed, but is possibly in the surrounding countryside around the Iraqi city of Mosul”.

The news site adds that the search for him has also extended to Turkey, where his brother Adel al-Salbi heads and represents a political party called the Turkmen Iraqi Front.

But the waning fortunes of Isis does not mean that the US is taking is taking the threat any less seriously. Pompeo this week stated: “We’ve destroyed the caliphate and we remain committed to Isis’s enduring defeat no matter who they designate as their leader.”

US forces have carried out air strikes in Iraq against what the Pentagon claims are five weapons storage sites run by an Iranian-back militia.

The strikes came in response to a rocket attack which killed two American and one British soldier near Baghdad on Wednesday.

The Pentagon said the strikes were aimed at Kata’ib Hezbollah, a paramilitary group with strong ties with Tehran, which Washington blames for the attack.

A spokeswoman said the strikes were “defensive, proportional, and in direct response to the threat posed by Iranian-backed Shia militia groups who continue to attack bases hosting … coalition forces”.

US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said that Donald Trump had authorised him to take whatever action he deemed necessary.

“We’re going to take this one step at a time, but we’ve got to hold the perpetrators accountable,” Esper said. “You don’t get to shoot at our bases and kill and wound Americans and get away with it.”

The Washington Post reports that a separate Iran-backed militia, Harakat al-Nujaba, accused the US of hitting militia and Iraqi army headquarters, as well as a civilian airport. In a statement, it warned that further strikes could prompt retaliation involving an “eye for an eye”.

The latest exchange of fire comes two months after an escalation brought the US and Iran to the brink of direct conflict.

At least 12 people were injured in the rocket attack on Camp Taji, of Baghdad. Coalition and Iraqi officials say 18 Katyusha rockets struck the base, with a “rocket-rigged truck” later discovered a few miles away, reports Sky News.

Boris Johnson has described the attack as “deplorable”, while Defence Secretary Ben Wallace condemned the “cowardly and retrograde act”.

The soldier who died was identified yesterday as Lance Cpl. Brodie Gillon, 26. She was a reservist and combat medical technician with the Scottish and North Irish Yeomanry.

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A British soldier is among three people who have died in a rocket attack on a military base in Iraq - the first British serviceperson killed by enemy fire since the UK joined the operation against Islamic State in 2014.

An American soldier and an American contractor were also killed, and at least 12 people were injured, in the attack on Wednesday on Camp Taji, north of Baghdad.

Coalition and Iraqi officials say 18 Katyusha rockets struck the base, with a “rocket-rigged truck” later discovered a few miles away, reports Sky News.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described the attack as “deplorable”, while Defence Secretary Ben Wallace condemned the “cowardly and retrograde act”.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said that an investigation was under way.

CNN reports that the US will also “go after the perpetrators”, citing an unnamed defence official who said that Iranian-backed fighters or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp were believed to be responsible.

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There here have been multiple rocket attacks in Iraq in recent weeks, but Wednesday’s incident was the first to result in a coalition death since December, when a US contractor was killed.

However, tension has been high since the US killed senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in January.

A retaliatory Iranian strike on a base hosting US troops left more than 100 soldiers injured.

A total of four British service personnel have now died while taking part in Operation Shader, the UK’s military operation against Isis in Iraq and Syria.

The previous three fatalities - in Iraq, at a Royal Air Force base in Cyprus, and in Syria - were the results of an accidental shooting, a traffic accident and so-called friendly fire respectively.

Hundreds of activists have returned to the streets of cities across Iraq to protest against the nomination of former communications minister Mohammed Allawi as the country’s new prime minister.

Allawi was named by President Barham Salih this weekend as the replacement for caretaker PM Adel Abdul Mahdi, who resigned at the end of November amid violent anti-government demonstrations.

Following weeks of political paralysis, Saleh had given Iran’s political factions until Saturday to nominate a new national leader, “sending them into crisis talks that produced a consensus on Allawi”, reports The Guardian.

But while Allawi has pledged to meet the protesters’ demands for widespread political reforms and a crackdown on corruption, many remain convinced.

What is happening in Iraq?

The Iraqi capital of Baghdad and the Shia-dominated southern provinces have been gripped by “four months of anti-government rallies demanding snap elections, a politically independent prime minister and accountability for corruption and protest-related violence”, says London-based news site Middle East Eye.

More than 480 people have died and nearly 30,000 have been wounded in clashes between security forces and anti-government activists since the start of October. The unrest began after then PM Mahdi demoted Iraq’s popular counter-terrorism chief, according to the BBC.

But while Mahdi subsequently resigned, demonstrators are demanding “a complete overhaul of the country’s political system introduced after the US invasion of 2003”, Al Jazeera reports.

Following weeks of fruitless debate to select a new PM, President Salih told Iraq’s heavily divided parliament that if they could not agree on a candidate by 1 February, he would make the decision.

The parliament chose 65-year-old Allawi, who served as communications minister under former PM Nouri al-Maliki before resigning in 2012 over alleged government corruption and interference in his department.

Can Allawi make a difference?

Allawi has been given a month to form a government, which must be approved by parliament. He is tasked with running the country until an early election is held, with no date for the vote set as yet.

After being named as the new PM, Allawi immediately posted a video on Twitter expressing his support for the protesters, saying: “I will ask you to keep up the protests, because if you are not with me, I won’t be able to do anything.”

In a subsequent televised address on state television, he said: “This nomination places a huge, historic responsibility on my shoulders.”

But many protesters accuse Allawi of belonging to the same political establishment that has failed them. Within minutes of his appointment being announced, hundreds gathered in the capital’s Tahrir Square, chanting “Mohammed Allawi, rejected”.

Protesters also flooded the streets of other cities including Diwaniyah, where one activist, lawyer Hassan Mayahi, told The Guardian: “Allawi’s nomination came with the approval of the same corrupt political blocs we’ve been protesting against for over four months.”

However, Allawi is being backed by influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament, who has called for the protesters to clear the roads and resume “day-to-day life”.

“This is a good step,” Sadr tweeted, adding: “I hope the president’s appointment of Mohammed Allawi is acceptable to the people and that they have patience.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Former FBI special agent Ali H. Soufan in The New York Times

on the cycle of disorder in the Middle East

Suleimani is dead, Iraq is in chaos and Isis is very happy

“Like all terrorist groups, the Islamic State draws fuel from chaos and division. The killing of General Suleimani promises much of both to come. The Islamic State still has deep pockets, affiliates around the world, and a knack for recruitment. General Suleimani’s death will have its leaders rubbing their hands in anticipation. The damage is done. Without a major cooling of tensions, a jihadist resurgence might now be all but inevitable.”

2. Gene Seymour on CNN

on an Academy losing touch with moviegoers

This year’s Oscars are a joke

“As I keep telling people year after year, the industry - not the critics or the audience - votes on these things. And people in the industry don’t just vote for what’s great or even good: They vote for what they want the rest of the world to know about their trade, their product and their shared values - and not necessarily in that order.”

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3. Bhaskar Sunkara in The Guardian

on a Bernie surge

Sanders is leading the pack in Iowa – and that’s good news for Democrats

“Sanders is an anti-establishment figure, and one with a decades-long history on the left, but his policy commitments are not outside the new American mainstream. If he can galvanize the same ‘moderate’ irregular voters who have been drawn to him in the past, he won’t just beat Trump, he’ll set the stage for a long-term political realignment – the political revolution he calls for. Sanders is a rebel, but he’s one who people know and trust. In other words, he’s the perfect candidate for 2020.”

4. Oliver Gill in The Telegraph

on a lack of transparency at Flybe

Flybe in a tailspin with too many planes and not enough passengers

“Despite its troubled history, news that Flybe was back on the brink has blindsided many industry watchers. Away from the glare of the public markets, Flybe’s latest travails have gone largely unnoticed. As a listed company, the airline had to provide regular updates on load factors – the number of people it was putting on its aircraft – and profitability. The burden of such transparency is removed as a private company. Flybe had suffered ‘soft’ winter trading, senior industry sources said. In itself, that is hardly a major cause for concern, but has been enough to spook the credit card companies. They gated millions of pounds of customer payments instead of passing the money onto the airline. That action has left a big hole in Flybe’s finances.”

5. Patsy McGarry in The Irish Times

on a party-crashing pontiff

Papal duty: Benedict XVI intervention raises question of what to do with a retired pope

“This latest intervention by Benedict, whether by intent or manipulation, raises the fundamental question – what do you do with a retired pope? Was it a mistake to allow Benedict to retain the title Pope Emeritus and continue to wear the white cassock peculiar to popes? It would appear so. It lends an authority which can be abused. It might have been better had Benedict simply become Bishop Emeritus of Rome, and taken the advice offered to retired bishops by former Archbishop of Dublin Cardinal Desmond Connell – ‘get lost’.”

Iran has launched more than a dozen missiles at US and coalition military sites in Iraq in retaliation for the killing of top general Qasem Soleimani.

Tehran fired the 22 short-range missiles from Iranian territories at about 1.30am local time (10.30pm GMT) on Wednesday, just hours after the burial of Soleimani.

US officials have confirmed that there was no American casulties, while the Iraqi joint military command also said that there were no Iraqi deaths as a result of the attack, CNN reports.

The missile launches were a “major retaliation” by the regime, Fox News says.

According to the Pentagon, two sites were attacked, in Irbil and Al Asad, west Baghdad. A White House spokesperson added: “The president has been briefed and is monitoring the situation closely and consulting with his national security team.”

Donald Trump has tweeted that “All is well!” The US president added: “Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good! We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far! I will be making a statement tomorrow morning.”

In a statement following the attack, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said: “We are warning all American allies, who gave their bases to its terrorist army, that any territory that is the starting point of aggressive acts against Iran will be targeted.”

It added: “To the Great Satan... we warn that if you repeat your wickedness or take any additional movements or make additional aggression, we will respond with more painful and crushing responses.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei described the strike as “a slap in the face” for the US, adding: “When it comes to confrontation, military action of this kind is not enough. What is important is that the corrupt presence of the United States should come to an end.”

However, the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, later seemed to be attempting to play down the tension, saying: “We do not seek escalation or war.”

Yashar Ali – an American journalist of Iranian descent - tweeted that it was “naïve” to think the attack heralded the end of the row. He added: “If you think Iran lobbing missiles over the border is the kind of revenge they ultimately have in mind, you’re wrong.”

According to CNN, “the crisis the world feared when President Donald Trump was elected president is upon us”.

In a post on Twitter, Thomas Juneau, an assistant professor and Iran expert at the University of Ottawa, said: “Iran assesses Trump does not want to get bogged down in a large scale war in the Middle East, and that this gives it more margin to manoeuvre.

“Needless to say, this is a HUGE gamble given how unpredictable Trump is.”

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The US defence secretary has denied US troops are pulling out of Iraq, after a letter from a US general in the Middle Eastern country suggested a withdrawal was imminent.

Mark Esper insisted there had been “no decision whatsoever to leave” after a general’s letter said Washington would be “repositioning forces in the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement”.

The letter from Brig Gen William H. Seely, head of the US military's task force in Iraq, says measures will be conducted “during hours of darkness” to “ensure the movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner”.

Amid what The Guardian describes as “scenes of confusion in Washington,” Esper told reporters: “I don't know what that letter is... We're trying to find out where that's coming from, what that is. But there's been no decision made to leave Iraq. Period.”

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, said: “That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released.” He described it as: “poorly worded, implies withdrawal, that is not what’s happening”.

The confusion comes after Iraqi lawmakers voted in favour of the departure of American troops from their country.

Iraqi politician Faleh al-Khazali said: “Trump should know that Iraq is not an American state and Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi should bear responsibility. We demand all US troops to leave Iraq and Iraqi government should consider them as occupiers.”

However, The Times notes that on Sunday, Trump said that if US forces left on anything other than “a very friendly basis” he would impose sanctions on Iraq.

The US president also said he would demand to be repaid for the “extraordinarily expensive airbase” the United States had built.

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Former US Navy Seal Edward Gallagher has launched his own clothing line after being granted clemency by Donald Trump for posing with the body of a teenage Isis fighter.

Gallagher was acquitted of committing war crimes including murder while serving as a platoon leader in Iraq, but was demoted for taking his “trophy photo” - until the president reversed the decision in November.

Fast-forward two months and Gallagher is modelling his new lifestyle clothing brand Salty Frog Apparel, as well as “endorsing nutrition supplements and positioning himself as a conservative influencer with close ties to the man who helped clear him”, says The New York Times.

The launch of his fashion venture comes just days after video recordings emerged in which his former Seals team refer to him as “evil”, “toxic” and “perfectly OK with killing anybody”. Gallagher denies any wrongdoing.

Who is Edward Gallagher?

Special Operations Chief Gallagher was a decorated veteran who served eight tours, during which he became infamous among other Navy Seals for his reckless and often violent behaviour.

Despite an unspoken rule against reporting other Seals for misconduct, by 2018 members of his platoon felt they had no option but to speak to outside investigators.

They reportedly told the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that Gallagher may have been “purposefully” exposing them to enemy fire to bait Isis fighters into revealing their positions. They also said that he had seemed to care primarily about racking up kills, including those of women and children.

In the recently released video interviews, obtained by The New York Times, a number of the platoon members break down in tears as they describe how their “evil” and “toxic” former leader would go on solo “gun runs” - described as “emptying loads of heavy machine gun fire into neighborhoods with no apparent targets”.

During his trial, some of the Seals claimed that they “tampered with his sniper rifle to make it less accurate, and fired warning shots to scare away civilians before the chief had a chance to shoot them”, according to USA Today.

In the most serious charge against him, Gallagher was accused of stabbing to death a barely conscious captive in May 2017, before posing with the corpse.

Gallagher was arrested in late 2018, but was acquitted by a military jury on six of seven charges in July 2019. He was found guilty of “wrongfully posing for an unofficial picture with a human casualty”, but was released as he had already spent more time in custody than the maximum sentence for the offence.

What happened next?

Following his court-martial, Gallagher was demoted from chief petty officer to a petty officer first class, which would have cost him a large part of his military pension and seen him stripped of his Seal qualification pin.

However, Trump then reversed the demotion as part of a wave of executive pardons of US troops convicted or accused of war crimes.

Gallagher subsquently issued a statement heaping praise on Trump, CNN reports.

“President Donald Trump you have my deepest gratitude and thanks,” Gallagher said. “You stepped in numerous times and showed true moral fiber by correcting all the wrongs that were being done to me. You are a true leader and exactly what the military and this nation needs.”

MilitaryTimes.com reports that since then, the former Seal “has struck up a relationship with the president”.

Only last week Gallagher was pictured alongside his wife at the Christmas Eve party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The killing of the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force in a US air strike has triggered warnings of a potential all-out conflict between the two nations.

General Qasem Soleimani was targeted by a drone strike at Iraq’s Baghdad International Airport in the early hours of Friday, in what the Pentagon has described as a “decisive defensive action”.

US military officials claim Soleimani approved recent attacks by protestors on the US embassy in Baghdad, and say he was killed “at the direction” of President Donald Trump.

What has the reaction been?

Charles Lister, director of the counterterrorism programme at the Washington D.C.-based Middle East Institute, describes the killing as “one of the biggest developments in the Middle East for decades”.

In an article for The Telegraph, Lister says the death of Soleimani “far eclipses the deaths of [Osama] Bin Laden or [Abu Bakr] Baghdadi in terms of strategic significance and implications”.

“His death is a serious loss for Iran’s regional agenda, but his ‘martyrdom’ will likely fuel a response that will, at least in the medium term, make up for his death,” Lister adds.

The New York Times’ Eric Nagourney says that Soleimani was seen by many as a future leader of Iran.

“The general, a once-shadowy figure who enjoyed celebrity status among the hard-line conservatives in Iran, was a figure of intense interest to people both inside and outside the country,” writes Nagourney.

“It is not just that he was in charge of Iranian intelligence gathering and covert military operations, and regarded as one of its most cunning and autonomous military figures. He was also believed to be very close to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

Nagourney notes that Soleimani was understood to be the “chief strategist” behind Iran’s military operations in Syria, Iraq and across the Middle East.

That view is echoed by Middle East scholar Andrew Exum, who in an article for The Atlantic writes that “I do not know of a single Iranian who was more indispensable to his government’s ambitions in the Middle East”.

“From a military and diplomatic perspective, Soleimani was Iran’s David Petraeus and Stan McChrystal and Brett McGurk all rolled into one,” says Exum, comparing the Iranian to the former CIA director, US army general and senior diplomat respectively.

“This doesn’t mean war, it will not lead to war, and it doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war,” Exum concludes.

The Guardian’s Juilan Borger agrees, writing that the killing “has closed one gruesome chapter in the region’s endless conflicts, only to open another, which could well prove even worse”.

The latest twist in the long-running proxy war between the US and Iran has “dispensed with proxies altogether and aimed a direct dagger thrust into the heart of Iranian power”, he adds.

What next?

Supreme Leader Khamenei warned in a statement following Soleimani’s death that “severe revenge awaits those criminals who have tainted their filthy hands with his blood”.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Amir Hatami said that the attack by the “arrogant US” would be met with a “crushing” response, reports The Washington Post.

As tensions continue to soar, Foreign Policy claims the killing could “mark the most dramatic escalation of the Middle East conflict since the Iraq War”.

“We are moving into a period where there is a strong possibility of escalating war and direct conflict between the United States and Iran,” Seth Jones, an expert on Middle East extremism at the Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the magazine.

The US embassy in Baghdad has urged US citizens in Iraq to depart the country immediately “via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land”, reports Sky News.

The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force has been killed by US forces in Iraq.

In a military attack described as “game-changing” by Fox News, General Qasem Soleimani was targeted with a drone strike while being driven from Baghdad airport by local allies.

The strike comes days after protesters attacked the US embassy in Baghdad, clashing with US forces at the scene. The Pentagon, which claims Soleimani approved the attacks on the embassy, says he was killed “at the direction of the president”.

Donald Trump ordered the airstrike as a “decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad” that was intended to deter “future Iranian attack plans,” the Pentagon added.

However, Iran's Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, described the move as “an act of international terrorism” and an “extremely dangerous and a foolish escalation”.

Soleimani has led Iran's Quds Force – a unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards – since 1998. Washington claims that the Force is “Iran's primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting” US-designated terrorist groups in the Middle East. According to CNN, Soleimani “has the blood of many Americans on his hands”.

Many consider Suleimani to have been “the second most powerful person in Iran”, behind the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, The Guardian says, and “arguably ahead of President Hassan Rouhani”.

“He was more important than the president, spoke to all factions in Iran, had a direct line to the supreme leader and was in charge of Iran’s regional policy,” explains Dina Esfandiary, a fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, in a profile. Last year, Prospect described him as a “canny, ruthless military leader” and “Iran's greatest defender”.

Therefore, attention now turns to how Tehran responds. The BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet says: “Escalation is expected and retaliation seems certain, setting an already volatile region on an even more dangerous course.”

Mohsen Rezaei, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said Iran would take “vigorous revenge on America”.

A spokesman for the Iranian government added that the nation’s top security body would meet in a few hours to discuss the "criminal act of attack".

Politicians and commentators in the US are already pointing to the Pentagon’s claim that the assassination was made to prevent further US deaths.

“One reason we don’t generally assassinate foreign political officials is the belief that such action will get more, not less, Americans killed,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy wrote on Twitter. “That should be our real, pressing and grave worry tonight.”

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After two days of tension, thousands of pro-Iranian protesters dispersed from their encampment around the US embassy in Baghdad yesterday, cooling a siege that has trapped embassy staff inside the compound.

The demonstrations represented a major crisis for the Trump administration, and have called into question its relationship with the Iraqi government - a strategic partner.

Washington has accused Iran of orchestrating the protests, and has sent 750 troops to Iraq in response to the incident.

Why did the protests happen?

The protests outside the embassy began after the US conducted airstrikes against Keta’ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia with ties to the Iranian government, killing at least 25 of their fighters. Immediately after holding prayer services for the dead, angry funeral goers proceeded to the US embassy and attempted to storm it.

The area surrounding the US embassy is supposed to be impassable to protesters, and has been closely guarded in the past by Iraqi security services, but when hundreds of supporters of Keta’ib Hezbollah marched on the embassy, they were allowed to do so without hindrance.

“Angered crowds marched unimpeded through the checkpoints of the usually high-security Green Zone to the embassy gates,” reports Al Jazeera. “They broke through a reception area, chanting 'Death to America' and spraying pro-Iran graffiti on the walls.”

“The demonstrators did not break into the embassy buildings, but their ability to storm the most heavily guarded zone in Baghdad prompted speculation that they had received at least tacit permission from Iraqi security officials sympathetic to their demands,” says Politico.

Why did Washington strike Keta’ib Hezbollah?

The US airstrikes came after a rocket attack on Friday on an Iraqi base that killed an American contractor. According to a statement released by the US Defence Department, the strikes on Keta’ib Hezbollah in Iraq were in response to “repeated Kata'ib Hizbollah (KH) attacks on Iraqi bases that host… coalition forces”.

“Recent KH strikes included a 30-plus rocket attack on an Iraqi base near Kirkuk that resulted in the death of a US citizen and injured four US service members and two members of the Iraqi Security Forces,” the statement said.

The role of Tehran and Washington

While the protesters who stormed the US embassy were reacting directly to US airstrikes, this week’s events in Baghdad cannot be seen outside the context of the increasing tension between the US and Iran.

In May 2018 President Donald Trump announced the US’s withdrawal from the Obama administration’s JCPOA - or the Iran Nuclear Deal - and replaced it with a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions and other measures against Iran.

Since then, the regime in Tehran has acted with increased assertiveness, and 2019 saw multiple attacks by Iran on Saudi oil facilities and international tankers as they passed through the Strait of Hormuz, as it sought to counterbalance the US sanctions crippling its economy.

At the same time, Tehran has worked tirelessly to increase its influence on Iraqi politics, with documents obtained by The Intercept revealing “years of painstaking work by Iranian spies to co-opt the country’s leaders, pay Iraqi agents working for the Americans to switch sides, and infiltrate every aspect of Iraq’s political, economic, and religious life.”

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Violation of Iraqi sovereignty

However, despite their close ties to Iran, Keta’ib Hezbollah are officially part of the Iraqi security forces, and US airstrikes against them on Iraqi soil without the permission of the government in Baghdad have infuriated some in Iraq.

This, at least in part, could explain why Iraqi security forces did not attempt to stop the protesters who approached the US embassy.

“The prime minister described the American attack on the Iraqi armed forces as an unacceptable vicious assault that will have dangerous consequences,” said the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi in a statement on Monday.

With recent protests in Iraq focusing at least in part on what Iraqis see as undue Iranian influence on their internal affairs, some analysts fear the Trump administration’s airstrikes and the embassy siege that followed have distracted from that, and have thus run counter to US interests in the region.

“US overreach is likely how Iran and its allies hoped the United States would respond to their provocations,” says Lawfare. “By stepping into this familiar trap, the Trump administration has once again made the United States the focus of Iraqis’ ire, relieving some of the pressure on Iran that has been building over several months of popular protests in Iraq.”

Security services in Iraq have shot dead at least 45 people as protesters continued to take to the streets to demand more jobs, an end to corruption and better public services.

On what the BBC describes as “one of the bloodiest days since anti-government protests began last month,” at least 25 people died when security forces opened fire to clear bridges in the southern city of Nasiriya.

Four more protesters died in Baghdad and 10 in the city of Najaf, where demonstrators stormed and torched the Iranian consulate. The Guardian says that development could “mark a turning point in the uprising against the Tehran-backed authorities”.

Tehran has called on Iraqi authorities to respond “firmly and effectively” to protesters who attacked the consulate. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi expressed “hatred” for the protesters and demanded action.

There has been widespread outrage over yesterday’s killings. Amnesty International's Middle East research director, Lynn Maalouf, said these scenes “more closely resemble a war zone than city streets and bridges”, accusing security forces of “appalling violence against largely peaceful protesters”.

The protests began in October when Iraqis became angered by Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s failure to tackle high unemployment, rampant corruption and poor public services.

One demonstrator said he and his fellow protesters see injustice and corruption everywhere in Iraq. “Everything is personal here,” he explained.

At least 350 people have been killed and thousands wounded since the unrest began. CNN says that the scale of the protests, believed to be the biggest since the fall of former President Saddam Hussein in 2003, have taken the government by surprise.

In response to the continuing disorder, the Iraqi military has announced it is setting up military “crisis cells” to quell unrest. The military command said an emergency unit had been created to “impose security and restore order”.

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From the students occupying university buildings in Hong Kong to activists overthrowing a 30-year dictatorship in Sudan, 2019 has seen a resurgence in the use of protesting as a tool for political and social change.

Dozens of countries have been affected by mass unrest this calendar year, most prompted by similar economic woes and anti-corruption drives but yielding mixed results ranging from total revolution to violent and bloody crackdowns.

Here’s a look at some of the major protests in 2019:

Hong Kong

The crisis in Hong Kong has become one of the year’s most significant news stories. In April, protesters began taking to the streets each weekend to oppose a proposed bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.

Despite the legislation being scrapped, the BBC reports that protesters “now want complete universal suffrage, an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality and amnesty for demonstrators who have been arrested”.

Iraq

Iraq has been rocked by rallies calling for an overhaul of the government since the start of October. Al Jazeera reports that protesters have “denounced rampant corruption, lack of opportunity and poor public services”.

A police crackdown has resulted in the deaths of at least 300 people, with the United Nations warning that the country is heading for a “bloodbath”.

Sudan

In one of the year’s success stories, long-time Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir was removed from power in April after months of protests supported by government troops.

Despite fears that tensions following the revolution could spark a bloody civil war, Sudan’s interim military government and the opposition coalition signed a final power-sharing deal in August paving the way for a transition to a civilian-led government.

Lebanon

Widespread rallies opposing poor economic conditions broke out across Lebanon in late September, with protesters calling for the toppling of the Lebanese elite that had ruled the country since the 1980s.

A month later, Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced his resignation after less than a year in power, but unrest continues amid a “tense stalemate” between authorities and protesters, The Guardian says.

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Bolivia

Protests came to Bolivia in October following left-wing President Evo Morales’s unprecedented decision to run for a fourth term. He was reportedly asked to resign by the military in controversial circumstances, with many believing that he was the victim of a coup.

Since Morales fled to Mexico, right-wing deputy senate leader Jeanine Anez has declared herself interim president. Unrest continues.

Chile

More than a million protesters took to the streets across Chile in mid-October over an increase in subway fares – protests which then spilled over into an airing of grievances over “long-standing frustrations”, Time magazine says.

But a brutal police crackdown characterised by “excessive use of force to torture, illegal raids and arbitrary detention” has marred the rallies and stoked further tensions, Amnesty International says.

Egypt

After years of uneasy calm, Egyptians returned to the streets in September calling for the removal of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has “imposed strict austerity measures since 2016”, The Guardian says.

Egypt has stringent anti-protest laws and police have responded with tear gas and live bullets, with thousands of protesters arrested. Sisi has remained defiant and little has changed.

Ecuador

Harsh austerity measures also brought Ecuadorians out in force in October, galvanised by President Lenin Moreno’s decision to repeal fuel subsidies, which have been in place since the 1970s.

Protesters have called for the return of the subsidies and subsequently for Moreno’s resignation and an end to austerity. As of November, the reinstatement of the subsidies has been the only major change.

Spain

Europe has not escaped major unrest this year, with Catalonia once again becoming a battleground for activists seeking independence from Spain.

In October, Spain’s Supreme Court jailed nine Catalan separatist leaders over their role in the region’s 2017 independence referendum, prompting rioting in Barcelona and other major cities. Hundreds were injured and protests are ongoing.

Algeria

In April Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had been in power for 20 years, resigned after weeks of street protests. Prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia was also forced to step down.

But according to the BBC, the president’s departure “was not enough for the predominantly young protesters” who are “calling for sweeping government reforms, accusing leaders of widespread corruption and state repression”.

The British government and the military covered up significant evidence of war crimes by soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to reports by the BBC and The Sunday Times.

An investigation found that military detectives unearthed evidence of serious incidents involving innocent civilians, but that senior commanders hid the alleged war crimes “for political reasons”.

The reports have given rise to calls for the International Criminal Court to intervene and investigate the disclosures.

What is alleged to have happened?

Among the allegations are claims that a soldier in the elite SAS unit murdered three children and a young man in Afghanistan.

It is claimed that the soldier shot the four civilians in the head at close range while they were drinking tea in their home in October 2012.

The investigation also found claims of beatings, torture, and sexual abuse of detainees by members of the Black Watch infantry unit. It is further alleged that there was widespread abuse of prisoners in the summer of 2003 at Camp Stephen, in the Iraqi city of Basra, leading to at least two deaths in custody.

Another crime looked into by the investigators was the fatal shooting of an Iraqi policeman in August 2003. It is suggested that this was covered up based on a soldier’s witness account, with the soldier later saying that evidence was fabricated without his knowledge.

The Sunday Times reports that military detectives uncovered allegations of falsified documents that were “serious enough to merit prosecutions of senior officers”.

An investigator told the BBC: “The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had no intention of prosecuting any soldier of whatever rank he was unless it was absolutely necessary, and they couldn’t wriggle their way out of it.”

Responding to the claims, the MoD said that the allegations were “untrue”, adding that the decisions made by prosecutors and investigators were “independent” and involved “external oversight and legal advice”.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who worked on war crimes policy as a lawyer in the Foreign Office before entering frontline politics, told the BBC that despite the lack of any prosecutions, it had “got the right balance” in making sure that “spurious claims” were not pursued.

What will happen next?

The revelations could result in a war crimes investigation at the International Criminal Court, if the UK is deemed to have failed to hold its military forces to account. The ICC is obliged to act when countries fail to hold military forces to account for breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

There are also calls for an independent, judge-led inquiry.

The BBC said this morning that the ICC “would independently assess the BBC's findings and would begin a landmark case if it believed the Government was shielding soldiers from prosecution”.

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What has the reaction been?

Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said “it’s absolutely reprehensible for politicians to take it upon themselves to interfere in investigations into crimes this serious, and to close those investigations down before they’re complete”.

But Hilary Meredith, visiting professor of law and veterans’ affairs at the University of Chester, who has represented several soldiers facing similar allegations, said: “This so-called new evidence has no credibility whatsoever. It is flawed, baseless and biased.”

The BBC added that the ICC is “taking the allegations very seriously”.

The United Nations has called for measures to halt ongoing violence in Iraq, following deadly clashes between security forces and anti-government activists.

As France 24 reports, mass rallies by protesters “calling for an overhaul of the ruling system” have rocked Baghdad and the Shia-majority south since the start of October. Police have responded with a brutal crackdown that has resulted in the deaths of at least 300 people, with a further 15,000 injured.

In the latest violence, three protesters were shot dead on Sunday night by security forces in the city of Nasiriyah, about 225 miles southeast of the capital.

So can Iraq end what Amnesty International describes as a “bloodbath”?

What is going on?

Over the past six weeks, Iraqis have been “pouring onto the streets to protest against corruption and the government’s failure to deliver basic services and economic opportunities”, says Al Jazeera.

The protesters’ demands have “widened to include the resignation of the government and a complete overhaul of the country’s political system”, which was set up by leaders in Washington following the US-led invasion in 2003, the broadcaster continues. The system is alleged to have facilitated widespread corruption that has allowed high-profile figures in Iraq to make huge monetary gains.

Many of the demonstrators are also believed to be angry about the increasing influence in Iraq of neighbouring Iran.

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The protests have been described as the “biggest threat to the power of the Iraqi political establishment since Isis was advancing on Baghdad in 2014”, reports The Independent.

The violence has escalated in recent weeks, with security forces allegedly firing live rounds into crowds at rallies. The military crackdown has reportedly been orchestrated by Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Revolutionary Guard’s al-Quds force.

The head of the Iraqi parliament’s human rights commission told Al Jazeera that 319 people have died since 1 October.

Despite the deaths, protesters have defied attempts by security forces to shut them down, instead “organising around places such as al-Tahrir bridge, with young men and women treating the wounded and giving out water, food, hard hats and gas masks to demonstrators facing tear gas”, according to CNN.

What does the UN propose?

The UN office in Iraq (Unami) has issued a statement condemning the excessive use of force and calling for a halt to the violence.

The body is calling on Iraqi security forces to pledge to “protect the right to life”, “guarantee the right to peaceful assembly” and “practice maximum restraint in the handling of the protests, including no use of live ammunition”, and has set out a series of measures to be implemented by the authorities.

Unami says the government should release all of the demonstrators who have been detained and “accelerate efforts to identify and prosecute those responsible for using excessive force against protesters”.

The UN is also calling on “all regional and international parties not to interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs, respecting its sovereignty”, without mentioning Iran by name.

In addition, the Iraqi authorities are being urged to enact electoral reform to pave the way for elections “as soon as possible”, and to activate anti-corruption laws within the next two weeks.

That call has been echoed by the US government, which released a statement on Sunday asking “the Iraqi government to halt the violence against protesters and fulfill President [Barham] Saleh’s promise to pass electoral reform and hold early elections”.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi last week promised that the government and judiciary would investigate the deaths of protesters, and that all detainees who have been arrested would be released.

The 77-year-old also claimed that new electoral reforms would be announced in the “coming few days”, but failed to give any further details.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Hugo Rifkind in The Times

on immature voting

In the end we’re all tactical voters, aren’t we?

“Probably, though, we all ought to just grow up a bit. Tactical voting is the child born when an archaic voting system gets into bed with an informed electorate. The first British electoral contest in which it probably played an undeniable role was the Greenwich by-election of 1987 when a few thousand Tory voters swung behind the SDP’s Rosie Barnes to beat off Labour. Reading back, much of the political establishment seems to have regarded this as a dangerous and probably immoral development of electoral strategy, not a million miles away from cheating.”

2. Michael Deacon in The Telegraph

on a less-than-glowing sendoff

John Bercow had gone at last... and his wannabe successors utterly trashed him

“Funny, isn’t it. On Thursday last week, MPs spent three solid hours paying lavish tribute to John Bercow. He was, they gushed, ‘a transformative Speaker’, ‘truly impartial’, ‘such a good human being’ who had ‘touched the lives of hundreds of thousands’... Then on Monday – the very next parliamentary sitting day – MPs burst into deafening cheers as his wannabe successors took turns to trash him as a one-sided, interfering, egotistical gasbag. None of them referred to Mr Bercow by name, but it was perfectly clear who they were talking about.”

3. Ted Rall in The Japan Times

on an unspoken controversy in US politics

The killing of al-Baghdadi: Illegal, disgusting and degenerate

“We have come a long way since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, signed Executive Order 12333, which states: ‘No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.’ E.O. 12333 — which remains in force — was part of the aftermath of the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s, which exposed assassinations and other illegal acts committed by the CIA in Latin America and elsewhere at the height of the Cold War. American spooks conspired to murder political adversaries and heads of state, mainly on the left, all over the world. Back then, the political class had the grace to pretend to be ashamed.”

4. Paul Krugman in The New York Times

on bankers unable to take criticism

Attack of the Wall Street snowflakes

“What, after all, does modern finance actually do for the economy? Unlike the robber barons of yore, today’s Wall Street tycoons don’t build anything tangible. They don’t even direct money to the people who actually are building the industries of the future. The vast expansion of credit in America after around 1980 basically involved a surge in consumer debt rather than new money for business investment. Moreover, there is growing evidence that when the financial sector gets too big it actually acts as a drag on the economy — and America is well past that point.”

5. Eliora Katz in Tablet Magazine

on the growing disillusionment with Tehran

The revolt against Iran

“While the majority of Iraqis share the same Shiite religious faith practiced in Iran, it is precisely in Iraq’s Shiite strongholds where the revolt against Iranian rule has taken root. Motivated more by national self-interest than, religious ideology, Iraq’s protesters hold the Iranian-dominated political establishment accountable for their country’s decay. These feelings have not developed overnight. Protests erupted last year in the oil rich city of Basra, when Iran turned off a power line in the region. Basra residents repeated ‘Iran out!’ as they burned Iranian flags, the Iranian consulate, and headquarters of Iran-linked militias.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Alan Cochrane in The Telegraph

on the SNP’s decades-long tightrope act

Will the Nats once again help usher in an era of Tory government?

“But now we have a situation where, once again, the SNP is pushing for a general election and where again the electorate could back the Tories, given that they and the Lib Dems are demanding a December 9 vote. It’s an incredible situation for the Nats to be in, given that it was only last week that Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Commons leader, described Boris Johnson’s aim of holding a general election on December 12 as ‘barking mad’. Not only that but he complained long and loud that his Highlands and Islands constituents in Ross, Skye and Lochaber would very likely have only six hours of daylight in which to cast their votes, given the shortened winter days.”

2. Jennifer Weiner in The New York Times

on the anatomy of a reality check

Why did it feel so good to see Trump booed?

“But what about civility? the pundits cry. Funerals and sports should be partisan-free zones. What are we becoming? Civility is a wonderful thing, when shared among equals. When people who have power require civility from those with less, or none, though, that demand is a cudgel, a weapon the haves use to keep the have-nots in line. When you’re confronted with evil, you don’t shake its hand or applaud it. If booing is incivility, bring it on.”

3. Jack Shenker in The Guardian

on Generation Disillusion

This wave of global protest is being led by the children of the financial crash

“One direct impact of the crash has been a rapid diminishment of opportunity for millions of young people in rich countries – who now regard precarious work and rising inequality as the norm. At the same time, the aftermath of the crash has cracked the entrenched structures that had evolved to detach citizens from active participation in politics – be that through authoritarian systems or via an institutional consensus on the inevitability of market logic and technocratic management. Amid widespread economic and social failure, it has become harder than ever for elites to justify power, even on their own terms.”

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4. Tara O’Reilly on HuffPost

on the public shaming of female politicians

Katie Hill’s resignation shows women have always been held to a double standard

“Women in the public eye are expected to meet unattainable standards: be smart but not too smart, be sexy enough to get attention but not too sexy, be confident in your looks but not so confident that you take photos of yourself. Men in politics, and especially here in parliament, get away with affairs and it is overlooked and passed off as boys being boys. But when a woman doesn’t follow the rules – Katie Hill is not accused of assault or harassment, she is alleged to have had sexual relations with staff members – it is talk of the town. And the media will go to town on that woman.”

5. Ibrahim Al-Marashi on Al Jazeera

on the future of a caliphate reduced to rubble

The day after al-Baghdadi’s death

“While Trump can boast of a victory against Isil, it is hardly a decisive one. Al-Baghdadi gave Isil’s followers a tangible experience of an Islamic state established in the 21st century - something that had previously only been discussed in theory. As a result, the remaining members of the terrorist organisation and its future followers have a clear vision of what they are fighting for - the resurrection of al-Baghdadi’s caliphate, which given the instability in the region, will remain within their reach.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Larry Elliott in The Guardian

on the curious case of “Lexit”

Don’t be fooled – the EU is no defender of workers’ rights

“In consequence, the only sure way to advance workers’ rights is to elect a government pledged to full employment and collective bargaining. The notion that only Brussels stands in the way of a barrage of deregulation betrays not just a misunderstanding of the way the EU operates but also a deep and irrational pessimism on the left, a belief that the Conservatives will be in power for ever no matter what they do. The left doesn’t need the EU to fight its battles. What it needs is to make the case for better working conditions and win over a public sick of a labour market loaded in favour of employers. With a bit of self-confidence it shouldn’t be that difficult.”

2. Sinan Antoon in Al Jazeera

on decades of despair in Baghdad

A cruel and crucial October in Iraq

“The sense of despair and disappointment the protesters feel and their desire to reclaim Iraq was crystallised in one of their main chants: ‘We want a country.’ These protesters are young Iraqis who came of age in the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of 2003. The invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, but it also dismantled the Iraqi state and its institutions, dictated a flawed constitution, installed a sectarian-based dysfunctional system, and populated it with parties and politicians, many of whom were allies if not pawns of the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The so-called political process, mischaracterised as a "democracy" by Western pundits and journalists, has cobbled together a failed state that is incapable of providing the minimum prerequisites for a dignified life for average Iraqis.”

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3. Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times

on the president’s problematic choice of words - and those who refused to condemn them

Donald Trump’s “lynching”

“No, [Lindsey] Graham did not live through this era. But his parents did, and the violence of that period marks the place he calls home. It marks the entire region and state. As a lawmaker who represents that state — who represents families and communities upended by racial terrorism past and present — Graham has a particular responsibility to that history. He owes his constituents a degree of sensitivity, an awareness of the weight of a word like ‘lynching’. Graham has rejected those obligations. Instead, he’s content to affirm President Trump’s endless sense of his own victimhood.”

4. Peter Guest in Wired

on a city succumbing to the waves

The impossible fight to save Jakarta, the sinking megacity

“The city’s new walls have bought it some time, but not much, and possibly not enough. Behind them is an alarming case study in how politicking, greed and vested economic interests can lead to a dangerous inertia – a microcosm of the global failure to address climate change. Whether the city saves itself, or whether it becomes the first megacity lost to environmental catastrophe, will depend on a combination of ground-level social change and engineering works of unprecedented scale to hold back the tide.”

5. Phil CW Chan in the South China Morning Post

on jumping out of the frying pan and into the authoritarian fire

Singapore is no alternative for Hongkongers who want freedom

“Singapore is also not a state party to the United Nations Convention against Torture. Caning is mandatory for unauthorised affixing of a poster on a public wall (our Lennon Walls, for instance, on second conviction), rioting and many other offences. Equality on the basis of sexual orientation, which the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal has found to be a Basic Law requirement, is absent in Singapore; consensual sexual activity between men remains a criminal offence under section 377A of the Penal Code... Contrary to what Singapore's current and former government officials and newspaper editors might like one to think, Singapore is not a peaceful society. It is a controlled society par excellence.”