politics

On a BBC program about their correspondents’ predictions the network’s seasoned correspondent, and my good friend, Lyse Doucet observed that this century is an opportunity for the Kurds. She said that Kurdish leaders may see this as their best chance “to try and take the apple from the tree.” But in 2013, here is...
Read More »

The events of the last week were a testament to the fragility of Iraq, the instability of its government and the immaturity of its political process. When Mam Jalal (Iraqi President Jalal Talabani) brokered the initial steps of the settlement process between Erbil and Baghdad by stopping the media war, everyone breathed a sigh...
Read More »

What did Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki gain by ordering the closure of Cairo-based news channel Al-Baghdadiya’s offices in Iraq? The Iraqi interior ministry which is directly controlled by Maliki, said over the weekend that the popular channel’s Iraq operation was being closed down, “Because it was not bound by the Media Commission’s regulations.”...
Read More »

As a frontline reporter of the 2003 war in Iraq, as a reporting instructor in the years that followed, and as someone who lived in Baghdad during the insurgency and sectarian war I was disturbed by the way the Kurdistan Region reacted to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s dispatching of Dijla forces into the...
Read More »

The events of the past few days and possible armed clashes between the Peshmerga and Prime Minister Maliki’s Dijla forces south of Kirkuk, reminded everyone that there are certain red lines that Kurds cannot afford to be divided on. Meanwhile, the Kurds should seize this opportunity and translate the results into a framework that...
Read More »

Those who saw the picture released by the prime minister’s office of Nuri al-Maliki inspecting fighter jets by knocking on the metal body of the plane should not be surprised that he has decided to halt the deal out of suspicion of corruption. The picture should have sounded alarm bells for the Russians, Czechs...
Read More »