The Trump administration has used rolling back Iran’s “malign” influence in the Middle East as a mantra to justify its aggressive approach to the country. The US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is couched in
On April 24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan followed through with his promise to move against Ankara’s nemesis: the leftist, Kurdish nationalist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its affiliates. Airstrikes that hit various locations throughout Syria also targeted a mountain in Northern Iraq
Sinjar is at a pivotal moment of transition and the next phase of its future will likely be determined by what happens over the next few weeks. This environment of change offers the US, UN, and EU a significant opportunity to help resolve
Organized by the Armenian Diaspora Research Center at Haigazian University, and supported by the Armenian Communities Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the conference on “Armenians of Iraq” took place over the course of three days. On Monday, May 29, the official opening
Following the closure of Yazda, a Yazidi humanitarian and human rights organization, by the KDP asa’ish (security police affiliated with Kurdistan’s largest political party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party) on January 2, 2017 in Dohuk, people have been asking many questions about why this
The Turkmen, Assyrians, Yazidis, Shabak, and other minorities are considered to be among the original Iraqi societies, as evidenced by the various civilizations of Iraq for thousands of years, as they lived, built, and constructed this area of the land between the two
During the morning of Friday 3 March, clashes broke out between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party)-linked Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)-linked Rojava Peshmerga units consisting of Syrian Kurds, while the latter made an attempt to enter the town
When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) stormed northern Iraq and took over Mosul in the summer of 2014, it ran a parallel campaign of genocide against the minorities of the Nineveh Plains. For many of these groups, including Christians and
As World War I broke out, the Turkish government implemented the plan to destroy the Christian communities within its empire. Around 2 million (1,500,000 Armenians, 750,000 Assyrians and 500,000 Pontic Greeks) were massacred and others deported from their ancestral lands. Churches were burned,
After the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) invaded and captured the northern cities of Iraq, it became apparent that they intended to eliminate the artificial borders that were drawn as a result of the Sykes-Picot agreement. The territory ISIS controls stretches