Tag - iraq

 
 

IRAQ

Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 9, 2014
Baghdad sends Kurds ammo in 'unprecedented' assistance
The Iraqi government provided a planeload of ammunition to fighters from Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region on Friday, a U.S. official said, in an "unprecedented" act of military cooperation between Kurdish and Iraqi forces brought on by an urgent militant threat.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 8, 2014
Islamic State extends gains in north Iraq, Christians flee
Islamic State militants extended their gains in northern Iraq on Thursday, seizing more towns and strengthening a foothold near the Kurdish region in an offensive that has alarmed the Baghdad government and regional powers.
WORLD
Aug 7, 2014
Thousands from Iraqi religious minority trapped in mountains by Islamists
Thousands of men and women from Iraq's Yezidi religious group are stranded in northern mountains, according to United Nations groups, as they sought to escape execution and rape by Islamist militants.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 7, 2014
Kurds clash with Islamic State militants on outskirts of regional capital Irbil
Kurdish forces attacked Islamic State fighters near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil in northern Iraq on Wednesday in a change of tactics supported by the Iraqi central government to try to break the Islamists' momentum.
WORLD
Aug 3, 2014
After defeating Kurds, Islamic State rebels seize Iraqi towns, oil field
Islamic State insurgents have captured two northern Iraqi towns and an oil field in their first major victory over Kurdish fighters, witnesses said Sunday.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 1, 2014
After Iraqi army crumbles, Maliki turns to state TV for help
State television is working overtime to persuade Iraqis to help Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki confront an al-Qaida offshoot that has seized wide tracts of the country, but its unifying call has been blunted by his sectarian reputation.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 1, 2014
An Iraq in peril struggles to hold together
Salman Khaled has already lived through Baghdad's sectarian disintegration; with Iraq now splintering into Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions, he says this time the survival of the country is at stake.
WORLD
Jul 28, 2014
Xinjiang extremists may have joined Iraq conflict, China envoy says
Muslim extremists from China's far western region of Xinjiang have gone to the Middle East for training and some may have crossed into Iraq to participate in the conflict there, China's special envoy for the Middle East said on Monday.
WORLD
Jul 25, 2014
Group divorced from reality: top Turkish cleric
The declaration of a so-called caliphate by Islamist militants in Iraq lacks legitimacy and their death threats to Christians are a danger to civilization, Turkey's top cleric, the successor to the last caliph's most senior imam, said.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 25, 2014
Islamic State crushes, coerces opposition
Using its own version of soft and hard power, the Islamic State is crushing resistance across northern Iraq so successfully that its promise to march on Baghdad may no longer be unrealistic bravado.
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Jul 24, 2014
Young Islamic State robs al-Qaida of militant prestige
In hiding, targeted by drone strikes and unable to land a blow in the West, al-Qaida's aging leaders are losing a power struggle with ultra-radical young militants in Iraq and Syria who see themselves as the true successors to Osama bin Laden.
WORLD
Jul 20, 2014
Iraq's ancient Christian population of Mosul flees ISIL
The ancient Christian community of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul had all but fled by Saturday, ending a presence stretching back nearly two millennia after radical Islamists set them a midday deadline to submit to Islamic rule or leave.
Japan Times
WORLD / FOCUS
Jul 13, 2014
Underage fighters drawn into Iraqi war
A video on a boy's phone shows him firing a heavy machine gun mounted on a tripod through a hole in a crumbling building, his slender body shaking from the kickback.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 12, 2014
Kurds seize Iraq oil fields, ministers pull out of government
Kurdish forces seized two oil fields in northern Iraq and took over operations from a state-run oil company Friday, while Kurdish politicians formally suspended their participation in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
Cost of 'making' democracy
For most of the American electorate, the U.S. perseveres as the messenger of democracy to a world that usually hasn't earned it and probably doesn't deserve it. But consider what this proud effort in the Mideast, Afghanistan, Ukraine and elsewhere has done to U.S. civil liberties and to U.S. democracy.
WORLD
Jul 10, 2014
Seized nuclear material in Iraq "low grade" — IAEA
The U.N. atomic agency believes nuclear material that Iraq said had been seized by insurgents was "low-grade" and did not pose a significant security risk.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 9, 2014
Iraqi security forces find 53 blindfolded bodies south of Baghdad
Iraqi security forces found 53 corpses, blindfolded and handcuffed, in a town south of Baghdad early Wednesday, local officials said.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 8, 2014
Islamists show online savvy in displaying menace, soft side
Tweets and online videos are emerging as weapons of war in the Islamic State's campaign to seize a swath of Iraq, with the al-Qaida offshoot's use of social media dwarfing efforts by other militant groups.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2014
Whitewashing the Iraq war
As Iraq stands on the verge of a complete breakdown into sectarian states, a former leading Iraq war advocate is popping up in the U.S. media, and he's in no mood to accept any responsibility for the protracted tragedy.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 8, 2014
Kurds dream of independence amid Iraq chaos
A grave, freshly dug and adorned with pebbles, is the modest tribute to one more sacrifice in the long history of struggle for an independent Kurdish state.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan