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Iraq's Sovereignty Days: Coalition mission ends, factions keep their weapons

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:06:37 +0000

Shafaq News- Baghdad

Iraq is marking the end of the US-led Coalition's military mission witha four-day public holiday, from September 30 to October 3, that the governmenthas named "Sovereignty Days." Five politicians and analysts who spoketo Shafaq News described the occasion as significant but incomplete, arguingthat while foreign combat forces have left, the Iraqi state has yet toestablish a monopoly on arms.

The Coalition, formed in 2014 to fight ISIS, wound down its mission inIraq on September 30. Baghdad once treated that date as the deadline fordisarming the country's armed factions as well. On September 21, Prime MinisterAli al-Zaidi separated the two. His phased plan opens with a 90-day pause inwhich the factions halt attacks in exchange for assurances that US forces willnot strike them, followed by a weapons handover due to end by June 30, 2027.Some factions are pushing for an even later deadline, at the end of 2027.

"Ending the foreign presence by agreement completes sovereignty onpaper," said Sami Oshana, a member of parliament's Foreign RelationsCommittee. "Bringing weapons under state control completes it on theground."

If the state succeeds on both fronts, Oshana told Shafaq News, nofaction operating outside the law could invoke "resistance" or"security necessity" to justify its arms. He warned, however, thatthe military action alone cannot settle the issue. It requires a political dealthat guarantees the factions a secure role in politics in exchange for thestate's monopoly on force.

Completing, Not Beginning

Adel al-Ghariri, an independent politician, argues that September 30marks the completion of Iraqi sovereignty rather than its birth. “Iraq'ssovereignty was never absent. Its most visible gap was the presence of foreignforces that Baghdad itself invited in 2014 to fight ISIS,” he told Shafaq News.The next step, in his view, is ending every foreign military presence on Iraqisoil, Turkish forces included, so that the state alone decides matters of war,peace and security.

Al-Ghariri does not tie disarmament solely to the foreign presence. Hecalls it a national demand resting on five pillars: public opinion, theconstitution, parliament, the judiciary, and religious leadership. “Shiite,Sunni and Christian religious authorities have all called for weapons to beheld by state institutions,” he noted, as has the Supreme Judicial Council,Iraq's top judicial body. The legal framework, he argued, must give thefactions and their members a route into official institutions, whether thesecurity services or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Safaa al-Asam, a security expert, points to a contradiction in thefactions' long-standing case. “They justified their weapons by the presence offoreign troops, yet the Iraqi state never described that presence as anoccupation.” It rested on the Strategic Framework Agreement that Iraq and theUnited States signed in 2008 under then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. WithISIS reduced to sleeper cells that Iraqi forces can handle, the Coalition'smission no longer had a rationale, he said.

“Together with efforts to end the Turkish presence at Bashiqa, a basenortheast of Mosul, the exit removes the factions' justification for keepingarms outside the state.” In his view, Iraq has begun tying up the loose ends ofthe weapons question.

Sovereignty Beyond The Ground

Political analyst Ali al-Nasser warns that sovereignty cannot bemeasured by the departure of ground troops alone. Al-Zaidi's government hastaken important steps, he told Shafaq News, but they need to go further,starting with control of Iraq's airspace: operational air-defense systems andradar, and the ability to stop any country from violating Iraqi skies. Heexpects the process to extend to Turkish positions, “including Bashiqa andMount Sinjar,” if withdrawal arrangements are completed.

Nasser also argues for economic sovereignty. Iraq depends almostentirely on oil revenue, and he says diversifying the economy should show up inthe 2027 budget. “That effort faces outside pressure, particularly over USdollar flows and American financial policy.”

On weapons, Nasser expects the end of the foreign presence to weakensome factions' case for keeping their arms, especially as armed groups moveinto politics and elections. “The hardest part concerns heavy weapons, missilesand drones. Other weapons are already registered with the Interior Ministry.”He believes the heavy arsenal could be handled gradually if the governmentbuilds more trust with the factions and with neighboring states.

One State, One Authority

Issam al-Faili, a professor of political science at Baghdad'sMustansiriya University, rejects any partial reading of the concept.Sovereignty cannot be divided, he told Shafaq News. It depends not only on theabsence of foreign troops but on respect for the law and the constitution, andon the absence of any authority outside the state. “No parallel entity has theright to carve up that sovereignty, and all armed groups must answer to theprime minister as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.”

Religious and sectarian particularities deserve respect, he added, butno creed or foreign loyalty can take precedence over the state.

Al-Faili argues that the US departure removes the last justification forweapons outside state institutions, citing a proposal under which the factions'weapons and fighters would be absorbed into the PMF, with thecommander-in-chief, not the armed groups themselves, deciding which weapons arehanded over. The state funds these groups, he noted, so the state should decidehow their weapons are used.

Resistance From Within

Political forces are negotiating with the factions over how the planwill be carried out. On September 23, al-Maliki, who heads the State of Lawcoalition, said the program and timetable would be announced on Sept. 30, butno such announcement had been made by publication time.

Some factions have hardened their position. On September 28, Abu Mujahidal-Assafi, security chief of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerfulIran-aligned factions, whose political wing, the Hoqooq Movement, holds sixseats in parliament, threatened to work to topple al-Zaidi's government if “itfailed to serve the people.” He also threatened to close the crossings ofcountries he accused of taking part in a blockade of Iran.

He warned that if US aircraft continued to violate Iraqi airspace afterOctober 1, the group would monitor the skies, issue warnings, and then shootdown aircraft it deems hostile.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Kurdistan Region faces air-defense gap as US troops leave Iraq

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 06:55:36 +0000

Shafaq News

In the earlyhours of Monday, three drones struck Azadi Camp in Koya, east of Erbil, asettlement that has housed families of the Iranian Kurdish opposition for morethan two decades. Nobody was hurt. The attack came two days before the US-ledcoalition ends its military mission in Iraq, and it brought into focus thequestion now dominating Erbil: who will defend the skies over the KurdistanRegion of Iraq (KRI) once the Coalition's military mission ends?

TheKurdistan Region Security Agency said the drones struck between 1:40 and 2:10a.m. No party claimed responsibility, and there has been no independentconfirmation of who carried out the attack. The camp shelters families offighters from the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), an exiledopposition group that has been a target all month. On September 2, Iranlaunched a series of drone strikes on KDPI bases, positions and camps, seniorparty official Karim Barwazi told Shafaq News. On September 15, an unidentifieddrone fell inside a KDPI camp north of Erbil, he said. The following night,coalition aircraft shot down a drone over the Soran Independent Administrationin Erbil province, a local source said. Komala, another exiled Iranian Kurdish party,has faced similar drone attacks on its camps in recent months.

The KRI'sMinistry of Peshmerga Affairs said that the Kurdistan Region has faced morethan 1,000 drone and ballistic missile attacks since the US-Iran war began inFebruary, some of them deadly. It called the timing of the withdrawal"sensitive" and said the departure of US forces without leaving anair-defense system behind was "a cause for concern." It also drew aconstitutional line: the KRI's airspace is part of Iraq's, and protecting it isthe federal government's job.

A USoversight body has documented the same gap. The 44th Lead Inspector Generalreport to the US Congress on Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the US-ledcampaign against ISIS, found that the Peshmerga lack significant air-defensecoverage of their own. American systems protected US facilities in Erbil, thereport noted, but the KRI's security forces, civilians, and energyinfrastructure remained exposed to aerial attack. The report, which coveredJanuary through March 2026, also recorded escalating strikes by Iran-alignedarmed factions and a temporary drawdown of US advisory support to thePeshmerga.

The DeadlineThat Moved

Kurdishofficials have not publicly tied their concerns to the disarmament of Iraq'sarmed factions, but the two are hard to separate. Erbil has been explicit aboutwho is firing. On April 5, KRI Prime Minister Masrour Barzani condemned attackson the US Consulate and civilian areas in Erbil by "terroristmilitias" and urged Baghdad to act against the groups responsible.Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an independent monitoring group, documented751 attacks on the Kurdistan Region between Feb. 28 and May 28, includingstrikes attributed to Iran and Iran-aligned Iraqi groups.

Baghdadoriginally linked disarmament to the same September 30 date as the coalition'sexit. On September 22, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi replaced that deadline witha phased plan. It opens with a 90-day pause in which the factions halt attacksin exchange for not being struck by US forces, followed by a weapons handoverdue to end by June 30, 2027. As a result, the Coalition mission ends this weekwhile the phased weapons-control process is scheduled to continue for anothernine months.

The USwithdrawal from the KRI is now complete, according to an Iraqi security sourcewho spoke to Shafaq News. Equipment moved overland through Duhok province andacross the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing into Turkiye, the source said. USequipment withdrawn from Erbil was transported to Incirlik Air Base near Adana,a US logistics hub in southern Turkiye that has supported American operationsacross the Middle East since the 1950s. Coalition forces had already left theirother Iraqi bases in January. Washington said on September 23 that the drawdownwas running on schedule under the plan agreed with Baghdad in 2024 to move to abilateral security relationship.

A Gap, Not AVacuum

Ahmedal-Sharifi, an Iraqi strategic expert, told Shafaq News that the withdrawalwill leave real gaps in Iraq's combat and technical capabilities. “Manpoweralone does not win modern wars. They turn increasingly on technology,surveillance, electronic warfare and advanced systems,” he argued.

He separatesthe end of the coalition's mission from the end of American power in the MiddleEast. The coalition was formed in 2014 to fight ISIS and has been shrinkingsince 2017, he noted. “What matters is whether US support continues.”

US troopsand aircraft stationed elsewhere in the Middle East can still back Iraq withsurveillance, electronic warfare and air support if needed. For that reason,al-Sharifi rules out a complete vacuum.

Even so, hecalls Erbil's fears justified. The KRI was attacked by both Turkiye and Iranwhile American troops were present. It will now depend more heavily on Iraqiinstitutions that, in his words, remain unable to deter every form of attack.“The Peshmerga cannot carry that burden alone,” he said, adding that theconstitution defines them as a force for protecting the Kurdistan Region, whiledefending Iraq's airspace and sovereignty falls to the federal Ministry ofDefense.

MohammedZangana, a political analyst based in Erbil, is less reassured. The withdrawalshould have come with a defense system able to protect Iraq's airspace,borders, and territory, insulated from political rivalries, he told ShafaqNews, tracing Erbil's anxiety to three things: Baghdad has offered no clearguarantees for the KRI, the political process remains fragile, and power andweapons are spread across too many hands.

He points to2011, when US forces left. Three years later, ISIS swept across a third ofIraq. The Inspector General report separately warned of the risk of an ISISresurgence following mass prison escapes in neighboring Syria.

TheBarzanis' Warning

MasoudBarzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which leads the KRIgovernment, made the same comparison on Al Sharqiya television on Sunday. Herecalled the debate in 2011 over whether Iraqi forces could take fullresponsibility for security. The Americans left, ISIS emerged three yearslater, and Baghdad had to seek international help again, he said, whileacknowledging that conditions today differ.

PM MasrourBarzani told the Financial Times that the withdrawal comes at a highlysensitive time and warned against leaving the KRI without adequate airdefenses. His office later accused the newspaper of misrepresenting hisremarks. It said his core concern was the lack of defensive means and repeatedthat the attacks had come from Iran and from "militias" inside Iraq.

Alial-Bidar, an Iraqi political analyst, told Shafaq News that Kurdish fears arewell founded, and that parts of the Sunni public and political class sharethem, given the turbulence across the Middle East and Iraq's own securityrecord. “The Barzanis' warnings deserve serious study,” he said, callingMonday's attack in Erbil province proof that the threat has not passed, andIraq may need American support again if its forces fall short of fullreadiness.

Beyond TheWithdrawal

HaithamNumaan, a public relations assistant professor at the University of Exeter,sees Erbil's calculations shaped by Syria. He singles out the dissolution ofthe Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led force that controlled muchof northeast Syria, and its integration into the new Syrian state. “Relationswith Baghdad also hinge on divisions inside Kurdish politics,” he told ShafaqNews, where the KDP and its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), takedifferent approaches to the federal government.

Thewithdrawal has exposed that divide. While KDP leaders have issued publicwarnings, the PUK has not officially voiced similar concern. Party members,speaking to the press, have instead described a different strategy. The PUK,they say, prefers balanced and less confrontational relations with Iran and itsallies in Baghdad, to keep the KRI from becoming a battleground for regionalscore-settling. In their view, the KRI's real guarantee after the withdrawallies not in a lasting American military presence but in resolving outstandingdisputes with Baghdad over public-sector salaries, the budget and theadministration of disputed territories such as Kirkuk, alongside reliablesecurity coordination between the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga.

Geographyhelps explain the gap. The American military presence was concentrated in Erbilprovince, the KDP's heartland, at Harir Air Base and Erbil airport, near the USConsulate. The PUK's base in al-Sulaymaniyah hosted no comparable US presence,so the withdrawal is felt most directly in Erbil. Al-Sulaymaniyah has notescaped the drones, however. Komala's camps in the province have been among thetargets.

Numan alsolinks the American debate over Iraq's "Balkanization" to disarmament.Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned last week that Iraq must disarm itsfactions to avoid that outcome. Numan reads the warning not as a call forpartition but as a warning against fragmented state institutions and competingcenters of security and political power, and as pressure to bring weapons heldoutside official institutions under state control.

Baghdad'sAnswer

Politicalforces in Baghdad reject the idea of a security vacuum. Fahad al-Jubouri, aleader in the al-Hikma Movement, a member of the Coordination Framework, theprincipal Shiite political alliance and a central force in governmentformation, told Shafaq News that the timetable for ending the coalition missionwas debated and agreed within the State Administration Coalition, thecross-sectarian alliance that formed the government. “The government is workingto strengthen control of Iraq's airspace and is buying air-defense systems.Iraq's security, intelligence and logistics institutions can handle internalthreats, and concerns will fade once the deadline passes.”

Bothcapitals point to signs of consolidation. Last week, Baghdad reached anagreement with Turkiye to take gradual control of the Zilkan base in Bashiqa, aTurkish military installation northeast of Mosul. In Erbil, a Sept. 21 ceremonyformally placed Peshmerga units under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs,marking a major step in a years-long effort to unify forces historicallydivided between KDP- and PUK-aligned commands.

Neither stepfully answers Erbil's central question. Al-Zaidi's initial 90-day phase runsuntil late December, followed by a weapons-control process scheduled toconclude by June 30, 2027. In the meantime, the Kurdistan Region will dependincreasingly on federal institutions for air defense while negotiationscontinue over weapons held by factions that Kurdish officials have blamed forrepeated attacks on the Region.

Written andedited by Shafaq News staff.

Iraq's armed factions sit at the center of a Middle East war, experts say

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 22:38:35 +0000

Shafaq News

On Sept. 30, the US-led Global Coalition's military missionin Iraq is scheduled to end, marking a transition toward a bilateral securityrelationship between Baghdad and Washington. Six analysts interviewed by ShafaqNews say the country it leaves behind is the most exposed battleground in aregional war that no longer runs along a single front.

The experts broadly agree that the Middle East has entered aphase of multi-front escalation. They see the main danger not in one decisiveconfrontation but in the way violence now moves between Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,Yemen, the Gulf and the Red Sea. A strike in one place can trigger a responsein another, often through armed groups that no government fully controls.

Since war broke out between the United States and Iran onFebruary 28, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen sharply. Trafficthrough Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow passage between Yemen and the Horn of Africa,has also suffered under attacks by Yemen's Houthi movement.

In Iraq, many of the factions operate through formationswithin the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a state-funded securityinstitution established during the 2014 fight against ISIS and dominated byShiite formations. Several of those factions keep close ties to Tehran. Theirpolitical wings sit inside the Coordination Framework, the principal Shiitepolitical alliance and a central force in government formation. Prime MinisterAli Falih al-Zaidi took office after the November 2025 elections. He is nowtrying to keep Iraq out of the war while negotiating the disarmament of groupsthat answer only partly to his government.

No Longer One Bloc

Firas Elias, a professor of international relations at theUniversity of Mosul, argues that treating the region's armed groups as aunified front is now analytically wrong. Their goals, capabilities anddependence on state sponsors differ too widely.

Elias describes three overlapping circles. The first is Iranand the groups aligned with it in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. The second isIsrael, which relies increasingly on direct military force. The third is theUnited States, still the most influential outside military power in the region.Turkiye, the Gulf states and Syria each play their own, uneven roles alongsidethem. These circles now link the Gulf and Hormuz to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, andthe Red Sea. With so many militias, regular armies, foreign bases, oilinstallations and shipping lanes packed into one theater, he warns that asingle "miscalculation" could push the conflict onto a differentlevel. A strike on a strategic facility or one that causes mass casualtieswould be enough.

He places Iraq at the top of the risk list. The country sitsbetween the warring parties, and some of its factions hold missiles and drones.“Any attack launched from Iraqi territory therefore reaches directly intoBaghdad's relations with Washington, Tehran and the Gulf.”

For Elias, the real challenge is not only keeping Iraqi soilout of the war. It is whether the Iraqi state can hold a monopoly over thedecision to use force and stop the country from becoming a military extensionof wider regional conflicts. He adds that if the fighting reaches energyinfrastructure or shipping routes, the security crisis would become an economicone. Freight and insurance costs would rise, oil exports would be disrupted,and supply chains would break.

Adnan al-Kinani, an Iraqi security expert, argues that thewar has outgrown its three main protagonists: the United States, Israel andIran. It has spread to fronts where their allies and partners operate. He namesthe Houthis, Iraq's factions and Lebanon's Hezbollah as potential backup frontsif the war with Iran widens. In his reading, fighting in Syria and Lebanon haseased compared with elsewhere. Yemen, by contrast, has become more closely tiedto the regional confrontation, particularly as Saudi Arabia takes a more activerole against the Houthis. He also places the conflict within a wider climate ofglobal tension, noting that the war in Ukraine carries its own risks for energymarkets and the world economy.

Iran's relationships with the groups are not identical.Hezbollah has maintained a particularly close ideological, financial, andmilitary relationship with Tehran for decades, while the Houthis retain a moredistinct political and religious identity despite extensive cooperation withIran. In both cases, Iranian support has extended their reach well beyondnational borders.

Players Outside The Axis

Sami Salam, a political researcher, argues that Turkiye,Saudi Arabia and a transformed Syria make any two-camp reading of the regionmisleading. He points to the agreement between al-Zaidi and Turkish PresidentRecep Tayyip Erdogan, reached on Sept. 23 on the sidelines of the UN GeneralAssembly in New York. Under the deal, control of the Bashiqa/Zilkan base, aTurkish military installation northeast of Mosul, will pass gradually to theIraqi government. The two leaders also agreed on steps to restore stateauthority in Sinjar, the Yazidi-majority district where Ankara has longdemanded the removal of armed groups it regards as foreign and banned.

Salam says Saudi Arabia has become a more direct securityactor. Syria now weighs heavily in Iraq's calculations, he adds, especially asregional trade and energy routes shift. Since Bashar al-Assad fell in December2024, the transitional leadership under Ahmed al-Sharaa has widened Damascus'sArab and Western ties. On Aug. 24, Washington formally removed Syria from itslist of state sponsors of terrorism, building on broader sanctions reliefintroduced earlier. The experts argue that Syria no longer serves as the landbridge in Iran's regional network that it did under al-Assad. That changereshapes the calculations of factions operating across the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Asef Melhem, director of the JSM Center for Research andStudies in Moscow, expects Washington to scale back its Middle East presenceafter years of direct involvement. The mounting cost of unresolved conflicts,from Gaza and Lebanon to Yemen, Iran, and Iraq's factions, is blurring USstrategy for the region's future, he argues. Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,Egypt, Iran and Israel would each try to fill the resulting vacuum.

Melhem does not expect any regional alliance to replace theUS role. Instead, he warns that the competition could turn into indirectrivalry fought through local allies. Without a regional settlement, thatrivalry would keep the region unstable and carry it onto new fronts.

The Weapons Question

Salam says not all factions share al-Zaidi's goal ofneutrality. Some have already handed over their weapons or begun integratinginto state institutions. Others keep their arms, remain tied to Iranpolitically and ideologically, and argue that continuing regional threatsjustify what they call "resistance weapons."

The holdouts include Kataib Hezbollah, whose political wing,the Hoqooq Movement, holds six seats in parliament. They also include KataibSayyid al-Shuhada, whose Muntasiroun bloc won about five seats within the Stateof Law coalition led by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Harakatal-Nujaba, which has no parliamentary wing, completes the group. On Sept. 4,al-Nujaba reaffirmed that it would not give up its arms. The holdouts tie anyhandover to a full withdrawal of foreign forces, and some also demand defenseguarantees, including stronger Iraqi air defenses.

Other factions have shown more willingness to work with thestate. They include Asaib Ahl al-Haq, whose Sadiqoon bloc won 27 seats in the2025 vote. Another is Saraya al-Salam, the armed wing of cleric Muqtadaal-Sadr's movement, which boycotted the elections. The third is Kataib al-ImamAli, which leads the five-seat Khadamat Alliance.

The timetable has evolved. Sept. 30 was initially treated byIraqi political forces as a key deadline for bringing factional weapons understate control, but al-Zaidi has since outlined a phased process extending toJune 30, 2027. Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said on Sept. 25 that thegovernment is drafting a new plan to bring unlicensed weapons under statecontrol while talks with the factions continue.

Even within the Coordination Framework, the approach hascritics. A source in the alliance told Shafaq News on Sept. 23 that fixing ahard deadline could complicate negotiations with faction leaders.

The US-led Coalition's forces have been withdrawing fromtheir remaining mission sites as Baghdad and Washington transition toward abilateral security relationship. Iraq says its forces can manage internalsecurity and the remaining ISIS threat, while intelligence sharing, trainingand arms cooperation are expected to continue.

Beyond Security

Ahmed Fouad Anwar, a professor of Israeli studies at Egypt'sAlexandria University, sees risks on two levels. At home, any securitybreakdown or delay in payments owed to some armed groups could spill intoIraq's internal security. Abroad, the factions' behavior will track thepressure on Iran. He argues that ordinary Iraqis would be the first to feel anywider shock through fuel prices, flight disruptions and insurance costs.“Because so many outside powers are involved, disarming the factions will alsorequire broader regional arrangements. It may even require a review of Iraq'spolitical and constitutional framework.”

From Beirut, political analyst Hussein Chaito argues thatIraq's geography and the overlapping presence of regional powers on its soilmake it impossible to separate from events around it. He considers Iraq a keyfront for Iran's allies and sees the dispute over weapons as inseparable fromthe US presence and the regional balance of power. He describes the standoffbetween the government and the factions as a fire smoldering beneath thesurface, though he believes dialogue can still prevent armed confrontation. Hestresses the role of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's senior Shiitecleric in Najaf, in calming public anger and preventing a slide into internalconflict. Iraq's stability, he concludes, is essential to the stability of theregion as a whole.

Al-Zaidi's 90-day phase runs until late December. Thatperiod covers the first weeks after the Coalition mission ends and a US-Iranwar that shows no sign of ending. The plan is built around factions refrainingfrom attacks. Whether that restraint survives a sharper escalation against Irancould shape not only Iraq's internal stability, but the wider regionalconflict.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Houthi official cites ‘private channels’ with Iraqi factions

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 21:24:23 +0000

Shafaq News

Abdulaziz Bin Habtour, a member of Sanaa’s Houthi-run Supreme Political Council and former prime minister, said Saudi vessels are excluded from guarantees for passage through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and confirmed continuing coordination with Iraqi political and armed groups through “private channels.”

In an interview with Shafaq News, Bin Habtour also said Houthi authorities would continue military mobilization and work to develop a “war economy” in areas under their control.

Bin Habtour, who also serves as deputy head of the General People’s Congress in Sanaa, discussed Red Sea shipping, coordination among members of the “Axis of Resistance”, a regional network that includes the Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and several Iraqi armed factions, and prospects for de-escalation in Yemen amid widening fighting on the western coast and rising tensions with Saudi Arabia.

“Private Channels”

Bin Habtour said members of the “Axis of Resistance” coordinate politically, through the media, and on security and military matters, while maintaining that each party decides its level of involvement based on its own circumstances, capabilities and leadership.

Asked specifically about contacts between Sanaa and Iraqi political forces and armed factions, he said the groups’ leaders were in “continuous and ongoing coordination” through “private channels.”

He did not identify the Iraqi groups involved or clarify the extent of any military coordination.

On Iraq’s debate over bringing weapons under state control and reserving decisions on war and peace for the government, Bin Habtour praised Iraqi armed factions for their role in fighting ISIS and described their weapons as a “firm guarantee for protecting Iraq.”

He also criticized figures within Iraqi state institutions, claiming some could “leave the country” if ISIS mounted another major attack.

His remarks come as the Iraqi government moves ahead with plans to bring faction weapons under state control. Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi has outlined an initial 90-day period during which factions would refrain from attacks, followed by phased weapons handovers, with the process targeted for completion by June 2027.

The sovereignty debate has also become entangled with tensions between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

After drones struck Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline, Riyadh said they had been launched from Iraq. Baghdad opened an investigation, and the spokesman for Iraq’s commander-in-chief later said the attacks had originated from a site in Maysan province. The government removed the commander of Maysan Operations Command and formed an investigative panel.

Asked about governments’ responsibility to prevent their territory from being used to attack other countries, Bin Habtour did not directly address the question. Instead, he criticized the presence of US military bases in Arab states and accused Arab governments of siding with Israel.

He also accused Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states of funding ISIS and other armed groups, without providing evidence for the allegations during the interview.

Bab Al-Mandeb

Bin Habtour described security in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb as “stable and safe,” saying forces under the Sanaa authorities guarantee the passage of global trade through the strait, except for Saudi vessels.

His description also contrasts with the UN'sassessment of an increasingly volatile security environment around Babal-Mandeb. On Sept. 15, UN Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari told theSecurity Council that fighting had intensified along Yemen's west coast andthat Houthi advances had heightened concerns over the strategic waterway,although commercial shipping flows at the time appeared largely unaffected. The IMO said four seafarers were killed in a Houthi attack on a merchant vessel on August 11 and urged shipping operators to assess risks before transiting the region.

War Economy

Asked about prospects for de-escalation and a renewed political process in Yemen, Bin Habtour offered no specific conditions for ending the escalation or a plan for restarting negotiations.

Instead, he called on forces allied with Sanaa to continue confronting their opponents amid the regional conflict and praised Iran and other members of the “Axis of Resistance.”

Another official in the Sanaa authorities, Zaid Al-Gharsi, previously told Shafaq News that an end to attacks on Saudi Arabia depended on ending the war and lifting what the Houthis describe as a blockade. He accused Riyadh of retreating from understandings over a peace roadmap.

Saudi Arabia rejects accusations that it has obstructed a settlement and holds the Houthis responsible for the latest escalation.

Efforts to establish a peace roadmap date to commitments announced by the United Nations in December 2023, including a nationwide ceasefire, payment of public-sector salaries, resumption of oil exports, reopening roads and easing restrictions on Sanaa airport and Hodeidah port. Those commitments have yet to produce a settlement ending the conflict.

Looking ahead, Bin Habtour said the Sanaa authorities would focus on maintaining their military and security capabilities, strengthening the domestic front, continuing “popular military mobilization” and developing a “war economy” to support the fighting.

The escalation has taken a growing toll on civilians. The UN refugee agency said on September 22 that intensified fighting, particularly along Yemen’s western coast, had displaced more than 130,000 people inside the country.

Arms and ballots: Iraq's armed factions test constitutional boundaries

Sat, 26 Sep 2026 16:57:26 +0000

Shafaq News

Iraq has around 340 licensed political parties, but real power rests with 10 to 15 parties and coalitions, and more than half of those are tied, directly or indirectly, to armed factions or security formations with political loyalties. The overlap blurs the constitutional boundary between armed institutions and political activity just as Baghdad moves ahead with efforts to bring faction weapons under state control.

Parties linked to armed groups hold ministries and parliamentary seats and help decide who governs. Iraq's legal framework, meanwhile, prohibits militias outside the armed forces and restricts political parties from maintaining links to armed formations. The challenge for Iraqi lawmakers, and for Washington, which has pressed Baghdad to bring weapons under state control, is whether the state can enforce those rules on political actors that are themselves part of the governing system.

From One Party To Hundreds

Before 2003, Iraq was a one-party state. The Baath Party of Saddam Hussein controlled political life and allowed no real competition. The US-led invasion that toppled Saddam in April 2003 opened the field, and the 2005 constitution established a multiparty system built on the peaceful transfer of power.

The sectarian shape of Iraq's armed politics has roots in the Baath era. Shia Muslims, who make up most of Iraq's population, were largely excluded from power, and their opposition movements were driven underground or into exile. When Shia-led uprisings swept southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, government forces crushed them with large-scale atrocities against civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. Several of today's factions grew out of that opposition.

The Badr Organization began in the early 1980s as the Iran-based armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, then the main exiled Shia opposition party. That history helps explain why Shia factions form the largest and most visible part of Iraq's armed politics. It does not, however, resolve their status under the constitution and the parties’ law, neither of which distinguishes between communities.

Legal expert Faisal Rikan told Shafaq News that the abrupt shift from single-party rule to open pluralism produced a flood of new movements and parties. In the years that followed, it also produced armed wings.

“Some parties kept fighters to protect themselves and spread their ideas,” Rikan said, even though the constitution clearly prohibits militias outside the armed forces.

What the Law Says

Article 9 of the constitution requires the armed forces and security services to reflect Iraq's communities without discrimination, places them under civilian authority, and states that they shall not be used to suppress the Iraqi people, interfere in political affairs, or play any role in the transfer of power. Its second clause states: “The formation of military militias outside the framework of the armed forces is prohibited.” Another provision restricts members of the armed forces from running for political office or campaigning for candidates while preserving their right to vote.

The Political Parties Law No. 36 of 2015 goes further. Article 8(3) stipulates that a party's founding and activity “shall not take the form of military or paramilitary organizations,” and that a party may not be linked “to any armed force.” The law also provides mechanisms for legal action against parties that engage in military or paramilitary activity or use violence in politics.

Rikan said those provisions have not been effectively enforced against the major political forces associated with armed factions.

When the Factions Entered Parliament

Political researcher Muhannad al-Janabi traces the problem to the earliest years after 2003, when armed groups that had opposed Saddam were absorbed into the new order, followed by a period of proliferating factions and militias. Al-Janabi rejects the idea that this is a passing irregularity, calling it “a dilemma in the Iraqi political system.”

He identifies the 2018 elections as the turning point. Factions tied to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a state-funded umbrella of mostly Shia armed groups formed in 2014 to fight ISIS and later incorporated by law into Iraq's security structure, entered parliament through political fronts while retaining armed formations.

That, al-Janabi told Shafaq News, created a major constitutional and legal problem. The PMF's legal status makes the issue particularly complex: its formations operate within a state-recognized security institution, while political organizations associated with some of those formations compete in elections and hold parliamentary seats.

The November 2025 elections cemented the pattern. Five Shia factions with armed wings now hold roughly 61 seats in the 329-member parliament, nearly a fifth of the chamber. Asaib Ahl al-Haq, led by Qais al-Khazali, sits through its Sadiqoon bloc with 27 seats, and one of its lawmakers, Adnan Fayhan, serves as first deputy speaker. The Badr Organization of Hadi al-Amiri holds 18 seats. Kataib Hezbollah's political wing, Hoqooq, holds six. Kataib Imam Ali, led by Shibl al-Zaydi, sits through its Khadamat bloc with five, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, led by Abu Alaa al-Walai, holds about five through its Montasiroun list, which runs inside former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition.

All five belong to the Coordination Framework, the alliance of Shia parties that has dominated government formation since 2022, and all five field brigades inside the PMF. Their fighters draw state salaries through the PMF, while their political representatives sit in the legislature that sets the institution's budget and legal framework.

The Framework itself is not uniformly armed: the State of Law of Nouri al-Maliki, the al-Hikma Movement of Ammar al-Hakim, and the Reconstruction and Development Coalition of former prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani have no armed wings, yet they govern alongside faction-linked political forces.

A further group sits outside the formal political system. Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, led by Akram al-Kaabi, along with Saraya Awliya al-Dam and Ansar Allah al-Awfiya, operate as armed factions with no registered political wing. That places them outside the direct reach of provisions in the parties law governing registered political organizations, leaving their armed status to be addressed through the wider constitutional and security framework.

The result, in al-Janabi's analysis, is a class of political actors that combines parliamentary influence with armed power. He argues that sovereignty can be eroded from within as well as from outside once armed groups can shape official decisions on security and politics.

“How freely can the commander-in-chief of the armed forces decide the fate of formations associated with parties in his own governing coalition?” he questioned.

Beyond One Community

The pattern is not confined to Shia factions. The PMF also absorbed Sunni tribal forces, known as the Tribal Mobilization, along with Christian, Turkmen, Shabak, and Yazidi units. The Babylon Movement, led by Rayan al-Kildani, controls the PMF's 50th Brigade and won four of the five parliamentary seats reserved for Christians in 2021; in the 2025 elections, the group dominated Christian quota seats. Much of its fighting force and voter base comes from Shia communities rather than Christian ones, and the Chaldean Catholic Church has publicly distanced itself from the group.

In the Kurdistan Region (KRI), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) historically maintained Peshmerga forces organized largely along party lines. The Kurdistan Regional Government has since moved to bring those forces under the unified command of the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, formally announcing completion of that process in September 2026. The Peshmerga also differ legally from militias outside the state structure because the Iraqi constitution recognizes the KRI's security forces.

Shia factions nevertheless account for the most significant intersection between faction-linked political representation and the PMF itself, where several Iran-aligned groups have maintained substantial influence.

The Vocabulary of Retreat

Al-Janabi points to a quieter shift in how the issue is discussed. The official Arabic formula, usually translated as “confining weapons to the state,” once implied full disarmament. In his reading, the political conversation has since drifted toward “regulating weapons,” a lower ceiling that leaves the arms in place and changes only who supervises them.

“Iraq needs disarmament, not merely the confinement of weapons,” he said.

The distinction matters because recent pledges fit both readings. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, sworn in on May 14, 2026, made state control of arms a central commitment. After Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr dissolved his Saraya al-Salam armed group and placed it under state control, other factions followed. Asaib Ahl al-Haq said it would leave the PMF and place its weapons under state control, as Kataib Imam Ali had done. If implemented, those moves would end the dual status of both factions' fighters.

Others were less clear. Kataib Hezbollah said it supported handing over weapons to the state but attached conditions, including the complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraqi territory and airspace, guarantees against their return, an end to “American influence” over the country's political and economic decisions, the withdrawal of Turkish forces from northern Iraq, and the dissolution of the Peshmerga.

Those conditions make any immediate disarmament contingent on demands extending well beyond the government's weapons initiative. Al-Nujaba rejected the initiative outright.

Both positions illustrate al-Janabi's point: “handing over” and “disarming” are not the same act.

Economic Reach

Political researcher Abdul Qader al-Nayel argues the problem has moved beyond legal violations into the character of the political system itself. The system, he told Shafaq News, breaches the parties’ law in practice, and two decades of tolerance have produced what he calls “statelets” with military, economic, political, and media power of their own.

He attributes this to weak state institutions and the leverage armed groups hold over political and economic decisions. His prescriptions reach beyond the weapons: closing the “economic offices” run by armed parties, some of which are accused of pressuring merchants, contractors, and business owners; addressing foreign armed groups operating on Iraqi soil; and requiring the Independent High Electoral Commission to bar any party proven to have an armed wing from running for office.

Al-Nayel also proposes a path for the fighters themselves, either reintegration into state institutions or civilian alternatives.

A political source previously told Shafaq News that a government proposal envisaged absorbing around 35,000 faction members into the army, police, and Counter Terrorism Service in exchange for surrendering their weapons. Baghdad also plans to continue its weapons buyback program. The proposed state monopoly bill, as currently drafted, would not affect the Kurdish Peshmerga.

Washington's Timetable

The domestic legal argument now runs alongside external pressure. Al-Zaidi instructed officials in August to draft legislation regulating the possession and use of weapons by state institutions as part of a broader effort to establish a state monopoly over arms.

The timetable has since stretched substantially. What was initially presented as a Sept. 30 deadline has evolved into a staged process that al-Zaidi says should be completed by June 30, 2027.

Meeting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this week, al-Zaidi renewed his government's commitment to restricting weapons to state institutions. US officials have also continued to press Baghdad over the role of armed factions and weapons outside direct state control.

What the Law Cannot Yet Reach

Every expert who spoke to Shafaq News located the solution in enforcing laws Iraq already has, not simply writing new ones. Rikan warned that any party whose armed wing remains outside the legal framework could face constitutional and legal accountability.

The difficulty lies in applying those provisions to a political system in which faction-linked parties hold parliamentary seats, senior positions and roles in government formation, while armed factions without political wings sit outside the parties’ law altogether.

Weapons handed to the state can be counted, catalogued, and verified. Determining whether a political party has truly severed its relationship with an armed force is harder, and Iraq's institutions will have to make that determination while some of the parties concerned hold seats within those same institutions.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Rubio's "Balkanization" warning links Iraq's armed factions to the country's unity

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 16:32:00 +0000

Shafaq News- Baghdad

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has linked Iraq'sarmed factions to what he called the “Balkanization” of the country, arguingthat bringing all weapons under government control would end the presence ofindependent forces operating outside a unified state command. The warning tiesthe fate of Iraq's armed factions to the integrity of the Iraqi state moreexplicitly than Washington has before, and it comes days before September 30,the scheduled end of the Global Coalition's military mission in Iraq.

Until now, Washington had framed disarmament largelyas a question of sovereignty and Iranian influence. Rubio'slanguage moves it into the territory of state survival. In Baghdad, politiciansand analysts who spoke to Shafaq News broadly accept that the country's manysources of arms threaten a unified security decision. They disagree sharply onhow close Iraq is to breaking apart, and several argue that the more realisticdanger is not partition but a confrontation over who controls the state.

Readmore: Iraq caught between US-Iran war and September 30 deadline

A Deadline That Moved

Rubio spoke to reporters in New York on Wednesday onthe sidelines of the UN General Assembly, after he and President Donald Trumpeach met Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. He said Washington had no doubtabout al-Zaidi's commitment to disarming the factions but described the task asmassive and difficult.

By his count, at least three armed groups had disarmedand joined state institutions, while at least one had been far lesscooperative. Completing the process, he said, would mean Iraq no longer had"independent forces operating and balkanizing the country."

Readmore: Iraq factions resist disarmament as coalition exit nears

That timetable has since changed. Sept. 30 remains thescheduled end of the coalition's military mission and is now expected to markthe announcement of a weapons-control program, while al-Zaidi has set June 30, 2027,as the target for completing the disarmament process.

The factions at the center of the debate are mostlyShia groups within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). At least five of themalso hold seats in parliament through political wings. Their responses todisarmament have varied. Some have pledged to hand over their weapons, Kataib Hezbollahhas offered to take custody of drones and missiles rather than surrender them,and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba has rejected the process outright.

The term Rubio chose carries a specific memory. TheBalkans became shorthand for violent fragmentation after Yugoslavia broke apartin wars between 1991 and 1999, leaving seven states where there had been one.In Iraq, the word evokes a long-standing fear that the country could splitalong Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish lines.

Too Many Centers Of Force

Khalid Sido, a member of the Iraqi parliament'sSecurity and Defense Committee, said that the problem extends beyond thefactions. The presence of multiple armed actors, including the US-led coalitionand Turkish forces, “weakens the state's monopoly on force and creates spacefor competition over influence and political pressure.” Turkiye maintainsmilitary bases in northern Iraq for its campaign against the Kurdistan Workers'Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group it has fought for decades.

Multiple centers of force, Sido said, "reduce thevalue of a unified security decision" and weaken Iraq's position with itsneighbors and the international community. He backed al-Zaidi's efforts toregulate weapons so that security decisions rest with the government alone. Healso warned against underestimating the risk of fragmentation, while notingthat Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which administers thesemi-autonomous Kurdish north, share intelligence and coordinate on security.

Division Before Fragmentation

Political and strategic researcher Ziad al-Arar ranksthe threats differently. Political division comes first, he said, particularlywhen factional interests override the public good. Rising sectarian rhetoricfollows, then weapons outside state control and foreign interference.

Uncontrolled weapons, in al-Arar's analysis, havebecome a regional and international concern that can deter investment and turnIraq into a target for military and political strikes. He sees the competinginfluence of Washington and Tehran as a separate pressure, pulling the countrybetween opposing external interests.

He stops short of Rubio's conclusion. Iraq, he argued,is not at the point of Balkanization, because tribal networks, securitycapabilities, and a judiciary that protects the state and the constitutionstill act as brakes. “Rubio's warning is a message to Iraq's political classabout its responsibility to fix the situation, not as a forecast that partitionis imminent.”

A Contest Over The State

Security expert Ahmed al-Sharifi rejects theBalkanization framing more firmly. Iraq faced a graver test in 2014, he said,when army units collapsed, and ISIS seized large areas, and the countryrecovered. He sees no direct risk of partition.

The more likely scenario, in his view, is a politicaland security clash over the shape of the state and control of its decisions,especially if some factions keep refusing to hand over their weapons or iftalks break down. “Should dialogue fail, the dispute could lead toconfrontation between state institutions and armed groups, with social andpolitical constituencies mobilizing behind either side.”

Al-Sharifi links the outcome to factors beyond Iraq'sborders, particularly negotiations between the United States and Iran, arguingthat any understanding between them could lower the temperature across theregion.

He also shifts the focus from the weapons to thepeople who will command the reorganized security institutions. Thoseinstitutions, he argued, must be freed from muhasasa, the post-2003 system thatdistributes state posts among parties along sectarian and ethnic lines.Reproducing those divisions inside the security services would weaken commandand control, a failure he identifies as a cause of their collapse in 2014.

Security expert Sarmad al-Bayati also considerspartition unlikely, pointing out that Iraq has survived harder periods withoutbreaking apart. The balances and pressures among Shia, Sunni, and Kurdishforces, he said, work against any scenario of division. His concern lies withwhat follows the coalition's exit, which could invite “greater interferencefrom various parties seeking to shape Iraq's politics.” The government'sability to keep control, al-Bayati said, will determine whether disputes staypolitical or become a security conflict.

Readmore: Establishing a Sunni Region in Iraq based on Kurdistan's model

Unity On Map, Division In Chain Of Command

The Iraqi voices in this debate reject Rubio's word,but none expects Iraq to split into separate states. Each describes a riskinside the state itself: rival centers of force, security institutions dividedby party quotas, and decisions on war and peace made in more than one place.

That distinction sharpens the issue facing Baghdad.Bringing the factions into state institutions could end their independence, orit could carry their loyalties into the institutions that absorb them.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Iraq’s “copy-and-paste republic” takes toll on journalism, creativity

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:30:01 +0000

Shafaq News

Iraq’s digital media landscape is exposing a wideninggap between intellectual property rights guaranteed by law and the ability toenforce them online.

Journalists, intellectuals, content creators andemerging media institutions increasingly complain of articles, investigations,photographs and videos being copied and republished without permission orattribution.

The problem extends beyond disputes over credit. Itaffects the economics of content production, journalistic ethics and investmentin digital media, as copying and distribution tools evolve faster thaninstitutions can document violations and enforce their rights.

Media researcher Haider Shallal says the practice hasmoved beyond unprofessional conduct, warning that copy-and-paste threatens thecore of journalism. “Journalists’ efforts are stolen without attribution oradded value, while the copier gets the reach and engagement,” he told ShafaqNews.

The deeper concern, he explained, lies in weakprofessional and legal accountability, which “encourages the continuation ofthe phenomenon and creates unfair competition between those who invest inproducing content and those who simply appropriate it.” He called for strongerlegal protection, professional oversight and a culture that respectsintellectual property and journalistic sources.

The Law in the Digital Age

Iraq's copyright legislation dates to 1971 but hassince been amended, notably through Coalition Provisional Authority Order No.83 of 2004.

Copyright Law No. 3 of 1971 protects originalliterary, artistic, and scientific works, including written works, computerprograms, photographic and cinematic works, radio and television productions,sound recordings, compilations, and other forms of creative output.

The 2004 amendment extended copyright protections todigital reproduction and storage, as well as making works available to thepublic through wired or wireless means.

Online platforms have also become an important part ofcopyright enforcement. Social media platforms and YouTube employ mechanismsthat include automated content-matching systems, copyright takedown noticesunder the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and other tools that allowrights holders to manage copyrights and submit disputes.

Zainab Rabie, head of Al-Nakheel Center for PressRights and Freedoms, regards the theft of journalistic and cultural material asone of the most prominent problems of the modern era.

The issue is not confined to Iraq, she stressed, butappears “more uncontrolled” there because of weak laws and legislation, limitedlegal deterrence, and the exploitation of the space for freedom availableonline.

Rabie urged journalists, intellectuals, artists, andspecialists to join efforts to develop legislation capable of keeping pace withthe times and protecting journalistic, intellectual and cultural achievements.The path toward such reforms, she cautioned, remains “long and complicated.”

A “Copy and Paste Republic”

In the digital environment, copyright infringement isno longer limited to reprinting a book or reproducing an article in anothernewspaper. A journalistic piece can be copied in full, broken into paragraphs,repackaged as a video or post, and distributed across dozens of pages within ashort period.

Previous media reports have documented the case of anIraqi journalist who accidentally discovered entire sections of her articlesincorporated into another person’s work without attribution. After tracking theindividual’s accounts, she found other material apparently assembled from thework of different journalists.

Journalists and intellectuals describe a problem thatextends beyond articles to poetry, prose, books, academic research, and visualworks, as well as investigative material requiring weeks or months of work.

The issue therefore reaches beyond copyright intoprofessional ethics. The traditional journalistic principle rests on verifyinginformation, attributing it to its sources, and recognizing the individualeffort behind it. Digital platforms, however, reward speed and engagement,creating incentives to reproduce trending material quickly rather than investin original reporting.

Shallal argues that the copy-and-paste culture harms“the core of journalism” by placing original producers in competition withthose who merely appropriate their work. In his view, the absence of effectiveaccountability also undermines fair competition, “as the cost of producingcontent becomes a burden on the original institution, while the copier gets aready-made product.”

The Battle over Proof

Legal action also depends on whether an allegedviolation falls within existing law. Courts cannot create offenses or penaltieswithout a legal basis.

That does not leave Iraqi courts without tools toaddress copyright violations. Existing law gives authors rights over thereproduction, adaptation, distribution and public communication of their workand provides penalties for certain infringements.

The broader difficulty in the digital environment liesin legal classification, evidence, and enforcement. Material published on asocial media platform does not necessarily disappear when an account holderdeletes it. It may remain in screenshots, archives, electronic copies, servers,or other accounts, making proof of the original publication date and theidentity of the original creator a central element in disputes.

Raad al-Mashhadani, spokesman for the IraqiJournalists Syndicate, considers the copying and republication of journalisticcontent without permission or reference to the source “a violation of therights of journalists and media institutions” and incompatible withprofessional and ethical standards.

The syndicate, he explained, treats the matterseriously but insists that individual cases be handled through professional andlegal channels, with “judgments or accusations not being made until the factsare verified.”

Al-Mashhadani added that the syndicate’s disciplinaryand monitoring committees track violations involving content theft orrepublication in ways that infringe on the rights of its owner. The committeesdocument such cases and submit them to the syndicate’s council for appropriateaction under its internal regulations and the applicable legal framework.

“Protecting rights in the digital environment alsobegins with the journalists themselves, by documenting published material andpreserving evidence related to the original content and its publication date,which helps prove rights when violations occur.”

Legislation without Enforcement

Iraq has been a member of the World IntellectualProperty Organization (WIPO) since 1976. The organization’s data shows thatIraq has national offices responsible for intellectual property, including theNational Center for Copyright and Related Rights, alongside bodies dealing withpatents and trademarks.

The legal framework extends beyond copyright toinclude Patent and Industrial Design Law No. 65 of 1970 and the law governingtrademarks and commercial indications, whose amended version WIPO lists through2010.

Yet the existence of multiple laws, with varying datesand scopes, does not by itself resolve the enforcement challenges created bythe platform-driven digital environment.

Hadi al-Marai, head of the Iraqi Observatory for PressFreedoms, argues that political dominance over public institutions has alsoweakened protections for the press and intellectual property. At the same time,he rejects placing sole responsibility on the judiciary, arguing that “it isnot fair to say that the judiciary turns a blind eye to all those intellectualviolations and infringements of rights.”

In an interview with Shafaq News, Al-Marai places muchof the responsibility on the political system, particularly the legislature,which he believes must establish enforceable rights through binding legislationand strict application of the law.

He further links the broader disorder to what hedescribes as political groups seeking to extend their influence and control thelandscape, arguing that this contributed to a situation in which intellectualproperty concepts became obscured amid the expansion of social media and moderntechnologies.

The Cost of Content

The issue extends to a journalist’s right to havetheir name attached to their work. Journalistic content has become an economicasset that requires financing.

An investigative report may involve a research andproduction team, filming, editing, travel, documents, and substantial time,while another platform can obtain the finished product simply by copying it.

Under this model, the original producer carries thecost and risk of production, while the copier can generate reach, engagementand revenue from material for which they paid nothing.

That dynamic weakens the incentive to produceexpensive work, particularly for smaller institutions that lack the resourcesavailable to larger organizations. The Iraqi Journalists Syndicate maintainsthat protecting content should not become a pretext for restricting thecirculation of information.

Al-Mashhadi stresses that “press freedom does not meanwasting the rights of the journalist or media institution,” while protection ofthose rights “should not come at the expense of freedom of information.” Headvocates a balance between the right to access information and respect for therights of content owners, alongside stronger standards of journalisticintegrity and proper attribution of information and sources.

Contracts and Creators’ Rights

Another dimension of the intellectual property debateconcerns the contractual relationship between content creators and mediainstitutions.

In a market where independent creators often havelimited bargaining power, contracts can determine who owns a work, who mayreuse, modify, or distribute it, and whether financial compensation covers onlycurrent use or also future rights.

Specialists therefore call for contracts to clearlyidentify the rights holder, licensing period, scope of use, financialcompensation, and rights of reuse, rather than leaving these matters ambiguous.

This does not mean that every agreement between aninstitution and a creator constitutes a “contract of adhesion.” However, animbalance in bargaining power can leave individual creators with limitedchoices, particularly when they depend on larger institutions for financing,distribution, or protection.

The debate remains divided over whether Iraq needs anew law or better enforcement of existing legislation.

One side argues that the current framework, despiteits age, can address some forms of infringement and that the primaryshortcomings involve documentation, enforcement, and technical expertise.Others call for a broader modernization of the system to address digital works,electronic evidence, and cross-border violations.

Digital rights advocates, meanwhile, stress thatintellectual property or cybercrime legislation must not become a tool forcriminalizing opinion or investigative journalism. They call for a cleardistinction between protecting a work against unauthorized copying and offensesinvolving political content, while advocating effective compensation andexplicit exceptions for criticism, education, and journalistic coverage.

They also call for clearer regulation of digitalevidence, including publication data, original files and platform records, andfor the use of digital fingerprints and blockchain technology in documentationwithout treating as conclusive evidence on its own.

Arab Experiences

Experiences in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt suggestthat copyright protection requires more than penalties, combining digital-userules, complaint mechanisms, technical expertise and safeguards for freedom ofexpression.

While those systems cannot simply be replicated inIraq, they offer possible models for handling digital evidence, complaints anddispute resolution.

Amid legislative delays, civil and union activismcontinues to push for digital laws that distinguish intellectual propertyprotection from political offenses and avoid vague language that could restrictopinion.

The approach seeks to protect creators from theftwithout turning copyright law into a mechanism for preventing legitimatequotation, criticism, satire or journalistic coverage.

Al-Mashhadani concludes that the syndicate “supportsany legislative or regulatory direction that contributes to strengthening theprotection of journalistic content and holding violators accountable under thelaw,” emphasizing that the rapid development of digital publishing requires areview of relevant procedures and legislation.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Kurdistan Region unifies Peshmerga, folding rival KDP and PUK forces into one army

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:17:30 +0000

Shafaq News

On September 21, 2026, the Kurdistan Region (KRI) publicly marked thecompletion of a long-running effort to bring the KDP- and PUK-aligned Peshmergaforces under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs.

The ministry had announced the formal completion of the unification onSeptember 10. The restructured force is organized under two regional commandscontaining 11 divisions, 33 brigades, and 99 battalions, but the persistence oftwo geographically distinct commands means that formal institutionalunification does not by itself prove that political influence has disappeared.

For most of the Kurdistan Region's autonomous history, the Peshmerga —Kurdishfor "those who face death," and the KRI’s legally recognized armedforce— operated as two armies with separate command structures, even after someformations had earlier been transferred into ministry structures. Unit 80answered to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by the Barzani familyfrom its stronghold across Erbil and Duhok. Unit 70 belonged to the PatrioticUnion of Kurdistan (PUK), the rival party rooted in the Talabani family's basearound al-Sulaymaniyah.

Each retained its own commanders, payrolls, and deployments. Cooperationbetween them rose and fell with the political weather between the parties. Whatthe September ceremony formally ended was the separate party headquarters, notnecessarily the party influence that grew up around them.

The public marking came nine days before September 30, the scheduled endof the remaining Global Coalition military mission in Iraq. Separately, thefour-year memorandum of understanding between the US Department of Defense andthe Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, renewed in September 2022, also reaches theend of its current term this month.

The Kurdish leadership was careful to keep the two matters apart, yetthe convergence of dates places both Baghdad and Erbil before a sharper set ofobligations than the language of unity conveys.

Inside a hall at the Kurdistan Region Presidency, decrees appointed Lt.Gen. Nijat Ali Saleh to command the First Military Zone, covering Erbil, Duhok,and their surrounding districts, and Lt. Gen. Omar Saleh Hassan to command theSecond, spanning al-Sulaymaniyah, Halabja, and their environs. PresidentNechirvan Barzani, who serves as general commander of the Peshmerga, oversawthe proceedings. He was joined by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, Deputy PrimeMinister Qubad Talabani, Peshmerga Affairs Minister Shoresh Ismail, andrepresentatives of the International Coalition and foreign missions.

The presence of Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir al-Shammari, who directs the officeof the commander-in-chief of Iraq's armed forces, signaled the federaldimension of a force whose status is layered: the constitution recognizes theKurdistan Region and its authorities, the Peshmerga holds legal standing, andit is broadly regarded as part of Iraq's wider defense architecture, withoutfalling under Baghdad's operational command.

Two zone commands survive the merger, and that has drawn a naturalobjection: one army with two headquarters could preserve the old split undernew names. Retired Lt. Gen. Sarwar Sheikh Qader, a security and militaryanalyst, rejected that reading in an interview with Shafaq News, describing thechange as an organizational and tactical shift from party-based administrationto institutional military management, and framed the neutral designations,First Zone and Second Zone, as a deliberate move to strip out partisanidentity.

“Two commands pose no problem, as long as both report to the ministrythrough a single line of command rather than to rival party headquarters,” hesaid.

President Barzani addressed the Unit 70 and Unit 80 legacy directly,casting the change as a national undertaking with more at stake than abureaucratic reshuffle. He set a demanding measure of success: each fightercoming to see the ministry as his institution and his comrade-in-arms as apartner regardless of party or region, rather than any count of units absorbedinto the new structure.

The military, he said, is no arena for party competition. Partiescontest elections; the Peshmerga is Kurdistan's force, and belongs to no singleparty. He also cautioned that the announcement opens reform rather thancompleting it, with command, training, promotions, and doctrine still to bereworked.

The path here ran along two overlapping timelines. The first began in2016, when the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs launched a reform program with theGlobal Coalition backing, led principally by the United States, the UK, andGermany, alongside the Netherlands, Italy, France, and other partners. Theeffort sought to consolidate command and control, audit personnel rolls andpayrolls, and build a more centralized military and financial administration.

The second milestone came on September 21, 2022, when the ministry andthe US Department of Defense renewed their memorandum of understanding, firstsigned in 2016, setting a four-year framework for continued US support andfurther institutional reforms. The September 21, 2026 ceremony fell on thefourth anniversary of that renewal.

The obstacles were rarely just technical. The decisive variablethroughout was the readiness of the KDP and PUK to hand real control of theirforces to the state. Presidency spokesman Dilshad Shahab conceded on the eve ofthe ceremony that political disputes had complicated the process for years.

PM Masrour Barzani called it a historic day and said the unifiedstructure now covers operations, training, command and control, communications,and financial management, with the next phase focused on advanced weaponry andair defense. He then turned the conversation to Baghdad, urging the federalgovernment to guarantee the Peshmerga's constitutional entitlements and bringits salaries and benefits in line with those of the Iraqi army. That plea forinstitutional unity in Erbil, while clear, does not settle the fiscalrelationship with the center.

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi welcomed the completion of themerger, describing the consolidation of forces within constitutional and legalframeworks as a step toward national security and unified defensedecision-making.

Iraqi media outlets reported that the transition formally integratedmore than 100,000 party-affiliated fighters into the unified structure. Evenso, officials published no final tally from the payroll audit that has anchoredthe reform since 2016, and no detailed timetable for transferring authorityover appointments, promotions, armament, and deployment to the ministry.

The breakdown of how the divisions are distributed between the twocommands went unpublished, as did the degree to which former Unit 70 and Unit80 personnel are actually intermixed. As Sheikh Qader noted, that blending willdetermine whether the KRI has produced a genuinely unified army or rearrangedold formations beneath a single roof.

Kurdish officials said unification had been a condition for continuedcoalition support, presenting the merger's completion as timed to thatrequirement. By their account, Erbil met the condition at the very moment theinternational presence that underwrote it began to recede, shifting the burdenof funding, equipping, and sustaining the new structure onto Baghdad and Erbilthemselves. That burden, and the slow work of making two zones feel like oneforce, is where the harder phase of reform now begins.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Iran war spreads to Iraq and Red Sea as regional risks mount

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 21:37:33 +0000

Shafaq News

The war between the United States and Iran, now in itsseventh month, has drawn Yemen, the Red Sea and Iraq into the fighting, butregional and international analysts told Shafaq News that a full regional warremains unlikely for now. They pointed to the approaching US midterm elections,Gulf pressure to calm the conflict, and the rising cost of a prolonged energycrisis as the main restraints on further expansion.

The war began on February 28, 2026, and its effects havespread over the past week to Yemen and the Red Sea, where Iran-aligned Houthiforces have made major territorial gains along Yemen's western coast and aroundBab al-Mandeb, the strategic strait linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden andIndian Ocean. The Houthis captured the Red Sea port of Mocha and Perim Island,which sits in the strait.

Iraq Tests Its Sovereignty

In Iraq, the spillover has become a direct test ofBaghdad's ability to keep its territory out of the region's wars. On September10 and 11, drones launched from Iraqi soil struck two pump stations on SaudiArabia's East-West pipeline, the line that carries crude from the kingdom'sEastern Province to the Red Sea port of Yanbu and lets it bypass the Strait ofHormuz. Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry said the drones came from Iraq and shutthe pipeline as a precaution.

Iraq's government confirmed the attacks originated on itsterritory and opened an investigation. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi removed thecommander of Maysan Operations Command and ordered an investigative council intothe command after authorities traced the launch site to the southern provincebordering Iran. He later dismissed Maysan's police chief and referredprovincial security officials for investigation.

Iraqi authorities said they reject any use of the country'sland or airspace to attack neighboring states. No group has claimedresponsibility for the attacks, and several Iraqi armed factions deniedresponsibility and offered to take part in the investigation.

The US State Department told Shafaq News that it supportsal-Zaidi's efforts to assert state authority and to prevent attacks inside Iraqor launched from its soil.

“The episode tests the government's ability to enforcesovereignty and protect Iraq's ties with its Arab neighbors at a moment whenBaghdad is trying to avoid being pulled into the regional confrontation,” Ahmedal-Sharifi, an Iraqi security analyst, said.

Energy Corridors Under Pressure

US officials have reported a sharp recovery in oil flowsthrough Hormuz, although commercial shipping trackers have producedsubstantially lower estimates. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said about 18million barrels of crude and refined products passed through the strait onSeptember 15. Independent trackers, however, have recorded far fewer vesseltransits, highlighting uncertainty over the actual volume moving through thewaterway.

The attack on the East-West line, one of the kingdom's mainalternatives to Hormuz, damaged its eighth and ninth pump stations and halted aflow of about four million barrels a day, with reports estimating that fullrepairs could take several weeks.

Samir Faraj, a retired Egyptian major general and strategicaffairs analyst, said widening the war serves no party's interest, and warnedthat disrupting shipping through Bab al-Mandeb while Hormuz is alreadyunsettled would carry broad economic costs worldwide.

Egyptian and Saudi efforts are focused for now on securingthe Red Sea, he added, pointing out that Cairo sees negotiations as “the moresuitable path and backs the Saudi approach, particularly while the UnitedStates stays out of direct combat against the Houthis.”

A Cautious Washington

Washington has kept a hand in managing the crisis whileavoiding direct combat. Reuters reported that US officials met Houthirepresentatives in Muscat to preserve an existing understanding and keep Babal-Mandeb open to shipping, and that a US military team is helping Saudi forceswith intelligence-sharing and planning without joining operations.

Military officials from the United States and Israel metthe army chiefs of several Arab states in Germany, according to Axios. Thetalks covered the war with Iran and regional security cooperation.

Mahdi Azizi, an analyst of Iranian affairs, said the Saudiand Egyptian moves and the Germany meeting do not necessarily mean the regionis heading toward all-out war. He expected the escalation to stay within"limited, lightning strikes," arguing that Washington wants quickresults and that the November congressional midterm elections make a long warof attrition more costly politically.

Bets on toppling the Iranian government have not paid off,Azizi added, and the United States has turned to other tools, among themsanctions, economic pressure and closer coordination with Arab states.

Henry Cuellar, a Democratic member of the US House ofRepresentatives, said that dealing with Iran requires both pressure and softpower, calling for tighter sanctions alongside continued humanitarian aid tothe Iranian people.

Two Tracks

Ghaleb Sarhan, a Lebanese political analyst, said theregion is moving along two tracks at once. The first is a geographic spread ofthe confrontation beyond the direct US-Iran axis, seen in the Saudi-Houthifighting in Yemen and in the Iraqi pipeline attack; the second is the limitedUS ability to widen the war under Gulf pressure, the energy crisis, and thecoming midterms.

Sarhan said regional and international powers “are tryingto avert the worst outcome but cannot fully control the course of theescalation.” He described the standoff as “a test of nerves” between Washingtonand Tehran, and argued that the most likely path is heightened mutual pressureaimed at improving the terms of an eventual political settlement.

Hazem Ayad, a Jordanian political analyst, said that theconfrontation has already widened as the fighting moved into Yemen and Babal-Mandeb, and Yemen's west coast became part of the battlefield, with effectsreaching beyond the states directly involved to regional and internationalsecurity and the economy.

“The ground situation points to further spread rather thancontainment,” he said, warning that allowing it to continue could turn aregional conflict into a chronic international one. He also noted politicalbrakes, among them the US midterms and domestic political calculations in boththe United States and Israel.

In the coming weeks, three tracks will help set the war'sdirection: the results of Iraq's investigation into the drone attack, whetherthe Muscat channel between Washington and the Houthis keeps Bab al-Mandeb open,and how long repairs to the East-West pipeline's pump stations take. Thesedevelopments will unfold as the United States approaches November's midtermelections, which several analysts interviewed by Shafaq News identified as animportant constraint on Washington's appetite for a prolonged regional war.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Iraq signs 63 foreign deals under Al-Zaidi, but analysts doubt delivery

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:40:10 +0000

Shafaq News- Baghdad

Iraq's new government hassigned 63 agreements, memoranda of understanding and partnership declarationsacross six countries in barely four months, an intensive diplomatic push aimedat attracting investment and expanding Baghdad's economic partnerships. Iraqianalysts, however, warn that signing agreements is easier than turning theminto projects that deliver tangible results.

Al-Zaidi, a banker with noprior political career, took office in May 2026 as the compromise candidate ofthe Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shia political forces that includesparties with longstanding ties to Iran, after months of post-election deadlock.He inherited a fiscal emergency. The US-Iran war that erupted in late Februaryhad choked the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 90 percent of Iraqicrude flows. With oil revenues accounting for the overwhelming majority ofstate income, the disruption left the new government facing severe fiscalpressure. That pressure has added urgency to Al-Zaidi's push for foreigninvestment and alternative export routes.

The investment drive also fitsWashington's vision for the next phase of US-Iraq relations. During Al-Zaidi'sJuly visit, President Donald Trump framed the transition around a larger rolefor American companies as US forces withdraw by September 30. Al-Zaidi'sitinerary reads as an answer to that expectation.

Readmore: Iraq-US investment deals depend on implementation, experts say

The tour opened in the UnitedStates between July 13 and 17, where Iraqi and American institutions signed 48agreements across oil, electricity, technology, finance, health andagriculture, with announced deals valued at more than $60 billion. Iraq's OilMinistry later valued its agreements with US energy companies, includingChevron, Halliburton, HKN Energy and ConocoPhillips, at about $200 billion.

From Washington, Al-Zaidi flewto Qatar, met Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and signed nothing, then to Iran onJuly 23 for fourtransport and railwayaccords, but without the tanker exemptions or additional gas supply Baghdad hadgone looking for.

Turkiyefollowed with fivememoranda; Francewith six covering air defense, civil aviation and a gas protocol between theelectricity ministry and TotalEnergies; Germany,where he arrived Tuesday, is expected to produce understandings with Siemens onpower transmission.

For the parliamentary bodythat oversees such diplomacy, the ledger is already familiar. Mukhtaral-Musawi, a member of parliament's foreign relations committee, told ShafaqNews that Iraq "has not felt anything" from al-Zaidi's earlier trips,because deals in energy, arms and oil keep foundering on the absence offollow-through.

Haidar Shalal Muta'ab, aresearcher on domestic affairs, credited the government with widening Iraq'sreach and opening political and economic channels, but insisted value is notcounted in documents. The real test, he argued, is the passage from signing to"implementation, follow-up and evaluation," a passage requiringexecutive programs, timelines and accountability that most of these textssimply do not contain. He turned the point on the press as well: “coverageshould not end at the signing ceremony but track what is actually delivered.”

Firas Ilyas, a professor ofinternational relations at the University of Mosul, pointed to structuralobstacles to implementation. Iraq has converted some agreements into realgains, he acknowledged, pointing to counterterrorism cooperation and energy andtransport links that have begun to reintegrate the country into the regionaleconomy. But he drew a hard line between "signing diplomacy" and"implementation diplomacy," blaming the gap on bureaucracy, changinggovernments and priorities, a weak investment climate and Iraq's multiplecompeting centers of power.

Foreign partners, he noted, nolonger treat a signature with Baghdad as a guarantee; they want political,security and legislative stability before capital moves.

Khalid al-Ardawi, an academicand political researcher, focused on the legal nature of the agreementsthemselves. “Most of what Al-Zaidi has signed are memoranda of understanding:declarations of intent carrying no binding legal obligation.”

The French documents are hisclearest example: letters of intent in defense and corporate cooperation withnothing to guarantee they become enforceable contracts. And the obstacle, inhis telling, is not the foreign partner but “a political and security environmentfractured by corruption, the *muhasasa* system of ethno-sectarianpower-sharing, and the lack of a single, unified decision.”

Wary of committing to a statethat may not deliver, he said, some governments let their understandings lapseinto "diplomatic courtesy," and the frameworks stay "ink onpaper."

The Atlantic Council notedthis week that Al-Zaidi has only a narrow window to attract American investmentinto Iraqi oil while convincing investors that the country is a secure,commercially viable place to operate, a challenge it linked to his limited politicalauthority within a system still shaped by Iranian influence. His cabinet,meanwhile, is unfinished: parliament approved only 14 of a planned 23 ministersamid factional bargaining. The contrast is notable: while Baghdad isnegotiating new defense arrangements abroad, the Defense Ministry remains amongthe vacant cabinet portfolios at home.

Iraq has faced this problembefore: agreements announced abroad have often encountered bureaucratic,political and financial obstacles at home. This time, however, the stakes areunusually high. Oil revenues are recovering from the disruption caused by thewar, the US-led coalition's military mission is approaching its September 30end date, and Al-Zaidi is trying to attract foreign capital while completinghis cabinet.

The 63 agreements thereforeoffer a measurable test of his government's economic diplomacy. Theirsignificance will ultimately depend on how many projects Iraqi institutions canimplement at home.

Readmore: Al-Zaidi sworn in as Iraq's prime minister with program already failed

Written and edited by ShafaqNews staff.

$45B deficit looms over Iraq’s draft 2027 budget

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:37:12 +0000

Shafaq News

Iraq is preparing its 2027 budget against an uncertain oil market, a potential deficit of more than 60 trillion Iraqi dinars ($45.8B) and a growing list of spending commitments, with the draft still awaiting cabinet approval.

Much of the budget's final shape remains unsettled. Revenue estimates, the overall spending ceiling, the balance between operating and investment expenditure, the size of the deficit, and assumptions for oil prices and export volumes are still being worked out, Financial and Economic Adviser to Prime Minister Mudher Mohammed Saleh told Shafaq News.

"The full picture of Iraq's 2027 budget has not yet emerged until the Council of Ministers finishes discussing and approving the draft federal budget law and refers it to parliament," Saleh said.

That uncertainty carries particular weight in Iraq, where oil remains the government's main source of revenue. A shortfall in either prices or export volumes could quickly widen the gap between revenues and spending, putting additional pressure on deficit financing and investment plans.

Yet oil is only one part of the challenge facing the budget.

"The preliminary indicators suggest that the 2027 budget was designed, to a large extent, on assumptions closer to those of peacetime economies," Saleh said, pointing to benchmarks based on a financial year that predates the war and the Strait of Hormuz crisis that began on Feb. 28.

That leaves Iraq facing a broader question: whether a budget built around relatively stable conditions can absorb the economic disruption that followed, from trade and transport to energy, imports and supply chains.

For Saleh, the answer does not lie simply in increasing expenditure. Peacetime assumptions may help preserve fiscal stability, but the budget also needs enough financial room to absorb unexpected shocks. Public money, he argued, should be directed toward areas with the strongest economic and development impact rather than used broadly to offset the effects of the crisis.

Oil, however, remains the first major test of that approach. An overly optimistic forecast for crude prices or export volumes could leave the government with a larger-than-expected deficit. A forecast that is too cautious, by contrast, could squeeze funding for essential services and investment. Saleh therefore favors realistic, conservative oil assumptions, supported by alternative scenarios covering lower prices, reduced exports and unexpected spending.

Economist Nabil al-Marsoumi sees the same uncertainty over oil as one of five major obstacles facing the 2027 budget. In a social media post, he pointed to the difficulty of forecasting both prices and export volumes while the regional situation remains unsettled, particularly with the Strait of Hormuz closed and no clear indication of how long the disruption will last.

"The other immediate problem is how to finance the gap," he said, warning that the deficit could exceed 60 trillion dinars ($45.8B) at a time when domestic debt has risen sharply and the scope for securing substantial external borrowing remains limited.

"That would leave the government having to weigh new borrowing against a range of competing demands already built into the budget," he added.

Where Spending Goes

The pressure on the budget is not confined to how much money comes in. What happens to that money once it reaches the spending side will be just as important.

For Saleh, the key question is therefore not simply how large the investment budget will be, but what Iraq gets in return.

Energy, transport, water, infrastructure and public services are among the areas he sees as needing priority, alongside projects that can help the private sector expand and broaden the country's productive base.

At the same time, the government cannot set aside the cost of running the state. A continued rise in operating expenditure would leave less room for investment, while poorly targeted cuts could affect basic services.

"The real challenge facing the 2027 budget is not the size of the figures alone, but its ability to withstand changing conditions," Saleh said.

Some of those pressures are already built into the budget. Al-Marsoumi put the Kurdistan Region's share of the federal budget at 14.1%, or 29 trillion dinars ($22.1B), based on the latest population census.

The public payroll adds another layer. The budget must account for new appointments, the permanent employment of contract and daily-paid workers, as well as financial obligations owed to employees for more than a year, he said.

Al-Marsoumi also expects allocations to the Oil Ministry to rise significantly following the introduction of a new economic model for pricing oil allocated for domestic consumption.

Taken together, those commitments leave limited room for error. The government must finance salaries and services, meet existing obligations, support investment and cover any deficit while remaining heavily dependent on volatile oil revenues.

Governing On Interims

The 2027 budget is being prepared against another complication: Iraq has spent the past two years without a fully approved annual federal budget with valid spending schedules.

Parliament approved a three-year budget law covering 2023, 2024 and 2025, but the spending schedules for 2025 were not approved before the financial year ended. The Finance Ministry then relied on a temporary mechanism under the Financial Management Law, allowing spending at one-twelfth of the previous year's allocations to cover salaries and essential expenditures.

That arrangement has carried into 2026 after parliament did not approve a new budget law, amid political complications, regional tensions and fluctuations in energy markets.

The government is now working toward a new annual budget. The Finance Ministry plans to send the 2027 draft to parliament on Oct. 15, according to lawmaker Jamal Kochar, a member of parliament's Finance Committee, who spoke to Shafaq News.

The timetable is set, but the numbers are not. Saleh has stressed that the preliminary features of the budget can still change before the cabinet approves the final draft. Only then will the balance between revenues and spending, the size of the deficit, the oil assumptions and the split between operating and investment expenditure become clearer.

For now, the budget is being built within a narrow margin: enough discipline to contain the deficit, enough spending to keep the state functioning and investing, and enough financial space to absorb another economic shock.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Saudi pipeline attack deepens pressure on Al-Zaidi over armed factions

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:33:07 +0000

Shafaq News

Drones launched from southern Iraq struck Saudi Arabia's main oil pipeline late last week, forcing Riyadh to shut the line and handing Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi the hardest test so far of his promise to bring the country's Iran-aligned armed factions under state control. The strike turned a long-running debate over bringing faction weapons under state control, increasingly tied to the US-led coalition's September 30 departure, into an urgent problem for Iraq's relations with the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline runs about 1,200 kilometers from the oil fields of the east to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, and it has become the kingdom's main route for moving crude while Iran's pressure on the Strait of Hormuz keeps Gulf exports at risk. The drones caused casualties and damage in the Riyadh and Medina areas, and Riyadh closed the line as a precaution.

The timing sharpened the alarm: the attack came as Yemen's Houthis seized Mokha and advanced toward islands near the Bab al-Mandab strait, the Red Sea's southern gate, placing Iran-aligned forces near the two chokepoints that carry much of the region's oil. Brent crude has traded above $100 since the Yemeni offensive began.

Al-Zaidi moved within hours. An Iraqi investigation found that the attacks had been launched from Maysan, prompting him to remove the commander of the province's Operations Command and later its police chief. Iraqi authorities also temporarily closed several border crossings with Iran, including Shalamcheh, al-Sheeb, and Mandali, as they investigated security breaches. A security source later said forces had found a launch platform suspected of involvement in the attacks, while Al-Zaidi approved an Iranian request for a joint investigation into launch sites near the border. Conceding that an attack on a neighbor began on Iraqi soil is the admission Baghdad has spent years avoiding.

No group claimed the strike, and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella of Iran-aligned factions, denied involvement and offered to cooperate with the government investigation. The attack nevertheless immediately intersected with the wider dispute over armed groups because it originated from Iraqi territory at a time when Baghdad is under pressure to bring all weapons under state control.

Baghdad's political leadership lined up behind the government's account. President Nizar Amedi, parliament speaker Haibet al-Halbousi, and the Kurdistan Region's presidency each rejected the use of Iraqi land or airspace against neighbors and repeated the demand to place all weapons under state authority.

Sakr al-Muhammadawi, a member of parliament's security and defense committee, told Shafaq News that a fact-finding team had reached Maysan and that its findings would set the course. He linked the country's stability to its economy and warned that the committee would stand against any foreign strike on Iraqi soil in response.

In July, the United States and Saudi Arabia struck Iran-backed fighters in Iraq after Riyadh accused the groups of launching drones at its oil facilities, killing at least 20 members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and wounding 32, according to PMF figures —the same state-funded umbrella that houses the armed factions now at the center of the disarmament talks. A second cross-border attack raises the prospect of a repeat, this time against a government that has staked its standing on preventing exactly this.

Sami al-Murshid, a Saudi writer on international affairs, said Tehran “has spent years using allied armed groups in Iraq and Yemen to pressure Gulf states,” and that cooperation between the Houthis and the Iraqi factions has run through media, logistics, and intelligence channels.

Speaking to Shafaq News, he placed the responsibility on Baghdad to secure its borders and disarm groups outside state control, and called a state monopoly on weapons “the first step toward restoring Iraqi sovereignty.”

The Yemeni front is escalating on its own terms. Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis' supreme political council, said Yemen was fighting Saudi Arabia to restore its independence and had imposed a naval blockade on Saudi shipping, describing the moment as escalation answered with escalation.

Abed al-Thawr, a Houthi military spokesman, said coordination among what the movement calls the axis of resistance —linking Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, the Palestinians, and Yemen— was continuing. The Houthi advance toward Bab al-Mandab, which took the port of Mokha and extended fighting toward several Red Sea islands in a week-long offensive the UN says displaced tens of thousands, has put a second major oil corridor at risk.

Ahmed al-Sharifi, an Iraqi analyst, said the operation carried meaning beyond the damage it did. “Its timing alongside the Houthi push at Bab al-Mandab signals an ability to act across a span of territory from Yemen to Iraq within a wider contest with the United States.”

Al-Sharifi told Shafaq News that a strike of this range —the targets lie hundreds of kilometers inside Saudi Arabia— needs continuous guidance and a ground-control station, “which points to sustained command on Iraqi soil rather than a single launch.” He noted that the drones flew from Maysan, a province central to Iraq's oil output, which raises questions about who controls its production zones.

Al-Zaidi has built his months in office around economic opening such as foreign investment, energy deals, and warmer relations with Washington, and al-Sharifi said an attack staged from an Iraqi oil province cut against that case directly. The attack showed how armed activity beyond effective state control could threaten Al-Zaidi's economic agenda, strain ties with Gulf states and expose Iraq to retaliation even before responsibility for the strike was established.

For now, Baghdad's response is containment. It has opened an investigation, tightened controls at several border crossings and approved an Iranian request to join a probe into launch sites near the frontier. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has agreed to refrain from responding for now while Baghdad investigates.

Those measures are meant to demonstrate the state control Al-Zaidi has promised to strengthen. But the attack has exposed the gap between that objective and conditions on the ground: Iraqi investigators say the drones were launched from Maysan, yet those responsible have not been publicly identified. A suspected launch platform has been found. The people behind the attack have not.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Iraq caught between US-Iran war and September 30 deadline

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 22:12:57 +0000

Shafaq News- Baghdad

The maritime war between the United States and Iran flared back into open fire this week, with American forces sinking Iranian oil tankers, Tehran firing missiles at a base in Jordan that hosts US troops, and Brent crude climbing past $100 a barrel for the first time since July. Iraq is not a combatant in that war. It may be its most exposed bystander, and the escalation has arrived almost three weeks before a deadline that could decide whether it stays out.

By September 30, Iraq's new government is expected to reach a critical stage in its effort to bring weapons held by Iran-aligned factions under state control, as the US-led coalition's military mission draws to an end. The two clocks are now running against each other. A regional war that gives those factions both a cause and cover to keep their weapons is accelerating at precisely the moment Baghdad has promised Washington it will take those weapons away.

Ashraf Akka, a specialist in international relations based in Ramallah, told Shafaq News that Iraq is the most fragile state in the region under the current trajectory. “Iraq cannot easily hold the middle ground between Washington and Tehran, and its territory could become an additional theater if either its factions strike American interests or the United States and Israel retaliate inside Iraq,” he told Shafaq News.

The mechanics of that risk are already established. Since the war opened on February 28, Iran-aligned Iraqi factions grouped under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella of hardline Shia paramilitaries, several of them also folded into the state-funded Popular Mobilization Forces, have struck US facilities in Iraq and the Gulf hundreds of times, by the reckoning of Iraqi and US officials. American and Israeli airstrikes have answered by killing dozens of fighters and, in at least one case reported by Baghdad, an Iraqi army commander. The Kurdistan Region has absorbed a share of the damage, with Erbil hit repeatedly and strikes reaching hotels, telecommunications sites, and residential districts.

This week sharpened every one of those pressures. US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it destroyed three Iranian tankers on September 5 and five more on September 8, each time describing the strikes as retaliation for Iranian attempts to hit US warships.

Iran answered on September 9 with missiles aimed at the Al-Azraq base in Jordan; the Jordanian military said it intercepted 18 of 20 incoming missiles, with the rest falling in open ground and no casualties. Iran's claim to have damaged two US destroyers was denied by CENTCOM. On the same day, the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency voted 23 to 3 to refer Iran to the Security Council over its nuclear obligations, the first such move in two decades.

For Iraq, the most direct signal came at sea. A cargo ship was struck by a projectile roughly 52 kilometers southeast of al-Faw, at the mouth of the corridor through which almost all of Iraq's crude reaches the world. Iraq exports the bulk of its oil through the northern Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Traffic through the strait has thinned to around ten commodity vessels a day over the past ten days, its lowest in months, and Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, has announced a restricted maritime zone in which ships entering without permission may face Iranian penalties. A prolonged squeeze on those lanes reaches Iraqi state finances directly, since federal revenue and the stability of export routes both hinge on the security of the Gulf.

Baghdad's room to maneuver is narrow in both directions. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, whose government rests on the Shia political forces closest to Tehran, has warned that factions refusing to disarm will face terrorism charges and reaffirmed that foreign forces will leave by October 1. Washington has pressed him hard: after a drone struck a US diplomatic facility in Baghdad, the State Department summoned Iraq's ambassador and publicly faulted Baghdad for failing to prevent the attacks. Tehran has pushed the other way.

Esmail Qaani, commander of Iran's Quds Force, the arm of the Revolutionary Guard that manages relations with allied groups abroad, visited Baghdad seeking an arrangement that would let the factions retain, or merely freeze, their weapons rather than surrender them. The Badr Organization, among the oldest of those groups, has warned that forced disarmament could open the door to internal strife.

The deeper problem for Iraq is that the war it is exposed to shows no sign of ending quickly. Saleh al-Qazwini, a political analyst who follows Iranian and regional affairs, told Shafaq News that Western forecasts of Iranian collapse misread the picture: inflation and a falling currency are real, but the state's security and political institutions remain intact, and decisions taken at the top by the Supreme National Security Council or the Supreme Leader still hold.

Mahdi Azizi, an expert on Iranian affairs, made a complementary point, arguing that “economic pain has not pushed Tehran toward surrender” and that time may work against Washington as the cost of a long war mounts. “If both readings are correct, the exchange grinds on.”

Akka expects intermittent fighting of low to medium intensity, limited air strikes, attacks on ships and energy infrastructure, cyber and intelligence operations, and the activation of allied groups across the region, a scenario he judges more dangerous than a short, sharp conflict precisely because it leaves no clear line between war and peace. For Iraq, months of that ambiguity mean months in which a single faction's strike on a US target could invite a response on Iraqi soil, and in which the disarmament deadline functions less as a resolution than as a test Baghdad can neither afford to fail nor fully pass.

Al-Zaidi's task is to take the factions' weapons without triggering the internal conflict they have threatened, and to do it while a live regional war hands those same factions their strongest argument in years for keeping them.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Iraq factions resist disarmament as coalition exit nears

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 06:21:50 +0000

Shafaq News

Iraq's most powerful armed factions say they will give uptheir weapons only after the country secures full sovereignty, a condition theydo not expect to be met by the end of September. Prime Minister Ali Falihal-Zaidi has linked efforts to bring faction weapons under state control to theSeptember 30 end of the US-led Coalition's mission, arguing that the departureof foreign forces would remove one of the factions' principal justificationsfor remaining armed. Some Iran-aligned groups reject that sequence.

The clearest statement of their terms came from KataibSayyid al-Shuhada, an Iran-aligned faction inside the state-funded PopularMobilization Forces (PMF) and a group the United States designated a terroristorganization in 2023. Its spokesman, Kadhim al-Fartousi, told Shafaq News thefaction would not disarm while foreign forces and outside threats to Iraqisovereignty remained, and that its arsenal exists to defend the country ratherthan to serve any single government. The factions, he said, treat weapons andsovereignty as one bargain.

Washington’s pressure on the question is concrete. TheHouse-passed version of the US National Defense Authorization Act for FiscalYear 2027 (H.R. 8800), which as of September 11, 2026 has not yet been enactedinto law, would limit the obligation of certain US security-assistance fundsfor the Iraqi security forces to no more than 25 percent until the Secretary ofDefense certifies that Baghdad has taken credible steps to “reduce theoperational capacity of Iran‑aligned militia groups not integrated into theIraqi security forces” through a publicly verifiable disarmament,demobilization and reintegration process; strengthen the authority andoperational control of the Prime Minister of Iraq as Commander‑in‑Chief overthe Iraqi security forces; and investigate and hold accountable members of“Iran‑aligned militias or the Iraqi security forces” who operate outside theformal chain of command and engage in attacks on US or Iraqi personnel orotherwise act in an illegal or destabilizing manner.

Alina Romanowski, the former US ambassador to Iraq, told anAtlantic Council panel in Washington that sanctions would remain Washington'smain instrument and would tighten until the United States reaches a broadersettlement with Iran.

For Baghdad, she said, the working relationship betweenal-Zaidi and President Donald Trump is the most effective way to soften thatpressure and turn it toward economic cooperation. The two met in Washingtonover the summer.

Al-Zaidi has little margin to absorb any of it. Anindependent banker with no prior senior office, he took power in May as acompromise candidate of the Coordination Framework —the alliance of Shiapolitical forces that includes the parties tied to the factions he is now askedto confront— after months of deadlock following the 2025 election. At 41, he isthe youngest prime minister in Iraq's history.

Fahd al-Jabouri, a leader of the National Wisdom Movement, aShia party within the Coordination Framework, said disarmament is settled inprinciple and needs only time. He described a document, expected to be signedin the coming weeks, that would set out a mechanism for the handover, andcalled it a near-agreement among the government, the factions, and theFramework.

September 30, in his account, opens the process rather thanends it, with the handover running toward the close of the year.

There are talks to point to. A three-member committee formedby the Framework —the former prime ministers Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and Nourial-Maliki, with Badr Organization leader Hadi al-Amiri— has met the factions inrecent weeks over the guarantees they want, among them the coalition'sdeparture and national control of Iraq's air defenses.

Issam al-Faili, a professor of political science atal-Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad, reads the legislative track lesshopefully. "The long-delayed PMF Service And Retirement Law, which wouldfix the force's ranks, pay, and command structure in law, is being used to foldthe factions into the PMF rather than to dissolve them," a path that wouldkeep their weight inside the state. Some groups are making any reorganizationconditional on the law's passage, he added, and the bill remains stuck.

That reading fits a proposal reported in August, under whichweapons handed over by the factions would be stored at PMF sites rather thanpassed to the defense or interior ministries or the counter-terrorism service.The PMF still contains the Iran-aligned factions themselves, so the arrangementwould put the weapons under a state command in name while leaving them insidethe same network. Shiite political figures have described the shift as a movefrom disarmament toward what they term weapons management.

Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi analyst and fellow at CenturyInternational, part of The Century Foundation, made a similar case at theAtlantic Council. The emerging timeline, he said, ends the coalition's missionbut not the factions' armament; the groups see no reason to disarm while USsanctions still target their commanders, and no political guarantees are on thetable.

He described the government's approach as pressure pairedwith incentive: sanctions and the threat of force on one side, the promise offoreign investment, particularly in energy, on the other. That investment, hesaid, is meant to revive an economy he estimates has lost billions of dollarsto disrupted oil exports, leaving the state struggling to cover salaries andpensions.

Jiyad put al-Zaidi's real problem at home. Relations withWashington are the warmest in years, he said, carried by the rapport with Trumpand by back-channel diplomacy. But the prime minister holds no bloc or party ofhis own to shield him from the established leaders who have run Iraqi politicsfor two decades. Should the effort fail, Jiyad suggested, al-Zaidi could weighresignation rather than let wider sanctions fall on the state —a possibility heraised, not a stated intention.

A thinner US presence brings its own risk, Romanowski added:it narrows Washington's options for a quick military response if the factionsescalate, including against the Kurdistan Region, which has taken repeateddrone and missile fire.

Haitham Numaan, a professor of political science at theUniversity of Exeter, is more doubtful still. Al-Zaidi's outsider standinggives him some room, he said, but a prime minister produced by the existingorder cannot break with it, and the factions are bound too tightly to powerfulblocs for him to take them on directly.

What has happened so far, in his view, is a set of politicalmaneuvers meant to convince Washington that change is coming. He warned thatIraq could be pulled into a wider US-Iran confrontation, whatever Baghdadintends.

That danger stopped being hypothetical while the talks werestill underway. Saudi Arabia said several drones launched from Iraq struck itsEast–West pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions, causing casualties andproperty damage and forcing a precautionary shutdown of a line that carriescrude toward the Red Sea coast. Riyadh said it reserved the right to protectits sovereignty, security, and installations.

No faction claimed the attack, a silence that stands outfrom the openness with which the same groups had set out their terms weeksearlier.

Al-Zaidi's response tracked the demand Washington has beenpressing. After authorities concluded the drones had flown from a site insideMaysan, he ordered an investigation into the province's operations command andremoved its commander, while security forces opened a large-scale search forthose responsible, a campaign the Counter-Terrorism Service could join.

The move asserted his authority as Commander-in-Chief, thesame authority the US defense bill would have him strengthen, and it exposedthe limit of the arrangement his government has been negotiating: weapons keptinside the state yet still inside the factions' network had, by Riyadh'saccount, just been fired across a border at a neighbor whose investment Baghdadis counting on to rescue its economy.

September 30 will close the coalition's military mission,the final phase of a drawdown that began when US forces left federal Iraq in2025. The factions' weapons will still be in the country the next day. Underthe arrangements now discussed, they would pass into state-run PMF storagerather than be surrendered, a distinction the government and the factions haveyet to settle.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Houthi advance raises stakes from Bab al-Mandeb to Iraq

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 22:00:06 +0000

Shafaq News

Yemen's Houthis said Thursdaythey had captured Mocha, a Red Sea port held for years by government-alignedforces, carrying the country's long civil war to the edge of Bab al-Mandeb —oneof the world's most heavily used shipping lanes. It is a major escalation fromthe relative calm that followed the UN-brokered truce in April 2022, and itarrives as Yemen's war is drawn into the wider standoff between Washington andTehran, with consequences that reach as far as Iraq.

The Houthis, formallyAnsarallah, control Yemen's capital and much of its north, and have turned acoastal advance into a strategic threat. Whoever holds the ground near Bab al-Mandeb, the strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, sits astridea passage that a large share of global maritime trade cannot avoid. That is whya single port town, in a war the world had largely stopped watching, nowregisters well beyond Yemen.

For most of four years, it hadgone quiet. The 2022 truce froze the front lines and held, in rough form, longafter its formal terms lapsed. That calm began eroding in July with a broadground offensive in Taiz, Hodeidah, Marib, Jawf, and Bayda, alongside Houthistrikes on southern Saudi Arabia at a scale the kingdom had not faced in years.The war is no longer confined to internal battle lines. The Red Sea, Babal-Mandeb, and Saudi territory have all become part of the equation.

The Houthis said they had alsoretaken the Hays–Khokha axis linking Taiz and Hodeidah, reversing gains Yemen’sinternationally recognized government had claimed days earlier. Fightingintensified across the western Taiz fronts. Col. Majid al-Nazili, a spokesmanfor government forces, said his side would use "all weapons" againstany Houthi movement inside what he called a designated "kill zone,"and warned civilians off the Taiz–Mocha road until further notice.

The Houthi military spokesman,Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, countered that his forces had repelled a governmentformation in Taiz with locally made missiles.

Each side's map is its own;the one point of agreement is that the coast is contested and moving.

Myles Caggins, a retired USArmy colonel and former spokesman for the US-led coalition against ISIS, readthe Mocha claim as a gain of real and symbolic weight for the Houthis. Theposition lets them menace ships near Bab al-Mandeb, he told Shafaq News, and ithands the government a tactical and psychological defeat.

He expected the site's valueto invite Saudi and other airstrikes aimed at “dislodging them.” But he drew afirm line between seizing a port and controlling a strait: dominating trafficthrough Bab al-Mandeb would demand holding coastal footholds, islands, andpassages, and sustaining the ability to threaten shipping over time, a farharder task than taking Mocha.

Mocha's strategic importancealso raises the prospect of a wider regional response. Malik Francis, apolitical analyst and a member of the US Republican Party, argued that eventshave already outgrown another round of the Yemen war.

The Red Sea and Bab al-Mandebare no longer merely waterways, he told Shafaq News, they are now fixtures ofregional and international security. “Turning the strait into a pressure cardand targeting international navigation could pull new actors in.”

Saudi Arabia has every rightto defend itself, he added, but force alone offers no durable exit, andRiyadh's interest lies in a stable Yemen rather than a hostile neighbor. Henoted that the kingdom's security partnerships with Turkiye and Pakistan meanany major strike on its territory could widen the circle by shifting the warfrom a Houthi–Saudi contest into a web of alliances, and from one front intoseveral.

Those partnerships are alreadyin motion. Saudi, Pakistani, and Iranian sources told Reuters on Wednesday thatIslamabad had relayed a Saudi warning to Tehran to rein in Houthi attacksbefore the confrontation spreads. The step gains weight against reportedSaudi–Turkish–Pakistani security coordination, though Islamabad has said itsrole would be limited to defending Saudi soil and would not extend to combatinside Yemen.

The alarm reached the SecurityCouncil itself. Hans Grundberg, the United Nations special envoy for Yemen,warned an emergency session Thursday that the escalation could spill pastYemen's borders unless it is contained, and pressed the Houthis to halt theirattacks and return to talks. He said the group's strikes had killed civilians,among them children, and had driven roughly 11,400 families from their homesacross the country.

Iraq enters this picture froma different place than it has before. Saleh al-Shazar, a professor ofinternational relations, said the post-2003 vacuum in Iraq widened Iran'sregional reach while several Arab states kept their distance from Baghdad.

Iraq has drifted closer to theIranian axis politically, he said, yet it still pursues a policy ofself-distancing: staying out of regional fights and keeping its balance betweenthe larger powers. Its own history of war, from the fight against ISIS to earlierGulf conflicts, leaves both state and society reluctant to sign onto newmilitary blocs.

“Regional defense arrangementsdo not automatically fold Iraq in: parliament must ratify any treaty, and thepacts on the table remain defensive rather than binding commitments,” he said.

Yemen, though, carries its ownlogic. The ideological and military bond between the Houthis and Iran makes ita genuine player in any wide confrontation, al-Shazar said, above all throughits ability to disrupt shipping. And any eventual settlement with Iran couldinclude the Houthis alongside Hezbollah in Lebanon and armed factions in Iraq—meaning the current military track does not foreclose a return to politics ifthe major parties reach an understanding.

The implications also extendto Iraq. The escalation has also fueled concerns that pressure around Babal-Mandeb could become another front in the broader US-Iran confrontation,alongside tensions near the Strait of Hormuz.

September 30 has been linkedboth to the end of the Global Coalition's mission and to efforts to bringfaction weapons under state control, although Iraqi officials and politicalforces have since debated whether the weapons process must be completed by thatdate. A wider regional conflict would make that process more difficult as Iraqseeks to balance its ties with Iran, the United States, and Gulf states.

The Houthi advance thereforeposes an indirect but significant risk to Iraq. Further escalation around Babal-Mandeb could widen the US-Iran confrontation, strengthen arguments by armedfactions for retaining their weapons, and make Baghdad's effort to stay outsidethe conflict increasingly difficult.

Written and edited by ShafaqNews staff.

Banking without trust: Why Iraqis still keep their money in cash

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 09:19:09 +0000

Shafaq News

Iraq does not have a shortage of banks, payment cards, or reform plans. What its financial system lacks is the one thing that would make any of them work: public confidence that money deposited today can be withdrawn tomorrow. Until Iraqi banks earn that trust, cash will keep its advantage, and the figures show it is winning by a widening margin.

Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) data put currency circulating outside banks at 104.542 trillion dinars ($79.45 billion) at the end of April 2026, against just 8.354 trillion dinars ($6.35 billion) held inside them. By May, the imbalance had grown, with cash outside banks climbing to 106.812 trillion dinars ($81.18 billion) as bank holdings slipped to 6.748 trillion dinars ($5.13 billion). Money is not merely sitting in the system's margins; it is draining away from its center.

Mahmoud Dagher, a financial expert and former CBI director general, cautioned against reading all of it as hoarded savings. Of roughly 105 trillion dinars in issued currency, he told Shafaq News, about eight trillion sat in banks and 97 trillion circulated elsewhere, but around two-thirds of that finances everyday transactions, property purchases, salaries, and wages, with perhaps a quarter held as stored savings. His point sharpens rather than softens the problem: Iraqis are not simply saving in cash; they are running an entire economy through it, and they do so because they distrust the alternative. After all, payment habits are entrenched, and electronic options remain slow to take hold.

The cost of that arrangement falls on the wider economy. Mudhir Mohammed Saleh, financial adviser to the prime minister, warned that money outside formal channels starves banks of the resources they need to lend. Cash held by households and businesses outside the financial system, he told Shafaq News, reduces what is available for intermediation while reinforcing informal activity and raising the cost of transactions. “Drawing those funds in will take competitive returns, stronger protections, simpler procedures, and dependable access to deposits, and even then the work is not done.”

The goal, Saleh stressed, is to channel the money into investment, production, and employment.

The banks, however, are moving in the wrong direction. CBI figures show deposits falling for a third straight month, from 105.090 trillion dinars in March to 104.727 trillion in April and 104.296 trillion by the end of May. Cash credit declined over the same period, from 73.832 trillion to 73.173 trillion dinars. The retreat is not for want of institutions: the Eco Iraq Observatory counted 81 banks and representative offices in July: eight state-owned, 24 local commercial, 31 local Islamic, 16 foreign, and two foreign representative offices.

Najm Abdul Tarish, an economic expert and professor at the University of Dhi Qar, argued that cash itself is not the issue; its dominance over both transactions and savings is, because it sidelines financial institutions from the wider economy. He traced that dominance to the same cluster of causes: distrust, ingrained payment habits, the informal economy, and thin electronic uptake.

In March, an economic source told Shafaq News that major state lenders, including state-run Rafidain and Rasheed banks, faced acute liquidity shortages that forced some clients to come back later or accept only part of what they had requested. When retrieving a large sum can take days, holding banknotes feels more dependable than any account: theft, loss, and depreciation notwithstanding.

Progress on payments has not closed the gap. Iraq has made measurable gains in electronic transactions: the Eco Iraq Observatory put active bank cards at around 25 million in July, and earlier government figures showed financial inclusion rising from under 10 percent in 2019 to roughly 40 percent. Yet access does not equal deposits. Salary earners often withdraw their wages the moment they land, merchants accept cards while still preferring cash, and households open accounts they never use for long-term saving. More cards, in short, have not meant less cash.

Iraq's dependence on oil compounds the strain. Petroleum supplies at least 80 percent of state revenue, which ties the banking system to the swings of government finance. When oil income falls, Baghdad relies more heavily on domestic banks.

In August, senior Finance Ministry officials and a source close to Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi told Shafaq News that the government was preparing to borrow more than three trillion dinars from local private banks to cover public-sector salaries after petroleum revenue dropped sharply. For depositors, a system with a narrow deposit base must absorb private-sector demand and bursts of state borrowing at once. That does not by itself delay withdrawals, but it deepens the structural pressure and underscores why stable deposits matter.

Baghdad is pursuing changes to governance, state-bank structure, and digital infrastructure: the Finance Ministry plans to merge Rafidain with Rasheed and the Cooperative Agricultural Bank with the Industrial Bank, and the government is weighing leadership changes at state lenders faulted for poor service and slow modernization. Cards, mergers, and new regulations can widen access. None of them can manufacture reliability.

Until Iraqis feel secure enough to trust banks with their money —confident that a deposit made today can be withdrawn in full tomorrow— cash will keep its advantage, and every reform will run up against the trust it has yet to earn.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Iraq activates whistleblower rewards as corruption reports top 26,000

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:04 +0000

Shafaq News- Baghdad

Iraqis have filed more than 26,000 corruption reports with the IntegrityCommission, the country's main anti-corruption body, according to governmentspokesman Haidar al-Aboudi, in a surge the government links to the DawnCrackdown (Sawlat al-Fajr) national campaign launched on June 28.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi ordered the activation of a long-dormant lawproviding financial rewards for people who report corruption during an Aug. 29visit to the commission, calling the fight against corruption the country's “firstline of defense.”

Al-Aboudi said the value of recovered funds, assets, and property haspassed 1.359 trillion dinars (roughly $1.04B), much of it during the campaign.Al-Aboudi said the government was also pursuing institutional reforms,including greater automation of public services to reduce direct contactbetween citizens and officials and limit opportunities for bribery.

The campaign has not been limited to arrests. The government and theIntegrity Commission have also moved to strengthen prevention, audit statecontracts, and monitor projects and border crossings.

How The Reward And Protection System Works

Iraq's legal framework combines a financial incentive for informantswith measures meant to shield them, according to legal researcher Alial-Tamimi. He cited two laws: the Informant Rewards Law No. 33 of 2008 and theLaw on the Protection of Witnesses, Experts, Informants and Victims No. 58 of2017.

The 2008 law sets a reward for citizens whose information leads to therecovery of state funds or exposes theft, embezzlement, forgery, oradministrative corruption, al-Tamimi told Shafaq News. The reward is 5 percentof recovered money up to 100 million dinars and 3 percent of any amount above that,he explained, while reporting a forgery that leads to an arrest can bring up to500,000 dinars. Payment depends on the money being recovered and a final courtruling, with the informant's identity kept confidential.

The 2017 law provides security, judicial, and social protection,al-Tamimi said, including concealing an informant's identity, relocating themwhen necessary, and allowing testimony to be given in ways that preservesecrecy. It also established a witness-protection division within the InteriorMinistry to assess risks and carry out protective measures.

“Together, the two laws create a balance of reward and protection thatcan help investigators reach information that is hard to obtain by conventionalmeans.”

Vetting The Reports

The commission is empowered to sort and verify the reports it receives,said lawyer Ahmed al-Abadi. Article 13 of the Integrity Commission law lets thebody handle and filter reports, including setting aside any that contain nocrime or that inquiries show to be false, while an investigating judge canrequest and examine a report.

The commission evaluates each report and refers cases showing evidenceof possible wrongdoing to an investigating judge, al-Abadi said. The judge canthen hear witnesses, gather evidence and question suspects before referring acase to court if there is sufficient evidence of a crime.

The reward system provides an additional filter because payments aremade only when information produces legal results and leads to the recovery offunds, he said. Reports found to be malicious or rooted in personal disputescan be dismissed, while informants' identities are kept confidential to protectthem from retaliation.

The Risk Of Overload

Mohammed al-Rubaie, head of Al-Nahrain Foundation for SupportingTransparency and Integrity (NFTI), said the volume of reports reflects realpublic participation and support for the campaign but also exposes aninstitutional challenge. He noted that the 2008 rewards law had existed foryears without being activated before it was revived in the current campaign,which he said raises questions about how effectively oversight legislation isapplied.

“Receiving 26,000 reports requires an electronic and governance systemcapable not only of taking in information but of analyzing it, classifying it,and linking it to the backgrounds of those who submit it and the nature of theclaims,” al-Rubaie said, alongside an institutional structure able to handlethat volume of cases.

He warned of a further danger he called a "flooding" tactic,in which networks tied to corruption could file multiple false reports againsta single person as investigations close in, aiming to scatter judicial effortand prolong inquiries. In such cases, “the courts could face dozens or hundredsof reports against the same person, some containing real information and otherswithout basis, forcing parallel financial, administrative, and judicialinvestigations that take a long time.” That, al-Rubaie said, could overwhelmoversight bodies and weaken their ability to reach the most important cases.

Political analyst Ziad al-Arar said activating the rewards system couldstrengthen cooperation between citizens and oversight bodies, but warned that thesurge in reports would require effective screening.

He proposed specialized follow-up committees to distinguish crediblereports from those driven by political or personal motives. “Involving citizensin fighting corruption should not become a substitute for oversightinstitutions, but part of an integrated system in which the relevantauthorities handle verification, investigation and referral to the courts,” hesaid.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

US pressure cannot halt Iraq-Iran trade, expert says

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 09:58:54 +0000

Shafaq News- Baghdad

US financial pressure on Iraqi banks cannot stop trade between Iraq andIran, because most of that commerce moves outside the dollar and beyondWashington's reach, Japanese sanctions expert Kazuto Suzuki* told Shafaq News.

More than six months into the US-Iran war, which began with US andIsraeli strikes in late February, Washington has widened its sanctionscampaign. Suzuki argued that the measures have failed to give the United Statesenough leverage to force major concessions from Tehran, with Iraq illustratingthe limits of that pressure.

Suzuki's assessment contrasts with Washington's portrayal of its latestmeasures as an intensified effort to disrupt Iran's remaining financialnetworks.

On August 24, the US Treasury launched Operation Economic Outcast,designating nearly 60 entities, individuals and vessels based in Hong Kong,China, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and elsewhere forfacilitating Iranian sanctions evasion, and widening the sectors exposed tosecondary penalties.

Days later, it moved to cut the UAE branches of Egypt's Banque Misr offfrom the US dollar system, and on September 4 it sanctioned Turkiye's GoldenGlobal Bank and two subsidiaries, accusing them of moving Iranian oil revenuefrom China through Turkiye and converting it into cash and gold for the IslamicRevolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.

Suzuki did not dispute the breadth of the campaign. His argument wasabout its marginal effect: after years of adapting to American restrictions,Iran has little left to lose from another round. "The United States hasmade a very big statement, but the economic impact is very small," he toldShafaq News.

Where Iraq Fits

Iraq is where that limit is most visible. Suzuki called it the"weakest link" in enforcement, citing a long border he compared tothose of Afghanistan and Pakistan, informal commercial networks, and theavailability of financial channels outside the dollar. Washington has pressedIraqi banks over illicit dollar transfers to Iran, but he said those controlscan only reach transactions that use the dollar in the first place.

Traders on both sides can settle in gold, cryptocurrency, localcurrencies, and informal transfers built on commercial ties that long predatethe dollar, he said, which means pressure on Iraqi banks constrains a channelBaghdad and Tehran can route around.

Suzuki framed this as a structural limit on enforcement rather than aclaim that all such trade is illicit and cautioned that nominal measuresagainst Iraqi institutions would not necessarily halt the underlying flow ofgoods or money.

The China Obstacle

Scaling the pressure up, in Suzuki's account, would require Washingtonto blacklist major Chinese banks and companies, and it will not. Although theTreasury has sanctioned smaller facilitators in China and Hong Kong, targetinglarge Chinese institutions would carry high costs for the American economy at amoment when Washington depends on Chinese rare-earth minerals, and would inviteretaliation from Beijing. That dependence, he argued, removes the onlyinstrument heavy enough to change Iran's calculations and leaves Tehran free tokeep trading with its largest customer.

Secondary sanctions on other partners carry the same defect. Suzukidescribed them as a "double-edged sword," saying penalties on Turkiyeor the Gulf states over their trade with Iran would cost Washington more instrained alliances than they would deliver in leverage. He noted that the UAEhas cooperated voluntarily, while Turkiye, which profits from its trade withIran, has not; the Banque Misr and Golden Global actions show partner-countryinstitutions are not exempt, but a broader campaign against Turkish commerce,he argued, would produce more diplomatic damage than gain.

Limits of Economic Pressure

Economic pressure alone will not collapse Iran's political system,Suzuki said. Sanctions have worsened living conditions and fed public anger,and the authorities have used force against protests, but unilateral USmeasures also let Tehran blame Washington for the country's hardship and rallyresistance to outside coercion.

He drew a contrast with the period before the 2015 nuclear deal. ManyIranians who backed Hassan Rouhani in 2013 wanted both sanctions relief and abreak from the nuclear policies of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, andthe sanctions then carried international legitimacy.

Today's restrictions are largelyunilateral US measures imposed after President Donald Trump withdrew from theJoint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, which Suzuki said makes them easierfor Tehran to portray as unjustified. The 2024 election of President MasoudPezeshkian reflected a desire for relief, he added, but not acceptance ofTrump's claim that more pressure could yield a better agreement.

The Hormuz Question

On the prospect of Trump securing an accord more favorable than theJCPOA, Suzuki was blunt: "The answer is no." A deal requiresagreement between two parties, he said, and Iranians are not prepared toconcede to American pressure.

He pointed to the memorandum of understanding, known as the IslamabadMemorandum, signed at the Palace of Versailles on June 17, as evidence thatWashington ultimately had to negotiate. Under its terms, it extended aceasefire, provided for reopening the Strait of Hormuz to toll-free shippingand lifted a naval blockade, according to the White House; Suzuki read thoseprovisions as concessions to Tehran rather than proof that pressure works. Thatceasefire has since collapsed, and US and Iranian forces were still exchangingstrikes around the Strait this week.

The waterway is itself in dispute. Washington says it controls theStrait and that the June deal restored free navigation. Suzuki disagreed,distinguishing the ability to intercept ships leaving Iranian ports from theability to protect commercial vessels along the Omani side, which he said theUnited States has failed to do.

With attacks continuing and insurers reluctant to enter, he argued,control belongs to whoever can make the route unusable. "The Americans arenot in control; the Iranians are," he said.

A Regional Security Gap

That gap, in his view, points beyond the current war. With UScredibility strained by a fight it has not won, and China unwilling to act asanything more than a customer, Suzuki said the Gulf states are being pushedtoward building their own security arrangement, one that would have to includeIran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and others rather than rely on either greatpower.

China has the economic weight to invest across the region, he said, butno appetite to become its military guarantor; in his account, Beijing treatsthe war as an opportunity, buying Iranian oil at a discount and selling Tehransatellite imagery and other goods.

The Gulf states are not without leverage of their own, Suzuki argued. Asthe parties with most to lose from a closed Strait, they can press Washingtondirectly by tying an end to the war to lower oil prices and to Trump's standingbefore the midterm elections and can pump more crude while the waterway staysopen. Persuading both Washington and Tehran to keep it open, he said, is wheretheir influence is greatest.

The Remaining Option

Washington's approach, Suzuki argued, has run through a familiarsequence of sanctions, then military action, then negotiation, and the firsttwo rungs are now exhausted. "The economic sanctions do not work, and themilitary option does not work," he said. "Then the only option is tonegotiate."

*Kazuto Suzuki is a professor of science andtechnology policy at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Public Policyand served from 2013 to July 2015 on the United Nations Panel of Experts thatmonitored sanctions on Iran.

Unspoken scars: The growing toll of parental separation on Iraqi children

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 19:17:25 +0000

Shafaq News

The sound of raised voices has followed Amir Khaldoun for most of hislife. He was only five when his parents separated, too young to understand whatdivorce meant but old enough to sense that the world he knew had changed. Thearguments eventually stopped. The marriage ended. Yet the fear that settledinto his childhood never truly left.

“Since I was five years old, I have been afraid of loud voices,”Khaldoun told Shafaq News. “I've lived with the fear of losing people, and Istill feel that something has been missing since my parents separated.”

What remains are memories of a childhood marked by anxiety, a lack ofemotional reassurance, and the feeling that home had become unfamiliar almostovernight.

“I grew up afraid of everything and unsure of myself,” he recalled. “Evenpeople close to me used to call me ‘the one with the shining tear’ because Icried so often after my parents separated.”

“I never found anyone who could support me emotionally. I grew upbetween neglect and difficult circumstances, and I still carry the effects ofthat period today.”

Khaldoun's memories are deeply personal. They are also becomingincreasingly common.

Every month, hundreds of Iraqi families leave personal status courtshaving legally ended a marriage. In June alone, courts across Iraq, excludingthe Kurdistan Region, recorded 6,250 divorces, an average of nearly 208 eachday, according to the Supreme Judicial Council.

For parents, each case closes a legal chapter. For many children, it canmark the beginning of a much longer one.

The consequences can emerge in the uncertainty of moving between twohomes, the loss of familiar routines, or a lingering fear that life may neverfeel stable again. Such experiences can shape children long after childhood,contributing to anxiety, depression, behavioral difficulties, and a diminishedsense of security.

A May 2026 report in The Lancet Psychiatry noted that some childrenwithdraw from friends, while others find it difficult to trust those aroundthem. Many simply learn to hide what they are feeling.

Yet the emotional impact often depends less on the divorce itself thanon what follows.

Despite the steady rise in divorce cases in Iraq, services specificallydesigned to help affected children remain limited. Schools and socialinstitutions often lack clear mechanisms to monitor their emotional well-beingbefore temporary distress becomes a lasting burden.

Tahira Dakhel, a professor of children's literature at Al-MustansiriyahUniversity, believes this reflects a broader misunderstanding of what childrenneed after divorce.

“Providing material support alone is not enough,” Dakhel said. “Childrenneed emotional security and a relationship with both parents.”

She called for specialized government institutions to providepsychological, educational, and social support through structured programs thatfollow children's recovery over time rather than responding only after problemsemerge.

“Maintaining a child's relationship with both parents is in the child'sbest interests,” she added, arguing that weakening that bond without necessitycan have emotional consequences well beyond childhood.

Schools are often among the first places where children's strugglesbecome visible. A child who suddenly becomes withdrawn, loses interest inschool, or reacts with unusual anger may be showing signs of emotional distresslinked to problems at home.

Mariam Al-Fartousi, head of the Alice Organization for Family and ChildAffairs, said schools have an important role in identifying children affectedby divorce, but that role remains limited in many parts of Iraq.

Educational counselors, she said, need stronger tools to recognizepsychological difficulties caused by family conflict and provide early support.“The absence of such programs leaves many children struggling without properguidance.”

The first formal encounter with the consequences of divorce often takesplace in personal status courts, where decisions are made about custody,financial support, and family arrangements. For children, those proceedings canturn a private family crisis into a public reality.

“The child is often the first victim during separation procedures,”Al-Fartousi said, noting that some children witness their parents' separationin court without psychological support to help them understand what is happening.

Social researchers also examine family circumstances, speak withparents, and assess which arrangements would best protect the child's interestsbefore submitting recommendations to judges.

Nebras Ali, a social researcher working in one of Iraq's personal statuscourts, said the process requires looking beyond the legal dispute.

“We take into consideration the child's age, psychological condition andpersonal preferences, as well as the ability of either the father or mother toprovide a stable environment,” Ali told Shafaq News.

“We also examine the family's financial, social and behavioralcircumstances before submitting a professional report to help the judge make adecision that serves the child's best interests.”

Social researchers become involved before a divorce is finalized and,where possible, try to determine whether reconciliation is possible. In somecases, couples decide to remain together.

“In exceptional cases, we may recommend placing a child in a social careinstitution if staying with either parent would expose them to seriouspsychological or social harm,” Ali said, adding that such recommendations aresubject to legal procedures and intended as a protective measure rather than aroutine solution.

For many children, however, the decisions made in court represent onlyone part of a much longer emotional journey. Doha Shaheen knows that journeywell.

Using a pseudonym to protect her identity, she remembers being sevenyears old when she last saw both parents living together.

“I was very young when I saw my parents together under the same roof forthe last time,” Doha told Shafaq News. “I did not understand the meaning ofdivorce then, but I understood that the home where I used to sleep safely wasno longer the same.”

The experience shaped the way she viewed relationships, leaving herafraid that any family she created could eventually face the same fate.

“I grew up carrying the effects of that experience…I feared building afamily that would end in the same way, but I went through the same experiencemyself.”

Today, Doha has three children.

“They are living through the same wound that I experienced in mychildhood,” she said, describing the realization that the effects of herparents' separation had not disappeared with time.

“I did not know how to overcome my parents' separation, and I did notunderstand that life had to continue,” she recalled, describing her childhoodas a time dominated by loneliness rather than play and carefree memories.

Social researcher Manahil Al-Saleh said children respond to divorcedifferently depending on their age, personality, and the environment theirparents create after separation. Many, however, share a sense of lost stability.

Younger children may struggle to understand why their parents separatedand sometimes blame themselves, while adolescents may express distress throughbehavioral changes, social withdrawal, or difficulties in their relationships.

Major changes in daily life —such as moving to a new home, changingschools, or dividing time between two households— can deepen that sense ofinstability. Continued conflict or poor communication between parents can alsoleave children feeling caught between them.

“Over time, some children may lose confidence in themselves, struggle tobuild stable relationships and begin to see emotional connections as uncertainor temporary,” Al-Saleh said.

She stressed, however, that divorce itself does not determine a child'sfuture. Parents can reduce its emotional impact by explaining the separation inan age-appropriate way, reassuring children that they are not responsible,allowing them to express their feelings, and continuing to cooperate in theirupbringing.

For Amir Khaldoun, those opportunities came too late.

He remembers what followed his parents' separation: the fear of loudvoices, the feeling that something was missing, and a childhood spent trying tounderstand a loss he was too young to explain.

His parents' marriage ended years ago. Its impact did not.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

What is killing Iraq’s fish? The evidence points to no single cause

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:24:55 +0000

Shafaq News

A rare eyeless fish still survivesin Al-Anbar's stable groundwater while mass die-offs spread across Iraq'srivers, marshes, and farms. The contrast frames the country's central failure:not that its fish are dying, but that Iraq often cannot say why.

The evidence points to no singlecause. Water scarcity and oxygen depletion are documented in some areas;pollution is suspected but unconfirmed in others; salinity, disease, anddestructive fishing add further pressure. In most cases, the testing needed toisolate one factor from another was never done, and the diagnostic gap, morethan any single toxin or drought, is what leaves each die-off unresolved.

The losses come amid a steepcontraction in the industry. Iraqi Fish Producers Association head Iyadal-Talibi told Shafaq News that annual production has fallen from more than900,000 metric tons in 2018 to an estimated 250,000–300,000 today. That collapse—roughly two-thirds of national output in under a decade— turns the issue froman environmental concern into a broader food-security problem.

The Green Iraq Observatory estimatedon August 8 that more than 1,000 metric tons of fish had been lost nationwideduring 2026.

Maysan: Scarcity Suspected, LabEvidence Lacking

Maysan offers the most consistentcase for linking deaths to falling water levels, though the evidence restslargely on official attribution rather than measurement.

Fish began dying in the Al-AmshanCanal in early August after water releases dropped sharply, according to theprovincial council's Agriculture and Water Committee. Environmental activistMortada al-Janubi attributed deaths in the Al-Ezz River and central marshes toreceding water and falling oxygen. Maysan lawmaker Duha al-Sadkhan told ShafaqNews that hundreds of tons were lost in Al-Mejar Al-Kabir district, with damageestimated at three billion to five billion Iraqi dinars ($2.28M – $3.80M).

The stronger evidence is historical.In August 2024, testing after extensive mortality in Al-Huwaizeh Marsh, on theIraq-Iran border, identified critically low water levels and oxygen depletionas the principal factors; environmental expert Ahmed Saleh put mortality therenear 95 percent. That episode was measured. The 2026 Al-Amshan deaths have beenattributed to the same mechanism, but Shafaq News found no publicly availabletesting confirming it. The distinction matters: a plausible explanation is notnecessarily a proven cause.

The World Bank warned in 2022 thatdams, water abstraction, and wetland drainage were cutting river flows andthreatening inland fisheries. For fish held at high density in cages or ponds,reduced flow compounds the danger: poor circulation drives oxygen stress anddisease.

Wasit: Pollution Is Credible ButUnproven

If Maysan points to scarcity, theApril die-off in Wasit remains genuinely unsettled, with attention fixed onwhether contaminated water moving from the Diyala into the Tigris caused thelosses.

The Green Iraq Observatoryattributed the episode to untreated sewage and industrial waste carrieddownstream after releases from Hamrin Dam rose, and it documented more than 20cases of poisoning and skin injury requiring hospital treatment. Al-Talibi blamedsewage entering the Tigris through the Diyala and estimated that about 95percent of Kut's floating cages were affected.

But no public laboratory datareviewed by Shafaq News reported the measurements that would separate pollutionfrom oxygen depletion, infection, or several causes acting together: dissolvedoxygen, ammonia, heavy metals. Iraq's 2018 mass mortality shows why that gapmatters: an international investigation concluded that Koi Herpesvirus was theprincipal cause, with poor water quality and overcrowding raisingsusceptibility rather than triggering the deaths. The obvious culprit was notthe killer.

Pollution remains a real threatregardless. A World Bank document in May 2026 estimated that more than 70percent of sewage in Iraq's urban areas enters rivers untreated. WaterResources Minister Muthanna al-Tamimi announced legal action in July against partiesaccused of polluting the Tigris and Diyala, citing joint inspections with theEnvironment Ministry. Months later, no public information identifies thedefendants or indicates whether the cases have advanced.

The South: Salt Changes The Habitat

The same loss of freshwater thatstarves fish of oxygen creates a second pressure farther south, where weakerriver flows let saltwater push deeper into the Shatt Al-Arab and connectedwetlands.

A 2025 study by researchers from theuniversities of Basrah and Babylon recorded a salinity of 29.9 practicalsalinity units in Al-Hammar Marsh, where every fish sampled at one stationduring the intrusion was a marine species. At Abu Al-Khaseeb, at 25 units,marine species made up 82.8 percent of recorded abundance. The findings do notname salinity as a cause of the recent die-offs, but they show how sharplydeclining flows can rewrite which fish a habitat can hold.

Illegal Fishing Keeps Removing Stock

Destructive fishing also continuesto strip breeding populations already weakened by water loss.

Iraq's Law No. 48 of 1976 banspoisons, explosives, chemicals, and electrical devices, with penalties up toimprisonment and confiscation of boats and catches. Yet the Supreme JudicialCouncil found electrofishing, explosives, pesticides, and illegal nets still inuse in 2024 and urged consolidating provisions scattered across separate laws,a legislative fix that has not come.

The World Bank likewise flaggedelectrofishing and breeding-season fishing as persistent, poorly enforcedthreats. Agriculture Ministry spokesperson Qusay al-Hattab told Shafaq Newsthat teams document violations with GPS equipment, but no public nationwidefigures show how many were recorded in 2025 or 2026, or how many led toconvictions.

Millions Released, SurvivalUntracked

Against these combined pressures,the government's most visible response is restocking. The Agriculture Ministryreleased about 155 million fish in the 2026 season, al-Hattab said —up fromroughly 95 million the year before— including more than 11 million into AnahLake in Al-Anbar in April alone. The Animal Resources Directorate produced morethan 1.5 million native fish between 2023 and 2025, among them Binni, Qattan,and Shabout.

What happens next is unknown. Nopublished data reviewed by Shafaq News show how many released fish survive tomaturity or form breeding populations. The releases are countable andimmediate; the water they enter is often the same unmeasured water where fishhave been dying. Restocking may replace some of the losses without addressingthe conditions behind them, while no publicly available data show whether theprogram is producing sustainable fish populations.

That is the shape of the problem. InMaysan, insufficient water and oxygen depletion. In Wasit, pollution that isplausible but unconfirmed. In the south, salt is reshaping habitats. Behind allof them, disease that has turned catastrophic before and illegal fishing thatnever stopped. The investigation finds no single nationwide killer, and, moreoften, no test capable of naming the local one.

Until that changes, Iraq risksreplacing dead fish faster than it can explain why they died, treating thelosses without fully understanding their causes. In Al-Anbar's caves,meanwhile, the blind fish endures in something increasingly scarce elsewhere: stableconditions.

Written and edited by Shafaq Newsstaff.

Hadi al-Ameri remarks revive debate over Iraq's Tishreen killings

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:00:18 +0000

Shafaq News

A lawyer filed a formal complaint on Wednesday askingprosecutors in the Iraqi province of Wasit to summon Hadi al-Ameri, leader ofthe Badr Organization, over public remarks describing Iraq's 2019 Tishreenprotests as "sedition " that armed groups he called "the resistance"had confronted.

Families of protesters killed during the demonstrations areseparately pursuing court action, according to relatives who spoke to ShafaqNews.

Al-Ameri, who is also a prominent leader of the CoordinationFramework, a coalition of mainly Iran-aligned Shia parties that dominatesIraq's government, made the comments on Sunday at a ceremony marking the deathof Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a senior Shia cleric killed in a2003 bombing in Najaf. In a video that circulated widely, al-Ameri said the resistance"bravely stood against the Tishreen sedition and preserved the state and thepolitical system."

The Tishreen (October) protests were the largestanti-government movement in Iraq since 2003, beginning in Baghdad and southernprovinces on 1 October 2019 over corruption, unemployment and failing publicservices. Rights groups including Amnesty International said at least 541protesters were killed and more than 20,000 wounded,

Amnesty said successive governments had formed numerousinvestigative committees but had made no findings public. Despite at least2,700 criminal cases being filed over abuses during the protests and theiraftermath, few people have been brought to trial and “next to no justice hasbeen delivered,” the organization said, adding that many sentences had beenoverturned.

The Complaint

Lawyer Hazem Mazen al-Badri submitted his complaint to thehead of the Public Prosecution Office in Wasit, seeking to open a case andsummon al-Ameri. According to the filing, al-Badri asked prosecutors toauthenticate the original video and verify its date, location, and context, tohear al-Ameri's account of which groups he meant, and to compare his statementswith earlier investigations and the case records concerning protesters.

Families of the dead have voiced similar demands. Alial-Dahamat, brother of prominent civil activist Amjad al-Dahamat, who wasassassinated in the southern province of Maysan during the protests, toldShafaq News that victims' families were not surprised by the remarks butconsidered them significant because they came publicly from a senior politicaland security figure. He said families had appealed to the Supreme JudicialCouncil and the Public Prosecution to act, and that some had already filedlegal complaints against al-Ameri.

Bahaa al-Sarai, brother of activist Safaa al-Sarai, who wasalso killed during the protests, said on Tuesday that he intended to file suitover the remarks.

Ali al-Abadi, head of the Iraq Center for Human Rights,called on the Supreme Judicial Council and government bodies to open atransparent investigation, and urged the United Nations and the InternationalCriminal Court to take up the case, according to a statement he issuedWednesday.

The Badr response

The Badr Organization rejected interpretations of al-Ameri'sremarks as an admission of involvement in suppressing the protests.Abdul-Hussein al-Zalimi, a Badr official, told Shafaq News that al-Ameri hadnot meant the protest movement or its early demands for services and reform,which “drew support from the Shia religious authority and broad sections ofsociety.”

Al-Zalimi said al-Ameri was instead referring to those heaccused of later diverting the movement and introducing outside agendas, andthat Iraqi leaders had spoken at the time of “a foreign hand” behind some ofthe killings of protesters and security personnel.

The dispute revives a contested account from 2019, whenofficials spoke of an unidentified "third party" targeting bothprotesters and security forces, while rights groups and activists attributedkillings, abductions and assassinations to security forces and armed factions.No comprehensive, public judicial ruling has since assigned responsibility forthe full range of abuses committed during the protests.

The Tishreen movement forced the resignation of PrimeMinister Adil Abdul-Mahdi's government in November 2019 and led to earlyelections in October 2021. Al-Badri's complaint now rests with the Wasit publicprosecutor, who has not announced a decision on whether to summon al-Ameri.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Baghdad is dying: The cost of environmental neglect

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:48:31 +0000

Shafaq News

By Ali HusseinFeyli

When this country’s water,land, and skies are in their worst condition, the plans and statistics placedon the desks of environmental policymakers are not enough to grasp the depth ofthe crisis. Official reports may measure falling water levels in the Tigris andEuphrates or concentrations of dust and fine particles over cities, but thelong-term risks are far greater than figures and indicators alone can capture.

What Iraq faces today is notmerely environmental degradation, but a decline in the historical awarenessthat shaped a culture of adapting to nature over thousands of years. Mesopotamiancivilization was built around the value of land and rivers as foundations oflife and stability, and as resources to be preserved rather than depleted,because society’s prosperity was always tied to its ability to manage itsresources and live within nature’s limits.

That balance began to breakdown when oil extracted from beneath the ground became the center of theeconomy, while the value of resources above it —water, agricultural land,orchards, and other natural assets— declined. Over decades, short-sighteddecisions subjected the environment to unregulated exploitation and turnedlarge areas of Iraq’s fertile landscape into sites of uncontrolledconstruction, without a long-term vision to protect what remained of the country’sresources.

Large areas of orchards thatonce served as natural lungs for cities and as shields against heat, dust, anddesertification were removed, while concrete development expanded at theexpense of green land, reducing cities’ ability to withstand the effects ofclimate change and rising temperatures.

This painful shift went beyondpoor management, leaving society with pollution, declining water resources, andshrinking vegetation while creating a cultural disconnect between youngergenerations and the natural environment that once formed part of Iraq’s memoryand identity. Today, younger generations are growing up less connected torivers, orchards, and clean air, and more accustomed to dust, pollution, andurban congestion.

Environmental decline is notsimply the result of temporary administrative failures, but a sign of a deeperproblem in how responsibility toward the country and future generations isunderstood. Addressing it requires more than superficial water agreements withneighboring countries or budgets for projects that lack planning, oversight,and effectiveness; it demands a change in how Iraq manages its land, water, andcities.

Baghdad today offers a painfulexample of the consequences: polluted land, dust-laden air, and water undergrowing pressure show that the environmental crisis is no longer a marginalissue, but has become part of the crisis affecting quality of life itself.

When nature is depleted andthe country itself is turned into a commodity, the cost of repair becomes fargreater than the cost of protection, with some losses eventually reaching apoint where money alone, regardless of how much is spent in the future, can nolonger compensate for them.

This article was originallywritten in Arabic.

Iraq’s Dawn Crackdown spreads through state institutions: What the latest cases reveal

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:22:11 +0000

Shafaq News

Iraq’s Dawn Crackdown, or Sawlat al-Fajr, has moved beyond the dramaticraids that marked its opening weeks, evolving into a broader campaign reachingmunicipal offices, land registries, electricity institutions, banks, provincialadministrations and senior political figures.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi launched the nationwide anti-corruptiondrive on June 28. By August 9, Shafaq News had documented the detention of atleast 210 officials, lawmakers, public employees and business figures duringthe campaign’s first six weeks. The government has not issued a continuouslyupdated consolidated arrest count.

The operation did not end with the first waves of arrests. A Shafaq Newsreview between August 11 and August 31 identified more cases involvingcorruption, bribery, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, forgery, fraud, misuseof public funds or closely related investigations and convictions.

Dhi Qar Stands Out

Among cases tied to specific provinces, Dhi Qar appeared most frequentlyin Shafaq News' August 11–31 review, with most involving Nasiriyah and itsmunicipal administration.

The cases included arrests of municipality employees, allegationsinvolving public land, forged documents, suspected damage to public funds,bribery and manipulation of property transactions.

On August 17, a former head of Nasiriyah Municipality’s PropertyDivision was sentenced to six years in prison for taking bribes andmanipulating land transactions. Authorities said hundreds of documents —includingdeeds, receipts, sale agreements and official correspondence— had been seizedduring the investigation.

Two days later, a municipal employee facing several corruption warrantsevaded an attempt to arrest him. Authorities were examining allegedmanipulation involving tens of thousands of residential plots as well assuspected waste in investment and health contracts.

The pressure continued through the end of the month, when securityforces and Federal Integrity Commission personnel raided the NasiriyahMunicipality building and arrested a surveying expert over alleged misuse ofpublic funds.

By then, Shafaq News had documented more than 23 arrests in Dhi Qarsince the Dawn Crackdown began, in addition to the dismissal of severaldirectors-general.

The pattern made Dhi Qar —and Nasiriyah Municipality in particular— oneof the most prominent provincial centers of the campaign in Shafaq News'review.

Baghdad ranked second in the August 11–31 review, while other cases werereported in Al-Muthanna, Saladin, Babil, Najaf, Maysan, Al-Anbar, Basra,Nineveh, Al-Diwaniyah and Al-Sulaymaniyah.

Other cases were national in scope or did not belong cleanly to a singleprovince.

Municipalities, Land And Property Dominate

Municipal government, local administration, land and property accountedfor the largest cluster of cases reviewed by Shafaq News. Other cases involvedthe electricity, oil, health, security, culture, investment, transport andindustry sectors, as well as other public institutions.

Some cases involved finance, banking, pensions and currency offices aswell as senior political or public offices.

Land appears repeatedly as both a public asset vulnerable tomanipulation and a mechanism through which suspected illicit gains can beconcealed.

In Baghdad, authorities foiled an alleged attempt to seize state landusing forged ownership documents.

In Basra’s West Qurna area, investigators uncovered an alleged networkusing forged documents in land-compensation claims.

In Najaf, a bribery investigation involved a forged municipal barcodeconnected to the ownership of a land plot.

The largest single land-related operation reported during the periodcame in Al-Muthanna, where the National Security Service announced the arrestof 61 people over an alleged property-record forgery network.

Investigators said more than 90 transactions had been manipulated orforged, causing losses estimated at around two billion dinars, or about $1.5million. The suspects included government employees, lawyers and real-estateoffice owners.

The repeated appearance of municipalities and land offices suggests thatthe campaign is increasingly reaching the administrative level where citizens,investors and government employees interact directly with state property,permits, records and public contracts.

Electricity Emerges As Another Pressure Point

The electricity sector was the second major institutional cluster. Thecases ranged from arrests and bribery convictions to allegations of illicitenrichment and financial violations involving current or former officials.

One investigation led to the seizure of millions of dollars and goldfrom an electricity official. Other cases involved employees of electricitydirectorates, officials at generation and distribution companies, andconvictions over bribery or illicit gains.

By the second half of August, electricity had clearly become one of thecampaign’s most visible institutional fronts.

Banks, pensions and public money

A further part of the campaign centered on banking, pensions, currencyor other state financial systems.

The cases stretched from an employee of state-owned Rafidain Bankaccused of misuse of public funds to allegations involving pension paymentsissued in the name of deceased beneficiaries.

An Integrity Commission audit announced in August identified 16,384deceased beneficiaries whose pension payments had not been stopped, alongsidearound 40,000 biometric payment cards issued using outdated records.

In Najaf, investigators separately detained Rasheed Bank employees overpension payments allegedly embezzled for years in the name of a deceasedretiree.

Authorities also opened reviews into losses at state-owned banks, whilesecurity forces announced operations against counterfeit currency, fake dollarsales and digital-wallet fraud.

From Local Employees To Senior Figures

At the same time, enforcement has continued to reach higher levels ofpublic office.

The August cases included former lawmakers, a former governor, a formerdeputy minister and other senior officials.

Shafaq News also documented that a wider corruption review had reachedformer prime ministers and lawmakers, while the Central Bank later orderedasset restrictions involving political figures under investigation.

On August 30, a former MP and a former oil official were reportedsentenced in separate corruption cases involving illicit enrichment.

Saladin: From Public Fees To Hidden Property

Saladin provides another example of how investigations have widened fromindividual transactions to accumulated wealth.

Cases during the period included the conviction of a former governor,alleged embezzlement involving the Traffic Directorate and the arrest of 21people in an investigation into unauthorized parking areas and fee collection.

Then, on August 29, the Federal Integrity Commission disclosed recordsconnected to about 95 properties during an investigation involving a seniorReal Estate Registration official.

Investigators said properties had been registered in the names ofrelatives and intermediaries and were examining allegations of bribery, misuseof office, illicit enrichment and money laundering.

Authorities seized property records, contracts, cash, gold, computersand other materials during the investigation.

The case illustrates another shift in the campaign: from identifyingsuspect payments to tracing how alleged proceeds may have been converted intoreal estate, gold and other assets.

Asset Recovery Becomes A Second Front

The Dawn Crackdown has increasingly been presented not simply as anarrest campaign but as an effort to return stolen money to the state.

By August 9, an estimated 482.6 billion dinars (about $371.6 million)had been recovered in cash and assets, according to figures cited by the EcoIraq Observatory. The total included cash as well as roughly half a ton ofgold.

International specialists in tracing stolen and smuggled funds alsojoined Iraqi teams in Baghdad in August, with authorities seeking to track assetstransferred abroad and pursue suspects outside the country.

Separately, the Iraqi National Security Service said on August 27 thatit had recovered more than 93 billion dinars (around $70 million) for the statetreasury during the first half of 2026, while also reporting seizures ofdollars and Iraqi currency in its operations.

A Campaign Shifting From Raids To Prevention

During a visit to the Federal Integrity Commission, Prime Ministeral-Zaidi ordered the implementation of a reward system for corruptionwhistleblowers, tighter monitoring of border crossings and greater publicdisclosure of those implicated in graft.

He also called for monthly and quarterly progress reports and increasedscrutiny of high-value provincial and federal contracts.

The Integrity Commission said field teams had been established to auditcontracts throughout state institutions and that reviews had already beencompleted at eight ministries, with others continuing.

Officials also announced completion of Iraq’s National Integrity andAnti-Corruption Strategy through 2030.

That development marks an important evolution in the Dawn Crackdown.

The first phase was measured largely through who was arrested.

The next may increasingly be judged by which systems are changed, howmuch money is recovered, whether major cases reach final court judgments, andwhether the same forms of corruption return after the raids end.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

The borderland bargain: Daily life inside Khanaqin’s quietly shifting frontier

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:28:37 +0000

Shafaq News- Khanaqin

The map around Khanaqin looks markedly different from what it did a generation ago. In northeastern Diyala, near the Iranian border and southeast of the Kurdistan Region, administrative boundaries have shifted, familiar areas have come under different jurisdictions, and disputes over land and population have made every change more consequential.

What began on the map has gradually reached further into the life of the city. Agricultural contracts remain unresolved, families arriving from elsewhere have changed the commercial landscape, Arabic has become more prominent on shop signs, and some parents are reconsidering whether Kurdish-language education offers their children the future they want.

All of this has unfolded alongside a political struggle of its own. Kurdish parties retain a substantial base in Khanaqin, but their votes remain divided, while residents often find themselves navigating between Baghdad's administrative authority and Erbil's longstanding political and social ties to the city.

A Shrinking Map

For people who remember Khanaqin's former reach, the change is visible in the territory itself. Qaratepe, Jabbarah, Jalawla and Saadiyah were once part of the district, according to Muhaymin al-Agha, a senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The conversion of Qaratepe and Jalawla into separate districts removed them from Khanaqin's administration and reduced the territory under its control.

''The PUK has challenged some of those decisions through legal channels,'' Al-Agha said, arguing that objections were not adequately addressed before some of the changes moved through Diyala's provincial institutions.

The story, however, reaches back further than the events of Oct. 16, 2017. Those events came weeks after the Kurdistan Region held an independence referendum, which Baghdad rejected as unconstitutional. On Oct. 16, Iraqi forces, backed by Popular Mobilization forces (PMF), moved into several disputed areas, including Khanaqin, after Kurdish Peshmerga forces withdrew, shifting control of territory that had been held by Kurdish forces.

Serbest Barzo, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), traces an earlier turning point to 1992, when the subdistricts of Bamu and Maidan were separated from Khanaqin and attached to Kalar. Further changes came after Oct. 16, 2017, affecting Mandali, Jalawla, Qaratepe, Jabbarah and Saadiyah.

"Khanaqin was one of the largest districts in Iraq in terms of area and administration," Barzo recalled.

Its territory once extended east toward Iran, north toward Halabja and al-Sulaymaniyah. Today, the city is largely a district center with almost no subdistricts remaining under its direct administration.

Sarwan Mohammed, a Khanaqin resident, sees more than administrative reorganization behind that transformation. He links some of the later changes to competition among influential Sunni Arab political forces in Diyala, associating the administration of Qaratepe and Jabbarah with the influence of the Taqaddum (Progress) Party, led by Mohammad Al-Halbousi, and developments involving Jalawla and Saadiyah with the Sovereignty Alliance (Al-Siyada), led by Khamis Al-Khnajar.

Land and Identity

For Barzo, the consequences are particularly visible in the changes that have taken place since 2017. He describes them as "Arabization and demographic change," pointing to Arab families from other areas who moved into Khanaqin and bought shops, homes, and land.

He further connects those developments to Article 140 of Iraq's constitution, which provides a framework for resolving the status of disputed territories and addressing the consequences of earlier demographic policies. Nearly two decades after the deadline originally set for completing the process, Article 140 remains unimplemented.

The unresolved status of the disputed territories has also left land and agricultural contracts in limbo. Legislation and decisions introduced after 2003 were intended to address earlier policies and restore rights to their owners, Barzo argues, but significant parts of that process have not been fully implemented in Diyala, particularly in Khanaqin.

Some contracts granting the use of disputed agricultural land have continued to be renewed rather than being settled through a final determination of ownership. For Barzo, the issue is not the ethnicity of the person using the land, but the legal basis of the right itself.

The population side of the dispute is harder to separate from everyday life. Abu Marwan, a former educator, has noticed more people from outside Khanaqin in its markets, restaurants, and public spaces. Some settled after the October 2017 events, he told Shafaq News, while others arrive to work, trade, shop, or complete government transactions.

For Barzo, those movements matter partly because of where Khanaqin sits, describing the city as part of a strategically important belt linking the Iranian border with the Kurdistan Region and central Iraq, further calling it the "Gateway to the Zagros."

"The location gives the administrative changes a significance that extends beyond the city itself," he said, stressing that control of Khanaqin and surrounding areas can affect the geographic continuity of Kurdish-majority territories outside the Kurdistan Region's formal administration.

That broader contest, however, is not confined to maps, property records or constitutional provisions. It is increasingly visible in the way the city looks and functions.

Changing Khanaqin

Walk through Khanaqin's markets and another part of the transformation comes into view. Arabic has become increasingly common on commercial signs, according to residents and shopkeepers interviewed by Shafaq News.

For many shop owners, the reason is practical. A growing number of customers come from outside the city, and Arabic is the language most likely to reach them.

The same kind of calculation is beginning to influence education.

Abu Marwan has watched some families reconsider whether to send their children to Kurdish-language schools. For them, the decision is not simply about language or identity, but also about what happens after graduation.

Financial difficulties have limited employment opportunities within Kurdistan Region institutions, while salary delays and other pressures have affected the education system.

Garmian University has become part of that uncertainty. The university once had about 4,000 students, but concerns over national recognition of its degrees have made some families uneasy about the prospects facing graduates.

For students, Abu Marwan sees two difficult paths: limited employment opportunities inside the Kurdistan Region or potential obstacles when they seek to enter federal institutions.

Language, in that sense, has become tied to the wider economic and political choices facing families. The changes are subtle enough to appear ordinary —a different language on a shop sign, a family choosing one school over another, a customer arriving from another part of Diyala— but together they point to a city whose social and economic landscape is shifting.

Divided Strength

Those shifts are taking place while Kurdish political forces remain divided over how best to respond. Ahmed Mohammed, a political observer of Kurdish affairs in Khanaqin, describes the relationship between Kurdish political forces as having moved from "integration" to "erosion."

The PUK and KDP frequently enter elections separately, and their rivalry can continue after the votes have been counted. Among their supporters, Mohammed argues, defeating the other Kurdish party can sometimes become almost as important as winning a seat.

The numbers illustrate the dilemma. Mohammed estimates that the KDP has more than 10,000 votes in the area, while the PUK has more than 30,000. Together, those figures represent a substantial electoral bloc, but separate lists divide its political impact and make it harder to convert that strength into equivalent representation in the Iraqi parliament and Diyala Provincial Council.

Mohammed argues that Kurdish political competition risks weakening the city's ability to defend its interests at a time when Khanaqin already occupies an ambiguous position between Baghdad and Erbil authorities.

That ambiguity is familiar to residents. When people from Khanaqin turn to Baghdad, artist Abbas al-Zahawi says, they can encounter the view that the city is politically connected to the Kurdistan Region. When they turn to Erbil, they can receive the opposite response: Khanaqin falls administratively under the Iraqi government.

The result is a sense of being caught between two systems without a clear political home.

Between Two Capitals

For residents who remember the years after 2003, that feeling is especially pronounced because the relationship between Khanaqin and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was once much more visible.

The city received reconstruction projects and substantial support from the KRG during that period. Barzo estimates that roughly 14 years of projects helped Khanaqin recover from some of the destruction and deterioration in services inherited from the previous Baath regime.

Al-Zahawi remembers the city before 2017 as "a beautiful mosaic" of people, languages and customs. The events of Oct. 16 that year, he believes, marked a turning point.

"The KRG and Kurdish political forces cannot be exempted from responsibility," he said, calling what followed "political erosion."

He also estimates that the KRG's service presence in Khanaqin fell by as much as 90% after the events, arguing that Kurdish parties devoted too much attention to internal competition instead of using their political and financial resources to protect the city's position and address residents' needs.

Al-Agha, meanwhile, places responsibility elsewhere as well as within the Kurdish political camp. While holding Baghdad primarily responsible for the administrative changes, he believes Kurdish divisions have weakened the ability of the parties to respond effectively.

The result, therefore, is a problem that can no longer be reduced to a single dispute over boundaries. For Khanaqin, the uncertainty surrounding its borders and political status continues to shape everyday life. As Baghdad and Erbil maintain competing ties to the city, residents are left waiting for greater clarity over the institutions and decisions that govern them.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.

Tension meets dialogue as Iraq approaches September 30

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:42:59 +0000

Shafaq News

Iraq is stepping up efforts to place weapons under statecontrol as talks with armed factions continue ahead of the September 30 end ofthe US-led Global Coalition’s military mission in the country.

The government announced on August 21 that September 30would mark the deadline for bringing weapons under state control. Two dayslater, however, National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji clarified that thedate referred to the end of the Coalition’s presence and that the process ofbringing weapons under state control would continue gradually afterward. On thesame day, military spokesman Sabah al-Numan confirmed that talks with armedfactions were ongoing and that the central committee overseeing the issue hadmade significant progress.

Agreement On Principle, Differences Over Timing

Hasan Fad'am, a senior member of the Al-Hikma Movement led byAmmar al-Hakim, told Shafaq News that placing weapons under state control hadmoved beyond a government program to become a political project supported bymajor political forces and endorsed by Iraq’s religious leadership.

Fad'am stressed that all sides, including armed factions,agree in principle that weapons should be controlled by the state. Differences,he explained, concern the timing and mechanisms of implementation rather thanthe principle itself.

He described the talks with the factions as having madesubstantial progress, adding that he was not aware of any faction openlyrejecting the principle of state control. The Al-Hikma figure expects negotiationsafter September 30 “to become more serious and clearly defined, particularlyover how the policy should be implemented.”

From Disarmament to Weapons Management

Security expert Adnan al-Kinani maintained that thegovernment was clearly seeking to reinforce state authority and restrictweapons to legally authorized bodies, while some armed factions were seeking todelay the process because of concerns about possible regional developmentsaffecting Iraq.

In an interview with Shafaq News, al-Kinani emphasized thatthe central issue was not the existence of weapons but whether their useremained outside state authority.

He called for a process that avoids confrontation and allowsfaction members to join official formations, including the Popular MobilizationForces (PMF) or the regular armed forces.

“Factions could pursue political and national roles throughalternative channels while protecting their members from becoming targets,” heargued, warning that external pressure could push Iraq toward dangerousescalation.

On August 23, political sources told Shafaq News that someShiite political leaders were seeking to replace the term “disarmament” with“weapons management,” with the use of weapons placed under the authority of thecommander-in-chief of the armed forces. The proposal also links weaponstransfers to the withdrawal of foreign forces and the passage of legislationgoverning PMF service and retirement arrangements.

A Coordination Framework (CF) source separately revealedthat weapons handed over by factions could be transferred to PMF storagefacilities rather than to the Defense or Interior ministries. The source alsopointed to political agreement on accelerating legislation governing PMFservice and retirement, including ranks, career progression and rights forfallen and wounded members.

State Institutions Prepare for The Next Phase

Iraqi state institutions have also begun preparing for amore formal enforcement phase.

On Wednesday, Supreme Judicial Council President Faiq Zidandiscussed with US Chargé d’Affaires Joshua Harris judicial procedures againstindividuals and entities carrying weapons in violation of the constitution andlaw, as well as mechanisms for enforcing the rule of law after the Coalitionmission ends.

On the same day, Iraqi security forces described placingweapons under state control as a matter of national sovereignty and confirmedthat the Coalition withdrawal was progressing according to its timetable. TheDefense Ministry has also been working to strengthen air-defense systems aheadof the next security phase, while security agencies announced that they hadfoiled an attempt to manufacture drones inside Baghdad.

Factions Take Different Positions

Saraya al-Salam, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Imam Ali haveindicated a willingness to adjust their relationship with state institutions,while consultations continue with other groups, including Kataib Hezbollah,Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, according to political andmedia sources cited by Shafaq News.

On August 21, a source told Shafaq News that Asaib Ahlal-Haq had handed over weapons, including drones, at one of its bases south ofBaghdad. The operation was overseen by a committee including representatives ofthe Interior and Defense ministries, the National Security Advisory and the PMFCommission.

Other factions, however, continue to defend what they callthe “resistance weapons,” tying their future to the complete withdrawal offoreign forces from Iraq and guarantees that the country can defend itselfagainst external attacks. Shafaq News has reported that Kataib Hezbollah,Harakat al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada remain among the groupsinsisting on retaining their military capabilities.

Regional Pressures Shape The Debate

The weapons issue is also connected to wider securitychanges across the Middle East since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Ardeshir Pashang, a senior researcher at the Iranian Centerfor Strategic Studies and the Iranian Association for West Asia Studies, notedthat Iraq has spent years balancing relations with Iran and the United Stateswhile at times becoming a venue for competing interests between the two powers.

He outlined a difficult balancing act for Baghdad:preventing armed factions from taking unilateral military decisions whileavoiding a process that could create a new source of instability amidcontinuing regional tensions.

“The end of the Coalition’s military mission could removeone of the main arguments used to justify keeping weapons outside the state’sdirect control,” Pashang observed, adding that strengthening state authority“could reduce the risk of Iraqi territory being used again in regionalconflicts.”

He maintained that aligning the PMF’s institutional statuswith a unified chain of command under state authority would strengthen Iraq’ssovereignty and stability. Meanwhile, negotiations continue over how factionweapons would be managed and over legislation governing the PMF.