2024
Documents Found After the Fall of Assad Show Syrian Intelligence
A file discovered at General Intelligence Directorate headquarters details an operation to investigate SIRAJ, a Syrian journalist collective that is part of the OCCRP network.
Oil fields and war remnants raise cancer rates in Basra
Dawai Naji (45 years old) from Basra, southern Iraq, lives in a whirlwind of anxiety about his mother, who is suffering from leukemia and has been hospitalized for weeks at Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital. He fears she might join his younger sister and nephew, who both died of cancer in 2014. He believes that emissions from oil fields are the cause: “A gas flare from an oil extraction facility is only 1000 meters away from our home in the paper factory area in the Dhi Qar region north of Basra, and because of it, the residents are vulnerable to various types…
Spread the “drugs” in the Kurdistan Region… the danger of
(A.S.), a 19-year-old young man from Duhok, did not complete his middle school education. At a young age, he was drawn into the world of drugs, influenced by friends he encountered during a time when his parents were unaware of his changing path, despite their persistent but unsuccessful efforts to steer him back toward his studies. Reflecting on this chapter of his life, he gestures toward his arms, adorned with tattoos, and continues: "My street friends led me into the trap of drugs. They exploited my curiosity and recklessness, encouraging me to try them. I experimented with various substances—crystal, hashish,…
Follow us on social media
Get our newsletter
Concrete blocks extend to the mountains of Sulaymaniyah and threaten
“They are turning green spaces into concrete cubes!” says Sara Karim (34 years old) as she points to an area in the Sarjnar resort (5 km west of Sulaymaniyah) that used to be a “public park” that she used to frequent during her childhood years before it was transformed into…
A dangerous trade sweeps Iraq… “Forex” victims lose billions
Noor Al-Ali (20 years old) from Baghdad, at the beginning of 2021, thought that she would move from a housewife with only a high school diploma to financial independence by entering the “Forex” market after her close friend convinced her to do so. In order to take her first step…
Diyala River.. Pollutants and the inability of “Al-Rustamiya” destroy life
Only a few days had passed since Murtadha was born in Al-Zafaraniya Hospital, south of the capital Baghdad, until his parents brought him back and admitted him to the premature infant ward, hoping that his breathing would return to normal after a suffocation attack that struck him due to the…
The other side of Kurdistan… 16 years of residents of
Every morning, before heading to his job as a middle school physics teacher, Farhad Abdullah (48 years old) places several large empty plastic containers in his car trunk and drives two kilometers to the location of an artesian well on the outskirts of his town, Darbandikhan, in the Sulaymaniyah governorate,…
Freely available weapons and a growing influence of non-state forces
Hawraa, a 32-year-old lawyer from Najaf, left the legal profession after practicing for nearly seven years. Her decision came after she was assaulted over a personal status lawsuit she was handling in 2022. Without a job, she turned to the cosmetics industry, which has since become her new source of…
Kwashi factories and refineries in Dohuk pollute the air and
A.M. (42 years old), who lives in the Bastaki residential complex north of Dohuk in the Kurdistan Region, is forced to close the windows of her house and the air cooler every evening, when primitive oil refineries operating nearby release their pollutants and fumes into the sky, carrying unpleasant odors.…
Crude Oil Refineries Belonging to Influential People in Iraqi Kurdistan
“If thorough examinations were conducted on the region’s inhabitants, we would discover the extent of the catastrophe we are living in, with primitive refineries emitting their toxins day and night without any treatment.”
Power struggle in Thi Qar met with reform protests
Protests erupt in Thi Qar over unemployment, corruption, and poor services.
