2025
The Demographic Trap Renewed: Identity Politics and the Failure of
Fakherddin Salih, a Kurd who returned to Kirkuk after 2003, is one of hundreds of Kurdish families threatened with eviction from their homes. For nearly a year, Salih and others guarded their homes, fearing forced displacement by the Iraqi army, pressured by "influential Arabs" seeking to reclaim residential and agricultural lands that the Ba'ath regime had granted them after seizing them from their original Kurdish and Turkmen owners. This is a deep-rooted and recurrent conflict over property, fueled by partisan interests and constantly shifting administrative and security power dynamics in the oil-rich province, which is home to a mix of…
The Code is More Dangerous Than a Bullet: Cyber and
The digital transformation in the Middle East accelerated over the past two decades through artificial intelligence, cloud computing, advanced communications, drones, and commercial satellites. This transformation reshaped the regional security landscape on two interconnected levels: intelligence (expansion of collection and analysis sources, and the emergence of the private sector as a key information provider), and strategy (the expansion of the scope of power into cyberspace and drones, and changes in deterrence equations and costs). Events in the region, from Stuxnet and Shamoon to the threats of drones to navigation in the Red Sea, demonstrate how technology has simultaneously become both…
Captagon Drug Networks Adapt and Survive in Middle East After
Syria’s transitional government is cracking down on the production of Captagon — an illicit synthetic stimulant that flourished under the sponsorship of the Bashar al-Assad regime until its fall in December. But production and trade of the drug are continuing, particularly in parts of Syria not yet under the control of the new administration.
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The Silencing Machine: Killings, Trials, and Isolation of Journalists Intensify
On December 22, 2024, the Karkh Court of First Instance issued a ruling fining Iraqi journalist Qais Hassan five million Iraqi dinars in a lawsuit filed against him by former Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi in August 2024 on charges of “insult and defamation.” Hassan is just one of dozens of…
Al-Gharraf Oil Field… The First Accused of Spreading Cancer in
Only 600 meters away from the Gharraf oil field, located to the north of Dhi Qar Governorate, is the home of young Ali Hussein Alwan (19 years old). In early February 2023, doctors discovered a tumor in his brain. He underwent two surgeries to remove it at the Al-Ahli International…
The Demographic Change Haunts Minorities in the Nineveh Plain
Since Imad Zuhair (a pseudonym, 47 years old) returned to Qaraqosh, the center of the Hamdaniya district in the Nineveh Plain, after it was liberated from ISIS in late 2016, he has not stopped thinking about leaving the country as soon as he finds a suitable opportunity for himself and…
Marginalization policies and lack of justice… The Yezidis of Sheikhan
After spending nearly four decades in Sheikhan, Hadi Dubbani (57 years old) left the country with his family, leaving the Yezidi town located north of Mosul to settle in Germany, as did dozens of his relatives. He says in a choked voice: “ISIS destroyed everything for us, it turned our…
