Investigative Reports
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 his small family, a wife and two daughters (9 and 11 years old). Like thousands of others, he was forced to flee to Erbil on August 7, 2014, after ISIS militants took control of the area and gave the residents two options: either pay the poultry farm (a tax) 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 lives upside down. I even left the land I never imagined I would leave. Many things pushed us to this decision: security, fear for the future, discrimination, and the absence of justice." Dubbani, who held the position of director of the Yezidi Endowment in Duhok Governorate in the Kurdistan Region…
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.
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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.”
In oil-rich Basra; two worlds, two classes
Corruption, poverty and unemployment grapple Basra, Iraq’s richest city, as thousands suffer to make ends meet.
