Investigative Reports
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…
Peace Talks Begin, But the Doors Remain Shut: Displaced Kurds
On July 3, 2024, Dawood Youkhanna (72 years old), along with his family and other residents of the village of Miska in the Amedi district (70 km northeast of Duhok), fled their homes and abandoned their farms—their main source of income—after their village turned into a battlefield between PKK fighters and Turkish forces deployed in the surrounding area. The fighting caused fires that destroyed farmland and damaged many homes. “It’s been almost a year since we left. We’ve endured harsh conditions and still live with the hope of returning,” Dawood says in a low voice, expressing his hope that the…
Redrawing Nineveh: Are Minority Needs Being Servedor Manipulated?”
As soon as Nineveh was fully liberated from ISIS in the summer of 2017, political movements started to emerge, particularly around the time of each election, regarding its administrative future. Representatives of minorities—including Turkmen, Christians, Shabaks, and Yazidis—repeatedly announced their desire to transform their areas (Tel Afar, Sinjar, and the Nineveh Plain) into separate provinces. These aspirations turned into formal efforts by political parties and forces, especially after the Iraqi Parliament voted on April 14, 2025, to approve the creation of Halabja Province—making it the fourth province in the Kurdistan Region and the 19th in Iraq. Minority Areas Nineveh spans…
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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.
