Category: Reports

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Reports

A War Without Images: How information is withheld, manipulated, and obscured in the age of AI

Do what we see in today’s wars actually reflect what is happening on the ground? Despite the abundance of information, in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the broader picture is shaped by restrictions, manipulation, and content engineered to appear real. This article examines and analyses this shift in the coverage of war.

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Reports

The Missiles Arrived: When the memory of 2019 returned to haunt us in Sulaymaniyah 

This article is about the regional war, and about the return of fear as a form of bodily memory, one that awakens suddenly and chases those who believed they had escaped it.

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Reports

Iraq in Wartime: Armed Factions, Political Deadlock Waiting for External Intervention  

This article argues that external intervention has become the most recurring response to Iraq’s crises. With each episode of internal political deadlock, ruling forces tend to wait for an external settlement or pressure to break the stalemate.

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Reports

“Everything Will Change”: Iraq After the Assassination of Ali Khamenei 

The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader revived long-standing questions inside Iraq about influence, arms, and the economy, placing ruling forces before a test they had not anticipated: What has changed since the dawn of 28 February? And how is a crisis managed as it intersects with military strikes, market turmoil, and the risk of oil markets disruption?
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Reports

Marriage Without Safeguards: The Consequences of Iraq’s Personal Status Code  

In this article, the author examines how Iraq’s Personal Status Code has weakened legal safeguards for women and girls, particularly by facilitating child marriage and creating a parallel religious legal regime. Drawing on court observations and survivor testimonies, the piece shows how unregistered marriages expose girls to abuse and argues that the new code erodes protections in divorce, custody, and access to civil documentation.

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Reports

What Happens to Water at the End of the Tigris and Euphrates: Water sustains oil fields while Basra runs dry

As Basra’s water crisis deepens, large volumes of water are being diverted to Iraq’s oil fields for reservoir injection. This investigation examines how oil production drains resources from people and farmland in one of the country’s most water-stressed regions.

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Reports

Sexual violence in Iraq: The normalisation of a structural crisis  

This article situates the mass sexual harassment incident in Basra within a broader pattern of systemic violence against women, connecting it to escalating domestic violence in Iraq, a culture of impunity, and moral double standards that hold victims responsible for their presence in the public sphere while allowing perpetrators to go unpunished.

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Reports

From arbiter to actor: The politicisation of Iraq’s courts 

How did the judiciary, an entity meant to be impartial, turn into a central actor in Iraq’s complex political landscape? Is there a way out of this entanglement? This is the story of a judiciary walking a tightrope, pulled from every direction.

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Reports

One state, three memories: Iraq’s divided identity 

One hundred years after the establishment of the Iraqi state, national identity remains elusive: a country unified by borders, yet divided by memory. This piece examines how history, sectarianism, and political rupture have fractured Iraq’s sense of identity — and why the state has repeatedly failed to reconcile them.

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Reports

Drought threatens Babylon’s fig trees: A tree for people, bees, and bulbul songbirds 

A fig tree can live for half a century and begins bearing fruit after its third year. On Saadoun Al-Saadouni’s farm, some trees are older than his eldest son. He tended them with the same care he gave his children. This is a story of fig trees dying in Babylon, one of Iraq’s most fertile provinces.