alt

Second-floor voting: Iraqis that can’t reach ballot boxes 

We interviewed 12 organisations concerned with the affairs of disabled people in Iraq and eight people with mobility and visual disabilities who were unable to participate in the 2021 elections. They unanimously agreed that the government had failed to facilitate their participation in voting over the past two decades. Will this be repeated in local elections? For days before the parliamentary elections on October 10, 2021, Mohammed Al-Ajeeli hoped to participate and vote for the candidate he deemed worthy.

alt

Vision Beyond the Eye: On Blindness and Sight in Theatre and Football

Darkness has become their world. It is an experience they don't want anyone to have. Yet, they learn from it. It inspires them. Details are not merely daily habits or fleeting actions in that world. They are like big achievements— indeed they are big achievement. About blindness, its world, and its community in Iraq. 

alt

Tower 716: How did a residential area become a cancer hotspot?  

An investigation into the fates of 20 cancer patients in Neighbourhood 201 in Baqubah, and the geographical scope of their cases which cover the area of Tower 716, operated by the telecommunications company Asiacell. Do mobile towers cause cancer? Why are people dying in this place? A residential area evacuated by a tower which is splitting families apart.

alt

Breathing life into a dead language: what remains of colloquial Mandaic in Iraq 

In the Iraqi dialect, when someone says, “I went home”, tabeet al-bayt, or “I entered the house,” dasheet al-bayt, half of what they are saying is in the Mandaean language. When a folk poet recites a poem about his mother’s sheela, it is taken from sheyala, which is the head covering of a Mandaean woman. The same applies to a singer who begins with “Woe, Woe”. Breathing life into a dead language: what remains of Mandaean dialect in Iraq

LATEST POSTS

PODCAST

OTHER POSTS

title
Analysis

We Waited for “The Matrix” to Fill Our World with Justice

Everything seemed to come to a halt in the period leading up to the US occupation of Iraq in April 2003. Everyday life, educational institutions, and government offices all came to a standstill, almost as if a child had hit the pause button during a particularly terrifying scene in a movie.

title
Features

Al-ʿAsa’ib’s Business Ravages the Banks of the Tigris

Around 50 quarries are scattered in the Tigris River and on its banks in the city of Mosul, with giant excavators desiccating it and making its aquatics vulnerable to extinction. But money, power, and the impulsion to return and rebuild, are the key drivers behind the continuation of this process that ravages the river and threatens its future.

title
Features

“There is little water left”: Tribes of Al-Muthanna fight over groundwater 

Water scarcity in Al-Muthanna has forced the residents to cultivate the desert by exploiting groundwater, but the story of the search for water is broader with countless twists and turns. This is the story of the underground “secret” in Al-Muthanna that may soon vanish.

title
Analysis

From Parliament to Jail: vaguely defined laws as a tool to suppress freedoms in Iraq 

Karkh misdemeanor court issued a ruling to imprison Hadi Al-Salami, a member of parliament from Najaf, for six months using the Article 331 of Iraq’s Penal Code. This followed a lawsuit filed by the Ministry of Trade against him.