more iraq news
(Possibly I will be posting news stories here on a regular basis for the time being. Possibly I will also resume posting non-updates on my life. Either way: trust that Iraq's on my mind.)
It's a strange kind of relief to read your friend's assurances that his organization has "a strong evacuation plan" in place should the shit start getting real in the city where he's based. One of the most immediate ways I can see all of this impacting the Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq is in the influx of refugees. Already there are tens of thousands of Syrian refugees there; now add half a million displaced people from Nineveh province.
Here are a few more articles I found, offering good background and summaries of what's going down:
ISIS seizes Turkish consulate in Iraq's Mosul (al-Arabiya; note that ISIS and ISIL are just different translations of the same group.) Turkey's retaliation - hell, the idea that Turkish forces could, in theory, end up fighting ISIL alongside Kurdish pshmerga - makes me want to laugh. Only it wouldn't be a good laugh, it'd be the kind of laugh I make when everything is going to shit and I can either laugh or bash my head against a wall.
Maliki's most solemn hour (The Arabist) This blog post better explains how all of this happened, and how it happened so quickly.
ISIL: Rising power in Iraq and Syria (al Jazeera) More background on where ISIL/ISIS came from.
Institute for the Study of War: Iraq updates, basically self-explanatory. Recent blog posts are breakdowns of the past days' events, and may be useful for gaining a better understanding of the larger picture.
Oof.
It's a strange kind of relief to read your friend's assurances that his organization has "a strong evacuation plan" in place should the shit start getting real in the city where he's based. One of the most immediate ways I can see all of this impacting the Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq is in the influx of refugees. Already there are tens of thousands of Syrian refugees there; now add half a million displaced people from Nineveh province.
Here are a few more articles I found, offering good background and summaries of what's going down:
ISIS seizes Turkish consulate in Iraq's Mosul (al-Arabiya; note that ISIS and ISIL are just different translations of the same group.) Turkey's retaliation - hell, the idea that Turkish forces could, in theory, end up fighting ISIL alongside Kurdish pshmerga - makes me want to laugh. Only it wouldn't be a good laugh, it'd be the kind of laugh I make when everything is going to shit and I can either laugh or bash my head against a wall.
Maliki's most solemn hour (The Arabist) This blog post better explains how all of this happened, and how it happened so quickly.
ISIL: Rising power in Iraq and Syria (al Jazeera) More background on where ISIL/ISIS came from.
Institute for the Study of War: Iraq updates, basically self-explanatory. Recent blog posts are breakdowns of the past days' events, and may be useful for gaining a better understanding of the larger picture.
Oof.