FORWARD (I) Since its establishment in 1994, the Iraqi Economic Forum (IEF) has been active in organising lectures and seminars in London on economic themes mainly relating to the Iraqi economy. A notable joint effort was the collaboration of the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter with IEF in organising an international conference in July 1997 on Iraq’s
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This article is part of a collection of tributes to the late Faleh A. Jabar. It was first published in Banipal 61, A Journey in Iraqi Fiction in Spring 2018. I first met Faleh in the early 1990s, introduced and highly recommended by my friends Peter and Marion Sluglett, prominent Iraq scholars, with a view to starting a PhD at Birkbeck. I took an immediate liking to Faleh,
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A ray of hope The defeat of Islamic State (IS) in northern and western Iraq, and restoration of federal-government control over disputed territories (including Kirkuk) in the aftermath of the KRG referendum on independence, have altered the mood of Baghdad politics significantly in recent months. There is a tangible new sense of Iraqi nationalism (among Arab Iraqis at
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Iraqis and outside observers alike are still making sense of the surprise results of last weekend’s elections, the country’s first since the violent rise and fall of the Islamic State. In the biggest shock, the populist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s political coalition—a nationalist, non-sectarian alliance between his political movement, secular activists and the Iraqi
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The victory of Saairun (Marching Forward) in Iraq’s 12 May elections took many by surprise. The alliance which united the Shi’i Islamist Sadrist movement, led by the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) won more seats (54) than any other electoral coalition. Much has been written since the shock election result reflecting on Muqtada’s supposed tr
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