Kurdish Bond Opens New Front in Autonomy Battle With Baghdad An Iraqi official said the Kurds who govern the north of the country have no right to sell their own bonds, opening a new dispute between the Baghdad government and the breakaway region. The Kurdistan Regional Government says it has hired Goldman Sachs International and Deutsche Bank AG to gauge interest in a sale of
Read MoreThe Kurdistan Regional Government, which oversees the semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq, has picked Goldman Sachs International and Deutsche Bank AG for a potential bond sale as it seeks greater independence from Baghdad. The two banks will “organize a series of meetings with international fixed-income investors in London, with a view to a potential transaction in th
Read MoreIraqis say ISIL’s impact on Baghdad food prices is even worse than its car bombs BAGHDAD—Four years after US troops pulled out of the Iraqi capital, local merchants are once more cursing America. “Look at these prices,” Abu Mustafa said, as he gestured at the mounds of fruits and vegetables around his stall at Karrada market. “Look what the dollar has done to them. Who can
Read MoreJune 20 was International Refugee Day, a fitting moment for the world to focus on the plight of the 60 million and rising number of displaced people. As the British-Somali poet Warsan Shire put it, “No one leaves home, unless home is the mouth of a shark.” But there are also millions who are unable to escape, lacking the means or fearful of bigger “sharks” further afield. Meanw
Read MorePsychologists in Iraq, a country long afflicted by violence, say they’ve never seen more terrible trauma than that caused by the Islamic State. These days, no one seems to have endured just one kind of life-jarring experience in the conflict areas of Iraq. The suffering is multilayered: trauma caused by having witnessed or being victims of Islamic State violence, being displac
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