How Can Iraq Rebuild? By JACK WATLING

The dilemma is that it needs money—and will inevitably lose some to corruption. On Sunday, Haider al-Abadi, the prime minister of Iraq, visited Mosul to herald the success of his army’s nine-month struggle to recapture the city from the Islamic State. In a speech on state television the next day, he declared “the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state of

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Pioneering program makes aerial survey of Iraqi antiquities. By Adnan Abu Zeed*

Iraq, together with UNESCO, has concluded a comprehensive aerial survey of Iraqi heritage destroyed by the Islamic State (IS), paving the way for further cooperation to restore various Iraqi sites, particularly at the 13th-century Assyrian capital of Nimrod. In mid-May, Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini handed over to his Iraqi counterpart, Friad Rwandzi, a 500-pag

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