Iraq Archive

The United Nations took a historic step earlier this month, for the first time naming a victim of human trafficking as a goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of such atrocities. Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a 23-year-old Yazidi woman who survived months of captivity as a sex slave of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, was appointed to the position at a ceremony at U.N. headquarters in New York. She gives an international voice to the brutalized young women and children of the Yazidi religious minority, the victims of barbarity and sexual enslavement in northern Iraq. Murad’s new role provides some […]

During a visit to Washington in April, Qubad Talabani, the deputy prime minister of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, declared that “the real existential threat facing Kurdistan today is the state of [its] economy.” The KRG’s monthly deficit had risen above $100 million, adding more strains on an already-teetering economy. Four months later, the KRG continues to face a financial crisis as oil production slows amid attacks from the Islamic State, refineries fall offline, and export quality drops. Kurdish leaders consider their region’s oil fields to be the foundation for an envisaged state. But falling oil revenue leaves […]