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A U.N. official said on Tuesday the Iraqi government has made ‘very slow’ progress in its efforts to properly monitor how much oil it is exporting, refining and storing, Daniel Bases reports for Reuters.
Iraq’s majority Kurdish and potentially oil-rich area in the north has survived a summer of Cholera, but the region’s health minister warns of more outbreaks, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.
Norwegian independent oil producer DNO said on Friday that its share of production from a oilfield in northern Iraq rose to 5,882 barrels per day from 2,632 barrels in October, Reuters reports. DNO won’t have anywhere to send the oil, however, unless the Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad reach some sort of a deal. The two sides met this week but sources say nothing substantial has come from the meetings. Read more in Monday’s Iraq Oil Report.
Iraq’s Kurdish officials reluctantly accepted a UN proposal calling for a six-month extension to implement Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution in mid-December, despite warnings from Kurdish lawmakers that failure to implement the article would be considered a direct violation of their rights under the constitution, by Kathleen Ridolfo in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Iraq’s teachers and healthcare workers, like the oil unions earlier this year, are demanding the government take action on improving working conditions, by Ben Lando for UPI.
Suffering, Oil, and Ideals of Coexistence, by Reidar Visser at Historiae.org: Among the numerous fallacies that have become widespread in analyses of today’s Iraq is the notion that the Shiites of the country are unified in demanding the establishment of a sectarian federal entity, a Shiite super-state.
Women are being killed by militia groups in southern Iraq for not conforming to strict Islamic ways, the police say. And, increased threats from militia groups is driving many women away from their homes, reports Ali al-Fadhily for Inter Press Service.
This issue was a major part of the presentation given by Hashemiyya Muhsin Hussein, the leader of Iraq’s electricity workers’ union, at the recent International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions’ Women’s World Conference.
“There is a great deal of women working in this sector. During the war between Iran and Iraq, the men left for the front and so women replaced them on a wide scale, which is why there are so many of them now,” she said.
People write slogans on the walls of the markets and other public places against women, against women who work and against women who do not wear the veil. The simple fact of working is dangerous for a woman. But many women have no alternative, because of their financial difficulties. Yes, the fact that I am a woman has made things very difficult as well, but I didn’t want to give up and so I fought for this position, even though I received death threats against myself and even against my son.”
The Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.
The strengths and weaknesses in the latest Department of Defense report on Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq, by Anthony H. Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It sees valid reporting of many areas of progress, but also clear warnings that major risks and problems remain.
In the same way that awakening councils in Sunni cities have declared war against Al Qaida, some political elements in Shiite cities have established awakening councils to address militia elements and the growing Iranian influence, Iraqi politicians said, Basil Adas reports for Gulf News. Interesting how this could play out, considering numerous groups, already with their own militias, accuse each other of ties to Iran. It will likely not be pretty.
Plunder of Heritage: What happened to Baghdad’s Museum of Archeology is a paradigm of the whole disaster that the US-led invasion of 2003 brought down on the heads of the Iraqi people, an Editorial in Arab News: The Americans knew what they were doing as well. The single official facility around which they threw a security cordon immediately after they entered the city was the Iraqi Oil Ministry. They therefore made their priorities clear from the very start.
“Suppose Iraq invaded America. And an Iraqi soldier was on a tank passing through an American street, waving his gun at the people, threatening them, raiding and trashing houses. Would you accept that? This is why no Iraqi can accept occupation, and don’t be surprised by their reactions,” says “The Imam,” a young man from a mixed Sunni-Shia family, as he explains the genesis of the insurgency in Iraq and its exponential growth, a review of the new documentary Meeting Resistance by Dahr Jamail, author of the new book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.
Higher Education and the Future of Iraq: The past record, current condition, and potential of Iraq’s higher education sector, a new report by Imad Harb, senior researcher at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, published on the website of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
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