The fact that Turkey’s national oil company was not among 35 companies approved over the weekend by Iraq’s Oil Ministry to bid for soon-to-be announced tenders to develop oil and gas fields led to disappointment is Ankara, particularly at a time when Turkey planned to strengthen relations with its neighbor through further energy cooperation, Today’s Zaman reports.
The minister of energy has stated “we will not stop inquiring,” the Sabah newspaper reports.
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In the past few years, Iraq’s oil and gas sector has been featured in numerous conferences aimed at linking top government officials with the global energy industry, all of which have taken place outside Iraq.
In October, the Iraqi American Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Ministry of Oil will bring the meeting home — a first event at the new convention center at the rebuilt Baghdad International Airport.
IACCI Chief Executive Officer Raad Ommar told United Press International’s Ben Lando the event will bring the biggest names in Iraq oil for the summit.
Iraqi troops cordoned off the Basra office of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s followers on Friday and prevented them from holding prayers in a move that seems sure to inflame tensions, Reuters reports.
A company of Iraqi government troops in Sadr City retreated when they came under attack from Shiite militiamen who used the cover of a sandstorm, police said Friday, Slobodan Lekic reports for The Associated Press.
Since the very first conflicts, until it was made illegal under international law, rape was a part of warfare. But a series of recent allegations against Private Military Contractors suggests that it is not just a historical phenomenon, David Isenberg writes for UPI. Earlier this month the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on the issue. The title, “Closing legal Loopholes: Prosecuting Sexual Assaults and Other Violent Crimes Committed Overseas by American Civilians in a Combat Environment,” said it all.
Consider Dawn Leamon’s story, which is chronicled in detail in the April 3 issue of The Nation. She says that while working for the U.S. contractor Kellogg Brown Root she was raped in Iraq earlier this year by a U.S. soldier and a KBR colleague.
Villagers in the north continue to support rebels fighting Turkey and Iran, even though many have been displaced by recent fighting, Yahya Ahmed reports for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.
Lack of opportunities and growing conservatism prompts many to contemplate emigration, IWPR reports.
U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance, according to a new study by the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University, Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath.
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