Iraq Oil Report's Daily Brief compiles the most important news and analysis about Iraq from around the web.
Published May 5, 2013
Bernard Gwertzman of the Council on Foreign Relations interviews Ned Parker:
Ned Parker, a veteran correspondent in Iraq, says the political situation in that country is worrying, and there is virtually no effort to bring rival Shiite and Sunni politicians together. "It is no accident that April was the bloodiest month for Iraq in five years," he says. "Politics exist in the vacuum of mistrust, and if harsh decisions are made, very quickly you go from calm into a crisis."
Parker explains that things are particularly bad in Baghdad, where conditions seem as they were when the war began in 2003. By comparison, cities in the north, in Kurdistan, and south of Baghdad are faring much better.
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Published May 5, 2013
Reidar Visser blogs:
The Iraqi elections commission IHEC today released the final results of the provincial elections on 20 April. The seat distribution, presented below with figures from 2009 in parentheses, largely confirms the picture that emerged from initial results.
Among the Shiite Islamist parties, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has lost some seats in some governorates but is still the biggest seat winner, with particularly strong positions in the governorate councils of Baghdad and Basra. Despite internal splits, ISCI has done a moderate comeback in several governorates. The Sadrists won back Maysan but otherwise are not making big advances; in Najaf, a local list is the biggest winner, exactly as in 2009. It is noteworthy that the Shiite parties that ran together in Diyala managed to emerge as the biggest winner with 12 seats; this will certainly be seen by some as an indication of increased sectarian polarization.
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Published May 5, 2013
Reuters reports:
Turkish energy company Kartet has secured a deal to export electricity to northern Iraq and has applied for an export license. That development could add to tensions between Baghdad and Ankara.
Under the deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Kartet will supply 200 megawatts (MW) of electricity a year, sources said April 29, adding that the Turkish Energy Ministry had given its consent to the deal.
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Published May 2, 2013
Raheem Kareem reports for Reuters:
April was Iraq's bloodiest month for almost five years, with 712 people killed in bomb attacks and other violence, the United Nations Iraq mission said on Thursday.
Iraq has grown more volatile as the civil war in neighboring Syria strains fragile relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Tensions are at their highest since U.S. troops pulled out in December 2011.
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Published May 2, 2013
Adam Schrek reports for The Associated Press:
The Sunni head of a committee established to investigate deadly clashes that erupted at a protest camp in Iraq last week said Wednesday that he believes excessive force was used by security forces as they tried to make arrests among anti-government demonstrators.
The April 23 clashes in the town of Hawija, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Baghdad, sparked a wave of violence across Iraq that has killed more than 230 people, posing the most serious threat to Iraq's stability since the last American troops left in December 2011.
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Published May 2, 2013
Ryan Crocker writes for The Washington Post:
The situation in Iraq has taken a very dangerous turn. Events there in recent days are reminiscent of those that led to virtual civil war in 2006 and resulted in the need for a surge in U.S. troop levels, a new strategy and very heavy fighting.
Indeed, the places where the violence has erupted are eerily familiar, as many were strongholds of al-Qaeda in Iraq at the outset of the surge, before the spread of the Awakening movement that fostered reconciliation between disaffected Sunni Arabs and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. The recent events come on top of increasing incidents of horrific attacks by al-Qaeda in Iraq, with last month seeing the largest losses in years — and they take place against a backdrop of increasingly serious political discord. These developments clearly require the attention and support of the international community, led by the United States.
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Published May 2, 2013
Emma Sky writes for Foreign Policy:
The famous Iraqi sociologist, Ali Wardi, wrote about the dual personalities of Iraqis. For many of us who served in Iraq, this is something we also seem to have developed.
I spent the weekend in Texas, staying with American friends I served with in Iraq. Although we had not seen each other in years, conversation came easily. Our shared experiences away at war had created life-long bonds. We reminisced about our time together -- the sense of purpose, the camaraderie, our small victories. We laughed. We drank. We ate unhealthy fast food. We gossiped about people we knew. Together, we visited the memorial at Fort Hood to pay our respects to the 450 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division killed in Iraq.
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Published May 1, 2013
The BBC reports:
At least 12 people have been killed in a series of bomb attacks in central Iraq, officials say.
A car bomb in Husseiniya, an eastern suburb of the capital Baghdad, left at least four people dead, police said.
Another explosion at a police station in Fallujah, to the west, killed four people, including three members of a local Sunni Awakening Council.
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Published May 1, 2013
The BBC reports:
Ten years on from the US-led invasion, violence is increasing, life expectancy is falling and children are falling behind in education, a new report says.
Nearly 700 children and young people were killed in the last five months.
The report warns that Iraq's children are being abandoned as international donors "sign up to the view that the mission has been accomplished".
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Published April 30, 2013
Reuters reports:
Iraq's oil exports rose in April to 2.6 million barrels per day (bpd), the country's oil minister said on Tuesday, helping to keep global markets well supplied as shipments from regional rival Iran are crimped by tightening Western sanctions.
Rising exports may help Iraq cement its position as OPEC's second-largest producer, even though creaking infrastructure and civil unrest hampering work at some of its top fields have kept the country short of a 2013 target of 2.9 million bpd.
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