ISIL 'using thousands as human shields' in Iraq's Mosul (Al Jazeera)

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/isil-thousands-human-shields-iraq-mosul-161028193148255.html

The battle for Mosul: The beginning of the end (Crispian Cuss, Al Jazeera)

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/10/battle-mosul-beginning-161023050933878.html

Marching towards Mosul with the Peshmerga (Adam Lucente, Al Jazeera)

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/marching-mosul-peshmerga-161024074724591.html

Battle for Mosul: Iraq forces close in on more villages (Al Jazeera)

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/battle-mosul-iraq-forces-close-villages-161024135052576.html

Mosul, the next target (Paul Rogers, openDemocracy)

The complex military operation to seize Iraq's second city from ISIS's grip is a microcosm of the long war.

https://opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/mosul-next-target

Iraq's Imperiled Democracy (Nathaniel Rabkin, The Washington Institute)

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/iraqs-imperiled-democracy

From Bosnia to Iraq: The Failure of Forced Coexistence (Janko Bekić, The National Interest)

The U.S.-led military interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, rump Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq have revealed Washington’s inclination toward forcible regime change and external democratization, but also its propensity for the maintenance of the status quo in regard to international boundaries (with Kosovo’s secession from Serbia as an obvious exception to the rule). In three out of four cases, the interventions have included neither border changes nor the diplomatic recognition of breakaway regions; in two, they’ve comprised the foreign imposition of experimental federal arrangements as part of a larger policy of compulsory coexistence between disparate ethnic and/or religious groups

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/bosnia-iraq-the-failure-forced-coexistence-16391

The Folly of Lobbying to Carve Up Iraq (Luay al-Khatteeb, The National Interest)

“It was the Kurds,” wrote Thomas Friedman in 2014, “who used the window of freedom we opened for them to overcome internal divisions, start to reform their once Sopranos-like politics and create a vibrant economy that is now throwing up skyscrapers and colleges.”

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-folly-lobbying-carve-iraq-16385

Understanding Iraq’s anti-ISIS efforts, political deadlock, and economy (Anna Newby, Brookings)

As the Middle East goes, much of the world’s attention is understandably focused on the chaos in Syria. But the United States is much more directly involved—in a variety of capacities—with Iraq next door. How is the military campaign against the Islamic State going in Iraq? What explains the political paralysis in Baghdad, as well as massive recent demonstrations? Is there hope for the economy? And on all of these fronts, is the Kurdish region doing any better?

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2016/05/19-iraq-isis-politics-economy-newby

Iraq: Are Shia leaders ready for sectarian healing? (Michael Knights, Al Jazeera)

It is often assumed that the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group since 2013 has made sectarian reconciliation harder to achieve in Iraq.

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Michael Knights is the Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He specialises in the politics and security of Iraq. He has worked in every Iraqi province and most of the country's hundred districts, including periods embedded with Iraq's security forces.

Wave of suspected ISIL attacks kill at least 60 in Iraq (Al Jazeera)

At least 62 people have been killed and about 83 wounded in a wave of suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attacks on military posts and civilian neighbourhoods across Iraq, officials said.

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The daughter of Iraq (Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, Arab News)

Zaha Hadid, who passed away this week, left Iraq in the early 1970s due to the increasing control of the Baath Party. She studied in Beirut and worked in London.

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The Comparative Metrics of ISIS and "Failed State Wars" in Syria and Iraq (Anthony H. Cordesman, CSIS)

The fighting against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh has become at least three different and interrelated conflicts: a fight against Daesh, a low-level sectarian and ethnic civil conflict in Iraq, and an intense civil war in Syria. It is also, however, part of a far broader regional and global conflict against terrorism and extremism; part of the competition between the United States and Russia; part of the competition between the majority of the Arab world and Iran; and part of an emerging struggle for Kurdish identity, and some form of “federalism” and/or independence that involves a range of separate Kurdish identities, Turkey, and the Arab world.

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Iraq Situation Report, Part II: Political and economic developments (Brookings)

As has too often been the case in Iraq, progress in the military sphere is not being matched by equivalent (or even commensurate) political progress. I continue to see Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi as a decent, intelligent man who wants to take Iraq in what I consider to be the right direction: toward ethno-sectarian reconciliation, more efficient government, and a more balanced foreign policy (or at least reduced foreign influence in Iraq). He continues to make smart moves in the military sphere, he has taken some important steps to decentralize power to the provinces, and his desire for a more technocratic and less political (or cronyist) government is laudable. However, his government continues to have little to show for all its good intentions, and that is costing the prime minister support in a variety of quarters.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2016/03/29-iraq-situation-report-politics-economics-pollack

Iraq Situation Report, Part I: The military campaign against ISIS (Kenneth M. Pollack, Brookings)

The U.S.-led coalition’s military campaign to “defeat” Da’esh (the Arabic acronym for ISIS) appears to be going better than is widely realized. The media has begun to pick up on this, but so far, the accounts do not seem to do it justice. The coalition has trained (or retrained) six Iraqi brigades, typically called the “Mosul Counterattack Brigades” or just the “Counterattack Brigades.” It was these formations that did most of the work at Ramadi and several are being shifted north to begin the Mosul operation. They are performing considerably better than other Iraqi brigades, a fact that is increasingly understood throughout the Iraqi government, boosting their prestige and the influence of the United States.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2016/03/28-military-campaign-against-isis-pollack

The Sunni Predicament in Iraq (Renad Mansour, Carnegie Middle East Center)

In Iraq, the self-declared Islamic State’s occupation of territory has lasted longer than most analysts and officials initially predicted. The solution, according to many Western policymakers, is to empower Iraq’s Sunnis to reengage with the central government—akin to the Sunni Awakening that flushed the Islamic State’s predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, out of the same areas. Understanding why, as of 2016, such a strategy is not working requires a nuanced look at the internal and external dynamics of the far-from-monolithic Iraqi Sunni community.

http://carnegie-mec.org/2016/03/03/sunni-predicament-in-iraq/iusn

The Comparative Metrics of ISIS and "Failed State Wars" in Syria and Iraq (Anthony H. Cordesman, CSIS)

http://csis.org/publication/comparative-metrics-isis-and-failed-state-wars-syria-and-iraq

Mosul Dam: Haider al-Abadi is too busy fighting ISIL (James Denselow, Al Jazeera)

The scenarios around the Mosul Dam collapsing are both real and terrifying.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/03/mosul-dam-haider-al-abadi-busy-fighting-isis-160302052947284.html

Iraq War: Not A Mistake, But A Holocaustic Crime (Ben Tanosborn, Eurasia Review)

Either our minds have softened in the United States, or our hearts have hardened way beyond the callous stage. Or, likely both.

http://www.eurasiareview.com/18022016-iraq-war-not-a-mistake-but-a-holocaustic-crime-oped/

Instability threatens Iraq's oil production (Wil Crisp, Al Jazeera)

While for much of 2015 oil traders were fixated on the United States shale oil producers, Chinese energy consumption and the actions of Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali al-Naimi, this summer they are also likely to be keeping a close eye on OPEC's second-largest producer, Iraq, where instability could curtail the nation's oil production and move global crude markets.

Over the past 18 months the south of Iraq has seen a surge in crime, including murders, kidnapping, armed robberies, extortion and drug trafficking.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/02/instability-threatens-iraq-oil-production-160208102652577.html