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It’s complicated: who’s on whose side in Syria and Iraq
There are so many different power blocs and interest groups in Iraq and Syria that it is almost impossible to predict where events might lead.
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There are so many different power blocs and interest groups in Iraq and Syria that it is almost impossible to predict where events might lead.
The Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin says Britain “needs to come in assistance” to Yazidis and Christians in Iraq. But bombing is not the answer, argues Fuad Nahdi, who runs the Radical Middle Way.
British Chinook helicopters could soon join RAF transport planes and Tornado jets operating in Iraq as the UK rapidly escalates its aid mission. Michael Crick explains.
Farhad Atrushi, governor of Duhok, tells Channel 4 News the international community must move quickly to help thousands of displaced Yazidis. “We need camps for of families in Duhok,” he says.
As long as Nouri al Maliki refuses to step down, the Iraqi government is doing no governing at all, let alone getting a grip on the military disaster to the north.
One man was punched back and I found myself dragging dehydrated children to the back of the aid helicopter for safety.
Iraq’s president asks Haider al-Abadi, deputy parliamentary speaker, to form a new government – a move that will be resisted by incumbent prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The US faces more tough choices to prevent a repeat of the 1991 humanitarian disaster in Iraq.
Minority Yazidis in Iraq are reportedly buried alive as the US steps up airstrikes against the Islamic State, which declares ‘caliphate’ in the region.
Barack Obama says airstrikes in Iraq destroyed arms and equipment that Islamic State insurgents could have used to attack Irbil, but warns the current operation could take some time.
Ali Khedery, a former American official in Iraq, Rosa Burc, a Yezidi and the head of the Kurdish society at SOAS, and Zuhair Al-Naher, a spokesman for the ruling Shia party in Iraq, debate.
US military aircraft conduct their first airstrikes against the Islamic State – the militant jihadi group that controls much of Iraq, as stranded refugees beg for international assistance.
Thousands of Iraqis, predominantly from the minority Yazidi ethnic and Christian groups, have fled to mountainous regions to escape an advance by Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq.
“The difference would be American air power,” says James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Iraq, on the question of how to deal with the Islamic State.
Iraqi government forces bomb the city of Mosul, held by Islamic State militants. The fighting comes as Kurdish officials report that thousands from Iraq’s Yezidi minority are in danger of starvation.