Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj The Nelson Mandela high school in the city of Nantes, France, was built as a modern and innovative building at the enormous cost of 75 million euros. Five architectural consulting firms designed the plans for this unique wooden building, which included indoor sections, a sports hall, a climbing wall for ascending, and various advanced laboratories. But apparently all this luxury and blessing was not enough; and this week, in the riots in France that were supposedly for “improving the state of education,” it was set on fire! In this wave of unrest, a quarter of France’s high schools suffered damage. So far, hundreds of police officers and firefighters have been injured, thousands of people have been arrested, and countless destruction has been created across France. France has a long history with riots, but it seems that this time it is not merely “another normal phase.” According to a leaked police intelligence report, these riots are systematic preparation and train...

Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj  Iraq’s dinar devaluation reveals deeper fiscal, geopolitical and Baghdad-Erbil pressures shaping the country’s economic future. Iraq’s decision to reset its exchange-rate structure and move the official dollar rate toward 1,500 Iraqi dinars is more than a technical monetary adjustment. It is a response to a broader strategic problem: a state whose political system, public finances and economic stability remain heavily dependent on oil revenues, dollar liquidity and an increasingly difficult regional environment. The immediate effect is straightforward. The government now receives more dinars for every dollar of oil revenue. But the geopolitical consequences are more complicated. The measure changes the relationship between Baghdad and the population, between the federal government and the Kurdistan Region, and between Iraq's domestic economy and the wider regional dollar market. The decision therefore needs to be understood as part of Iraq's struggle to pres...

 Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj On September 21, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq officially announced the completion of the long-delayed unification and reorganization of its Peshmerga paramilitary forces under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs (MoPA). The Peshmerga are Kurdish armed forces, with roots going back to Kurdish guerrillas who fought as a more or less united front against successive Iraqi governments for most of the 20th century. After the 2003 invasion, though, they never came together as one Kurdish national army. Instead, they split into two separate party forces, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), each tied to one of the region's dominant political factions. Kurdish leaders hailed the September unification announcement as a historic victory for the Kurds in Iraq. Notably, the unification happened nine days before the final U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq. The timing raises an important question: as Washington shrinks its di...