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The Next Pressure Front: Iraqi Militias, Critical Infrastructure and the Struggle for State Authority

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 Iran-aligned militias could use Iraq’s airports and critical infrastructure as leverage, testing Baghdad’s sovereignty after the US withdrawal. Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj  Iraq is entering a potentially dangerous phase in which the struggle between the state and Iran-aligned armed groups is moving beyond the question of weapons and military bases toward the country's critical infrastructure and transportation networks. The Iraqi government's decision to suspend flights operated by Iranian airlines has created a new point of confrontation between Baghdad and powerful factions that oppose restrictions on Iraq's relationship with Tehran. At the same time, assessments that Iran-backed militias could target electricity infrastructure, oil-export routes and Baghdad International Airport point toward a broader strategy of coercion: rather than directly challenging the Iraqi government militarily, armed groups could seek to impose economic and political costs that make state policy increa...
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Call for sanctions on Iraqi Kurdistan over role in migrant smuggling to Britain

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  Service Jahan - A former British Foreign Office official has urged the government to increase pressure on the Iraqi Kurdistan Region to tackle migrant smuggling networks and target senior officials in the region who he says are linked to the smuggling networks.  According to a report published by the National News, Ben Judah, a former adviser to the British Foreign Secretary and visiting fellow at the Chatham House think tank, said the British government should put sanctions on Kurdish regional officials on the agenda to show its seriousness. Judah, who previously worked under Foreign Secretary David Lammy, said: "The government should use sanctions on Iraqi Kurdish officials to show that it is serious about this. I think when we say in meetings that this is one of our main concerns, they do not take it seriously.» He added that the British government should “increase the pressure on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq” because, he said, the majority of the operations to transfer ...
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From Erbil to the World: What Rudaw’s Guinness Record Says About Kurdish Soft Power

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Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj A Kurdish media organization has just produced a digital result that deserves to be understood as more than a communications milestone. On September 14, 2026, Rudaw Media Network announced that its digital platform had entered Guinness World Records after a Rudaw fact-checking video generated 284,007,601 views on Facebook within a 24-hour period. According to Rudaw, the video , published on July 24, 2026, became the most-viewed Facebook video within a 24-hour window globally and subsequently ranked among Facebook's most-watched videos overall. Rudaw has described the achievement as a milestone for Kurdish digital media and as evidence that professional journalism produced in the Kurdistan Region can reach audiences far beyond its immediate geographical constituency. The significance of the achievement, however, is not adequately captured by the number 284 million. In geopolitical terms, the more important question is what happens when an institution based in E...
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The Gulf’s strategic chokepoint crisis | Kurdish Policy Analysis

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  Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran face a widening struggle over pipelines, Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, reshaping Gulf geopolitics and energy security. The Middle East is entering a more dangerous phase of the Iran–Gulf confrontation in which the central strategic issue is no longer simply the exchange of missiles and drones, but the control of the region’s energy and maritime arteries . In the space of days, Saudi Arabia has faced attacks launched from Iraqi territory against its East-West oil pipeline, Qatar has publicly backed Riyadh’s restraint, Iran and the Gulf states are preparing another diplomatic effort in Oman, and Iran-aligned Houthi forces have seized strategically important territory around the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Taken together, these developments reveal an emerging regional contest over whether energy can continue to move through the Gulf and Red Sea despite the wider war. The most consequential development for Iraq and the Gulf is the reported drone a...
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Iraq’s Minorities Are Not Just a Humanitarian Issue — They Are a Test of the State

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Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj Iraq’s minority question is often presented primarily as a humanitarian concern: communities displaced by war, religious sites destroyed, families unable to return home and survivors requiring assistance. That framing is understandable, but it is incomplete. Iraq’s experience since 2003 demonstrates that the survival of minority communities is inseparable from the country’s unresolved problems of governance, political representation, territorial competition and fragmented security. The central problem is therefore not simply that Iraq’s minorities have suffered repeated waves of violence. It is that the Iraqi state has repeatedly struggled to create political and security arrangements capable of protecting communities whose territories sit at the intersection of competing national, sectarian and geopolitical interests. The consequences are particularly visible in Nineveh, Sinjar and the wider disputed territories, where Baghdad, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG...
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