Iraq

U.S. Marines take up positions in the area around the Palestine hotel in the center of Baghdad, April 9, 2003.

Before the U.S. rolled into Baghdad 20 years ago, Iraqis warned us what would happen

5:02am March 21, 2023

by Larry Kaplow

When the U.S. invasion of Iraq began, NPR's Mideast editor Larry Kaplow was a reporter in Baghdad. Looking back now, he writes that the signs and warnings of the chaos to come were all too clear then.

U.S. Marine Maj. Bull Gurfein pulls down a poster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on March 21, 2003, a day after the start of the U.S. invasion, in Safwan, Iraq.

3 takeaways 20 years after the invasion of Iraq

5:00am March 19, 2023

Two decades ago, then-President George W. Bush announced the start of combat operations in Iraq. The bloody occupation that followed lasted longer and cost more in lives and money than anyone guessed.

While the U.S. military has used burn pits in other conflicts, one expert says they were exceptionally large in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What is the legacy of burn pits? For some Iraqis, it's a lifetime of problems

5:00am August 12, 2022

The PACT Act provides new access to services for American veterans struggling with the health effects of exposure to burn pits. But in Iraq, civilians who were exposed are still on their own.

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Twenty-year-old Rusul Ahmed has painted several of the murals in Mosul. She says after the dark period of ISIS, the colorful murals make people happy.

In Iraq's Mosul, art springs up from ruins almost 5 years after the ouster of ISIS

5:22pm March 20, 2022

by Jason Beaubien

This vibrant street art is a sign of the spirited rebuilding going on in the northern Iraqi city, after ISIS was defeated in 2017.

Hassan Sham (pictured above) is one of 26 displaced persons camps in northern Iraq. Most of the residents are the wives and children of ISIS fighters — who say they are considered outcasts because of the stigma and are no longer welcome in their hometow

Health & Safety

A life in limbo for the wives and children of ISIS fighters

1:45pm March 15, 2022

by Jason Beaubien

Most of the residents of the Hassan Sham camp in northern Iraq feel like outcasts, with nowhere else to go. And conditions are getting worse as funding for food, education and health care dries up.

Fans spray air mixed with water vapor to cool down pedestrians on a Baghdad street on June 30, 2021, during a heat wave.

Why Baghdad will be one of the cities hardest hit by global warming

8:42am March 10, 2022

by Jason Beaubien

Iraq's capital city is already seeing record heat — up to 125 degrees Fahrenheit. A report predicts more 120-plus degree days to come. And the "urban heat island" effect will make things even worse.

Hussein Raad, a 22-year-old college student, gets his second dose of the Pfizer vaccine at Zayoona Mall in Baghdad.

Iraq has enough doses of COVID vaccine for everyone. But many Iraqis don't trust it

5:19pm February 20, 2022

by Jason Beaubien

The vaccination rate is only 17%. People are scared and skeptical for many reasons. Now government health workers are trying to up the numbers. One strategy: vaccination booths in the mall.

Chinese lecturer Zhiwei Hu speaks to students in the Chinese language department at Salahaddin University in Irbil, Iraq, Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2021.

World News

Iraqi Kurds are learning Mandarin to take advantage of jobs from Chinese companies

2:11am January 28, 2022

by The Associated Press

Dozens of contracts signed in recent years ensure China's growing footprint, even as major Western companies, including the U.S., plot their exit.

Retired Special Forces Maj. Ian Fishback, seen in December 2019, deployed four times to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2005, he blew the whistle on U.S. troops who were torturing people in Iraq.

National

The final, anguished years of a warrior-scholar who exposed torture by U.S. troops

10:25pm December 02, 2021

by Quil Lawrence

Ian Fishback was a Green Beret who exposed torture by U.S. troops in Iraq. After serving four combat tours and earning a Ph.D. in philosophy, Fishback died last month in a nursing home. He was 42.

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As water levels dropped in the marshlands this summer, the marsh water became too salty for the water buffalo to drink.

In Iraq's famed marshlands, climate change is upending a way of life

10:11am November 07, 2021

by Ruth Sherlock

Drought and extreme heat that scientists link to climate change are altering the UNESCO-protected marshlands. Iraq's average annual temperatures are increasing at nearly double the rate of Earth's.

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