News and reports from the Middle East.
The UK Foreign office advises against "all but the most essential travel" to Iraq but some businessmen have never seen a better time to go. The security situation in post-war Iraq remains unstable with civil unrest rife and daily reports of coalition troops being attacked. But for oil and construction executives the lure of going […]
Continue ReadingForget the small-time looters who ran wild in Iraq after the war. Saddam Hussein put them to shame in what could have been the greatest bank heist of all time… After all, $1 billion is no paltry sum. But the brazen nature of Saddam’s operation was really what was so startling. No fancy hi-tech hacking […]
Continue ReadingCafé Kardelen is the only Internet café in Silopi – pronounced "sloppy" – Turkey’s nearest town to the North Iraq border. Both town and café are held under siege by international correspondents panning for stories in-between cups of sweet tea and filterless cigarettes as they await Harburgate – the border’s corridor to the war in […]
Continue ReadingWith Turkey, the US and Kurdish forces fighting it out for oil and land in the North of Iraq, a humanitarian crisis is looming. In a hotel lobby in Diyarbakir, Turkey, 24 hours before the first coalition bomb hit Baghdad, Metin Corabatir, a UNHCR external affairs officer, told me he expected 60,000 predominantly Kurdish refugees […]
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