Creator
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Iraq: A divided nation tears itself apart once again
Iraq went to the polls for the third time since the fall of Saddam Hussein but for many Iraqis the election has held little hope.
Syria’s very poor revolution
Hundreds of international fighters have flocked to Syria to join the war against Bashar al-Assad’s government, most of them ill-equipped.
Insanity rules the new front in al-Qaeda’s war
Former comrades are pitted against one another –and against a besieged government.
How Somalia’s civil war became new front against al-Qaeda
On a side street off Mogadishu’s Wadnaha Road frontline a young officer is explaining the unwritten rules of the city’s intractable civil war.
Behind the glitz of Dubai
Dizzying construction boom relies on migrant labourers who are lured into a life of squalor and exploitation, writes Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.
Iraq’s Mehdi Army vows revenge on British troops
The Mehdi Army Shi’ite militia vowed on Friday night to conduct revenge attacks on British soldiers in southern Iraq after its Basra leader was killed by Iraqi special forces in…
Behind Baghdad’s front lines
Fadhel is a slim 26-year-old Mahdi Army commander with a thin goatee beard and smoothed-down hair that looks like a flat cap. One day last month he described how he and his men…
Behind the lines of a civil war
Husham is standing on a street corner in his Sunni Baghdad neighbourhood when his cellphone rings. ”Yes brother … Two strangers … Investigate and take measures,” he mumbles. He…
Inside Iraq’s sectarian war
Some men hold paper tissues under their noses; others wrap their kuffiya ends around their mouths. It is a hot and humid day at the city’s main morgue where 20 men stand in a…
Zarqa’s superhero
The road to Zarqa from Amman runs for 15km through beige hills peppered with limestone quarries, past factories, military camps, a scrapyard for big yellow cabs and a KFC joint.…
‘We don’t need al-Qaeda’
”Abu Theeb is a tall, handsome, well-built man with a thin beard and thick eyebrows. His name is a nom de guerre: it means Father of the Wolf. He is a farmer during daylight and…
The deadly danger of working as a journalist in Iraq
I had been dreading this moment for weeks, but I knew it would come inevitably. The night before leaving for Baghdad; preparing for yet another trip to that doomed city to report…
‘It’s the election that counts’
Election fever is picking up. Almost every single wall in the city is covered by hundreds of posters, some pasted over others, giving a sense that Baghdad is itself one big…
No hope for the former rulers
What started as secular socialist rule under the Ba’athists ended as a tribal Sunni regime led by Hussein. For centuries they have comprised the ruling class, but since the fall…
Iraq’s scars of war
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi artists were forced to produce works that glorified the leader. Now the subject they most want to depict is the violence around them. Ghaith…