LaNUBlog™

Businessmen trading in Irbil compare it to the Dubai of 20 years ago. Even at moments of remembrance the origins of World War One seem as distant as the fall of Rome. The steps in the doomed diplomatic dance in the summer of 1914 are hopelessly remote to the modern mind. It's not just the imperial ambitions and the strategic balances - this was a world where politicians still wore frock coats and the seditious syncopations of ragtime were an affront to Christian decency. But there are places where the furtive manoeuvrings of the politicians - which went on in parallel with the fighting - still feel like unfinished business. Very few Western Europeans could tell you what the main result of World War One really was - except that it led directly to World War Two. It brought countless indirect changes too of course, but they are hard to measure. The prosperous north of Iraq feels like a different country The role of women in parts of Europe and North America at least, was transf...

Baghdad - Bombings in Iraq killed 20 people on Sunday and brought the year's toll to more than 5 000 dead in a surge in violence that authorities have failed to curb, officials said. Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal sectarian conflict. The spike in violence, which has included a number of sectarian attacks, has raised fears of a relapse into the kind of intense Sunni-Shi’ite bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people. On Sunday, 21 explosions - 10 car bombs, nine roadside bombs and two suicide bombings - hit central and south Iraq, also wounding 130 people. In one of the deadliest attacks, a car bomb exploded near a bus station in the city of Kut, killing four people and wounding 15, police and medical personnel said. Other targets in the wave of bombings included a football field and a funeral. The funeral was for one of the victims of a car bomb targeting shoppers that k...

Baghdad - Violence including an attack on Shi'ite pilgrims in Baghdad killed at least 73 people across Iraq on Saturday, among them two journalists gunned down in the north, officials said. Violence is at a level unseen since 2008, and there are persistent fears that Iraq will relapse into the kind of intense Sunni-Shi'ite bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people. Accounts differed as to whether the attack on the pilgrims in the Adhamiyah area of north Baghdad, which killed at least 49 people and wounded at least 75, was a bomb followed by a suicide bombing, or a suicide attack alone. It came as pilgrims walked to a shrine to commemorate the death of Imam Mohammed al-Jawad, the ninth Shi'ite imam. Iraq is home to some of the holiest sites in Shi'ite Islam, and millions of pilgrims visit them each year. But crowds of pilgrims are frequently targeted by Sunni militants including those linked to al-Qaeda, who consider Shi'ites to b...

Baghdad - Iraqi officials say attacks across the country have killed five people, including two journalists working in a northern city. Police say a reporter and cameraman for the private al-Sharqiya TV channel were shot on Saturday while working on a report in the city of Mosul, about 360km northwest of Baghdad. It was not immediately clear why they were targeted. Three other people were killed and five were wounded when a roadside bomb hit a checkpoint manned by Sunni militiamen opposed to al-Qaeda in the town of Youssifiyah, 20km south of Baghdad, police officials said. Hospital officials confirmed the casualties. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to journalists.

Al-Qaeda standards for membership have slipped. The organisation is admitting a new generation of members - and expanding its reach. Osama Bin Laden did not want the Somali Islamist group al-Shabab to join the al-Qaeda network. He criticised their leaders in a letterthat was found in Abbottabad after he was killed in 2011, implying that they imposed unduly harsh penalties on "those whose offences are ambiguous". Al-Qaeda's new leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is less concerned with al-Shabab's shortcomings. Less than a year after Bin Laden's death, Zawahiri welcomed al-Shabab into the fold. "He thought it would extend the reach," says Richard Barnett, the former co-ordinator of the al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team at the United Nations. The induction of al-Shabab shows a new style of al-Qaeda leadership. Zawahiri and his cohorts are more accommodating - and also more ambitious in their scope - than their predecessors. "They've franchised them...

Continuation,... ..."Iraqis made a declaration we didn't believe so we had to come up with evidence to prove that they were wrong and then they would give us a new story," he says. In situations like this where trust is lost, Trevan says you need to study documents dating back decades. This requires a further set of skills. "You need people who are experts in export documentation so that you can find the companies who were the suppliers and ask them what the country imported," he says. When following the paper trail, it also helps to know whether a document supposedly from the 1970s really is 40 years old, or something knocked up yesterday. Chemical attacks *.The modern use of chemical weapons began in WWI, when poisonous gas killed 100,000 people *.In 1925 the Geneva protocol banned the use of chemical and biological weapons *.Since WWI, chemical weapons have injured more than a million people *.In 1988 Saddam Hussein used mustard gas, sarin and tabu...

A team of weapons inspectors will return to Damascus on Wednesday following Syria's pledge to give up its chemical arsenal. The last time they were in the country they were shot at as they tried to gather evidence. What does it take to be a weapons inspector? Last month, Ake Sellstrom and his team of 20 weapons inspectors negotiated a ceasefire between the warring parties in Damascus and set off for Mou'adamiya, in the suburb of Ghouta, to check whether reports of a chemical weapon attack were true. Find out more *.Ake Sellstrom and Tim Trevan spoke to Newsday on the BBC World Service More from Newsday More from the BBC World Service But no sooner had they entered No Man's Land when the shooting began. "We had quite a few sniper shots in the windows - the windows of the armoured vehicle almost collapsed," he says. "We were warned by security people working with us that this normally happens, that snipers could put a bullet here and there just to mark...

Eleven Islamist rebel groups in Syria have announced they do not recognise the authority of the main opposition alliance, the National Coalition. A joint statement says: "All groups formed abroad without having returned to the country do not represent us." They also call for the opposition to unite under an "Islamic framework". Islamist rebel forces have become increasing prominent in the conflict in Syria, and they are believed to command tens of thousands of fighters. The signatories include members of the Free Syrian Army as well as more radical Islamists - among them the powerful al-Nusra Front, which has links to al-Qaeda. It comes amid fighting on the ground between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), an offshoot of al-Qaeda, and more moderate rebel forces, especially in areas along Syria's northern and eastern borders. 'Unite under Sharia' In a video statement published online on Tuesday, 11 of the most powerful Islamist groups...

Fifty-one people have been killed at a funeral in the mainly Shia Sadr City district of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Police officials said the attack involved a suicide bomber who detonated a car bomb near a tent where mourners were gathered. The officials said that women and children were among the dead and at least 70 people had been injured. No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, which happened early on Saturday evening. Medics in nearby hospitals confirmed the casualty figures. The bombing followed an attack earlier on Saturday, in which 11 people died during an assault on a police station in Baiji, north of Baghdad.