Tikrit was a test case for Iraq’s ability to unite the country after ISIS massacred 1,700 air force cadets, mostly Shia, at Camp Speicher there to drive a permanent sectarian wedge for the Iraqi state’s implosion
Tag: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
Iraq Diaries: Show Of Shia-Sunni Battlefield Unity
To showcase the broad-based resistance against ISIS, we were driven to Baghdad's riverside palm tree-shaded Jadriya locality for a show of Shia-Sunni unity by commanders fighting the terror group
Iraq Diaries: Pope Francis’s Balm Of Inter-Faith Harmony
The turnaround in the situation was such that Pope Francis could visit Mosul seven years after it fell to ISIS to acknowledge the assistance Christians received from Muslims and their harmonious coexistence
Iraq Diaries: Ayatollah As Breath Of Fresh Air For West
The Iranian revolution and the captivity of 52 Americans crystalized dormant Islamophobia with ubiquitous Khomeini at its center decades before the US invasion of Iraq put another Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani under the global spotlight for entirely different reasons as someone unlike the Iranian revolutionary leader
Iraq Diaries: Making Of United Front Againt ISIS
Members of the clergy and officials in Iraq were at pains the negate the western projection of the war on ISIS in sectarian terms
Iraq Diaries: Ground Zero Of Spirited Fightback Against ISIS
The seeds of perhaps the most spirited fightback ever against terrorism were sown in narrow Rasool Street in Iraq’s Najaf, where Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa in 2014 from his small house urging all able-bodied men to resist ISIS Pope Francis on his way to Sistani's residence for a meeting in 2021. By … Continue reading Iraq Diaries: Ground Zero Of Spirited Fightback Against ISIS