PM Zaidi’s Cabinet Completed With New Positions Created For Patronage

  

Iraq’s parliament recently completed most of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s cabinet. It represents Iraq’s version of power sharing not where parties are to be equals and balance each other out but rather where each winning party gets positions based upon the number of seats in parliament they win.

This Day In Iraqi History - Oct 21 UK decided to seize Baghdad during WWI Would say would be there temporarily but created Iraq as a British mandate

1914 Ottoman Basra Governor demanded UK withdraw warship from Shatt al-Arab docked in

            Persia to protect oil concession Ottomans began shooting at ship UK agreed

(Musings On Iraq review Iraq In World War I, From Ottoman Rule to British Conquest)

(Musings On Iraq review When God Made Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921)

This Day In Iraqi History - Oct 20 Iraqi forces and Peshmerga fought in Kirkuk in aftermath of Kurdish independence referendum

1922 Interior Min Sadoun told governors to start preparing for parliamentary elections and to

            urge voters to only elect candidates who would back Anglo-Iraq Treat

This Day In Iraqi History - Oct 19 Saddam said Iraq couldn’t win Iran-Iraq War because outnumbered

1830 Daud Pasha’s Mamluks assassinated governor sent to replace him in Baghdad Sultan

Mahmoud declared Daud a rebel and appointed another governor

This Day In Iraqi History - Oct 18 ISI held march in Ramadi to declare it capital of its caliphate

1920 Najaf surrendered to British in 1920 Revolt Was one of the centers of rebellion

(Musings On Iraq review Reclaiming Iraq, The 1920 Revolution and the Founding of the Modern State)

(Musings On Iraq review Enemy On The Euphrates, The Battle For Iraq 1914-1921)

This Day In Iraqi History - Oct 17 Zarqawi pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his group became Al Qaeda in Iraq

1909 Mosul representatives to new Ottoman Assembly left for Istanbul Was part of Young Turks’

reforms

Review Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper of Sinjar, Serpent’s Tail, 2018

  

The Beekeeper of Sinjar is full of heartbreaking stories of mostly Yazidis who were victims of the Islamic State takeover of northern Iraq in 2014. Author Dunya Mikhail befriended a Yazidi man named Abdullah who was helping women escape from the militants. He told her of some of the people he assisted. Many of the tales are similar but they need to be told as the community faced genocide during the war.