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Although the word 'coup' has been thrown around regularly in Baghdad since 2004, it has typically related to an imagined American step to seize direct control of the government once again by ousting elected leaders. Now, for the first time since Saddam Hussein's fall, the prospect of a slow-burning military takeover of politics is re-emerging as a credible threat.

The Iraqi parliament on 24 September finally passed the Provincial Powers Bill. The hotly contested legislation must still be approved by the senior leadership, but even a concerted rearguard action by opponents such as Kurdish federal President Jalal

US construction company Perini Corporation has been awarded work worth $170m from the US Army Corps of Engineers (Usace) in Iraq to provide its blast-resistant overhead coverage systems (OCS). The projects come under an existing contract for design, build and construction services

The western media remain focused on the prospects for US troop drawdowns and the Status of Forces Agreement, but on the ground it is the Arab/Kurdish confrontation that threatens to have even greater long-term significance, as federal troops and Peshmerga face off in northern cities, and a new Sunni politics emerges

GSN has braved a welter of forums, brown bag lunches and fundraisers to get a closer look at the Obama and McCain camps’ regional policy plans. The conclusion: the candidates’ Middle East manifestos are largely similar, with the emphasis on toughness and smart diplomacy. Obama is more focused on Afghanistan, while McCain remains Iraq-minded

An Iraqi-led operation in Diyala province shows how Baghdad’s most intractable opponents are being squeezed. Operation Bashaer Al-Khair (Omens of Prosperity) kicked off three days earlier than anticipated in Diyala province, but otherwise came as no surprise. After other supposedly intractable security blackspots had been tackled this year – first Basra, then Baghdad’s Sadr City, then Mosul and

In a deal said to be worth around $4bn, the government has agreed to award Royal Dutch Group a contract to capture and use flared gas in the southern region of Basra. This represents the first deal signed between the government’s South Oil Company, responsible for developing southern oil fields, and a western oil company since the US-led

Denis McDonough – Obama’s senior foreign policy co-ordinator is a venerable ‘Beltway bandit’, a career Capitol Hill staffer. His previous job was senior fellow at CAP, a liberal-oriented think tank with many members advising Obama’s campaign and with a key focus on ending US

Through history Kuwait has energetically asserted its independence, while Iraqi nationalists have jealously eyed what Saddam Hussein called his ‘Nineteenth Province’.  Cross-border connections run deep, and these are impacting on business today

The mood of crisis in Gulf affairs, with decisions on a war against Iraq perhaps just weeks away, is proving a delicate test for the West’s readiness to promote a democracy and human rights agenda.

The US public  was  shown  further  grounds  to  support  an attack  on  Iraq,  when  a  leaked  intelligence  report  suggested that  a  US Navy pilot  lost  in  1991  might  still  be  alive  and  in captivity. It touched on a topic of exceptional sensitivity in the USA — where  many  people  still  believe  missing  servicemen from  the  Korean and Vietnam wars  are  either  alive  or  were held  until  their  deaths.  It  also  forced  a  reluctant  Pentagon  to publicly admit that the Iraqi Air Force (IrAF) scored a single air-to-air victory on the first night of the Gulf War.

The  New  Yorker magazine,  required  reading  for  MidEast watchers,  has  revived  suggestions  of  a  “new”  link  between Iraqi intelligence  and  Osama  Bin  Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. Its claim that the two pariahs jointly ran a terrorist organisation in Kurdish northern Iraq—if true—could provide the smoking gun  that  US hawks  have  been  seeking  to  take  the  “war against terrorism” to Iraq. Efforts to link 11 September suicide hijacker Mohammed  Atta with  Iraqi  intelligence  in  the  Czech Republic did  not  convince,  and  until  now  the  Central Intelligence  Agency — but  not  its  influential  former  directorJames  Woolsey—had  largely  discounted  reported  links between President Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

GSN in August 1990 gave its initial round-up of Saddam Hussein’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait, which then editor, the late John Christie, rightly said marked a watershed in Middle East politics, 

Iraq’s financial situation is far from satisfactory. The Gulf states and Saudi Arabia have provided the country with something like $30bn but there are some signs of a growing reluctance to lend any more.