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The press was built during a period of time in ancient Assyria when there was growing demand for wine

Archaeologists recently excavated what they believe to be one of the oldest wine presses in the Middle East, dating back 2,700 years.

The wine press was found by Italian archaeologists in a small village in north Kurdistan region of Iraq, the first of its kind discovered in the region.

It was built during a period of time in ancient Assyria when there was growing demand for wine, according to archaeologists.

Assyria, one of the world's earliest empires, was located in most of modern-day Iraq, as well as parts of Iran, Kuwait, Syria, Turkey and Lebanon.

"This is very interesting because these wine presses do have parallels in other Assyrian sites, for instance in Lebanon," said Danielle Morandi Bonacossi, Professor of Near-Easten Archaeology at the University of Udine.

The wine press structure consists of 14 different basins in different shapes connected via small canals to storage areas that held the liquid. The resulting products were then shipped from the factory to the capital of the Assyrian empire.

The machine and factory was in use sometime between the 8th and 7th century BCE.

"The Dohuk Antiquities Authority is coordinating with the Udine University in Italy to add these sites... to the UNESCO World Heritage list so it can be prepared to receive tourists," Baikaz Gamal Eldin, Head of the Antiquities Department in Dohuk said.

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2,700-year-old Wine Press Discovered In Northern Iraq - i24NEWS

This article originally appeared on VICE Arabia.

After decades of devastating political instability, Iraq is still in danger. The agricultural workers of the war-torn country have to wrestle with a new and equally destructive force: climate change.

In 2020, the United Nations Environment Programme declared the Middle Eastern country the fifth most vulnerable nation on Earth to the longterm effects of climate change. The cradle of civilisation is under threat from droughts and dust storms. Temperatures are rising and agriculture is an increasingly difficult proposition. Just like everywhere else on the planet, it is the poorest people in Iraqi society who are most at risk from the life-changing effects of the climate crisis.

Farmers who found themselves displaced during the 2014-2017 conflict with ISIS slowly began to rebuild their lives, only to find out that it was no longer possible to pick up their old jobs. Agricultural land across the country is in danger. Climate breakdown is here and it is wreaking havoc.

Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey are to some extent dependent on water from the Tigris and Euphrates basin, which is used for domestic consumption, agricultural irrigation and for generating mighty hydroelectric power. The basin has long been a point of geopolitical tension and is now experiencing catastrophic water shortages due to global warming. While the effects of these shortages are felt across the region, it is at its worst at Lake Hamrin in Diyala, an eastern region of Iraq that sits on the border with Iran.

Lake Hamrin, an artificial river with a reservoir which is the main source of water in the province, has dried up. A dramatic drop in water levels means the lakes irrigation canals which used to supply water to the surrounding countryside cannot function. Many villages in the area have very little water for crops and livestock.

Fadhili Hamad Salem, a 34-year-old farmer from Diyala, lost all of his grapes as a result of high temperatures this summer. He says that even after he sold his car to pay for a new well, the water he has access to is insufficient. We work in agriculture to feed our children, but this year, it was much more difficult than in the past years, he says. All the land died due to lack of water supply. We cut half our personal and family expenses to keep the farm alive.

The lack of water is directly linked to the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis. In Iraq, temperatures this summer reached 51 degrees celsius, and the average temperature has risen by 2.3 degrees celsius since the end of the 19th century twice what the rest of the world has witnessed.

In October this year, Iraq's agriculture ministry announced that it was reducing the area of land used for winter crop planting by 50 percent in an attempt to preserve water. None of this land is in Diyala, and farmers in the province will remain reliant on the regions 160 wells for both irrigation and drinking water.

Farmers across the region are facing up to the difficult fact that their way of life is in imminent danger of extinction. The crisis has affected Mohamed Al-Mayahi's drinking water supply and has killed 20 percent of his flock of sheep his main source of income. He is contemplating leaving his land and life as a farmer to find another job.

We lost about 20 of our sheep. The last five months were very difficult as there was no water at all, says Al-Mayahi. A lot of the sheep died as there is no water to drink, and the water has a bitter taste. This is the land of my father and grandfather, but if things continue like this we will have to leave.

Having been displaced for three years as a result of the war with ISIS, and then returned to Diyala, 49-year-old farmer Mohamed Adnan is considering moving on again. This is the hardest year weve ever been through, he says. Due to the lack of usable water, we havent been able to harvest anything this season. I live on farming and everything is dying. It wasnt like this a few years ago - water was never a problem before.

Ahmed Ashkiti Ajil, a 51-year-old farmer and rancher, is just as desperate. All my sheep are dead because of the lack of water. The only source we have left is salty, he says. "I never expected there would be no rain or water. If I had known it would end like this, I would have sold the sheep and worked in another career, but there are no jobs anyway. This is our land and we will stay here and die here.

The agriculture industry accounts for nearly 20 percent of the Iraqi workforce. It is the second largest contributor to the countrys GDP after oil. The ongoing water scarcity crisis will have ramifications for the country on social and economic levels.

On a financial level, it is causing problems in the here and now. Fatima Awad Saleh, 60, is a mother in rural Diyala whose farm and property were attacked during the war with ISIS, causing two of her daughters to have permanent disabilities. These require financial costs in addition to the familys regular, ongoing bills, which she simply cant afford.

Farmers in poor rural areas in Iraq are likely to continue to be severely affected by water shortages caused by climate breakdown and ineffective water management. Many farmers say that if things continued as they are, they would not want their children to work in agriculture, but rather encourage them to find other, more stable jobs.

Natiq Jassem Sabiya is a case in point. The 60-year-old farmer from Diyala wanted to pass on the farming traditions he had inherited from his grandfather to his two sons, but they had to find work to help with the expenses. We used to produce different types of wheat and vegetables but didn't grow anything this year. I inherited this land from my grandfather. But there is simply no more water for farming.

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The Climate Crisis Is Wreaking Havoc on Farmers in Iraq - VICE

From the plane, Rauff went to Erwin Rommels battle headquarters, where he presented his orders to the field marshals chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Siegfried Westphal. As commander of a new mobile killing unit, an Einsatzkommando, Rauff was assigned to carry out executive measures, meaning mass murder of Jews, as soon as Rommel completed his expected conquest of Egypt. Rauff had come from Berlin, where the Nazi leadership was awash with optimism about Rommel pressing forward through Egypt into the Near East, as German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had just told the Japanese ambassador.

After Egypt, Rauffs next target would be the 500,000 or more Jews of Palestine. And if, as Adolf Hitler expected, Rommels tanks drove forward to the oil fields of Iraq, the Jews of that country and of Syria and Lebanon would face mortal danger.

But Rommels chief of staff explained to Rauff that logistical problems, especially lack of fuel, were delaying the Axis forces advance, so the two agreed that Rauff and his team would move from Germany to Athens, Greece. From there, they could deploy to Egypt once Rommel swept forward into Alexandria a mere 60 miles east of El Alamein and Cairo.

It never happened. The desert battlefield would be the site of Rommels most famous defeat, and one of the great turning points of the Second World War.

Yet Rauffs mission to Egypt is fraught with significance. Contrary to popular memory, the Holocaust was not only a European event. Across north Africa and the Middle East, from Morocco to Iraq, the Germans and the regimes collaborating with them systematically persecuted Jews. Hitler had declared his intent to eradicate the Jews of the Middle East, and the SS actively prepared to do so. Allied victories heroic, and at times close to miraculous prevented the Nazis from carrying out the worst of their plans, but any full account of the Holocaust requires a map that extends well beyond Europe.

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The early months of the Second World War were disturbing but distant thunder for Jews in the Arab world. Three events in June 1940 changed that. First, the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini announced to an obediently cheering crowd of thousands in Rome that Italy was joining Germany and going to war against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the west: Britain and France. His immediate goal was seizing a scrap of France as it collapsed before the German onslaught. The larger implication was that war was inevitable in north Africa, since Mussolini dreamed of creating a new Roman empire, using the Italian colony of Libya as a base for expansion.

A week later, First World War hero Philippe Ptain formed a new government in France and sought peace with Germany. The armistice left Ptains government, based in Vichy, in control only of southeastern France, but it ruled most of Frances overseas empire, including the north African colonies of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

The third incident came at the end of June. An Italian anti-aircraft unit at Tobruk in eastern Libya shot down an Italian plane, mistaking it for a British aircraft. On board was Italo Balbo, the governor-general of Libya.

SS officer Walther Rauff, photographed in 1945. After his mission of mass extermination was halted at El Alamein, Rauff was posted to Tunisia. (Photo by ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Balbos death made life go from bad to worse for Libyas 30,000 Jews. Though a prominent Fascist, Balbo had opposed the Nazi-style anti-Semitism that Mussolini had adopted. The Italian campaign against the Jews had begun in 1938 with the Manifesto of Race that defined Italians as Aryans, and Jews as biologically inferior. A series of race laws barred Jews from government jobs, from teaching or studying in Italian schools, from practising professions including medicine and law, and more.

Balbo avoided enforcing the laws strictly in Libya, especially those that locked Jews out of the colonys economy. The Jews are already a dead people; there is no need to oppress them cruelly, Balbo explained to Mussolini in a letter. Il Duce answered: Though the Jews may seem to be dead, they never really are, echoing the Nazi view of Jews as a powerful, clandestine threat. Once Balbo was dead, the official persecution of the Jews in Libya could be escalated.

The Vichy regime in France, meanwhile, showed how fully it had become a German satellite by enacting its own Jewish Statute in October 1940. The move was driven in part by the home-grown anti-Semitism of the French right, but, as Vichy foreign minister Paul Baudouin would write, German pressure played a major role. Modelled on Nazi laws, the French statute defined Jewishness in racial terms, with a Jew being anyone with three Jewish grandparents or with two and a Jewish spouse. Among the measures, Jews were banned from all teaching, judicial and police positions, and most of the civil service. Only 2 per cent of lawyers, doctors and midwives could be Jewish all professions in which Jews were prominent.

The provisions echoed those adopted in other Nazi satellites in Europe, including Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. In the French case, though, their reach extended to Africa. The Vichy statute was applied directly in French Algeria, while the sultan of Morocco and bey of Tunisia, nominal rulers of French protectorates, issued decrees bringing in similar rules.

After enacting the Jewish Statute, Ptain abrogated the 1870 decree that granted French citizenship to Algerian Jews. Vichy authorities gave Jews a month to sell their businesses. The sultan of Morocco decreed that Jews living in European areas of cities had one month to move back to the old, crowded Jewish quarters. There, with more people packed in, disease spread quickly. Step by step, the Jews of French north Africa saw their lives and livelihoods constricted, in a process parallel to what German Jews had endured early in Nazi rule.

Another country at the far end of the Arab world briefly tilted into the Axis orbit when, in April 1941, four Iraqi colonels overthrew the British-aligned government. The coup was planned in the Baghdad home of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and exiled leader of the Arab revolt in Palestine in the late 1930s. Abd al-Ilh, the regent who ruled in place of Iraqs six-year-old king, Faisal II, fled to Transjordan, while the king was smuggled out of Baghdad by his mother.

Iraqs government radio station broadcast a stream of inflammatory agitation against the Jews and powerful appeals to Nazism, according to a later commission of inquiry. Baghdad was then about one-sixth Jewish. On the streets, members of pro-Nazi paramilitary groups, such as the Youth Phalanxes, seized random Jews and dragged them to police stations, or occasionally murdered them. Meanwhile, Britains codebreakers at Bletchley Park deciphered Axis messages that the German and Italian air forces were sending unmarked warplanes to aid the Iraqi junta and that ships arriving at Rhodes bore ammunition to be airlifted to Iraq.

Commander of the Afrika Korps, Erwin Rommel (right), gives orders during the north African campaign. Often described as the war without hate, the conflict actually witnessed numerous persecutions against Jewish populations. (Photo by Jean DESMARTEAU/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

The British quickly organised an invasion and the Iraqi army had crumbled by June. Husseini and the other plotters fled. When Abd al-Ilh returned to Baghdad, British troops stayed outside the city in the hope that his return would not look like their doing. A crowd of Jews came to greet the regent, but as they returned home Iraqi soldiers attacked them, with teens from the Youth Phalanxes joining in. Only on the next day did the newly returned regent finally order the police to disperse the mobs. A large number of Jewish shops and homes were looted, and several hundred Jews were brutally murdered, the British ambassador reported. The dead of the Baghdad pogrom, the Farhud, may be the least known and least acknowledged victims of Nazism.

Husseini eventually reached Berlin and, in November 1941, met with Hitler. He asked the fhrer to declare publicly his backing for the independence and unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq. While Hitler avoided such a pledge, he promised that once German armies in the Soviet Union pushed south into the Middle East, Germanys objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element in the Arab world.

Axis armies would actually threaten the Middle East from a different direction. In September 1940, Italy launched an invasion of Egypt from Libya. By winter, the British under General Archibald Wavell counterattacked and pushed the Italians out of Cyrenaica, the eastern province of Libya. Afraid the Allies would keep going and threaten Europe from the south, Hitler sent an army to Libya under his favourite general, Rommel.

In the expanse of the desert, the fighting see-sawed wildly. Rommel reconquered most of Cyrenaica, then in late 1941 the British Eighth Army overran the province again, only to be pushed back once more. By early 1942, Benghazi, the largest town in Cyrenaica, had changed hands four times.

Mussolini found a scapegoat for Italian military failures: Libyas Jews. On 7 February 1942, he issued a decree to expel them to a concentration camp in the desert. Colonial authorities started with the Jews of small towns in Cyrenaica, and lists of those to be expelled began appearing in synagogues each fortnight. Survivors would remember that 40 people were packed onto each open truck and that they travelled for five days in the sun to the camp at Giado, south-west of Tripoli. There, men were subjected to forced labour. Inmates received between 100 and 150 grams of bread a day, and when they complained about the lack of food, camp authorities told them: The purpose of bringing you here is not to feed you, but to starve you to death. Of the 2,600 Jews imprisoned at Giado, more than one in five died within a few months of hunger or typhus.

One factor slowed the sfollamento, the clearing, of Jews, according to the German consul in Tripoli: a shortage of trucks. They were needed to supply Rommels new offensive, which began in late May 1942. Thanks to his secret weapon, a superb intelligence source in Cairo, he had taken Tobruk in eastern Libya by 21 June. A message from the Cairo source said that the Eighth Army was decisively beaten and if Rommel intends to take the Nile Delta this is a suitable moment.

Rommel plunged into Egypt. In Berlin and Rome, expectations soared and the SS sped up its preparations to send an Einsatzkommando to the Middle East. Yet during that crucial last week of June 1942, an intelligence breakthrough at Bletchley Park identified and silenced the Axis source. The timing was providential. Rommel was caught by surprise when British commander General Claude Auchinleck made a last-minute decision to move his defensive line to El Alamein. Auchinlecks change, the topography of the area and dogged fighting by British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian and South African troops stopped the Axis advance. Rommel and Rauff would never reach Cairo or Tel Aviv.

Following the battle of El Alamein, in November 1942, the Eighth Army, now commanded by General Bernard Montgomery, shattered Rommels army and forced it to retreat eastward. Days later, the Allies launched Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of Morocco and Algeria. In response, German forces seized Tunisia as a last redoubt in Africa and the SS sent Rauffs team.

As German historians Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cppers have detailed, Rauff carried out a reign of terror against Tunisian Jews that included conscripting 5,000 for forced labour. But with shipping to Europe under constant attack, Rauff could not carry out the larger SS plan to send Tunisias Jews to death camps in Europe.

The Nazis intentions to carry the war against the Jews beyond Europe never wavered. Ultimately, though, defeat at El Alamein turned the tables and kept the SS from carrying out its plans.

Yet leaving north Africa and the Middle East out of Holocaust history has erased the suffering of many of the Nazis victims and obscured the full significance of the victory at El Alamein.

Early in 2021, I received an email from the scientist Michael Bevan, son of Lance Corporal John Bevan of the Second New Zealand Division, who fought and was taken prisoner at El Alamein. My father always thought they were fighting to preserve the British empire, he wrote, which for a colonial was not a high priority. Only in the winter of 1945 in Germany, when as a prisoner of war his father saw female slave labourers building an airfield, did he fully grasp the evils he had fought to contain.

Therefore, the soldiers son went on, understanding how the Eighth Army established the El Alamein line, and thus prevented genocide in the Middle East, has brought new and deserved honour to the brave men of my fathers generation, who fought and suffered in Egypt.

For their sake, too, the story must be told.

As a French protectorate, Morocco was subject to Vichy control after the fall of France. While Jews were not sent to death camps in Europe, Sultan Mohammed V issued a decree enacting Vichys Jewish Statute. Under wartime rationing, Jews received less to eat than Europeans or Muslims, and a 1941 edict gave Jews living in European neighbourhoods one month to move back into the mellahs, or Jewish quarters, where overcrowding accelerated the spread of disease.

The Vichy regimes Jewish Statute was applied directly in Algeria, where at least 110,000 Jews lived. They were stripped of French citizenship, removed from occupations, given one month to sell their businesses, and those of military age sent to internment camps. Even after the Anglo-American liberation of Algeria in November 1942, Vichy officials remained in office and anti-Jewish measures were only overturned late the following year.

Subject to Vichy rule from 1940, Tunisia was then occupied by Germany in November 1942. The SS sent in the Einsatzkommando under the command of Walther Rauff, who had been originally assigned to the mass murder of Egypt and Palestines Jews. Rauff took Jewish leaders hostage in order to round up 5,000 Jews for forced labour, and imposed fines on the pretext that international Jewry was responsible for Allied bombings. As many as 400 Jews died due to the German occupation, but the Allied liberation of Tunisia in May 1943 thwarted Nazi plans to ship Tunisias 66,000 Jews to death camps in Europe.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini enacted anti-Jewish laws that were enforced with increasing strictness in the Italian colony of Libya. In 1942, on Mussolinis orders, 2,600 Jews from eastern Libya were trucked to a desert concentration camp, where more than 500 died of disease and starvation. The British conquest of Libya after El Alamein prevented the imprisonment of the remainder of Libyas estimated 30,000 Jews and resulted in the liberation of the concentration camp at Giado.

The SS created a mobile killing unit to carry out genocide in Egypt and Palestine as the Axis army, under the command of General Erwin Rommel, reached El Alamein in July 1942. Britains Special Operations Executive trained Palestinian Jews for guerrilla warfare after the expected Nazi conquest. But the dogged British defence at El Alamein stopped Rommel and prevented the murder of an estimated 75,000 Jews in Egypt and half a million or more in Palestine.

French mandatory officials declared fealty to Vichy and enacted anti-Jewish statutes. Jews were dismissed from government posts, the press and the railways, but enforcement was otherwise sporadic against the 30,000 or more Jews across the two countries. An Anglo-Free French invasion in June 1941 ended Vichy rule, and Free French general Charles de Gaulle abrogated the anti-Jewish laws.

Four colonels, known as the Golden Square, carried out a pro-Axis coup in April 1941, threatening some 110,000 Jews in the country. Government radio broadcast a stream of Nazi propaganda. In Baghdad, pro-Nazi paramilitary group Youth Phalanxes arrested or sometimes murdered Jews on the streets. The regimes collapse in the face of a British invasion ignited a pogrom in which soldiers and Youth Phalanxes murdered 180 or more Jews. The events shattered Jewish confidence in life in Iraq, setting the stage for a later exodus.

Gershom Gorenberg is an Israeli historian and journalist. His latest book, War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East, was published in January by PublicAffairs

This content first appeared in the September 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine

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Holocaust In The Middle East: From Morocco To Iraq - HistoryExtra - BBC History Magazine

A record 82.4 million people are displaced by conflict and violence around the world today, and facilitating their return to their places of origin is one of the most complex and urgent challenges facing the international community. On this United Nations International Day for Tolerance an annual commemoration to foster mutual understanding among different peoples and cultures we consider an oft-overlooked yet particularly formidable barrier to return: the extent to which displaced people seeking to go home after conflict are not permitted to do so by their former or potential neighbors.

This is a particular challenge in Iraq. Almost five years since the Iraqi government declared victory over the Islamic State (ISIS), the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs) continues to be delayed. Nearly 1.2 million IDPs have not yet gone back to their home areas, while thousands of others have been displaced again after attempting to return. Beyond the humanitarian and logistical barriers, a deeper societal problem looms large: the lack of social acceptance or the willingness of individuals and communities to welcome and live alongside returnees.

In Ninewa Governorate, one of the most diverse regions in Iraq and among the worst-affected by mass violence and displacement, ISIS systematically targeted and persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, including Assyrians, Yazidis, Christians, and Shabak. Although they have long faced discrimination and marginalization, the abuses meted out by ISIS were especially notable for their scale and brutality, thus compounding these minorities experiences of oppression and stoking fear and resentment of the local Sunni Arab population. Yazidis, in particular, were subject to horrific violence en masse, which has been recognized by the United Nations as genocide.

While efforts are ongoing in Europe and the United States to bring perpetrators of these atrocities to justice, much more attention and action are needed locally to resolve the continued challenge of displacement in Iraq. The legacy of ISIS has stymied the return of IDPs in ethnically and religiously mixed areas, both by discouraging members of minority groups from returning and by causing them to resist the return of displaced Sunnis. New research by our organization, Mercy Corps, based on years of experience in humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding programs in Iraq, suggests that durable solutions to displacement will remain elusive unless they include restorative justice and peacebuilding mechanisms to promote social acceptance and coexistence.

Based on a survey of more than 500 Yazidi households in the Sinjar District of Ninewa, we identified several factors that shaped their willingness to accept returnees. First, returnees movement patterns during ISIS rule play a much greater role than their ethnic or religious identity. We found that respondents (both men and women) were more likely to accept returnees who fled ISIS, regardless of their identity, than those who stayed and lived under the group and fled later echoing reports of a tendency in Iraq to assume that those who did not flee ISIS are supporters or collaborators. Second, reminding Yazidis through inclusive narratives that both they and Sunni Arabs suffered under ISIS helps to foster a sense of shared experiences, which in turn makes them, especially men, more likely to accept Sunni returnees. Conversely, Yazidi women were much less likely to accept Sunni returnees, highlighting important gender differences that may reflect the particular fear and trauma that Yazidi women and girls have endured, including being subjected to ISISs widespread use of sexual violence. Third, we found that Yazidis who were displaced with Sunnis and had frequent interactions with them were more likely to accept Sunni returnees, regardless of respondents gender.

These findings suggest that even among a heavily persecuted population in Iraqs polarized sectarian environment, it is possible to improve the prospects of social reintegration. This has important implications for efforts to facilitate durable solutions to displacement, support survivors of violence including sexual violence and contribute to stability and justice in Iraq. Ending the countrys displacement crisis is not only a humanitarian imperative; it is essential for ensuring peace, stability, and economic prosperity moving forward.

To that end, donors, policymakers, and practitioners should take several actions.

First, it is crucial to correct the misperception that those who did not flee ISIS rule were necessarily collaborators or sympathizers of the militant group. People may have stayed because of their deep attachment to their homes and lands, because they lacked the resources to move, or because they were prohibited by ISIS from leaving. Erasing this stigma will require the concerted efforts of and cooperation between local government, civil society, and international humanitarian and peacebuilding organizations with the support of bilateral and multilateral donors. Mercy Corps experience in other contexts, such as Nigeria, suggests that religious leaders and community elders can be highly influential in countering misinformation and changing peoples attitudes towards coexistence with former perpetrators of violence and other groups in conflict-affected environments.

Second, promoting inclusive perceptions of shared experiences across different religious and ethnic groups that suffered under and survived ISIS brutal occupation can help advance sustainable returns. This can be done by facilitating safe spaces and meaningful opportunities for intercommunal dialogue that enable the recognition of each others experiences of surviving atrocities by ISIS and encourage communities to envision a shared future of co-existence based on tolerance and mutual respect.

Third, to support long-term recovery, Iraqi officials and community leaders should work together to establish locally relevant restorative justice mechanisms. For example, in Ninewa, this could take the form of efforts to ensure accountability alongside community-level truth-telling circles or public memorialization and commemoration initiatives. The approaches should be community driven and rooted in local customs in order to repair relations and mitigate the risk of new or recurring harm.

Finally, donors should expand investments in trauma-informed and gender-sensitive peacebuilding, including multi-year programming, to support individual and community-level psychosocial needs of survivors. Psychosocial support and trauma-healing can help foster social cohesion and build trust within and between communities. Such services have the potential to create a foundation for intergroup reconciliation between Yazidis and Sunni Arabs in Iraq, but they are only likely to be effective if designed in a gender-sensitive manner that takes into account the differential needs and aspirations of both men and women, especially survivors and witnesses of conflict-related sexual violence and other abuses.

At the same time, the voices, lived experiences, and leadership of women and girls must be integrated into the design and implementation of programs to counteract social alienation and promote peaceful co-existence. This is consistent with the objectives of the 2017 Women, Peace and Security Act, which Congress adopted with bipartisan support, as well as the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. In Iraq, it is also critical not only for resolving displacement, but indeed for ensuring peace and preventing future conflict.

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To Ease Iraq's Displacement Crisis, Restorative Justice and Peacebuilding are Vital - Just Security

The newly resuscitated Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) has been authorised by the government in Baghdad to directly negotiate with U.S. oil giant, Chevron, for it to develop the long-delayed Nasiriyah oil field in the southern DhiQar province, according to several domestic news sources.

The idea of developing the 4.36 billion-barrel Nasiriyah oilfield has been mooted by a rapid succession of governments in Iraq since it was discovered by INOC in 1975. The original plan to develop the field on a standalone basis was shelved in the lead-up to the Iran-Iraq war that began in 1980 and lasted until 1988. The field eventually came on-stream in 2009 and was listed on the 2009-2010 fast-track development plan, which aimed to raise its output to at least 50,000 bpd in the first phase.

In the first half of 2009, Chevron was one of four international oil companies (IOCs), along with Italys ENI, Japans Nippon Oil, and Spains Repsol, to be invited to submit bids to develop the field on an engineering procurement construction (EPC) contract basis. The Japanese consortium led by Nippon Oil, and comprising Inpex, and JGC Corporation, then looked set to win the contract before negotiations broke down again.

In 2014, a serious push was made to resuscitate the development of the Nasiriyah field within the broader scope of the Nasiriyah Integrated Project (NIP) that also included the development of adjunct lesser oil sites to the main Nassiriyah site and the construction of a 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery. Bids for this wider project were encouraged by the government-ordered changes to the original Iraq technical service contract (TSC) that were aimed at addressing the concern of many IOCs that saw the contract model as falling short of the production sharing contracts model that they preferred.

Unlike the previous contracts, the new TSC variant offered investors a share in project revenues, but only when production began, and the Oil Ministry would pay recovery costs from the date of commencement of work. This differed from the previous contract where the costs were only paid when the contractor raised production by 10 per cent. This said, investors would still have to pay 35 per cent taxes on the profit they made from the Nassiriya project, the same amount as in previous deals.

At that point in 2014, the international engineering and construction firm Foster Wheeler had already completed a front end engineering and design study for the refinery, and 12 potential bidders were on the list. These comprised: Indias Reliance Industries, Oil and Natural Gas Corp, and Essar Oil, Russias Rosneft, Lukoil, and Zarubezhneft, Frances Total, and Maurel & Prom, Chinas CNPC, the U.S.s Brown Energy, a Japanese joint bidding team from JGC and Tonen General, and South Koreas GS Engineering & Construction.

Given longstanding IOC concerns about legal, accounting, and financial transparency in Iraq, this 2014 initiative to develop the Nassiriyah oil field foundered. As summarised by the independent international non-governmental organisation, Transparency International (TI), in its Corruption Perceptions Index, Iraq demonstrates: Massive embezzlement,procurement scams, money laundering, oil smugglingand widespread bureaucratic bribery that have led thecountry to the bottom of international corruptionrankings, fuelled political violence and hamperedeffective state building and service delivery.

In 2017, China relaxed its directive of the previous two years to all state-owned hydrocarbons companies to cut budgets. From the Iraqi side, this coincided with a fresh impetus for expediting as much production from the south of the country ahead of the chaos in oil supplies from the north that was likely to result (and did) from Kurdistans independence referendum to be held in September.

These factors then led to Chinas Sinopec and PetroChina proposing a deal that would see the NIP being rolled out as part of the broader Integrated South Project (ISP). The ISP (later rebranded as the South Iraq Integrated Project) aimed to boost output across Iraqs southern oilfields, and also to build out related infrastructure, including pipelines, transport routes, and the construction of the Common Seawater Supply Project (CSSP).

The Chinese said that they would spend US$9 billion on the [NIP-related] refinery and the first phase of developing Nassiryah but as, under the terms of Iraqi oil contracts, the Iraqis would have to pay back this cost to the Chinese from the value of oil recovered, a source who works closely with Iraqs Oil Ministry told OilPrice.com. The initial reaction from the Oil Ministry was to decline the offer, and to say that the development should only cost around US$4 billion, which the Chinese in turn flatly turned down.

The Chinese had other demands that grated on Iraq at that time as well. China also wanted its firms to receive their costs back in a much shorter timeframe than most other similar projects, said the source. This meant that they were effectively asking for a per barrel remuneration fee at a 15 per cent premium to the highest maximum fee being paid to any company in Iraq for a regular crude oil producing field, which was US$6 per barrel to PetroChina for al-Ahdab, he added. This would mean that the Chinese would get around US$6.90 per barrel, more than [Angolas] Sonangol for its heavy oil extraction at Najmah [US$6 per barrel] and Qairayah [US$5 per barrel] and would dwarf the US$1.49 per barrel that [Malaysias] Petronas was getting for the same type of field of Gharraf, he told OilPrice.com. China also demanded that it was given [Iraq] dinar-denominated government-backed bonds for the entire amount [US$9 billion] that could be cashed in if the development did not start to generate large amounts of oil quickly, he underlined.

Given the negative history of dealing with China over the Nassiriyah project and the fact that Russia is occupied elsewhere in the country and the region, the U.S. might be in an unusually positive position to take a significant role in either the Nassiryah field development alone or in the broader NIP. This has been bolstered by the apparent willingness of Iraqs de facto leader - radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to engage with U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, and by the shift in tone from one key player in Iraqs influential al-Hakim family.

Whether this shift in attitude towards doing substantial and enduring business with the U.S. across its oil, gas, and petrochemicals sectors is genuine, or whether it is just the usual games-playing by Baghdad to keep the money flowing from Washington, remains to be seen but the slew of deals signaled recently appear propitious at this stage.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

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