The Islamic State (ISIS) has created another state in the Hamrin area in the Kurdistan Region, according to Peshmerga intelligence. Peshmerga commanders say ISIS has gathered a large number of militants in the area, mlitants who escaped from Mosul following the offensive and came to the Hamrin area to create a new state allegedly named Jabal Hamrin.
Over in Lebanon, the parliament has scrapped a law under which a rapist could be exempt from punishment if he married his victim, something women’s rights activists had long fought against. Their campaign was supported by the Minister for Women’s Affairs who said the law was like something “from the Stone Age”. Similar legislation has recently been swept away in both Tunisia and Jordan. States with a comparable loophole include Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya and Syria.
Lastly, the Kurdish translation of a Dutch novel recounting the lost history of Jews in Kurdistan and Iraq was launched in Erbil Wednesday evening, at an event with the book’s author and journalist Judit Neurink. The book, a work of fiction, centers around the lives of two women; one of which lived in Kurdistan in the 1940s at the very onset of Jewish flight from Iraq to the Mandatory Palestine. Released by the Sulaimani-based publishing house Endeshe, readers can find it at local bookstores with a price tag of 12 thousand Iraqi Dinars.
