Baghdad (AFP)

Conspiracy theories, spurious announcements of attacks, ad hominem attacks and slander against all kinds of adversaries ... In Iraq, false information abounds online, where it stirs up political and religious divisions.

"Suddenly, Iraq has become a virtual battleground between Iran and the West and anything goes," Aws al-Saadi, one of Tech's founders, told AFP. 4 Peace, an Iraqi NGO specializing in tracking down false information knowingly disseminated, in particular on social networks.

In January, he recalls, as relations began to improve between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, radical pro-Iran groups, hostile to any normalization between the two neighbors, launched a campaign on Twitter and Facebook accusing a Saudi, whose photo they had published, of being responsible for a double suicide bombing in Baghdad that killed 32 people.

This man had in fact been deceased since May 2015 and the attack in the Iraqi capital had finally been claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

According to Mr. Saadi, "there are hundreds of publications of false information on Iraqi Facebook and Twitter every day", whether in the political, social, security or economic fields.

These infoxes are published "by alleged press agencies", purely fictitious, he explains.

- "Surveillance service" -

In a country which has known nearly two decades of civil war and crises, the problem is such that the Interior Ministry has created a "surveillance service" bringing together several people responsible for tracking down news on television and on the Internet. social networks.

"When information seems suspicious to them, they give the alert", and an investigation is carried out with the ministries concerned to confirm or deny it, affirms the police general Nebras Mohammad, at the head of this department.

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But success remains limited.

Only 34,000 people follow the Facebook account of this "monitoring service", out of more than 25 million users of social networks in Iraq in 2021, according to the specialized site DataReportal.

"I do not trust the information I read, whether governmental or not," summarizes Abdallah, a 24-year-old student who claims to devote a lot of time to himself checking the information he receives on his laptop.

For Mr. Saadi, "Facebook is the main vector of infox in Iraq".

For example, Internet users have been divided in recent weeks when they read that a young man from Mosul had married four young girls on the same day.

It was actually an advertisement for a beauty salon.

After the fire at Ibn Al-Khatib hospital in Baghdad that killed 82 people, Iraqis panicked when they read on social media that other hospitals had caught fire.

Again, totally wrong.

- Denominational divisions -

Sometimes, the infox takes on a more political character, stoking the sectarian tensions still latent in the country.

"These are campaigns of thousands of posts, especially on Twitter, with political objectives," led by both pro-Iran factions and their opponents.

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At the end of August 2020, for example, a rumor had spread after the arrest in the Shiite south of Iraq of the owner of a car loaded with explosives and who supposedly came from Tikrit, a city north of Baghdad. and predominantly Sunni.

But others claimed that the owner was a member of Hachd al-Chaabi, a paramilitary coalition integrated into the Iraqi state and made up of Shiite factions loyal to Iran.

In the end, both versions were false and he was a criminal not belonging to any political organization, according to the authorities.

To fight against the danger of these rumors, the anti-fake news section of the Ministry of the Interior claims to have reinforced the "field campaigns" by distributing educational leaflets to passers-by.

Nebras Mohammad also assures to discuss "with the bloggers to let them know the legal consequences" of the publication of false information.

But this obviously has little effect.

However, a law on the criminalization of false information has existed since 1969, during the time of dictator Saddam Hussein.

A new bill must also be discussed in Parliament to fight online crime.

But it could, according to Human Rights Watch, "undermine freedom of expression in Iraq."

© 2021 AFP