Arshad Al-Hakim, spokesperson for Iraq’s National Security Agency (NSA), said Wednesday that combating hate speech remains one of the agency’s key priorities, particularly as such rhetoric tends to surge on social media platforms during religious occasions.

“One of the key issues the NSA is addressing is hate speech—which threatens civil and social peace and typically surges on social media platforms during religious occasions,” Al-Hakim said.

He explained that the agency has implemented a series of measures to address such content, beginning with monitoring and tracking, followed by interception, obtaining judicial approvals, and conducting technical analysis to determine the origins of the pages involved. Once the process is completed, the agency contacts the national focal point for further action.

Al-Hakim said that during the first half of 2026, the agency identified approximately 5,000 pages promoting terrorism, narcotics, and the banned Ba'ath Party. Some of these pages, he said, were involved in promotion, extortion, and cyber-financial fraud, while others disseminated hate speech and incited violence, posing a threat to social peace.

He added that nearly 2,700 pages had been shut down since the beginning of the year. He cited a high level of coordination between the NSA, the national focal point, global technology companies, the agency’s designated judge in Baghdad, and judges across Iraq’s governorates.

“The work is proceeding at full pace,” he said.

Al-Hakim also said that the agency had successfully repelled more than 750 cyberattacks targeting government websites in Iraq during the first half of the year. According to him, all of the attacks were detected and neutralized.