History Of Iraq Research Articles

Iraqi Women in Conditions of War and Occupation

IRAQI WOMEN IN CONDITIONS OF WAR AND OCCUPATIONSince the early twentieth century, the issue of women's emancipation has been integral to Iraq's struggle for liberation and development. With the foundation of the League for the Defense of Women's Rights in 1952, women moved to the forefront of Iraqi social activism. Reflecting the official misogyny manifest at the time, the League was initially established as an underground organization. It led the struggle for the establishment of women's legal rights and championed the replacement of tribal law with civil law, realized in 1959 with the passage of the Personal Status Law, in effect catapulting Iraq into the role of a vanguard state in the Arab world on women's rights. What this reflects is that the trajectory of Iraqi development in the twentieth century from a backwater province of the Ottoman Empire to a modem state is reflected in the progress of women from tribal chattel to citizens.'The works under review here document the reverse of this trajectory in terms of the process of transformation of Iraqi women from citizens of a viable state to tribal chattel in the dystopia created by regime change. Insofar as all these works were written in Arabic by Iraqi women and published within the past decade, they bear witness to the events unfolding around them, and reflect the discourse emergent among Iraq's female intelligentsia. Due to language barriers (that affect even some specialists) and limited distribution, this discourse has not received attention outside of Iraq. These works not only provide rare attention to women's active participation in Iraqi intellectual life and in critical debates on issues facing Iraqi society but they also draw on Iraqi sources that are not readily accessible or even known outside of Iraq, such as some government documents. Taken together, these books consider the changing status of women in Iraq over the last four decades and treat their position from different, though related, vantage points, shedding light on women's material conditions, participation in the workforce, and participation in the political system. Together, they document the degradation of Iraqi women's status with the decline of the Iraqi state.Lahay 'Abd al-Husayn's book, Athar al-Tanmiya wa-l-Harb 'ala al-Nisa ' fi al-'Iraq, 1968-88, is a revised version of her doctoral dissertation (PhD diss., University of Utah, 1988). The book traces the significant shifts that occurred in women's roles in Iraqi society between 1968 and 1988, or from the Ba'ath Party's rise to power to the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) roughly two decades later. This research contributes to our understanding of an overlooked, yet formative, period in Iraqi history, one that saw the beginning of the decline of women's rights. 'Abd al-Husayn argues that the negative effects of the Iran-Iraq war on women's access to education and work outside the home foreshadowed later shifts in Iraqi women's status. These shifts occurred as a result of significant turning points in modem Iraqi history, including the implementation of the sanctions regime in 1990 and the onset of the Anglo-American occupation in 2003.The significance of this book stems in large part from the author's use of Iraqi sources. For example, 'Abd al-Husayn employs statistical data reported in the main Iraqi government statistical yearbooks for 1967 through 1988, issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning. This source was difficult to obtain at the time of writing and was reportedly destroyed along with other source materials in the rampant pillaging and burning during the U.S. occupation. 'Abd al-Husayn's use of this and similar sources helps to reconstruct the historical record. The author complements these Iraqi government sources with annual reports of several international agencies, in particular the World Bank and the United Nations.Through exhaustive statistical analysis, the author concludes that while development expanded women's educational and employment opportunities, the Iran-Iraq War pushed women toward more segregated work opportunities in the lower strata. …

Ḥizb ad-Da͑wa al-islāmīya. Selbstverständnis, Strategien und Ziele einer irakisch-islamistischen Partei zwischen Kontinuität und Wandel (1957–2003) by Florian Bernhardt (review)

Reviewed by: Ḥizb ad-Da͑wa al-islāmīya. Selbstverständnis, Strategien und Ziele einer irakisch-islamistischen Partei zwischen Kontinuität und Wandel (1957–2003) by Florian Bernhardt Rainer Brunner Ḥizb ad-Da͑wa al-islāmīya. Selbstverständnis, Strategien und Ziele einer irakisch-islamistischen Partei zwischen Kontinuität und Wandel (1957–2003) by Florian Bernhardt , 2012 . ( Kultur, Recht und Politik in muslimischen Gesellschaften, 24 ). Würzburg : Ergon , 351 pp., €45 . ISBN: 978-3-89913-932-7 . In February 2014, Muqtada al-Sadr, the controversial scholar-cum-politician of post-Saddam Iraq, announced his withdrawal from politics, adding that ‘no party represents us from now on in Parliament or in any position inside or outside the government’ (New York Times, 16 February 2014, A4). While it remains to be seen whether Sadr’s statement will be followed by practical consequences – it is not the first time that he heralded such a step only to retract the announcement later – it once again revealed the complex relationship between party politics and religious scholarly circles that has been characteristic of Iraq since the establishment of the state in the 1920s. An organisation whose history over the past six decades serves as an apt illustration of this fact is the ‘Party of the Islamic Call’ (Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyyah). The book under review – which is based on the author’s PhD thesis submitted in 2011 to the Humboldt University in Berlin – is not the first scholarly discussion of the party. A previous approach was taken by Faleh A. Jabar in his book The Shi‘ite Movement in Iraq (London 2003), but contrary to him, Bernhardt is not only interested in the party’s history, but also its changing ideological evolution. He is careful enough to limit the scope of his inquiry to the period before the upheavals in 2003 which mark a watershed in Iraqi history comparable to that of the 1979 revolution in Iran; the later developments are only summarized in a brief concluding chapter. The book consists of a detailed and comprehensive chronological section about the historical development of the party between 1957 and 2003 (45–130) as well as chapters about the party’s self-image (131–58), structure (159–64), constituency (165–72), strategy (203–20) and political goals (221–305), and finally a discussion about the role of the clerical [End Page 235] establishment and the legitimacy of party politics in Shi‘a islamism (173–202). While he manages to present a succinct outline of the various phases of the party’s history – from its foundation in the late 1950 via the ‘golden era’ in the 1960s, the increasing persecution by the Ba‘th regime in the 70s, its destruction and the subsequent exile in Iran and Europe in the 80s, to the ideological re-orientation after 1988/89 – several of the other chapters are not equally convincing. Thus, it quickly becomes clear that due to an apparent dearth of adequate sources, neither the social composition of its followers and protagonists nor the inner structure and decision making of the party can be elucidated sufficiently. Transferring data from the (Sunni) Egyptian context to Iraq because there is simply not enough information available for the party’s social composition (168) is, at any rate, unsatisfactory. One may in this context also question the author’s somewhat over-simplified understanding of the concept of ‘democracy’ that is more or less reduced to the purely formalistic notion of filling positions by way of elections (101, 164) – which is even accomplished by totalitarian regimes of all sort. What is more, the sections on the party’s self-image, its strategy and political goals as well as on the role of the ulema are also largely structured according to chronology, which makes numerous redundancies inevitable. Khomeini’s political theory of wilayat al-faqih for instance, which at certain times was also advocated by the Hizb al-Da‘wah, is discussed in multiple places (99ff., 194ff., 245ff.); so is Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr’s counter-theory of the wilayat al-ummah (255 & 279), al-Sadr’s enigmatic withdrawal from the party around 1960 (67 & 179), his at times tense...

New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq by Orit Bashkin (review)

Reviewed by: New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq by Orit Bashkin Kathrin Haurand Orit Bashkin , New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2012. 310 pages. Paperback, $24.95. ISBN-10: 0-8047-7875-2. Looking at Jewish lives in Iraq during the first half of the twentieth century provides seminal insights into how European and Middle Eastern societies have historically influenced each other. Orit Bashkin's New Babylonians: The History of Jews in Modern Iraq focuses on the crossroads of Jewish, Iraqi, and European cultures. Bashkin, a historian at the University of Chicago, investigates the role of secular Jewish intellectuals in the Nahda (renaissance), the Arab nationalistic literary and cultural renewal movement, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century in Iraq. Her study sheds new light on how the secular Arab national movement influenced the self-understanding and identity of Jewish intellectuals in Iraq under Hashemite rule between 1921 and 1958. Like The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Syracuse University Press, 2009), Bashkin's earlier book on Iraq's political culture under Hashemite rule, New Babylonians challenges orientalist approaches to Middle Eastern and European history which often treat them as two discrete fields [End Page 102] of historical study. Bashkin sees herself as avoiding two traditional pitfalls of narrating Middle East Jewish history: presenting it either as a tale of peaceful, harmonious coexistence or as a story of perpetual persecution. Nonetheless New Babylonians does sketch a vision of peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Jews in Arab lands, even as it also details how that harmonious relationship was destroyed in the maelstrom of a modern Iraqi history ineludibly impacted by the political vicissitudes, sociocultural displacements, and violence of twentieth-century European history. Baskin tells how Jews were in the vanguard of modernization under the British-installed monarchy after World War I. By focusing on the experience of the Iraqi Jewish intellectual elite, she portrays a complex and vibrant "ethno-religious composition of Iraqi society that created a unique Jewish Iraqi experience, which was nonetheless intertwined with global and Western discourses." Arab language became the vernacular of social transformation, and "the educational system was key to the reconceptualization of Arab and secular identity." Transcending social barriers came at the price of disowning one's cultural and religious distinctiveness, such as abandoning certain Judeo-Arab dialects or religious observances. The "new effendia," as Bashkin terms the secular Iraqi Jewish intellectuals, moved into Baghdad's formerly Muslim, middle-class neighborhoods and became prominent in trade, politics, and Arabic literature. Less fortunate Muslims and Christians looked for answers to socio-economic inequalities in the emerging communist movement of the 1930s. The Iraqi Communist Party became a platform for poor Jewish students to raise their voices against social inequality by claiming a share in a national future and "employing the term Arab Jew." Despite the newfound status of secular Iraqi Jewish intellectuals and the vocal anti-Zionism of some prominent Jewish members in Baghdad's literary and political scene, Iraqi nationalists began to attack Jews as traitors in the 1930s. Nazi Germany's shortwave Arabic broadcasting Voice of Free Arabism began in October 1939 and continued broadcasting in Iraq daily until March 1945. The propaganda contributed significantly to a spread of anti-Semitic ideas by consolidating anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist resentment with Arab nationalism. Upon being exiled from Palestine by the British in 1937, Hajj Ammin al-Husseini, the pro-Nazi leader of the Palestinian national movement, found refuge in Baghdad, where he helped German and Arab nationalists to foment anti-Semitic violence. In the months leading up to the Farhud, the pogrom in Baghdad on June 1 and 2, 1941, most Jews placed their hope in British military intervention. Bashkin reveals that Baghdadi Jews were not just forsaken by leading Arab nationalists but also by the British, who stood by and watched the violence unfold. Bashkin contends that historians have overemphasized the larger significance of the 1941 riots. This has contributed, she asserts, to a "Farhudization" of Jewish Iraqi history, in which the Farhud is cast as typifying the overall experience of the otherwise harmonious relationship between Jews and...

Iraq: A Decade of Lost Opportunities

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. “Failed States Index 2012,” Fund for Peace, http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/?q = fsi2012. 2. Currency conversion according to the exchange website www.xe.com. 3. George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006). 4. Anthony Shadid, “Iraq's Last Patriot, ”New York Times, February 4, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/magazine/06ALLAWI-t.html?pagewanted = all&_r = 0. 5. Translation provided by the author. Another translation can be viewed at: “Iraqi Constitution,” World Intellectual Property Organisation, October 15, 2005, http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id = 230000. 6. Human Rights Watch “Judging Dujail: The First Trial Before the Iraqi High Tribunal,” Human Rights Watch, November 20, 2006, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/11/19/judging-dujail. 7. Abbas Kadhim, “Iraq's quest for Democracy Amid Massive Corruption,” Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, March 3, 2010, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/sada/2010/03/03/iraq-s-quest-for-democracy-amid-massive-corruption/6bjj. 8. Exact figures on civilian casualties on Iraq do not exist, however Iraq Body Count is considered the most reliable source. It estimates that over 54,300 Iraqis were killed over the two years. “Iraqi deaths from violence 2003–2011,” Iraq Body Count, January 2, 2012, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2011/. 9. George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006). 10. Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, (New York: Norton, 2007). 11. Charless Tripp, A History of Iraq, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 12. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, (London: Clays Ltd, 2006). 13. The White House, “Promise Kept,” www.whitehouse.gov/Iraq. 14. Nigel Baggar, “The Invasion of Iraq: what are the morals of the story?” International Affairs 87 :1, (2011). 15. Julian Linden, “Iraq ride wave of support to lift Asian Cup,” Reuters, July 29, 2007, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2007/07/29/uk-soccer-asia-idUKSP26426720070729. 16. Patrice Hill, “Iraq's Flood of ‘Cheap Oil’ could rock world markets,” Washington Times, February 3, 2013, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/3/iraqs-flood-of-cheap-oil-could-rock-world-markets-/?page = all. 17. “The Corruption Perceptions Index 2012,” Transparency International, 2012, http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results. 18. “Iraq election turnout 62 percent, officials say,” BBC, March 9, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8556065.stm. 19. Nemir Kirdar, Saving Iraq: Rebuilding a Broken Nation, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009). Additional informationNotes on contributorsMina al-OraibiMina al-Oraibi is Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Alawsat Newspaper, a daily pan-Arab newspaper

Sectarian Relations in Arab Iraq: Contextualising the Civil War of 2006–2007

Discussions surrounding sectarian relations in Iraq have often been reduced to extremes of either overemphasising the Sunni-Shiʿa divide to a near Manichean level or, the other extreme, reducing them to the point of irrelevance in Iraqi history and society. This paper challenges both views and attempts an examination of the dynamics of Sunni-Shiʿa relations in Arab Iraq and how these interact with Iraqi nationalism. As will be shown, sectarian identity advances and recedes depending on wider circumstances, often at the expense, but not to the exclusion, of national identity. The post-2003 period in general and the civil war of 2006–2007 in particular offer us a wealth of highly charged sectarian discourse in the form of songs, poems, speeches and publications. I have relied on a considerable sample of such forms of public discourse to analyse the rising salience of sectarian identity in the period under consideration in a broader attempt at analysing the dynamics of Sunni-Shi‘a relations in Arab Iraq generally. It will be seen that sectarian relations are dynamic and responsive and that civil wars are not necessarily the end of the process; rather, in some cases, sectarian civil wars are merely a violent stage which many mixed communities around the world — including Iraq perhaps — have unfortunately gone through.

Unnatural Narratives and Transgressing the Normative Discourses of Iraqi History: Translating Murtaḍā Gzār’s Al-Sayyid Aṣghar Akbar

Abstract This article consists of two parts: an annotated translation of “The Theory”—an excerpt from the novel Al-Sayyid Aṣghar Akbar (2012) by Iraqi author Murtaḍā Gzār—preceded by a critical essay that articulates the socio-historical context of the novel and analyzes it in light of recent research in unnatural narratology. The essay highlights the ways in which the novel departs from the mimetic norms of realism that characterize the dominant narratological models in modern Iraqi and Arabic fiction. It argues that through metalepsis, or transgression of intradiegetic time, coupled with the conceptual restructuring of iconic Iraqi places and discourses, the novel defies our standard knowledge of the procession of historical events in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Iraq. The novel in turn negotiates an entry into liminal discourses that lie on the peripheries of the national narrative of the Baʿth as well as the religious counter-narrative of the Shīʿī opposition as it is traditionally conceived. The novel exposes the discrepancy between two authoritative, normative processes of historicizing, namely, the ‘Rewriting of Iraqi History Project’ and the Najafi ijtihād and taqlīd traditions. By so doing, the novel at once mirrors the immense complexity of Iraq’s modern historiography and accomplishes a skeptical deconstruction of its cultural formations, resulting in a new postcolonial reading of state hegemony, Shīʿism, Najaf, and Iraqi identity.

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

72 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews “My life was formed by keen distractions designed to control / my body’s great awakening, which brought to bloom / the passion upon which I had wagered my soul” (“The Elastic Cord”). Published by Wigestrand in a bilingual edition, An Elastic State of Mind makes Powell a full-fledged American Norwegian poet who has been translated in six languages and has translated eleven books into Norwegian. With this, her fifth poetic volume, Powell has reached new maturity and new depth and has produced an innovative and sensitive tribute to an extraordinary woman. Alice-Catherine Carls University of Tennessee at Martin miscellaneous Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. Beau Beausoleil & Deema K. Shehabi, ed. Oakland, California. PM Press. 2012. isbn 9781604865905 Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad is a winding street about one thousand feet long, noted for its many bookstores and outdoor book stalls. Named after the famous classical Arab poet Abu at-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi (915–965 ce), it has been a thriving center of Baghdad ’s bookselling and publishing for many years. On March 5, 2007, a car bomb was exploded on it, perhaps to intimidate intellectuals. More than thirty people were killed, and more than one hundred were wounded—booksellers, book buyers , and devotees of reading and of books—and the Shabandar Café where intellectuals met was gutted. Beau Beausoleil, a poet and San Francisco bookseller, created in solidarity a coalition of poets, artists, writers, printers, booksellers, and readers; broadsides of their writings and artwork about this tragic event were printed, and recitations were made in many cities. With Deema K. Shehabi, another San Francisco poet, an anthology of 135 pieces in prose and verse has now been compiled in this book, including some translated from Arabic and French and the texts of some broadsides (see WLT, May 2012, 34–37). Thepiecesareofdifferentlengths and moods. Some describe the street and decry the horrible event, others commemorate the innocent victims, and others still exult defiantly in the eventual triumph of freedom and truth: “You can bomb a bookstore or ban / a book, but it will not die. You cannot kill / a poem like you can a man. / Al-Mutanabbi Street will rise again” (Sam Hamill). “The books blew up and people, / cafés and stores; but words remained, / hovering, circled, waiting” (George Evans). The anthology begins with an impressive five-page essay by Anthony Shadid, originally published in the Washington Post on March 12, 2007. Born in Oklahoma City in 1968, Shadid died on February 16, 2012, while covering the current Syrian revolution. His essay is a heartfelt story of Mohammed Hayawi , an Iraqi bookseller who died on Al-Mutanabbi Street and whom he knew while he was the Baghdad bureau chief of the newspaper. A similar personal essay is by Maysoon Pachachi, a London-based filmmaker of Iraqi origin, who reminisces about a 2004 visit to Baghdad for the first time in thirty-five years and remembers Al-Mutanabbi Street and Shabandar Café and other experiences. She ends by saying, “And sometimes it seems like the rhythm of Iraqi history is one of destruction, lament, and repair.” In fact, Al-Mutanabbi Street has reopened, and Shabandar Café has been renovated, although its owner lost many family members in the murderous blast. Among other contributions, there is one by Adrienne Rich (1929– 2012) entitled “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve,” another by the Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926– 64)—his famous “Rain Song”—and another by Marilyn Hacker entitled “Ghazal: Dar al-Harb,” critical of the United States: “I might wish, like any citizen, to celebrate my country / but millions have reason to fear and hate my country.” This anthology is recommended, not only for its literary merits, but also for its testimony. Issa J. Boullata Montréal ...

Introduction: Sami Zubaida, modernity, politics and a social Middle East

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Norbert Elias was published in the second number of E&S, in May 1972 (‘Theory of science and science of theory’, pp. 195–221). As Goudsblom & Mennell (1997 Goudsblom, J. and Mennell, S. 1997. The Norbert Elias reader, Blackwell: Oxford. [Google Scholar]) relate, his influence was eclipsed by the Marxist vocabulary of the period, only to be ‘re-discovered’ 30 years on. On Elias, Zubaida, Giddens et al see Goudsblom & Mennell, 1997 Goudsblom, J. and Mennell, S. 1997. The Norbert Elias reader, Blackwell: Oxford. [Google Scholar], p. 84. On the broader role of Elias and Leicester's Sociology Department, see Goodwin & Hughes (2011). llya Neustadt, Norbert Elias, and the Leicester Department: personal correspondence and the history of sociology in Britain, The British Journal of Sociology (2011), 62 (4), 677–95. 2. On overhearing the jibe “flat-footed empiricist” as a term of intellectual abuse, he mused with a smile, “I have no problem with empiricism, it's the ‘flat-footed’ I object to, the condition is damn inconvenient.” 3. Evident in Hindess & Hirst (1977 Hindess, B. and Hirst, P.Q. 1977. Pre-capitalist modes of production, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) and Turner's (1978 Turner, B. S. 1978. Marx and the end of Orientalism, London: George Allen & Unwin. [Google Scholar]) Marx and the end of Orientalism. The contents of Bryan Turner's work predate and are unrelated to Said's Orientalism – the influence of which is discussed in Aziz Al-Azmeh's text here. 4. The metrics of amazon.com are far removed from the concerns of the scholars discussed here. Yet such twenty-first century rankings do serve to underscore the substantial impact that the Middle East activists and scholars discussed here continue to have on the understanding and study of the Middle East. To this day Sami's Islam, the people and the state, Roger Owen's State, power and politics in the making of the modern Middle East, as well as numerous works by Talal Assad and Fred Halliday – both also part of the informal study group on the Middle East mentioned in the tributes here – continue to be the books most bought by graduate students. 5. See Sami's review of John Hall's Ernest Gellner: An intellectual biography which was published in The British Journal of Sociology, (2011). 6. Jaber & Dawod (2003), Jaber (2002), Vali (2011), Paidar (1995). 7. Bayart (2009), The state in Africa: The politics of the belly (2nd ed.). 8. Zubaida & Tapper, 1994 Zubaida , S. & Tapper , R. 1994 . A taste of thyme: Culinary cultures of the Middle East . I.B.Tauris : London . [Google Scholar], p. ix. 9. Zubaida, S. (n.d.). ‘Our kitchen in 1940s Iraq’ [Turkish language newspaper]. The text unconsciously complements Tony Judt's (2009 Judt , T. 2009 , 25 November . Food . The New York Review of Books . Retrieved from: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2009/nov/25/food/ [Google Scholar]) memories of Jewish cuisine in London's East End at an identical point in the mid-twentieth century. 10. Prominent among these in the UK are Nadje Al-Ali, Toby Dodge, Gareth Stansfield and Charles Tripp. Sami's impact on broader understandings of the region also stem from frequent commentary on the BBC World Service. He has also been a long-standing contributing editor to the US-based Middle East Report, whose radical origins also lie in the 1970s. 11. For the historical foundations of this analysis, see Zubaida, 2002 Zubaida , S. 2002 . The fragments imagine the nation: The case of Iraq . International Journal of Middle East Studies , 34 ( 2 ), 202 – 15 [Google Scholar]. Aspects of this were echoed in the conference meeting by Eugene Rogan, who presented on Iraqi history in the 1940s. 12. Volumes 1 (1975) and 2 (1976) of the Review of Middle East Studies consist largely of papers first presented at the conference; several present a pre-Said, materialist critique of Orientalism.

The modern history of Iraq

The modern history of Iraq

Iraq between occupations: perspectives from 1920 to the present

Introduction A.Baram , R.Zeidel & A.Rohde PART I: IRAQ BETWEEN A NATION STATE AND ETHNO-SECTARIAN DIVIDES: A RE-APPRAISAL One Iraq or Many: What has happened to Iraqi Identity? P.Marr Kurds, Arabs and Iraqis: A History of a Clash of Identities S.Kirmanj The Kurdish Phoenix: Nation-Building in a Failed Iraqi Nation-State O.Bengio A Kurdish Leadership in Iraq: Facing the New Challenges, the Danger and the Chances of the Post-Saddam Era M.Eppel PART II: ASPECTS OF IRAQI HISTORY UNDER THE MONARCHY The Roots of Democratic Thinking in Iraq and their Contemporary Implications: Discourses on Democracy in the Hashemite Period 1921-1958 through the Vision of 'Abd al-Fattah Ibrahim' O.Bashkin Women under the Monarchy: A Backdrop for Post-Saddam Events N.Efrati PART III: THE BA'TH ERA AND BEYOND Understanding Ba'thist Iraq? Toward a Comparative Historiography of Dictatorships A.Rohde Sadr the Father, Sadr the Son, and the 'Revolution in Shi'ism' A.Baram On Servility and Survival: the Sunni Opposition to Saddam and the Origins of the Current Sunni Leadership in Iraq R.Zeidel The Iraqi Military under the Ba'th Regime: the Case of the Iraqi Armed Forces in Operation Desert Storm and the Impact of Desert Storm on its Performance in Operation Iraqi Freedom P.Malovany Iraq's Economy 2003-2008 J.Sassoon PART IV: THE US IN IRAQ 2003-2007/8 The U.S. in Iraq: The Dual Challenge of Insurgent and Sectarian Violence M.Eisenstadt Amateur Hour in Iraq: A Worm's Eye View of the Failure of Nation Building A.H.Coyne Until They Leave: Liberation, Occupation, and Insurgency in Iraq J.Yaphe

From Ally to Foe: The Iraqi Communist Party and the Kurdish Question, 1958–1975

In the modern history of Iraq, the period from the 1958 Revolution until the Ba‘th Party's consolidation of power by the mid-1970s stands out as an exceptionally eventful era. Not only did it witness a revolution that overthrew the British-installed monarchy, it also saw the revolutionary regime's own downfall a few years later in a bloody coup. That putsch was later followed by many similar military interventions. In addition, the epoch witnessed phases of internal warfare between the Kurdish minority and the central government. Throughout this period the future of the new Iraqi republic was ‘up for grabs’, and various disparate groupings and political parties struggled for power and to win over the general population to their respective causes. Besides the Ba‘th Party, which eventually seized power in 1968, the two major political players during this period were the Iraqi Communist Party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Most academic studies have downplayed the role played by the two latter organisations during this period and none have explicitly looked at the changing relationship between them.

Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq

Charles Tripp’s A History of Iraq is now in its third edition. Since 2000, when the first edition appeared, it has become a classic in Middle Eastern studies. The current edition has been updated to include the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, the fall and capture of Saddam Husayn, and the subsequent insurgency. Its author is Professor of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the University of London.

From storm to freedom: America's long war with Iraq

From Storm to Freedom analyzes and assesses the strategic interaction between Iraq and the United States from 1990 to 2009, from the perspective of a single, if discontinuous conflict. With this longer-term perspective, covering both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the book clarifies the long road of war against Iraq. This work recounts presents the evolution of counterinsurgency operations from 2003 to 2009, explains the misunderstanding and miscommunication between government leaders in Iraq and the United States throughout the period and describes the ineffective nature of the UN sanctions, the inefficient efforts of the Clinton Administration and the impact of the preemptive strategy of the Bush Administration that led to conflict in 2002.The book first identifies the influence of the Vietnam era on the use of U.S. military power and the decision for war in 1990. The book then outlines the important factors of Iraqi history and culture which dominated relations between the two nations during the 1980s and 1990s. In subsequent chapters, the 1991 campaign of Desert Storm is analyzed from both the U.S. and Iraqi perspectives; then the military, economic and diplomatic actions of the period between the two more conventional, military parts of the conflict are assessed. The final chapters analyze the highly successful, 2003 conventional campaign from both perspectives; the ineffective post-war stabilization operations in Iraq which began with the failure to transition under the Coalition Provisional Authority; and the eventual development and implementation of a more effective strategy in Iraq - combining new doctrine and a Surge of forces to protect the population in a renewed counterinsurgency campaign. In a concluding chapter, the key lessons for the future are reviewed, including the importance of effective strategic decision-making and the mindset required to prosecute modern war.

The Iraq War: origins and consequences

* 1. Culture and History of Iraq: Ancient Mesopotamia to the British Mandate * 2. From the British Mandate to the 1958 Revolution * 3. The Iraq Revolution, Post-Monarchy Political Conflict and the Establishment of the Baathist Regime * 4. Saddam Hussein, the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War * 5. The Invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Persian Gulf War * 6. The Iraq War: Causes, Invasion, and Post-Invasion Policies * 7. Iraq in the Context of Previous US Interventions and the Vietnam War * 8. Post-Invasion Iraq: Occupation and Reaction Government and Economy Insurgency * 9. Counterinsurgency and U.S.Corporate Presence * 10. Impacts of the Iraq War

Lands, Hands and Socio-cultural Boundaries: A Reading of Dhu Nun Ayyub's The Hand, the Land and the Water (1948)

This article offers a literary analysis of the novel The Hand, the Land and the Water (Al-Yad wa'l ard aa'l ma'), written by communist intellectual Dhu Nun Ayyub (b.1908). I read this novel in an attempt to analyze the boundaries between Baghdad and countryside (al-rif), as understood by the novel's protagonists, and to underscore the ways in which such boundaries were not only constructed, but also crossed and challenged. The novel conveys many themes that occupied the Iraqi leftist intelligentsia at the time, such as the abuse of peasants by their sheikhs and by the state. It was one of the first fictional representations of the Wathba, and thus can be seen as an endeavour to understand the meanings of this very important moment in Iraqi history.

Tosh, Why History Matters

In his fascinating book on the place of history in modem society, John Tosh, a social historian at Roehampton University in the United Kingdom, begins with the 2003 invasion of lraq. Blithely ignorant of the historical forces and precedent in that region, Anglo-American citizens later would be surprised by Iraq's turmoil in the months and years that followed an apparently easy conquest. Other than the 1991 Gulf War, few had any inkling of past interventions or knowledge that British troops had fought their way to Baghdad during the First World War and, in the process of establishing its mandate, took heavy casualties in a series of revolts and insurgencies. The legacy to the modem world was an artificial state with Kurdish and Shiite majorities controlled by a Sunni Islam minority, multiple coups against dictatorial governments, and the ultimate dictator in Saddam Hussein. In Tosh' s view, those watching speeches by Tony Blair and George W. Bush were generally unaware of the narrative of Iraqi history. Without this perspective, citizens of these democracies were unable to participate rationally in the political debate. What makes Tosh's message especially interesting is that he places much of the blame for the uninformed citizen squarely on the backs of modem historians who "are strangely reluctant to adopt the role of expert" in ongoing political debates.

A brief history of Iraq

A brief history of Iraq

The disintegration of Iraq: the manufacturing and politicization of sectarianism

Since the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, Iraqi politics and society have been interpreted through the lens of sectarian division and strife. Iraq under occupation has been beset by sectarian violence; however, contrary to standard belief, this sectarian violence has no significant precedent in Iraqi history, the politicized sectarianism that now dominates Iraq is argued to be the intended result of a deliberate Anglo-American occupation policy that has had at its foundation, the goal to carve Iraq into sectarian enclaves and to engineer a weak, pliable, state. The purpose of this article is thus two-fold: first, this article delineates social folkloric forms of sectarianism in Iraq from the militarized sectarianism that now constitutes Iraqi political culture. This, centred on folk practices, is argued to have been mitigated through a long process of state-building and social secularization. Today's political sectarianism, as reflected in militia activity and religious chauvinism, is presented in terms of Anglo-American occupation strategy, including: the empowering of sectarian militia parties which had no natural constituency in Iraq; the stripping and destruction of Iraq's national symbols; and the imposition of an American-written constitution drained of any national content that only reinforced sectarian division in Iraq. Second, against this backdrop of politicized sectarianism, outposts of genuine Iraqi nationalism are considered, with a particular focus on the populist Sadrist current. This current, an Iraqi national force informed by Islamic notions, represents an uneven but nevertheless genuine resistance movement, who might portend the emergence of further national movements in occupied Iraq.

The terrorists of today are the heroes of tomorrow: the anti-British and anti-American insurgencies in Iraqi history

The anti-British rebellion of 1920 has become one of the most important foundational myths of Iraqi nationalism. It has been the subject of poetry, theatre, film and folklore and continues to be commemorated and evoked as a symbol of the Iraqi nation state and of Iraqi pride and independence. This popular reading of events ignores the realities of the rebellion: that it was a mid-Euphrates, rather than a national, affair and that the motivations, to begin with at least, were far more personal and economic than national. Nevertheless, the rebellion's memory has acquired a hallowed place in Iraqi nationalist discourse. This article will focus on two points: first, to place the rebellion of 1920 in its correct historical context; second, it will be argued that today's anti-American insurgency will make the same historiographical journey from being a tumultuous and localised event that had no shortage of detractors to becoming a defining symbol of Iraqi nationalism. As will be shown, there is already much evidence to suggest that the process has already begun. The foreign troop presence cannot remain indefinitely and when, sooner or later, Coalition forces withdraw we may well see the development of a narrative that credits the ‘resistance’ for gaining Iraqi independence; in other words, the ‘resistance’ today may well become the foundational nationalist myth of the new Iraq.

“Out of Place”: Home and Empire in the Works of Mahmud Ahmad Al-Sayyid and Dhu Nun Ayyub

This essay highlights silenced aspects of Arab-Iraqi nationalism. While scholars of Iraqi nationalism paid great heed to intellectuals affiliated with the state, I explore sources that were written outside of official circles, namely, novels, to rescue a more nuanced understanding of Iraqi nationalism and, concurrently, to reconstruct the richness of the Iraqi cultural field. I focus on two intellectuals, Mahmud Ahmad al-Sayyid (1904-37) and Dhu Nun Ayyub (1908-84), two socialists whose novels critique the state and its elites. I argue that, despite the prominence of Pan-Arabism in Iraqi national historiography, their works reveal the existence of Eastern forms of Iraqi national identity that emphasize the connections among Iraqi, Indian, and Turkish nationalism(s). Such works also complicate our periodization of Iraqi history. Whereas scholars agree that after the end of World War II the Iraqi public sphere was invigorated by radical voices from the Left, these novels demonstrate the early existence of critical and democratic voices in the interwar period.