Violence In Iraq Research Articles

Maha Sulaiman Younis: A personal history of psychiatry in Iraq through war and conflict

Across four decades of war and violence in Iraq between 1981 and 2003, I undertook my medical training in psychiatry. I chose this specialty in response to the suffering of the bereaved women in Iraq across these rough times. This article details a personal history of my journey specialising in psychiatry through this period in Iraq and the experience of being the first female psychiatrist who accomplished her training through the Iraqi Board of Psychiatry in a programme established in 1988. I reflect on how psychiatry was not the specialisation of choice for female doctors, which created a shortage in the field. This most acutely impacted female trauma victims, who preferred to be treated by female psychiatrists. From the 1950s to 1988, the ratio of psychiatrists in the country increased from 0.2 to 0.5 per 100,000 population. However, this saw a dramatic decrease because of two waves of migration in 1991 and 2003, as of 1998, the ratio of psychiatrists in the country had dropped to 0.1 per 100,000 of the population. The pursuit and development of this specialisation were disrupted by war, invasion and comprehensive sanctions. I also consider the socio-economic impact of these aforementioned events on society as a whole and, in particular, on the medical profession. This account tells the story of my lived experience during those difficult times and my efforts to become an example of a new generation of women psychiatrists.

Maha Sulaiman Younis: A personal history of psychiatry in Iraq through war and conflict

Abstract Across four decades of war and violence in Iraq between 1981 and 2003, I undertook my medical training in psychiatry. I chose this specialty in response to the suffering of the bereaved women in Iraq across these rough times. This article details a personal history of my journey specialising in psychiatry through this period in Iraq and the experience of being the first female psychiatrist who accomplished her training through the Iraqi Board of Psychiatry in a programme established in 1988. I reflect on how psychiatry was not the specialisation of choice for female doctors, which created a shortage in the field. This most acutely impacted female trauma victims, who preferred to be treated by female psychiatrists. From the 1950s to 1988, the ratio of psychiatrists in the country increased from 0.2 to 0.5 per 100,000 population. However, this saw a dramatic decrease because of two waves of migration in 1991 and 2003, as of 1998, the ratio of psychiatrists in the country had dropped to 0.1 per 100,000 of the population. The pursuit and development of this specialisation were disrupted by war, invasion and comprehensive sanctions. I also consider the socio-economic impact of these aforementioned events on society as a whole and, in particular, on the medical profession. This account tells the story of my lived experience during those difficult times and my efforts to become an example of a new generation of women psychiatrists.

Strategic Targeting: The Islamic State and Use of Violence in Iraq and Syria

ABSTRACT What explains the specific location of Islamic State attacks in Syria and Iraq? We consider how both ethnic and economic factors shape the group’s decision-making about where to attack. We explore these competing motivations using spatial analysis of the Islamic State’s individual acts of violence from 2013–2017. We find that both areas with ethnic heterogeneity and valuable economic rents are associated with more individual Islamic State violent events. By examing the micro-foundations of the Islamic State’s conflict decisions, we provide further nuance to understanding the strategic logic of rebel groups during wartime.

Private military and security companies, corporate structure, and levels of violence in Iraq

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the effect of private military and security companies (PMSCs) on levels of civilian casualties in Iraqi governorates from 2004 to 2007. Within a principal-agent framework, we argue that the capacity to monitor and evaluate PMSC performance is conditioned by the availability of performance-related information. Crucially, PMSC corporate structure impacts the information available to the employer. Differences in PMSCs’ corporate structure (e.g., whether a firm is publicly traded or closed ownership) influences the disclosure of different levels of information about a firm’s performance. A closed ownership PMSC is opaque, obstructing access to information. Publicly traded PMSCs, by contrast, have legal obligations to release information on corporate performance, policies, and contracts. Closed ownership PMSCs are correlated with increases in the likelihood of civilian casualties while publicly traded PMSCs have no effect on civilian casualties.

ABD’nin Irak Müdahalesinde Güvenliğin Özelleşmesi: Sözleşmeli Personel ve Özel Askeri ve Güvenlik Şirketlerinin Rolü ve Etkileri

With the US intervention in Iraq in 2003, private military and security companies (PMSCs) became one of the most important partners of the United States and contractor personnel even became the second largest group within the coalition forces. After 2003, US administrations tried to externalize the increasing economic, humanitarian and political costs of the Iraq War through contractor personnel. While the contracted personnel fought in Iraq alongside the US forces before 2011, they replaced the US forces in the country after 2011. Although US administrations could offload some of the burden of their work through the PMSCs and their contracted personnel, human rights violations of contracted personnel undermined the reputation of the US in Iraq and the region. Contractor personnel also became a part of the increasing violence in Iraq as they themselves became targets and responded in turn and thus they became an important party of the increasing violence in the country. The privatization of security in Iraq through the US also transformed the concept of security and caused new security problems that are still being discussed. The legal status of and control over the PMSCs and their personnel, the exclusionary understanding about security and the marketization of security led to new security problems in Iraq, which was becoming an increasingly fragile country. The roles played by the PMSCs during the Iraq War also led to new theoretical and practical discussions in International Relations regarding the transformation of traditional security understanding and the monopoly on force.

Contracting Blowback?: The Use of Violence by Private Security Companies and Insurgents during the Iraq War

This article assesses the influence of Private Security Companies’ (PSCs’) violence against insurgents and noncombatants on the frequency of insurgent attacks against PSCs during the 2004 to 2009 period of the Iraq War. It finds that PSC violence may have exerted fairly weak influence on short-term variations in the frequency with which insurgents attacked the firms. It also finds that variations in the frequency of insurgent attacks against PSCs may have been at least partly a side-effect of variations in the overall frequency of insurgent violence in Iraq that were, in turn, driven by events that were beyond the firms’ control.

Too Late to Apologize? Collateral Damage, Post-Harm Compensation, and Insurgent Violence in Iraq

AbstractA key piece of conventional wisdom among scholars of modern armed conflict is that collateral damage is often strategically costly in war. Yet most combatants already know this and take actions after mistakes—most prominently, the distribution of “condolence payments” to civilian victims—in order to mitigate these costs. Do these payments work? This question is important not only for policymakers but also for deeper theoretical debates about how civilians respond to combatant signals in war. To examine these issues, I use micro-level conflict event data on 4,046 condolence payments made by Coalition forces to civilian victims during the Iraq War from 2004 to 2008, matching it with corresponding data on collateral damage and insurgent violence. The results of this analysis reveal that post-harm compensation does significantly diminish local rates of insurgent violence, and that this is true across different types of payments (cash handouts or in-kind assistance). Ultimately, these patterns can be best explained by a rationalist mechanism in which civilians update their beliefs about violent events based on new information about combatants’ wartime intentions. The results thus provide a compelling strategic rationale for combatants to compensate their victims in war, and suggest that civilians are not blinded to new information about conflict dynamics by their preexisting biases.

Topography of Fear and Violence in Ahmad Al Sadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad

This paper examines the postcolonial Iraqi novel which gives a voice to the Iraqi writers to describe for the first time the political repression and violence in Iraq before and after the US invasion. They address the bad conditions in Iraq after the 2003 and discuss the reshaping of the Iraqi identity due to the sectarian conflicts that have endangers the minority population in this pluralistic society. We intend to stress the contemporary fears of Iraqi people through the use of the monster. In this paper, the researchers attempt to present a new voice in the Iraqi novel that was silenced for a long time. The Iraqi writers tend to describe aesthetically the terrible national condition in Iraq post 2003.

Water as a weapon and casualty of armed conflict: A review of recent water‐related violence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen

AbstractViolence over water resources has persisted in various forms for thousands of years, driven by complex ideological, religious, economic, and strategic factors. Scarce and valuable freshwater has played a role in conflicts as a contributing factor, a target or tool, or a weapon. The focus of this review is on specific instances of violence around water and water systems conflict in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, where water resources and human‐built water systems have been both weapons and targets of conflict. A new cycle of violence in the region, growing in extent and severity, began approximately three decades ago and is described here in the context of broader regional water challenges and theoretical issues around environmental security. New data and definitions and an analysis of the types of event and sources of information are also provided in the context of international humanitarian law. This assessment confirms and expands upon previous work that evaluates trends toward the weaponization of water and the targeting of water systems in Middle East conflicts. Initial recommendations for reducing these trends are provided.This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance Human Water > Rights to Water Science of Water > Water Quality

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among Women with Breast Cancer in Iraq: A Preliminary Report

Background: Diagnostic and statistical manual versions IV AND 5 recognized cancer (life threatening disease) a traumatic event. Exposure to trauma (war or violence) might lead to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Publishing on PTSD after ca breast is scarce in Iraq. Objective: To comment on the prevalence of PTSD among females with ca breast. Method: A total of 70 women with cancer of breast after surgery was included in the study. Iraqi version Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) was used. It is a self-completed questionnaire. Results: Out of the total, 81.4% were with PTSD. Women showing PTSD were significantly younger (46.5 ± 10.7 year) than those without PTSD (57.5 ± 10.7 year) (p = 0.002). Of those with PTSD, 93.6% were exposed to > 5 traumatic events during escalated violence in Iraq. The association between number of traumatic events and PTSD was significant (p = 0.001). Conclusion: High prevalence of PTSD among women treated from ca breast. Age and exposure to traumatic events are determinant of PTSD.

Theatres of blood: Performative violence in Iraq

Abstract This article examines much of the violence of the past two decades in Iraq through the prism of performative politics. This draws attention to its spectacular nature, its repertoires and aesthetics, where blood becomes the common referent in a theatre of state power and resistance. Beyond the spectacle, however, violence is performative in that it possesses causal power. Violence has shaped the ways in which conflicts have been understood and organized, reproducing and reinforcing particular identities, institutions and attitudes in Iraq. Performative violence became a spectacle of horror and, through that horror a technology for the demarcation of whole categories of Iraqi citizen whose blood Islamic State and others licensed themselves to shed. Both nascent state forces and those resisting them, as well the foreign powers active in the Iraqi theatre, had every interest in making manifest their competence and their potential in the use of violence. Regardless of the identity of the parties involved, or the ends they were pursuing, violence has thus become a key technology of power. To perform it has been to assert the right to power in the political landscape of Iraq.

From Anarchy to Civil War: The Escalation of Violence in Iraq, 2003-2006

Civil wars are often the product of low-level political violence that escalates, rather than emerging ex nihilo from a peaceful society. Therefore, it is important to focus on what causes the initial pattern of violence and why it escalates. This essay integrates structural and strategic theories of political violence to develop an analytical framework of violence escalation. This framework allows us to identify critical junctures where intervention may limit or halt escalation. The framework is applied to Iraq, 2003–2006 to determine how and why violence escalated, culminating in widespread sectarian civil war in 2006.

Challenges Facing the Controlling Stage of the Disaster Response Management Resulting from War Operations and Terrorism in Iraq

The effects of war in Iraq are coupled with the susceptibility to natural hazards, which has exposed the people of Iraq to multiple man-made disasters. Despite the fact that terrorists did not have a hold on any part of Iraq before the US invasion, it is generally believed that Iraq contains many terrorists and terrorist organisations. As a result, violence in Iraq has become normalised, ranging from the Iraqi and US military assaults and sectarian militias, threat of suicide bombings, to violent street crime. Because response activities must operate in a constantly changing environment during a disaster, the response operation is complex and need more controlling efforts. Therefore, it is widely agreed that controlling the response to disaster stemming from war operations and terrorism is often considered a difficult stage within the four disaster response management stages: planning, organising, directing, and controlling. This paper is based on an ongoing PhD study. It aims to determine the challenges facing the controlling stage of disaster response management in Iraq with particular reference to war operations and terrorism. This paper adopts a single holistic case study approach, where disaster response management is the unit of analysis. In order to develop a rich and robust data set, a mixed methods approach is utilised based on semi-structured interviews, questionnaire surveys and document analysis. A conceptual content analysis is used to articulate the primary data and this is then analysed in the context of the secondary data. The findings show that disaster response controlling stage faced different challenges such as lack of modern technology and equipment, multiple sources for the decision at the scene, lack of public education, and failure in imposing a proper security cordon.

An Eventful End to an Eventful Year

The year 2017 started with a bang in Asia and ended not with a whimper but with an even bigger bang. The election of U.S. President Donald Trump shook up old premises about U.S. engagement in Asia that had long been taken for granted. The new U.S. government took a strong interest in developments in the Korean Peninsula after DPRK leader Kim Jong Un launched his country's most dangerous nuclear tests yet. However, other aspects of what had long been a traditional U.S. posture in the region suffered from some uncertainty. These included doubts about the U.S. president's sensitivity to the strategic concerns of its allies Japan and South Korea, as well as support for multilateral trade and economic cooperation arrangements that the former Obama government had supported, especially the Trans Pacific Partnership. The “America First” policy also raised questions about the extent to which trade tensions with China and other countries would dominate U.S. foreign policy, and as a consequence imperil long-term U.S. economic influence in the region. Trump's visits to several Asian countries in the latter part of the year went some ways in giving his counterparts in the region some assurances, but apparently not quite enough. In Southeast Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) commemoration of the 50th anniversary of its 1967 establishment provided much occasion to look back and be thankful for the economic success, relative peace, and cordial relations among the neighboring states in this formerly war-torn region. But serious challenges loom in the immediate future, including those arising from domestic political contestations in several states; Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia saw signs of growing dissension in 2017. There was also slow progress in economic integration under the ASEAN Economic Community, as well as ASEAN's inability to unify the perspectives of member-states on certain key regional security concerns, including disputes with China in the South China Sea, and the massive humanitarian crisis brought about by repression and abuses by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya minority in Rakhine State. Another sad endnote to the [email protected] celebrations was the untimely passing of Surin Pitsuwan, former ASEAN Secretary-General (2007–2012), consummate diplomat, humanitarian, and peace-maker, who until his very last days was on the road promoting Southeast Asian cooperation. In the Philippines, a siege by an ISIS-inspired rebel group—founded by the Maute brothers—lasted for five months in the once-prosperous and beautiful Islamic city of Marawi in the southern island of Mindanao. The urban landscape was reduced to rubble—a dire warning to the region that—as extremist violence in Iraq and Syria was dwindling, Southeast Asia could easily be the next major front. Toward year-end, the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China gave President Xi Jinping a fresh five-year mandate which promises to bring even bolder and possibly more controversial measures than those we witnessed during the five years just ended. The “China dream” elucidated by Xi not only portends continuing efforts by China on the path to greater power (in particular, military power), but an invigoration of the Party's control over both the Army and the State. In external relations, the Belt and Road Initiative emerged as a major platform for China to integrate its own economy even further across the globe through infrastructure, trade, and financial connectivity projects. Whereas “America First,” Brexit, and the growth of Islamophobia and right-wing populism in the West may portend loosening links between Asia and the West, China continues to reach out not only to the West and its East Asian neighbors but to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and beyond, with promises of infrastructure investments and welcoming markets. Economic problems bedeviled the Chinese economy as well, not least a massive debt. Yet, should there indeed be a Western retreat from global engagement whether in economic or security affairs, the space for growth of China's own influence and leadership will inevitably expand. The sentiment in Beijing is that China is on the cusp of fully rising to reclaim its lost glory; after a “hundred years of humiliation,” it is closer than ever to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation that its people have long aspired for. Selective as these highlighted events from 2017 are, we are tempted to predict that 2018 in Asia will be no less interesting.

Private military and security companies, contract structure, market competition, and violence in Iraq

Conflict environments exacerbate an incentive dilemma between employers and private military and security companies (PMSCs). PMSCs seek to maximize profits, but employers seek to minimize expenses and maximize services. We argue that PMSCs are influenced by two complementary economic factors: contract structure and intra-sector competition. Contract structures are set by employers and establish compensation constraints and intra-sector competition identifies potential replacements. Both impact service delivery. We find that PMSCs with contract structures that lack performance incentives, even in the presence of competition, increase the likelihood of violence in Iraq. PMSCs that lacked intra-sector competition had a similar but smaller effect.

Oil and intra-state conflict in Iraq and Syria: sub-state actors and challenges for Turkey's energy security

ABSTRACTThe continuing dependency on fossil fuels of the Middle East not only in Turkey's energy mix but also in world energy demand requires further analysis of oil and conflict in the region since the fall of Mosul in Iraq to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in June 2014. This article addresses the relationship between oil and conflict. Then, it examines the case of Turkey's increasing energy relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government to elucidate the implications of inter-state and intra-state conflict on regional interdependence in the region. The argument asserts that risks of an abrupt regime change or revolutionary regime formation in the aftermath of civil war in Syria and ethnic or sectarian violence in Iraq, which are highly associated with intra-state conflicts, present challenges for Turkey's energy security and most importantly for human security in the region.

Extending Care and Support to the Survivors of Gender-Based Violence in Iraq During Humanitarian Emergencies

Extending Care and Support to the Survivors of Gender-Based Violence in Iraq During Humanitarian Emergencies

SECTARIANISM, MINORITIES, AND THE SECULAR STATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Over the last few years there has been much scholarly interest in sectarianism and minorities in the Middle East. New scholarship has appeared against the backdrop of communal violence in Iraq triggered by the US-led invasion, the intensifying Saudi–Iranian rivalry, the rise of extremist groups such as ISIS that have made sectarian violence a centerpiece of their ideology, and the ongoing Syrian Civil War.

The Theory of Legal Cynicism and Sunni Insurgent Violence in Post-Invasion Iraq

We elaborate a cultural framing theory of legal cynicism—previously used to account for neighborhood variation in Chicago homicides—to explain Arab Sunni victimization and insurgent attacks during the U.S. post-invasion occupation of Iraq. Legal cynicism theory has an unrecognized power to explain collective and interpersonal violence in international as well as U.S. settings. We expand on how “double and linked” roles of state and non-state actors can be used to analyze violence against Arab Sunni civilians. Arab Sunnis responded to reports of unnecessary violent attacks by U.S./Coalition soldiers with a legally cynical framing of the U.S./Coalition-led invasion and occupation, the new Shia-dominated Iraqi state, and its military and police. A post-invasion frame amplification of beliefs about state-based illegitimacy, unresponsiveness, and insecurity made it not only possible but predictable that Arab Sunni insurgent attacks would continue against U.S./Coalition forces and transfer to Shia-dominated Iraqi government forces. Violence in Iraq persisted despite U.S. surge efforts to end the Arab Sunni insurgency.

Sexual violence in Iraq: Challenges for transnational feminist politics

The article discusses sexual violence by ISIS against women in Iraq, particularly Yezidi women, against the historical background of broader sexual and gender-based violence. It intervenes in feminist debates about how to approach and analyse sexual and wider gender-based violence in Iraq specifically and the Middle East more generally. Recognizing the significance of positionality, the article argues against dichotomous positions and for the need to look at both macrostructural configurations of power pertaining to imperialism, neoliberalism and globalization on the one hand, and localized expressions of patriarchy, religious interpretations and practices and cultural norms on the other hand. Finally, the article reflects on the question of what a transnational feminist solidarity might look like in relation to sexual violence by ISIS.