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An Expensive Bribe for a Syrian ID

My Lost ID by the Fountain

Sri Lanka’s Fishers Face a Tangled Future

Modern Issues Tangle Traditional Fishers

Kang-Chun Cheng

Medieval Arabic Culinary Literature Offers Lessons for the Present

A Trove of Medieval Arabic Cookbooks

Excess was in vogue at the zenith of the Abbasid Empire. The wedding of its seventh caliph, al-Mamun, cost 50 million dirhams, according to the historian al-Tabari. It required 140 mules to make three trips a day for an entire year to transport wood for the stove. It then took two days and nights to burn through all the wood as the food cooked above it.

Mahmoud Habboush

Hard News: The Struggle to Report on Myanmar and Belarus From Exile

Reporting From Exile

Condemned to Death for Blasphemy in Pakistan, She Lives a Life of Poverty in Exile

Blasphemy Laws and Life on the Margins

Tunisia’s President Gives Life to a Zionism Conspiracy Theory

Sub-Saharan Zionism in Tunisia?

Living — and Reliving — the US Invasion of Iraq

Living Through the Iraq War

Rasha Al Aqeedi

I Worked in Iraq During the US Occupation. The ‘Rot’ in the Project Was Known to Us All

America’s Impotence in Iraq

The Uses and Abuses of the Iraq War

The Ghosts of Calamities Past

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Podcasts

How America Fell Out of Love With War — with Samuel Moyn and Faisal Al Yafai

How America Fell Out of Love With War — with Samuel Moyn and Faisal Al Yafai

Life and Loss in Occupied Iraq — with Noor Ghazi

Life and Loss in Occupied Iraq — with Noor Ghazi

Hyperconnectivity’s Unsettling Changes — with Rogers Brubaker

Hyperconnectivity’s Unsettling Changes — with Rogers Brubaker

Editors' Picks

Living — and Reliving — the US Invasion of Iraq

Living — and Reliving — the US Invasion of Iraq

Rasha Al Aqeedi

I Worked in Iraq During the US Occupation. The ‘Rot’ in the Project Was Known to Us All

I Worked in Iraq During the US Occupation. The ‘Rot’ in the Project Was Known to Us All

The Uses and Abuses of the Iraq War

The Uses and Abuses of the Iraq War

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Photo Essays

Syrian White Helmets Work Miracles After Earthquake

Syrian White Helmets Work Miracles After Earthquake

Fared Al Mahlool, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Desertification in an Iraqi Bread Basket

Desertification in an Iraqi Bread Basket

Future Melting Away as Water Crisis Hits Northwest Corner of India

Future Melting Away as Water Crisis Hits Northwest Corner of India

Haziq Qadri, Lylla Younes

A Vanishing Craft: Khartoum’s Handmade Skull Caps

A Vanishing Craft: Khartoum’s Handmade Skull Caps

Jenny Gustafsson

Contributors

Rasha Al Aqeedi

Rasha Al Aqeedi

"I still have scars from the invasion, both visible and invisible. Besides the emotional trauma, I suffered cuts from shrapnel when an improvised explosive device planted right outside our garage door caused my bedroom window to shatter and its frame to collapse. I am also one of the lucky ones. My life took an undeniably better turn because of the war, and for that I carry enormous guilt, which I doubt will fade anytime soon."

Robert Ford

Robert Ford

"There is a revisionist version of history that purports that, if we had just undertaken more micromanagement of Iraqi domestic politics after 2011, we could have limited the corruption and sectarian abuses. That is a wish, not an analysis. The reality is that American micromanagement between 2005 and 2010, at best, knowingly accepted and, at worst, knowingly promoted those who committed the abuses."

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

"The lesson of Iraq, then, is not to retreat into fatalism and make a virtue of apathy. It is to start from a place of empathy and weigh the human cost of both action and inaction. It is not to develop a “tragic mind” that is impervious to circumstance, but to cultivate an inquiring spirit that is both earnest and irreverent. It is to never initiate a war where there is none, but to ensure that, if someone else starts one, it ends in the aggressor’s defeat."

Noor Ghazi

Noor Ghazi

"They just randomly opened fire, and she fell on the ground, and she died instantly. It was hard, just seeing my best friend falling right in front of me. But what hurts is that she was counted as collateral damage to the invasion. She was turned into a statistic, into a number. Her name was Raghad. I always like to say her name, just because I feel like saying her name honors her in some way."