Tunisia’s President Gives Life to a Zionism Conspiracy Theory
For months, President Kais Saied and his closest advisers have been ingesting the bizarre musings circulated by a tiny, obscure party on Facebook, with one particularly pernicious theory gripping his attention: that Black migrants are pawns in a Zionist settler movement designed to fundamentally strip Tunisia of its identity and land.
Condemned to Death for Blasphemy in Pakistan, She Lives a Life of Poverty in Exile
In 2010, Asia Bibi became the first woman in Pakistan to be sentenced to death under the country's controversial blasphemy laws, in a case that sparked global outrage. After eight years on death row, she escaped to Canada in 2019 following her acquittal. She tells New Lines how she has since lived a life of poverty in exile.
The Uses and Abuses of the Iraq War
The lesson of Iraq 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 to never initiate a war where there is none, but, should someone else start a war, to ensure that it ends in the aggressor’s defeat.
I Worked in Iraq During the US Occupation. The ‘Rot’ in the Project Was Known to Us All
The sectarian human rights abuses and actions to undermine the democratic structures being put in place were known to us, yet we proved powerless to act. On this 20th anniversary, many are looking for lessons in America’s actions. But what remains inexplicable is that many knew at the time what the issues were.
Living — and Reliving — the US Invasion of Iraq
The days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq still live vividly in the minds of Iraqis. The nuances go beyond the question of whether life worsened or improved. Coming of age during the invasion is the story of undoing decades of indoctrination under Saddam’s dictatorship, while looking for any silver linings in one of modern history’s most unpopular wars.