Iraq
Saddam, the Original Cake King
The celebration hall was vast, with the birthday star placed majestically in its middle. I don’t mean Saddam or even any of his children or grandchildren. The character we all eagerly anticipated was Saddam’s birthday cake.
Waterways Dry in the Land of Two Rivers
Iraq’s marshes in the south are drying out, eroding ecosystems and livelihoods while the government has little to offer. Meanwhile, as climate change and neighboring states have contributed to Iraq’s water woes, environmentalists have been subjected to kidnapping for speaking out.
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.
The Disarming of Iraq: What Went Wrong and What Went Right
History ultimately proved the international inspections right, while the cited intelligence was wrong. Why the difference? Unlike the misuse of distorted intelligence based on uncorroborated single sources, the international inspections relied on multifaceted data collection and analysis. Prevented from the comparatively straightforward sequential tasks of verifying Iraqi WMD declarations and elimination anticipated by the 1991 cease-fire, they devised multiple approaches to find overlapping indicators of illicit weapons programs instead.
Life and Loss in Occupied Iraq — with Noor Ghazi
Twenty years after the war began, Noor Ghazi and New Lines magazine’s Rasha Al Aqeedi reflect on their experiences of life in Iraq during the American invasion and what they lost in its aftermath.