Download or read book Iraq in Fragments written by Eric Herring and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it expected to be able to establish a prosperous liberal democracy with an open economy that would serve as a key ally in the region. It sought to engage Iraqi society in ways that would defeat any challenge to that state building project and U.S. guidance of it. Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala argue that state building in Iraq has been crippled less by preexisting weaknesses in the Iraqi state, Iraqi sectarian divisions or U.S. policy mistakes than by the fact that the US has attempted-with only limited success-to control the parameters and outcome of that process. They explain that the very nature of U.S. state-building in Iraq has created incentives for unregulated local power struggles and patron-client relations. Corruption, smuggling, and violence have resulted. The main legacy of the US-led occupation, the authors contend, is that Iraq has become a fragmented state-that is, one in which actors dispute where overall political authority lies and in which there are no agreed procedures for resolving such disputes. As long as this is the case, the authority of the state will remain limited. Technocratic mechanisms such as training schemes for officials, political fixes such as elections, and the coercive tools of repression will not be able to overcome this situation. Placing the occupation within the context of regional, global, and U.S. politics, Herring and Rangwala demonstrate how the politics of co-option, coercion, and economic change have transformed the lives and allegiances of the Iraqi population. As uncertainty about the future of Iraq persists, this volume provides a much-needed analysis of the deeper forces that give meaning to the daily events in Iraq.

Download or read book What I Heard About Iraq written by Eliot Weinberger and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iraq War has unleashed such a torrent of opinion - impassioned polemic, neo-con apologia, world-weary cynicism - that it feels like the important truths are being lost in a media feeding-frenzy. Eliot Weinberger eschews the rehtoric of the soapbox in an extraordinary montage of facts, sound bites and testimonies. He assembles an uncompromising and blackly comic narrative, which permits the voices of the war to speak for themselves, and allows the protagonists to damn themselves in their own words. This pocket-sized volume is vast in scope, a work unlike any other you have read on Iraq, which finds an unexpected eloquence in its refusal to join in the facile grand-standing and selective amnesia of so much contemporary commentary.

Download or read book The Book of Collateral Damage written by Sinan Antoon and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sinan Antoon returns to the Iraq war in a poetic and provocative tribute to reclaiming memory Widely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon’s fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric bookseller who is trying to catalogue everything destroyed by war, from objects, buildings, books and manuscripts, flora and fauna, to humans. Entrusted with the catalogue and obsessed with Wadood’s project, Nameer finds life in New York movingly intertwined with fragments from his homeland’s past and its present—destroyed letters, verses, epigraphs, and anecdotes—in this stylistically ambitious panorama of the wreckage of war and the power of memory.

Download or read book A Universal History of the Destruction of Books written by Fernando Báez and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the many reasons and motivations for the destruction of books throughout history, citing specific acts from the smashing of ancient Sumerian tablets to the looting of libraries in post-war Iraq.

Download or read book Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in Iraq written by Ahmed S. Hashim and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a loosely organized insurgency continues to target American and Coalition soldiers, as well as Iraqi security forces and civilians, with devastating results. In this sobering account of the ongoing violence, Ahmed Hashim, a specialist on Middle Eastern strategic issues and on irregular warfare, reveals the insurgents behind the widespread revolt, their motives, and their tactics. The insurgency, he shows, is not a united movement directed by a leadership with a single ideological vision. Instead, it involves former regime loyalists, Iraqis resentful of foreign occupation, foreign and domestic Islamist extremists, and elements of organized crime. These groups have cooperated with one another in the past and coordinated their attacks; but the alliance between nationalist Iraqi insurgents on the one hand and religious extremists has frayed considerably. The U.S.-led offensive to retake Fallujah in November 2004 and the success of the elections for the Iraqi National Assembly in January 2005 have led more "mainstream" insurgent groups to begin thinking of reinforcing the political arm of their opposition movement and to seek political guarantees for the Sunni Arab community in the new Iraq.Hashim begins by placing the Iraqi revolt in its historical context. He next profiles the various insurgent groups, detailing their origins, aims, and operational and tactical modi operandi. He concludes with an unusually candid assessment of the successes and failures of the Coalition's counter-insurgency campaign. Looking ahead, Hashim warns that ethnic and sectarian groups may soon be pitted against one another in what will be a fiercely contested fight over who gets what in the new Iraq. Evidence that such a conflict is already developing does not augur well for Iraq's future stability. Both Iraq and the United States must work hard to ensure that slow but steady success over the insurgency is not overshadowed by growing ethno-sectarian animosities as various groups fight one another for the biggest slice of the political and economic pie. In place of sensational headlines, official triumphalism, and hand-wringing, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq offers a clear-eyed analysis of the increasingly complex violence that threatens the very future of Iraq.

Download or read book Baghdad Noir written by Muhsin al-Ramli and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique anthology of Iraqi noir fiction collects fourteen original stories of crime, conspiracy, regret, and revenge in the capital of Iraq. The centuries-old city of Baghdad has known many rulers, many troubles, and many crimes. But while most Iraqis would agree that their life has always been noir, there has not been a literary tradition to capture this aspect of the culture. By commissioning the fourteen stories collected here—most by Iraqi writers, all by authors familiar with Baghdad—editor Samuel Shimon and Akashic Books have created what may be the first anthology of Iraqi crime fiction ever assembled. Here you will read of life in Baghdad both during and after the Saddam Hussein era, with stories of fear in the shadow of a ruthless dictator; kidnappings in the time of U.S. occupation; detectives who investigate political conspiracies; and tales of revenge, assassination, mental illness, and family struggle in the war-torn City of Peace. Baghdad Noir includes brand-new stories by Sinan Antoon, Ali Bader, Mohammed Alwan Jabr, Nassif Falak, Dheya al-Khalidi, Hussain al-Mozany, Layla Qasrany, Hayet Raies, Muhsin al-Ramli, Ahmed Saadawi, Hadia Said, Salima Salih, Salar Abdoh, and Roy Scranton.

Download or read book Camera Boy written by Fred Minnick and published by L&R Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fred Minnick spent more than a year in Iraq as a U.S. Army public affairs photojournalist, covering the good, bad and ugly sides of the conflict. With a Nikon in one hand and an M-16 in the other, he accompanied combat troops on missions ranging from raids on suspected terrorist strongholds to public relations events including the opening of a school for girls. Some of the stories made it back home, most did not.Camera Boy offers an eye-witness account of the Iraq War from a soldier with a different POV--from behind a camera and typewriter. Unfortunately, being assigned to public affairs did not shield Staff Sergeant Minnick from the horrors of war--including the deaths of two close friends--or from the devastating effects of PTSD upon his return home.It is a story of courage, frustration (with both the military and the mainstream media), dedication and redemption. Includes more than 40 black and white photos taken by the author.

Download or read book Fragments from Iraq written by Zsolt T. Stockinger, M.D. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From February 2005 to March 2006, Navy trauma surgeon Zsolt Stockinger served on a forward operating base in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, where he treated more than a thousand casualties and performed hundreds of surgeries. Throughout his deployment, he recorded his thoughts and experiences in a journal that he occasionally sent to his wife as a way to stay connected. Stockinger's diary offers a unique account of daily military life in Iraq from a surgeon's perspective, from the intense action of rocket attacks and emergency procedures to the creative and often lighthearted ways of filling tedious stretches of down time. Illustrated with 47 photographs, this work provides a realistic portrait of life on base and a powerful perspective on the human carnage of war.

Download or read book Fragments of Grace written by Pamela Constable and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For four and a half years, Pamela Constable, a veteran foreign correspondent and award-winning author, has traveled through South Asia on assignment for the Washington Post. Following religious conflicts, political crises, and natural disasters, she also searched for signs of humanity and dignity in societies rife with violence, poverty, prejudice, and greed. In Afghanistan, she made numerous visits while the country suffered under the hostile rule of the Taliban, attempted to reach the capital in a convoy that was ambushed and saw four journalists killed. She finally moved to Kabul in late 2001 to chronicle the country's post-Taliban rebirth. In Pakistan, she covered a military coup in 1999, immersed herself in the mys-terious world of Muslim mosques and academies, and discovered both the extremist and tolerant faces of Islam. In India, she attended one of the largest spiritual gatherings of Hindu pilgrims in history and then rushed to the horrific aftermath of a devastating earthquake. She repeatedly visited the Kashmir Valley, where Pakistani-backed Muslim guerrillas are waging a seemingly endless war with Indian security forces. In Nepal, she covered the crown prince's massacre of the royal family and journeyed to remote villages where communist rebels brought rigid moral order to life. In Sri Lanka, she explored a tropical paradise where reclusive insurgents trained children to become suicide bombers in pursuit of a utopian ethnic homeland. Between extended sojourns in South Asia, Constable returned to the West to reflect on the risks and rewards of her profession, revisit her roots, and compare her experiences with Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. Her book is a uniquely personal exploration of the rich but solitary life of a foreign correspondent, set against a regional backdrop of extraordinary political and religious tumult.

Download or read book They Will Have to Die Now Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate written by James Verini and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2019 “It’s a small miracle that a writer as good as James Verini witnessed the battle of Mosul.… It will take its place among the very best war writing of the past two decades.” —George Packer James Verini arrived in Iraq in the summer of 2016 to write about life in the Islamic State. He stayed to cover the jihadis’ last great stand, the Battle of Mosul, not knowing it would go on for nearly a year. This “urgent, scalding, hallucinatory work of war reportage” (Patrick Radden Keefe) takes the reader into the conflict against the most lethal insurgency of our time.

Download or read book For the Love of Humanity written by Ayça Çubukçu and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On February 15, 2003, millions of people around the world demonstrated against the war that the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies were planning to wage in Iraq. Despite this being the largest protest in the history of humankind, the war on Iraq began the next month. That year, the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) emerged from the global antiwar movement that had mobilized against the invasion and subsequent occupation. Like the earlier tribunal on Vietnam convened by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre, the WTI sought to document—and provide grounds for adjudicating—war crimes committed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allied forces during the Iraq war. For the Love of Humanity builds on two years of transnational fieldwork within the decentralized network of antiwar activists who constituted the WTI in some twenty cities around the world. Ayça Çubukçu illuminates the tribunal up close, both as an ethnographer and a sympathetic participant. In the process, she situates debates among WTI activists—a group encompassing scholars, lawyers, students, translators, writers, teachers, and more—alongside key jurists, theorists, and critics of global democracy. WTI activists confronted many dilemmas as they conducted their political arguments and actions, often facing interpretations of human rights and international law that, unlike their own, were not grounded in anti-imperialism. Çubukçu approaches this conflict by broadening her lens, incorporating insights into how Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Iraqi High Tribunal grappled with the realities of Iraq's occupation. Through critical analysis of the global debate surrounding one of the early twenty-first century's most significant world events, For the Love of Humanity addresses the challenges of forging global solidarity against imperialism and makes a case for reevaluating the relationships between law and violence, empire and human rights, and cosmopolitan authority and political autonomy.

Download or read book Frankenstein in Baghdad written by Ahmed Saadawi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *International Booker Prize finalist* “Brave and ingenious.” —The New York Times “Gripping, darkly humorous . . . profound.” —Phil Klay, bestselling author and National Book Award winner for Redeployment “Extraordinary . . . A devastating but essential read.” —Kevin Powers, bestselling author and National Book Award finalist for The Yellow Birds From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi—a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café—collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realizes he’s created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive—first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path. A prizewinning novel by “Baghdad’s new literary star” (The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.

Download or read book The Iraqi Christ written by Hassan Blasim and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ** WINNER OF THE ENGLISH PEN WRITERS IN TRANSLATION AWARD ** **LONG-LISTED FOR THE 2013 FRANK O'CONNOR INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD** **BOOK OF THE MONTH IN THE SKINNY** A soldier with the ability to predict the future finds himself blackmailed by an insurgent into the ultimate act of terror… A deviser of crosswords survives a car-bomb attack, only to discover he is now haunted by one of its victims… Fleeing a robbery, a Baghdad shopkeeper falls into a deep hole, at the bottom of which sits a djinni and the corpse of a soldier from a completely different war… From legends of the desert to horrors of the forest, Blasim’s stories blend the fantastic with the everyday, the surreal with the all-too-real. Taking his cues from Kafka, his prose shines a dazzling light into the dark absurdities of Iraq’s recent past and the torments of its countless refugees. The subject of this, his second collection, is primarily trauma and the curious strategies human beings adopt to process it (including, of course, fiction). The result is a masterclass in metaphor – a new kind of story-telling, forged in the crucible of war, and just as shocking. 'At first, you receive Blasim with the kind of shocked applause you’d award a fairly transgressive stand-up. You’re quite elated. Then you stop reading it at bedtime. At his best, Blasim produces a corrosive mixture of broken lyricism, bitter irony and hyper-realism which topples into the fantastic and the quotidian in the same reading moment.' – M John Harrison 'Perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive...' – The Guardian. 'Bolaño-esque in its visceral exuberance, and also Borgesian in its gnomic complexity... a master of metaphor.' – The Guardian.

Download or read book Civilizations of Ancient Iraq written by Benjamin R. Foster and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-08 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Civilizations of Ancient Iraq, Benjamin and Karen Foster tell the fascinating story of ancient Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements ten thousand years ago to the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Accessible and concise, this is the most up-to-date and authoritative book on the subject. With illustrations of important works of art and architecture in every chapter, the narrative traces the rise and fall of successive civilizations and peoples in Iraq over the course of millennia--from the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians to the Persians, Seleucids, Parthians, and Sassanians. Ancient Iraq was home to remarkable achievements. One of the birthplaces of civilization, it saw the world's earliest cities and empires, writing and literature, science and mathematics, monumental art, and innumerable other innovations. Civilizations of Ancient Iraq gives special attention to these milestones, as well as to political, social, and economic history. And because archaeology is the source of almost everything we know about ancient Iraq, the book includes an epilogue on the discovery and fate of its antiquities. Compelling and timely, Civilizations of Ancient Iraq is an essential guide to understanding Mesopotamia's central role in the development of human culture.

Download or read book Women and Gender in Iraq written by Zahra Ali and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting Iraqi women's voices, this is an examination of women, gender and feminisms in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion.

Download or read book My Father s Paradise written by Ariel Sabar and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly three thousand years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born. Yona's son Ariel grew up in Los Angeles, where Yona had become an esteemed professor, dedicating his career to preserving his people’s traditions. Ariel wanted nothing to do with his father’s strange immigrant heritage—until he had a son of his own. Ariel Sabar brings to life the ancient town of Zakho, discovering his family’s place in the sweeping saga of Middle-Eastern history. This powerful book is an improbable story of tolerance and hope set in what today is the very center of the world’s attention.

Download or read book Docu Fictions of War written by Tatiana Prorokova and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical writing and fiction are not the same thing, though historians often creatively manipulate material in imposing plot structures, selecting starting and ending points, and fashioning compelling literary characters from historical figures. In Docu-Fictions of War, Tatiana Prorokova argues that the opposite is also true—war fiction offers a kind of history that both documents its subjects and provides a snapshot of the cultural representation of the United States’ most recent military involvements. She covers a largely neglected body of cinematic and literary texts about the First Gulf War, the Balkan War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War to open a fresh analysis of cultural texts on war. Prorokova contends that these texts are not pure fiction, but “docu-fictions”—works of imagination that can document their subjects while disclosing the social, political, and historical link between war and culture during the last three decades. Docu-Fictions of War analyzes how these representational narratives have highlighted a humanitarian rationale behind American involvement in each war, whether the stated goals were to free the oppressed from tyranny, stop genocide, or rid the world of terrorism. The book explores the gap between history—what allegedly happened—and the cultural mythology that is both true and inexact, tangible and sensed, recognized and undocumented.