Download or read book Iraq Ten Years on written by Claire Spencer and published by Chatham House (Formerly Riia). This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report brings together a variety of perspectives on the state of Iraq ten years after the US-led invasion in 2003 and sets out some possible scenarios for the country's future. It begins with an overview of the political changes that have been under way since the invasion, with a focus on conflict and political violence, the debate over the nation-state and the dynamics of a political transition weighed down by the legacies of dictatorship and occupation. The report discusses Iraq's domestic politics, foreign policy and relations with regional and international powers, as well as the impact that the regime change has had on perceptions of democracy, Middle Eastern authoritarianism and the role of Western intervention in the region. Iraq has undergone a transition from a purely authoritarian system to one with an elected government. However, the levers of power used by the previous regime - organized violence, oil-funded state patronage and the use of communal differences for 'divide and rule' strategies - remain crucial factors in the country's politics. Iraq's primary foreign policy preoccupation has been re-establishing sovereignty, and negotiating an end to the US occupation and seeking to end the country's UN Chapter VII status. However, factional divisions and the perceived weakness of state institutions mean there are significant incentives for neighboring states to seek to influence the foreign and domestic policies of a country that has always had a major impact in the region. Iran is undoubtedly the most influential external player in domestic Iraqi affairs, though not the only one. For its part, Iraq wants to balance its relations with Tehran and its partnership with the United States while maximizing its autonomy from both. Navigating this complex combination of alliances places Iraqi decision-makers in an uncomfortable position, above all over Syria, which poses serious risks to Iraq's own future. Three main scenarios are laid out in the final section: Syria's conflict becomes the main driver of political trends in Iraq as Iraqi factions take increasingly polarized positions on Syria and pursue diametrically opposed policies in supporting the warring sides with money and fighters. Iraq becomes more resilient, resisting efforts by Al-Qaeda and others to exacerbate sectarian tensions, and hedging its bets on Syria. Iraqis remain fractious and disunited, avoiding state collapse but continuing to be heavily influenced by the agendas of competing regional powers. Although Iraq embarked on a political transition ten years ago, it is by no means exempt from the demographic, political and economic drivers that underlay the Arab uprisings. Over time it will become harder for the political elite to blame the legacy of dictatorship, sanctions and war for the country's problems. But it is as yet unclear to what extent future regional interactions, including Iraq's relations with the rest of the Middle East, will be defined by competitive ethno-sectarian identity politics or by the sense of common aspirations that was articulated in the early days of the Arab uprisings.
Download or read book The Political Economy of Iraq written by Gunter, Frank R. and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of The Political Economy of Iraq is as comprehensive and accessible as the first with updated data and analysis. Frank R. Gunter discusses in detail how the convergence of the ISIS insurgency, collapse in oil prices, and massive youth unemployment produced a serious political crisis in 2020. This work ends with a discussion of key policy decisions that will determine Iraq’s future. This volume will be a valuable resource for anyone with a professional, business, or academic interest in the post-2003 political economy of Iraq.
Download or read book Photojournalists on War written by Michael Kamber and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With previously unpublished photographs by an incredibly diverse group of the world's top news photographers, Photojournalists on War presents a groundbreaking new visual and oral history of America's nine-year conflict in the Middle East. Michael Kamber interviewed photojournalists from many leading news organizations, including Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Magnum, Newsweek, the New York Times, Paris Match, Reuters, Time, the Times of London, VII Photo Agency, and the Washington Post, to create the most comprehensive collection of eyewitness accounts of the Iraq War yet published. These in-depth interviews offer first-person, frontline reports of the war as it unfolded, including key moments such as the battle for Fallujah, the toppling of Saddam's statue, and the Haditha massacre. The photographers also vividly describe the often shocking and sometimes heroic actions that journalists undertook in trying to cover the war, as they discuss the role of the media and issues of censorship. These hard-hitting accounts and photographs, rare in the annals of any war, reveal the inside and untold stories behind the headlines in Iraq.
Download or read book Iraq on the International Stage written by Jane Kinninmont and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report aims to shed light on the key actors, processes and narratives that are shaping Iraq's foreign policy behavior and options, at a time when the country is seeking to emerge from international sanctions and resume a more normal role in international affairs, but is also facing intensifying domestic divisions over its position in a Middle East region that is increasingly polarized along pro-Iranian or pro-Gulf lines. The analysis draws on a series of first-hand interviews conducted in Iraq (Baghdad, Erbil and Suleimaniya) in 2012-13, as well as two expert-level workshops and interviews in London and Washington with a variety of Iraqi and other diplomats, politicians, analysts, historians and civil society voices. Iraq's foreign relations are increasingly intertwined with the country's own divisions, and the increasing polarization of key Middle Eastern countries over Syria threatens to escalate Iraq's internal crisis. Syria has become the most divisive foreign policy issue facing Iraq, with little consensus on how to respond to the conflict. To protect against the risk of spillover from Syria, Iraq's political groupings must develop at least a basic agreement on their strategic response to the conflict. Western governments should caution their allies in the Gulf that the exploitation of sectarian discourses will have toxic effects that could last for at least a generation.
Download or read book The Iraq War written by Peter Katel and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the world marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the war is fast fading from the memories of many Americans. After more than eight years of combat, the U.S. and Iraqi governments couldn't come to terms on keeping U.S. combat troops in the country. They were withdrawn at the end of 2011 except for a small contingent involved in training Iraqi forces. But Iraq remains mired in sectarian and religious conflict. In the United States, debates about the justification for the invasion have given way to arguments about whether Iraq is a budding democracy -- an objective of the George W. Bush administration -- or a new dictatorship. That dispute intersects with the question of whether U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will spur the country to solve its own problems or push it into friendlier relations with its anti-American neighbor, Iran.
Download or read book 1001 Nights in Iraq written by Shant Kenderian and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-06-05 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shant Kenderian's visit to Baghdad in 1980, at age seventeen, was supposed to be a short one -- just enough time to make peace with his estranged father before returning to his home in the United States. But then Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and sealed off Iraq's borders to every man of military age -- including Shant. Suddenly forced onto the front lines, his two-week visit turned into a nightmare that lasted for ten years. 1001 Nights in Iraq presents a human story that provides unique insight into a country and culture that we only get a hint of in the headlines. After surviving the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War, Shant was then forced to fight on the front lines of Desert Storm without being given the proper equipment, including a gun, but miraculously survived to be captured by the Americans and become a POW. He underwent starvation, heavy interrogations, and solitary confinement, but what broke him in the end was his love affair with a female American soldier. Yet throughout this whole ordeal, Shant never lost his respect for people, his faith in God, or his sense of humor.
Download or read book Iraq after America written by Joel Rayburn and published by Hoover Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than a decade after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, most studies of the Iraq conflict focus on the twin questions of whether the United States should have entered Iraq in 2003 and whether it should have exited in 2011, but few have examined the new Iraqi state and society on its own merits. Iraq after America examines the government and the sectarian and secular factions that have emerged in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003, presenting the interrelations among the various elements in the Iraqi political scene. The book traces the origins of key trends in recent Iraqi history to explain the political and social forces that produced them, particularly during the intense period of civil war between 2003 and 2009. Along the way, the author looks at some of the most significant players in the new Iraq, explaining how they have risen to prominence and what their aims are. The author identifies the three trends that dominate Iraq's post-U.S. political order: authoritarianism, sectarianism, and Islamist resistance, tracing their origins and showing how they have created a toxic political and social brew, preventing Iraq's political elite from resolving the fundamental roots of conflict that have wracked that country since 2003 and before. He concludes by examining some aspects of the U.S. legacy in Iraq, analyzing what it means for the United States and others that, after more than a decade of conflict, Iraq's communities—and its political class in particular—have not yet found a way to live together in peace.
Download or read book The Middle East Ten Years After the Invasion of Iraq written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Iraq Study Group Report written by Iraq Study Group (U.S.) and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2006-12-06 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the findings of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which was formed in 2006 to examine the situation in Iraq and offer suggestions for the American military's future involvement in the region.
Download or read book War Plan Iraq written by Milan Rai and published by Verso. This book was released on 2002-11-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the United States' hidden role in the collapse of the U.N. weapons inspection agency, UNSCOM, this book demonstrates that a war with Iraq would be in violation of international law and could precipitate a world recession with dire consequences for the world's poor.
Download or read book Iraq 100 written by Hassan Blasim and published by Tordotcom. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of NPR's Best Books of 2017! A groundbreaking anthology of science fiction from Iraq that will challenge your perception of what it means to be “The Other” “History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be heard.”—Operation Daniel In a calm and serene world, one has the luxury of imagining what the future might look like. Now try to imagine that future when your way of life has been devastated by forces beyond your control. Iraq + 100 poses a question to Iraqi writers (those who still live in that nation, and those who have joined the worldwide diaspora): What might your home country look like in the year 2103, a century after a disastrous foreign invasion? Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be “The Other”, this groundbreaking anthology edited by Hassan Blasim contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal, and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, these stories are also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance, and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book State of Repression written by Lisa Blaydes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new account of modern Iraqi politics that overturns the conventional wisdom about its sectarian divisions How did Iraq become one of the most repressive dictatorships of the late twentieth century? The conventional wisdom about Iraq's modern political history is that the country was doomed by its diverse social fabric. But in State of Repression, Lisa Blaydes challenges this belief by showing that the country's breakdown was far from inevitable. At the same time, she offers a new way of understanding the behavior of other authoritarian regimes and their populations. Drawing on archival material captured from the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'th Party in the wake of the 2003 US invasion, Blaydes illuminates the complexities of political life in Iraq, including why certain Iraqis chose to collaborate with the regime while others worked to undermine it. She demonstrates that, despite the Ba'thist regime's pretensions to political hegemony, its frequent reliance on collective punishment of various groups reinforced and cemented identity divisions. At the same time, a series of costly external shocks to the economy—resulting from fluctuations in oil prices and Iraq's war with Iran—weakened the capacity of the regime to monitor, co-opt, coerce, and control factions of Iraqi society. In addition to calling into question the common story of modern Iraqi politics, State of Repression offers a new explanation of why and how dictators repress their people in ways that can inadvertently strengthen regime opponents.
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 Imperial Ambitions written by Noam Chomsky and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first collection of interviews since the bestselling 9-11, our foremost intellectual activist examines crucial new questions of U.S. foreign policy. Timely, urgent, and powerfully elucidating, this important volume of previously unpublished interviews conducted by award-winning radio journalist David Barsamian features Noam Chomsky discussing America's policies in an increasingly unstable world. With his famous insight, lucidity, and redoubtable grasp of history, Chomsky offers his views on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the doctrine of "preemptive" strikes against so-called rogue states, and the prospects of the second Bush administration, warning of the growing threat to international peace posed by the U.S. drive for domination. In his inimitable style, Chomsky also dissects the propaganda system that fabricates a mythic past and airbrushes inconvenient facts out of history. Barsamian, recipient of the ACLU's Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, has conducted more interviews and radio broadcasts with Chomsky than has any other journalist. Enriched by their unique rapport, Imperial Ambitions explores topics Chomsky has never before discussed, among them the 2004 presidential campaign and election, the future of Social Security, and the increasing threat, including devastating weather patterns, of global warming. The result is an illuminating dialogue with one of the leading thinkers of our time—and a startling picture of the turbulent times in which we live.
Download or read book Night Draws Near written by Anthony Shadid and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-07-11 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Iraq, this riveting account illuminates ordinary people caught between the struggles of nations.
Download or read book Turkey and Iraq written by Henri J. Barkey and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Throughout the 1990s, Turkey was the anchor in the containment of Saddam Hussein's Iraq by the United States. The unpredictable set of events unleashed by Operation Iraqi Freedom has unnerved both Turkish decision makers and the public alike. The U.S.-led coalition's operation in Iraq has also upended Turkey's fundamental interests in Iraq, which are fourfold: (1) Prevent the division of Iraq along sectarian or ethnic lines that would give rise to an independent or confederal Kurdish state (with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as its capital), thus supporting aspirations for a similar entity in Turkey's own extensive Kurdish population. (2) Protect the Turkish-speaking Turkmen minority, which resides primarily in northern Iraq. (3) Eliminate the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Turkish Kurdish insurgent movement, which has sought refuge in the northeast of Iraq following its defeat in 1999. (4) Prevent the emergence of a potentially hostile nondemocratic fundamentalist Iraqi state"--Summary.
