Iraqi History

Iraq has distanced itself from its traditional radicalism and adopted a more pragmatic and moderate posture. Still, close ties between Iran and Iraqi Shi'a groups in particular threaten the chances for normalization between Jerusalem and Baghdad, while the U.S. ability or willingness to challenge Iran on this matter is limited. Also discussed is the positive Kurdish-Israeli relationship and areas of potential cooperation. At the same time, however, there exist Kurdish fears of negative reactions from non-Kurdish Iraqis and the Arab world and Israeli fears of antagonizing Turkey and jeopardizing its strategic partnership with it.

يوثِّقُ هذا الكتابُ منعطفاً تاريخياً للكويت تمثل بالغزو والاحتلال العراقي في عهد صدام حسين (2 أغسطس 1990م إلى 26 فبراير 1991م). وسيركز على الفترة الممتدة من قبيل وقوع الغزو العراقي سنة 1990م للتعريف بمقدماته وأسبابه، ويستمر بالتغطية التوثيقية إلى عدة سنوات بعد التحرير، حيث ينتهي عند الاعتراف الثالث للعراق باستقلال الكويت وبحدودها في أكتوبر سنة 1994م. ستتناول الأجزاء الستة لهذا الكتاب المواضيع التالية:

الجزء الأول: الأزمة السياسية التي افتعلها العراق مع الكويت قبل الاجتياح العسكري، ورد فعل الكويت على المستويين الحكومي والشعبي.

الجزء الثاني: عملية الغزو العراقي والدفاع الكويتي وعملية انتقال الشرعية الكويتية إلى خارج البلاد، وأبرز إجراءات سلطة الاحتلال في الداخل.

الجزء الثالث: دور المقاومة الكويتية بكافة أشكالها، وآثار العدوان العراقي على الكويت.

الجزء الرابع: جهود الكويتيين من أجل تحرير الكويت، ومواقف الدول تجاه قضية الكويت وأعمال حكومة الكويت في المنفى بالطائف والمؤتمر الشعبي الكويتي بجدة.

الجزء الخامس: النشاط الإعلامي للكويتيين في الخارج ومواقف بعض دول العالم وأحزابه تجاه قضية الكويت والجهود العسكرية لتحرير الكويت.

الجزء السادس: فترة ما بعد التحرير وإعادة البناء المؤسسي والمجتمعي وإطفاء حرائق آبار النفط وتنظيف البيئة الكويتية، ونزع الألغام. وسينتهي عند فشل العراق بغزو الكويت مرة ثانية في سنة 1994م والذي انتهى بتوقيع معاهدة تعترف باستقلال الكويت وبحدودها.

The story of Francis William Rickett is riddled with contradictions. Bluff and resourceful, notorious for his exploits in the world of oil in the 1930s, he remains an enigma today. Speculator and businessman he was, but he also had deeper links with oil companies and foreign governments than appeared in the press reports of the time. Above all, he lived in interesting times, and through his exploits we have a tantalizing glimpse into behind-the-scenes struggles for the control of oil.

On October 17, the rectorate hall of the University Turin will host a New-Med conference entitled “Cultural Heritage and Illicit Trafficking in a Fragmented Middle East”. The meeting, co-organized by profs. Lorenzo Kamel and Stefano de Martino, relies upon the cooperation and support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), the University of Turin’s Dpt. of Historical Studies, Compagnia di San Paolo, the German Marshall Fund (GMF) of the United States, and The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
24 international renowned scholars, head of museums, practitioners, and policy makers from 11 countries will gather to analyze the dramatic events that have affected cultural heritage in Middle Eastern countries in recent years. Speakers will also focus on the “human dimension” of this tragedy, and shed light on projects aimed at the rebirth of cultural heritage in the region, such as museums, archaeological excavations, and restoration of damaged monuments.

The Islamic Dawa Party was the first modern Islamist group to be formed in Iraq. It went through a long struggle with the Iraqi government that resulted in its banning by the Baathists, open warfare with Saddam Hussein’s regime, which forced it to go underground, and led many of its members to go into exile. Below is an interview with Dr. Rodger Shanahan, a former officer in the Australian army and senior adviser in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy who specializes in the Middle East. Dr. Shanahan goes through the history of the Dawa Party, and how that has shaped the worldview of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

This article is the Arabic translation (with minor modifications approved by the author) of an English original ("The KRG's Relationship with the Yazidi Minority and the Future of the Yazidis in Shingal") that was published by NRT, a Kurdish media outlet in Iraqi Kurdistan, on January 31, 2017. This Arabic translation was published by NRT on March 19, 2017. Both versions are available on Academia.edu and also appear on the NRT website.

Recall pictures of Iraqi women in Baghdad who walk in public spaces with westernized clothes. These pictures, in addition with their Afghan counterparts, are often used in didactic discourses that contrast the "before" and "after" of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq's case, the presence of unveiled women, implicitly yet ahistorically justified Saddam Hussein's regime. But the "modern Arab women" had occurred prior to Saddam's regime within the specific context of the Cold War. British influence continued in Iraq after the 1958 coup, yet the U.S. also achieved great diplomatic gains in the Cold War. While many studies have explored the state relations, this paper wishes to explore the visual archive, debates and political movements within Iraq in the context of decolonization and Pan-Arabism. While both the Ba'ath and Communist Party in Iraq espoused policies of social equality, the fates of people who followed each respective party differed during the tumultuous 1960s. Intense nationalization debates occurred in 1951 in regards to the division of oil royalties and continued to determine the legitimacy of rulers in Iraq afterwards. This paper will argue that the Cold War era from 1958 to 1979, as experienced in Iraq, fostered an Arab modernism evident in its visual archive. Ideologies and intellectual currents of modernism, such as feminism and communism, manifested as meaningful trajectories for the future in Iraq. Yet certain ideas were also co-opted by certain top-down strategic maneuvers. In answering these questions, this paper wishes to challenge the sectarian master narrative that dominates many histories of Iraq. This paper also will explore different meanings of statehood in this time period, which can illuminate the questions of social justice in Iraq in our current day-and-age.

In 2009, eleven million top-secret documents from the former Iraqi Ba'th Party were opened to researchers, revealing new insights into how Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. From these files, scholars came to understand that Saddam did not govern through terror alone, but also through rewards and enticements. Furthermore, the archives confirm that Iraqis were not entirely silenced by fear, but actively engaged with the regime and spoke up about their problems and needs. This chapter draws on a collection of 100 letters and petitions written by ordinary Iraqi citizens to Saddam that were found in the Iraqi Ba'th Party archives. I focus on petitions written from 1990-2003, a period of economic decline due to international sanctions. During these years, the political economy of resource distribution within Iraq came into stark relief, plainly revealing which groups were in the regime's good graces and which were left without sufficient resources. Analyzing these 100 letters and petitions helps answer the question of how ordinary Iraqis communicated with the regime: the rhetoric they used, the limits of their speech, and the effectiveness of their petitions. In times of need, how did Iraqis try to convince the regime to provide them with assistance? Next, analyzing the regime's responses to these petitions reveals how the regime leveraged these petitions to consolidate support within certain demographics. Which Iraqis were most likely to have their requests granted, and why? Finally, these patterns of regime favoritism revealed in these petitions contribute to ongoing debates about the role of sectarianism under Saddam's rule. Is it true that Saddam favored Sunnis, or were there more complex considerations at play? This chapter concludes with new arguments about how ordinary Iraqis and the regime alike tried to weather the challenges of the sanctions period and what the consequences of these survival strategies were for the post-Saddam era.

Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, many Iraqi academics were assassinated. Countless others received bullets in envelopes and instructions to leave their institutions (and in many cases the country) or get killed. Many heeded the warning and fled into exile. Having played such a pivotal role in shaping post-independence Iraqi society, the exile and internal displacement of its academics has had a profound impact. Tracing the academic, political, and social lives of more than 60 academics, Bullets in Envelopes offers a 'genealogy of loss', and a groundbreaking appraisal of the dismantling and restructuring of Iraqi institutions, culture and society. Through extensive fieldwork in the UK, Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan, Louis Yako shows the human side of the destructive 2003 occupation, how things are today, and how they came to be.

Recent outbursts of sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq have made many observers question the viability of the state itself. It is said that due to the artificiality of the state and a lack of deep-seated political institutions, Iraqi politics is doomed to endlessly revert back to primordialism. Political parties are mere facades for the real intention of pursuing ethno-sectarian interests, the argument goes. But the present situation has largely been caused by Saddam Hussein’s infamous rule over the past three decades, combined with the plight of international sanctions. Before Saddam’s ascent to power in the late 1970s, however, the Iraqi political spectrum was full of political parties operating from ideological platforms. The largest, and arguably most important of these groups, was the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). The ICP stands out as the only true cross-sectarian party in Iraqi history, drawing support from all of Iraq’s diverse communities. From its inception in 1934, it continuously fought the various regimes in power and endeavoured to spread communist ideology throughout Iraq. At times the party achieved considerable success in this regard, although ultimately never able to seize power. Red Star over Iraq analyses the twists and turns of the ICP from its inception until its ultimate demise as a significant political force at the hands of Saddam in 1979.

Since the United States’ military invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, Iran has played a crucial role in defining the future of the Iraqi state through its involvement in the internal political process. Part of Iran’s strategy in Iraq has been to empower Shia political parties, which has involved the mobilisation of Shia militias in Iraq. These militias are now playing an essential role in ejecting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from Iraq. There remain stiff challenges associated with the militias’ post-ISIS integration into the regular Iraqi security forces and the potential for other more destabilising Iranian missions.

Diyala can be said to be a microcosm of Iraq. It is the home to all three major ethnosectarian groups in the country. It has lush farmlands and mountain ranges. It also remains a battlefield between the security forces, militias and the insurgency today. In 2005 Richard Buchanan worked there as a defense contractor interrogating prisoners where he saw first hand the early stages of the civil war. Here is an interview with Buchanan about how the Iraqi insurgency was organized, what the militias did in response, and how the Americans were caught in the middle.

This report was issued Jan. 28, 2016 and contains the first published mapping of mass graves of Yazidis killed in Sinjar, Iraq during the Yazidi Genocide of 2014. The report was written by Matthew Barber (then Executive Director of Yazda Iraq) with research data procured by Yazda's genocide documentation team (led by Andrew Slater and Ali Khalaf). The report was released in conjunction with a statement from Human Rights Watch:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/01/30/iraq-protect-mass-graves

Mark Kukis worked as a journalist for Time magazine in Iraq from 2006-2009. That covered the peak of the civil war. During those years it was hard to get around the country, and even harder to talk to any Iraqis out of fear that they might be killed for being seen with an America. In January 2009, when the sectarian conflict had faded, Kukis got the idea to put together an oral history of Iraq, inspired by The Good War by Studs Terkel. Unlike the vast majority of books on the subject, this would not be a story told by the Americans, but rather one by the Iraqis themselves, something that has largely been missing from most of the reporting on the country. Using the Iraqi staff at Time, he was able to interview dozens and dozens of Iraqis from all parts of Iraq except for Kurdistan, because it largely escaped the civil war. These were put together in his 2011 book Voices From Iraq, A People’s History,2003-2009. Below is an interview with Kukis about his motivation, and some of the amazing stories he heard. This adds an important chapter to the Iraq War, because it includes the Iraqi perspective of the struggles that they went through during the U.S. invasion, the insurgency, and the subsequent civil conflict.

It is now more than 30 years since the publication of Edward W. Said’s seminal text Orientalism. With his discourse analysis of an astounding number of academic, bureaucratic and literary texts from the colonial period, Said was able to demonstrate that the western colonial project was premised on a matrix of interdependent discourses, institutions and practices, which he termed ‘orientalism’. The net output of such orientalism was an ideological fantasy, a fantasy that bore no relation to the reality and complexity of non-european society with its myriad cultures, religions, peoples, customs and histories. Instead, orientalism has served to homogenize, demonize and stereotype the non-european world according to fairly reductive and negative terms, so that the oriental was viewed as the ‘other’. Clearly the unquestioned tendency to view the people of the orient as eficient and inferior ‘others’ served the colonial agenda of continuing to dominate and control sections of the East.

One cannot overstate the significance and impact of orientalism. Indeed, in the years that followed, Said’s work was both contested and applied by a whole range of different disciplines including middle-east studies, media analyses, international relations and history. It has also spawned an entirely new sub-discipline known as postcolonial studies. What has long been missing in the field of research is a sustained engagement with Said’s work from the perspective of defence studies and military history.

This article presents rarely seen glimpses into life in the barracks of the Iraqi Army during the Gulf War (1990–91). We analyse fifteen diaries of Iraqi soldiers found in the Kuwait Dataset of the Iraqi Ba'th Party Archives, which was first opened to researchers in July 2015. These diaries shed new light on the mind-sets, ideological frameworks, morale and daily lives of Iraqi rank-and-file soldiers. We ask the following questions: did Iraqi soldiers support the invasion and occupation of Kuwait and accept Saddam Hussein's rationales for the war? How did Iraqi soldiers view the United States and its coalition partners? These diaries also provide clues about why so many retreating soldiers rose up against Saddam in country-wide protests one week after Iraq's defeat in the war. Although diaries from the US Civil War and the First and Second World Wars have been thoroughly examined by historians and literary scholars, few diaries of soldiers from the modern Arab world have been studied. This article fills an important gap in knowledge about the experiences of soldiers in modern authoritarian regimes and about the Gulf War. (Preview Only)

Babylon was one of the biggest and greatest cities of the Ancient Near East. At present the ruins of Babylon extend over an area of 850 ha and constitute the largest ancient settlement in Mesopotamia.
The Report compiled in November 2004 on the state of the major relics in Babylon at that time, together with documentation of the modern infrastructure erected on the site during the 24-year rule of the late Saddam Hussein.
The use of substantial part of the Babylon archaeological site as a Coalition military base ("Camp Alpha") between April 2003 and December 2004 involved the placement of a major military facility, some 150 hectares in extent, directly on the center of the archaeological site.
The Report was prepared by the three Polish archaeologists (Mirosław Olbryś, Tomasz Burda and Agnieszka Dolatowska) stationed with Multinational Division Central South at Camp Alpha, for the occasion of the return of the site to Iraqi authorities. It reflects the condition of the site on the day of the hand over by the Multinational Forces in Iraq to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture.
The Report  has 107 text pages and over 1037 photographs and is a kind of conservation inventory. It assesses the condition of all the historical buildings erected on the ancient foundations and monuments located within the boundaries of the Camp Alpha. The document consists of two parts: (I) a catalogue divided into eleven zones established inside the Camp and (II) a second catalogue comprising fifteen historical buildings and monuments also located inside the Camp. Each catalogue item includes textual description and photographs. The part I and the entries of the part II have their own pagination and numbering of photographs.
A separate “Real Estate Inspection Report” on the fifty-two buildings (including the former palace of Saddam Hussein on an enormous artificial earthen hill) built on the site in the 1980s and 1990s was also prepared and joined.

This new series provides a forum for exchange on a myriad of alternative histories of marginalized communities and individuals in the Near and Middle East and Mediterranean, and those of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean heritage. It will highlight thematic issues relating to various native peoples and their narratives and – with particular contemporary relevance – explore encounters with the notion of ‘other’ within various societies. Often moving beyond the conventional state-centred and dominant monolithic approach, or reinterpreting previously accepted stories, books in the series examine and explain themes from inter-communal relations, environment, health and society, and will explore ethnic, communal, racial, linguistic and religious developments that go beyond geopolitical compositions.

Building on the foundations of scholarship within an interdisciplinary framework, this series spans the continuum of Near Eastern and Mediterranean traditions extending from the fourth millennium B.C. to the present – bridging previous fields which originally had little connection with each other. The aim is to enhance perspectives by applying various methodological approaches to dilemmas that have in the past been treated as the exclusive concern of a single given discipline.

Key Features

Creates a forum for marginalized and/or indigenous communities to engage with the ‘accepted past and present’ and to challenge previously accepted truths
Opens a dialogue for alternative intellectual histories/narratives
The first series to focus on indigenous and minoritized related narratives from the understudied and often marginal perspective
Covers cultural, linguistic, ethnic, gendered, political, numerical and economic communities in the Near and Middle East, the Mediterranean and its extended environs
Engages with all periods of history from the ancient world to the present day, especially in terms of continuity of culture, cultural heritage and heritage preservation
Communities studied may include Alawites, Alevis, Armenians, Assyrians, Christians, Copts, Druze, Jews, Mandaens, Maronites, Palestinians, Pontian/ Anatolian Greeks, Samaritans, Shabbaks, Yezidis and Zoroastrians among others

This essay intends to explore how anthropology understands violent relationships between the elite and oppressed, and it's subsequent study in the Middle East region. This essay argues that violence is a broad, changing and nebulous category of human action that is expressed and best studied through the investigation of power relations and exertions of power. Furthermore, this essay suggests

פלישת כוחות הקואליציה לעיראק בראשות ארצות הברית בשנת 2003 לוותה בהבטחה אמריקאית לחולל שינוי דרמטי במדינה. ממשלו של ג'ורג' וו. בוש הבטיח להפוך את עיראק למדינת לאום דמוקרטית שתהווה מודל לשאר ארצות המזרח התיכון. שינוי דרמטי אכן התחולל בעיראק, אך במקום מודל של יציבות ודמוקרטיה היא הפכה לזירת התגוששות בין כוחות סקטוריאליים (סונים מול שיעים), אתניים (כורדים מול ערבים), דתיים (מוסלמים מול נוצרים), שבטיים, מגדריים ואחרים. התפרצותם של קונפליקטים אלה דחפה רבים בתקשורת, בפוליטיקה ואף במחקר האקדמי, לאמץ את "הנרטיב הכתתי" בבואם להסביר את הסיבות להתפוררותה של המדינה. מאמר זה מבקש לבחון את "הנרטיב הכתתי" מזווית מגדרית. הוא מראה כי קיים קשר הדוק בין נרטיב זה ל"נרטיב הצלת הנשים העיראקיות" שליווה אף הוא את הפלישה לעיראק. בהתבסס על ההיסטוריה של נשים בעיראק והמאבק למען זכויותיהן. הוא מערער על טיעוניו החדשים של "נרטיב ההצלה" ומאתגר כמה מהנחותיו המרכזיות של "הנרטיב הכתתי". המאמר מבקש לא רק להראות שטיעוניהם של נרטיבים אלה אינם עולים בקנה אחד עם ההיסטוריה הקרובה והרחוקה של נשים בעיראק, אלא גם להצביע על נטייתם להתעלם מההיסטוריה של המעורבות הזרה במדינה. התעלמות זו  מסתירה מעיניהם את הן תרומתה של המעורבות הזרה להבניית שסעיה של עיראק והן את תרומתה להבניית נשותיה כמושא להצלה.

The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Yet several aspects of their history remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order.

This article illustrates aspects of modern Iraqi history, being concerned with the life and career of Yamen Yousef (Yāmēn Yūsif, Hebrew name: Yāmīn Ṣiyyōn [ben] Yōsēf [ben] Nissīm), an officer in the army of the Kingdom of Iraq, who was the commander in charge of the Baghdad Royal Arsenal in the 1930s, and earlier on had been one of the three young officers made to proclaim Iraq's first king during the coronation ceremony. That up to the late 1930s he was commander in charge of the Baghdad Royal Arsenal is in retrospect surprising (and that late in that decade a false charge was made against him by the far right is unsurprising), in consideration of rising animosity towards his ethno-religious identity. This came to a breaking point when he resigned, thus reverting from the acquired status of a career in the service of the state, to private bourgeoisie: this was happening in the first decade of full independence, when Jewish civil servants were being dismissed in their droves, after having been co-opted into the process of nation-building, owing to their educational qualifications giving them for a while an advantage. This study contributes novel data and facets that enable a fairly novel, and certainly more nuanced view of intercommunal relations in Iraq from late Ottoman times throughout the Hashemite monarchy (and beyond).