Category Archives: Iraq

Rape in the Iraq War

Gender and Sexuality, Immigration Issues, Iraq, Iraq War, Jordan


Khalida: The mother of two, shown in silhouette, was raped during the war.

Rape’s vast toll in Iraq war remains largely ignored

By Anna Badkhen, The Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 2008 edition

Amman, Jordan – As though recoiling from her own memories, Khalida shrank deeper into her faded armchair with each sentence she told: of how gunmen apparently working for Iraq’s Interior Ministry kidnapped her, beat and raped her; of how they discarded her on a Baghdad sidewalk.

But her suffering did not end when she fled Iraq and became a refugee in Jordan’s capital, Amman. When Khalida’s husband learned that she had been raped, he abandoned her and their two young sons.

Rumors spread fast in Amman; soon, everyone on her block knew that she was without a man in the house. Last month, her Jordanian neighbor barged into her apartment and attempted to rape her. Continue reading Rape in the Iraq War →

Civil Society minus the visas

Iraq, Iraq War, Scholars

Academics Struggle for Civil Society in Iraq

by David Moltz, Inside Higher Ed, November 25, 2008

WASHINGTON – Two of the three scholars invited from Iraq to share analysis of academic conditions there could not get visas to attend this week’s meeting of the Middle East Studies Association. Those gathered at the annual meeting for a panel on “the role of academics in building civil society in Iraq” had to settle for having the papers paraphrased to them by a colleague. This twist of fate, however, prompted the remaining panelists to reflect on the challenges that still exist for students and scholars in a post-Saddam Iraq.

Though Riyadh Aziz Hadi, a high-ranking administrator at Baghdad University, and Amer Qader, a professor at Kirkuk University, were unable to attend the event, their scholarly work was presented before the panel.

“This is kind of good for the event in a sinister way,” said Abbas Kadhim, professor of Islamic studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, Cal. and a product of Iraqi higher education. “This shows you some of the difficulties that remain for Iraqi academics. If someone cannot attend an event like this — because of a denied visa with one year’s notice [the case for Hadi and Qader] — you’re looking at a sequestered group of people.” Continue reading Civil Society minus the visas →

Killing Time

Gender and Sexuality, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism and Media


Iraqis with the remains of a minibus hit by a roadside bomb on Monday morning in Baghdad: Joao Silva for The New York Times

There are those decisive moments when something important or historic or even catastrophic happens. These are the things historians chronicle and poets bemoan. Then there is the universal act of killing time, the boring drudgery of day-to-day life but the kind of mundane routine we all long for after the unsought catastrophes. Thomas Friedman in a Saturday op-ed views the current economic crisis as a WMD dug up in our own backyard, a danger so potent that the January inaugural might be best moved up to Thanksgiving, killing two birds (a sacrificial turkey and a lame duck) with one bold act. President-elect Obama is hardly killing time, as his proposed cabinet appointees are press-conferenced to the nation in rapid-fire progression. Time in the larger sense is mercifully short, unless it stops completely in one of those mortality shocks that deadens any sense of time.

Like Monday in Baghdad, where killing time has been the rule both before and after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Continue reading Killing Time →

The PKK as a burden on Iraqi Kurds

Iraq, Iraq War, Kurds, Turkey


Former PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, pictured in 1992.

The PKK as a burden on Iraqi Kurds

by IHSAN DAÄžI, Today’s Zaman, October 14, 2008

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) attacks from northern Iraq on Turkish targets have turned the Kurdish region in Iraq into a primary target of Turkey.

It is time for the regional Kurdish administration to stop using the PKK as a bargaining chip against Turkey; it is not a time for the Kurdish people of Iraq to side with the PKK out of Kurdish sentimentality. While the former produces no advantages and incites the animosity of Turkey and pressures of the US, the latter ignores the fact that the PKK threatens to undo the gains Iraqi Kurds have made through their long struggle.

What Iraqi Kurds have today, after decades of struggle, is certainly worth preserving and consolidating, and those gains should not be risked by protecting the PKK. Continue reading The PKK as a burden on Iraqi Kurds →

Surge vs. Splurge

Election 2008, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism and Media

McCain is deluding himself over the ‘surge’
Johann Hari, The Independent, October 6, 2008

There’s a hole in the US argument, and blood is rushing through

John McCain is desperate to talk about the surge rather than the splurge. His Iraq war is set to cost one trillion dollars, and his deregulation-mania has cost hundreds of billions. So in order to maintain his façade of being “tough on spending”, he needs to shift the subject. That’s why he has tried to shrink the debate about the Iraq War to one small question. Not: did Saddam have Weapons of Mass Destruction? Not: did Saddam have links to 9/11? Not: why do 70 per cent of Iraqis think the presence of US troops make them less safe and they should go home now?

McCain knows he will lose those arguments, so he wants us to talk solely about whether the surge of US troops last year has been successful. But a hole was just blown in that argument – and blood is rushing through.

Those of us who got Iraq wrong have a particular duty to honestly describe what is happening now. Continue reading Surge vs. Splurge →

The surge be praised but pass the ammunition

Afghanistan, Election 2008, Iraq, Iraq War

The potential meltdown of Wall Street has brought the economy front and center as “the” issue in the closing days of the election cycle. Even Friday’s debate, originally planned to focus on foreign policy, started out on the state of the economy and looming bail-out plan in congress. But Iraq is not about to disappear from the news. If the only measure of progress in Iraq is the raw number of U.S. casualties, then the “surge” be praised, but keep passing the ammunition. Darfur is also out of the daily news cycle these days, but the killing there has hardly abated. Afghanistan does make the headlines, in part because U.S. casualties are rising dramatically this year.

So five years and counting after the shock-and-awe sweep through Iraq and the May Day announcement of “Mission Accomplished” by George W. Bush, the mission continues and the death toll keeps rising. Here is yesterday’s count from al-Jazeera:

Deadly car bombs rock Baghdad Continue reading The surge be praised but pass the ammunition →

Cholera outbreak spreads in Iraq

Iraq, Iraq War


The victims include seven children and two women.

Reported in Al-Jazeera, Thursday, September 11, 2008

Babel, a central Iraqi province, is on alert after Iraqi authorities declared it a disaster zone marking the country’s latest cholera outbreak.

At least five people died on Thursday while 90 new cases had been reported, local and national health officials said.

Babel’s provincial council, said: “The laboratory reports from Babel health department indicate there are 200 cases of suspected cholera, vomiting and diarrhea in the province”.

At least 20 people, including seven children and two women, have died from cholera in the past three days, a local official said. Continue reading Cholera outbreak spreads in Iraq →