Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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Iraq War (2003- )

MERIP updates

Dick Cheney Dead

An Archival Remix on the Neoconservative Legacy

James Ryan • 3 min read

Water, Oil and Iraq’s Climate Future — Mehdi, Abbas and Eidan hanging out after school in the town of Chibayish, near the Iraqi Marshlands, 2018. Tamara Abdul HadiRead this article in Arabic at Jummar. Image designed by Atef Al-Jaffal/Jummar.

MER Article

Water, Oil and Iraq’s Climate Future

Two resources tell the story of Iraq's climate vulnerability.

Zeinab Shuker • 9 min read

Iraqi Women’s Activism—20 Years After the US Invasion — Iraqi women take to the streets in a Tishreen demonstration in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on February 13, 2020. (Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images)

MER Article

Iraqi Women’s Activism—20 Years After the US Invasion

What the last two decades have meant for Iraq's women's movement.

Zahra Ali • 9 min read

Interview—The Past, Present and Future of Iraq’s Cultural Heritage — In the complex of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri and al-Habda Minaret, destroyed by ISIS in 2017. An earlier prayer hall and ablution rooms, dating to the 12th century, were discovered during the preparations for reconstruction. Mosul, Iraq, 2022. Ismael Adnan Yaqoob/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

MER Article

Interview—The Past, Present and Future of Iraq’s Cultural Heritage

A conversation with archaeologists Mark Altaweel and Jaafar Jotheri.

Mark Altaweel, Jaafar Jotheri, Hannah Parsons-Morgan • 14 min read

Water, Oil and Iraq’s Climate Future — Mehdi, Abbas and Eidan hanging out after school in the town of Chibayish, near the Iraqi Marshlands, 2018. Tamara Abdul HadiRead this article in Arabic at Jummar. Image designed by Atef Al-Jaffal/Jummar.

Uncategorized

Water, Oil and Iraq’s Climate Future

In the second preview article from MERIP's spring issue, The State of Iraq—twenty years after the invasion, Zeinab Shuker writes about how oil and water tell the story of Iraq's climate vulnerability.

Zeinab Shuker • 9 min read

Birth Defects and the Toxic Legacy of War in Iraq — Boys play in front of burning oilfields in Qayyara, south of Mosul, Iraq, 2016. Goran Tomasevic/ReutersA US Air Force equipment manager tosses used uniform items into a burn pit at Balad Air Base, Iraq, 2008. Department of Defense photo by Senior Airman Julianne Showalter/US Air Force

MER Article

Birth Defects and the Toxic Legacy of War in Iraq

In Iraq, birth defects are a visible embodiment of the enduring toxic legacy of war for future generations and the environment. War and occupation shattered public infrastructures necessary for health and well being, but also triggered cascades of environmental degradation.

Kali Rubaii • 10 min read

Birth Defects and the Toxic Legacy of War in Iraq — Boys play in front of burning oilfields in Qayyara, south of Mosul, Iraq, 2016. Goran Tomasevic/ReutersA US Air Force equipment manager tosses used uniform items into a burn pit at Balad Air Base, Iraq, 2008. Department of Defense photo by Senior Airman Julianne Showalter/US Air Force

Current Analysis

Birth Defects and the Toxic Legacy of War in Iraq

In Iraq, birth defects are a visible embodiment of the enduring toxic legacy of war, burn pits, sanctions and other military interventions. War and occupation shattered public infrastructures necessary for health and well being, but also triggered cascades of environmental degradation. Kali Rubaii i

Kali Rubaii • 10 min read

From the Archive: Iraqibacter and the Pathologies of Intervention — Men sweep debris from a damaged pharmacy, located near the site of Wednesday's car bomb attack, in the city of Hilla

Current Analysis

From the Archive: Iraqibacter and the Pathologies of Intervention

As Iraq now confronts the arrival of COVID-19, its war-damaged medical infrastructure and degraded environment will make it harder to combat the virus. In 2019, Omar Dewachi explained how these same conditions transformed innocuous bacteria into dangerous drug-resistant strains.

Omar Dewachi • 14 min read

MER Article

Weaponizing Iraq’s Archives

The Bush Administration’s exploitation of Iraqi state archives for atrocity material to justify its failing 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on precedent. The genealogy of exploiting Iraqi archives for political ends serves as a warning for how the self-evidently virtuous notion of human rights can b

Wisam H. Alshaibi • 19 min read

MER Article

Iraqibacter and the Pathologies of Intervention

Omar Dewachi traces the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria in war-related wounds—which US military doctors labelled Iraqibacter—to the biological legacy of decades of sanctions, war and intervention in Iraq, and how antibiotic resistance is increasingly being found in other militarized interventi

Omar Dewachi • 13 min read

MER Article

"Mosul Will Never Be the Same"

In June 2014, the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) launched an assault on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Within days, the Iraqi army collapsed and ISIS proclaimed its sovereignty over the city. An anonymous blog named Mosul Eyebegan reporting on life under ISIS rule. With de

Omar Mohammed • 13 min read

MER Article

Caught in the Circle of Punishment

The politics, sensibilities and lives of Iraqis born in the 1970s and 1980s were intimately shaped by harsh US sanctions on essential and non-essential goods, Saddam Hussein’s wars and the US invasion in 2003 with its devastating war and aftermath. What can a young Iraqi possibly hope for now?

Omar Al-Jaffal • 6 min read