Current Analysis

Iraqi Protesters Thwarted by Trump's Iran Policy

The recent US assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Soleimani has had dire consequences for the Iraqi protest movement and its calls for substantive changes in the Iraqi political system.

Yousef K. Baker • 10 min read

Iraqis Demand a Country

Chanting “We want a country,” the youth-led protesters of Iraq are demanding nothing less than a new country as the uprising goes beyond narrowly defined political demands concerning electoral politics and legal reforms.

Zahra Ali • 10 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

Humanitarian Crisis Research as Intervention

Sarah Parkinson describes the growing popularity of extreme research—scholarly research conducted in crises zones amongst conflict-affected populations in the Middle East and North Africa—and shows how this research is a mode of intervention that can impose serious harm on individuals, communities,

Sarah Parkinson • 15 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

Current Analysis

Preservation or Plunder? The ISIS Files and a History of Heritage Removal in Iraq

The removal of the ISIS files from Iraq is only the latest episode in a long history of seizures of Iraqi archives and artifacts by Europeans and Americans. Rather than dismiss Iraqi critics as unreasonable, everyone with a stake in the study of Iraq—including all journalists, historians, and archiv

Arbella Bet-Shlimon • 18 min read

MER Article

Iraq Dispatch

I have been conducting research in Iraq—in Basra and the outskirts of Tikrit—for roughly the last six months. Since Donald Trump’s election as US president in November 2016, when someone discovers that I live and work in the US, I am usually asked, “That friend of yours [Trump], what’s wrong with hi

Hayder al-Mohammad • 4 min read

MER Article

“ISIS Is One Piece of the Puzzle”

Yifat Susskind is executive director of MADRE [http://www.madre.org/], an international women’s human rights organization based in New York. Jillian Schwedler spoke with her on October 28, 2015, the week after Yanar Mohammed, head of MADRE’s partner group the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

Jillian Schwedler • 12 min read

MER Article

Regional Responses to the Rise of ISIS

Regional responses to the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, have varied depending on regime perceptions of threat, not only from ISIS itself, but also from other potential rivals, challengers or enemies. Despite the jihadi group’s extensive use of violence in Syria and Iraq and i

Curtis Ryan • 14 min read

Current Analysis

Another Benghazi

“We didn’t want another Benghazi.” Oh no, is that really why the Obama administration decided to bomb Iraq [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/world/middleeast/fear-of-another-benghazi-drove-white-house-to-airstrikes-in-iraq.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=a-lede-package-r

Chris Toensing • 5 min read

Current Analysis

Not Much Better Than Bush

President Barack Obama got it right [http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/19/politics/obama-iraq-transcript/index.html] when he declared: "There's no military solution inside of Iraq, certainly not one that is led by the United States." But his Iraq track record doesn’t mark much of an improvement over the m

Amanda Ufheil-Somers • 2 min read

Current Analysis

Nowhere to Turn for Mosul's Refugees

In 2006, 30,000 Iraqis arrived in Syria every month, seeking and receiving safe haven from US occupation and sectarian warfare [http://www.irinnews.org/report/79659/syria-unhcr-cash-for-iraqi-refugees-but-many-vow-never-to-return] as kidnappings, death threats, and bombings by air and land engulfed

Sophia Hoffmann • 4 min read