Current Analysis

A New Normal for Iraqi Kurds?

At first glance, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) seems to have come out ahead from the takeover of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Taking advantage of the power vacuum left by the flight of the Iraqi security forces from Mosul and its envir

Denise Natali • 8 min read

Current Analysis

Catastrophe and Consequence

What is happening in Iraq is a catastrophe, but not a sudden one. The violence in Iraq has been worsening steadily over the last few years. And more to the point, today’s crisis is the consequence of failed policies and failed politics -- national, regional and international -- years and even decade

• 3 min read

Current Analysis

Petraeus’ Real Failure

On the sidelines of the catastrophic failure of the Iraqi army to hold back the militias of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (or ISIS, as it is usually known), and the fall of Mosul to that group, a debate is taking place in the United States about whether this turn of events is yet another

Laleh Khalili • 5 min read

MER Article

Hadi al-`Alawi, Scion of the Two Civilizations

In the 1950s, the People’s Republic of China began to host a small community of Arab scholars and journalists, recruited mostly through “revolutionary” channels like the FLN, the PLO, and the Iraqi and Sudanese Communist Parties. These experts were brought to China with the explicit purpose of editi

Mohammed al-Sudairi • 6 min read

Current Analysis

Looking for the Three of Diamonds

A few years ago, I began work on a crime novel set in Iraq [http://www.bitterlemonpress.com/new-books/american-crime-fiction/baghdad-central.asp]. I borrowed the name of a real-life person, Muhsin Khadr al-Khafaji, as a writing prompt. Taking this man’s name seemed like nothing since my character wa

Elliott Colla • 5 min read

MER Article

Antoon, Ya Maryam

Sinan Antoon, Ya Maryam (Beirut/Baghdad: Dar al-Jamal, 2012).

Isis Nusair • 3 min read

MER Article

Iraqi Christians: A Primer

Media coverage in the West can overstate the degree to which Christians are “disappearing” from the Middle East. But one place where such characterizations have merit is Iraq. In the years since the 2003 invasion led by the United States, at least half of Iraq’s Christians have fled the country to e

Amanda Ufheil-Somers • 5 min read

Current Analysis

Syria's Disabled Future

Jamal is not yet a teenager. His school closed in 2011, soon after the Syrian revolution turned into an armed conflict, and his father found him a factory job. One day in 2012 as he returned from work there was a battle going on in the main street near his home. Jamal immediately started carrying wo

Edward Thomas • 11 min read

MER Article

Sassoon, Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party

Joseph Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the difficulties of writing about the exercise of power inside authoritarian Arab regimes have been well known. The regimes’ inner workin

Roger Owen • 3 min read

MER Article

The Challenges for Women Working at Iraqi Universities

Ten years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, Iraqi women suffer from pervasive hardships -- the overall lack of security, gender-based violence, the feminization of poverty and poor access to basic services. Women working at universities face all these challenges, as well as others particular to hig

Nadje Al-Ali • 4 min read

MER Article

A Makeover

Two clouds kissed silently in the Baghdad sky. I watched them flee westward, perhaps out of shyness, leaving me alone on the bench beneath the French palm tree (so called because it stood in the courtyard in front of the French department) to wait for Areej. I looked for something

Nada Shabout • 13 min read

MER Article

Permanent Transients

“We do not know our destiny. The Jordanian government might ask us to leave at any moment,” said Hana, a widow in her fifties. “There is no rest for a guest.”

Isis Nusair • 20 min read