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The modern history of Iraq is punctuated by a series of successive and radical ruptures (coups d'etat, changes of regime, military adventures and foreign invasions) whose chronological markers are relatively easy to identify. Although researchers cannot ignore these ruptures, they should also be encouraged to establish links between the moments when the breaks occur and the longue durée, in order to gain a better understanding of the period.Combining a variety of different disciplinary and methodological perspectives, this collection of essays seeks to establish some new markers which will open fresh perspectives on the history of Iraq in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and suggest a narrative that fits into new paradigms. The book covers the various different periods of the modern state (the British occupation and mandate, the monarchy, the first revolutions and the decades of Ba'thist rule) through the lens of significant groups in Iraq society, including artists, film-makers, political and opposition groups, members of ethnic and religious groups, and tribes.
The modern history of Iraq is punctuated by a series of successive and radical ruptures (coups d'etat, changes of regime, military adventures and foreign invasions) whose chronological markers are relatively easy to identify. Although researchers cannot ignore these ruptures, they should also be encouraged to establish links between the moments when the breaks occur and the longue durée, in order to gain a better understanding of the period.Combining a variety of different disciplinary and methodological perspectives, this collection of essays seeks to establish some new markers which will open fresh perspectives on the history of Iraq in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and suggest a narrative that fits into new paradigms. The book covers the various different periods of the modern state (the British occupation and mandate, the monarchy, the first revolutions and the decades of Ba'thist rule) through the lens of significant groups in Iraq society, including artists, film-makers, political and opposition groups, members of ethnic and religious groups, and tribes.
"The Kurds, once marginal in the study of the Middle East and secondary in its international relations, have moved to centre stage in recent years. In Turkey, where the Kurdish question is an issue of national significance, and in Iraq, where the gains made by the Kurdistan Regional Government have allowed it to impose its authority, moves are afoot to solve 'the Kurdish Question' once and for all. The picture is less positive in Syria, where the Kurds have borne the brunt of the Islamic State's onslaught, and in Iran, where they struggle to express their cultural distinctiveness and suffer disproportionately at the hands of the Islamic Republic's security apparatus. Yet the situations in both countries remain in flux, affected by developments in Iraq and Turkey in a manner that suggests we may have to revise the notion of the Kurds being forever divided by the boundaries of the Middle East's and subsumed into the state projects of other nations. The contributors to The Kurdish Question Revisited offer insights into how this once seemingly intractable, immutable phenomenon is being transformed amid the new political realities of the Middle East"--Publisher's description.
Order out of Chaos explains why Iraqis turned to the mosque after state collapse. In 2003, the US-led invasion of Iraq destroyed the Bathist state. Despite this the citizens of Basra established predictable routines of daily life and social order as the familiar and customary structures of state-imposed order collapsed. What enabled individuals in Basra to work together to produce order amid anarchy? The answer: the Friday mosque. A week after the regime fell, Shii imams introduced Friday congregational prayers and associated sermons for the first time in most places since the 1950s. These sermons facilitated the spread of common knowledge and coordination, both locally and nationally, and contributed to the emergence of a relatively cohesive imagined community of Iraqi Shia that came to dominate Iraq's political order. Combining rational choice approaches, ethnographic understanding, and GIS analysis, David Siddhartha Patel reveals the interconnectedness of the enduring problem of how societies create social order in a stateless environment, the origins and limits of political authority and leadership, and the social and political salience of collective identity.
Who are the Assyrians and what role did they play in shaping modern Iraq? Were they simply bystanders, victims of collateral damage who played a passive role in the history of Iraq? And how have they negotiated their position throughout various periods of Iraq's state-building processes?This book details the narrative and history of Iraq in the 20th century and reinserts the Assyrian experience as an integral part of Iraq's broader contemporary historiography. It is the first comprehensive account to contextualize this native people's experience alongside the developmental processes of the modern Iraqi state. Using primary and secondary data, this book offers a nuanced exploration of the dynamics that have affected and determined the trajectory of the Assyrians' experience in 20th century Iraq.
The activities of ISIS since 2014 have brought back to centre stage a series of very old and very troubling questions about the integrity and viability of the Iraqi state. However, most analysts have framed recent events in terms of their immediate past and without the contextual background to explain their evolution. State and Society in Iraq moves beyond a short-sighted analysis to place the complex and contested nature of Iraqi politics within a broader and deeper historical examination. In doing so, the chapters demonstrate that beyond the overwhelming emphasis on failed occupations, cruel tyrants, ethnic separatists and violent religious fanatics, is an Iraqi people who have routinely agitated against the state, advocated for legitimate and accountable government, and called for inter-communal harmony.When, the authors maintain, the Iraqi people are given agency in the complex process of consent, negotiation and resistance that underpin successful state-society relations, the nation can move beyond patterns of oppression and cruelty, of dangerous rhetoric and divisive politics, and towards a cohesive, peaceful and prosperous future - despite the many difficulties and the steep challenges that lie ahead.
Within recent years a new body of literature has emerged within international relations on transnationalism and foreign policy. This literature has thus far focused on the strategic relationship between home states and their ethnic lobbies abroad, often with regard to remittances to and politics in the home country. This book breaks new ground in that it develops a theory about when, how and for what reasons host states use diasporas and the ethnic lobbies they generate to advance foreign policy goals. Ask What You Can Do for Your (New) Country focuses on a previously unexamined phenomenon: how host governments utilize diasporas to advance their foreign policy agendas in mutually beneficial ways. As was demonstrated in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when Iraqi exiles testified that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, ethnic lobbies have been utilized strategically by the United States (and other countries) for the promotion of political objectives. Host states have even promoted the creation of such ethnic lobbies for this purpose. As Nadejda K Marinova shows, those who participate in such lobbies are of a particular subset of émigrés who are politically active, express a sustained vision for homeland politics, and who often have existing ties to political institutions within the host state. These groups then act as a link between the public and officials in their home state, and other (generally less politically active) members of the diaspora via a coordinated effort by the host state. She develops a theoretical model for determining the conditions under which a host state will decide to promote and utilize an ethnic lobby, and she tests it against eight cases, including the Bush Administration's use of the American Lebanese Cultural Union and the World Council for the Cedars Revolution in developing policy towards Lebanon and Syria, the Iraqi National Congress in endorsing the US invasion of Iraq, the Cuban-American Committee's cooperation with the Carter administration in attempting to normalize relations with Cuba, and the International Diaspora Engagement Alliance (IdEA) launched by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 to promote economic development in a number of countries.
This book presents a thorough analysis of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s memory culture, focusing particularly on commemorations and representations of the Anfal and Halabja atrocities. The author employs a transdisciplinary approach that draws on Memory Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Heritage Studies, Kurdish Studies, Literary Studies and Trauma Studies, to analyze cultural objects such as Kurdistani literary novels, museums, and school curricula. The book introduces two key concepts: the "phantomic museum" and the "apostrophic museum." The former explores the fragile and politicized nature of memories of missing individuals who disappeared during Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaigns and who have never been found, primarily as they return in the Halabja Monument and Peace Museum. The latter examines how the addressing – apostrophizing – of Kurdistan, in and by the Amna Suraka museum in the city of Sulaymaniyah, institutionalizes “official” and highly politicized versions of the past.
A new account of modern Iraqi politics that overturns the conventional wisdom about its sectarian divisions How did Iraq become one of the most repressive dictatorships of the late twentieth century? The conventional wisdom about Iraq's modern political history is that the country was doomed by its diverse social fabric. But in State of Repression, Lisa Blaydes challenges this belief by showing that the country's breakdown was far from inevitable. At the same time, she offers a new way of understanding the behavior of other authoritarian regimes and their populations. Drawing on archival material captured from the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'th Party in the wake of the 2003 US invasion, Blaydes illuminates the complexities of political life in Iraq, including why certain Iraqis chose to collaborate with the regime while others worked to undermine it. She demonstrates that, despite the Ba'thist regime's pretensions to political hegemony, its frequent reliance on collective punishment of various groups reinforced and cemented identity divisions. At the same time, a series of costly external shocks to the economy—resulting from fluctuations in oil prices and Iraq's war with Iran—weakened the capacity of the regime to monitor, co-opt, coerce, and control factions of Iraqi society. In addition to calling into question the common story of modern Iraqi politics, State of Repression offers a new explanation of why and how dictators repress their people in ways that can inadvertently strengthen regime opponents.
The little-known history of public school teachers across the Arab world—and how they wielded an unlikely influence over the modern Middle East Today, it is hard to imagine a time and place when public school teachers were considered among the elite strata of society. But in the lands controlled by the Ottomans, and then by the British in the early and mid-twentieth century, teachers were key players in government and leading formulators of ideologies. Drawing on archival research and oral histories, Teachers as State-Builders brings to light educators’ outsized role in shaping the politics of the modern Middle East. Hilary Falb Kalisman tells the story of the few young Arab men—and fewer young Arab women—who were lucky enough to teach public school in the territories that became Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine/Israel. Crossing Ottoman provincial and, later, Mandate and national borders for work and study, these educators were advantageously positioned to assume mid- and even high-level administrative positions in multiple government bureaucracies. All told, over one-third of the prime ministers who served in Iraq from the 1950s through the 1960s, and in Jordan from the 1940s through the early 1970s, were former public school teachers—a trend that changed only when independence, occupation, and mass education degraded the status of teaching. The first history of education across Britain’s Middle Eastern Mandates, this transnational study reframes our understanding of the profession of teaching, the connections between public education and nationalism, and the fluid politics of the interwar Middle East.