iraq

When She Flew

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:03:00 +0000

In a fictionalized version of a true event that that happened a few years ago, an Iraq war vet and his young daughter are discovered living in the Oregon woods. When police officer Jessica Villareal hears that a young girl has been sighted in the woods and could be a runaway teen, she asks to be added to the search team. Jessica has always played by the rules, but finds herself heading towards forty and feeling like her job is the only thing she has going for her. She has an estranged teenage daughter and grandson who live close to her ex-husband, Rick in another state. As the story unfolds, we learn that Jessica, who is half-Mexican, is the daughter of a policeman who was killed in an auto wreck while on duty when Jessica was very young. Since then she has tried to maintain a firm grip on her world to keep danger and insecurity at bay.

Throughout When She Flew, we sense that Jessica is trying to find her way back to her daughter and her own lost childhood by trying to help Lindy, the teenage girl. As told through the narrative voices of Jessica and Lindy, we inhabit the worlds of these two separate, but linked individuals. Despite a lack of material resources, Lindy has been brought up by her survivalist father to love and appreciate nature. She has a special interest in birds and is first sighted by bird watchers when she ventures away from the campsite to follow a blue heron she sees by the river.

Without giving the entire plot away, the title of the book _When She Flew_ symbolized, for me, how both the younger and older female characters of the novel eventually find the courage to leave the safety of the known and find their own “truths” about life and their place in the world, even if they doesn’t always conform to societal expectations. The novel asks thought provoking questions about our assumptions when it comes to raising children. Pater is raising his daughter outside of the confines of conventional society, but would Lindy be better off with a foster family, or in an institutionalized setting? These characters stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page. Once I started reading this book, I found it hard to put it down.

Written by: Gita Tewari, January 12th 2010

Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq

admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Christina Asquith

Random House

Sisters in War is a brilliant, convincing, and powerful story of three women from the same Iraqi Shia family: Zia is twenty-two years old, university educated, an outspoken and brave young woman when the story begins with the invasion of Iraq in 2001. Her younger sister, Nunu, a university student, is a quiet and traditional Muslim woman who hopes for an arranged marriage with a suitable man. Their Mamina, a schoolteacher, reminisces about the proud Iraqi tradition of equality for women in the 1950’s and 1960’s. She recalls the times of General Kassim who believed in equality, freedom and creativity for all: women, men and children alike. Since 1979, Mamina and her Ph.D. educated husband, Baba, have lived in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s control.

The story of this Iraqi family is interwoven with the historical account of the events in Iraq during the American invasion as experienced by Heather and Manal. Heather was an idealistic and ambitious employee of the White House, whose office had already overseen $350 billion dollars in federal spending on national security programs when she understood that she could not overcome anti-American sentiment in Iraq from behind her desk in Washington, D.C. Manal was an educated, veiled woman in her twenties, an outspoken American aid worker who laced her powerful speeches in the United States with Muslim slang.

Both women traveled to Iraq where against all odds they became strong advocates for Iraqi women’s rights. They risked their own lives trying to help Iraqi women survive in their own country. They also founded the first women’s center in Baghdad.

These stories serve as a basic thread of Iraqi women’s lives, their hopes and dreams, and amongst them is Zia’s romance with Keith, an American contractor working in Baghdad. Zia supported her entire family working in the U.S. Headquarters as a translator from Arabic into English.

Zia and Nunu become the target of violent Iraqi militants. In a destroyed country, whose people experience the lack of every imaginable commodity, the dream of their liberation loses its significance. People are afraid to go out, women prone to abuse by any passing man yet unable to escape the restrictions of Iraqi society, are unable to continue their normal lives. Experiencing violence and harassment many of them fall into deep depression, giving up all their hopes and optimism for the future.

In spite of all the hardship, fear and death threats, the story has a happy ending. Zia manages to leave Iraq for Washington, D.C. in 2005, but her sister and Mamina have to stay in the horrifying, bloody city where suicide bombers kill hundreds of innocent civilians in every day attacks. Luckily, all three women are reunited at Sacramento International Airport in the summer of 2008 and Baba might be able to join them in the future. Zia’s love story is crowned by her marriage to Keith. Mamina, Zia, and Nunu are finally together and will share their lives together, hopefully in peace.

Christina Asquith, a journalist who spent two years in Baghdad working for The New York Times shortly after the start of the Iraq war, has written a sincere, thought-provoking, and timely account of the lives of Iraqi women from 2001 to 2009. This true story is engaging and very well written; in fact, I felt I was reading a novel rather than the non-fiction intimate description of the true events in Iraq. It is not only a story of women fighting for their liberated lifestyle. It is a story of Islamic traditions, religion, power, and politics versus American lifestyle, American power, and American beliefs.

In a subtle manner it recognizes the failure to understand, to want to understand the Muslim world by Americans and vice versa. Indeed, in her extraordinary book, Asquith filled in many pieces of the Iraq puzzle that needed to be deciphered.

Written by: Anna Hamling, January 9th 2010

The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism

admin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:45:00 +0000

By Barry Sanders

AK Press

The Green Zone takes two very big issues of the moment—global warming and the wars in the Middle East—and seeks to illustrate the correlations between the two. Everyone knows something about the horribleness of both topics individually, but most people, including myself, never really put the two together, so I was excited to learn what this book had to offer.

Right off the bat, one of the weaknesses is that the book spends an awful lot of time on what seems to be exposition: there is a preface, a foreword, and finally, an introduction—all of which spell out the gist of the book—before we get to the actual content. The Green Zone presents heavy questions that (according to Sanders) even the Pentagon has no answers for, such as how many military bases America has all over the world, how many Iraqi and Afghani civilians lost their lives since America’s occupation, and how many people will continue to suffer long after America pulls out of the two countries because of the various ways their environment has been polluted since the first Gulf War.

As compelling Sander's case is, he unfortunately goes off on tangents throughout the book, which detract from the point he is attempting to make. One minute he’ll be discussing the Gulf War, then the modern day ice caps, and then off to some other topic with little to no transition between them all. This gets confusing, especially when so many numbers and new terms are introduced.

The middle of the book is the most coherent, and seems to be where Sanders has the most passion in discussing the different ways the American military pollutes and endangers Iraq, Afghanistan, and even its own people. This was a hard book to read, in terms of both subject matter and delivery; however I still consider it a must read.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 14th 2009

Utopia and Epitaph

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:54:00 +0000

Directed by Moslem Mansouri

Underground Cinema

Utopia and Epitaph aren’t quite what documentaries are supposed to be, but, surprisingly, that’s a very good thing. In most documentaries, there’s narration and context, exposition and editorializing. The filmmaker boxes the viewer in with a comfy explanation of why “this” matters, and guides him or her on the sort of journey of other people’s lives that allows the interested, yet uninvolved, tourist’s view of the world. In the end, the way documentaries are “supposed” to be offers us an opportunity to improve ourselves, enrich ourselves, or do some other wonderfully important thing for, to, or about ourselves. In Utopia and _Epitaph, _Moslem Mansouri makes that all-important distance impossible and we and our “selves” are lost. There is only the subject—the people for whom these films are supposed to speak.

In Utopia, we meet Iran’s internal refugees who fled their homes due to what is simply referred to as “this war,”—the war between Iran and Iraq—and took up residence in the abandoned homes of those who had fled the country altogether. We know this small bit of context, the identity of the war to which the film refers and the source of the suffering we are to witness, only through a brief snippet of white words on a black screen at the beginning of the film. The same sort of opening introduces Epitaph, which examines the world of prostitution in a country where a woman can be stoned to death for sexual offenses, but self-declared holy men have no compunction against making use of their services.

From the first human face on screen to the last, both films are comprised solely of the voices of the desperate, their words often horrific and at times, astoundingly poetic. The same refrains echo through both films, despite the very different experiences of the two groups. Whether prostitute or refugee, adult or child, each person reveals the monster created by the twisted nightmare imposed by the Ayatollah and his henchman.

Over and over again, they speak of the crimes and offenses they have committed, or would commit, or imagine they must commit just to survive. They pray for death, or simply for never having existed in the first place. They mourn the potential within them that has been stripped away by law and circumstance, even if that circumstance is just being female in a world where children get married and educated women turn to prostitution rather than be some cleric’s cheap mistress. They curse their country’s political and “moral” leaders and the oppressive rules about gender and sex that diminish men, women and life itself. They dare to proclaim what they wish they could say to them, or what they have, in a few cases, had the courage to say to them about the failures, the hypocrisy and the lies. “If this is religion they are practicing,” they say, one after another. If this is religion, we want no part in it.

Neither film offers the viewer an out. There is no phone number to call, no foundation to contact, no address for donations. There is nothing to help us feel better for having done something, just the knowledge of suffering a world away. Watch them anyway.

Written by: Melinda Barton, June 9th 2009

What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:29:00 +0000

By Nadje Al-Ali, Nicola Pratt

University of California Press

March 20, 2009 marked the six-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Although the half a dozen years of occupation must seem like an extended nightmare from which Iraqis are anxious to awake, for many young Americans an occupied Iraq is the only Iraq they have ever known. This is precisely why Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s research could not have come at a better time. What Kind of Liberation? offers a revolutionary perspective on the war that has come to define a generation, using a gendered analysis that factors in women’s historical participation in Iraqi society, attempting to separate it from the one-dimensional warzone it is known as to many Americans today.

In the tradition of colonialism, the U.S. initially engaged in the war under the guise of freedom, campaigning specifically for women’s liberation. Tragically the manipulation of women’s interests as a strategic element of the occupation transformed women’s bodies into the location of a cultural war between the growing number of Iraqi insurgents, politicians and citizens opposed to the war, and an American administration that pushed women’s liberation as a Western cause.

Al-Ali and Pratt largely based their research on women in the Iraqi diaspora who had lived through, or who had family that lived through Saddam Hussein’s rule and the subsequent occupation of Iraq by the U.S. military. Their interviews reveal that despite the violence and tyranny implemented under Hussein, many of the interviewees imagined pre-invasion Iraq as a safer space for women. Although they do not attempt to sympathize with Hussein’s regime, they show that it was not until after the invasion, and after the U.S. spearheaded the campaign of the “liberation” of Iraqi women that women became the site for the rejection of Western values, and a return to conservative values was made on a nation-wide level.

What Kind of Liberation? presents us with a messy, complicated and living Iraq, a society with a rich history that is not streamlined. Iraqi women speak about their histories in their own words, offering a snapshot that largely contradicts what we see unfolding in the American media. Despite the U.S.’s promises for the future of Iraqi women, no investment was made in women’s interests when creating the new Iraqi government. Their voices were largely excluded. But these broken promises have not stopped female activists and politicians from braving threats and harassment and the backlash of a war in which they were used as part of a fictitious cause.

In the foreword Cynthia Enloe explains why Al-Ali and Pratt’s book is so necessary, “It’s happening. The country, the complex, dynamic society that is Iraq, is becoming ‘Iraq,’ just as the complex, dynamic society that is Vietnam has become merely ‘Vietnam.’” Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s gendered analysis of the war and historical documentation of women’s activism will contribute to the growing pool of knowledge that separates the orientalist notions of “Iraq” from the diverse and complicated country that has room for a future for men and women alike.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, May 15th 2009

I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody

admin — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:18:00 +0000

By Sinan Antoon

City Lights Books

Sinan Antoon’s novel I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody brilliantly portrays the complex impacts of political repression on humanity. It takes the form of a fictionalized compilation of interpreted handwritten prose of an Iraqi college student as he is held and tortured in a prison during the reign of the Ba’th regime in the 1980s. In the introduction of the novel, the reader is told that the Ministry of the Interior in Baghdad came across a handwritten “un-dotted” manuscript that an individual has "clarified" by dotting and inserting diacritics. Antoon points out that half of the twenty-eight letters in the Arabic alphabet are pairs or triplets with the same skeleton. They indicate different sounds by the varying number and location of “dots” above or below the letter. The word “I’jaam,” found in the title, literally means the “dotting” of Arabic script, but has come to signify something that produces a “clarifying” effect. And, thus, Antoon sets up the prose as "found text" written by a prisoner that government personnel have interpreted and made available to the public.

Antoon’s introduction is remarkable in its ability to blur fact and fiction and encourage the reader to become conscious of the politics of memory, story and interpretation. The reader wonders throughout: What meanings have disappeared or changed because of the “dotting” of the script and the political motivations of the interpreter? Which of these prisoner’s memories are true, and which are hallucinations of an under-fed and tortured captive? Most importantly, Antoon propels the reader to question their own need to distinguish between fact and fiction. He illustrates that life under a repressive political regime often means the inability to differentiate between reality, fiction, time and space.

Antoon writes with an illustrious and brash poetic style that moves the reader in profound ways. We not only understand, but feel the fear, frustration and helplessness that come to claim every inch of an oppressed person’s existence. “To live here means to piss away three quarters of your life waiting,” he writes, “Waiting for things that rarely come…waiting so long that you drown in time, because time itself is a fugitive citizen, trembling with fear and stumbling on the sidewalk, only to be pissed and spat upon by a merciless History.” It is not difficult to read passages like this, which were written in the context of the Ba’th regime, and apply them to the current U.S. occupation of Iraq. The passing of time has only increased the relevancy of this text to current political crises.

The real brilliance of this novel comes from Antoon’s ability to illustrate the tense relationship between culture, history and oppression with subtlety and potency. The narrator struggles to keep his passion for poetry and literature alive as the government attempts to regulate which forms of expression are acceptable and which are not. His obsession with the banned Iraqi poets al-Jawarihi and Muzaffar al-Nawwab illustrates oppressive regimes’ ability to deaden the humanity of the people. Ba’th party slogans and sayings of Saddam Hussein are interwoven with personal experiences and demonstrate the discrepancy between the rhetoric of the regime and the reality of life in Iraq. Ultimately, Antoon’s poetic expression of this dichotomy is his greatest strength as he powerfully unearths the deadening impact of oppression.

Written by: Arwa Ibrahim, June 8th 2007

Friendly Fire: The Remarkable Story of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq, Rescued by an Italian Secret Service Agent, and Shot by U.S. Forces

admin — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:03:00 +0000

By Giuliana Sgrena

Haymarket Books

In the United States, Giuliana Sgrena is known as the Italian journalist who was kidnapped in Iraq, held for a month, and then, on the day of her release, shot at by American troops on her way to the airport; the Italian secret service man escorting her was killed and Sgrena herself was severely injured. In the weeks following, while the U.S. military insisted that Sgrena’s car had failed to stop at a checkpoint, Sgrena claimed that the shots had come without warning. In Italy, where Sgrena is known for her long career of courageous reporting, she became a national hero. Hundreds of thousands marched in the streets to demand her release, and her kidnapping brought together a national movement to demand the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq.

In Friendly Fire, Sgrena tells of her experience of being confined to a single room for four weeks by two gun-touting men who call themselves “Abbas” and “Hussein.” Left mostly in the dark with the barest of necessities, Sgrena cautiously engaged her captors in conversation, demonstrating great intelligence and acumen—qualities that have no doubt served her well in her career. But in her book she does not shy away from revealing her own fears and vulnerabilities, keenly showing what it was like to have her life in the hands of these two strangers and the organization to which they belonged.

This would make a fascinating story in itself, but Sgrena gives us so much more, interweaving her personal experience with keen observation and analysis of Iraq under American occupation and the sectarian violence that is pulling the country asunder. She describes the political and religious dynamics behind this apparent chaos while imbuing her writing with a pervasive sympathy for the ordinary Iraqis caught up in what has become a living nightmare.

Her chapter on women is particularly instructive, describing the deterioration of conditions for women generally in Iraq and how, with some parts of the country now effectively ruled by extremists and under Islamic law, women have become the conflict’s most unseen (literally—forced to wear the veil and leave public life) victims. A compelling read, her book makes real the enormous risks taken by reporters to tell the story of Iraq and other war-torn parts of the world and leaves the reader with an enormous admiration for this journalist in particular.

Written by: Elaine Beale, May 30th 2007

My Country, My Country

admin — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:16:00 +0000

Directed by Laura Poitras

Zeitgeist Films

I admit that I popped My Country, My Country into my DVD player with genuine trepidation. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this film and had prepared myself for the agonizing boredom that is inflicted by a truly awful movie. Fortunately, My Country, My Country was a captivating and heart wrenching tale that exposes the truth behind war. When we watch the evening news, we see images of soldiers, tanks and insurgents, but what we seldom see is the toll that is levied on the people living under these conditions on a daily basis. These are regular people who are forced to survive in an unimaginable situation. After watching My Country, My Country, I have a deeper understanding of the hardships that the people of Iraq face every day.

Although I enjoyed this movie immensely, I must admit that there were elements that made my blood boil. Before I elaborate, I would like to state for the record that I was never in favor of George Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. However, my respect for the men and women of the armed forces is unwavering. The various scenes that portrayed U.S. servicemen and women as bloodthirsty warmongers left a very bad taste in my mouth. I don’t doubt that there are a few bad apples among our military personnel, but I believe that the majority are descent individuals serving their country.

If you can keep an open mind and understand the political intent behind the negative portrayal of our military, you will find a deeper empathy for the Iraqi people after watching My Country, My Country. Regardless of your feelings about this war, you will be mesmerized by the exquisite cinematography that highlights the beautiful landscapes in Iraq. At the same time, you will be horrified by sights of a war torn country, as well as some of the apparent injustices being levied on the Iraqi people. My Country, My Country left me with many questions needing to be answered by U.S. officials. In the end, it is a movie well worth watching, but be prepared to have your feathers ruffled.

Written by: Becky Barry, April 5th 2007

Return to the Land of Wonders

admin — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:17:00 +0000

Directed by Maysoon Pachachi

Typecast Releasing

I was riveted by Maysoon Pachachi’s documentary about her homeland: Return to The Land of Wonders. She returns to Baghdad after a thirty-five year absence, soon after the U.S. invasion. The Baghdad she brings to the viewer is not one seen on CNN; she offers a rare insight into the committee (headed by her father, Adnan) working on the drafting of a temporary Iraqi Constitution and Bill of Rights. Their struggle to retain their dignity, their customs and laws and, especially, the right of habeas corpus is difficult as they are required to comply with the dictates of both Washington and their own sectarian leadership.

Iraqi women are extremely interested in the form the new regime will take, and their frustration is noted by one who states: “The security situation fills us with fear. If Iraqi women can’t move about freely, can’t express their opinions freely, can’t protect themselves and their organizations, then how can proper elections be held?”

This theme is explored further for this issue of security is not just about being assaulted on the street, though that happens; it is about the fallout of extremism. Unveiled women are harassed on the street, robberies abound and never has it been more important to have laws that guarantee and protect their freedoms and rights. As one woman put it, “I don’t want to be forced to wear the political veil.”

Other aspects of Baghdad are presented. A man imprisoned for thirteen years after the Ba’ath party came into power tells how he retained his sanity by translating novels into Arabic. Placed in solitary confinement for five years, knowing men around him were hanged every day, he found strength in his faith and belief in his own innocence. The first novel he translated was John Steinbeck’s comedy, The Short Rein of Pippin IV; he went on to translate seventeen more novels during his incarceration.

There is dire need for medical aid, a situation which has only increased. One man asks for better needles for injections for his daughter, a mother for medicine for her jaundiced child. Hospital personnel are threatened with guns when they try to enter the medical facility and landmines have been found at those entrances as well.

Maysoon Pachachi has produced a beautiful, thoughtful documentary about the homeland she loves that still holds wonders for its people. I would highly recommend this film be shown at gatherings for anyone concerned about the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Written by: Pamela Crossland, March 16th 2007

Baghdad Burning II: More Girl Blog From Iraq

admin — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:23:00 +0000

By Riverbend

The Feminist Press

Some people are covering the war in the Middle East from a distance. Riverbend is blogging directly from Baghdad. This second print installment of Riverbend’s blog offers her entries from late 2004 to the beginning of 2006. There are humorous moments when she offers a Christmas list requesting blast-proof windows, landmine detectors and running water. Her hilarious version of the 2006 Oscars dubbed the Sayid Awards nominates George W. Bush as one of the Best Actors for convincingly portraying “the world’s first mentally challenged president," but she also indicts several Islamic leaders who act unaware of the political climate.

Riverbend is writing with limited access to the world at large yet, she offers a probing perspective. She analyzes media sources, television shows and various drafts of the pending Iraqi constitution. This is an accessible book that introduces the human side of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians impacted by the war in Iraq. The treatment of women is noted. Some of the glaring inequities include being turned away for service in a public place for being improperly covered, when ballots must indicate the sex of the voter, when the grocer says the policy will not change him running his store and Riverbend remembers she cannot work. The abstractions of war and confounded policy in Iraq become concrete in such moments.

Other entries describe the effects of bombing where people still live, celebrate birthdays, shake silt out of the rugs creeping into their homes from dust storms and hope for less than sporadic electricity and water. Riverbend introduces Elin, a translator for the kidnapped U.S. journalist Jill Carroll. Elin was killed before Carroll’s abduction, but Iraqis like Riverbend knew him for his record store where people could find refuge in music and conversation before bombings closed the store. Abu Ammar runs the local produce market where the prices for and types of produce available tell people about the conditions in other parts of the country.

Such characters and her analysis sparks offers another voice speaking on the issues that continue to emerge from this Middle Eastern conflict going into its fourth year. Baghdad Burning II gives insights from a person who is experiencing and not just observing. Her ongoing commentary is still being posted at http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/.

Written by: Tara Betts, January 3rd 2007

Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq

admin — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 12:42:00 +0000

By Peter Laufer

Chelsea Green Publishing

Mission Rejected explores the lives and motivations behind soldiers who have refused to serve in Iraq—either by finding a way out before their tours began or by returning home, devastated by what they saw in the desert and finding ways not to return when called. The first half of the book deals with soldiers who have actually gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave) fleeing to Canada while the second half of the book portrays soldiers who have found other ways of being released from their commitment to fighting, such as filing for Conscientious Objector (CO) status. Laufer takes on a broad interpretation of what it means to reject the war in Iraq and includes stories of would-be soldiers, who never even got as far as basic training before opting out of military service. The common theme among the soldiers who actually did serve is that once they were in Iraq, they saw the futility of the war and felt as if they were just there killing innocent civilians for no reason at all. One of the most disturbing elements of the soldiers’ accounts is how similar they are. The soldiers were sent to Iraq where they saw their fellow "freedom fighters" killing innocent civilians without compunction. They saw right away that there were no "weapons of mass destruction," or even many weapons at all. They saw that the US-led coalition was there raping and pillaging a very poor country that has virtually no means to defend itself. They saw the futility, the rage and the hopelessness in the Iraqi people we were supposedly "liberating," so they exercised their right of will and conscience and got out. Laufer paints a picture of men and women who are heroes in the truest sense, because they dared to think for themselves and opted out of a situation that compromised every value they had learned as citizens of this country, and as human beings.

Written by: Shana Scudder, November 27th 2006