A Glimpse Of Iraq

A book written by an Iraqi about Iraq and Iraqis to make them comprehensible. It explains the diversity and the lingering antiquity that shape the country in simple terms and through facts and anecdotes. It looks at the occupation, the chaos and lawlessness that followed and their effect on the lives of people and individuals. It also provides a look into the "Triangle of Death" - one of the most volatile regions in the country - from the inside, showing some of the intricacies of tribal relations. But, above all, this book is about people. It aims to illustrate how ordinary people dealt with the traumatic situation, why civil war was so hard to ignite and why there is still hope. It may help the reader understand the failure to understand that led to failure.

These memoirs of the distinguished Iraqi statesman Tawfiq al-Suwaydi (1892-1968) evocatively recapture a now largely vanished Arab world¿and are an eloquent reminder that Iraq was once a far more open and tolerant society than it is today. Al-Suwaydi served as Iraq¿s prime minister (1929, 1946, 1950) three times, as foreign minister on numerous occasions, and as ambassador to Iran, the League of Nations, and the United Nations. He frequently undertook sensitive diplomatic missions on behalf of the Iraqi monarchy. Among the major world figures with whom he interacted personally were Kemal Ataturk, Adnan Menderes, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, John Foster Dulles, Anthony Eden, George Curzon, Benito Mussolini, George Antonius, and Kings Abdullah, Faisal, Hussein, and Ibn Saud. From this vantage point, he wrote with an insider¿s detail about the diplomatic, political, and geostrategic issues that vexed Iraq and the entire Arab world from the early twentieth century through the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. A comprehensive essay by Antony T. Sullivan, senior associate for Middle East affairs at TerraBuilt Corporation International, introduces this first English-language edition of the memoirs.

A Purple Heart is the token honor given to soldiers for their wounds, it makes, them heroes. It is the title that Nina Berman has given to her photographs of American soldiers gravely wounded in the Iraq war, who have returned home to face life away from the waving flags and heroic send-offs. The images are accompanied by first-person interviews with the soldiers, who discuss their lives, reasons for enlisting, and experience in Iraq. They provide a glimpse into the myths of warfare as glorious spectacle through the minds of young men desperate to believe in the righteousness of their actions. One soldier explains that he always wanted to be a hero. He thought the military would be fun--he would jump out of planes. He never imagined it could be ugly until he saw "Saving Private Ryan. He is now a cripple, doped up all day on pain medications, flat broke, with one kid and another on the way. Another soldier describes how he called a recruiting station after watching an MTV-style commercial for the Army on TV.,An immigrant from Pakistan, he was given his citizenship following his injury. It's a fair trade in his mind: a leg for an American passport.

I feel that I have been sleeping all my life and I have woken up and opened my eyes to the world. A beautiful world! But impossible to live in. These are the words of fifteen-year-old Hadiya, blogging from the city of Mosul, Iraq, to let the world know what life is really like as the military occupation of her country unfolds. In many ways, her life is familiar. She worries about exams and enjoys watching Friends during the rare hours that the electricity in her neighborhood is running. But the horrors of war surround her everywhere—weeklong curfews, relatives killed, and friends whose families are forced to flee their homes. With black humor and unflinching honesty, Hadiya shares the painful stories of lives changed forever. “Let’s go back,” she writes, “to my un-normal life.” With her intimate reflections on family, friendship, and community, IraqiGirl also allows us to witness the determination of one girl not only to survive, but to create, amidst the devastation of war, a future worth living for. "Hadiya's authentically teenage voice, emotional struggles and concerns make her story all the more resonant." —Publishers Weekly “Despite all the news coverage about the war in Iraq, very little is reported about how it affects the daily lives of ordinary citizens. A highschooler in the city of Mosul fills in the gap with this compilation of her blog posts about living under U.S. occupation. She writes in English because she wants to reach Americans, and in stark specifics, she records the terrifying dangers of car bombs on her street and American warplanes overhead, as well as her everyday struggles to concentrate on homework when there is no water and electricity at home. Her tone is balanced: she does not hate Americans, and although she never supported Saddam Hussein, she wonders why he was executed... Readers will appreciate the details about family, friends, school, and reading Harry Potter, as well as the ever-present big issues for which there are no simple answers." —Hazel Rochman, Booklist “IraqiGirl has poured reflections of her daily life into her blog, reaching all over the cyber-world from her home in northern Iraq. She writes about the universals of teen life—school, family, TV, food, Harry Potter—but always against the background of sudden explosions, outbursts of gunfire, carbombs, death.… [A]n important addition to multicultural literature.” —Elsa Marston, author of Santa Claus in Baghdad and Other Stories About Teens in the Arab World “A book as relevant to adults as teenagers and children. Hadiya’s clear, simple language conveys the feelings of a teenager, offering a glimpse into the daily life of a professional middle-class Iraqi family in an ancient-modern city subjected to a brutal occupation.” —Haifa Zangana, author of City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance

Iraq’s economy has undergone profound changes over the last decade, many of which have had significant implications on the evolution of the country’s informal economy. The statist, heavy-handed economic policies of the Ba’athist government concentrated much of Iraq’s productive capacity on nationalized factors, which degraded under the sanctions regime of the 1990s, when both industrial and agricultural production faltered for lack of input. The 2003 overthrow of the regime saw the nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contract by 35 percent and it has recovered little since then, despite US-led reconstruction efforts. The only part of the economy to have survived both Saddam Hussein and the post-2003 period of instability is the country’s informal economy. At the aggregate level, corruption appears to be a key factor in the growth of Iraq’s informal economy. Over the years, corruption at many levels has led to a general reduction in trust on the part of market participants. Furthermore, the reduction in social capital has forced the shift of many transactions from the formal to the informal markets, where intimate knowledge of participants provides some insurance against fraud and non-compliance. Other factors, such as the shortage of energy and electricity and the dangers associated with transport, have caused a number of previously formal businesses to revert to the informal economy. This has been particularly evident in the agricultural sector, the neglect and subsequent demise of which has not only forced many farmers into informal subsistence-type farming, but has also greatly limited the ability of the sector to play its traditional role as a temporary source of employment for unemployed urban workers. The shutting down of many schools and poor quality of education among others, together with low family incomes, have forced many children into the informal sector—mainly as street vendors. The country’s many child labor laws are being largely ignored by the authorities. Meanwhile, women are also increasingly becoming participants in the informal economy. Many have been widowed or abandoned and the informal sector provides their easiest access to income. The high level of corruption in post-war Iraq continues to reinforce these trends. In its latest assessment, the prestigious Transparency International has ranked Iraq as the most corrupt country in the Middle East. In short, the issues require far more than simply organizing and financing a massive construction program. Rather, what is required is the rebuilding of a devastated economy and society simultaneously. In a nutshell, the issues require a development strategy under crisis. This study outlines several areas that require greater attention in the country’s reform program, as well as strategies that might help stem the tide toward informal activity in Iraq. Taken as a whole, these policy initiatives have the potential to not only significantly expand domestic employment opportunities, but more importantly, to do so through the creation of a virtuous cycle with feedback between the domestic market, further reforms and the incorporation of the informal segments of the economy into the formal sector. Ultimately, a rapidly growing formal private sector is essential for making any significant progress in combating Iraq’s vast informal economy and job creation needs.

A survey of the culture of Iraq, including religion, holidays and festivals, fashion, arts, cuisine, and leisure activities.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • One of the Washington Post Book World's 10 Best Books of the Year • Time's 10 Best Books of the Year • USA Today's Nonfiction Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book "Staggeringly vivid and persuasive . . . absolutely essential reading." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "The best account yet of the entire war." —Vanity Fair The definitive account of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq Fiasco is a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq through mid-2006, now with a postscript on recent developments. Ricks draws on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders.