Noga Efrati outlines the first social and political history of women in Iraq during the periods of British occupation and the British-backed Hashimite monarchy (1917–1958). She traces the harsh and long-lasting implications of British state building on Iraqi women, particularly their legal and political enshrinement as second-class citizens, and the struggle by women's rights activists to counter this precedent. Efrati concludes with a discussion of post-Saddam Iraq and the women's associations now claiming their place in government. Finding common threads between these two generations of women, Efrati underscores the organic roots of the current fight for gender equality shaped by a memory of oppression under the monarchy. Efrati revisits the British strategy of efficient rule, largely adopted by the Iraqi government they erected and the consequent gender policy that emerged. The attempt to control Iraq through "authentic leaders"—giving them legal and political powers—marginalized the interests of women and virtually sacrificed their well-being altogether. Iraqi women refused to resign themselves to this fate. From the state's early days, they drew attention to the biases of the Tribal Criminal and Civil Disputes Regulation (TCCDR) and the absence of state intervention in matters of personal status and resisted women's disenfranchisement. Following the coup of 1958, their criticism helped precipitate the dissolution of the TCCDR and the ratification of the Personal Status Law. A new government gender discourse shaped by these past battles arose, yet the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, rather than helping cement women's rights into law, reinstated the British approach. Pressured to secure order and reestablish a pro-Western Iraq, the Americans increasingly turned to the country's "authentic leaders" to maintain control while continuing to marginalize women. Efrati considers Iraqi women's efforts to preserve the progress they have made, utterly defeating the notion that they have been passive witnesses to history.

This book is about the new Iraq, the Iraq that many say has finally after many years become a democracy, which has brought freedoms and rights, chaos and confusion. The author relates lending her skills to help Iraq progress toward a better future. She also gives an account of her feelings and experiences upon returning to her native city Baghdad, with each new encounter provoking old memories and building new foundations, and her view of the current Iraq from the perspective of someone who has lived in the United States for three decades. Finally she offers her thoughts on where Americans and Iraqis are headed together, with their lives intermingled as never before because of the recent war.

An unbarred account of life in post-occupation Iraq and an assessment of the nation's prospects for the future

An account of the forces-historical, religious, ethnic, and political-that produced Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

Presents the findings of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which was formed in 2006 to examine the situation in Iraq and offer suggestions for the American military's future involvement in the region.

Uses United Nations reports, Iraqi government records, and interviews with Iraqi educators, writers, and ordinary citizens to present a history of modern Iraq, from the construction of the modern state in 1920 through today.

What do we owe Iraq? America is up to its neck in nation building--but the public debate, focused on getting the troops home, devotes little attention to why we are building a new Iraqi nation, what success would look like, or what principles should guide us. What We Owe Iraq sets out to shift the terms of the debate, acknowledging that we are nation building to protect ourselves while demanding that we put the interests of the people being governed--whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, or elsewhere--ahead of our own when we exercise power over them. Noah Feldman argues that to prevent nation building from turning into a paternalistic, colonialist charade, we urgently need a new, humbler approach. Nation builders should focus on providing security, without arrogantly claiming any special expertise in how successful nation-states should be made. Drawing on his personal experiences in Iraq as a constitutional adviser, Feldman offers enduring insights into the power dynamics between the American occupiers and the Iraqis, and tackles issues such as Iraqi elections, the prospect of successful democratization, and the way home. Elections do not end the occupier's responsibility. Unless asked to leave, we must resist the temptation of a military pullout before a legitimately elected government can maintain order and govern effectively. But elections that create a legitimate democracy are also the only way a nation builder can put itself out of business and--eventually--send its troops home. Feldman's new afterword brings the Iraq story up-to-date since the book's original publication in 2004, and asks whether the United States has acted ethically in pushing the political process in Iraq while failing to control the security situation; it also revisits the question of when, and how, to withdraw.

An on-the-ground commander describes his brigade's first year in Iraq after the U.S. forces seized Baghdad in the spring of 2003, and explains what went right and wrong as the U.S. military confronted an insurgency, in a firsthand analysis of success and failure in Iraq.

Unlike other publications since the downfall of Saddam's regime, Iraq: Then & Now traces the history of the country from ancient times until the present. Supplementary boxes, many written by Iraqis themselves, reflect on life today as compared with life in Saddam's Iraq and even earlier, describing their experiences, hopes, fears, ambitions and visions for the future.The book self-consciously avoids making any judgement on the political debate surrounding the 2003 war and subsequent occupation; instead it presents the varying views, and offers a rounded, balanced picture.Published to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the change, this guide to the country and its people, provides information on Iraq's culture and archaeology, the south, Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle. The northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan stands apart as a success story and the travel appendix provides essential information for the increasing numbers of visitors to this region.

One of BookPage's Best Books of 2020 “The detailed, nuanced, gripping account of that strange and complex journey offered in Robert Draper’s To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq is essential reading—now, especially now . . . Draper’s account [is] one for the ages . . . A must-read for all who care about presidential power.” —The Washington Post From the author of the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain comes the definitive, revelatory reckoning with arguably the most consequential decision in the history of American foreign policy--the decision to invade Iraq. Even now, after more than fifteen years, it is hard to see the invasion of Iraq through the cool, considered gaze of history. For too many people, the damage is still too palpable, and still unfolding. Most of the major players in that decision are still with us, and few of them are not haunted by it, in one way or another. Perhaps it's that combination, the passage of the years and the still unresolved trauma, that explains why so many protagonists opened up so fully for the first time to Robert Draper. Draper's prodigious reporting has yielded scores of consequential new revelations, from the important to the merely absurd. As a whole, the book paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised by a combination of post-9/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and a set of actors with idées fixes who gamed the process relentlessly. Everything was believed; nothing was true. The intelligence failure was comprehensive. Draper's fair-mindedness and deep understanding of the principal actors suffuse his account, as does a storytelling genius that is close to sorcery. There are no cheap shots here, which makes the ultimate conclusion all the more damning. In the spirit of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat, To Start A War will stand as the definitive account of a collective process that arrived at evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false, driven by imagination rather than a quest for truth--evidence that was then used to justify a verdict that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing.