Rather than debate the U.S. record, seminar discussions were focused on Iraqis’ experiences of mass violence, from diverse perspectives—historical, sociological, political, demographic and statistical, environmental. Iraqi scholars and specialists framed an agenda for studying patterns of violence around Iraq’s history and politics, including domestic governance and societal relations, and relations with neighboring states and international powers.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is in danger of negating one of the basic reasons for its existence. Its recent decisions to acquit senior Serbian architects of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia imply that the Tribunal does not, after all, rise above the traditional impunity enjoyed by state actors [...]
During the Iran-Iraq war, the regime pursued the Iran-allied Kurdish rebels with a vengeance, focusing on both towns (arrests, deportations) and countryside (attacks on, then destruction of, villages); targeting insurgents but then also the civilians who – willingly or not – gave them shelter; and using at first conventional weapons (rockets, air-dropped bombs), but then also poison gas. The assault on the Kurds was one long escalation from 1982 (the first turning-point in the war) onward.
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The burning question is whether Obama and his new team will have the wisdom and foresight to push patiently for a negotiated solution, or whether they will succumb to the temptation to demonstrate the president’s political command.
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Since the end of the Cold War, elections have become a standard component of peace agreements ending civil wars. The main reason is that Western governments and international organizations now place greater emphasis on democratic principles and are more involved in brokering peace agreements. Multiparty elections have become the only internationally acceptable way to legitimize [...]
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The story of abuse in Iraq is about an extremely weak state with an even more bloated repressive apparatus than Saddam boasted at the height of the Iraq- Iran war; it is about settling of accounts; it is about treating the state that has so abused them as nothing more than a ghanima, a place to steal from as fast as one can because who knows what tomorrow may bring.
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