The GCC and Iraq: What’s Happening?

December 22, 2008 – 7:37 am

Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), led by Bahrain, have declined to offer Iraq an immediate path to membership of the body that carries substantial economical and political clout in the region, but the question needs to be asked, does Iraq really need to be a member of the GCC?

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates proposed the idea in Manama, Bahrain, last weekend. Addressing the Manama Dialogue, Gates suggested that Iraq should be included in regional organizations in order to help bolster its rehabilitation.

“If you look closely at Iraq’s economic and political potential, about what it can offer the Middle East, you will see that it is in everyone’s strategic interests to support the new government and the people of Iraq in whatever way you can.

“Iraq can only play a constructive role in this region if it is on an equal footing diplomatically, which also requires its government to take proactive steps, such as continuing to appoint its own ambassadors,” Gates said.

“Regional engagement also means that Iraq should be included in regional forums for economic and security cooperation, and considered for membership in Middle East organizations,” he added.

This is not the first time that the U.S. has sought to tie Iraq to the GCC, but this latest call comes at a time when violence is low and the economic opportunities on offer are leading the war torn country to be labeled an ‘emerging market’ like its Gulf neighbours. It also comes on the back of the recently signed agreement that will see U.S. force leave the country by the end of 2011, thus removing a significant obstacle to warmer Arab relations with Baghdad. Read More »

By Oliver Pearce | Posted in business world, iraq | Comments (0)

Iraq: A Business Risk Worth Taking

October 18, 2008 – 9:31 am

Organisations looking to invest in developing countries need to look beyond generic labels such as ‘BRIC’, and the associations made with geographical regions, and should evaluate countries on an individual basis to discover their true value, according to Richard Fenning, CEO, Control Risks Group.

Speaking at the Economist’s Emerging Markets Summit in London, Fenning said that a term that lumps multiple countries into a single group “supposes a kind of homogeneous nature” is not an accurate assessment of the reality on the ground.

But even when investors look past a country’s regional position, the ‘country brand’ - perceptions of a country fuelled by external commentators such as the media, analysts, international bodies - can distort a true analysis of the risks involved.

“We have to stop looking at the world in terms of these various categories: developing economies, BRIC economies and the next level down, and look at them seriously as independent.” Fenning said.

For those organisations willing to take a ground up approach and understand the local climate for themselves, Fenning reasons, opportunities do exist.

Iraq as the ‘phenomenal risk story’ for 2009

Iraq has, for the past five years, dominated Western news coverage with harrowing tales of sectarian strife, mass suicide bombings, and the collapse of social order and public services. Read More »

By Oliver Pearce | Posted in business world, iraq | Comments Off

“Battle For Haditha” Comes To British Screens

September 14, 2008 – 8:19 pm

Perhaps with the mainstream audience’s addiction to reality television and “found footage” movies such as “Cloverfield” and “Diary of the Dead,” Nick Broomfield’s recent ventures into features will finally give him the credit he richly deserves for a genre that he has been a giant in for over two decades.

His ground breaking and often controversial documentaries have been the template for an entire generation of reality drama, most keenly felt in Paul Greengrass’ work on “United 93.” Now Broomfield seems to have once again found a subject that will divide the public and tap into the collective zeitgeist of the moment.

His “Battle for Haditha” is the true story of a small engagement between a Marine patrol and two local men who have been paid 1000 dollars by al Qaeda to detonate an IED. The chaos that ensues after the explosion which kills a Marine Captain quickly develops into a massacre of the local population by the surviving Marines. In all 24 people died, but this is no crucifixion of the U.S. forces or a condemnation of the insurgents, but rather an even-sided account of one terrible day.

In fact, “Battle for Haditha” is an internal struggle of conscience for all concerned; Marines, civilians, and insurgents alike. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in entertainment, iraq, jordan, terrorism | Comments (0)

Fouad Siniora in Iraq: Progress Between Iraq and Lebanon?

August 27, 2008 – 9:58 am

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora traveled to Baghdad last week, becoming the first Lebanese leader to visit Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. This was a further step toward Iraqi reconciliation with its Arab neighbours and a step toward the restoration of commercial relations between two former trading partners.

The announcement came a day after Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh announced that seven Arab countries are set to reopen their embassies in Baghdad this year. These countries include Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Algeria and Morocco.

Jordan also recently announced that it would reopen its embassy to Iraq after the historic visit of King Abdullah, who became the first Arab head of state to do so since the 2003 invasion that toppled the former regime.

Lebanon is only one of five Arab states to currently have an embassy in Iraq, alongside Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon and Tunisia, which it opened in 2006. Official relations had been strained for six years between 1994 and 2000 when Lebanon broke its relations with Iraq in 1994 following the murder of an Iraqi dissident in Lebanon.

Sinioria travelled to Baghdad to discuss trade and energy, his spokesman quoted by the AFP as saying: “The discussions with Iraqi leaders will be on bilateral relations and particularly trade and oil.”

Renewed relations with Lebanon would be a positive sign for Maliki’s government, and both countries share a similar recent history. Read More »

By Oliver Pearce | Posted in business world, iraq, lebanon | Comments (0)

Iraq’s Money and America’s Responsibility

August 13, 2008 – 5:44 pm

$80 billion can buy a lot of things – a tropical island or ten Caecescu palaces jump to mind – but what it can’t buy is infrastructure for a country with a population of almost 28 million people that is emerging from five years of ruinous geo-political and sectarian conflict.

As violence tapers off, oil exports increase, and global crude prices remain high, Iraq’s economy is set to grow by 8 percent in 2008 and will end the year with a predicted $79 billion budget surplus, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

But with the U.S. presidential campaign in full swing the Democrats are lashing out at Iraq for draining American money and American lives. The media machine has been in overdrive, with scathing attacks from both neo-con and liberal commentators scoring points on the same issues: U.S. lives, U.S. money, and the impact on the lives of U.S. consumers.

They demand that Iraq now pay is own way for reconstruction and embrace a potentially tragic cut-and-run strategy that could lead to further internal and regional instability. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in business world, iraq, politics | Comments (3)

LEILA HUSSEIN GUNNED DOWN

June 3, 2008 – 8:09 am

Basra, Iraq - The Guardian reports that Leila Hussein, the mother of honour-killing victim Rand Hussein, was shot and killed as she was walking with two women activists to meet a contact to take her to Amman, Jordan. Leila Hussein drew her family’s ire when she refused to support her husband’s decision to murder their daughter for entertaining a crush on an American soldier. Leila Hussein’s sons had also participated in the brutal act, and did not support their mother in her escape.

Hussein’s husband had previously boasted to the media that the local police had fully supported him. And while Basra law enforcement officials have told the press that Leila Hussein’s defiance had nothing to do with her murder, that this was a routine spat of sectarian violence targeting the women activists, their own role in this story makes their statements suspect.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Leila Hussein was being made an example of. This wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last time, in today’s brutalized Iraq. The activists who were trying to help Hussein escape are receiving threats as well. Any woman who does not submit to her role as a passive piece of human garbage is a potential target in a patriarchal society scarred by years of violence.

Please note that the authors of Jezebel can help you donate money to the Basra activists, if you contact them. We hope to have more on this story. Until then, may God rest the souls of the innocent. There is nothing more that I can personally can say in the face of such tragedy.

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in honor killing, iraq, muslim women | Comments (2)

Notes from the Dubai International Film Festival: The Battle for Haditha

December 13, 2007 – 7:41 am

This article is part of a series on various films at DIFF 2007.

Nick Broomfield’s “The Battle for Haditha” has not yet gotten enough press. In some ways, this is understandable. Despite the explosive subject matter, this is a low-key film. There are no big-name actors, no enormous budget, and, most importantly, the picture’s stylistic elements tend toward a stark, bare-boned simplicity. Nevertheless, this is a film to see.

Broomfield cast many amateurs for key roles, among them some ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees, and this is both good and bad. There is a definite air of authenticity surrounding the film, yet the acting occasionally appears forced. Some of the dialogue struck me as contrived- although this may have something to do with the subtitles. I do not speak Arabic, but having been accompanied by an Arabic speaker at the screening, I discovered that the subtitles are not as good as they could have been.

This movie is earnest, but, in some scenes, it also comes across as didactic. Do we really need to see the chief insurgent character, a disgruntled former member of the Iraqi army, spelling out the message with lines such as: “The Americans created the insurgency by dis-banding the army”? Does the chief insurgent furthermore have to opine stiffly on the future of Iraq, noting (in a manner that suggests that he is channeling Fukuyama) the bleak possibility of the country inheriting a new leader, someone who will be a helluva lot worse than Saddam?

Yet in spite of a few missteps, this is a haunting picture. I can’t get it out of my head, and I probably won’t for a long time. Broomfield captures the comings and goings of the residents of Haditha, people whose lives are about to be shattered, with intimacy and grace. I was floored by the character of Rashied (Duraid A. Ghaieb), a young man besotted with his pregnant wife (Yasmine Hanani - who attended the screening alongside the director, and ex-Marine actors Elliot Ruiz and Eric Mehalacopoulos), keenly aware of the growing danger of staying with his family in Haditha, and yet unable to do much about it.

Alongside U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians, Broomfield dares to portray the members of the Iraqi insurgency as human beings. These people are not just fundamentalist foreigners, they are also ordinary locals who are infuriated with what has happened to their country. This simple truth is about as inconvenient as anything Al Gore can come up with, and is bound to make American audiences squirm in their seats. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in arts and literature, dubai, entertainment, iraq, terrorism | Comments (3)

Motorcycle Diaries Part III

May 12, 2007 – 11:59 am

(This article was first published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

I’ve had it with the deceptions of the media. Perhaps my face doesn’t show it, but I am pissed-off angry. And here, for once, I’m not talking about the political side of things. I’m not talking about how docile news organizations in the West capitulated to their governments and, without a shred of resistance or an atom of intellectual integrity, accepted the barrage of blatant lies that linked Iraq to WMD’s and to Al-Qaida, thus facilitating the most unprovoked and unforgivable invasion in modern history. I’m not discussing how these misinformation organizations let their political leaders literally get away with murder of hundreds of thousands of people so that a few multinational corporations can add billions upon their trillions of ill-gotten wealth.

Let’s leave all that aside for now – along with the uncontainable mayhem coming out of the Pandora’s box that was irresponsibly opened in Iraq. In this episode of my road chronicles, I’m referring to other more mundane, yet equally irritating, aspects of the daily bombardment of lies and half-truths that I am subjected to every single day by an advertising industry gone berserk. Whether it’s when I’m out soaking up one billboard after the other, or sitting peacefully at home reading a magazine or watching TV, I am fed up with being taken for a ride. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in entertainment, iraq | Comments (1)

Babylon Burning

November 16, 2006 – 11:26 am

There is in Le Louvre a diorite stela from the 18th century BC, on which are inscribed the 282 laws of the Code of Hammurabi: pretty much the earliest recorded set of laws we have (centuries older than Exodus, it includes the principle of “an eye for an eye”)–at a stretch, it might almost be called the world’s first written constitution.

A picture of it is displayed in the British Museum, that Aladdin’s cave of looted treasures from Britain’s former colonies, near the Stela of Nabonidus. Made of basalt, 58 cm high by 46 cm wide, and dating from the 6th century BC, this has carved upon it in bas-relief is a figure wearing the traditional dress of a Babylonian king, who is thought to be Nabonidus, the last ruler of Babylon before it was conquered by Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 BC. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in arts and literature, current affairs, iraq | Comments (0)

The Kindness of Strangers

February 22, 2005 – 11:35 am

President Bush wants me to be excited about the recent elections in Iraq while the news shows lines of Iraqi voters, segregated by sex. I’m supposed to be thrilled, elated, waving an ink-stained finger around a pasty version of E.T., while the ballots specifically asked the voter to disclose his or her sex. Smug American politicians repeat the word “freedom” like a broken record, while already on the streets of Baghdad women are harassed for wearing pants.

It funny, for all the current saber-rattling going on about Iran at the moment, Bush seems completely ignorant of the fact that he himself has just helped create a new Iran: a battered, bitter post-Saddam Iraq at the risk of succumbing to fascism in the guise of moral authority. Oh sweet irony. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in current affairs, iraq, muslim women | Comments (0)