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 V

August 13, 2007 – 11:57 am

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

Before I reveal to you my ambitious proposition to end human strife and achieve world peace, allow me first to share with you an unusual personal condition from which I’ve been silently, yet painfully, suffering for at least two years now. Today, I believe the time has come to speak out and seek counsel, and perhaps even find a cure. Although I know this is not a help-line for my ailments nor is it the right venue for such private complaints, I still feel the need to blurt it out in public. Maybe, just maybe, I would feel a little better somehow by talking about it. So please excuse my selfishness if you can, but here it is, my mysterious disorder: I cannot read, hear or watch the news anymore. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in entertainment, humor | Comments (0)

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)

Reclaiming Islam in this Summer of Terror

August 31, 2005 – 11:38 am

“It’s good to be alive this morning,” my friend Firas wrote on MSN Messenger. It was the morning of July 23, 2005. The world had just woken up to news of the massive bombs in Sharm Al-Sheikh, a car bomb in the heart of the buzzing night life of Beirut, and various stories related to the hunt for the failed bombers in London. A month later, the news of death and destruction continue unabated, with the latest being a series of rocket attacks in Aqaba that killed a young Jordanian soldier, not to mention the sad monotony of the daily reports on the massacres in Iraq. The mad terrorists are on a roll this
summer, and they seem to be chasing every breath of life on planet earth. Read More »

By Nasser Ali Khasawneh | Posted in current affairs, islam, terrorism | 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)

Towards a New Arab Movement

April 27, 2003 – 11:51 am

As the dust begins to settle on the American/British victory in Baghdad, it falls upon all Arabs now to reflect seriously on the future. I cannot provide accurate percentages, but it would be fair to say that an overwhelming majority of Arabs were against this war, to say the least. A sense of outrage was palpable across Arab society. And I am not talking only of the underprivileged or the disenfranchised. The outrage, despair and humiliation, as hundreds of thousands of bombs pounded Iraq, were equally felt by palace and ghetto dwellers. Read More »

By Nasser Ali Khasawneh | Posted in current affairs, iraq | Comments (2)