Since July 2022, I've been thinking about the 20 years of the start of the war in Iraq, in March 2023, and suggested to my co-contributing editors at the Markaz review to dedicate an issue on the country.
I'm also preparing a few other articles.
In a previous post here, I also explained the link between my research on music history and politics, my book on Bristol, and my recent work for a couple of reviews and websites.
Read here: 2003-2023.
As I wrote in this post, I went to the US, to Northwestern University's Journalism school, as the war was starting, in April 2003. In April 2016, I travelled to Iraq Kurdistan, while finishing the French version of my book, working for a charity helping women and displaced people on the ground, more on this work here: Iraq: Action in Kurdistan and Nineveh for IPDs.
Now, thanks to months of dedicated work, TMR 28 is here !
TMR 28 • IRAQ
I asked my friend, the photographer Susan Schulman, who has spent time in Iraq recently, to write a text and share some photographs:
I wrote about music and sound, after interviewing Hardi Kurda,
Hardi Kurda: Archiving the Sounds of Northern Iraq
5 February, 2023 •
Composer, sound artist and researcher Hardi Kurda is founder of Space21, a music festival operating from his hometown, Slemani (Sulaymaniyyah), in Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurda is at the heart of the Archive Khanah: Sounds from Iraq project, a community-based archive celebrating Iraq’s musical and sonic diversity, financially supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture Fund (AFAC). To demonstrate connections between the musical traditions of Iraq, it digitizes selected records, has created an online interactive archival map, and may yet host a physical exhibition.
Read here.
All all the Iraq stories featured here on TMR Issue 28.
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Post scriptum
Iraq - A bit of Recent History
The modern nation-state of Iraq was created following World War I (1914–18) from the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul.
It derives its name from the Arabic term used in the premodern period to describe a region that roughly corresponded to Mesopotamia and modern northwestern Iran.
Britain seized Iraq from Ottoman Turkey during World War I and was granted a mandate by the League of Nations to govern the nation in 1920.
A Hashemite monarchy was organised under British protection in 1921, and on October 3, 1932, the kingdom of Iraq was granted independence.
Iraq gained formal independence in 1932 but remained subject to British imperial influence during the next quarter century of turbulent monarchical rule.
The Iraqi government maintained close economic and military ties with Britain, leading to several anti-British revolts.
A revolt in 1941 led to a British military intervention, and the Iraqi government agreed to support the Allied war effort.
In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown, and for the next two decades Iraq was ruled by a series of military and civilian governments.
In 1961, Kuwait gained independence from Britain and Iraq claimed sovereignty over Kuwait. A period of considerable instability followed.
With proven oil reserves second in the world only to those of Saudi Arabia, the regime was able to finance ambitious projects and development plans throughout the 1970s and to build one of the largest and best-equipped armed forces in the Arab world.
The party’s leadership was quickly assumed by Saddam Hussein.
He led the country into disastrous military efforts: first the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), then the Persian Gulf War (1990–91).
On 6 August 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed economic sanctions on Iraq.
The Gulf War thus started, as an armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases:
-Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991;
-and Operation Desert Storm, which began with the aerial bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January 1991 and came to a close with the American-led Liberation of Kuwait on 28 February 1991.
Sanctions were still applied during the 1990s.
In 2003, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York city in 2001, an American-British coalition launched the Second Iraq War, on false allegations around the search for WMD, weapons of mass destruction.
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