 | | Photo illustration by Victoria Villasana |
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This week the At War section published an essay by Hawra al-Nadawi, an Iraqi writer whose journey into injustice and oppression began in 1984, when she was imprisoned with her mother in Al Rashad prison in Baghdad, part of a crackdown on dissidents by the security services of Saddam Hussein. In the manner of collective punishment, much of Nadawi’s family was rounded up during the same time. The men went to Abu Ghraib; the women to Al Rashad. Nadawi spent the remainder of her infancy and her early life as a toddler in her mother’s care within the prison’s walls. She took her first steps as an inmate, and didn’t know the world outside until she was released in 1986, shortly before turning two. |
Five years later, in 1991, in fresh crackdowns that followed uprisings after the American-led military force in Operation Desert Storm weakened, but did not displace Hussein’s government, the security services imprisoned Nadawi’s father again. Months later, after her father was released anew, her family fled to Jordan, and eventually resettled in Europe. |
Almost 30 years on, Nadawi writes, she “may never have a country to call my own, but I will always be a prisoner who grew free.” It is from this vantage point that she examines and dares to feel hope from the example of the latest generation of Iraqi dissidents — the pro-democracy protesters, many of them young, who rose against their government last year. |
“I belong to the rebels,” she wrote, “because they alone give me faith that one day children in Baghdad will walk to school unafraid, that they can keep their families and extended families and that never again will they be diminished because a militia deserts them or a sect threatens them or a dictator wants to drown them in gas.” |
Iraqi writers are relatively scarce in the American discourse of the wars and other depredations that have consumed Iraq in recent generations, often as a consequence of American military action. When American readers do encounter writers of Iraqi descent (including the English-language translation of “The Corpse Washer,” a novel by Sinan Antoon that I teach in a war journalism class at Columbia University, in a session devoted to the cross-pollination of war journalism and art), they stand to encounter a historical or multigenerational sweep many other writers cannot access or simply omit. |
Such perspectives are priceless, for the simple reason that we cannot fully understand American policies or American wars with American voices alone. Nor can we understand the countries and societies our government attacks, arms or occupies by interrogating only ourselves — no matter how much self-reflection is necessary. Nadawi’s voice is a reminder of the imperative that writers from the societies suffering the effects of war be heard, and that voices like mine yield the mic so that the impulse to talk becomes balanced, and often replaced, by the responsibility (and rewards) of listening. |
If this is not a popular idea, so be it. We have much to learn. Fealty, Nadawi suggests, should be to something higher: “I belong to the rebels of this generation and past generations, even if the parties in the conflicts have sometimes exchanged places, with the oppressed of yesterday becoming the unjust of today. Even so, it is always the rebels’ side I am on.” |
C.J. Chivers is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. He received a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2017 and is the author of two books, including “The Fighters,” which chronicled the experiences of six American combatants in Afghanistan and Iraq. |
Afghan War Casualty Report: October 2020 |
 | | Afghan security forces remove a damaged police vehicle from the site of a car bomb that targeted the provincial governor’s convoy in Laghman Province on Oct. 5, 2020.Noorullah Shirzada/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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At least 53 pro-government forces and 37 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan so far in October. [Read the report.] |
Here are four articles from The Times that you might have missed. |
 | | In recent months, President Trump has repeatedly voiced a desire to leave Afghanistan sooner than the timeline laid out in the peace agreement with the Taliban in February. Jalil Rezayee/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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“As of today, there are under 5,000, and that will go to 2,500 by early next year.” President Trump’s national security adviser announced on Wednesday that the United States would cut its troops in Afghanistan to 2,500 by early next year. [Read the article.] |
“These charges are the product of many years of hard work in pursuit of justice for our citizens slain by ISIS.” Two notorious Islamic State detainees from Britain were brought to the United States on Wednesday to face federal charges over accusations that they jailed and tortured Western hostages, some of whom were beheaded, Justice Department officials said. [Read the article.] |
“We are getting away from ‘individual cases’ and are able to get an overview.” Germany’s security services recorded more than 1,400 cases of suspected far-right extremism among soldiers, police officers and intelligence agents in the three years ending in March, according to a government report released Tuesday. [Read the article.] |
“I couldn’t understand where they were falling. And then I heard a boom.” Ruzanna Avagyana huddled in a basement for days as artillery struck Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. When she finally fled on Monday, she saw burning buildings and ruins, signs of an escalating conflict in the Caucasus. [Read the article.] |
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