“If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don’t take the shot. Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.” - James Mattis

In the early days of the Iraq war, civilian casualties were due especially not to a carelessness of troops, but to a careful strategy on the part of people who desperately wanted to maintain their own power within Iraq, even as the tides were turning against them.

Imagine this--- you are sitting at home, in your capital city, and you know that things where you live aren't great. The government is corrupt, but you and your loved ones are relatively well off and are all getting by just fine. You hear that the military of Foreign is planning to come in with intent to overthrow the current, corrupt government. Knowing what you know, you have no particular feelings about this, one way or another. As long as you and your family continue to get by on a daily basis, who is in charge of the government isn't really a top concern, and you have nothing in particular against Foreign or their government.

One day, as your child is walking home from school, she is killed by shelling in the area by Foreign's military. How do you feel about Foreign now? In all likelihood, your "Foreign meter" has gone from "neutral" to "negative," right?*

That shift, from neutral to negative, was essential in maintaining resistance, if not outright violence, against the US military. And how do you accomplish this, if you are a combatant? Easy, you move into a civilian area and you fire outward. The response from US forces might take you down, but it will probably take a couple innocent civilians down with you, and that will cultivate the kind of anger needed to keep the war moving and to hang onto any vestiges of power your family might have. That strategy is the reason the quote in the title of this post is so essential. The death of innocents creates enemies.

That strategy is also why Iraq continues to fall apart-- as people exact revenge against one another's religious sects, tribes, families, communities, or ethnic groups, trying to even the score, everyone is becoming the enemy of everyone else. There is no greater driver of hatred than revenge, and without access to a justice system that sees everyone equally, revenge is the only way to balance the books for a lost loved one. People here aren't violent, nor are they uneducated. In fact, Iraq is an incredibly well-educated country as a whole, for men and women alike. Rather, with no appropriate way to obtain justice, they seek their own. It's not good, but it is understandable.

What would you do if your loved one died, and nobody did a damn thing about it? Nobody looked; nobody cared? I'd hazard that even the most peaceful among us would at least contemplate lashing out. Now imagine this has happened not once, not twice, but tens of times in your family and among your community. Still nobody sees. What would you do then? How long would it take for you to turn to violence?

The violence that continues to grip this country is hard to understand as an outsider. But as a human, looking at human relationships, it is all too simple, It's painful, and unfortunate, but the ultimate breakdown to a unified Iraq is a lack of a strong, functional, representative government that hears everyone equally. From the US, it's way too easy to write off conflict as "over there"... as in "do those people over there just love fighting?".... but is it really so different? What would you do in their shoes?

How different would your life look? I'd guess not much.

*The basic framework of this explanation and sentiment comes from the book The Baghdad Blog, which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in an intelligent, sarcastic, deeply cynical first-hand Iraqi account of the onset of the Iraq war. To read the actual blog post, check it out here.

MENA Women's Security Forum

Well, after two really incredible, albeit exhausting days of intensive Arabic, I really want to write a post that does justice to this amazing conference that I just attended. It was put on by Iraqi Al Amal Association, and hosted probably over 100 women activists from across the MENA region, including from Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt (and those are just the people I met). These women are quite literally saving lives and preventing terrorism in their countries through youth outreach, through community activism, and through lobbying their local governments to make much needed changes. We heard testimony from Yazidi Christians who escaped Mosul about the horrors that they had to endure, as well as from Syrian community leaders, government officials, UN representatives, international NGO representatives, and countless grassroots activists working to combat extremism in their communities and help people to restore a sense of normalcy to their lives in a way that militarization just can't achieve.

Unlike perhaps any other event I've been to, it had a kind of quiet defiance about it. Getting to the event itself for many was a challenge, and yet their dedication to ensuring that their countries continue to move forward overwhelmingly outweighed the challenges. Women are often the at the forefront of conflict in ways we really don't think about in the West. They are the community organizers, operating something best thought of as a makeshift underground railroad sort of system to help people get out of conflict. They are setting up shelters, cooking for the hungry, advocating for change, working on building community between religions or political groups. They view security first and foremost as being about their families and their communities, defining it in as simple of terms as can their children go to school safely to learn and have a future? They bear the trauma of gender-based violence and rape, which is used as a weapon of war. And yet, or perhaps because, of all of that, these women absolutely will not be silenced or made to feel afraid. They will keep making noise until they are heard. These women, like all of the women who inspire me, are in a perpetual state of call to action. They are not the sitting and waiting type. They will make things happen.

I will definitely write more about this, but after two days of stretching my Arabic to its limits (not to mention being out of the office and having to catch up on that work), I'm instead going to leave you with a small smattering of photos.

Calling all travelers

I have 9 days of leave in about two weeks, and I'm trying to decide where to go. Does anyone have suggestions of fun, safe, relatively cheapish destinations in the Middle East or Europe? I'm going to do Turkey over a long weekend since it's so close, and have plans to do Jordan in late summer/early fall, but I have this practically free vacation time so I want to see somewhere I've never seen if possible.

Places I've been (and thus don't want to go again just yet):

Tunisia, Israel/Palestine, Netherlands (and Iraq, though that would hardly qualify as a vacation since I live here)

Man, looking at it on a map sure reminds me how little I've seen

I'm eyeballing France, Italy, Spain, Lebanon, Greece, Georgia... I briefly contemplated heading in the other direction toward India... and am definitely open to suggestions. Thoughts, anyone?