Adeed Dawisha to MESH:

My purpose in this book is to demonstrate that the most useful and effective way of making sense of the post-2003 seeming waning of the country—the failures of state institutions, the frailty of democratic attitudes and commitments, and the fragility of a coherent national identity—is through a systematic understanding of the same three projects as they were first undertaken by the British and the Iraqi ruling elites in 1921, and then developed, with a few successes and many failures, during the life span of the country right through to the tumultuous events of the post-2003 era.

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Product Description

With each day that passed after the 2003 invasion, the United States seemed to sink deeper in the treacherous quicksand of Iraq's social discord, floundering in the face of deep ethno-sectarian divisions that have impeded the creation of a viable state and the molding of a unified Iraqi identity. Yet as Adeed Dawisha shows in this superb political history, the story of a fragile and socially fractured Iraq did not begin with the invasion--it is as old as Iraq itself.

Dawisha traces the history of the Iraqi state from its inception in 1921 following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and up to the present day. He demonstrates how from the very beginning Iraq's ruling elites sought to unify this ethnically diverse and politically explosive society by developing state governance, fostering democratic institutions, and forging a national identity. Dawisha, who was born and raised in Iraq, gives rare insight into this culturally rich but chronically divided nation, drawing on a wealth of Arabic and Western sources to describe the fortunes and calamities of a state that was assembled by the British in the wake of World War I and which today faces what may be the most serious threat to survival that it has ever known.

Iraq is required reading for anyone seeking to make sense of what's going on in Iraq today, and why it has been so difficult to create a viable government there.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #312772 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 408 pages

From Booklist
In the spring of 2003, at the onset of the invasion of Iraq, Dawisha (Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, 2003) coauthored an article in Foreign Affairs in which he suggested, with cautious optimism, that building democracy in his native country might not be as difficult as some critics of the war were then warning. Six years later, his concern is not whether Iraq will bloom as a democracy but whether Iraq as a unified national entity and sovereign member of the international community will even continue to exist. The challenge, he argues, is and has always been “ethnosectarianism,” a product of Iraq’s geographically and demographically diverse population. From King Faysal in the 1920s through the rule of Saddam Hussein, powerful central government, nationalist ideology, and brute force more or less successfully contained Iraq’s internal centrifugal forces. Such diversity could be fertile ground for democracy, but since 2003, the flames of sectarian conflict have been fanned by the state’s inability to effectively neutralize threats to its power, and by a political system that cultivated, rather than managed, sectarian strife. More scholarly in tone than most recent works asking what went wrong in Iraq, Dawisha’s historical perspective also sets his account apart. --Brendan Driscoll

Review
Anyone who thinks that Iraq has no history of democratic government needs to read this book immediately.
(Choice )

Review
Adeed Dawisha has written a deeply informed study of the history of the Iraqi state. This is a book to be read by all who care about Iraq's future.
(William B. Quandt, University of Virginia )