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After the U.S. strike killing Iranian general Qasim Suleimani in Iraq, U.S. critics warned that the president’s lack of strategy may escalate to outright war with Iran. After Iran’s clearly muted retaliatory strike last night and President Trump’s address this morning it seems that the escalation many commentators feared will be avoided. Assuming that is the case, many Americans’ attention will turn back to other matters and any future mention of these events will focus on the tragedies that almost ensued.
Before we all breathe our sigh of relief, however, at avoiding another war, I would like to point out the implications of the strike for Iraqis who have, in one form or another, been living in the conditions of war since 2003. For Iraqi society, it seems the damage may already have been done.
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 Image credit: https://mosul-eye.org/ Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Sunni and Shia alike, have been taking to the streets in cities across Iraq to protest their country’s failed political system and its rampant corruption. Although the demonstrations in Iraq have been going on for weeks, they are finally getting some coverage in western media. The issues at stake in these protests and the government’s responses to them are complex and there is a lot to say, but for this post I will focus on one aspect of these protests that I think is important for Americans to understand: sectarianism or, more accurately, the lack of it.
 This weekend I had the privilege of attending a high school reunion like no other. A synagogue in Montreal, Quebec hosted roughly two hundred Iraqi Jews from around the world.
  Why are you interested in the Jews of Iraq?
(I get asked this a lot when I meet Iraqi Jews I hope to interview) It has been a strange path that led me here. Born and raised in northern Ohio I never expected to travel outside the country, much less specialize in another part of the world. To be honest, I wasn't much of an academic growing up either... so finishing a PhD and becoming a college professor (as I hope to do) is likely the last thing anyone would have guessed for me. All that changed when my National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq in 2005, where we spent a year in Baghdad searching the highways around the city for roadside bombs. There is a lot I can say about that experience, but I'll stick to how that led me to where I am now. The most frustrating thing about my year in Iraq was my inability to interact with the people of Baghdad. Our convoy missions made it impractical and the language barrier didn't help. Everyday I observed the people of that ravaged city attempting to carry on with their lives while my comrades and I rolled through their neighborhoods in armored vehicles. I hadn't the first understanding of why I was there or why the country was in such a messy situation. Over the year I spent there I accumulated more questions and fewer answers, so imagine my frustration when, upon arriving home, friends looked to me to help them understand what the Iraq war was about. The Middle East continues to generate questions for puzzled Americans who have little recourse to worthwhile sources to gain any sort of understanding of the reasons for the regions conflicts, much less the beautiful cultures and histories of the modern Middle East that lay beyond the headlines of the latest bombing. I am drawn to the history of Jews in Iraq because it is a history largely unknown to Americans and it is indicative of both a defining characteristic of the Middle East--diverse ethnic and religious communities with a long history of coexistence--and the current crises facing the region that are bringing so many of these communities to an end (today there are a mere four Jews living in Baghdad, where Jews constituted a third of the population as recently as 1950). In future entries, I will use this blog as a platform for sharing insights that I've gained through my studies and research as a specialist in the modern Middle East. Whiles the articles I publish in academic journals will be written for a scholarly audience and have a very formal tone, These blog entries will be my opportunity to write more informally about topics related to my areas of specialty (Middle East, Jewish, and Muslim American histories) and about my current research projects, travels, and community involvement. My hope is that readers may gain some insights to help them better understand some of the important and often puzzling issues facing our world today. |
Marcus Smith, PhDMarcus is a historian specializing in Modern Middle East History 
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