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In 2016, Iraq was reaping the bitter fruits of the adventurism of another westerner Paul Bremer, who fell back upon the colonial divide-and-rule policy to counter a broad-based challenge to the American occupation and prepared the ground for ISIS to tap into resentment over the Sunni purge
Colonnaded thoroughfare Al Rasheed Street was built to commemorate the Ottoman victory in Kut al-Amara during the First World War before the scales tipped in Britain’s favour and the British troops drove Ottomans out with the help of Arabs By Sameer Arshad Khatlani In March 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the pretext of … Continue reading Iraq Diaries: Colonnaded Street And British Betrayal Of Arabs
Gertrude Bell helped in creating a geo-political order for the West’s benefit but the one that spawned schisms the Middle East continues to grapple with by deciding the future of Arabs without letting them have a say in it
A spirit of openness was fostered in what is now Iraq under the patronage of Abbasid rulers, who led from the front in their pursuit of knowledge at the peak of the Islamic Golden Age
A tapering gateway of inscriptions and geometric themes now leads to Mustansiriya University, one of the world’s oldest universities which survived the Mongol onslaught, floods, and manmade and natural calamities that claimed much of Baghdad’s heritage over centuries
12th-century saint Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani is an integral part of the spiritual life in my native Kashmir, the Himalayan Valley he never visited over 4,000 km from his burial site in Baghdad
A theological college within the walls of Baghdad’s old city became the Qadiriyya Sufi Order’s mother shrine when the 12-century saint Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani was buried there
Abbasid Baghdad had a sanitation department to ensure streets were regularly swept, washed, and free of refuse when London and Paris were ‘still grainy and chaotic little towns'
The Sinak Bridge in Baghdad offered a breathtaking view of the snaking Tigris in the Cradle of Civilization, where pivotal technological innovations such as writing, the wheel, and irrigation originated
While they kept Iraqis away, Americans let their hair down in the pool, gazebos, and palm tree-shaded garden of Saddam’s Republican Palace, which was known as Iraq’s White House, in the Green Zone
