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Fractured lands: How the arab world came apart

calamity

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Awesome piece in NYT mag laying it all out. I'm about 10% into it right now. So, my comments are muted at the moment. Just thought I'd share the article sooner rather than later and comment on it after I get through most of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...le-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html?_r=0

This is a story unlike any we have previously published. It is much longer than the typical New York Times Magazine feature story; in print, it occupies an entire issue. The product of some 18 months of reporting, it tells the story of the catastrophe that has fractured the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq 13 years ago, leading to the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis. The geography of this catastrophe is broad and its causes are many, but its consequences — war and uncertainty throughout the world — are familiar to us all. Scott Anderson’s story gives the reader a visceral sense of how it all unfolded, through the eyes of six characters in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Accompanying Anderson’s text are 10 portfolios by the photographer Paolo Pellegrin, drawn from his extensive travels across the region over the last 14 years, as well as a landmark virtual-reality experience that embeds the viewer with the Iraqi fighting forces during the battle to retake Falluja.

It is unprecedented for us to focus so much energy and attention on a single story, and to ask our readers to do the same. We would not do so were we not convinced that what follows is one of the most clear-eyed, powerful and human explanations of what has gone wrong in this region that you will ever read.
 
Awesome piece in NYT mag laying it all out. I'm about 10% into it right now. So, my comments are muted at the moment. Just thought I'd share the article sooner rather than later and comment on it after I get through most of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...le-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html?_r=0

That is impressive indeed! And quite damning of American regime-change policies of the past.

Personally, I think that a great deal of the blame also lay with the Brits, for what they did to the region in the years during and after WWI - they watered the seeds of discontent that were already there from the Shi'a/Sunni schism. What we did was dump a whole heck of a lot of fertilizer, and now the seeds of discontent have become a jungle.
 
That is impressive indeed! And quite damning of American regime-change policies of the past.

Personally, I think that a great deal of the blame also lay with the Brits, for what they did to the region in the years during and after WWI - they watered the seeds of discontent that were already there from the Shi'a/Sunni schism. What we did was dump a whole heck of a lot of fertilizer, and now the seeds of discontent have become a jungle.

It's a major mess...and, yes. The invasion of Iraq toppled the unjust social order created by the Brits, French and Italians in the region---actually making it worse.

I really liked this passage in the introduction chapter of the piece.

At least one man saw this quite clearly. For much of 2002, the Bush administration had laid the groundwork for the Iraq invasion by accusing Saddam Hussein of pursuing a weapons-of-mass-destruction program and obliquely linking him to the Sept. 11 attacks. In October 2002, six months before Firdos Square, I had a long interview with Muammar el-Qaddafi, and I asked him who would benefit if the Iraq invasion actually occurred. The Libyan dictator had a habit of theatrically pondering before answering my questions, but his reply to that one was instantaneous. “Bin Laden,” he said. “There is no doubt about that. And Iraq could end up becoming the staging ground for Al Qaeda, because if the Saddam government collapses, it will be anarchy in Iraq. If that happens, actions against Americans will be considered jihad.”
 
It's a major mess...and, yes. The invasion of Iraq toppled the unjust social order created by the Brits, French and Italians in the region---actually making it worse.

I really liked this passage in the introduction chapter of the piece.

Hm - that's the very same passage I found most interesting, too!
 
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