A Year of Living Dangerously

The knives are out, and another year of living dangerously awaits Iraq. With bottom-dollar oil prices and a drug-like dependency on oil to fuel something called the ‘economy’, this and the next year will ultimately see the unravelling of the post-2003 political order.

The ensuing violence, the key driver of change, will take with it many casualties, not least the disconnected, illegitimate political proxies, not an iota of self-determination, and weak and supine to nothinginess. And not a rule in sight, not even governance.

For how longer can hand-clapping PR’ists and Yes-Man types parading as analysts, experts and politicians blag it?

In this unfolding quagmire lies a truth that can not be veiled anymore – the situation is untenable, stuck in one of DAESH’s throw-away human dustbins.

The solution, if that, is a way out through the unsettling violence of uprooting vested interests built rapaciously around oil wealth and greed dressed as government.

It’s the new class oil is, a function of property ownership and its aspirants , and a deepening loss of dignity and an ‘othering’ that our suffering is more than yours, and therefore ‘I’ deserve it now, before, and ultimately above you.

The ‘West’. That Empire, its thirst for other people’s things, and an Occupation of the mind as much as of the earth, can only do so much.

Violence is stronger, a force far beyond, as its coming back to bite, and bite it will with the fierce anger of human dignity.

A loss that can only be overcome through violence, and not peace, for peace is a political party or religious group masquerading as a political party or religious group.

Breaking with the past, reclaiming the past, go hand in hand.

The year of living dangerously awaits us all.

 

 

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About Mehiyar

Dr Mehiyar Kathem is a researcher at University College London (UCL). Mehiyar completed a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where he researched peacebuilding interventions and the formation of Iraq’s domestic NGO sector after the 2003 War. During this research, he looked at the gradual evolution of Iraq from totalitarian dictatorship through the country’s emerging domestic organisations. His research interests include statebuilding, civil society peacebuilding and the ways in which development, politics and money interact at a local level. In 2012 and 2013, Mehiyar conducted field research in Iraq for his PhD programme, spending a year meeting with and interviewing domestic NGO actors, political parties, government officials and international donors. Previously, Mehiyar worked on a number of grassroots programmes geared to build the capacity of civil society organisations and continues to advise international donors on the effective design and delivery of projects in Iraq. He tweets at @mehiyar

One comment

  1. Hossam Mahdy

    Very sad and very true.

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