International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies - Volume 5, Issue 3, 2012

Human rights and democracy are the products of the active participation of people building their own societies. From the perspective of the Arab Spring the US-led war to enforce democratic regime change from the outside appears all the more arrogant and colonial. The involvement of the United Nations in giving legitimacy to the process is highly problematic especially as its own recent report assesses the human rights situation in Iraq as 'fragile'. It will be Iraqi citizens drawing on their own resources who will create an authentic human rights culture.

Many commentators see Iraq as divided between Sunni, Shia and Kurds – and perhaps a few Turkmen. Nothing could be further from the truth. Iraq also has significant populations of Baha'is, Christians, Faili Kurds, Mandaeans, Palestinians, Shabak and Yezidis. Some of Iraq's minority groups have been present in the region for more than two millennia. But they now face the threat of eradication in or expulsion from their ancient homeland. Since 2006, the situation has deteriorated. To make matters worse, the international law of minority and group rights has largely developed in the context of the recent history of Europe, and, perhaps, has little to contribute to the situation in Iraq. This article asks what role, if any, can international law, notably the law of human rights, minority rights and group rights, play in resolving or mitigating conflict. This is especially the case when the underlying rationale of this law is so problematic. The structure of this article is as follows. I start with an overview of the various minority groups in Iraq. There is a common theme – things have got a lot worse since 2003. Next, I explore Iraq's statehood, that it is a recent construct, a product of British imperial ambition and cynicism. In fact, Mesopotamia, the territory of contemporary Iraq, was a Persian territory for many centuries until its conquest by militant Islam, its glorious role in the Golden Age of Islam (contemporaneous with Western Europe's dark ages) and incorporation into the Ottoman Empire. Third, I reflect on Britain's disastrous adventures in the region. Mesopotamia was the scene of Britain's greatest military disaster; but Britain has been responsible for the unceasing violence and persecution which characterizes modern Iraq. Fourth, I turn to a marvellous dream, a document of extraordinary cogency and unreality: Iraq's 1932 Declaration, on admission to the League of Nations. This document is a tragic mirage: an Iraq of respect for and enjoyment of its cosmopolitan diversity. It is significant that the only two occasions on which such a vision achieved a purchase in Mesopotamia were the short periods of Kemalist and communist rule. For Britain and the United States such a trajectory was utterly impermissible. Fifth, I turn to the fact that Iraq was one of the first members of the United Nations, and ratified all the relevant human rights instruments dealing with minority rights. Iraq was until the 1990s an assiduous participant in the UN human rights mechanisms, submitting periodical reports to the treaty bodies and submitting itself to interrogation in Geneva, followed by concluding observations and recommendations. This continued despite the eight years' war with Iran, the disastrous invasion of Kuwait in 1991 and the long years of sanctions, blockade and continuous aerial attack, reminiscent of Britain's reliance on the Royal Air Force (RAF) during and after the Mandate. Finally, there is Iraq's 2005 Constitution, a joke version of the 1932 Declaration. At the same time, since 1999 Iraq has not engaged with the UN human rights mechanisms. My conclusion is not sanguine.

Critics of the concept of human development argue that it has for the most part been easily absorbed into neo-liberalizing frameworks that neglect national, material development and that fail to prioritize the poor and insecure. While those criticisms have some force, more attention needs to be paid to the opportunities for resistance afforded by the fact that neo-liberalization is permeated by self-undermining contradictions and must articulate in hybrid and diverse fashion with existing social forces. When Iraq's human development report, national development plan and poverty reduction strategy are examined, we can see in them elements of resistance to neo-liberalization and evidence of the assertion of development – national and human, material and non-material – as a right. However, in assessing poverty in Iraq as 'very shallow', Iraq's poverty reduction team demonstrated that resistance to neo-liberalization and the neglect of the poor will require struggles with Iraqi as well as global actors.

This article discusses the international legal obligation to identify and record every casualty of armed conflict that finds its basis in the treaties and customs of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The article applies the various facets of the legal obligation to the armed conflicts in Iraq and Sri Lanka and argues that the parties in these conflicts failed in their international legal responsibility to civilians.

The emergence of a Shia-majority Iraqi state has provoked a debate on the nature of Shia Islam, and its potential for control of the wider Middle East. As a result some commentators have pointed to what is termed a 'Shia revival' or awakening, with Iraq the nexus where many of these critical issues are converging. Through the prism of the 'Shia revival' proposal, this article argues that the re-conceptualization of the emerging Iraqi state in Shia-majority terms is misguided. It seeks to provide an overview of three major developments in the Shia identity in Iraq: the background to the disenfranchisement of the Shia grouping in modern Iraq; the Shia intifada after the first Gulf War; and the devastating insurgency post-2003. The final section counters the arguments for a Shia revival, pointing instead to the human rights discourse with a specific emphasis on minority rights provisions as a more appropriate framework for representative government within the state.

In the 2007 case of R (Al-Skeini) v. Secretary of State for Defence (2007), the United Kingdom refused to extend rights under the European Convention on Human Rights to civilians shot by British troops who were at that time in occupation of the Iraqi city of Basra. It justified this refusal on the grounds that it would constitute 'human rights imperialism' to apply European human rights norms to Iraq. This article examines some of the historical resonances of this decision, analysing the reasoning of the House of Lords in the context of Britain's former relationship to its colonial possessions and its historical scepticism of European Human Rights Institutions.

THE POLITICAL ROAD TO WAR WITH IRAQ: BUSH, SEPEMBER 11TH AND THE DTIVER OVERTHROW SADDAM, NICK RITCHIE AND PAUL ROGERS (2007) London: Routledge, 240 pp., ISBN: 0415459508 (pbk), $US39.95

THE IRAQI REFUGEES: THE NEW CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, JOSEPH SASSOON (2011) London and New York: I.B. Tauris, xx + 247 pp., £14.44 (pbk), £47.60 (hbk), ISBN-10: 1845119193 ISBN-13: 978-1845119195