Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World - Volume 14, Issue 3, 2020

A review of the works of Iraqi writer Kareem Ketafa identifies a common thematic invocation of fleeing, widely shared across the characters developed in each novel, that situates them all as at the indeterminate liminal line between forgetting past lives and embracing the memories those lives invoke. By centring Ketafa’s Iraqi origins the focus on its role in his literary imagination and ability to invoke the reality of past suffering and intense personal pain in how they shape character. This reading allows for an engagement with the arc of Ketafa’s plots, where actions allow for movement beyond individual flight and a familiarity with the fourth dimension that contributes to shaping one’s life story.

Students from the University of Halabja were asked in a survey conducted in April 2019 about their attitudes towards emigration in the wake of a prolonged financial crisis burdening the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) since 2014. While these students are not yet migrants, researching the reasons for their envisaged migration helps to better understand the challenges they face. Despite a continuous development of its post-secondary education sector, the KRI still struggles with low absorption rates of graduates. At the same time, the KRI exhibits a growing youth bulge, as well as high unemployment levels among its young population. These unfavourable conditions might cause a brain drain, pushing the educated youth to leave the country in search of better financial means, as well as waves of social unrest as seen throughout Iraq and the wider Middle East. First results show that more than half of the surveyed students have considered emigrating. Local job opportunities would, however, diminish their percentage.

Over recent decades, countries have been competing to attract foreign investments to benefit from the advantages they offer in financing economic development, providing modern technology and effective administrative methods, as well as providing job opportunities. In addition to the problems of financing development, Middle East and North African (MENA) countries experience high unemployment rates. We therefore believe that one way to overcome this issue is to bring in FDI as more investment provides new job opportunities. This article explores the dynamic relationship between FDI and domestic investment (DI) on unemployment in MENA countries using panel data for the period 2003–18. The empirical analysis, based on the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) model, finds that FDI increases unemployment and domestic investment reduces it. Further, the findings show that the prominent determinant of unemployment rates is corruption.

These notes are a continuation of the recollections of the author’s personal experiences growing up in 1940s Baghdad while actively engaged in the family business of book selling in the old Suq Al-Saray which was located in the centre of what is now identified as ‘old’ Baghdad City. Reflecting the experience of being born and raised within a block of the now world famous Al-Mutanaby Street, aspects of these recollections were recently published in the form of two articles published in the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies (9:3, pp. 165–90) and Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World (13:2, pp. 217–25). The present contribution represents a continuation of these personal recollections together with some associated historical commentary that terminates in October 1951 on the author’s departure from Baghdad to study engineering in England.

Review of: A Broken Trust: Sir Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, Sahar Huneidi, foreword by Walid Khalidi (2001)

London: I. B. Tauris, 340 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-86064-172-5, h/bk, out-of-print

The Palestine Deception, 1915–1923: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, the Balfour Declaration, and the Jewish National Home, J. M. N. Jeffries, edited and with an introduction by William M. Mathew (2014)

Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, 175 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-88728-320-8, p/bk, $16.00

Palestine. The Reality. The Inside Story of the Balfour Declaration 1917–1938, J. M. N. Jeffries, with a new introduction by Ghada Karmi (2017)

Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 800 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-56656-024-5, p/bk, $30

Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict, Walter L. Hixson (2019)

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 324 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-108-70532-5, p/bk, $29.99

Review of: Injazat al-Iraq al-diplomasiyah athna’ al-ahad al-malaki 1921–58 (Iraq’s Diplomatic Achievements During the Royal Regine: 1921–58), Mamoon Amin Zaki (2020)

London: Dar al-Hikmah, 313 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78481-161-7, p/bk, USD 17.00