Iraq

The Gulf War of 1991 and the stringent economic sanctions that were imposed on Iraq by the UN Security Council on August 6, 1990, and extended into 2010, led to the devastation of both Iraq and the welfare of the Iraqi people. The U.S./U.K.-led invasion in 2003 furthered the economic paralysis, high rates of malnutrition, a dysfunctional health care system, water-related diseases, excess deaths, and social suffering that already destabilized the country. Access to basic necessities, the threat of everyday explosions, waves of violence and displacement, and global as well as internal mass migration are current challenges in central and southern Iraq. The Kurdistan region has become a site of new developments in neoliberal global economics, and a refuge for Iraqis in general. The region ...