Donate Now"Iraq: Death of a Nation" examines how the U.S. invasion and occupation created a multi-faceted civil war in which the U.S. is now actively arming multiple factions. Last summer, the project focused on how Iraq's refugee crisis was created by the invasion and the fighting that has followed. This summer, Enders and Rowley will focus on Iraq's upcoming elections, the issue of US detention of Iraqis and continued US pacification efforts in Sadr City and Falluja. These two locations, while at the opposite poles of local Iraqi politics, are both important test cases for the US as it attempts to move forward in Iraq. Enders and Rowley also travel to Syria to examine the continuing struggle for Iraqi refugees there.
August 05, 2008 | Pulitzer Center
All the rooms are full
All the rooms are full at the Bourj Babel Hotel outside of Basra. Every guest is there to visit a family member inside of the US detention facility at Bucca.
At 3:30 AM minivans take them out into the the desert where they wait at the first gate until it opens at 7 AM.
There is no electricity and the town is dark. Oil flares light the sky. Bucca burns on the desert floor like an alien city.
Our driver to Basra was playing this song on the trip.
August 03, 2008 | The Washington Times
Militia Routed, But Fear Remains in Iraq
As the sun came up on a recent morning in the district of Sadr City, Iraqi army troops searched as many as a thousand houses, arresting a dozen suspects and collecting nearly 50 unregistered weapons.
Four months ago, these streets, some too narrow for Humvees, were controlled by the Jaish al-Mahdi, a Shi'ite militia whose name in Arabic means the Mahdi Army, which in 2006 poured out of Sadr City and took over large parts of Baghdad.
August 01, 2008 | Virginia Quarterly Review
No Roads Out, No Roads Home
Mehyar said he had a car, but he didn't bring it with him.
"It's broken," he told me, and I'm sure my expression gave away my dismay. "We can take a cab, or we can take my bike."
August 01, 2008 | Pulitzer Center
The Hospitality of Thieves
Today, the newspapers plant their flags on a mountain of corpses and a city of walls.
She empties her lungs.Capillaries blossom red. Color leaks back into lips.They move, but our ears are still ringing.Brace against the door frame for a secondary blastand pray that it never comes.
For five years, we let the asphalt burn our feet,breathed in the smell of sewage and blood,and waited for a spring full of tulips, a black shirt stained with salt, a red kaffeiya and coal black eyes. . .
In the lobby, he smiles while his hands fidget with the room keys'When I saw him bleeding from his chest,I swear I forgot how to speak - in Arabic and in English. . .my only son. . . I am an old man now. . . he was all I had.'
'They own the land, and now we are their guests on it.'
...
Today, on the edge of Amara.Flies swarm around the desk.He buckles his belt.Prison tattoos curl around his wrist and a shadow clouds his forehead.
Yesterday, on the edge of Falluja.The same room with the same old men.Nicotine teeth, gold watches and pearl handled revolvers.
It is, at least, a safe place to sleep.
After five years, we have lost even this - even the clarity of death.Nothing left but the hospitality of thieves.