On September 12, Professor Nabil Al-Tikriti joined an evening panel of Fredericksburg area residents to discuss potential U.S. military intervention in Syria. The panel was organized by Fredericksburg Patch and the BBC’s Nuala McGovern, and was broadcast on BBC World Service during a four hour long world news show. In the course of the panel, Al-Tikriti expressed his reservations about a potential U.S. intervention, as both an area studies expert and experienced relief professional. For a posting explaining more about the broadcast, see: http://fredericksburg.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/fredericksburg-residents-respond-to-syrian-conflict.
Local Woman’s Relatives Survive Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack (Fredericksburg.Patch.Com)
Newsday – 9/12/2013 (BBC World Service)
Nabil Al-Tikriti Leads Plenary Session on Health Care Under Fire
In his capacity as a board member of MSF / Doctors Without Borders USA, on June 14 Nabil Al-Tikriti co-organized, moderated, and led discussion during a plenary session entitled “Health Care Under Fire” during the 2013 MSF USA General Assembly in New York City. During this session, participants set out to “share some of MSF’s direct field experiences of the risks and dangers associated with healthcare delivery in insecure contexts, and, most importantly, to reflect on the impact such violence has on the disruption of medical services.” The forum served to launch a fresh initiative within the MSF movement entitled “Medical Care Under Fire” designed to engage with this issue globally. The new initiative follows a similar initiative launched by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2011, and is partially in cooperation with that colleague agency.
Session panelists included: Mark Steinbeck (Medical Advisor and Delegate for ICRC at its Regional Delegation in Washington, DC), Joe Amon (Director, Health and Human Rights Division, Human Rights Watch), Francoise Duroch (Manager, Medical Care Under Fire project, MSF International), and Jason Cone (Director of Communications, MSF USA).
The session description was as follows: “Violence or the threat of violence against patients, health care personnel and health care structures is increasingly recognized as a potential barrier to our ability to deliver quality health care in highly unstable contexts. Our staff or our patients may be the direct victims of these attacks, but the indirect victims are all the people and communities who, as a consequence of these attacks, can no longer access health services. Health care can be suspended, withdrawn, or rendered impossible by violent events. Wounded and sick people can be denied effective health care when hospitals are damaged by explosive weapons or violated by fighters, when ambulances are hijacked and when health-care personnel are threatened, kidnapped, injured or killed…”
For an extended interview on this issue by Francoise Duroch, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyBNafxzF7w&feature=share
Prior to leading this session, Prof. Al-Tikriti served for several weeks this spring as Deputy Head of Mission for MSF France’s Syria relief operations, which entailed three brief visits into the conflict region. At this point, he grappled firsthand with many of the issues intended to be addressed by MSF’s new initiative in this direction.
Nabil Al-Tikriti Presents at Cairo Conference on Iraq 10 Years Later
During the conference, Nabil Al-Tikriti also took the opportunity to explore Cairo, the Sayyida Zaynab religious festival, Upper Egypt.
On June 3-4, Nabil Al-Tikriti offered a presentation entitled “Some Longer Term Effects of the 2003 Anglo-American Invasion on Iraqi Society” to the conference entitled Iraq – 10 Years On: Conflicts, Migrations, Futures in Cairo, Egypt. This conference brought together experts from the fields of Iraqi studies and forced migration to examine some of the lingering effects of the 2003 invasion of the country. Prof. Al-Tikriti presented both his impressions gained from a trip to Baghdad the previous month and his thoughts on the invasion’s legacies throughout a range of sectors. Organizers expect to complete an edited volume of conference presentations within the next few months. This conference was hosted by the American University in Cairo’s Center for Migration and Refugee Studies; and jointly sponsored by the Japan Foundation, Chiba University, Japan Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Here is a link to the conference program: http://iraq10years.info/wp-content/uploads/Cairo_Program2013Ver3.pdf.
Here is Prof. Al-Tikriti’s conference abstract:
“In 2003 the United States and Great Britain led a “coalition of the willing” in an invasion of Iraq which was only the latest in a long string of interventions by the two powers in the region dating back to the nineteenth century. With this contribution, I plan to examine some of the longer term effects of this particular intervention on Iraqi society and the region as a whole, as distinct from all the previous interventions as well as certain other developments endogenous to Iraqi society.
Within Iraq, I concentrate on changes in the cultural and educational spheres, extending and updating research I carried out in the years immediately following the invasion. In the cultural sphere, I ask what has befallen Iraq’s cultural patrimony since the invasion, particularly in terms of manuscript collections and archives. In the educational sphere, I examine changes in higher education and social studies textbook production since 2003.
Outside Iraq, I examine changes both to the region as a whole, as well as to the reach of U.S. foreign policy as a result of the 2003 invasion. As widely publicized at the time, American policymakers hoped to spread democracy throughout the region, transform Iraq into a base for intervention elsewhere, and demonstrate the vibrancy of an unregulated economy. My contribution will conclude with a summary overview of the success, failure, and longer term effects of such policy orientations on both the region and the United States itself.”
Nabil Al-Tikriti Submits Paper at Baghdad Translation Conference
On 7-9 May, Nabil Al-Tikriti submitted a paper entitled “A Tale of Two Nations: Translation Traditions in the Arab World and Turkey” to the Third International Translation Conference in Baghdad, Iraq. In this conference addressing a wide variety of theoretical and contextual issues related to the field of translation, Prof. Al-Tikriti’s paper addressed a comparison of translation traditions and realities in Turkey and the Arab World. This conference was sponsored by the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and the Dar al-Ma’mun Publishing House. In the course of this visit, Prof. Al-Tikriti also provided an extensive interview to the Ministry’s prime newspaper, The Translator, and visited a number of sites throughout Baghdad. These sites included the National Archives and Library and the Iraqi National Museum, which were especially opened for the conference delegation. The US delegation to this conference also visited the US Embassy in Baghdad, where they met with Cultural Affairs Officers and discussed possibilities of educational exchange between Iraqi and American institutions.
Nabil Al-Tikriti Participates in NGO Field Associative Debate
In his capacity as a board member of the United States section of MSF/Doctors Without Borders, Nabil Al-Tikriti, associate professor of history and American studies, participated in the annual Field Associative Debate (FAD) for MSF staff serving throughout South Sudan, in Juba on 1-2 March.
This year’s FAD topic covered arguments in favor of and against the utilization of “remote control” management in constricted relief contexts, whereby international staff avoid direct presence and leave local operations to national staff — in its extreme form, a sort of humanitarian sub-contracting. After debating this year’s topic, staff members then presented recommendations and motions for consideration by the MSF International General Assembly. After the FAD was completed, Prof. Al-Tikriti conducted a brief field visit to MSF’s child and maternity hospital intervention in Aweil, South Sudan. Upon his return, he completed a thought piece on his experience for internal review.
A brief video produced to commemorate this year’s South Sudan FAD can be accessed here:
Nabil Al-Tikriti Participates in Iraqi Foreign Policy Workshop
On February 20-21, Associate Professor of History and American Studies Nabil Al-Tikriti joined a workshop in London entitled “Iraqi Foreign Policy in a Changing Middle East.” Participants included over thirty area experts, party representatives, government officials, scholars, and journalists. The closed workshop was sponsored jointly by the Middle East and North Africa Programme of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House and the U.S. Institute of Peace of Washington, D.C. Six sessions covered a range of topics, including Iraq’s relations with Syria, the Kurdish Regional Government, the oil sector, and the Gulf states, as well as Iraq’s future role in the region. Chatham House plans to publish a summary report of workshop proceedings within the next few weeks.
Nabil Al-Tikriti Presents Great Lives Lecture on T.E. Lawrence
On Tuesday, Feb. 12, Nabil Al-Tikriti delivered a lecture entitled “Troubled Man, Troubling Legacy: T.E. Lawrence, 1888-1935” as part of the Chappell Great Lives lecture series at Dodd Auditorium on the UMW campus. The prezi visuals which accompanied the presentation can be accessed here: http://prezi.com/bjyci7hkur_a/te-lawrence-troubled-man-troubling-legacy/.
The Great Lives series official video production can be accessed here: www.umw.edu/greatlives/2013/02/14/video-lawrence-of-arabia/.
In advance of the lecture, The Free-Lance Star published an opinion piece by Prof. Al-Tikriti regarding T.E. Lawrence, which can be accessed here: http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2013/022013/02102013/752750/index_html?page=1.
Here is the entire text of the opinion piece, published by The Free-Lance Star on Sunday, February 10:
“RARE IS THE individual who attracts over 40 biographies within decades of his or her departure from this world. Thomas Edward Lawrence, whose troubled legacy we will examine in Dodd Hall on Tuesday starting at 7:30 p.m. is one of those rare specimens.
Certain facts about his biography are well-known to casual observers, usually informed by David Lean’s 1962 film classic, “Lawrence of Arabia.” As everyone knows, Lawrence organized and led the Great Arab Revolt, which delivered the Arabs from the terrible Turkish yoke and overturned the mighty Ottoman Empire. He was more a sensitive scholar than a classic warrior, and was reluctantly pressed into service to help his country in its hour of need. He shied away from the limelight, and hated the attention he received as a result of his fame.
While each point is defensible, all are interpretations that have reached the public only after several levels of distillation. The real story is far more complicated.
Lawrence was indeed a complex man, a visionary of sorts who as a child craved to be recognized as a hero and then grew arguably insane as an adult due to his success in this realm. He welcomed the publicity offered by the prominent American journalist Lowell Thomas, the individual most responsible for shaping the legend of “Lawrence of Arabia.” He carefully managed his own image and was not above reminding people who he was when they were either unaware or uninterested in his fame. By the end of his life, he had developed a series of personality quirks that suggested borderline psychosis, and the account of his death never fully satisfied all observers.
Real contention about Lawrence springs from his legacy and the overall British legacy in the Middle East following the Great War. The popular narrative suggests that without the “Arab” uprising, the “Turks” would never have been defeated, as well as that, without Lawrence, there would have been no “Great Arab Revolt.” Neither of these propositions passes without intense criticism in the region itself. While those participating in Lawrence’s military endeavor were certainly Arab when they weren’t loyal soldiers of the British crown, they never numbered more than a few thousand, and were never more than an idealistic core of committed activists leading a motley crew of criminals, opportunists, and tribal raiders interested far more in the violent privatization of spoil and plunder than the ideals of national liberation.
As difficult as it has been for subsequent Arab and Turkish nationalists to recognize, the vast majority of Ottoman subjects in what is today the eastern Arab world were loyal to their empire to the end. In many cases, they were loyal beyond the end, as when Iraqi peasants appealed to Mustafa Kemal to rescue them from their new British overlords in the early 1920s.
Lawrence, who repeatedly claimed in his own classic “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” to have been tortured by his irreconcilable loyalties to both the British Empire and Arab independence, was capable of a ruthless pursuit of his often inconsistent agenda. He was aware of allied agreements destined to betray British promises made to the Hashemite family, and he believed that Jewish settlement of Palestine need not conflict with the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. He felt that putting Faisal on the throne in the newly created country of Iraq, and his brother Abdullah in the equally unknown Transjordan, discharged his obligations to the Arab cause. Much like today’s Obama administration, Lawrence found the judicious use of air power to be modern, humane, and more efficient than alternative methods of exerting sovereign control over recalcitrant populations.
Although this individual’s illegitimate birth, proclivity for whippings, misanthropic and chaste approach to sexual relations, and extreme personality tendencies are all psychologically fascinating, our talk on Tuesday evening will focus more on public interpretations of his legacy than his private demons. Those planning to attend should do their utmost to first screen Lean’s film classic, as all good history should begin with a great flick.”
UMW Faculty to Discuss Anniversary of Iraq War
Nabil Al-Tikriti
Eric Bonds
UMW faculty members will discuss the 10 year anniversary of the Iraq War during a roundtable on Wednesday, Feb. 13. The discussion will begin at 4 p.m. in Combs Hall, Room 139 and is free and open to the public.
The roundtable will feature Nabil Al-Tikriti, associate professor of history, Eric Bonds, assistant professor of sociology, Jason Davidson, associate professor of political science and Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies. All four faculty members have published scholarly research on aspects of the war. Ranjit Singh, associate professor of political science, will serve as the moderator.
For more information, contact Jason Davidson at jdavidso@umw.edu or (540) 654-1509.
Stephen Farnsworth
- Ranjit Singh