Word: saddams
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Iraq's civic society has blossomed since the fall of Saddam Hussein, who sought to rigidly repress it. There are some 6,250 registered organizations operating in the country today, as well as a Ministry of State for Civil Society Affairs and civil society committees in provincial governments. But there are still limitations. NGOs cannot merge with one another or form networks without the permission of the government. Furthermore, the participation of non-Iraqis, even in international NGOs, will be limited to 25% of an organization...
Khaled al-Asadi, a member of parliament's committee on civil society organizations, says that although Saddam's dictatorial regime was toppled, some of its habits linger. "Certain groups within government want to put their fingerprints all over the work of NGOs and the law governing them," he says. "They still think in terms of control and surveillance. The Iraqi people were raised on this mind-set. It's not easily or quickly erased...
...stake is the control of disputed territories. Kurds say they are reclaiming areas like the oil-rich city of Kirkuk that was theirs until Saddam Hussein forcibly removed them from it. Arabs say the land wasn't Kurdish to begin with. In the meantime, Kurdish peshmerga militia forces, which operate independently of Baghdad and answer to Kurdistan's regional government, have steadily pushed south of their United Nations-delineated border into contested zones...
...just because Atheel Nujaifi says so in the media," says Fryad Rwandzi, a Kurdish member of parliament and spokesman for the 58-strong Kurdish bloc in the national parliament. "We, as Kurds, have the authority to defend our people; 172,000 Kurdish people were driven away from Mosul [during Saddam's Arabization period]. [The peshmerga] are to protect the Kurdish people." (Read a TIME story about Kurdistan...
...their real names. Tagged on their standard issue camo shirts, Abdul becomes Mark, or Pablo, or Bill. Ricky chain-smokes and sweats heavily; earlier that day he had shown me the ugly marks on his back and arms that, he said, were scars from electrical wire torture by Saddam Hussein's security forces. They tortured him, he said, because his brother was a member of Kurdish intelligence. He tells me that because of what the Americans did to Saddam, he trusts them. (See why Arab-Kurd animosity threatens Iraq's fragile peace...