Articlesالمقالات
Articles & Essays
Newspaper columns, journal articles, and papers — in Arabic and English, ordered from the most recent, indexed by date and by publication.
2016
10 March 2016
Alghad TV
The cracking of the Mosul Dam threatens an environmental catastrophe
On the contradiction between international engineers’ warnings and the government's reassurances about the Mosul Dam, and how financial and political bankruptcy turns neglected infrastructure into environmental disaster.
8 March 2016
Al Jazeera
Can the political process in Iraq succeed?
On a political process born under occupation carrying the seeds of its own failure, and whether Abadi or any other actor can reform it.
2015
8 September 2015
Sky News Arabia
Najaf and Qom: a contest between openness and rigidity
On the widening struggle between a Shiite current open to its Arab surroundings and one organically tied to the Iranian system through the authority of the Guardian Jurist.
2 August 2015
Al Jazeera
Iraq’s protests and Abadi’s options in facing them
On the service protests: hundreds of billions spent over years left daily life unimproved in one of the world’s richest oil states and one of its most corrupt, narrowing the prime minister’s room for anything short of structural reform.
25 July 2015
Al Jazeera
Whither Iraq after the political solution was set aside?
Three years of ignoring the demands of the marginalised, sidelining dialogue, and preferring the language of force have left no visible end to the tunnel — a survey of Iraq’s political, military, and humanitarian condition.
6 March 2015
Deutsche Welle / Qantara
Iraq's Sunnis: out of the frying pan, into the fire
An interview on why the army and Sunni communities did not fight ISIS in Mosul, and how a war fought as a Shia campaign deepened the Sunni predicament.
3 February 2015
Saada Press
The Houthi wants neither to antagonise Saudi Arabia nor to side with Iran
A reading of the Yemeni file: Riyadh’s fear is Iranian penetration rather than the Houthis themselves, and Houthi positions will follow immediate alliances rather than strategic commitments to Tehran.
2014
14 November 2014
Al Jazeera
The significance of changes in the Iraqi army command and their chances of success
On the removal of thirty-six commanders in the name of fighting corruption and cleaning up the military after its collapse before the Islamic State — and whether personnel changes can repair an institution built on patronage.
8 September 2014
Deutsche Welle
The Abadi government is Iraqis’ last chance
On parliament's approval of Haider al-Abadi's cabinet after a difficult birth: the security emergency posed by the Islamic State, and the contentious files left unresolved by the deal that formed it.
23 August 2014
Monte Carlo Doualiya
The Iraq we knew in the past is over
On Joe Biden’s revived federal proposal: the idea is not new, and the constitution already permits a federalism no side has been willing to implement honestly — so the unitary Iraq of the past no longer exists in practice.
2013
27 December 2013
Saourss
Iraq’s parliamentary elections and the available options
On the run-up to the April 2014 vote: large alliances fragmented into sub-coalitions while the sectarian alignment held, so competition shifted inside each community rather than across them.
2012
3 February 2012
Radio Free Iraq
The Iraqi lesson spares the West direct involvement in the Arab Spring
Ahead of the tenth anniversary of the invasion, and with the British inquiry casting doubt on the official account, an argument that the cost of Iraq is precisely why Western powers avoided direct intervention in the Arab uprisings.
2010
12 May 2010
Radio Sawa
The coming days will determine the country’s direction
After the 2010 election deadlock: the failure of Iraqiya and State of Law to agree on a government created an atmosphere conducive to violence, with more than fifteen armed groups waiting on the outcome.
7 April 2010
Al Jazeera
The role of external actors and their influence on the political blocs
On the post-election impasse: how regional states worked through Iraqi divisions during government formation, and the contours of a partnership cabinet stalled by the fight over the premiership.
2009
1 February 2009
Al Jazeera
The effect of the elections on the coming political map
Ahead of the provincial council elections: how the vote would test the balance of powers between the central state and the governorates, and reshape alliances before the national contest.
2008
9 June 2008
Radio Sawa
The military agreement with Iran will deepen division in parliament
On the defence agreement signed with Tehran: it is read as an attempt to calm Iranian fears of the American presence, and it exposes how deeply Iraqi parliamentary blocs are split over their ties to Iran.
11 May 2008
Al Jazeera
De-Baathification: distinguishing thought from practice is the condition for reconciliation
A televised debate on the de-Baathification law: reconciliation means settling with your adversary rather than with yourself, and a law that punishes an idea instead of documented acts cannot deliver it.
2007
2007
Al-Sharqiya TV
“Bush’s option does not solve the puzzle” — Al-Sharqiya interview
A television conversation on the American choice between the Baker–Hamilton committee's political and regional approach and a military surge, arguing that Washington's position is shaped by Congress, public opinion, and the region rather than by Baghdad alone.
2006
2006
DIE ZEIT online
“Tor zur Hölle” — a German interview on withdrawal and the region
Interviewed by Alain-Xavier Wurst: against a rapid American withdrawal, which would open the gate to hell, and for an international conference including Syria and Iran — because the Iraqi question can only be settled regionally, not in isolation.
2005
15 December 2005
bitterlemons-international
The Jordanian option for solving the Iraq case
On Jordan's position between Iraq and Israel/Palestine, the astuteness that let the Hashemite leadership absorb successive upheavals, and the limits of an Amman-centred approach to Iraq.
1 September 2005
Book preface — Baghdad
Preface to the second edition: Iraq's early democratic thought
Written in Baghdad in September 2005 for the expanded second edition of his documentary study of pre-1968 Iraqi political thought, with new Kurdish and governmental material and a tribute to contributors who had since died.
28 August 2005
Primary document — Baghdad
The final draft of the Iraqi constitution (primary document)
The complete text of the final draft constitution put to referendum in 2005, from the preamble through the transitional provisions — the document at the centre of much of Dr Atiyyah's constitutional writing and advocacy.
7 July 2005
bitterlemons-international
America’s Iraqi follies, Iran’s opportunities
Written days after Ahmadinejad's election: Iran emerged as the chief beneficiary of America's wars, and the longer Washington remains bogged down in Iraq the closer the country moves to de facto partition with the south under Iranian influence.
1 July 2005
Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy
The impact of the Iranian hardline right's victory on Iraq
Written days after Ahmadinejad's election, this analysis weighs what a resurgent Iranian right means for Iraq: unresolved war reparations, the 1975 border treaty, Kurdish rivalries, and the risk that American drift leaves semi-independent entities under Iranian influence.
16 June 2005
Al-Sabah
“We are trying to establish an Independent Iraqi Constitutional Committee”
An interview on the independent constitutional committee convened with academics and specialists to work alongside the official drafting body — taking the constitutional debate to unions, guilds, universities and the press so that citizens vote on a text they have actually read.
15 June 2005
Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy
Is the formulation of a permanent constitution a chance to get out of the dilemma?
On the constitutional committee seated after the January 2005 elections — fifty-five members, two of them Sunni Arabs — and why a text drafted in eight weeks under that arithmetic, and under a deadline set in Washington, cannot carry the consent a constitution requires.
24 May 2005
Al Jazeera
The war of assassinations in Iraq
On the assassination campaign and the drift toward sectarian alignment: Sunni bloc politics, the interplay of foreign interference and domestic resentment, and what the government could still do to cool the situation.
23 May 2005
Al Arabiya — Min al-Iraq
The anticipated Iraqi constitution and Iraqis' historic responsibility
Television debate with Ali al-Dabbagh and Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi on the drafting of the permanent constitution, the inclusion of Sunni representation, and the responsibility Iraqis bore in shaping the new state.
25 April 2005
Al-Sharqiya TV
The Constitution: a contract of permanent coexistence (episode two)
A programme on the form of government Iraqis want: whether the Transitional Administrative Law should be made permanent, and why the long wait for a new government eroded public confidence.
7 April 2005
Al-Ahram Weekly
The spectre of sectarianism
Two years after the fall of Baghdad, Atiyyah reads the January 2005 elections: a single national constituency and a Sunni boycott that pushed every community to vote by sect rather than programme. The future of Iraq, he argues, depends not on America but on what Iraqis themselves do to pull the country back from sectarian breakdown.
3 February 2005
Al Jazeera
The ambitions of the American discourse
After the first post-invasion election, a discussion with Juan Cole and Fouad Ajami on Bush's claims of success, the American agenda in Iraq, withdrawal timing, and the region.
19 January 2005
Al Jazeera
The Shiite political scene in the elections
On the eve of the January 2005 vote: how the electoral lists were assembled, the use of religious symbols in campaigning, and what the accommodation between secular and religious parties implied for Iraq's future.
10 January 2005
Al Arabiya
The dispute over the date of the Iraqi elections intensifies
A debate on the eve of the January 2005 vote over whether to hold the elections on schedule, with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Kurdish and Sunni voices.
2005
Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy
Proposal for an Independent Constitutional Commission
A working proposal for a commission of experts and a broad advisory board to widen public participation in the constitutional process ahead of the August 2005 deadline — complementing, not competing with, the National Assembly committee.
2004
14 December 2004
Al Jazeera
The serial American mistakes in Iraq
On the accumulating errors of the American administration in Iraq, the role of the former opposition, the absence of Iraqi unity, and the Muslim Scholars Association's stance on the elections.
12 October 2004
Jordan TV — Under the Light
Has a historic reconciliation among Iraq's ruling Shia been achieved?
A televised debate on whether the Shia forces brought to power after 2003 had truly reconciled among themselves, and what that meant for Iraq's national compact.
14 July 2004
Baghdad — official memorandum
Memorandum to the Supreme Preparatory Committee for the National Conference
Written in Baghdad as a member of the committee itself, this memorandum accuses the Preparatory Committee of reproducing the Governing Council's habit of "sharing out the cake": a quarter of its hundred members carried over from the old council, 144 conference seats reserved for parties that polling showed the public did not trust. Atiyyah proposes four correctives — no reserved seats, no participant acting as referee, wider provincial representation, and independent places used to draw the marginalised into politics rather than violence — warning that the alternative is chaos or a new dictatorship.
8 April 2004
The New York Times
Account of Broad Shiite Revolt Contradicts White House Stand
James Risen's report on the April 2004 uprising, in which Atiyyah — then executive director of the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy in Baghdad — is quoted arguing that Iraqis identified with Moqtada al-Sadr less out of belief than out of their own grievances, and that Sadr had "hijacked the political process" ahead of the June handover of sovereignty.
2004
Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy
National Reconciliation Conference: prerequisite for national elections
A year into American rule, an argument that elections cannot precede reconciliation: without a national conference that brings in those excluded by the appointed institutions, a vote would ratify division rather than resolve it. The United Nations is cast as facilitator, not trustee.
2003
11 September 2003
Iraqi File
A way out of the impasse: free elections within a specific timeframe under UN supervision
Written in Baghdad four months into the occupation: a diagnosis of the collapse of order and of the Governing Council's legitimacy, and a proposal for early elections under United Nations supervision rather than a constitution drafted by an appointed body.
28 January 2003
The Daily Star
New Iraq opts for democracy and strategic partnership with the US
Answering Arab critics who reduced the Iraqi question to oil or to Israel, Atiyyah argues that the region's attachment to the status quo would try to deliver 'Saddamism without Saddam,' that federalism is an Iraqi demand rather than a Kurdish one, and that a democratic Iraq allied to the United States would unsettle every neighbour that had grown comfortable with Iraq's ruin.
9 January 2003
openDemocracy
Fixing it: the London conference, Tehran deal, and beyond
On the December 2002 London opposition conference and the accompanying understandings with Tehran: what a decade of disunity had cost, and what a credible political path for Iraq would require.
2002
5 December 2002
openDemocracy
The Iraqi opposition conference: born in an Iraqi womb
Published days before the London opposition conference of 13–15 December 2002, this piece reads the conference's difficult birth as a sign of health: the quarrels were Iraqi quarrels, not a script written abroad. Atiyyah sets the gathering against Iraq's earlier national fronts, from the Front of National Unity before 1958 onward, and argues that the opposition must first decide what it wants from the conference before bargaining over seats.
18 November 2002
Iraqi File / MEES
The Iraqi Opposition at Crossroads
Written as editor of Iraqi File and reprinted in English by the Middle East Economic Survey, this essay traces how the Iraqi National Congress was reduced to an instrument of US policy, how Ahmad Chalabi came to be treated as the Pentagon's man, and why the Kurdish leaderships — not Washington's favourites — had become the only viable basis for a united opposition. Atiyyah concludes that a conference whose success cannot be assured is better postponed than held.
15 November 2002
The Daily Star
American discord undercuts planned Iraqi opposition conference
A commentary on the repeatedly postponed opposition conference, arguing that the feud between the State Department and the Pentagon — and the Pentagon's decision to back Ahmad Chalabi alone — had turned a national gathering into a contest for American patronage. Atiyyah holds that the Kurds have an Iraqi, not merely Kurdish, interest in a united and federal opposition, and that a conference whose outcome is pre-decided in Washington is better deferred than staged.
14 September 2002
The Daily Star
The road map to democratic governance in post-Saddam Iraq
Written on the eve of the invasion, this commentary sets out the practical sequence required for a democratic government to replace Saddam Hussein: constitutional guarantees before elections, an opposition accountable to its own constituents rather than to foreign patrons, and a transitional framework broad enough to include Iraqis inside the country. Atiyyah warns that unseating the regime will prove the easy part compared with building democratic habits after four decades of their decline.