Suchergebnisse

Following the devastation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul by the Islamic State, various foreign actors launched initiatives to reconstruct the heritage sites of the city. However, such efforts are underpinned by assumptions about how local people value their heritage, how they perceive its destruction, whether they view reconstruction as a priority and the extent to which they support foreign-led efforts to rebuild their heritage. This article holds these assumptions up to empirical scrutiny via an original survey of 1600 Mosul residents and their attitudes towards heritage. The results hold four key implications for current and future heritage projects in Mosul, namely that while residents want to see heritage sites reconstructed, they prefer that heritage reconstruction not be privileged over humanitarian aid, development and peace building; includes the rebuilding of their local religious sites as much as iconic and/or non-religious sites and transforms sites into new and more useful structures to the community, and while they acknowledge the work of foreign actors, they want agency and control over the future of their heritage. The article concludes by noting that such findings hold important implications for future foreign-led heritage projects in (post-)conflict environments where mass human suffering and heritage destruction has taken place.

AbstractThis article examines state‐society relations and inter‐communal dynamics in conflict, focusing on the case study of non‐Muslim minorities in Iraq. It draws on interview data to analyse the lived experiences of Iraq's Yazidis and Christians before, during and after Islamic State (IS) rule. It finds that the attacks by the IS on Iraq's Yazidi and Christian communities not only caused considerable suffering but also led to a renewed crisis of faith in the Iraqi state and a further breakdown in relations with other groups, especially Sunni Arabs. However, Iraq's Yazidis and Christian have also demonstrated remarkable resilience in terms of returning to their ancient homelands and rebuilding their fractured communities. Together, these findings raise further questions about the legitimacy of the Iraqi state in the eyes of its non‐Muslim minorities and the prospects of a peaceful multicultural future for Iraq.

The destruction of heritage in conflict has emerged as a key challenge to global security and the prospects of peace. In response to the deliberate targeting of heritage sites by the Islamic State (IS) and other actors in recent years, the international community has launched a number of initiatives designed to protect and reconstruct key heritage sites in complex (post-)conflict contexts. However, this article demonstrates that such initiatives are often underpinned by the norm that the protection of heritage in conflict can serve to enhance the prospects of reconciliation, stability and peace. This article problematizes this norm by focussing on the case study of Shia responses to the targeting of their religious heritage sites by the IS in Iraq from mid-2014. It documents the ways that key Shia leaders instrumentalized the case of protecting heritage not to advance peace and security, but to create entirely new militias, to recruit thousands of Shia faithful, to mobilize them to fight against the IS, and to engage in violence and human rights abuses. This raises significant concerns about whether the promotion of heritage as a pathway to peace could inadvertently exacerbate conflict and lead to renewed waves of violence and heritage destruction.

This article examines Australia's post‐conflict reconstruction and development initiatives in Iraq following the intervention of 2003. Overall, it finds that Australia privileged the neo‐liberal model of post‐conflict state building by investing in projects that would enhance the capacity of the new Iraqi state, its key institutions and the private sector towards the imposition of a liberal democracy and a free‐market economy. To demonstrate, this article documents the failures of the Australian government's stated aims to "support agriculture" and "support vulnerable populations" via interviews conducted in Iraq with rural farmers and tribal members and those working in, or the beneficiaries of, Iraq's disability sector. It concludes by noting that such failures are not only indicative of the inadequacy of the neo‐liberal state building model, but also that these failures point the way forward for future post‐conflict reconstruction and development projects which ought to be premised on a genuine and sustained commitment to addressing the needs of those made most vulnerable by war and regime change.

This article assesses the link between the state and the media in their coverage of foreign policy decisions. It holds up to empirical scrutiny the claim that genuine press criticism can only occur within the bounds of political-elite debate. Taking the Australian government's 2014 decision to fight the Islamic State as its case study, it explores areas of consensus and dissensus between political discourse and the media. Conducting a qualitative analysis of three media frames used by major newspapers, it tests the "indexing hypothesis" and concludes that some press coverage went beyond the parameters of political-elite debate. This finding of independent criticism has implications beyond the present case study, as it helps us better understand the role of the media in democracies—specifically, holding governments to account when sending their nations to war.

Acknowledgements; Contributors; Introduction; The Arab Spring and the coming fall of Orientalism's Tower of Babel; Is it the end of state feminism?; Reinventing wor(l)ds; Social media, social movements and the diffusion of ideas in the Arab Revolutions; The 2011 Bahrain uprising; Syria: Post-Assad?; When it's not time for change; Conclusion; Index.