Title: The Limits of Trauma Discourse Women Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq
Author: Karin Mlodoch
Place of publication: Berlin
Publisher: Klaus Schwarz Verlag Berlin
Release date:2014

Iraq: Dealing with the legacy of the past under conditions of ongoing violence Eleven years after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s Baath-regime, the world’s eyes are once again on Iraq: the 2014 brutal advance of the »Islamic State« terror militias into large parts of Iraq marks the failure of the country’s national political process. This is, on one hand the result of decades of sectarian policy under the Baath regime and the regimes following it, and, on the other hand further escalates the sectarian conflicts in Iraq and the fragmentation of the Iraqi society along ethnic-national and religious boundaries. Violence and conflict in Iraq cannot simply be explained – as frequently occurs in public debate – as the impact of the US-led invasion and occupation, but instead reflect also de cades of dictatorship under the Baath regime, which exposed large swaths of the Iraqi population and members of different ethnic, religious and regional groups to savage violence and human rights violations, destroyed individuals and social structures throughout Iraq and compelled the population to withdraw to its narrow ethnic, religious and regional frameworks.[1]