Mosul & the Lessons of History: Perhaps

Mosul seized by a small group proclaiming a Sunni pan-state across Syria and Iraq. And now Kurds claiming back Kirkuk from the Arabisation that Saddam Hussein instituted on that northern Iraqi city ("Iraqi Kurds 'fully control Kirkuk' as army flees," by Paul Wood, BBC News, 12 June 2014).   "The Fall of Mosul and the False Promises of Modern History," by Juan Cole, History News Network, 11 June 2014, lays blame for recent events on, well, just about everyone.  "Hold Your Horses, Iraq Is Not About to Fall … Yet," by Douglas Ollivant, Foreign Policy, June 12, 2014, is not unwilling to apportion blame for the "known-unknowns." But what has happened is not yet clear, so perhaps assigning the lessons of why it happened might be a bit premature.

A slightly longer timescale for Iraqi cities is provided in "Baghdad by Justin Marozzi – review," by Christopher de Bellaigue, The Guardian, 11 June 2014, which reviews a new book beginning when "the city was founded by the Abbasid caliph Mansur in 762," and including (left) when the Mongols were at the gates in 1258.

Contextualizing Arab Spring - Now

"Confronting Amnesia and Political Change in the Arab World," by Martin Evans, History Today, Blog, 10 June 2014, highlights a new movie, They Are the Dogs, which appears to be about a worker released from prison for something that did or did not happen in the 1980s right at the time that Morocco is spiraling into crisis. (The article includes a trailer in English.) Morocco didn't have a "Spring," but the atmosphere on the streets is similar to that in Egypt or Tunisia.

• "The film follows three members of a television crew as they set off to report on the protest movements in Morocco in February 2011. Intrigued by the strange mannerisms of an old man called Majhoul, the crew decide to focus their report on him. As they follow him through the backstreets of urban Casablanca, the crew discover the story of a man who has just been released from prison 30 years after a police raid during Morocco's 1981 food riots, and who is completely lost in a modern Morocco in the midst of the Arab Spring."

The UK premier of the film is at a conference on 16 June. Wish I could be there.

Iran: Another Year, another Spring

"Tehran Postcard: What Has Rouhani Changed In One Year?," by Claudio Gallo, Worldcrunch, 3 June 2014 (originally La Stampa, 27 May 2014) 

• "'The atmosphere here has gotten better,' says Nima. 'The morality police aren’t harassing us so much anymore, and the tourists have come back. But we’re from Isfahan, in the center of the country, and everything there is still closed.'"