Kanan Makiya
Crown Conversations 4 (Summary) — The largest and most sustained demonstrations in Iraq’s post-Ba‘th era began in early October 2019, which led to the resignation of then Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. After five months without a government and several failed attempts by other nominees to form one, journalist and intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi became Iraq’s new prime minister in May. In this Crown Conversation, as the premier approaches 100 days in office, we asked Kanan Makiya to reflect on the forces that brought Kadhimi to power, his mandate, and the challenges he faces. In 2003, Makiya founded the Iraq Memory Foundation, an NGO dedicated to issues of remembrance, violence, and identity formation in Iraq; Kadhimi directed that foundation from 2003 to 2010.
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Kanan Makiya is a senior fellow at the Crown Center and professor emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University. His most recent book, On Cruelty (in Arabic, Dar Al Jamal, Beirut, 2020), explores the phenomenon of cruelty in politics and grew out of a course he taught each spring at Brandeis.
David Siddhartha Patel is the associate director for research at the Crown Center.