Iraqi Americans Witnessing A Genocide by Weam Namou is an attempt to record the author’s response to what happened in Iraq after 2003 as well as how the Iraqi Christian community in Michigan reacted to the war with the Islamic State in 2014. It reads like a journal of Namou’s thoughts on her former motherland jumping from topic to topic.
Namou came from an Iraqi Christian family who left Iraq in 1980 and settled in Michigan which became a major Arab and Iraqi community in America. In 2014 she and her community were shocked by the Islamic State seizing Mosul and parts of northern Iraq and the atrocities that occurred afterwards. The author wasn’t just concerned about the attacks upon Iraqi Christians but the violence overall perpetrated by the group.
The book tries to give the author’s own views about events but also includes Iraqis she interviewed as part of her job as a journalist. That includes a Yazidi artist named Ammar who used to do family paintings but then became obsessed with depicting the crimes of the Islamic State against his people. Another was an Iraqi Muslim woman who attended a protest by Iraqi Christians against the militants. She saw the war as a struggle between good and evil and that everyone should voice their objections to the Islamic State.
There were several people working with charities to try to support people back in Iraq. After ISIS seized Mosul and Ninewa province it occupied several Christian towns forcing over 100,000 to flee. The group also destroyed Christian shrines, tombs and historical sites and marked the homes of Christians. The author and others were calling it a genocide. Several groups in Michigan were trying to provide general aid, school supplies for children, and record their lost property so that after the war they might be able to file for compensation.
Other times the book covers what Namou and others thought about the U.S. occupation after 2003. Here it includes things like the two battles for Fallujah in 2004, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the looting of the national museum in 2003 and more. The author is obviously critical of how the Americans mishandled the situation.
It also talks about how Iraqis came to blame everything on the U.S. such as claiming that Zarqawi founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t exist and was created by the Americans to justify their military operations. The author has a similar mindset at times such as when she claims that U.S. troops executed civilians in their homes during the second battle of Fallujah. Since the Americans were considered all powerful they were blamed for everything whether they were responsible or not leading to a host of conspiracy theories.
Michigan has a huge Iraqi population which was hardly mentioned during the Iraq War. That was the motivation for Weam Namou to write this very short book on how she and her community felt about the 2003 invasion and the Islamic State. The first half skips around from topic to topic with the second half being more focused upon ISIS. It shows how the author was shocked by the U.S. occupation and then how her community was mobilized by the Islamic State to try to help their compatriots in Iraq.
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