There can be no doubt that war is the most chaotic activity in which humanity has taken part. Its capacity to blight the land, annihilate industry, devastate families and cripple public services is spectacular and sobering, certainly sufficient the wreck once proud civilizations. It is understandable then that, notwithstanding the degree to which it advances certain technologies and philosophies, it must be a tool of last resort, a means by which the desperate and the wronged, the provoked and the beleaguered, re-adjust their circumstances. For to engage it for any less significant a purpose is to sell the innocent into a kind of unending nightmare from which their lives will never completely recover. After all, displacement and disease, joblessness and homelessness, are antithetical to a stable existence. Ms. Asquith vividly demonstrates these potent truths in this captivating work.
Helmed by an infamous despot who had famously resisted a previous effort to be ousted by the united States, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the perfect target for a wounded America needing a victory and a purpose in the post-9/11 world. Having suffered for more than a decade under stifling sanctions that plunged most of its millions of citizens into poverty, Iraq's bark had far outstripped its bite, as the Americans demonstrated when, in 2003, they invaded the oil-rich country and conquered its ruling regime in a matter of weeks. But rather than spark widespread hopes for a new, democratic Iraq, free of the burdensome shadow of Saddam Hussein's four decades of autocratic rule, this swift victory galvanized an organized and vicious insurgency which ignited a campaign of indiscriminate slaughter in hopes of sapping the will of the Coalition to fully realize their goals in the beleaguered country. For four long years, this Al-Qaeda-supported insurgency flourished, using suicide bombings to kill thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Coalition soldiers, reducing large swaths of Iraq to armed camps plagued by fear and distrust.
However much the insurgency may have been effective against the Coalition it sought to remove, it was infinitely more effective at destroying both the lives and the sense of normalcy of everyday Iraqis. As pitiless bomb attacks are paired with gruesome beheadings of aidworkers and journalists, as Iraqis cooperating with the Coalition are identified, labelled as traitors and threatened with death, Iraqi society disintegrates. Jobs are lost, families are scattered, schools are shut down and neighborhoods surrendered to extremists, realities which lead many Iraqis to depressingly conclude that they are worse off under the Coalition than they were under the cruel dictator who tortured and disenfranchised them. For the good and the bad, the earnest and the passive, the brave and the cowardly, life will never be the same.
Through the eyes of an American-Palestinian aidworker, an Iraqi journalist and an American soldier, Sisters in War allows us to watch the disaster of postwar Iraq unfold in terrifying slow motion. Imbued with the wisdom of hindsight, Ms. Asquith relates the tragic efforts of three courageous women, from entirely different backgrounds, in entirely different circumstances, to make something lastingly good come from a shattering conflict. But though armed with Coalition funds and passionate desires to make positive change, their various projects -- creating womens centers, providing basic services to Iraqi citizens, and reporting on the real news in a country newly liberated from tyranny -- self-destruct. For in this new Iraq, money and will are insufficient to overcome both the nihilism of the insurgency and the immobility of the American bureaucracy which governed the country until 2005. As a result, their goodwill, thought to be depthless, is exhausted, their spirits deflated by ignorance and inertia; truly a toxic brew.
Ms. Asquith is a talented narrative journalist. Surrendering her voice entirely to her three compelling subjects, she taps into the power of the memoir without sacrificing the journalistic framework that allows her to communicate the broad strokes of those early postwar years, covering off the key incidents for those who are less familiar with the transitional period. The resulting product is both informative and emotionally engaging. For our eyes are invariably trained on the only place that matters, the ground floor of this 21st century war and all the social decay it is responsible for.
None of this would be possible, though, without Ms. Asquith's three subjects, each of whom possess wills in proportion to their courage. Their desire to forge ahead despite having the deck stacked so heavily against them is as inspiring as the insurgency is deflating. Their hardened innocence juxtaposed with the irredeemable barbarity of the terrorists leaves the reader with a powerful portrait of war's inevitable fallout.
Masterful work... The best and worst of humanity lives in these pages. (5/5 Stars)
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