Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan (review)

The title of this book is somewhat misleading. While it does cover, in great detail, the record of genocide in the regions of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan, it also includes an extensive discussion of genocide in theory and practice throughout history and around the world. For example, the first quarter of the book addresses the development of the law of armed conflict, theoretical approaches to genocide, the history of colonialism and its genocidal effects in North and South America, Asia, Africa, Oceana, and even Ireland, and a short history of the early Arab and Turkish conquests in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Later chapters treat the Holocaust in Europe and concurrent Japanese policies in Asia, post-colonial conflicts and Cold War policies in India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, as well as the current "war on terrorism." The concluding chapter considers possible remedies for genocide, specifically prosecutions and reparations. In short, the book seeks to present a comprehensive study of genocide that deals in particular, but not exclusive, detail with the three regions in its title.

Dense with figures, reports, and statistics, and heavily footnoted, it is not an easy book to read. Often, the reader feels overwhelmed by page after page of lengthy detailed accounts of murders, abductions, and campaigns of extermination, especially in those chapters dealing with the Ottoman Armenians, the Ottoman and Persian Assyrians, the Anatolian Greeks, and Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaign against the Kurds and Assyrians in Iraq. The cumulative effect, however, is compelling, as the full extent of genocide in these regions in the late 19^th and the 20^th centuries becomes apparent. Eyewitness accounts and diplomatic reports are effectively interwoven with other documentary evidence and academic research to produce a very thorough and disturbing portrait of this history.

While there can be little doubt that the events discussed in these regions constitute genocide under any definition of that term, the author does address the meaning of genocide and its application to other events and in other areas. Relying in large part on the work of Professor Raphael Lemkin (who as noted by the author invented the term "genocide" in 1943), genocide can and should include not just the physical murder of large numbers of people, but also the systematic physical, cultural, economic, and political extermination, in whole or in large part, of a group of people. With this concept in mind, the author examines whether, for example, the African slave trade carried out by Europeans constituted genocide. He inquires whether the massacres of Hindus and Muslims following the partition of British India into India and Pakistan should be treated as genocides. Similarly, he devotes a full chapter to the problem of terrorism, especially as carried out by the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. These are important questions, not just for the historian but for those who search for an effective remedy to this problem.

The book concludes with the suggestion that such a remedy may best be found in economic reparations rather than the more frequently-used tool of criminal prosecutions in international tribunals. His examination of various forms that such reparations might take is wide-ranging, intriguing, and offers a hopeful note on which to conclude this otherwise dispiriting but well-researched study of the persistent and widespread practice of genocide throughout the world.