Inside the Middle East - Blog
April 27, 2008
Mideast Snapshot - More Art In The Warzone



Thirty-one year-old Azhar Abbas, an artist from Fallujah, in the heart of the Sunni Triangle. A few months ago, she started depicting the impact of war through her paintings. (Photos CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq)

Ms. Abbas should be commended for having not only the courage but the artistic and intellectual focus to produce such vivid images of the horrors of war and the nightmares that will forever haunt the survivors, families, and future generations, in the middle-east, America, the allied nations, and indeed the world.

I am speechless, upon reviewing the eyes of the subjects in each piece, empty and yet still gripingly alive and bearing witness to an atrocity that can neither be explained, justified, or repaired.

Perhaps, the saddest fact is that given the life span of the average Iraqi citizen, Ms. Abbas, is likely to never run out of subject matter before her time on earth is at an end.
As disturbing as these images are, this form of art is a journal and history that has its roots in other human atrocities from slavery to the holocaust. Wihtout the benefit of a professional background in art, I cannot speak to the intrinsic monetary value of such work. However, on a human an existential level, it speaks volumes to the devestation wrought on not only the people of Iraq, the American and Allied service personnel, as well as, the future victims of the extremists created as a result of the Bush doctrine to manufacture a fictious case to prosecute the whole-scale destruction of Iraq - but the very souls of all of the aforementioned individuals and groups.
Is Sadr City becoming the new My Lai
Is there any way to purchase one of these paintings?
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