Kanan Makiya

Kanan Makiya
Born1949 (age 74–75)
Baghdad, Kingdom of Iraq
EducationMassachusetts Institute of Technology

Kanan Makiya (born 1949) is an Iraqi-American[1][2] academic and professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. He gained international attention with Republic of Fear (1989), which became a best-selling book after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and with Cruelty and Silence (1991), a critique of the Arab intelligentsia. In 2003, Makiya lobbied the U.S. government to invade Iraq and oust Hussein.[3]

Makiya was born in Baghdad and left Iraq to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later working for his father's architectural firm, Makiya & Associates which had branch offices in London and across the Middle East. As a former exile, he was a prominent member of the Iraqi opposition, a "close friend" of Ahmed Chalabi, and an influential proponent of the Iraq War (2003–2011) effort.[4][5] He subsequently admitted that effort "went wrong".[6]

  1. ^ "Critic of Hussein Grapples with Horrors of Post-Invasion Iraq - New Y…". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 9 September 2012.
  2. ^ "'The Rope' Chronicles a Good Death, and a Bad Start". NPR. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016.
  3. ^ Alshaibi, Wisam H. (2024). "The Anatomy of Regime Change: Transnational Political Opposition and Domestic Foreign Policy Elites in the Making of US Foreign Policy on Iraq". American Journal of Sociology. doi:10.1086/732155. ISSN 0002-9602.
  4. ^ Dexter Filkins. "Regrets Only" The New York Times Magazine, October 7, 2007. Accessed October 12, 2007.
  5. ^ Edward Wong."Critic of Hussein Grapples With Horrors of Post-Invasion Iraq" The New York Times, March 24, 2007. Accessed July 13, 2008.
  6. ^ "'The Rope' Chronicles a Good Death, and a Bad Start". NPR.