BACKGROUND The environment for medical education in Iraq has been difficult for many years. The 2003 invasion of Iraq accelerated a steady emigration of faculty and graduates. Kidnappings and deaths of doctors became commonplace. To understand current career plans, expectations and perceptions of medical students, three Baghdad medical schools were surveyed. METHODS Written questionnaires wer...

O n 29 March 2011 Professor Mohammed Alwan, dean of AlMustansiriya Medical School in Baghdad and my uncle, was assassinated. A bomb was planted in his car and exploded as he got in after leaving his medical practice. He was a distinguished academic and surgeon who was respected by his students, and he was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Within a week, another clinical acad...

In 2004, the Lancet published results from a survey that estimated the death toll attributable to the conflict in Iraq until then at almost 100,000. Since that moment, the topic has been subject of a large debate among scientists. Besides this publication, four other surveys conducted in Iraq reported data on mortality due to the conflict. Although each one of these studies had its own specific...

Kirkuk Governorate has been a focal point of significant tensions in Iraq since the 2003 US-led intervention. Substantial oil reserves, strained relations between Kirkuk’s Arab, Kurdish, Turkoman and Chaldo-Assyrian communities, and the broader power struggle between Arabs and Kurds over Kirkuk’s future status place Kirkuk at the intersection of larger interests both inside and outside of the c...

The Red Queen’s notion “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place” has been applied within evolutionary biology, politics and economics. We find that a generalized version in which an adaptive Red Queen (e.g. insurgency) sporadically edges ahead of a Blue King (e.g. military), explains the progress curves for fatal insurgent attacks against the coalition military within ind...

What aspects of ingroup identification can lead people to resist justice for the victims of their ingroup’s mistreatment? In three studies carried out in the US and UK, in which participants read reports of mistreatment of prisoners and civilians by coalition troops in the Iraq war, ingroup glorification, but not ingroup attachment or other individualdifference variables, was a key predictor of...

The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory is a frequently used self-report measure of posttraumatic growth. It was adapted recently to a short form with preliminary evidence in support of its psychometric properties. The current survey study replicates evidence for the short form's factor structure, internal consistency reliability, and concurrent validity among a sample of 327 National Guard soldiers...