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Mar 18 • 15 tweets • 9 min read
A personal #thread on the #IraqWar and how it changed my career path:

It was 10:16 pm on March 19, 2003, I threw a bag of chips at the television in disbelief: Watching from my student apartment in New Haven, the invasion had just been announced on television. /1
My 🇳🇴 and 🇭🇷 room mates were looking at me a bit bewildered. Yet for months, a friend of mine @YaleLawSch with extensive experience in the Middle East kept telling me that the 🇺🇸 government would invade. I did not believe her. She had been right. /2
I was spending a year at @Yale studying international relations and security, the most intellectually rewarding time I’ve ever experienced.
Or listening to former NSA director, William Odom, talk about devouring foreign literature to better understand hearts and minds as a young army intelligence officer during the Cold War and why this war was wrong. smh.com.au/world/a-cold-w…
Yet the mood on campus seemed numb to war. Every day, I walked through the Memorial Rotunda’s marble inscriptions list of fallen Yale graduates. Very few students in 2003 would be fighting in Iraq, even though this war was launched by one of the university’s graduates.
Years later, when studying at @Georgetown, I would meet 🇺🇸 soldiers fighting in this war. I will never forget their stories, their distrust of politicians, and how much they despised to #AbuGhraib and torture as a stain on America’s ideals.
The Iraq invasion of 2003 had another effect on me. It profoundly disrupted my belief in the Washington, DC think tank world I had wanted to be part of until then.

middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-war-…
Many years later, I went to Iraq with @SavetheChildren, and met the women and children of Mosul whose entire city had been flattened in the fight against ISIS, some of the same armchair analysts from 2003 where still making policy recommendations from thousands of miles away.
I spent the summer of 2003 working in refugee camps and it set the course for my next 20 years in development and humanitarian work. And the years working with those affected by war convinced me that they should inform our governments’ policies more than anyone else. /END
@threadreaderapp unroll please
Don’t miss the @BBCWorld History Hour on “The invasion of Iraq” - @maxpearsonbbc presents voices of Iraqis, @yasirdhan, speaks with former @BBCWorld Iraq correspondent, @carolinehawley and others.

bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3…
And also this @Reuters podcast with @iron_emu and @kimvinnell 👇🏽
And two episodes of @RoryStewartUK and @campbellclaret 👇🏽
And if you have not yet watched the stunning @BAFTA-winning @KEOfilms 2020 documentary “Once Upon A Time In Iraq”, do so now! pbs.org/wgbh/frontline… via @BBCWorld @frontlinepbs
It is one of the best I’ve seen! 👇🏽

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More from @bnashat

Bidjan Nashat Profile picture
Dec 18, 2022
“Were these monuments built for Germans to collectively remember what had been done, or a performance of contrition for the rest of the world?”

Fascinating @TheAtlantic essay by @ClintSmithIII on 🇩🇪 remembrance and lessons for the 🇺🇸 #slavery #Reparations
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
I grew up around many of these monuments in Berlin and followed the debates since I was a child. And I believe that #Stolpersteine are among the most effective ways to remember, because they are immediate, personal, and created and maintained by civic action.
“Dear father! I am saying goodbye to you before I die. We would so love to live, but they won’t let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death, because the small children are thrown alive into the pit. Goodbye forever. I kiss you tenderly.”

Judith, 12, Belarus, 1942
Read 12 tweets
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Dec 13, 2022
A #thread on #RetrogradeFilm, the @natgeodocs #Oscar2023 contender documentary by @MattHeineman, produced by my friend @baktashahadi and available on @DisneyPlus and @hulu /1
It's been called "a triumph of access & unbelievable bravery" (@TheWrap), yet it is about much more than the 🇺🇸 withdrawal from 🇦🇫 through the eyes of an Afghan general, @SayedSamiSadat.

It's a story about #leadership, #strategy, #friendship, #war, & our need for #support. /2
1⃣ #Leadership: I watched a case study of a leader (@SayedSamiSadat) facing overwhelming adversity but communicating optimism in the face of danger and constant onslaught from the enemy (and his superiors). How do you Iead in the face of growing certainty of military defeat? /3
Read 8 tweets
Bidjan Nashat Profile picture
Oct 23, 2022
Which movie🎥or📺show made you:

1⃣ Learn more about an important historic event?
2⃣ Reminded you of the topic’s relevance for today?

A #Thread on #Argentina1985” & an inspiring @hiltonfound & @devex workshop in LA with #Hollywood studio execs & humanitarian CEOs #HiltonPrize.
Yesterday, I watched #Argentina1985, a gripping movie🎥 about the most ambitious trial against a fascist coup & human rights violations in Latin American history, produced & directed by @SantiagoMitre and written by Mitre and Mariano Llinás. It stars Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani. Image
The entire time watching, I was thinking about it’s relevance for today’s challenges with preventing and prosecuting coups, and human rights violations while one part of your society openly sympathizes with the perpetrators.
Read 13 tweets
Bidjan Nashat Profile picture
Sep 24, 2022
How can organizations learn from mistakes and develop a learning culture?

A few observations based on my experience over the last 15 years at @WorldBank and other large organizations and some inspiration from @AmyCEdmondson’s research at @HarvardHBS. /1
More than a decade ago, I worked at the @WorldBank on using independent #evaluation results to inform future #strategy and #management decisions.

A big part of my job was to rethink & redesign the way staff & managers interact and respond to receiving evaluation results. /2
My fascination with this topic came from my graduate studies @thehertieschool & my 🎓 thesis on learning from evaluations @UNODC. I studied the literature & developed a framework. In my field work, I interviewed dozens of senior staff over months working there in 2006. /3
Read 11 tweets
Bidjan Nashat Profile picture
Jun 5, 2022
"The 🇯🇴 soldiers welcomed us at the border to sent us toward the camps. I told him 'wait a minute, I want to have a last look at Syria.'"
Listening to @lysedoucet & @LoraElwen report on the 10th anniversary of @ZaatariCamp and it brought back memories bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3… /1
Memories of spending close to a decade working with @SavetheChildren for children and families affected by conflict in #Syria, #Iraq, #Somalia, #Myanmar, #Palestine, and many other places. And losing #cynicism, finding #purpose, and changing my perspective on conflict and war. /2
In 2011, I was sitting in an air conditioned office at @WorldBank in Washington DC. I thought I had landed my dream job. But instead I had tasted #bureaucracy, #hierarchy and the #cynicism of organizational politics. If you had met the 2011 version of myself, you would agree. /3
Read 11 tweets
Bidjan Nashat Profile picture
Aug 16, 2020
A #THREAD on #refugee and #migrant #fiction, #storytelling and reality: I finished reading #AmericanDirt by @jeaninecummins and it touched me. And I read some of the criticism and can empathise with the fact that voices from Latino writers struggle to be heard. /1 Image
But it strikes me as a typical "AND" rather than a "BUT" argument. In my work with @save_children I've met and listened to the stories of so many refugees and their children in the last ten years in many different countries. /2
Most of them want their story to be heard and told, by anyone who is listening. In our work, we try to give children and their families a voice. /3
Read 14 tweets

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