Colby’s Center for the Arts and Humanities, in collaboration with the Anthropology and Global Studies departments, recently hosted a faculty book celebration for Associate Professor Nadia El-Shaarawi’s new book, Collateral Damages: Tracing the Debts and Displacements of the Iraq War. The event featured a conversation between El-Shaarawi, an associate professor and associate chair of global studies, and Sarah Duff, associate professor and chair of history. They focused on the book’s decade-long research process and its commitment to documenting the experiences of Iraqi refugees.
El-Shaarawi introduced her background as a cultural and medical anthropologist specializing in transnational forced migration, humanitarian intervention, and mental health in the Middle East and North Africa. Initially interested in social theory of risk and addiction, El-Shaarawi’s political and personal experiences, including her involvement in the anti-war movement leading up to the Iraq War and post-9/11 Islamophobia, drew her to the region. She explained that her academic focus shifted significantly following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the ensuing refugee crisis, which resulted in the displacement of nearly five million Iraqis.
Duff initiated the conversation by asking about this foundational shift and the scope of the book: “I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about why Cairo, why the shift in topic, and maybe that’s also a good moment just to give everyone gathered here today just a sense of what your book is about, who you trace, and why.”
El-Shaarawi explained that her research evolved out of her direct engagement with refugees who were grappling with “urban displacement” and “uncertainty.” The resulting book, published in 2025, traces the experiences of Iraqis who initially sought safety in Cairo following the invasion and the subsequent civil war. Her work is a critique of the dominant narratives surrounding the Iraq War, which often obscure the long-term material and affective costs borne by Iraqis.
The book’s fieldwork spanned from 2007 to 2017, with core research conducted in 2009 and 2010. During this period, Iraqi refugees in Egypt were classified as urban refugees and granted prima facie status by the UN, a designation that acknowledges mass displacement without requiring individual status determination. However, this status came with significant constraints imposed by the Egyptian government. El-Shaarawi recounted that refugees were broadly prohibited from working, accessing public schools for their children, or using public healthcare, resulting in widespread economic precarity and a sense of enduring vulnerability.
This precarious state led to what El-Shaarawi terms a pervasive condition of “stuckness”; that is, the inability to return home, build a stable life in Egypt, or secure resettlement to a third country. According to El-Shaarawi, this environment created a setting where refugees were often disciplined into rigid categories required by the international humanitarian system to qualify for aid or resettlement.
The conversation addressed the complex power dynamics inherent in ethnographic research with displaced populations. Duff noted an observation from the book and asked: “I wonder if you could reflect on that wonderful comment as well about sort of the limits of what an ethnographer can do,” referencing the author’s comment that many individuals she approached had “no problem at all not talking” to her.
El-Shaarawi responded by stressing that many refugees, often highly educated professionals from a country with a sophisticated pre-war education system, did not consent to participation out of necessity, but from a place of agency and a genuine belief in the value of education and having their stories documented. She countered the notion that anthropologists should avoid research with refugees to prevent exploitation, arguing that such avoidance risks simplifying their identity to one of mere victimhood. She asserted that the ability of individuals to decline participation demonstrated their sustained autonomy and resistance to being fully defined by their displacement. The ethnography, she stated, values the interlocutors as “theorists” who actively interpret and resist external narratives.
According to El-Shaarawi, the central purpose of Collateral Damages is to construct an alternate archive of the Iraq War that moves beyond official records and Western-centric narratives. The book seeks to document the war’s aftermath through the eyes and voices of Iraqis, whom El-Shaarawi considers active historians.
She illustrated this through the case of Mazen, the brother of an Iraqi journalist killed by U.S. forces. While the incident was investigated by the U.S. military and ruled an “accident,” a finding Mazen and his family refuted, his primary focus became seeking accountability. Mazen and his family reconstructed the event through witness testimonies, insisting on telling the story of injustice and murder, a narrative that stood in contrast to the victim-focused account typically required for a successful resettlement application.
The family refused the small “condolence payment” offered by the U.S. forces, demanding a justification for the killing instead. Furthermore, Mazen took the rare step of refusing a resettlement offer to the United States. His case was eventually reprocessed by the UN, and he and his family were resettled in Canada. El-Shaarawi concluded that Mazen’s insistence on his own interpretation of the war, prioritizing the story of injustice over the story required for resettlement, inspired her to consider how the war could be recorded differently. El-Shaarawi ultimately asserted that a necessary “reckoning” with the Iraq War has yet to occur in the United States, and that the long-term displacements and debts of the intervention continue to shape lives in profound ways.
~ Stephen Owusu Badu `27
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