Activists distribute books in Anbar’s first reading festival
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A group of activists are preparing to distribute free books across Ramadi, as the first Anbar Reading Festival kicks off on Friday with the aim of changing the narrative and increasing the circulation of books in the city liberated five years ago from Islamic State (ISIS).
Organised by volunteers from the Peace Forum in Ramadi, the book festival held in the grounds of the Anbar Youth Cultural Forum this weekend also hopes to show another side of the region, with an organiser telling Rudaw English that it is a chance to change the negative view of an area ravaged by conflict for the best part of two decades and, in a satisfyingly simplistic explanation, is “a festival to encourage reading by providing it for free.”
The capital of Anbar, Iraq’s largest province and Sunni-heartland, was occupied by Al Qaeda in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003. Following former prime minister al-Maliki’s decision to pull security forces out of the province in 2013, the city fell to ISIS in early 2014.
Eighteen months later, Ramadi was liberated in February 2016, although many former residents were unable to return until the summer of 2017 due to the scale of the damage inflicted by the war. In recent years, the reconstruction of the city has been lauded, and up to 80 percent of the population displaced by ISIS have since returned.
Activists are working hard to maintain this peace, and to change “the negative view of Anbar as a province of terrorists,” Nooraldeen Adel, 27, who grew up in Ramadi and is a key organiser of the festival, told Rudaw English.
“Anbar province faced several struggles, with the most recent one being the fight with Daesh [ISIS] which lasted from 2014 until 2017. This war led to the forming of a gap between Anbar province and other provinces, giving the province a negative image of housing terrorists,” Adel explained.
The festival has grown out of the city’s Peace Forum, where Adel volunteers alongside a team of around fifty, formed after the war with ISIS in order to work towards building peace in Anbar, and to reject ideas of violent extremism.
ISIS infamously burnt books, and in Anbar province their book-burning campaign destroyed more than 100,000 titles, according to local officials.
The symbolism is not lost on the festival. “Among the important tools to fight extremist ideologies is through spreading peaceful thoughts. Circulating cultural and artistic books is an important tool to spread peace,” Adel continued.
After ISIS’ control of the city ended, several libraries were established. “A woman called Ruqaia established an electronic library after the war immediately, which is considered the first electronic library,” he said.
The team of volunteers for Friday’s reading festival has since expanded to 160, and their requests for books from individuals, publishers and libraries has been a tremendous success. With the promise that all donated books will be distributed free of charge to attendees of the festival, they received over 5,000 books in a matter of days - not only from Ramadi, “but across Iraq.”
”Over 100 people of different religions and sects from outside of Anbar will join us and we expect the visitors from inside the province to reach 2,000 or 3,000 or more,” according to Adel.
Along with the books, the festival includes activities designed to “celebrate the diversity in Anbar and Iraq”, with artistic and cultural segments promoting messages of co-existence and respect.
Held in front of Ramadi’s al-Hak Mosque, Adel stressed how “people from several religions will be invited to attend the festival and convey the true picture of Anbar.”
The Peace Foundation will continue their efforts to confront extremist ideologies after the reading festival, and books remain a key tool. Historians mostly agree that the earliest known form of writing appeared in Mesopotamia over 5,000 years ago, in what is now present-day Iraq, and recent book festivals across Iraq have attracted huge crowds of keen readers.