Kanan Makiya was born in Baghdad but left Iraq to study architecture at MIT. In 1981, Makiya left his architecture practice and began to write a book about Iraq, Republic of Fear (1989), which became a best-seller after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. His next book, The Monument (1991), was an essay on the aesthetics of power and kitsch. Both Republic of Fear and The Monument were written under the pseudonym, Samir al-Khalil. The award-winning Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (1993), followed, and most recently he published The Rock: A Seventh Century Tale of Jerusalem (2002). Along with these books, Makiya has written for The Independent, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and The Times. Makiya has played a central role in Harvard's Iraq Research and Documentation Project, which has collected resources on and created a database about the rule of Iraq's Ba'ath Party. He is one of the influential Iraqi exiles who advocated the removal of Saddam's regime. He is currently an adviser to Iraq's Interim Governing Council and a member of the panel working on the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution.