Understanding the Role of Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi in Iraq's

POMEPS STUDIES 37 Challenges to the Middle East North Africa Inclusionary State February 2020 The Project on Middle East Political Science The Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) is a collaborative network that aims to increase the impact of political scientists specializing in the study of the Middle East in the public sphere and in the academic community . POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Henry Luce Foundation . For more information, see http://www .pomeps .org . This publication was made possible, in part, by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York . The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of each individual author . We would like to thank LAU and ISJCR for their generous support and for hosting our workshop . We also thank Ms . Maria El Sammak for coordinating all technical and logistic details pertaining to the workshop . 2 Contents Challenges to the Middle East North Africa Inclusionary State . 3 Understanding the role of al-Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq’s national and transnational political field . 5 By Toby Dodge Everyday security in Beirut’s southern suburbs: mapping the capacity and legitimacy of state and non-state actors . .13 By Jeroen Gunning and Dima Smaira Non-State Actors and Approaches to the Yemeni State . .. 18 By Stacey Philbrick Yadav Be careful what you wish for − The Multiple Strategies of De-Sectarianization . 22 By Morten Valbjørn Sovereignty, Biopolitics and De-Sectarianization in Divided Societies . 28 By Simon Mabon Civil society mobilization as a driving force in bridging the political divide and promoting reconciliation in postwar countries . 31 By Makram Ouaiss Inequality, Renteirism and the Roots of Lebanon’s October 2019 Uprising . 35 By Ala’a Shehabi Designing transitional justice: Problems of planning political & institutional change in volatile political contexts . 41 By Mariam Salehi Introduction Challenges to the Middle East North Africa Inclusionary State The challenges to inclusionary states in the MENA Deploying such a field-based conception of the state region are daunting indeed . Fiercely authoritarian allows for a coherent incorporation of non-state and states prioritize retaining power over building a more transnational actors into the political-institutional field . legitimate, durable or inclusive order . The reality or threat It also underscores the agency of these actors against of political violence hangs over fragmented arenas, with simplistic accounts that caricature them as mere proxies states themselves up for grabs and in some cases deeply of external regional patrons . As Toby Dodge puts it in his interpenetrated with armed militias and transnational contribution to this volume, “the outcome of this national actors . Protest movements repeatedly attempt to force and transnational struggle in Iraq is a political field whose meaningful reforms on to recalcitrant political elites, to boundaries have been broken and stretched well beyond little avail . In September 2019, POMEPS and the Lebanese the territory and population of the country itself ”. Jeroen American University (LAU) brought together a diverse, Gunning and Dima Smaira broaden this perspective to interdisciplinary group of scholars to discuss the challenges show how “state actors may have to compete or cooperate to building more inclusive orders under these conditions . in complex hybrid assemblages with ANSAs (Armed The discussions revolved around several key issues . Non-State Actors) who may be regarded as equally or more legitimate and more effective ”. Or, as Stacey Philbrick First, how should we revise our theoretical understanding Yadav puts it, “The nature and function of non-state of the state when it is so thoroughly penetrated by actors was not constructed by these actors as conceptually clientalist networks, armed groups, financial predators, or autonomous from the state but rather as intimately tied sectarian actors? Which ‘state’ are we talking about when to its past and future performance of key functions ”. Thus, we examine post-uprising dynamics in societies divided non-state actors which look functionally similar on the along sectarian, ethnic, or tribal and regional lines? How surface in fact have very different relations with the state is this state imbricated in society, and when does it matter and make very different demands through their political for the organization of political life? Against the Weberian action . These dynamics link state and non-state actors in ideal of the autonomous state possessing a monopoly over different but recursive ways . the use of legitimate violence, several authors drew on the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu to encourage This reconceptualization helps to explain the perverse thinking in terms of a contest over political fields which consequences of many well-intentioned policy proposals . incorporated state and non-state actors engaged in a In the area of security sector reform, for instance, common political endeavor . On this view, then, the Dodge notes that “policy prescriptions that have been state is perceived as a field in which both national and shaped by this Weberian model, in an attempt to secure transnational actors compete . In Iraq, for instance, Toby security sector reform or post-conflict demobilization, Dodge shows how Shi’a militias of various denominations disarmament and reintegration, have found their approach exist both within and outside of the state . In Lebanon, at odds with empirical reality and have hence failed to Jeroen Gunning and Dima Smaira show that “militias” can realise their goals ”. Postwar Lebanon was an early example at times provide greater security than the official agents of dynamics now underway in Iraq . Morten Valbjorn of the state, throwing into question basic assumptions of shows in his essay how “a shared ambition of challenging the advantages of state orders . This means, they suggest, sectarianism can translate into very different kinds of that “we need a framework that does not presuppose a top-down and bottom-up strategies, some of which are Weberian state and can accommodate varying hybrid burdened with their own problems or dilemmas, raising security assemblages involving state and nonstate actors, the question whether the cure is always better than the including linkages with transnational (non)state actors ”. disease ”. There are important practical lessons in his essay 3 to groups in Lebanon and Iraq challenging sectarianism, These interactions across the political field crossing state and the inevitable limits of these challenges . Mariam and society have a particular resonance in the domain Salehi, in her essay, shows how the pursuit of transitional of sectarianism and attempts at de-sectarianization . justice can produce unintended negative consequences Deploying the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, even as the goals are widely embraced . Even reconciliation, Simon Mabon conceputalizes this dynamic in terms a process now assumed standard in post-transition or of biopolitics, using the case of Bahrain to show how postwar contexts, is deployed differently in different “biopolitical machinery designed to regulate life and political contexts . prevent the emergence of cross-sectarian unity . targets Shi’a groups using all aspects of sovereign power ”. De- The interaction of state and non-state actors can be seen sectarianization is unlikely where the cultivation of well beyond the most obvious area of armed militias . As sect-based difference is a key component of sovereign Makram Ouaiss argues, the process of armed conflict can power, given that cross sectarian co-operation is typically shape the very nature of civil society and its ability to effect seen as “the biggest internal threat to regime survival ”. change . Reflecting on Lebanon’s civil war, he observes that Valbjorn similarly warns that calls to reduce the salience “where the violence drives a mass exodus of moderate of sectarianism must account for how that might threaten educated elites, who used to or could play a tempering the power and interests which sectarianism reinforces, and role in a post-conflict environment, their departure leaves produce destructive effects far from the intentions of its the landscape to the more militant or embattled as well as advocates . powerless members of society further delaying the ability of civil society to recruit active and influential members of Taken together, then, this collection of essays points society ”. Civil society, then, cannot be considered separately towards novel ways of reconceptualizing state and non- from the state, when they are in fact both constituent parts state actors in today’s Middle East, across different fields of a political field not defined by the exclusive authority and levels . “Thinking with Bourdieu’s toolbox,” as Dodge of state actors . Nor can these be separated from the puts it, opens up an approach to the political field in which political economy within which both are embedded . As state militaries and non-state militias compete for similar Alaa Shehabi demonstrates in Lebanon, the rentier and modes of legitimation, and in which civil society, sectarian clientalist patterns of economic policy both depend upon actors and the state evolve together but recursively . Such and reinforce the sectarian status quo in ways which make an approach might offer

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