University of Mississippi eGrove Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors Theses Honors College) Spring 4-30-2021 More Than Sectarianism: How have state and non-state institutions used violence to form the current Iraqi state and what is the effect? Caitlyn Perkins Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis Part of the Arabic Language and Literature Commons, Arabic Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, Islamic Studies Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, and the Political History Commons Recommended Citation Perkins, Caitlyn, "More Than Sectarianism: How have state and non-state institutions used violence to form the current Iraqi state and what is the effect?" (2021). Honors Theses. 1935. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1935 This Undergraduate Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College) at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MORE THAN SECTARIANISM: HOW HAVE STATE AND NON-STATE INSTITUTIONS USED VIOLENCE TO FORM THE CURRENT IRAQI STATE AND WHAT IS THE EFFECT? By Caitlyn Perkins A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Mississippi in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College. Oxford, MS May 2021 Approved By: _____________________________ Advisor: Professor Ashleen Williams ______________________________ Reader: Dr. John Winkle ______________________________ Reader: Dr. Charles Joukhadar 2021 Caitlyn Perkins ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College for being a part of my life for the last four years. I would first like to acknowledge Professor Ashleen Williams. She ignited the spark within me to pursue more knowledge on Iraq in the first class I ever took with her. This thesis would not have been possible without her encouragement, expertise, and friendship. I will carry her teachings with me forever. Next, I want to thank my friends. Their support, humor, and invitations to take breaks allowed me to never get discouraged throughout this process. Thank you all. 3 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the role of violence in Iraq in establishing the current Iraqi state. My chapters provide historical and theoretical context to the subject before getting into the analysis. The goal of this thesis is to show that violence in Iraq is not only caused by sectarian differences, but has been used and influenced by leaders, outside governments, and non-state institutions for personal gain and political goals at the cost of the Iraqi people. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Historic Background 13 Chapter 2: Economic Sanctions 25 Chapter 3: Return to Faith Campaign 37 Chapter 4: Media Violence 44 Chapter 5: Conclusion 53 5 Introduction Background/Research Question: In order to understand Iraq today, it is important to look back on its history and the major role that violence has played in the formation of the state. Throughout history, and in more recent events such as the United Nations sanctions in the 1990s, Saddam Hussein’s Return to Faith Campaign, and the actions of Iraqi media, the state of Iraq and its people have been subjected to extreme violence. Violence in Iraq continually delegitimizes the government, weakens the economy, and warps the ability to have an Iraqi national identity. The actions of internal and external powers have created violence and greatly influenced its role in the country. Iraq’s problems have been attributed to sectarian divisions for a long time. While these divisions have contributed to the current state, this is an oversimplified argument. Violence will continue to shape Iraq until the international community understands that the problem is not due sectarian divides, and the Iraqi government gains public confidence through legitimate, internal reforms. Exploring socioeconomic tensions, religious identities, the media, and global issues that affect the country such as international power dynamics and the effects of orientalism through the lens of violence will shed new light on problems and solutions regarding the Iraqi state. As I dive into each chapter’s event, I hope to show how different types of violence in Iraq are intrinsically intertwined with the state and non-state institutions and how it has affected the country and the government’s legitimacy. In addition to this, I will explore how Iraq’s challenges are deeper than sectarianism. 6 Data and Methodology: In order to research this question, I mainly used qualitative methods of research. For primary sources, I found previously conducted interviews with government officials and Iraqi citizens. I used these to better understand the public’s feelings towards different events. It helped me gain a better perspective on the problems facing Iraq, rather than just looking at them from the outside, American lens. Additionally, I read books and news reports written by Iraqis who lived through the specific events that I researched along with official government documents. These also contributed to having a less Americanized view of things. For my secondary sources I referenced many books, articles from academic journals, and credible news reports from other countries. By reading theoretical discussions on violence, I better framed my research around the current ideas of violence that are discussed in academia. I searched for biographies of Saddam Hussein to better understand his policies and way of governing. This helped me form my own opinions about his rule and reasoning so that I could apply the knowledge to the bigger picture of Iraq’s problems. For my quantitative sources, I looked at official statistics from governments and NGOs for data on child mortality rates, rates of inflation and unemployment, and the religious and ethnic makeup of Iraq. I used this information as concrete evidence of the negative effects of the events I covered. This mixture of sources and methods greatly increased the credibility of my research by basing my findings and analysis on facts. Challenges: Although Iraq continually feels the effects of sectarian division and its impact on daily life, I wanted to make sure that I did not look at everything through a sectarian lens or orientalist lens. This is because one of my main goals of this thesis was to prove that Iraq’s problem with violence stems from more than just sectarian divisions. Additionally, too often academic work 7 from Western researchers on these topics is created with a sectarian lens. As a student studying the Middle East, I wanted to do my due diligence of avoiding this cliched analysis in order to accurately and respectfully conduct my research. This was a difficult responsibility, but I wanted to undertake it because it could negatively influence my research by generalizing and blaming all of Iraq’s problems on its sectarian divides, which is not factual. It was also important to not assume that insurgent violence was the primary cause of insecurity and all other forms of security would follow its resolution, which is why I am not focusing greatly on Islamic State or al-Qaeda. With that assumption, I would overlook the roles that legitimate governments play in carrying out violence. Additionally, I purposely did not discuss the violence that the Kurds, Yazidis, and other minority groups in Iraq have been subjected to. I chose to do this because while each group has been exposed to so much violence, I could not cover it all in full in this undergraduate thesis. Their experiences still very much matter and contribute to the current state of Iraq. If I ever expand on this research, I would like to do it in a way that includes these groups. Definitions: A common factor throughout almost every academic source that theoretically discusses violence is the concept of “us versus them.” This notion is presented in a variety of ways, but the theoretical reasoning for violence is almost always referred back to it. Along with this, violence is usually divided and studied in three categories that were originally defined by Johan Galtung. The categories are personal (direct), structural (indirect), and cultural (symbolic). The types of violence exist in a flow relationship. While they can exist on their own, most of the time they form a causal flow from cultural via structural to direct violence.1 1Galtung, Johan. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 27, No. 3. (Aug., 1990), pp. 291-305. https://www.galtung-institut.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Cultural-Violence-Galtung.pdf 8 The types of violence that I cover are political, economic, religious, and cultural. Each of these come with direct, indirect, and symbolic characteristics. With these, I hope to show that violence is not just a physical action, but a way to systematically control and oppress a population by state and non-state actors. While researching and analyzing violence, there are two problems to look at: the use of violence and the legitimation of that use. Christina Perez defines political violence as a type of violence aimed to get political influence that is motivated to seek power or to maintain its prevalent structures.2 Here, the notion of political violence will be understood as the violence directly and purposefully administered in the name of a political ideology, movement, or state. This can be the physical repression of dissent by the state or outside government as well as its converse, which is the popular armed struggle against a repressive regime. Nitasha Kaul’s definition of economic violence states that it is “not only the violence caused for economic reasons, but also the violence caused by spurious economics. It is the violence caused to people when they lose their jobs and livelihoods, when they witness massively divergent rewards for work, when they see an endless perpetuation of inequality around them.3” She argues that such involuntary unemployment in the long run leads to social breakdown and community fragmentation.