POMEPS STUDIES 35 Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq October 2019 Contents Introduction: Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq................................................................................…2 Marc Lynch and David Siddhartha Patel Te State Under Sanctions War, Bureaucracy, and Controlling Religion in Saddam’s Iraq…...................................................................6 Samuel Helfont, Naval Postgraduate School Sex Crimes and Punishment in Baghdad…......................................................................................................10 Alissa Walter, Seattle Pacific University Sectarianism, Religious Actors, and the State Institutionalizing Exclusion: De-Ba‘thification in post-2003 Iraq…...........................................................17 Shamiran Mako, Boston University Ayatollah Sistani: Much More than a “Guide” for Iraqis…...........................................................................22 Caroleen Sayej, Connecticut College Reimagining the Hawza and the State…............................................................................................................29 Marsin Alshamary, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Siting the State: Intersections of space, religion, and political economy in Baghdad…..........................33 Omar Sirri, University of Toronto Muhasasa Ta’ifiya and its Others: Domination and contestation in Iraq’s political field…....................38 Toby Dodge, London School of Economics Te Diminishing Relevance of the Sunni-Shi‘a Divide…...............................................................................47 Fanar Haddad, National University of Singapore ISIS, Violence, and Legacies Understanding Displacement Decisions During Rebel Governance: Evidence from Mosul, Iraq.......55 Mara Redlich Revkin, Yale University Achieving a Durable Peace by Reforming Post-ISIS Justice Mechanisms in Iraq................................…63 Nussaibah Younis, European Institute of Peace Genocidal Rape and Community Cohesion: Te Case of Yezidis…............................................................68 Tutku Ayhan, University of Central Florida Seeing Beyond Ethnosectarianism Violence in Iraq: Some Methodological and Historiographical Questions…...........................................73 Sara Pursley, New York University Cultural Antecedents of the Leftist-Sadrist Alliance: A case study of Sadrist institution building…..79 Benedict Robin-D’Cruz, University of Edinburgh Feminist Activisms in Post-Da’esh Iraq….........................................................................................................85 Zahra Ali, Rutgers University Te Project on Middle East Political Science Te 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. 2 INTRODUCTION Introduction: Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq Marc Lynch and David Siddhartha Patel Iraq was long neglected by Middle East political emerged writing about their own country’s politics and scientists, rarely treated as a comparative case for studies society. of democratization or social mobilization and generally viewed as an exceptional outlier case in studies of Tis has led to a rethinking of the relationships among authoritarianism. Islamist movements in Iraq received religion, violence, and the Iraqi state before and after little attention, despite the participation of a Muslim 2003. How much control did the Ba‘th regime have Brotherhood-affiliated party in government as well as over society immediately before the invasion, and what the fascinating array of Shi‘i Islamist movements and role did violence play in that control? In what ways did parties that have competed in elections and governed the regime’s Faith Campaign in the 1990s influence the the country since 2005. Te neglect of Iraq had many post-invasion prominence of religious actors? Why did causes. Prior to 2003, Saddam Hussein’s security state sectarian politics and violence become so pronounced offered little access to researchers of any kind, while soon after the invasion yet later ebb? Finally, what the intense violence and insecurity in the decade after dynamics within Iraq are missed by looking at the his overthrow deterred most scholars who were not country through a lens that prioritizes sectarianism? embedded with coalition authorities or the U.S. military. Political opposition to the invasion and occupation In April 2019, POMEPS and the Crown Center for of Iraq may also have led scholars to avoid research Middle East Studies at Brandeis University brought which they thought might somehow vindicate the Bush together almost two dozen scholars to discuss these administration’s calls for democratization through and other topics. Te authors come from different regime change. disciplines – political science, history, sociology, and urban studies – and employ a range of methodologies In recent years, however, the study of Iraq has undergone and sources of data. All of the authors have conducted a quiet renaissance. Iraq has become comparatively research either in Iraq or in the Ba‘th Party Records at safer and more open to academic research than in the the Hoover Institution or both. Te 14 papers in this past, while other Arab countries have become closed collection exemplify the ways in which scholars are using to researchers or less safe. New outrages since the 2011 new perspectives, data, and sources to offer insights into Arab Uprisings, such as the debates over intervention in religion, violence, and the state in Iraq’s past, present, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, have perhaps eased the unique and future. stigma surrounding the post-2003 Iraqi project, while a younger generation of scholars may be less shaped by Te state under sanctions the politics of that moment. Te failed states and civil wars of the post-2011 period arguably have made Iraq Understandings of Iraqi politics were long shaped by an “less unique,” with its experience now viewed as offering iconic 1989 book by Kanan Makiya which described Iraq valuable comparative perspective. Te opening of the under Saddam as a totalitarian state built on violence: Ba‘ath Party archives to researchers, while problematic Republic of Fear. Te implication was that the Iraqi state in some ways, has created the possibility for genuinely penetrated and controlled virtually every aspect of life unique archival study of the inner workings of an Arab through pervasive surveillance and brutal punishments. autocracy. And a generation of young Iraqi scholars has Te millions of pages in the Ba‘th records captured and 2 INTRODUCTION made available to scholars after the 2003 invasion has bodies, are often seen as entrenching sectarianism allowed a significant rethinking of the extent to which and ensuring a leading role for religious actors. In this the Ba‘thist regime had been capable of exercising this collection, Shamiran Mako pays particular attention level of control. Recent books by Lisa Blaydes, Aaron to the consequences of the Coalition Provisional Faust, Dina Khoury, Joseph Sassoon, and others have Authority’s institutionalization of patterns of exclusion carefully explored the limits of the Iraqi state’s reach, and ethnic dominance through its creation of the showing how the exigencies of the Iran-Iraq war in the de-Ba‘thification Commission, which she argues was 1980s and the international sanctions that were placed used as a vehicle for the exclusion of Sunni Arabs from on Iraq beginning in 1990 changed how the country was public life rather than as one for democratization and governed. reconciliation. Several authors in this collection draw on these sources Several contributors to this collection examine how the to explore continuity and change in the 35 years the Shi‘i clergy responded to these changes. Caroleen Sayej party ruled. Samuel Helfont emphasizes how powerful describes how Grand Ayatollah Sistani pushed back taboos within the Ba‘thist bureaucracy – originally against this trend, rejecting sectarianism and pushing rooted in the party’s Arab nationalist ideology – against for an inclusive Iraqi national identity. She emphasizes distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi‘a transformed his commitment to serve as a guide and moral compass policies initially directed at specific groups of Iraqis for Iraq. Marsin Alshamary’s interviews with Shi‘i clerics into larger projects encompassing all of Iraq’s religious about the relationship between religion and state reflect landscape. Te state, in this account, was compelled the impact of Sistani’s position but also the desire of to intrude into Sunni circles when the initial target the religious establishment to protect itself from the were Shi‘a and vice versa. In contrast, Alissa Walter Iraqi state. Te management of Baghdad’s al-Rahman uses the escalating criminalization of sex work in the Mosque, whose construction began as part of the Faith 1990s to discuss how low-ranking individuals in the Campaign, reflects how private actors – in this case a security and legal system could exercise discretion religious party linked to a Shi‘i cleric – came to control, in the application of mandated punishments.