The battle for Iraq: Islamic insurgencies in comparative perspective

Abstract

This article constructs a model of three types, or clusters, of Muslim insurgency over the past two centuries. It analyses how each cluster shares a common ideological formulation, impetus, leadership type, propensity for violence, organisational structure and level of durability. Examples from each of the three clusters are briefly examined and compared on these criteria. The article then examines Iraq's insurgency (more correctly, insurgencies) from mid-2003 to the present in light of the models to suggest how the insurgency ‘fits in’ with other insurgencies in the Muslim world. Understanding its characteristics in light of the models sheds light on how durable the insurgency may be. The most durable insurgencies have been ones in which the mantles of nation and Islam are successfully fused.

Notes

1 After surveying nearly 2000 houses in Iraq, Johns Hopkins University researchers concluded that about 600 000 Iraqi civilians have died violently as a result of the war through July 2006. New York Times, 11 October 2006. This figure is significantly higher than the roughly 30 000 – 50 000 dead normally cited, including by the Brookings database on Iraq.

2 L Bilmes & JE Stiglitz, ‘The economic costs of the Iraq war: an appraisal three years after the beginning of the conflict’, paper presented at the assa meetings, Boston, MA, January 2006.

3 For the full 13-volume study and related documents, see the United States Department of State, The Future of Iraq Project, Washington, DC: US Department of State, 2006, at http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/index.htm#1.

4 There is a growing literature on how the US bungled the aftermath of its overthrow of Saddam Hussain, including TE Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, New York: Penguin, 2006; and PW Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. A more journalistic approach that reaches the same conclusions can be found in Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

5 Ironically, living in exile in Damascus in 1860 after having been imprisoned in France, ‘Abd al-Qadir personally intervened to stave off a potential massacre of thousands of Christians, including the French Consul, there, for which he was honoured by France.

6 The full text in English can be found at http://meastpolitics.wordpress.com/files/2006/09/speech.pdf# search=%22Nasrallah%20September%20speech%22.

7 For a detailed discussion of Hamas's ideology and its cultural frames, see Glenn E Robinson, ‘Hamas as social movement’, in Quintan Wiktorowicz (ed), Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004.

8 The phrase comes from John Arquilla. For a comprehensive discussion of the history of the struggle to define Iraq and create a unifying national narrative for the erstwhile British mandate, see E Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.

9 All data in this section come from The Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index, found at http://www.brookings.edu/iraqindex.