The Uneven Application of the ‘Civil War’ Label to Iraq

Abstract

Many scholars and policy practitioners believe that the US invasion of Iraq triggered a civil war. Several major scholarly data-sets, however, do not code a civil war, due to the challenge of coding multiple simultaneous patterns of violence. Further, many political actors have resisted the term, due to obvious political and public relations concerns. This paper analyses these discrepancies in the use of the label, arguing that, for scholars, the coding problem could limit or even bias models of civil war, while for policymakers, the failure to see Iraq’s civil war as such has contributed to major policy failures, from the Bush administration’s state of denial early in the war to the Obama administration’s withdrawal and the subsequent reescalation of violence.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Stewart S. Johnson, Robert Nyenhuis, the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.

Notes

1. See Figure 7 in Jones 2007, p. 34, for a map of Baghdad’s changed ethno-sectarian neighborhoods. Also see: http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml for similar maps.