Demobilization Minus Disarmament and Reintegration: Iraq’s Security Sector from the US Invasion to the Covid-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

This article argues that ethno-sectarian exclusion undermined the post-invasion attempts at security sector reform (SSR) in Iraq by the US and successive local governments. While corruption, poor management, improper training, and lack of equipment contributed to the collapse of the Iraqi military in the face of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria invasion in 2014, this article primarily examines how the exclusion of Arab and Turkmen Sunnis from the new security sector resulted in this failure. This event led to the rise of militias in Iraq, complicating SSR, but emerging as a de-facto strategy in maintaining domestic security.

KEYWORDS:

• Iraq
• ISIS
• civil war
• militias
• security sector reform
• Covid-19

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Ibrahim Al-Marashi

Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an Associate Professor of history at California State University San Marcos and visiting professor at the IE University School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, Spain. He is co-author of Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008), The Modern History of Iraq, with Phebe Marr (Routledge 2017), and A Concise History of the Middle East (Routledge, 2018).