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Iraq & Syria - Coggle Diagram

- - - - 19th century Ottoman state reformation w more rational bureaucracy, centralisation, organisation etc. e.g. taxes
        
        e.g. 1958 private ownership of state agricultural land codified and legalisaed
        
        1908 Ottoman revolution replacing Abdulhamis II with constitutional YT government
      - December 1918: SA General Smuts proposed the Mandates System
        
        adopted & extended in the drafting of the Covenant of the League of Nations
      - Wilson's liberalism spreading, idea of self-determination, US economy control requiring free global capitalism
      - Clemenceau not massive on colonies but lost Presidency in 1920
      - 1916: British encouraged uprising against Ottoman Empire by Sharif Husayn (of Mecca), with his son Faysal in charge of the army
        
        extended authority over Homs, Hamah and Aleppo and in 1918 was head of a 'rudimentary Arab state' (Neep)
        
        Faysal did not acquiesce to French demands to demobilise and recognise Mandate so marched on and won back Damascus on 25th July 1920, Faysal -> Baghdad
      - 1939: 'Alawi State & the Jabal Druze detached from Syria
        
        1942: both reunited w Syria
      - 1919: General Gourard appointed first HC of Syria and Lebanon
      - 1921: Services des Renseignements founded
      - 1925 Great Syrian Revolt began in the Jabal Druze
        
        1919: Salih al-Ali and 'Alawis rebellion in NW mountains
        
        1922: Sultan al-Atrash's guerilla bands in Druze Mountain
        
        3 day bombardment of Damascus
      - officials on the ground v independent and authoritative
      - start of Mandate, French army in Levant: 70,000, 1924: 15,000
      - Troupes Speciales formed of minority communities e.g. Armenians, 'Alawis, Circassians
      - socio-spatial engineering that eventually solved the rebellion issue
      - Sultan al-Atrash
    - - Daniel Neep (Occupying Syria under the French Mandate)
        
        Ottoman organisation reform bringing a 'new foci for identity (the nation, the municipality) and new frameworks for thought (secularism, science and religious reformism)'
        
        'The Mandates system... became not just a tool of the incipient international community to engineer global peace, but also a technique for refashioning old colonial possessions into new polities more appropriate to the zeitgeist of Wilsonian international liberalism'
        
        'in his speeches of 1918, Wilson had made it clear that the US commitment to joining the war was conditional upon Europe's acceptance of the principle of self-determination'
        
        Wilson at 1919 Paris Peace Conference: ''we are done with the annexations of helpless peoples meant by some powers to be used merely for exploitation'
        
        French not such fans of the mandate system because 'in the immediate post-war period, the Mandates system was seen as a potential Trojan horse for Anglo-Saxon influence in French-controlled territory and thus viewed with some suspicion'
        
        Clemenceau's 'loss of the presidency in 1920 opened the door for the colonial lobby (le parti colonial)
        
        'Despite French acquiescence to the new rules, colonial policy in the Mandates of Syria and Lebanon was rather less 'Wilsonian' and rather more interventionist than it was in the British Mandates of Palestine and Mesopotamia'
        
        identifies 3 factors for France's 'special interest in Syria and Lebanon': 'religious protector of Catholics in the Middle East'; 'economic' having 'held a majority state in the Ottoman Public Debt' and 'strategic' defense against possible spread of Arab nationalism from east to west
        
        'Although ultimately unsuccessful, Ottoman efforts to pacify, civilise and modernise these unruly fringes drew on the same body of practices used by France and Britain in their colonial possessions such as Algeria and Egypt'
        
        'the expectation that the state practically could and normatively should shape society was evident from the earliest days of the French Mandate'
        
        divided Mandate into 'mini-states and special administrative units with autonomous or semi-autonomous status' and Druze and 'Alawis (as concentrated) 'granted administrative autonomy in an attempt to induce a strain of separatism that would divorce them from their more nationalist Sunni Arab neighbours'
        
        'there was at first an unclear, overlapping distinction between military and civilian rule'
        
        'weapon' of 'science of ethnography'
        
        SR founded because 'a more indirect kind of administrator was required, one more in keeping with bore the political spirit of the Mandate and the financial limitations of post-war France'
        
        'the behaviour of Captaine Grabriel Carbillet, the authoritarian governor of the Jabal Druze, was so exreme that in 1925 it provoked a major uprising that soon spread to the rest of the country. This resulted in a large-scale rebellion that threatened French control of much of Syria'
        
        in response to 1925 revolt, 'the bombing of Damascus caused a scandal in the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, though this was less due to disgust at the needless killing of Syrian civilians than to the outrage that the resident community of diplomats had not been warned to evacuate the city prior to its bombardment'
        
        'During the winter months of 1925-26, Damascus was surrounded by a sea of rebels and effectively cut off from the outside world'
      - Michael Provence (The Great Syrian Revolt)
        
        'while Sultan al-Atrash was a rural shaykh from a rebellious minority sect, he had also become a Syrian nationalist'
        
        'the Druze had experienced many rebellions against the Ottoman government and his call to revolt was not widely popular. Sultan al-Atrash hoped to spark a wider revolt that would provide the Druze with the greater autonomy that they had managed to wrest from the Ottoman state'
        
        'Hourani's description of Ottoman provincial society emphasized three social groups, the State, the Notables, and, by implication, the ra'iya or state subjects'
        
        'Arab nationalism was understood as the ideology of a tiny elite' and 'few scholars explained how an elite ideology of intellectuals and wealthy landowners had suddenly burst forth in 1920 to fill the streets of Damascus with ordinary people protesting for national rights and an end to European occupation'
        
        'Military and bureaucratic reform and the idea of Ottoman patriotism went together'
        
        'Rural rebellions were suppressed with military force, and urban schools were built to educate and indoctrinate subjects in the benefits of the Ottoman system'
        
        'a template for later revolts, such as the revolt in Palestine in 1936'
        
        'its leaders were not members of the great landowning notable families who sought to become national leaders in an incremental process of negotiation with the French' ao 'it was a decisive breakdown of the elite-dominated system of the 'politics of notables'
        
        'involvement in the revolt became a signifier of nationalist commitment' and many future politicians who were in fact not involved later claimed to be
        
        'French mandate authorities failed to comprehend the significance of the relationships and the connections among regions, classed and sectarian groups in Syria. They sought to divide and govern mandate Syria along a series of supposedly timeless sectarian and geographical dimensions. Jabal Hawran was one such division'
        
        ! 'The Syrian nationalist narrative has been codified, and there is little space in it for heroic narratives that compete with the dominant narrative of the late President Hafiz al-Asad and the Baath Party'
        
        in 1970s, 'Syria's military and then its government became the preserve of members of another formerly isolated rural sectarian minority, which had played no major role in the Great Revolt. The national narrative that privileged Damascus and the Druze was replaced by a narrative that included many revolts'
        
        'The Syrian revolt was a catalyst for the formation of popular notions of Syrian-Arab identity'
        
        'the way one conceives or imagines the community differs from person to person. But it is the common notion of membership that is important, not the common understanding of what membership means'- this is a mega quote
        
        'while these ghastly methods' (collective punishment, demolitions, bombardment of civilians etc, 'have continued to characterize conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere, it was the distinction of the mandatory government of France to have used them first'
  - - - Raphael Lefevre Ashes of Hama (3The Islamic Revolution to the Ba'athist Revolution)
        
        not just an Islam vs secularism debate but 'much more complex than the regime may have wanted to suggest'
        
        Michael Aflaq (Christian) articulating unique relationship between Arabism and Islam, 'by identifying Islam with Arab nationalism, the Ba'athist ideologue hoped to convince the Arab street that embracing secularism did not mean rejecting religion'
        
        'as the balance of power among religious communities inside the army progressively changed in favour of the minorities... so did the orientation of the Syrian government'
        
        'originally led by the historic civilian founders of the Ba'ath, the regime soon became dominated by men originating from the milarity, whose minority and often rural background gave them a more radical outlook'
        
        correction movement 'the declared objective of moderating the Ba'athist stance on socioeconomic issues'
        
        al-Asad 'sought to cutivate a public image associated with a personal commitment to Islam '
        
        new, less ealthy elites who 'to achieve the socioeconomic transformaton of Syria to which the Ba'ath party was committed, full use was made of tools such as land reform and nationalization'
        
        land reform meaning 'thile the landed upper class numbered 19,640 in 1960, this figure had decreased by a factor of four to 8,360 rural notables by 1970'
        
        meant that 'throughout the 1970s, the Ikhwan strove to appeal to the upper land-owning class which had been severely hurt by Ba'athis policies such as land reform and the substitution of state credit for private money lending'
        
        Baath also pissed off the middle-class as 'religious and economics were deeply intertwined as many low-income Sheikhs combined their religious activities with being a petty trader or an artisan'
        
        Baath 'utterly failed to live up to their promises of developing a foreign policy genuinely guided by Arab nationalism', 1961 joining separatist movement from Egypt union , backing Iran in 1980 Iraq war
        
        'under Hafiz al-Assad's rule the Baath Party itself became a secondary institution, its members and leaders being sidelined from taking part in the regime's most important decisions'
        
        'widespread elite corruption' and 'utter lack of ideological commitment'
        
        'landed Sunni elite of both cities' (Hama and Aleppo) 'represented the traditional Syrian ruling class which the rural and minority-dominated Baathist rulers had aimed to destroy'
        
        'in Hama, the resentment which many of the city's inhabitants felt towards the regime was more focused on the actual policies implemented', being targeted by Baathist land reforms
        
        'Hafiz al-Assad, aware of the Ba'ath Party's lack of popularity inside the capital, endeavoured to co-opt the Damascene economic and political elite in the early 1970s'
      - Raphael Lefevre Ashes of Hama (4 A Minority Cannot Forever Rule a Majority)
        
        'by the late 1970s, much of the Islamic opposition to the Syrian Baath had become framed in sectarian terms'
        
        'Akawis traditionally suffered a measure of social and religious oppresseion from the ruling SUnnis, representing 69 per cent of the Syrian population', accused of hereticism for unorthodoxl practices & beliefs
        
        1 'the French quickly realized the opportunity to use Alawi resentment against hte rest of the Syrian population and pursued a policy of divideand-rule aimed at curbing the rapidly expanding Arab nationalist movement, led in Syria by SUnni and Christian intellectuals'
        
        'by briefly prviding the Alawis with a country of their own, 'the state of the ALawis' (1920-1936), the French ended up reinforcing the longstanding mutual distrust between Sunnis and Alawis'
        
        Alawi discrimation led them 'to join towo of the few instiuttions providing them with upward mobility and inside which their power would ultimately prevail after hte coup of 8 March 1962: the army and teh Baath Party'
        
        coup of 23 February 1966 'saw the advent of a more radical, disproportionately rural and minority-dominated regime' in neo-Baath period, 'Alawi officer representation inside the Syrian Army increased from 30 per cent in 1963-66 to 42 per cent in 1966-70
        
        Hafiz increased Sunni representation in Syrian cabinets attempting 'to moderate the sectarian antagonism he inherited from his radical 'neo-Baath' predecessors'
        
        'informal alliance with the Sunni bourgeoisie of Damascus'
        
        asked Lebanese cleric Musa al-Sadr to issue a fatwa 'asserting that Alawis belong to Shi'ism and are therefore Muslims'
        
        'increasingly, Syrian Islamic publications such as Al-Nadhir referred to the Baathist regime as embodying the 'Alawi enemy' or these 'infidel Nusayris who are outside Islam''
        
        1976-82 anti-regime campaign from Islamic movement, 'what was at first targeted violence soon transformed into indiscriminate sectarian killing'
        
        1979-80 Hafiz purged hundreds of Sunnis from army and party after Sunni Baathist Captain Ibrahim Yusuf assembled Alawi cadet officers in dining hall before letting Fighting-Vanguard assoicate jihadists slaughter 83 of them
        
        'by the end of 1979, it seemed as though they were' two Syrian armies'
        
        'very often, state repression itself assumed a sectarian nature as the units sent to crush the opposition and detain suspected terrorists were predominantly Alawi in their composition'
    - - Baath part & Syrian Ikhwan
      - 1966 Salah Jadid in power
      - November 1970 Hafiz al-Assad in power
      - early 50s start of political clashes of Baath & Muslim Brotherhood
      - 1963 Baath ascent to power
      - April 1964 prayer leaders making speeches against secular Baath regime & spread of street riots, especially in Hama, Marwan Hadid taking refuge in al-Sultan mosque & Baath orders to storm it
      - Baathist officer Ibrahim Khlas' article sparking protests
      - November 1970 Hafiz al-Asad's coup and 'correction movement
      - 1973 draft constitution mentioned Sharia but did not give it the prominence of the 1950 one
        
        later did add an article saying that the President of the republic should be Muslim
      - military members took over Baath after Salah Jadid's 1966 coup
      - 1979 massacre of Alawi military cadets faced strong local Baathist reaction, imprisoning Imam of Aleppo Grand Mosque -> months of Muslim brotherhood protests joined by unions
      - 1979 in Hama truck driver murder by Alawi peasant triggering mass protests
        
        overwhelmingly Alawi army eventually sent to kill 25,000- 40,000 of inhabitants
  - - - 12% Alawi, 64% Sunni Arab, 10% Kurdish
      - 2011 uprisings
      - Summer 2011 Free Syrian Army formed
    - - Christopher Phillips (Sectarianism and conflict in Syria)
        
        suggests it is a semi-sectarian conflict w many other 'fault lines' such as class, ideology and 'other non-sect, sub-state ties'
        
        most significant 'structural changes and elite reactions to them'
        
        Kurdish 'though mostly Sunni, identify primarily with their own ethnic group and prefer neutrality'
        
        2011 'peaceful uprising and the regime's response to its contributed to the outbreak of civil war'
        
        in 2011 opposition, people 'spoke for 'the people' and 'Syria' rather than any etho-sectarian group, even if most were Sunni Arabs. The regime responded by also emphasising its nationalist credentials'
        
        FSA that emerged in 2011 literally called the Free Syrian Army
        
        'echoing a long trend in Syrian politics, and also a feature of the recent Iraq civil war, each side used the label 'sectarian' to discredit the other'- disguising their own sectarianism whilst being sectarian
        
        'the regime was accused of ethnically motivated murder as early as 27 April 2011, when Shabiha reportedly killed between five and 40 Sunnis in Telkalakh'
        
        discrepencies: 'in MArch-April 2011 in Banias opposition protestors reportedly chanted, 'Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the Grave' and in Homs the inclusive slogan heard across Syria 'one, one, one, the SYrian people are one', was reversed to 'Sunni blood is one''
        
        many Sunni bureaucrats payed by government were loyal and 'after rebels attacked Aleppo in 2012, the mostly Sunni city was divided along economic, not sectarian lines: the wealthy west remained loyal while the rebels made a base in the poorer east'
        
        Haddad's theory of ethno=-symbolism and sectarianism roots in pre-modern era ''reawakened' rather than recent constructs using past events to legitimse themselves, as modernists claim'
        
        'Haddad argues that elite policies can only reflect or exacerbate existing tensions within society. However, in Syria, it is elites that have politicised sub-state identities from the very beginning'
        
        Phillips divides elites into ruling regime 'which has consistently politicsed sub-state ties for short-term political gain'; sub-national elites; international elites
        
        'Kaufman suggests that in multi-ethnic states the 'natural' order is actually coexistence and only a combination og longand short-term factors pushes this into violence'- ned ancient hatreds, economic rivalty and that 'manipulating elites promote and encourage ethnic division to further their own ambitions'
        
        Era 1 'it was under the French mandate (1920-46) that replaced Ottoman rule when both SYrian and sect identities became politicsed', many elites founding origins of Syrian state nationalism to break free from French rule which 'encouraged religious and sect differences'
        
        disproportionately high minority rep. in military 'a consequence of French over-recruitment' that 'meant minorities played leading roles in the various coups. Alawi officers particularly came to dominate the Baath, leading coups in 1963, 1966 and 1970'
        
        Era 2 Hafiz 'developed a Syrian identity discourse through state institutions, education and his own personality cult', an identity that was 'deliberately ambiguous'
        
        'unlike in Saddam's Iraq, where the majority Shia had their culture repressed, Hafez al-Assad prioritised Sunni culture' e.g. teaching it in schools
        
        'economic and social shifts laid the groundwork for the 2011 uprisings and increased the potential for sectarian resentment'
        
        'in 2005 he sidelined old SUnni stalwarts... in favour of members of his extended family'
        
        'the 'social market' reforms cut key subsidies for ordinary Syrians', worst affecting the mostly Sunni peasantry
        
        'early protests in 2011 in towns dominated by recent Sunni rural-urban migrants targeted the corrut elire, particularly Rami Makhlouf, not Alawis in general, suggesting their concerns were primarily economic and political not ethnic'
        
        also shrunk army budget, in effect 'the refime was shrinking the social reach fo the state'
        
        'the group fo non-state groups, defined by religion or sect' (& needed after shortened reach of state), 'may have indirectly increased sect tensons'
        
        Assad's facilitation of Sunni jihadist fighters across Iraq frontiers would come back negatively as their ideology spread
        
        furthermore, private Gulf citizens raised millions for sectarian militias
        
        'there is possibly a degree of 'Iraq contagion', whereby those familiar with Iraq are projecting the same trends onto Syria'
      - Kheder Khaddour and Kevin Mazur (The Struggle's for Syria's Regions)
        
        'the central demands of the protestors were that the Syrian people be united based on membership in a single political community and that the actions of the government reflect the interests of all'
        
        'chant insisting htat 'the Syrian people are one''
        
        one young Syrian they interviewed said of dmeonstrations 'for the first time in my life, I felt Syrian'
        
        by Summer 2012, 'multi-ethnic crowds pressing for non-violent change became scarce'
        
        'whatever biases motivated the state's everyday practices, they did not make their way into Baathist rhetoric , which was always national and explicitly non-sectarian'
        
        region is 'the primary basis on which the state deals with its subjects', ID cards w where ppl from on first thing authorities ask for
        
        'the practice of registering ancestral place of origin allows the state to retain information on its subjects backgrounds that would otherwise be rendered invisible by migration and social mixing'
        
        few netwoeks between Kurdish regions but the 2004 Qamishli incident (anti-Kurdish taunting at football match -> uprising and govt. repression) 'sharply heightened a sense of 'linked fate' among Kurds of the three regions: Kurd saw other Kurds persecuted for being Kurds'
        
        'restoration of citizenship to hundreds of thousands of stateless Kurdish Syrians'
        
        'while the regime once viewed Jurdish identity as a threat, it now sees a tool with which to delink the fates of various Syrians demanding a change in the nature of the political community'
        
        'the regime has deployed Kurdishness as an identity boundary to help manage its regions'
        
        'just as events on the ground can transform identities, powerful actors can deploy various identities to accomplish their projects'
        
        'national identity is imprecisely defined and thus open to appropriation by actors with competing aspirations for the nation'
        
        'in contemporary Syria, a central function of national identity for both regime supporters and the opposition is to create a bridge between otherwise unlike groups and to wall off one's opponents as traitors'
        
        regime 'ceiling of the homeland' concept, 'Bashar al-Asad, in both his personage and his role in government, is the ceiling of the homeland', above nation defining what cpounds as national- 'a home needs a roof, and giving Bashar al-Asad the job is an attempt to delimit the set of political futures that a loyal Syrian might suggest for his or her political community'- he is 'best for the country' and anything to the contrary is a violation of the nation
      - Raymond Hinnebusch (Syria from'authoritarian upgrading' to revolution)
        
        calls it 'fragmented society'
        
        'Bashar's economic liberalization project, initially matched by an opening to Western Europe, was quickly jeopardized by the collapse of the peace process with Israel and the parallel souring of Syrian-US relations'
- - - - Toby Dodge (Inventing Iraq)
        
        'far from consciously creating an 'informal empire' in the Middle East, as some scholars have argued, the British in Iraq were very aware of the temporary nature of their tutelage'
        
        Iraq created 'in the interregnum between two epochs- that of free-trade imperialism dominated by the British and U.S. promoted international liberalism'
        
        'the U.S. attempted to re-establish, along reformed lines, the Westphalian system. It was hoped that reformed Westphalisn principles would create a coalition of states who would act colletively in ways that favoured the United States'
        
        big vision of 'a global order that would extend the principle of state sovereignty beyond Europe and use it to mee the world-wide challenged of revolution and instability'
        
        'of markets were to be open, if consumers across the world were to be allowed freedom of choice, then there was little room for colonial notions of tutelage and protected markets'
        
        Wilson 'combined moral assurance with a liberal idealism influential among U.S. intellectualists and industrialists at the beginning of the twentieth century' also 'playing to a sense of the superiority of the American system of government and its sustainability for the rest of the world'
        
        'Delhi proved unable to adjust to managing the Middle East, not shifting in line w the contemporary attitudes'- 'it was the acting Civil Commissioner A.T. Wilson who came to personify the 'Indian' view', being 'ideologically unable to accept the new situation'
        
        'growing nationalism amongst the urban populations of Iraq became the major influence driving British policy after 1920' so 'for 1923-1927 the approach of the authorities in Baghdad and their masters can best be described as advisatory'
        
        'Britain decided to construct a 'quasi-state', one which bore the appearance of a de jure national opolity but whose institutions were in fact a facade built in order to allow Britain to engage'
        
        George Lewis Beer, member of the advisory team to W. Wilson determined that 'the power and capital should be supplied by the state with the largest direct interest in a given area. But, crucially, this relationship must be administered through an 'international mandate embodied in a deed of trust' to protect both the native population and the interests of other foreign powers
        
        'the notion of self-determination and the ideological power of nationalism meant that a section of Iraqi society was demanding the right to represent the nation'
        
        'by the summer of 1920 Wilson had become a useful scapegoat for the uprising that swept the country, and he was ceremoniously removed when Percy Cox returned from Iran', then formed a cabinet of notables and 10 months later a king 'approved by what was presented as a constitutional referendum' in August 1921
        
        King vital 'both as institution and central political actor'
        
        'Faisal, with no constitutency of his own, appeared open to British manipulation'
        
        August 1921 discussions 'readily agreed to British supervision of finance and foreign relations but refused to accept that Cox would be the ;ultimate power' in Iraq'
        
        Churchill's priority was to 'strenghten him [the King] in the eyes of the people'' so went to LoN to withdraw ultimate powe from the HC
        
        'in Baghdad there seems to have been surprise at the short time it took to create the new state and the alacrity with which the urban population adapted to it'
        
        'the long-term goal of a pliant Iraq safely within a British sphere of influence could only be realized by ties of mutual interest and common outlook between those who built the state and those who ran it after independence'
        
        'the job of advising the politicians of an incrasingly independent state and simultaneously furthering British interests quickly became impossible'
        
        03/01/1923- Administrative Legal Inspectorate Law passed changing advisors to inspectors 'intended to emphasize the advisers' position as the final guarantors of administrative efficiency'
        
        1928 Iraqi demands for entry into LoN 'brought relations to a new low'
        
        LoN had five demands of which Iraq only met that it 'have 'settled' government and administration' (was not ''capable of maintaining its territorial integrity and political independence''; was not 'able to maintain the public peace throughout the whole territory''; did not have ''adequate financial resources to provide regularly for normal Government requirements''; was not ''able to maintain the public peace throughout the whol territory''; laws did not afford ''equal and regular justice to all''
        
        'the rhetoric of self-determination, combined with the pressing need for the economies to be gained by disengagement, meant that Britain had to devolve power to the Iraqi elite'
        
        'the British government succumbed to the power of its own domestic public opinion as well as the demands of the Iraqi political elite' but 'the LEague of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) still had to be convinced that Britain had dischared its duties under teh mandate'
        
        ridding itself 'of the costly and potentially unending burden of turning Iraw into a liberal state of international standing', planned to reduce the demands of the PMC rather than meet them on the basis that 'a comparison between these two types of state was neither fair nor necessary. Both had the right to exist as independent states wihtin the international community'
        
        Michael Mann's analysis of state power
        
        ideological, economy, military
        
        'the making of the stae in Iraq depended upon its ability to dispense largesse and upon the legitimacy conferred by the international promise to honour the principles of self-determiantion'
        
        also infrastructural and despotic power
        
        infrastructural ''the capacity of the state to actually penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm'
        
        despotic 'the range of actions which the eltie is empowered to undertake without routine, institutionalized negotiations with civil society'
        
        Anthony Giddens' analysis of state power
        
        allocative 'concerns the control of resources' or authoritative ('the deployment of coercion to control the activities of the state's subjects'
        
        'after 1921, the main institution mediating the application of state power was the RAF'
      - Sami Zubaida (The Fragments of Imagine the Nation: The Case of Iraq)
        
        Tanzimat's 'centralising thrust' that 'gave rise to many conflicts and rebellions'
        
        'for the different Iraqi groups at the turn of the 20th century there were a number of overlapping theoretical and actual entities in terms of which they could imagine their inclusion'
        
        'then there was the new idea of the Arab peoples and homeland -an idea that was much more vague and uncertain to Iraqis at this point than either the Ottoman world or Iran'
        
        'the establishment of the Arab Kingdom in Syria after the war under Faysal, the son of the sharif, mafe this theoretical claim ever more tangible'
        
        says Anderson's imagined communities useful
        
        'modern administration did not appeal to many people who were used to lax government that allowed considerable local autonomy and to corrupt officials with whom deals could be made'
        
        1920 uprising 'occupies a place of honor in natioanlist histories as thawrat al-ishrin
        
        'Wardi argued that there was a crucial difference in this instance in that the tribes fought with nationalist slogans and with the concepts of 'Iraq', Arabism, and patriotism'; 'in Anderson's terms, we can say that this was the beginning of imagining the nation'
        
        'the Efendiyya were the officials of the Ottoman state who were put out of their jobs after the British occupation'- 'many were converted to the British cause and subsequently, to the Arab king under the British Mandate'
        
        'within the shrine cities of Najaf, Kerbala, and al-Kadhim (a suburb of Baghdad), the mujtahids ruled and behaved like heads of state'
        
        'supremacy passed at his death from one Yazdi in Najaf, who was anti-Ottoman, anti-constitution, and ultimately pro-British, to Shirazi of Karbala, who was just the opposite and played an important part in the 1920 events'
        
        'in the Ottoman sphere, the Young Turk regime initiated important cultural and political developments. Secular schools, liberalization of publications,a nd the new institutiosn of representation all contributed to the creation of a modern intelligentsia'
        
        '1919 'referendum' by the British governor of 'the educated' of each city, posing the alternatives of British rule of an Arab kingdom and the prefferred Arab prince', 'notables of most towns opted for British rule'
        
        Naqib al-Ashraf of Baghdad, Abd al-Rahman al-Gaulani (soon to become prime minister in the first Iraqi national government), who told Gertrude Bell that the idea of the referedum was foolish and could only ;ead to trouble. The British were the conquerors, and they should rule by right of conquest'
        
        'under their rule, the British opted for a policy of recognizing one chief for each tribal group with whom they dealth adn whom they favored in pay, arms, and tax concessions. this angered many other leaders'
        
        'the most 'national' of all strata in an incipient nation-state are the functionaries and politicians of that state. Their world outlook and life chances revolve around the national idea'
        
        'the first ministries of the new state were composed mostly of representatives of the patrician Sunni families' but 'under Faysal this was soon to change'- 'Nuri al-Said the most frequent prime minister and the real power behind the throne'
        
        'faysal was highly conscious of the need to integrate the Shi'a into the state' but 'he was hindered in this project by his own entourage of ministers and officials'
        
        'the nation is imagined in terms of the rival discourses and contests between its fragments'
        
        'it soon became a convention that hte minister of eduction would be a shi'a' though the director general of education was anti-Shia Sati' al-Husry
        
        'an emerging Shi'i intelligentsia identified vigorously with Iraq as an Arab nation-state and degended this identification agains the dominant Sunni officialdom that tried to exclude them on the grounds of Persian connections and insufficient loyalty to Iraq and Arabism'
        
        'it was in terms of leftist ideology that Iraq was imagined as a nation of all its communities'
        
        in Iraq, 'it is the state that made the nation'
    - - British financial/ military weakness post WWI
      - shift from British colonial free-trade to US Westphalian inspired global liberalism
      - Cairo, Delhi & London the centres of UK policy-making in the Middle East
      - 02/07/1920 revolt/thawra started in Rumaitha, Wilson removed (replaced w Percy Cox) & London's predominance confirmed
      - March 1917 capture of Baghdad (replacing Ottoman rule) --> formally codified policy on Iraq
      - Oct. 10 1922: Mandate replaced with signed treaty of alliance (Anglo-Iraqi treaty)
        
        March 1923 changed from 20 years of British involvement to 4
        
        1926 new 25 year Anglo-Iraq treaty w clause for a priviosn reviewing Iraq's LoN joining and ending mandatory relationship
      - 1922 Bonar Law elected PM, not so invested in overseas, pressure at home to reduce involvement
      - 1923 Percy Dobbs replaced Percy Cox as HC
        
        later replaced by Sir Gilbert Clayton
      - 03/01/1923- Administrative Legal Inspectorate Law passed changing advisors to inspectors
      - 1928 Iraqi demands for entry into LoN
      - 1925 3 month international commission sent after dispute referred to LoN for settlement w negative results for Iraqi independence
      - Najaf Yazdi --> Shirazi of Karbala (much more anti-British & revolutionary
  - - - Fanar Haddad (Sectarian Relations and the Mythology of 1991)
        
        'the sanctions-era was conducive tot he galvanisation of sub-national communal identities'
        
        'the events of 1991 continue to be imagined in polarised terms by the vast majority of Iraqi Shi'as and Sunnis'
        
        'cultural majority's obliviousness to the other's historical narratives'
        
        now a challenge to the state within the same national definition? 'whilst Kurdish rebellions revolved around regional goals and ethnic politics, the southern governorates had no such ambitions. In short: for the southern rebellions to succeed, significant political change would have to be visited upon Baghdad'
        
        nation vs state- Kurds 'a serious and ongoing threat to national security but not to the central state in Baghdad'
        
        'sense of entitlement and belonging to the central state felt by the people of the southern governorates'
        
        'prior to 1991, the very terms 'Shia' and 'Sunni' were seldom seen in Iraqi official discourse'
        
        some attempt at building national unity- 'in the Political Report of the Ba'ath Party Ninth Regional Congress of June 1982, no mention is made of Shi'as or Shi'ism despite a heightened state of tension following Shi'a militant attacks and ruthless suppression of Da'awa activists; rather, Iran is blamed for propagating the 'religious-political phenomenon'
        
        'in the midst of full-scale war, the regime could not afford to alienate large swathes of Iraqi society'
        
        Al-Thawra articles April 1991
        
        'dirty foreign conspiracy that was executed by foreigners in identity and nationality and foreigners to Iraq in mind, conscience and feeling'
        
        theme that 'the people of the marshes and those of the mountains are somehow less Iraqi as a result of their isolation and their proximity to foreign culture which has resulted in, 'isolation, ignorance and restriction to the norms, language accents and ways of life that were inherited from the original [foreign] influenced condition'
        
        'successive Iraqi regimes have delegitimised Shi'a identity by displacing it beyond the boundaries of Arab identity but seldom in so vividly articulated and public a manner'
        
        'the articles were the first step in a profound change in public discourse whereby sectarian identities were to some extent unshrouded'
        
        'by amplifying the Shi'a character of the events of 1991, the uprisings become an alien and malicious phenomenon aimed at the rest of Iraq whom the regime claims to represent'
        
        2002 Iraqi state TV broadcast retelling events of 1991
        
        'the explanation for the considerable acceptance of the state's narrative is that it played on pre-existing, but latent, fears and antagonistic myths regarding the sectarian other'
        
        ! 'it is the legitimacy, if not popularity, of the state rather than the person of Saddam Hussein or Nuri al-Maliki- in other words the political superstructure that drives state-sect relations'
        
        'there is little, if any, evidence to suggest an anti-Arab- meaning Iranian- movement or organised element to the uprisings'
      - Joseph Sassoon (Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party)
        
        'the interwar period was characterized by the rise of pan-Arabism, an ideology influenced by the educationalist Sati' al-Husri'
        
        first coup in Oct 1936 by head of army Bakr Sidqi 'signaling the active entry of the military into politivs and creating a precedence for the use of violence to settle political disputes'
        
        'in 1952, the overthrow of the monarchy in Egypt galvanized Iraqi officers into contemplating an overthrow of their own monarchy'
        
        'the events in Palestine in 1948 increased the new part's appeal, and its leaders saw the gaps between governments and tehir peoples in the Arab world as an opportunity to expand their political base'
        
        'following in the footsteps of the Egyptian Free Officers, Iraq's Free Officers launched the July 1958 revolution that toppled the monarchy, created the Iraqi republic, and inaugurated a new era in Iraq's history of coups d'etat and instability'
        
        'the violent end of the royal family and of Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa'id instituted the use of public violence to resolve political disputes'
        
        'Qasim began to view the communists as a threat to his regime and gradually curtailed their power, but they were left with little alternative except to support him to end, because they saw him as their best option'
        
        'the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Qasim later became mythologized in Saddam Hussein's personality cult, glorifying him and his associates'
        
        under Qasim, 'the Iraqi people became accustomed to having the same leader for four years and to realizing that authority began and ended with him'
        
        'Although the record of Qasim's regime was mixed, there is lttle doubt that much-needed social reform was launched and that his regime helped to make society somewhat moer egalitarian'- he 'was sensitive to the diversity of Iraq and the need to create some cohesion between groups' but 'no politically representative institutions or appropriate processes to govern Iraq were created'
        
        'in 1963, the party realized that it was the highest constitutional authority, but that it did not have the necessary support networks in place. Hence, after 1968, the Ba'th made strenuous efforts to create solid local support, and under Saddam Hussein's leadership it built powerful security organizations that could crush any resistance in its infancy'
        
        'another outcome of the 1963 period was the increasing deterioration of relations between the Iraqi and Syrian Ba'th parties'
        
        'Abd al-Salam 'Arif 'manipulated the Ba'th party into giving him the presidency'
        
        'creating the Republican Guard as a praetorian militia within the army presaged the centralization of systems of power and personal loyalty that was ruthlessly perfected under Saddam Hussein'
        
        ''Arif's policy combined strong pan-Arab nationalism with a social conservatism derived from his devout Muslim faith. He was antagonistic toward the Kurds and the Shi'is'
        
        Saddam 'took advantage of his appointment as the head of its intelligence and security arm, known as jihaz hunain''
        
        'the chasm between the so-called left wing in Syria and the right wing supported by al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein was never bridged'
        
        'the weakness of Arabism in Iraq compared with Syria was one of the distinguishing features of the two ideologies'
        
        'Ba'th policy between November 1963 and July 1968 focused on how to seize power, rather than on constructing political programs to attract new members'
        
        'from the mid-1980s the Ba'th's philosophy and political education came to embody a cult rather than a political ideology'
        
        'since independence, Iraq had become accustomed to strong men' and 'Saddam Hussein gave Iraq a certain sense of stability'
        
        Hussein 'claimed that he understood the psyche of the Iraqi people and could anticipate their behaviour'
        
        his lack of tolerance for dissent was 'exacerbated by two factors: the functioning of Saddam Hussein's inner circle and his personal capabilities'
        
        'articles extolling him and promoting the need for a true qa'id (leader) were published as early as 1975'
        
        'anyone born after 1979 was known as a part of jil Saddam (Saddam's generation' and children called him baba Saddam
        
        the creation of his personality cult 'could not have been achieved without the prominent role of the party and its overwhelming influence on society'
        
        'the Ba'th political indoctrination became mor and more centered on the cult of Saddam Hussein as its ideology became fused with the exalted idealization of him'
    - - 1991 Shia uprisings against the Ba'ath
      - ideas of nation vs state and differing conceptions of the nation vs different conceptions of the same nation
      - Iraqi state account of 1991 uprising as Iranian infiltration defended against by 'noble Arab tribes' of south
      - 1933 head of army Bakr Sidqi massacre of hundreds of Assyrians
        
        1936 his coup (Iraq's first)
        
        1937 his assassination
      - 1941 coup against the monarchy itself
        
        Rashid 'Ali al-Kaylani & his 'golden square' replacing regent 'Abd al-Ilah
  - - - 20 March 2003 US invasion of Iraq
        
        April 9 Baghdad fell
        
        1 May Bush declares end to major combat operations
      - 1998 Iraq Liberation Act: 'it should be the policy of the US to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime'
      - Jan 2002 Bush declared Axis of Evil in his State of Union address
      - Iraqi Interim Authority (IIA) task of drafting constitutions & arranging elections
      - Ahmad Chalabi of Iraqi National Congress had been in exile in Saudi since 1958
      - September 2003 beginning of insurgency against all non-Iraqi forces and Iraqis working with them and the Cpa
      - 13 December 2003 Saddam Hussein captured
      - March 2004 decision to take on Sadr and his Mahdi army
      - November 2004 assult on Falluja
      - October 2005 new constitution approved by referendum
      - 2005 elections v low Sunni turnout
    - - Rangwala and Herring (Iraq in Fragments)
        
        US intentions: 'when the US led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it expected to be able to establish as prosperous liberal democracy with an open economy that would serve as a key ally in the region'
        
        state building definition (general section): 'we conceptualise state building as the deliberate attempt to establish a centralised organisation in a territory, able to predominate in terms of political authority, coercive ability and control of financial capital', 'in an effective national statebuilding project, the state is able to raise taxes, provide a regulatory framework for economic activity and services for the population, and represent the interests of that state in regional and global political and economic forums'
        
        'the US has not pursued a consistent statebuilding policy' and has 'tended to sacrifice state building in an attempt to retain control in the short term'
        
        US decided that 'a detailed project of state building was unneccesary in this case' so Office of Reconstruction and HUmanitarian Assistance (ORHA) given narrow mandate of dealing w humanitarian crises
        
        balanced competing Iraqi political actors against each other to maintain US control but also meant that 'any Iraqi actor aspiring to secure office had to coordinate with teh Coalition authorities, which undermined any such actor's potential for nationwide popular legitimacy'
        
        power achieved not through appealing to citizens but 'through demonstrating their usefulness to the occupying powers and doing deals with other political parties'
        
        US then found that groups 'did not have the reach into Iraqi society that they had claimed previously' and the British rep at Nasariyya conference on April 15 said that there was a 'sharp divide between exiles and survivors'
        
        population feels threatened by security forces which have further 're-militarised the country in ways that have advantaged insurgents and also militias with little loyalty to the stae'
        
        fragmented state one in which 'actors dispute where overall political authority lies and there are no agreed procedures for resolving such disputes'
        
        draft 1991 Defence Planning Guidance paper showing 'strategic outlook of the neoconservatises' that's 'basic argument was that the US was now in a position to secure its pre-eminence and use force unilaterally if necessary to prevent the rise of any power that might challenge that pre-eminence'
        
        'Grand Ayatollah 'Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential cleric, refused to meet Bremer, at least partly in order not to be tainted by association with the occupation'
        
        'the use of these party leaders and the indefinite postponement of national elections indicated that the US was attempting to bolster the positions of leaders whose standing amongst most Iraqis was weak, as part of a wider process of transforming Iraq' alongside 'mass deBaathification'
        
        November 2004 US captured Falluja but did not surround it so insurgents simply moved elsewhere
        
        'violence in Mosul, which- unlike Kirkuk- had an Arab majority, was only sporadic until the US assault on Falluja in November 2004, at which point the largely SUnni Arab police force of the city either resigned or joined the insurgents'
        
        'for anti-occupation Iraqis, the US forces had carried out another massacre in Falluja'
        
        'Even Adnan Pachachi, a secular member of the IGC, said: 'we consider the action carried out by US forces illegal and totally unacceptable' and the IGC issued a statement demanding that the coalition's 'collective punishment of Falluja cease' and offered to negotiate with what it called the 'leaders of the anti-coalition forces'
        
        'the IIG showed little interest in integrating Sunni Arabs into national politics, and US military offensives in mainly Sunni Arab areas further alienated them'
        
        'the January 2005 elections took place against a background of the Shia led parties having agreed a level of cooperation between themselves, while Sunni Arabs were more deeply disaffected than ever'
        
        Shias made most of numerical advantage by coordinating into a single list- United Iraqi Alliance 'under hte broad guidance of Sistani'
        
        'few in mainly Sunni Arab areas voted: in al-Anbar the turnout was a mere 2%. The official turnout was 58% of registered voters across Iraq’
        
        ‘although Sadr did not formally endorse participation in the elections, his followers were on the UIA national list of candidates , and two supporters were appointed to head ministries in the Transitional Government- ‘Abd a;-Muttalib Muhammad ‘Ali as Minister for Health and Salam al-Maliki at Transport and Telecommunications’
        
        Talabani President, Ja'afari Prime Minister
        
        TNA had 2/55 Sunni members and 'because it was obvious that a constitution drafted without participation from this group's members would alck legitimacy, 15 Sunni Arab politicians who were not TNA members were chosen in June to take part in an expanded committee'
        
        at the next elections, 'the Sadr movement now formed the largest group within the UIA- a good measure of the US failure to exert control'
        
        Nuri al-Maliki UIAs nomination for PM