Brave New World Order: The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Rise of Iraqi Shī‘ī Identity Politics

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article uses the history of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest Shī‘ī Islamist organization within the exiled Iraqi opposition movement, as a case study to delineate how the meaning, function, and salience of sectarian identities are affected by political and social changes at the local, regional, and international level. To this end, this work identifies and explains a discursive shift observed in SCIRI’s publications produced during its tenure as an Iraqi opposition group. Whereas SCIRI’s publications during the Iran-Iraq War emphasized that its brand of Islamic government would represent all Iraqis regardless of their religious or ethnic affiliation, following the war’s conclusion the Council strove to portray its leaders as the primary defenders of Shī‘ī interests in Iraq and focused near exclusively on the need to protect the rights of Iraq Shī‘ī. It argues that several key developments account for the Supreme Council’s adoption of a Shī‘ī-centric political stance during the 1990s, namely: the internationalization and unification of the Iraqi opposition movement in the aftermath of the 1991 March Uprisings and the post-Cold War environment within which the exiled Iraqi opposition was operating. When considered collectively, beyond demonstrating the contingency and complexity of the advent of Shī‘ī identity politics within Iraqi opposition circles throughout the 1990s, these findings suggest the importance of taking into consideration larger, global trends as contributing factors when conceptualizing how subnational forms of identification acquire heighted social and political salience.