Iraq – Quo Vadis?

Abstract

Shi'a revolutionary activism, on the other hand, is essentially a spent force.1 Nearly four years after the US-led invasion of Iraq and the toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein, extreme violence continues to define the immediate political landscape of what was once referred to as Mesopotamia. The military and political battles being fought out in Iraq today, battles which often in their complexity defy an easy nomenclature such as ‘insurgency’ remain, nonetheless grounded in decades of conflict and domestic strife.2 While it is true that 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces in Iraq remain relatively quiescent, the same cannot be said of the violence that afflicts the four remaining and indeed most populous provinces where the levels of bloodshed have gone from bad to worse. This includes not only attacks against coalition forces, but a growing spiral of sectarian violence among and between religiously-based militias, almost nihilistic in its savagery. With central government either unable or indeed unwilling to intervene to counter such bloodshed, many regard Civil War as now defining the political reality as, in the absence of security structure loyal to the state, militias – Sunni, Shi'a and Kurdish – struggle over land, people and resources. This may appear a somewhat alarmist observation. After all, on the political front, Iraq has managed to hold several elections and to create a federal government despite the extreme partisan nature of political and religious affiliation throughout the county. This is no small achievement, but it is clearly not enough to make the transition to a system of political institutionalisation whereby adversarial politics are played out in a peaceful way. The essays in this special issue therefore represent a modest attempt not only to explain the multiple dynamics that have come to inform the violence in Iraq, but equally, to shed light on how the role of both external and internal actors, both state and non-state have come to impact on the very idea of Iraq as a sustainable, viable entity at the beginning of the twenty-first century.