ABSTRACT
The conflict in Iraq, ongoing since the US-led invasion in 2003, presents a uniquely inauspicious context for the political reintegration of irregular armed groups. With the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the reintegration of Iraqi militias and other armed forces was to occur in an environment where new state structures were only just emerging. Militia and insurgency groups were thus asked to lay down their arms for the sake of a political system whose sustainability and dispensation of power were far from certain and with no guarantee that security be maintained subsequent to their dissolution. The situation distinguishes itself further by the fact that none of the targeted armed groups had won or been defeated in the war leading up to regime change. Rather than as victors and losers, the groups were defined and treated according to their supposed proximity to Saddam Hussein prior to the war. Sufficiently complex, this effort at reintegration was also to proceed alongside a hugely ambitious exercise in state building, conducted by a reluctant ‘nation-builder’ short on plans and personnel, in a region marked by tension and in which the intervening state suffered a lack of legitimacy. Yet in this context of few positives, the process of political reintegration was perhaps most fatally undermined by the dearth of attention paid, by both the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq and the Bush administration in Washington, to this critical component of state building. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the significance of the low prioritisation of political reintegration in Iraq’s subsequent unravelling. The story is familiar: in the years following the US invasion, Iraq experienced a descent into civil war characterised by insurgent violence, militia rule, crime and insecurity. US authorities and forces were badly prepared to counter this downwards spiral and in some ways contributed to it. The Iraqi government and security forces were similarly unable, or even unwilling, to address the growing anarchy, all of which reinforced the scope for vigilante violence and tit-for-tat retaliations among rival militias. By 2006, the situation had reached a nadir, marked by insurgent attacks, roaming Shia death squads targeting Sunni civilian populations and a government infiltrated by sectarian agents.
