‘ALLAH, AL-WATAN, AL-QA’ID’: A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF REGIME MILITIAS IN IRAQ, 1991-2003

Abstract

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the emergence and dominant position of militias in the country has become common knowledge. In terms of conceptualization, the rise of militias is generally viewed in isolation from the era of Saddam Hussein and his Baʿth Party’s rule of Iraq, which was thought to still be centered on an albeit weakened, but still highly centralized conventional military structure. This thesis presents a more complicated picture, with the hypothesis that the use of militias by Saddam’s Baʿth regime was both more extensive and consequential than has been previously realized. By bringing the two principal paramilitary formations to the forefront of approximately the last decade of Baʿthist rule, this work sheds light on an under-studied aspect of Saddam’s regime: militias. It also investigates the deeper continuities and conditions that have affected the Iraqi state with regard to the devolution of the institutions and organization of violence toward the local level. Drawing on the captured records of Saddam’s regime, this study examines the Fidaʿiyyu Saddam and Jerusalem Army, the two major militias established by the regime between the 1991 and 2003 wars. It argues that militias, while underappreciated by contemporary observers, were a crucial security instrument in the rebuilding of the Baʿth Party during the 1990s and in turn, the survival of the regime. This study concludes by suggesting that violence devolution may be one of the most significant continuities between the Baʿth and post-2003 periods.