master's thesis
Tags: grad school
- Reintegration of Iraqi Militias
- PMF Command Structures
- PMF command structures are vastly different, from KH’s Hezbollah-like situation to brigade 30
- Money laundering and ghost soldiers
- Who is lining their pockets and benefiting from different command structures?
- PMF command structures are vastly different, from KH’s Hezbollah-like situation to brigade 30
- Sectarian conflicts
- PMF cross cuts class, race, and religion
- Shia Turkmen, Christians, pro-sistani vs pro-iran
- What kind of nationalism is being created? Alternatively, what kinds of sub-state nationalism (borrowing Toby Dodge) is being created?
- PMF cross cuts class, race, and religion
- Similar reintegration histories?
- Peacebuilding in
- Balkans
- Reintegration of Bosnia mujahadeen?
- “Recyled” militia in Serbia armed groups?
- Lebanon
- Hezbollah and similarities there?
- Nepal
- Ideaologically driven - were maoist. Does this hold similarities?
- Afghanistan
- Taliban
- Namibia
- Colombia
- Paramilitary demobilization, and it’s failures
- Chechnya
- Militias as spoilers of the Chechen state, does this occur in Iraq?
- Ivory Coast
- “Warrior generation”, political violence similar levels, are there models to be drawn here?
- Balkans
- Peacebuilding in
- Post-conflict peacebuilding within formal state structures
- The Iraqi state did not totally collapse and fought off an insurgency, is this different than integrating militias in newly formed states?
- External actors
- UNAMI
- US
- Iran
- etc
- Mechanics of peacebuilding
- Combants to civilains -> Has this happened?
- Post-conflict state -> Has Iraqi society reached “post-conflict”? What determines post-conflict?
- “Big” questions
- Current government framing of Iraq
- Lack of legitmacy on several key institutions
- “Supreme” court has no constitutional legitmacy
- Lack of legitmacy on several key institutions
- KRG
- Resolved issues of KRG disputes, how do the peshmerga fit into this equation?
- What constitutes as “rehabilitation” and “reintegration”?
- UN has often sought “reintegration” by waiting it out, which has rarely worked. Succesful examples are Nepal and Namibia, which sought greater reintegration via massive state-sponsered jobs programs
- How does this change in a world of low interest rates? Namibia and Nepal had difficulties borrowing money, does the shift in the global markets affect this?
- “Big” reintegration - who are the funders of reintegration for previous states? Who funds reintegration for the Iraqi state?
- Who directs reintegration? Often times funded and directed in DC, but acted upon in other states
- What do we reintegrate back into? Reintegration implies return to prewar “normalcy” – the same conditions that gestated the conflict.
- Sierra Leone of 2005 looks like the Sierra Leone of 1991
- What structural changes are available?
- What does this look like in the backdrop of Arab Spring? Of the 2019/2020 protests?
- UN has often sought “reintegration” by waiting it out, which has rarely worked. Succesful examples are Nepal and Namibia, which sought greater reintegration via massive state-sponsered jobs programs
- Current government framing of Iraq
- Unknown quesitons
- War veterans in post-war situations
- Refusal to reintegrate?
- Similarities to societal groups like Turkey’s war vets?
- Refusal to reintegrate?
- External communities
- How do the communities reintegrating the militia members feel?
- What about disapora?
- Generational questions
- “Reintegration” implies that there is a life to go back to. Are militia members who spent their lives in conflict have this open as an opportunity?
- War veterans in post-war situations
- PMF Command Structures
Similar/Previous Work
- survey - Structure and Interpretation of the Hashd al-Shaabi
- migrant violence - [[e_activity_4_who_bears_responsibility_for_refugee_violence_lebanon.md][Where does responsibility for violence suffered by migrants
Peacebuilding and islam in iraq
- can we draw conclusions from islam?
- mixed work like Li - The Universal Enemy
- half sociological half computation?
- like Meeker - A Nation of Empire?
peacebuilding with hashd al-shaabi and infrastructure?
- how are they building infrastructure
- weapons depots, telecommunications, etc
- osint on their locations, monitor communications
- the build up of telecommunication infrastructure and how they deliver money? how are payments delivered into communities?
important part of writing a thesis
- don’t get caught up in the sequences
- do things you thnink you’re not ready to do
- how to identify one thing