problems and methods - final

Tags: problems and methods

Outline

Starting point: The Community as a system wrt Iraqi Militias

Draft: master’s thesis

Concept

• Communities are often held as the crucial center for deradicalization and reintegration programs. For the context of Iraqi Militias/Hashd al-Shaabi/PMF, what does this look like? How can communities foster peacebuilding within this context?

Baselines

• Terrorism “deradicalization” vs DDR vs refugee reintegration
  • Is the difference between terrorism “deradicalization” and militia reintegration a purely judicial/jurisprudence one?
    • “Deradicalization” is for “strong” states
    • “reintegration” is for states emerging from post-conflict conditions
    • Refugee reintegration is a whole different ballgame <- have not yet fleshed this one out
• How do communities impact reintegration programs?
  • Commonly assumed that ideas impact behavior, changing ideas changes behavior (not played out, poor theory, many radicalize/fail to demobilize from the communities they live in)
    • This concept of “ideology” typically atomizes the individual and reduces them to a bag of ideas
  • Feelings of loneliness and outcast
    • Bosnia case - Darryl Li
  • Communities that sustain radicalization/failure to demobilize
    • Dayon et al: Career Foreign Fighters
• Sectarianism/Divisions
  • Does it matter? Does it influence ddr
    • Hinnebusch - Identity and State Formation in Multi‐sectarian Societies
  • religion
    • Nagel, Ferran - Politics of Religion and Nationalism
    • Soper, Fetzer - Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective
    • Talal Asad - What role does religion play in this?
      • muslim brotherhood?
• State of the Art - How does peacebuilding and DDR work now?
  • Pouligny - Peace Operations Seen From Below
  • Other external actors
• Comparative Cases - What can we compare against?
  • Unique, successful cases (reach out to Patty Chang, Sally Sharif)
    • maoist fighters in nepal
    • namibia
    • colombia
  • middle east cases
    • hezbollah
    • bosnia

Bring it together

• Start by talking about how communities, not ideas are the center point for successful reintegrating of former fighters (nepal, namibia)
• Talk about the current state of the PMF and how they are semi-state
  • Talk about the religious/sectarian aspects of the PMF
• Talk about how communities impact reintegration programs
• Answer how peacebuilding works now, and why it doesn’t work, and where it’s worked before
• Dive into deeper comparative cases

Outline

• Clauswitz On War
• DDR as a requirement for post-conflict statebuilding
• Conceptualize the iraqi PMF issue as a dual countery insurgency one and a SSR/DDR one
  • PMF’s seen in sectarian caraiture
    • much more complicated, mosaic
• State lead reintegration on Iraq
• What lessons have we learned from sierra leone, cote d’ivore, etc?
• State lead -> how does this look in comparison to sudan?
• What forms a community on a micro level? How do we define a community? Communities under DDR and SSR?
• Communities -> reintegration transforms between individual and communal based
  • Also faction leaders
  • How do these play in?
• use Simpson - War from the Ground Up

Introduction

• rise of daesh
• PMF and their current status
  • proxies, not proxies, etc
• militias in the middle east <alaaldin_rise_2019>
• counter insurgency, Simpson - War from the Ground Up
• post-conflict state building via DDR and SSR, Williams - Research Handbook on Post-Conflict Statebuilding

Current Literature

• Statebuilding
• Issues and comparative cases
• Treating counter insurgency as a means to an end
• “Sectarianism” Dodge - Bourdieu goes to Baghdad, Dodge - Rethinking Political Identities in Iraq After 2003
  • comparative cases -> hezbollah, KH
• neoliberal framing of iraq, beyond 2003

Propose a structure and interpreation

• move beyond interpreting this as a proxy
• move beyond interpreting this as a sectarian lens
  • their entry into government unfortunately puts this in deeper sectarian lens, since scholars already tend ot see it in sectarian lens
• war as politics by other means
• move into interpreting this as a specific realities
  • what works for peacebuilding?
  • what doesn’t work for peacebuilding?
  • state lead SSR?
• rethinking them as potential destabilizers, as the often the case of the conflict reform