Neighborhood Sectarian Displacement and the Battle for Baghdad: The Self-fulfilling Prophecy of Crimes Against Humanity in Iraq

Even when American decision-makers were denying it, ordinary Iraqis in the neighborhoods of Baghdad fearfully anticipated the dangerous consequences of the U.S.-led invasion. We use two unique Iraq datasets to analyze the self-fulfilling neighborhood specific forces set loose following the U.S.-led invasion. Sectarian criminal violence by Shia militia disproportionately forced Sunni residents from their Baghdad neighborhoods. The Mahdi Army, mobilized through the coercive entrepreneurship of Muqtada Al Sadr, used organized crime tactics of harassment, threats, and protection to defend and extend Shia influence in the remaking of the Iraq state. The Mahdi Army changed the neighborhood demography of Baghdad and helped leverage the Sadrist movement into the political leadership of Iraq. Ordinary Iraqis were victims of an amplified “self-fulfilling prophecy of fear” that created the momentum necessary for massive sectarian displacement in the battle for Baghdad. Neighborhood Sectarian Displacement and the Battle for Baghdad: The Self-fulfilling Prophecy of Crimes Against Humanity in Iraq The Neglected Sociology of Iraq “If any single person has come close to unlocking the secrets of the Iraqi character,” writes former Iraqi defense and finance minister Ali Allawi (2007:12), “it is Ali al-Wardi.” AlWardi (1913-95) was a U.S.-trained Iraqi sociologist who explored the persistent historical roots of sectarian conflict in Iraq. He argued this conflict was so deeply embedded in Iraqi society that, “[f]our decades of national rule have not been sufficient to eradicate or at least to make people forget their old conflicts” (2008:115). He implied this conflict would not merely outlive Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian suppression, but also the Bush administration’s occupation of Iraq. Even more than citizens of other Arab nations, Al-Wardi insisted Iraqis have long been divided along sharp lines of ethnic and tribal identity. In Baghdad, the most acute sectarian division is between the Shia and Sunni groups, even though the Kurds and numerous other entities have populated this city’s neighborhoods. The Shia-Sunni division is such that when the invading U.S. soldiers brought the statue of Saddam to the ground in Firdaus Square of Baghdad, observers (e.g., Allawi 2007:133-4; Shadid 2006:149-50) sensed ambivalence among Iraqi onlookers that expressed their fears at least as much as their hopes. Yet, beyond such anecdotal descriptions, we know little empirically about how this fear was socially constructed and the mechanisms by which it would profoundly change – in ways unanticipated by U.S. policy makers – the social composition of Baghdad’s