Bargaining, fear, and denial: Explaining violence against civilians in Iraq 2004-2007

Terrorism and Political Violence

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 261-287

  Boyle, Michael J ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Violence Iraq terrorism bargaining

Indexed keywords

EID: 67651208612     PISSN: 09546553     EISSN: 15561836     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09546550902765565     Document Type: Article

References (117)

1. "Gunmen Strikes at 27 Baghdad Mosques, Kill Imams" CNN.Com (22 February 2006), available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/22/ iraq.main/index.html (accessed 11 November 2008).
2. Donald Horowitz defines a precipitant act broadly, as one which is sufficient to generate future violence. The precipitant event and the violence which follows may sometimes have the same social or political causes.
3. See Donald Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 1-42.
4. James D. Fearon, "Iraq's Civil War," Foreign Affairs (2007).
5. Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey Friedman, "The Iraq Data Debate: Civilian Casualties from 2006-2007," Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder (28 September 2007).
6. There remains considerable debate in Iraq over the extent to which Al-Qaeda in Iraq (also known as the Islamic Army in Iraq) is responsible for attacks. Most official estimates suggest that AQI numbers approximately 1,000 fighters and are responsible for between 8 to 15% of attacks, though some question whether in fact they are even smaller than this estimate. See Andrew Tilghman, "The Myth of AQI," The Washington Monthly (2007).
7. This paper does not address the decline in violence after February 2008, when the surge strategy began to have its effect. Its analysis is current until that point, but does not take into account political developments beyond that point.
8. On outbidding, see Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 76-100. On the mechanism of outflanking (though not described in these terms), see Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization 56, no. 2 (Spring 2002), 263-296.
9. On spoilers, see Stephen John Stedman, "Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes," International Security 22, no. 2 (Autumn 1997), 5-53 and Kelly M. Greenhill and Solomon Major, "The Perils of Profiling: Civil War Spoilers and the Collapse of Intra-State Peace Accords," International Security 31, no. 3 (Winter 2007).
10. On private information and credible commitments, see James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49 (Summer 1995), 379-414.
11. Some of these criminal networks are also allegedly linked to the government. See John F. Burns and Michael Luo, "Arrest of Iraqi Police Officials Ordered After Kidnapping," The New York Times (14 November 2006).
12. For a good analysis of how the localization phenomenon applies to Iraqi politics, see Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and Its Legacy (London: Hurst, 2006), 96-160.
13. One could argue that armed actors in Iraq are actually involved in a two-level bargaining game, negotiating with those from other sectarian or national groupings and simultaneously with rivals from their own sectarian or national groups. The two-level games framework originally applied to interstate negotiations, but has been extended to other instances of bargaining. For the original formulation, see Robert D. Putnam, "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two Level Games," International Organization 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988), 427-460.
14. There are a number of sources for data on violence against civilians in Iraq. The U.S. military has kept detailed records of the number of Coalition forces killed and wounded since the beginning of the occupation in 2003 and since 2006 has provided a more systematic accounting of the number of civilians killed for Congressional testimony and reports. For an overview, see Hannah Fischer, "Iraqi Civilian Death Estimates," Congressional Research Service (22 November 2006). Unofficial data also varies significantly in the estimated numbers killed. The Iraq Index, produced by the Brookings Institute, culls official statistics released by the DoD and other sources to generate a single composite source. This paper uses the Iraq Index produced by the Brookings Institute (17 September 2007), but this report is updated on a biweekly basis. Other unofficial sources include the Iraqi Body Count (http://www. iraqbodycount.org/) and the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (http://icasualties.org/oif/ IraqiDeaths.aspx).
15. 11 These studies have come under criticism for their methodology.
16. See L. Roberts et al., "Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey," Lancet 364:9448 (2004), 1857-1864 and G. Burnham et al., "Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey," Lancet 368:9545 (2006), 1421-1428.
17. For a good discussion of the controversy, see David Brown, "Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000," Washington Post (11 October 2006). For a critique of the Lancet studies, see David Kane, "The Lancet Surveys of Mortality in Iraq," Working Paper, Unpublished (2007).
18. Throughout this paper death tolls reported are the simple average of the two estimates (high and low).
19. The most comprehensive data on the total number of enemy-initiated attacks, and attacks against civilians as a percentage of these, have been released by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I). These data have been released in graphical form (though not in raw data or summary statistics) a number of times, in DoD Reports to Congress and Government Accounting Office Reports. The most recent summary graph was released by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) in Figure Two of "DoD Should Provide Congress and the American People With Monthly Data on Enemy-Initiated Attacks in Iraq in a Timely Manner," Government Accounting Office (28 September 2007).
20. Data drawn from MNF-I slides released to the author (November 2007).
21. Iraq Index (17 September 2007) (see note 11 above), 8.
22. While the general trend of increased targeting of civilians is clearly evident, one must be careful not to over-estimate the trends in the data especially based on an analysis of two fixed points; as Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey Friedman point out, the violence may be nonmonotonic and subject to random fluctuations, which undermine efforts to detect a single dominant trend. See Biddle and Friedman (2007) (note 4 above).
23. Iraq Index (17 September 2007) (see note 11 above), 10.
24. General David H. Petraeus, "Report to Congress On the Situation in Iraq," 10-11 September 2007, available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/ pdfs/Petraeus-Testimony 20070910.pdf
25. This data includes some U.S. and UK attacks during the Iraq war which killed civilians.
26. I am grateful to Charles Tripp for this point.
27. Source: IBC Monthly Data, January 2003-February 2008. Table 1-1 is drawn directly from IBC reports. Table 1-2 is calculated by dividing the number of casualties per month divided by the number of days in the month. In Table 1-2, the casualties are the "minimum" estimated casualties, excluding those that may cut across two months (like delayed morgue reports).
28. Iraq Index (17 September 2007) (see note 11 above), 11.
29. See the discussion of the tactics of groups is in International Crisis Group, "The Next Iraqi War? Sectarianism and Civil Conflict" (27 February 2006).
30. Mohammed Hafez, "Suicide Terrorism in Iraq: A Preliminary Assessment of the Quantitative Data and Documentary Evidence," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29 (2006), 593.
31. For example, the Islamic Army in Iraq - comprised of former Baathists - are more willing to engage in mass-casualty attacks against civilians than the 1920s Revolutionary Brigades.
32. The peshmerga are alternatively accused of engaging in sectarian killing and of being complicit when irregular units or criminal gangs do it.
33. See Ashraf al-Khalidi and Victor Tanner, "Sectarian Violence: Radical Groups Drive Internal Displacement in Iraq," The Brookings Institute (Occasional Paper, October 2006). On the Arabization campaign, see George Packer, The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 333-369.
34. For terrorism as communication, see Alex P. Schmid, Political Terrorism: A New Guide To Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories and Literature (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2006).
35. See also Andrew H. Kydd and Barbara Walter, "The Strategies of Terrorism," International Security 31, no. 1 (Summer 2006), 49-80.
36. The classic statement of this position is Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966).
37. For a review of this literature, see Dan Reiter, "Exploring the Bargaining Model of War," Perspectives on Politics (March 2003), 27-43.
38. For illustrative examples of bargaining literature applied to civil wars, see V. Page Fortna, "Scraps of Paper?: Agreements and The Durability of Peace," International Organization (Spring 2003), 337-373 and Suzanne Werner, "Negotiating the Terms of Settlement: War Aims and Bargaining Leverage," Journal of Conflict Resolution 43, no. 6, 705-726.
39. For illustrative examples, see Andrew Mack, "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict," World Politics 27, no. 2 (January 1975) and Ivan Arreguin Toft, "How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict," International Security 26, no. 1 (Summer 2001), 93-128.
40. For a good review of the counter-insurgency literature, see John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counter-Insurgency Lessons From Malaya to Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 14-31.
41. Both of these mechanisms were identified by James D. Fearon. See his "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995), 379-414.
42. See also David A. Lake, "Rational Extremism: Understanding Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century" Dialog-IO (2002), 15-29.
43. See in particular Greenhill and Major (2006) (note 8 above).
44. See Nagl (note 31 above), 26-28.
45. See for instance, Gordon H. McCormick and Guillermo Owen, "Factionalism, Violence and Bargaining in Civil Wars," Homo Oeconomicus 20 (2004), 361-390.
46. Fearon (2007) (see note 3 above), 5.
47. Solomon Moore and Louise Roug, "Deaths Across Iraq Show It Is A Nation of Many Wars, with U.S. in the Middle," The Los Angeles Times (7 October 2006).
48. Hafez (2006) (see note 24 above), 599.
49. It remains entirely unclear to what extent AQI takes orders from, or even indeed shares goals, with al-Qaeda writ large.
50. Violence against civilians has been shown to be a particularly effective way of extracting concessions from the government by a weak actor. For a recent study, see Lisa Hultman, "Battle Losses and Rebel Violence: Raising the Costs for Fighting," Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 2 (July 2007), 205-225.
51. Hafez (2007) (see note 98 below), 18-19.
52. Unnamed Iraqi journalist quoted in International Crisis Group, "The Next Iraqi War: Sectarianism and Civil Conflict," 27 February 2006, 23.
53. Kydd and Walter (2006) (see note 26 above).
54. On the manufacturing of urgency, see Schelling (note 27 above), 92-125.
55. See for example ICG, The Next Iraqi War: Sectarianism and Civil Conflict, 27 February 2006.
56. Quoted from UNHCR statistics in Rhoda Margesson, Jeremy M. Sharp, and Andorra Bruno, "Iraqi Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: A Deepening Humanitarian Crisis," CRS Report for Congress (23 March 2007). The refugees have been created by all accounts by a concerted attempt at sectarian cleansing.
57. Hafez (2006) (see note 24 above), 608-611.
58. International Crisis Group, "Where is Iraq Heading? Lessons from Basra," Middle East Report 67 (25 June 2007).
59. Mark Kukis, "Ethnic Cleansing in a Baghdad Neighbourhood," Time Magazine (25 October 2006).
60. See in particular Ashraf al-Khalidi and Victor Tanner, "Sectarian Violence: Radical Groups Drive Internal Displacement in Iraq," The Brookings Institute (Occasional Paper, October 2006).
61. See Kukis (2006) (note 49 above). A similar phenomenon was in evidence in reprisal killings in Kosovo. See Michael J. Boyle, "The Prevention and Management of Reprisal Violence in Post-Conflict States," Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Cambridge University, 2004.
62. On polyvalent communication, see Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 176.
63. See in particular al-Khalidi and Tanner (2006) (note 25 above).
64. See the data from UNHCR/IOM Survey (12 June 2007), available at: http://www.internal-displacement.org/idmc/website/countries.nsf/(httpEnvelopes)/ B6C0B024031DFA0F802570B8005A74D6?OpenDocument (accessed 14 March 2008).
65. Martha Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," Comparative Politics 13, no. 4 (July 1981), 387.
66. See Crenshaw (1981) (note 55 above).
67. The BBC/IBC Data is from Iraq Index (see note 11 above), 22. The map (with coding by the author) is drawn from a CIA ethnographic mapping done in 2003. See http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle east and asia/iraq ethno 2003.jpg
68. The civilian casualties come from unpublished IBC data, January 2003-February 2008.
69. International Crisis Group, Where is Iraq Heading?: Lessons from Basra, Middle East Report No. 67 (25 June 2007).
70. International Crisis Group, Where is Iraq Heading? Lessons from Basra, Middle East Report No. 67 (25 June 2007).
71. Kirk A. Johnson, Seeing with One Eye Open: Why Sectarian Violence Measures Create an Incomplete Picture of Civilian Casualties in Iraq (unpublished, August 28, 2007). On average, 48.7% of all violent incidents between August 2006-August 2007 were classified as non-sectarian. In a three-month sample (May-August 2007), 2667 murders were classified as sectarian.
72. The Mehdi Army behaves differently from region to region in part because it is inchoate and high-factionalized, which has led Moqtada al-Sadr to call a six-month freeze in activity in 2007 so that he can "reorganize" it. See BBC News, "Sadr 'freezes' militia activities," 29 August 2007.
73. This echoes a distinction drawn by Stathis Kalyvas, when he speaks of the gap between the macro-level explanation for a conflict and its micro-foundations. See Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence In Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 388-392.
74. ICG, Where is Iraq Heading? Lessons from Basra (25 June 2007).
75. Fearon (1995) (see note 8 above).
76. On mutually hurting stalemates, see I. William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute for Peace, 1995).
77. BBC News, "Iraqi Insurgents Kill Key US Ally," 13 September 2007.
78. See particularly Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
79. There is a vast amount of literature criticizing the present Iraqi government, but perhaps the most comprehensive and incisive is Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New Haven: Yale, 2006).
80. Iraq Index (September 17, 2007) (see note 11 above), 34.
81. Iraq Index (September 17, 2007) (see note 11 above), 7.
82. See Iraq Study Group Report, 9-10. James H. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, "The Iraq Study Group Report: A Way Forward - a New Approach" (New York: Vintage, 2006).
83. Lionel Beeher, Iraq's Militia Groups (2005), available at http://www.cfr.org/ publication/8175/#4 and Ellen Knicksmeyer, "Official: Guard Force is Behind Death Squads," The Washington Post (14 October 2006).
84. See Kenneth Katzman, Iraq: Post-Saddam Governance and Security (27 March 2007), 33.
85. See International Crisis Group, "In Their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency," 15 February 2006 and ICG, "The Next Iraqi War," 27 February 2006.
86. Iraq Index (17 September 2007) (see note 11 above), 56.
87. Quoted in ICG, Basra, 10. International Crisis Group, Where is Iraq Heading? Lessons from Basra, Middle East Report No. 67 (25 June 2007).
88. Barry Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," Survival 35, no. 1 (Spring 1993), 27-47.
89. For a recent application to Iraq, see Chaim Kaufmann, "A Security Dilemma: Ethnic Partitioning in Iraq," Ethnic Conflict 28, no. 4 (Winter 2007).
90. All of these factors are identified in Posen (1993) (see note 78 above).
91. On civilian behaviour during civil wars, Kalyvas argues that most citizens are essentially survival maximizers, willing to do what is necessary to make it through the war. See Kalyvas (2006) (note 63 above), 87-110.
92. In some cases, this was due to the fact that anti-U.S. and anti-AQI activity was conducted concurrently, complicating efforts to impose penalties on Sunni groups.
93. Ian Siperco, "Subversive Markets: The Economic Roots of the Iraq Insurgency," RUSI Papers (2007).
94. James Glanz and Robert F. Worth, "Attacks on Iraq Oil Industry Aid Vast Smuggling Scheme," The New York Times (4 June 2006).
95. This is recounted in vivid detail in Rory Stewart's Occupational Hazards (London: Picador, 2006).
96. For a discussion of denial as a strategic choice for al-Qaeda as a transnational organization, see Devin D. Jessee, "Tactical Means, Strategic Ends: Al-Qaeda's Use of Denial and Deception," Terrorism and Political Violence 18 (2006), 367-388.
97. Ian F.W. Beckett, Insurgency in Iraq: A Historical Perspective (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005), 4.
98. See also Colonel Jabbar Naeemah Karam, "Post-Transition Violence in Iraq (2004-2005). "The Military Perspective of an Insider" Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2006.
99. They lack in Lawrence Freedman's terms a "narrative" which helps the threats to be interpreted by the intended recipients. See Lawrence Freedman, "Terrorism as a Strategy," Government and Opposition 42, no. 3 (2007), 320-321.
100. See Preti Taneja, "Assimilation, Exodus and Eradication: Iraq's Minority Communities Since 2003," Minority Rights Group International (2007).
101. Patrick Jackson, "Crushing Iraq's Human Mosaic" BBC News (13 July 2007).
102. Reuters, "Iraqi Red Crescent Says 500 Killed in Yazidi Attack" (22 August 2007).
103. The motivations of these attacks are complex. In the case of the Yazidi, for instance, the mass-casualty attack was the last step in a cycle of escalation that began when Yazidis stoned a young woman for converting to Islam. Gunmen subsequently pulled 23 Yazidi off a bus and killed them near Mosil, leading to internal population flight among formerly concentrated Yazidi minorities.
104. See Michael Howard, "They Won't Stop Until We Are All Wiped Out. Among the Yezidi, a people in mourning," The Guardian (18 August 2007). As a more general point, these attacks may also be emblematic of a Salafi ideology which has little mercy for those not following the "true" version of Islam.
105. See for examples USA Today, "Iraqis Told to Arm for Self-Defense After 220 Killed" (July 8, 2007) and Michael Howard, "They Won't Stop Until We Are All Wiped Out. Among the Yezidi, a people in mourning," The Guardian (18 August 2007).
106. Bodies reported in the IBC data set (October 2007).
107. Ellen Knickmeyer and Muhannad Saif Aldin, "Dozens of Iraqis Killed in Reprisals," The Washington Post (16 October 2006).
108. For a good discussion, see Lionel Beehner, "Impediments to National Reconciliation on Iraq," Council on Foreign Relations (5 January 2007), available at: http://www. cfr.org/publication/12347/#2
109. Joshua Partlow, "Top Iraqis Pull Back From Key U.S. Goal," The Washington Post (8 October 2007).
110. Kydd and Walter develop an argument that if a target group appears to have the capacity to stop terrorist attacks but fails to do so during a bargaining process, the impact will be higher than if the armed actor was perceived to be incapable. See Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization 56, no. 2 (Spring 2002), 263-296.
111. See Mohammed Hafez, "Martyrdom Mythology in Iraq: How Jihadists Frame Suicide Terrorism in Videos and Biographies," Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 1 (March 2007), 95-115.
112. Carl von Clausewitz, On War (translated: Michael Howard and Peter Paret) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 357-359.
113. On in-group policing, see Daniel Byman, "The Logic of Ethnic Terrorism," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 21 (1998), 149-169.
114. Jamie Findlater, "Concerned Local Citizen Groups Aid Progress in Iraq," American Forces Press Service (13 November 2007).
115. See the Petraeus Testimony (2007) (note 18 above).
116. See Ian F. W. Beckett, "Insurgency in Iraq: An Historical Perspective," Strategic Studies Institute (Carlisle, PA), 6, and Steven Metz, "Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq," The Washington Quarterly (Winter 2003-2004), 28-29.
117. Reuters, "Iraqi Shiite Leaders Seal Pact to Curb Violence," 6 October 2007.