Sacred time and conflict initiation

Security Studies

Volumn 20, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 491-520

  Hassner, Ron E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859030211     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2011.625775     Document Type: Article

References (206)

1. James Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War: Comparative Religious Symbolism of Military Violence (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 35-36.
2. Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God (London: Secker & Warburg, 1960), vol.1, 457-60
3. A. J. O Anderson and Charles Dibble, trans., Florentine Codex (Santa Fe: Monographs of the School of American Research, 1950-82), vol. 12, 5-15. This account is questioned by several historians who are suspicious of its absence from sources independent of Spanish influence.
4. Byam Nigel Davies, The Aztecs (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974).
5. Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
6. Camilla Townsend, "No One Said It was Quetzalcoatl: Listening to the Indians in the Conquest of Mexico," History Compass 1, no. 1 (2003).
7. Miguel Leon-Portilla, ed. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).
8. Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1982).
9. Alexander George, "Warning and Response: Theory and Practice," in Yair Evron, ed. International Violence: Terrorism, Surprise, Control (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1979).
10. Michael I. Handel, Perception, Deception and Surprise: The Case of the Yom Kippur War, Jerusalem Papers on Peace Problems (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post Press, 1976), 17-28.
11. Patrick Morgan, "The Opportunity for Strategic Surprise," in Strategic Military Surprise: Incentives and Opportunities, eds., Klaus Knorr and Patrick Morgan (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983).
12. Betts, Surprise Attack, 87-149.
13. Ephraim Kam, Surprise Attack: The Victim's Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 14 and 21.
14. Katarina Brodin, "Surprise Attack: The Case of Sweden," Journal of Strategic Studies 1, no. 1 (May 1978).
15. Richard Betts, "Surprise Despite Warning: Why Sudden Attacks Succeed," Political Science Quarterly 95, no. 4 (Winter 1980). An exception is Robert Axelrod's study of an initiator's deliberations about the best timing for revealing a surprising asset. Here timing is assessed in relation to the initiator's and not the target's schedule.
16. Robert Axelrod, "The Rational Timing of Surprise," World Politics 31, no. 2 (January 1979).
17. Alex Roberto Hybel, The Logic of Surprise in International Conflict (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986), 75-85 and 95-103. One incidental exception is a study of the geographic distribution of suicide terrorism, in which the authors note that attacks against Israeli targets are twice as likely to occur in the months of March through May, when many Jewish holidays and Israeli civilian holidays occur. The authors do not explore the implications of this finding.
18. Nurit Kliot and Igal Charney, "The Geography of Suicide Terrorism in Israel," GeoJournal 66, no. 4 (July 2006): 367.
19. For efforts to quantitatively assess the proportion and impact of religiously motivated conflicts,
20. James D. Fearon and David Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (February 2003).
21. Tanja Ellingsen, "Toward a Revival of Religion and Religious Clashes?" Terrorism and Political Violence 17, no. 3 (Summer 2005).
22. Jonathan Fox, "The Increasing Role of Religion in State Failure: 1960-2004," Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 3 (2007).
23. Monica Toft, "Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War," International Security 31, no. 4 (Spring 2007).
24. Susanna Pearce, "Religious Rage: A Quantitative Analysis of the Intensity of Religious Conflicts," Terrorism and Political Violence 17, no. 3 (2007).
25. Jeffrey Dixon, "What Causes Civil Wars? Integrating Quantitative Research Findings," International Studies Review 11, no. 4 (December 2009).
26. In-depth analyses of the pervasive role of religion in conflict are few and far between.
27. Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War
28. R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000).
29. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000).
30. Madawi al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin, ed., Dying for Faith: Religiously Motivated Violence in the Contemporary World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009).
31. Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 386.
32. Other conceptions of sacred time, including metaphysical, eschatological, or mythical sacred time, may have effects of their own on international security but these are beyond the scope of this paper. For example, on the relationship between belief in the afterlife and violence,
33. Monica Duffy Toft, "Issue Indivisibility and Time Horizons as Rationalist Explanations for War," Security Studies 15, no. 1 (January-March 2006): 34-69. On eschatological time and terrorism.
34. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War examines the relationship between mythical time and warfare. For quantitative analyses of religion and war.
35. see also Errol A. Henderson, "Culture or Contiguity: Ethnic Conflict, the Similarity of States, and the Onset of War, 1820-1989," Journal of Conflict Resolution 41, no. 5 (October 1997): 649-68.
36. Jonathan Fox, "Is Islam More Conflict Prone than Other Religions? A Cross-Sectional Study of Ethnoreligious Conflict," Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 6, no. 2 (Summer 2000).
37. Jonathan Fox, Religion, Civilization, and Civil War: 1945 Through the New Millennium (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005).
38. On the relationship between sacred space and sacred time.
39. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), 73-76.
40. Hermann Usener, Götternamen, 2nd ed., (Bonn, 1920), 191.
41. On military effectiveness see Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
42. Stephen Peter Rosen, Societies and Military Power: India and Its Armies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).
43. Alan Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
44. Stephen Biddle and Robert Zirkle, "Technology, Civil-Military Relations, and Warfare in the Developing World," Journal of Strategic Studies 19, no. 2 (June 1996).
45. Kenneth Pollack, Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 (University of Nebraska Press, 2002).
46. Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, ed., Military Effectiveness (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1988).
47. Risa A. Brooks and Elizabeth A. Stanley, ed., Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 1-26.
48. Ibid., 11-12.
49. Yediot Aharonot (Israeli daily newspaper), quoted in "Secrecy Preceded Onslought,"Agence France Presse, 28 December 2008, http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20081228-110844.html. Israel launched its largest airstrike during Operation Cast Lead on a day that was both a Jewish Sabbath and in the midst of Hanukkah.
50. Todd Venezia, "Hell Fire Rains on Gaza; Massive Israeli Airstrike; Bloodiest Hit in 60 Years; Just the 'Opening Stage,'" New York Post, 28 December 2008, 4. A similar calculation motivated an attack on the Jewish Sabbath during the Lebanon War.
51. See Glenn Frankel, "Israeli Raid Kills 40 in Lebanon; Rare Attack on Sabbath Uses Element of Surprise," Washington Post, 6 September 1987.
52. Thomas Schelling, foreword in Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962), vii.
53. James William Morley, ed. and David Anson Titus, trans., Japan's Road to the Pacific War: The Final Confrontation: Japan's Negotiations with the United States, 1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 322-23. For the source of this
54. Morley, Japan's Road to the Pacific War, 404, n 293.
55. See also Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941 (New York: Penguin Group, 2007), 372.
56. John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 183.
57. Mitsuo Fuchida, "I Led the Air Attack on Pearl Harbor," Reader's Digest 64, no. 382 (February 1954): 944.
58. Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, 378.
59. Nathan Miller, War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II (Oxford University Press, 1997), 198.
60. Dorothy Perkins, Japan Goes to War: A Chronology of Japanese Military Expansion from the Meiji Era to the Attack on Pearl Harbor, 1868-1941 (Collingdale, PA: Diane Publishing, 1997), 168.
61. Edwin T. Layton, Roger Pineau, and John Costello, I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway: Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 1985), 309.
62. Carl Smith and Adam Hook, Pearl Harbor, 1941: The Day of Infamy (Sterling Heights, MI: Osprey Publishing, 1999), 21-22.
63. Cecil B. Currey, "Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap" (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1997). For dissenting opinions that emphasize a political rationale for the choice of date
64. Ronnie E. Ford, Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 126.
65. Ang Cheng Guan, "Decision-Making Leading to the Tet Offensive (1968)-The Vietnamese Communist Perspective," Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 3 (July 1998): 341-53.
66. James J. Wirtz, The Tet Offensive (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 110.
67. General William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (New York: Dell Publishing, 1976), 106-7.
68. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 424
69. Wirtz, The Tet Offensive, 221
70. J. H. Willbanks, The Tet Offensive: A Concise History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 32.
71. Pham Van Son, ed. The Viet Cong "Tet" Offensive 1968 (Saigon: Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces Printing and Publication Center, 1968), 387 and 419.
72. Ford, Tet 1968, 103.
73. Wirtz, The Tet Offensive, 221.
74. Willbanks, The Tet Offensive, 26
75. Son, The Viet Cong, 53.
76. Son, The Viet Cong, 362.
77. Muhamed Borogovac, The War in Bosnia 1992-1995, pt. 5, chap. 6 (Boston: Bosnian Congress, 1995).
78. Carl Savich, "Srebrenica: The Untold Story," http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/051.shtml.
79. Norman Davies, Europe: A History (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 875-76.
80. Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 403.
81. Mitja Velikonja, Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2003), 99-100.
82. Michael Tierney, Eoin MacNeill: Scholar and Man of Action, 1867-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 199-214.
83. Jonathan Githens-Mazer, Myths and Memories of the Easter Rising: Cultural and Political Nationalism in Ireland (Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 113.
84. W. J. Brennan-Whitmore, Dublin Burning: The Easter Rising from Behind the Barricades (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), 13.
85. Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 31-43, 187, and 237-38.
86. Fouad Ibrahim, "al-Shahada: A Center of the Shiite System of Belief," in Dying for Faith, eds., Al-Rasheed and Shterin, 117.
87. Manochehr Dorraj, "Symbolic and Utilitarian Political Value of a Tradition: Martyrdom in the Iranian Political Culture," Review of Politics 59, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 502-3.
88. Chibli Mallat, "Religious Militancy in Contemporary Iraq: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr and the Sunni-Shia Paradigm," Third World Quarterly 10, no. 2 (April 1988): 724.
89. As a direct consequence, Ireland is the only country that does not commemorate its independence day on a fixed date in the calendar but moves the commemoration in conjunction with the religious calendar: The proclamation of the Irish Republic is commemorated on Easter Monday every year, regardless of whether or not this coincides with April 25, the date on which the Easter rising occurred in 1916.
90. I thank Gideon Aran for drawing my attention to these ambivalent connotations. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan observed: "Henceforth, Yom Kippur would take on added solemnity." Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life (New York: William Morrow, 1976), 473.
91. Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 168-69.
92. At the extremes, the civil-religious significance of war can overshadow and even subsume the initial religious significance of the date. We might call this the "Crispin Effect": Though initially the occasion of St. Crispin's Day may have lent some significance to the Battle of Agincourt, in English narratives the sacred day now derives its significance from the battle. 41 Qur'an, Surah 3, verses 13 and 123-25 and Surah 8, throughout.
93. Henry Kissinger and Muhammad Hassanain Haikal, "Kissinger Meets Haikal," Journal of Palestine Studies 3, no. 2 (Winter 1974): 219-20.
94. Mohammed Abdel Ghani El-Gamasy, The October War: Memoirs of Field Marshal El-Gamasy of Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1993), 181.
95. Taha El Magdoub Hassan El Badri and Mohammed Dia El Din Zohdy, The Ramadan War, 1973 (Dunn Loring, VA: T. N. Dupuy, 1978), 48.
96. Insight Team of the London Sunday Times, "The Yom Kippur War," London Sunday Times (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 75.
97. For example, the terrorists mounted a fake license plate to the vehicle used in the attack with the number AZ H 314 to commemorate the 314 warriors who fought alongside Muhammad at the Battle of Badr. Madawi Al-Rasheed, "Rituals of Life and Death: the Politics and Poetics of jihad in Saudi Arabia," in Dying for Faith: Religiously Motivated Violence in the Contemporary World, eds., Madawi Al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 82-83.
98. Jubin M. Goodzari, Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East (London: Tauris, 2006), 69-70.
99. Joana Dodds and Benjamin Wilson, "The Iran-Iraq War: Will without Means," in Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East, ed. Barry Rubin (New York: Routledge, 2009), 56.
100. Elliott Horowitz, "The Rite to Be Reckless: On the Perpetration and Interpretation of Purim Violence," Poetics Today 15, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 9-54.
101. Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
102. Jerold Auerbach, Hebron Jews: Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 137-38.
103. Mike Guzofsky, quoted in Geoffrey Paul and Jenni Frazer, "From Brooklyn to Kirya Arba," The Jewish Chronicle (London), 4 March 1994.
104. Malcolm Brown, "The Christmas Truce 1914: The British Story," in Meetings in No Man's Land: Christmas Fraternization in the Great War, eds., Mac Ferro, Malcolm Brown, Ŕemy Cazals, and Olaf Mueller (London: Constable & Robinson, 2007), 21.
105. Stanley Weintraub, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 5-7.
106. Robert Axelrod devotes an entire chapter of The Evolution of Cooperation to analyzing how these arrangements evolved.
107. Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 2006), chap. 4, 73-87.
108. Weintraub, Silent Night, 14-15 and 25
109. Brown, "The Christmas Truce 1914," 25.
110. As cited in Brown, "The Christmas Truce 1914," 29.
111. Brown, "The Christmas Truce 1914," 32, 44-45 and 51
112. Weintraub, Silent Night, 42-61.
113. These include sporadic fraternization during Christmas in 1915 and, on the Eastern front, during Easter in 1916.
114. Brown, "The Christmas Truce 1914," 73.
115. Thomas W. Lippman, "U.S. Claims Tacit Support From Arab Nations; Attack's Timing Propitious for Minimizing Negative Reactions in Region, Analysts Say," Washington Post, 17 December 1998, A30.
116. Ultimately, US-Iraqi cease-fire talks began less than two weeks before the start of Ramadan. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 385-411
117. Richard M. Swain, Lucky War: Third Army in Desert Storm (Diane Publishing, 1999), 71
118. Bruce Gottlieb, "Why Not Bomb on Ramadan?" Slate Magazine, 18 December 1998.
119. Charles M. Sennott, "Clinton Gets Little Sympathy in Iraq; The Clinton Impeachment," Boston Globe, 20 December 1998, A1
120. Barton Gellman, Dana Priest, and Bradley Graham, "Diplomacy and Doubts on the Road to War; U.S. Prepared to Bomb Iraq While Wondering If the Aftermath Would Be Worth It," Washington Post, 1 March 1998, A01.
121. Arianna Huffington, "Clinton Plays into Milosovic's Hand," Chicago Sun-Times, 11 April 1999, 31.
122. Bill Sammon, "No Pause in Bombing for Ramadan Month Goal is to 'Finish the Mission,' Rice Says," Washington Times, 2 November 2001, A4.
123. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld interview with Brett Baier, Fox News, US Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, 19 August 2002.
124. Secretary Rumsfeld interview with Tom Bowman (Baltimore Sun), US Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, 27 December 2001.
125. Stephen Lynch, "Most Dangerous Game: What Went Wrong in the Hunt for Bin Laden," New York Post, 5 October 2008, 34.
126. Susan Sachs, "The Struggle for Iraq: The Occupation; U.S. Forces to Lift Night Curfew for Muslim Holy Month," New York Times, 25 October 2003, A8
127. David Ignatius, "Tikrit Tests Plan A," Washington Post, 26 October 2003, B07
128. David E. Sanger, "The Struggle for Iraq: Occupation; Iraq Paradox: Cracking Down While Promoting Freedom," New York Times, 28 October 2003, A10
129. Daniel Williams, "U.S. Grip Loosens in the Sunni Triangle; Tactical Shift In Iraq Leaves Power Vacuum," Washington Post, 8 November 2003, A16
130. Alex Berenson, "The Struggle for Iraq: Combat; U.S. Troops Raid Tikrit in Hunt for Guerrillas," New York Times, 9 November 2003, Sect. 1, 15
131. Dexter Filkins, "A Region Inflamed: Strategy; Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns," New York Times, 7 December 2003, Sect. 1, 1.
132. Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Day of Infamy Speech," delivered to a joint session of Congress, 8 December 1941.
133. Emily S Rosenberg, A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 31-33.
134. Hilary Conroy and Harry Wray, Pearl Harbor Reexamined: Prologue to the Pacific War (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), 123.
135. The executive officer of the USS Enterprise, for example, accompanied the first raids against the Japanese Navy in the central Pacific with the verse "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, this Sunday it's our turn to shoot."
136. Nathan Miller, War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II (Oxford University Press, 1997), 233-34
137. John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 63.
138. Son, The Viet Cong, 13-14.
139. Abba Eban, An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1977), 504.
140. Linda Greenhouse "News of Conflict Given at Yom Kippur Prayers," New York Times, 7 October 1973.
141. D. D. Elazar, "The United States: Overview" in The Yom Kippur War: Israel and the Jewish People, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Arno Press, 1974), 11.
142. Yoram Hazony, "Israel's Right and Left Converge," New York Times, 26 April 2002, 29.
143. Joel Brinkley, "Mideast Turmoil: Mideast; Bomb Kills at Least 19 in Israel as Arabs Meet over Peace Plan," New York Times, 28 March 2002, 1.
144. Joel Brinkley and Serge Schmemann, "Mideast Turmoil: The Fighting; Sharon Calls Arafat an Enemy and Sends Tanks To Isolate Him at Headquarters In Ramallah," New York Times, 29 March 2002, 1
145. Michael R. Gordon, "Mideast Turmoil: Strategy; Limits of Force: Superior Israeli Firepower Isn't Likely to End Terror," New York Times, 14 April 2002, 16
146. Matt Rees, "The Battle of Jenin," Time Magazine, 13 May 2002.
147. Ron E. Hassner, "Fighting Insurgency on Sacred Ground," Washington Quarterly 29, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 158-59
148. C. Christine Fair, "The Golden Temple: A Tale of Two Sieges," in Treading on Sacred Ground, eds., Sumit Ganguly and C. Christine Fair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
149. Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi's Last Battle (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985).
150. For example, Jews can observe up to fifty-five primary holy days a year in addition to the weekly Sabbath; some Muslims venerate as many as thirty-six holy days (including the month-long Ramadan fast) in addition to attending congregational prayers on Fridays; and according to some Catholic and Orthodox Christian calendars, nearly every day of the year is associated with a saint, above and beyond Sunday observance and the veneration of major holy days.
151. Cryil Glassé, The New Encyclopedia of Islam (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 109-10
152. Leo Trepp, The Complete Book of Jewish Observances (New York: Behrman House, 1980), 88-90
153. Vatican Roman Missal (Third Typical Edition, 2002)
154. Archbishop Dmitri Royster, Trans., The Priest's Service Book (Dallas, TX: Diocese of the South Orthodox Church in America, 2003).
155. William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (Boston, MA: Back Bay, 2002), 355.
156. George Feifer, The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot, 2001), 106.
157. The analysis below relies on daily incident counts between 20 March 2003 and 30 June 2009 provided by Joseph H. Felter and Jacob N. Shapiro's Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC). The data were produced through a multi-year collaboration between ESOC and Iraq Body Count (IBC) and are based on coding of press reports from multiple sources. For more details on IBC procedures
158. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/. Each incident is attributed to coalition forces, sectarian actors, or insurgents but without reporting the identity of victims or perpetrators. The data have the disadvantage of only registering attacks in which civilians were killed and thus probably undercounts the number of incidents, though there is no reason to assume that it does so in a consistently biased manner that overestimates or underestimates events during sacred dates in the calendar. For other work with these data
159. Luke N. Condra and Jacob N. Shapiro, "Who Takes the Blame? The Strategic Effects of Collateral Damage," (unpublished manuscript, 2009).
160. Richard W. Stevenson and David Firestone, "The Struggle for Iraq: The White House; Bush Says Bombings Will Not Deter Him," New York Times, 28 October 2003, A12
161. Thom Shanker, "As Iraq Elections Near, Pentagon Extends Tours of Duty for About 6,500 U.S. Soldiers," New York Times, 20 October 2004, A8
162. Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, "Funds," New York Times, 22 October 2004, A1
163. Richard A. Oppel., "Rebel Attacks Kill 18 Iraqis; G.I.'s Injured," New York Times, 24 October 2004, sect. 1, 1
164. Eric Schmitt, "In Iraq, U.S. Officials Cite Obstacles to Victory," New York Times, 31 October 2004, sect. 1, 1
165. Bradley Graham and Walter Pincus, "U.S. Hopes To Divide Insurgency; Plan to Cut Extremism Involves Iraq's Sunnis," Washington Post, 31 October 2004, A1
166. Richard A. Oppel Jr., "In Wake of Falluja, Pace of Combat Intensifies in Ramadi," New York Times, 14 November 2004, sect. 1, 13
167. Jackie Spinner, "Danger, Boredom Converge At Checkpoint Near Baqubah Soldiers Seek to Thwart Car Bombers, Distinguish 'Bad Guys' From Civilians," Washington Post, 25 November 2004, A30
168. Daniel Williams, "Explosions Across Iraq Kill 3 GIs, at Least 15 Others
169. Car Bomb in Front Of Mosul Police Station Claims 9," Washington Post, 1 February 2004, A20
170. Steve Fainaru, "Violence, Crash in Iraq Kill 6 Troops 5 Baghdad Churches Targeted by Bombers," Washington Post, 17 October 2004, A1
171. Karl Vick, "Trouble Spots Dot Iraqi Landscape Attacks Erupting Away From Fallujah," Washington Post, 15 November 2004, A1.
172. Edward Wong, "Rebels Dressed as Women Attack Iraqi Police Station," New York Times, 5 November 2005, A10
173. Amy Scott Tyson, "'06 Cuts In Iraq Troops Unlikely; General Points to Sectarian Violence In New Assessment," Washington Post, 20 September 2006, A1
174. Sudarsan Reghavan, "Since Threat, Attacks on U.S. Troops Have Risen," Washington Post, 21 September 2006, A19
175. Michael Luo, "After Burst of Violence, as Many as 60 Bodies Are Found in Baghdad," New York Times, 29 September 2006, A12
176. Reuters, "110 Bodies Found in Baghdad in Two Days," Washington Post, 11 October 2006, A12
177. Josh While and Thomas E. Ricks, "'Tough' Time in Iraq to Continue, Casey Says," Washington Post, 12 October 2006, A21
178. Joshua Partlow, "State Dept. Convoy Attacked in Baghdad, Sparking a Shootout Security Guards Kill 9 Civilians, Iraqis Say," Washington Post, 17 September 2007, A14
179. Sudarsan Reghavan, "Blasts Kill at Least 30 Across Iraq in Growing Campaign of Violence," Washington Post, 27 September 2007, A18.
180. The years 1427-9 AH correspond to the period 30 January 2006 to 27 December 2008. The numbers along the x axis denote the Muslim month in each of the three years covered, starting with 1 (Muharram) and ending in 12 (Dhu al-Hijja). Ramadan is the ninth month of the year. This period, at the height of the insurgency, was chosen for illustrative purposes. The analysis that follows covers the entire period between 20 March 2003 and 30 June 2009.
181. The slight rise in sectarian attacks during Ramadan is statistically insignificant at p =.4489 for sectarian attacks and p =.7204 for insurgent attacks, where statistical significance is defined at the standard p <.05 level. For this and all subsequent models, we assume a negative binomial distribution in order to model the number of incidents per day as an overdispersed event count skewed toward low values.
182. The findings on sectarian attacks and the findings on insurgent attacks are both significant at p < 0.01. This analysis controls for the effect of a one-day lag in number of incidents, days since the beginning of the war, and fixed effects of years and months. The complete results for this and the subsequent analyses will be available on the author's web site.
183. This finding is significant at p =.013366. This model controls for the effect of a one-day lag in number of incidents, days since the beginning of the war, and fixed effects of days of the week, and years. The results for insurgent and coalition attacks are not significant. This may suggest that Muslim combatants regard Eid al-Fitr as an unsuitable occasion for attacks on fellow Muslims but an appropriate occasion for attacks on coalition forces. Alternatively, it may be that the movements involved in sectarian conflict and those involved in anti-coalition attacks are constrained by different interpretation of Islamic beliefs and practices regarding this sacred day. The data available do not suffice to adjudicate between these explanations.
184. Both results are statistically significant at the p =.017938 and p < 0.01. This model also controls for the effect of a one-day lag in number of incidents, days since the beginning of the war, and fixed effects of days of the week, and years. The results are robust to coding Eid al-Adha as a three-, four-, or five-day feast.
185. The distaste for violence on Eid al-Adha is also confirmed in the dismay with which Sunni Muslims throughout the Middle East witnessed the execution of Saddam Hussein on Eid al-Adha. The decision by Iraq's Shi'a majority government to time the hanging with the Feast of Sacrifice was interpreted as an anti-Sunni outrage, helped Ba'athists frame Hussein as a martyr, and galvanized active support for Sunni militant groups in the immediate aftermath of his death.
186. Associated Press, "Angry Protests in Iraq Suggest Sunni Arab Shift to Militants," New York Times, 2 January 2007, 9
187. Thomas L. Friedman, "A Hanging and a Funeral," New York Times, 3 January 2007, 21
188. Hassan M. Fattah, "Hanging Images Make Hussein a Martyr to Many in Arab World," New York Times, 6 January 2007, 1.
189. I searched for incidents in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the International Religious Freedom Report under "Abuses by Rebel or Foreign Forces or Terrorist Organizations." I counted only instances in which targets were identified as Christian (or "Chaldean") and in which the date of the attack was specified.
190. This measure of the link between Christian sacred time and anti-Christian violence in Iraq is relatively conservative since it excludes all Christian holy days aside from Sundays. In both 2008 and 2009, for example, several attacks coincided with Advent, the Roman Catholic Vigil of the Solemnity of Mary, and the Eastern Orthodox Nativity feast. Nonetheless, we cannot conclude from these data that there is a statistically significant correlation between Sundays and anti-Christian violence in Iraq. After all, most Sundays in Iraq saw no attacks against Christians.
191. These attacks included the bombing of four churches in Baghdad and two churches in Mosul on 1 August 2004
192. Attacks on four Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican churches on 29 January 2006
193. The bombing of six churches and three convents in Baghdad and Mosul on 6 January 2008; and attacks on five Baghdad churches on 12 July 2009.
194. Somini Sengupta and Ian Fisher, "Bombs Explode Near Churches In 2 Iraqi Cities," New York Times, 2 August 2004, A1
195. Pamela Constable, "Blasts Target Christian Churches in 2 Iraqi Cities; Attacks During Services Kill 11 in Baghdad, Mosul," Washington Post, 2 August 2004, A1
196. Robert F. Worth, "Bombings at Christian Sites Leave 3 Dead and 15 Hurt," New York Times, 20 January 2006, A12
197. Steven Lee Myers, "Churches and Envoy Attacked in Iraq," New York Times, 13 July 2009, A4
198. International Religious Freedom Reports for 2004, 2006, and 2008, available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/.
199. A historical precedent that may have inspired Giap, the successful attack by the Vietnamese General Quang Trung against the Chinese during Tet in 1789, and the decision by the North Vietnamese leaders to advance the celebration of Tet by one day, lend further credence to this hypothesis.
200. Clark Dougan and Stephen Weiss, eds., Nineteen Sixty-Eight (Boston: Boston Publishing, 1983), 11.
201. Currey, "Victory at Any Cost," xix-xx.
202. Anwar El-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 241.
203. Mohammed Abdel Ghani El-Gamasy, The October War: Memoirs of Field Marshal El-Gamasy of Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1993), 181.
204. Saad El Shazly, The Crossing of the Suez (San Francisco: American Mideast Research, 2003), 36.
205. For an analysis of the impact of this timing as well as Israeli deliberations regarding Muslim sacred time in 1973
206. Ron E. Hassner, "Religious Intelligence," Terrorism and Political Violence (forthcoming, 2011).