Description
Studies of armed conflict in Iraq have been overwhelmingly state-centric, framing Iraq’s conflicts as a product of interactions between states and armed groups. From the Iran-Iraq War to the 1991 Gulf War to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the 2007–08 civil war, and the war against ISIS, civilians’ experiences have rarely come to the fore. This article reverses the lens. Drawing on 60+ life-history interviews (2000–2025) with Iraqis from six cities—Baghdad, Mosul, Erbil, Karbala, Ramadi, and Basra—we make two claims. First, ethnosectarian identity by itself is a weak predictor of an individual’s conflict experiences. There has been no “typical Sunni” or “typical Shia” experience of war. Our findings showed significant within-group variation in experiences of violence, coercion, displacement, revenge, and injustice. Second, geography—especially micro-geographies—does much more work in explaining the variation in conflict experiences. Where a person lived and worked profoundly shaped their risk profile and coping strategies. Ethnosectarian identity mattered insofar as it intersected with place, time, and local configurations of authority (militias, police, tribal actors) but not as a free-standing driver. These findings caution against the everyday use of ethnosectarian labels as shorthand for social relations or political attitudes. Even in settings branded as “ethnic wars”, identity offers at best a partial explanation. Analytic leverage lies in the interaction between identity and geography, and in tracing how local control, mobility constraints, and neighbourhood economies structure civilians’ encounters with violence over time.
