Mimicry and Its Double in the Iraqi Civil War

Mimicry and Its Double in the Iraqi Civil War

Description

The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 sparked one of the most violent and complex civil wars in the early twenty-first century, one that provided ample opportunities and incentives for identity mimicry. This chapter uses the Iraqi civil war of 2006–2008 to understand the many forms that mimicry can take and the effects it may have in a modern conflict setting. It offers detailed descriptions of a wide range of defensive and aggressive mimicry tactics employed by all sides in the conflict as well as the counter-strategies they inspired. A striking feature of the Iraqi mimicry landscape was the phenomenon of policemen pretending to be members of sectarian death squads pretending to be policemen, a type of meta-mimicry intended to conceal the actual involvement of policemen in sectarian killings. Mimicry likely contributed to, and was subsequently somewhat reduced by, the sorting of Sunnis and Shiites into separate areas and to the retrenchment of the US presence into heavily fortified bases.

First Page

205

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191802454.003.0008

Source Publication

Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict

Source Editors/Authors

Diego Gambetta, Thomas Hegghammer

Publication Date

4-1-2024

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Mimicry and Its Double in the Iraqi Civil War

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