From British mandate to post Anglo‐American invasion: Reproduction of ethno‐sectarian divides and the breakdown of social cohesion in Mosul

Abstract

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 ushered in an era of great uncertainty and turbulence that left the country in an economically crippled, politically unstable, and socially desperate situation. While the built-in ethno-sectarian divides have been widely used as analytical categories to address the enduring violence in both Mosul and the rest of Iraq, little attention has been paid to the connection between the long-term Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the ethnosectarian violence that currently characterizes Mosul. This study argues that while ethnic and sectarian loyalties have historically persisted in their social forms since the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the highly politicized and violent forms of ethno-sectarian conflict are modern phenomena, produced and reproduced under the conditions of the decades-long British and American interventions. The study retrospectively evaluates the current dynamics of ethnosectarian confrontations in Mosul through two stages in the long historiography of modern Iraq. The first section reveals how Britain's mismanagement of colonial Iraq set the initial conditions for communal cleavages and instability in today's Mosul. Later, the second section turns its attention toward the contemporary manifestation of ethno-sectarian violence, particularly under the U.S.-led occupation. K E Y W O R D S ethno-sectarian conflict, Iraq, Mosul | 7 ÖZEKIN

Iraqi Kurds: The dream of nation state

“…After the British withdrawal from Iraqi territories in 1932, the Kurds were concerned about potential oppression by the Baghdad government (Özekin, 2020). At that time, the League of Nations guaranteed minorities the right of petition under the supervision of the Permanent Mandates Commission.…”