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ORDER OUT OF CHAOS
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A volume in the series
Religion and Conflict
Edited by Ron E. Hassner
For a list of books in the series, visit our website at cornellpress . cornell . edu.
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ORDER OUT
OF CHAOS
Islam, Information, and the Rise and
Fall of Social Orders in Iraq
David Siddhartha Patel
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS I THACA AND LONDON
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Copyright © 2022 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press,
Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at
cornellpress . cornell . edu.
First published 2022 by Cornell University Press
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Patel, David Siddhartha, 1977– author.
Title: Order out of chaos : Islam, information, and the rise and fall of social
orders in Iraq / David Siddhartha Patel.
Description: Ithaca, New York : Cornell University Press, 2022. | Series:
Religion and conflict | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022013884 (print) | LCCN 2022013885 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501715419 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501767944 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781501715426 (epub) | ISBN 9781501715433 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Islam and politics—Iraq—History—21st century. | Iraq War,
2003–2011—Peace. | Iraq—Politics and government—2003– | Iraq—Social
conditions—21st century.
Classification: LCC DS79.769 .P38 2022 (print) | LCC DS79.769 (ebook) |
DDC 956.7044/31—dc23/eng/20220429
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013884
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013885
Cover image: Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque of al-Abilla in Basra, Iraq,
May 23, 2003. Photo by Andrea Comas. REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo.
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Contents
Preface vii
Note on Transliteration xiii
1. Order, Authority, and Identity 1
2. The Sanctions- Era Roots of Postinvasion Developments 20
3. Collapse 40
4. The Emergence of Local Orders 52
5. The Geography of Order 89
6. Ayatollahs’ Networks and National Authority 119
7. The Limits of Sunni Religious Authority 162
8. Beyond Basra and Beyond Sermons 173
Notes 179
References 203
Index 215
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Preface
At one level, this book is a story about what happens when an authoritarian and
controlling state suddenly dis appears. How do individuals establish some sort
of order until the state reestablishes itself under new leadership? Many Iraqis in
April 2003 looked to the mosque and found cues in Friday sermons, which I ar-
gue was neither “natu ral” nor expected. And because clerical institutions in
Shiʿi Islam and Sunni Islam are or ga nized differently, Iraq’s Shiʿi clergy were a
lot more effective in binding people in a functioning national- level community,
inadvertently contributing to the salience of sectarian identities. At another level,
this book uses postinvasion Iraq to speak to big and enduring questions— the
origins of social order, the source and limits of po liti cal authority, and the sa-
lience of collective identity— that cross borders of academic disciplines and popu-
lar interest.
As is often the case with fieldwork, my field site chose me. In September 2003, a
friend working in Iraq with a humanitarian nonprofit organ ization offered me
an unexpected opportunity to visit Basra. At the time, the US- led invasion of
Iraq seemed like it might be one of the most impor tant events to occur in the
region in my lifetime ( today, that still seems true). That thought led me to change
my plans, fly to Kuwait, and cross into southern Iraq. At the time, there was no
checkpoint or immigration on the Iraqi side of the border; after passing the
Kuwaiti authorities, one could drive unhindered into the border town of Safwan,
Iraq.
Once in Basra, where I lived with a local Iraqi in their home throughout my
time there, I began to talk with vari ous people to try to make sense of what was hap-
pening a fter the fall of Saddam and in the absence of a functioning state. As I did,
I realized that Basrawis w ere doing essentially the same t hing that I was d oing,
and they seemed almost as confused about what was happening in their neighbor-
hood, city, and country as I was. Every one was in the same boat, trying to make
sense out of anarchy.
I collected ethnographic data during seven months of field research in Basra,
where I was immersed in Iraqi society from September 2003 to April 2004. I had
plans to remain in Iraq for at least another six to nine months, but escalating
vio lence forced me to suddenly suspend my fieldwork much earlier than antici-
pated, and I was never able to pick up where I left off. When I left, I was field-
testing a survey and a field experiment and had begun to collect systematic data
vii
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viii Preface
on indicators of social order. I had conducted dozens of interviews and had many
more planned.
But in the first week of April 2004, the situation in Iraq for foreigners changed
dramatically, virtually overnight. Militiamen affiliated with Moqtada al- Sadr
clashed with co ali tion forces throughout southern Iraq and in Baghdad a fter the
Co ali tion Provisional Authority (CPA) closed a newspaper associated with his
movement and arrested one of his top aides. At the same time, US Marines began
an offensive in Fallujah in response to the killing of four armed Blackwater con-
tractors in the city. I happened to be in Baghdad when this all occurred and could
not return to Basra because Sadrist militias controlled points along both of the
roads I could have taken from Baghdad south to Basra. This was the moment
when insurgents and opportunists began to kidnap foreigners in large numbers.
At least a dozen foreigners were abducted that week in Iraq, and over seventy
were taken hostage by the end of 2004. Rumors passed among journalists and
foreigners in Iraq that gangs w ere trying to sell hostages to violent jihadists in-
stead of or in addition to collecting ransoms from families and employers.1 After
the kidnapping spree began, and unable to safely travel west or south from Bagh-
dad, I went north to Iraqi Kurdistan, crossed into Turkey, and made my way to
Amman, Jordan, to wait for things to settle so that I could return to Basra and
continue my fieldwork. I did not see Basra again for more than seven years.
I remained in Jordan from April to September 2004, interviewing Iraqis and
aid workers t here and anticipating resuming my fieldwork in southern Iraq. A
second round of fighting between Sadr’s militiamen and the US military, as well
as the kidnapping of a British freelance reporter from his h otel in Basra in Au-
gust 2004, convinced my contacts in Basra that it would be unsafe for me in their
city.2 By this point, my presence in Basra also would have significantly increased
risks to t hose Iraqi contacts: militias and criminal gangs knew that p eople with
access to money could and would pay sizable ransoms for relatives, friends, and
coworkers. The anthropologist Hayder al- Mohammad conducted fieldwork in
Basra after 2005 and l ater wrote, “Many of my friends and acquaintances have
been kidnapped. Most did not survive.”3
When Iraq held elections in January 2005, it seemed that things might be im-
proving to the point where I could resume fieldwork. I flew to Jordan in April 2005
and was emboldened in May when I heard that an American freelance journalist,
Steven Vincent, had moved into a hotel in Basra and was collecting material for a
book on the history of the city. If Vincent was in Basra, I could be too! It took two
months of cajoling and waiting in Amman before the Iraqi embassy t here gave me
a visa. On 2 August, two weeks before I was to return to Basra, Vincent was ab-
ducted off of a main street in the city by men wearing police uniforms and driving
a police vehicle.4 He was tortured and executed, less than three months after
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Preface ix
arriving in the city. Two days earlier, Vincent had published an op-ed in the New
York Times stating that “Basran politics (and everyday life) is increasingly coming
under the control of Shiite religious groups” and that “a few police officers are per-
petrating many of the hundreds of assassinations— mostly of former Baath Party
members— that take place in Basra each month.”5 The following month, an Iraqi
journalist and stringer in Basra, Fakher Haider, whom I knew and respected, was
abducted from his home by masked men claiming to be police officers. His body
was found hours l ater, “with his hands bound and a bag over his head in a deserted
area on the outskirts of Basra.”6 I had interviewed p eople in, and planned to return
to, the neighborhood where Haider had been abducted. The murders of Vincent
and Haider, in rapid succession, erased any hope I had that I could safely restart
my fieldwork in Basra.7
Vincent’s reporting had accurately described the influence of Islamist mili-
tias and the spread of conservative mores in Basra. For reasons I describe in this
book, local social orders based on mosques could not scale up to provide district-
level or citywide order. And the spread of religious discourses and symbols
helped Shiʿi Islamist militias operate with impunity, including from within po-
lice ranks. Kidnappings for ransom and assassinations increased dramatically
in Basra from 2003 to 2005. The police chief of Basra Governate, General Has-
san al- Sade, admitted to the Guardian in May 2005 that half of his force of 13,740
officers was working for po liti cal parties and militias and was involved in assas-
sinations.8 Gangs and militias made Basra ungovernable for weak central author-
ities and far too dangerous for me to conduct fieldwork. Several preachers and
officials whom I had interviewed were assassinated. More than a dozen of my
contacts fled the city; several o thers were murdered. The situation in Basra de-
teriorated further in early 2007 when the US military increased operations in
Baghdad’s Sadr City in an effort to degrade the militias’ capabilities. The Mahdi
Army and other militias relocated their seasoned fighters and bomb makers to
Basra to prevent them from being killed or captured.9 The central government
did not reestablish control over the city until early 2008, when the Iraqi Army
launched its first major operation since the collapse of the state in 2003, Opera-
tion Charge of the Knights. I fi nally returned to Basra in June 2011, seven years
after I had left and four years after I had filed my dissertation.
During my time in Basra, I was fortunate to land and remain on good terms
with several key individuals connected to militias in the city, including Moqtada
al- Sadr’s local representative, Sheikh Abdul Satar al- Bahadali. On several occa-
sions I had run- ins with Sadr militiamen, and being able to mention Bahadali’s
name and phone number, as well as the names of other clerics in the Office of
the Martyred Sadr II, prevented tense situations from escalating and saved me
from being detained or possibly harmed. I learned ways to quickly figure out
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x Preface
which militia controlled any par tic u lar checkpoint or building; this made it eas-
ier to know which names to mention and which to avoid mentioning. This
would have been more difficult in Baghdad, a larger city with more actors. Th ere
were two particularly dangerous Shiʿi Islamist militias operating in Basra while
I was there— TharAllah (God’s Revenge) and Fifteenth Shaʿban.10 Both were ru-
mored to be linked to the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps or the Sadrists, or both. These two militias were widely thought to be re-
sponsible for a series of assassinations of alleged Baʿthists, sympathizers of the
nascent insurgency, and alcohol sellers. Members of these militias knew who I
was: I was introduced at a meeting to a TharAllah official whom I believe was
their leader, Yusuf al- Mosawi, and an Iraqi contact later told me members of
TharAllah had asked employees at a restaurant I frequented, Qasr al- Sultan, for
the names of Iraqis with whom I met.11 I always had the sense that someone, per-
haps in the Sadr Office or with the Badr Organ ization, had vouched for me and
instructed those and other groups to leave me alone. Elsewhere, t hings might
not have been as fortuitous for me.
I have always been aware that I was able to enter Iraq, to remain there, and to
leave when I did because of who I was and the passport I held. Although it was
the British Armed Forces and the British- led CPA South that were pre sent in
Basra, the fact that it was my country, the United States, that had led the inva-
sion and occupation of Iraq influenced my fieldwork. I hope this book makes at
least a miniscule contribution to our understanding of the impact of those ac-
tions on Iraqi society.
Along the tortuous route I took to complete this book, I incurred more debts
than I can acknowledge here. I am privileged to have the support networks that
allowed me to conduct field research in Iraq, safely leave when I had to, and then
make sense of what I saw unfold.
This research began while I was a gradu ate student at Stanford University. I
thank David Laitin for encouraging and supporting my foray into Middle East-
ern and Islamic studies, despite the university offering few ave nues at the time
to do so. Avner Greif’s teaching, writing, and feedback deeply influenced how I
view institutions and strategic beliefs. I thank Jim Fearon for repeatedly push-
ing me to be precise in my arguments and reminding me not to allow my claims
to go further than what the data allow. Jeremy Weinstein provided pointed feed-
back that, to my regret, I brushed aside u ntil a manuscript reviewer echoed
similar concerns. Although they w ere not part of my committee, Russell Hardin
and Barry Weingast each had a greater influence on my thinking than I real-
ized until years later.
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