Leiden University Student Repository

Fleischer, Thomas (2020)

"Wages of Sectarian Violence" Agents, Discourses, and Material Conditions in the Construction of Sectarian Violence in Iraq in 2006

Bachelor thesis | International Studies (BA)

This thesis seeks to explore and understand the manner in which elite actors in Iraq constructed the sectarian violence in 2006 between the Shia and Sunni communities. To comprehensively analyse this period, this paper will make use of Dexter and Jackson's framework "the Social Construction of Organised Political Violence". It will show how elites – called agents of political violence – used specific discourses and discursive sites to bring about the conditions necessary for political sectarian violence. However, this paper also argues that one cannot understand the sectarian violence in 2006 outside of the context of the U.S' invasion and subsequent occupation.

Iraq

United States

Ethnicity

Violence

Constructivism

Author

Fleischer, Thomas

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Middle East

Supervisors

Yenen, Alp

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en