The Shia armed groups and the future of Iraq

In: Security & defence quarterly, Band 19, Heft 2, S. 39-53

Abstract

<i>In this article, we try to identify the impact of the Shia militias in Iraq on the future of this
country. We maintain that these armed groups will be a destabilising factor for Iraq and its
neighbours, and they will worsen and deepen the sectarian division in the Middle East. We
assess these different groups from different perspectives, for example, using the Weberian
theory that the state is the only entity that has a monopoly of violence, Ariel Ahram's
model of state-sponsored and government-sponsored militias, and finally the devolution of
violence to these armed groups.</i>