Mako Discusses Research on De-Ba’athification in Iraq
Shamiran Mako, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, appeared on the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) Middle East podcast to discuss her recent Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding article, “Subverting Peace: The Origins and Legacies of de-Ba’athification in Iraq.”
Mako’s article demonstrates how exclusive and unconstrained lustration in Iraq created an institutional mechanism that targeted and excluded key segments of the population as perceived regime collaborators, which subverted peacebuilding during the transitional period of the occupation. In the article portion of the podcast, Mako discusses how her work explores De-Ba’athification as a means of lustration, the policy’s origins and legacies, as well as how it and foreign influence affected the coalition government. She argues that while lustration could have been used as a tool for transitional justice in Iraq, it was not due to the fact that it was used exclusively as a tool to exclude, subverting an important phase of the peacebuilding process in post-2003 Iraq.
The full podcast can be listened to below. Note that Professor Mako’s remarks begin around the 30:00 mark.
Shamiran Mako is an assistant professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. She is also a member of the Graduate Faculty at the Political Science Department at Boston University. Her research explores the historical and contemporary drivers of inter and intra-state conflicts that produce weak and fragile states across the MENA region. She is the author of After the Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa, with Valentine Moghadam (forthcoming June 2021). Read more about Professor Mako on her faculty profile.