The Centre for Statecraft & National Security is delighted to host Dr Inna Rudolf for a talk about her new book, Iraq’s Shi’a Warriors: From Battlefield to Parliament.
Iraq’s Shi’a Warriors traces how the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) and their formal and informal affiliates have sought to establish themselves as legitimate actors within the highly fragmented Iraqi state. Providing an overview of the theoretical arguments challenging the idea of approaching the state in Iraq as a unitary actor or an ‘independent variable’, Rudolf dissects the PMU’s pursuit of legitimacy in three distinct yet interconnected arenas of struggle – the political, the religious and the civic field. She demonstrates how the academic debates on the specificities of the Arab state – including national elites’ prioritisation of regime survival over institutional capacity and the outsourcing of coercive power to irregular auxiliary forces – offer an analytical foundation for contextualising the rise of Iraq’s Shi‘a militants, who present themselves as serving ‘God and country’.
This book offers a critical perspective on the prospects for Security Sector Reform (SSR) and highlights the limitations of externally driven Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) efforts. It speaks to scholars of Iraq and the Middle East, as well as diplomats, security actors, and SSR practitioners. Its unique fieldwork methodology offers guidance for researchers engaging with armed non-state and para-state actors in post-conflict settings. Altogether, the book addresses a strong academic and policy demand for evidence-based analysis of the PMU’s complex identity – offering a flexible framework for studying hybrid security actors with transnational connections and domestic ambitions.
About the Speaker:
Dr Inna Rudolf is a Fellow at CSNS and a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies. Within the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) consortium, she is analysing the implications of identity politics and the mobilisation of violent memories in conflict-affected borderlands. As part of her PhD thesis at the War Studies Department of King’s College London, Rudolf focused on the hybridisation of security sector governance, examining Iraq’s paramilitary umbrella and their quest for legitimacy within the state. She received her master’s degree in political science and Islamic studies in 2012 at the University of Heidelberg, specialising in Conflict Resolution, Peace Building and Political Islam. In addition to her field work in Iraq, she lived in Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia and Palestine for several years.
Prior to joining the research team at CSNS, Rudolf represented the BMW Foundation in the Middle East and North Africa region. She is also a partner at the Candid Foundation – an independent Berlin based think tank working on political, social and cultural challenges facing Muslim communities in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and beyond.
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