In recent years much ink has been spilled to explain the ascendancy of sectarian divisions in post-2003 Iraqi state and society. Hitherto, explanations largely focus on the legacy of Ba‘thist rule, the effects of the sanctions era, the failures of US policy in post-invasion Iraq, and, albeit to a lesser extent, the advent of ethno-sectarian identity politics within Iraqi opposition circles. Regarding the latter, whereas extant scholarship largely attributes this progression to local or regional developments, such as the 1979 Iranian Revolution or the events of the 1991 March Uprisings and their aftermath, this article contextualizes this development against the backdrop of a wider, global trend observed throughout the 1990s To this end, this study demonstrates how the ascendancy of Shi‘i identity politics within Iraqi opposition circles occurred just as other political factions across the globe began making similar identity-based claims to power. Indeed, the 1990s witnessed the rise of ethnic-nationalist movements in Serbia and Croatia, the ascent of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in India, as well as the “ethnification” of political movements across numerous African countries, to name just a few examples. While an all-encompassing explanation for this global trend is well beyond the scope of this paper, I nevertheless argue that the Iraqi opposition’s shift towards a Shi‘i-centric political platform was due in part to the unprecedented degree of political currency that human rights advocacy acquired in the aftermath of the New Cold War. From this vantage, the rise of ethno-sectarian identity politics within Iraqi opposition circles throughout the 1990s is viewed as an unexceptional, albeit particular, byproduct of a much broader trend underway globally over the past three decades that affected parts of the world differently. Beyond clarifying the history of a critical development that not only altered the trajectory of Iraqi diaspora politics, but the socio-political landscape of post-2003 Iraq as well, this study also makes inroads into a broader body of literature that vies to attenuate the explanatory power of primordialist arguments vis-à-vis “sectarianism” in the contemporary Middle East. Whereas this growing body of scholarship primarily refutes the “ancient hatreds” thesis by demonstrating the contingency of recent episodes of sectarian political competition and violence, this article achieves this end by highlighting the unexceptionality of the Iraqi opposition’s embrace of ethno-sectarian identity politics.