On January 21, 1954, Iraqi engineers began the demolition of public brothel houses located in the Maydan area of Baghdad, forcibly relocating those in the city’s sex trade to the surrounding streets and neighborhoods. The Hashemite monarchy had long been concerned about the unregulated movement of Baghdad’s sex workers, yet the targeted depopulation of this space led these evacuees to adopt new forms of mobility for survival. This demolition project and the consequential changes in urban mobility present notable case studies for a better understanding of the relationship between local and transnational networks, modernization efforts, gender, and sexuality in the history of mid-twentieth-century Iraq. This paper considers the intersection of these themes by mapping the social history of prostitution in Baghdad between 1950 and 1958. It first addresses how the Iraqi state and the public associated sex workers with perceived threatening, vulnerable, and redeemable characteristics. Not only were these perceptions informed by concerns on the national level, but they were also situated in contemporaneous debates about abolishing prostitution on the international level. According to these attitudes, the government translated anxieties about the spread of prostitution into various preventive measures issued in the capital city, such as the demolition of public brothels. These projects were inextricably connected with the Iraqi state’s discourse on modernity as modernization efforts in mid-twentieth-century Baghdad were often intentionally employed to exclude segments of the population from the urban landscape. As this paper will argue, many of those involved in Baghdad’s sex trade, specifically female sex workers, actively responded to these threats against their survival by adapting to new networks of mobility. In the scholarship on Iraq’s social history, the subject of prostitution in 1950s Baghdad has been largely neglected. Some scholars have drawn noteworthy conclusions about Baghdad’s nightlife in general, and prostitution in particular, by considering literary accounts and the work of female performers in the 1950s. Building upon this literature, this project conducts a social history of prostitution in mid-twentieth-century Baghdad through discourse and digital geospatial analyses of local newspapers, government census data, memoirs, international convention materials, and maps. By incorporating these sources, this paper seeks to shed further light on the social history of Iraq and present an introductory approach to mapping modernization efforts and mobile networks of prostitution in 1950s Baghdad.

Michel ʿAflaq (1910-1989), a Greek Orthodox Christian born in Damascus, was a co-founder of the Arab Socialist Baʿth Party, branches of which eventually took over and ruled both Syria (1963-present) and Iraq (1968-2003). After factional infighting within the Syrian Baʿth Party and feuding between the Iraqi and Syrian branches, ʿAflaq moved to Beirut and later Baghdad, where he served the Iraqi Baʿth as the Secretary General of the National Command, the nominal head of the party. Along with overseeing the Baʿth’s relations with pro-Iraq branches of the Baʿth Party in the Arab world, ‘Aflaq served as a spokesperson for the Iraqi regime, giving the customary address on the anniversary of the party’s founding each year. During his time in Iraq, ‘Aflaq was revered as “the founding leader” (al-qā’id al-mu’assis) and “the professor” (al-ustāḏ) by President Saddam Hussein and his fellow Iraqi Baʿthists until his death in 1989. Having enjoyed a close personal relationship with ‘Aflaq, Saddam quickly ordered that the party take appropriate measures to commemorate his life and work. The anniversary of ‘Aflaq’s passing would be observed by Saddam and the Iraqi Baʿth every year until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. After announcing ‘Aflaq’s previous conversion to Islam, which the party founder’s son Iyad later confirmed, Saddam ordered that his final resting place must be significant to the Baʿth. On the fourth anniversary of ‘Aflaq’s death in 1993, the Iraqi Baʿth unveiled his mausoleum and museum. Located adjacent to the Baʿth Party’s headquarters in Baghdad, the area underneath the structure would ultimately come to hold the contents of the Baʿth Party Archive. The party records contain the considerations and deliberations surrounding the design and construction of ‘Aflaq’s mausoleum and museum, which allow us to reconstruct the process by which they came into being. This paper will tell this story while illustrating the ways in which the final design of the Iraqi Baʿth’s commemoration of ‘Aflaq came to emphasize his association with Iraq and its Islamic heritage over its pre-Islamic past.

In recent years much ink has been spilled to explain the ascendancy of sectarian divisions in post-2003 Iraqi state and society. Currently, explanations primarily focus on the legacy of Ba‘thist rule, the effects of the sanctions era, the failures of US policy in post-invasion Iraq, and the actions of Iraqi opposition movement. Regarding the latter, several opposition groups that returned to Iraq and rose to power following the Ba‘th’s ouster are charged with engaging in a “Shi‘i-centric state-building project.” Undergirded by feelings of collective Shi‘i persecution and social and political disenfranchisement, this form of state-craft led to the forceful mapping of Shi‘i myths and symbols onto Iraq’s post-2003 national identity and facilitated the exclusion of Iraqi Sunnis from the central levers of state power. Over time, the former exiles’ actions fostered sentiments of alienation, loss, and victimhood among Iraqi Sunnis, a development that contributed to the outbreak of sectarian violence and later, the rise of the so called “Islamic State.” While this form of statecraft was only implemented following Saddam Hussein’s ouster, its ideological roots can be found in the immediate post-Cold War era. By way of a historical analysis of the publications, statements, and actions of several key Iraqi opposition figures, chief among them being Kanan Makiya and Hassan ‘Alawi, this study traces a critical shift in the wider Iraqi opposition movement’s conceptualization of Iraqi Shi‘i identities that enabled the imagining and implementation of Iraq’s post-2003 Shi‘i-centric political order. Specifically, it will outline the process through which Iraq’s Shi‘i communities, once understood and complex and ideologically diverse, were reduced and repackaged by the Iraqi opposition movement as a monolithic socio-political unit defined by collective victimhood and feelings of political entitlement over the course of the 1990s. Beyond demonstrating the historical roots of one of the core drivers of sectarian politics and violence witnessed in post-2003 Iraq, this paper also makes inroads into larger debates surrounding the ways in which sectarian identities acquire socio-political salience. At a time when sub-national forms of identification are rapidly gaining traction the world over, perhaps such a study is not only long overdue, but urgently needed.

In post-war settings, social processes tend to take place in particularly opaque contexts. This type and scale of change is often unnoticeable and progressive, despite affecting the very way in which cities operate and the processes that govern them. Spatial features, notably in urban environments, can help reveal concealed transformations and emerging dynamics. To better understand how conflict transforms cities, this dissertation will explore hidden geographies where post-war order is reflected and produced. More specifically, it asks: how does reconstruction renegotiate, or influence, emerging post-war order in Mosul? In other words, how do transformations to the built environment affect the power dynamics and practices that govern daily urban life (i.e. how a city functions)? It will further question what kind of order(s) emerges from various types of reconstruction projects? While deeply rooted in empirical fieldwork, this research rests on theories of relational space pioneered by Lefebvre. They posit that the interaction between the social and spatial realms is foundational to the evolution of a given place; they co-produce each other, exist in relation to one another. This is particularly relevant in post-war cities that suffer from large scale physical destruction. Based on a year of fieldwork in Mosul and Erbil, this research focuses on three distinct reconstruction sites: UNESCO monuments, the municipality’s riverfront project, and an informal settlement community. This study is qualitative and is mainly based on semi and unstructured interviews. All three forms of reconstruction are established as sites where power is accumulated and contested, revealing, embedding, and driving the new (or altered) power dynamics and practices that govern post-war life in Mosul. Finally, it will address the implications of multiple, overlapping forms of order on evolving post-war conditions. The legacies of war far outlive gunfire and airstrikes, molding the very nature and existence of peace.