Ransom motives and political shifts

Aimen's in the thick of it this week so isn't able to appear on the show. Sitting in for him is Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli researcher and analyst, and a doctoral student at Princeton University. During field research in Iraq in 2023, she was kidnapped by Kata'ib Hezbollah and held in captivity for over two years, suffering torture and solitary confinement.

In what we hope will be the first of many appearances on Conflicted, Elizabeth discusses:

• Saddam Hussein’s faith campaign and the rise of Shia religious politics in Iraq
• The Sadrist movement in Iraq and Muqtada al-Sadr
• The politicisation of sectarian identity in post-2003 Iraq
• Iraqi militias as criminal-political enterprises engaged in in theft, extortion, oil smuggling, and dollar smuggling
• The difference between Iraqi militias and Lebanese Hezbollah
• The impact of militia rule on ordinary civilian life
• Iraq’s extreme inequality despite its oil and gas wealth
• The 2003 Iraq War and the debate over American responsibility
• Iraqi elite agency and the failures of Iraq’s political class
• The 2010 Iraqi election crisis and Nouri al-Maliki’s return to power
• The Iraqi constitution and the failure of constitutional democracy
• Iraq’s dependence on oil revenues and the Strait of Hormuz
• The impact of the current Iran war on Iraq’s economy
• Iranian attacks on Iraqi oil exports and oil tankers
• The U.S. military presence in Iraq after ISIS
• American influence over Iraqi prime ministerial politics
• Nouri al-Maliki, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, and Ali al-Zaidi
• Fa’iq Zaidan and the power of Iraq’s judiciary

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Elizabeth's personal website: https://elizabeth-tsurkov.net/en/

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Find Elizabeth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-tsurkov-79491b15/

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small.

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