Iraq: Anatomy of a Broken State

CONFLICTED

Message Heard

History, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2026

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 Join the Conflicted Community here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Elizabeth's personal website: https://elizabeth-tsurkov.net/en/ Find Elizabeth on X: https://x.com/LizHurra Find Elizabeth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-tsurkov-79491b15/ Find us on X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/MHconflicted⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced and edited by Thomas Small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, dear listeners. Welcome back to Conflicted. I'm Thomas Small, and this week,
0:06.0	Amon sadly, cannot be with us. His work has taken him away, as it often does, so this week
0:12.4	he will not be in the chair. Instead, I am extremely happy to have, filling in for him, and really
0:19.4	at the very last minute, Elizabeth Zirkov, a Russian-Israeli
0:24.8	scholar, researcher, intellectual. Elizabeth, you know, first of all, thank you very much for coming on
0:31.9	the show. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm definitely not smart enough to be an intellectual,
0:36.7	but all the other things are true, yes. Well, I have been following your work for many, many years. My admiration for
0:44.5	you has grown and grown. And I'll explain why shortly to those listeners who are not familiar
0:49.6	with your work. But I just, first of all, I mean, I just want to say thank you again for coming on at such
0:54.6	short notice. I'm really looking forward to this conversation, which is going to cover your
0:59.4	research in Iraq, in Syria, your knowledge of the situation in Lebanon, obviously your personal
1:05.7	knowledge of the situation in Israel, Palestine, and many other things. Anyway, Elizabeth, thanks for coming on the show.
1:12.6	Let's get right into it.
1:18.6	Elizabeth Zirkov.
1:20.1	So as I said in the introduction, you are a Russian-Israeli.
1:24.7	So you were born in Russia and moved to Israel as a child. You are known, I think,
1:30.5	primarily for field-based research that you've done in Syria during the Arab Spring era and
1:38.1	into the Civil War era. Iraq, we'll talk about that a bit later. Also, obviously, Israel, Palestine,
2:02.1	you've worked studying authoritarianism, how that works on the ground for actual citizens of authoritarian or totalitarian or militant states. You've talked about militias, the ideology, the psychology, and the real-world consequences of militia-based governance,
2:03.6	obviously human rights. So how would you describe your academic, scholarly, field-based research?
2:09.6	So I traveled across the region to conduct field work, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Southern Turkey.
2:18.3	But even before I did that travel to conduct both research that was published with
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