Violence-producing Dynamics of Fragile States: How State Fragility in Iraq Contributed to the Emergence of Islamic State

In the post-Cold War era, “Jihadi-Salafi Groups” (JSGs) have emerged as significant “violence-making” organizations. Almost all JSGs have emerged in highly fragile states. The literature on the state fragility-terrorism nexus, by focusing exclusively on whether state fragility is a cause of terrorism or not, has failed to consider the broader impact of state fragility on the emergence of JSGs. The role of state fragility as a condition of the emergence of JSGs, in particular, is mostly overlooked in the literature. This paper, adding state fragility as a condition variable to the causal model of the rise of JSGs, fills this gap. The empirical basis of this research includes a single case study examining the relationship between state fragility in the post-Saddam Iraq and the formation of Islamic State (IS). By adding a new variable to the causal model of the rise of IS, this research makes a strong within-case inference concerning this case. Although the empirical basis of this research includes a single case study, the analytical framework developed in this paper has possible implications for studying a larger number of Jihadi-Salafi groups.