Pierre-Jean Luizard, Historian CNRS Research Director, assigned to the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (GSRL) at the EPHE. He is in charge of its " Islam, Politics, Societies " program. A specialist in contemporary Islam in the Arab countries of the Middle East, he has published numerous works on Iraq.
Iraq : a nationless state subject to foreign interference
The founding of the Iraqi state, proclaimed by the British representative in Baghdad in 1920, established a nation-state on the European model in the Mesopotamian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which had never before existed under that name (Iraq) and within those borders. In contrast to Lebanon, Iraq's undisguised political confessionalism has given rise to a quasi-permanent war between the state and its society. A militia system, corruption and the failure of the State to carry out its minimum regal missions and prerogatives have wiped out any public space and rendered civil society inoperative for lack of an interlocutor.
