The Shia factor: Intra-Islamist dynamics and the growth of armed Islamism

Conflict research is increasingly interested in grasping the exponential growth of armed Islamist groups in armed conflict over the past 50 years. Yet a crucial flaw of existing scholarship is that it misses the Shia factor – it overwhelmingly focuses on Sunni Islamists, with adverse empirical and theoretical implications. This article introduces the first comprehensive dataset of 228 major armed Sunni and Shia Islamist groups that have operated in armed conflict between 1945 and 2021 – DASSIG (Dataset of Armed Sunni and Shia Islamist Groups). The analysis shows the importance of including the Shia factor, by pointing to similarities and differences in the patterns, timings and locations of the evolution of armed Shia and Sunni Islamisms and by arguing that cross-sect interactions (positive and negative) between armed Islamist groups have significantly fuelled the growth of the phenomenon over time. More broadly, these findings call for further disaggregation in studies of the role of ideology/religion and how it intersects with other factors in conflicts.