Why They Die: Civilian Devastation in Violent Conflict

Conclusion

Conclusion In declarations about the “just cause” of their struggle against a sworn enemy , con›ict protagonists readily recount the enemy’s violent actions, inhumane character, and threat to the homeland. The enemy’s evildoings are plain to anyone who can see, demanding action, retaliation, and possibly revenge. As the logic of retaliation seems unimpeachable, the militants ’ civilian compatriots are castigated for collaborating, colluding, conspiring with, and giving moral support to the enemy. Engulfed in the con›ict spiral between militants, the civilian Other is stigmatized, taking on new characteristics that are linked to the con›ict. The preceding chapters examine how the militaristic framing of armed con›ict is interlaced with a radical repoliticization of the weakest participants in the con›ict. In depicting the transition from citizens in a body politic to civilians in protracted armed con›ict, military leaders routinely characterize civilians as disempowered both physically and politically and stripped of an ability to act in concert against martial forces. The categories presented—diminished political capacity, loss of agency, and marginality —are taken at face value and are accepted as axiomatic truths within the of‹cial framing of the con›ict. This newfound identity represents a precondition for certain military tactics and strategies that bring about precisely the status they presupposed. We do not dismiss as groundless all pronouncements of external threats by con›ict protagonists. The case for engaging in violent struggle with an adversary may be reasonable, and the fears of an external threat may be well founded. Underpinning such modes of thinking and speaking are assumptions about two distinct realms of entities—the realm of the 181 con›ict zone and the realm of civilians as objects—and these assumptions operate to mutual effect. Juxtaposed against the realm of the con›ict zone is a realm of civilian objects that is understood as consequential to con›ict rather than as causally determining its outcome. The subordinated relationship of this second realm to that of the con›ict zone is taken at face value and is rarely subject to critical re›ection. Military leaders’ dominant discourse about armed con›ict determines what is “rationally visible” regarding the information gathered and analyzed. As secondary entities, civilians are situated in the gaps, zones, or boundaries between and among the primary entities underpinning the of‹cial talk— that is, the theater of con›ict itself. The independent existence of this subordinated realm must be real, or so that implicit assumption goes, because the of‹cial realm of entities is transparently real. One source of civilian devastation is located in the forms of decisions, policies, and/or technical instruments that are undertaken in response to such dangers. These instruments include analytical tools for not knowing and for cutting off inquiry into civilian suffering. These intangible instruments function as preconditions for civilian objecti‹cation and control. Particularly important is the need to silence civilians regarding their experiences in the “state of nature” in which they lived during many con›icts. We seek to demythologize the dogma about civilians in armed con›ict, to recognize and renounce certain myths about civilians in protracted violence . By unmasking the narratives that subjugate civilians to war’s wider purposes, we hope to alter the logic of their submission to those ruling regimes or militaristic objectives. The result of this discovery will be the gaining of power that the myths have concealed under the mask of objecti ‹cation (Ricoeur 1974: 335–36). We seek to expose and undermine the impact of anticivilian ideology in explanations of civilian devastation, giving the categories of civilian identity due primacy in studies of protracted violent con›ict. One form of anticivilian thinking centers on the vitriolic hatred of a perceived enemy, driven by the belief that self-preservation requires the elimination of that enemy. The so-called new terrorism of recent years exhibits this kind of openly anticivilian mentality: the crusading injunctions of religious extremists (of all kinds) demonize civilians of the target country for their complicity in the government’s evil policies. Similarly, con›icts involving genocidal violence depend on a manifestation of this thinking. We examined such an ideology in chapter 4 with our study of the Hutu extremists in the events leading up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A second form of anticivilian thinking centers on a ruthless pragma182 | Why They Die tism in the treatment of civilians, occurring typically in the state-sponsored...