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Part One
- University of Michigan Press
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Part One | Disempowering Civilians How do con›ict protagonists characterize the civilian Other in the course of hostilities with adversaries? Our research reveals that the category of civilian noncombatant is neither clear nor pure, neither transparent nor immune to ideological contamination. We seek to lift the veil of ideological purity common to the notion of civilians in war, to strip away as false the veneer of political neutrality that is fostered by a militaristic framing of war. We argue that negative characterizations of the militant enemy in times of armed con›ict can be transferred to beliefs about their civilian counterparts. The transformation in notions of who civilians are, what they do, and how they should be treated in times of war constitutes a precondition of their endangerment. Interlaced with the rhetoric of armed con›ict are measures for repoliticizing the citizenry. These measures represent the faceless form of domination in ways that routinely serve martial forces at the expense of civilians. Of course, there are many different kinds of armed con›ict and many ways in which civilians are characterized by martial forces. Most wars today do not involve combat between two state-sponsored militias. More frequently , internal national con›icts are the norm, and these con›icts tend to be prolonged affairs with buried roots that speak more to complex subjectivities than to nation-state objectives. Shared racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious , and/or kinship characteristics unite the protagonist groups in today’s protracted con›icts. Our habitual understanding of warfare as the tumultuous clash between two martial forces generally representing states seems time-tested and rational, but this understanding admits only combatants as war’s legitimate agents and participants. The marginality of civilian non7 combatants in this model is clear. Unfortunately, such a framing tends to minimize the scale of systematic violence against them, even in the absence of more traditional forms of propaganda (Nordstrom 2004: 37).1 We de‹ne a major armed con›ict as a prolonged combat between the military forces of two or more governments or of one government and at least one organized armed group and incurring the battle-related deaths of at least one thousand people for the duration of the con›ict (Wallenstein 2002: 57). We believe that this de‹nition is suf‹ciently broad and reasonably precise. We seek to examine two kinds of enmity relations that de‹ne the nature of armed con›ict—(1) between the ingroup and the militant enemy and (2) between the militant enemy and the civilian Other. In both cases, such juxtaposition suggests complementarities of construction that operate to mutual effect. As accounts of the enemy’s degenerate character dominate the narrative in the rhetoric of con›ict, the impact of these accounts extends to characterizations of civilians—as compatriots, collaborators , coconspirators, supporters, or simply innocent bystanders. Of course, accounts of civilian actions may lack the vitriol of enemy narratives .Yet characterizations of the civilian Other are often intertwined with the understanding of the militant Other in the storytelling practices of con›ict protagonists. In Part I of the book, we draw special attention to anticivilian ideologies that are routinely embedded in the enmity relations between con›ict protagonists. Hugo Slim offers insight into three forms of anticivilian ideology (2008: 121–79). These forms serve as a point of departure for our study of civilian devastation. The ‹rst form of anticivilian ideology is exempli ‹ed in the atrocities collectively perpetrated against speci‹cally de‹ned groups. In cases of vitriolic hatred, militant extremists (religious, nationalistic, ethnic) are often driven by an obsession with purity and a corresponding compulsion to eradicate evil—to unmask it and eliminate its source. These extremists tend to be locked in disgusted fascination with the enemy Other, an Other of their making whom they both fear and need. In its extreme form, anticivilian thinking demands the total subjugation , collective punishment, or complete elimination of an entire group of people (Slim 2008: 124–39). For religious extremists driven by an apocalyptic vision of the social /political world, the nation (or ingroup) is understood to be trembling on the brink of an abyss from which it could be saved by bold action against the adversary. The repudiation of the civilian status of the entire outgroup is an essential step on the road to a holy war. For example, the 8 | Why They Die [3.236.214.123] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:21 GMT) militant participants in the so-called new...