War, Genocide, and Iraq.

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Monday February 23, 2004 14:23 by Idiot

could a civil war be a good thing.

This peice relates to the developmental process of two different Middle Eastern states, the Lebanon and Iraq. It stresses the benefits of the civil war in the Lebanon and asks if a civil war is the only way for Iraq to function as a nation.

War can be absolutely essential to the defining of states in a number of different regards, it can act to define borders, it can create a ‘nation’ through a common cause, and it can allow for production multiplication. However there is no set state-building goal of war and often the benefits are not realised prior to conflict. States are not the only actors that are involved in war other institutions like clans or religious groups have also been catalysts of war. However "states have been the world’s largest and most powerful organisations for more than 5000 years" and that privileged status has meant that states are the most important warring bodies. There are many different models that account for state building and the emergence of the nation-state as the dominant form. A Marxist account of state formation concentrates on the economic determinants that underpin the formation process, a statist account claims that the key is an internal event or set of events, and an Internationalist account focuses on the influence of the system of states and international aspects of state formation. For each model an example can easily be found that fits what that model expects; however each of the models recognises the importance of war in the process. Marx stresses that war is a tool and notes that economic developments occur through war . It is clear that "[o]ver the millennium as a whole war has been the dominant activity of the European states" . It has created the weave of European states and the internal dynamics of these states is also conditioned by war . In ancient Sparta war was the dominant state activity. It was important for offensive and defensive purposes on the ‘international’ stage but also as an internal repressing tool. The subjects of Sparta outnumbered the citizens and they "felt it essential to have enough military strength to ensure survival" . The political structure of Sparta is alien to a modern state but it does demonstrate that war has been important internally and externally as long as the state has existed. When modern nation states began to emerge war remained as important in the definition of the state. The First World War was the impetus for the creation of a whole host of states in Central and Eastern Europe and the Second World War the impetus for the creation of nation states out of the former colonies of the great European powers.

The state system originated in Europe but the comparison between the development of European states and developing world states is difficult due to the different conditions that now prevail. Often prior or during a third world civil war the great powers intervene, this didn’t happen in the early European states and means that grievances that would have been solved by civil war are allowed to persist. New weaponry is much more sophisticated and allows for large-scale destruction, and due to the rigid nature of the contemporary states system international wars are almost a thing of the past . Of course there are some things that can be predicted about the ‘new’ states by looking at the origin of the states system in Europe but more can be learned and predicted by comparing two similar states and seeing where they specific divergences are and why.


The Divergent Effects of War

Despite the dramatic convergence of states towards the Western European model each state is still different and while war effects every state it does so in a variety of different ways. War has diverse effects on a state if it breaks out on the border of a state it may cause a strengthening of the popular will but it may also cause the society to split. Comparisons of wars effects between two different times will generally be impossible due to technological and societal change. State and other actors also take diverse motivational factors into wars, the prevention of revolution was a serious motivational factor for the British in the First World War whereas the French motivation was primarily defensive. These differences coupled with the differences of many layers of internal and economic organisation make it difficult to draw comparisons between states at war and the effects those wars have on state structures. Despite the difficulty of drawing comparisons there is scope to compare similar wars in similar times. The current wave of globalisation has integrated world society to a much greater degree by standardising social and economic forces inside the rigid state system it allows for comparisons to be reached in a regional if not global community. In looking at a region like a the middle east there is no doubt that general social and economic themes can be identified, this will enable us to make comparisons across national borders to see how war and ‘warlikeness’ can effect different nations in different ways.


Iraq’s Formation Through War

Iraq is a state that has been at war or in a state of ‘warlikeness’ for most of its short history. The Iraqi political sphere became used to the intervention of the army well before the rise to power of the militaristic Ba’ath party. In 1936 Bakr Sudki, a commander of an army division, forced the resignation of the cabinet and in 1941 the military commanders put Ali al Kaylani back into power . These actions and other minor interventions laid the ground for the normality of military intervention in politics. The reality of intervention was demonstrated brutally in the 1958 revolution against the Hashemite monarchy . With the rise to power of the nationalistic Ba’ath party the militarisation of society sped up dramatically. In the 1960’s Iraq had six divisions and by 1988 it had forty-four an astounding increase even given the fact that it entered into a war during this period . Those forty-four divisions contained 3.5% of the total population, a figure only exceeded by Israel’s massive armed forces. The growth of the military began to effect every walk of life and social construct. During the war conscription was obligatory so every Iraqi citizen had a vested interest in the military, due to this influential effect military life began to mix with civilian life . By the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980 military life was all-pervasive in Iraq and as the war escalated so did the level of military involvement in civilian life. "War preparation, war making, and raison d’etat have become thoroughly and disastrously integrated in Iraq" .


Militarisation and State Building

Concomitant with the process of militarisation was the building up of the state. From the 1958 revolution Iraq’s elite sought to use the oil income to expand the state apparatus and employ more people in state owned industries. This move fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship between the state and it’s people, shifting the balance of power towards the state. The state sought to set itself as the means for all life, economic and otherwise, in Iraq. Using this privileged position it sought to assert its monopoly on violence and its role as state protector . By the time of Saddam Hussein’s rise to power in 1979 the Iraqi state was in an economically strong position, had a very large military, and had a militarised population who were ready for war. When the opportunity arose for Hussein to test this capacity he did not shy away. With this process came ideological commitments to the dominant group, the Iraqi regime built Iraqiness around the ideas of Arabism. This allowed the regime to claim that critics were anti-Arab or anti-Iraqi despite the fact that they may have been ethnically both Arab and Iraqi . It allowed the regime to totalise those groups it found undesirable and therefore minimise difference between members of that group and re-categorise these groups as sub-human. Eventually this process of Iraqism reached such a peak that anything became acceptable and groups excluded from power became victims in the name of the nation. Nation formation throughout Europe used war as a method of homogenising the population to secure one group’s eternal ascendancy . Iraq was no exception, the Shia were victimised to a certain degree and were excluded from power however they never felt the brunt of ‘homogenisation’ like the Kurds. The Iraqi regime identified the Kurds as ‘other’ to the Iraqi idiom and therefore felt no remorse in the attempt to systematically exterminate or remove them.

Historically it is possible to draw a parallel between the increasing victimisation of the Kurds and the events of the 1930’s. In Germany in the 1930’s we find a group which is excluded from the state so that the state could define itself by what it opposed. It excluded ‘the jews’ and built its identity on the back of this exclusion. They were not German, they were different and the Third Reich tolerated no difference within the totality of the German State. With this exclusion taking place there was a line drawn between German and non-German that allowed certain people to put themselves on the German side and gave them a sense of identity . The same process can be identified in Iraq this process led to the repression of the Kurds in a program known as al Anfal that had as its goal the termination of Kurdish presence in Iraq.


The Collapse of the Lebanese State

In the Lebanon a very different political dynamic emerged, after independence from France the Lebanon had an uneasy peace and shaky political arrangement between the Muslim majority and the large Christian minority . In the 1970’s the situation rapidly deteriorated due to lack of state control and the presence of various militias operating inside Lebanese territory. Syria sent in troops to back its allies in 1976 and Israel invaded the southern portion of the Lebanon to secure its interests. Eventually the various warring factions were persuaded to end their fight and by 1981 the civil war was declared over however the fighting did not stop until 1996 . The Lebanese state had been completely ineffectual in combating the problems on its soil and had fallen apart in 1984 with its troops joining rebel militias and its economic and social power being usurped by the various militia organisations. During the conflict the militias took over the state role of tax collecting and the violence (or threat of) that assists collection, in doing this and other economic activities they became essential to the rebuilding process. The weak state that emerged after the civil war needed to co-opt the militia economies and due to the states weak bargaining position it was forced to accept the plurality of power relations that grew up during the conflict. Lebanon has no real nationalistic program loyalty is to those who have protected and the Lebanese ‘nation’ has protected nobody whereas the various militias have. This gives us a situation where no group has been able to subject another to its will in the form of the states will as we have seen in Iraq. While there were limited incidents of ethnic cleansing there was nothing even close to the scale of Iraq’s genocide and now the opportunity for peace coupled with mutual respect is good.


Iraq’s Road to Genocide

If we look at the process that led to Iraq’s genocide we find that it starts with a resource; oil. Oil allowed the regimes in Baghdad to set up a classic rentier state that had very little connection to its population as it did not need them as a revenue source. The states relationship with its citizens became heavily balanced in favour of the state. Add a serious military and police wing used for internal repression and we get a very dangerous mix. With these structures in place coupled with a heated Arabism that disconnects itself from its intellectual base and becomes a tool of the ruling elite it is easy to see how the internal enemy became identified and its removal was sought. The usage of the term Anti-Arab has many precedents, in Israel anti-Semite is often interchangeable with opposition to the regime and as we saw previously the term ‘jew’ in Nazi Germany. This whole process creates an atmosphere where the identified other is stripped of its humanity and has no right to live or die. There seems to be some confusion as to why the Iraqi people remained silent at this Genocidal activity, it is contended that the brutality of the regime does not explain this silence however the Iraqis, according to the view taken in this paper, were not killing people like them but the ‘other’ that threatened them. There was nothing to raise their voices about. This draws another harsh parallel between the situation in Nazi Germany where the vast majority remained silent at the death of ‘the jews’ and the situation in Iraq.


Lebanon and Iraq

The differences between Lebanon and Iraq are apparent. While both were emerging Middle Eastern regimes with Religious and ethnic divides the Lebanon had no oil. When the Lebanese government sought to impose its will it found that it was weak and could not do so whereas in Iraq the rentier state had sufficient cash and clout to follow through on its wishes. In the Lebanon no single group managed to achieve real hegemony as most major groups were supported by powerful outside interests (Israel and Syria) that could dominate the state will in Beirut. External support coupled with a weak state is the primary reason for the civil war in Lebanon but it may also be the reason that there was no genocide in Lebanon. The Kurds in northern Iraq had no external ally of and had very limited internal power, just like the Jewish community in Nazi Germany who were disenfranchised and had no external state to appeal to. In the Lebanon there was a certain degree of identification of the enemy within as other this is manifest in the limited ethnic cleansing and the consolidation of ethnic and religious groups under the banner of their causes.




Conclusion

One of the key elements of a functioning society is the compromise between various interest groups and the government. Since such co-operation is not necessary for the government of a rentier state it is not done, instead the government dominates society and societal groups. This domination excludes particular groups and exclusion breeds contempt. The Lebanon and Iraq both had similar divided states that they sought to transform into nations. Iraq’s path to genocide is clear and rests heavily on its origins as a rentier state nevertheless the full horrors of genocide were avoided by the reasonably lucky intervention of the international community. This intervention stopped Saddam Hussein in his tracks and later offered the Kurds a degree of protection protection. Lebanon may have been spared the path to genocide this by its lack of oil and its strong neighbours and instead it fought a civil war that has now forced the communities to work together on a basis of mutual respect that opens the possibility of a healthy society. This brings into question the benefit of having a strong, rich state. It also points towards the conclusion that if civil war helped Lebanon away from the possibility of genocide then could a civil war have prevented the Iraqi genocide and is a future civil war in Iraq entirely negative due to its ability to clean the political air.