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DEVELOPMENT, COUNTERINSURGENCY, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE IRAQIMARSHES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2015

Abstract

Following the 1990–91 Gulf War and the subsequent March 1991 uprising,the Iraqi government launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in the marshesof southern Mesopotamia. Alongside mass killing and forced populationresettlement, the state used hydrological infrastructure to divert water fromthe wetlands, permanently desiccating the area. Using newly available Iraqigovernment archives, this paper argues that the destruction of the marshes wasthe result of a complex interplay between sectarianism, development planning,and security imperatives. Inhabited by peripatetic Marsh Arabs(Maʿdan), the marshlands stood out as an impenetrable wilderness.Baʿth policies in the marshes combined measures meant to promotesocial and economic modernization with counterinsurgency tactics meant toachieve control over the marsh region. After 1991, the regime set out toobliterate a terrain it deemed a strategic liability and a population thatseemed an obstacle to modernization.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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