Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

“There Should Be No Life”: Environmental Perspectives on Genocide in Northern Iraq

2023; Taylor & Francis; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14623528.2023.2254555

1469-9494

Ariel I. Ahram,

Health and Conflict Studies

ABSTRACTThis article examines the natural environment during the Kurdish genocide in northern Iraq. The genocide killed between 50,000 and 180,000 people and destroyed some 4,500 Kurdish villages from the 1960s to 1980s, reach peak violence during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). The paper uses American, British, and Iraqi archival documents to analyse how the violence affected the natural landscape and how ecological conditions constrained the violence. Iraqi leaders regarded dams and other modes of environmental engineering as levers to facilitate agricultural modernization and social integration. Protecting and projecting hydraulic power justified greater military exertion. Iraqi leaders, frustrated by the lack of progress in development and hostile to the claims of Kurdish nationalism, resorted to more coercive options to combat guerrillas. But the inadequacies of military exertion prompted the government to redouble efforts to tame unruly nature and those who dwelled in it. This escalation contributed significantly to the lethal violence against rural Kurdish society. At a theoretical level, these findings highlight the troubling ways in which policies aimed to improve environmental conditions fold into campaigns of mass violence. The article also adds to understanding of violence in Iraq, showing how Iraq’s attempts to use environmental engineering for development intersected with security concerns and ethnic marginalization to create more intensive repression.KEYWORDS: IraqKurdsinsurgencygenocidedevelopment Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Tim Cole, Holocaust Landscapes (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016); Tim Cole, “Expanding (Environmental) Histories of the Holocaust,” Journal of Genocide Research 22, no. 2 (2020): 273–9; Samuel Dolbee, “The Desert at the End of Empire: An Environmental History of the Armenian Genocide,” Past & Present 247, no. 1 (2020): 197–233; Andrew Woolford, Wanda June, and Sereyvothny Um, “‘We Planted Rice and Killed People:’ Symbiogenetic Destruction in the Cambodian Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 1 (2021): 44–67; Emmanuel Kreike, “Genocide in the Kampongs? Dutch Nineteenth Century Colonial Warfare in Aceh, Sumatra,” Journal of Genocide Research 14, nos. 3–4 (2012): 297–315.2 Omer Bartov, “What is the Environmental History of the Holocaust?” Journal of Genocide Research 24, no. 3 (2022): 419–28.3 Philip Dwyer, “Violence and its Histories: Meanings, Methods, Problems,” History and Theory 56, no. 4 (2017): 7–22; Cole, “Expanding (Environmental) Histories of the Holocaust.”4 The CRRC collection was originally housed at Fort McNair’s National Defense University in Washington, D.C., but was closed in 2015. The author visited the archives several times between 2010 and 2015. Whenever possible he relied on original Arabic images of documents. If these were not available he used supplemental English translations. Cf. Lawrence Rubin, “Research Note: Documenting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” Contemporary Security Policy 32, no. 2 (2011): 458–66.5 Robert Kern, “Ecocriticism: What is it Good for?” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 7, no. 1 (2000): 9–32.6 Isam Al-Khafaji, “War as a Vehicle for the Rise and Demise of a State-Controlled Society: The Case of Ba’thist Iraq,” in War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East, ed. Steven Heydemann (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Lisa Blaydes, State of Repression (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018); Dina Rizk Khoury, Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Joseph Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’th Party: Inside an authoritarian regime (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).7 Fanar Haddad, Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Dina Rizk Khoury, “The Security State and the Practice and Rhetoric of Sectarianism in Iraq,” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 4, no. 3 (2010): 325–8; Sara Pursley, “Violence in Iraq: Some Methodological and Historiographical Questions,” POMEPS Studies: Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq 35 (2019): 77.8 Joseph Hupy, “The Environmental Footprint of War,” Environment and History 14, no. 3 (2008):405–21; Sheldon Ungar, Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of Warfare, (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2006): 1–288; John R. McNeill, “Woods and Warfare in World History,” Environmental History 9, no. 3 (2004): 388–410; John R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, Environmental Histories of the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Emmanuel Kreike, Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022): 1–538.9 Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts, Violent Environments (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); R. Woodward, “Military Landscapes: Agendas and Approaches for Future Research,” Progress in Human Geography 38, no. 1 (2014): 40–61; Chris Pearson, “Researching Militarized Landscapes: A Literature Review on War and the Militarization of the Environment,” Landscape Research 37, no. 1 (2012): 115–33.10 Joshua Busby, States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022); Rafael Reuveny, Andreea S. Mihalache-O’Keef, and Quan Li, “The Effect of Warfare on the Environment,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 6 (2010): 749–61; Anna Feuer, “Environmental Warfare Tactics in Irregular Conflicts,” Perspectives on Politics (2022): 533–49.11 Gary Machlis and Thor Hanson, “Warfare Ecology,” BioScience 58, no. 8 (2008): 729–36; Gary Machlis et al., Warfare Ecology (New York: Springer, 2011).12 Lauren Eichler, “Ecocide is Genocide: Decolonizing the Definition of Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 14, no. 2 (2020): 104–21; S.J. Galligan and P. Bryan, “Re-Theorising the Genocide–Eocide Nexus: Raphael Lemkin and Ecocide in the Amazon,” The International Journal of Human Rights 26, no. 6 (2022): 1004–31.13 Lizzie Collingham, Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (New York: Penguin, 2012); Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2015); Gesine Gerhard, “Food and Genocide: Nazi Agrarian Politics in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union,” Contemporary European History 18, no. 1 (2009): 45–65 ; Alex De Waal, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2017); Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, State Food Crimes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).14 Dwyer, “Violence and its Histories”; Cole, “Expanding (Environmental) Histories of the Holocaust.”15 Alexander Downes, Targeting Civilians in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017); Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004); Benjamin A. Valentino, Paul Huth, and Dylan Balch-Lindsay, “‘Draining the Sea’: Mass Killing and Guerrilla Warfare,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004): 375–407.16 Andreas Forø Tollefsen and Halvard Buhaug, “Insurgency and Inaccessibility,” International Studies Review 17, no. 1 (2015): 6–25; David Siroky and Valery Dzutsati, “The Empire Strikes Back: Ethnicity, Terrain, and Indiscriminate Violence in Counterinsurgencies,” Social Science Quarterly 96, no. 3 (2015): 807–29.17 Corinna Jentzsch, Stathis Kalyvas, and Livia Isabella Schubiger, “Militias in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (2015): 755–69.18 Christian Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 177–262.19 Patricia Owens, Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).20 Joanne Yao, The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022).21 Martin Crook and Damien Short, “Developmentalism and the Genocide–Ecocide Nexus,” Journal of Genocide Research 23, no. 2 (2021): 162–88; Alexander Dunlap, “The Politics of Ecocide, Genocide and Megaprojects: Interrogating Natural Resource Extraction, Identity and the Normalization of Erasure,” Journal of Genocide Research 23, no. 2 (2021): 212–35; Michael M. Cernea, The Economics of Involuntary Resettlement: Questions and Challenges (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1999).22 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).23 Megan Ybarra, “Taming the Jungle, Saving the Maya Forest: Sedimented Counterinsurgency Practices in Contemporary Guatemalan Conservation,” Journal of Peasant Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 479–502.24 Feuer, “Environmental Warfare Tactics in Irregular Conflicts,” 8.25 Robert McC Adams, Land behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement on the Diyala Plains (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); Peter Christensen and Steven Sampson, Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environment in the Middle East, 500 BC-AD 1500, New edition (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016); Karl August Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957); Robert A. Fernea, “Conflict in Irrigation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 6, no. 1 (1963).26 Chris Gratien, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022); Faisal Husain, Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021); Camille Lyans Cole, “Precarious Empires: A Social and Environmental History of Steam Navigation on the Tigris,” Journal of Social History 50, no. 1 (2016): 74–101.27 Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Baʻthists, and Free Officers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 33.28 Mohammed M.A. Ahmed, The People and Land Resources of Kurdistan-Iraq (Tallahassee, FL: Badlisy Center for Kurdish Studies, 1993), 5; Nadhir Al-Ansari, Nasrat Adamo, and Varoujan Sissakian, “Hydrological Characteristics of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers,” Journal of Earth Sciences and Geotechnical Engineering 9, no. 4 (2019): 1–26.29 Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 152.30 Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Sammy Salama, Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (New York: Routledge, 2008), 35; Priya Satia, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).31 Archibald B. Roosevelt Jr, Miscellaneous Notes on Irrigation and Irrigation Farming, 21 August 1945 1945, Confidential US State Department Central Files, 890G.6113/8-2145.32 Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010); Christopher Sneddon, Concrete Revolution: Large Dams, Cold War Geopolitics, and the US Bureau of Reclamation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).33 M.M. Badry, M.S. Mehdi, and J.M. Khawar, “Water Resources in Iraq,” in Irrigation and Agricultural Development, ed. S.S. Johl (Oxford: Pergamon, 1980); Edith Tilton Penrose and Ernest Francis Penrose, Iraq: International Relations and National Development (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1978), 453–5.34 Edmund Ghareeb, The Kurdish Question in Iraq (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1981).35 Nicola Degli Esposti, “Land Reform and Kurdish Nationalism in Postcolonial Iraq,” Middle East Critique 31, no. 2 (2022): 147–63; Avshalom H. Rubin, “Abd al-Karim Qasim and the Kurds of Iraq: Centralization, Resistance and Revolt, 1958–63,” Middle Eastern Studies 43, no. 3 (2007): 355.36 Rubin, “Abd al-Karim Qasim and the Kurds of Iraq,” 369.37 Edwin Jones to Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, 16 September 1961, 887.2553, 434016, Confidential US State Department Central Files, 787/009-1661 XR887.2614.38 Eric Jacobsen, “A Coincidence of Interests: Kennedy, US Assistance, and the 1963 Iraqi Ba’th Regime,” Diplomatic History 37, no. 5 (2013): 1029–30.39 Dispatch from E.F.G. Maynard, British Embassy, Baghdad, to D.L.N. Goodchild, Eastern Deaprtment, 27 June 1963, FO 371/170447, 10114/154/63, Foreign Office, reproduced in Anita L.P. Burdett, Records of the Kurds: Territory, revolt and nationalism, 1831–1979: British documentary sources, vol. 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 420.40 E.F.G. Maynard, Dispatch (secret) from E.F.G. Maynard, British Embassy, Baghad, to Goodchild, Eastern Department, Foreign Office, 26 June 1963, FO 371/170447, Foreign Office, 10114/154/63, Foreign Office, reproduced in Anita L.P. Burdett, Records of the Kurds : Territory, Revolt and Nationalism, 1831–1979: British Documentary Sources, vol. 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 434.41 Disptach, E.F.G. Maynard, Baghdad to W. Marsden, Eastern Department, 9 November 1963, FO 371/170450, Foreign Office, 10014/257/63, Foreign Office reproduced in Anita L.P. Burdett, Records of the Kurds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 442.42 Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield, Crisis in Kirkuk: The Ethnopolitics of Conflict and Compromise (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 34–5.43 E.F.G. Maynard to C.T. Brant, Eastern Department, 9 July 1965 1965, FO 248/1616, 101114/126/65, Foreign Office, reproduced in Anita L.P. Burdett, Records of the Kurds, vol. 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 575; Dispatch, E.F.G. Maynard, British Embassy, Baghdad, to M.St.E. Burton, Eastern Department, Foreign Office, 2 January 1965 1965, FO 371/180812, 10114/1/65, Foreign Office, reproduced in Anita L.P. Burdett, Records of the Kurds, vol. 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 519.44 E.F.G. Maynard, British Embassy, Baghad to M.E. Burton, Eastern Department, Foreign Office, 23 May 1964 1964, FO 371/175753, 10114/46/64, Foreign Office, reproduced in Anita L. P. Burdett, Records of the Kurds, vol. 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 501.45 David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 327–9.46 Ghareeb, The Kurdish Question in Iraq, 123.47 McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 360.48 Arbella Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 156–88; Anderson and Stansfield, Crisis in Kirkuk, 39–40.49 J.A.N. Graham, Dispatch, J.A.N. Graham, British Embassy, Baghdad to the Hon. I.T.M. Lucas, Middle East Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 19 January 1978 1976, FCO 8/2802, reproduced in Anita L.P. Burdett, Records of the Kurds, vol. 12, Cambridge Archive Editions, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 509–12.50 Leszek Dziegel, Rural Community of Contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan facing Modernization (Krakow: Agricultural Academy in Krakow, Institute of Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture and Forestry, 1982), 43; Penrose and Penrose, Iraq: International Relations and National Development, 460.51 N.K.J. Whitney, Letter from N.K.J. Whitney, British Embassy, Baghdad to I. McCluney, Middle East Department, 1976, FCO 8/2802, No. 011/2, Foreign and Commonwealth Office reproduced in Anita L.P. Burdett, Records of the Kurds, vol. 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 539.52 Kaziwa Salih, “Kurdish Linguicide in the ‘Saddamist’ State,” Genocide Studies International 13, no. 1 (2019): 34–51.53 Ghareeb, The Kurdish Question in Iraq, 178.54 J.A.N. Graham, Britsih Embassy, Baghdad to Hon. I.T.M. Lucas, 30 September 1976 1976, FCO 8/2802, 011/2, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, reproduced in Burdett, Records of the Kurds, Vol. 12, 544–5.55 Azad Hama Shekhani, “Reversing Iraq’s Resettlement and Anti-Rural Policy in Kurdistan,” Zagros, 1998: 1–5.56 A.K. Fink and I.D. Ostrizhnov, “Dokan hydroelectric station in Iraq,” Hydrotechnical Construction 17, no. 10 (1983): 519–22.57 Dispatch from A.J.D. Stirling, HM Ambassador to Iraq, Baghdad to Hon. I.T.M. Lucas, Middle East Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 13 December 1978, FCO 8/3244, reproduced in Burdett, Records of the Kurds, Vol. 12, 562.58 Dziegel, Rural Community of Contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan, 52.59 Robert Springborg, “Infitah, Agrarian Transformation, and Elite Consolidation in Contemporary Iraq,” Middle East Journal 40, no. 1 (1986): 33–52.60 Dziegel, Rural Community of Contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan, 26–7.61 A.J.D. Stirling, HM Ambassador to Iraq, Baghdad, to the Foreign Secretary, 9 March 1978, FCO 8/3242, No. NBR 245/1, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.62 Mieczysław Adamowicz, “Grain Production and Food Security in Arab countries,” Agricultural Economics 2, no. 1 (1988): 39–56.63 Ghareeb, The Kurdish Question in Iraq, 178.64 Dziegel, Rural Community of Contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan, 27.65 Ibid., 77.66 Ibid., 35.67 Hal Brands, “Why Did Saddam Invade Iran? New Evidence on Motives, Complexity, and the Israel Factor,” Journal of Military History 75, no. 3 (2011): 861–85.68 Yaniv Voller, “Identity and the Ba’th Regime’s Campaign against Kurdish Rebels in Northern Iraq,” The Middle East Journal 71, no. 3 (2017): 383–401.69 Ofra Bengio, “Iraq,” in Middle East Contemporary Survey, ed. Itamar Rabinovich, vol. X (London: Routledge, 2019): 534–78.70 Khoury, Iraq in Wartime, 115–17; Black and Whitley, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (New York, NY: Human Rights Watch, 1993), http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1993/iraqanfal/.71 Meetings between Saddam Hussein and Iraqi officials Regarding Iran-Iraq War tactics, including the Use of Napalm and Cluster Bombs, 1980, Saddam Hussein Archives, Conflict Research Record Center CRRC-SH-PDWN-D-001-021.72 Pesach Malovany, Wars of Modern Babylon: A History of the Iraqi Army from 1921 to 2003 (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2018), 323.73 Pierre Razoux, The Iran-Iraq War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2015), 157.74 Operations Guide Issued by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, 1984, Saddam Hussein Archive, Conflict Research Record Center CRRC-SH-AFGC-D-000-686; General Military Intelligence Directorate Correspondence with the Ministry of Interior and Revolutionary Command Council, 1985, Saddam Hussein Archive, Conflict Research Record Center, CRRC-SH-GMID-D-000-343.75 Kevin M. Woods et al., Saddam’s War: An Iraqi Mililtary Perspective of the Iran-Iraq War (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 2009), 65.76 Razoux, The Iran-Iraq War, 240–54.77 Ibid., 329, 369, 415.78 Manual on Counterinsurgency Warfare, 1985, Saddam Hussein Archive, Conflict Research Record Center CRRC-SH-IZAR-D-000-296.79 Khoury, Iraq in Wartime, 119–20.80 Human Rights Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds, Human Rights Watch Books (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 53.81 Ibid., 55.82 Correspondence Regarding the Anfal Campaign, including orders from Ali Hasan al-Majid and Information on Chemical Attacks, Saddam Hussein Archive, Conflict Research Records Center CRRC-SH-GMID-D-000-859.83 Black and Whitley, Genocide in Iraq, 59.84 Correspondence Regarding the Anfal Campaign, Including Orders from Ali Hasan al-Majid and Information on Chemical Attacks.85 Kaziwa Salih, “Pillage as the Political Economy of the Kurdish Anfal Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 16, no. 3 (2023): 12.86 Choman Hardi, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011).87 Shekhani, “Reversing Iraq’s Resettlement and Anti-Rural Policy in Kurdistan.”88 Khoury, Iraq in Wartime, 119.89 General Military Intelligence Directorate Correspondence Regarding Reports on the Movements of Troops on the Northern Front Line during the Iran-Iraq War, 29 March 1988 to 5 May 1988, Saddam Hussein Archive, Conflict Research Records Center CRRC-SH-GMID-D-000-530.90 Razoux, The Iran-Iraq War, 437–9; Joost R. Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press), 109; Malovany, Wars of Modern Babylon, 371.91 Human Rights Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, 71.92 Ibid., 103; Whitley and Black, Genocide in Iraq, 132.93 Various Memoranda Regarding Iraqi use of Chemical Weapons against Halabjah and other Kurdish Villages, 1 January 1988 to 31 December 1988, 1 January 1988 1988, Saddam Hussein Archive, Conflict Research Records Center CRRC-SH-PDWN-D-000-678.94 Malovany, Wars of Modern Babylon, 430.95 Human Rights Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, 131.96 Black and Whitley, Genocide in Iraq, 279.97 Human Rights Watch, Iraq’s crime of Genocide, 255.98 Ibid.99 Alissa Walter, “The Ba’th Party in Baghdad: State-Society Relations through Wars, Sanctions, and Authoritarian Rule, 1950–2003” (Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 2018), 110.100 “Brazil’s Geotecnica Says It has Signed Two Dam Contracts with Iraq,” Middle East Economic Digest, 19 October 1985.101 McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 360.102 Human Rights Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, 257.103 McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 360; Whitley and Black, Genocide in Iraq, 32.104 Sherko Kirmanj and Aram Rafaat, “The Kurdish Genocide in Iraq: The Security-Anfal and the Identity-Anfal,” National Identities 23, no. 2 (2021).105 Sarah Mubareka and Daniele Ehrlich, “Identifying and Modelling Environmental Indicators for Assessing Population Vulnerability to Conflict Using Ground and Satellite Data,” Ecological Indicators 10, no. 2 (2010): 163–83; Lina Eklund, Andreas Persson, and Petter Pilesjö, “Cropland Changes in Times of Conflict, Reconstruction, and Economic Development in Iraqi Kurdistan,” Ambio 45 (2016): 78–88.106 Hardi, Gendered Experiences of Genocide, 151–5.107 David D. Palkki and Lawrence Rubin, “Saddam Hussein’s Role in the Gassing of Halabja,” The Nonproliferation Review 28, no. 1–3 (2021): 128.108 Study Prepared by the Intelligence System of the Southern Zone Regarding the Marshes, Its Geography, and Local Tribes, 18 May 1992, Saddam Hussein Archive, Conflict Record Research Center, CRRC-SH-GMID-D-000-591.109 Ariel I. Ahram, “Development, Countersinsurgency, and the Destruction of the Iraqi Marshes,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, no. 3 (2015): 447–66; Cara Priestley, “‘We Won’t Survive in a City. The Marshes are Our Life’: An Analysis of Ecologically Induced Genocide in the Iraqi Marshes,” Journal of Genocide Research 23, no. 2 (2021): 279–301.110 Bahar Baser and Mari Toivanen, “The Politics of Genocide Recognition: Kurdish Nation-building and Commemoration in the Post-Saddam era,” Journal of Genocide Research 19, no. 3 (2017): 404–26; Kurdistan Omar Muhammad, Hawre Hasan Hama, and Hersh Abdallah Hama Karim, “Memory and Trauma in the Kurdistan Genocide,” Ethnicities (2022): 426–48; Edith Szanto, “Mourning Halabja on Screen: Or Reading Kurdish Politics Through Anfal Films,” Review of Middle East Studies 52, no. 1 (2018): 135–46.111 Kali Rubaii, “‘Concrete Soldiers’: T-Walls and Coercive Landscaping in Iraq,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 54, no. 2 (2022): 357–62; Marcus DuBois King, “The Weaponization of Water in Syria and Iraq,” The Washington Quarterly 38, no. 4 (2015): 153–69; Bridget Guarasci, “The National Park: Reviving Eden in Iraq’s Marshes,” The Arab Studies Journal 23, no. 1 (2015): 128–53; Bridget Guarasci, “The Art of Nature in Iraq’s Marshes: Images of the Occupation,” Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 15, no. 1–2 (2021): 165–82.112 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 76; Stathis Kalyvas, “The Urban Bias in Research on Civil Wars,” Security Studies 13, no. 3 (2004): 160–90; David Brenner and Enze Han, “Forgotten Conflicts: Producing Knowledge and Ignorance in Security Studies,” Journal of Global Security Studies 7, no. 1 (2021): 1–17.113 Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); Martin Coward, “Against Anthropocentrism: The Destruction of the Built Environment as a Distinct Form of Political Violence,” Review of International Studies 32, no. 3 (2006): 419–37; Hannibal Travis “Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction,” Journal of Genocide Research 13, no. 3 (2011): 382–7.114 Arda Bilgen, “A Project of Destruction, Peace, or Techno-science? Untangling the Relationship between the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) and the Kurdish Question in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 54, no. 1 (2018): 94–113; Joost Jongerden, “Dams and Politics in Turkey: Utilizing Water, Developing Conflict,” Middle East Policy 17, no. 1 (2010): 137–43; Zeynep Oguz, “Cavernous Politics: Geopower, Territory, and the Kurdish Question in Turkey,” Political Geography 85 (2021): 1–12.115 Michael Hancock-Parmer, “Flight and Famine: Interrogating Collectivization, Stalinism, and Genocide,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 20, no. 3 (2019): 601–11; Sarah Cameron, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).116 Bernard Nietschmann, The Unknown War: The Miskito Nation, Nicaragua, and the United States (New York: Freedom House, 1989).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.Notes on contributorsAriel I. AhramAriel I. Ahram serves as professor and programme chair in government and international affairs at the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of War and Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (Polity, 2020) and Break All the Borders: Separatism and the Reshaping of the Middle East (Oxford, 2019), among other books and articles.