Locating spatial practices o f violence in Baghdad
This thesis began by asserting that it is possible to explore violence as an
experim ental and productive force. The first chapter argued that, to explore violence in this way, it is necessary to get ‘below ’ the over-determ ined level o f strategy, where violence is apparently instrum entalised by (political) agency or structural
configuration, and ‘above’ the level o f the supposed anarchy of the m om ent of
com bat. Rather, the chapter suggested that it is possible to w itness in the sp a tia lisin g p r a c tic e s of violence (particularly in the everyday practices of violence) the
em ergence o f novel and com peting m odes o f ordering violence. The nexus between (open form ations of) violence and space was explored through the work of Foucault, in which spatial orderings of violence are historically contingent arrangements of decentred subjects and objects (although, in practice, Foucault’s assessm ent tends to affix practices o f violence to rigid configurations of pow er/know ledge/space);
through the work of Lefebvre, in which the relationality of Foucault’s understanding o f space is given real flexibility by including the openness of everyday rhythms to
repetition a n d change; and through the work of Deleuze and Guattari, in which the differentiating (vitalist) operation of spatialising assem blages is shown to be intim ately related to shifting ‘kinds’ of violence.
Taking these insights as a starting point, the rest of this thesis looks to the city of Baghdad to illustrate how the US military engaged in hybridised and experim ental behaviour. Specifically, this thesis argues that the spatial practices of violence in Baghdad are a figure of a truly ‘new ’ security problem atic that is not easily confined w ithin the “geo-m ythography” of contemporary security debates, but which instead is related to the US military’s self-reflexive response to a multiple, slippery, and
uncertain real.382
This chapter outlines the qualitative study on which this thesis is based, exploring 1st Cavalry D ivision’s use of a new com m and and control technology, Command Post of the Future (CPOF, pronounced ‘c-p o f). The study consists of interview s carried out with returned soldiers from 1st Cavalry who had been operating in Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom Phase II (OIF-II, the phase im m ediately after the invasion, that lasted roughly from April 2 0 0 4 to April 2 0 0 5 ). These
interviews, undertaken at the Cavaliy’s hom e base of Fort Hood, Texas during June 2 0 0 5 (about two m onths after the D ivision’s return from deploym ent), took place at nearly every level throughout the Division, from senior mem bers of the Commanding General’s staff in the Divisional Headquarters, through to enlisted m en who worked in Battalion-level Tactical Operations Centres (TOCs). All of the interviewees worked in som e way with CPOF.383 The interviews also encom passed the civilian contractors supporting CPOF who deployed with 1st Cavalry to Baghdad to troubleshoot the new
3 8 2 por a discussion of the role of “geo-mythography” in shaping contemporary security discourse, see,
Mitchell Dean, "A Political Mythology of World Order: Carl Schmitt’s Nomos," Theory, Culture & Society
23, no. 5 (2006): 3.
system . T hese contractors had the advantage of having seen CPOF as used by the Cavalry s replacem ent force, 3rd Infantry Division, after 1st Cavalry5s return hom e in 2 0 0 5 , providing them with insight into alternative m odes of using the technology. These interview s were supplem ented by observation of 4th Infantry Division (with w hom 1st Cavalry share Fort Hood) using CPOF in a sim ulated Iraq-style
environm ent, as well as observation of classes of new soldiers from both 1st Cavalry and 4 th Infantry D ivision learning to use the technology.
1st Cavalry Division is one the US Army's premier Divisions (one of two so-called Digital D ivisions), and as such, offers an excellent location from which to study the novelty o f the ways in which the US Army has engaged the complex situation in Baghdad. Its situation, however, should not be over-generalised. 1st Cavalry entered the war at a precarious stage, and its experience in Baghdad is far from a ‘universal5 experience of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Briefly put, when the Cavalry arrived in April 2 0 0 4 the US military had effectively destroyed the Baathist regime, and was facing only the early stages o f an insurgency which was undefined in its scope and am bitions. Parts o f the insurgency derived from the (ethnically Sunni but secularly m otivated) irregular forces, or Fedayeen, established by Saddam H ussein’s regime as a form o f civil defence; parts were inspired by a Sunni religious jihad, including those m ujahadeen led by al-Qaeda. In Sadr City, m eanwhile, an explicitly religious, but at this stage still ostensibly ‘patriotic5 and ‘nationalistic5 Shi’ite militia, the Mahdi Army, began resisting the American occupation just as 1st Cavalry assum ed com m and.384 W hile it was a very dangerous tim e to be a W esterner on the streets o f Baghdad (at least outside of the Green Zone), there were som e signs of a ‘normal5 Iraqi life resum ing in the city proper. Politically, during this period, the Coalition Provisional
384 For more details of the early composition of the insurgency in Iraq, see, Michael Gordon and Bernard
Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside S tory o f the Invasion an d Occupation o f Iraq(London: Atlantic Books,
2006), Chapters 13-24. For an intimate study of 1st Cavalry’s first engagement in Sadr City, see, Martha
Authority transitioned sovereignty to an unelected Iraqi governm ent on 29th June, 2 0 0 4 , and elections to determ ine the country’s constitution (and subsequent
dem ocratic future) were held in Novem ber of that year. There were high hopes that a dem ocratically elected, publicly legitim ate governm ent would be able to stem the insurgency. Funds for reconstruction, however, continued to be disbursed largely through US military as well as international civilian agencies.
Importantly, none o f the concerns that dom inate discussion of Iraq (and
particularly Baghdad) today - the likelihood o f civil war; the form ation of rival Shi’ite and Sunni m ilitias (death squads); the dramatically escalating nature and num ber of deliberately targeted attacks against civilians; the Parliament’s inability to form a stable (and united) government; interference by Iran and Syria; m ass refugee flows; and the possibility of Iraq becom ing a failed state - were dom inant in discussion of Iraq at the tim e. In other words, while it was certainly bloody, the situation did not yet seem as intractably insoluble as it does today (see, in particular, Figure y).385 1st Cavalry’s form of engagem ent with Baghdad during this period took a very different form to that taken on its return to Iraq in August 2 0 0 6 .
Further, CPOF is a small technology and does not contain the entire of 1st Cavalry’s experience of Baghdad. It does not, for example, address important issues such as patrol tactics, taking and dealing with prisoners, and the training of the Iraqi National Guard. It is a technology that is confined to comm and posts, and does not (explicitly) travel to and with the soldiers on the street. However, CPOF’s form as a com m and and control technology opens it onto a world of spatial practice that is largely ignored by doctrine or concepts o f war. Doctrine dictates spatial orderings by
3®5 Raddatz, for example, notes that when 1st Cavalry soldiers deployed they believed that in Baghdad
they would be engaged in no worse than robust peacekeeping. See, Raddatz, The Long R oad Home, 32-
producing know ledge about the battlespace in the a b stra c t (knowledge about a generic battlespace, a generic enem y), which is then routinised through tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). In this, Foucault’s discussion of dressage explored in Chapter One of this thesis is a discussion of doctrine, em phasising as it does the routine and pre-determ ined activities of the 18th-century military.
Com m and, on the other hand, is implicated in spatial orderings through its involvem ent in the production and organisation of a flow of knowledge about the battlespace in specific. To study com m and practices, then, is to produce an everyday praxiography of pow er/know ledge/space regarding the battlespace, and one that does not overly circumscribe the sim ilitude of the repetition of the everyday.