Why They Die: Civilian Devastation in Violent Conflict

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Introduction “Then cry ‘havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war.” —William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar “Why did we become blind? I don't know. … I think we are blind, Blind but seeing Blind people who can see, but do not see.” —José Saramago, Blindness After all the parades, the patriotic tributes, and the media portrayals that enshrine familiar virtues while maligning foreign vices, it is the weakest participants of armed conflict who bear its greatest burden. No matter how you look at it, by any reasonable measure it is clear that civilians suffer most in large-scale violent conflicts. Violence against the innocent is not a secondary or passing consequence of war—it is deeply embedded in the character and evolution of today's hostilities. Hatred against the enemy can quickly convert to attacks on noncombatants. Women and children are often targeted. In all too many armed conflicts raging across the globe, brutality to civilians caught up in the hostilities does not “just happen.” It is not merely occasional, nor is it circumstantial to some larger set of events. In such conflicts, the deep structures of existing enmity between the groups involved dictate how the participants treat civilians. Notions of the militant enemy's evil nature drive conflict protagonists to believe that their cause is just, that security at home is threatened, and that certain sacrifices will have to be made. The infectious rage that wartime rhetoric often evokes in the “good people” at home also seeps into their sentiments, ideas, impressions, and images about the civilian Other. The feelings of euphoria and purity that are evoked in the rhetoric of war often have a powerful yet frequently implicit impact on the ways in which civilians are characterized. The conflict spiral between protagonist groups is intensified by ideas about what civilians living in the enemy Page 2 →camp do, who they are, and how they should be treated in war's tumult. As a protagonist group becomes obsessed with the militants' evil, members often castigate the enemy's civilian compatriots. In times of armed conflict, whole societies may slip into collective modes of denial of the differences between an enemy combatant and an enemy civilian. The international community has failed to protect the innocents, in part by missing their plight altogether; studies of war often neglect the fact that civilians are situated centrally in the nature of armed conflict, and as in past centuries, the least powerful participants in armed conflict suffer most. In times of war, civilians tend to live strange lives. They can be uprooted from their homes, removed from their guardianship of their land, and treated like refugees in their own country. From the perspective of martial forces, civilians should have no power to affect war's outcome. Warfare is not “theirs” to win or lose. Civilians are neither allies nor enemies, neither political leaders of the opposing forces nor their subordinates. From the perspective of international law, warfare is primarily an enterprise of combatants, for combatants, and with complicity of the combatants' political institutions. And the exclusion of civilians from military decision making magnifies civilians' powerlessness. Their cries in the face of impending doom are dismissed by combatants as signs of their “irrationality,” in contrast to the professional demeanor of trained soldiers. In spite of being objectified by martial forces engaged in combat, civilians are witnesses to a side of war often buried by military leaders. Politicians and military leaders predominantly view civilians as powerless—and must continue to perceive them in this way so that their devastation can be cast as inevitable. Thus, those civilians living in the path of protagonist military forces are objectified as impediments to the real business of war. Their political status as citizens is undercut by the militarypolitical “realities of war” that seem to necessitate their demise. In this work, we seek to explain why they die. We launch this inquiry by bringing a novel perspective to the analysis of violent conflict. We find dualistic models of conflict inadequate for our purpose because such models

fail to give primacy of place (or, indeed, any place) to the category of civilians. Probing beyond the binary framing of conflicts as existing solely between militant groups, we focus our analysis on the formative constructions of and between the two Others—militants and nonmilitants—from the perspective of the ingroup. Our findings reveal that in times of protracted conflict, such constructions take perceived identities of these Others as infallible truths and often serve as a basis for decisions, commands, and policies that endanger civilians. Page 3 → We show that the identity politics surrounding two groups—enemy combatants and civilian noncombatants—play a major role in the aggression against civilians that would be unthinkable in times of peace. A common source of civilian devastation in armed conflict is found in the relationship between the militant Other and the nonmilitant members of the enemy population from the perspective of the ingroup combatants. In other words, the perspective of the protagonist forces in combat (the “good guys”) is shaped by a set of characterizations pertaining to the relationship between the enemy combatants or militant members of an enemy group (the “bad guys”) and the nonmilitant civilians (compatriots of the “bad guys”). And such a relationship is malleable; various military and political forces manipulate this relationship to set and then justify their courses of action. In the chapters that follow, we forgo the familiar top-down approach to causal explanations in which abstract principles are first presented and then followed by specific applications to cases. Instead, we adopt a grounded approach that gives primacy of place to case studies that then build to a detailed analysis. After introducing four explanatory models in chapter 2, we offer corresponding case studies in chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6. These cases encompass three forms of civilian devastation: (1) structural violence against civilians in totalitarian regimes, as illustrated by the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 (chapter 3); (2) the devastation of civilians in ethnic and religious conflicts, as illustrated by the Rwandan genocide in 1994 (chapter 4); (3) and the killing of civilians in both the Second Lebanon War of 2006 (chapter 5) and the Iraq War that began in 2002 (chapter 6). These six chapters comprise Part I of the book. In Part II, we examine the central themes that are drawn from these cases—themes that we believe explain the systematic nature of civilian devastation in times of armed conflict. We move outward from specific case studies to examine the systematic nature of civilian devastation in modern conflict in terms of the sociopsychological underpinnings of group identity—religious, political, and national. Redressing the radical failings of militaristoriented explanations of civilian suffering, we resort to studies of group identity as a theoretical framework for understanding enmity among the primary groups involved in armed conflict. The formation of social identity guides our explanation of civilian devastation in violent conflict. We examine how, as a prelude to collective violence, group identity is shaped by a complexity of value commitments that guide protagonists to believe in the necessity of their course of action. We argue that the constructed forms resident in the collective consciousness essentialize Page 4 →who they are and how they should respond to the Other. Such commitments cohere individuals and exert a force for them to act in unison. We argue that each identity group engaged in conflict establishes a rationale for combat through its self-defined collective axiology. Collective axiology encapsulates a group's sense of virtue and vice, right and wrong, and good and evil in relations with outsiders. The axiology establishes obligations that compel some to act according to their duties, demands rights from others, and establishes judgments of character through the attribution of virtues and vices to members of the ingroup and outgroup, respectively. The unity of the collective is founded in shared aspirations to achieve something permanent for the group, transcending the finitudes of each individual (fleeting) life, and to find solace in a vicarious immersion in the universal and the eternal. Such unity is manifested in connections across generations achieved through the use of symbols, myths, stories, and icons. Stories of violence and victims, dangers and purity, establish boundaries and orders of identities that confer an existential orientation on agents of conflict, establishing their placement (as victims) in a dangerous world, offering a rationale for violent retribution, and charting paths for right actions. We define social identity as an individual's sense of connection to a social group and the social category, a connection that affects perceptions and behaviors. Social identity is generated, confirmed, and transformed in the

process of interactions between groups and individuals. And through such interactions, the individual achieves a feeling of belonging. As the salience of group identity intensifies, the group members take on notions of a shared history, common values, and local customs. With such salience providing ingroup unity, outgroup differences become more pronounced. Identity forms in the process of comparing ingroup characteristics with outgroup ones. Our theory centers on the moral and political polarities of collectivities. As the ingroup identity becomes essentialized, outgroups are differentiated, and borders between good and bad, right and wrong, and virtue and vice appear impermeable. Nuance goes out the window as notions of ingroup purity give new life to common normative categories such as good/evil, clean/dirty, and virtuous/vicious. These categories are as relevant to soldiers preparing for combat as they are to religious extremists preparing to proselytize. In many contexts, the need to comprehend what is incomprehensible results in the emergence of stories, narratives that provide shape to horrific events and clarity to murky morality. These narratives of violence further entrench either/or thinking and provide coherence Page 5 →to the struggle of “us against them.” Such normative dualities also establish unrealizable ideals that are driven by a need to overcome hardship, struggle, and suffering yet are manifested in practices that are purposive, corrective, and potentially transformative. It is easy to see how the rationale for domination, manipulation, or downright conquest of the outside group is created in the context of such dualities. Undergirding this rationale is a system of normative positioning not only of the militant enemy but also of the nonmilitant civilian, as we show in the chapters that follow. Each of our four causal models in the study of this positioning replicates a critical element of the enemy/innocent dynamic and in so doing sheds new light on the prevalence and hidden nature of civilian devastation in war.

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Part One: Disempowering Civilians How do conflict 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 conflict 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 conflict 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 conflict 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 conflicts are the norm, and these conflicts 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 conflicts. 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 non-combatants Page 8 →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 define a major armed conflict 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 conflict (Wallenstein 2002: 57). We believe that this definition is sufficiently broad and reasonably precise. We seek to examine two kinds of enmity relations that define the nature of armed conflict—(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 conflict, 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 conflict protagonists. In Part I of the book, we draw special attention to anticivilian ideologies that are routinely embedded in the enmity relations between conflict 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 first form of anticivilian ideology is exemplified in the atrocities collectively perpetrated against specifically defined 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 Page 9 →militant participants in the so-called new form of terrorism draw their anticivilian

ideology from a sense of embattled identity (Sandole 2003). Extremists engaged in so-called religious wars against their mortal enemy tend to link their survival to a neocrusade that envelops civilians as “legitimate” targets. The collective narcissism that privileges ingroup virtues and demonizes outgroup vices elevates the perception of those characteristics to the level of essential truth. The obsession with and acceptance of absolute dualities—good/evil, saint/sinner, and victory/defeat—embeds them in the military order, validating the call brutally to eradicate half of the equation. Psychologically, this process of externalizing an evil to a stigmatized group leads to feelings of being “saved” from the dangerous impurity they represent or of being “cleansed” of sin. A similar form of demonization occurs in ethnic wars. We examine this form of collective violence in our study of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (chapter 4). We analyze the ideological campaign orchestrated by Hutu extremists in the early 1990s to demonize all Tutsi living in Rwanda. Utilizing their control of various media outlets, the extremists spun tales of Tutsi violence, recounted alleged episodes of brutal subjugation of defenseless Hutus, and delivered speeches on nefarious Tutsi plans for the absolute conquest of all Hutus in Rwanda. Our analysis of this anti-Tutsi propaganda shows how such damning proclamations directly contributed to the mass hatred and fear that gripped the country, paving the way for outright genocide. A second form of anticivilian ideology is based on the argument that the ruthless pragmatism of military operations necessitates suspension of humanitarian norms (Slim 2008: 139–51). In this type of anticivilian ethos, humanitarian principles are seen as archaic and out of step with the so-called realities of war. In addition, this form of thinking views civilians who reside in the enemy's land as culpable. Civilians are seen as sharing the enemy's malice, succoring the enemy army with psychological and material support, replacing combatant jobs at home, and sometimes filling their ranks in battle. In the draconian policies of totalitarian rulers, this form of anticivilian stance leads to brutality and repression. In chapter 3, we examine the case of Crimean Tatars deported in 1944 by the Soviet authorities on the grounds of alleged complicity with the Nazis during their occupation of Ukraine. To justify this unwarranted deportation, the Soviet leadership at the time orchestrated a public campaign of collective demonization that castigated all Crimean Tatars as conspirators, traitors, and enemies of the Soviet people. The campaign also demonized many other nationalities, resulting in the deportation of 228,392 Page 10 →Crimeans from the peninsula. This example of the “civilians are complicit” school of anticivilian ideology demonstrates the conscious actions of political and military leaders to hide the truth of what they are doing beneath seemingly compelling arguments for the necessity of their course. In cases such as these, not only is the scale of civilian suffering suppressed but explanations of civilian fatalities by military commanders disguise the subterranean layers of political forces at work. A third form of anticivilian ideology is linked to those theories of war that ostensibly retain a humanitarian ethic but rationalize civilian casualties as tragically inevitable consequences of war's “realities.” In this kind of ideology, civilian disempowerment is taken for granted in military objectives, which focus a great deal on the efficiency of military machines. According to the militaristic framing of warfare, civilians caught in the wake of martial forces are characterized as secondary to war's primary agents. Civilians represent objects to be controlled, in contrast to war's agents, the martial forces that generate victory or concede defeat. To many military professionals, this characterization is devoid of political import and is driven by standards of technical rationality for military efficiency. This third ideological form characterizes civilian deaths during combat as unintended consequences or as part of war's costs. From a political perspective, the casualties of war are the cost of freedom (or whatever the goal of the martial forces); battle casualties are costs of war; civilian casualties are the cost of battle; and so on (Scarry 1985: 76). As civilians are caught in war's wake, their fatalities ultimately occur on the road to victory—or, in other words, during the process of achieving another (and more important) goal that must not be interrupted by such “inconsequential” elements of war's terrain (Scarry 1985: 74). As collateral to war's primary forces, as incidental to the strategies and tactics of the martial forces, such fatalities are typically rationalized as necessary, acceptable, inevitable, unavoidable, unfortunate, and occasionally terrible. Civilian suffering in these cases is cast as the “price that must be paid” for correcting the misadventures and criminality of the foreign political leadership. (Here, blame is neatly shifted to the opposing side.) This deadly “bargaining” rationale leads to acceptable tradeoffs that are forcibly imposed for the protection, security, and glory of one's own people (country, ethnic group,

nationality). The underlying assumption is that some (other) civilians must die for the sake of “our” primordial nation, privileged race, or supreme culture (Cockburn 1998: 213).2 And to risk one's own military force in the protection of the civilian Other is viewed as bizarre, unheard of, a kind of altruistic madness. Page 11 → We believe that this third form of anticivilian thought ironically underpins the humanitarian laws of war. The laws of war serve two primary functions—to legitimize the deployment of military forces by a nation-state and to determine the “proper” conduct of such forces in warfare. The laws of war function as a strategic partner for military commanders, giving them protection for actions that would be prohibited in peacetime (Kennedy 2006: 41). Such laws seek to balance the legitimate deployment of military forces against a humanitarian ethos. The Hague Conventions regulate the methods and means of warfare, prohibiting, for example, the use of certain weapons. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 as well as the 1977 Geneva Protocols seek to protect certain victims of war—prisoners, civilians, the sick, and the wounded. The 1949 Geneva Conventions stipulate that civilians who take no active part in combat shall be protected against the dangers arising from military operation unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities (Henckaerts and Doswald-Beck 2005: 100). At the United Nations World Summit of 2005, governments reaffirmed the basic principle of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The laws of war find their historical foundation in the theory of just war. Within this theory, the “double effect” principle provides a vindication of the unintended but foreseeable deaths that an otherwise legitimate military action produces. Central to the notion of double effect is the idea that the combatant should be driven by good intentions alone, seeking to eliminate or neutralize the enemy's capacity to engage in combat. The combatant must not be driven by the intention of producing evil, either as an end or as the means of the military action (Walzer 1977: 153). The principle of double effect holds that the act (such as a military assault against an enemy) is permitted in spite of the evil consequences (killing of civilian combatants) it produces provided that the act is good in itself (at least in the sense that it is an acceptable action in service to the goals of a “just” war), that the direct effect is morally acceptable, and that it sufficiently compensates for its evil consequences. The laws of war lay out three basic principles for engaging in what is termed just war. First, the principle of military necessity authorizes the use of armed force only against targets that are valid military objectives. The military objectives are those objects that, if destroyed, would offer a definite military advantage. Second, the principle of distinction requires that combatants distinguish themselves from noncombatants and that military objectives be distinguished from nonmilitary objectives such as the protection of property. The purpose of this principle is to ensure that martial forces direct their assault against legitimate military targets. Third, Page 12 →the principle of proportionality requires that military commanders calculate the degree of damage anticipated to impact noncombatants against the degree of military advantage that will be achieved by inflicting it. According to this principle, the scale of civilian casualties predicted to occur as a result of military operations must not exceed the proportionate level of concrete and direct military advantage expected. Of course, this principle establishes limits to the degree of collateral damage permitted. Based on the international laws of war, the definition of a civilian appears self-evident and cleansed of political meaning. In effect, the notion of a civilian noncombatant is defined negatively, by what it is not. According to Article 50 of the International Humanitarian Law (Geneva, 1974–77), “any person who is not a member of armed forces is considered to be a civilian” (Henckaerts and Doswald-Beck 2005: 100). This negative definitional form seems innocuous and self-evident. What could be more obvious or more natural than categorizing civilians as noncombatants? The simplicity of this definition lends an air of ideological purity to the doctrines encoded in the laws of war; its logical underpinnings seem immune to the various forms of political contamination that are legend in the rhetoric of war. However, we submit that this rather thin definition of civilians in war masks a set of moral and political assumptions that promote civilian disempowerment in war. In times of armed conflict, civilians experience a radically diminished status compared to their former experience. While citizens of a state enjoy a contractual arrangement with the state, at least in principle, civilians in war are cast as collateral in relation to the primary

martial forces. While citizens in most democratic nations are empowered with certain rights that should be protected by the state, the rights of civilians in war are rarely safeguarded and are usually suspended when the state ceases to operate according to former principles. The militaristic framing of war establishes a narrative in which military forces and objectives constitute the dominant reference point; this narrative by default embodies the assumption that civilians are subject to control by those martial forces to promote the efficiency of military machines and achieve the political goals of the conquering nation. Civilians are cast as objects residing in the landscape, retaining as much agency in the matters of war as a tree or a building. Their presence in a combat zone means they are “in the way.” The removal of civilian agency from the conversation reveals a politically charged ideology that precedes military operations, a repositioning that occurs long before the missiles fall or the bombs are released. An analysis of this kind of repositioning is presented in chapter 5, Page 13 →which examines the Second Lebanon War of 2006. The Israeli leadership involved in the deliberations during this time decided against direct assaults on the Lebanese civilian population. Leaders ordered the Israeli Defense Force to launch limited air strikes on buildings, bridges, and roads of strategic significance. Nevertheless, the collateral damage to “civilian objects,” as the Lebanese noncombatants were called, included 1,183 fatalities, one-third of them children, and 4,054 injuries (Amnesty International 2007). Similarly, our study of the war in Iraq (chapter 6) focuses on the intangible instruments of conquest that render civilians politically powerless in relation to militant forces. These intangible instruments do not cause physical harm but create the conditions in which civilians are objectified and their agency removed. In chapter 6, we examine the seemingly innocuous techniques employed by occupying U.S. forces for classifying, scanning, coding, and recording civilian behavior. Every gesture, movement, and expression is assessed to determine whether it constitutes a sign of danger or threat. Thus subject to constant surveillance, civilian life in the war zone mimics inmate life in prison. A prison is a fishbowl of visibility in which the inmate finds himself almost continually caught in the central gaze of technically skilled observers looking for any sign of misconduct or rebellion. Michel Foucault's (1995) well-known analysis of the effective domination achieved by activities of measuring, supervising, and eliminating abnormalities in attempts to eradicate an outbreak of plague in seventeenth-century France is extremely useful in understanding the techniques of military control of a civilian population.3 Subject to technologies of military surveillance as well as the resulting judgments of that surveillance over which they have no control, civilians in a war zone are recast as bodies in a network of relations, creating preconditions for their manipulation, control, and even elimination. When used in the context of a combat zone in which civilians are present, these instruments strip civilians of political power, weaken their agency in life-ordeath decisions, and annul their human status. In all three forms of anticivilian ideology, the members of the ingroup use complementary mechanisms to construct their notion of both combatant Others and noncombatant Others. These processes—one involving mechanisms for demonizing enemy militants and the other involving the political conquest of the civilian Other—are interdependent. This complementarity of the two Others represents a defining aspect of contemporary conflicts. In Part I, we examine the interconnectedness of the instruments of civilian control and repression. In the wake of military Page 14 →operations, civilians are wrenched from the ordinary structures of their former lives as they fend for themselves in moments of quiet desperation or silent horror. Their suffering is typically private. Their plight in major armed conflict is often relegated to the tiny recesses of forgotten stories. Civilians who experience war's tumult are barricaded within emotional walls, reduced to a set of self-contained feelings, psychological peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies. From the perspective of combatants, civilians' resultant behavior merely reinforces their appearance of passivity, fragility, and fearfulness. In extreme cases of tumult between martial forces, civilians can become enslaved by their struggle for mere survival. And such a struggle can dominate their lives, overwhelm their social relations.

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1 Who Dies in Armed Conflicts? From the militaristic perspective, the realities of armed conflict are often invoked to explain the civilian devastation that so often sadly results. Civilian fatalities are seen as routine, unavoidable, and in most cases excusable. For military commanders, the inevitability of civilian devastation is incontestable, and its scope is as broad as the battlefield. Purely by virtue of their physical location, hapless civilians become part of the landscape of war, objects embedded in the ground of combat. And once the dogs of war are unleashed, no human agent can prevent the ensuing havoc wrought upon whatever objects (human or otherwise) lie in their path. But there is another angle to the argument of proximity. Trained soldiers typically specialize in specific tasks, which are in and of themselves remote from the overall effects of the larger military force—links on a chain. And when effects of technical acts are unseen to the soldier, the moral tests are easily met or simply ignored. It is easier to deal death when it can be done at a distance. How many civilians die in armed conflict generally? How many die in the aftermath of the fighting? And what is the proportion of civilian fatalities to those of combatants? These questions are rarely addressed by academic researchers and almost never examined by military commanders. A vast majority of academic studies on war understate the plight of civilians in armed conflict, overstate the centrality of martial forces to the essence of conflict, and as a consequence sustain the militaristic perspective. We believe that this inattention fosters a narrow vision of war's devastation. There is simply no way, as moral beings, we can attempt to understand the nature of human conflict without addressing, Page 16 →in a rigorous and scholarly manner, the role of and impact on all of the participants of violent conflict. Our contribution to the subject matter is primarily explanatory. We seek to explain civilian devastation through the kind of social-psychological positioning that encompasses characterizations of both the militant Other and the nonmilitant (or noncombatant) Other. The discovery of the specific roots of conflict affect our understanding of why civilian fatalities occur in such numbers. What factors lie in the basis of the conflict dynamics? How do these factors influence the transformation of civilians from innocent citizens to collateral damage?

The Reality of Combat In virtually all large-scale violent conflicts, civilians suffer most. Whether by rape, extreme poverty, displacement, or mass murder, civilians—more so than soldiers—pay a catastrophic price for the goals of opposing forces. The twentieth century has witnessed the willful destruction of human life in staggering proportions; it was a century of unimaginable horror. Yet how do we measure civilians' sacrifice? Who makes sense of noncombatants' role in combat? From the perspective of military science, noncombatants do not begin or end war. Their plight has little impact on combat operations or outcome of war. Their demise is as impersonal as the rubble that litters the landscape of a bombed city. Military commanders often rationalize “collateral” devastation of civilians by associating their destruction with strategic objectives. And the results of that rationalization are not only stunning but difficult to comprehend. From the few studies that have been conducted, the evidence is clear: in cases of protracted violent conflict (wars of many kinds), noncombatants die in far greater proportion than do combatants. According to United Nations reports published in 1998, civilians account for at least 75 percent of all war deaths in wars of the late twentieth century (Annan 1999). This kind of disproportionality is reported in studies commissioned by the Human Cost of War Project, which concluded, Since World War II, Asia, Africa and the Middle East have become the world's primary battlegrounds. In the conflicts that raged in Angola and Mozambique from the 1960s to the 1990s, more than 75 percent of the victims were civilians. A large number were also children: between 1985 and 1995, some two million children died Page 17 →from warfare, and another 10 million to 15 million were maimed physically or psychologically. (Clemens and Singer 2000: 57)

A study published in 2005 showed that the majority of conflict-related deaths in poor countries occur off the battlefield. And combatant fatalities represent a small proportion of the total mortality that results from the lifethreatening war-generated conditions that affect the general population. And the total number of fatalities in armed conflicts globally is staggering. According to a study by Uppsala /PRIO, each year between 1985 and 1994, an average of 137,000 people (combatants and noncombatants) died globally. But a later study by another team of researchers found that even this figure is relatively low. Using data from the World Health Organization, these researchers estimate that the global figure for annual total war deaths during those years was actually 378,000 and ranged from 156,000 to 614,000 (Obermeyer, Murray, and Gakidou 2008). One reason for the pervasive underexamination of civilians in war centers on the reliance on military vernacular, particularly the term battle. For example, in their research on fatalities in nine African conflicts, Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch show that nonbattle deaths far exceed the total number of battle deaths (2005: 148). As table 1.1 shows, these researchers divided the total number of fatalities into major categories: battle deaths (everyone killed during combat) and nonbattle deaths (fatalities that result from the changing social and environment conditions brought on by war). When the civilian fatalities include both battle and nonbattle deaths, the disproportionate devastation to civilians in relation to combatants is clear. For example, between 1998 and 2001, only 6 percent of the total 2.5 million war-related deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo were combatants. The vast majority of noncombatant deaths in this case were caused by disease induced by the conditions of the conflict. The devastation to women in armed conflict requires special attention. In many conflict settings, women's bodies are treated as a kind of battlefield, bearing within themselves the results of violence. In the Rwandan genocide of 1994, over the course of one hundred days, an estimated 11 percent of all females—approximately 535,000 women—were raped. (Survivors Fund 2007) Between 1964 and 2003, the yearly aggregate number of internally displaced persons and refugees worldwide, the majority of Page 18 →them women and children, rose significantly, peaking to 33,000,000 in 2003. (Human Security Centre 2005: 103) In recounting their devastation during the recent conflict in Sierra Leone, 89 percent of women surveyed said that they were raped at least once. (Physicians for Human Rights 2000) Of course, civilians are subject to other forms of violence beyond simple brute force. As table 1.1 shows, warfare also destroys the conditions for civilians' physical survival. Johan Galtung's (1969) taxonomy of violence is instructive. He draws attention to the sort of violence that is embedded in social and political systems, often leading to destruction of life's necessities: prolonged alienation and misery; privations of water, food, and shelter; and extreme poverty. For example, totalitarian regimes promote a kind of structural violence that nullifies the public's capacity for independent action, speech, and thought, with devastating results. The violence against civilians in war is the subject of a study by researchers at the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) (Eck and Hultman 2007). Their research focused on one-sided violence, which is defined as violence from deliberate attacks on civilians by state-run militaries or rebel militia. Their analysis of 350,000 news reports of major armed conflict for the period of 1989–2004 reveal important results about Page 19 →perpetrators of such violence. The number of rebel forces engaged in one-sided violence in war exceeded that of governmentsponsored militaries by a ratio of appropriately 2-to-1: 51 rebel militias and 27 government militaries participated in one-sided violence during that period of time. But in the aggregate of conflict in which one-sided violence occurs, the government forces are far more deadly to civilians: 528,000 deaths by government forces, including approximately 500,000 committed by the Hutu-led government forces of Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. Rebel forces were responsible for 45,000 civilian fatalities in cases of one-sided violence for that period. So, while more rebel groups participated in acts of one-sided violence, government forces are responsible for a greater number of civilian fatalities for this time period. In fact, for each year that a government force participated in a major armed conflict, the force committed on average 6,435 civilian fatalities, compared to 221 civilian fatalities

per year for each rebel group (Eck and Hultman 2007, 238–39). These researchers also show the extent to which one-sided violence tends to be clustered by region. Table 1.2 summarizes the findings on the number of one-sided fatalities per year for each continent (Eck and Hultman 2007, 239).

Many violent conflicts involve the clash of multiple pairs of martial forces, as the UCDP researchers' findings demonstrate. The researchers rely on the notion of a dyad—a pair of warring parties—in their definition of an armed conflict as a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties results in at least twenty-five battle-related deaths in a year (Harbom, Melander, and Wallensteen 2008: 697). This definition accounts for conflicts in which multiple pairs of warring parties are active. Of the 236 violent conflicts that have occurred since 1946, 30 were waged simultaneously by two or more dyads. Page 20 →

Conflict Resolution This evidence undermines the myth that civilian brutality is limited to a single conflict, a particularly brutal military campaign, or one military leader's singularly devastating strategy. Civilian suffering is endemic to contemporary protracted conflict of many kinds. The ubiquity of this plight suggests the need for a reframing of the nature of violent conflict, recognizing the centrality of its weakest participants. In the remainder of this volume, we invite the reader to suspend belief in what is cast as an absolute truth about violent conflict and attend to the actions, attitudes, and diminished agency of civilians a defining dimension of conflict. The dualistic framing of protracted violent conflict, as the tumultuous clash of pairs of martial forces, is legend in social scientific research. Such a framing seems to be anchored in the reality of violent conflicts for any era. In place of the dualistic conception of conflict, we rely on a triplet conception that gives analytical primacy of place to the weakest participants in conflict in their interactions with the warring parties. Combat involving the martial forces of nations typically transforms civilians from individuals with the power to shape their own lives to war's weakest participants. As martial forces clash, the civilian Other is often dehumanized, with civilians characterized minimally as pathetic beings whose placement makes them vulnerable to suffering or in the extreme as evil conspirators tainted by association with the militant enemy they presumably support—or as vicious, immoral, criminal, uncivilized, reprehensible, blameworthy, villainous, satanic, diabolic, demonic, and depraved. The instruments of such dehumanization are deployed before and during combat. With these instruments, various forms of transformation of civilian identity are imposed. We analyze these processes through the recent findings of researchers in conflict analysis. The field of conflict studies has undergone several significant transitions in recent years, each of which is related to the topic of the root causes of conflictual behavior generally. The remainder of this chapter encapsulates as background information three turning points in the field of conflict studies, particularly in the studies that seek to explain the causation of violent and conflict-focused behavior: (1) the change from the emphasis on positions to the emphasis on interests, (2) the understanding of interests as based on social identity, and (3) (a stage represented by this book) the analysis of collective axiology as a basis for social identity. Each approach advances the field of conflict studies through the examination of the sources of phenomena that previously were considered as a priori to Page 21 →the analysis. Building on the first two seminal developments, we believe that a complete understanding of civilian devastation is possible only within the framework of the collective axiology that defines the morality and worldview of the parties in conflict. Why People Take Positions in Conflict: From Positions to Interests Roger Fisher and William Ury achieved one of the major advances in the field of conflict analysis through their study of peace negotiation and conflict resolution. Their book Getting to Yes represents a paradigm shift for conflict analysis and resolution. They view conflict resolution generally and negotiation in particular as the rational pursuit of a mutually satisfactory solution to a conflict involving interdependent actors. Through a form of

bargaining that they call principled negotiation, Fisher and Ury recommend that practitioners “look for mutual gains whenever possible, and that where your interests conflict, you should insist that the result be based on some fair standards independent of the will of either side” (1981: xviii). This “win-win” perspective constitutes a radical break from the familiar zero-sum models of conflict resolution and has guided the work of subsequent practitioners. Fisher and Ury draw particular attention to the question “Why do people have their positions?” According to the authors, beneath the demands of the participants in any negotiation lies something more fundamental than their stated positions. “The basic problem in a negotiation lies not in conflicting positions, but in the conflict between each side's needs, desires, concerns and fears” (Fisher and Ury 1981: 40). Fisher and Ury call these deeper, often unexpressed, motives interests, and they presumably determine the positions that actors take and project to others in a conflict. Importantly, the authors see interests as including basic human needs, which do not qualitatively differ from other interests (48). Thus, the character and source of conflicts rest on the interests that actors adopt in their conflictual relationships. These authors concern themselves primarily with the unemotional, rational pursuit of solutions to the “problem” of diverging interests and urge negotiators to “separate the people from the problem” (18), treating adversaries' perceptions and emotions independently from their interests. Fisher and Ury explain conflictual behaviors through the existence of substantive issues rather than through the perceptions, emotions, and identity issues of individuals and groups. Galtung's tripartite conception of conflict also gives priority to interests Page 22 →and needs in the analysis of the conflict dynamic. According to Galtung (1969), a full conflict can be characterized as including elements of attitude, behavior, and contradiction. Contradiction refers to the structural components of the conflict (for example, the pursuit of limited resources by both parties). Behavior, the most straightforward element, encompasses the actions parties choose to take in their pursuit of hostilities. Attitude comprises the perceptions and the emotions of the actors involved. All three of these elements are interdependent. Thus, attitude is not by itself the root source of conflict—contradiction, or a “conflict of interest,” is—but is instead a factor that can dramatically inflame or reduce such instrumental conflicts. Why People Have Particular Interests in Conflict: From Interests to Identity In his contribution to the study of protracted conflicts, John Burton draws special attention to “certain human needs that are universal in the sense that they are a systemic requirement of the individual and that no society can be harmonious or survive indefinitely unless they are satisfied” (1979: 58). For Burton, conflict protagonists adopt positions based on perceived needs: social conflict emerges within societies that deprive certain individuals of the path to satisfying these basic human needs. Conflictual behaviors tend to occur as these needs remain unfulfilled. Burton's (1990) emphasis on basic, universal needs advances the work of Fisher and Ury and places particular importance on identity needs in explaining conflictual behaviors. He recognizes that identity needs are fundamental to human development and are more important to survival than other needs. Because identity needs are so critical to survival, their suppression, annulment, or denial can foster hostile responses. Thus, within Burton's model, the satisfaction of basic human needs represents a major goal of conflict prevention and resolution: “There are acceptable means of giving a sense of identity to the person at the work place, to young people, to minorities and ethnic groups” (1997: 18). Burton's theory of basic human need applies to the political domain regarding the failure of existing state systems to satisfy the need for identity as the primary source of modern ethnonationalist struggles (Rubenstein 2003: 61). Conflicts arise when identity groups perceive (or believe) that they are oppressed and victimized by a denial of recognition, security, and equity. The social identity theory also gives priority to the suppression of identity needs as a driving mechanism of interethnic conflict, as we show Page 23 →in chapter 9. Here, however, we turn to the work of later theorists to demonstrate the usefulness of social identity theory in the study of protracted ethnic conflict. For example, John Turner argues that membership in the minority group tends to diminish a person's self-esteem and dignity (Turner et al. 1984). And according to Henri Tajfel (1986), if a dominant group is unable to satisfy a minority's esteem needs, the members of the minority group are prone to take one of three possible positions in their response: they can seek to change the social structures, they can struggle for new standards of intergroup comparison, or they can

reject the ingroup altogether in favor of a “better” group (i.e., can attempt social mobility). Tajfel outlines the conditions under which minority group members adopt one position over the others: 1. If social systems are perceived as legitimate and highly resistant to change, minority members can accept their dependency on the majority. 2. If the members of the minority group perceive the system as illegitimate, they will seek alternatives to the system. In these cases, society loses stability, and the state resorts to tactics of terror and oppression to hold together the system. 3. If relations between the minority and majority are perceived as illegitimate and the system is unstable, members of the minority group attempt to redefine and reinterpret the characteristics of their group and consequently transform their identity into positive one. Tajfel's contributions to the study of minority groups confirm the findings of other researchers that identity needs represent a major source of ethnonationalist movements. Burton (1987, 1990) calls such conflicts “deep-rooted” and points out that they rest on underlying needs that cannot be compromised: interest and position in these conflicts are not negotiable. Edward Azar (1990a) also emphasizes the role of identity needs as a source of protracted social conflicts. He argues that such conflicts are “distinct from traditional disputes over territory, economic recourses, or East-West rivalry, [as they] revolve around questions of communal identity” (1990b: 93). Yet Azar recognizes that in the evolution of hostilities, the internal sources of conflict (identity needs) tend to merge with external ones (1990a: 6). He stresses the importance of group identity development and mobilization as well as the formation of the political goals of Page 24 →autonomy, secession, and access to power and resources in the dynamic which governs protracted social conflicts. Azar identifies four main factors that influence the reinforcement of protracted social conflicts: (1) communal content that rests on the identity of racial, religious, ethnic, and other groups and reflects the level of responsiveness of major “communal groups” to the needs of other groups in the society; (2) deprivation of human needs that are ontological and nonnegotiable, including security, development, political access, and identity; (3) the role of governments and the state, including “incompetent, parochial, fragile, and authoritarian governments that fail to satisfy basic human needs” (1990a: 10) complicated by rapid population growth and limited resources; and (4) the impact of international factors, including economic dependency and political-military linkages, on weak and developing states. In his research on identity-based conflicts, Jay Rothman also locates the sources of armed conflict in a group's history, psychological and cultural makeup, and values and beliefs. Conflicts have high stakes for all parties involved. Their intensity often is destructive, as each side seeks to avoid or subdue the others. … They are deeply rooted in the underlying individual human needs and values that together constitute people's social identities, particularly in the context of group affiliations, loyalties, and solidarity. (1997: 6) However, as Rothman points out, the differences between identity-and interest-based conflicts cannot be clearly defined in conflict resolution: “All identity conflicts contain interest conflicts; not all interest conflicts contain identity conflicts” (11). Furthermore, many unresolved interest-based conflicts can evolve into identity conflicts, developing around the issues of dignity, identity, pride, and group loyalty. In his conceptualization of the social conflict, Louis Kriesberg finds little merit in distinguishing between interestbased conflicts and identity-based conflicts. However, he describes identity as one of four sources of social conflict that arise from a strong sense of ingroup identity and out-group difference. For Kriesberg, the sense of ingroup self-definition is critical. First, some groups characterize themselves through expressions of ideological conviction—most notably political and/or religious beliefs. Such convictions are often linked to fears of annihilation, leading to injunctions to vanquish the “lesser beings” (2003: 11). Second, leaders tend Page 25 →to

mobilize constituencies to deal with adversaries. Third, group boundaries tend to be reaffirmed and at times exaggerated. The clear recognition of intergroup differences reinforces group members' willingness to fight for power and resources. Fourth, the degree of perceived ingroup difference accentuates the assumption of internal threats and the perception of others as enemies. Roger Brubaker (1996) also stresses that ethnic identity politics and minority grievances can foster tensions that lead to violent conflict. The formation of a nation as an independent state often incites national minorities to acts of violence. The movement from colonialism and totalitarianism to political pluralism is connected to the construction of the state and the reshaping of national identities. Conflict can arise when the identity chosen by an individual is incompatible with the identity imposed by others or a social context in which identity is constantly being recreated (Kelman 1982; Stein 1998; Stern 1995). Vamik Volkan (1988, 1997, 2004, 2006) locates social identity at the core of armed conflict, stating that all people's interests lie in social identity. He defines large group identity as “tens of thousands, or millions, of people—most of whom will never meet one another in their lifetimes—sharing a permanent sense of sameness” (2006: 15). He contributes to the study of intergroup conflict in his psychoanalytic study of the dynamics of an individual's affiliation with a group. According to Volkan, if the real or psychological borders between groups are not clear and groups share similar characteristics, behaviors, and beliefs, the group identity can be at risk. To protect a group's sense of uniqueness and to promote outgroup negativities, the ingroup will often resort to emphasizing and enshrining minor differences between itself and the similar outgroups (1997). Such differences are reinforced by vivid enemy imagery and the dehumanization of members of other groups. Marc Howard Ross (2007) demonstrates the importance of historic narratives and cultural symbols in relations between conflict protagonists. He gives special attention to psychocultural dramas, which he characterizes as “conflicts between groups over competing, and apparently irresolvable, claims that engage the central elements of each group's historical experience and their identity and invoke suspicions and fears of the opponent” (2007: 25). In particular, Ross argues that a group's psychocultural narratives about its history constitute a critical element of social identity. Ross notes that such narratives are subject to misinterpretations, cognitive and perceptual distortions, and biased predictions about other groups' behavior. Each group possesses its own interpretations of events, Page 26 →which are usually contradictory or opposed to narratives of other groups. Ingroup members share these narratives, and this ideology of a common fate gives narratives additional emotional power. Several authors emphasize the importance of boundary divisions as a basis of identity conflicts. Donald Horowitz (1975) examines how cultural and political elites play an important role in the process of boundary enlargement or contraction by stressing the resemblances and disparities that define the group and its boundaries. Horowitz describes how “artificial ethnicity” develops during the creation of larger ethnic agglomerations connected to political competition in the wider territory. Anthony Cohen (1985, 1986) shows that communities recognize and depend on clear boundaries that represent distinctive ways of life and may often mobilize themselves if they perceive these boundaries are endangered—as under threat from the outside. Charles Tilly stresses that social identities “center on boundaries separating us from them” (2005: 7). The definition of this intergroup boundary as well as the relationships inside and across the boundary are reflected in the narratives of both groups and create the foundation of collective identities. Tilly argues that boundary change is linked to the development of conflicts and strongly affects both the intensity and forms of collective violence. He shows how the different mechanisms of boundary change led to interethnic hostility, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Thus, these theoretical contributes seek to explain armed conflict through social psychological processes that go beyond an individual's commitments to particular interests. Why Identity Influences Behavior in Conflict: From Identity to Collective Axiology The next major phase in identity studies, which has only recently emerged, centers on a normative framing of identity and difference as a basis for understanding the dominance of a group's attitudes, norms, and value commitments over personal ones. We advocate this normative approach to identity studies, arguing that a

thorough understanding of group identities rests on notions of a collective axiology—that is, a group's set of value commitments conjoined with evaluative tools for shaping intergroup relations. A group's collective axiology defines its normative commitments, its sense of right and wrong actions, good and bad injunctions, and virtuous and vicious characteristics. A collective axiology unites members of a group around a shared normative vision of an idealized Page 27 →world. The axiology establishes obligations that in times of war compel members to march in lockstep according to their particular duties and demand a shared denigration of the enemy Other. As such, a collective axiology is revealed in a group's political ideology, religious conviction, or its moralistic stance in relation to outsiders. In the course of coping with harms, dangers, threats, and struggles, conflict protagonists often seek guidance toward a better way and toward a path to “the good.” Stories of violence and victims, dangers and purity, establish boundaries and orders of identities with respect to “what is good” (us) and “what is bad” (them). Such a unity confers an existential orientation on conflict protagonists, establishing their placement (as victims) in a dangerous world and offering a rationale for actions (as agents). It influences moral judgments and provides justification for the killing of civilians in violent conflicts.

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2 Distinguishing the Enemy from the Innocent in War As we showed in chapter 1, civilians die in far greater numbers than do combatants in major armed conflicts across the globe. We seek to explain why the weakest participants in such conflicts are routinely subjected to the greatest degree of suffering. In many conflicts, militant groups—for strategic or tactical purposes or for vengeance—often deliberately target civilians. In many cases, actions taken against noncombatants are linked directly to their relations with the militant enemy. In this chapter, we explore how the relationship between the enemy Other and the civilian Other is critical to the continuation and ferocity of hostilities, how civilians are stigmatized by their bonds with the militant enemy, and how such stigmatization leads to acts of brutality, retaliation, and retribution. Why do militant protagonists address their grievances against the enemy group by inflicting much greater devastation on non-combatants than on their militant opponents? For insight into this question, we turn to theories on the formation of group identity. At its core, identity theory examines the origins of social identity and the mechanisms for its change. While cognitive, emotional, and motivational aspects of identity have received significant attention in academic studies, the normative underpinnings of group identity and differences lack the attention they deserve. We show that in spite of enormous strides in the field of social identity processes, a gap remains concerning the normative underpinnings of identity-based conflicts. The impact of collective valuation within and between protagonists groups remains underexamined. We redress this gap through four causal models of the enmity system that underpins the combatant-noncombatant relationship. Page 29 →

Conflict Theory as Value Theory Members of every identity group (religious, political, national, or cultural) develop a sense of who they are by reflecting on their relations to other groups, and some separate themselves from the general public to adopt a culture of quiet isolation. Intergroup relationships can and often do rest on essentializing certain differences between groups, differences that are intensified by stories that convey a group's unique past and aspirations for a promising future. This trajectory of thinking solidifies notions of an established normative order. For members of an ingroup, certain actions are recognized as acceptable, proper, civil, decent, or virtuous. Since the definition of terms such as acceptable and proper occurs within the group, ingroup positioning is inseparable from the notion of out-group difference with respect to evaluating what is “normal.” In and of itself, this kind of referential positioning is neither aberrant nor destined to yield pathological violence. In cases of protracted conflict, extremists on both sides eventually elevate perceived outgroup evils to the status of eternal truth. Injunctions for vigilance against the encroachment of such evils are widespread in the presence of such identity formation processes, as are demands for personal sacrifice. In the course of prolonged hostilities, group differences are intensified through narrative practices that recount examples of the enemy's evil character, demand retaliation, and recite the creed of ingroup virtues and outgroup vices. Furthermore, the dualities enshrined in these narrative practices spill over to groups that are uninvolved in the conflict, blurring the boundary between the militant Other and the nonmilitant Other. In the course of continued violence, civilians who are not party to the conflict are often cast as unjust, dangerous, and therefore malicious. And demands for the control, conquest, or even elimination of large segments of the population soon follow. One central question for scholars of identity studies is critical to our project: What exactly constitutes a boundary between social groups? According to Charles Tilly, a boundary is a social space that establishes group cohesion, solidarity, and a sense of uniqueness. The social boundary solidifies social relations on either side of an intermediate zone. The boundary also establishes distinct relations across this zone and shared representations of the zone itself (Tilly 2005: 132; see also Abbott 1995; Lamont and Molnar 2002). The repositioning of these boundaries is inextricably linked to the attempt to redefine power relations; as a discursive activity, such

repositioning is always politically charged. In times of war, conflict Page 30 →protagonists impose a positioning system of civilian identity that accentuates the impoverishment of civilian rights, the limitations of civilian abilities, and the annulment of civilians' political power. Over the course of a prolonged and brutal conflict, protagonists tend to redefine and in some cases eliminate the sociopolitical boundary between the militant enemy and the coexisting civilians. In narratives depicting enemy /civilian collaboration, civilians are portrayed as acting in concert with the enemy, harboring enemy militants, offering them safe haven, providing them with material support, or celebrating their victories and lamenting their losses. In these narratives, the “innocent” Other absorbs many of the enemy's negative characteristics by acts that are perceived as collaborative. As civilians are recast in this way, the battle lines for militant actions are redrawn, and the arena for conflict is expanded. In some cases, noncombatants can be cast as evil personified (innocent in name only), as we illustrate in our study of the Rwandan genocide (chapter 4). Tilly (2005) illustrates this imposition of new boundaries in his studies of the genocide of Armenians and Greeks of Anatolia around World War I; the genocide against Jews and other groups in the Holocaust of World War II; the deportation of Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and other groups from the former Soviet Union in the 1940s; and the 1990 war in Yugoslavia. In each case, he demonstrates how the designation of new boundaries between distinct outgroups leads directly to fear of an external threat and to policies of expulsion or extermination. For example, the Nazis' July 1935 Nuremberg Laws redrew the boundaries between Jews and non-Jews by identifying a Jew as a person with at least 25 percent Jewish ancestry and by strictly prohibiting marriage between Jews and non-Jews. This kind of repositioning treats Semitism as a taint, dangerous when present even at low levels, and engenders fear and loathing of an identity characteristic previously seen as different (perhaps even inferior) but essentially innocuous. For protagonists in protracted armed conflict, the enemy evokes disgusted fascination, constitutes the thing most hated, and possesses a power that extends beyond its mere existence. Julia Kristeva's theory of the abject sheds light on this combination of responses. Less an object than a quality of an object, the abject includes anything that threatens to cross or does cross a border. In this sense, the abject has much in common with the pollution theories of anthropologists Mary Douglas and Claude Lévi-Strauss. However, there is more at stake with abjection than pollution or infection by filth; the subject's identity, its separateness as an individual, is threatened. As Kristeva argues, the natural response to such a threat would Page 31 →be to attempt to remove it, yet the presence of the abject serves to redraw the boundary between subject and annihilation: “There, abject and abjection are my safeguards. The primers of my culture” (Kristeva 1982: 2). This fascination with the threatening and disgusting Other therefore serves multiple purposes and leads to questions about enemies' character. Who are they? How do they get their resources, their support, and their powers? Where do they come from, and, more important, when will they strike again? Answers to these questions typically become entwined with normative judgments that invigorate dualities of good/bad, right/wrong, and virtue/vice. In the face of calamity and confusing moral crises, simplistic notions and categories can comfort the extremist and help to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, pure from impure. In some protracted conflicts, all members of the outgroup therefore fall comfortably into the category of those who are vicious, wicked, immoral, criminal, uncivilized, and depraved. As hatreds intensify, observed actions of the Other filter through this lens and seal group members' perpetual immorality in the minds of the ingroup. “They” are bad, vicious, or unjust. “We” are morally pure, endowed with virtues that inhere in a birthright connected to a sacred homeland, the legacy of a country's monarchy, and/or a social order established by an approving God. Such judgments typically are rooted in notions of a sacred land or are essentialized through laws about the “inevitability” of conflict. Birth in the sacred realm (the homeland) secures one's virtues, whereas birth in the enemy realm confers those vices that are linked to profane foreign territory. In seeing the world as a battleground, the protagonist “knows” that his values are the values of the collective, and these values are privileged, sacrosanct, and primordial.

Positioning of the Threatening Other

In this chapter, we introduce four models that reflect the transformation of boundary change between the enemy and its civilian compatriots. Processes of civilian repositioning presented in each of the models involve, for example, stereotyping, prejudice, outgroup threat, ingroup support, attribution error, security dilemma, dehumanization, devaluation, humiliation, and revenge. However, each model represents different sources and directions of how these mechanisms function within the triangle of the ingroup, the enemy Other, and the civilian Other. Our first model outlines how the civilian Other is recharacterized by virtue of association with militant Others. As the conflict drags on, the Page 32 →militant ingroup tends to recast civilian noncombatants as imbued with the enemy's (real or imaginary) vices. Flaws, compulsions, and obsessions are transferred like a taint from the enemy to its civilian compatriots. Model 1 is linked to a practice of conferring a taint, which is a familiar topic of researchers in social psychology—the practice of stigmatization. Many studies have shown that stigmatization—the practice of marking certain individuals or groups as tainted—diminishes the moral worth, political autonomy, or social status of those groups and individuals. Individual character traits are converted to collective negativities of the entire stigmatized group. Members of the group are viewed as unjust, immoral, uncivilized, or even inhuman simply because of their membership, their assigned social identity. Stigmatized groups are marginalized, are viewed as threatening, and are often reassigned to a separate social space.1 Over time, the stigmatized group can become the scapegoat for all the wrongs that befall the ingroup; those who are stigmatized become responsible for assorted crimes, injustices, or even a general state of disorder. Even cases of involuntary stigma, such as a physical handicap, can lead to attribution of a vicious character. According to Erving Goffman's celebrated study (1974), stigmatization is a process of creating differences that lead to social separation, moral denigration, or accusations of criminal culpability. Projecting responsibility for evil deeds onto a stigmatized group renders virtuous all deeds carried out by the ingroup. As an added bonus, the moral sanctity of the “untainted” ingroup is solidified. According to Model 1, the ingroup depiction of the militant Other affects how civilians are cast; an ingroup's sense of essential civilian identity is linked to notions of complicity with or mere moral support of the militant enemy. MODEL 1: The ingroup characterization of the threatening Other (combatants) is a causal factor in the positioning of the civilian Other (noncombatants). Model 1 is represented in figure 2.1. In this respect, the denigration of civilians in war fosters a kind of moralpolitik of group identity. For example, in cases of religion-based conflicts, religious militants on both sides of the equation evoke a disturbing echo of each other through their injunctions for vigilance against the “impurities” of the enemy society. Even children can be demonized by such discursive practices as a consequence of their relationship with enemy parents, who presumably exert total influence over their offspring. In many cases of protracted conflict, the entire Page 33 →enemy population is thought to act in lockstep. Members of the enemy group are perceived as a totality that follows the same mission and speaks with one voice. Caught in this perceived totality, the civilians are assumed to be threatening, amoral, and evil despite their ability to “masquerade” as virtuous. Acts of retribution against the enemy are linked to promises of spiritual glory and of securing entrance to the holiest regions of the afterlife—hence the term holy war. By demonizing the enemy, the members of the ingroup enhance and elevate their own moral standing, achieving redemption for the acts they are about to commit. In such cases, the boundary between the militant Other and the civilian Other is highly porous, and the perception of both groups lacks almost any moral or political differentiation. Model 1 is also illustrated in some cases of state-sponsored conflict—for example, the genocide committed by the Japanese Imperial Army against Chinese civilians in Nanking in 1937. In this conflict, Japanese soldiers viewed the Chinese army as subhuman, partly because of soldiers' “cowardly” retreat and surrender following the Japanese invasion. The Japanese soon felt justified in extending this characterization of cowardice and subhumanity from Chinese soldiers to Chinese civilians (the nonmilitant Other). Chinese men were forced to rape their own children or mothers at gunpoint for the amusement of the Japanese soldiers. Civilians were used for bayonet practice; some were doused with gasoline and burned; others were buried alive or forced to bury their

friends and family members alive; and many were decapitated. Figure 2.2 represents a causal model of these atrocities, showing the malignant repositioning of Chinese civilians by Japanese militants intent on destroying the Chinese army. At the end of six weeks of savagery in Nanking, the Japanese Imperial Army had murdered three hundred thousand people, most of them civilians. These violent activities represent examples of how the noncombatants are repositioned on the basis of their relations, perceived or actual, with the dangerous Other. Such episodes show that the characterization of the enemy militant has a causal effect on the characterization of civilians. Page 34 →

Positioning of Noncombatants Our second model codifies other cases in which the process of stigmatization operates in an opposite direction. Rather than the civilians being tainted by their affiliation with the militant enemy, as depicted in Model 1, Model 2 represents cases in which civilians are cast as the source of the taint and exert malicious influence over the enemy militants. Conflict protagonists in these cases believe that the enemy's actions are driven by their relations with civilians. Such cases are evident when conflict protagonists castigate women for their alleged corrupting power over the militant enemy—strategically, tactically, or ideologically. Conflict protagonists of the ingroup are convinced that the “innocents” of the outgroup are not innocent at all since they are living a lie, embracing symbols of purity Page 35 →that erect a facade over their true identity and purpose—to incite enemy combatants to conquest and war. The protagonists soon conclude that the degeneracy represented by these civilian collaborators and their influence on potential enemy combatant groups must be exposed to ensure ingroup survival. As civilians are recast as dangerous, a new set of injunctions is imposed on the faithful members of the ingroup. Increased vigilance against the effects of these manipulative collaborators is called for, and demands for their control, domination, or possibly even elimination arise with greater frequency. This process of repositioning the militant Other through its association with civilian compatriots is represented in Model 2. MODEL 2: The ingroup characterization of the civilian Other is a causal factor in the positioning of the militant Other. Model 2 reverses Model 1's causal arrow of the militant-nonmilitant relationship as captured in figure 2.3. In race-based conflicts, racist extremists often demonize the general population, citing the source of their corruption within their racial “makeup.” The civilians of the enemy camp are said to sometimes disguise themselves with the outward signs of purity while engaging in deception and complying with enemy objectives. Their outward demeanor is deceptive and untrustworthy. The framing of the civilian Other in this context actually ascribes greater culpability to nonmilitants than to militant Others because of their hidden motives; in many ways, the so-called innocent are perceived as more dangerous than the enemy, who is openly and clearly combative. An example of Model 2 can be found in the anti-Tutsi propaganda orchestrated by Hutu extremists preceding the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Newspaper articles and radio broadcasts captivated many Hutus with stories of Tutsi atrocities and plans for conquest. The public media cast the Tutsi as degenerate, criminal, and vicious. They were accused of deviously infiltrating powerful positions of state, economic, and religious institutions, positions that “rightfully” belonged to the Hutus. Hutu ideologues Page 36 →included in their anti-Tutsi propaganda stories of malicious and conspiratorial Tutsi women (see chapter 4). In December 1990, the magazine Kangura issued an anti-Tutsi declaration and a call to arms for all Hutus. Known as the Ten Commandments, this declaration exhibited clear overtones of a religious crusade. Hutu extremists used the Commandments to fuel Hutu hysteria and to legitimize a strategy of Tutsi extermination (Semujanga 2003: 196–97). The ideologues implored Hutus to become aware of the essential Tutsi character, as conveyed by the phrase “every Muhutu must know …” The other commandments include references to the Tutsi as power-hungry, wicked, and Page 37 →deceitful. Hutu propaganda stated that as part of the Tutsi campaign of conquest, Tutsi

women would try to seduce Hutu men to create hybrid descendants and breed pure Hutus out of existence. Figure 2.4 provides a model of the repositioning of Tutsi women. In addition to the Ten Commandments, the radio broadcasts at this time depicted the Tutsi as “the enemy,” driven to violence on a massive scale and seeking the domination of Hutu, the only genuine Rwandans. These communiqués demanded Hutu vigilance to expose Tutsi manipulators' lies, condemn their declarations, and unveil their evil plans (Klinghoffer 1998: 37). For both Models 1 and 2, the “discovered realities” of complicity between civilians and the militant enemy establish a logicality of action that seems inevitable, unavoidable, and utterly apparent. No more facts of the matter are needed. The evidence of the resultant threat becomes “plain for all to see,” and the necessity for action seems transparent. To the followers of this thought process, ingroup survival is at stake. The impending or ongoing struggle appears inevitable, and its importance to the safety of the faithful seems uncontestable.

Actions against Civilians Our third model deals with the causal link between the portrayal of militant/civilian relations and the calls for retribution. In many conflict settings, the ultimate proof of one's devotion to the collective mission is a willingness to abjure conventional moral views and intentionally sacrifice civilians. Of course, in the eyes of the faithful members of the ingroup, the civilians targeted are not innocent, nor are any civilians who do not share the ingroup's views. Exposing former friends and even family members to ingroup authorities can elevate one's status within the group. This kind of retreat from basic humanitarian values ironically demonstrates bravery and places one's devotion to the cause beyond any doubt. Even so, to some degree, the ghost of these abandoned values continues to hover in the minds of those who have capitulated, as is evident in their rationalizations about having no other available option. We often read declarations such as, “Look at what they made us do. They made us destroy, conquer, control, and kill. But we are not criminals, invaders, or murderers. We are the protectors of the true society.” The perceived realities of the absolute peril in which the ingroup resides override the ethics of the wider world and demand extreme sacrifice, including the sacrifice of noncombatants. Page 38 → We capture this theme in Model 3. MODEL 3: The ingroup portrayal of the relations between the militant Other and the civilian Other is causally linked to injunctions (commands, orders, directives, or strategies) that target civilians. As civilians are exposed for their degeneracy, a formulaic sequence of concepts is forged into a logicality for (violent) action. In totalitarian societies, the exclusionary polarities of group difference call on its agents (the good people of the tribe) to expose, target, uproot, and then remove the dangerous elements of society. Such divisions draw on a formulaic ideology about the evildoings of the enemy outside the tribe and represent a kind of lateral projection of cognitive frames regarding duality of security and threat at home. In the case of the deportation of Germans and Crimean Tatars from Crimea in the Ukraine during World War II (see chapter 3), the Stalinist totalitarian regime at the time accused these ethnic groups of collaboration with the dangerous Other—the Nazis. Because Crimea's German residents were seen as potential enemies who supposedly conspired with fellow compatriots in Nazi Germany, they endured hardships and devastation. In 1938, all German-national schools, districts, and self-regulatory bodies within Crimea were liquidated. At the beginning of the war, 50,200 Germans and their families were expelled from their homes; in April 1944, after the liberation of Crimea, 2,230 more Germans were deported. Though not ethnically German, Crimean Tatars also were accused of conspiring with the Nazis—not particularly to side with them in the Germany-Russia quarrel but to establish a Crimean Tatar republic under Nazi rule.

Between 187,859 and 188,626 Tatars were forcibly deported to regions in Central Asia. From 1944 to 1948 approximately 20 percent of them perished from the harsh conditions of their exile. Figure 2.5 depicts a model of the repositioning of Germans and Crimean Tatars. In 1989, restrictions regarding the return of all deported ethnic groups from Crimea were nullified. A declaration of the Supreme Council of Crimea, issued on November 14, 1989, stated that previous actions taken against deported ethnic groups constituted criminal activity. At the end of the 1980s, returning Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Germans, Bulgarians, and Greeks flooded the peninsula, changing its ethnic composition. Regional administrations were not ready to solve the enormous problem of accommodating those who returned. Partly as a result of bad planning and partly because of the conditions under which these groups were originally Page 39 →exiled, the Crimean administration reverted to old exclusionary habits. Between 1987 and 1989, leaders initiated a media campaign that characterized Tatars as Nazi collaborators and Soviet traitors and “condemned] radical activists of Tatar nationality.” Intense hostility against repatriated civilians resulted.

The “Objects” of Combat Our fourth model deals with militant/civilian characterizations in state-sponsored armed conflicts. The devastation of civilians during combat Page 40 →certainly has prompted endless admonitions by world leaders for the protection of those civilians. Nevertheless, a militaristic framing of the conflict in question neatly explains away occurrences of civilian casualties as “collateral” to the primary goals of war. Civilians are cast as unfortunate bystanders, some of whom must (because they will) die in the wake of a military operation. The “war is hell” narrative likens the tumult of warfare to naturally occurring disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes. As in the case of a natural disaster, no state can prevent all the destruction inflicted on those caught in the path of these forces, and all people are powerless against those forces. A combat zone is the province of military forces rather than of civilians, and the strategic deployment of military forces will have unfortunate if unintended consequences for those who get in the way. Damage to the civilian population during a military operation is unavoidable, inevitable, and ultimately acceptable. In official statements by military leaders engaged in state-sponsored war, the suffering of noncombatants is either dismissed as insignificant to military operations or simply ignored. Their plight represents a tragic by-product of war's otherwise intended effects. We believe that the application of a militaristic framing of warfare represents a flawed approach to understanding civilian life in times of war. Framing identity-based conflicts in militaristic terms cannot satisfactorily explain the nature of such conflicts when the majority of devastation occurs to civilians outside the primary quarrel. As we argue in chapter 6, such explanations imply a radical repositioning of civilians, distorting who they are (objects lying in the path of war's machinery) and what they need for survival. In relation to military operations, civilians are cast as passive spectators, incapable of participating in the tactical decisions that affect their lives. In the face of their devastation, noncombatants are thus disempowered and silenced. Warfare between state-sponsored militaries imposes a radical shift of boundaries between enemy militants and civilian compatriots. Such a shift is causally relevant to the devastation they experience in war and is captured by Model 4. MODEL 4: In the context of state-sponsored wars, the positioning of the civilians in relation to enemy militants is a causal factor in the occurrence of civilian casualties, displacement, and disease. This model encapsulates the significant reframing of noncombatants that underpins military commands, proclamations, and strategies for targeting Page 41 →the militant enemy. Through these injunctions, civilians are objectified, reduced to elements of friction that interfere with the efficient operation of military machinery. This reframing or recasting creates a shift in the boundary between the militant enemy and civilian noncombatants, as depicted in figure 2.6.

This figure does not represent cases in which civilians are intentionally targeted for their alleged complicity and collaboration with the militant enemy. In contrast to the vilification so common in racial wars, the “reality of war” rationale effectively ignores civilian noncombatants, removing them altogether from the sphere of military affairs. Such a removal relegates civilian suffering to a nonexistent status among military professionals—one must first possess agency to be seen to suffer. Page 42 → In state-sponsored wars, military leaders often depict civilian noncombatants as objects embedded in war's landscape, as inert specks atomized into agentic insignificance by an invading military force. Caught within the tumult of war, their fate lies in the hands and perceptions of military planners, commanders, and their subordinates. Civilians cannot say or do anything that could influence their survival or the survival of those in the private or public sphere. The lives of civilians are considered neither pure nor evil; indeed, their lives are not considered at all. Their death is not celebratory, their conquest is not glorious, and their removal from the zone of combat is not sacrificial. This perspective can be seen in certain strategies employed by Allied military leaders in World War II. Arthur Harris, Royal Air Force commander during this time, believed that the war could be won by attacking the morale of an enemy population—not of its armies—until its will to resist was broken (Grayling 2006: 120). The surprise attack on the civilians of Hamburg in 1944 was aimed to cause maximum destruction, disruption, and terror among the inhabitants, presumably as a means of coercing their leaders to halt hostilities. It is difficult to see how Harris believed the German High Command would value the lives of German citizens over the objectives of war when the kind of thinking that views civilians as pawns led Harris to order the attack. Similarly, after the firebombing of Tokyo on March 9–10,1945, which led to 185,000 civilian casualties, Curtis LeMay, in charge of the U.S. Pacific Bomber Command, stated, “There are no innocent civilians. The entire population got into the act and worked to make those airplanes or munitions: men, women, and children” (Grayling 2006: 142). In this case, LeMay adopts a draconian policy by arguing civilians out of existence. These attacks on Hamburg and Tokyo constitute deliberate acts to punish the enemy society rather than defeat its armies (Grayling 2006: 278). The contradiction in terms is hard to ignore. Thus, in launching this new field of inquiry, we recommend four models for further study and application: MODEL 1: The ingroup characterization of the threatening Other (combatants) is a causal factor in the positioning of the civilian Other (noncombatants). MODEL 2: The ingroup characterization of the civilian Other is a causal factor in the positioning of the militant Other. MODEL 3: The ingroup portrayal of the relations between the militant Other and the civilian Other is causally linked to injunctions Page 43 →(commands, orders, directives, proclamations, decrees, or strategies) that target civilians. MODEL 4: In the context of state-sponsored wars, the positioning of civilians in relation to enemy militants is a causal factor in the occurrence of civilian casualties, displacement, or disease. Each of these models frames the analysis of identity conflict and constitutes a fresh reimagining of the means by which hostilities take shape and are perpetuated. Though each of these models codifies a different way in which militant enemy/civilian compatriot positioning plays a role in the rationale for civilian destruction, they all ultimately depict an element of civilian disempowerment. This disempowerment can extend to the smallest details of individual life, atomize human beings into isolated units, and alienate the innocent from their social relationships. During combat, civilians undergo a radical disempowerment. They lack the political legitimacy to say or do anything that could influence their survival or the survival of their private sphere. In extreme cases, they live “a life unworthy of being lived,” as in the case of those who are incurably lost following an illness or an accident (Agamben 1998: 138).

In developing our theoretic explanation of civilian devastation, we are mindful of the general philosophical requirements for scientific theories. A scientific theory is defined as a set of conceptual models that seeks to replicate certain properties of a set of empirical phenomena. We treat each model as an epistemic tool—that is, as a conceptual instrument that is constructed to serve certain purposes. Each model provides a conceptual template developed to bring coherence to relevant information about a range of conflicts. By introducing our four models, we seek to provide a deeper understanding of the sources, preconditions, and causes of civilian devastation in armed conflict. Such an understanding gives special attention to the models' core categories. These categories are directly applicable to the case studies in this volume and are deeply embedded in the central features of armed conflicts presented in Part I. The case study presented in chapter 3 represents an example of Model 3, according to which the civilian other is castigated for its alleged associations with the militant enemy. The case study presented in chapter 4 represents both Models 1 and 2, stressing the two directions of repositioning of the civilian other. Chapters 5 and 6 offer cases of Model 4, although some elements of other models are discussed. In each case, we explain civilian devastation through a relationship among three groups: ingroup protagonists, the militant enemy, and civilian noncombatants.

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3 Deportation from Crimea The politics of group identity is legend in armed conflicts of the twentieth century. While many cases of racial hatred and devastation have received world attention, other episodes are less well known. This chapter examines the enormous hardships experienced by Crimean Tatars at the hands of the Soviet government. After recapturing the Ukraine from the Wehrmacht in 1944, the Soviets enacted a brutal campaign of propaganda against large segments of the population for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis. The Crimean Tatars were accused of willingly supporting the enemy, killing innocent Ukrainian civilians, and taking up arms against the Red Army. This propaganda campaign castigated Crimean Tatars for conspiring to establish a Crimean Tatar republic under Nazi rule. The denigration of this group as traitors and enemies of the Soviet people served as a prelude to many oppressive measures, including mass deportation. On May 18, 1944, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars began. Between 187,859 and 188,626 people—mostly children and women—were expelled from their homes and scattered across many regions in Central Asia. They settled in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, Mariisk in the Autonomic Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Gorky, Sverdlovsk, and Kostroma regions. Also deported from Crimea were 9,620 Armenians, 12,420 Bulgarians, and 15,040 Greeks. A total of 228,392 people were exiled from the peninsula during this period. Because of horrendous living conditions in their new settlements, the years 1944 to 1948 saw 44,878 people (approximately 20 percent of the total number of deportees) die of starvation, disease, and exposure. The deportation not only resulted in the Page 45 →displacement, misery, and death of the exiled population but also intensified misconceptions about the deported ethnic groups' treachery that haunted them for decades. In this chapter we examine the brutal policies against Crimean Tatars as well as the malicious propaganda campaign enacted by Soviet authorities to demonize this ethnic group and the stigmatization that lasted for decades after the war. Particularly important to our study are the numerous stories of Tatar collaboration with Nazis during their occupation of Ukraine, stories that tainted Tatars en masse and conferred on them the vices of the “Nazi horde,” exhibited in treachery, murder, and brutality. Based on newly released documents from the Russian archives, including correspondence of high-ranking officials in the Soviet hierarchy, we show how the Soviets characterized Crimean Tatars as a people whose Nazilike vices essentially defined their character. As the old boundaries of identity positioning were rearranged to suit this new offensive of hate, the twin poles of Tatar criminality and Soviet virtues were deemed to be embedded deeply in the social and political landscape. Such a polarity stigmatized Tatars for years to come. Furthermore, after the war, authorities reinforced divisions among ethnic groups in the Soviet Union in smear campaigns that fomented antipathy and loathing among the general population for the targeted groups. The plight of the Crimean Tatars represents a clear case of a newly forged collective axiology that served the Soviet authorities as a justification for its brutal policies. We begin with a brief review of the Nazi occupation of Crimea, followed by an examination of the negative images of Crimean Tatars published in Soviet newspapers between 1941 and 1943. We then present the explicit rationale given by the Soviet authorities for the deportation of Tatars and other ethnic members of the population, with particular attention given to the correspondence of Levrentii Beria, director of the NKVD (the forerunner of the KGB) during the war, to Joseph Stalin. We review the mitigation of hostilities against Tatars in the years following the war and summarize attempts to repatriate Crimean Tatars after 1989 in the chapter's concluding section.

Occupation of the Crimean Peninsula by Nazi Germany During World War II, Crimea was among the first Soviet territories occupied by the Wehrmacht. Taking the British colonial administration in India Page 46 →as their model, the Nazis resorted to a divide-and-rule strategy for dominating the occupied population. However, because they lacked sufficient manpower for complete control,

the German army sought support from certain segments of the local population, recruiting them to serve in the local police force or in lower levels of government. And such attempts relied on tactics of ethnic division: the Wehrmacht carefully exploited ethnic tensions and favored Crimean Tatars over other groups. Crimean Tatars are a Turkic-speaking people. They represent a mixture of the ancient Gothic and Alan populations who settled in Eastern Europe in the seventh century. The name Tatars first emerged in the thirteenth century, when the Mongol Golden Horde occupied the peninsula. As the non-Turkic population became assimilated with other Crimeans via shared religion, language, and culture, Tatars formed an independent state known as the Crimean Khanate—a political entity ruled by a khan, on the model of the invading Mongols. This state remained independent until the Russian Empire began to expand in the seventeenth century. Upon Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in the eighteenth century, the Crimean Khanate lost its autonomy. The relationships between Crimean Tatars and the Russian Empire periodically intensified. The mutual mistrust between the imperial Russian and Crimean Khanate governments further strained relations in the peninsula, forcing many Tatars to leave for the ottoman Empire for fear of retaliation or for possible resettlement within the Russian heartland. Such fears led to extensive Tatar migration throughout Russia. Though many Tatars remained in Crimea, by 1917 Tatars made up only a quarter of the population there (Williams 2002). In its early years of power following the Russian Revolution, the Soviet regime initially supported ethnic minorities, whether native nationalities or indigenous people. According to the process of division into districts (zoning) in 1935, the territories with a predominance of certain ethnicities were transformed into independent administrative units. A total of 177 regional self-regulatory bodies, the majority of them Crimean Tatars, were created, including units in the Alushta, Balaklavsky, Bakhchisaray, Karasubazarsky, Kuibyshev, Sudak, and Yalta regions. Moreover, a number of ethnic schools were established, and newspapers and magazines were published in the Crimean Tatar language. But this brief period of regained autonomy did not last. During his leadership of the Soviet government, Stalin changed many of the policies regarding the rights of ethnic groups. In a campaign to create a single Soviet nation, aspirations for the distinct identity of minorities were brutally Page 47 →suppressed. These repressions led to mass arrests, and hundreds of religious buildings (mosques, temples, synagogues, and so forth) were destroyed. The independent ethnic administrative units were terminated and Crimean Tatars, among others, lost their religious freedoms and their right to education in their native language. During the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine in World War II, the situation changed yet again. Nazis enticed Crimean Tatars with special privileges. The occupiers distributed gardens that had been expropriated during collectivization, released Crimean Tatar prisoners of war, and excused Tatars from labor duty. In addition, Crimean Tatars were relieved of heavy tax duties, allowed to practice their religion openly, and offered education in the Tatar language. A Muslim committee was created in Simferopol, and Crimean Tatars were appointed to administrative positions within it. Such policies garnered strong support for the occupying force from many Crimean Tatars, particularly among older residents whose suffering under Stalin's brutal collectivization policies had not been forgotten. In exchange for such privileges, some Tatars collaborated with the Nazis by revealing key strategic information, such as the positions of partisan troops and Soviet army plans. Yet most Tatars refused to work for the Wehrmacht, in part because of German brutality against inhabitants of Tatar villages. Furthermore, during this time, 10 percent of the Crimean Tatar population was mobilized and forced to fight on the front lines for Hitler (Williams 2002); almost every family had a close relative serving. In addition, a majority of Crimean Tatars retained their loyalty to the Soviet government, as they were consumed by Soviet propaganda urging resistance to the Nazi occupiers.

Presentation of Crimean Tatars in Soviet Newspapers in 1941–1943 At the beginning of the war, Soviet newspapers recounted acts of courage and heroism by Tatar soldiers. These accounts fostered patriotism among Crimean Tatars and intensified hatred toward the Germans. Newspapers

constantly published accounts of atrocities committed by the Nazi army, the progress of the Soviet army, and the courage of Crimean Tatar soldiers and guerrillas. The leading Crimean newspaper, Krasnyi Krym, generally portrayed the Tatar people as coexisting peacefully for centuries with their “older brother—the great Russian nation.” In these accounts, all nationalities in the Soviet Union were acting in unison against their common and Page 48 →evil adversary (Krasnyi Krym 1943a, 1943b). According to one article recounting the brutality of the German army, Brother-Tatars! You are in the occupied territory among the enemy. You see and feel the horrors of the Fascist occupation. The Germans send your sons to the front line. They rape your daughters; they turn you into powerless slaves. They condemned you to starvation and death. (Krasnyi Krym 1943b) As Crimean Tatars were positioned in unity with other nationalities in the “Soviet family,” the boundary divisions between Crimean Tatars (as “brothers”) and Germans (as the “vicious enemy”) intensified. The newspapers repeatedly cast the Germans as colonizers seeking to destroy the cultural heritage of the people: “The Germans try to sow discord among people of the Crimea. They set Russians against Jews, Tatars against Russians. This is an old trick of colonizers” (Krasnyi Krym 1943a). These narratives unmasked the Nazis' proclamation that they would bring freedom to Tatars as part of a devious campaign of colonization, linked to their true mission to destroy the nation's honor and pride and to plunder the rich Crimean soil (Krasnyi Krym 1943b). But newspaper accounts promised that the Soviet army would soon reenter the peninsula and expel the Wehrmacht. Some of the articles mentioned Crimean Tatars' collaboration with the German army, but the reports stated that such collaboration occurred only after Nazi deception, provocation, and coercion. Even so, the collaborators were viewed as traitors to the nation. As one article contended, [The Germans] created the so-called Tatar Committee, but it is clear to everyone that this committee is the slave of the German-colonizers, it works for Fascists and helps rob and deceive the Tatar people. (Krasnyi Krym 1943a) The articles referred to an old Russian proverb that “there is no village without a dog,” implying that every community has its own “degenerates” (urody obshestva) and that some traitors existed within any community, but such cases were presented as rare. In general, the Crimean Tatar population remained loyal to Soviet rule and was viewed as such. The Soviet authorities drew on cultural images of tight-knit Crimean Tatar communities, which emphasized family security and respect for elders, to show that the willingness of some Crimean Tatars to join the Nazi Page 49 →army was like an act of youthful rebellion against the wider family. By casting enemy collaboration in familial terms, forgiveness for such transgressions and reunification of the greater Soviet family could result after acts of repentance by the “rebellious child.” As the war progressed, Soviet propaganda sought to intensify national pride by promoting images of the heroism of the multicultural Soviet army. Acts of enemy collaboration by a few individuals were presented as cases of character flaws, likened to the betrayal of selling one's ancestral land. Newspaper stories stressed the inclusion of all racial and ethnic groups in the Soviet army, in stark contrast to the racist policies of the Nazi army that considered all non-Aryans to be Untermenschen. Many articles offered personalized accounts of the hardships of Crimean Tatar troops and featured the life stories of those who demonstrated outstanding courage (Krasnyi Krym 1943c).

Deportation of the Crimean Tatars As the Soviet army recovered its territory from the Wehrmacht in the later stages of the war, the number of articles glorifying the heroic deeds of Tatars rapidly decreased. The Soviet propaganda machine shifted from publishing inspiring stories in pursuit of national unity to narrative tactics that served the need to return a sense of

normalcy to the reoccupied territory. Following a new government campaign, the newspapers abandoned their earlier characterization of Crimean Tatars as rebellious younger brothers and portrayed them, as well as other ethnic groups, as enemy accomplices. These portrayals castigated these groups as traitors who deserved severe punishment. Moreover, based on this characterization, future generations of Crimean Tatars should be condemned for the actions committed by their ancestors during the war. Dehumanizing images of Tatars were spread throughout the general population, representing a stark contrast to the glorification of those who had served in the Red Army. The official decision to deport all Tatars from Crimea required careful planning and forethought at the highest levels of government. In his secret correspondence to Stalin months prior to the decision to deport Tatars, Beria characterized all Crimean Tatars as traitors. On April 25, 1944, for example, he wrote, The devastating situation in the occupied territories of Crimea can be explained by the diversion group. 1178 people who helped the Page 50 →German army were arrested. The Tatar national committee, which had branches in various regions in Crimea, mobilized volunteers into the Nazi Tatar division and sent the non-Tatar population to the labor camps in Germany.1 On May 11, 1944, Beria stated that Crimean Tatars had acted as accomplices to Nazi occupiers: Many Crimean Tatars betrayed their Motherland, deserted from the army and joined the army of the enemy, participated in the voluntary Nazi divisions, [and] participated in the barbaric and cruel killings of the Soviet people. On April 13, 1944, the People's Commissar on Internal Affairs and the People's Commissar on State Security imposed a law (ukase) designed to punish all anti-Soviet elements operating in areas previously occupied by the Wehrmacht. According to this law, the Crimean Peninsula was to be “cleared” of “agents of German and Romanian intelligence, traitors, collaborators, members of crime organizations” as well as of “the agents of foreign intelligence agencies and contra-intelligence groups, of those who betrayed their country and traitors, who actively helped Nazi-German occupation forces and their agents, of participants in anti-Soviet organizations, bandit groups and other anti-Soviet elements that helped occupation forces.” The law did not refer to any specific ethnic affiliation. In a secret wire to Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars, and Georgy Malenkov, member of the State Defense Committee, two weeks later, Beria reported on the number of members of each nationality living in Crimea who had been killed, taken to labor camps by the German army, or evacuated by the Soviets. On Crimea. The population of the Crimea before the war—1,126,000 people, including 218,000 Tatars. Killed 67 thousands of Jews, Karaimov, Krymchakov, taken to Germany—50,000 people, evacuated 5,000 people. (The Telegram of the People Commissar on Internal Affairs L. Beria to the State Defense Committee) Beria explained that the high number of casualties in Crimea resulted from the work of saboteurs and anti-Soviet elements among the Crimean Tatars. The Tatar National Committee was cited as working closely with Page 51 →voluntary German divisions, supplying intelligence on Soviet operations, and sending non-Tatar natives to the German labor camps. The Tatar National Committee, having its own branches in every Tatar district in Crimea, recruited intelligence agents to work in the occupied territories, enlisted volunteers to the created German Tatar division, [and] sent the local non-Tatar population for work in Germany. Crimean Tatar families, women, and elders were identified as traitors, aiding those hiding from the Soviet army. These accusations intensified prevailing divisions between the “loyal” Soviet peoples and the “treasonous” Crimean Tatars.

On May 10, Beria for the first time applied an ethnic designation to the wartime anti-Soviet elements, writing that more than twenty thousand Crimean Tatar soldiers had deserted the Soviet army and joined Nazi forces. Considering treacherous action of the Crimean Tatars against the Soviet people and considering unfeasibility of the further residency of Crimean Tatars on the border of the Soviet Union, NKVD asks for your consideration of deportation of all Crimean Tatars from the territory of Crimea. Beria recommended that the entire Crimean Tatar population be deported to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. He had already informed the head of the Central Committee of Uzbekistan about this impending deportation, anticipating no obstacles to this proposal for state-sponsored brutality. He stated that the operation would start on May 21 and last for about ten days. Beria told Stalin that “the issue of settling the Tatars in Uzbek SSR is arranged with the Secretary of the Central Committee of Uzbekistan, comrade Usupov.” Stalin signed the deportation decree on May 11, and the Soviet State Defense Committee immediately ordered the deportation of all Crimean Tatars from the peninsula. Many Crimean Tatars were accused of treason, deserting their military units, embracing the enemy's goal of conquest, and serving in Schutzmannschaftsbataillonen (police battalions). The document also asserted that Crimean Tatars had acted inhumanely against the Soviet guerrillas, actively engaged in transporting Soviet people to Page 52 →German labor camps, gathered intelligence for the enemy, and sabotaged Soviet military operations. Instead of being cheered as war heroes or scolded as younger brothers, the Crimean Tatars were now repositioned as a monolithic unit, a dangerous enemy bloc whose recent campaign of mass treachery necessitated deportation of the entire population to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic by June 1, 1944. These drastic measures were allegedly required to prevent any additional collaboration of Crimean Tatars with potential sympathizers to the retreating Nazi army. Moreover, although the Nazis were retreating and losing the war by this time, the idea that they could have used Crimean Tatars to establish alliances with Turkey and with segments of the Muslim population prompted Soviet officials to worry that the Tatars could take up the banner and threaten the Soviet Union's cohesion by fostering Muslim solidarity across the region. Despite such frenzied accusations, the few documented cases of collaboration by Crimean Tatars were wildly exaggerated by propagandists. The Soviet fear of losing Crimea to the Wehrmacht even after its departure prompted the deportation of “unreliable elements” of the population to Central Asia. But even in possession of totalitarian controls, the Soviet leaders still required a public justification for such widespread action against this ethnic group. With vitriolic hatred of Germans still deeply ingrained in the collective psyche, the positioning practices began to shift, and a new enemy group emerged. But unlike Germans, who as invaders were never in close proximity to majority of the Soviet population, Tatars had inhabited the land for centuries and lived freely among the Soviet people. Their perceived betrayal felt personal, close to home, and fratricidal. Many segments of the general population found in the Tatars convenient scapegoats for the current misery. Tatars were blamed for the conditions of service in the Soviet army and the lack of basic necessities for survival for many members of the general population. The propaganda campaign established a normative order that exiled the outgroup not only physically but socially, forever tainting them with the stain of treason. The Soviet political elite skillfully exploited the emotional trauma among the population. In May 1944, with little warning, Tatar women, children, and the elderly were loaded into freight trains and transported to Central Asia, primarily to Uzbekistan. Lacking food, water, and adequate sanitation, many Tatars died in transit. Those who survived the journey were confined to “special zones” for their residency. Lower Communist Party officials sought to meet pre-established quotas of deportation by Page 53 →forcing many Tatars to abandon their property and personal possessions. The settlements of Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan turned into permanent residences. Tremendous economic, political, and social hardships ensued. Beria's plea to Stalin to implement a cleansing “process of Crimean population from the anti-Soviet elements” resulted in clinical thinking about the whole operation. Almost every day for four months preceding the final arrests and deportations, Stalin received progress reports that reduced the tragedies of thousands of families to numerical measurements—the number of people deported, the number of arrests, and the number of appropriated houses, cattle, and other domestic animals.

The secrecy of Soviet institutions kept the general population ignorant of the numerous atrocities committed by the Soviet government against its people. Those who expressed disapproval of the inhumane treatment of minority groups were denounced as enemies. Nevertheless, stories about mass deportations and arrests began to circulate unofficially throughout the country. Many segments of the general population learned about the Crimean Tatars' deportation to Uzbekistan, as well as the dispersion of Chechens, Koreans, and Volga Germans to Kazakhstan. Other small ethnic minorities, such as the Karachay, Ingush, Balkar, and Kalmyk, were also scattered across vast Soviet territories. But few people realized the scale of the tragedy or the full extent of demonization campaign against the Tatars and other minorities. During postwar reconstruction in the Soviet Union, a large number of deportees sought to return to their homelands. Yet the need to control the interactions of multiple nationalities prevented such mobility. The Supreme Committee of the Soviet Union passed a ukase imposing severe punishment on anyone attempting to repatriate, claiming that returning Crimean Tatars would serve as agents for foreign governments. The law demanded that each ethnic group be assigned a particular place of residence. Like so many of the edicts of the Soviet government, this law was established in secret.

Crimea after the War—Exoneration of Crimean Tatars In the early 1950s, the situation changed yet again: the lack of skilled and unskilled workers in certain regions led to campaigns to entice families with two or more capable adults to live in Crimean kolkhozy. After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev instituted liberal policies that included the right of return for certain nationalities to the peninsula. Crimea was Page 54 →only one of many Soviet regions that received a large influx of newcomers. Although Crimean Tatars were completely exonerated of all crimes in 1967, their requests for repatriation were continually denied. The new residents became the lawful owners of property held previously by Tatars. Now primarily Slavicized, Crimea gained important military significance, especially because of its access to the sea, which was critical to the Soviet fleet. It also became a major national resort. Summer camps, resorts, and parks were also located in former property belonging to the Crimean Tatars. Despite these restrictions, the Crimean Tatars slowly began to repatriate. A small Tatar group launched a movement advocating the rights of deportees. The gradual return of the Tatar population was still perceived as a threat to the existing social and local infrastructure. While the number of Tatars living in Crimea remained rather low at the time, their increasing presence prompted some residents to fear that the returnees would demand reinstatement of an autonomous Crimean republic. To avoid possible social upheaval, therefore, Soviet authorities severely limited the number of those returning to Crimea. To justify this policy of selective denial, Soviet propagandists revived earlier denunciations of Crimean Tatars, castigating them as long-standing enemies who had committed “unforgivable acts of treason” during the war. The Secretary of the Ukraine's Communist Party persuaded Khrushchev that it would be inadvisable to pardon Crimean Tatars and permit their repatriation. The Secretary's report resurrected earlier accusations of desertion from the Soviet army, collaboration with the Nazis, and sabotage. Stories of treachery and collaboration again were actively crafted to dehumanize the Tatars en masse. Familiar normative borders between Crimean Tatars and other ethnic groups were revived.

Repatriation—Exoneration of the Crimean Tatars Over time, the cause of Crimean Tatar repatriation began to be recognized. Beginning in 1989, the liberal policies associated with Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika allowed more than a quarter of a million of Crimean Tatars to return to their historic homeland, predominantly from Uzbekistan (Williams 2002). These policies were driven by the need to redress gross injustices of the past and the brutal mistreatment of this Turko-Muslim ethnic group. As might be expected, many Crimean residents objected to Tatar repatriation. Their allegedly treasonous deeds during the war were neither forgotten Page 55 →nor forgiven. The Tatars were stigmatized as a danger to the Soviet people, allegedly degenerate. In the half century absence of Crimean Tatars from their homeland, Tatar history and culture heritage had largely been erased, with the Crimean Tatars castigated as invaders whose

presence threatened the peninsula's legitimate residents. As an extended arm of the reigning political institutions, the mass media actively embraced government policies for the repatriation of exiled ethnic groups; however, simultaneous coverage of public demonstrations and conflicts among the local Crimean population perpetuated strong negative images of returning Crimean Tatars. Letters to the editor of the large newspaper Argumenty I Fakty (Arguments and Facts) denounced Crimean Tatars' attempts to return and dismissed their claims as groundless. Most returnees were accused of never having lived in Crimea. Tatars were accused of marrying outside of their ethnic group and thus relinquishing their right to return. Moreover, the USSR was viewed as a fatherland for all people residing in its territory regardless of their ethnic identity, so the desire to return to a designated “homeland” represented a lack of patriotism. Once again, the practices of identity positioning returned to the idea of the greater Soviet family to suit the needs of the dominant group. Pursuing repatriation (as well as other rights) was viewed as the work of extremist nationals (Argumenty I Fakty 1987). As the number of Crimean Tatars returning to the peninsula increased, ethnic hostilities there intensified. After extended political debate in the late 1980s over the rights of Crimean Tatars, representatives of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party held dialogues between Crimean Tatars and other ethnic groups, seeking to decrease social tensions and prevent “extremist” tendencies toward repatriation in the population. Some committee officials were sent to Uzbekistan, the major source of repatriates, to discourage the migration of large numbers of people. Moreover, the committee recommended that the Ukraine's Soviet ministers revisit the peninsula's history, particularly the period around World War II, to install a monument in commemoration of the Crimean Tatar soldiers who had died during the war. These positioning tactics embraced a policy of “keep them where they are.” The Department of Information and Popularization of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party advised the Ukrainian media to promote peaceful coexistence among the Crimean peninsula's diverse ethnic groups (Uehling 2004). The newspapers called for harmonious ethnic relations, stressed the long traditions of respectful and peaceful coexistence between Tatars Page 56 →and the Ukrainian population, and condemned attempts to sow seeds of discord (Pravda Ukrainy 1990a). According to some articles, Crimea had sufficient resources to meet the needs of all returning expatriates (Pravda Ukrainy 1990b). Yet economic challenges contributed to escalating tensions between current residents and returning Crimean Tatars. To aggravate tensions, the government could not provide all returnees with affordable housing, equal educational opportunities, or adequate medical services. The newspapers repeatedly raised asked rhetorically, “Where does one get various resources?” (Pravda Ukrainy 1990b). The dissolution of the Soviet Union increased the economic burdens on the local government. Lacking governmental support, many returning Crimean Tatars settled in unauthorized settlements, samozahvat, enraging the local population. Newspapers reported that samozahvat destroyed 238 hectares of fertile land (Selskaya Jizn 1990). Hundreds of houses built by the newly arrived Crimean Tatars were bulldozed; hundreds of people were denied registration, jobs, and education. The rights of housing and settlement became a point of contention between the government of Ukraine and the Tatar mejelice, a local elected governing office. Public officials and the media eventually recognized the scarcity of resources to meet the basic needs of the general population. The voices that encouraged resettlement were met with disdain from most members of the population. Some of these critics saw the troubles as emanating “from the top”—that is, from government authorities (Nezavisimaia Gazeta 1998). Old labels, stories, and prejudices reflecting well-worn patterns of ethnic hostility resurfaced. Many articles cast Crimean Tatars as traitors for serving in the Nazi army (Literaturnaya Gaseta 1990). The economic prosperity of some Crimean Tatar families was attributed to their inherent criminal character, as evident in practices such as money laundering and government corruption, rather than to their hard work (Argumenty I Fakty 1994). Many members of the general public positioned Tatars as barbarians (Nezavisimaia Gazeta 1998). Tatars were denigrated as culturally backward, lacking adequate language skills, and unsuited for modern life (Pravda 1990; Russkii Telegraph 1998). In general, economic hardships often cause people to blame ethnic or minority groups that differ from the

predominant population. The citizens of Crimea during the 1980s argued that the peninsula was being invaded by traitors who sought to transform Crimea into “Tatarland” (otatarivshiy) (Literaturnaya Gazeta 1990). Despite certain official proclamations regarding the need to exonerate Tatars from past allegations, Page 57 →some officials accused returning Tatars of engaging in a sinister campaign to conquer Crimea's rightful residents. These officials argued that the Crimean Tatars had lost all their rights as a result of their deportation to the Central Asia (Kuranty 1991). As they began to repatriate, some Crimean Tatars responded to their continued provocation with aggressive statements, political challenges, and occasionally violence. Attempts to reclaim lost property led to numerous attacks against the local population. Crimean Tatar officials threatened that when they took power, they would deny residency for all non-Tatar populations in Crimea (Nezavisimaia Gazeta 1998). Such rhetoric further incited animosity and escalated the struggle to a state that approached civil war.

Redressing the Past During World War II, the Soviet authorities orchestrated a campaign to reclassify certain ethnic minorities as a basis for deporting them from their homelands. Such a campaign was not unusual for Soviet authorities. From its earliest days of power, the Bolsheviks sought to reclassify Russian society (Fitzpatrick 1993). Soviet law established the existence of socioeconomic classes as objectively real. Such categorization soon became an instrument of terror. From the perspective of collective axiology, demonic images of an enemy invigorate notions of outgroup vices and ingroup virtues and solidify notions of the essentially degenerate character of the Other. The demonization of Nazis by the Soviet propaganda machine intensified hatred toward (perceived and actual) collaborators. Working in secrecy, Soviet propagandists exploited information about a few cases of Tatar collaboration with the Nazis to generate nationalistic hatreds that lasted for half a century. Significant reduction of hostilities began with perestroika and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The repatriation of Crimean Tatars in the beginning of the 1990s represents a preliminary attempt to redress previous injustices and to compensate for the hardships Tatars experienced at the hands of the Soviet government.

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4 Genocide in Rwanda In Collaboration with Tom Bartlett In the field of international relations, threats are typically characterized as realpolitik tactics, deployed as instruments of power by nation-states. In reality, any threat is a form of coercion, control, power, manipulation, or possibly terror. This idea holds particularly true for large-scale armed conflicts that persist for generations. In such cases, threats can have a destructive effect on the ways protagonist groups define their identities and their essential differences. Over time, threats can shape and reshape a sense of group identities. Thus implicated in identity formation, threats can quickly escalate to function as a major source of violence. In this chapter, we examine how the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was fueled by a qualitative shift in the anti-Tutsi ideology of Hutu extremists and how this ideology heightened threat narratives that intensified denigration of the Tutsi. The ideology of racial hatred in Rwanda has its historical roots in colonial rule. When the Belgians took control of Rwanda in 1916, they instituted policies that distorted racial divisions between Tutsi and Hutu. Tutsis were presumed to have “nobler,” more “naturally” aristocratic dimensions than the “coarse” Hutus. Belgians placed the Hutus in forced labor camps and on road construction and forestry crews, and by the 1930s, Tutsi leaders enjoyed a complete and unprecedented monopoly of “traditional leadership positions” in Rwanda (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 10). This situation was reversed, however, after a 1959 Hutu uprising left the majority of Tutsi chiefs dead or in exile and ushered in a “social revolution.” The legislative elections of September 1961 saw widespread political violence against the Tutsi, and Hutu parties won 83 percent of votes nationwide, Page 59 →a figure corresponding to the percentage of Hutu in the general population (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 10–11). Full independence came on July 1, 1962; in the 1965 legislative elections, only the Hutu-based MDR-Parmehutu Party of President Grégoire Kayibanda fielded candidates. Thus, racial hatreds persisted even after Rwanda acquired full independence. Reversing the extreme pro-Tutsi ideology of Belgian rule, by the late 1980s and early 1990s Hutu extremists were portraying Tutsis as essentially degenerate. And after the October 1990 invasion of the Uganda-based Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), a group of mainly Tutsi exiles (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 13), some Hutu extremists claimed that Hutu survival demanded the elimination of the Tutsi from Rwanda. This anti-Tutsi ideology fosters denigration of Tutsis on the grounds of their alleged complicity with the Tutsi leadership. We believe that such a characterization conforms to Model 1. Again, as presented in chapter 2, Model 1 holds that the ingroup characterization of the threatening Other is a causal factor in the positioning of noncombatants. Yet in other respects, Model 2 also applies—the Tutsi leadership is denigrated as a consequence of the degeneracy of all Tutsis, even civilians. These two forms of denigration mutually reinforced the enmity that preceded the genocide in Rwanda. In this inquiry into the propagation of Hutu/Tutsi difference, we employ the concepts and themes of positioning theory in social psychology (Harré and Moghaddam 2003; Harré and van Langenhove 1999). A position is a set of rights and obligations that are kept alive through storytelling practices and realized through speech and other acts. In the case of Rwanda, storytelling occurred through newspaper articles and radio broadcasts by anti-Tutsi ideologues prior to 1994. These anti-Tutsi media captivated some sections of the Hutu population's attention with increasingly elaborate character assassinations of individual Tutsis, stories of past atrocities, and narratives of Tutsi plans for conquest. Positioning theory explains how an essentialized Tutsi identity, already suspect to segments of the Hutu community, was objectified as degenerate, criminal, and vicious. Through articles and broadcasts, these media fostered among Hutus a sense of righteous hatred of an enemy, as a demonization campaign by anti-Tutsi propagandists further fabricated identity differences through the categories of virtues and vices. A transforming moment in the radicalization of Hutu opinion occurred with the assassination of president of

Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, in a plane crash near Kigali's airport on April 6, 1994. The country Page 60 →erupted into an orgy of violence, and the systematic campaign of extermination by the interahamwe (Hutu death squads) resulted in between five hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand murders and the displacement of more than two million people from their homes. However, in this chapter we show how the political propaganda that precipitated the 1994 genocide was not a new phenomenon but a shift in the anti-Tutsi ideology of the 1950s, which claimed that the Tutsi had always dominated the Hutu, exploiting a caste system of institutionalized injustice and brutality against them. Such an ideology perpetuated myths of the Tutsi as “power-hungry” and “terrible warriors,” an “intelligent,” “tricky,” “double-dealing,” and “dishonest” people whose presence in Rwanda served as a direct threat to the Hutus as genuine Rwandans. More ancient distinctions were also mythologized, and propaganda-centered notions of Tutsi-Hamite and HutuBantu “races” flourished, deepening divisions. The myth of the “feudal” Tutsi as a “race of arrogant lords” was solidified. Many scholars attribute this myth to the work of a former seminarian, Grégoire Kayibanda (Semujanga 2003: 172). He developed a racist ideology without race—in actuality, Hutu and Tutsi cannot legitimately be separated by race. Whatever physical distinction could be observed in past centuries has been obliterated through generations of intermarriage. The belief in a separate ethnic identity is at best highly suspect. According to the Genocide Convention of the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda Statute, an ethnic group is “a group whose members share a common language or culture.” The Tutsi and the Hutu share the same religion, language, and culture.1 In the 1990s, racial hatreds were aggravated through state-sponsored media. The periodical Kangura was particularly inflammatory. Distributed free of charge by the state, Kangura enjoyed wide popularity. It quickly became an outlet for anti-Tutsi propaganda, such as the racist “Ten Commandments.” Although originally intended to unite the Hutu behind President Habyarimana and his party, the Hutu extremists used the Commandments to fuel Hutu hysteria, to legitimize a strategy of extermination. Some of the Commandments revealed “knowledge” of the Tutsi defects (Semujanga 2003: 196–97). For example, according to Commandment 1, Every Muhutu [Hutu] must know that Umututsikazi, wherever she is, works for her Tutsi ethnic group. Therefore, any Muhutu who weds a Mututsikazi, who makes of a Mututsikazi his concubine, who makes of a Mututsikazi his secretary or his Protégé is a traitor. (196) Page 61 → These commandants appeal to the Hutus to understand Tutsi character, evident in “every Muhutu must know …” The other commandments include references to Tutsi as power-hungry, wicked, and deceitful. Hutu propaganda stated that as part of the Tutsi campaign of conquest, Tutsi women would try to seduce Hutu men to create hybrid descendants.

Demonizing the Other Delving into the sources of anti-Tutsi ideology requires attention to the theoretical underpinnings of research on ethnicity. Of course, in many academic circles, the study of group identity centers on various constructed forms that include sets of beliefs, shared history, myths, symbols, and rituals. Our research on protracted armed conflict focuses on a shared repository of beliefs that organizes the social world in terms of normative dualities—safe /dangerous, home/foreign, sacred/profane, and evil/virtuous, among others. When disseminated through radio, television, print media, and Internet, threat narratives take on the aura of legitimate “news” and foster a sense of global, fixed, essential, and eternal differences. These stories explain the malicious deeds of the threatening Other not by the fleeting circumstances of the social setting but rather by their uncontrollably malicious, degenerate, or demonic behavior. They are portrayed as vicious, wicked, immoral, criminal, uncivilized, reprehensible, blameworthy, scurrilous, felonious, nefarious, infamous, villainous, heinous, atrocious, accursed, satanic, diabolic, hellish, infernal, fiendish, demonic, and depraved. As the threat narratives

denigrate the Other, they reinforce the moral superiority of the ingroup. Exploits of those attempting to thwart advances of the invaders are glorified as pure, noble, angelic, saintly, or occasionally even godlike. The question “Who are they?” as a collectivity calls for an understanding of the character, commitments, and plans of the Other. Such a manipulated understanding shapes and solidifies beliefs about group differences. That is, group positioning associated with threat narratives has a tendency to essentialize the normative duality of ingroup virtues and out-group vices. In the hands of extremists, such categories are retrieved to “educate” the faithful to the “true” sources of hostilities, guide them in taking the right course of action, and prepare them for the struggle ahead. This case clearly illustrates Model 3 (chapter 2), according to which civilians' complicity with the militant Other provides a logic that links Page 62 →“knowledge” of the threatening Other with an injunction for action. The “reality” of ethnic difference operates in conjunction with imperatives to eradicate the Tutsi threat. The threatening Other is characterized as eternally untrustworthy, committed to destruction, and capable of conquest. A preformed logic for action is solidified as it fosters a sense of inevitable conflict. The narrative of inevitability follows from demands for vigilance, obedience, strength, and sacrifice (Frohardt and Temin 2003). In some cases, the story of impending strategic incursion and conquest by the Other establishes the rationale for preemptive attacks against the “invaders” as a measure of “self-defense.”

Events Occurring in Mythic Time In this section, we focus on accounts of real-time events and their relationship to narratives of sacred events set in mythic time. Such recontextualization is a linguistic operation; however, the linguistic means for achieving this transformation are not straightforward. First, at the linguistic level, they involve not only the renarration of historical events within a mythical framework of time and space but also the legitimation of this retelling through the interpersonal and rhetorical resources of language. Second, such linguistic legitimation is effective only for those with the appropriate symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1991), the sociocultural prestige that lends certain speakers an aura of authority in particular fields of discourse and before relevant audiences. Discourse, in these terms, is the mediational means through which speakers realize their embodied symbolic capital as power in action within a specific “linguistic marketplace” (Bourdieu 1991). The linguistic analyses that follow therefore focus on textual devices for representing and evaluating reality, for situating events in time and space within a particular rhetorical or generic form as a socializing strategy, and for operationalizing the external symbolic capital of the speaker. Following the theory of systemic functional linguistics (Halliday and Hasan 1985), we can label these three parameters field (the representational), mode (the generic/textual), and tenor (the interpersonal). For events and situations (field) to be accommodated within a mythic and sacred story line, they must be recontextualized in an appropriate form (mode) by legitimate speakers (tenor). For example, mythic language realizes capital as power within groups for whom myth is a socialization convention provided the speaker is recognized as a “legitimate mythologizer” Page 63 →and the audience (and other elements of the marketplace) are appropriate. Once legitimated, such discourse becomes an “interpretative repertoire” for future events within that discourse community (Potter and Wetherell 1987: 172). The following analyses, chronologically ordered to suggest the dynamics of media representations that precipitated the genocide, attempt to show the evolution of such interpretative repertoires within the framework of normative difference. These repertoires suggest a drift in discourse style along two parameters. There is a movement from a narrative style primarily concerned with recounting current events and recent history and using ethnic generalization and essentialism as support of a style that chiefly promulgates such stereotypes in the form of caricature and myth. This shift occurs in parallel with a movement from a textual authority derived from history, science, and the law to a call for widespread grassroots vigilantism of calls to tribal and family loyalty. However, the chapter does not claim to provide a complete picture of media discourse in the buildup to the Rwandan genocide and its role in that tragedy. We illustrate how a fuller discourse analysis might offer a rigorous and nuanced understanding of how a shift in perceived identity differences acted as a prelude to the genocide.

Here, we focus on what we see as the key linguistic aspects of the axiology of difference: the discursive construal of “mythic time” and “sacred events” and their evolution through the accommodation and assimilation of realtime events and circumstances through the dynamics of narrative exemplification. From this perspective, the story line, positioning, and evoked acts of Hutu extremists evolved from the long-term situation sketched in figure 4.1 to the far more radical position of figure 4.2 in the period immediately prior to the genocide. Employing the analytical framework of positioning theory (Harré and Moghaddam 2003: chapter 1), the three points of the triangle represent the following: the story line of past and current events that is maintained and developed in the minds of protagonist groups and that provides the interpretative repertoire against which future events will be evaluated and the rights and duties of the protagonists determined; the position of the protagonists in terms of their rights and duties and those of outgroups as determined by the evolving story line; and the actions that protagonists carry out or are supposed to carry out in light of the evolving story line and the interpretation of their rights and duties within it. Importantly, the story line can be reconstrued by those with the appropriate symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1991) and couched in culturally powerful rhetorical styles to skew a group's interpretative repertoires. Page 64 → Figures 4.1 and 4.2 replicate in broad terms different stages of development in the mythic history of the Hutu extremists, story lines that are structured around axiological differences and that inform the positions taken up and used to justify extreme acts. We can use this model to trace the dynamics of change as a process of interaction between the mythic bases of belief/identity and situated narratives as the means of accommodation and assimilation between current events and the evolving myth. And protagonists' actions will appear not only justified but the only honorable course. Thus, a small shift in story line as the source of a group's interpretative repertoire can represent the prelude to violence as the acts appropriate to these rights and duties are recalibrated. The purpose of the discourse analysis offered here is to track how these shifts occurred and to suggest a strategy for developing counterdiscourses. Figures 4.1 and 4.2, however, are not meant to represent an initial and a final state but rather a direction. There is never a point where one story line exists in isolation; nor is there a chain of story lines/triangles leading from one position to the next: at any time, positioning is occurring at many different levels in relation to various goals and time scales. In other words, positions are not discrete, and drifts are not steady and unidirectional: these are general tendencies, and the dynamic nature of positioning as well as the complexities of life in real time preclude analyses that are too neat. The following analyses, then, show how detailed consideration of linguistic features might be used to strengthen or challenge more global analyses. These analyses are focused on (1) two Page 65 →discourse representations of the evolving axiological myth from December 1990 and March 1993, a few months before the genocide; and (2) media reports of the government massacre of Bagogwe Tutsi in January 1991 as an illustration of narrative exemplification. These are followed by analyses of broadcasts from Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) during the genocide and their relationship to the evolving myth. Some important caveats apply: 1. 2. 3. 4.

the texts used have already been chosen by previous authors to illustrate their conclusions; they are neither full nor exhaustive; they have been translated from Kinyarwanda to French to English; some texts are excerpts from longer texts and so lose some of their continuity.

The first texts come from the newspaper Kangura. This outlet served as a familiar medium for reaffirming myths of ethnic divisions in Rwanda, calling on Hutu to protect their rights against the Tutsi, who, the texts repeatedly proclaim, were intent on taking over the country and disrupting the “natural balance” that had existed since the revolution of 1959. As foreign minister Casimir Bizimungu said on Radio Rwanda on October 8, 1990, Page 66 → This terrorist organization [Rwandan Patriotic Army] has as its only aim the establishment of a

minority regime embodying feudalism with a modern outlook. The Rwandan people will not agree to reverse history, leading the nation's dynamic forces back to feudal drudgery and enslavement. (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 25)

As this and the following passages suggest, pre-1959 Rwanda and ancient history often intermingled to create a single image of Tutsi rule as disorderly, barbaric, and threatening to the Hutu. This myth draws strongly on the idea that the Tutsi are not truly a Rwandan race, that they are at worst invaders and at best outsiders who have infiltrated Rwanda and who continue to dissimulate to receive more of their quota of jobs as scientifically assigned within the existing Hutu order. In texts 4.1 and 4.2, we see how this myth is developed through historical narratives with an air of scientific authority and neutrality. Text 4.1. Kangura, November 1990, 21 (Chrétien 1995: 109) In the history of Rwanda, the first arrivals were the Twa [Pygmies], who dedicated themselves to hunting and gathering; then the Hutu [Bantus] arrived, clearing the forest to farm there and establishing a social organization; finally the Tutsi came [nilotic, Ethiopides], devoting themselves to cattle-breeding. Why does one want to change our history? Who would have the right to change the history of the country? Text 4.2 repeats the ploy of using quasi-scientific language to mask racist discourse but this time uses this neutral language as a springboard to a more explicitly evaluative stance. We can analyze the development of this text along the three parameters of field—roughly, the subject matter, including attributions of agency; tenor, focusing on the forms of authority that underlie the discourse and on evaluative language; and mode, the rhetorical styling of the discourse (Cloran 2000: 175). This analysis is provided in table 4.1. The force of these variables in practice is a function of the symbolic capital of the speakers and the cultural significance of the rhetorical style in the specific linguistic marketplace. In the first paragraph, we see what looks like a historical account of the Page 67 →origins of the Tutsi in Rwanda in which the depiction of Tutsi power as feudal and monarchical reads as authoritative, using an academic style to talk of historical groups and events. However, this neutral style is used to frame a more powerful mythical representation with the introduction of the Queen Mother Kanjogera, a powerful icon in representations of the RPA as wanting to return the country to pre-1959 backwardness (where the barbarism of mythical history and the perceived disorder of the twentieth-century social system are not clearly distinguished). The text thus moves from the historical concepts of vassalage and servitude to the more emotive oppressive and bloody individualized icon of the evil Queen Mother with her swords stuck in the backs of innocent Hutu (line 5). Myth is thus embedded in pseudoscientific reporting and borrows some of the credibility that style establishes. Text 4.2. Kangura, December 1990, 7–8 (Chrétien 1995: 110) 1

The first inhabitants of Rwanda were the Twa, followed by the Hutu [seventh century].

2 A long time after, the Tutsi infiltrated and quickly took power by a system of vassalage based on the cow. 3 Power was monarchical and feudal, and the other ethnic groups were reduced to servitude, abused at will, and exploited without mercy. 4

The regime was oppressing and bloody.

5

For example, the queen mother, Kanjogera, to rise from her seat, would lean on two swords

planted in the shoulders of two Hutu children. … 6 The hypocrisy and the spirit of domination of the Tutsi extremists seem to be limitless when those who have remained in the country are characterized by falsifying their identity so as to occupy, beyond the positions already granted to them according to regional and ethnic balance, a share of the positions that belonged to Hutu. 7 The Rwandan refugees never felt ashamed to keep on lying knowingly that the Tutsi ethnic group was discriminated against. 8

They are, however, well represented in all sectors. …

The text (lines 6-8) equates the icon of the Queen Mother and her ruthless domination to the Tutsi extremists of today (though, importantly, the qualification of extremists is still present). The personal opinion Page 68 →of “seem” is soon hidden by the narrative example of Tutsi duplicity and the evocation of those who cheat the quotas afforded them by the post-1959 order and so subvert the system, which appears to be a model of modernity and justice when juxtaposed with the vassalage and blood-thirstiness of Tutsi rule. The language here is explicitly pejorative until the return to the more neutral “fact-based” earlier style (line 8). This phase of the text illustrates how objective facts can be accommodated to stereotypes: not only are the statistics showing the underrepresentation of Tutsi in powerful positions false, it is claimed, but the reason they are false is that the Tutsi cheat. This “fact” presumably reveals Tutsi deception, here only in terms of gaining employment but later developed to devastating effect to suggest that all Tutsi are accomplices and hence potential RPA soldiers. In short, this brief passage shows the mixing of pseudofactual language, myth, and moral condemnation as well as the identification of characters and events from history with narratives from the present. It also demonstrates the force of stereotype in overcoming more objective accounts of the status quo. It fits in with the first positioning triangle (figure 4.1) by positing the Hutu/government as defending the gains of 1959 against the backwardness of Tutsi extremism while preparing the ground for the move to the more radical second position (figure 4.2). One of the principal ways this second positioning gains prominence is through extension of the already powerful duplicity myth to denigrate the Page 69 →entire Tutsi population, not just the extremists of the text, as another excerpt from Kangura (text 4.3) demonstrates.

Text 4.3. Kangura, December 1990, 10-11 (Chrétien 1995: 290-91) In truth, no one is unaware that we have been attacked by enemies of Rwanda who are called inkotanyi. These enemies of the country prepared themselves a long time ago, since they were pushed back at the time of the first attacks. They didn't stop there. They went to prepare a war that will not leave anybody alive [simusiga]. In preparing that war, they have constituted a network of accomplices among businesspeople, among the military and civilians, among Rwandan journalists and foreigners. At roughly the same time as texts such as these develop the myth of Tutsi duplicity, universal collusion with rebel forces, and predictions of massacres, the parallel idea is developed that the Tutsi do not truly represent Rwanda, either historically as Nilotic interlopers or in the present day, as they readily renounce their identity, are accomplices of “enemies of the country,” and are even plotting to colonize the entire region of Central Africa and enslave the Hutu (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 67). This combination of narrative moves came into prominence after the RPA captured Ruhengeri for a day in late January 1991, liberating prisoners there (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 29). The following texts demonstrate how this event is narrated to reinforce and develop these sacred myths. The first

is a January 24, 1991, Radio France International report of a statement by the newly appointed director of the state information department, Ferdinand Nahimana, under whom Radio Rwanda “broadcasts tended to become more virulent and distorted.” These attackers included a number of Libyan commandos. … [T]he proof comes from the information we received precisely from those who fled Ruhengeri prison, who say the Arabs had freed them. (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 29) This report might well be for international consumption, but it also contributes to the myth of the Tutsi as less Rwandan than the Hutu. While for this myth, the idea of accomplices refers to outside agents, it is later also used to refer to insiders as notions of agency are muddied and a general Page 70 → notion of uncertainty and fear is promulgated. These events are narrated in a January 1991 Kangura article: The accomplices of Ruhengeri have taught us a lesson, we should understand that if we persevere in being unconcerned we will be exterminated by the accomplices of the inkotanyi. … Before I arrived at [the] center of Ruhengeri town city, I met with the warrant officer Sukiranya who runs the prison of Ruhengeri. He told me how we first were attacked by well-placed accomplices who always knew how to hide among the others. He assured me that the weapons used by the inkotanyi had been in Ruhengeri for a long time. (Chrétien 1995: 291–92) This text explicitly claims that the agents behind this act were not merely the RPA but their political and civilian accomplices, who for some time had been storing weapons intended for Hutu extermination. Thus, the author simultaneously accommodates the event to the myths of Tutsi dissimulation and duplicity and their plans for regional domination while portraying the war as one of all Tutsis against all Hutus. This last point was brought home in all its ferocity in a leaflet issued in response to Ruhengeri by the minister of the interior and the prefect of Ruhengeri: Go do a special umuganda [communal work]. Destroy all the bushes and all the Inkotanyi who are hiding there. And don't forget that those who are destroying weeds must also get rid of the roots. (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 34) In January 1991, shortly after this leaflet was issued, the government carried out a massacre of Bagogwe Tutsi. The massacre's progovernment narrative shows the power of axiological stereotyping in assimilating events into mythical story lines. In September 1991, one month after news of the massacres reached the public, the progovernment paper La Médaille Nyiramacibiri “denied that any Tutsi had been killed but instead claimed that the Bagogwe were responsible for widespread violence in north-west Rwanda”: They are the ones who have sparked the violence in Mutura region by provoking the population, beating and killing a soldier just as the inyenzi had stepped up their attacks. … [T]he fury of the Page 71 →Bagogwe is stronger than that of lions Why do certain Tutsi like blood? (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 69–70) While these texts demonstrate a movement toward eyewitness testimony as a powerful source of interpersonal authority and toward grassroots justice as an appropriate arena of action—both developments that seem to be critical to the genocide—the growing segregation of Rwandan society along ethnic lines continues to be rationalized along pseudoscientific lines. To demonstrate how the movement in discourse in the period leading up to the genocide represents a shift in the dominant myths in Rwandan society and the alternative authorities that underpin them, a more detailed analysis follows of a text that appeared in Kangura in March 1993, not long before the genocide. This text demonstrates the same conflation of historic myth and present-day fact as text 4.2, but whereas in the earlier text, myth is used to illustrate opinions presented as history, here myth and icon receive preference over pseudoscience, while blame is cast on the Tutsi in general as a race, inherently deceitful and bloodthirsty, and Hutu vigilance is urged. These were RTLM's dominant discourses. Text 4.4 takes the term inyenzi (cockroaches) as applied to the Tutsi and develops it to the fullest extent in lines

5–8. The established metaphor of the Tutsi as cockroaches simultaneously denigrates the Tutsi while conflating the population in general with the RPA through its play on inyenzi and inkotanyi (RPA fighters, earlier Tutsi militias), a generalizing strategy repeated through the bracketing together of the monarchy, the battles of 1960, and the present struggle. In terms of the axiological model, in texts 4.1 and 4.2 myths are used to provide an interpretative framework for current events and recent history, while in text 4.4 the myth is the given with narrated events playing an illustrative and hence supportive role. Moreover, the word of the speaker, the evidence of the readers' eyes, and common sense have become the only authority behind the argument, a contrast from the pseudoscience of the earlier text. Iconography and myth take precedence over historical narratives, and rhetorical questions replace the need for proof. In this context, the government of Kayibanda is as much mythical as historical and provides the metaphor of the forefathers whose examples are to be followed in preference to the leaders of today, lulled by the deceptiveness of the Tutsi, now an established fact, into a kind of “definitive drunkenness.” The deceptions included the notions of peace and unity, Page 72 →notions that the Tutsi have exploited—part of the reason they lack legitimacy. The story line within the second positioning triangle (figure 4.2) is by this stage well in place: a narrative constructing the Tutsi in general, prompted by their inherent bloodthirstiness, as seeking domination over the Hutu population in general. Text 4.4. Kangura, March 1993, 17–18 (Chrétien 1995: 275–76) 1

We begin by saying that a cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly; it is true.

2

A cockroach gives birth to another cockroach. …

3 The history of Rwanda shows us clearly that a Tutsi stays always exactly the same, that he has never changed. 4

The malice, the evil are just as we knew them in the history of our country.

5

We are not mistaken in saying that a cockroach gives birth to another cockroach.

6 Who can make the distinction between the inyenzi [cockroaches] who attacked in October 1990 and those in the years of 1960? 7

They all are linked; some are the grandchildren of the others.

8

Their wickedness is the same.

9

All these attacks have as their objective to restore the monarchy and feudalism.

10 The unimaginable crimes that the inyenzi of today commit against the citizens remind one of those made by their ancestors: killing, plundering, raping girls and women, etc. 11 If in our language someone calls something a snake, that by itself is enough. 12 That means many things. 13 A Tutsi is somebody who seduces by his word but whose wickedness is incommensurable. 14 A Tutsi is somebody for whom the desire for revenge never dies out, somebody whom you can never know what they think, who laughs when he suffers atrociously.

15 In our language, a Tutsi is called a cockroach because it takes the advantage of the night, using concealment to achieve his goals.

This narrative may not represent a huge shift from the earlier, longstanding account, with most of the mythology and iconography predating the genocide by many years. However, the constant reiteration and refinement Page 73 →of these narrative shifts creates a new interpretative repertoire within which the Hutu population in general, or at least those who joined the militias, had their position, as a set of rights and obligations, recalibrated away from supporting the government's fight to preserve the gains of 1959 against the RPA rebels and toward a more radical positioning in which they see themselves as defenders of the Hutu race and their families against the Tutsi population as a whole. Such an urgent narrative does not rely on the authority of history or science but reacts to the repeated calls of those close to the ground and implies a moral authority derived from military heroism and community solidarity. In this role, as “the drumbeat behind the violence” (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 116), RTLM set up on July 8, 1993, came into its own, and completed the movement from the authority of (pseudo)science and the battle against the RPA and “accomplices” to a discourse of Hutu versus Tutsi, grassroots justice and peer pressure underwritten by notions of loyalty to everyday heroes. In the case of RTLM, the story line and interpretative repertoire fomented by the repeated maligning of the Tutsi, no matter how incredible, underpinned the extreme Hutu positioning and the horrendous acts it inspired. This notion is captured in a statement made after the conflict by a self-confessed Interahamwe militiaman: I did not believe that the Tutsi were coming to kill us … but when the government radio continued to broadcast that they were coming to take our land, were coming to kill the Hutu—when this was broadcast over and over—I began to feel some kind of fear. (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 5) RTLM manufactured a relevant style by setting itself up as representing the grassroots, creating a forum for public venting, and thus inspiring their loyalty. According to French historian Gérard Prunier, RTLM was geared to people on street corners—if it was beamed to peasants, it was for the young ones. Their parents would have disapproved. It was for 20-year-olds and under. RTLM's target was gangs, young thugs. The older message was “we need to set things right after they went wrong under the feudal monarchy.” The younger generation did not care about this. It meant nothing to them. … [Y]ou have to get the support of the people not yet born in the revolution of 1959. … The ideas [for ethnic hatred against] Tutsi had been around for Page 74 →years. RTLM presented them in a form more palatable for the younger generation. RTLM used street language. (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 86–87) In terms of assimilating individual events into the mythic story line, the RTLM response to the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye of Burundi, a Hutu, on October 21, 1993, draws on all the axiological themes we have seen so far, as it calls on the Hutu population in general to respond to the Burundi situation, for which agency is extended from the RPA, as part of the regional master plan, to be seen as a threat from Tutsi in general. In October 1993, RTLM quoted from an article from Ijambo, a progovernment newspaper, The fact that the Rwandan army has not yet launched an attack on Burundi is a sad thing. They should go and destroy the quarters of the Inkotanyi in Burundi, if they agree that the Hutu also have the right to live in Rwanda and Burundi. … All Rwandan Hutu are asked to contribute. Those who can use a gun, let them cross the border; those who cannot, let them learn; those who cannot yet [learn], let them contribute money to buy guns and bullets. (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 88–89) The call for grassroots action with its authority derived from eyewitness accounts, group solidarity, and the heroism of peers is brought to the fore in RTLM's April–May 1994 interview with Marie-Claire Kayirange, who

became a road blocker after being holed up for three days: God willing … I managed to get out and left. But I told myself that I would continue to fight. … I was fighting without a gun, I did not even know how to use it, I used traditional weapons. So you see, everybody is fighting. Women cannot rest. The advice I give others is that they get military training and have the courage to fight the enemy. (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 117–19)

Conclusion: Toward a Counter Discourse This analysis of anti-Tutsi ideology reveals the effects of the following racial “law” of Rwandan history: a Hutu's life is touched by the lives of ancestors, descendants, and contemporaries, tracing a path from the past to Page 75 →the future that “demonstrates” essential Hutu/Tutsi differences. From such a law, Hutu extremists sought compliance from their followers to eliminate the Tutsi threat. As the genocide progressed, RTLM descended further into a role of intelligence center for the extremists, revealing the identity and whereabouts of “accomplices” who sought to escape. Calls were made for the international community to jam the broadcasts. The Article 19 International Centre, an anticensorship group, endorsed this idea in this extreme case but suggested that it would have been better to provide alternative discourses before the genocide, broadcasting in Kinyarwanda from outside the Rwandan border (Article 19 International Centre 1996: 161–65). This is an important point where discourse analysis, as sketched out in this chapter, might prove useful in demonstrating that providing alternative story lines is not enough. They must also be taken up by the community as a whole, draw on (and counterbalance) prevailing myths and narratives, and be underwritten by appropriate forms of authority.

Page 76 →

5 The Second Lebanon War On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah's Lebanese guerrillas crossed into Israel and attacked an Israeli patrol, killing three soldiers and kidnapping two others. In retaliation, Israel launched air strikes against Lebanon and imposed a naval blockade that began a bitter thirty-four-day war. During the war, Hezbollah fired nearly four thousand rockets at heavily populated areas in northern Israel, killing forty-three civilians. In response, Israel deployed more than seven thousand air strikes in Lebanon. Vital points of Lebanese civilian infrastructure were partially or completely destroyed. In the war's final days, Israeli forces launched hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs, each containing millions of bomblets. These cluster bombs caused civilian casualties long after hostilities ceased. Following the war, Amnesty International (2007) confirmed 1,183 fatalities, one-third of them children, and 4,054 injured among Lebanon's civilian population. In addition, 970,000 civilians—a quarter of the Lebanese population—were displaced. Israeli civilians were outraged; a torrent of criticism of Israeli leadership reverberated throughout the country, focusing on accusations of misguided military strategy and a failure to enhance national security (see, e.g., Greenwald 2006; Shavit 2006). The outcries led to the resignation of the top Israeli command (including the Israeli chief of staff) in January 2007 and the dismissal of the Israeli defense minister the following June. During the war, Israeli decision makers deliberated about the proper military actions against civilian targets in Lebanon. Such deliberation was revealed to the general public in the reports of an Israeli governmental commission convened to evaluate the conduct of political and military leaders concerning many aspects of the war. This commission, known as Page 77 →the Winograd Committee, heard testimony from seventy-four witnesses and read the protocols of all cabinet and military command sessions and meetings concerning the war. In both its April 2007 interim report and its January 2008 final report, the committee recounted the rationale for launching military strikes against Hezbollah and the Lebanese civilian infrastructure. In this chapter, we examine Israeli leaders' decisions to engage in a military campaign that caused extensive suffering among Lebanese civilians. Based on the testimony before the Winograd Committee, we focus on the leaders' understanding of relationships between Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah as a basis for decisions made during the war. The Winograd Committee reports are limited as a historical record of the exact motivations and perceptions behind the attack. The Winograd Committee was an official Israeli body, and members were careful to protect Israel's national security as well as its international reputation (Winograd Committee 2008: 79–80, 485). In addition, much of the testimony of top military officers before the committee was withheld from public circulation. Despite these limitations, we believe that the Winograd Committee reports provide primary source material that reveals critical perceptions regarding targeting civilians in the course of the war. In this chapter, we identify one source of devastation to Lebanese civilians in perceptions among the Israeli leadership of the relationship between enemy combatants and Lebanese civilians. Several interpretations of the Israeli characterizations of enemy combatants and civilian noncombatants are offered. We find that such characterizations of our Model 1 regarding the castigation of civilians on the basis of their alleged complicity with the militant enemy. Yet the Winograd reports reveal that such denigration was contested among the Israeli leadership, open to multiple interpretations and disagreements. We do not seek to evaluate the war's legitimacy or to engage in the debate regarding the “just cause” of either Hezbollah or Israel. Rather, we focus on the impact of Israel's military engagement on Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure. We begin by summarizing major developments in identity studies, including recent advances on the normative dimensions of group affiliation and perceived boundaries among the in-group, the enemy, and other associated groups. This summary is followed by a brief history of the Lebanon War as well as discussion of our research methodology. We then employ identity theory as an analytical lens for examining Israeli leaders' characterizations of Hezbollah and Lebanese civilians during the deliberations regarding retaliation against Hezbollah and Page 78 →the subsequent dissolution of group differences (in character) between

Hezbollah and the Lebanese civilians.

A Model of Identity-Based Conflict We believe that any complete understanding of protracted violent conflict involving identity groups must draw on social scientific studies of collective identity and difference. Social identity theory provides insight into the socialpsychological dimensions of enmity that so often precede wide-scale hostility. Researchers in this field have shown that intergroup prejudice is intensified when individuals, seeking self-esteem through membership in a socially prestigious group, resort to negative stereotypes and prejudicial judgments against members of an outgroup (R. Brown 2000; Tajfel 1978; Tajfel and Turner 1986). For example, this correlation between ingroup identification and outgroup hostility is evident among ethnic groups in South Africa (Gibson and Gouwa 1998). Although cognitive, emotional, and motivational aspects of social identity have received significant attention, only a few social identity theorists studying the sources of group violence have examined the connections between personal identity and a group's value commitments. For example, Viktor Gecas emphasized the role of culture in the formation of what he called value identities, which arise when individuals conceive of themselves in terms of the values they hold (2000: 96). A person develops a positive self-image and value identities by assessing the links between behavior and culturally approved values. Shalom Schwartz (1992, 1994; S. H. Schwartz, Struch, and Bilsky 1990), in his studies of the multiplicity of cultural values among different cultural, racial, and ethnic groups, showed that value commitments can significantly impact intergroup hostility (S. H. Schwartz, Struch, and Bilsky 1990: 186). Perceived differences foster stereotyping and in some cases can be a source of protracted conflict. In another example of this kind of research, Stephen Reicher, Russell Spears, and Alex Haslam examined how acts of violence are often rationalized by value-oriented comparisons between Self and Other: Thus, for racist hostility to occur it is necessary that racial categories are not only socially available but also that they are salient and accepted in the relevant context. It is also necessary that racialist ingroup members choose to compare themselves with the given racial other. Last, it is necessary that they seek to differentiate themselves Page 79 →along dimensions that lead to anti-social behaviors (e.g.,“we are intelligent and hence we exclude them as stupid”) as opposed to pro-social behaviors (e.g., “we are charitable and therefore help them”). (forthcoming, 10) Reicher, Haslam, and Rath (2008) have proposed a five-step social identity model that details the processes through which inhumane acts against other groups can be characterized as virtuous: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Identification: the construction of an ingroup. Exclusion: the definition of targets as external to the ingroup. Threat: the representation of these targets as endangering in-group identity. Virtue: the championing of the ingroup as (uniquely) good. Celebration: embracing the eradication of the outgroup as necessary to the defense of virtue.

The last two steps are most relevant to the normative aspects of social identity theory. In our earlier research, we argued that one source of violent conflict can be found in the normative framing of group differences in which notions of ingroup virtue and outgroup vice are elevated to “objective realities.” Such differences tend to be framed as moralistic dualities—virtue and vice, right and wrong, and good and evil. In the polarizing rhetoric of war, the enemy is identified as bad, vicious, or unjust; the ingroup faithful (by their nature) are inherently good, virtuous, and just (Rothbart and Korostelina 2006b). The Other's threatening actions are thought to be vicious, immoral, criminal, and uncivilized. The ingroup's responses carry moral weight and moral worth in the minds of group members, justified minimally by the need to thwart invaders' advances. These normative categories are passed on and even enshrined through storytelling practices and are used to justify and rationalize or condemn and denounce specific actions. The normativity of group difference is definable in terms of two factors: collective generality and normative balance. Collective generality refers to the ways in which ingroup members categorize and generalize an

outgroup's essential characteristics. In principle, the generality can be high or low. High generality of normative difference fosters a monolithic depiction of the outgroup. A low generality of normative difference leads to the perception of the outgroup as differentiated, subject to change, and manifesting multiple kinds of behaviors. Normative balance refers to the Page 80 →degree of parallelism of virtues and vices attributed to an entire group. High normative balance fosters both positive and negative characterizations of a group. In this instance, the members of the outgroup act virtuously under some conditions and viciously under other conditions. In addition, high normative balance may include the ingroup's recognition of its own moral failings. In contrast, low normative balance includes a monolithic depiction of both ingroup and outgroup identities that often manifests in the exaggeration of outgroup vices and ingroup virtues. In such cases, the outgroup is subject to total delegitimization, which is an extreme process of negative stereotyping that casts the outgroup as acting in violation of basic human norms or values (Bar-Tal 1990). Moreover, whereas social identity theory stresses the dualism of in-group–outgroup relationships as a basis for social interactions, no other research to date has given due attention to the impact of a third group on intergroup relationships. Yet in times of war, enmity against the militant or aggressive Other is routinely extended via varying degrees of collective generality and normative balance to alleged collaborators, possibly including socalled civilian noncombatants. In the course of prolonged hostilities, denigration of the militant enemy can be extended to nonmilitants of the other camp, thereby weakening the identity boundaries between the militant Other and the nonmilitant (civilian) Other. As a result, ancillary nonmilitant groups are often stigmatized as dangerous and malicious. Of course, ingroup narrative accounts of civilian actions may lack the vitriol of enemy narratives; nevertheless, the understandings of the civilian Other are intertwined with the understandings of the militant Other. In the rhetoric of war, civilians are often castigated for acting in concert with the enemy, for harboring militants, for providing them with material support, or for celebrating their victories and lamenting their losses. Old boundary divisions are superseded by new ones. As divisions between combatants and noncombatants are recast, the battle lines for retaliatory actions are redrawn, and the scope of conflict is widened to include those who are not its active participants. Like a powerful contagion, the stigma of the militant enemy can be extended to collaborators, associates, or intimate relationships, transferring the enemy's character flaws—vicious, uncivilized, criminal, depraved—to noncombatant civilians. In this chapter, we offer a normative framing of group differences as a basis for decisions by the Israeli leadership to attack the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon. Such decisions were driven in part by perceptions of value differences in the inherent character of the Israelis (as a nation and a people) and Hezbollah. Page 81 →

Prewar Events The war in 2006 represents a culmination of various periods in Lebanon's history of domestic strife, political instability, and foreign domination. These periods of turbulence explain, in part, the recurrence of violence between Lebanon's dominant religious groups—Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, and Maronite Christians. At the time of Lebanese independence, Maronite Christians controlled the government. However, civil war broke out in 1958 when Muslim factions rebelled against the ruling order. Lebanon became embroiled in another civil war from early 1975 to late 1976, resulting in massive Syrian intervention. Hostilities renewed in 1977 in a civil war that ended in 1990 following the Ta'if Agreement,, which led to a power-sharing arrangement in which Muslims received a larger share of governmental participation. In addition, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas, who staged raids on Israel from Lebanese territory, provoked several large-scale Israeli invasions of Lebanon throughout this period. In June 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon, driving twenty-five miles past the border and moving into East Beirut. The Israelis received military support for these invasions from Lebanese Maronite Christian leaders and militia. Although this war forced the PLO to flee to Tunisia, Israel's hopes for a politically stable regime to its north crumbled with the 1982 assassination of the Lebanese prime minister, Bashir Gemayel. Lebanese Shiites, who lived primarily in

southern Lebanon, eventually strongly objected to Israel's continued military presence. Hezbollah, a Shiite Lebanese organization that was officially founded in 1982, took on the mantle of Lebanon's protector against Israel. By mid-1985, Israel had retreated from most of Lebanon but left soldiers to work with the Christian Southern Lebanese Army in a security (“buffer”) zone. Following the Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah continued to attack the remaining Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in southern Lebanon as well as communities in northern Israel. In May 2000, the IDF unilaterally retreated from the security zone in Lebanon, and on June 16, 2000, the United Nations (UN) Security Council verified that Israel, having withdrawn its troops to its side of the demarcated Lebanese-Israeli line, was in compliance with the 1978 UN Security Council Resolution 425.1 The period between 2000 and 2006 was characterized by tense but relatively peaceful relations between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel followed a “containment policy” that called for restrained military response to Hezbollah attacks. According to the policy's architects, Hezbollah's commitment Page 82 →to expel Israel from Lebanon had become its raison d'être, so that following the withdrawal, Hezbollah's political power in Lebanon should weaken. However, during this period, Hezbollah began building up forces, such as missile sites, along the Lebanese-Israeli border. The 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, who had served as Lebanon's prime minister from 1992 to 1998 and from 2000 to 2004 and who was known for his anti-Syrian attitudes, sparked anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon. These protests led to increased international pressure on Syria to withdraw all its troops from Lebanon. Parliamentary elections in May and June 2005 brought victory for the anti-Syrian coalition, with Fouad Siniora, an ally of Hariri, securing the post of prime minister. At the end of 2005, however, a cabinet vote in favor of an international trial of the suspects in Hariri's murder led to a split in the government, with Shiite ministers refusing to attend cabinet sessions. The boycott lasted until February 2006, but calls by some in the government for Hezbollah militia to disarm (as required by the UN) slowed the resolution of the matter, and the prime minister ultimately had to acknowledge Hezbollah as a “national resistance movement.” Still, many government officials continued to demand that Hezbollah disarm. Although Hezbollah's actions in July 2006 did not represent a significant escalation of its attacks on Israel (Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers several times prior to July 2006), the new Israeli leaders at that time decided to abandon their predecessors' “containment policy” regarding Hezbollah, a decision that led to the Lebanon War.

Research Method How did the Israeli leadership understand the relationship between Hezbollah and its civilian compatriots? Did the Israeli cabinet believe that civilians collaborated directly with Hezbollah in a campaign against Israel and thus were not protected by international humanitarian laws of war? Did Israeli leaders believe that Lebanese civilians were, like Hezbollah, inherently degenerate, which would weaken the boundary between the militant Other and the civilian Other? To answer these questions, we analyze the testimony of the witnesses who testified before the Winograd Committee. One of the researchers, who is an Israeli citizen and native Hebrew speaker, examined the testimony for indications of value differentiation between Israelis on the one hand and Hezbollah on the other. All the researchers then analyzed the Page 83 →level of normative balance and generality of the testimony, focusing on how the Israeli leaders depicted the relationships among Israelis, Hezbollah, and the Lebanese civilians. Our analysis also relied on advances in the social psychology of in-group–outgroup positioning (Harré and Moghaddam 2003; Harré and van Langenhove 1999; Moghaddam, Harré, and Lee 2008). According to the architects of this theory, social encounters can be understood through the interplay of three constructions: positions, story lines, and (meaningful) actions (Harré and Moghaddam 2003). A position is a spatial metaphor for the relative placement of individuals or groups in social encounters. Such a placement is defined by beliefs about the rights and obligations that guide actions and is revealed through analysis and review of storytelling practices. By providing a cast of different actors in the specific story line, whether it is explicit or implicit, a speaker makes

available different subject positions for different parties involved in an episode. In addition, different story lines are linked to different normative orders, with presuppositions about what actions count as right, legitimate, and appropriate. In addition to offering research on interpersonal relations, advocates of positioning theory have examined the relations involving large-scale groups, such as institutions and nations (see, e.g., Aberdeen 2003; Moghaddam and Kavulich 2008; Slocum and van Langenhove 2003). In this context, conflict protagonists operate according to the chosen story lines that recount the negative characteristics of opponents and that position opponents negatively as a prelude to actions against them or a denial of their rights (Harré and Slocum 2003). The positioning researcher attempts to identify “what conflict participants believe the actors and the goals are: how they define the groups and position themselves and the other, with a story line in which actions are being identified and taken to signify particular acts” (Louis 2008: 29). Relying on the primary categories of group positioning, we focus on the normative underpinnings of decisions by the Israeli leadership regarding attacks on civilian targets.

Devaluation of Hezbollah During their testimony before the Winograd Committee, Israeli leaders characterized the enemy in normative terms of ingroup virtues and outgroup vices. At a deeper level, such characterizations represent a clear case of high collective generality (perceiving Hezbollah as monolithic, as a single Page 84 →“entity” acting in lockstep fashion) as well as low normative balance (implicitly accepting an imbalanced characterization of Hezbollah as possessing predominantly negative traits). All Israeli senior political and military leaders cast Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in alliance with Israel's enemies, such as Iran, Syria, and Hamas. In his testimony before the Winograd Committee, trade minister Eli Ishai portrayed Hezbollah as uniformly inhumane: They are guerrillas, they come to die. They come to commit suicide. They come to kill. Our purpose is to preserve order. We spare human life. We sometimes risk the lives of our own people while fighting in [enemy] buildings (which I strongly opposed) in order not to harm innocent civilians, while they use their own children as human shields against the IDF. It is terrible. They take advantage of our humanistic army, our high morals. I do not think there is an army in the entire world with such high moral standards as the IDF. (2006: 5, lines 13–21; see also 6, lines 23–25; 15, lines 11–14) In Ishai's testimony, Hezbollah's treatment of its own civilians graphically contrasts with the actions of Israel's “humanistic army,” Israel's humane attitude toward foreign citizens, and the country's commitment to peace (17, lines 10–22) even under threat from Hezbollah (14, lines 4–5; see also 17, lines 7–8; 21–22; 12, line 22). Again, this monolithic denigration of the enemy corresponds to a low normative balance. Similarly, in a speech before the Israeli Parliament on July 17, 2006, prime minister Ehud Olmert portrayed Hezbollah as operating within an axis of evil: The campaign we are engaged in these days is against the terror organizations operating from Lebanon and Gaza. These organizations are nothing but “sub-contractors” operating under the inspiration, permission, instigation, and financing of the terrorsponsoring and peace-rejecting regimes, on the axis of evil, which stretches from Tehran to Damascus. … Iran and Syria still continue to meddle, from afar, in the affairs of Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, through Hezbollah and Hamas. Radical, terrorist, and violent elements are sabotaging the life of the entire region and placing its stability at risk. These murderous terror groups threaten the region in which we live. It is a regional—as well as global—interest to take control and terminate their activity.2 Page 85 → In addition to the demonization language, Olmert's accusation of international terrorism is framed in bureaucratic terms—a campaign, an organization, an operation, terrorists as subcontractors, and the terrorist use of financial resources, all operating as an enterprise of murder. Hezbollah and Hamas allegedly operate in unison against Israel, with strategic links to their chief benefactors, Iran and Syria. This understanding of Hezbollah's

bureaucracy of terror that threatens Israeli security is obvious to the entire world, according to Olmert. Indeed, most senior Israeli political and military leaders shared Olmert's belief that Hezbollah was a proxy for more powerful enemy agents, particularly Iran and Syria. For example, the minister of public security, Avi Dicter, testified, Hezbollah is Iran. Hezbollah is not an independent entity. … It was established by a state [Iran] as [an Iranian] division. They just posted it in Lebanon instead of Iran. (2006: 10, lines 16–17; 13, lines 4–5) Dicter's testimony represents a high degree of collective generality and a low degree of normative balance (or an unbalanced axiology of identity and difference). For dovish Israeli leaders, such as deputy prime minister Shimon Peres and minister of tourism Yitzhak Herzog, Hezbollah acts in compliance with Iran's strategic interests. These leaders tend to place Israel in a coalition that includes, in addition to the United States and Europe, moderate Arab states and some Palestinian groups (Peres 2006: 11, lines 7–10; Herzog 2007: 46, lines 3–17). In this context, Peres and Herzog recall that yesterday's foes can be tomorrow's allies and that Israel can rely on its allies in the war against the “Axis of Evil.” Some Israeli leaders acknowledged in their testimony that Israel was also responsible for the war's escalation (Dicter 2006: 19, lines 1–16; Livny 2007: 9, lines 13–16). From their perspective, Israel intentionally responded with disproportionate force to change the balance of power in Israel-Hezbollah relationships. Foreign minister Zipi Livny, for example, opposed the decision to attack Hezbollah's headquarters in Beirut's Dahiya neighborhood and claimed that Hezbollah tends to conform to a set of rules in response to Israeli actions (2007: 44, lines 10–16). In fact, several Israeli decision makers lauded Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as sophisticated and clever while castigating Israeli society as divisive (see, e.g., Peres 2006: 4, lines 22–24). Page 86 → However, even Israeli leaders who held a more balanced view of Hezbollah remained steadfast in their support of the IDF. They insisted that Israel's tactics during the war complied with international laws of war, whereas Hezbollah's did not (Ramon 2007: 41, lines 4–12). Many Israelis cited strong international support for Israel's actions in Lebanon, referring to the fact that many countries, including the United States and moderate Arab countries, supported Israel's attack on Hezbollah (Ramon 2007: 18, lines 5–9). Furthermore, some Israelis challenged the claim that Israel was indeed responsible for civilian fatalities, instead blaming Hezbollah for the killings and accusing Hezbollah and Lebanon of inflating the number of civilian casualties (Herzog 2007: 31, lines 14–15). Therefore, despite some differences in their characterizations of Hezbollah, these decision makers uniformly had mostly negative view of Hezbollah that contrasted sharply with the state of Israel, which was perceived as just and moral (indicating a low level of normative balance) and as working within a campaign of global terrorism (indicating a high level of collective generality). Such characterizations contribute to our understanding of the vast support among Israeli cabinet members for the Israeli army's harsh actions against Hezbollah.

Characterizations of Lebanese Civilians Although the Winograd Committee's interim report (2007) shows a relatively uniform denigration of Hezbollah, it also reveals disagreements regarding the treatment of Lebanese civilians. Chief of staff Dan Halutz, Ishai, and minister of justice Haim Ramon advocated intense military attacks on Lebanese civilian targets, including infrastructure. However, most Israeli cabinet members rejected this proposal, arguing that the IDF should limit attacks to known Hezbollah targets. These leaders exhibited a higher degree of normative balance in their characterization of Hezbollah than did their hawkish counterparts. Content analysis of these reports reveals three narrative patterns underlying the Israeli leaders' deliberations over civilian targets: “civilians as collaborators” narratives, “civilians as political capital” narratives, and “civilians as collateral” narratives. The first two narratives appear only in testimony of those who advocated intense attacks on

Lebanese civilian targets, whereas most other Israeli leaders rejected both rationales. The third narrative was shared by all Israeli leaders and informed the Winograd Page 87 →Committee's (2007, 2008) explanations of Israeli actions in the war. We believe that these three patterns reveal the sociopsychological underpinnings of decisions to attack the civilian infrastructure. Civilians as Collaborators The “civilians as collaborators” narratives recount how Lebanese civilians lent support to Hezbollah and so took on Hezbollah's negative characteristics. For example, during the war, Ramon remarked, “All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah.”3 In its less extreme and more common form, the collaboration narrative casts both Lebanese civilians and the country's political leaders as “hosting” enemy militants. For example, Ishai referred to “the Lebanese civilians that allow Nasrallah's guerrillas to operate in exchange for benefits or money or something” (2006: 13, lines 11–14). Figure 5.1 illustrates the structures of such narratives. The collaboration narrative implies that Hezbollah and the Lebanese leadership operate in concert with each other. In his testimony to the Winograd Committee, Ishai stated, “We should not separate between Hezbollah and Siniora. There is no such thing” (2006: 7, lines 23–24). Siniora “hosts guerrillas. He hosts Nasrallah. He hosts a man who can endanger and destroy Israel” (8, lines, 6–10; see also 14, lines 18–20; 17, lines 2–3; 39, lines 8–9; Halutz 2007: 75, lines 5–6; Ramon 2007: 16, lines 1–2). This monolithic characterization of Lebanon as a homogeneous society represents a case of high normative generality. However, such a characterization defies a number of facts known to Israeli leaders—the persistent ethnic and religious frictions in Lebanon, the political opposition to Hezbollah within the Lebanese government, and the attempts by many government officials to disarm Hezbollah. In their challenging questioning of Ramon, members of the Winograd Committee cited Lebanese opposition to Hezbollah. In response, Ramon deemphasized the importance of this opposition while recounting the frequent military incursions emanating from Lebanon. He warned against the “domino effect” that he believed these attacks would have on the entire region: Ramon: Imagine that there is a Syrian model, and they see the Lebanese model, and a “militia for the liberation of Palestine” is created in Syria, and this militia grows in power and at some point starts firing Katiusha rockets into the Golan Heights. What would Page 88 →we do then—would we fight that militia or would we say what we always say … Committee member: The state. Ramon: The state … we should explain to that state: You are the state—you have obligations. If you fail to meet them, you will pay dearly. What we … Committee member: [That would apply] in an effective state. Ramon: That is no excuse. Otherwise, anyone would say, “I'm not an effective state.” What will we do then? … Committee member: [But Lebanon] is not an effective state—we know that. Ramon: When Jordan stopped being an effective state, it became clear to King Hussein in 1970 that he turns Jordan into an effective state or else Israel will take action … and he understood that if he does not fight Black September, Jordan will cease to be a monarchy. That is something we cannot live with—we had this phenomenon in Jordan, then in Lebanon. We need to put an end to it, since this could turn into a great ploy. Imagine if next a militia is created in Saudi Arabia, in the region near Eilat [in southern Israel] … and we will end up having to chase every individual militia member—this is unacceptable. It has to be clear. … [I]f your state is not effective, you cannot be a prime minister. You can't be a puppet prime minister. … If a state is not effective, its citizens—and I say this with great unease—those citizens, the citizens of the state, should pay for their choices. (2007: 21–22)

In his testimony, Ramon positioned Lebanon as a strong sovereign state responsible for all actions emanating from its territory. The fact that Lebanon as a state failed to stop Hezbollah from attacking Israel is interpreted as tacit endorsement of Hezbollah's goals. In this narrative, Israel is positioned as the victim, a small nation vulnerable to attack by powerful enemies. The normative underpinnings of this story line reaffirm Israel's right to self-defense against its attackers through strategies of deterrence. In this way, Israel's acts of aggression appear in stark contrast to Hezbollah's. Indeed, in holding the entire state of Lebanon responsible for Hezbollah's actions, Halutz, Ishai, and Ramon proposed attacking the Lebanese infrastructure not for the purpose of killing civilians but merely to disrupt daily life. Halutz suggested without remorse that such attacks would create chaos among the populace, and minister of defense Amir Peretz believed that such destruction would revert the country to a state of devastation Page 89 →similar to what occurred during the civil war (Winograd Committee 2007: 87–88). As Hezbollah missiles continued to fall on Israel's northern communities, Ishai, Ramon, and other government ministers called for razing any village or city that lent support to Hezbollah. Ishai addressed this issue in his testimony by recounting episodes in which Lebanese civilians “hosted” Hezbollah: Page 90 → Committee member: You are talking there [in the cabinet meeting] not just about surgical strikes against a building from which missiles are launched or against a building that serves as a hiding place for rocket launchers. Ishai: [I am talking about razing] entire villages that are sources of fire against Israel. … [The villagers] will know the next time around not to host the guerrillas. (Ishai 2006: 12, lines 4–26) However, during cabinet meetings, the notion that Lebanese civilians colluded with Hezbollah was challenged by other cabinet members (including Peres, Herzog, and in some cases Olmert and Peretz) and by certain IDF generals (Mossad director Meir Dagan; Yuval Diskin, the deputy company commander of the general security service; the head of the National Security Council, Ilan Mizrahi; and the Defense Ministry's chief official for diplomatic affairs, Amos Gilad). Peres stressed that the Lebanese government was too weak to act against Hezbollah and portrayed Lebanon as an ungoverned country riddled with murderers freely roaming about (Peres 2006: 4, lines 4–6). Rejecting the view that Lebanon was “hosting” Hezbollah during the war, Peres argued that, to the contrary, Hezbollah was exploiting the chaos in Lebanon and that Lebanon itself constituted one of Hezbollah's victims. Furthermore, during the cabinet discussions on July 12,2006, Peretz, Olmert, and Herzog indicated that Hezbollah did not enjoy total support among the Lebanese and that attacks on the Lebanese infrastructure would only enhance existing Lebanese support for Hezbollah (Winograd Committee 2007: 76–78; see also Peretz 2007: 18, lines 21–22; 36, lines, 15–22; 37, lines 8–13; Herzog 2007: 36, lines 14–18). Thus, a clear majority of these cabinet members dismissed recommendations by Halutz, Ramon, and Ishai to target the Lebanese infrastructure and by Ramon and Ishai to raze entire villages (see Peretz 2007: 18, lines 21–22; 36, lines 15–22; 37, lines 8–13; see also Herzog 2007: 36, lines 14–18). Civilians as Capital The testimony of most Israeli policymakers reveals a Clausewitzian position that war is the continuation of politics by other means (see Olmert 2007: 4, lines 14–15; 3, lines 16–17; 27, line 30; see also Herzog 2007: 48, line 21; 49, line 12; Dan Halutz 2007: 29, lines 24–27). Ishai used this militaristic perspective to justify intentional targeting of civilians for political Page 91 →purposes. Such attacks, he argued, would generate international pressure for a diplomatic resolution of the war in ways that would be favorable to Israel, an opinion that he recounted before the Winograd Committee: I assumed that [fighting] would be stopped on the diplomatic front. … It always ends that way eventually. That's why I thought we should hit the infrastructure hard right at the start. … This would

create a situation where the world would protest, and I'll tell you the truth, it is preferable that the world will protest and stop us. I had no wish to go into there [land invasion of Lebanon]. … I repeat: I believed we could do the aerial campaign and be done with it … and at that point, excuse me for saying this, we need to invite the diplomatic pressure [for a cease-fire]. (2006: 16, lines 20–27; 41, lines 12–15; see also Livny 2007: 6, lines 4–7)

The strategy laid out by Ishai assumes that Western powers would seek to maintain their endorsement of the international laws of war. In contrast to the “civilians as collaborators” narrative, the Lebanese civilians in this case are depicted as members of a weak state, whereas Israel is portrayed as the strong, clever state that “manipulates” the “world” into intervening. Unlike the “collaboration” narrative that confers agency on the Lebanese state and extends the delegitimation of Hezbollah to the country as a whole, the “civilians as capital” narrative dehumanizes civilians, objectifying them as political capital within the realpolitik framing of international relationships. Figure 5.2 illustrates the structure of such narratives. Despite some confusion among Israeli policymakers regarding the war's military and political objectives, most Israeli leaders recognized the political damage that would result from killing innocent Lebanese civilians. In fact, in contrast to Ishai's view, most Israeli cabinet members and IDF generals thought that a high number of Lebanese civilian casualties would endanger Israel's ability to achieve its military and political goals. These leaders argued that the inevitable outcry from the international community in response to such killings would threaten the kind of political solution that Israel was seeking. In her testimony, Livny expressed fear that attacks on civilians would damage Israel's reputation abroad (2007: 39–40; see similar ideas in Herzog 2007: 15, lines 8–14, 20–25). During the war, Halutz, Olmert, and Peretz warned that such killings would force Israel to stop the military operations prematurely, before inflicting significant harm on Hezbollah. Page 92 → Civilians as Collateral Again, many cabinet members and generals refused to authorize military strikes that targeted Lebanese civilians. Nevertheless, the IDF carried out numerous attacks on the civilian infrastructure—on Beirut Airport, major roads, bridges, tunnels, communication lines, schools, gas stations, and power stations, including the coastal Jiyye Power Station (Amnesty International 2007). These attacks resulted in 1,183 civilian fatalities. How did the Israeli leadership rationalize these actions? The answers lie in part in the analysis of a third narrative—the “civilians as collateral” narrative—that Page 93 →emerges from the testimony of all Israeli policymakers. This narrative casts all of Israel's military actions in Lebanon (including the attacks on civilian targets) as part of a campaign against Hezbollah. Indeed, according to the Winograd Committee's final report (2008), residential buildings became legitimate targets only after Hezbollah used them to store armaments. Attacks on roads, bridges, and airports were essential to prevent Syria and Iran from rearming Hezbollah from afar (Winograd Committee 2008: 327–28). The Winograd Committee noted that before attacking residential areas, Israel urged Lebanese civilians to leave the targeted locations. However, the report ignored the fact that even those who heeded such warnings were endangered by IDF attacks on surrounding roads and bridges. For example, on July 23, seven Lebanese civilians were killed, three of them when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a white minibus carrying nineteen people fleeing the village of Tairi after Israeli forces ordered residents to evacuate. Layal Najib, a twenty-three-year-old photographer for the Lebanese magazine al-Jaras, was killed when Israeli forces struck near her taxi outside of Qana (Shadid 2006). In some cases, civilian killings were explained as the result of unintentional misinformation supplied by the Israeli Air Force regarding the location of Hezbollah strongholds. For example, on July 30, an Israeli missile struck a house in the village of Qana, resulting in the deaths of twenty-eight civilians huddled in a basement shelter. Following this event, Israel stopped its aerial attacks on Lebanon for forty-eight hours and apologized for causing these fatalities.

The explanations offered by Israel's leadership rationalize the civilian fatalities as routine and unintended consequences of modern warfare. In this narrative, civilians are depicted as collateral to the primary forces of war, as insignificant spectators compared to the justifiable and unstoppable machine of war. The leadership's use of dehumanizing terminology when describing Israeli actions and decisions reinforced this stance. Cabinet members spoke routinely about Israeli attacks on “civilian targets” and “infrastructure targets.” The attack on Dahiya, a dense neighborhood in Beirut where Hezbollah maintained its headquarters, became an attack against a “realestate target.” Figure 5.3 illustrates the structure of such narratives. Whereas the “civilians as capital” narratives imply the need to target civilians, the “civilians as collateral” narratives do not because such attacks would be criticized as violations of international law. According to the latter narratives, civilian casualties are rationalized as unintentional byproducts of modern warfare. Members of the Winograd Committee resorted Page 94 →to the “civilians as collateral” narrative to explain the deployment of cluster bombs against populated areas. The committee members conducting the investigation did not directly challenge the army's assertion that its use of cluster bombs fell within the bounds of international law but recognized a lack of clarity regarding the decision to deploy such weapons in villages from which civilians had fled. The committee also found that the use of cluster bombs represented a “lack of clearness of orders and a lack of operational discipline that resulted in deviation from Page 95 →explicit directions regarding the uses of this kind of weapon” (2008: 497–500). The report's discussion about this issue, then, is framed in legalistic and military jargon about unclear orders and unauthorized actions by soldiers in the field rather than in moralistic terms regarding the legitimacy of using of such weapons in areas of civilian population. Furthermore, the notion of an acceptable level of civilian fatalities in the war was not limited to the Lebanese. Olmert and Halutz expressed a willingness to sacrifice Israeli civilians for strategic purposes. According to Halutz, I think that when seven soldiers are killed, the question of the home front is important but not relevant. Otherwise, if we are paralyzed [by thinking about the home front], then we wouldn't be able to respond to anything. (2007: 24, lines 18–20; see also his words during a cabinet meeting as reported in Winograd Committee 2007, 76; Peretz 2007: 22, lines 14–17; 45, lines 1–3) This statement suggests that military operations would have priority over protection of Israeli civilians given certain strategic objectives. Olmert expressed this strange moral differentiation between Israeli civilian casualties and those of Israeli combatants. He repeatedly cast Israeli soldiers as “children” and “my friends' sons” (2007: 72; see also 74). He described his emotional state when he authorized ground operations at the end of the war as the “worst moment of my life.” Despite his expressed sympathy for the IDF soldiers, however, Olmert did not extend these sentiments to the Israeli civilians who he knew would be attacked by Hezbollah or express remorse that in the lead-up to the war, he expected extensive suffering by Israeli citizens (28, 74).

Conclusion This case illustrates a commonality of modern warfare—civilians as the principal victims of combat. Again, as presented in chapter 1, studies of fatalities in armed conflict at the end of the twentieth century reveal that the number of noncombatant casualties greatly exceeds that of legitimate targets (Lacina and Gleditsch 2005). This phenomenon is examined in some studies of terror and genocide (e.g., Catherwood 2002; Juergensmeyer 2003; Staub 1989). Our analysis explains this occurrence in terms of social identity theory and the social-psychological complexity of relationships, Page 96 →attitudes, and interactions between two (or more) outgroups. A strong undercurrent links demonization of Hezbollah with denigration of Lebanese civilians, the result of which is a perceived license for the Israeli leaders to order military attacks on civilian targets. This mutually reinforcing characterization of militant enemies and their noncombatant compatriots can be understood in terms of normative balance (that is, the degree of parallelism of virtues and vices attributed to entire groups) and the collective generality (that is, a homogeneous perception of outgroups versus the presence of a nuanced view that

distinguishes among specific groups). The fate of the Lebanese civilians was determined in part by the alleged interactions between Hezbollah and Lebanese civilians as expressed through three narrative patterns. Some Israeli leaders—including Halutz, Ramon, and Ishai—perceived Lebanese civilians as enemy agents working within an expanded campaign of nations seeking Israel's destruction. In this “collaboration” narrative, Lebanon was positioned as a sovereign state that “hosted” Hezbollah, and Israel was positioned as a victim fighting for its survival. When employing this narrative pattern, Halutz, Ramon, and Ishai called for the intentional targeting of Lebanese civilians to discourage them from (and, in a way, to punish them for) collaborating with Hezbollah. However, other Israeli decision makers—among them Peres, Livny, Herzog, and at times Olmert—were loath to demonize Lebanese civilians and in fact noted stark differences in the goals of Lebanese civilians and those of Hezbollah. However, even these decision makers tended to rationalize civilian war casualties as necessary and unavoidable. In this case, the denigration of Hezbollah indirectly affected the fate of the Lebanese civilians. Nevertheless, this narrative still operated as a powerful sociopsychological source of decisions regarding civilian casualties. The belief in a fixed opposition between the good Israelis and the bad Hezbollah (and their alleged allies) led to unilateral support for any Israeli action and promoted a moral distancing from the fate of Lebanese civilians. This collective assumption is revealed in two story lines—the “civilians as collaborators” and the “civilians as capital” narratives. The “civilians as capital” story line also calls for intentionally targeting Lebanese civilians. However, this narrative does not necessarily attribute negative characteristics to the Lebanese civilians and does not cast Israel as the victim. On the contrary, it positions Israel as a strong state that manipulates the Western powers to intervene, whereas the Lebanese civilians are cast as political capital whose deaths are rationalized by the realpolitik of international relationships. Page 97 → The third narrative pattern, “civilians as collateral,” casts Israel as a strong military power whose actions are guided by legitimate rules of engagement governed by international law. In this narrative, Lebanese civilian casualties are viewed as secondary and unintended products of warfare. Civilian casualties are rationalized as accidental but also unavoidable consequences of the conflict. Whereas the latter two narratives do not stigmatize the Lebanese civilians as the “collaboration” narrative does, they nevertheless vindicate Israel for the suffering of civilians as a consequence of the military campaign. Whether the particular narrative positions Israel as a strong country or as a victim of stronger enemies, whether or not civilians were intentionally targeted, the sociopsychological attitudes associated with rationalizing civilian deaths reinforce normative boundaries between Israel on the one hand and the militant enemy and their civilian compatriots on the other. We believe that the theoretical lens used in this chapter can be applied to other cases, such as the war between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. Future studies should focus on other cases and groups (including Hezbollah) to identify more psychological mechanisms used in determining the fate of civilians in modern warfare.

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6 Better Safe than Dead in Iraq Political leaders' wartime rhetoric is riddled with simple moralistic language. When the nation is at war, civilians at home are barraged with proclamations from their leaders that their cause is just, the nation's ideals are supreme, and the wartime tactics are humane. But when it comes to explaining the all-too-pervasive civilian devastation caused by martial forces, politicians' speeches quickly shift from idealistic rhetoric to riveting accounts of war's “realities” as a means of justifying violence. Because of the realities of war, we are told that “damage” to civilians during combat is unavoidable, inevitable, and to some degree acceptable. No amount of professional training, noble intention, or humanitarian aims can change the “facts” about combat. The leaders' speeches shift, and we find ourselves in a rhetorical landscape in which war is no longer a divine mission but a simply an operating machine or an unstoppable natural disaster. Portraying conflict in these terms leads to the conclusion that no one can possibly eliminate all the violence and suffering that is inflicted on civilians. General William Sherman once famously appealed to this point of view to rationalize the harsh actions of Union troops under his command, including the burning of Atlanta and the forced evacuation of its inhabitants. He appealed to war's realities in his rationale for the “scorched earth” policies of Union soldiers against the population of Georgia during the American Civil War, a wake of destruction memorialized in the catchy tune Marching through Georgia.1 Resurrecting the “war is hell” theme, he declared, “You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war” (quoted in Carr 2002: Page 99 →153).2 The devastation to civilians in this context is framed as simply the unintended, though negative, “by-product” of military operations. The reasoning underpinning this “realities of war” rhetoric casts the tumult of war as routine, uncontrollable, and amoral (outside the realm of morality altogether). And this kind of suffering is presumably forever situated in war—past, present, and future. In this chapter, we argue that the reasoning that supports the “realities of war” logic exhibits elements of an implicitly anticivilian ideology. We define an ideology as a system of beliefs used to legitimize power, explain and judge historical events, identify moral/political rights, and set forth the interconnections (causal and moral) between political and other spheres of activity (McClosky 1964). These aspects of an ideology are embedded tacitly within the “realities of war” value system, and like so many political value systems, its effectiveness and power are bolstered by rhetorical tricks and logical flaws. Though military leaders may employ the “realities of war” explanation as if it is an infallible truth, the logic behind it nevertheless rests on various kinds of irrationalities. We argue that this way of explaining civilian casualties involves factual distortions, illogical premises, and impoverished methods of analysis. These failures are reminiscent of Orwellian doublethink—ignorance is knowledge, vice is a virtue, and the unreal is real. Of course, military leaders have always buried information about the suffering of noncombatants at the hands of their own forces, and the “war is hell” explanation is just another method of dismissing those truths. We acknowledge that the war zone is the province of military forces, and the strategic deployment of such forces will have unintended consequences for all those who lie in their path. We distinguish between those actions of war that are imperfect and unchangeable and those that are preventable. However, this acknowledgment does not justify the forms of deception that underpin official statements by military commanders. Based on accounts from soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq and earlier in Vietnam, we show how these deceptions serve as ideological instruments that foster an insidious repositioning of civilians and rationalize the unjustified killing of civilians. This chapter focuses on the pernicious recharacterization of civilians in times of war. Insinuated in the militaristic framing of warfare, with its polarizing rhetoric—”us against them” and “their gain is our loss”—is a political repositioning of civilians. We can explain the persistence of civilian devastation in modern warfare through exclusionary polarities—good/bad, saint/evildoer, victory/defeat. Such Page 100 →polarities are fueled by ingroup myths of self-glory on the one hand and victimhood as a consequence of outsiders on the other. As it absorbs and projects these increasingly polarized characterizations, the transformed ontology tends to undermine the division between civilians and enemy combatants, attributing similar intentions and motivations to both groups.

This process represents an example of Model 4: In the context of state-sponsored wars, the positioning of the civilian noncombatants in relation to enemy military forces is a causal factor in civilian devastation. In the vast majority of wars involving state-sponsored militaries, civilians' rights are annulled, their dignity lost, and their humanity threatened, while the humanitarian demands to protect civilians (aside from those imposed by international law) are recast as antiquated, quaint, or even dangerous. Civilians are stripped of their capacities for establishing a community, forming a body politic, or creating political institutions. Thus, the preconditions for large-scale slaughter are set in place—some of the outgroup civilians will be “lost” so that the ingroup civilians can be “saved.” We begin by examining the international humanitarian principles of war, with particular attention to the principle of proportionality. We argue that this principle gives military commanders the false impression of providing guidance for rational decision making regarding the fate of civilians. We then develop our critique of the laws of war with a critical reflection on the so-called realities of war explanation of civilian fatalities, which is legend in military circles. Such an explanation presupposes that civilians in a combat zone are “frictions” that potentially impede the smooth functioning of the machines of war. We apply this view to an analysis of the rules of engagement (ROE) for U.S. military forces that are currently operative in the Iraq War. Next, we offer concrete examples that show how these rules are used to control civilians around troop convoys, military checkpoints, and surveillance operations. Through analysis of U.S. soldiers' testimonies, we examine the changing role of civilians under these discursive conditions. We examine the surveillance techniques of U.S. soldiers and show that the result of such techniques can render walking, sitting, and driving fatal for Iraqi civilians. We then establish similarities between dangers faced by Iraqi civilians and those faced by Vietnamese civilians in the presence of U.S. forces fighting the Vietnam War. The next section briefly addresses the social-psychological transformation that U.S. soldiers undergo in military training in preparation for the acts of controlled killing that are expected in war. Page 101 →

Killing Civilians in the Proper Proportion No set of doctrines displays more irony regarding the protection of non-combatants than the international laws of war (LOW) for nation-states. The LOW establish principles of military necessity that dictate when a nation may act in self-defense, how an enemy combatant may be distinguished from civilian noncombatant, and how to limit the use of military force through standards of proportionality. In Directive 5100.77, November 5, 1974, the U.S. Department of Defense adopted three principles that govern armed conflict by U.S. military forces: military necessity, distinction, and proportionality. [1] Military necessity requires combat forces to engage in only those acts necessary to accomplish a legitimate military objective. … [2] Distinction means discriminating between lawful combatant targets and noncombatant targets such as civilians, civilian property, POWs, and wounded personnel who are out of combat. The central idea of distinction is to only engage valid military targets. An indiscriminate attack is one that strikes military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. … [3] Proportionality prohibits the use of any kind or degree of force that exceeds that needed to accomplish the military objective. Proportionality compares the military advantage gained to the harm inflicted while gaining this advantage. Proportionality requires a balancing test between the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated by attacking a legitimate military target and the expected incidental civilian injury or damage. Under this balancing test, excessive incidental losses are prohibited. (Berger, Grimes, and Jensen 2004: 90) Based on the proportionality principle, the force expended to achieve military objectives (even as sanctioned by the mythical notions of “good violence” in defense of the “sacred homeland”) should not be excessive—that is, the force should not exceed that which is required decisively to counter and defuse the hostile act or demonstrated

hostile intent. On closer inspection, the notion of proportionate casualties to civilians exhibits three weaknesses: it is impoverished as a basis for objective decision making, misguided from a humanitarian perspective, and morally objectionable. Page 102 → First, although the principle requires that every operation pass a balancing test regarding excessive incidental loss, there are no uniform standards for codifying the test. No universal measure of proportionate killing has been established by international jurors. International law fails to offer an operational (nonarbitrary) standard for guiding military commanders in the assessment of proportional force—the determination rests entirely with combatants themselves. So what is the proper proportion of civilian “losses” in relation to the anticipated losses of enemy combatants? Is there an objective method for determining whether the military advantage gained is worth the costs in civilian lives? And what exactly is a reasonable balance between the “gain” of enemy deaths and the “loss” of civilian casualties? These challenging normative questions are left to military commanders in the field, to be determined on a target-by-target basis. And what is a nonarbitrary measure of excessive civilian loss? In mathematical terms, military commanders could always resort to the simple notion of counting anticipated noncombatant casualties against anticipated combatant casualties. But then, what is the objective numeric ratio for determining the point at which civilian casualties become excessive? Is there a humane balance of noncombatant casualties to combatant casualties? What is the proper ratio for proportionate killing? Is it 1 civilian casualty to 2 enemy casualties? Or 1 to 1? Or 2.53 to 1? Can one reasonably “weigh” the death of an enemy soldier against the death of a civilian noncombatant? And how can anyone compare the imminent risk to allied troops against the long-term risks in health to civilians resulting from deteriorating conditions brought on by the conflict? Civilians who experience war conditions are routinely subjected to greater health risks from poor nutrition, poor sanitary conditions, and inadequate diet. The frequency of infectious diseases is higher under the conditions that warfare brings than in peaceful conditions (Collier et al. 2003). The principle of proportionality presupposes a requirement to gather sufficient information for rational decision making on the cost/benefits of possible actions. But such a requirement is rarely met during combat. Our point is not that military commanders do not seek a calculus of costs and benefits in times of war but rather that their decisions about proportionate killing of civilians rest unavoidably on empirically thin layer of information of questionable validity. And in the heat of battle, the analytical challenges often lead to liberal interpretations of military necessity. In many cases, the anticipated casualties to noncombatants are allegedly balanced against the predicted harm to the enemy in the distant future based Page 103 →on speculations about the enemy's possible long-term strategy. Many of these speculations are grounded on inadequate or incorrect information. U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon (2007) identified this problem when he castigated the Israeli Defense Force for its disproportionate killing of Lebanese civilians during the Second Lebanon War: This tendency was evident, for example, in the government of Israel's justification for civilian casualties resulting from its military campaign against Hezbollah in 2006, a campaign that was subsequently determined to constitute a significant pattern of excessive indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force. We believe that the difficulties in reaching an objective determination of proportionate killing of civilians are not limited to any particular martial force. From the perspective of rational decision theory as well as the perspective of common sense, it is unreasonable to expect military commanders to gather sufficient information about the probability of devastation to noncombatants, weigh such “negative” outcomes against the “positive” results of enemy killings, and then to act as neutral judges in the “rational” calculation of viable alternatives. Military commanders also routinely forgo reporting on the civilian casualties caused by their troops. Despite the

fact that the U.S. Department of Defense compiles extensive reports on allied troops killed, injured, and missing, the deaths of civilian noncombatants in combat zones often go unreported. The Pentagon rarely compiles statistics on civilian noncombatants whose injuries or deaths result from armed combat involving allied forces.3 In fact, there is no systematic data collection regarding civilian casualties, no organized briefings from combatants in the field, and no routine communication with civilian authorities.4 To a large extent, this lack of data collection reflects the enormous risks of gathering information in a combat zone. Yet without reliable evidence of the slaughter of civilians, no accurate assessment of the “collateral damage” can be achieved. This failure to gather information perpetuates the illusion that the “costs of war” are measurable and are in fact measured by military officials. In this respect, common terms are twisted and ignorance becomes a form of knowledge. Second, the principle of proportionality is misguided from a humanitarian perspective. While the principle rests on a comparative measure of killing and injury, there is no legalistic constraint on the absolute number of civilian fatalities resulting from a military operation as long as the Page 104 →number of enemy casualties is sufficiently high in comparison. Again, jurists of international law have yet to provide a universal standard for determining the “permissible” balance between civilian and enemy combatant casualties. The result in the field is likened to a kind of “futures hedging.” Entire urban centers can be demolished on such grounds. And of course, such has been the case in virtually every military offensive in the state-sponsored wars of the twentieth century. In times of war, military powers routinely inflict enormous devastation on large segments of the foreign population. Third, the proportionality principle is morally objectionable. As the civilian casualties are ostensibly balanced against the anticipated harm to enemy combatants, the instruments of objectification are set in place. Civilians are recast as objects stripped of moral demands and are treated as friction in the machine's operation. From a normative perspective, the principle of proportionality may constitute the only international law that sanctions killing of civilians without judgment of their actions, character, plans, or affiliations. The proportionality principle implies that for purposes of military operations, civilians are cast as functional units that are expendable as long as sufficient military “gain” is anticipated (T. W. Smith 2008: 147). The fate of civilians will not be affected by their vices, behaviors, or intentions but rather by their comparative placement along a spectrum of the objectives and values of the invading force. In many state-sponsored military engagements, foreign noncombatants possess fewer rights than do criminals in the homeland of the conquering armies.

Rules of Engagement Military professionals often characterize warfare as the tumultuous clash of mechanistic forces. Military units—regiment, battalion, section, and ultimately division—function as a sort of machine with many parts, moving in relation to one another to arrive at a configuration that will obtain a specific result (Pick 1993: 171). Within the discipline of military science, the principles that guide decisions inside the closed mechanistic view of war are presumably scientific, extramoral, and fixed. Humanitarian sentiments for life's sanctity, therefore, should not interfere with military operation, nor should emotion invade the complete neutrality of decisions that guide controlled killing. According to Carl von Clausewitz (1991), warfare always embodies a tension between order and disorder, reason and emotion, and predictability Page 105 →and spontaneity. He recognized that the flip side of viewing war in terms of an efficiently functioning machine is that combat is always subject to the unexpected. In times of war, unpredictable encounters threaten to derail the established plans and strategies of engagement (1942: 167). There is always friction, caused by unknown forces and incidents that are impossible to anticipate to any reasonable degree of reliability (291).5 If war operates as a machine, it must be designed to take into account zones of chaotic activities. The “friction” must be held in check, not allowed to interfere with the believed certainty that the human subject is above all else a unified reasoning being (Clausewitz 1991: 50). During combat, civilians are cast as war's friction. They are often entangled within both the orderly and the chaotic effects of military power. A war zone represents a landscape of threats, and within that landscape, civilians are recast as minuscule elements (or objects) that threaten the efficiency of the military. Civilians are bodies subject to various controls for the forces of war. And bodies can be assessed for their contribution to or

interference in the machine's operation. With such control, minute segments of civilian life are subject to surveillance, regulation, and judgment. The mechanistic conception of warfare frames the subject's dominant narrative in political and military institutions. Such a conception enjoys a symbolic profit of normality, familiarity, and apparent universality. The framing of war's “realities” as the clash of mechanistic forces underpins military professionals' strategic thinking. Yet just below the surface of this framing are tacit assumptions about the plight and normative status of civilians, their rights and obligations in times of war, and limitations on “permissible” behaviors. Operating at a subterranean level of thought and deed are unofficial practices of war's agents, practices that include rhetorical disguises of euphemisms, ambiguities, and double meanings (Bourdieu 1984: 118). And essential to this framing are instruments of invisibility through redescription. Insinuated in the technical rationality of waging war, with its measures of combat's costs and benefits, is a set of doctrines that are morally and politically charged. The euphemisms about killing of civilians—as byproducts, collateral, or incidental to war—are legend.6 And though such euphemisms seem self-evident, transparent, and innocuous, they mask an anticivilian mode of thinking that is particularly pernicious given the scale and scope of the stakes at hand. Individual idiosyncrasies—that is, behaviors that cause civilians to function in any other way than as objects to be manipulated—are considered impediments to the efficiency of military machinery and potential Page 106 →dangers threatening the safety of soldiers in combat zones. Civilians can be pushed, pulled, moved, collected, relocated, and even destroyed in service of larger military objectives. They are cast as fragile, self-contained, and irrational regarding military affairs. In contrast to the active parts of the invading force, civilian objects within this framework lack the ability to determine their own fate, engage in rational decision making, or establish plans based on expected costs and benefits. From inside the military mind-set, civilians are by definition “outsiders” because they lack knowledge of the science of war and are unskilled in its instrumentalities. In a war zone, each speck of human existence is subject to assessment for its instrumental value based on the pragmatics of mechanistic efficiency. Soldiers employ various tactics in this kind of assessment. For example, the practice of scanning civilians in a setting of military occupation requires that soldiers keep alert to possible dangers in their environment, observing, surveying, categorizing, dividing, and anticipating certain civilian behaviors. Every detail of civilian behavior is assessed as a potential impediment to the operation of the machine of war. The objective is to reveal any abnormality, dangerous behavior, or security threat. From the perspective of military tactics, scanning appears both innocuous and completely apolitical. At a deeper level, scanning is anything but neutral. Underpinning the act of scanning is a set of instruments that expose human bodies to possible controls. In scanning, the civilian represents a body to be labeled and segmented, inspected and organized, exposed and evaluated. Beneath such a gaze, the civilian body becomes a map, the anatomy of military power in a threatening landscape (Foucault 1995: 215). Employing such methods of detection, civilian noncombatants are reduced to elements embedded in the local terrain. This results in domination over civilians' bodies by a political anatomy of institutions, to use Michel Foucault's term (1995: 137). The primary tool used by U.S. soldiers for controlling “friction” from civilians is deployment of ROE. In general, ROE are conceived in part to protect civilians from the harm that could come to them by “getting in the way” and thereby serve as one of the cornerstones of the operational law discipline (Berger, Grimes, and Jensen 2004: chap. 5). ROE include a wide range of directives for the use of force, including the selection of targets, the procedures for detecting enemy fire, the rules governing civilian and allied forces' property, and the procedures for control and command. The rules include tactics for controlling civilians, regulating their movements, and anticipating their actions. In seeking to protect civilians, these rules prohibit the willful killing, torture, or inhumane treatment of noncombatants.7 Page 107 → Nevertheless, according to the standing ROE for U.S. forces, issued by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2000,

operations must be conducted with minimal risk to U.S. troops (M. Schwartz 2006). A military commander is obligated to anticipate and respond to a potential threat by the enemy with sufficient force to mitigate such risk. One commonality among all the rules given to U.S. soldiers in a combat zone is the injunction for self-defense. The ROE “never limit a commander's inherent authority and obligation to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate action in self defense of the commander's unit and other U.S. forces in the vicinity” (Berger, Grimes, and Jensen 2004: 86). In Iraq, the ROE are no different, giving license to use lethal force on anyone who demonstrates hostile action or hostile intent against allied forces. These two concepts are defined in a January 15, 2000, U.S. Department of Defense directive: Hostile Intent: the threat of imminent use of force by a foreign force or terrorist unit against the United States, U.S. forces, or other designated personas and property. When hostile intent is present, the right exists to use proportional force in self-defense to deter, neutralize, or destroy the threat. Hostile Act: An attack or other use of force by a foreign force or terrorist unit against the United States, U.S. forces, or other designated persons and property, or a use of force intended to preclude or impede the mission of U.S. forces. A hostile act triggers the right to use proportional force in self defense to deter, neutralize, or destroy the threat. (Berger, Grimes, and Jensen 2004: Standing Rules of Engagement for U.S. Forces) The interpretations of these two concepts—hostile action/hostile intent—by U.S. forces have led to a wide range of abuses in the field of battle. The priority for self-protection gives U.S. soldiers enormous license in the use of lethal force. According to the rules, soldiers must recognize a harmful action or harmful intent before they can respond with lethal force. As a result, soldiers in Iraq have operated under a policy that they call “better safe than dead.” One factor that explains war's brutality of civilians centers on soldiers' latitude in interpreting a civilian threat. The priority to protect allied forces over civilians leads logically to an unprecedented vigilance in reading the landscape for possible sources of threat. The determination of a threat rests on indicators that are as fine-grained as physical gestures, facial expressions, Page 108 →or choice of words. Within this framework, there is no limit to equating any markers to a potential threat and no end to the possible faces of danger. Such markers can be found virtually everywhere in the endless possibility of layers of disguises and deceptions. The presence of anyone not employed by the U.S. military in a threat zone can affirm malice.

Iraqis Walking, Sitting, and Driving Of course, many U.S. military commanders in Iraq take great care to minimize civilian casualties. Yet within a threat zone, the benign features of one's surroundings and the trivial events of daily life can be easily recast as signs of hostile intent or hostile action. In some scenarios, the act of running can be a sign of bad intentions. Even sitting can carry an ominous association. A noise, an image of a hat, or a sudden movement can be “proof” of danger. Simply walking casually can unleash deadly results on an unsuspecting civilian, as when a sniper killed a young boy who was walking too close to a military convoy. Running is viewed as particularly suspicious. The routine killing of unarmed Iraqis by U.S. forces is often unofficially rationalized by the aforementioned “better safe than dead” policy. Many encounters with civilians are perceived as threats to soldiers. “Basically it always came down to self-defense and better them than you,” said Sergeant Bobby Yen, who served one year beginning in November 2003 (Hedges and Al-Arian 2007: 24). “Cover your own butt was the first rule of engagement,” according to Lieutenant Jeff Van Engelend. “Someone could look at me the wrong way and I could claim my safety was in threat” (24). Human Rights Watch reports that U.S. checkpoints constantly shift throughout Baghdad and are occasionally not well marked. A dearth of Arabic interpreters and a poor understanding of Iraqi hand gestures cause confusion, with results that are sometime fatal for civilians. At these checkpoints, soldiers sometimes shout conflicting instructions in English with their guns raised: “Stay in the car!” or “Get out of the car!” In many cases of civilian

killings at checkpoints, soldiers are complying with the ROE. For example, U.S. military authorities investigated a checkpoint killing in al-Slaikh and determined that although the shootings were a “regrettable incident,” the soldiers had “acted in accordance with the rules of engagement” (Human Rights Watch 2003). When questioned about the license to fire on civilians, U.S. military commanders in Iraq denied that such tactics violate international humanitarian laws of war.8 But many accusations of brutality come from the Page 109 →combat soldiers who witnessed unwarranted killings. Direct testimony of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq offers graphic accounts of civilian casualties. The ROE for U.S. soldiers in Iraq permit the use of excessive firepower against Iraqi civilians. The narratives presented here are drawn from the testimony of U.S. soldiers at a March 2008 public hearing sponsored by Iraq Veterans against the War. A politically charged and highly contested event, the hearing brought together veterans to discuss a wide range of experiences from their service in Iraq. Of course, such testimony is highly selective and cannot be used to represent a cross-section of experiences of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. We are not suggesting that the testimony serves as convincing evidence for our models or compelling confirmation of our hypotheses presented in chapter 2. But the soldiers' accounts bear witness to what we believe is a common mode of thinking: with the priority given to the safety of allied forces, the indicators of hostile acts or hostile intent are subject to enormous latitude and arbitrary judgments that serve as a source of civilian devastation. In the heat (and fear) of battle, such judgments are intensified by the degree of uncertainty regarding the character and source of hostilities. In other words, as the degree of precision regarding the source of the enemy's firepower decreases, the indicators for the use of return fire become increasingly subjective and arbitrary. The result is ever-expanding license for the indiscriminate use of firepower against civilians, a phenomenon understood by soldiers in Iraq as “better them than us.” Checkpoints Again, the ROE permit the use of deadly force in cases where a soldier is threatened by civilians' harmful intent or harmful actions. In counterinsurgency operations, U.S. forces follow such rules as they man checkpoints at intersections, invade Iraqi homes, and confront civilians in the street. But the standard of harmful intent/harmful action can be subject to bizarre interpretations. In some cases, the ROE provide legalistic cover for unwarranted attacks on civilians, according to the testimony of Jason Lemieux (2008), who served four years and ten months in the U.S. Marine Corps Infantry, including three deployments in Iraq: “The rules of engagement have been broadly defined and loosely enforced to protect U.S. service members at the expense of the Iraq civilians. And anyone who tells you different is a liar or a fool.” Lemieux testified that the ROE changed during the course of the war to increase soldiers' license to use force against Iraqis: Page 110 → During the invasion of Iraq, during the push north to Baghdad, the rules of engagement given to me were gradually reduced to the point of nonexistent. …When we first crossed the Kuwait-Iraq border at Azuber in March 2003, we were operating under Geneva Convention guidelines and were authorized to shoot anyone wearing a military uniform, except for medical and religious personnel, unless they had surrendered. By the time we got to Baghdad, however, I was explicitly told by my chain of command that I could shoot anyone who came closer to me than I felt comfortable with, if that person did not immediately move when I ordered them to do so. Keeping in mind I don't speak Arabic. The general attitude, uh, that I got from my chain of command was “better them than us.” And the guidance that we were given reinforced that attitude across the ranks. It was an attitude I watched intensify greatly throughout the course of my three tours. I remember in January of 2004, attending the formation where we were given what was going to be our mission for our second deployment. … And my commander told me that our mission was, and I quote, “to kill those who need to be killed, and save those who need to be saved.” And that was it. And with those words, he pretty much set the tone for the deployment.

Lemieux went on to explain how a mere feeling of a threat in the presence of civilians could be interpreted as permitting the use of firepower: My officers explicitly told me, and my fellow marines, that if we felt threatened by an Iraqi's presence, we should just shoot them and the officers would “take care of us.” … There was one incident where a roadside bomb exploded. And a few minutes later, I watched the marines start shooting at cars that were driving down the street hundreds of meters away and in the opposite direction from where the IED [improvised explosive device] had exploded. We were too far away to identify who was in the cars and they didn't pose any threat to us. And, for all I could tell, uh, as I was standing about twenty meters away from the marines and three hundred meters from the cars, they were just passing motorists. This commander's reckless and senseless use of force established a precedent for other marines to carry out the same kind of unjustified killings. The uncertainties of establishing a positive identification contribute to the routine killings of innocent civilians. “You can't tell the difference between Page 111 →these people at all,” said Sergeant Mardan. “They all look Arab. They all have beards, facial hair. Honestly, it'll be like walking into China and trying to tell who's in the Communist Party and who's not. It's impossible” (Hedges and Al-Arian 2007:27). Ken Davis, a U.S. soldier in Iraq in 2004, recounted his initiation to the rules for identifying and engaging the enemy: When I came to Iraq, I said to my superiors, “Yes, I'll gun. I'm new here. Just tell me what I'm looking for, and I'll gun all day. But the only thing I need to know is the rules of engagement.” They look at me. I said, “I need to know the rules of engagement. I've never been in a combat zone before.” They said, “If it looks like the enemy, shoot it.” I'm like, “No, no. I'm serious. I need the rules of engagement. What constitutes the enemy?” They said, “We just told you, Sergeant. If it looks like the enemy, shoot it.” And I looked at them and said, “You know, I've really never been outside of the United States. Everything looks like the enemy to me out here.” (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib 2007) According to military officials, more than sixty thousand Iraqis have been arrested and detained since the beginning of the occupation. The “evidence” required for such measures often centers on the smallest details, such as the color of civilians' clothing, the presence of particular newspaper articles in homes, or even the age of the civilians in question.9 The resulting dehumanization of civilians is not surprising in such a setting, a view expressed by Specialist Jeff Englehard: You can honestly see how the Iraqis in general or even Arabs in general are being, you know, kind of like dehumanized. Like it was very common for the U.S. soldiers to call them derogatory terms, like camel jockeys or Jihad Johnny, or, you know, sand nigger. (Hedges and Al-Arian 2007: 14) Said Specialist Michael Harmon, “By calling them names, they're not people anymore. They're just objects” (14). Taxicabs A few soldiers recounted receiving orders to fire on all taxis in an urban intersection. Hart Viges served in the army's Eighty-second Airborne Division from November 2001 to December 2004. He was deployed to Page 112 →Kuwait in February 2003 and then to Iraq in March 2004 with the invasion force. Viges (2008) testified about the lethal risks of driving a taxi in close proximity to a military convoy: One time [our lieutenant colonel] said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for, for transportation. And uh … that in Iraq any car can be a taxicab; you just paint it white and orange and there you have it. And uh, one of the snipers across the radio replied back, “Uh, excuse me, did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?” And the lieutenant colonel replied back, like, “You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.”And once that conversation ended, the town pretty much lit up. All the

units that were in there fired on numerous cars. Again, you know, people witnessed real proof. This, this was my first experience with, with, with war [and it] really kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment.

Of course, in such a setting and with such an order, no positive identification of enemy combatants is possible. Viges had no opportunity to distinguish the enemy from civilian noncombatants. Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, also received orders to target taxi drivers. Washburn (2008) served two tours of duty with the First Battalion, Fourth Marines, Charlie Company, and a third tour of duty with the Third Battalion, First Marines, Weapon Company. Most of the innocents I, uh, actually saw get killed, were behind the wheel of a vehicle, uh, usually a taxi driver. Uh, I've been present for almost a dozen of those, uh, types of people got killed just driving. Uh, during my third deployment there was a rule in place where all Iraqi traffic had to pull off of the road to let military convoys pass by. If they didn't comply or someone got back on the road too early, they would get shot up. If they approached the checkpoint too fast or too recklessly, uh, they would get shot up. Often we were told to be on the lookout for, uh, vehicle-borne IEDs, uh, matching the description of every taxi in Iraq—um, you know, be on the lookout for a car that has orange-paneled doors, and, you know, a front that's white or, you know, vice versa. And it's like every taxi in Iraq, that's exactly what it looks like. … So quite a few of those guys got shot up just because their car looked like what we were told to look out for. Page 113 → Moving Too Fast or Too Slow In some cases, the speed of a civilian's car served as a basis for deadly force. In one instance, the soldiers operating at a checkpoint received orders to fire on all approaching vehicles that did not slow down to five miles per hour. Adam Kokesh (2008), who served from February to September 2004 with a Marine Corps civil affairs team in Fallujah, recalled one incident in which a minor act of civilian noncompliance led to lethal results: In the first couple days we were [in Iraq], there was a checkpoint shooting, uh, to the west of our perimeter. … We were told that a higher rate of speed … caused them to be suspicious. And they unloaded into the vehicle with a fifty-caliber machine gun. And the idea is that anyone coming at your position who doesn't slow down to five miles an hour has to be an enemy combatant. … [S]o the bullets started at the bumper and went up through the engine compartment, and then one round at least hit this Iraqi in the chest so hard that it broke his chair backwards. In regions where enemy combatants operate, the actions of driving too slowly are often perceived as expressions of harmful intent. On one occasion, when a military convoy was moving through an urban area with orders not to stop, some soldiers shot civilian drivers who “got in the way” or did not get out of the way quickly enough. In some cases, when the soldiers feel cars are too closely following convoys, the soldiers open fire on the cars, injuring or killing their occupants. Following any kind of explosion, soldiers have fired indiscriminately, typically from belt-fed fifty-caliber machine guns. Scores of civilian wounded or dead have been left in their wake (Hedges and Al-Arian 2007: 16–17). “One example I can give you, you know, we'd be cruising down the road in a convoy and all of the sudden, an IED blows up,” said Specialist Ben Schrader, who served in Baquba from February 2004 to February 2005. He continued, And you know, you've got these scared kids on these guns, and they just start opening fire. And there could be innocent people everywhere. And I've seen this, I mean, on numerous occasions where innocent people died because we're cruising down and a bomb goes off. (Hedges and Al-Arian 2007:

17)

Page 114 → Jason Hurd (2008), who completed ten years of honorable service in the U.S. Army and the Tennessee National Guard and who served in central Baghdad from November 2004 to November 2005, testified, Individuals from my unit indiscriminately and unnecessarily opened fire on innocent civilians as they were driving down the road on their own streets. My unit, individuals from my platoon, would fire into the grilles of these cars and then come back in the evenings, after missions were done, and brag about it. At checkpoints, civilians are often unsure whether to stop, go, speed up, slow down, or drive in a certain lane. And in some cases, civilians have been targeted even when they complied with soldiers' commands. Free-Fire Zones Of course, a common setting for the indiscriminate use of firepower against civilians is free-fire zones. After a town is designated as a threat to allied forces, civilians are often subject to deadly force. Clifton Hicks was a private in C Troop of the First Squadron of the First Cavalry Regiment. According to Hicks (2008), First item: April 2004, Free-fire zone in Abu Ghraib neighborhood of Baghdad. During operation Blackjack, my troop was specifically instructed by our troop commander, a captain, that a particular sector that we were moving to recon enforce was now considered a free-fire zone. I specifically recall him telling us that there were “no friendlies” in the area. And then he specifically said, “Game on. All weapons free.” I support and understand these are not unusual orders. … Upon arrival in the area, we found the streets … littered with wreckage of vehicles—who knows if it's a civilian vehicle or an enemy vehicle, there's no way to tell—… but wreckage of vehicles. There wasn't a single building in this neighborhood that hadn't had a hole shot through it or something explode inside of it. This place was totally destroyed. The streets were littered with numerous human and animal corpses. Uh, not just men, uh, but all matter of humanity. Uh, I personally saw no military gear or weapons of any kind on any of the bodies that I came across. I personally did not fire my weapon on this operation. But I do know that other members Page 115 →of my unit embraced the weapons-free order by firing, for example, huh, by firing indiscriminately in occupied civilian vehicles and at civilians themselves using both personal weapons, such as rifles, and of course vehicle mounted weapons such as machine guns, uh, coaxial machine guns of various calibers. The reference to “game on” indicates an unsettling disposition among soldiers to view combat in terms of playing a video game or hunting animals in the wild. Hicks (2008) went on to recount the results of receiving free-fire orders in Baghdad. Such orders seem to be warranted for self-protection in an environment where the enemy cannot be distinguished from non-combatants. It's common knowledge among the men of my squadron that the unit which we relieved in the summer of 2003, which was 37 Cavalry of the Third Infantry Division, had also been given free-fire orders when they first entered Baghdad in the spring of that year. Many of the men in 37 told stories of massive civilian casualties and in some cases direct orders to inflict such casualties. Uh, they claimed, as a matter of fact, that they literally—literally this is what they said—honest to a man that they had killed everything and everyone who dared to show themselves. That means animals, people, anything. Uh, this is what happens when a conventional force, such as the U.S. military, attacks a heavily populated urban area. Um, they put us in a situation, you know, we're not bad people, uh, you know, we were there because we thought it was the right thing to do. We were there because we thought we were going to make things better. We were there because we thought these people wanted

us to be there. And then you show up and you realize that there's a whole bunch of people who want to kill you. And guess what—they look just like the folks that don't want to kill you. So are you gonna sort them out and figure it out? The only way to ensure your survival is to make sure that you put them in the dirt before they put you in the dirt, to put it bluntly. And I'm sorry to say that.

Echoes of Vietnam The priority for self-protection over civilian protection echoes the “better safe than dead” perspective on combat adopted by U.S. troops fighting in Page 116 →Vietnam. U.S. forces in Vietnam had a pervasive lack of detailed knowledge about enemy actions, intentions, plans, mind-set, behaviors, and strategies in a combat zone that permitted a wide range of “defensive” measures. For example, one soldier remembered that Captain Ernest Medina, the company commander of troops in the infamous My Lai massacre, provided orders to kill civilians without adequate information about their purpose or intent: “Anybody that was running from us, hiding from us, or who appeared to us to be the enemy. If a man was running, shoot him; sometimes even if a woman with a rifle was running, shoot her” (Walzer 1977: 310). In another engagement, Barry Kavanagh described a night when his platoon heard “some scuffling in the bushes” and opened fire. In the morning “we discovered it's a party of schoolgirls who had been missing from a nearby village” (Bourke 1999: 166). These accounts exemplify the lethal results that can occur when the ROE, blindly followed, collide with total ignorance of the threat landscape to which those rules apply. This irony is illustrated in riveting detail in a letter written by a U.S. soldier fighting in Vietnam regarding the My Lai massacre: In an operation of this size, there is a lot of confusion. Intelligence reports said the hill was heavily fortified and that only [North Vietnamese soldiers] and their families live there. A report of that kind makes you trigger-happy. There is a saying here, “better safe than dead.” Everyone is nervous when moving in. All it takes is one person firing in the air, and everyone assumes that there is contact and they are under fire. Any civilians nearby become expendable on the theory that you cannot take a chance on their having concealed weapons or chicoms [grenades]. Then, with everyone firing in all directions, people get carried away, like a mob. Everyone is doing it, but no one is leading it. All nonGI's become suspected enemy. By the time you find out if someone has a weapon or is a simple farmer, he could empty 30 rounds from an AK-47 in you. … I am not condoning My Lai. There is no doubt that a massacre took place. If you enrage and tease a lion, and then an innocent person comes along and pets the lion, the innocent person will be mauled. People who think that troops should always restrain themselves are simply asking too much of human nature. They sit in the carpeted homes and say, “Control yourselves, don't give in to your emotions.” They've never had a friend hit a booby trap and shipped the pieces home in a rubber sack. Let them tell me what to write to Page 117 →a man's wife or parents. Control yourselves, your husband/son is dead. Or to his buddies. Control yourself, your friend who you slept with, ate with, and patrolled with, is dead; but don't feel any hatred. (Carroll 2001, 422–23) The writer explains the atrocities committed in My Lai based on his knowledge of military training, his experiences in the combat environment in Vietnam, and his understanding of a soldier's “impotent rage.” The author takes the stance of a knowledgeable authority on soldiers' reactions to military operations. In this war zone, the tactics associated with self-protection demand a high level of suspicion of civilians living in and around the area. They are repositioned as elements within a threat landscape. When receiving enemy fire from an unseen source, soldiers return enemy fire, even under conditions of uncertainty about who is firing. Those soldiers who wait around for positive identification of the source of combat make up the dead in Vietnam. In A Rumor of War, Philip Caputo recounted an incident in which bodily movement offered sufficient justification for killing civilians:

Peterson concluded by reading instructions from brigade concerning rules of engagement. The day before, a rifleman in B Company had shot a farmer, apparently mistaking him for a VC [Viet Cong]. To avoid similar incidents in the future, brigade again ordered that [rifle] chambers be kept clear except when contact was imminent, and in guerrilla-controlled areas, no fire be directed at unarmed Vietnamese unless they were running. A running Vietnamese was a fair target. This left us bewildered and uneasy. No one was eager to shoot civilians. Why should the act of running identify someone as a Communist? The skipper finally said, “Look, I don't know what this is supposed to mean, but I talked to battalion and they said that as far as they're concerned, if he's dead and Vietnamese, he's VC.” (1977: 73–74) The resultant imposition of a death sentence on all civilians who were seen running was repeated throughout the war (230). In other settings, the act of sitting—or staying put—proved fatal. According to eyewitness testimony, civilians who violated orders to move to relocation camps could be executed. For example, Lieutenant James Hawkins justified killing farmers on the grounds that they failed to move Page 118 →to such camps. “Anything in [that area] was game. If it was living, it was subject to be eliminated” (Sallah and Weiss 2003b: 6). “We killed anything that walked.” “It didn't matter if they were civilians. They shouldn't have been there” (Sallah and Weiss 2003c: 5). Whether or not they saw civilians running, some soldiers believed that the ROE gave them license to fire on civilians for any reason. William Doyle, a former Tiger Force sergeant, lost count of the number of civilians he killed: “So you did any goddamn thing you felt like doing—especially to stay alive. The way to live is to kill because you don't have to worry about anybody who's dead” (Sallah and Weiss 2003a: 3). The lines between civilians simply refusing to leave and the active, communist enemy became increasingly blurred (Sallah and Weiss 2003a: 6). For ten days beginning on November 11, 1967, platoon members claimed to be killing Viet Cong, reporting a total of forty-nine deaths in that period. But army records show that in forty-six of those cases, no weapons were found on those killed. One soldier recalled a report to commanders. “We would call in on the radio—'seven VC running from hut. Shot and killed'—Hell, they weren't running. We didn't know if they were VC” (Sallah and Weiss 2003a: 11). During the day, soldiers would round up people to send to relocation camps. At night, platoon members huddled in camps on the valley floor, dodging grenades hurled by enemy soldiers in the mountains who had clearly not been among those sent to the camps. Even babies could be seen as threatening. During his court-martial hearing, in which he was convicted of atrocities committed in My Lai, Lieutenant William L. Calley identified babies as sources of threat. “The old men, the women, the children—the babies—were all VC or would be VC in about three years,” he claimed. “And inside the VC women, I guess there were a thousand little VC now” (1971: 8, 84). Calley felt no remorse for slaughtering hundreds of old men, women, and children on a single day in March 1968. After all, he reasoned, “what the hell else is war than killing people?” (Bourke 1999: 159). In the same court-martial proceedings, Paul Meadlo testified, “I thought [the babies] had some sort of chain or a little string they had to give a little pull and they blow us up” (160). Other soldiers accused of committing atrocities at My Lai testified that babies could carry and/or detonate loaded grenades (Hammer 1971: 29).10 A 1971 survey of 108 U.S. Army general officers who served in Vietnam confirmed the commission of atrocities as common practice within many army and marine divisions. Fewer than one-fifth of these officers believed that the ROE had been “carefully adhered to throughout the chain of command” (Kinnard 1975: 451). Almost 15 percent claimed that the ROE Page 119 →were “not particularly considered in the day-to-day conduct of the war” (451). And 86 percent of the members of of Vietnam Veterans against the War believed that what happened at My Lai was common or “one of many similar incidents.” Moreover, 40 percent of Vietnam Veterans against the War said that they had witnessed the shooting of civilians (Helmer 1974: 202–3).

Military Training Clausewitz stressed the importance of certain subjective factors in combat, including life, emotion, character, and possibly genius (Pick 1993: 36). These factors are recognized in military training. Young recruits frequently acquire warlike tendencies and an associated black-and-white moralistic framework from a heightened

consumption of jingoistic fervor that glorifies their nation. The enemy is vicious, wicked, immoral, criminal, uncivilized, reprehensible, and depraved. We are virtuous, praiseworthy, pure, noble, angelic, and even godlike. Lurking behind these intense nationalistic feelings is a passionate yearning for exaltation, the kind that war alone delivers. To those who imbibe the nationalist myth, life is transformed into an immense battleground, inhabited by a small remnant of good guys who prefer peace but are forced to confront hordes of bad guys who must be hated and killed. By embracing such a myth (which also contains overtones of the sacred), the “nation's faithful” are secure in their divine origins and are unanswerable to the fleeting events of history (Hedges 2002: 54). These mythic and subjective dimensions of warfare are exploited and intensified through the techniques of military training. Of course, the purpose of military training is to prepare recruits physically for violent encounters and procedurally for their role in the well-functioning “machine,” but the training process equally establishes a psychological absolution for acts of “good violence” in response to the enemy's “bad violence.” How does military training override every instinct of self-preservation and enable recruits to throw themselves into battle and continue fighting? We believe that military training confers on recruits a way of thinking that rests on a collective axiology. Military training is one vehicle for imprinting a particular axiology on the collective by instilling in recruits moralistic categories of the virtuous national self in opposition to the amoral, vicious outsider—”all enemies, foreign and domestic,” according to the oath sworn by U.S. soldiers. Such categories enable recruits to make essentialist Page 120 →distinctions between ingroup and outgroup morality, conferring not only total legitimacy on ingroup members but also honor on the act of killing as long as it is done within prescribed limits of “civilized” behavior. In their capacity as an official arm of state power, soldiers act as surrogates for the state in confrontations with enemies. The state in turn legitimizes violence undertaken on its behalf through the myth of a morally supreme “civilized” war as opposed the morally depraved “savagery” committed by those who kill without official sanction—or who kill with someone else's “misguided” sanction. In this way, the powerful cultural practice of sanctioned violence is extended from the days when military forces were guided by leaders who fought under the banner of divine legitimacy. Through training and indoctrination, a “true soldier” acquires membership in a moral/political community and commits to reciprocal obligations to act fairly, justly, and in a civilized manner. A military “hero” embodies a cluster of characteristics, including bravery, sacrifice, and strength, and inhabits a sacred and rare identity through acts of sacrifice and devotion to a worthy, noble cause (Jabri 1996). The military world-view is fleshed out in codes of conduct that offer legitimacy, authority, justice, and especially absolution to obedient soldiers—and that conversely make outcast, through the removal of these same rewards, the noncompliant soldier. The world of the military establishes power, absolutions, and justifications for “right life” and “good violence.” In particular, the formation of military identity rests on the cognitive instruments of axiological bordering—on the icons, moral discourse, and conceptual models of purity and contamination familiar to scholars of fundamentalist religions. These cognitive mechanisms, which rationalize and absolve the would-be soldier who commits acts of “good violence” and vilify the enemy combatants who commit acts of “bad violence,” rest on clear categories of virtue and vice, the noble cause and the demonic deed. In conferring a collective axiology on young recruits, military training also includes a transformation in normative commitments. The framing of warfare in terms of exclusionary polarities—ally/enemy, victory/defeat, courage /cowardice—has a pernicious effect on how soldiers view civilians. Over time, the rules and resources regarding efficient military operations demand an ideology of civilian powerlessness (as objects impeding efficiency). The instruments for achieving this ideology are situated in the use of words, the control of ideas, and the standards for proper conduct toward civilians. For military ethics, the notion of good violence is framed by categories of heroism and evil—violence is good when it is conducted by heroic Page 121 →figures (the ingroup) against agents of evil (the outgroup). Military training provides the key to decoding what is good and what is evil; the military identity is anchored, as so many collective identities are, in the sacred “truths” of primordial origins. The origin of most military/nation-state identities is generally a mythic war or struggle, not necessarily a specific one, locatable in one place in time. Rather, this mythic war, initially the birth impetus of the ingroup, recurs continually in the struggles of all generations, gaining new heroes and new creators. Heroes who embody the ideals of the temporal world are

created and reinforced through engagements in the temporal world, and contemporary soldiers draw power and motivation not only from their mythic-symbolic connection to the heroic past but also from the possibility that they can become new avatars. Thus, moral absolution for an act of “good violence” is achieved when certain martial encounters in the temporal world of human beings mimic interactions among idealized figures in a transcendent realm. Even “dying for the cause” can be proof of one's sacred identity defined by categories from the narrative structure of a sacred myth. This conference of sacredness is especially meaningful given the conditions of mental, emotional, and physical deprivations that both the fundamentalist religious zealot and the soldier deliberately undertake.

Conclusion Fear of the unknown only exacerbates the conditions for civilian violence. In a threat landscape, soldiers often operate under the fear of falsely identifying combatants as civilians. The consequences of a false negative identification can be lethal to soldiers, since a combatant masquerading as an innocent civilian can get close enough to inflict harm. Conversely, a false positive determination—misidentifying a civilian as an enemy combatant—is likely to have less harmful consequences for soldiers. It is not difficult to imagine which mistake generates the most fear or which mistake is the most avoided by applying force. In many military operations, overly aggressive soldiers can imagine and attempt to predict civilians acting in a harmful way. Under the emotional stresses of war, it is easy to distort the probability of such destructive attacks. But the possibility of such an attack or threat is endlessly “actionable,” living as it does within the realm of an idealized future. Entertaining a threat's probability brings it back into the realm of measurable reality. Vigilance against the enemy is necessary to survive but never completely finalized; the self is constantly Page 122 →threatened by the fear of what is possible. When soldiers characterize babies as sources of threat, we witness the full irony of the “better safe than dead” policy: the less soldiers know about the civilian population—their actions, behaviors, mind-set, strategies, and mission of the enemy—the more license soldiers have to act “defensively” via the use of deadly force. Of course, warfare provokes in some soldiers measures that subvert the rules, regulations, and principles of international law. Particularly disturbing is the practice of recasting civilians as the enemy after their deaths. One horrific irony of combat in civilian areas is that after actions against civilians are taken, their status is retroactively “confirmed” as harmful, suspicious, or dangerous despite evidence to the contrary. In some cases, those killed in Iraq by U.S. forces would later be identified as enemy insurgents after weapons such as AK-47s were planted next to their bodies (Hedges and Al-Arian 2007: 21). Cavalry scout Joe Hatcher said that soldiers often carried around extra weapons for precisely this purpose: “Every good cop carries a throwaway. If you kill someone and they're unarmed, you just drop one on ‘em” (Hedges and Al-Arian 2007: 21). But aside from such corruptions, warfare between nations creates an environment for the systematic plunder of civilians. In the Iraq War, the rationale used to justify the many civilian fatalities centers on the need to eradicate potential threats—a contemporary version of “better safe than dead.” As in Vietnam, soldiers in Iraq operate with scant knowledge of the culture, language, plans, and intentions of the local civilians they are meant to detect and protect. Taken to an extreme, prioritizing the safety of U.S. forces over that of war's silent participants can rationalize virtually any form of violence against civilians. Many of the atrocities committed in both Vietnam and Iraq can be explained as an important consequence of the ROE: the demand for complete safety of allied troops combined with near-total ignorance of civilians' culture, plans, and ultimately intent provides ideal conditions for structural violence against those civilians.

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Part Two: Conflict Theory as Value Theory Why are civilians routinely killed in armed conflict at a far greater rate than combatants? Does this fact reflect a pattern of systematic atrocity in armed conflicts globally? These questions are central to our analysis of conflict theory, and from them we have drawn new models for assessing cases of protracted conflict. To address these questions, we should explore the interconnected repercussions that armed conflicts engender—no act of violence stands alone. All conflicts incur consequences—positive and negative, foreseen and unexpected, subtle for some and fatal for others. Violence sets in motion an unending sequence of occurrences that can never be fully anticipated. To act violently and to suffer violence are opposite sides of the same coin, and the story begun by an act of violence is composed of its initial deed and consequent sufferings (Arendt 1958a: 190). To those experiencing such suffering, the taints of criminality, degeneracy, and evil can quickly spread to all those living in proximity to the militant enemy. In Part I, we showed that the tumultuous clash of martial forces in armed conflict routinely devastates its weakest participants. Such destruction can be linked systematically with the pattern in which both kinds of Others (militant and nonmilitant) are characterized by the ingroup. Model 1 represents cases in which the denigration of the militant enemy extends, like a taint, to the general population. According to this model, the ingroup characterization of the threatening Other is a causal factor in the positioning of the civilian Other. In other cases, the taint moves in the opposite direction from its origin in the essence of the civilian population to the enemy militants. This process is captured in Model 2, according to which the ingroup characterization of the civilian Other is a causal factor in the positioning of the militant Other. Yet in some cases of protracted violent conflict, both forms of stigmatization operate to mutual effect. This dual stigmatization process confers the mantle of a self-evident truth about the social-political “realities” of the enemy land, as if the pernicious character of both enemy civilians and militants is part of the natural terrain that engulfs them. Bolstered by these “realities,” the injunctions for conquest seem self-evident, axiomatic, and irrefutable. This correlation is captured in Model 3, according to Page 124 →which the ingroup portrayal of the relations between the militant Other and the civilian Other is causally linked to injunctions (commands, orders, directives, proclamations, decrees, or strategies) that target civilians. A special case of this model represents conflicts in which state-sponsored militaries engage in combat in heavily populated areas. Model 4 holds that for state-sponsored wars, the positioning of civilians in relation to enemy militants is a causal factor in civilian devastation. The four cases of devastation presented in Part I reflect the workings of an anticivilian ideology that relies on instruments for disguise, deception, and fabrication. This ideology elevates categories of ingroup purity and outgroup danger to essential realities while suppressing the principles of a universal ethic for the protection of all the world's civilians. The four case studies of civilian victims of conflict—Crimean Tatars during and after World War II, Tutsi preceding the Rwandan genocide, Lebanese civilians during the Second Lebanon War, and Iraqi civilians in the current Iraq War—illustrate the impact of a dominant narrative that “exposes” an interdependency between enemy militants and their civilians and insinuates characterizations that serve the needs of the (ingroup) conflict protagonists. From the perspective of military commanders operating in a combat zone, such interactions are rarely innocent and inconsequential. In some cases, the bond established between enemy militants and civilians represents a deadly alliance that threatens the security of the allied forces and/or the members of the ingroup. As we showed in chapter 3, Levrentii Beria cast all Crimean Tatars as enemies of the Soviet Union and as threats to the general population. In another case, Hutu extremists castigated all Tutsi for their desire to subject Hutus to feudal domination (chapter 4). During the Second Lebanon War, some Israeli leaders denigrated all Lebanese civilians living in the southern portion of the country for their believed support of Hezbollah (chapter 5). And in yet another case, the Page 125 →tactics deployed by U.S. forces in Iraq objectified Iraqi civilians as potential threats (friction) to the efficiency of the allied military machine (chapter 6).

In Part II of this book, we delve into the theoretical underpinnings of our findings by focusing on critical elements of this anticivilian ideology. The chapters in Part II are introduced separately via four distinct questions. Question 1: How should we understand identity and difference between protagonists in a protracted conflict? This question is addressed explicitly in chapter 7, where we offer a critical review of social identity theory, highlighting the important findings that have emerged in recent research on group dynamics. Our review reveals important topics that are underexamined in the field, such as the increasing influence of a group's values over personal values in the formation of dominant social identity and how the impact of relations to a third group (such as civilians) can alter relations between the ingroup and the outgroup. Question 2: What is the precise character of the salience of group identity—religious, political, or nationalistic—in protracted violent conflict? This question is answered in chapter 8, where we focus on the ingroup's sense of virtue and vice, right and wrong, and good and evil in relations with outsiders. We call these normative constructions the collective axiology of an identity group. The collective axiology establishes obligations that compel some to act according to their duties, demands rights from others, and establishes judgments of character through the attribution of virtues and vices to members of the ingroup and outgroup, respectively. As the salience of group identity increases, such obligations extend beyond the immediacy of particular actions in a particular time to a realm of something more permanent, enduring, and potentially universal. This unity of purpose is manifested in connections across generations achieved through the use of symbols, myths, stories, and icons. We focus on the power that threat narratives exert on a protagonist group. Such narratives confer on group members an existential orientation, establishing their placement (as victims) in a dangerous world and offering a rationale for Page 126 →violent retribution. Threat narratives include stories of violence and victims, dangers and purity in ways that affirm ingroup and outgroup identities with respect to virtues and vices. Question 3: What exactly is an identity-based conflict? In chapter 9, we examine this question and adopt a dynamic perspective in which we define identity conflicts in terms of four stages of increasing salience of ingroup glorification and outgroup denigration. In the final stage, normative commitments become prominent and emerge from the practices of devaluation and dehumanization of the Other. These normative commitments establish a value system in which violent actions against outgroups are justified in moralistic terms, causing a new turn in the conflict spiral of violence. Question 4: What is the notion of causality that guides explanations of civilian fatalities? This is the major question of chapter 10. Underpinning any rigorous study of group violence are philosophical commitments to the nature of causality, the exact relationship between a causal event and an effect, and the nature of a causal mechanism. These commitments are rarely made explicit, and their importance is easily missed in theories of the nature of war. In seeking to explain civilian fatalities, it is tempting to take the view that the civilian's fate is an effect of brute forces, such as a soldier's action or the brutal force of military weapons. Although this simple cause-and-effect relationship is certainly accurate and relevant, we argue that it is an impoverished way to explain civilian devastation, since it lacks a full understanding of the discursive forces at work. Revitalizing pivotal themes from the philosophy of social science, we develop a conception of causation that is novel for conflict analysis and that can satisfy the explanatory goals and methodological standards of contemporary researchers in our field. This conception, which centers on what we call formal/telic causation, finds expression in a moralpolitik of group identities—a conception of ingroup identity that is fused with the politics of outgroup relations. Thus, for protagonists with a high salience of group identity, memories of past tragedies foster a logicality of action concerning the “necessary” responses to the enemy's deeds, the inevitability of conflict, and the need for vigilance in the face of enormous sacrifice.

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7 Limitations of Social Identity Theories in Relation to Conflict Analysis Again, in this book we explain civilian devastation in violent conflict through intergroup relations between militant Other and the civilian Other. We examine notions of the two Others from the perspective of the ingroup, how both groups presumably plan, scheme, conspire, strategize, collude, join together, or unite forces in ways that threaten ingroup security. In the context of such alleged conspiratorial union, we study the instruments of civilian devaluation that operate in full force before and during protracted conflicts. Our research centers a kind of identity conversion from citizens in a body politic to civilians engulfed in protracted conflict. Such a conversion is evident in a myriad of constructed forms—the rhetoric, categories, and doctrines of armed conflict—that represents, in most cases, an annulment of preconflict political identity. We draw on the categories and principles of social identity theory to reveal critical elements of this conversion. As an academic discipline, identity studies has experienced important advances in recent decades, especially in the area of understanding negativities between identity groups (racial, nationalistic, ethnic, religious). Most social scientists characterize social identity as dynamic, socially constructed, and amenable to some degree of personal choice. But to our knowledge, no body of academic research has framed the combatant/noncombatant distinction through the analytical categories and doctrines of social identity theory, and no findings give rigorous attention to this distinction through the lens of social identity and difference. We believe that this omission has contributed to many academics' shallow explanations of civilian devastation. To redress this failing, we examine certain advances Page 128 →in identity studies, drawing special attention to the achievements of recent researchers in the field while stressing the inattention to some important elements of social identity. In this chapter we offer a critical review of the major developments in social identity theory, noting major achievements in recent decades and evaluating deficiencies. We organize this review around three topics: (1) sources and motives for identity, (2) depersonalization and loyalty to the ingroup, and (3) intergroup relations. We conclude the chapter with a novel proposal for framing and defining the formation of group identity. We argue that in many conflict settings where the salience to group identity is quite high, a single, dominant identity establishes a seemingly fixed opposition between “we” and “they.” Such a duality is defined by categories of virtues and vices, conferring on group identities an axiology of difference that underpins the sort of rationale that is common in prolonged conflicts.

Sources and Motives for Identity A central topic of social scientific research is the formation of social identity. By the middle of the twentieth century, social identity was recognized as the bridge between individual psychology and the structure of social groups. Every social scientific discipline sought to explain the dynamics of “social identity” and its impact on social processes. Psychoanalysis examined the role of social identity in ethnic conflicts and cycles of violence (Volkan 1997, 2004). Anthropologists studied the cultural dimensions of identity formation as well as the impact of social identity on group boundaries (Barth 1969; Cohen 1986). Social psychologists analyzed social identity in the process of intergroup relations, prejudice, and group conflicts (Tajfel 1986; Turner et al. 1987). Sociologists evaluated social relationships between personality and society (Giddens 1991; Jenkins 1996; Stryker 2000). Political scientists explored the role of social identity in domestic and international conflicts (Brubaker 1996; Fisher 1997; Gellner 1994; Gurr 1970; Tilly 2005). Sociologists tend to frame group identities through internalized rules, expectations, and norms connected to specific social roles (Stryker 2000; Stryker and Burke 2000). These researchers characterize a social group as a set of individuals who act according to socially defined roles. By accepting a social role, a person implicitly establishes a relative stance to others Page 129 →and to the social system as a whole. Thus, role identity is defined in the process of interaction with others within a broad intergroup context.

Sociopsychological theories of social identity emphasize intergroup relations and categorical distinctions as a source for social identity (Tajfel 1986; Turner et al. 1987). In this context, social identity is a result of the processes of identification with other group members who share common characteristics, social experiences, and behaviors. A person's social identity reflects his or her compliance with these commonalities. Thus, social identity is developed through the affiliation of individuals to different groups, along with a determination of position in society. Social identity theorists stress how positive social identity can be achieved through intergroup comparison and through intragroup exaggeration of virtues. Experiments with simple social categorizations showed that the introduction of new simple social category was sufficient for the development of the positive estimation and support of group members (Allen and Wilder 1975; Billig and Tajfel 1973; Brewer and Silver 1978; Doise and Sinclair 1973; Tajfel et al. 1971). In such experiments, subjects are randomly assigned to groups, which are intended to be as meaningless as possible. For example, by taking a test, the subjects of the experiment were divided into two groups: one group preferred the art of Wassily Kandinsky, and the other group preferred Paul Klee. The subjects were asked to distribute rewards for the participation in the experiment between members of both their own group and the other group. It was found that people tend to award more money to people who are identified as ingroup members. Two social-psychological theories that emerged from these famous experiments, social identity theory and social categorization theory, differ in their understandings of the main motives for identity. The theory of social identity stresses the importance of two factors in the process of identity development. First, the cognitive factor centers on the process of social categorizations and intergroup comparison; second, the emotional factor deals with feelings of inclusion, such as love, hate, amity, and enmity. Researchers of social categorization theory describe group processes in terms of the functions of self-conceptions, stressing that group processes influence self-categorization, perception, and learning. Such processes are determined by a common shared membership in the group; individuals categorize themselves as members of social categories, perceiving and estimating themselves in terms of these categories. Self-identification occurs in three stages. During the first stage, individuals Page 130 →define themselves as members of a social group; in the second stage, they learn the stereotypes and norms of the group; and in the third, group categories influence the perception and understanding of all situations in a particular context. Through these three stages, an individual acquires a sense of cognitive clarity that unifies perceptions around certain shared categories (Oakes 1987). Yet social categorization theorists also recognize the importance of emotional connections with the group. As Michael A. Hogg (1992) stresses, social identity results from unity among ingroup members and ingroup relations and rests on positive attitudes toward the prototype. The cognitive roots of social identity were also accentuated in Marilynn Brewer's theory of “optimal distinctiveness” (1996, 2000, 2001). According to the homeostatic model of this theory, most people continually seek a balance between differentiation (the need for distinction from the group) and inclusiveness (the need for the attachment to the group). Groups that are exclusive rather than highly inclusive engage in more attachment and identification because they satisfy both of these needs simultaneously (Brewer 2000). Another cognitive basis of social identity is the “reduction of uncertainty” approach (Hogg 1996; Hogg and Abrams 1993). In this approach, the fears associated with the uncertainties of life can be reduced through group affiliations. The level of uncertainty is closely linked to an individual's need to identify with a social group. According to another cognitive-based approach, known as the interdependence theory, self-interest is critical to the drive for group affiliation (Rabbie, Schot, and Visser 1989). This self-interest derives from the awareness about a common fate—that is, the perceived common treatment and outcomes that result from ingroup membership. This positive interdependence leads to cooperation and a salience of group identity. Vamik Volkan (1988, 1997, 2004, 2006) adopts a psychoanalytic approach to social identity. He analogizes identity to a protective canvas tent (Volkan 1997: 27). As long as the tent remains strong and stable, held erect by the leader, the members of the group pay little attention to it since they have no need to reaffirm their identity. If the tent is shaken, however, they may become collectively preoccupied with trying “to shore it up.” Thus, group

identities rest on chosen glories (usually mythologized and idealized achievements that took place in the past) and chosen traumas (losses, defeats, humiliations that are usually difficult to mourn) as well as on suitable targets of externalization (or shared reservoirs). Such symbols include Page 131 →flags, songs, special dishes, places of worship, religious icons, memorials, certain animals, people, and groups of people (Volkan 1997). Chosen traumas and glories and suitable targets of externalization are usually real events from history or real objects chosen because of the current state of relations with other groups and provide “explanations” for poor economic conditions or minority status. Researchers in the fields of anthropology and sociology have advanced understanding of the cognitive and emotional sources of identity and difference. In 1981, Fredrik Barth adopted the notion that social identity is formed around boundary divisions, thereby solidifying the relationship between “them” and “us.” Charles Tilly also stresses that social identities “center on boundaries separating us from them” (2005: 7). The basis of collective identities lies in narratives that reflect boundary divisions within and across groups. These narratives of groups can contradict or complement each other. Other scholars show that the formation of categories of social actors rests on recognition, invention, and borrowing of boundary divisions (Cohen 1985, 1986; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001). According to the theory of self-formation (Holland and Lave 2001; Holland et al. 1998), the cognitive and emotional roots of identity underpin the ways in which individuals position themselves as agents and subjects operating in culturally constructed worlds. The theory stresses that identities are formed by collective work of evoking, confirming, or declining participation in collective practices. This theory introduces another dimension of identity sources, stressing the role of common values in the formation of social identity. In his work on identity formation, Thomas H. Eriksen (2001) emphasizes the importance of establishing a shared body of mythic stories. Another researcher, James Peacock (2006), stresses the normative underpinnings of social identity, devoting particular attention to the moralistic underpinnings of cultural practices. Thus, the important advances in identity studies have stressed intergroup borders, roles of ingroup members, and perceived needs for positive identity, optimal distinctiveness, reduction of uncertainty, and group support as the main sources of social identity. But researchers in identity studies have not focused on the axiological dimensions of group identity except the theory of self-formation that emphasizes the moral roots of social identity. The idea of morality as a basis or motive for identity that defines its structure and dynamics has yet to take hold in this field. Page 132 →

Depersonalization and Loyalty to Group Social identity theories differ in their understanding of interrelations between two components: the individual or “self” identity (defined as the set of individual features and stressing one's differences with other people) and the collective or “we” identity (described in terms of group similarities). While social identity reflects feelings of collective unity, individual identity stresses the personal differences (Deschamps and Devos 1998; Tajfel 1986; Tajfel and Turner 1986). Henri Tajfel explained human behavior as juxtaposed between the extremes of individualism and collectivism. Individual identity reflects interpersonal behavior characterized by a differentiation between the individual and others, while social identity is connected with intergroup relations, characterized by a differentiation between groups (or between “we” and “they”). At one end of the continuum, the behavior is completely determined by interpersonal relations without influences from social groups. At the other end, the behavior reflects an extreme individuality. Without influences from interpersonal relations, these polarities represent idealizations that are rarely manifested in actual social encounters. Tajfel stressed that under certain conditions, individuals can choose to act according to individual or group identity based on the need for positive self-evaluation, self-esteem, and striving for improving self-representation. Alternatively, if individuals cannot achieve high self-esteem in the context of interpersonal comparison, they will

tend to increase their self-evaluations by connecting with social groups that they estimate more positively than other groups. John C. Turner, who examined the tensions between individual identity and group identity, recognized the importance of high self-esteem. He discovered that stronger individual identity leads to the perception of fewer similarities between a person and other ingroup members. Salient social identity results in the perception of close affinity between a person and other ingroup members, strong connection with ingroup, and suppression of individual's sense of uniqueness (Turner et al. 1984, 1987). In such cases, individuals embrace collective victories and defeats, which influence perceptions of the world. Nevertheless, researchers have studied cases in which an individual can maintain a harmonious balance between personal identity and society identity. Some researchers show that salient social identity does not contradict personal differentiation if it is allowed by the ingroup norms (Jaromowic 1998). For example, in individualistic cultures, strong Page 133 →identification with the ingroup can be connected with salient personal identity. However, researchers have not proven that this phenomenon of personal conformity exists in all cultural contexts. Several scholars (Deschamps and Devos 1998; Deschamps and Doise 1978) developed the hypothesis of covariation, which holds that in a dichotomous social context between two groups, two simultaneous processes reflect both intergroup differentiation and intergroup egocentrism. Several experimental studies based on this hypothesis have demonstrated that the rise of intergroup differentiation can lead to more salient interpersonal differentiation. To explain a person's affiliation with and in some cases submission to a group, some researchers have identified a central cognitive mechanism known as self-verification (Burke 1991; Stryker 2000). A person sees the self as embodied in the social standards, including norms and meaning associated with the role. Richard Jenkins (1996) posits that the categorization and attribution of a specific category to a person lie in the basis of identity. The more roles that a person associates with a particular identity, the stronger the commitment to that identity. High levels of commitment, both interactional and affective, increase the salience of corresponding identity. Salience of identity, in turn, impacts the perception of others and leads to the formation of social networks within specific groups. Thus, identities reflect the influence of social norms and expectations on a person. Thus, one consequence of salient social identity is depersonalization, whereby a person loses individual uniqueness, submits behavior to group requirements, and disregards personal attitudes. In contrast to Tajfel's findings that people can prefer personal or group identity in their searches for self-esteem, several findings confirm the importance of social categories in the reinforcement of identity choices. Researchers have shown that dominance of one group and even disproportion between groups can increase identity salience (Kinket and Verkuyten 1997; McGuire et al. 1978). The study of Ellemers, Spears, and Doosje (1997) has shown that people with salient identity find more in common with other members of their ingroup and do not want to leave the ingroup even in situations of threat. As Leonie Huddy (2001) has argued, four factors influence the acquisition of identity: the valence of group membership, the defining social characteristics of typical group members, the core values associated with membership, and the characteristics of common outgroups that help to define what the ingroup is not. However, researchers have given little attention to the ways in which individuals undergo changes in their value commitments in conjunction Page 134 →with the development of group loyalty. Victor Gecas is one of a few researchers who have studied the links between personal identity and value commitments. He emphasizes the role of culture in the maintenance and development of identities. “Value-identities” arise when “individuals conceive of themselves in terms of the values they hold” (2000: 96). A person develops positive self-image and value identities by assessing the links between behavior and culturally approved values. Mary C. Waters has discussed the impact of ethnic identity and group loyalty on personal values, describing “symbolic identity” as a perceived commonality of values and experiences shared by various ethnic groups in America. According to Waters, the feeling of belonging to an ethnic group influences the description of “values

and beliefs that are very general—in fact, held by most middle-class Americans—as being specific to their own, and not to other, ethnic groups” (1990:134). Such attributes include “love of family,” “hard work,” and a “belief in education.” But no researcher in identity studies has given serious attention to the changes in value commitments resulting from acquisition of a new social identity or from an increase in the salience of existing social identity. While some researchers studied group value systems, including racial groups, ethnic groups, and gender, the dynamics of value systems during social identification remains underexamined. The influence of social group on the choice between personal and social identity can be explained through the concept of the primacy of in-group, or the feeling of supremacy of ingroup goals and values over individual goals and values (Korostelina 2006). The primacy of the ingroup contains several components: (1) predominance of ingroup aims over individual aims, (2) the readiness to forget all internal ingroup conflicts in situation of threat to the ingroup, and (3) the readiness to act in unison against outgroup. The higher the level of ingroup primacy for members, the stronger their willingness to disregard their personal goals and values. Ingroup primacy can increase or decrease the influence of identity salience on the behavior of ingroup members. Some groups require a high level of ingroup primacy as a condition of group membership; other groups provide opportunities for maintaining a balance between individual and ingroup value commitments. If high ingroup primacy is required, salient ingroup identity will lead directly to intergroup prejudice and conflict behavior. If high ingroup primacy is not required, ingroup members with salient identity can still revise their attitudes toward an outgroup and subsequently their readiness for conflictual behavior based on their individual experiences.Page 135 → Although the early work of Karina V. Korostelina focuses on the connections between identity salience and value commitments, this work does not extend to questions regarding why and how individuals voluntarily submit to the collective will. Thus, theories of social identity do not provide theoretical basis for or explanation of the dynamic of value transformation in the development of salient social identity and group loyalty. There is a pressing need to understand how people change their value systems through the process of social identification and why people with salient social identities are ready to sacrifice their main values in submission to their social group.

Identity and Intergroup Relations Social identity theory gives special attention to intergroup relations, bias, and prejudice as major topics of analysis. The effect of ingroup favoritism reflects the positive estimation and support of group members; people achieve positive social identity through group comparisons and ingroup overestimation. Many theories of social identity explain intergroup prejudice as resulting from a need for self-esteem and social status in prestigious groups (R. Brown 2000; Huddy and Virtanen 1995; L. A. Jackson et al. 1996; Tajfel and Turner 1986; Taylor et al. 1987; Wright, Taylor, and Moghaddam 1990). Tajfel, for example, suggests that members of minority groups have difficulty in achieving positive social identity since minorities often have worse social status than do members of the majority group. Therefore, membership in the minority group frequently may undermine an individual's self-esteem and dignity (Turner et al. 1984). If the group is unable to satisfy esteem needs, individuals have several options (Tajfel 1978): (1) trying to change the structure of the group (social change), (2) seeking new criteria of comparison that can increase ingroup dignity and thus strengthen social status (social creative potential), or (3) leaving/declining the ingroup to join a “better” group (social mobility). The social identity theory suggests that the need for positive social identity is often linked to constructions of outgroup negativities (R. Brown 2000; Tajfel and Turner 1986). In fact, researchers have demonstrated that among South Africans, strong affiliation with a racial and ethnic group is tied to antipathy toward and fear of outgroups (Branscombe and Wann 1994; Gibson and Gouwa 1998; Grant and Brown 1995).

Extensive research has centered on the importance of individual self-image, Page 136 →especially in regard to relations between minority group members and those of a majority group. As the minority group members acquire feelings of insecurity in their relations to the majority, they also experience a heightened salience of ingroup identity (Kinket and Verkuyten 1997; Perreault and Bourhis 1999; Van Oudenhove and Eisses 1998; Verkuyten and Masson 1995). The sense of identification with the in-group, with respect to both positive and negative characteristics, is greater for minorities than for members of a majority group (Brewer and Weber 1994; Ellemers, Kortekaas, and Ouwerkerk 1999; Simon and Hamilton 1994; Simon, Stroebe, and Hewstone 1992). Furthermore, the correlation between salience of ingroup identity and biased feelings toward the out-group is different for majority group members than for minority group members. The ingroup identity of majority group members is primarily provoked by perceptions of intergroup conflict, while minority group members have salient ingroup identity for a variety of reasons (M. Jackson 2002; Verkuyten and Masson 1995). The actions taken by minority group members to compensate for perceived insecurities tend to foster negativities toward the majority group (Gerard and Hoyt 1974; Mullen, Brown, and Smith 1992; Sachdev and Bourhis 1984). Researchers have also shown that minority groups demonstrate stronger intergroup biases than do majorities (Brewer and Miller 1984; Deaux 1996; Ellemers, Kortekaas, and Ouwerkerk 1999; Perreault and Bourhis 1999; Simon and Hamilton 1994). In particular, discriminatory behavior tends to be exhibited more by low-status minority groups than by members of a majority group (Espinoza and Garza 1985; Otten, Mummendey, and Blanz 1996). Since minority groups often are low-status groups, they are highly motivated to improve the fate of the ingroup and need stronger group support than do majority groups (Mummendey and Otten 1998). Nevertheless, in contexts where members of a minority group believe that their low status is unjustified, their sense of ingroup identity can diminish (R. Brown 2000; M. Jackson 2002; Verkuyten and Masson 1995). In his study of minority groups' sense of unfair positioning in society, Tajfel (1978) describes three possible structures of stratified societies. First, if social systems are perceived as legitimate and minorities do not see hope for changing the social structure (like feudalism), they accept their dependence on the majority. Second, if minorities perceive the system as illegitimate, they will develop new alternatives to the system. In such a case, society may resort to terror and oppression to retain its power over the minority. Third, if relations between the minority and majority are Page 137 →perceived as illegitimate and the system is unstable, members of the minority group may attempt to change their low status. They will also redefine the characteristics of their group and consequently transform their identity into a positive one. Researchers in the theory of social categorization stress the importance of ingroup identity and outgroup differences (us against them, men and women, whites, and so forth). This theory includes the principle of metacontrast to explain why people perceive more connections among members of ingroup and stress dissimilarity between members of ingroup and outgroup. According to this principle, intragroup differences tend to be fewer and less important than intergroup differences. This duality of ingroup affiliation and outgroup differences is closely linked to the ways in which individuals perceive events in the world. Some researchers have given special attention to the formation of boundary divisions within and between distinct social groups (Tilly 2005). Anthony P. Cohen (1985, 1986) has demonstrated the importance of the recognition of clear boundaries between groups for the formation of ingroup identity and notes that ingroup members often mobilize when they believe that their group is threatened by outsiders. Louis Kriesberg (2003) has also stressed the importance of clarity of group boundaries for the mobilization of conflict parties. The change of boundary divisions can lead to changes in group members' willingness and intensity to resort to violence. Some researchers have examined how groups' differences in values and beliefs lead to negativities against outgroup. Shalom H. Schwartz (1992, 1994, 1996, 2005) studied differences in value systems among different cultures and ethnic, gender, and religious groups. He described possible conflicts among the value types for group members and showed that value priorities can determine intergroup hostility. The perceived duality of basic values raises the possibility of a protracted conflict (S. H. Schwartz 1990: 186). Such a duality is manifested in the dichotomy of dominance versus tolerance regarding relationships with others. Consequently, while some groups define their relations to other groups through instruments of power and a perceived commitment to benevolence that rests on the ideas of dominance, control, and ingroup-orientation, other groups value security and

universalism, reflecting commitments to tolerance, equality, and harmony in intergroup relations. The value systems also can vary regarding the sense of humanitarian relations to outsiders, from “prosocial” values that promote the welfare of others (such as equality, helpfulness, and forgivingness) to “hedonism values” that reflect selfish interests, including Page 138 →pleasure and a comfortable life (S. H. Schwartz 1990). The results of Schwartz's study of Israeli and German students' values and intergroup biases show that perception of outgroups as having less “prosocial” values leads to intergroup bias and negative actions toward it. In their explanations of racial attitudes and interracial behavior, Ball-Rokeach and Loges (1996), Sears (2001), and Schuman (1972) also give a critical role to value commitments. According to these findings, racism results from the perception that African Americans, through their request for special treatment, including affirmative action, violate one of the most important American values—individualism. Milton Rokeach's study (1973) supports this idea, showing that the value of equality has different significance for whites than it does for African Americans with the same level of income and education. Equality is the second-highest-ranked value for African Americans as well as for whites. Thus, several researchers emphasize the impact of value differences for the degree of antagonism and negative stereotypes in intergroup relationships. S. H. Schwartz also describes contradictory value systems that can lead to conflicts between groups, including humanity versus hedonism and control versus equality and tolerance. In their analysis, the authors analyze value systems as determined by culture as relatively stable, considering them to be indicators of intergroup hostility. Therefore, these theoretical approaches do not address how changes in value systems affect the dynamics of group conflict. Moreover, the interrelations between value systems and social identity are not clearly defined. Thus, social identity theory stresses a positive assessment of the ingroup and negative perceptions of the outgroup as sources of negativities. The theory also highlights minority groups' willingness to change social stratification in ways that redress perceived injustices. The theories shed little light on the role of history and values in the development of intergroup perceptions and behaviors. Some scholars emphasize values as a determinant of intergroup behavior, showing that differences and contradictions in value systems among racial, ethnic, religious, and gender groups lead to negative attitudes and conflict among groups. In conclusion, despite an enormous body of social scientific research on intergroup relationships, important topics remain understudied. First, the role of collective evaluation of ingroups and outgroups as a source of identity development has not received the attention it deserves. It is not clear how people embrace a group's values at the expense of personal values with the increase of social identity salience. Second, the understanding of social identity on intergroup conflict requires deeper analysis of the Page 139 →normative dimensions of identity and difference. The normative underpinnings of intergroup behavior need to be carefully explored. While cognitive, emotional, and motivational aspects of identity have received significant attention, morality as a basis for identity was completely undermined. Third, all theories of social identity stress dual relationships between ingroups and outgroups as the framework for identity formation and functioning. No research has examined the impact of a third group on the structure and dynamics of social identity and intergroup relations. It is not known if perceptions of one outgroup and behaviors toward it can be disseminated to associated outgroups. It is also uncertain whether the relationship between two outgroups can influence the intergroup behavior between ingroups and outgroups. These topics are addressed in chapters 8 and 9.

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8 Understanding Group Identity as Collective Axiology Why does systematic violence against civilians occur? Why do some identity groups find in their heritage the values that promote reconciliation and peace, while others engulf large segments of the civilian population in mass devastation? Part of the mystery surrounding the apparent thirst for destruction of civilians arises from the interconnected repercussions that violence engenders—no act of violence stands alone. Again, all violent acts incur consequences—positive and negative, foreseen and unexpected, subtle for some and fatal for others. In this chapter, we examine certain symbolic instruments for civilian denunciation, denigration, and demonization that are routine in the rhetoric of protracted conflict. We draw particular attention to the impact of narratives of threat that characterize notions of the Other (both civilians and militants), narratives that shift blame from an individual's faults to denigration of an entire group. “Who committed this crime, this injustice?” “Who aided the work of the criminals?” “Who supported their cause in word or deed?” Threat narratives presumably provide answers to these questions, fostering a collective devaluation of the out-group and in turn “proving” the immoral, uncivilized, or subhuman character of the Other. Of course, a threat can take the form of a menace, abuse, hazard, intimidation, denunciation, or danger. In the case of armed conflict, a threat is cast as a danger to ingroup security, a prelude to harm or possible destruction. And significantly, the source of the threat can be either a state of affairs, such as the enemy's mobilization of its military forces, or a group, such as the enemy forces themselves. As presented in Part I, examples of Page 141 →this characterization of a threatening Other include Levrentii Beria's depiction of the Crimean Tatars as collaborators with the enemy during World War II (chapter 3), Hutu extremists' denigration of all Tutsis as waging a campaign of genocide against the (rightful) Rwandans (chapter 4), some Israeli leaders' castigation of the Lebanese for supporting Hezbollah (chapter 5), and allied military commanders' technical (and ostensibly amoral) depiction of Iraqi civilians as potential “friction” in the allied military machines (chapter 6). In this chapter, we deepen the analysis through a study of the social-psychological power that threat narratives can exert on conflict protagonists. We examine how narratives characterizing the threatening Other are distilled from stories of violence, victimization, and criminality. And we show that such narratives insinuate certain normative commitments that are inextricably linked to notions of ingroup virtue and outgroup vice that can emerge in due course from the storytelling of the enemy's threats.

Threat Narratives Communities living in peace with their neighbors exhibit a multiplicity of social identities in categories as varied as religion, geography (nation, region, city, local community), and profession. Some identities are more salient than others. Some identities are interconnected and mutually strengthened. Even peaceful communities harbor negative images of outsiders, which are conveyed through the discursive practices of derision, degradation, and assumption. When peaceful communities are shattered by the proliferation of violence, the “true purpose” of the destruction often confounds its victims. For survivors of protracted conflict or relatives of torture victims, simple questions about the meaning of their ordeal quickly become complex. Uncertainties about the perpetrators feed the panic that follows an attack. Who committed this crime? Will it happen again? What will they do next? And what is our standing in the world? We believe that the answers given by conflict protagonists to these questions offer insight into the perceived intentions, motives, purposes, and character of the unknown Other. Victims form stories about the Other that convert the threat from private episodes confronting individuals to collective events that enshrine a shared public danger. The evolving public discourse makes sense of the violence by conveying certain “truths” about the perpetrators that Page 142 →explain their actions. These explanations inevitably pass into the realm of moral rather than political or economic discourse, bearing far more cognitive heft than mere practical understanding. The groundwork is thus laid for an unshakable and essentialist view of the enemy.

Many threat narratives address at least one of three themes: normative agency, predictability, and global positioning. First, storytellers progress easily from outlining the behavior of criminals to revealing their inherently depraved character. Never limited to the empirical “facts” about the criminal's actions, threat narratives are infused with moral indictment. The notion of criminal responsibility implies both causal efficacy and moral culpability. Threat narratives seek to explain the criminals' normative agency—their comprehensive culpability. Within threat narratives, violent acts reveal an agent's motives, intentions, plans, projections, and future actions. The familiar duality between pure description and moralistic judgment is abandoned in threat narratives. The truth about an agent's capacity to exert influence merges with normative denunciation. As victims of torture, rape, and brutality recount their personal suffering, axiological differences emerge. A threat exhibits a vice, and a vice tends to be associated with a calamity, tragedy, or severe hardship. The virtues (kindness, sincerity, honesty, and personal sacrifice) are contrasted with vices (unkindness, insincerity, dishonesty, and brutality). Virtues and vices are manifested in very different behaviors (MacIntyre 1981: 205). Second, threat narratives address the predictability of additional crimes. “Will they strike again?” “Will we (the good people) be victimized by their criminality?” “What will happen as we confront enemies at our gate or possibly in our midst?” The fear of the unknown, of the unknowable consequences of future violence, is one of the most disturbing aspects of confronting real or imagined threats and one of the most powerful sources of the call for retaliation. Threat narratives distill pivotal elements of past encounters to anticipate future possibilities. The meaning of violence goes beyond the immediacy of a physical episode—it can alter the social landscape of a community. In recounting the horror of past violence, storytellers strive toward but rarely attain a single coherent framework for explaining and predicting future violence or for charting a path from the dangerous past to a safe future. Despite the antipathy of storytelling practices to bearing the burden of proof, the veracity of such narratives can never be demonstrated through the scientific methods associated with empirical testing of hypotheses. Predictions about the long-range actions of remote groups of individuals based on a few stories of previous behavior are at best highly speculative and at worst purely fabricated. Page 143 →The inherently dangerous character of remote or even familiar groups asserted by threat narratives typically is immune to standard methods of scientific testing. Phenomenological methods are needed to assess those characterizations that are encased in normative terms. Third, threat narratives implicitly address the normative standing of the ingroup in relation to the threatening Other. In other words, these narratives establish a normative border that immediately classifies those inside the group as acceptable and good and those outside the group as abnormal and bad. Acts of violence can then be judged according to the side of the border on which they fall rather than on their actual merits. Psychological studies of religious-based terrorism show how terrorists committed to a divine authority acquire feelings of absolution and even holiness in the course of carrying out their often suicidal missions. Such feelings are grounded in the belief in a sacred covenant with a higher authority. Ironically, the devotee feels cleansed of feelings of wrongdoing, self-loathing, inferiority, and insignificance (Piven 2002: 120) by perpetrating acts of violence that would generally engender those feelings. Threat narratives provide a normative basis for judging such acts in ways that counteract human nature and intuition. In recounting the morally reprehensible actions of members of the outgroup, storytellers offer the faithful ingroup a scenario for establishing a moral separation from criminals. The faithful align themselves with those who exemplify civility, morality, and virtue—that is, with people on their side of the border. By consuming and participating in these narratives, the members of the ingroup shore up their own sense of virtue, reestablish their moral privilege, and reassure themselves of their existential orientation in a world of violence and evil. Threat narratives shape value commitments that intensify group differences. Listeners are carried across an analytical boundary between description and evaluation, that is, between what is true about the act and what is wrong with the criminals. The capacity of the threatening Other to act becomes inseparable from their indisputably degenerate character. To the ingroup, the enemy is definable by two essential traits—agency and immorality; the Other not only possesses the means for violence but lacks any moral system for inhibiting it. The combination of these two traits appears threatening indeed. Underpinning the threat narrative is a system of normative positioning of groups. Normative positioning captures

one aspect of social encounters (Harré and Van Langenhove 1999). More than simply a distillation of prescriptions and injunctions, a normative position encapsulates a set of moral obligations, rights, duties, and expectations that guide individuals Page 144 →in their interactions. The comprehensive adherence to a particular religious faith can provide a strict normative order. For devout followers of a religious tradition, a covenant with God includes embracing the normative order established by him and interpreted or communicated by religious leaders. A religious order can wield considerable power over its members, since such orders typically originate in the mythic events of a sacred past and extend into an indefinite future. However, normative ordering is always responsive to modulation from accounts of new occurrences (Moghaddam 1999: 77), which can lead to calls for preservation that limit the individual freedoms of ingroup members. Moral positioning reflects a tension between stability and change, between fixed identities and social border crossings. New experiences pose a risk to the stability of a moral order. To illustrate the three themes of threat narratives in a single example—normative agency, predictability, and global positioning—we revisit the case of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Immediately prior to the Rwandan genocide, the country's radio stations delivered intense expressions of hatred and fear to a nationwide audience (Chrétien 1995: 68). These hate broadcasts asked supposedly legitimate questions about the threat posed by a specific ethnic group. Who are the Tutsi? (Normative agency) What will they do? (Predictability) What is our moral relationship to them? (Global positioning) Listeners heard that Tutsi were foreigners, committed to stealing power from Hutu by changing identities and acquiring the outward expressions of the Hutu—the genuine Rwandans (Klinghoffer 1998: 37). Tutsis were accused of deviously infiltrating powerful positions of the state, economy, and religious institutions, positions that rightfully belonged to Hutus. These accusations achieve a normative ordering in which the Hutu are the “rightful” Rwandans (the normal, good folk) and the evil Tutsi are the outsiders (the amoral Other). The Hutu not only demonized the Tutsi but also incited fear of future encroachment and even attacks (predictability). The radio broadcasts depicted the Tutsi as “the enemy,” as seeking to kill Hutus on a massive scale, hoping to conquer lands of the genuine Rwandans (Hutus). These messages demanded Hutu vigilance to expose Tutsi manipulators' lies, condemn their declarations, and unveil their evil plans. The fear fomented by these threat narratives was intensified by the stated uncertainty about where and when they would strike. Such messages condemned Hutus for their naïveté in the face of such machinations and for failing to understand the depth of Tutsi commitment to an agenda of domination (Klinghoffer 1998: 37). This perceived combination of immorality and unpredictability Page 145 →in the actions of the Other leads to a sense of utter instability and imminent threat to the world in which the ingroup lives. The third question posed by the threat narrative (What is our moral relationship to the Tutsi?) lays the foundation for the inevitable answer that we (the Hutu) are morally superior to the enemy, which is attempting to wipe us out. The apparent threat to Hutu survival painted in such vivid colors by the hate broadcasts promoted an existential need to reaffirm moral status in an unstable world. The Hutu needed to regain their sense of relative moral superiority over the Tutsi to justify retaliatory action.

Purity and Threat What are the sources of ethnic violence? Reflection on these three themes suggests the importance—indeed, the centrality—of an axiology of difference in the conversion of private hatreds to public devaluations. One expression of axiological differentiation is the practice and process of stigmatization. Global devaluation of the Other creates a kind of security in simplicity that remedies the fears brought about by chaos and violence. The act of externalizing an evil to a stigmatized group effectively ejects that evil from the midst of the ingroup, creating a border between the sacred and the profane, the clean and the unclean. In this way, members of the ingroup are “saved”; they live in a state of grace (on the correct side of the border) and are purified in their dealings with the “unclean” Other, regardless of what those dealings might entail (Tiryakian 2006). The conversion of private hatreds to public devaluations, whether through the process of stigmatization or the nurturing of threat narratives, provides a major source of protracted conflicts. This process of denigration tends

to solidify a sense of group difference that is inherently axiological. In the context of telling stories about outgroup threats, the axiology of difference “exists” as constructions used for addressing the themes of agency, predictability, and normative order. Stories of violence and victims, dangers and safety, enemies and heroes, foster the creation of normative boundaries. As storytellers ascribe blame to the Other and condemn their evildoings, ingroup virtues are solidified. The institutions and policies of the faithful are glorified—indeed, almost purified—when contrasted with those of the vilified Other. An axiology of difference emboldens the ingroup to create, maintain, and reinforce certain social relations as well as prohibit, close off, and denigrate other kinds of social relationships. Yet axiological Page 146 →differences are dynamic, continually reconfigured as a result of the shifting boundaries between Self and Other. Such constructions cannot be explained or examined by resorting to familiar scientific categories such as true/false, rational/irrational, and real/unreal. Appeal to empirical data, coherent scientific theories, or corroborated causal hypotheses alone cannot prove or disprove the negativities of the dangerous Other. One could object that the theoretical efficacy of axiological difference is undermined by the notion of fundamental attribution error. According to this error, people tend to explain the negative behaviors of others by overemphasizing their character traits as the source while underemphasizing circumstantial factors that influenced the behavior. Based on this error, explanations of outgroup violence are found in negative dispositions of the Other, but similar behaviors of ingroup members are rationalized by the circumstances of the social environment. However, this apparent polarity in thinking between character traits and circumstantial influences is misleading because it ignores the role of moral categorization. Our study of threat narratives shows that the rationale for ingroup actions relies not only on circumstances surrounding in-group actions but also on deeply embedded dispositional characterizations. To protect the homeland and those born within its borders, retaliatory or offensive actions are rationalized through categories of virtues and vices. Responding to the enemies lurking at a nation's borders, the “good citizens” demand security and may demand the destruction of potential invaders. In so doing, members of the ingroup find solace in their sense of moral superiority to the Other, which is often associated with the need to preserve “mankind,” “civilization,” or “social order.” Narratives that extol the exploits of heroes, the strength of leaders, and the sacrifices of the population promote moral distancing from evildoers. As hostilities continue over time, the “necessity of circumstance” is inseparable from perceived axiological differences. The dynamism of axiological difference can be revealed in three kinds of constructed forms: mythic narrative, sacred icons, and normative orders. Mythic Narrative Stories of the threatening Other gain potency through the dissemination of shocking images, harrowing anecdotes, and accounts of violence. Over time, such stories solidify perceptions of the Other by repeating seemingly fixed negativities that are grounded in a common origin (such as a geographic Page 147 →location), a shared ancestry (such as religion or ethnicity), or common flaws. Through the power of such images, certain particularities of place, times, and actors become sacred to both storytellers and listeners. Axiological differences are shaped by episodes that occur in a mythic past and exude a sense of the sacred. Mythic events do not occur in chronological time. On the contrary, mythic history consists of its own time.1 An episode that becomes sacred is venerated in a way that lifts it outside the tide of sequential events and makes it appear to reign over the experiential world.2 The sacred episodes acquire archetypical meanings that shape group consciousness and contribute to the mythic narratives that color perceptions of the Other. A sacred episode becomes a prototype of the normative order. The sacred/profane duality at work in the process of axiological differentiation translates to the present to define momentary gods in the current threat landscape; both ingroup and outgroup members acquire mythic form as “victims,” “criminals,” or “heroes.” Children's stories illustrate how mythic narratives work by highlighting positive and negative prototypes of behaviors. Parents and teachers shape a child's persona by recounting the exploits of heroes and villains. Children identify with the positive traits of certain figures in the story, linking their own identity to that of the hero,

generating a collective sense of pride and self-esteem that comes from virtue, goodness, and achievement. The threatening, aggressive, and vicious character of the villains children encounter in the stories is associated with members of their society's outgroup. The negative consequences of the villains' actions are conveyed in terms of shame, loss, and failure. Ingroup identity is developed and reformulated by the process of intergroup interaction—that is, during the process of raising children (Barth 1969). Mythic narratives often rely on prototypes of positive or negative personality traits to tell stories (Turner et al. 1994); in so doing, they provide clarity and coherence to the process of evaluating the outside world and promote agreement among other members of the ingroup. Members of the ingroup who conform to the positive prototypes in the stories are estimated as having positive morality, while members of the outgroup that exhibit characteristics similar to the negative prototypes are estimated as having aberrant or even no morality. This sense of instilled morality enables developing children to socialize within their groups and interact harmoniously with their peers. Thus, this social self-concept includes bequeathed memories of the ingroup and serves as a basis for negative estimation of other groups. Page 148 → Sacred Iconic Order In protracted violent conflict, images of the enemy have stunning effects on consumers, marking a major stage in the characterization of others as dangerous. Enemy images are lifted above the immediacy and locality of a particular encounter, exceeding their empirical base. For example, the photograph of U.S. soldiers raising the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima was initially bound to a particular place and time but has become a powerful icon expressing particular truths that apply to all U.S. soldiers throughout history. Emerging from specific story lines pertaining to localized episodes, icons function as graphic expressions of eternal characteristics of good and evil. A particular episode, event, action, or encounter is thus privileged, venerated, and almost sanctified in this transition from particular image to timeless icon. Certain images become demonic over time, adding to the religious significance of episodes that are accounted profane. When a stranger's actions are associated with such images, they function as prototypes of the outsider's unjust, immoral, uncivilized, or even inhuman character. Icons appear frequently in the eschatological stories of religious traditions. The symbolic content of religious traditions is idealized and otherworldly. By linking sensory images to cognitive content, the icons exhibit a projective capability, opening imaginative avenues to a charged realm typically inhabited by figures (whether imaginary or real) of the scared past. The use of icons suppresses uncertainties and doubts about the Other; complexities of character are replaced by emotionally charged images. The process of icon formation contributes to the global denigration of the Other by collapsing the infinite variety of the human experience into powerfully compact representations. The consumption of icons produces an immediate effect in which the full potency of what is represented (heroism, maliciousness, deception, uncleanliness) is unleashed within the mind of the viewer and irrevocably transferred to whatever is associated with the image (i.e., the Other). Each icon converts (individual) images of a particular action, experience, episode, encounter, or event, into (collective) symbols intelligible to the ingroup. For example, during military training, both the enemy's demonic character and the warrior's inherent virtue are depicted through iconic projections. These virtues are associated with the sacred homeland, in which nativity is linked to a physical territory, grounding ingroup identity in the geographic borders of a land. A close association between people and place, between group identity Page 149 →and territory, is common to all human tribes. The very idea of “nation” is intrinsically linked to a homeland. Liisa Malkki (1995) argues that the territorial icons associated with terms such as native, indigenous, and nature foster essentialist notions of social identity that are virtually rooted in the soil of a territory. Such a reliance on territoriality suggests a static ontology that comprises the “natural” condition of things, as if the borders between nations were rooted in nature itself.3 The rigidity provided by this perceived ontology can fuel mutual hatreds among protagonists in protracted

conflict. The idea of “nation” can function as an icon and create all of the consequent effects when used within narrative. It is no surprise that countries and groups choose flags to provide graphic representations of the nation as icon. The natural world provides a wealth of imagery employed in the creation of icons. The threatening Other is often dehumanized through the use of bestial images. For example, Hutu propagandists resorted to species attribution, portraying Tutsis through evocative images of insects, reptiles, and predators. Hutu leaders depicted the Tutsi as groups of cockroaches preparing inconspicuously for invasion; the idea of an infestation of cockroaches in anyone's home is enough to send shudders down the spine. Hutu propagandists also portrayed the Tutsi as snakes posing as “real” Hutu. The snake imagery here reinforces characteristics of secrecy, malice, and predation. This imagery translated easily to stories of how Tutsi men coerced their women to seduce Hutu men for the purposes of taking over Rwanda (Klinghoffer 1998: 10). Once the Tutsi were tainted by being associated with vermin, it was a simple step to implore Hutu to exterminate them. Hutu were told to “get to work,” “clear the bush,” and “clean around their houses”—all euphemisms for killing Tutsi (Klinghoffer 1998: 45) made palatable (and justifiable) by the use of graphic imagery. Senegal has experienced conflict regarding Casamance, which is considered part of the country but separated almost entirely from the rest of Senegal (previously administered by France) by Gambia (which was colonized by the British Empire). Casamance also differs from the rest of Senegal because of its climate: most of Senegal has a dry climate with a rainy season of only three months, while Casamance is green and has sufficient rain. Many historians stress that Casamance had been part of Senegal long before the colonial era and that its residents peacefully coexisted with the rest of the Senegalese nation and people. Other scholars show that until the early twentieth century, Casamance was a hot spot for many insurgencies and forms of resistance against French control, while most of the Senegalese nation was relatively resigned to its foreign ruler. Because of Page 150 →these stories of rebellion and icons of resistance associated with the Casamance population, many Senegalese label the province “rebellious” to explain the current crisis there. The Senegalese point to ethnic and cultural differences in support of that attribution, stressing that such differences may cause potential conflict with the Senegalese people. Any “Diola” is labeled a “rebel,” regardless of whether she or he is a member or supporter of the secessionist movement. This global denigration of all “Diolas,” bolstered by threat narratives and iconic depictions that promote the dangerous nature of Casamance, exemplifies the axiological differentiation we have been outlining. In reality, the same distinctness could be applied to all other ethnic groups in the region, which initially evolved as separate political entities before merging into one Senegalese nation—the Bassari in the extreme southeast, the Pulaar in the north, and the Wolof in the west-central part of the country. These ethnic differences have previously been noted and have influenced each group's negative view of the others but did not produce violence prior to the Casamance conflict. The application of icons and political labels in this case resulted in an overemphasis on the distinctness of the Casamance and Diola and played an important role in developing the ethnic and regional identities that have led to violent conflict. Normative Order A third element underpinning the formation of axiological difference centers on the creation of a normative order that establishes group boundaries through such dualities as sacred/profane, good/evil, or virtuous/vicious. To accept “who we are,” it becomes necessary to define “who we are not” or “who are the Others.” Though this normative bordering can result in fairly innocuous distinctions—”As southerners, we drink sweet iced tea. You northerners do not!”—too often these divisions are contested and emotionally charged. For example, such terms as Israeli, Arab, Hamas, and Palestinian have loaded meanings. The stronger an in-group's sense of collective identity, the more likely its members are to rely on normative orders that vilify those outside the group's borders. The formation of salient identity fosters stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination while avoiding direct interaction with outgroup members. By contrast, people with nonsalient ethnic identity tend to perceive ingroup and outgroup members alike as neighbors in a common society (Korostelina 2003, 2004). A normative order has a temporal dimension. Protagonists in a Page 151 →conflict live simultaneously in the past, future, and present. Actions of the ingroup cohere with an idealized vision of “the good,” a vision often

projected simultaneously backward and forward in time. The notion of the right course of action is inseparable from a vision of betterment, of promoting good and preventing bad. And such a vision is tied to the mythic narratives of the past. The existence of every nation-state presupposes a kind of normative order—in this case, a community of individuals bound by reciprocal moral obligations. Indeed, the birth of the nation-state in the modern era arose out of the notion of a social contract rather than a divinely bestowed order. Following the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, a bargain arose between the state and its subjects: the state would protect its subjects from the ravages of war in exchange for the subjects offering their material and human resources necessary to fight. Over time, the state became authorized by international law to take action under certain conditions against those who violated the state's normative obligations and so threatened its existence. Because of the way the nation-state has developed, the realism of the political order is inseparable from a specific normative commitment to keep dangers out (Mansbach and Wilmer 2001: 74). Military training, for example, reinforces a value system of ingroup virtues and outgroup vices. In conferring a new military persona on young recruits, the normative differences between the ingroup virtues and outgroup vices are organized around differences between the homeland (which is sacred) and the foreign land (which is profane). To prepare recruits for combat, pain, and extreme sacrifices, military training requires the instillation of intense nationalism and relies on the mythic dualities of scared/profane, good/evil, and virtuous/vicious. The homeland represents a sacred realm offering a bounty of riches for its people (as well as for potential conquerors seeking plunder). The homeland as defined in military training is always threatened, always subject to danger, and perpetually vulnerable to an enemy's attacks. The specter of embattled nationalism thus haunts and sanctifies the soldier's mission. Those born in the homeland are virtuous, just as those born in the enemy region possess an immoral character. The distinction that seems to be rationalized by geographical separations offers justification for “good violence,” which stands in stark contrast to the enemy's “bad violence.” The values of the “faithful” enable them to act from a place of moral superiority over the enemy. Accusations of immoral behavior, such as those that imply human rights abuses or unjustifiable violence, threaten ingroup virtues. In many cases, any recognition or consideration of such claims provokes strong resistance Page 152 →from the accused group. For example, relations between Armenia and Turkey have been strained since 1915–23, when Turkish soldiers killed more than 1.5 million Armenians. Today, Armenians insist that this calamity constitutes genocide, but the Turkish government denies that characterization of those activities, declaring that the Armenians died in a civil war that broke out during World War I. Scholars planned a conference in Istanbul in the summer of 2005 to analyze these varying conceptions of events. The announcements of such a conference provoked strong negative reactions from political leaders in Turkey, and the minister of justice stressed in a speech to Parliament that the conference was a stab in the back. In conclusion, during periods of crisis, a collective axiology among conflict protagonists tends to dominate notions of group difference as it unifies the faithful members of the ingroup through a repertoire of normative polarities—sacred/profane, good/evil, and virtuous/vicious. In times of state-sponsored war, the home population tends to turn from complex reality to comforting simplicity, narrowing their vision to focus on two basic outcomes: victory abroad and security at home. Lurking behind this beguiling equation lays the glory and comfort of a belief in in-group purity. Such putative purity transcends the messy and inscrutable theater of international relations. The ingroup, safely ensconced in its own circles of perceived victimhood, learns not to see, hear, or speak about the victims of militant forces. On the topic of the civilian Other, a kind of collective autism envelops the home front. The sacrifice of the civilian Other is either unknown or regarded as necessary to homeland security. Depending on their location in relation to the combat zone, civilians can, in effect, be expendable if they “get in the way” of allied forces. They are collateral to the greater goals of conflict protagonists and the pursuit of victory.

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9 The Normative Dimensions of Identity Conflicts As a major theme of the book, we argue that civilian devastation is routine and systematic to identity conflicts. But we have yet to give a precise account of such conflicts—their character and causes, their evolution and variability. In this chapter, we provide a model for the dynamics of identity conflicts (Korostelina 2007). This model defines such conflicts through four distinct stages: comparison, competition, confrontation, and counteraction. Numerous studies on the dynamics and sources of identity conflicts have examined the interrelations between interests and identity, exploring the fundamental question, “Do ethnic and national identities cause political conflict or do they arise out of political conflict?” Two main approaches to the study of conflict and identity, the primordial and the instrumentalist, provide opposite answers to this dilemma. The primordial approach stresses the role of salient social identity in protracted violent conflict. According to this approach, each ethnic group manifests its identity through distinctive artifacts and customs, combining them with elements of irrationality that arise from primordial needs of domination, differentiation, and survival. Biological arguments for the salience of ethnic identity represent one aspect of the primordial approach, and there are numerous contributions to this body of work, including Pierre L. Van den Berghe's studies of shared genes (1987), J. Philippe Rushton's theories of genetic similarity (1995), and Tatu Vanhanen's work on predisposition to ethnic nepotism (1999). These biological explanations of violent ethnic conflict tend to underestimate the political and economic motivations that fuel conflict as well as the role of the Page 154 →political elite and their astute manipulations of public opinion in the incitement of perceived threats and the creative redefinition of history. In contrast to the primordial approach, the instrumentalist approach prioritizes economic and political interests as well as beliefs about inequalities over social identity issues. Scholars who take this approach point to numerous factors that lead to ethnic violence, including the concept of “weak states” (state making as territorial consolidation and institution building) (Ayoob 1996; R. Jackson 2004; Tilly 1975; Zartman 1995); political, economic, social, or territorial disputes between two or more ethnic communities (M. E. Brown 1993); a struggle over rights (Stavenhagen 1991); the role of political and ethnic entrepreneurs in the maintenance of “war economies”; and the construction of a discourse of violence that paints vivid portraits of evil enemies and thereby dehumanizes them (R. Jackson 2004). We believe that in contrast to the primordial approach, this interest-based focus overestimates the role of the manipulation of the masses by those in power and underestimates the importance of social movements and social mobilization. In other words, the primordial approach focuses on the agency of the social being, whereas the instrumentalist approach privileges the agency of the political elite. Neither perspective provides a comprehensive picture of the source of identity-based conflict or an adequate explanation for its intractable nature. Interethnic and interreligious communities can coexist peacefully for centuries, even if members of these communities have salient social identities—that is, strong feelings of membership in a specific group. Only in specific situations will these communities revert to violent conflict. Their group identities do not arise as a result of conflict between groups but have the potential to increase in salience and become mobilized. They neither cause nor initiate conflict but can become a powerful tool of social mobilization when provoked by skilled leaders. Thus, social identities should be understood not as consequential to conflict but as a form of consciousness that changes the character of conflict, regardless of whether that conflict arises from primordial, social, economic, or political needs. Once social identity becomes involved in interest-based or instrumental conflict, it then changes the nature of that conflict in specific ways, generating protracted and deep-rooted hostilities. In this chapter, we characterize the dynamics of identity conflict through four stages: comparison, competition, confrontation, and counteraction (figure 9.1). Extending the analysis from chapter 8, we argue that Page 155 →collective axiology is a defining factor in identity formation and in the evolution of conflict behaviors.

Comparison During the first stage of our model, the formation of negative images of the outgroup results naturally and to a large extent inevitably from the practice of comparing groups to each other. In interactive communities, people take on multiple identities that are characterized by different forms, types, and levels of salience. Such communities frequently represent a complexity of multiple identities: ethnic, religious, national, regional, city or village, local community, and professional union. A group may elevate one kind of identity in importance while placing other identities in a narrative background. Nevertheless, even in peaceful and cooperative communities, members of ingroups harbor negative perceptions of outgroup members; these perceptions include derisive and degrading stereotypes, an underestimation of outgroup culture, and the categorization of certain behaviors of the outgroup as unacceptable or inadmissible. Several factors influence the negative perceptions of outgroups. First, Page 156 →according to Marilynn Brewer's theory of “optimal distinctiveness” (1991, 2000, 2001), human beings possess both the need for distinction from a group (intercategory contrast) and the need for inclusion in a group (intracategory assimilation). These two needs are components of a homeostatic model that describes a person's permanent search for balance between differentiation and inclusiveness. Thus, a person who feels him or herself excluded from particular ingroup interaction will search for a group or social category that can provide strong feelings of inclusiveness. In homogenous societies with negligible cultural diversity, people lack the options to satisfy fully their need for differentiation and therefore tend to develop loyalties to increasingly small groups, such as those defined by region, city, or ethnic minority. If distinctions between groups are not significant, people tend further to shape these regional or ethnic identities by stressing minor differences (Volkan 1997). Even people living in areas as small as a major city will look for ways to distinguish themselves from their neighbors. These overlapping circles of differentiation and inclusion explain the complex interplay of numerous identities a person may claim as his or her own as well as the consistency of unflattering beliefs about whoever the outgroup happens to be. Second, since positive social identity is the outcome of favorable social comparisons between the ingroup and the self in relation to all available groups, members of an ingroup tend to evaluate outgroups negatively. In other words, people tend to evaluate outgroups negatively in the process of eliminating the groups they do not wish to join and identifying with the groups they do wish to join (or already feel part of). According to the theory of social identity, the drive to acquire positive identity through membership in ingroups and negative comparison with outgroup is the basis for the formation of intergroup prejudice (R. Brown 2000; Huddy and Virtanen 1995; L. A. Jackson et al. 1996; Tajfel and Turner 1986; Wright, Taylor, and Moghaddam 1990). This drive leads to the formation of positive autostereotypes and negative stereotypes to compensate for the low social status of an ingroup (Lalonde 1992; Mummendey and Schreiber 1984; Van Knippenberg 1978; Van Knippenberg and Van Oers 1984). A third factor driving the prevalence of negative outgroup perceptions is rooted in what we call “automatic jealousy.” Even in situations of economic and social equality, the ingroup comparisons to an outgroup lead to an underestimation of the ingroup's economic and social status as well as the perception of relative deprivation or disadvantage. Naturally, the belief that members of the outgroup are much better off (in terms of money, resources, or just plain prestige) than members of one's ingroup Page 157 →can lead to entrenched negative attitudes toward the outgroup. Researchers have shown that the perception of deprivation or disadvantage is usually based on comparisons rather than on the estimation of the in-group position alone. Relative deprivation can be manifested in many ways, from members of the ingroup's perception of discrepancies between their expectations and their value capabilities (Gurr 1970: 24) to a perception that the members of the ingroup have less than what they feel they deserve in comparison to others. People typically compare their ingroup with a similar group or with an advantaged outgroup to arrive at this perception of disadvantage. The outcome of the latter comparisons is called fraternal deprivation (Runciman 1966). As a result of fraternal deprivation, members of disadvantaged groups perceive more discrimination on the level of group identity than on the level of personal identity (Crosby 1984) and thus exhibit more desire for social change (Kawakami and Dion 1993; Walker and Pettigrew 1984).

The fourth factor influencing the negative estimation of outgroups is the operation of asymmetrical status. In stratified societies where economic and political inequalities prevail, minority groups and groups with low social status experience a stronger collective sense of self and greater ingroup homogeneity than do majority groups that enjoy high social status (Ellemers, Kortekaas, and Ouwerkerk 1999; Simon and Hamilton 1994; Simon, Stroebe, and Hewstone 1992). Researchers show that in-group bias is stronger among social or numerical minority groups than among majority groups (Brewer and Weber 1994; Ellemers, Kortekaas, and Ouwerkerk 1999; Simon and Hamilton 1994). In particular, members of low-status minority groups exhibit the most discriminatory behavior, often toward other low-status outgroups (Espinoza and Garza 1985; Otten, Mummendey, and Blanz 1996). The reasons for the stronger ingroup bias of minority groups are their ever-present concern about social identity (Gerard and Hoyt 1974) and their desire to compensate for perceived insecurity (Sachdev and Bourhis 1984). If the history of a community includes war, violence, or conflict among particular groups, the identities of these groups are more likely to be salient, collective, and mobilized than are other social identities within the identity systems of that community. Thus, the history of an intergroup conflict can be counted a fifth factor affecting negative outgroup perception. In addition to these factors, other approaches can explain the tendency to attribute negative characteristics and goals to an outgroup. For example, Vamik Volkan (1997) theorizes that members of an ingroup experience problems integrating the negative and positive features of their Page 158 →group image. Since people have a need for positive identity (Tajfel 1978), they tend to internalize the positive characteristics of their group image. But they also tend to project the negative characteristics of the ingroup onto well-situated outgroups, particularly those with whom they share any past hostilities or competition. In these cases, ingroup members also tend to believe that the ingroup does not have enough power because the outgroup is immoral, is aggressive, and defeated the ingroup in battle. These projections “congeal” certain negativities that over time come to characterize the outgroup's essential nature and offer the only lens through which to view them. Consequently, certain negative perceptions of the outgroup exist even in the context of peaceful cooperative communities and constitute a constant potential for the mobilization of particular hatreds.

Competition Competition is the second stage in our model of the interrelations between identity and interest in the prelude to violence. Conflicts of interest typically arise between two or more groups that maintain competing claims to resources or power, such as access to land or water or the control of information. Such conflicts usually occur between groups that coexist on common territory or in a common community, often separated by status: minority and majority, advantaged and disadvantaged, and so forth. As discussed previously, minority groups and groups that feel marginalized have more salient identity and exhibit more prejudice against out-groups than do majority groups. Competition between groups often leads to notions of the Other as threatening. According to realist conflict theory, intergroup prejudice intensifies in cases of competing goals and interests (Blumer 1958; Bobo 1999; Bobo and Hutchings 1996; Hardin 1995; Sherif 1966). Researchers have shown that the threat of the outgroup consuming the resources or achieving the goals for which both groups are striving fosters hostility toward the outgroup. In situations of competition, proximity and contact increase intergroup hostility (Brewer 2000; R. Brown 2000; LeVine and Campbell 1972; Sherif 1966; Sherif and Sherif 1953; Taylor and Moghaddam 1994). The ingroup usually perceives the outgroup as a threat in several contexts involving intergroup relations: (1) the unequal economic, cultural, or political positions of ethnic groups (Gellner 1994); (2) the different Page 159 →citizenship or citizenship status of ethnic groups (Brubaker 1996); (3) memories of the outgroup's former domination and belief in group members' desire to revive that domination (Gurr and Harff 1994); (4) perceptions that ingroups have weaker or worse positions in comparison with the outgroup (Gurr 1970, 1993); (5) limitations of the ingroup's socioeconomic opportunities by the outgroups (Gellner 1994); and (6) the existence of the outgroup's political extremism, violence, and nationalism (Hagendoorn et al. 1996). Members of an ingroup see the outgroup as an active competitor for the same goals, history, and ideals (Blumer 1958; Horowitz 1985). Ascribing aggressive and destructive goals to the outgroup results in the perception of outgroups as a threat to ingroup survival. The projection of negative attitudes and goals onto others has been

described in attribution theory as constituting a fundamental attribution error—the tendency for people to overemphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while underemphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior (Heider 1958; Jones and Harris 1967; Ross 1977). In the situation of perceived competition between groups, all actions of the outgroup are interpreted in terms of their harmful and aggressive motivation and goals (a dispositional explanation) and viewed as constituting a potential threat to the ingroup. In David Lake and Donald Rothchild's study of group competition (1998), factors such as information failure, credible commitments, and the security dilemma can provoke identity conflict. The security dilemma has traditionally been used to explain the interactions of states (usually countries) according to the outmoded view of an international system based on relations between nation-states. The understanding of the application of this concept to the arena of global conflict has recently shifted. The role of the security dilemma was analyzed on the level of international relations, particularly with regard to the Cold War (Collins 1997; Jervis 1976, 1978; Spear 1996; Wheeler and Booth 1992), and posited as a source of ethnic conflicts (Posen 1993; Snyder and Jervis 1999) and a contributing factor in the rise of nationalism (Van Evera 1999). However, the essence of the security dilemma includes certain defining elements of an identity conflict. Rooted in the perspective of rational game theory, a security dilemma operates according to the principle of the zero-sum game: any gain by an outgroup is seen as an ingroup loss. Translating this principle to the perspective of social identity theory, intergroup comparison typically fosters competition over self-esteem, pride, and a sense of dignity. Page 160 →Group members often assume that a gain in status by the outgroup is automatically a loss of status by the ingroup, and vice versa. Emotionladen status competition leads to an increase in the perception of threat.

Confrontation During the third stage in our model of the dynamics of identity conflict, confrontation, the preconditions for violence are set in place as the high salience of group identity reaches the point of confrontation with the “dangerous” Other. As described in the previous section, conflicts of interest based on competition for a shared set of resources will lead to the polarization of communities and an increase in the importance and eventual dominance of one social category that (1) best describes adversary groups, (2) was used in previous conflict situations, or (3) is most obvious or suited to the task at hand. Leaders of the groups fighting over power and resources often exploit identity issues to mobilize group members, increase group loyalty, and prepare group members for the conflict ahead. Stories of the collective traumas and glories experienced by the ingroup dominate the accounts by group leaders of the conflictual relations with the outgroup (Volkan 1997). These stories of past injustices may not be factually accurate but are selected for their emotional power and rhetorical ability to mobilize members and to explain the poor economic conditions or minority status currently afflicting the ingroup. Stories of the threatening Other gain potency through the dissemination of shocking images, harrowing anecdotes, and accounts of violence. In protracted violent conflict, images of the enemy have enormous impact on the perceptions and imagination of a fearful ingroup. Emerging from specific story lines or local occurrences, these images evoke graphic expressions of the evil inherent in the outgroup. A single image often can prove more powerful than an entire story line in the creation of disgust and fear. Even if most members of groups participate in multiple identity categories, competition and relative deprivation can intensify conflicts of interest and generate situations in which individuals tend to privilege one identity over all others. As the disputes intensify, members of different groups with multiple identities feel that the escalating quarrels disrupt their sense of security and moral authority. These members often seek out a strong single identity that employs ideological myths to provide certainty and redress the erosion of security and moral authority they fear. One salient identity can replace the entire complex of core identities Page 161 →previously available to ingroup members and completely overhaul their perception of the world. The transformation by which one social identity prevails and replaces the entire complex of multiple identities signifies its ideologization—in effect, the prevalent social identity acquires the totalizing power of an ideological system. In addition, the meaning of this identity shifts from a multilateral mode (concerned with various subjects, including ingroup traditions and values, the characteristics of ingroup members, the in-group's ideology, and

members' interrelations with outgroups) to a unilateral one in which prevailing threat narratives about the outgroup dominate all discourse. The operation of this dominant identity functioning in a unilateral mode leads to a perception of the world in terms of “we/they” and transforms conflicts of interest into identity-based conflict.

Counteraction Finally, the fourth stage in our model consists of counteraction as a normative response to a perceived threat. As illustrated in the case studies presented earlier, the source of a threat is typically cast as evil, immoral, uncivilized, or degenerate. These notions of ingroup virtues and outgroup vices are shaped by historical and mythic narratives that are selectively mined for examples of trauma and glory as well as by the practices of favorable comparison, prejudice, and attribution error. The resulting salient mobilized identity strengthens the perception of the outgroup as a homogenous evil. Such normative characteristics of group difference reveal the workings of collective axiology. As we argue in chapter 8, a collective axiology is a set of value commitments that offers moral guidance for understanding and responding to life's challenges, frailties, and finitude. In cases of protracted conflict, stories that depict the criminality of the enemy take on a mythic quality, situating listeners within a larger-than-life framework, explaining how current problems came into being, and establishing pathways for action to redress current evils. Through intergenerational storytelling, certain episodes from a group's collective history become venerated over time until they acquire an almost sanctified status. Specific places, times, and actors are treated as sacred, and their legendary power shapes notions of group differences. The negative perceptions fostered by threat narratives are framed through the binary categories of sacred/profane, good/evil, or virtuous/vicious. Page 162 →To accept “who we are,” it becomes necessary to define “who we are not”—or, in other words, “who the Others are.” Such divisions are often contested and emotionally charged. This duality of ingroup/outgroup identities generates value judgments about how the world should be organized. Such judgments reassure the faithful of their moral standing or even moral supremacy in a world populated by evildoers. Ingroup members believe their positions are secured, their mission is sanctified, and their sacrifices are glorified. In some cases, the threatened group acquires feelings of absolution for past criminal acts. Once a society has divided into antagonistic groups, social identities become a source of confrontations for people's security, beliefs, values, and worldview. In short, they perceive a conflict for their survival.1 The readiness to engage in conflict with the outgroup reflects an eagerness to defend one's own group in situations of real or perceived threat, to prevent actions by members of other groups that are seen as potentially dangerous (or able to increase the status of the outgroup), or to take revenge on members of the outgroup (Korostelina 2003, 2005, 2006). The readiness for conflict also depends on expectations that all members maintain the same goals and aspirations (a common perception of the outgroup) and similar intentions to change social situations. Thus, ingroup support increases the willingness to fight for one's goals against those of the outgroup. According to the “false consensus effect” (Ros, Greene, and House 1977), the estimation of ingroup support for violent action differs among majority and minority groups. Research has shown that individuals tend to overestimate the number of people who possess attitudes similar to their own (Granberg 1987; Holtz and Miller 1985; Wilder 1984). This effect is found to be stronger among members of low-status and minority groups (Mullen 1983; Wetzel and Walton 1985). Minority group members overestimate ingroup consensus on relevant standpoints and underestimate majority group support for the same standpoints (Mullen, Brown, and Smith 1992; Sanders and Mullen 1983). In addition, false consensus is reinforced if individuals perceive their interests to be threatened (Crano 1983; Suls and Wan 1987).

Conclusion So, is the most significant source of protracted violent conflicts group interests or group identity? Identity plays a critical role in the first, third, and Page 163 →fourth stages, while interests determine conflict dynamics in the second stage. In the comparison stage, ethnic and religious groups living in multicultural communities develop intergroup stereotypes and beliefs. With such beliefs, outgroup vices are exaggerated, as are ingroup glories that

are often linked to collective traumas. For example, prior to the persecution of Crimean Tatars during World War II, members of this ethnic group lived peacefully with their Russian compatriots in spite of intergroup prejudice, biases, and stereotyping. In another case, prior to Belgium's colonial rule of Rwanda, Tutsis and the Hutus had experienced certain periods of relative peace despite their intergroup hatreds. Similarly, intergroup hostilities were widespread immediately preceding the 2006 Lebanon War as well as the years leading up to the war between Iraq and the United States. In the competition stage, group leaders exploit the prevailing intergroup prejudices for political or economic gain. Before imposing his policies of persecution during the war, Joseph Stalin sought to undermine Turkey's growing influence among the Crimean Tatars. His attempt to control Crimea as a strategically important region motivated the discriminatory policies that followed. To justify the deportation, the idea of Crimean Tatars as traitors was employed in 1944; the same idea was later reused by Crimean administration in early 1990s to deny Tatars the right to land and jobs in a situation of economic crisis. In Rwanda, the intergroup divisions intensified under Belgian policies of colonial rule, and the distorted notions of racial division gave the ideological rationale for the Tutsi monopoly on economic and political power. The recent wars in both Lebanon and Iraq strengthened competition between the countries' military and governmental institutions. As narratives of an outgroup threat circulate among members of the ingroup, intergroup differences become essentialized and universal. The confrontation stage is characterized by notions of essential group divisions that presumably define relations between the group members. In this third stage, intergroup relations are brought to the brink of violence. In Crimea in 1944, Soviet government authorities fostered ethnic hatreds through governmentsponsored media. Fifty years later, the Crimean transitional government used the education system to intensify ethnic hostility against Crimean Tatars, casting them as former collaborators with the Nazi invaders. Even those Crimean Tatars not committing treasonous acts were castigated as sympathizing with the enemy during World War II. Similarly, Tutsi-Hutu relations reduced to intense hatred and acrimony and took on a political dimension through the Rwandan Page 164 →government's anti-Tutsi policies. In the Iraq and Lebanon Wars, intergroup negatives began to dominate in relations between engaged parties, gradually consuming civilians as a part of the image of the enemy. In the counteraction stage of intergroup relations, the outgroup is completely denigrated, essentialized as cunning, deceitful, cruel, aggressive, and impure. The outgroup is cast as an existential threat so that in-group survival demands vigilance and possibility conquest of the aggressors. The violent action and counteraction become a pattern of intergroup relations. The elements of a conflict spiral are set in place. As the Crimean Tatars were perceived as a threat to the Soviet people, the 1944 policies of deportation were cast as necessary for victory over the enemy. The case of Hutu extremists in Rwanda even likened the Tutsi to Nazis engaging in a campaign of genocidal extermination of the “Jews of Rwanda.” In Iraq and Lebanon, civilians began to be castigated, devalued as human beings. They were perceived as evil enemies or insignificant Others who could be killed or destroyed with no moral reservations.

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10 Causality in Explanations of Civilian Devastation In Collaboration with Rose Cherubin When identity conflicts evoke vitriolic hatred between protagonist groups, a ferocity that taps into the most violent passions of our human experience emanates from a collective fixation on the dangerous Other, a fixation that in turn tends to dominate the ingroup's entire identity and fosters a readiness to address grievances through violent means. In chapter 8, we explained this process in terms of commitment by protagonist groups to a collective axiology. Again, a collective axiology is a system of value commitments that offers a moral compass in relation to the actions of those within and outside of the group. It provides a sense of normal life and order, serves as criteria for understanding actions and events, and regulates ingroup behaviors. A collective axiology reassures group members that they are part of something larger than themselves, since the identity and values acquired by individual members at birth and left behind at death exist before that birth and after that death. In times of crisis, such constructions unify ingroup members and assist them in making sense of their hardships and struggles. Underpinning our proposal to explain identity conflicts in terms of collective axiology are philosophical presuppositions about the nature of causation, causal relations among events, and causal aspects of normative commitments. Such questions are rarely made explicit in studies of identity conflicts. Their importance is easily missed. These questions are addressed in this chapter and are advanced for purposes of conflict analysis. Our perspective is rather unusual for this field—we resort to a rich philosophical tradition dealing with the nature of causation, a tradition that arguably begins with the ancient Greeks and resonates to this day in the Page 166 →work of philosophically minded social scientists. Revitalizing pivotal themes from this tradition, we develop a conception of causation that is novel for conflict analysis generally and is perfectly suited for explanations of civilian devastation in war. This conception centers on the ways the Other is essentialized through the idea of a moralpolitik of group difference that infuses political relations between groups with moralistic conviction about “essential” differences. We interpret this notion of causality as both formative of and teleological from group difference. In spite of an enormous body of research on identity-based conflicts, the precise anatomy of the causality that underpins such research has not been adequately addressed. In fact, conflict theorists underexamine two essential questions: (1) What notion of causation best serves explanations of identity conflicts? and (2) What are the appropriate indicators of such a notion for analysts of identity conflict? We believe that this silence represents a critical theoretical omission in the field of conflict analysis. Retrieving notions from ancient Greek thinkers, we offer an original conception of causation that gives philosophical depth to our theory of identity-based conflict. One lesson from the vast body of philosophy literature on the nature of causality has currency for our study of identity conflicts: no single conception of causation fits all explanations of social encounters. Different conceptions of causality are suitable for different epistemic purposes and ontological categories. Launching our study with the recognition of the need for multiple conceptions of causality, we argue that the causes of identitybased conflict are reducible neither to material conditions alone nor to patterns of empirical events. The causes of identity-based violence include the shared normative commitments of the protagonist groups, commitments that center on notions of ingroup purity and outgroup vice. With respect to (normal and abnormal) forms and adherence to and application of such forms to all aspects of social life, normative commitments represent an example of formal/telic causation. As we develop in this chapter, a formal/telic cause centers on the forms (and formulas) used for organizing the social/political world into primary categories and processes as well as the purposes (telos) of these forms through construction of strategies, plans, and projects for attaining the collective good. In cases of identity-based conflict, formal/telic causation is manifested through a combination of mythic narratives, logicality of action, and telic modeling of group differences. In spite of the outward symbols of fixity and permanence that conflict protagonists ascribe to group differences, the “them/us” duality associated with identity-based conflict is responsive Page 167 →to changing

conditions and new occurrences. We argue that protagonists with a high salience of group identity are spurred by memories of past calamities to formulate a logicality of action concerning the “necessary” responses to the enemy's deeds, the inevitability of conflict, and the need for vigilance against all those (including civilians) who support, harbor, and give comfort to the militant enemy.

Aristotle's Four Causes Again, the term cause takes on many senses in the sciences, ubiquitously used but given different meanings in different kinds of inquiry. An understanding of Aristotle's “four causes,” we believe, will help illuminate modern investigations into the multiple sources of identity conflicts. Aristotle's four causes are the four ways in which a thing can be designated a cause (aitia), a “why” of something.1 The first, the “matter” (sometimes today called the “material cause”), is that out of which something is made, its constituent stuff. The second is the source of motion, rest, or change; it is what sets off an event or what is responsible for something coming into being, perishing, moving, or changing. This is sometimes called the “moving cause” or the “efficient cause.” The third kind of cause is something Aristotle variously terms the eidos (form), the ousia (substance or being), the paradeigma (pattern), the definition (in the sense of the defining characteristics) or the account of, and to ti n einai (what it is to be something, sometimes translated as “essence”). This is often referred to as the “formal cause.” Aristotle expresses this kind of cause as that for the sake of which something is, happens, or is done—its purpose. He sometimes refers to it as the telos, the Greek word meaning “end” or “goal.” Today, it is sometimes called the “final cause.” Many empirical social science studies of causal hypotheses rely on the first two kinds of causes, which are the most adaptable to empirical investigations. In the twentieth century, some social scientists studying warring relations among nation-states invoked efficient cause as the primary form of causality, focusing on significant events that preceded (and arguably produced) the effect of war. The link between the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I would be an example of the application of efficient cause to the study of that conflict. However, for an analysis of identity-based conflict, it is necessary and fruitful to examine Aristotle's other two kinds of cause—the “formal” and the “final” causes. Not only is any account of the causes of violent conflict Page 168 →incomplete without employing formal and final causes in telic models, but our understanding of the material and efficient causes is inadequate without an investigation of the other two. Aristotle declared in Physics that matter “exists by hypothesis” (1969: B9). He meant that his concept of “matter” is always matter of something, not a self-subsistent entity such as modern “matter.” Aristotle's concept survives today in the familiar query “What is the matter?” That which is going to count as matter in a given description depends on what one is counting as a particular subject of investigation. In other words, Aristotle acknowledged that there are different ways of identifying “things.” We may then say that a telic model is one way by which a group might come to identify what “things” are operating in a given situation. The “matter” of the alleged evil that is the subject of the Hutu Ten Commandments would be the living Tutsi. The Spanish Inquisition also imagined an alleged evil—the threat of heresy—and sought to eradicate it, but that model suggested that the souls of the Jews and Muslims were the matter of the problem, and Spanish leaders thus sought to kill only Jews and Muslims whom authorities thought would not really convert. When we identify a thing, we identify it as a particular kind of thing—as something having a particular description. Aristotle would call this “formula” of what it is to be a thing of a certain kind the “form,” the third kind of cause in his list. A thing's form is a cause in the following sense: in the case of a wooden table, the form is what makes it a table as opposed to a chair, a bed, and so on. This form, which it has in common with tables made of other materials, is part of what makes it what it is—that is, a wooden table. The form of being a table is what it is to be a table, and in that sense the form is the cause whereby this assemblage of wood is a table. In Aristotle's accounts of the development and maintenance of living things, explanation by the formal cause thus invokes explanation by the final cause. The form to which such explanations appeal always functions partly as

goal (Cooper 2004: 110). Formal cause invokes final cause; form invokes goal or end. For Aristotle, stories about right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust reflect a society's response to the question of how to live well and do well. Toward these ends, each society promotes virtues and conditions that it deems conducive to its ideals and to the flourishing of those it understands to be its members (Salkever 1981: 492). Similarly, one defining element of identity-based conflict centers on a process by which a group struggles to overcome life's hardships, lives according to its normative principles, and flourishes in the face of perceived external threats. Through such a process, every identity group promotes Page 169 →its own values according to its polis-idea, and every polis or polis-idea unites individuals through a blend of politics and axiology. The lives of individuals in the group acquire meaning from the “wisdom” inherent in the history of the group's sacred past, which is projected forward in time to visions of an idealized and purposive future. In this respect, the collective identity of a group is inescapably charged with normative content; the group defines its identity through its sense of a polis, as is evident in declarations of obligations, expectations, requirements, demands, and rights. This is also true of the telic processes that work to develop and maintain societies and group identities: the forms invoked always point to a specific outcome.

Story, Action, and Model We believe that the Aristotelian argument provides novel possibilities for the analysis of conflict. Reading causation through the lens of these ideas, we argue that formal/telic causality underpins one kind of interactions between conflict protagonists in that group differences are cast through the “essential” form and the defining “telos” of the Other. Such differences accentuate the axiology of virtues and vices that establish borders between protagonist groups. The mythic narratives that nourish and support an ingroup's sense of its own identity render certain experiences sacred and ascribe responsibility to a targeted group. Yet the efficient cause (seemingly descriptive and nonprescriptive) should also be understood as a formal cause of axiological differences. A telic model also invokes final causality. For example, the Hutu of the anti-Tutsi broadcasts took as their final cause or goal the eradication, generally through extermination, of the Tutsi. They saw this goal as essential to Hutu survival. Similarly, the Nazis believed that their survival required the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, mentally and physically disabled people, and dissidents (and later other groups). The Nazis, too, assumed that only when such “contaminants” were eliminated would group members fully attain possession of the homeland they saw as necessary to their flourishing as a people (necessary because it was “theirs”). This is captured by Model 3 regarding the telic dimensions of ingroup identity (figure 2.5). As conflicts become protracted, the primordial attachment of individuals caught up in the conflict to their group identity (religious, national, ethnic, racial, political, economic, class, social) assumes an aura of absolutism Page 170 →that tends to overwhelm other social attachments. Inquiry into the plight, suffering, and grief of the Other is completely cut off, as is direct contact with the genuine identity of the Other. The result is a form of cognitive blindness regarding the subjectivity or even the humanity of the Other. The demand to forgo all forms of inquiry becomes morally imperative for ingroup identity, lest the contamination spread. In these cases, conflict protagonists often lack a clear vision and conception of a genuinely positive future. Their stated objectives are not only brutal but also self-contradictory and incomplete. The Nazis had no clear plan for what they would do if they won the war, no design for how they would rebuild, how people would live, or what institutions and industries would exist. They also blocked free inquiry into plans for rebuilding and sustaining life. The Hutu were willing to ravage and poison the land they claimed to desire if such tactics would drive out or kill Tutsi; the Hutu also had no plan for postwar life or rebuilding. Both the Nazis and the Hutus were willing to kill members of their own groups—precisely the groups they claimed to be saving—if those deaths would enable the destruction of the groups to be eradicated. In both cases, law and principle—even when articulated by the ruling party—were subjugated to the desires of those in power, so that in effect no real laws or principles at all were operating. In cases of protracted identity conflicts, certain “basic” ways of knowing and talking about the enemy depend on

certain constructed categories of the social/political world. The symbols of orders and borders bring into existence what they convey: they delimit the interior from the exterior, the realm of the sacred from that of the profane, and the homeland from the foreign territory.2 For conflict protagonist groups with a high salience of identity, acts of violence are fueled by myths about the Other and, based on such myths, rationalizing imperatives for action that demand revenge, vigilance, and sacrifice. This combination of mythic narrative and imperatives for action is interwoven with models that unify the group's history of its sacred past with the same set of imperatives for action. The nexus of story, action, and model offers the conflict protagonist a lens through which outgroup threats are detected, explained, and acted on and can become a major catalyst for hostilities among conflicting groups. Stories Storytelling is as human an activity as eating or breathing. The practice of telling stories over the course of many generations leads to the creation of Page 171 →a group's mythic history. Conflict protagonists draw guidance from tales of past tragedies, sufferings, and acts of injustice. For protagonists, these tales tend to solidify the savagery and brutality of the Other and to offer “insight” into the sources of hostility, solace for the sufferings that must be endured, and guidance for actions that must be taken. Most groups and cultures venerate their military leaders, sacred grounds, and episodes of extraordinary sacrifice. Through intergenerational storytelling, these episodes are converted over time into mythic events occurring in a sacred realm. This collection of tales comprises a body of narrative that can be mined for examples of heroism or barbarity particular to the conflicts or perceived threats currently facing the ingroup and can provide comfort, hope, and validity to the chosen course of violent retribution. Certain places, times, and encounters are selected and revered, lifted above the tide of history, and relived as the tales are revived and recounted. The ingroup psyche is shaped by stories that shore up the current call to arms and demonize the Other as uncivilized, savage, ignorant, and degenerate. Storytellers utilize these symbols to discover the sources of violence, disruption, or the violation of a moral (cosmic) order that are central to the validation and continuation of conflict (M. Jackson 2002: 22). Intergenerational stories about outgroup threats, dangers, and injustices tend to exaggerate and essentialize moral /political differences. And such differences are closely linked to injunctions for the necessity of continuation of hostilities. When threatened by hostile and powerful forces, the ingroup reverts to its mythic history to gain “insight” into the enemy's motives and guidance for the road ahead. Stories from the sacred realm compensate for the finitude and dangers of individual life. Protagonist groups privilege episodes that serve as protophenomena of the unjust, immoral, uncivilized, or even inhuman character of the Other. Myths exude the sacred, and the retelling of particular myths to illuminate the current hostilities transforms the belief in the guilt and consequent responsibility of the Other to the level of sacred reality. A nexus of powerful icons, value-laden notions, and global models frames this process and emboldens the in-group to protect the innocence and purity of their home. Logicality of Action Memories of past calamities alone would be radically incomplete as a motive for violence without a normative vision of the idealized future. A conflict protagonist telling a story about the enemy's long-standing criminal deeds will inevitably shift attention away from the past and cast an eye Page 172 →toward future possibilities, imagining how the current course of events could change based on various scenarios. In the cases mentioned earlier, the memories of a group's mythic history are encased in a preformed logicality of action that affirms and enshrines a set of decisions leading to conflict in the present. The narrative of inevitable conflict, tacitly supported by its apparent logicality based on past examples, follows from demands for vigilance, obedience, strength, and sacrifice (Frohardt and Temin 2003). In some cases, the story of impending incursion and conquest by the Other establishes a rationale for preemptive attacks against the “invaders” as a measure of “self-defense.” The application of an axiology of difference to present or future scenarios thus confers a sense of stability to ingroup identity and consistency (even fairness) in the implementation of norms. For protagonists in identity-based conflicts, mythmaking creates the illusion of historical precedent that shores up

the (equal) illusion of present necessity. In spite of the enormous cultural, historic, and economic differences among the plethora of conflict settings across the world today, extremists fighting to preserve their groups' identity disturbingly echo one another in their rationale for violence. In religion-based conflicts, this rationale often emerges from the alleged engagement in a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil (Juergensmeyer 2003: 150) and justifies violent actions as necessary responses to the threats of the criminal Other. For Osama bin Laden, the jihad upon which he and his followers have embarked is a life-or-death struggle against the forces of injustice and vice (Moore 2003: 153). Some members of Hamas depicted the American incursion into Kuwait in 1990 as a direct attack on the whole of Islamic civilization and as an example of “another episode in the fight between good and evil” (57). Mohammad Sidique Khan, the alleged leader of the group responsible for the July 7, 2005, London bombings, proclaimed as his “ethical stance” that he was a soldier fighting the governments responsible for “atrocities against my people” and was engaged in a “war” that “my people” are waging in the streets of London against “your democratically elected governments.”3 In speaking of his “people,” Sidique Khan was referring not to all people who profess the Muslim faith but to those who share his politico-religious identity. In these cases of religion-based conflict, the rationale for violence is often framed in axiological terms within doctrines of right and wrong, categories of good and bad, and principles of virtues and vices. This dependency on normative framing indicates a high salience of group identity, a moralpolitik of group difference that is linked closely to normative moral Page 173 →imperatives to oppose the enemy, convert the contaminated, or act according to the (ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, or economic) “laws” of nature. The moralpolitik of difference generates these do-or-die imperatives via a nexus of mythic narratives, a preformed logicality of action, and a telic model of group differences. Like the ideological thought it mirrors, logicalities of action masquerade as scientific truths that lead to inevitable conclusions. Hannah Arendt's conception of political ideology is instructive. For Arendt, an ideology is represented in the logic of an idea, the consequences of the idea, and the workings of the world as understood in accordance with that idea as well as the historical “laws” that are derived from it. Racism, for example, is “the belief that there is a [causal] motion inherent in the very idea of race” (1958b: 469); in other words, it is the belief that racial differences cause other differences between peoples, without any inquiry into the nature and existence of what is called race. Ideological thinking, Arendt goes on to point out, “proceeds with a consistency that exists nowhere in the realm of reality” (471). The apparent logical consistency of an ideology is one of the elements that help to make it look “scientific.” Instead of supporting fundamental causal inquiry, ideological thought blocks such inquiry. Even where it includes explicitly religious elements, which might seem to eliminate the need for any additional reasoning, the ideology of violence tends to require the “logic of the idea” to promote the sense of inevitability of that violence. What is defective and devastating in the worldviews of agents in violent identitybased conflicts is not only their cruelty—for history has unfortunately shown that almost any set of beliefs may be interpreted or manipulated to foster cruelty and oppression—but also their thoroughgoing repression of open inquiry in favor of an unreasoning, arbitrary, and ideologically consistent authority. Hutu radio broadcasts made it seem as though it was obvious that the Tutsi had to be eradicated to prevent their domination. The conclusion that they should be eradicated was not presented as a conclusion of a logical argument but rather existed implicitly within the description of the Tutsi as evil and poisonous. Telic Modeling The consistency characteristic to ideological thought derives in part from the peculiar role of the formal cause in the telic model. Telic models have to do with the end goal or purpose of entities. A formal cause within a telic model has the effect of applying forms (or stereotypes) to the telos (final outcome, or meaning) of a group. If an outgroup as an entity is demonized Page 174 →as evil and destructive, its members are consequently characterized as evil and destructive. If their alleged danger threatens to contaminate the area in which they live, then it follows that the source of the alleged contaminants must be eliminated. No arguments or observations can (or must) demonstrate an actual causal link between the nature of being an outgroup member and being destructive; no arguments or observations can establish that the alleged contamination is fatal to others and ineradicable except by killing the agents of contamination. The relevant associations, as Arendt notes, are

conceived as axiomatic. Like the reliance of religious militants on divine authority, the commitment to a logical /mythic frame of any kind cuts off any causal inquiry in the scientific sense, which requires the burden of proof. To provide analytical clarity to this study of causality, we employ the notion of a telic model: an idealized construction of group differences, the formation of which, when derived from the nexus of mythic history and logicality of action, is a major source of identity-based violence. Such a model represents an abstraction of features of the protagonists' narratives, providing an idealized depiction of a subject matter in perfected form. It functions as a model of encounters by providing retrospective application of a limited range of narrative selections to current events. But in its instrumental function, the telic model in fact emerges as a model for subsequent understandings, serving as a cognitive guide deployed to explain subsequent events. The model's properties improve on those of the narrative's subject matter, reenvisioning an idealized totality of the past. We might say that the telic model renders experiences coherent and meaningful. The telic model is subject to continual change from the infusion of new, potentially sacred, episodes. In turn, the application of the teleological model to new circumstances rests on the process of narrative exemplification of mythic episodes through their retelling in new events. The application of an axiology of difference to present or future scenarios thus confers a sense of stability to ingroup identity as well as consistency (even fairness) in the implementation of norms. The virtues of justice demand uniform application of the axiological order, establishing a moral requirement for consistency, which is always doing the right thing under similar conditions.

Anti-Tutsi Ideology In December 1990, the magazine Kangura issued an anti-Tutsi declaration and call to arms for all Hutu. Known as the Ten Commandments, Page 175 →this declaration fueled Hutu hysteria in support of a campaign of Tutsi extermination. The commandments include references to Tutsi as power-hungry, wicked, and deceitful. The “logic” of the Ten Commandments juxtaposes “knowledge”—based on a pseudoscientific law of ethnic history—with injunctions for action. Commandments 1, 2, and 4 recount what every Hutu “must know” about Tutsi defects (Semujanga 2003: 196-97). The use of the word must sets the stage for injunctions for action based on what “everyone” knows. The injunctions for action conveyed in Commandments 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10 establish what every Hutu “must do” for survival (Semujanga 2003: 197). For example, Commandment 9 reads, Bahutus, whoever they are, must be united with, in solidarity with, and preoccupied with their Bahutu Brothers. [Bahutu] must counter Tutsi propaganda. Bahutu must be firm and vigilant against their common Tutsi enemy. This commandment works as a call to eliminate the Tutsi threat. Commandment 8 insists that Hutu must “stop feeling any pity for the Tutsi” and provides a moral loophole for any Hutu experiencing qualms about the elimination of this “threat”—killing the Tutsi is necessary because they are enemies of the republic. Commandment 8 comes as a logical conclusion to the narratives of knowledge and action; it is as if the commandments state the facts and demand the consequent actions (Semujango 2003: 199–200): spread Hutu ideology, “counter Tutsi propaganda,” and kill the interlopers. This concept of the Tutsi as “interlopers” was, unsurprisingly, sourced from a body of collective narratives. A myth regarding Tutsi origins heavily utilized by the Hutu propagandists promotes the idea that the Tutsi are not truly a Rwandan race—they are outsiders who have infiltrated Rwanda and who continue to dissimulate to receive their quota of jobs as scientifically assigned within the existing Hutu order. The dissemination of this myth easily established and essentialized Tutsi criminality and degeneracy. Simply belonging to the group that had stealthily invaded the country and stolen Hutu resources erased any individuality or individual rights a particular Tutsi might appear to possess. As one self-proclaimed Hutu killer said, Our Tutsi neighbors, we knew they were guilty of no misdoing, but we thought all Tutsis at fault for our constant troubles. We no longer Page 176 →looked at them one by one; we no longer stopped to recognize them as they had been, not even as colleagues. They had become a threat greater than all

we had experienced together, more important than our way of seeing things in the community. That's how we reasoned and how we killed at the time. (Hatzfeld 2005: 121)

Thus, principles that make a course of action seem inevitable or necessary also render critical inquiry into the rationale for that action impossible, unnecessary, and potentially seditious. The ingroup becomes barricaded within its own frame of group difference, reinforcing an “absolute” separation from what are seen as threats to the ingroup. Contamination from outsiders' activities, ideas, or mere presence is the great fear within a barricaded ethnicity (Jowitt 2001: 28). It is precisely inquiry into empirical causes that disrupts such barricades. If causal inquiry is available, justice cannot be reduced to the will of the ingroup. If Tutsis or Jews or Arabs are defined as evil and destructive, it follows that they are dangerous. Since their presence is, by this definition, dangerous to anyone living near them, it follows that survival of the (virtuous) ingroup requires elimination of the threat. Because ideological thinking relies on the “logic of an idea,” it eschews all information from experience except what can be interpreted in conformity with the idea. Indeed, the experience is not valued for itself and is secondary to the idea.4 The Hutu killer reported that he came to ignore his own experience with Tutsi individuals in favor of a received idea about the abstract nature of the Tutsi. He does not seem to have asked how the Tutsi had caused problems; how it could be that his individual neighbors had done nothing to harm him, yet all Tutsis qua Tutsi were guilty of harming Hutus; why the neighbors' ethnicity rather than their individual identities was responsible for the conflict; or indeed whether Tutsis truly were responsible for the Hutu's problems. Relying on notions of Hutu/Tutsi difference, he had no need for serious inquiry into the genuine character of “our Tutsi neighbors” and no need to reference any experience that might have contradicted those enshrined differences.

Operationalizing Formal/Telic Causation To develop the formal/telic explanations of the civilians in war, we rely on two variables of group difference: the degree of collective generality and the degree of axiological balance. Page 177 → A. Collective generality. Collective generality refers to the ways in which ingroup members categorize the Other—how they simplify or do not simplify the Other's essential character. Specifically, we offer four criteria for determining the collective generality for a particular ingroup: 1. 2. 3. 4.

homogeneity of perceptions and behaviors of outgroup members; long-term stability of their beliefs, attitudes, and actions; resistance to change in their ideas about the Other; the scope or range of categorization of the Other.

These four criteria provide a foundation of measurable phenomena by which scientific conclusions about the nature of collective generality and its role in the formation of a collective axiology can be reached. When all four criteria are present in high concentration, ingroup members will more than likely exhibit strains of extremism. For example, adherents of so-called fundamentalist religions tend to rely on a high level of collective generality in the formation of their ideas about the Other. This reliance is evident in narratives, common across such groups, that chronicle the existence of an apocalyptic struggle by the forces of good against the cosmic forces of evil. A high level of collective generality projects a notion of the outgroup as homogeneous, unchanging in its behavior, committed to long-term fixed beliefs and values, and able to act across a wide-ranging, even global, arena. A low degree of collective generality leads to the perception of the outgroup as differentiated, subject to change, manifesting various kinds of behaviors, and relatively limited in scope. For example, adherents of socalled fundamentalist religions tend to exhibit a high level of collective generality, believing those outside the faith to be indisputably in error and constantly encroaching, as can be seen in the narratives associated with some religious traditions of a coming apocalyptic struggle with the cosmic forces of evil. In other conflict settings, the

protagonist groups adopt a low degree of collective generality, which results in a complex and nuanced understanding of the Other. The degree of generality operating within the collective imagination of the ingroup is always subject to change. For example, the escalation of hostilities can prompt protagonists to broaden their target enemy from a local group to an entire race, ethnic group, nationality, or culture. This expansionist tendency globalizes the conflict and can be represented analytically as a transformation from low generality to high generality of axiological Page 178 →difference. In the initial stages of a conflict, the outgroup tends to be perceived in its full diversity, as is evident in the rivalries that exist between political parties, social movements, or value commitments. As hostilities between the groups escalate, the degree of collective generality tends to increase. The outgroup begins to be perceived as a monolithic unit, acting as a single entity and speaking with one voice, usually attributed to a glorified leader. In such cases, the ingroup tends to expand the category of the outgroup to include more and more nationalities, religious and ethnic groups, or races. B. Axiological Balance. A second factor that should be considered in the study of axiological difference centers on the notion of balance. Axiological balance refers to a kind of parallelism of virtues and vices attributed to groups, seeing both positive and negative characterizations of a group. When applied to stories about the Other, a balanced axiology fosters positive and negative characterizations. Under some conditions, the members of the outgroup act virtuously; under other conditions they act viciously. In possession of a balanced axiology, the faithful adopt a stance of judicious recognition of the “goodness” and “badness” of the Other. Moreover, groups with a high degree of axiological balance recognize their own moral failings. In contrast, a low degree of axiological balance corresponds to a monolithic depiction of both ingroup and outgroup characteristics. This state of low axiological balance tends to promote a kind of “tunnel consciousness” and diminished capacity for independent thought among in-group members. In its extreme form, a low axiological balance correlates to multiple instances of the exaggeration, inflation, and outright fabrication of outgroup vices and ingroup glories. Armed with an overblown sense of its collective virtue, the ingroup acquires a sense of moral supremacy over the outgroup. This kind of unbalanced depiction of group differences provides fertile ground for the justification of resistance to the world's “criminal” outgroup elements. These two variables capture two critical aspects underpinning the intensity and prolongation of identity conflicts. The combination of these two valences is often associated with extreme forms of nationalism, fascism, racism, and sectarianism. As this unbalanced axiology becomes embedded in group identities, the ingroup loses its ability to see any virtues in the Other, to understand their complexities, or judiciously to evaluate their actions. In the totalizing effect of protracted conflict, visions of evil tend to overpower visions of goodness. Not surprisingly, identity-based conflicts are often characterized by a Page 179 →combination of low axiological balance and high collective generality. In cases of protracted violence, an increasing degree of collective generality intensifies notions of a monolithic outgroup, acting in lockstep as a single and threatening “entity.” This tendency to exhibit low axiological balance is evident in narratives that present the world as a simple battleground between good and evil. In such a world, it is kill or be killed. As discussed in chapter 5, Israeli leaders' demonization of Hezbollah represents a clear case of high generality and low axiological balance that, in turn, had a direct effect on the characterization of Lebanese civilians. Exemplifying a process of high axiological generality, certain Israeli decision makers extended characterizations of Hezbollah to Lebanese civilians. Other Israeli decision makers differentiated between Hezbollah and innocent Lebanese civilians. But even those decision makers tended to justify the civilian casualties as necessary and unavoidable in a war against an evil coalition that threatens Israel's existence.

Conclusion Nothing in this chapter rules out the importance of scientific inquiry into the material conditions and immediate impulsion of conflict—that is, into its material causes or its efficient causes. But neither material causality nor

efficient causality—or their combination—alone can capture the dynamics of identity-based conflict and protagonists' struggles over how to live, how to live well, and how to relate (peacefully or not) with others. A study of high salience of group identity also demands inquiry into a complexity of constructed orders that define the moralpolitik of identity, centering on a sense of common history, shared cultural elements, and vision of a promising future. Any adequate theory of identity-based conflict relies on causation as a core concept. In generations of identitybased conflict, the constructed differences among protagonist groups can generate (as a formal cause) hostilities—that is, the preset “formula” that such groups apply to their experiences and actions in their relations with the Other. Such differences among groups with a high salience of identity also have a telic dimension, which refers to the axiology of living and flourishing in relation to and in encounters with outsiders. This moralpolitik of identity (ethnic, religious, racial, political, economic, class, social, and so forth) juxtaposes an in-group's moral commitments with political demands for security, influence, or even conquest of the outgroup. Page 180 → Based on the formal/telic causes of conflicts, the normativity of group differences becomes inseparable from demands for actions. As the members of the outgroup are essentially vicious, committed to evil, and inherently impure, the ingroup members are glorified as virtuous, driven to good deeds, and fundamentally pure. Our axiological framing of group identities, presented in chapter 9, gives depth to such a normative duality between the militant Other and the nonmilitant compatriots. Again, according to this theory, the duality of intergroup relations is definable through two dimensions: the degree of axiological balance and the degree of axiological generality. In protracted identity conflicts, the axiological balance tends to be low (highly imbalanced), which means that the outgroup is definable only in terms of negative characteristics with little (or no) regard for their virtues. In such conflicts, this tendency is linked to notions of a universal characterization; a high degree of axiological generality is evident in the notion that “they are all like this.”

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Conclusion In declarations about the “just cause” of their struggle against a sworn enemy, conflict protagonists readily recount the enemy's violent actions, inhumane character, and threat to the homeland. The enemy's evildoings are plain to anyone who can see, demanding action, retaliation, and possibly revenge. As the logic of retaliation seems unimpeachable, the militants' civilian compatriots are castigated for collaborating, colluding, conspiring with, and giving moral support to the enemy. Engulfed in the conflict spiral between militants, the civilian Other is stigmatized, taking on new characteristics that are linked to the conflict. The preceding chapters examine how the militaristic framing of armed conflict is interlaced with a radical repoliticization of the weakest participants in the conflict. In depicting the transition from citizens in a body politic to civilians in protracted armed conflict, military leaders routinely characterize civilians as disempowered both physically and politically and stripped of an ability to act in concert against martial forces. The categories presented—diminished political capacity, loss of agency, and marginality—are taken at face value and are accepted as axiomatic truths within the official framing of the conflict. This newfound identity represents a precondition for certain military tactics and strategies that bring about precisely the status they presupposed. We do not dismiss as groundless all pronouncements of external threats by conflict protagonists. The case for engaging in violent struggle with an adversary may be reasonable, and the fears of an external threat may be well founded. Underpinning such modes of thinking and speaking are assumptions about two distinct realms of entities—the realm of the Page 182 →conflict zone and the realm of civilians as objects—and these assumptions operate to mutual effect. Juxtaposed against the realm of the conflict zone is a realm of civilian objects that is understood as consequential to conflict rather than as causally determining its outcome. The subordinated relationship of this second realm to that of the conflict zone is taken at face value and is rarely subject to critical reflection. Military leaders' dominant discourse about armed conflict determines what is “rationally visible” regarding the information gathered and analyzed. As secondary entities, civilians are situated in the gaps, zones, or boundaries between and among the primary entities underpinning the official talk—that is, the theater of conflict itself. The independent existence of this subordinated realm must be real, or so that implicit assumption goes, because the official realm of entities is transparently real. One source of civilian devastation is located in the forms of decisions, policies, and/or technical instruments that are undertaken in response to such dangers. These instruments include analytical tools for not knowing and for cutting off inquiry into civilian suffering. These intangible instruments function as preconditions for civilian objectification and control. Particularly important is the need to silence civilians regarding their experiences in the “state of nature” in which they lived during many conflicts. We seek to demythologize the dogma about civilians in armed conflict, to recognize and renounce certain myths about civilians in protracted violence. By unmasking the narratives that subjugate civilians to war's wider purposes, we hope to alter the logic of their submission to those ruling regimes or militaristic objectives. The result of this discovery will be the gaining of power that the myths have concealed under the mask of objectification (Ricoeur 1974: 335–36). We seek to expose and undermine the impact of anticivilian ideology in explanations of civilian devastation, giving the categories of civilian identity due primacy in studies of protracted violent conflict. One form of anticivilian thinking centers on the vitriolic hatred of a perceived enemy, driven by the belief that self-preservation requires the elimination of that enemy. The so-called new terrorism of recent years exhibits this kind of openly anticivilian mentality: the crusading injunctions of religious extremists (of all kinds) demonize civilians of the target country for their complicity in the government's evil policies. Similarly, conflicts involving genocidal violence depend on a manifestation of this thinking. We examined such an ideology in chapter 4 with our study of the Hutu extremists in the events leading up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A second form of anticivilian thinking centers on a ruthless pragmatism Page 183 →in the treatment of civilians, occurring typically in the state-sponsored terrorism of totalitarian regimes. The deportation of Crimean Tatars by

the Soviet authorities during World War II illustrates an example of this approach, in which the ruling regime rationalized the inhumane treatment of thousands of civilians by referencing “security needs.” This case illustrates a technique of totalitarian rule that involves converting the population into scattered, isolated units that can be controlled and manipulated. Thus isolated, individuals become conditioned beings whose reactions can be anticipated and calculated even when they are led into certain death (Arendt 1958b: 240). A third form of anticivilian thinking underpins the militaries of democratic states. In this form of thinking, civilian suffering is unintended, unavoidable, unsystematic, and consistent with humanitarian laws of war. Our findings on the Second Lebanon War (chapter 5) and the Iraq War (chapter 6) show the impoverishment of these explanations of civilian suffering. This third form of anticivilian thought is perpetuated through many military circles. In these chapters, we focused on the techniques of analytic manipulation used by troops who “scan” the enemy landscape and rely on euphemism, misinformation, and artificial recategorization. Such techniques have generated a kind of optical illusion among the military leaders of nation-states about civilians, obscuring a clear view of their plight. In sum, these four cases bring to the fore categories and doctrines of the four explanatory models presented in chapter 2. Model 1 captures cases in which the stigmatization of the militant Other is extended, like a taint, to the civilian population. Model 2 captures cases in which the stigma moves in the opposite direction, from civilian noncombatants to the militant Other. In cases where protracted conflict involves vitriolic hatred of an entire identity group, such as a race of people, the two forms of stigmatization operate jointly. In the rhetoric of militant extremists, the necessity for violent confrontation is cast as self-evident and irrefutable, as explained in Model 3. Model 4 represents a special case of Model 3 in which the positioning of civilians in relation to enemy militants is a causal factor in civilian devastation. In conflicts involving state-sponsored militaries, the opposing nation-state casts civilians as stateless, as political anomalies. Their political status is radically nebulous. They are perceived as neither enemy nor ally, neither friend nor foe. In times of war, civilians are what militants make of them. Like refugees, they are repositioned as undifferentiated and objectified (as the term civilian objects indicates). They are cast as secondary Page 184 →to war's primary mechanistic forces. In many combat settings, civilians become the doomed elements of war's landscape—they are objectified, treated as material bodies in a landscape of many threats, atomized into isolated units, and alienated from their social humanity and social structures. Indeed, within the mind-set of the invading force, their lives lack any such nuance. And the noble principles of humanitarian law to protect noncombatants are easily superseded by the priority to defend the martial forces engaged in combat. The safeguards intended to protect civilians become superfluous in relation to the awesome technical power of military machinery. The instruments of civilian disempowerment as displayed in various forms of technical rationalities are particularly telling. The strategies of targeting an enemy, protecting allied forces, and removing obstacles in the path coincide in ways that engulf civilians, to tragic effect. Civilians are routinely viewed as frictions interfering with efficient military operations, collateral to their efficiency, and able to be eliminated with regard to the military progress of “civilized” nations. Their plight is virtually absent from political leaders' official pronouncements explaining, justifying, or inciting war. In public statements to the world community, these leaders foster a kind of political autism on the topic of the devastation of the civilian Other. As a nation's political leaders appeal to a conflict's “just cause” and its military commanders resort to the “war is hell” mantra, large segments of foreign populations are subject to devastation and then simply forgotten. As chapter 6 shows, the unofficial “better safe than dead” policy of soldiers in Iraq provides a sense of inevitability of self-protection that gives troops a license to use lethal force in areas heavily populated by civilians. Even for the most humanitarian soldier who confronts the suffering of women and children, civilians are stripped of their political status as citizens by the policies that shape the soldier's thoughts and actions. The freedoms that civilians may have enjoyed before hostilities are severely undermined. Citizens experience a radical political conquest in the presence of an occupying military force. They are treated like inferior locals in relation to the colonialist “saviors” of a bygone era. Their rights—civil, national, and human—are diminished in deference to the conquerors' strategies, even when, as in some cases, they are desperately pleading for their lives.

The militaristic vernacular of commanders and political leaders tends to suppress the truths about civilian devastation. A familiar rhetorical tactic is to give old words new meanings. Civilians become “objects” that can be pushed, pulled, or discarded, as if they were markings on a map. Yet no Page 185 →military leader can measure accurately and objectively the “cost” of a leg lost, a village destroyed, or a child killed. And the claim that the powerlessness of civilians is a “given” in war's realities detracts from the spurious nature of such “objective” measurements.1 Slogans about the “cost of war” that civilians must pay come cheap for military commanders. This deadly bargain or weighing of trade-offs is an element within the systematic destruction of the enemy, which is the military's primary objective. And as such, the primary outcome of such bargaining will always be the protection, security, and glory of the home nation. So what should be done to protect civilians from such onslaughts? This volume does not address this urgent question with sufficient care. However, we suggest that military and political leaders should stop mythologizing warfare and resist the temptation to deceive, withhold, or distort critical information about the fate of civilians. That is, we call for measures that would remove the mask of professed objectivity, transparency, and infallibility. We propose that military leaders forgo the rhetoric of deception and avoid the tendency to use euphemisms, ambiguity, and misinformation regarding civilians' plight. We seek to expose the pseudological fabrications that mold minds and consequently destroy bodies. We seek to smash the false scandal that is the militarist framing of warfare. We call on political leaders who champion the nation's moral virtues to be forthright about the civilian fatalities that their troops will generate in times of war. Military leaders preparing their solders for battle should inform their young recruits that the machines of modern warfare will plunder civilians in numbers that far exceed those of enemy combatants. Military veterans who have served their nation in war should be encouraged, invited, and allowed (without compulsion) to tell their stories about the devastation of war's greatest victims. And we seek an open deliberation about a systematic assault on the human status of civilians in armed conflict.

Page 186 → Page 187 →

Notes INTRODUCTION TO PART I 1. Of course, any act of violence has a political dimension. A perpetrator of violence typically seeks to alter, transform, control, influence, or devastate another person or group, aspiring to impose his/her will over an uncooperative (or dangerous) adversary (Riches 1986:4). 2. The “ethic” that some foreign civilians are expendable is reminiscent of the ideology of nineteenthcentury colonialism. 3. Foucault examines the techniques of domination that penetrate the smallest details of everyday life (1995: 198). He writes, The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A “political autonomy” which was also a “mechanics of power” was being born; it defined how one may have a hold over others' bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but also so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. (138)

CHAPTER 2 1. Erving Goffman identified three kinds of stigmas. First, a stigma can be conferred on individuals with physical deformities, disabilities, and chronic diseases, precipitating an avoidance reaction from members of the wider community or even acts of open hostility. Second, a stigma can be conferred on individuals based on knowledge of their socially deviant behavior. Information about former criminals, political radicals, or religious heretics in a fundamentalist society can be a source of stigmatization. Third, a stigma can be attributed to individuals because of their race, national origin, or religious heritage. A stigmatized person is separated, avoided, or occasionally even removed from society (1974: chapter 4). Page 188 →

CHAPTER 3 1. Archive, Lenin's Library, Moscow. The subsequent dated quotations from Beria in the text are also from this source.

CHAPTER 4 1. The International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda addressed the problems of Tutsi racial identity. After dismissing various attempts to objectify the differences between Hutu and Tutsi through ethnic, national, and racial indicators, the court ruled that the categories of protected peoples are not subject to “objective” (etic) definitions of an ethnic group. The court relied instead on “subjective” (emic) indicators established by the Rwandan people themselves (Magnarella 2002: 318).

CHAPTER 5 1. Hezbollah announced that Israel had not completely withdrawn from Lebanon, as it controlled Shebaa Farms. The UN, however, defined Shebaa Farms as Syrian land captured along with the Golan Heights. 2. http://www.cjebaltimore.org/article.php?id=197 (accessed July 29, 2010). 3. BBC News Online, “Israel says world backs offensive,” July 27, 2006, cited in Human Rights Watch 2006.

CHAPTER 6

1. http://freepages.music.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~edgmon/cwmarching.htm (accessed July 29, 2010). 2. Engagement in warfare can evoke experiences of an awesome power in combatants. In A Rumor of War, Philip Caputo conveys a similar notion from his experiences fighting in Vietnam: There is an awesome, elemental quality about an army on the move. It seems to possess its own momentum, a force that cannot be controlled by the men who are its parts, nor even by the men whose orders set it in motion. Inexorably, as if borne upon the current of some powerful river, we were carried closer to the planes that would take us to Vietnam and war. (1977: 50) 3. When asked about gathering data about civilian casualties in Iraq, Tommy Franks declared, “We don't do body counts” (quoted in Epstein 2003). 4. In response to a Human Rights Watch request for information about civilian casualties in the Iraq War, the U.S. Department of Defense press office stated, In terms of statistics, we have no definitive estimates of civilian casualties for the overall campaign. It would be irresponsible to give firm estimates given the wide range of variables. For example, we have had cases where during a conflict, we believe Page 189 →civilians had been wounded and perhaps killed, but by the time our forces have a chance to fully assess the outcomes of the contact, the wounded or dead civilians have been removed from the scene. Factors such as this make it impossible for us to maintain an accurate account. (Human Rights Watch 2006: 217) 5. According to Clausewitz, This enormous friction, which is not concentrated, as in mechanics, at a few points, is therefore everywhere brought into contact with chance, and thus incidents take place upon which it was impossible to calculate, their chief origin being change. (1942: 36) 6. One such tactic is known as decapitation, which requires precision targeting of key enemy strongholds with air power or surgical special operations. By eliminating a few key targets, decapitation potentially becomes an efficient tactic for achieving regime change, successful enemy deterrence, or military disruption (Pick 1993: 9)—at least, efficient according to the terms of a mechanized warfare system. According to one commander, the “attractiveness of decapitation operations stems from the potential profit versus the costs.” In spite of risks in terms of time lost, resources expended, and soldiers killed or wounded, the “gamble” of these operations can presumably be offset by the potential for high return in pursuit of military objectives. 7. ROE are directives issued by competent military authority to delineate the circumstances and limitations under which its own naval, ground, and air forces will initiate and/or continue combat engagement with other forces encountered. They are the means by which the National Command Authority and operational commanders regulate the use of armed force in the context of applicable political and military policy and domestic and international law (Department of Defense 2001: 477 [Definition of ROE]). 8. The U.S. presence in Iraq has shown “our ability to treat the civilian population with humanity and dignity, even as we remain ready to immediately defend ourselves or Iraqi civilians when a threat is detected,” according to Major General William Caldwell, spokesman for the Multinational Force Iraq Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad (2006:29). 9. Specialist Richard Murphy, twenty-eight, an army reservist from Pocono, Pennsylvania, realized that the number of prisoners was growing “exponentially.”“I knew that a large percentage of these prisoners were innocent. In just listening to the prisoners' stories, I mean, I get the sense that a lot of them were just getting rounded up in big groups” (Hedges and Al-Arian 2007: 12). 10. Q: What did you do? A: I held my M-16 on them.

Q: Why? A: Because they might attack. Q: They were children and babies? A: Yes. Q: And they might attack? Children and babies? A: They might've had a fully loaded grenade on them. The mothers might have thrown them at us.Page 190 → Q: Babies? A: Yes. Q: Were the babies in their mothers' arms? A: I guess so. Q: And the babies moved to attack? A: I expected at any moment they were about to make a counterbalance. (quoted in O'Brien 1994: 203)

CHAPTER 8 1. Anthropologists have thoroughly documented the mythic elements of ethnic identity. The relative positions of groups emerge from jointly constructed story lines in which the groups play parts. According to Anthony Smith, an ethnic community is (1) a named human population (2) with a myth of common ancestry, (3) shared memories and historical experiences and (4) cultural elements, (5) a link with a historic territory or homeland, and (6) a measure of solidarity—that is, as sense of common ethnicity (1996: 6). 2. Ernst Cassirer offers an excellent analysis of the differences between discursive thought (associated with scientific inquiry) and mythic thought (associated with religious traditions) (1955: 56). 3. Not all group identities rely on territorial icons. Malkki illustrates a deterritorialized identity in the displacement of Hutu refugees in Burundi. The Hutus refused to become naturalized—that is, to put down roots in a place in which they did not belong. Their “true nation” was formed centrally by the “natives” in exile (1995: 501). In such cases, the problems of refugees, the homeless, and wanderers create pathological behavior, seen in other terms as a form of stigmatization. A deterritoriality epistemology of identities gives priority to shifting border conditions, potentially shaped and reshaped through the evolving borders, which are the markings of sameness and difference.

CHAPTER 9 1. Several researchers have confirmed the role of subjective group membership in shaping political attitudes and behavior (Conover 1988; Miller et al. 1981) and demonstrated strong correlations between group identification and outgroup hostility (Branscombe and Wann 1994; Grant and Brown 1995).

CHAPTER 10 1. See Aristotle 1969: book B, chapter 3, 194b20–195a5; book B, chapter 7, 198a15–25; Aristotle 1966: book A, chapter 3, 982a25–983b5. 2. For an excellent analysis of the relationship between ethnic identity and religious identity, see Avruch 1982.

3. Guardian Weekly, September 9–15, 2005, 12. 4. Jean-Paul Sartre develops this theme in his study of anti-Semitism: Page 191 → The anti-Semite has cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, the less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti-Semite and it remains understood in his thought. … For the moment so many tasks confront the anti-Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good. … Those who come after will concern themselves with the Good, if there is occasion. As for him, he is in the front rank of society, fighting with his back turned to the pure virtues that he defends. His business is with Evil; his duty is to unmask it, to denounce it, to measure its extent. (1948: 44–45).

CONCLUSION 1. In the 1970s, two economic historians sought to give an econometric explanation for the nineteenthcentury practice of owners flogging their slaves. Their explanation centered on the “moral neutrality” of measuring the “costs” of flogging against the “benefits” to a slave's productivity to the plantation. Aside from the moral horror induced by contemplating this econometrics of slavery, this methodology fosters a pseudoscience of human objectification. See Fogel and Engerman 1974.

Page 192 → Page 193 →

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Index of Names Abbott, A., 29 Aberdeen, L., 83 Abrams, D., 130 Agamben, G., 43 Al-Arian, L., 108, 111, 113, 122, 189 Allen, V.L., 129 Amnesty International, 13, 76, 92 Annan, K., 16 Arendt, H., 123, 173–74, 183 Aristotle, 167–68, 190 Avruch, K., v, 190 Ayoob, M., 154 Azar, E. E., 23–24 Bar-Tal, D., 80 Barth, F.E., 128, 131, 147 Bartlett, T., v, 58 Berger, J., 101, 106–7 Beria, Levrentii, 45, 49, 50, 51, 53, 124, 141, 188 Billig, M., 129; (Tajfel et al. 1971), 129 Bizimungu, Casimir, 65 Blanz, M., 136, 157 Blumer, H., 158–59 Bobo, L., 158 Booth, K., 159 Bourdieu, P., 62–63, 105 Bourhis, R.Y., 136, 157 Bourke, J., 116, 118

Branscombe, N. R., 115, 190 Brewer, M. B., 129–30, 136, 156–58 Brown, M. E., 136, 154, 162, 190 Brown, R., 78, 135–36, 156, 158, 162, 190 Brubaker, R., 25, 128, 159 Burton, J. W., 22, 23 Caesar, J., 1 Cain, C. (Holland et al. 1998), 131 Caldwell, W., 189 Calley, W. L., 118 Campbell, D. T., 158 Caputo, P., 117, 188 Carr, C., 98 Cassirer, E., 190 Catherwood, C., 95 Cherubin, R., v, 165 Child, P. (McGuire et al. 1978), 133 Chrétien, J. P., 66–67, 69–70, 72, 144 Clausewitz, C.V., 90, 104–5, 119, 189 Clemens, W. C., 17 Cloran, C., 66 Cockburn, C., 10 Cohen, A. P., 26, 128, 131, 137 Collier, P., 102 Collins, A., 159 Conover, P. J., 190 Cooper, J., 168 Crano, W. D., 162 Crosby, F., 157

Davis, J. A., 111 Deaux, K., 136 Deschamps, J. C., 132–33 Devos, T., 132–33 Dicter, Avi, 85 Dion, K. L., 157 Page 210 → Doise, W., 129, 133 Doosje, B., 133 Doswald-Beck, L., 11–12 Douglas, M., 30 Eck, K., 18–19 Eisses, A., 136 Ellemers, N., 133, 136, 157 Elliott, V. L. (Collier et al. 2003), 102 Engerman, S. L., 191 Epstein, E., 188 Eriksen, T. H., 131 Espinoza, J. A., 136, 157 Fisher, R., 21, 22, 128 Fitzpatrick, S., 57 Fogel, R.W., 191 Foucault, M., 13, 106, 187 Frohardt, M., 62, 172 Fujioka, T. (McGuire et al. 1978), 133 Gakidou, E., 17 Galtung, J., 18, 21–22 Garza, R. T., 136, 157 Gecas, V., 78, 134

Gellner, E., 128, 158–59 Gerard, H. B., 136, 157 Gibson, J. L., 78, 135 Gleditsch, N. P., 17, 95 Goffman, E., 32, 187 Gopin, M., v Gorbachev, Mikhail, 54 Gouwa, A., 78, 135 Granberg, D., 162 Grant, P. R., 135, 190 Grayling, A. C., 42 Greene, D., 162 Greenwald, G., 76 Grimes, D., 101, 106–7 Gurin, G. (Miller et al. 1981), 190 Gurin, P. (Miller et al. 1981), 190 Gurr, T. R., 128, 157, 159 Habyarimana, Juvenal, 59–60 Hagendoorn, L., 159 Halliday, M. A. K., 62 Halutz, Dan, 86–91, 95–96 Hamilton, D. L., 136, 157 Hammer, R., 118 Hardin, R., 158 Harff, B., 159 Hariri, Rafik, 82 Harnish, R. (L. A. Jackson et al. 1996), 135, 156 Harré, R., 59, 63, 83, 143 Harris, V. A., 42, 159

Hasan, R., 62 Haslam, S. A., 78, 79 Hatzfeld, J., 176 Hedges, C., 108, 111, 113, 119, 122, 189 Hegre, H. (Collier et al. 2003), 102 Heider, F., 159, 198 Helmer, J., 119 Henckaerts, J.-M., 11–12 Herzog, Yitzak, 85–86, 90–91, 96 Hewstone, M., 136, 157 Hicks, Clifton, 114–15 Hodge, C. N. (L. A. Jackson et al. 1996), 135, 156 Hoeffler, A. (Collier et al. 2003), 102 Hogg, M. A., 130; (Turner et al. 1987), 128, 129 Holland, D., 131, 199 Holtz, R., 162 Horowitz, D. L., 26, 159 House, P., 162 Hoyt, M. F., 136, 157 Huddy, L., 133, 135, 156 Hultman, L., 18–19 Human Rights Watch, 108, 188–89 Human Security Centre, 18 Hutchings, V. L., 158 Iraq Veterans Against the War, 109 Ishai, Eli, 84, 86–91, 96 Jackson, L.A., 135, 156 Jackson, M., 136, 171 Jackson, R., 154

Jaromowic, M., 132 Jenkins, R., 128, 133 Jensen, E., 101, 106–7 Jervis, R., 159 Jones, E. E., 159 Jowitt, K., 176 Juergensmeyer, M., 95, 172 Page 211 → Kavulich, K., 83 Kawakami, K., 157 Kayirange, Marie-Claire, 74 Kelman, H. C., 25 Kennedy, D., 11 Khrushchev, Nikita, 53–54 Kinket, B., 133, 136 Kinnard, D., 118 Klinghoffer, A. J., 37, 144, 149 Kokesh, Adam, 113 Korostelina, K.V., 79, 134–35, 150, 153, 162 Kortekaas, P., 136, 157 Kriesberg, L., 24, 137 Kristeva, J., 30–31 Lachicotte, W. (Holland et al. 1998), 131 Lacina, B., 17, 95 Lake, D.A., 159 Lalonde, R. N., 156 Lamont, M., 29 Lave, J., 131 Lee, N., 83

LeVine, R.A., 158 Levi-Strauss, C., 30 Linssen, H. (Hagendoorn et al. 1996), 159 Livny, Zipi, 85, 91, 96 Louis, W., 83 MacIntyre, A. C., 142 Magnarella, P. J., 188 Malanchuk, O. (Miller et al. 1981), 190 Malenkov, Georgy, 50 Malkki, L., 149, 190 Mansbach, R. W., 151 Masson, K., 136 McAdam, D., 131 McClosky, H., 99 McGarty, C. (Turner et al. 1994), 23, 147 McGuire, C. V., 133 McGuire, W. J., 133 Miller, A. H., 136, 162, 190 Miller, N., 136, 162 Moghaddam, F. A., 59, 63, 83, 135, 144, 155, 158 Molnar, V., 29 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 50 Moore, R. S., 172 Mullen, B., 136, 162 Mummendey, A., 136, 156–57 Murray, C., 17 Nahimana, Ferdinand, 69 Nordstrom, C., 8 Oakes, P. J., 130; (Turner et al. 1987), 128, 129; (Turner et al. 1994), 147

Obermeyer, Z., 17 O'Brien, T., 190 Olmert, Ehud, 84–85, 90–91, 95–96 Otten, S., 136, 157 Ouwerkerk, J.W., 136, 157 Peacock, J. L., 131 Peres, Shimon, 85, 90, 96 Peretz, Amir, 88, 90–91, 95 Perreault, S., 136 Pettigrew, T. F., 157 Physicians for Human Rights, 18 Pick, D., 104, 119, 189 Piven, J., 143 Posen, B., 159 Potter, J., 63 Prunier, Gérard, 73 Queen Mother Kanjogera, 67 Rabbie, J., 130 Ramon, Haim, 86–90, 96 Rath, R., 79 Reicher, S. D., 78–79 Reynal-Querol, M. (P. Collier et al. 2003), 102 Riches, D., 187 Ros, L., 162 Ross, L., 25 Ross, M. H.,25, 159 Rothbart, D., 79 Rothchild, D. S., 159 Rothman, J., 24

Rotman, D. (Hagendoorn et al. 1996), 159 Runciman, W. G., 157 Rushton, J. P., 153 Page 212 → Sachdev, I., 136, 157 Salkever, S. G., 168 Sallah, M., 118 Sambanis, N. (Collier et al. 2003), 102 Sanders, G. S., 162 Sandole, D. J. D., v, 9 Saramago, J., 1 Sartre, J. P., 190 Scarry, E., 10 Schot, J., 130 Schreiber, H.-J., 156 Schwartz, M., 107 Schwartz, S. H., 78, 107, 137–38 Semujanga, J., 36, 60, 175 Shadid, A., 93 Shavit, A., 76 Sherif, C., 158 Sherif, M., 158 Sherman, W., 98 Simon, B., 136, 157 Sinclair, A., 129 Singer, J. D., 17 Siniora, Fouad, 82 Skinner, D. (Holland et al. 1998), 131 Slim, H., 8–9

Slocum, N., 83 Smith, A. D., 136, 162 Smith, C., 136, 162 Smith, T. W., 104, 136 Snyder, J. L., 159 Spear, J., 159 Spears, R., 78, 133 Stalin, Joseph, 38, 45–47, 49–51, 53, 163 Staub, E., 95 Stavenhagen, R., 154 Stein, J. G., 25 Stern, P., 25 Stroebe, W., 136, 157 Sullivan, L. A. (L. A. Jackson et al. 1996), 135, 156 Suls, J., 162 Survivors Fund, 17 Tajfel, H., 23, 78, 128, 129, 132, 133, 135, 136, 156, 158 Tarrow, S. G., 131 Taylor, D. M., 135, 156, 158 Temin, J., 62, 172 Tilly, C., 26, 29–30, 128, 131, 137, 154 Tiryakian, E., 145 Tumanov, S. (Hagendoorn et al. 1996), 159 Turner, J. C., 23, 78, 128, 129, 132, 135, 147, 156 Turner, P. (Turner et al. 1984), 23, 132, 135 Uehling, G. L., 55 Ury, A., 21–22 Van den Berghe, P. L., 153 Van Evera, S., 159

Vanhanen, T., 153 Van Knippenberg, A., 156 Van Langenhove, L., 59, 83, 143 Van Oers, H., 156 Verkuyten, M., 133, 136 Viges, Hart, 111–12 Virtanen, S., 135, 156 Visser, L., 130 Volkan, V. D., 25, 128, 130–31, 156–57, Walker, I., 157 Walton, M. D., 162 Walzer, M., 11, 116 Wan, C. K., 162 Wann, D. L., 135 Watherell, M. S. (Turner et al. 1987), 128, 129, 132 Weber, J. G., 136, 157 Weiss, M., 118 Wetherell, M., 63 Wetzel, C. G., 162 Wheeler, N. J., 159 Wilder, D. A., 129, 162 Williams, B. G., 46–47, 54 Wilmer, A., 151 Winograd Committee, 77, 82–84, 86–87, 89–91, 93, 95 Washburn, Jason, 112 Wright, S. C., 135, 156 Zartman, I.W., 154

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Index of Subjects Anticivilian ideology, 8–10, 13, 99, 124–25, 182 Arabs, 69, 111, 176 “Artificial ethnicity,” 26 Basic human needs, 21–22, 24 Boundary division between identity groups, 26, 48, 80, 131 Causality, 126, 165–69, 174, 179 Chosen glory, 130 Chosen trauma, 130 Civilians as collaborators, 86–87, 91, 96 as collateral, 10, 12, 86, 92–94, 97 as frictions to military machines, 141 as political capital, 86, 91–92, 96 Cognitive dissonance, 25, 28, 38, 78, 170 Cold War, 159 Collateral devastation, 16 Collective axiology, 4, 20–21, 26–27, 45, 57, 119–20, 125, 140–53, 155, 161–65, 177 balance of, 176, 178–80 generality of, 79–80, 83, 85–87, 96, 176–80 iconic order of, 148 mythic narrative of, 146–47, 151, 161, 166, 169–70, 173 normative order of, 29, 52, 83, 144–47, 150–52 Conflict, 51, 123, 126–27, 165–66, 169 analysis, 51, 123, 126–27, 165–66, 169 ethnic, 3, 22–23, 128, 153, 159 deep-rooted, 23–24 dynamic, 16, 22, 163

resolution, 20 Construct of consciousness, 3, 147, 154, 178 Cooperative interdependence, 130 Crimea, 38–39, 44–57, 163, 183 Crimean Tatars, 3, 9, 30, 38–39, 44–57, 124, 141, 163–64 Culture, 10, 29, 31, 46, 55, 60, 78, 122, 132, 134, 137–38, 155, 171, 177 Democratic Republic of Congo, 17 Demonization, 9, 53, 57, 59, 85, 96, 140, Differentiation, 33, 82, 95, 130, 132–33, 145, 147, 150, 153, 156 Direct testimony of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq, as recorded in Winter Soldier Testimony (2008), 109–15 Discrimination, 150, 157 Dominant identity, 128, 161 Education, 47, 56, 134, 138, 163 Ethnic cleansing, 26 Ethnic community, definition of, 190n1 (chap. 8) Ethnic conflict, 3, 22–23, 128, 153, 159 Ethnic group(s) blame directed at during times of economic hardship, 56 Genocide Convention definition of, 60 Page 214 → See also names of specific groups Ethnic identity belief in separate Tutsi and Hutu ethnic identities as a suspect belief, 60 impact on personal values, 134 instrumentalist approach to study of, 154 primordial approach to study of, 153–54 See also under Identity Ethnic schools, 46 Experience of domination, 5, 7, 13, 35, 37, 67, 70, 72, 81, 106, 153, 159

Four-C model, 155 comparison stage of, 153–61, 163 competition stage of, 153–54 confrontation stage of, 153–54 counteraction stage of, 153–54, 161–64 Gaza, 84, 97 Geneva Conventions, 11 Genocide, vii, 3, 9, 17, 19, 26, 30, 33, 35, 58–61, 63–65, 67, 69, 71, 72, 75, 95, 124, 141, 144, 152, 182 Germany, 38, 45, 50, 51 Global attribution error, 31, 146, 159, 163 Globalization, 177 Hague Conventions, 11 Hezbollah, 76–78, 80–91, 93, 95–97, 103, 124, 141, 179, 188 Historic narratives, 25 Humanitarian laws of war, 11, 82, 108, 183 principle of distinction of, 11 principle of military necessity of, 11, 101 principle of proportionality of, 12, 100–104 Human rights, 18, 108, 151, 188–89 Hutus, 9, 35, 36, 37, 58–61, 69–70, 124, 144, 163, 170, 175–76, 190 Iconic order, 148 Identification, 68, 78–79, 110, 112, 117, 129–30, 133–36, 190 Identity, vii, 3–4, 9, 20–26, 28–30, 32, 35, 40, 43–46, 55, 58–61, 63–64, 67, 69, 74–75, 77–80, 85, 95, 120–21, 125–41, 143, 145, 147–51, 153–63, 165–70, 172–74, 178–83, 188, 190 collective, vii, 26, 78, 96, 121, 131, 150, 169 common, 3–4, 7, 26, 30, 41, 48, 60, 71, 129 crisis, 150, 152, 163, 165 dominant, 128, 161 ethnic, 25, 55, 60, 134, 150, 153, 156, 190 individual, 132, 176

national, 25, 153 regional, 38, 46, 67, 70, 74, 84, 150, 155–56 Ingroup, 2–4, 8–9, 13, 23–26, 29, 31–35, 37–38, 42–43, 59, 61, 77–80, 83, 100, 121, 123–28, 132–41, 143–48, 150–52, 155–66, 169, 170–72, 174, 176–80 favoritism, 135 loyalty, 24, 128, 132, 134, 135, 160 primacy of, 134 support, 31, 162, 169 Interahamwe, 60, 73 Intergroup, 23, 25–26, 29, 78, 80, 127–29, 131–39, 147, 156–59, 163–64, 180 comparison, 23, 129, 159 conflict, 15, 29 contact, 116–17, 158, 170, 189 Internally displaced persons, 17 Iraq, vii, 3, 13, 98–101, 103, 105, 107–13, 115, 117, 119, 121–22, 124–25, 142, 163–64, 183–84, 188–89 Israel Defense Forces, 81 Japan, 33 Japanese Imperial Army, 33 Jews, 30, 48, 50, 164, 168–69, 176 Leadership, 9–10, 13, 46, 58–59, 76–77, 80, 82–83, 87, 92–93 Page 215 → Israeli, 13, 76–77, 80, 82–83, 85–87, 91–92, 96, 124, 141, 179 Soviet, 9, 52 Lebanon, vii, 3, 13, 76–77, 79–91, 93, 95–97, 103, 124, 163–64, 183, 188 Locus of self-esteem, 23, 78, 132–33, 135, 147 Logicality of action, 37, 126, 166–67, 171–74 Majority-minority position. See Perceptions of consensus Management of multicultural communities, 163 Mass media, 55 Metacontrast principle, 137

Minor differences, 25, 156 Moralpolitik, 32, 126, 166, 172–73, 179 Multiculturalism, 49, 163 Muslims, 81, 168 Mutual differentiation, 33, 133, 156 My Lai, 116, 117, 118, 119 National identity concepts, 38, 59, 67, 107 structure, 1, 14, 23, 64, 87, 91, 93, 121, 128, 131, 135, 139, 184 Nationalism, 151, 159, 179 Nazis, 9, 30, 38, 44–48, 52, 54, 57, 164, 169–70 Negotiation of national identity, 21 Normative order, 29, 52, 83, 144–47, 150–51 Optimal distinctiveness theory, 130–31, 156 Outgroup threat, 31, 145, 163, 170–71 Patriotism, 47, 55 Perceived interdependence, 124, 130 Perceptions of consensus, 162 PLO, 81 Prototype, 130, 147–48 Radio-Télévision Mille Collines, 65 Readiness for conflict, 134, 162 Realistic conflict theory, 158 Reconciliation, 140 Regime change, 189 Relative deprivation, 156, 157 Role identity, 129 Rules of engagement, 97, 100, 104, 107–11, 117 Russia, 38, 45, 46

Russians, 48 Rwanda, vii, 3, 9, 17, 19, 30, 35, 37, 58–61, 63, 65–75, 124, 141, 144, 149, 163–64, 175, 182, 188 Rwandan Patriotic Army, 66 Security dilemma, 31, 159 Segregation, 31, 159 Self-esteem, 23, 78, 132–33, 135, 147, 159 Self-hatred, 149 Shared reservoirs of identity, 130 Sierra Leone, 18 Social categorization theory, 129–30 Social psychology, 32, 59, 83 Sociology, 131 Stereotypes, 63, 68, 78, 130, 138, 150, 155–56, 163, 173 Telic modeling, 166, 173 Terrorism, 9, 85–86, 143, 182–83 Threat narratives, 58, 61, 125–26, 140–46, 150, 161 Training, 74, 98, 100, 117, 119–21, 148, 151 Tutsi, 9, 35–37, 58–62, 64–75, 124, 141, 144–45, 149, 163–64, 169–70, 173, 175–76, 188 Ukraine, 9, 38, 44–45, 47, 54–56 Ukrainians, 44, 55–56 U.S. Department of Defense, 101, 103, 107, 188 Uzbekistan, 51–55 Values of identity group, 125, 134 War, vii, 1–3, 5, 7–20, 27–33, 35, 37–43, 45–47, 49–50, 52–55, 57, 69–70, 76–77, 79–81, 83, 85–87, 89–91, 93, 95–109, 112, 117–22, 124, 141, 151–52, 154, 157, 159, 163–64, 166–67, 170, 172, 176, 179, 182–85, 188 Page 216 → Cold War, 159 Iraq War, 3, 100, 122, 124, 183, 188 Second Lebanon War, vii, 3, 13, 76–77, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 103, 124, 183 Second World War, 16, 30, 38, 42, 45, 47, 55, 57, 124, 141, 163, 183

Vietnam War, 99–100, 115–19, 122, 188n2 (chap. 6) Winograd, 77, 82–84, 86–87, 89–91, 93, 95 Winter soldier. See Direct testimony of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq