WORLD
Seductions of violence in Iraq
Baku, April 2 (AZERTAC). Violence in Iraq is not a throw-back to some more `primitive` past, driven by dark passions dredged up from history. On the contrary, it has a logic and a constitutive power of its own fully in line with the contemporary experiences that Iraqis have undergone both before and after 2003. Moreover, it seems to be regarded by those in power as a good deal less troubling than public accountability.
Some of the uprisings in the Arab world in 2011 demonstrated the appeal and the power of nonviolent protest. Others, however, bore witness to the enduring appeal of violence, both for embattled regimes and for those trying to unseat them. For the former, violence and the threat of violence promises to restore order and discipline; for the latter it promises direct access to power. It thus becomes in the projection of power both a symbol and an instrument of the seriousness of the political project, expressing resolve and representing the very embodiment of sovereignty: the ability and the right to grant life and death.
For government, violence presents itself as a realist resource for stability, the key in fact to `stability operations` – yet one more euphemism to make violence so seductive. For the opposing forces, violence equally is a token of their own seriousness and determination, a graphic way of portraying `what the struggle is all about`. Massive and demonstrative violence to inspire terror on the part of established authorities and insurgent forces has therefore been at the heart of many political projects, projecting a realist image, and suggesting that this is something with which you cannot argue.
However, the apparent `clean break` of the violent act, the seemingly unanswerable power of violence has severely complicating consequences. Beyond its immediate imaginative appeal, long after the violent act itself, it has a resonance or ripple effect of immense power. It sets in motion social and political processes of enormous complexity and ambiguity that are rarely taken into consideration in so-called realist calculations about the short-term efficacy of violence. There is no final outcome, but a chain of consequences far beyond the control of those who first picked up arms.