Everyday Occupations: Experiencing Militarism in South Asia and the Middle East 9780812207835

Citation preview

Everyday Occupations

PENNSYLVANIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS Bert B. Lockwood, Jr., Series Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

EVERYDAY OCCUPATIONS Experiencing Militarism in South Asia and the Middle East

Edited by

Kamala Visweswaran

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

Copyright 䉷 2013 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Everyday occupations : experiencing militarism in South Asia and the Middle East / edited by Kamala Visweswaran. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Pennsylvania studies in human rights) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4487-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Military occupation—Social aspects—South Asia. 2. Military occupation—Social aspects—Middle East. 3. Militarism—Social aspects—South Asia. 4. Militarism—Social aspects—Middle East. 5. Ethnic conflict—South Asia. 6. Ethnic conflict—Middle East. I. Visweswaran, Kamala. II. Series: Pennsylvania studies in human rights. UA832.7.E94 2013 355.4'90954—dc23 2012032310

contents

Healing the Forest Cheran Rudhramoorthy Introduction: Geographies of Everyday Occupation Kamala Visweswaran

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1

Chapter 1. Qırıx: An ‘‘Inverted Rhapsody’’ on Kurdish National Struggle, Gender, and Everyday Life in Diyarbakir Serap Ruken Sengul

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Chapter 2. The War Zone in My Heart: The Occupation of Southern Sri Lanka Sandya Hewamanne

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Chapter 3. Grounding Militarism: Structures of Feeling and Force in Gilgit-Baltistan Nosheen Ali

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Chapter 4. Stateless Citizens and Menacing Men: Notes on the Occupation of Palestinians Inside Israel Rhoda Kanaaneh

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Chapter 5. Indigenous Women and Culture in the Colonized Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh Kabita Chakma and Glen Hill

132

Chapter 6. Death and Life Under Occupation: Space, Violence, and Memory in Kashmir Mohamad Junaid

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Contents

Chapter 7. The Missing Grave of Sheikh Said: Kurdish Formations of Memory, Place, and Sovereignty in Turkey Hisyar Oszoy

191

Afterword: Refining the Optic of Occupation Richard Falk

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Some Day Kabita Chakma

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Notes

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List of Contributors

261

Index

285

Acknowledgments

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healing t he forest

Cheran Rudhramoorthy

To heal a still smoldering land, we went; no bird in sight.

with dance and song by an estranged foe; what then is the way ahead?

An empty sky above the sparrow-flying earth.

To cool the burning heart there is nothing today.

An ash-covered landless earth to the edge of that wide expanse; here, no one knows how to gather bones. Yet, Our libation of milk the relentless welling of tears now mocked with glee

No witness for the drop of blood still not dry. To claim closure to dissolve ashes in the sea to scatter in the air to close one’s eyes, there is no air there is no sea there is no way to heal the forest.

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Cheran Rudhramoorthy

The year 2012 year marked the release of my eighth collection of poems, Kaadaatru (‘‘Healing the Forest’’) (Nagercoil: Kalachuvadu Publications). The poems were written mostly during the last stages of the war that ended in May 2009 with the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The English translation ‘‘Healing the Forest’’ does not capture the depth, imagery, and ritual undertones of the Tamil title. Kaadaatru is a death ritual performed on the third day after cremation and involves gathering the ashes and bones of the dead. Performing kaadaatru is the beginning of closure. However, the poem sketches the haunting inability to perform kaadaatru and therefore the impossibility of achieving closure.

Introduction: Geographies of Everyday Occupation Kamala Visweswaran

In 2008, an Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, threw his shoes at President George W. Bush at a press conference in Baghdad; he was quickly detained (and badly beaten by security detail) but became something of an overnight hero in Iraq and across the Middle East. In Sadr City, Iraqis hung their shoes and sandals on long poles they waved in the air as a protest against the U.S. occupation, while in Najaf people threw their shoes at passing military convoys. One of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s daughters awarded al-Zaidi a medal of courage, while Syrians recognized him as a hero.1 Soon after, an Internet video game irreverently called ‘‘Sock and Awe’’2 (www .sockandawe.com) went viral, allowing players to reenact the thirty-second scene by throwing virtual shoes at Bush sheepishly ducking behind a podium (high score 99 by several Chinese gamers). Some two years later, during a summer dubbed the ‘‘Kashmiri Intifada’’ by the international press, head constable Abdul Ahad Jan, from his backbencher’s seat at an Indian Independence Day function, lobbed his shoe at Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, landing it harmlessly in front of him. Jan was also beaten and taken immediately into custody; he too became an overnight sensation: thousands of villagers converged on his home town near Bandipora (at the Line of Control separating India and Pakistan), shouting ‘‘Meri jaan, teri jaan, Ahad Jan, Ahad Jan!’’3 Indian mainstream media with much puzzlement noted a number of Facebook pages devoted to the unlikely hero, even as his sanity was questioned, and allegations that he was involved in local extortion were quickly countered by pointing to a service medal he had received in 1992—the year before the Kashmiri police revolted against the occupation of Indian troops. What is instructive about these incidents is the sense of something happening

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that eludes easy coding by regimes of power: a sense of the popular as the site of enactment of an inversion, a surge of affect cresting as a kind of jouissance, marking a joyful triumph of the insult such that the narrowly ducked shoe would be appropriated by Bush as a ‘‘sign of democracy,’’ while Abdullah would ‘‘pardon’’ constable Jan’s shoe-toss in a display of Ramadan-inspired forgiveness. Other figures, apart from this shoe-throwing hero, also emerged from the Kashmiri intifada amid the masses of stone-pelting youth (or ‘‘sangbazan’’) that summer. These are the unemployed youth stuck at home during curfews, the ‘‘bekaari’’ (good-for-nothing, slackers) of a social network calling itself the Bekaar Jamaath (Idle Group). These ‘‘useless people’’ originated as a Facebook group with 12,000 members, highlighting complaints about exams, jokes about engineering students, mock letters to the dean (and mock-up photos of members of university administration), film heroes, and the usual images college students take to be cool or just plain silly. The most explicit reference to the situation in Kashmir is a wall photo that asserts, ‘‘Unlimited creativity needs undivided spaces’’ and its fevered, late-night imagining of itself as an ‘‘epidemic’’—as almost a symptom of the fighting on the streets: Bekaar jamaath is a new epidemic . . . Symptoms include insomnia, restlessness, anxiety, headaches, constant presence on Facebook, always online in gtalk, doing silly things to remain busy & so on . . . In a region where cell phone usage is monitored, text messaging frequently banned, and internet service often limited, the site had reportedly crashed amid reports of Indian intelligence infiltrating social network sites, was briefly up again, then defunct by September 2011.4 Cartoonist Malik Sajad’s graphic novel Facebooked tellingly describes the plight of young Kashmiris harassed and detained by police for their Facebook posts, though Facebook posting itself is not a crime.5 A breakaway Facebook group, the Kargil Bekaar Jamaat, located in cyberspace but also at the Line of Control where India and Pakistan last fought a war in 1999, is still putting the edge on ‘‘idle’’ critique, however. It adopted as one of its slogans, ‘‘No seedhi baat, only bakwaas,’’ a play on the popular expression, ‘‘Seedhi baat, no bakwaas’’ (‘‘Straight talk, no nonsense’’), and the Aaj Tak Indian cable TV news show Seedhi Baat

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(‘‘Straight Talk’’). For the Kargil BJ, ‘‘No seedhi baat, only bakwaas’’ is ironically posed as a form of ‘‘Bekaar advertising’’ (where bakwaas can also refer to something fake) and is superimposed across a cartoon image of a man getting his brains blown out, a referent to the ‘‘fake encounter’’ killings practiced routinely throughout Kashmir. It is dark humor that uses inversion to point to news spin and negotiated forms of ‘‘straight talk’’ as so much false advertising that fails to mask the bald exercise of political power. One wall photo on the site is of an Indian military sign that says in English and Hindi, ‘‘Caution You Are Under Enemy Observation,’’ mirroring another inversion for its Kashmiri addressees. Still another photo on the site juxtaposes a military supply plane touching down on a runway as a luxury Jet Airways plane, dubbed ‘‘BJ Airline,’’ is poised for take-off. The narrative and visual structures of the Bekaar Jamaaths are playful or silly, but in the end they cannot escape the politics of occupation. They enact an aversion to politics, an inversion of them, and perhaps against the Bekaar Jamaats’ will, a reversion to them.

* * * The papers in this volume take seriously the intertwining of popular and expressive culture with the political in exploring the logics of occupation. They examine militarization as it is wielded as a political and economic tool, and as it is experienced as a material form of violence and symbolic domination. Roughly half the group write on militarization as it affects soldiers or on the imbrication of military logics in forms of popular culture from the standpoints of the occupier; while the other half approach militarization from the standpoint of the occupied, their forms of resistance and challenges to the practices of militarization. Rhoda Kanaaneh and Sandya Hewamanne see the logic of occupation as crucial for how the Israeli and Sri Lankan states reinvent and reterritorialize themselves through racialized and gendered fantasies or rationales. Mohamad Junaid, on the other hand, defines the logic of occupation as neither reason nor rationale since, as he points out, occupation rarely names itself as such (hence the semantic difference between ‘‘Indian-administered Kashmir’’ and what Kashmiris refer to as Indian-occupied Kashmir). For Junaid, occupation can be better understood as ‘‘general features’’ or practices like the ‘‘physical organization of space, uses of violence, procedures of security, emergency laws and

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ordinances, tactical decisions and moves among higher and lower level figures in power, psychological operations and propaganda,’’ which, while specific to Kashmir, also resonate with other places under occupation. ‘‘Occupation’’ might also be seen as an example of what Carol Gluck and Anna Tsing have called a ‘‘word in motion,’’6 one that gains in force by moving across space and time, in and out of majority and minority nationalist vocabularies, and as a set of military practices with consequences for dominant and subjugated peoples. It is historically part of imperial conquest, settler colonialism, and more recently, as we have seen with the ‘‘Occupy Wall Street’’ protests, a form of urban resistance. Junaid describes how in Kashmir, the occupation is referred to as the halat or ‘‘situation’’ while Ruken Sengul relates how in Turkish Kurdistan the surec or ‘‘process’’ came to define Kurdish nationalist revolutionary struggle against Turkish military domination. Like other powering rubrics on ‘‘Partition,’’7 ‘‘Empire,’’8 or ‘‘Walls,’’9 it is the work of this volume to see how recentering an analytic object or set of events—‘‘occupation’’—may productively revise historical, political, social, and economic frames of analysis. Histories, Sovereignties ‘‘Preoccupation,’’ in the sense Sandya Hewamanne uses it in her chapter in this volume, is a form of saturation of culture with the symbols and processes of militarization that extend Sri Lanka’s military occupation of Northeastern Sri Lanka to the southern, Sinhala-majority portion of the country. But (pre)occupation also refers to prior histories of sovereignty or belonging that cannot be encapsulated by either the Westphalian or the postwar/ postcolonial state form. The Tamil peoples are split between India and Sri Lanka, yet Tamil presence in Sri Lanka dates to perhaps the second century, and a Tamil state was in place during the ninth or tenth centuries, contributing to the sense of the Jaffna Peninsula and Northeastern Sri Lanka as a historic, if mixed ‘‘Eelam’’ or homeland. Tibet was occupied in 1949, but claims a state form as far back as the seventh century. Kashmir claims a regional identity and historical tradition tied to seventh-century Sanskrit and later Kashmiri and Persian literatures, though Kashmir is divided by India, Pakistan, and China. Kurdish nationalist thought locates a sense of territoriality and vatan (homeland) that extends at least to the eleventh century, if not to the seventh or second, preempting twentieth-century claims by Russian, Turkish, Syrian, Irani, and Iraqi regimes.10 ‘‘Historic

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Palestine’’ is a term of considerable contention, with Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, and Arabic linguistic sources that predate by millennia the modern era, but the Zionist presumption that the Christian, Muslim, Bedouin, Mizrahi, or Sephardic Palestinian peoples are simply the residuum of Israeli state-formation is both pernicious and highly revealing of the processes of exclusion, violence, and domination that have come to characterize modern Israel. As for Bangladesh’s indigenous groups, James Scott reminds us that by the close of the eighteenth century, most of the world’s minority peoples, inhabiting remote regions but the greater part of the world’s land mass, were ‘‘stateless,’’ particularly those highland groups stretching from South to East Asia.11 Such groups as the Chakmas (and other indigenous or ‘‘Jumma’’ peoples of South and Southeast Asia) also claim forms of precolonial sovereignty that predate British colonial, Burmese, Indian, Pakistani, and now Bangladeshi nation-states, as Kabita Chakma explains in her contribution for the volume. While it is the work of nationalism to push forms of identity or territoriality deep into the past, it is not the task of this volume to resolve the relationship of premodern forms of identity to modern-state formation (where already a large critical literature exists). Hisyar Ozsoy’s and Kabita Chakma’s chapters, however, do mark the heft of such long-mobilized identities for alternate conceptions of sovereignty, raising the larger question of what forms of sovereignty are legitimate or are indeed even intelligible outside the nation-state form. Michel Foucault in his lecture of March 10, 1976, provides an ingenious reading of how nation and state became soldered together in eighteenthcentury France, linking this process to the displacement of war in historical discourse, and to ‘‘the idea of an internal war that defends society against threats born of and in its own body.’’ As he puts it, this ‘‘idea of social war makes . . . a great retreat from the historical to the biological.’’12 Foucault would, of course, call this form of nation-state war on itself a form of biopolitics, and it is a major challenge to the literature on global civil wars, which takes as given the very object it seeks to explain.13 Indeed it is Foucault’s rethinking of the terms of sovereignty itself, which helps to establish the tradition critical of the state’s management of life (biopower) that has enabled Giorgio Agamben and Achille Mbembe to write of the spaces of bare life signaled by the forms of occupation attended to in this volume. These spaces of ongoing violence or of bare life nonetheless still represent the ‘‘essential domain of sovereignty’’ in Henri Lefebvre’s terms; they

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attempt to wrest sovereignty away from the issue of external recognition to one of ‘‘internal recognition.’’14 It is for this reason that Kashmiri calls for azadi (freedom) or Sri Lankan Tamil demands for viduthalai (liberation) are nearly unintelligible in the framework of the Westphalian nation-state. Richard Falk, special rapporteur for Palestine, in his Afterword for this volume, is critical of the ways international law recognizes only territorially based sovereignty. Indeed, to lose territorial control as a result of what he calls the ‘‘Westphalian knife’’ is to lose all claim to sovereignty; it is thus unsurprising that so many unresolved conflicts of this century and the last are centered on land. While historian Eric Weitz has located the roots of a ‘‘populationbased’’ politics of partition in the late nineteenth century,15 we can clearly see a partitioning blade carving up lands after the First World War. As Hannah Arendt observes in her classic essay, ‘‘The Decline of the NationState and the End of the Rights of Man,’’16 the massive displacements and deportations that marked the close of the First World War (and the breakup of empires) marked the large-scale emergence of modern statelessness, as some nations were arbitrarily assigned states, and others were excluded from the state form. After World War I, the Kurds, a group of some twenty million people, were slated to form a state under the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 (as were the Armenians); instead they were effectively partitioned by creation of the nation-states of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Soviet Union. In the postwar period, the birth of the modern nation-states of India and Israel was the result of back-to-back partition mandates in August and November 1947.17 Occupation is thus part and parcel of postcolonial state formation even as the standing international law on occupation was reformulated through the postwar administration of Japan and Germany by the Allies.18 Yet, the occupations of Kashmir and Palestine by newly minted states on the eve of British withdrawal from these areas are foundational to the postwar world order in a way that classifying India and Israel as democracies does not make evident. Or rather it asks us to pose a different question: to what extent is occupation foundational to the world’s ‘‘largest’’ democracy and the ‘‘only’’ democracy in the Middle East? (We should also not neglect to ask this question of the world’s ‘‘oldest’’ modern democracy, with its decade-long occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan only now winding down).19 Elections can been seen as a kind of theater of the absurd where, as Mohamed Junaid notes, Muslim majority Kashmiri citizens of India (or

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for that matter, minority Palestinian citizens of Israel) are performatively disenfranchised from the larger publics that confer second-class citizenship on them (to say nothing of the widespread fraud and vote-rigging of the last Afghan elections). Similarly (although we cannot cover this region in the volume), to place the 1949 occupation of Tibet genealogically in line with the occupations of Kashmir and Palestine is again to question the received distinctions between democratic and communist forms of governance. New questions emerge: How exactly has occupation shaped the postwar state form, and how might it force a re-reckoning with the body of postcolonial theory and the so-called ‘‘era of decolonization’’?20 A genealogical, as distinct from a strictly comparative, grid allows us to understand not just similarities and differences but asymmetries and forms of transitivity21 through which sites of occupation index and refer to each other (the throwing of stones or shoes, practices of martyrdom or collaboration; arm sales between occupier states; state applications of special emergency powers and forms of legality), showing both the power of mediatization and its skewed operation. If we consider the postwar legal regime that established the international laws that regulate and administer occupation, Kashmir is the first site of contemporary military occupation, yet its history remains comparatively less known than that of Palestine or Iraq, even though the number of Indian troops posted in Kashmir approaches 700,000—more than twice the U.S. forces in Iraq at the height of the military occupation there. Kashmir may receive less international attention than Palestine, but much of Northeastern India, where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has been in force since 1958, receives even less media coverage and international scrutiny than Kashmir, where the AFSPA has been in place since 1990. In the process of genealogical relocation we thus also learn of hidden or masked occupations. Turkey’s ongoing occupation of Northern Cyprus (since 1974) and its displacement of 170,000 Greek Cypriots22 has been the subject of several UN resolutions, but its occupation of Kurdish and Armenian lands is hidden in the process of state formation in the region. And we find occupations within occupations: while the Southern Sinai Bedouin experience of military occupation was occluded in the back and forth transfer of the Sinai between Israel and Egypt in 1949–1982,23 as Rhoda Kanaaneh argues in this volume, the fact of Israeli citizenship for Palestinians within the 1967 territorial boundaries of Israel masks the contiguities of their experience of occupation with Palestinians of the West Bank and

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Gaza. And there is by now Israel’s ‘‘forgotten’’ occupation of southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000.24 The U.S. and UK occupations of Grenada and the Falklands are the forgotten occupations of the 1980s. A genealogical grid also yields new insights as to how inter-regional political economies of militarization are produced through the world system. Over the last decade, the portion of Israel’s GDP for military-related expenditures has averaged 7.7 percent a year, but rose to 15.3 percent during the peak of the first intifada.25 By 2008, however, India was Israel’s largest arms customer, although earlier Turkey and more recently Sri Lanka were recipients of Israeli military technology. Indeed, the Mossad and other Israeli advisors trained the Sri Lankan armed forces, helped establish its notorious paramilitary Special Task Force (STF), and recommended the establishment of Sinhalese settlements in Tamil dominated areas.26 As of 2009, the military-related portion of Sri Lanka’s GDP was 3.5 percent (as opposed to Bangladesh’s 1 percent, India’s 2.8 percent, and Pakistan’s 2.8 percent of GDP), but between 1988 and 2001, Sri Lankan military spending tripled.27 By 2008 Sri Lanka had spent 1.8 billion dollars on defense, almost 20 percent of the national budget.28 Pakistan’s economy is heavily dependent on U.S. military ‘‘aid,’’ but it was nonetheless in a position to sell Sri Lanka’s military some of the cluster bombs it dropped on Tamil civilians in the last stages of the war in 2009.29 And as Nosheen Ali notes in her chapter, the militarization of Pakistan is not separate from the U.S. military-complex and the production of its own national security regime. Despite a tanking economy and the cost of wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, which cost the United States as much as $4.4 trillion over the last decade30 (and by the U.S. government’s own estimates,31 almost $13 billion a month over the last year alone for just Afghanistan and Iraq), the U.S. continues to rank as the world’s largest military power, with military spending at 4.8 percent of its GDP.32 As the world’s second largest arms exporter, it has also played the major role in developing Israel’s military arsenal. Indeed, the U.S. both instigated and authorized Israel’s sale of arms to India in 2002, while keeping the U.S-Pakistan military corridor clear.33 As of the U.S-India nuclear deal of 2008, the U.S. now sells arms to both India and Pakistan.34 And with post-9/11 national security regime triangulation between these countries, the security laws of India, Israel, and the U.S. also look remarkably similar, a product of both the political economy of militarization and the UN system.35 In turn, Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) is similar to India’s Prevention of Terrorism Act

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(POTA), although Sri Lanka had been under Emergency Rule in 1983–2001 (with a hiatus in 1989), and again from 2005 until the present. After the Sri Lankan army’s military victory over the LTTE in 2009, however, it seems the Indian military may be viewing it as a model for dealing with its own insurgencies.36

Complicities In addition to the military forms of transitivity that both consolidate and splinter traditional forms of regionalism, the areas covered in this volume also share the experience of being monitored and administered by the UN international system. Between 1948 and 2009, the UN Security Council passed 225 resolutions on Palestine; between 1948 and 1971, it passed 27 resolutions on Kashmir, while the UN General Assembly passed three resolutions on Tibet.37 India and China, perhaps thinking of their own occupied territories, were instrumental in blocking a Security Council resolution that would have authorized a war crimes investigation into Sri Lanka’s killing of 40,000 Tamil civilians in its May 2009 offensive against the LTTE, even though Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, had authenticated by 2010 a video showing Tamil prisoners being executed by the Sri Lankan army. As of May 2011, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) were present in every district in Jaffna; unsurprisingly they also have a strong presence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Iraqi Kurdistan, and Palestine (UNICEF went to Pakistan-occupied ‘‘Azad’’ Kashmir after the earthquake of 2005). Palestine also has an entire relief agency allocated to it—the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), separate from the mandate of the UNHCR, which deals with all other refugees.38 UNRWA was conceived in 1949, and has been operational (since 1950) for more than 60 years; it administers 58 camps and runs 690 schools in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza with an enrollment of half a million children. Its 137 primary health centers serve two million Palestinian refugees (two-thirds of those registered of a total eligible refugee population of 4.8 million).39 Given the number of UN agencies present in occupied zones, we might more productively understand the UN system as one that has evolved in some measure to administer if not enable occupation; indeed, a UN occupation of Haiti is

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ongoing since 2004.40 We must thus ask what the work of occupation is for the international system; how occupation was not so paradoxically enabled by its very birth. The UN system’s ‘‘safe haven’’ policies proffer other troubling episodes in the international management of conflict. In Bosnia in 1993–1995 the ‘‘safe haven’’ policy led to civilian massacres, and cast doubt on the UN’s ability to respond to ongoing conflict.41 The lessons, if any, of these controversial ‘‘safe area’’ policies for occupied regions, are unclear at best.42 Unlike Bosnia or Rwanda, when the UN compound in Dili was threatened by Indonesia-backed militias in September 999 after the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence, the remaining UN employees refused to abandon the 1,5000 East Timorese sheltering there.43 In response, the UN evacuated the entire compound, and while up to 250,000 Timorese may have been displaced by Indonesian-backed militias over a two-week period, pressure was brought to bear on the international community until a multinational force could be assembled to stem the violence. More recently, in the Tamil stronghold of Killonochi, signs of statesponsored massacre were already imminent in September of 2008 when the government of Sri Lanka informed the UN that they could not guarantee the safety of its personnel there, and the UN agreed to evacuate all its employees. As the Sri Lankan army closed in on the Vanni region, 400,000 Tamil refugees fled into a succession of ever-smaller governmentdesignated ‘‘No Fire Zones’’ (NFZ) or ‘‘Civilian Safety Zones’’ (CSZ), which conveniently overlapped with the western and southern flanks of LTTE defense lines. This gave the Sri Lankan army an excuse to repeatedly shell the area, claiming it could not distinguish civilians from LTTE. In a massive international PR blitz, the Sri Lankan government claimed it was engaged in ‘‘humanitarian rescue’’ and pursuing a policy of ‘‘zero civilian casualties,’’ even as the army continually shelled food distribution lines and cut off supplies of food, water, and medicine, creating tens of thousands of casualties. In April, some 80,000–100,000 people were herded into closed barbed-wire camps. By the beginning of May, makeshift hospitals in the NFZ (whose location was known precisely from unmanned aerial vehicle [UAV] surveillance) had been hit sixty-five times by army shells, while some 130,000 people remaining in the NFZ were pressed onto a mile-long sand spit, where they were bombarded from all sides. Much of it was captured on satellite imagery available to the UN,44 but the international community took no action.

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Akin to the bombardment of Gaza by Israel in January earlier that year, international commentators likened the May 2009 military assault on civilians in Sri Lanka’s NFZ to ‘‘shooting fish in a barrel.’’ Radhika Coomaraswami, well regarded for her decade-long work as former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and current Special Rapporteur on Children and Armed Conflict, produced a report critical of the plight of Gaza’s children in February 2009. However, as a Tamil international civil servant, she was unable to say anything publicly about thousands of Tamil children killed in the onslaught of the Sri Lankan army in 2009, let alone the large numbers of Tamil women subject to rape and sexual violence. After the U.S. interventions in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, special rapporteurs were appointed to assess the flow of Kurdish and other Iraqi refugees to Turkey, and of Turkish Kurds to Northern Iraq.45 In 2009, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) produced a report on ‘‘disputed’’ areas of Northern Iraq, and in 2010, the representative of the secretary general on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons asked the Kurdish regional government of Iraq to deal with internal displacement. That same year, the UN Special Rapporteur on the ‘‘Right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,’’ Anand Grover, noted that Syrian Kurds were denied the rights to health and numerous other rights since they were rendered stateless in 1962,46 while the UNCHR expressed concern about the number of Kurds executed in Iran in 2010. What we see is less a failure of the UN system to ‘‘solve’’ the problem of occupation, than its complicity in maintaining it. The UN has developed the capacity to report on and ‘‘witness’’ occupation, not to change it— exacerbated no doubt by the United States withholding more than $1 billion in dues47 until 2008. UN resolutions are blocked by powerful countries or simply rendered unenforceable without NATO or UN peacekeeping troops. And peacekeeping troops sometimes trail their own human rights violations in their wake. The proliferation of a variety of honorary, nonsalaried special rapporteurs may be another sign of this failure: rapporteurs can exercise influence and make recommendations, but their recommendations are not binding. The rapporteur system, however, does claim UN resources and has immense fact-finding value. Indeed, much of the existing social science on occupation has (arguably) emerged through the UN system of documentation, and the rapporteurs are key nodes in this information system. The extent to which the rapporteur system potentially moves beyond

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neutrality into the zone of critical engagement for occupied peoples is not yet clear. Richard Falk reflects on some of these questions in the Afterword.

Violent Peace Most of the places covered in this volume—Palestine, Kashmir, CHT, Northeastern Sri Lanka—are places where formal or informal cease-fires and peace accords have been brokered, sometimes monitored or administered by the UN (or other international actors), resulting not in peace but in the paradox of ‘‘violent peace.’’48 The failure of the 1993 U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestine is the most renowned. And while Kashmir is no longer considered an ‘‘unresolved dispute’’ by the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), it remains in place at the Line of Control between India and Pakistan to monitor the cease-fire agreement of 1971. Bangladesh declined to have a UN-brokered peace accord in the CHT in 1997, but agreed, at the instigation of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) for a special rapporteur, Lars Anders-Baer, to investigate and report (in 2011) on why the Bangladesh government had not enforced it. The Sri Lankan government pulled out of a 2002 Norway-brokered cease-fire with the LTTE in 2008. In Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) attempted several unilateral ceasefires, the longest lasting from 1999 to 2004, with the latest withdrawn by the PKK in February 2011. Despite their illegality according to the international law of occupation (see Falk, this volume), state-sanctioned or official policies of transmigration or population transfer in Palestine and Bangladesh—or more specifically of settler-violence by Jewish Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank, and settler violence by Muslim Bangladeshis against Jumma indigenous peoples in the CHT—are major reasons for failed agreements and cease-fires. In the CHT, ‘‘model villages’’ for settlers were set up next to the 500 military camps in the region,49 while in Palestine, expanding Israeli settlements were often built on higher ground to double as surveillance points for the Israeli army.50 Palestinians have lost their claim to roughly 78 percent of historic Palestine and have acquiesced to the formation of a state on the remaining 22 percent of the land in this region. Existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank would reduce even this amount by 10 percent,

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though, as Rhoda Kanaaneh notes in her chapter, Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, has proposed to the UN a ‘‘population transfer’’ that would transfer Israeli settlements on the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in exchange for Palestinian citizens of Israel being sent to live in areas administered by the PA. On the other hand, Bengali transmigration into the CHT, as Chakma shows, resulted in land-grabbing and an increase of the nonindigenous population from 9 percent in 1951 to almost 50 percent by 1991. With 70,000 Jummas who had sheltered in the Indian state of Tripura as a result of the conflict, and as many as 300,000 more internally displaced, more than 20 percent of the half million Jummas still in the CHT have lost all claim to their lands.51 Over the same period in Sri Lanka, a government-sponsored transmigration program resulted in an influx of Singhalese into mixed or Tamilmajority districts.52 After the Colombo riots of 1983, this process intensified, leading to an escalation of conflict as convict settlers in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Manal Aaru (now Weli Oya) were not only armed but given a stipend of rs. 50 to 100 per day to keep guns in their homes.53 Areas marked for development or the protection of putative Buddhist heritage sites resulted in violent expulsions of Tamils by the Sri Lankan army, and permanent displacement as they lost the right to their own lands. In this way, the seemingly innocuous planting of a Bo tree in a Northeastern Sri Lankan village signaled construction of a Buddhist temple and impending Tamil expulsion, just as surely as setting aside lands for Hindu pilgrims was seen as aggressively decreasing the amount of Muslim public space in Kashmir. In Indian-occupied Kashmir there has been a steady Hindu influx into the Jammu region. In 1961, the Muslim population of Kashmir was 68 percent in 1961, 66 percent in 1971, and 64 percent in 1981; over the same period the Hindu population increased from 28 to 32 percent.54 Thus, the government’s 2008 attempt to transfer 40 hectares of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board for development of permanent camping areas for Hindu pilgrims at the shrine was seen by Kashmiris as a bald attempt at landgrabbing that resulted in mass protests, and a partial revocation of the transfer. On the other hand, in Pakistan’s Northern Areas of Jammu and Kashmir (now called Gilgit-Baltistan), the elimination in the 1950s of a ‘‘state subjects rule,’’ which had restricted nonlocals from claiming local citizenship and property rights, was seen by ethnic Shias and Balwari nationalists as paving the way for Sunni colonization of a Shia majority

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region. In most of these areas, some form of state-led ‘‘development’’ has been the means by which population transfers and land acquisition took place. In Turkey, as early as 1913, Kurds who had seen their lands in Eastern Anatolia occupied by the Russian army were prevented from returning by occupying Turks.55 The regime instead decided to disperse the Kurds in groups of three hundred over the Western provinces so that they would never constitute more than 5 percent of the population in a given locality.56 A series of Kurdish rebellions ensued. The largest, led by Sheik Said in 1925 (described by Hisyar Ozsoy in his chapter), resulted in 15,000 deaths; there was another large rebellion in the Ararat region in 1928–1930. Deportations of Kurds to the Western provinces continued, with Turks settling in their place, until the Law on Resettlement of 1934 officially designated some Kurdish districts to be depopulated and others to be diluted with an influx of Turkish settlers. In 1935, the Dersim (now Tunceli) District was put under military rule, and police posts and governor’s mansions were installed in all villages as deportations began. Another rebellion (1937– 1938) was brutally put down, with several thousand killed.57 In November 2011, Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan offered a (personal) apology for the Dersim massacres, yet land claims of the survivors have been recently denied in Turkish courts, while several new dams are slated for construction in Hakkari and historic Dersim (which will flood Kurdish and Armenian heritage sites).58 In the name of development, whole villages have been evacuated, while those protesting dams and other large infrastructural projects are labeled antidevelopment ‘‘terrorists.’’ In Turkish Kurdistan, the army has destroyed more than 4,000 villages, leading to the internal displacement of up to one million Kurds. Seen from this vantage point, the goal of occupation is not to end violence, as states claim, but to possess the land and to dispossess the people. In Achille Mbembe’s formulation, space is the raw material of sovereignty, and ‘‘sovereignty mean[s] occupation.’’59 Occupied peoples are thus caught in a classic bind: their lands are wrested from them by force, leading to their displacement and dispersion, creating a form of deterritorialized sovereignty, as Falk suggests. Yet sovereignty is understood by the international legal system to be territorially based. The ongoing practices of population transfer, aggressive settlement, and land-grabbing in these areas of South Asia and the Middle East mean that we should better understand military victory, cease-fires, and brokered

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agreements as touch points where militarization of the region has not receded, but rather proceeded apace. In the CHT and in Northeastern Sri Lanka, formal cease-fire arrangements provided the pretext for intensification of the military control of space. In the CHT, nearly a third of Bangladesh’s army is quartered in a region that has only a tenth of the territory of the country, while in Sri Lanka and Kashmir there is one soldier for every eighteen Tamil or Kashmiri civilians.60 In Sri Lanka, High Security Zones (HSZs) in Tamil-majority areas administered a devastating governmentsanctioned economic embargo between 1990 and 2002.61 These HSZs remained in place after the 2002 cease-fire was brokered. In the violent peace that ensued, there were more than 200,000 internally displaced people by 2006. As a result of Sri Lanka’s military victory over the LTTE in 2009, there were more than 300,000 internally displaced, with 35,000 Tamils still held in closed camps as recently as 2010. Emergency rule remains in place four years after the end of the war.

Everyday Poetics and the Languages of Occupation Set against our understanding of the longue dure´e of occupation and the complicity of the international order in maintaining it, what might we learn from an analysis of the everyday experience of occupation? As we have seen, one of the central goals of occupation is the control of land or territory. Yet it also seeks to violently remake the culture of a subjugated people by changing its internal fabric or patterning. Where brute force leaves off, the repression of cultures, religions, and languages begins, though more commonly the two coincide: a new year’s celebration is made illegal, and people are killed while celebrating it; textbooks reflect dominant religious orthodoxy, and people are shot for protesting it; a language is outlawed, and children are beaten in school for speaking it. The chapters collected here are attentive to the everyday linguistic contexts of occupation: Kashmiri or Kurdish not being taught in schools as a matter of Indian and Turkish state policy until fairly recently, while Jumma adivasi children are schooled in Bengali, but not indigenous languages in Bangladesh, at the same time that Tamil children are forced by circumstance to learn Sinhala in Si Lanka, and Palestinian children in Israel are obliged to learn Hebrew. The chapters thus explore the language politics and semiotics of occupation, how the meaning of ordinary words is

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changed by war: the Tamil word vandu (beetle) was widely used to describe the UAVs used by the Sri Lankan army to report on civilian positions in the so called NFZs; or war brings new words into language as when technical terms like cluster bomb or phosphorus bomb are translated into Tamil as kotthu kundu, or eri (burn) kundu become part of the everyday life of violent displacement. And when occupying armies take control of territory, places take on the Sinhalese, Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, or Turkish names of the victor, erasing from public spaces their Tamil, Arabic, Kashmiri, Chakma, or Kurdish names, to live on as forms of linguistic memory or subversion. The Kashmiri residents of Anantnag call their city ‘‘Islamabad,’’ even though all the local shop signs have changed; the Turkish city of Diyarbakir is still known as Amed to its Kurdish citizens. Ethnographic objectivity is always situated and partial, requiring a form of in-depth knowledge gained through the intimacy of experience. The experience of militarism or occupation for some of the writers in this volume may be quite direct, or date to childhood, yet the writing strategies for describing it range from poetic to ironic, from self-reflexive, ‘‘experiencenear’’ to more ‘‘experience distant’’ forms of narration. Such mixed registers of ethnographic analysis, however, also yield a more expansive and acute understanding of the ways violence shapes both subjectivity and the social. The ‘‘poetics of military occupation’’ as first defined by Smadar Lavie referred to a range of performative practices and idioms through which Sinai Bedouins registered their relationship to Israeli or Egyptian occupiers.62 In this volume, Ruken Sengul understands humor and irony to mark a poetics of ‘‘inverted rhapsody,’’ while Sandya Hewamanne, Kabita Chakma, and Hisyar Ozsoy also see poetry, song, and story as genres expressive of political ambiguity, hegemony, or subversion. Two contributors to this volume are also published poets whose poems open and close the volume: Jumma feminist scholar Kabita Chakma, who writes in Bengali, and Cheran Rudhramoorthy, a sociologist and Sri Lankan poet who writes in Tamil. In part, the ethnographic analyses of popular and expressive culture offered here are also testimonies against the legitimating discourses of global geopolitics and international relations that code people’s struggles against oppression and unfreedom as ‘‘terrorism.’’ They attempt to show the other side of occupation, from the ‘‘inside out’’ to use Saree Makdisi’s

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phrase,63 and as a performative of struggle (and parody in Sengul’s elaboration). They challenge conventional views of politics, state legitimacy, and sovereignty, and they do so through the optic of minoritized cultures or through a critique of the impact of militarism on dominant culture. The volume takes gender to be constitutive of those forms of everyday culture built against and through the mundane pluralities and extraordinary practices of occupation, and it traces those moments when the two collide to produce forms of social normativity: the ‘‘takeover’’ of clotheslines by military personnel at a women’s boarding house; the routine torture of men and boys in local Kashmiri or Chittagong schools;64 the bombing of the offices of a community newspaper or magazine. It looks at forms of visual culture, dark humor, satire, parody, critique, and also forms of affect such as fear, suspicion, anxiety, joy; it describes how the social fabric is rent by trauma; it explores the dual nature of occupation from the standpoints of occupying and being occupied. And above all, this volume seeks to explore the everydayness, and unfortunate ordinariness of occupation. Theories of the everyday like Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life, Raoul Vanegeim’s Revolution of Everyday Life, or Michel de Certeau’s Practice of Everyday Life65 pose it as a site of creativity and critical reappropriation or rejection of consumerism and capitalist values. Vanegeim saw the everyday as a vantage-point from which to see the world ‘‘inside-out,’’ but except for Lefebvre, none of these theorists address the structuring relationship of state-sanctioned or mass violence to the everyday, although they do see social violence as foundational to the repressive apparatus of capitalism. It was in what some would call Lefebvre’s fourth volume on the everyday, Rhythmanalysis,66 that an explicit relationship was drawn to a quotidian that was repressive through the very process of repetition. Lefebvre distinguished between cyclical or ‘‘natural’’ processes, and linear social practices constituting the everyday. Thus, ‘‘The interaction of diverse, repetitive rhythms animates . . . the street and the neighborhood. The linear . . . in short succession, consists of journeys to and fro: it combines with the cyclical, the moments of long intervals. The cyclical is social organization manifesting itself. The linear is the daily grind, the routine, therefore the perpetual, made up of chance and encounters.’’67 The chance encounter under military occupation, however, yields a form of deathly normativity, when militants or their kin are killed in police or army ‘‘encounters.’’ For Lefebvre, ‘‘political power knows how to utilize and manipulate time, dates,

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time-tables,’’68 it is invested in regulating and usurping the rhythms of daily life. Social practices turn back onto natural ones, even as a curfew can turn a day into night, or a succession of ‘‘curfewed nights.’’69 Groups imprint their rhythms on eras through force or insinuation; there are secret rhythms of memory and public rhythms of commemoration;70 these, too, take on startling specificity and transitivity when viewed in the contexts of mass funerals in Palestine, Kurdistan, or Kashmir. More recent theorists see the everyday as the space in which the presence of the state is manifested or rendered marginal.71 Others have astutely noted the presence of violence in the everyday and the necessity of ‘‘getting by’’ it.72 Work in this vein has cited the gendered importance of understanding ‘‘How women have taken the noxious signs of violence and reoccupied them through the work of domestication, ritualization and renarrativization,’’ where ‘‘the zone of the everyday had to be recovered by reoccupying the very signs of injury that marked her so that a continuity could be shaped in that very space of devastation.’’73 Such theorization suggests the importance of ‘‘reoccupation’’ as an ethnographic analytic for capturing the violence of the everyday. In some aspects of this body of work, however, there is a marked tendency to pose the everyday as the repository of the morality of coexistence (rather than the space of its violation); the habitus through which survivors of violence ‘‘recover life’’ through a ‘‘descent into the ordinary,’’74 to which the violent ‘‘event’’ is always attached. Such work thus tends to assume that violence is mostly event-focused, or episodic (‘‘Partition,’’ the ‘‘1984 riots’’) and its ongoing, planned, organized, and institutional character is left unremarked and untheorized. Originating out of the attempt to guarantee the safety and rehabilitation of survivors, this work also tends to construct a subject in need of humanitarian rescue or inscription, whereby the goal is to understand culturally embedded forms of suffering rather than people’s struggles against injustice. The tendency to focus on event-structured, episodic violence has thus enabled an understanding of ‘‘social suffering’’ as a kind of ethical template for comprehending large-scale social injustice and political violence. However, it pays inadequate attention to the temporalities of violence,75 and is an abstraction of the human questions of suffering out of the possibilities of justice and freedom that may actually sustain people through decades of ongoing violence. Whether it is seen as a set of practices or ensembles, there is a routinization and systematization of occupation such that the everyday may be less a refuge from violence than

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the site from which it reverberates or rebounds. How, then, should we think of the everyday when it seems to occupy the ground between the violence of the past, and its future anticipation?

Ethnographic Realignment With the exception of Palestine, which has yielded an archive of ethnographic intensity,76 occupation has not been the focus of much in-depth theorizing, even when some places under formal occupation, such as Northern Ireland,77 or under informal occupation, such as Sri Lanka,78 have received extended attention in the anthropology of violence literature. There is next to little ethnographic work on the CHT, Kurdistan, or Kashmir.79 The literature on the anthropology of violence is largely an assemblage of ethnographies of political violence from around the globe, comprising a range of forms—ethnic violence, genocide, dirty wars, revolutionary violence, peacetime crime, gendered violence, torture, militarization—and the themes of fear, trauma, and memory work.80 Much of it emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a means of coming to terms with the revolutionary and ‘‘dirty wars’’ in Central and South America81 or the ‘‘civil wars’’ of ethnic and communal violence in Europe,82 Africa,83 South Asia,84 and Middle East.85 Such work, as a collection of ethnographic instances, is loosely comparative when state violence is seen to produce what has been called cultures of terror,86 scenes of ‘‘fieldwork under fire,’’87 ‘‘ethnography in unstable places,’’88 or paramilitary ‘‘death squads,’’89 but apart from Stanley Tambiah’s comparative work on South Asia,90 a substantial methodological terrain is left unexplored by this literature. It fails to register the political contradictions that ensue when democratic states engage in long-term violence against minority or racialized communities; or to explore the possibility that particular forms of state violence may also produce distinct social experiences of violence at the level of the everyday. One task of this volume is to engage a rigorous inter-regional area studies comparison between South Asia and the Middle East—the region where most of the world’s major occupations play out—as a means of defining occupation as a distinct analytic and ethnographic object. But as there is no geographic region of the world that has not experienced occupation, it is also the intent of the volume to move beyond a traditional area studies

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frame to understand occupation as a set of practices that transcend national boundaries and bring communities subject to similar structural conditions into alignment across regions. In this broader understanding, indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and around the world also live under occupation, or what James Scott calls ‘‘enclosure’’91—the tendencies of nation-states to close in on ‘‘captive nations’’ (described by Richard Falk in his Afterword) by encapsulating them or squeezing them out of traditional territory. Indeed, according to one expansive definition, there were more than fifty-eight ongoing conflicts due to occupation between 1980 and 2003, the majority of these occupations concerning indigenous peoples throughout the world.92 In addition to the social production of fear through physical violence, under occupation both structural violence (poverty, chronic unemployment, shadow economies) and infrastructural violence (population transfer, city architecture and planning, dam construction) are major and defining elements of the process of militarization. The value of ethnographically realigning these forms of occupation across areas is that the combination of clandestine and overt physical violence with structural violence as a long-term remaking of cultural and geographic space is made manifest. When Israel’s military capacity to break and ‘‘walk through the walls’’ of Palestinian homes catalyzes the U.S. military’s capacity to do the same in Iraqi homes93 or when militarized resettlement zones in Northeastern Sri Lanka and militarized cluster villages in the CHT create similar forms of spatial restriction or surveillance, we see both regional transitivity and local specificity at work in the same moment. An ethnographic focus also enables a productive intervention in the macro-level comparative work in political science and international relations that focuses on ‘‘terrorism’’ or ‘‘low-intensity warfare’’ but misses the significance of occupation for subject peoples. Consider widely influential books in the field of international relations written by Mary Kaldor and Robert Pape. In Kaldor’s first book, New and Old Wars,94 she argues that the end of the twentieth century saw a decline in the number of wars, and that ‘‘new wars’’ of the 1990s were characterized by low-intensity conflict and counter-insurgency techniques borrowed from guerrilla warfare, which are directed at civilians. In this scenario, ‘‘terrorism’’ is a variant of these new wars, which blur distinctions between war and crime. Globalization results in the breakup of traditional political, economic, and social entities with the formation of new networks and transnational entities. Most of

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Kaldor’s examples are drawn from Africa and Eastern Europe; she fails to see that the ‘‘new wars’’ in many parts of South Asia and the Middle East are older products of decades of occupation and unresolved conflict.95 On the other hand, Robert Pape’s study on suicide terrorism, Dying to Win, does note that occupation is often central to the intensification and prolongation of conflict. Though Pape attempts to move from a statecentered to a people- or movement-centered view of such conflicts, he retains a conventional definition of terrorism as ‘‘use of violence by an organization other than a national government to intimidate or frighten a target audience.’’96 At least one writer97 has noted the irony of states founded on (violent) anticolonial or democratic revolutions (once themselves labeled terrorist by colonial regimes) now charging separatist movements with ‘‘terrorism,’’ but for the peoples of these regions, terrorism is more often seen as the term states use to discredit and delegitimize their struggles for self-determination than the result of violent ‘‘transnational, non-state networks.’’ Indeed, for the peoples of Palestine, Kashmir, Kurdistan, Jaffna, or the Chittagong Hill Tracts, it is ‘‘state terrorism’’98 that provokes and intensifies nationalist resistance. Pape, however, is right to challenge the idea that ‘‘religion’’ is somehow the defining feature of these conflicts, though it does play a role. It is true that India is a Hindu majority country, and that most Kashmiris are Muslims; that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist majority country, and most Tamils are Hindus; that Israel is a Jewish state, and most Palestinians are Muslims; that Bangladesh is an Islamic state, and most of its indigenous peoples are Buddhists; while most Kurds are Sunni Muslims who live in Muslim countries.99 Yet, a number of the militant movements most closely identified with occupied peoples in these regions, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in Indian-occupied Kashmir, Fatah in Palestine, the PKK in Turkish Kurdistan, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Iraq, the LTTE in Sri Lanka, the Parbatya Chhatagram Jana Sanhati Samiti (PCJSS) (Chittagong Hill Tracts United People’s Party) and Shanti Bahini (its military wing) in Bangladesh, are secular and Marxist in orientation.100 Paradoxically, while the global North has often pursued secularization as a security strategy, it has just as often allied itself with religious extremists, spurning secular alternatives in the name of anti-communism. Globalization has not only led to the formation of transnational terror networks, as Kaldor argues, but through neoliberal economic policies101 in these regions, has resulted in a regional and transnational reconsolidation

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of state military powers. In her sequel to the first book, Kaldor proposes Global Civil Society as an ‘‘answer to war’’ because ‘‘the concept of civil society has always been linked to the notion of minimizing violence in social relations, to the public use of reason as a way of managing human affairs in place of submission based on fear and insecurity.’’102 Here again, Kaldor neglects to understand how the lines between state and civil society have become blurred, how states frequently seek to establish contiguities with civil society as a means of establishing the hegemony of their logics and rationales; how, in turn, state-initiated processes of militarization extend not only to the civil administration of places like Kashmir or Sri Lanka, but though the veins and capillaries of civil society and everyday life. Militarized civil societies are unlikely to be solutions to conflict; indeed they can be seen as the continuation of war by other means. The chapters by Sandya Hewamanne and Nosheen Ali describe the ways state values and military norms insinuate themselves in dominant cultural forms; Rhoda Kanaaneh’s chapter also shows how cultural ideas of racialized embodiment seem to buttress or even instigate state policies of miscegenation and population transfer. Militarization also deeply affects the social organization of space,103 by converting the ground of the occupied into the ground of the occupier. As Mohamad Junaid describes in his chapter, the geography of childhood under occupation is marked by the disappearance of fields and apple orchards and the appearance of military bunkers so closely spaced that the soldiers in them could see each other from one end of the street to the other. For Nosheen Ali, a childhood familiarity with the colonial legacy of the lush, green spaces of the cantonment (cantt.) areas of Lahore points to the internalization of military landscapes as normal; it is finally the bleakness and density of military checkpoints in Gilgit-Baltistan that forces a wider recognition of the extensive militarization of space in Pakistan. Pradeep Jeganathanhas describes the everyday life of checkpoints in Sri Lanka,104 while Palestinian Israeli Member of Parliament Azmi Beshara calls Israel the ‘‘land of checkpoints.’’ But if the new headquarters of the Sri Lankan Army’s Fifty-First division recently inaugurated in Jaffna sit atop an LTTE burial ground, while the historic Muslim burial ground at Ma’man Allah in Jerusalem is destroyed to build an Israeli museum of tolerance, local practices also seek to reclaim such social spaces from occupying armies. Mohamad Junaid describes how the missing body of JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat has been

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given an ‘‘open’’ grave in the martyrs’ graveyard of Srinagar—he cannot be buried as his body has never been returned to Kashmir by the Indian state (a stark contrast to the more than 2,100 secret mass graves for Kashmiris suspected of militancy killed or ‘‘disappeared’’ by Indian security forces).105 Hisyar Ozsoy also writes of how the ‘‘missing grave’’ of the martyred Kurdish rebel, Sheikh Said, is said to lie among the government buildings in Diyarbakir’s central square. The Kurdish national liberation movement has constructed shifting versions of the rebellion amid changing circumstances and political instrumentalities. Popular memories and oral traditions, however, resiliently bind past to present in an almost messianic political temporality, symbolically reversing a ‘‘failed rebellion‘‘ and appropriating the legacy of Sheikh Said into a legendary sacred, and as yet, unfinished struggle. Oszoy situates local memories as place-making practices that transform the Sheikh’s grave and Dagˆkapı Square—where the grave is located—into symbolically meaningful sites in which to recuperate a sovereign identity, reclaim an occupied territory, and restore political justice. In so doing, Kurdish mnemonics effectively disrupt the spatial strategies devised by the Turkish state to erase the memory of the sheikh’s rebellion. The practices of martyrdom described by Ozsoy and Junaid in their chapters blur the lines between religious and secular, while the Pakistani and Bangladeshi state practices of martyrdom or heroism described by Nosheen Ali and Kabita Chakma in their chapters are rife with the contradictions of gender, serving as forms of both demarcation and erasure.

Gendering Occupation Gender as it emerges in Rhoda Kanaaneh’s analysis is a structuring rubric of what she calls ‘‘soft occupation.’’ Palestinians who remained within the borders of the new Israeli state in 1948 were forcibly minoritized; until 1966 they were under a separate military administration they referred to colloquially as ‘‘the occupation.’’ Israeli domination of Palestinians is naturalized through state practices and imaginaries through a code of ‘‘cultural difference’’ that seems to invoke liberal multiculturalism, but actually has racist overtones. Palestinians and Jews are held to be racially different, seen to speak different languages (although Palestinian citizens of Israel must learn Hebrew), to embody different values and characteristics, and should not socialize or intermarry across cultural boundaries. Palestinians who fail

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to identify with or conform to racial stereotypes are at risk if they cross boundaries. One of the ways this embodiment is realized is through the racialized gendering of Palestinian men as seducers and harassers of Jewish Israeli women, so that their own consent in mixed relationships is negated as Palestinian men are charged with rape. Here, a Jewish woman’s consent to an intercommunal relationship is converted into an act of imagined rape as a transfiguration of the practices of occupation, which routinely use sexual violence against occupied peoples, a theme also addressed by Kabita Chakma. Chakma explains how the rape of Jumma women by Bangladeshi armed forces is common: according to Chakma, more than 94 percent of all rapes reported between 1991 and 1993 were committed by security forces. Such practices, legitimated by the army, soon saw Bengali settlers in the region also using rape of women as a means of subjugating the community. In some instances, the army and settlers have together participated in gang rapes of women. This is ironic, given the Bangladeshi state’s position on the mass rapes of Bengali women committed by Pakistani forces during the 1971 war for independence. Women victims of wartime rape were given the status of war-heroines, or biranganas, whose memory was kept alive through various memorials and public forms of testimony.106 The silence about systematic sexual violence against Jumma women is thus telling. And in contrast to the Israeli state’s policies against intermarriage and miscegenation, Chakma points to a Bangladesh government’s secret memorandum encouraging army officers to marry indigenous women in the CHT. The abduction and forced marriage of Jumma women has resulted in what Chakma calls ‘‘colonization through marriage.’’ Sandya Hewmanne’s chapter examines the intimacy of occupation from within the domestic interiors of the home and Free Trade Zone (FTZ) workers’ boarding houses. She is concerned with the soldiers in the Sri Lankan army and their reception both in the larger popular culture and in their familial and romantic relationships. Widely seen as ranawiruwan, or ‘‘war heroes,’’ young soldiers reproduce forms of hypermasculinity implicated in violence against women. Indeed, as Hewamanne explores the semiotics of national sacrifice, the domestic accommodations and sacrifices women make (providing sex and comfort on demand, enduring broken promises of marriage, and unwanted abortions) always pale in comparison to those of the ranuwiruwan. Hewamanne marks this working of differential sacrifice as fundamental to the gendered logic of the war; women are

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dishonored and men honored in what she terms the militarization of violence against women. Such violence is often internalized by women themselves, either through the pleasures of popular nationalist songs and local media, or through the social relations of respectability that create zones of danger and desire for FTZ workers in relationships with soldiers, even as they insist that they are not ‘‘sex workers,’’107 and disidentify with Tamil women who face sexual violence from Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers. By contrast, Nosheen Ali shows how the logic of sacrifice works as a site of differential inclusion or exclusion into the dominant state form of citizenship. At the end of the war between India and Pakistan in 1948, the largest part of Kashmir’s territory claimed by Pakistan was the so-called ‘‘Northern Areas’’ (renamed Gilgit-Baltistan in 2011).108 The militarization of the region includes forms of ethnic recruitment into the armed forces for deployment in regions of conflict across the Line of Control in Indianoccupied Kashmir or in Baluchistan. In 1999, when Pakistan denied military involvement in the war with India, but claimed that jihadi ‘‘freedom fighters’’ were responsible for the incursions into Kargil (in Indianoccupied Kashmir), members of the Northern Light Infantry (NLI), drawn mostly from Gilgit-Baltistan, felt an acute sense of betrayal when they were not recognized as shaheeds, or matyrs, by the state. Central to the working of militarism in Gilgit-Baltistan is the cultivation of certain emotional dispositions by the military-intelligence regime shaping what Ali refers to as a ‘‘political economy of feeling’’ that buttresses Pakistan’s defense economy. Regional employment in the Pakistani military creates ‘‘loyal subjects’’ who revere the military and the military-state as a source of pride and honor, producing the conditions of possibility for continued military authoritarianism in the region. At the same time, the presence of intelligence agencies in the area also cultivates a sense that the residents of the region are themselves under surveillance, producing a state system of paranoia and suspicion. As a teacher in the region put it, ‘‘It is not that agencies exist because we are unreliable. We are assumed to be unreliable so that agencies can exist,’’ a formulation that echoes Kanaaneh’s description of the Israeli security state, which ‘‘depends upon the embodiment of Palestinians as a source of insecurity in order to justify the continued centrality of the security apparatus.’’ Many of the dynamics of the Gilgit-Baltistan/Northern Areas region— which both the Kashmiri and Balwari national movements understand to be occupied territory—also enact subject-positions of the occupier, and

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resonate with Kanaaneh’s study of Palestinians in the Israeli military.109 The military is the major employer in the region, but Giligiti-Baltistanis in the Pakistan military feel discriminated against in terms of promotion and key assignments. Men join the military seeking prestige and perhaps to challenge their second-class citizenship, but it is the very second-classness of their citizenship that ensures they will be distrusted and seen as disloyal. Tragically, the NLI regiment, which draws a large number of its soldiers from this Shia majority region, was sent to war in Kargil in 1999, another Shia majority area on the Indian side of the border. Junaid describes this affective contradiction for people of the region as the ‘‘dilemma of seeking employment from the same apparatus that inflicts violence upon them.’’ Junaid thus elaborates a different process in creating a culture of fear and suspicion in Indian-occupied Kashmir. He writes of a simulated ‘‘black economy’’ flooded by unregulated cash and shadowy commercial deals; of shadowy gunmen, na-maloom, and of a gray zone inhabited by collaborators, informers, executioners, and provocateurs that blur the distinction between occupier and occupied. The Indian state’s practice of turning former resistance fighters—ikhwani—into civilian informers imbedded in the security establishment breeds acute terror. The ikhwani were feared for their abilities to settle scores through beatings, harassment, forced disappearances, torture, and execution—in short, for assuming many of the bodily functions of Indian security forces. Some of them also became large property developers and built shopping complexes, casting an entirely different light on state ‘‘development.’’ Junaid shows how the language of occupation seeps into everyday life: how ‘‘crackdowns’’ trigger anxiety for people locked in their homes awaiting the worst, how ‘‘interrogations’’ became the accepted way of referring to torture; how ‘‘combing operations,’’ where security forces go door-to-door searching for militants, were also scenes of sexual violence against women. In turn, the halaat, or ‘‘situation,’’ became the semiotic shorthand for understanding the arbitrariness of violence in both the slowed-down time of the curfew, where everyone is shut indoors, or the instantaneous or speeded-up of time of the everyday ‘‘encounter,’’ where the soldier’s muddied boot on a Kashmiri’s pheran (cloak) also produces dark humor about the farce of free elections. Ruken Sengul writes about a similar kind of temporizing humor in the popular comic strip Qırıx in the Free Agenda Kurdish daily. Its central protagonist is the hapless antihero Keko, caught in the ‘‘process’’ of the Kurdish movement’s counterhegemonic notion of time in opposition to the

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Turkish militarization of the Diyarbakir metropolitan area of Southeastern Turkey. Qırıx wields humor against violence even as violence is marked in its pages. The use of the term ‘‘Qırıx’’ to signify ‘‘city boy’’ carries connotations of ‘‘splitness,’’ ‘‘dubiousness,’’ or ‘‘illocatability.’’ Keko is a loafer, and a bit of a thug, but he can’t quite pull off the tough-boy image he desperately longs to project: he’s uninterested in PKK literature, spending his time chasing after the neighborhood lovely who spurns his advances; his mother calls him useless, and kicks him out of the house; he forfeits the respect of his preadolescent younger brother who has already been to jail as a diligent party worker, and his teenage sister mocks his lack of a proper mustache. For Keko, ‘‘relationships on the streets determine the relationships at home,’’ yet such a constitutive homology is itself an incomplete inversion of the revolutionary imaginary, for the minor success of Keko’s public performances is not mirrored in the domestic space, suggesting a radical reordering of how masculinity commonly makes itself through the exercise of patriarchal authority in the home. That Keko himself can never step into his father’s role as head of household suggests not only the slippage of ‘‘feudal’’ patriarchal relations, but a gendered affirmation of, and form of doubletalk to, the revolutionary project itself. Keko’s mother, for example, is secretly charmed by the revolution, but desperate to keep her children out of it. She combs through Keko’s magazines, throwing out the PKK pamphlets but leaving the porn, enabling Keko to proclaim he has a mother who has ‘‘overcome sexual taboos.’’ She tells the PKK to get lost if they come to her door, but is known in the neighborhood as one of its biggest supporters. With its ironic invocations of Turkish Republic ‘‘village evacuations’’ or smuggled tea, Qırıx engages a political satire of the state through an appreciative mocking of its revolutionary subjects: they too are split, neither captured by state hegemony, nor completely enraptured by the revolution.

Epitaph: Occupation/Genocide Occupations have a habit of turning massacres into genocides. By UN estimates, to date 300,000 Palestinians have died since 1967. More than 100,000 Kurds were killed in Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign in 1987– 1989, while Turkish government figures state that 37,000 Kurds were killed

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between 1984–2007 as a result of the conflict with the PKK. Over a twentyfive-year period until the war’s end in 2009, some 80,000–100,000 people died in Sri Lanka, 40,000–75,000 of them Tamils killed in the last two months of the conflict.110 Since 1989, 40,000–80,000 Kashmiris have died. In the CHT 1,600 people were killed in 1979–2008. The numbers never tell the story. As Esmail Nashif has suggested,111 there is something about the ‘‘manner of dying’’ that says much about a society’s way of life. The final months of the Sri Lankan conflict saw the unprecedented targeting and massacres of 330,000 Tamils herded like cattle into a diminishing twelve by one mile coastal NFZ that was repeatedly shelled by Sri Lankan air force and infantry units; survivors were then forced into internment camps where rapes and killings of Tamil civilians continued. The trophy videos shot on Sri Lankan soldiers’ cell phones showed executions of Tamil prisoners. Other trophy videos were of dead, naked Tamil women being loaded feet first into army trucks, trousers at their ankles, dresses pulled up over their heads, soldiers commenting, ‘‘This one has the best figure,’’ or ‘‘this one is not moaning now.’’ Huma Dar112 reminds us that the images in trophy videos are social forms of circulation; they are implicated in the making of the social. If the chapters in this volume can be variously seen to pose the question, ‘‘What is the social that occupation makes?’’ they also challenge us to think collectively about what remaking of the social is required for ending the occupations when, and if, the armies ever leave.

chapter one

Qırıx: An ‘‘Inverted Rhapsody’’ of Kurdish National Struggle, Gender, and Everyday Life in Diyarbakır Serap Ruken Sengul

Just as Satire derives from Tragedy and Mime from Comedy, so does Parody derive from Rhapsody. Indeed, when the rhapsodes interrupted their recitation, performers entered who . . . inverted and overturned everything that had come before. . . . For that reason, these songs were called parodious, because alongside and in addition to the serious argument, they inserted other ridiculous things. Parody is therefore an inverted rhapsody. —G. C. Scaligero, in Giorgio Agamben, Profanations

¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem (The Free Agenda) over 1992– First published in the daily O 1995, the comic strip Qırıx, by Dog˘an Gu¨zel, is a parody of everyday life in Diyarbakır, epicenter of Turkish Kurdistan, written at the height of the Kurdish movement for national liberation in the 1990s.1 At the focal point of Qırıx’s gaze is the reflection of the political process in the life of an urban tough named Keko, and his social habitat. As Diyarbakır is captured by a spellbinding and frightful confrontation between the Turkish state and the Kurdish movement, Keko, the erstwhile pompous authority of home and the streets, is faced with an existential dilemma. The process of national revolutionary struggle, or just the process,2 deprives him of the conditions for realizing himself as the ‘‘keko’’

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(‘‘older brother’’) of the inner and outer milieus. Since the streets have begun to swarm with Turkish police, informants, and Kurdish revolutionaries, gone are the days for Keko when a single stroll in his flaunted gait was enough to fill the open city with awe and fear. The more the process takes over the rhythm of the city, by ideological determination for some and out of practical necessity for others, the more the days when Keko was a source of inspiration and admiration for his peers and younger generations are increasingly a thing of the past. ‘‘Because the relationships on the streets determine the relationships at home,’’ as Keko himself concludes at one point, he can no longer maintain his older brother bearing even with his own siblings, let alone those outside. In fact, Keko, too, is charmed by the national political cause, not to mention the social recognition and respect conferred upon its ‘‘political elder brothers.’’ However, he does not want to give up on the joys and privileges that he inherited by convention or earned by style as an urban older brother, either at home or outside. The upshot is that in a city whose social imaginaries are dislodged by national revolutionary utopia and whose streets are occupied under draconian forms of state violence, to covet both tradition and revolution, continuity and change, past and future at one and the same time, is to risk total social and political alienation. Keko tries hard to remain himself and to remain relevant to this life by any means necessary. Alas, neither can he escape casual interdiction on the streets by Turkish police for being a ‘‘terrorist’’ or by the revolutionaries for being an ‘‘escapist,’’ nor can he find any peace ‘‘in this topsy-turvy world’’ at home where ‘‘even Eys¸o,’’ his primary schoolaged sister, ‘‘believes she has a right to kick [Keko] out’’ for his ‘‘feudal’’ ways. Keko is the parodic double of a certain local masculine type in Diyarbakır who self-identifies as ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u, Turkish for city boy, and yet is hailed by others with the name qırıx. As I discuss in detail later, qırıx is an eccentric idiom that signifies both a split and an ambiguity. Produced from within the discursive domains of the Kurdish movement, Qırıx offers a humorous, at times satirical, critique of this masculine persona in terms of his lumpen ambiguity vis-a`-vis the terms and imperatives of the process of Kurdish national struggle of the 1990s. Nevertheless, putting a qırıx hero like Keko and his lifeworld at the center of a story about this process is also an ironic enterprise. It has the capacity to destabilize while simultaneously naturalizing its apparent pedagogical terms and extending the truths of the process across the profane and discontinuous registers of everyday life. As

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Qırıx draws Keko’s political ambiguity across the open city and his home, it also brings forth 1990s Diyarbakır as a wildly contradictory space of emergent utopias and dismantled lifeworlds, hope and failure, commitment and opportunism, tenacity and trickstery. This chapter explores how Qırıx ‘‘worlded’’ the everyday of Kurdish national revolutionary struggle in comic space, wielding humor as a critical venue to read and write about sociohistorical experiences of the time. In a militant context of oppression and violence, such as that which surrounded Qırıx’s production, speaking about humor invites a dialogue with a large body of scholarship on humor’s force as counterdiscourse. Therefore, I begin with situating the reading by briefly revisiting scholarly debates on humor and existing readings of Qırıx’s humor produced in Turkey. This is followed by a discussion of the context that shaped the production of Qırıx, bringing to the center the genealogies of two idioms that gave Qırıx its time-space, the process, and its main hero, Keko-the-qırıx. Next, I offer the comic strip, with attention to its characters, event composition, and narrative strategies. I conclude with a discussion of Qırıx’s critical commentary on the process of Kurdish national struggle with a focus on the text’s struggle with ambiguity by means of parody.

Humor in Theory and Context A dominant strand in sociocultural analysis treats humor as a remedy to false sublimations that structure the (re)production of violence and subordination. Humorous discourse, characterized as it is by an arbitrary mixing of otherwise strictly separated languages, bodies, and gestures through pun, pastiche, and parody, destabilizes, we are told, absolutist claims to language and reason, allowing the emergence of an earthly reality of multiplicity, heterogeneity, and anti-totality.3 This essentially Bakhtinian liberatory approach4 has also had its critics, who brought into discussion the licensed limits of humorous inversion and the often idealist notions of power and moralist conception of agency that underlie such analysis.5 However, these critiques are very rarely reflected in works that engage with humor in relation to everyday forms of oppression and resistance.6 I suggest that shaping this nonreflection is a shared interdisciplinary investment in the redemptive potential of the everyday; be it the dichotomies on which official public discourses depend by hosting ‘‘difference,’’

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‘‘multiplicity,’’ ‘‘ambiguity,’’ and ‘‘contradiction’’ or the reaches and determinations of disciplinary power in its capacity to provide a zone of ‘‘flight,’’ ‘‘escape,’’ or ‘‘evasion.’’7 Thus, often when analytical interest in humor and the everyday converges, the former’s liberatory promise is kept intact through interpretive templates such as ‘‘weapons of the weak,’’ ‘‘subversive laughter,’’ or ‘‘fugitive insubordination.’’8 This chapter is closely informed by approaches to humor as counterdiscursive practice. However, I also believe that assigning any such stable, inherent meaning to humor is highly problematic, especially when violence and transformation is in question in everyday life in militant contexts. First, in these contexts the humorous split in the language of reason has an increased possibility of attesting to a deeper destabilization of language and reason as a structuring quality of everyday life and its subjects.9 Second, the ‘‘critical intentionality of humor’’ rarely builds on humorous statement alone, but is effectively mediated by the ‘‘ironic process of reading.’’10 In situations where processes of meaning-making and judgment undergo militant contestation, interpretations of humorous discourse may reveal less about the social contexts of production than about the values and priorities operative in the time-space inhabited by the reader(s). Finally, and in a related vein, the theoretical certitude of humor’s counterdiscursive essence has the capacity to simulate context and condition as ethnographic disinterest ‘‘to know and speak and write of the lived worlds inhabited by those who resist (or do not, as the case may be).’’11 Let me briefly refer here to available readings of Qırıx to clarify these points and proceed with my own reading. Qırıx enjoyed immense popularity among the political Kurdish community from the day of its publication. It also garnered a sympathetic readership among limited sections of leftist intellectuals and activists in Turkey. So far, this popularity has been discussed with respect to the comic strip’s counterdiscursive force to expose both the Turkish state’s repression of Kurds and the vanguard logos of the Kurdish movement of the 1990s. In a fairly early review, in which he celebrated the sagacity of Qırıx’s humor by likening its ‘‘resilient gaiety’’ to the ‘‘robust pessimisms of Haseck, Brecht, and Beckett,’’ cultural critic Orhan Koc¸ak defined Qırıx’s theme as the ‘‘light dimension of a decade-long dirty war,’’ and suggested: ‘‘Gu¨zel’s line focuses on what goes on out there; while showing what goes on despite everything, it points to what has to go on despite everything. . . . Gu¨zel seems to say to [Kurdish] ‘political truth’ that it can derive a source of life

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only by acknowledging, or at least by registering, these [lifewords] whatever their contents are.’’12 Recently, sociologist Mesut Yeg˘ en assigned Qırıx a seat ‘‘within the ‘unforgettables’ of Turkey’s popular culture.’’13 Locating Qırıx ‘‘almost-totally within the orbit of Kurdish national problematic,’’ Yeg˘en delineated the series’ ‘‘definitive characteristic [as] a keen attention to representing the internal heterogeneity of the Kurdish national-cultural field’’ and suggested that Qırıx’s ‘‘magic’’ lay in ‘‘its characters being full of defects, ambiguities, and ambivalences both in everyday life and toward the national question that runs through it.’’14 For Yeg˘en this was a reflection of the ‘‘plainly inconsistent, indecisive . . . neither this nor that (both this and that) position the inhabitants of Diyarbakır (the characters in the comics) occupied at a time when they were caught under ‘‘two grand calls, two summonses; that of the [Kurdish] ‘nation’ and the [Turkish] state.’’ ‘‘Keko,’’ maintained Yeg˘en, is ‘‘Diyarbakır in-between these two summonses.’’15 Both readings offer strong insights into Qırıx’s force to unsettle the given terms of debate about the Kurdish conflict in the 1990s, including the limits of Kurdish political discourse to represent the lived realities of Kurdishness in the 1990s. However, I also suggest that they were misguided in their analysis of Qırıx’s ‘‘main problematic,’’ the ‘‘dirty war’’ or ‘‘being caught in-between two summonses.’’ This misinterpretation was due to how both authors delineated that problematic by reducing ‘‘what was shown’’ in Qırıx to ‘‘what went on out there,’’ ignoring the comic strip’s own interdiscursivity and performativity at large. The irony is that the production of Qırıx was immanent to the Kurdish movement, and so was its circulation (largely); at the time it was serialized as a newspaper comic strip. As one Diyarbakırite critic emphasized, ‘‘Qırıx was born from inside the Kurdish political movement, it was published in a newspaper that belonged to this tradition’’; and it told the struggle that it waged ‘‘through the story of a native hero . . . whom its primary readers knew very well but by no means identified as one of their own, mocked, perhaps even hated if only for this reason.’’16 In fact, the same identificatory sympathy with the Kurdish movement as ‘‘our struggle’’ continued to characterize the circulation of Qırıx across Diyarbakır’s public cultures at the time of my fieldwork between 2006 and 2008. Then, qırıx, the masculine type, was still an ‘‘other’’ (for his lifestyle) for most of the self-avowed political Kurds who were my research informants, quite representative of the city’s politico-cultural demography by that time. Yet, the very same

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group of people responded to my self-inclusive question, ‘‘Why did we love Qırıx?’’ almost uniformly and with an almost ever-present solemn laughter: ‘‘Because it was telling our own lives!’’ With this historical-ethnographic sensibility, this chapter seeks to move the exploration of how Qırıx related to the experiences of the Kurdish movement of the 1990s away from an uncomplicated notion of ‘‘uncovering heterogeneity’’ toward a consideration of how it allowed a conjuring of the ‘‘sense of homogeneity’’ reflected in and on the performatives of ‘‘our struggle’’ or ‘‘our life’’ through the power of humorous discourse. In other words, it attempts to explore the critical cultural work Qırıx performed with attention to what kind of facticity of ‘‘our life’’ the comic strip offered for its (primary) readership beyond the limits of legibility and sayability set by the formal discourses of ‘‘revolution,’’ ‘‘struggle,’’ or ‘‘resistance.’’ Such an attempt, however, cannot do away with seriously engaging with the ethnographic and discursive contexts that shaped the text’s production. Guided by the interpretive approach of ‘‘reading formation’’ offered by Tony Bennett, I also ‘‘attempt to think of context as a set of discursive and intertextual determinations, operating on material and institutional supports, that bear in upon a text, not just externally, from the outside in, but internally, shaping it, in the historically concrete form in which it is available as a text-to-be-read, from the inside out.’’17

The Process and Qırıx For nearly two decades beginning in the early 1980s, Diyarbakır was the center of a radical Kurdish national liberation movement led by the PKK and an aggressive State of Emergency Rule instituted by the Turkish state (1979–2002). It was in the midst of this larger period, the early to late 1990s, that both Kurdish political mobilization and state violence peaked, with profound effects on the general organization and conduct of life in the city. On the one hand, national mobilization generated novel experiences and imaginaries of Kurdish identity and history in the city. Thousands joined the PKK guerrilla forces; neighborhoods and streets became hotbeds of Kurdish political activism, illegal boycotts and mass demonstrations in support of the organization became parts of daily life. At the same time, the situation of conflict undermined any sense of political, socioeconomic,

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or physical stability. Systematic police oppression, torture, censure, thousands of unidentified killings, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, and the construction of intelligence and espionage webs among the civilian population turned terror into a property of everyday urban existence. Due to this political militancy and oppression, Diyarbakır, dubbed the ‘‘city of the Kurdish intifada,’’ ‘‘capital of Kurdistan,’’ and ‘‘castle of resurrection,’’ became the home and symbol of the Kurdish struggle, the promises and tragedies of Kurdishness in the 1990s. In Turkish state discourse, the 1990s entailed nothing but an upsurge of ‘‘separatist terror.’’ In the same period, the Kurdish movement relied on a counterhegemonic notion of temporality, the process, which filled in the chronological 1990s with the presence, principles, and experiences of national liberation struggle. What determined the essence of the process structurally was struggle against Turkish state domination. Yet, determinative in the internal constitution of process was the revolutionary transformation of Kurdish sociality as integral part of this struggle. Fashioned after the anticolonial and neo-Marxist teachings of its formative era, the PKK’s revolutionary pedagogy deeply contested existing sociocultural formations among Kurds as constitutive sites wherein individuals were tied to the ‘‘establishment’’18: The Kurdish landed classes and bourgeoisie, for instance, were enemies of people no less than was the Turkish state; traditional religiosity (represented by sheiks and imams) was the best gatekeeper of the status quo that fed on people’s ignorance; the family was a ‘‘feudal-backward institution’’; romantic-sexual engagement was the ground of women’s patriarchal enslavement; attachment to money, women, alcohol, or conventional forms of leisure seduced men into corrupt existence; overinvestment in formal education was a petty-bourgeois contradiction, to name but a few of the prevalent claims.19 This revolutionary discourse was far from irrelevant to the experiences of struggle in the 1990s in Diyarbakır, or in Turkish Kurdistan at large. To the contrary, the PKK owed much of its appeal to and influence on Kurdish popular classes precisely to this promise of transformation, the promise that ‘‘the last would be the first, and the first would be the last.’’ ‘‘Struggle, so conceived, was a devastating hope,’’ as I was once told by an urban tough-turned Kurdish political activist in contemporary Diyarbakır. It offered the underprivileged, the poor, women, country folk, heretofore unimagined possibilities of experience and becoming. However, if this was true, it was also no less true that this discourse also provided the limits of

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the intelligibility and speakability of human experience in this time-space. As the process ordered all experience teleologically—relegating the ground of experience from the domain of ‘‘space’’ and ‘‘present’’ to ‘‘time’’ and ‘‘history’’—a myriad human experiences that could not be easily read into the intentions and directionality of national struggle were ignored as constitutive of the process, or representations of these experiences were subsumed under the prefigurative binaries and moral authority of the revolutionary discourse. Let me proceed at this point with how qırıx fit into this larger context, starting from the masculine type, ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u, which it signified. This was a local type of youthful inner-city masculinity that emerged in Diyarbakır in the 1960s at a juncture of urban modernity characterized by massive rural to urban in-migration, disruptions to local work regimes, increased sociospatial stratification, and the emergence of new cultures of leisure. The practices and expressivities of ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u displayed a certain plasticity across further episodes of socioeconomic and cultural transformation. Nevertheless, an accented speech, a certain gait, stylized attire, distance from formal labor processes, petty criminality, physical practices of male honor and prowess, and particular habits of homosocial leisure built around coffeehouses, city walls, movie theaters, wine and weed consumption also came to dominate an image and persona. S¸ehir ¸cocug˘u was much contested in debates over local identity, modernity, and belonging in Diyarbakır from the time it figured in urban popular culture. For those who assumed this identity, ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u meant simultaneously being an abject-subject thrown into an unequal, decaying, immoral urban space, and inhabiting a sovereign ethos of ‘‘being good at being a man.’’20 The very name they adopted was the expression of such a claim on the city as their true forebear and terrain of mastery. Such a presumptive defiance was predictably rejected by ‘‘others,’’ that is, the urban middle classes. Qırıx was called in out of this rejection as an alternative, substitute name. In fact, the idiom had its origin in the ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u slang, which mixed the vocabulary and syntactic orders of Turkish and Kurdish languages with radical arbitrariness. It was constituted by the enunciation of Turkish word kırık, literally broken, with an accentuated Kurdish intonation, and used in the ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u parlance for those who assumed this identity only by appearance without living up to its moral ethos, who, thus, bore a split between his image and essence, his words and deeds.

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The appropriation of qırıx by the middle classes involved remapping the split denoted by the signifier onto the ethos of modern urban existence. In this usage qırıx came to denote an out-of-place masculine performance characterized by roughhewn provinciality, anti-social violence-mongering, and uneducated tastes, and was strongly disavowed. The social attitudes and affective intensities invested in the idiom in use, however, were also not uniform. They took shades from intense moralization and criminalization to sympathy for the fallen and downtrodden, and even at times a latent fascination with the nonconforming hedonist. The later Kurdish national revolutionary discourse also hailed the ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u as qırıx, by remapping yet again the split the signifier denoted of the city from the (colonized) nation. Here qırıx became the name for an alienated lumpen existence produced through the internalization of colonial, feudal, and classed forms of repression and violence. Like its neo-Marxist counterparts in many other Third World contexts, the PKK regarded the lumpenproleteriat as a potentially significant ally of the revolutionary struggle.21 Resituating qırıx’s ‘‘dilemma’’ at the interfaces between ‘‘establishment and struggle,’’ ‘‘tradition and revolution,’’ ‘‘purposeless revolt and conscious resistance,’’ the organization emphasized his mobilization into revolutionary overcoming in Diyarbakır. Despite, or together with, this active on-the-ground organizing agenda, qırıx’s representations remained troublesome for the political elite for some time. As late as 1990, Yılmaz Odabas¸ı, a preeminent local political poet and man of letters, half apologetically remarked in his essay on the qırıx of the Xancepek neighborhood in Diyarbakır: I received stern reactions from some friends when writing this piece. They told me to ‘‘leave these psychopaths alone and write about serious things.’’ They told me to write about ‘‘those who resist!’’ As far as I was concerned, writing was not a matter of writing only about ‘‘those who resisted.’’ In fact, I believed one had to consider the primary significance of writing about those who did not resist, those who could not resist. . . . After all, men would not be emancipated unless the cities were liberated.22 Nevertheless this ideological censure was also going to change by the mid1990s, following the strong induction of the qırıx into the ranks of political

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struggle, and a new perception, a new representational type of qırıx as the subject-object of revolutionary transformation was going to take effect. The ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem reporter who later following biographical piece about an O died as a PKK guerrilla is quite typical of these later accounts; hence I quote it at length: Mehmet S¸enol was a sharp and split qırıx of this city. . . . The process of national-social movement in his country was soon to shape his fate. Instead of tabloids he would start reading Mao and other leftist classics. When meeting his friends at the coffee-houses beneath the city walls, he would now, using Marxist theories tell them how great the Chinese leader was. The omni-directional revolt in his heart was finally reaching harmony and he was attaining an ideology from the pages of books. At this point, the narrative shifts from a description of Mehmet S¸enol, the man, to one of his sociological location: The qırıx of Diyarbakır had an instinctive revolt against the establishment. Their heart was too delicate to take any injustice. Their emotions were sharp as the sator [butcher’s cleaver] hidden under their arms. When the dark of the night hit the sky, these orphan boys of the city would take the streets with their wine . . . When the sun rose, they would abandon the city to its owners. When the rebellion poured onto the streets and smeared the nights with danger, both the qırıx and the law of qırıx-ness left the streets to more unforgiving laws . . . The rebellion swept away the wine-red qırıx nights. And it sculpted their wine-smeared, dark-headed anger like a patient architect. It recovered their stolen identities from the pothole of the establishment. It returned their own notes and voices back to them. They continued gathering in the dark and consigning their secrets to the night. They were still angry and anguished. Yet it was no more wine which made them drunk, but a new love which enlightened their hearts. And S¸enol was now a rebel in love with this ¨ zgu¨r city. . . . Amidst all the dust and flame, he started working in O 23 Gu¨ndem. Thus, finally was harmony achieved between qırıx and the city in the process. However, this epic resolution, as it incorrigibly would

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be, was essentially anachronic, if only because it had as its condition of possibility the very negation of qırıx (as the negation of negation). In other words, the revolutionary discourse preserved intact the founding split denoted by qırıx while casting ‘‘being qırıx’’ and ‘‘being in the process’’ as at two distinct planes of existence, experience and speech. Speaking ‘‘seriously’’ then, insofar as qırıx remained as qırıx, he could hardly represent anything but an irreducible ‘‘otherness’’ to revolution, struggle, or resistance in Diyarbakır for much of the 1990s.

Qırıx, the Comic Series ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem early in the 1990s, when the KurdQırıx began to appear in O ish movement was seeking to promote its counterhegemonic reach in Turkish Kurdistan (and any resolution of ‘‘the qırıx question’’ was still due). ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem had a crucial role in the collective administration of the O process. In a context in which the Turkish state systematically censored the production of any public information on the Kurdish issue beyond the ‘‘terror’’ trope, the newspaper was the only institutionalized medium through which a Kurdish account of war and struggle was publicized on a daily basis. Hence, it was also the target of an unremitting campaign of state violence and terror. This terror included killing seventy-six of the paper’s staff (thirteen of them distributors in their early teens or younger), systematic detention and arrest of its editors and contributors, bombing its headquarters, countless police raids into its offices, periodic banning of the paper’s distribution in Turkish Kurdistan, and casual policing and harassment of its readers, particularly in this emergency-ruled region. With these ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem was also as definite. Most of them features, the readership of O were Kurds who recognized their subjectivity as being in the process; who tried, or would have liked to think themselves to be trying, to organize their lives and selves according to the principles and imperatives of the nationalpolitical struggle.24 Qırıx’s author Gu¨zel was a Diyarbakırite cartoonist, an insider to both the city’s public cultures and the culture of the Kurdish movement. Gu¨zel ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem contributor, and yet in Qırıx he was also a permanent O offered his readers a quite distinct process story, in at least two senses. First,

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while the framing structure of the daily newscast was, as a rule, the polarization between Turkish state oppression and Kurdish resistance, Gu¨zel was predominantly interested in navigating the day with a focus on how Kurds negotiated their identities and selves inside their own changing social space. Second, in contrast to the rest of Kurdish cultural productions of this time, Gu¨zel’s attention was not on the historical movement of the process or its teleological unfolding. Instead, Qırıx was an exploration of the everyday possibilities and predicaments of the process of struggle through the possibilities offered by humorous discourse. In line with the general terms of debate about qırıx, Gu¨zel also had his hero’s resistance or, better, ‘‘resistance to resistance’’ during the process, as the driving theme of his portrayal of Keko. However, rather than setting him as a self-contained, discrete figure at the margins of society and history (recall the phrases ‘‘psychopath’’ and ‘‘orphan boys’’ in the quotations above), he emplotted Keko and his dilemmas and ambiguities within an all too ordinary set of relationships.

The Story of Qırıx Qırıx is set in any familiar inner-city neighborhood in Diyarbakır with its narrow alleys, homosocial coffeehouses, and city walls. Its characters bear a close similarity to the city’s cultural stereotypes, and all native characters in the comics but one speak a brazen Diyarbakırite-accented Turkish.25 The story time of Qırıx is the immediate present, the ‘‘here and now’’ in Diyarbakır in the 1990s. The symmetry between fictional time and outside reality is sustained across the comic strip’s episodes by frequent references to real-time political events and agendas: a government ruling, an armed clash at a guerrilla base, a boycott or demonstration organized by ERNK26 (the PKK political wing), or a (Turkish) official or a (Kurdish) ‘‘national’’ day like Turkish Republic Day, the Kurdish New Year, Newroz, or the anniversary of PKK’s foundation on August 15. The Turkish state exists in Qırıx with all its sovereign institutions and capacity of intimidation, yet with its grandeur consumed in the breadth of two letters: ‘‘T.C.’’ for Tu¨rkiye Cumhuriyeti, the Republic of Turkey. Along¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem, side this are the multiplied ideographs of the process; O 27 ‘‘Kurdistan,’’ ‘‘ERNK,’’ ‘‘patriotic,’’ ‘‘establishment,’’ ‘‘revolution,’’ ‘‘feudal,’’ ‘‘lumpen,’’ ‘‘guerrilla,’’ ‘‘dilemma,’’ ‘‘contradiction,’’ ‘‘perspective,’’ ‘‘objective conditions,’’ and ‘‘subjective circumstances.’’

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Qırıx’s narrative center of gravity is Keko; hence the strip’s name. But this eponymy between the work and its main protagonist belies its multiple significations from the outset: each character brings to the surface a different dimension of Keko’s ambiguities vis-a`-vis the terms and principles of the process, while also giving life to Qırıx through multiple ways of being in the process. Humor is wielded with a parodic intercepting of the traditional and the ordinary with the political. My use of parody here builds on Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of it as a form of telling that builds on an outof-place split inserted into the very activity of narration. Qırıx pursues this strategy in its character composition and event development while keeping up a systematic split between the situations in which it portrays the characters and the corpus of significations it entrusts to their use to interpret and act upon these situations. Below is the story of Qırıx. Keko is an empathetically portrayed stereotypical qırıx with his social background, practices, and expressivities. Meticulously dressed with a jacket draped over his shoulders, the heels of his shoes smashed in as he walks, a sator (butcher’s cleaver) hidden on the right side of his torso, and rolling a rosary in his hands, he would like to perform the roles of supervisor of justice, social extractor, and moral protector of the streets. This is the reason he has long been a frequenter of police stations as a common criminal, and hence also his big fear of the police. Keko is perennially unemployed, with few prospects and no apparent plan to find a job, unless one counts the idea of running a coffeehouse or selling lamb-liver kebabs sometime in the future a proper plan. As of now, he is totally dependent on his humbly surviving family to get by, but at the same time he is also particular about his claim to fame for masculine prodigality in the world of men. If what distinguishes a man is having style in his joy and sorrow, Keko is also a heavy wine drinker, a most loyal consumer of Marlboros (the most expensive cigarette brand available), a folk dance genius, and a virtuoso of unrequited platonic love. The name of his beloved is Leyla. She is a typical urbanite college girl from the next neighborhood, and Keko calls her ‘‘davam’’ (‘‘my cause’’). Were the objective circumstances conducive, Keko would not have wanted more as a daily routine than to supervise the social order in the coffeehouse where he hangs out with his qırıx buddy C¸eto, starting at dawn by punishing nonconformists on the streets, then chasing after Leyla on her way from home to college, and after all is done, playing checkers with C¸eto

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Figure 1.1. I. Keko chases Leyla. II. I have had too much fun. Let me hang out a little as siyasi. III. Keko chasing a (Turkish) officer’s son dreaming of punishment with his sator. Courtesy of Dog˘an Gu¨zel.

at the coffeehouse or sharing with him a bottle of wine, albeit a cheap one, inside the lush Hewsel gardens or beneath the tranquil city walls of Diyarbakır. Alas! Since the process started to change the dynamics of fighting on the streets, the circumstances became quite unfavorable for him to do as was his wont. What is worse is that since then, Keko’s fickle heart has fallen for a new ‘‘cause’’: He wants to ‘‘hang out a little as siyasi [political by nature].’’28 ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem, and charges So Keko makes siyasi friends, starts reading O himself with leading the political transformation of his coffeehouse and family. Yet being siyasi is nothing like chasing Leyla, platonically and without reciprocity. First, one has to be ready to take the full brunt of the state. Keko is very much scared of the state. Second, ‘‘being siyasi’’ demands a full-time commitment in one’s words and deeds. Keko simply wants to have it both ways: to remain a qırıx and ‘‘be siyasi a little bit.’’ This is a plain contradiction in terms, and would be quite dangerous. As they say, ‘‘He who cannot take sides is in a fix.’’29 Thus, the more Keko fails to choose between ‘‘being qırıx’’ and conforming to the requirements of ‘‘being siyasi,’’ the more he becomes physically and socially vulnerable. Qırıx is a close-up on this emergent crisis in Keko’s life that builds on his desire to be ‘‘a little siyasi qırıx.’’ The story revolves around how in this attempt Keko constantly navigates between the contradictory languages, practices, and identifying symbolisms of ‘‘being a qırıx’’ and ‘‘being siyasi’’

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according to changing sources of opportunity and threat as he moves across the streets, the coffeehouse, between his qırıx and siyasi friends and his home during the process. There are many characters located across the sites that make up Keko’s social universe. There are C¸eto and Leyla, who have already been mentioned as the protagonists of Keko’s usual qırıx life. There are secondary qırıx. There are also, of course, the ‘‘gestapo’’ police and soldiers. Finally, there are a few of those Keko calls ‘‘the student-minded,’’ who are thrilled that Diyarbakır ‘‘feels like the France of Resistance and we are the resistance fighters.’’ But of all these characters a few stand out with the intensity of their role in shaping Keko’s life and experiences within the process. One of these is Siyasi Abi (literally ‘‘Political Elder Brother’’), the most stable indicator of the revolutionary process in Qırıx, and also of Keko’s irreducible ambiguity within and to it. Another is Ramazan Usta, a sheltering yet opportunist bazaari who runs the coffeehouse that figures in Qırıx as the main public site, save the partitioned streets, of everyday social and political encounters. Family emerges in Qırıx as the site where the ordinary articulates with the political in the most gaily dynamic and contradictory ways, and all other characters of significance in Qırıx are Keko’s family members: His primary school age siblings Quto and Eys¸o who are both enchanted by the process, his politically antagonist father whom all the kids call the ‘‘police at home,’’ and his mother who would curse the PKK in her children’s presence to protect them from the dangers of political involvement while building for herself a serious career among her neighbors as the primary agit-propagandist of the PKK. All these characters and their relationships pass into one another across the street, the coffeehouse, and home over the course of Qırıx’s episodes. However, there are also different leitmotifs that drive Keko’s relationships with each of these characters and complete the trajectory of the story. Let us first consider the streets, where Keko is the most visible in his familiar qırıx life with C¸eto and Leyla; or, better, where the difficulty for him in remaining a typical qırıx is starkly visible during the process. On the streets, there is first the problem of constant police presence. Keko does not even need to do anything any more to agitate the police, because the police are always already agitated in the process. They perceive every moving thing to be a ‘‘terrorist’’ and try to take all movement down with constant ID checks and generalized violence. These checks scare everyone, but more so Keko because he is absent without leave (AWOL). Every possibility of being

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detained carries in it the danger of being presented to the Turkish army to perform his compulsory military service.30 The impending police prosecution has an additional ‘‘incredibly destructive effect on Keko,’’ who, as C¸eto suggests, ‘‘has made it a part of his character to distribute justice in this city.’’ Motivated by a primary instinct for survival, Keko cannot confront the Turkish army even when its officers’ sons beat up his brother Quto, let alone cope when the police harass people in what used to be his turf. Keko has to navigate his way on the streets not only with the police, but also with the full-time siyasi. On the rare occasions when Keko manages to outwit the police, he then has to confront an interdiction by a revolutionary siyasi or sympathizer for being a ‘‘dodger’’ of the national (PKK) military service that awaits him on this side. More often when Keko manages to fix an occasion to carry out his street fights for justice or honor away from the police, he comes across those who invite him to leave feudal-lumpen aggressiveness for the revolutionary line. Keko and C¸eto always have to hide their drinking escapades from the revolutionaries, for whom such indulgence also indicates a lumpen deviance. If they manage to outwit the revolutionaries in pursuit of alcoholic solace, they often find their leisure spots zoned off by the police or the army. This is the reason Keko has largely become a shadow fighter on the streets with C¸eto, and is constantly on the run. For all the dangers that they breed, however, the streets are also the main stimulants for the growth of Keko’s political consciousness. If, for instance, the police beat Keko for fighting with another qırıx in the middle of the night over some petty ‘‘sugar in the tea’’ issue, Keko knows that ‘‘the State has been reduced to its institutions of force. What is left of Kemalism is only its violent face.’’ Coming across a schoolboy in tight jeans and punkstyled hair, Keko and C¸eto now recognize that the boy’s ‘‘petty-bourgeois tendencies’’ are not because he is corrupt, but because ‘‘he is a victim of T.C.’s politics of corruption as a weapon of warfare.’’ More than anything or anyone else, it is his changing experiences with Leyla that give Keko’s political consciousness a sufficient maturity in the public eye. If, say, a Turkish officer starts chasing Leyla and Keko does not dare confront him, he inescapably understands how ‘‘it is truly a fact that unless one’s country is liberated, one’s honor cannot be protected.’’ Other times, the desire to impress Leyla with new sources of masculine respectability and charm turns Keko into an implacable political agent. When, for instance, he is seen by Leyla while being slandered by a police officer who calls him a ‘‘Savage,

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vagabond!’’ Keko will not disappoint the aggressor as to his true identity: ‘‘No Savage, no vagabond!’’ he will shout back at him, ‘‘A Kurd is what I ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem out in the open am!’’ Other times, he would hold a copy of O while chasing Leyla although ‘‘it is too dangerous . . . the State or counterguerrilla may show up at any moment.’’ It is not that Leyla cares about any of these, because she believes they are ‘‘all a shameless pretention to impress her.’’ But Keko does not lose faith in the power of his siyasi charm to attract Leyla, even though he himself spends most of his time trying to escape the dangers invoked by that same charm. The closest siyasi around is Siyasi Abi, a militant, probably an ERNK cardre, who does popular front organizing in Keko’s neighborhood. He is a respected and even-tempered man of reason in his thirties with thick glasses and a stereotypically large leftist moustache. His only other distinguishing trait is being totally bereft of surprise and contradiction. Perhaps it is a sign of this intactness that he is also the only Kurdish character to speak flawless Turkish throughout the comic strip. Even in that language Siyasi Abi does not talk much, and rarely does he offer any political discourse. This is because Siyasi Abi’s significance in Qırıx does not lie in what he says. His presence ‘‘here and now’’ is enough for the emergence of revolutionary truths over the surface of others’ words and deeds, Keko’s in the first place. Keko and Siyasi Abi frequently meet on the streets or at Ramazan Usta’s coffeehouse. Keko holds Siyasi Abi in deep respect and affection, so much that one day he badly beats a guy up in the coffeehouse who unknowingly sits in Siyasi Abi’s usual chair while the latter is under detention. But whenever Siyasi Abi is around, Keko is also the most pained. Siyasi Abi would like Keko to attain proper political subjectivity, but Keko’s ‘‘habitat is not at all congruent with the political line.’’31 So Siyasi Abi gives Keko ‘‘political books,’’ yet Keko cannot read any of them beyond eighteen pages, no matter how hard he tries. Keko smokes Maltepe, the cheapest cigarette brand, and plays chess when Siyasi Abi is around, ‘‘like all special people do these days,’’ only to exchange them for checkers and Marlboros in his absence. If Siyasi Abi asks Keko to punish police informants, Keko assents. But because he would not dare speak of the political essence of his act, not only would he would invent an excuse of ‘‘honor infringement’’ when beating up the culprits, but he would also use his lumpen sator to carry out the task (though Siyasi Abi had asked him to give it up long ago). Keko would also ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem distributors against gird himself with his sator to protect O

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possible counter-guerrilla attacks on the streets, without any request by Siyasi Abi for such an act of bravery. Yet, if Siyasi Abi asks Keko to host PKK militia men in his home, Keko will body search them to make sure they do not have any illegal belongings or blindfold them on the way home, as he did with Feyzo, because he is scared that police may be driven toward his home if PKK militias visit too often. Keko would never want to let affronts to honor go unpunished if, say, Leyla or the daughters of a certain Aunt Makbule are harassed by street vagabonds. But if Siyasi Abi criticizes ‘‘fighting over women in these times,’’ Keko feigns innocence and assures him that ‘‘it will not happen again as our people are getting more aware.’’ Using politically correct language always has purchase for manipulating Siyasi Abi for good or bad. Once, for instance, Keko tells Siyasi Abi that he is taking off with C¸eto ‘‘to see a play in the Culture Center,’’ when in fact the two buddies were planning to have a drink somewhere. Another time he tries to convince Siyasi Abi to join in a soccer match in the neighborhood by telling him about the ‘‘classed dimensions of this match.’’ But even if Keko tries to evade Siyasi Abi at every other moment, he can neither escape his influence on him nor dare forfeit his recognition. That is why if Keko’s every step toward Siyasi Abi involves two steps backward from what he represents, all his evasions of Siyasi Abi also wind up being circumvented by his field of influence. Driving Keko’s relationship with Ramazan Usta are other dimensions of Keko’s life as ‘‘a little siyasi qırıx’’ within the process. At one point Ramazan Usta is a person whose life has recently been incredibly burdened with turning his cafe´ into a meeting spot for the police, soldiers, political militants, sympthatizers, qırıx, and others; and all at once. Ramazan Usta never sells out his political customers to the police. His role in the process actually goes beyond this. As he put it once in talking to himself after being patronizingly put to task for some political issue by Siyasi Abi, then Keko and Quto, ‘‘No one would be able to do any fucking politics were it not for me.’’ At another point Ramazan Usta is a typical crafty bazaari who knows how to manage relationships to minimize risks and maximize returns. For instance, if he would not dare charge the police for tea, he would immediately compensate for the disturbance this gesture would cause other customers by treating them to better ‘‘smuggled tea’’ while complaining of the sore throat he got from having to drink that ‘‘crummy Turkish tea’’ in the officers’ presence. Or if he dares to bill the police in a way theatrical enough

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Figure 1.2. Ohh! The books that Siyasi Abi had given me to read! They are all here . . . How many there are! Ohh! A lot . . . A lot . . . Hundreds of pages . . . Thousands of paragraphs . . . Tens thousands of . . . Courtesy of Dog˘an Gu¨zel.

for others to notice, he would be thinking how this brave gesture would make it easy for him to ‘‘raise the tea prices without popular opposition.’’ On a day of political demonstrations, like the Newroz (New Year) celebrations, when neither the siyasi nor police or soldiers show up, Ramazan Usta is relieved to ‘‘get back the coffee-house of [his] dreams.’’ At other times he cannot help dreaming about the fortune that this war has brought him as the coffeehouse overflows with increased numbers of unemployed men. Of everyone Ramazan Usta has to manage in this process, perhaps the most difficult is Keko. He both forces Ramazan Usta to be an accomplice of his qırıx underground and opts for being Ramazan Usta’s archangel for revolutionary revelation. While he counts on Ramazan Usta to hide his and C¸eto’s wine jugs from Siyasi Abi, or to shield his whereabouts from revolutionary militias when necessary, or simply to shelter him in the coffeehouse when violence escalates on the streets, Keko also becomes the most astute critic when it comes to exposing the latter’s political opportunism and ambiguity. For instance, if Ramazan Usta’s dreams of ‘‘being made

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Figure 1.3. Keko: Damn it! We are sitting right next to the police. And we have been talking about the process for the past one hour. C ¸ eto: On top of it . . . Many siyasi passed by us; and they all had moustaches. Keko: We have to get rid of the pall of suspicion over our table. Ramazan Usta! Ramazan Usta: See who is gambling! I am sure they have a valid reason! Courtesy of Dog˘an Gu¨zel.

rich by T.C. out of this war’’ are not thwarted by intermittent catastrophes like the ruin of all the cafe´’s tables and chairs by an unexplainable rain on a sunny Sunday morning, or the sudden bombing of the coffeehouse, Keko becomes the one to enforce the truths of the process on him by pointing to his ‘‘objective complicity with the war’’ by way of his bazari position. Whenever Ramazan Usta tries to keep the police calm with freshly brewed tea, Keko organizes the coffeehouse against him to voice the ‘‘needs’’ or ‘‘sensibilities of my people.’’ If once he would have Ramazan Usta let him gamble at the coffeehouse so that ‘‘the siyasi pall’’ over his table would dissipate, another time he would accuse Ramazan Usta of having no respect for ‘‘political agency,’’ when the latter asks him to read his ‘‘political books’’ in the closed section reserved for hiding gamblers in case of a police raid. No matter how ambiguous Keko is about talking the talk and walking the walk of the process in public, he is consistent in posing siyasi militancy toward his family members. Yet if the process destabilizes Keko’s presence and power on the streets, it hits him even worse on the home front. The biggest blows to Keko’s standing and authority come from his siblings Quto and Eys¸o. Quto, as his name suggests, is a tiny boy (in fact, he is so tiny that Mother does not let him bathe on his own). He is a copycat of Keko in

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some respects, as in his affection for smoking and cowing strangers to the neighborhood. Yet that is as far as the resemblance goes. Born right into the process, Quto does not have any of Keko’s political ambiguities. Quto is a full-time militia member of the revolution, and he disdains his older brother’s lumpen attitude toward the process. He attends school only for the purposes of political activity such as enforcing ERNK boycotts, forcing other kids to escape the official flag ceremonies, or for writing the graffiti ‘‘Biji Kurdistan’’ (‘‘Long live Kurdistan’’). He finally ‘‘succeeds in making [his primary] school siyasi,’’ which he realizes with much excitement when one day the police occupy it like other siyasi high schools. If he is not at school, he is working as a street vendor to contribute to the family budget instead of the unemployed Keko. Quto refuses to sell water or watermelon seeds to the police, and pees into their teacups before serving them if he is ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem is helping Ramazan Usta at the coffeehouse. On the days O banned in Diyarbakır (in real-time), Quto drives the police mad by selling old editions on the streets. Quto’s unforgiving attitude toward the establishment is so unblemished that he even resorts to charging his father with being a ‘‘feudal police collaborator,’’ when one day the latter talks him out of risking detention. Such firm revolutionary commitment and resourcefulness earns Quto well-deserved public respect, which becomes the main source of Keko’s shattered sense of self- and social worth. For example, once Siyasi Abi and C¸eto go the police station when they hear ‘‘Keko was detained for a political activity,’’ only to find Quto coming out of the building with his right hand raised with a victory sign, while Keko follows him, head lowered, for he was detained, but in connection with a common crime. Another time, Keko’s dream of showing off at the coffeehouse with traces of blood on his head from a street fight turns into a nightmare when he finds others immersed in listening to Quto’s story of how he was beaten by the police. The fact of the matter is that in the new world of manhood in Diyarbakır, social respectability and recognition are no longer based on how one beats up others, but on why one fights, and gets beaten in the process. Even Keko cannot escape the fact that he will no longer be able to maintain a legacy even through his own brother. As one day he tells C¸eto in tears after the buddies are abandoned by Quto, who rejects their offer to ‘‘step into the world of adults [men]’’ by joining their wine-and-dine ritual, ‘‘Nothing will ever be the same because of this slut process.’’ The foregone symbols of his masculine prowess bring no more than pain and humiliation for Keko.

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Figure 1.4. Eys¸o: You want a feudal male sovereignty, huh? I will fight you with your own weapon. Courtesy of Dog˘an Gu¨zel.

The youngest, Eys¸o, is no more comforting. Like Quto, Eys¸o is a dedicated member of the revolutionary front. At school, she is a diligent disciple of her younger brother, who taught her how to escape the flag ceremonies the very first day. The rest comes habitually: when the strategy of being late to school to eschew the morning oath-taking ceremony becomes unviable when noticed by her teacher, she has the school watchman let her inside the school building at dawn. She refuses to do any homework assigned about Atatu¨rk, founder of Turkish Republic, despite this stubbornness resulting in beatings by her teacher and parents. Keko could have even taken pride in his sister’s public activism, had she not played soccer with boys. Yet if Quto’s rejection of his lumpenism gives Keko hell outside, Eys¸o’s objection to his ‘‘feudalism’’ destroys the one bit of comfort Keko can enjoy at home. At home, Eys¸o is the ultimate woman’s freedom fighter created by the revolutionary moment. She may not yet have acquired the power to turn down Keko’s unending demands on her, but she excels at mobilizing her new ideals by shredding Keko’s political fac¸ade at every opportunity. Once Keko orders her to make his tea, iron his jacket, and prepare his food while at the same time forcing himself to read the book Kadin Sorunu Uzerine (On The Woman’s Question) at Siyasi Abi’s request. As Eys¸o notices what Keko is reading, she asks him with ultimate mockery, repeating a well-known revolutionary slogan: ‘‘ ‘Women get beautiful

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through struggle.’ You will be able to get that, right?’’ Eys¸o can be so blunt that she does not even hesitate to pour salt on Keko’s feudal wounds. As Keko is well aware, he lives in a culture of ‘‘huge mustache-fetishism,’’ but he has a very sparse beard. Once, when Keko orders her to learn to make tea and tidy his room and so forth because ‘‘these will be her jobs not his,’’ Eys¸o joyfully mocks him by asking if he would ever tell her to bring his shaving set, forcing him to leave home out of humiliation. At other times, she would not even resort to these tactics, but simply tell him to ‘‘Get out!’’ leaving Keko perplexed that ‘‘in this topsy-turvy world, even Eys¸o believes she has the right to kick me out of the house.’’ Such intense humiliation by his siblings, however, never discourages Keko from assuming the task of transforming his parents in line with the revolutionary agenda. Keko’s father, who ‘‘defends the state as if it were his own father,’’ as Keko tells it, is a conservative-religious man who is against the process as a matter of faith, and due to a belief in the impossibility of defeating the state with all its ‘‘tanks, mortars, soldiers and guns.’’ He is the only earning member of the family and firm enough to stand against his kids’ presumptuous rebelliousness, and yet, as has been implied, his home patriarchate is being shaken in tandem with the power of the bigger patriarch outside. Keko’s mother, like all traditional mothers, has the primary task of ‘‘balancing intra-familial power relations,’’ that is, acting as mediator between the father and the kids. Her biggest ordinary trouble on this account is making a case for Keko’s needs, particularly money, since Father regards Keko as quite lowly for being the ‘‘idle vagabond’’ he is. So, for instance, if she manipulated Father into giving Keko stipends with madeup stories of someone’s son’s losing his job ‘‘because the economy is so bad’’ or some young man’s suicide attempt ‘‘because he was penniless,’’ in Father’s absence she would scold Keko for his laxness with added details about someone’s son who has found a job or became rich or set up a family. As the process unfolds, the power relations she needs to balance multiply, and so does her deftness at and vulnerability to manipulation. With no change in the reasons Father dislikes Keko in the first place, Keko declares war against his ‘‘dictatorship at home’’ in the terms of the process: he will not ‘‘recognize these feudal relationships anymore!’’ He still has to gauge carefully when to fight with Father; he will do it, for example, while Father is performing daily prayer and thus cannot talk back; but definitely not after sunset, because if Keko is kicked out of the house at night, there is more danger of ID checks by soldiers. One day Keko learns

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that Father had registered him on his birth certificate as two years older than he actually was so that he could do his military service earlier. People used do this in the old days so that boys could finish with it early and find a job and marry sooner. But that time is over, and now Keko accuses Father and Mother of being ‘‘objective traitors’’ for having done so. Of everyone, Mother is the one who takes Keko’s siyasi identity most seriously. She often persuades Father to let Keko come home by threatening him that ‘‘if the police detain Keko, they will come home and find the political books.’’ She is usually taken in when Keko pretends siyasi radicalization. Once for instance, she alarmingly steals some money from Father for Keko when she overhears him talking to himself of the need to join the guerrilla: ‘‘Ohh God! It is only because of this T.C. that I live like a parasite. . . . This is not fate; this way of life cannot be accepted. Struggle is a must . . . The devil says. . . .’’ She misses, of course, when Keko thinks to himself ‘‘mission accomplished’’: ‘‘One needs to make use of the backward structure of the institution of family.’’ However, Mother is also far from being helpless with Keko. Whenever the heat on the streets permits, she kicks Keko outside the house despite ‘‘[Keko’s] proud street fighting victories’’ at such times. Mother is the ‘‘fastest of all to deploy ‘operasyons’ ’’32 against Keko’s (and Quto’s) ‘‘Ahaa, terrorist!’’ books given to them by Siyasi Abi. In the meantime, she even ‘‘overcomes sexual taboos,’’ as Keko sees it, for in her ‘‘operations she exterminates only the political books,’’ leaving his porn magazines and the Conan series untouched. Mother is frightened of ‘‘a day when none of the nude magazines will be there and only the terrorist ones will remain.’’ Thus, she increases her political disciplining of Keko with other means if she fears he is getting serious. Denial of recognition is always the best strategy: at time of the general elections of 1995 (which the Kurdish movement boycotted in real-time), when Keko tries to convince Mother to support the boycott against ‘‘the fake-Muslim kontra-parties,33’’ she turns her back on him saying: ‘‘Go and earn a few pennies first. You can make politics later!’’ After Keko leaves, she rehearses his boycott propaganda almost verbatim to her neighbors, as she always does. But Keko too misses Mother’s revolutionary revelations at these times. Once she decides to ‘‘equip [herself] politically’’ through a neighbor’s daughter to convince Keko that ‘‘The period of national liberation struggles is over in the post-Cold War era. The Russian Government collapsed, now

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Figure 1.5. Mother: Does he ever mention the Kurds? They are fake Muslim kontra parties. The others are working only for their families! If they had had any honor they would have withdrawn. If that is it, then boycott it is! Neighbors: Yeah, in the name of Allah! Boycott! Courtesy of Dog˘an Gu¨zel.

there is only America. The world is globalizing!’’ However at other times, ‘‘when it suits [her] interest’’ (as Keko says) she tries Keko with the supreme judgment of the national liberation struggle at hand to keep him away from what is in her traditional-religious world sinful: wine. Thus, one day when Keko returns home gaily drunk, she challenges him by holding Eys¸o at her side, remarking ‘‘No no!’’ disparagingly: ‘‘My pretentiously patriotic son violated the ban on alcohol use, huh. What a terrible contradiction, son!’’ Nevertheless, if contradiction is inescapable at home, so is a sheltering compromise inevitable. The whole family is alarmed whenever Keko forgets to take his ID with him when going outside. They, too, are up whenever Keko awakens to nightmares of being arrested by the soldiers. Even Father will compromise. On a day of heavy police siege, he comes home with ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem. ‘‘What a brave gesture.’’ Despite this, Quto is dismayed O that Father risked such peril just to read out to him ‘‘ERNK’s decision to lift the boycotts in primary schools!’’ If compromise is necessary at home, so would contradiction be inescapable outside: One day the police beat and humiliate Father very badly while threatening him that ‘‘he should not trust that his old age would save him.’’

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Figure 1.6. I. As if it wasn’t enough that it irritated my patriotic people by assuming a counter-revolutionary guise. II. Now, with the revolutionary identity that it has earned, it has attracted the hatred of T.C. III. It has become too political . . . I mean, in a sense, it has lost its former innocence . . . It has been contaminated . . . IV. It would be better also for me if it stays in the waters of the Tigris until it regains its feudal-lumpen character. Courtesy of Dog˘an Gu¨zel.

That night Keko overhears how Father angrily reacts to a state news broadcast about ‘‘seventeen terrorists who were caught dead,’’ by saying ‘‘Get lost you rascals. All lies! This is all your doing!’’ Unaware of what happened earlier in the day, Keko concludes happily: ‘‘Oh my God! I guess I have succeeded in transforming my family.’’ In fact, Keko concludes incorrectly: neither is Father really transformed, nor does Mother turn into a devout patriotic mother. Ramazan Usta never ceases to shelter revolutionary activity in his coffeehouse, while at time same time he never gives up on his dreams of immense war profit despite intermittent catastrophes, natural or man-made. Keko, above all, never ceases to be qırıx in his siyasi-ness or siyasi in his qırıx-ness. Even when one day he finally throws his sator into the Tigris River, it is not because he has turned firmly siyasi, but because ‘‘[the sator] has become too political. I mean, in a way it also lost its former innocence.’’ Keko intends to take it up again ‘‘when it gains its feudal-lumpen character back.’’34 Even Siyasi Abi knows that now. Never mind, though! The more the process rocks (their) lives in 1990s Diyarbakır, the better the story rolls.

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Conclusion How, then, did Qırıx bring into presence the process of Kurdish national struggle of the 1990s by allowing its protagonists to continually misappropriate its sacred truth with suspicious interpretations to dubious ends or by having its readers witness a ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u’s mourning for his sator while criticizing the contamination wrought upon its becoming ‘‘too political’’? Perhaps the place to start is the constitutive structure of the process in Qırıx, starting with what the comic strip made of Keko’s qırıx-ness. The name qırıx, as I suggested, primarily represents a social masculine type. Yet as Keko moves across Qırıx’s episodes, the eponymy acquires a surplus meaning: it becomes the name for the organizing principle of Keko’s political subjectivity. This is an irreducibly split subjectivity that cannot be fixed a priori. Keko remains consistently qırıx in Qırıx, that is, consistently inconsistent in his relationship to the terms and principles of the nationalrevolutionary struggle. Yet through this strange consistency he occupies an inconsistent multiplicity of subject positions in the process that shifts from him being an ‘‘opportunist’’ to a ‘‘wise fool,’’ from a ‘‘trickster’’ to a ‘‘hero,’’ from a ‘‘victim of police violence’’ to a ‘‘victim of vanguard bigotry,’’ from being ‘‘naı¨ve’’ to being ‘‘leery,’’ back and forth across the sites and relationships that make up his social existence. However, Keko’s split subjectivity is not unique. It is but the determining feature of most everyday subjectivities and situations. Of all the adult characters in the story, it is only Siyasi Abi who stands for the logos of the process, whose words and deeds are self-proximate. If Quto and Eys¸o are also bearers of such integrity in what they say and do, then the split is ingrained in their very existence, in the contradiction that they embody as revolutionaries who lack reflective faculty by virtue of being children. All the other characters—including those to whom this chapter could not do justice—cite the language of the process arbitrarily as they live their ordinary lives. At a different level, Qırıx’s subjects depend on these arbitrary engagements simply in order to secure daily physical and social survival, because there remains little ordinariness to inhabit in this violently disrupted emergency space, be it within the family, among friends, or in the streets. Being split is, thus, also the quality of everydayness in Qırıx. It is important to note, however, that the ‘‘splitness’’ of the everyday is not limited to the words and deeds of actors, but involves also a generalized disjuncture

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Figure 1.7. But how come these two are always together? I don’t understand. Oh, what a weird time! Courtesy of Dog˘an Gu¨zel.

between the practices that bring it to life and the knowledge and effects of those practices. To put it differently, if the everyday provides in Qırıx a zone where the actors evade the state as well as the logos of the process, it also features as a zone that escapes the logic of its actors. No matter how Keko and others evade the orders and confuse the borders in their everyday conduct, they rarely can control the results of their actions. In fact, it is the contradiction between political (instrumental) reason and the political effect that provides continuity across Qırıx’s episodes. An evasive action more likely ends up turning its owner into an agent of the process, or a principled dialogue with the process fails to produce politically desirable results. ‘‘Reason’’ and ‘‘action’’ also articulate contradictorily in the formation of political (siyasi) agency, for the latter feeds on multiple factors that diminish ideological or moral commitment to the level of insignificance.35 Specifically, it feeds on the desires for and pleasures of social recognition or on the promise of being siyasi as being something out of the ordinary. What kind of a process story is this, then, that encounters life in a continual split between surface and depth, the part and the whole? If such split was the definition of qırıx in the first place, then Qırıx is the story of an intrinsically qırıx process. One of the episodes casts a naı¨ve teenager, a side character, as profoundly confused on seeing Siyasi Abi and Keko walking together on the street. He says: ‘‘If I hang out with Keko, my homefolk

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object. They say he is a sator-monger, a qırıx. Very dangerous. They are also against Siyasi Abi. They say he is dangerous, too. He would dupe me and send me off to the mountains. One should not hang out with this one, either. But how come these two are always together? I cannot understand. Oh, what a strange time!’’ The process is in fact ‘‘a strange time’’ in Qırıx inhabited at the convergence of determinacy and ambiguity; thus ambiguous throughout. That is to say, all in all, Qırıx brings back to the center of the social time of revolution what was supposed to attest the unfolding of revolutionary time only by (its) negation. This humorous split it opened in formal Kurdish national discourse is, undoubtedly, deeply destabilizing of the latter’s capacity to represent given and immutable ‘‘truth’’ both in and of itself and with respect to the totality of individual and social experiences of the 1990s in Diyarbakır, and, possibly, across Turkish Kurdistan. I suggest that subsuming this work of unmasking under a framework of truth-oriented counterdiscursive exposure would be both reductionist and unanswerable to the comic strip’s own truth-effects. It would be reductionist because I argue that what Qırıx brings to presence is something much beyond the ‘‘suppressed’’ or ‘‘silenced’’ ‘‘others’’ of the revolutionary discourse. What it reveals at large is that the prefigurative terms of this discourse were chronically deficient for addressing the formation of ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘here’’ in the Kurdish struggle of the time.36 It reveals, perhaps more significantly, that the facticity of ‘‘revolution’’ or ‘‘struggle’’ in this time-space did not lie n the ideological truths that sought to transform life collectively. It rather lay in the practical everyday actions that effected transformations in life through the myriad subjective appropriations of those truths. In this sense, if Qırıx’s critical work needs to be thought in relation to ‘‘truth’’ at all, then, I suggest, it is better perceived as a mode-of-truth making whose power and significance lie less in how it ‘‘destroyed the secrets’’ of the Kurdish struggle than in the ways it brought to light the experiences that structured this process secretly, from the underground.37 Otherwise, there would be little ground to address how a work of parodic fiction came to stand for the ‘‘real’’ of ‘‘our life’’ or ‘‘our struggle’’ among the political Kurdish community, as I argued earlier. With this in mind, let me conclude, then, with a few points that I believe may help in making sense of the production and sense of a ‘‘struggling collectivity.’’ The first and perhaps the most obvious point relates to the possibility that Qırıx’s parodic split sustained an opening up to sustain the project of

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counter-hegemony against the Turkish state by proliferating resistance and the fantasy of resistance beyond the limits of serious (as opposed to humorous) discourse and thought. Qırıx did this through the power of punning and absurdity: by calling the state T.C., casting the refusal to drink ‘‘crummy Turkish tea’’ as revolutionary patriotic resistance, refusing to love ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem on the streets on the days it was banned in Atatu¨rk, selling O Diyarbakır, and peeing into the teacups of the police. What such representations offered was not only a textual desecration of state symbols, but an affective surplus that promised to demystify the state and its intimidating capacity by releasing the readers from the pietism of commonsense and demands of rational thought. The second point relates to how the performative reiteration of the terms and symbols of the process intensifed the presence of political truth in language and social life; and helped further the semiotic and affective interpellation, through what Achille Mbembe calls ‘‘the interface of fantasy and lack of fulfillment.’’38 At one point it matters less what the protagonists of the story were doing with these signs, how they inverted or subverted them in their individual modes of appropriation. It matters more that the capacity of political truth to have a say in the world of phenomena was multiplied by being inserted into the most ordinary modes of signification. If parodic cutting destabilized the claim of the revolutionary discourse to command the absolute truth, then in so doing it extended the reach of the same discourse into the minute details of everyday practice as an inescapable judgment. Qırıx’s reiterations had quite real-time effects among the political Kurdish community of 1990s Diyarbakır: Eys¸o provided, for instance, the voice for dealing with real time kekos, and Marlboro use sank into the social underground. Finally, I would like to point to the surplus this parodic split released in itself. ‘‘Something so strange emanates from the wound of sacrilege wrought by desecration,’’ for the defaced object acquires ‘‘its greatest illuminating power’’ says Taussig. Akin to the philosophy of Dada cinema, this is because ‘‘it is the cut as the montage principle that makes the energy in the system visible and active.’’39 I believe that it was at this point, more than anywhere else, that Qırıx provided a source of energy to the Kurdish struggle. While cutting through the process with a structuring ambiguity, it was able to recuperate ambiguity itself as a resource for struggle and as a zone of inhabitation rather than posing it as a point of disruption or a point blank. Perhaps therein lay the ‘‘magic’’ of Qırıx for what Keko would call its

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siyasi readership. It gave them a space, in a place of multiple emergencies, to face their experiences and realities in the plain contradictoriness of ‘‘our life.’’ This meant a space to be able to laugh while looking at themselves falling into a mirror, of not being mesmerized by their ‘‘wound,’’ or scared and ashamed of their scars. It meant also a space to keep an openness to recognizing their loss at moments they thought they acheived the most: when primary school boys finally ‘‘succeeded’’ in making their schools siyasi, when religious mothers had to overcome their ‘‘sexual taboos,’’ when conservative fathers came to realize the truth of the state only through the pain of torture, or when the qırıx finally dropped their sators into the river.40 I would like to end by suggesting that this is, perhaps, also the point where Qırıx may offer some energy to those of us who live and work in militant contexts of conflict, to navigate our way through those everyday situations of ambiguity that we often too readily tend to conclude is the crisis of ‘‘ideology,’’ or ‘‘the subject,’’ or ‘‘struggle,’’ or the end of the story.

chapter two

The War Zone in My Heart: The Occupation of Southern Sri Lanka Sandya Hewamanne

During mid-June 2011, several people posting on my Facebook page either wondered how to find a link to see the Channel 4 documentary on the last days of Sri Lanka’s civil war1 or registered shock and dismay at the horrific images of atrocities committed on civilians by both government forces and the LTTE. Around the same time, photos started popping up on my wall with comments from my twenty-year-old niece. These photos captured my interest as they were from her three-week ‘‘leadership training period’’ at the Boosa military camp. This highly controversial program for university entrants was inaugurated with a ceremony on May 23, 2011, a mere two years after the end of the war. The photos showed young people engaged in such activities as physical exercise, cooking, and playing games. Members of the Charlie 3 group, of which my niece was one, commented under each photograph, providing more information on the context and their feelings.2 Most were sentimental and talked about how they had bonded and were now like brothers and sisters. Surprisingly, some soldiers and officers also commented on these threads, mentioning that they were now like a family, bonded for life. Responding to one such comment, a young male university entrant exclaimed, ‘‘You are so correct, sir!’’ Thinking of my own university days, when many new entrants quickly unlearned some of their internalized chauvinism and even became ardent Marxists, I could not help but worry about the cultural logic of this militarizing embrace. Apart from creating problematic loyalties among groups

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who traditionally remain in separate spheres, this program made new university students a part of the state-military collusion, at a time when they are poised between identities and the most vulnerable to internalizing new ideologies. These young people were brought up in a society embroiled in a protracted civil war and are already enmeshed in hegemonic state militarization efforts. However, incorporating them into the military establishment, even for a short time, will not only affect their capacity for critical thinking about the military, but also impact whether universities themselves continue to be sites of social criticism and resistance. As Kamala Visweswaran notes in the introduction to this volume, states frequently seek to establish connections with civil society as a means of establishing hegemony. This ‘‘leadership training’’ program seems designed to give the military access to the popular, circumscribing its potential to become a site of resistance. Visweswaran names such efforts by militarized states to enter civil society as ‘‘war by other means.’’ This chapter, however, is not about university students who have the means and know-how to engage in social media activities. It is about migrant workers at an urban FTZ, where an overwhelming majority have no idea how to use a computer, let alone have the means to own one. This does not mean that they are subjected less to invisible forms of militarization—‘‘war by other means.’’ Long before the military sought access to popular culture via social media, the state made sure that the images and language associated with the war and war heroes invaded even the most intimate realms of Sinhala people’s everyday lives. The following focuses on how the state saturated Sinhala culture with such propaganda so as to establish hegemony over people’s hearts and minds. It thereby explores an aspect of Sri Lanka’s civil war that received scant attention in popular or scholarly discourses: how war and militarization preoccupied the predominantly Sinhala southern areas of the country, and how a gendered group of migrant global factory workers experienced this on top of the brutalities of trade liberalization. Focusing on the varied social relationships between the Sri Lankan armed forces and FTZ workers during the intensified nationalist/militarist discourses of 1999–2000 and 2004–2009 and in light of the new political and economic realities since the civil war ended in May 2009, this chapter analyzes how the violence of militarism and neoliberalization seeped into the intimate, everyday spaces of supposedly peaceful areas to comment on the militarization of violence against women.

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The Takeover of Clotheslines During my stay in Sri Lanka’s FTZ boarding houses with garment factory workers, I often found that basic daily chores, such as taking a bath, cooking, cleaning, and eating, had a competitive edge. With one well, five toilets, and one kitchen with ten stoves for fifty to sixty, and competition, tension, conflict, and networking became absolutely necessary. Women washed their clothes by hand at the well and hung them from four clotheslines that ran along the length and width of the compound. Due to the tall trees and foliage, the spots where sunlight fell for the longest time were few and sought-after. Many minor verbal battles broke out over hogging or stealing them. Only rarely did someone get undisputed ownership—when soldiers visited their girlfriends, sisters, and cousins. As soon as the men arrived, they changed into casual clothing, and either their female hosts or someone washing clothes at the time would wash their travel clothes and hang them in the sunniest spots, pushing other clothes out of the way or taking them down.3 No verbal battles ensued, and everyone helped the drying process by moving these clothes as the sun moved across the sky. Once I came back to the compound to find my clothes had been removed from a prime space. Vijitha, my unofficial clothes-drying helper for the day, explained that she removed them for Hemantha Aiya’s clothes and would not have allowed any of the other women even to come close to my space. I was expected to understand why Hemantha—a soldier on leave—deserved the spot without further explanation. Earlier, I wrote about the way these women used clotheslines to ensure some privacy from prying eyes and, at the same time, hung their white underwear on the outer lines to send a message—‘‘We are not sex workers’’—since they supposedly wear black ‘‘sexy’’ undergarments. What messages were they sending by hanging the soldiers’ laundry so prominently? Why was no one upset about it getting the best spot on the line?

Victims of Friendly Fire Pradeep Jeganathan terms the maneuvering of numerous military checkpoints in Colombo as ‘‘walking through violence’’ and points toward many ways in which war-related violence seeps into everyday life even in noncombat areas.4 Catherine Lutz draws our attention to groups of people who

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are ‘‘friendly fire casualties of war,’’ such as poverty-ridden people living around U.S. military communities, women who leave their home towns to escape objectification after the military has moved in, and gay and lesbian people who are unreported hate crime victims in U.S. military towns.5 Similarly, this chapter investigates spaces that usually remain unanalyzed within the context of militarized violence (or any sort of violence for that matter). This is also an exploration of how such violence occurs within deeply emotional relationships and thus was inextricably entwined with pleasurable sentiments and short-term gains. The gendered conquest of hearts created norms about how men and women should respond to the civil war, and especially the military men in their lives. Militarized discourses occupied peoples’ minds and directed their decisions in matters of the heart, managing emotions and eliciting appropriate responses. Anxieties about suicide bombs in Colombo and a few other major cities conspicuously preoccupied people, but the subtle demands on women’s love, sacrifice, and service occupied their hearts in more immediate and powerful ways. Civilian men were also expected to provide respect, love, and deference but to a lesser extent and not in easily visible ways. The violence of such invisible subjugation mostly manifested itself as uncritical acceptance of a costly war and blindness toward the discriminatory practices against minorities that led to the war. Women, however, were expected to be comfort and care providers while deriving identity, pride, and pleasure from their connections to military men thus leading to increased inequalities within such relationships and emotional violence. Many writings explicate how over time wars and resultant cultures of violence produce new social formations in relation to which people refashion their lives.6 While poor, unemployed males found the military a good source of employment, others took advantage of auxiliary services needed to run the military to generate income. Just as elite and marginalized sections of society differently adjusted their lives in relation to the war, men and women also strategized their existence as best befitted them under the constraints and opportunities presented by the war. This chapter evinces how a group of women experiencing multiple forms of marginalization made complex decisions as they confronted conflicting demands and challenges related to the war. The way militarization effects and increases violence against women has received much attention.7 However, everyday violence that occurs within

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legally or socially sanctioned relationships has not received as much attention. According to Miriam Cooke, this is a result of the binarized gendering of war and militarization.8 When everything war-front related is masculinized and everything home-related gets feminized, such representations suggest that war violence targets men even as it conceals varied forms of military-related violence against women.9 This is especially true for violence committed within sanctioned domestic spaces such as marriages and relationships. In what follows, I explicate how state-orchestrated propaganda campaigns invaded the everyday life of Sinhala majority areas and succeeded, especially among working-class women, in setting up standard emotional responses to the civil war and military personnel.

War Zone in My Heart The gods and deities offered this meritorious land like a golden flower to us. A golden gate around this island safeguards it from losing even a fistful of soil. When the whole world is sleeping in warm dream worlds, The nation’s guardian deities are up and protecting us through the night. When the sons that they brought up with so much love have taken up arms, The nation’s fathers fold their hands in respectful patriotic fervor at their heroism. When those sons sacrifice their lives in the name of the nation, In all corners of Sri Lanka, mothers’ breasts become wet with milk in those sons’ names. The gods and deities. . . . These heroic kids were born, not of mothers’ wombs, but from the womb of earth itself. We will get new life from you [the military] and be reborn in this land again and again because of you Everybody in this land is your relative, brothers, and sons and daughters. In our hearts, we are in the war zone and will never leave you alone.

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This song has been broadcast over Sinhala-language radio and television channels over and over since 2000 or so, between programming, or before or after announcements about the war. The television broadcasts, of course, were accompanied by militaristic music and images of soldiers in battle fatigues, bearing heavy arms, and engaging in maneuvers. At appropriate moments, women appeared as mothers and partners tearfully kissing the soldiers. The lyrics and images highly gendered the military experience; soldiers were described as sons, and women were depicted as nurturers and service providers. The one female soldier was shown nursing a wounded civilian. Furthermore, the lyrics drove home that military men are superhuman in expressions like ‘‘guardian deity’’ and ‘‘not born of mother’s wombs.’’ In an apparent inversion of patriarchal hierarchies, the song speaks of fathers paying respect to their heroic sons, while mothers—by extension, all women—overflow with kindness and generosity, symbolized by breast milk for military men. The catchy tune, good singing, and attractive images made the song very popular. FTZ workers loved it and hurried toward the TV the moment they heard the music. They watched the images with love and longing in their eyes, and many times started conversations about their own loved ones and the fears and anxieties about their safety. In fact, throughout my fieldwork in the Katunayake FTZ, the most unifying force among the workers was this shared sense of loyalty to their brothers and boyfriends in the armed forces. My earlier work tried to explain how loyalty to military personnel became a rallying point for oppressed women workers toiling in a transnational factory.10 I commented on the conflicts surrounding class status and gender norms stemming from the complex intersections of the political economy of war and transnational production that resulted in new spaces of violence in FTZ factory workers’ lives. In 2000, the civil war between government armed forces and the separatist Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) had been raging since 1983 in the northern and eastern provinces.11 As the number of dead climbed, government propaganda to attract young men to the military’s lower ranks intensified, targeting the predominantly Sinhala Buddhist south. Government and privately owned media portrayed soldiers as heroes who protected the nation. The Sinhala word ranawiruwa (war hero) was rapidly incorporated into everyday conversation to identify military personnel of all ranks. Songs, poems, and novels were written about their heroism. Films depicted soldiers’ nobility and sacrifices as the main theme or a subtheme.

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Poetry and short stories in newspapers and weekly magazines and dramas on national television reminded audiences daily that the soldiers were sacrificing their young lives to protect the country’s sovereignty and that they deserved respect, honor, and love from all patriotic citizens. Schools, temples, and charitable organizations conducted ceremonies to honor local ranawiruwan and their parents, and military motifs were increasingly displayed on T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, greeting cards, bumper stickers, and toys. This militarized thinking eventually manifested in gendered terms. Women were expected to show extra concern for soldiers and keep them comfortable when they were on leave. Comfort-providers certainly included sex workers, who flocked to the cities that held transition camps for soldiers near the war zone, but women, married and unmarried, who were partners with lower-ranking military personnel and middle-class women married to high-ranking officers held more ‘‘honorable’’ roles as unpaid welfare providers to the nations’ protectors. Militarization not only valorized patriotic mothering but insinuated that women in soldiers’ lives should comfort them in class-specific ways. I focus on female FTZ garment factory workers because they hailed from the same poor rural families as the lower-ranked military men and had deep emotional connections to them. They experienced the civil war profoundly through their social, emotional relationships while bombarded by government-sponsored media campaigns seeking to win majority support for a long mismanaged civil war that became, in its final phase, a brutal, no-expense-spared onslaught on insurgents and civilians alike. I show that occupation can take many affective forms, sometimes entailing pleasure, pride, hope, and opportunity along with pain, fear, and violence.

‘‘Must Be Able to Tolerate Many Things’’—Girlfriends Although many men gravitated to the FTZ in the hope of finding a girlfriend, the women workers obviously preferred military men. As members of rural, marginalized families themselves, their brothers, cousins, neighbors, and former school friends served in wartorn areas. Through these connections, they befriended other soldiers, and many became romantically involved with men who were not only government servants with good salaries but part of a valorized group. In 2000, when the civil war between the

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government and the LTTE was at its peak, most workers I met at the Suishin garment factory and the boarding houses had boyfriends in the armed forces. Unfortunately, these relationships generally ended in misery due to the workers’ image as women who transgressed behavioral ideals. According to Caitrin Lynch, FTZ factory workers are ‘‘positioned as stigmatized objects of moral panic,’’ and their unusual public mobility contributes to that stigma.12 Intense anxieties about their morality created an image of FTZ workers as women of loose virtue who could be easily deceived into sexual relationships. As rural Sri Lankan women, FTZ workers earnestly desired marriage and sincerely believed that their relationships with soldiers would end in marriage. Although firmly holding that their boyfriends were not bad men, they knew that these relationships could result in misery and even tragedy. Since the dominant culture makes premarital sex taboo, women frequently talked about men abandoning women they have sex with as a crime (aparadhayak). Stories were told of soldiers who befriended a worker, promised her marriage, had sexual relations with her, and then vanished without a trace. Some would also have relationships with FTZ workers while their wives believed they were away on active duty. Occasionally, one heard of soldiers marrying their FTZ worker girlfriends, but mostly they were said to cheat, abuse, and abandon them. Most soldiers told me that there are good and bad garment workers. According to them, most young women come to the FTZ with noble intentions of helping their families and earning for their future. Good garment workers are the ones who ‘‘do not go the wrong way’’ by starting romantic relationships and adopting urban lifestyles but rather follow traditions and customs and protect the good name of their families and villages. They all mentioned their sisters, cousins, or village friends as such good girls but said that due to the difficult working and living conditions and the evil of some men, garment workers often go the wrong way and become bad, forgetting their village virtues and exploiting their freedom with men. This understanding made FTZ workers an unofficial pool from which lower-ranking military personnel chose girlfriends. While the workers’ loyalty, love, and similar background attracted the soldiers, their inflated image as war heroes made them envision achieving social mobility through marrying up, resulting in them rejecting their FTZ girlfriends as potential spouses. Military recruitment advertisements created these hopes and desires, which affected working-class people in various ways. Significantly,

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in 2007, the Sri Lankan Navy launched a recruitment campaign that used scenes very familiar to rural people. The ads did not ask the young men to enlist because it is their national duty, or because the job is good, but depicted the sailors’ enhanced value in the marriage market. Television Advertisement 1. Two elderly women holding flower trays walk down temple stairs, discussing their respective families. Obviously, they have not seen each other in a while. Woman 1: That son who went to Peradeniya [university]—what does he do? Woman 2: He is [working] in the bank. Woman 1: And the daughter? Woman 2: She is a teacher. Woman 1 (in a sympathetic tone): Only the youngest son—[became a headache to you] Woman 2 (with annoyance at the question and obvious pride): He is in the Navy. Flash of the Navy seal, and a voice stating, ‘‘Sri Lankan Navy—a university in the middle of the ocean.’’ Woman 1 (with lot of interest in her voice): My youngest daughter is very well educated. The age is good too—[how about making a match?] Woman 2 (with an arrogant tilt of her head): I’ll think about it. The ad ends with the sailor’s mother walking past the other woman. Television Advertisement 2 A matchmaker is visiting the mansion of an aristocrat. The latter shows him no respect or hospitality. Matchmaker: The prospective groom’s brother is an engineer. His sister is an English teacher. Aristocrat (with no enthusiasm): Ok, ok, what does the prospective groom do? Matchmaker: He is in the Navy. Flash of the Navy seal, and a narrator states, ‘‘Sri Lankan Navy—the university in the middle of the ocean.’’ Aristocrat (half stands with a big smile): Matchmaker sit, sit. Daughter—(calling inside the house) bring this matchmaker uncle a cup of tea.

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Some versions of the ad end with a comely young woman offering a cup of tea to the matchmaker, smiling at him bashfully. These ads were remarkable in the way they sought to equate navy service with a highly prestigious position in Sri Lankan society: being a graduate of one of the handful of universities. The first ad went one step further by adding the name of Sri Lanka’s oldest and arguably the best university and then allowing the second mother to ignore the graduate and quickly choose the sailor as a more suitable match for her highly educated daughter. Neloufer De Mel writes about the marketing strategies of such recruiting campaigns and notes that the military plays on the desire for social mobility by using male models as soldiers and showing them engaged in middle-class leisure activities, such as lounging by a pool or dining at high-end restaurants.13 However, studies have shown that, although foot soldiers were highly valued during the war, the military hierarchy corresponds closely to social class hierarchy, with poor rural or working-class families supplying the soldiers and officers hailing from the middle and upper classes. Nonetheless, the war-hero image was propagated with no regard to rank. Their highly orchestrated elevation within war-time social reality made soldiers envision social mobility, and they found FTZ workers unsuitable marriage partners. Many soldiers I talked to were sympathetic toward workers’ difficult lives but thought they were not ‘‘good’’ because they live ‘‘alone’’ in urban areas. They preferred to marry women who lived with their families and had a dowry or held jobs as teachers or nurses through individual choice or parental arrangement. On the other hand, after being daily bombarded with images of soldiers as superhuman heroes, FTZ workers adored them and found them far superior to other working-class men who sought their affections. They identified soldiers as war heroes and talked about them as ‘‘hypermasculine’’ men whose needs should be given more attention than those of civilian men/ boyfriends. Women also talked about how taking care of soldiers was part of their duty toward the nation. The relationships with soldiers more often than not included sexual and domestic services and conflicted with taboos on premarital sex and nationalist ideals of women’s purity. The girlfriends and other women at the boarding houses responded to these conflicting demands via a narratively constructed dichotomy between noble (military) men and weak (civilian) men. The barrage of

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government propaganda encouraged this differentiation between workingclass men. An ad that started airing around 2006, ‘‘We are for us,’’ showed soldiers being kind to children and the elderly and engaging in everyday activities with their families. In stark contrast to the images that accompanied the Golden Flower song, these images included no weaponry. The very last visual showed a young woman offering her seat on the bus to a soldier. According to unwritten rules, clergy, pregnant women, women carrying babies, and sometimes older people were offered seats when they got onto a bus. Young men were expected to be the first to offer them. This ad was the only time I saw a woman offering a seat to a young man in either real life or in popular cultural representations. I discussed it with a group of garment factory workers in 2008, and they were not at all surprised. ‘‘Of course I would offer my seat to an Army aiya [elder brother]. They are out there dying for us, and if we cannot show gratitude with a simple gesture like this, what’s the point of our lives?’’ Devika asked and added, ‘‘But they would not accept the seats. They are ‘real men.’ ’’ The occupation of their hearts and minds was orchestrated not only via mainstream media but alternative media that targeted them and existed on the fringes of what the middle classes term acceptable. FTZ workers read and discussed two ‘‘pornographic’’ magazines, Priyadari and Suwanda, in groups, and identified those as influential new means of education available to them in the FTZ.14 Some stories sent by readers continually stressed how girlfriends of military men should be extra careful about the latters’ feelings and give into their demands even if they at times found them to be unreasonable. For example, in one Priyadari story a garment factory worker noted how military girlfriends should not demand attention from their boyfriends and instead should be able to face any challenge and be disciplined when dealing with the outside world.15 The authors sounded sympathetic of even unfair sexual demands and wrote how they happily complied because of the soldiers’ service to the nation. For example, one author wrote how she had to have sex on a day she was having her period as her military husband came home and could not wait to have sex.16 Whether written by real life military partners or the magazine editor, reading such stories weekly intensified women’s notions of obligation to war heroes and shaped their responses to military men’s advances. Also throughout the last decade, Priyadari displayed a front-page blessing, directly under the paper’s name; ‘‘This is our respect and blessings for you, who took up arms to protect the country.’’

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Discussion with two people associated with the publisher showed that their collaboration in the state’s militarizing project is based on their own gratitude to the war and war heroes and commercial interest in providing what they assumed workers would like to see. Military spouses and girlfriends wrote repeatedly about going to temples and other sacred places to perform rituals, such as bodhi puja,17 to bless their partners in the war zone. FTZ workers often went in groups to nearby temples to perform such blessings for their boyfriends, brothers, loved ones, and then all members of the armed forces generally. On special religious days, sermons included blessings on the armed forces, and workers enthusiastically participated in blood drives, light offerings (pahan puja), and other activities in honor of the military. Soldiers usually couched their demands for sexual services in terms of deprivation and the stress of war, making it doubly difficult for women to say no. In fact, during 2000, it came to light that most stories that circulated in boarding houses about unwanted pregnancies and abortions were about the girlfriends of military men. Women discussed how it must be hard to say no to a man who fought against the national enemy in jungles for months on end. As Nadee said, ‘‘when considering how these weak (nakutu) men cannot let their girlfriends alone, one can understand how army folk feel when they see their girlfriends after so many months.’’ This statement closely resembled the view of some army officers I interviewed. During this conversation, rather than blaming the boyfriends, military or otherwise, women complained about the cultural sentiments and practical situation that discouraged women from using contraceptives. Even when writing to Priyadari about military boyfriends, women were careful to differentiate between war heroes who protect the nation and occasional women abusers. In one such rare story an FTZ worker wrote, ‘‘the military has such innocent and honest boys and I always loved military men. . . . And it was my rotten luck that I found this animal who destroyed me.’’18 Some women in trouble, however, used the idea that women should be generous to military men to their advantage. For example, Gita found that she was pregnant with her civilian boyfriend’s baby and soon realized the man was avoiding her. She moved to a new boarding house and told everyone that the father was in the military and that they were planning to get married the moment he came back on vacation when she suddenly received news that he had died at the front. Residents and owner rallied around her and helped her to get an abortion and rebuild her life. According to several

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workers, most girlfriends say they had sex only because they could not say no to a war hero. It might be true in some cases, but in others, they thought, girlfriends used this excuse to minimize condemnation for their transgression. While these sexual activities, unwanted pregnancies, pressured abortions, and violence went on behind the very flimsy cover of providing soldiers comfort, workers, girlfriends, and onlookers alike refused to identify with the sex workers who populated the brothels in transition cities, such as Anuradhapura. While enjoying the independence afforded by their migration, FTZ workers took pains to distinguish themselves as good, moral women, unlike sex workers. The need to preserve at least a modicum of respectability was ensured by the FTZ employment structure, which forces the women out of their jobs after five to six years. The logic of militarization seems to work hand in glove with the logic of transnational production in the use of temporary services. The temporary character of the work prevented women from developing the political consciousness to act collectively in the factories and made them veil their sexual activities so that they could go back to their villages with pristine reputations. It was quite unthinkable for many women to sympathize with sex workers let alone identify with them. According to Mats Berdahl and David Malone, the presence of economic motives and commercial agendas during wars is not a new phenomenon.19 Workers’ fascination with military men, while choreographed by nationalist discourses also included their own preferences for soldiers who, in workers own words, were ‘‘better looking, better dressed and better paid.’’ While militaristic discourses and their other emotional connections to soldiers played a major role in women’s desire for soldiers as romantic partners, the capitalist, open market, and state economic policies also ensured that they choose soldiers as partners, thus providing ‘‘moral boosting’’ services to the lower-ranked military men.20 According to Mats Utas, young females in the Liberian civil war alternatively used different tactics—becoming girlfriends of military officers, enrolling as soldiers themselves, or prostituting—to maintain social networks, cope with challenges, and to exploit the opportunities presented by the civil war.21 While women in southern noncombat areas did not have the same pressures as Liberian women, they also at times evinced an ability to enmesh the rhetoric of national duty with their own need to claim a stake in the war economy.

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This Leg That Kicked Me—Military Wives A woman writing about her life with a soldier to Priyadari, one of the colorful tabloids that targeted FTZ workers and was widely noted as their favorite reading material, included the following description of a common experience during the height of Sri Lanka’s civil war: ‘‘When his leg was blown off by a landmine, I went to see him at the hospital. I was thinking how many times he kicked me with that leg. Now it is no more. But I still treated him like a god throughout his recovery as befits a war hero.’’ The story showed a highly conflicted woman, her resentment toward an abusive husband at odds with the expected sacrificial nurturing role of a military wife, and was one of several Priyadari stories that conveyed the conflicts engendered by nationalist demands on women to show their loyalty by nurturing soldiers. Why would a woman who remembered this man’s abuse treat him like a god? The pressure on these women to perform the good-military-wife role with men who kicked them is a form of violence that no convention identifies as violence. While some women got to sneak their frustrations into the alternative print media, the mainstream media recorded blissful stories of courageous military wives who managed their young families in the south, safeguarding their husbands’ good name by self-policing their movements. The following song was written by famous progressive lyricist Rathnasri Wijesinghe, inspired by his transfer to a remote area in the north-central province as a political punishment. He was closely associated with the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party during early 1970s22 and was transferred as soon as the United National Party came into power in 1977. This is a common practice in Sri Lanka, and trade union activists of the ruling parties expect to be transferred the moment the governments change. The intent of the song is to convey the injustice of such transfers and how those affect families; it is narrated by his courageous wife, who promises to be brave, and asks him to leave with peace in his mind. Please leave now with your heart and mind ready to do service in the mountainous, jungle terrain . . . Victory to you my precious husband! My eyes are hurting from sad nightmares. I will wash those images with my own tears.

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I will drive away the illnesses and diseases And protect our children with courage. Please leave now. . . . We are trapped in debts, But I will not say ‘‘I can’t’’ and will carry this burden. I don’t need gold or silver But happiness of the heart. I wish that the fragrance of my love will make your brutal nights in the jungle bearable. Please leave now. . . . Sometime during the last decade, the song started appearing on TV, showing a man in a military uniform, tearfully parting from his wife and children, who look on as he leaves them to return to the front after a vacation. Scenes of combat were inserted at appropriate places, while the camera mostly lingered on the woman’s tear-streaked yet determined face. When I tried to talk about the original meaning behind the song, the FTZ workers sounded skeptical and said that it had always been about a military wife, and I must be confusing it with another song. They loved the soulful rendition and the sentimental images and said the military wives they knew felt exactly like the woman in the song. Even military girlfriends at the boarding house seemed to reenact versions when their loved ones departed after visiting them. This kind of revisualization and new interpretations are not new. The song ‘‘Udangu liyan gotha bandina,’’ also known as ‘‘a wish of a flower,’’ was originally written by Rabindranath Tagore during the Indian nationalist struggle and narrated a flower wishing to be thrown in the path of a war hero’s funeral procession. The flower wished not to end up as an adornment for an arrogant woman’s hair or a table on which empty people ate. When I was taught the Sinhala version of this song in primary school (before the full-blown civil war started) the emphasis was on the social class implications of the first two verses. In May 2009 someone uploaded the song with patriotic visuals from the civil war as a tribute to the armed forces, with interchanging visuals of flowers and women in the background.

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My Gift to the Nation: Mothers and Sons One rarely heard of former FTZ workers who had sons in the military. Amitha was the only one I met, though I heard of a few women who were in the FTZ in the early 1980s and were now soldiers’ mothers. Amitha lives with her husband in a remote village off Nikavaratiya township. Having used her salary and EPF payments wisely, she is a successful small businesswoman and arguably head of the richest family in the village. However, the crowning glory of her life, she claimed, is her twenty-one-year-old war hero, Avishka. ‘‘When the end of the war was announced on TV, village people got together and visited our house with milk rice and sweet meats to thank us for raising a war hero. Everyone bowed to us in gratitude, while younger people worshipped me and my husband at our feet,’’ Amitha recounted, wiping away tears. The walls of her home and living room surfaces were covered with framed photos of her son in military uniform, posing with other soldiers or participating in ceremonies. She pointed to them while recounting their occasions and brought out several albums of her son’s photos. Her daughter, Uthpala, who worked for two years at a factory before quitting, joined in. In between explaining the photographs, they talked about the anxieties they felt during his two-and-a-half years as a soldier. These were the worst years during the decades-long civil war, and Amitha emphasized that he did not have to join the army to feed his family. ‘‘In fact, we were going to start another chicken farm with 5,000 chicks and give it to him to manage. But he was adamant about doing his duty to the nation, and we had to give up,’’ Amitha said. They both stressed that during those two years, their blood had become water due to their fear of losing him. ‘‘There were praying and pirith chanting everyday at our house for him. How many bodhi pujas this girl and I have performed! In fact, all the military mothers came for bodhi pujas almost every other day so that one day, the chief monk laughingly said that the Bo tree might die of too much water,’’ Amitha explained. While many FTZ workers preferred to find a military boyfriend, Uthpala had decided to choose a nonmilitary boyfriend because she knew that she could not handle such fears for two men in her life without going crazy. Both Amitha and Uthpala confessed to being touched by the ‘‘golden flower’’ and ‘‘courageous wife’’ songs. Amitha mentioned the images of a mother tearfully kissing her military son while smiling with pride. ‘‘That’s

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exactly how I feel when he leaves after a vacation. I learned a long prayer developed especially to bless military sons [by a popular monk] and would bless him for a long time until he whined about being late,’’ Amitha said with a tender smile. Amitha, her husband, and Uthpala suffered immensely due to their fears for Avishka but obviously derived pleasure and pride from the fact that he enlisted out of a sense of duty rather than for economic reasons. Amitha developed friendship networks with other military mothers, engaged in religious and social activities with them, and enjoyed gratitude shown by villagers.

Noble Duties: Sisters It was always fun when soldiers visited their girlfriends, sisters, or cousins at the boarding house. Saman, the owner, and his gang of male friends were the first to surround the soldier with greetings, questions, and ministrations; next, the lucky girl and her friends. Overall, soldiers received a lot of love from everyone and held court among both the male and female groups. When a soldier visited a room, everyone stood up to greet him and to see to his comfort. After he was properly seated, usually in the only chair or on the bed, women sat around him to chat and listen to his stories and jokes, usually on the floor. I remember getting on the nerves of many a visiting soldier by standing in the doorway. Wanting neither to sit at his feet nor to miss the conversation, I leaned against the frame, mostly looking outward. Jovial, talkative, and paternalistic, the soldiers tried to get me to sit down by joking that I was ‘‘trying to grow taller.’’ Sometimes, they would succeed. Other times, I thought the stories of heroic campaigns, larger-than-life officers, and friends who died fighting valiantly, were not worth the discomfort of sitting on the floor looking up at boy/men trying to live up to the hyped image of war hero. Contrary to these performances for a host of adoring fans, most soldiers proved sensitive, thoughtful, kind, and intelligent when I met them at different venues and had time to talk to them. Niluka, a very close friend from the FTZ factory where I conducted my fieldwork, introduced me to two such soldiers. One was her boyfriend, and the other, her brother. Niluka figured very prominently in my dissertation and book because of her political activities at the factory. Two months after I finished my stint there, she led a rebellion on the line and left the factory with ten other workers. Due

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to her reputation as a highly skilled worker with troubleshooting abilities, the factory made numerous attempts to lure her back, even sending a hired van to her village to provide her transportation. She took the opportunity to visit Colombo in style, visited the factory, obtained some money she was owed, went to her former boarding house, and applied at other factories. She quickly obtained a job and was soon promoted to line leader. When I met her in 2007, she expressed satisfaction with her job and said ‘‘I more or less run the factory’’; without her, the floor coordinator would be lost. Niluka aimed to get married to her boyfriend in July 2009, and when I inquired whether she would leave her job, she laughed and said, ‘‘What would I be without the factory?’’ and added that she would work until the day she died. However, in March 2009, I was informed that she had left her job because she wanted to help her brother, who had lost both legs in the war. One of my scheduled research activities that summer was to videotape her wedding to analyze social rituals of conformity and spaces of resistance, but it had been postponed and I made couple of customary visits to ‘‘see the patient.’’ Both Niluka and her mother sobbed on and off during my first visit. Whenever they heard Nuwan’s wheelchair, they wiped their tears and tried to be jovial. He did seem to accept his fate well. Family members and frequent visitors sat around and praised him and repeatedly thanked and blessed him for ‘‘saving the nation.’’ Nuwan expressed complete satisfaction with the care he received at the military hospital and military rehabilitation center, which still sent transportation for his monthly visits. Niluka and her mother were devoted to his care, and in typical fashion, Niluka was in charge of alterations to the house to facilitate his movements and the new indigenous medicine they were trying. When I asked whether she missed the factory, she said that no work in the whole world was as noble as what she was doing right now. During my second visit, I saw her fiance´, who expressed the same sentiments: ‘‘I would take Niluka even without a cent to her name for the service she is rendering to the nation.’’

Counter-Discourses Every form of occupation has its pockets of resistance, and the occupation of the heart was not immune to counter discourses. At rare moments, women, mostly individually, responded to demands for their self-sacrifice

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in alternative ways. A poem in the Dabindu newspaper once questioned the state’s intentions in sending working-class men to a corrupt war and elucidated how class consciousness and nationalist leanings struggled in the author’s consciousness. When I heard you had gone to Mannar (town in the war zone) Warm tears filled my eyes How much they love recruits from our class Will only be known when something bad happens (to people from our class) We hear about the war in the North And I worry about you so often I am telling you this with much love How could one win (the war) without proper training23 These two quatrains, taken from a ten-quatrain poem, written as a letter to a soldier from a garment factory worker, display her understanding of the war as a project of the elite, and critique the government for sending newly recruited soldiers to the war zone without giving them proper training. Yet later the writer expresses nationalist sentiments by wanting to see the LTTE crushed and wishing victory to the government forces. Earlier I noted how women went to temples to perform religious rituals for their military menfolk. When girlfriends were unceremoniously discarded, sometimes with unwanted pregnancies, they usually refused to resort to silence in the name of the nation. As in the case of civilian culprits, discarded military girlfriends turned to symbolic violence to bring a form of closure. They consulted ritual specialists in the area seeking to inflict the same kind of pain and violence on the wrongdoer. Ritual specialists usually performed certain actions such as grinding turmeric on a stone (kaha ambaranawa) or smashing coconuts, while chanting that the wrongdoer should be destroyed just the same way. The women were then asked to wait a week or two to see how the bad men would be destroyed. According to the ritual specialists I interviewed, the idea of symbolic violence provided an outlet for extreme anger, and the waiting period helped the wounds to heal and provided time for women to get more practical help from friends and family. While resorting to these culturally learned responses, including public suicide threats and writing suicide notes,24 helped women to pick up pieces

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and move on, it did not entirely prevent the pain and suffering from entering the everyday as Veena Das notes, in the form of poisonous knowledge.25 However, my visits to several roadside abortion clinics and ethnographic data on crude forms of hasty, unsanitary abortions, suggest that it would be difficult for women to forget such trauma. The 2001 movie, Me Mage Sandha (This Is My Moon), addressed military personnel’s sexual violence against Tamil women in the war zone and showed how soldiers’ wives and parents got into conflict over who received compensation for the soldier’s death. The movie is based on the story of a Tamil woman who was raped by a Sinhala soldier. She follows him back to his village, forcing his family and community to confront difficult questions and eventually accept her as a daughter-in-law. Aside from its problematic ethnic symbolism, the film shows as a cultural norm, how (South Asian) women sometimes stick with their abusers to claim their rights. Every day, the woman follows the soldier (obviously a deserter) to the chena and helps him with hard agricultural work and helps his mother and sister around the house. The film ends familiarly with everybody reconciling once the raped woman gives birth.26 The basic plot is uncritical of the cliche´d narrative of patriarchal, gendered norms triumphing over ethnic and political ambitions. However, the film determinedly attacks the ideals of noble soldiers and their all-sacrificing families. Its attempt to deromanticize these images received intense criticism in mainstream media, and the movie flopped at the box office. FTZ workers picked up the criticism from TV forums and angrily cursed the producer/director for vilifying soldiers. During interviews in 2005, they refused to acknowledge that the movie portrayed some reality. In 2010, they were even more adamant that either no or very few military rapes happened. As one woman noted, ‘‘Every community has its terrible creatures. One or two could get into the army, too.’’ The film Sulang Kirilli (Wind Bird), by contrast, focused on a relationship between a soldier and a FTZ worker and showed how he, a married man, impregnated the worker and then pressured her to get an abortion. Many FTZ workers easily related to the portrayal and noted that there are bad military men who put war heroes to shame. These counter narratives were few and far between and did not easily reach working-class audiences or affect them in desired ways. In fact, the intensity of valorization changed slightly from 2002 to 2006 (the start of the ceasefire and final phase of the war) and at least one Sinhala woman who had stayed silent for fifteen years about a horrific gang rape committed by military personnel against her

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found the courage to write about it to Priyadari in 2002.27 More such stories are likely to appear in the near future.

Postconflict In May 2009, government forces captured the last rebel stronghold in Killinochchi and killed LTTE leader Prabakaran. On May 18, the government declared the war won, and wild celebrations broke out in majority Sinhala areas. These celebrations, significantly inflating the war hero image, now as the liberators of the nation, included paying respect to military families, naming newborn babies for the few stand-out military leaders, and numerous proposals to build houses and give other gifts to soldiers. However, the following months saw a bitter political battle between the army commander, general Sarath Fonseka, and the political leadership. The government apparently was afraid that the general would acquire a cult following due to the victory and sought to curtail his powers by forcing him to retire and accept a ceremonial position. The events leading up to this created much resentment and the main opposition party decided to use the situation for their benefit by offering him, the only person who could have seriously challenged President Rajapaksa right after winning the war, the party’s presidential candidacy. The highlight of General Fonseka’s campaign was his threat to the government that he would divulge information about war crimes. The ensuing months saw his unsuccessful bid for the presidency on the main opposition party ticket and the consequent court martial that landed him in jail. He was arrested while leading a political discussion at a private residence with other opposition party leaders, and the episode was widely criticized for being unnecessarily humiliating for a war hero. Government efforts to shift all credit for winning the war to the political leadership significantly shifted the social focus of valorization away from the military. Yet, my interviews with workers and their families in July 2009 showed that many still viewed military men as larger-than-life war heroes who deserved more love and respect than others. Such sentiments suggest that power relations engendered by the intersections of the political economy of war and transnational production may continue in some form. In October 2010, many soldiers were airing doubts about the nations’ gratitude. Government propaganda was now promoting a certain notion of

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ethnic and religious unity and President Rajapaksha’s visions for development and reconciliation. The constant insertion of songs and military images between TV programs had tapered off, and although there are many special features on the war and the military, the valorization of soldiers is no longer common on TV. In addition, in an effort to manage the budget, the military had forced retirement on a certain percentage of officers and discharged some voluntary servicemen. Several soldiers and officers I talked to said they feared their sacrifices would be erased by the state, just as the former army commander had been reduced to a criminal in a jail cell after the war’s end. Still, many expressed faith in the general public and thought it would not soon forget the hardships during the war and be grateful to the military for ending it. Their families and loved ones worried about this erasure more than the men dared to express. One military wife and two mothers I spoke to worried that the government would discontinue the preferential treatment of military men’s children in the enrollment policies of popular public schools. This preferential treatment was still in place as of March 2011. I visited Niluka at her parents’ home in October 2010. Obviously tired and irritable, she still looked after her brother, who seemed to be doing better with prosthetic legs. Niluka and her fiance´ registered the marriage in January 2010 and thought of having a small ceremony later, but since they started sleeping together when he was on vacation, the parents advised them against a ceremony. Her family was still reeling from their only son’s misfortune, and Niluka herself felt it was not right to celebrate when her brother had lost so much. Before the tragedy, she had looked forward to a traditional ceremony with all the bells and whistles, and she was conflicted by the loss of her dream. I came to understand this conflict only after hearing jokes about her crying fits on the day the couple, bedecked in rented wedding clothes, went to a portrait studio to take a photo for their future children to see. Niluka still explained her choices in terms of nationalist duty, but when I was making my way back to the van for my departure, she said she missed the fun days in Katunayake. Both her brother and husband said she should go back to work, but she did not feel ready and asked, ‘‘What would people say if I abandon him now?’’ But Niluka was also looking forward to handing over her caring duties to another FTZ worker, who is planning to leave the FTZ soon due to marriage. Chamali, a friend of Niluka who visited her at home a few times, has fallen in love with Nuwan, and they were planning to marry sometime

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in 2011. During the civil war many FTZ workers expressed their willingness to marry disabled soldiers and Varuni explained the reasons as follows: ‘‘They (disabled soldiers) get their salary but do not have to go to war. So you don’t have to suffer in fear for their lives. They need our help too. So like the others they would not abandon women after their needs are fulfilled. They will marry the girlfriends and would also love us more for our own sacrifice for them . . . how meritorious it is to look after a war hero.’’ Varuni’s statement shows a desire for equity in marital relationships and a way to reconcile it with their patriotic duty. De Mel notes that disabled soldiers felt that the social capital they acquired as active, able-bodied military men was now lost due to their disabilities.28 Yet in keeping with his ultra-positive coping strategy, Nuwan actually thought his standing in the village had doubled since the tragedy. Niluka, however, confided that the family was in negotiations to finalize his marriage to a schoolteacher from a respectable family but those broke down the moment he was injured. In such a vulnerable position, disabled soldiers and their families seem to find FTZ workers to be worthy of their respect. Niluka’s family thought Chamali a ‘‘very good woman’’ and a young male visitor used the term ‘‘heroic woman’’ (weera kanthawak) to describe her choice of partner. Whether FTZ workers would still desire soldiers or disabled soldiers with the same fervor now that the war is over remains to be seen. If so, it will be interesting to see how male demands for sex are framed in the postwar era, and how girlfriends and other observers respond.

Conclusion Militarist discourses shaped how people, particularly women, responded to soldiers and civil war news, yet the services expected of women were not new. For example Niluka’s family would have expected her services even if her brother had not been a soldier. However, ready-made words, phrases, and imagery made it easier for onlookers to demand such services and to all but close escape routes, even for a normally rebellious woman like Niluka. The war intensified demands for gendered services from mothers and sisters and raised new expectations of wives and girlfriends to provide sexual services to military men. While these new expectations clashed with gender norms for unmarried women, ranuwiruwan discourses allowed some to justify sexual activities that they might have engaged in anyway

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and demanded that intimate onlookers—friends, neighbors, relatives, and, in some cases, boarding-house owners, and factory officials—understand and justify the transgression to distant onlookers, and provide support, if needed. The discourse on understanding the ‘‘stress of being a soldier’’ and ‘‘having lot of patience if you are a military partner’’ shaped the way women responded to physical and emotional abuse in their relationships. They were prompted not just to tolerate abuse but to inflate men’s already largerthan-life self-image. This denied them the right even to share their stories in fear of social backlash. Having to contain such knowledge was one very powerful way war-related violence seeped into everyday life. Majority Sinhala men and women in Sri Lanka’s southern cities experienced the civil war in quite a different way than people in the war zone. The orders that manipulated hearts and minds were not issued by an enemy force in any directly threatening way. They just slowly seeped into everyday life as songs, poems, and TV images, easy to hang onto in a climate of deeply held chauvinistic ideas, mistrust between ethnic and religious communities, and a rebel force that had a record of brutalities against civilians of all ethnic communities. While some questioned the war’s management, most more or less believed in it and readily latched onto the militaristic and nationalist discourses that facilitated recruitment of poor, rural youth to the armed forces. The violence of this invisible occupation mostly manifested itself as uncritical acceptance of a costly war and blindness to pervasive violence and discriminatory practices against minorities that led to the war. It was experienced in gender-specific ways, as women were expected to be direct comfort and care providers while deriving identity, pride, and pleasure from their connections to military men. How women should feel toward certain people and situations was written into militaristic scripts causing them to feel abnormal or bad when they did not. Although individually resisted at times, the women were not able to develop a significant critique of these scripts. Perhaps the biggest damage was inflicted on working-class movements in the southern areas. Concerns about the war and the fate of loved-ones pushed class interests to the back burner and allowed the government to play with people’s sentiments via politically timed military maneuvers. Especially for FTZ workers, thorough training in the correct way to think and respond prepared them to surrender any budding class consciousness to the nationalist cause.

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Now that the war has been over for close to four years, we must look at how some power relations are being reconfigured. As the valorization of the war hero image dies down, how will gradual equalization within malefemale relationships impact workers’ and women’s right movements in the postwar era? It would be interesting to mark this in tandem with the question of how the state’s encroachment upon students’ social media activities impact the potential for it to emerge as a site of resistance from which to enunciate critical perspectives.

chapter three

Grounding Militarism: Structures of Feeling and Force in Gilgit-Baltistan Nosheen Ali

Rethinking Repression This chapter interrogates the working of military relations of force as they are institutionalized in state structures and experienced in everyday life, in the region of Gilgit-Baltistan that forms part of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. I attempt to capture the multiple ways the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies occupy space, politics, and subjectivities in this strategic border zone. My aim is to go beyond a conceptualization of the military that views it merely as a state apparatus of repression whose power lies in its monopoly of violence.1 To make sense of the military-intelligence regime’s hegemonic rule in Gilgit-Baltistan, I adopt a more grounded and processual approach that investigates how military power is rooted in the physical control of space, bodies, and resources, but also in the domination of discourse, emotions, and ways of being. In this approach toward analyzing militarism and occupation, the scholarship on state-backed affective regimes is particularly useful, and I seek to contribute to it by examining the connections between processes of military power, emotions, and the everyday, interrogating how these shape the nature of state rule as well as our notions of belonging.2 Militarization fundamentally structures state, economy, and society in Gilgit-Baltistan. It is critically linked to livelihoods and cultural orientations, shaping local understandings of family, region, and nation as well as people’s identities and aspirations. Central to the working of military power

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in Gilgit-Baltistan, I argue, is a process of emotional regulation whereby structures of rule produce and work through ‘‘structures of feeling.’’3 The cultivation of certain emotional dispositions by the military-intelligence regime creates a political economy of feelings that buttresses Pakistan’s political economy of defense.4 Regional employment in the Pakistani military creates loyal subjects who revere the military and the military-state, producing the conditions of possibility for continued military authoritarianism in the region. At the same time, the activities of the intelligence agencies produce a paranoid state and suspicious subjects, reinforcing military power in the region through the use of surveillance and calculated disorder along sectarian lines. Loyalty and suspicion thus constitute forms of emotional regulation that are paradoxical but not contradictory: the former integrates people into the nation and accomplishes rule by creating consent, while the latter services state power by emotionally disintegrating the region through suspicion, and hindering the possibilities of local collective action. Nevertheless, militarization is also a site of negotiation.5 Thus, I highlight historical and everyday moments that reveal how the military-intelligence hegemony in Gilgit-Baltistan is continually fraught with tension and contestation.

Context Gilgit-Baltistan is a rural, mountainous territory at the borders of Pakistan, India, China, and Afghanistan. Before the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, the main areas that today constitute Gilgit-Baltistan formed part of the ‘‘Gilgit Agency’’—a political unit based around the mountain outpost of Gilgit that was created by the British in 1877. The Gilgit Agency was established as part of an imperialist ‘‘forward policy’’ for securing the British Empire’s northern frontier in the Anglo-Russian scramble for Central Asia that came to be called the ‘‘Great Game.’’ The British were able to conquer these northern territories through the active support of the Dogra rulers of Jammu, who had established the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir through the Treaty of Amritsar in 1846, and managed to annex Gilgit to their state in 1860.6 However, this northern region of the British Empire remained a fluid frontier zone with multiple, intersecting systems of authority and alliance, rather than a borderland with firmly established boundary lines.7

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At the time of partition, when the rulers of the princely states of India were given a choice to accede to either Pakistan or India, Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir decided in favor of India on October 26, 1947. The predominantly Muslim population of the Gilgit Agency resented the collapsing of their territory under ‘‘Kashmir’’ and opposed accession of their land to a ‘‘Hindu’’ India by a Hindu maharaja whose sovereignty over their region was already contested by local rulers. Dogra rule from Kashmir was also disliked by locals for several other reasons: people perceived themselves to be ethnically distinct from Kashmiris, they were underrepresented in Kashmiri state forces, and there was a prohibition on slaughtering cows.8 On October 31, the local paramilitary force called the Gilgit Scouts—led by British commandant Major Brown—initiated a revolt against the governor of Jammu and Kashmir stationed in Gilgit and arrested him with the help of the Muslim soldiers of the Jammu and Kashmir armed forces.9 The territory of Gilgit and Baltistan was subsequently liberated through a mutiny, and on November 1, local military and political leaders declared a new independent state centered in Gilgit. However, this independence was short-lived: the leaders of the rebellion and members of local ruling families realized that the region’s security as well as their personal interest would be better safeguarded with Muslim majority Pakistan. Hence, they acceded to Pakistan within two weeks, without any attempt by the Pakistani government to win them over. At the same time, Pakistan also disputed the maharaja’s accession letter, and with the aid of frontier groups fought a brief war with India that resulted in Pakistan’s occupation of part of the region now known as Azad Kashmir. Due to these ongoing tensions with India over the control of Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan was not formally incorporated into the Pakistan state even though its accession was accepted. The Pakistani government at the time felt that it was in its interest to keep the region ‘‘disputed’’; as in the event of a UN-backed plebiscite in Kashmir—which both India and Pakistan agreed to in 1948—people in Gilgit-Baltistan were expected to opt for Pakistan. The Pakistani government thus adopted a policy of ‘‘calculated ambiguity’’ toward the region, slowly incorporating it politically and economically without granting it constitutional status and full democratic rights.10 Consequently, Gilgit-Baltistan remains embroiled in the long-standing Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Between 1947 and 1972, the Pakistani government continued the policies that existed during the colonial regime: indirect rule was perpetuated

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through a Pakistani political agent in place of a British one, while local monarchs continued to squeeze labor, produce, and taxes from their subjects. In some ways, the rule of the Pakistan state was even worse. as the political agent implemented much despised policies. These included, first, the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) that gave discretionary law-enforcing powers to state officials in the region. Subsequently, the Pakistani government abolished the State Subject Rule—a law put in place by the Dogra state, which had regulated and prevented nonlocals from claiming local citizenship and property rights. According to several local inhabitants, ending this rule eased the process of land control and demographic change in the region. In 1972, popular resentment was tamed by abolishing the FCR as well as the rajgiri (principality) and jagirdari (feudal) system of local rulers. The territories previously divided into autonomous states and political districts were now combined under the label ‘‘Northern Areas,’’ and brought under the direct purview of the federal administration. In 2009, the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order changed the region’s nomenclature from the cryptic geographical label ‘‘Northern Areas’’ to the more meaningful name ‘‘Gilgit-Baltistan.’’ An Election Commission was also set up, followed by the first general elections in the region—undertaken in haste and with flawed preparations but without systematic rigging.11 Despite these much-needed reforms, the political status of Gilgit-Baltistan remains unsettled; it is neither an autonomous, self-governing territory nor a region with constitutionally guaranteed citizenship rights within Pakistan. While there is an elected local legislature, the real decision-making power continues to lie with the militaryintelligence establishment that dominates the region. Moreover, GilgitBaltistan is the only Shia-majority political unit in Sunni-dominated Pakistan.12 This religious difference poses significant anxiety for the Islamizing state of Pakistan, which has gradually come to embody the Sunni interpretation of Islam as the normative ideal for its Muslim citizens. In Gilgit-Baltistan, this Islamizing agenda has resulted in policies that have outright led to Shia oppression—such as state-backed violence by Sunni militants in 1988—or have been perceived by the local Shia population as emblematic of Sunni domination—such as the introduction of Sunnibiased public school textbooks in 2000. As a result of such divisive state policies, the border zone of Gilgit-Baltistan has experienced gradual polarization of inter-sect relations in tandem with forms of political repression. Such conditions have led to a rise in nationalist movements in the region,

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including the Balawaristan National Front, which demands a separate, independent state free of Pakistan, India, and Kashmir. These movements face enormous suppression in the militarized environment of Pakistan and Gilgit-Baltistan, which I now analyze.

Militarizing Pakistan Studies of the military in Pakistan have focused on the issues of martial rule and civil-military balance, arms procurement, the extensive military capital that is hidden from public view, and the army’s historical relationship with the United States.13 While these studies contribute immensely to our understanding of military dominance in Pakistan, what is missing is a focus on the ethnographic experience of military power. Instead of emphasizing the organization and activities of the military in Pakistan, or its relationship with civilian governments, this chapter explores the culturalpolitical discourses of rule, practices of domination, and emotional subjectivities through which military power works in a specific regional context of Pakistan. Militarization as a state-formative process is neither limited to the armed forces nor to war situations. Rather, it represents a cultural and political-economic process through which military structures and ethos become deeply embedded in state and society. De Mel argues that ‘‘a militarized society is one in which the military has taken ascendancy over civilian institutions, and is predominantly and visibly relied upon to police and regulate civilian movement, solve political problems, and defend and expand boundaries in the name of national security.’’14 While this definition applies well to countries like Sri Lanka and Pakistan, one might erringly conclude that national society in the United States is not militarized. I would argue, however, that militarization need not involve direct and visible dominance of the government by the armed forces. Rather, the political and economic dominance of the military can be represented by the powerful role of military-industrial corporations in creating what Mills has called a ‘‘permanent war economy’’ as well as in covertly shaping public policy.15 What defines the hegemony of the military over state and society is an investment in perpetuating a cultural ethos of militarism, in which military ideals are valorized, and hypermasculinist and violent solutions to conflict favored.16

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In effect, a ‘‘military definition of reality’’ becomes the common sense for the nation.17 In this naturalized vision of reality, the meaning of ‘‘national security’’ is monopolized to promote a political economy that is centrally dependent on military institutions, armaments, and warfare. This political economy is underpinned discursively by ‘‘a shift in general societal beliefs and values in ways necessary to legitimate the use of force, the organization of large standing armies and their leaders, and the higher taxes or tributes used to pay for them.’’18 It is further sustained through a logic of hate, threat, fear, jingoistic patriotism and defense against internal and external Others. This discourse helps justify and provoke more conflict, which only serves to prove the existence of the threat and bolster the need for more militarization. In Pakistan, such an enabling discourse is provided primarily by a military-shaped nationalism in which India is constructed as an aggressive other that constantly threatens the existence of the country. This is not to suggest that the Indian state has not been hostile, but rather, that the military-dominated state in Pakistan has cultivated an extreme fear of India to the exclusion of other national needs, and also pursued aggression toward India as a means to legitimize itself and its hawkish policies. Additionally, the military also claims to provide internal stability by protecting the nation from corrupt politicians.19 It constructs itself as an agent of cleansing discipline and security, erasing its own role in perpetuating profound violence, inequality, and religious extremism to sustain its own interests.20 ‘‘National security’’ in Pakistan has thus been reduced to the creation and maintenance of a strong and dominating military, supposedly providing internal and external protection through high defense spending, an arms buildup, and a direct role in government. For its survival, the nation is asked to prioritize the needs of the military, giving it privileged access to state land and resources.21 However, what lies under the guise of ‘‘national security’’ is a project of rule that has produced a military-dominated state instead of one that facilitates democratic participation, political negotiation of resources, and rule of law. This state of affairs has been achieved through the collusion and tacit approval of elites and political groups who have been patronized as beneficiaries in a military-dominated system.22 Simultaneously, the perpetuation of a military-state in Pakistan is fundamentally tied to U.S. patronage of the Pakistan army. Since World War II, the U.S. security agenda has entailed backing authoritarian regimes in developing countries, particularly military ones that tend to support and

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gain from empire. Democratic governments tend to be less conducive to domination, and might even question the imperialist policies of the United States. Pakistan has been especially pursued as a client regime in maintaining American hegemony for its central role in defending capitalist ideology and Western oil interests in the Middle East.23 In return for compliance, and the use of Pakistan as an army base for American military needs, the United States has extended significant military aid, armaments, and training to the Pakistan army. It has also sometimes knowingly ignored and many times actively supported the army’s repeated use of internal and external violence, and derailment of the democratic process. Support from the U.S. has been critical in strengthening the Pakistan army’s sense of superiority and invincibility, with the result that the army has increasingly resorted to autonomous execution of Pakistan’s foreign policy, particularly military strategies in Afghanistan and Kashmir. In pursuing destructive policies of military interventionism, the state of Pakistan has become a mirror image of its imperial master. It is essential, therefore, to understand militarization at the nation and state levels as part of the global U.S.-dominated process of empire-making and militarization, in which the international production and trade in arms feeds off, and builds upon national security regimes. The U.S. militaryindustrial complex in particular maneuvers political decisions in the United States toward hawkish goals, and ensures support to military client regimes abroad to sustain military consumerism as well as U.S. imperialism. Such short-sighted and devastating American foreign policies have enhanced the power of client militaries in states like Pakistan, where the army has come to dominate both politically and economically, and created extensive business interests of its own that further perpetuate the military’s political predatoriness.24

The Garrison Region While Pakistan in general is dominated by the army and has therefore been described as a garrison state, it is in a strategic and politically suppressed region like Gilgit-Baltistan where its garrison tendencies are especially manifest and entrenched.25 Until 2004, a visitor to Gilgit-Baltistan may not have found any overt signs of military dominance in Gilgit, the key administrative center of this

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region and the place where I conducted the bulk of my fieldwork. It was the magnificent landscape that met the eye, inspiring an overwhelming sense of awe—a feeling that I still remember from my first trip to the Gilgit-Hunza region in 1996. By 2006, the feeling one got was one of fear and nostalgia. Although I had traveled to Gilgit-Baltistan several times during these ten years and even stayed there for extended periods, it was in 2006 that the change seemed drastic. Numerous checkpoints guarded by military and paramilitary units had been set up after the sectarian clashes of 2005, and Gilgit now appeared to be a high-security zone instead of a tourist gateway. No matter how long I stayed in Gilgit, crossing a checkpoint always remained an unsettling experience of force. Even before the coming of such palpable markers of military power as checkpoints, Gilgit was defined by a militarized landscape. Driving from the airport toward Jutial, in a short span of time, one passes the premises of the FCNA (Force Command Northern Areas), Controller of Military Accounts, Army Public School, Askari Bakery, and Helicopter Chowk.26 Since I myself partly grew up in the ‘‘Cantt’’ area of Lahore and studied in the military-controlled elite area called ‘‘Defence,’’ military memorials and buildings had become a normalized feature of my spatial experience of the city. Hence, initially, I considered the military presence to represent nothing out of the ordinary in Gilgit—indicating my own internalization of military symbols, which are extraordinarily pervasive in Pakistan. However, in 2006, the establishment of multiple checkpoints in Gilgit heightened the visibility of other military spaces as well. If Gilgit resembled a big cantonment before, now it looked like a fortified army base. The military dominates both state and capital in Gilgit-Baltistan, reigning over economic, strategic, and administrative matters. Road-building and maintenance is a monumental service industry in the mountainous terrain of the region, and is controlled by the military-run Frontier Works Organization (FWO). The main telecommunications infrastructure is under another army-controlled body called the Special Communication Organization (SCO), the sole provider of home phone lines in GilgitBaltistan.27 Most significant, the military exerts tremendous political control through direct intervention in the administration of Gilgit-Baltistan. While multiple authorities govern the administration, the Force Command Northern Areas (FCNA)—the Gilgit-based headquarters of the Pakistan army—is considered the key institution spearheading overall control of the region. The FCNA commander holds the position of major-general in the

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Pakistan army, and works directly under the 10 Corps—the crucible of army power based in Rawalpindi. Among other tasks, the FCNA is responsible for supervising the Frontier Corps, the Rangers, and until recently the Field Monitoring Coordination Cell (FMCC) and the District Monitoring Teams (DMTs), which were also known as Army Monitoring Teams. These teams were introduced in all of Pakistan by General Pervez Musharraf after he seized power through a military coup in 1999. Their role entailed monitoring the civil administration, and in practice, meant that military personnel were appointed to supervise even individual government departments within each district of Pakistan. Such practices effectively paved the way for an invasive role of the army in the day-to-day governance of the country.28 These teams continued in Gilgit-Baltistan till June 2009, even though they were discontinued in the rest of Pakistan within one or two years of their formation. The direct army ‘‘monitoring’’ that was undertaken in Gilgit-Baltistan from 2000 to 2009 through the FMCC and its DMTs was the source of intense local resentment. I was frequently told that it is these very institutional structures that directly enabled fauj ki hukomat, or army rule, in what was then called the Northern Areas. The FMCC effectively controlled the use of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) in Gilgit-Baltistan, selecting which development schemes would be approved, and who would be hired to execute these schemes. For example, the Northern Areas Public Works Department (NWPWD) is the biggest recipient of the ADP funds in the region, and under the army’s monitoring regime, the appointment of project directors for various development projects under NAPWD had to be approved by a major or colonel at the FMCC. Speaking about the role of the FMCC, a down-country bureaucrat posted in Gilgit acknowledged to me: ‘‘The civil administration was largely ineffective in all bigger matters. Posting and transfer above Grade 17 simply could not happen without the approval of the army.’’ For local government servants—those who are ethnically from the region of Gilgit-Baltistan itself—such army interference could be even more gnawing. They resented how army ‘‘approvals’’ for government projects often translated into selection of down-country employees, instead of qualified people from the local populace. This reinforced the already strong perception in Gilgit-Baltistan that employment opportunities in the region are not only controlled unfairly by the army, but also predominately reserved for nonlocals, particularly from Punjab and Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa. For

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example, I was often told how the FWO, the Frontier Constabulary (FC), and the SCO are military organizations that control key economic services in Gilgit-Baltistan and draw heavily from the region’s budget, yet most of their employees are ‘‘outsiders.’’ Hence, local grievances about the ‘‘nonlocal’’ aspects of Gilgit-Baltistan’s political administration are often linked to the dominant presence and control of the army. An argument frequently given by the military establishment for the preferential treatment to nonlocals in civilian or military bodies is that there is ‘‘lack of local expertise.’’ However, as a Gilgiti engineer, Barkat Jan responds: First of all, there are many locals who are well-qualified. But how will we ever get experience if we are never given jobs even in our own region? People here, in the mountains, have faced a lot of hardship to get good education and training. Many of us have worked for the local government in a junior capacity as well. Plus, we have the advantage that we know the region better, and have a higher sense of accountability as we have to continue living here. Those who come from outside will just come, make money, and leave. At the least, there should be some partnership. The government just wants to perpetuate nonlocal rule in Gilgit-Baltistan. They want to keep us subservient; they don’t want us to ever get ahead. Military authoritarianism has to some extent been curtailed in GilgitBaltistan since the reemergence of democracy in Pakistan in 2008, following nine years of military rule. But this curtailment has come as a result of political struggle. In February 2008, when chief of army staff general Ashfaq Kayani ordered the withdrawal of military officers from Pakistan’s civilian administration, a colonel was posted as an executive engineer to the Northern Areas Public Works Department the very next day—signaling that the status quo in Gilgit need not change. However, media protests by Gilgiti progressive journalists brought pressure on the newly inducted Pakistan People’s Party government and successfully resulted in the cancellation of the colonel’s appointment. A year later, the Army Monitoring Teams were officially disbanded in Gilgit-Baltistan. Following the first regional elections in November 2009 and the establishment of a province-like setup, direct interference of the army in the daily administration of government has been further reduced. However, the role of the military in the political

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economy of the region remains crucial, particularly through the FWO, which, as mentioned earlier, maintains control of road-building in GilgitBaltistan. Locals deem the organization a source of incompetence as well as injustice. The critique of the FWO—and by implication, the army—has become particularly sharp in the wake of the 2010 Attabad Lake disaster in Hunza, which destroyed several kilometers of the most critical road in the region, the Karakoram Highway (KKH), drowning large tracts of village land and disrupting the lives of thousands. The inhabitants of the region argue that the FWO used its military-backed power to ensure that the contract for reconstruction did not go to a Chinese road firm that was already active in the region for the widening of the KKH. They feel that the destruction caused by the lake was amplified because of the nonserious attitude of the FWO—or ‘‘Funds Wasting Organization’’ as it has come to be called by some activists in the region. In 2011, the FWO obtained a three-year contract for making a spillway and rebuilding the affected road, despite protests from civilians as well as some members of the Legislative Assembly. As one of the affected residents from Gulmit village said to me, ‘‘we can challenge our political leaders, but it is impossible to challenge the power of an army organization.’’

Of Desire and Honor While the role of the army in the regional administration of Gilgit-Baltistan is a source of widespread resentment, the Pakistan army is simultaneously an object of intense desire as well. This is because the army has historically provided one of the key avenues of employment, with the result that there is a strong tradition of military service in the region. The employment of Gilgit-Baltistani men in the military dates back to colonial times. At the end of the nineteenth century, the British established a unit of civil levies in the Gilgit Agency, which was transformed into the Fighting Levies in 1903, and then into the Gilgit Scouts in 1913. Indeed, military employment was the first formalized source of wage labor in Gilgit-Baltistan, providing a dominant source of income in the form of active service as well as that of pensions.29 Employment in the Gilgit Scouts was socially desirable not just because of its financial rewards, but also due to the prestige and privilege associated with working for a mighty foreign power—particularly its security forces.

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The British commandants of the Gilgit Agency tended to induct men from influential local families into the Gilgit Scouts, a practice that added to the Scouts’ authority and appeal. As Jamil Khan, a senior journalist described: ‘‘The Gilgit Scouts had both rowb (power) and izzat (honor) because they represented a salaried class, and had regiments, garrisons, medals—all of which attracted the imagination of people. In fact, soldiers of the Gilgit Scouts were regarded as the most eligible bachelors.’’ This revered and glamorous status of the military continues today, even as other forms of paid work have emerged. The opportunities for military employment have also expanded, with the increase in the paramilitary forces from Gilgit-Baltistan and the possibilities of employment in army regiments outside the Northern Light Infantry (NLI).30 Most important, there are concrete perks and benefits associated with military service that heighten its appeal for many families. As a number of women informed me, the children of army personnel pay Rs. 300–450 in the local Army Public School—considered one of the best in Gilgit— whereas a civilian child has to pay between Rs. 1100–1350.31 Children of army personnel do not have to pay a security fee, and their pick-up and drop-off at school are free. Two teachers of the Army Public School also mentioned that teachers cannot fail an army child. In the realm of health care as well, subsidized treatment is available to soldiers and their families. Put simply, families who have a member employed by the military are more privileged citizens, particularly in a context where education and health are the two most critical concerns and sources of expenditure. Given the glory associated with military participation since British times, and the economic opportunities and benefits provided by military service, it is not surprising that almost every person I met in Gilgit-Baltistan during my fieldwork had a relative who once served in or continues to serve in the army. Tales of army service, honors, and courage frequently came up in my conversations and interviews, particularly when people introduced their family to me. For many families who have a strong tradition of military service, both military conquest and military sacrifice (shahadat) are described as the highest form of service to the nation. As the retired Colonel Ghulamdin told me in an interview: ‘‘In 1948, my father conquered Targabal fort in Dras. Now in Kargil, my younger brother commanded a battalion in the same sector of Kargil. This is a huge honor for us. We can say with pride that we are true Pakistanis.’’

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Hence, the military is not just a form of employment; for many in the region, it is part of family history, identity, and honor. This political economy of feeling and familial connection reinforces their loyalty to the Pakistan army, as well as their emotional bond with the nation. It is the production of such loyal subjects, as well as the status, opportunities, and privileges generated by army service, that play a critical yet underrecognized role in producing the hegemony of the military in the region. In a context where the military is a key source of employment and by the nature of its service, an object of pride and respect, the possibilities of political assertion and contestation of military dominance become severely limited. It is not just out of economic need and feelings of desire and allegiance that young men might join the army. Though I was not able to investigate this aspect in detail, I did come across two cases where the men had joined the army because they were doing badly in school, or had quit it altogether. Their parents or relatives reasoned that joining the army was better than sitting idle at home. There are also cases of soldiers who want to leave the army within months of joining, but all those who go through the initial Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) training sign a bond that prevents them from leaving till they reach a higher rank, which might take several years. To leave before this point, soldiers must pay a sizable amount of money depending on the nature of their service—amounts parents in GilgitBaltistan can ill afford. This contractual bond is yet another factor in the hold of the military on the male labor of the region. Increasingly, many young men do not look at the army as the same source of prestige and honor as their parents’ generation. Some question and fear the kind of social values a culture of military service propagates. For example, Aftab, a university student, said to me: ‘‘If you kill 100 people and come back, you become a ghazi. If you kill 100 people and you die, then you are a shaheed. Is this something to glorify?’’32 Whether looked upon with pride or resentment, the reality remains that a dominant tradition of military service in Gilgit-Baltistan has entailed a high number of deaths of local soldiers during external as well as internal army operations in Pakistan. The possibility of becoming a shaheed can be a source of pride and honor, but also one of anxiety and loss for many in the region. The Kargil episode of 1999 is a tragic case in point, where the martyrdom of Gilgit-Baltistan’s soldiers while fighting against India

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engulfed the region in simultaneous pride and suffering, and also— importantly—exceptional bitterness toward the high command of the Pakistan army. An in-depth analysis of the episode is much needed, and could be the topic of a separate chapter. Here, I shall just attempt to sketch an outline of the conflict and its implications for Gilgit-Baltistan—an aspect that has mostly been eclipsed in the already limited, state-centered discourse on the conflict.

Kargil Between May and July 1999, Pakistan and India were embroiled in the worst armed conflict since the 1965 war, once again over the disputed territory of Kashmir. The encounter came to be known as the Kargil conflict or the Kargil war, as it was fought in the high-mountain district of Kargil in Indian-ruled Kashmir. The conflict was all the more frightening since the long-term rivals had become nuclear powers barely a year before. The strategic goal of Kargil for Pakistan—specifically its army that had conceived the plan—was to cross over the Line of Control (LoC) into Indian-ruled Kashmir, and then block India’s land route to Siachin so that supplies to the Indian army stationed there could be interrupted.33 To achieve this goal, the Pakistan army launched a ground attack using its paramilitary troops—primarily the NLI, at that time entirely composed of soldiers from Gilgit-Baltistan. Moreover, these NLI fighters were deployed in the garb of mujahideen to enable plausible deniability—Pakistan could claim that independent Kashmiri freedom-fighters had launched the struggle—and consequently India would not have an excuse to declare war on Pakistan. To give credence to this mujahideen effect, Kashmiri and Pakistani jihadis were also engaged under the direction of the army. The NLI soldiers quickly made progress toward their assigned task, but when they called for support and supplies, no help was forthcoming. Pakistan was officially claiming that it was the mujahideen who were fighting, and hence, refrained from giving any ground or aerial support as that would reveal its own involvement. Indeed, people in Skardu movingly speak about how even the food needs of the soldiers had not been planned for, and hence, local families organized to provide food for their jawans (young soldiers). India, on the other hand, was fully equipped to respond to infiltration of the territory hitherto under its control, and

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soon resorted to aerial bombing to quell the offensive. Left in the lurch in an already difficult terrain, the NLI began to incur heavy loss of life, and around 200,000 civilians on either side of the border were forced to become refugees for several months.34 Pakistan was eventually forced to retreat, due to the failure of its operation as well as direct pressure from Washington. The military strategy of Pakistan was simply ill-conceived, and bound to fail—army-backed soldiers could gain ground, but without any support they could never hold the ground in the face of the massive and fully engaged Indian military. Second, the operation was deemed irresponsible by the international community at large, and shattered the diplomatic gains Pakistan had made from the Nawaz Sharif-Vajpayee bus diplomacy barely three months prior to Kargil. When prospects of peace between the democratic forces of India and Pakistan looked bright, and were being worked on, an offensive Pakistani military operation appeared to be a deliberate attempt to spike aggression by the Pakistan army under General Musharraf. On the domestic front as well, much conflict arose between Musharraf and prime minister Nawaz Sharif, as the latter claimed that he was neither fully informed about the Kargil operation, nor gave his consent. Indeed, the fallout between the two over Kargil became one of the major reasons behind Musharraf’s coup barely three months later, in October 1999. Apart from the civilians who suffered on both sides, the victims of the Kargil tragedy on the Pakistani side include the soldiers of Gilgit-Baltistan whose bodies were used as fodder in a grandiose and reckless military plan. There was widespread discontent in Gilgit-Baltistan at the way NLI soldiers were left to tackle the might of the Indian army alone. However, the region erupted in total outrage when the Pakistani government even refused to accept the bodies of the martyrs of Kargil, in order to perpetuate the myth that only mujahideen were involved. Angry processions were made by political parties and ordinary people, but they were crushed and several protestors were detained. It was only after India decided to honor the Pakistani soldiers by giving them proper Muslim burials that the Pakistan government was shamed into accepting the martyred bodies. The landscape of Gilgit-Baltistan continues to bear the memory of this martyrdom, as countless graves of the Kargil shaheed dot the region, each made visible by a white flag. The death toll from the conflict on the Pakistan side is estimated to be 800–1,000, while in Gilgit-Baltistan alone the official count provided by the Ex-Soldier’s Board is 561 martyrs.

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To diffuse local rage and make up for its callous abuse, the Pakistan army undertook a number of appeasement and control measures. For example, the Nishan-e-Haider was given for the first time to a martyr from Gilgit-Baltistan—the NLI soldier Lalak Jan, a resident of Ghizer district in Gilgit-Baltistan. This honor also represented a grudging acknowledgment of the Pakistan state’s central role in the Kargil ‘‘insurgency.’’ More significantly, a long-standing NLI demand was accepted and the hitherto paramilitary organization was converted into a full-fledged regiment of the Pakistan army. This heightened the status and privileges accorded to soldiers from Gilgit-Baltistan, but simultaneously also embodied a form of discipline. as a regiment entails a mix of soldiers from different areas of Pakistan. Before the war, almost 100 percent of NLI was comprised of men from Gilgit-Baltistan; as a regiment, around half its strength now comes from outside Gilgit-Baltistan. The Pakistan army was thus able to dispel one of its chief fears after the Kargil conflict—that a homogeneous frontier force, when enraged, might rebel or organize against its own state. However, no matter how much the loyalty and courage of soldiers is tested and exploited, the possibilities of rebellion are already limited by the material dependency and emotional attachment that participation in the military generates. Becoming a shaheed for the sake of defending the nation is the highest goal soldiers are trained to aspire toward. As such, Kargil presented a unique opportunity, and ironically, at least in some part helped to reestablish the loyalty of Gilgit-Baltistani subjects to the Pakistani nation. While the families of martyrs suffered, they also learned to deal with their suffering because of the collectively recognized honor accorded to martyrs. Even several years after the conflict, people often mentioned their association with a Kargil shaheed to me with immense pride. Lalak Jan has become a symbol of regional pride, and is revered in local poetry as the one whose martyrdom finally enabled the region to get recognition in the nation-state of Pakistan. At the same time, expressions of indignation are still present, particularly at the continued disregard for the promised compensation to some martyrs’ families. My interviewees, thus, often had a nuanced take on the role of the Pakistan army in the region, revealing the complexity of the political economy of feeling within which military power thrives. For example, a passionate retired military captain who extolled the virtues of the Pakistan army in general, and the bravery of Gilgit-Baltistan soldiers in particular, also acknowledged: ‘‘Our military psyche is that we are the best, and the

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dushman (enemy) is nothing. We have too much guroor (arrogance). There is no reflection, and no public accountability. This is why we blindly thought that we would conquer Kargil.’’ Here, military power is linked to the arrogance of the military and the resulting lack of accountability, not just to valorizing emotions of pride and loyalty. For nationalist political parties in Gilgit-Baltistan—already agitating for constitutional rights—the Kargil episode similarly epitomized the arrogance and highhandedness of the Pakistan state. Not surprisingly, their efforts as well as their popular appeal gained strength after Kargil. Unfortunately, their voices and legitimate grievances have never been heard respectfully, nor responded to diplomatically. Instead, they have been brutally crushed with repression, including bans on critical newspapers such as Kargil, intimidation, torture, and illegal detention of activists, and often their engineered exclusion from local elections. Ultimately, the Kargil issue brought to the fore the ironies and contradictions in the militarized relations of rule in Gilgit-Baltistan. Gilgiti soldiers were fighting to defend a nation-state that denied them even the most basic citizenship rights, and this denial is linked to the very dispute of Kashmir over which the Kargil war was being fought. Moreover, the same state even disowned their bodies once they were sacrificed for ‘‘national glory.’’ Yet the bond of loyalty and the power of martyrdom are such that soldiers continue service with dedication and courage. Moments of martyrdom, however, are not always moments of commemoration; they may also create a space for questioning whether a martyr’s death could have been avoided.

Sacrifice, Suffering, and ‘‘Internal Security’’ One morning in August 2006, the dead body of Captain Zameer Abbas was brought back to Gilgit from Balochistan. At that time, I was a visiting faculty member at Karakoram University in Gilgit, and was living in the university’s girls’ hostel. Captain Abbas was among 21 security personnel who died during General-President Musharraf’s military operation against Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti.35 With everyone I met that day— students at the university, staff members at a local NGO, shopkeepers, and taxi drivers—the topic of conversation was the captain’s death. How Zameer Abbas was just thirty-nine-years old when he died. How he had

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gotten married just last month, and how his mother was now in the hospital. For several days, people were mourning the tragedy that had befallen this respected local soldier and his family. Since I arrived in Gilgit—barely a month before Captain Abbas’s death—I had noticed that people around me were avid followers of the news, both in print and on television. Whether in the homes of people I visited for research or social purposes, or at the hostel, men and women would switch to the hourly news and critically debate it at length. But it was at the time of the Balochistan operation that I realized that people in Gilgit might have a reason to follow and debate the news beyond general interest, particularly in times of escalating ‘‘internal security operations.’’ Such political events were not remote and inconsequential realities; they directly and personally affected people in Gilgit-Baltistan, as the region provided the very bodies on and through which the ‘‘national security’’ politics in Pakistan was being played out. The flourishing of relatively independent, private news channels— which many have called a ‘‘media revolution’’ in Pakistan—provided an added draw to the news. The power of free media dawned on me at this particular time of my fieldwork. The state-run Pakistan Television (PTV) was remarkable in its demonization of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, as well as its open justification and even celebration of the army operation. Moreover, PTV pathetically insisted things were completely ‘‘normal’’ in Balochistan after the operation. On the other hand, private news channels such as ARYWorld and GEO highlighted the prominent political status and legacy of Akbar Bugti, the mass unrest and condemnation that followed the operation, and the diverse views on the operation from parliamentarians in official buildings as well as people on the street. What even such independent channels did not highlight were details about the soldiers who had died in the operation and where they came from. For this, people around me in Gilgit turned to their local cable channel. Commentary on Zameer Abbas continued for several days in everyday conversation and local newspapers. Mixed with the grief was a seething sense of rage. When I talked to the female cook, Shahnaz, at the hostel about the operation, she said: ‘‘Killing one’s own people? Where is such a principle followed? Use of force can never be a solution.’’ An ex-government servant, Mohammad Khan, commented: ‘‘They keep sending our men to danger zones such as Balochistan and Wana.36 Whereas those from other areas are sent to Lahore and Karachi.’’

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In sheer bewilderment, people seemed to be asking: how can the Pakistani government use fighter jets and gunship helicopters to openly kill a prominent leader of an already marginalized province? Very often, a sense of resentment was followed with a sense of pride or vice versa. For example, right after criticizing the military’s repeated use of local soldiers in danger zones, the same government servant Mohammad Khan said to me: ‘‘You know our soldiers are from the mountains, so they know how to fight in mountainous terrain. They are very brave and competent. Look, the shaheed Captain was so young, and yet he was qualified enough to be sent to an important mission.’’ A similar sense of pride and veneration was expressed to me by a taxi driver and by a student at the Karakoram University. Perhaps this sensibility is precisely what enables people to deal with military deaths. The death of a shaheed needs to be honored, not questioned—it has become a structural, emotional disposition in a context where every other family has a man in the army. And yet, even a genuine sense of glory in shahadat for the sake of the nation can sometimes fail to give comfort to those who lose their family members in the process. A female cousin of Captain Abbas, Safia, lamented to me: ‘‘What was the point of his death? He didn’t have to die . . . he shouldn’t have died. The women suffer when their men go away in the army, and they suffer when their men die for the army.’’ The gendered aspect of the suffering was also brought home to me a year after Captain Abbas’s death, at the time of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) operation in July 2007.37 Once again, people around me in Gilgit seemed to be watching the news with more than general interest. I was having lunch with Sitara, a twenty-six-year old friend who was an administrative assistant at a local NGO. We were sitting in the cafeteria of the NGO when I noticed that she was pale with anxiety, and unable to eat. When I asked why, she explained: You know my brother-in-law, Safdar bhai, did not call last night. He is part of the battalion that is fighting against the Lal Masjid clerics. There was no light in our house yesterday, so we could not even watch the news. And today, a TV channel said that 6 soldiers have died, but they did not reveal the identity of these soldiers. Before I came to the office, I could not breathe and my throat was dry. I felt more sick thinking what my sister must be going through. She is in the village these days. The phone is not working there, so

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Safdar bhai calls me and I communicate the news to my sister through a neighbor. My sister could not even keep calling me for information, because otherwise my mobile would be busy when Safdar bhai tried to call. A while ago, finally, Safdar bhai called and he said he was fine. It was such a relief for all of us, but I still feel tense. Who knows, when . . . I just keep looking at the phone.

The Paranoid State The anxiety and suffering linked to military employment I have highlighted above is heightened by the repressive role of the intelligence agencies in the region. Yahan har doosra banda jasoos hai—every other person here is a spy—was repeated to me several times during my research stays in Gilgit. Initially, I thought that my friends and colleagues were exaggerating the role of the intelligence agencies so that I would be extra-cautious in my research. However, I gradually discovered that while not every other person may be a spy, the presence and control of intelligence agencies in GilgitBaltistan was indeed quite exceptional, and that this pervasiveness had becomes a social fact, firmly rooted in people’s experience. Intelligence agencies are generally quite powerful in Pakistan, often described as forming a ‘‘state within a state’’ due to their apparent independence from the Ministry of Interior as well as the Ministry of Defence. It is also widely recognized that agencies—particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)—have played a decisive role in electoral rigging, and in the production of religious militants for Pakistan-sponsored movements in Afghanistan and Kashmir.38 However, the role of agencies in the micropolitics of government remains an understudied area of analysis.39 The secrecy and repression that shrouds intelligence activity is an obvious barrier to such an analysis; nevertheless, my field research revealed aspects of the local experience of agencies that can help illuminate their complex role in shaping the social fabric of the Pakistani state as well as the Gilgit-Baltistani region. If military domination in Gilgit-Baltistan has translated into a garrison state, the work of the intelligence agencies has created a paranoid state that both creates and feeds on surveillance and suspicion. Agencies have been able to expand their already unchecked powers in extraordinary ways, as

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the structure of national political representation and accountability that is at least formally present in the provinces is absent in this strategic territory. Furthermore, agencies have used the disputed border status of the region, along with the specter of its always suspect Shia populace, as grounds for spreading their reach. As a result, there are known to be at least eight different intelligence units operating in the small vicinity of Gilgit, with spies employed all across Gilgit-Baltistan. I did not have to ask about the ‘‘role of the intelligence agencies’’ in my interviews—it would inevitably come up itself whenever I asked about the political and administrative issues that afflict the region. My interviewees— across sect and other social locations—pointed out that agencies are fundamental to the working of the military establishment in Gilgit-Baltistan. They closely monitor and shape the dynamics of the local administration. The decision to induct, promote, and dismiss government servants is often critically dependent on the extensive dossiers agencies maintain through their network of hired informers. These dossiers detail the views expressed and activities undertaken by potential or existing government employees in private or public. This is to test whether an action could be interpreted as a sign of critique or dissent, and hence a source of suspicion. Such dossiers are also maintained for journalists, teachers, and political activists to keep them in check. As part of this reconnaissance, intelligence agencies regularly tap phone lines, and intercept postal and electronic communication. They have also embedded informers as journalists in the local media to ensure the monitoring of media personnel and censorship of the news. Moreover, house searches, messages of warning, detaining people without charge, and violent interrogation techniques are routine methods of agency harassment and coercion in Gilgit-Baltistan. During my fieldwork, several interviewees matter-of-factly mentioned that they knew a person or even a rishtaydaar (relative) in their village and neighborhood who worked for the agencies, or had been approached to work for them. In a casual conversation with a taxi driver, I learned that he himself previously worked for the agencies, but since the money was not enough, he decided to take a loan to buy a car and become a taxi driver instead. The normality with which he brought up his employment for an intelligence agency was disconcerting to say the least, but after an extended stay in the region, I realized the taxi driver was not an exception. In a context of widespread unemployment, many people spy to get extra

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income, and this had become a taken-for-granted reality in the region. The identity of intelligence agents is often known to the public at large, as has also been observed by Verkaaik for the Pakistani city of Hyderabad.40 Importantly, the way people accept and valorize employment in the Pakistan army does not apply to the agencies. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that intelligence agencies are the most despised element of the state establishment in Gilgit. A number of linked reasons are responsible for this sentiment. To begin with, working for the agencies was often described to me as a result of a person’s majburi—his helplessness due to economic need—and a cause for disdain as this need was being used as a weapon to create disaffection in his own community. More important, there is widespread bitterness at the manner in which agencies create and sustain the representation of the region as an untrustworthy, treacherous space. People are acutely aware—and painstakingly insist—that this representation has no correspondence with reality, and it is perpetuated only because it serves to justify the agencies’ own survival and control. Ataullah, a teacher from a local government college tellingly explained: It is not that agencies exist because we are unreliable. We are assumed to be unreliable so that agencies can exist (my emphasis). We are the most loyal and peaceful Pakistanis. Ours is the only region that actually fought a war to become part of Pakistan—the other areas became part of Pakistan by political settlement. Our men have also given sacrifices for Pakistan in the 1965 war, in the 1971 war, and in Kargil. People from Punjab, and from Azad Kashmir have been caught spying for India, but never from our region. Then why aren’t we trusted? The border is an excuse, Shias are an excuse. It is because agencies run this place, and this is what they do . . . they suspect, and make everyone appear suspect. This is the biggest problem facing us—this suspicion, and this lack of trust. This is why we are denied any identity, any political rights. Juxtaposing this comment with one from Sarwat Khan, a member of the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly (GBLC), yields further insight: A country needs intelligence agencies for its security. But more than ensuring external security, the agencies in our region create internal

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insecurity through suppression. They make sure that no rights are given to us, and if we ask for our legitimate rights, they make sure that our voices are crushed. A journalist, Mehboob Shah, adds: It is like thought control. So many of us live in fear, and are afraid to freely discuss anything in public—what if there is a spy around? Last week, when I sent a report about the region to a newspaper in down-country—under a pseudonym—I first got a threatening warning on phone, then through an agent who came to my house. They do this to remind us that they know where we live, where our families are. This ghatiya (debased) pressure is brutal. We have to ask: who benefits from this system? By denying us our rights, and holding us in fear and suspicion, it is the military establishment that benefits because they want to maintain their unchecked privileges. The ‘‘thought control’’ Shah refers to is reminiscent of Foucault’s thesis on panoptic surveillance, and the ways power in modern society functions through the internalization of the state’s gaze and the self-monitoring that results from it. Foucault describes the modern surveillance machine as ‘‘permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action,’’ inducing ‘‘a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’’41 The surveillance machine works by producing emotions of self-suspicion and paranoia—a kind of ‘‘psychic panopticon’’ that serves to intensify state rule.42 As the views expressed by my research subjects illustrate, suspicion is also integral to the operation of political power in Gilgit-Baltistan because people are assumed to be suspect by definition, and this presumed suspicion has translated into a regime of monitoring and intimidation by a militaryintelligence establishment for whom the suspicion serves as a convenient rationale for maintaining its own political and economic authority. If there is any expression of critique or dissent at the abuses of this establishment, it is treated as a threat, and as evidence of a disloyalty that is already presumed. The endemic nature of suspicion and surveillance, in fact, produces such an absurd level of paranoia that state suspicion thrives even in the absence of specific expressions of protest. For example, in 2011, a group of special, disabled children from Gilgit-Baltistan visited India with their

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teacher to participate in a sports tournament. For months after they returned, the teacher as well as the Gilgiti nonprofit that facilitated the trip were repeatedly visited by local intelligence agents and harassed to reveal the ‘‘real reasons’’ for the trip. The hyper-nationalistic paranoia that characterizes Pakistani-India relations has not even spared animals. According to the Pakistani English daily Express Tribune, Pakistani wildlife authorities captured an Indian monkey for crossing the border in December 2011, while in May 2010 a Pakistani pigeon was held under armed guard by Indian police.43 Suspicion thus creates corrosive patterns of behavior and social interaction, serving to legitimize ordinary and extraordinary political actions. It is integral to state nationalism, as nationalist ideologies seek to create a singular self by vehemently marginalizing and dehumanizing internal and external others they are suspicious of. The others—be they religious, ethnic, regional, national, or racial—need to be seen with intense distrust, and hence constantly monitored, contained, or thwarted. Increasingly, the discourse of permanent threat and the availability of new technologies have led to a ‘‘surveillance society’’ in which the citizenry as a whole is suspect, and intricately monitored in ways not open to public scrutiny and accountability.44 Thus, the logics of secrecy, suspicion, and surveillance have come to define the very nature of the late modern state, bolstering the militarization of citizenship that a security state already entails.45 Moreover, the absurd extent of this paranoid state is not limited to disputed zones like Gilgit-Baltistan, or antagonistic nations like India and Pakistan. Several scholars have documented—for countries such as the United States, UK, Canada, Russia, and Germany—how undercover law enforcement can be disproportionately paranoid, its scale bordering on the ridiculous and its tactics nasty and outrageous.46 The recent work of Anne McClintock47 is especially useful in understanding the contemporary paranoid state. Speaking of the U.S. state and empire, McClintock writes, ‘‘a social entity such as an organization, state, or empire can be spoken of as ‘paranoid’ if the dominant powers governing that entity cohere as a collective community around contradictory cultural narratives, self-mythologies, practices, and identities that oscillate between delusions of inherent superiority and omnipotence, and phantasms of threat and engulfment.’’48 It is this dual nature of paranoia—hallucinations of grandeur existing alongside the dread of perpetual threat—that has the capacity to produce extraordinary forms of violence. McClintock argues

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that the rise of this paranoia is linked to the incessant rise of U.S. militarism since the 1960s, which justifies itself through the social production of fear. The spectral, obscene violence embodied in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and particularly the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons thus needs to be traced to this history of paranoid militarism, and not seen as a spontaneous response to 9/11. The Pakistani state is characterized by a similar, paranoid militarism—a sense of untouchability and arrogance has accompanied the tumorous growth of military-intelligence power in politics, business, and society, while delusions of internal and external threats have been propagated to justify the military surveillance machine. While the working of this process in Gilgit-Baltistan is chronicled in this chapter, in the contemporary moment its violence is most cruelly manifest in the Pakistani region of Balochistan, which I have written about elsewhere.49 There is yet another aspect of Pakistani state paranoia that is revealed most acutely in Gilgit-Baltistan. The military-intelligence regime accomplishes its rule in the region not only by rendering its citizens suspect and using this suspicion to further its control, but also by promoting suspicion among citizens and hence disrupting local political solidarity and resistance against the military regime. Apart from suspected subjects, it thus also produces suspicious subjects.

Suspicious Subjects Sectarian tension is the most significant arena in which the role of intelligence agencies is widely recognized and condemned in Gilgit. I was often told that agencian firqon ko larwati hain (agencies make the different sects fight), and agencian fasad ki jar hain (agencies are the root cause of conflict). Of course, theology itself fosters a sense of incommensurable values and along with bigoted religious practices—such as stereotypes learned at home—creates a potential for discord between people with different beliefs. However, it is organized political action—not primordial belief—that has produced conditions for sectarian conflict in modern times. In the Gilgit district of Gilgit-Baltistan, the time before the 1970s is remembered as a time of shared life-worlds, when religious identities were fluid and pluralistic. Though inter-sect skirmishes were acknowledged, people by and large respected and even participated in each other’s religious

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rituals, and inter-marriage across sects was fairly common, with the result that several families in Gilgit-Baltistan today have members who belong to different sects. Such practices defy essentialist understandings of ‘‘sectarian difference’’ which presume that sectarian identity is inherently exclusionary and antagonistic, and that differences between sects naturally lead to conflict. It is the military-intelligence regime’s calculated efforts at fomenting religious hate—what we might call strategies of sectarianization—that have played a central role in radically altering the pluralist social textures of life in Gilgit-Baltistan. According to my interviewees, the invasive role of intelligence agencies in Gilgit-Baltistan emerged in the early 1970s, particularly in the aftermath of a significant, secular movement that galvanized Gilgitis at the end of 1970. The movement demanded the enactment of democratic rights in Gilgit-Baltistan, and especially the abolition of the FCR—a British-era law that enabled autocratic rule in the region. The movement occurred in the larger context of political change in Pakistan, where a Bhutto-led prodemocracy struggle was already underway. Interestingly, it was a case of military abuse and arrogance coupled with gendered humiliation that provided the immediate impetus for the first protest. A child of a nonlocal military officer failed an examination at a Gilgiti school, and in response, the wife of the officer went to the school, humiliated its female principal, and ordered her to change the grade. The principal subsequently lodged a complaint with the district commissioner (DC)—the highest bureaucratic post at the time—but instead of acknowledging her grievance, he fired her. This incident signified the impunity that characterized everyday indignities of militarism in the region. Students boycotted their classes and local Gilgiti leaders such as Jauhar Ali of the Tanzeem-e-Millat began to mobilize people and spearhead protests. The protestors first attacked and looted the shops that the military officer owned in Gilgit town. The office of the DC was subsequently stormed by a massive crowd of people from across sect and social class. When the DC ordered a local Gilgit Scout soldier to fire at the protestors, the soldier refused and fired in the sky instead. This strengthened the crowd, and when the authorities responded with jailing many of the protestors, people en masse broke into the jail and managed to release their compatriots. The incident shocked the Pakistani establishment, which now realized that troops drawn from the local population could not be solely relied on to enforce rule. By 1975, the Gilgit Scouts that were hitherto responsible for order in the region were disbanded, and the responsibility

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of local security was passed to the FC or other military or paramilitary units that employed nonlocal, primarily Pashtun or Punjabi soldiers. An official document, Report of the Committee of Gilgit-Baltistan (1971), acknowledged the significance of the 1970 incident and recommended specific actions of appeasement that needed to be taken in response. It suggested that people of the region had to be given some basic rights, so that they could be incorporated more firmly within the Pakistan state. Otherwise, they might rebel. Subsequently, the Bhutto government in 1972 abolished the FCR and began the process of abolishing the feudal kingdoms in the region—a move that fit well with Bhutto’s campaign against feudalism and relieved people in the region from much hardship, while also strengthening the direct rule of the Pakistan state. Simultaneously, the militarybureaucratic state apparatus—chiefly the army, intelligence agencies, and KANA ministry50 —embarked on a divisive project aimed at creating disunity along sectarian lines, in order to thwart future expressions of regional solidarity and secular-nationalist aspiration. This project of division first entailed state sponsorship of Sunni and Shia religious organizations, which were required to spur sectarian animosity as a means of deflecting political energy and agreement.51 Maulvis (clerics) and government employees from both sects were paid by intelligence agencies to engage in dehumanizing tirades against sectarian others, through wall-chalking, mosque loudspeakers, and publications. While each sect was played against the other, the Sunni sect was especially patronized, as the Shia identity has been rendered antithetical in a gradually Sunniized Pakistan state.52 Hence, there was a targeted suppression of the Shia community in Gilgit-Baltistan. One of the first acts in this suppression was the banning of the traditional Muharram procession in 1974 in Gilgit, which generated a major sectarian clash in this Shia-majority region. In popular memory and discourse, this is the period that is routinely identified with the beginning of ‘‘sectarian conflict.’’53 The late 1970s soon heralded the international mobilization of political Islam and creation of jihadis for the Cold War, alongside the national project of Islamization implemented by General Zia—both of which ultimately resulted in the Shia pogrom of 1988. Well-equipped Sunni lashkars (military forces), with members who had been trained for the Afghan jihad and had participated in it, were allowed to enter Gilgit-Baltistan with the support of the Zia government to orchestrate sectarian riots.54 In the massacre that followed, Shia-dominant villages such as Jalalabad, Bonji, and Jaglot were completely destroyed, and

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even people’s animals were slaughtered. The official death toll was put at 300, but unofficial accounts estimate the number at 700. No official inquiry was undertaken to investigate this campaign, and many Shia leaders still demand accountability and compensation for the losses the community sustained in 1988. More recently, in 2000, new textbooks were introduced in GilgitBaltistan that were perceived by the local Shia community as having a visibly stronger Sunni orientation. This ‘‘textbook controversy’’—as it came to be called—turned into a full-blown sectarian conflict in 2004–2005, when almost a hundred people lost their lives, educational institutions were closed for half the year, and a constant curfew paralyzed daily life in Gilgit.55 As a result of such episodes of conflict, there has been a marked increase in sectarian polarization in Gilgit, evidenced by trends such as a decrease in inter-marriage between the different Muslim sects and in adjacent living in joint neighborhoods. Sectarian identity has thus become the most defining axis of difference in Gilgit today. Indeed, as I argue elsewhere, politicized forms of cultivating difference have produced a ‘‘sectarian imaginary’’ in Gilgit-Baltistan, whereby people from different sects have come to perceive one another with prejudice and suspicion and tend to view all sorts of mundane matters through a sectarian lens.56 According to some political commentators in the region, the Pakistan army has used the Sunni-Shia conflict as an excuse to expand military presence and influence, by transferring key civilian posts to army brigadiers and deploying paramilitary forces. Hence, apart from subverting regional solidarity, sectarian conflict in Gilgit-Baltistan is further useful for the military state as it serves to produce the very ‘‘sectarian’’ subject it ascribes to the region, thus reinforcing the need for its own presence for maintaining ‘‘law and order.’’ By sectarianizing citizenship and politics, the question of substantive citizenship rights is trumped, reinforcing the securocratic interests of the state in relation to Kashmir, as well as its hegemonic efforts to impose a particular sectarian vision of Islam as defining of the nation. Ironically, while the military-intelligence regime in Gilgit-Baltistan thrives on creating suspicion among the populace, their activities in turn create suspicion toward the regime itself and particularly toward the intelligence agencies. Indeed, any discussion of political and religious conflict in Gilgit-Baltistan would be incomplete without someone mentioning is mein to agencion ka haath hai—‘‘the hand of agencies is responsible for this.’’ Since there is an experiential awareness of the pervasiveness of intelligence

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agencies, they end up being the prime suspect whenever there is any incidence of conflict and violence. For example, in the case of the textbook controversy, it can be reasonably believed that at least part of the stronger Sunni orientation of the books came from the domination of the Punjab Textbook Board by members of the Jamaat-e-Islami, or others who profess a conservative Sunni sensibility.57 However, many Gilgitis and particularly Shias felt that ‘‘divide and conquer’’ was the key reason behind the change in curriculum. To what extent this is true, I do not know. But it is important to note that every other state act is now seen through the divideand-conquer lens, due to the established reality that intelligence agencies continue to maneuver political and religious activity in the region. This suspicious—and sometimes conspiratorial—outlook among citizens is symbolic of their subjectivity under conditions of secrecy and deception, instead of their pathology.58 This reverse suspicion also offers some solace, as people in GilgitBaltistan across sects—aware and wary of the ‘‘hand’’ of intelligence agencies—have come to see sectarian conflict as a political instead of a primordial matter. The heightened visibility and interference by intelligence organizations has thus resulted in the subversion of their own power. While the role of local maulvis and external players is recognized, the state itself and particularly the intelligence agencies are perceived to be the major culprits, trying to create sectarian conflict to continue a divisive project. We might say that this reverse suspicion reflects a crisis in the legitimacy of the state, quite contrary to what the discursive structure of the state-as-protector is designed to accomplish. In this sense, then, the affect of suspicion also marks the limit of power, even as it is saturates the very horizon and operation of power.59

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to explore how the military-intelligence regime in Pakistan defines state practice and everyday experience in GilgitBaltistan. The regime’s domination of political administration in Gilgit is a form of repression that constitutes a key aspect of military power. But to understand the occupation of the military and intelligence agencies in the region, we need to attend to the emotional regulation through which their

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power is embedded in the Gilgiti social imaginary. I thus highlight the politics of desire and aspiration the military engenders, as families strive to become part of its economic opportunities and privileges. The process of local employment in the military and sustained participation in security operations has produced a political economy of feelings that cultivates honor, pride, and loyalty toward the military, and hence, toward a militarystate: these constitute the conditions of possibility for continued military authoritarianism in Gilgit-Baltistan. Efforts to challenge this status quo are made all the more impossible by the surveillance and divisive activities of intelligence agencies, which have served to create suspicious, sectarianized subjects, eroding social cohesion and possibilities of political cooperation. Along with the panoptic gaze and control of the military-intelligence regime, this suspicion and paranoia among citizens produces and consolidates state power in the region. And it is precisely the insidious and unaccountable practices of the intelligence agencies that nationalist-political movements in the region identify as the key problem in their struggle for demilitarization. The command of the military-intelligence regime is thus contested through critical citizen reflections as well as political movements that construct the regime as a source of insecurity, injustice, and violence, particularly in the national context of rising ‘‘security operations,’’ which have deeply affected the lives of Gilgit-Baltistan’s soldiers and their families.

chapter four

Stateless Citizens and Menacing Men: Notes on the Occupation of Palestinians Inside Israel Rhoda Kanaaneh

Naifa al-Turi is from Al-Araqib, a small Bedouin Arab village in the Naqab desert region in southern Israel. The Israel Land Authority wants to remove her and the three-hundred-odd residents of the village to plant a forest in its place. To date, Israeli police and bulldozers have destroyed the small village twenty times, demolishing concrete structures and zinc shanties and, ironically, uprooting hundreds of trees. Al-Araqib is a village inside Israel, and al-Turi and her family are Israeli citizens. Despite their long history, Bedouins in the Naqab are viewed by the state as lawless trespassers and criminal ‘‘foreigners’’ invading state land and hence subject to the ‘‘expulsion of intruders’’ law.1 Removing Bedouins from their lands and ‘‘concentration by choice’’ in planned ghetto communities is part of the Israeli policy of Judaizing the Naqab.2 Israel’s policy of claiming and settling Arab lands in the formal Occupied Palestinian Territories, especially the West Bank, is more widely known. In this chapter, I propose to look at Arabs inside Israel as also living under occupation though of a different, ‘‘softer’’ sort. In contrast to the popular image of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, I join a growing literature that identifies Israeli rule of Palestinian citizens as a deeply hierarchical rule of one nation over another, with the help of military might and a security rationale.3 Though the military administration over Palestinians inside Israel formally ended in 1966, old ladies in my

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village until today refer to the government as ‘‘the occupation.’’ Labeling the power structures inside Israel in this way is not meant to minimize the brutality of the much more severe occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, dismiss the significance of citizenship, or to collapse the two systems into one, but to make a definite link between them. Israel’s state attorney plans to sue the residents of Al-Araqib for more than one million shekels in costs of repeated demolitions.4 This suit figures the Arabs in unrecognized villages as victimizers, and the state that evicts them and demolishes their homes as the victim. This distorted lens is also commonly employed by the state in viewing its Palestinian citizens; clear power relations of domination are absurdly twisted and presented in reverse. Government authorities burn Bedouin crops in the Southern desert region of the Naqab as part of the famous project of making the desert bloom.5 The Nature Protection Society functions as a destruction society when it confiscates Arab land throughout the country to ostensibly protect it from its owners. The historic Muslim burial ground at Ma’man Allah in Jerusalem is destroyed to build a museum of tolerance.6 A distorting lens is at work here that masks power relations, twists them or reverses them. This topsy-turvy logic is in part a product of the racism and ethnocentrism common in colonial contexts, but it is also animated by a set of naturalized assumptions about Arabs and Jews as ‘‘culturally’’ distinct, with the ascription of certain characteristics to each group. Well known aspects of these characteristics include, for example, the idea that Arabs only understand violence, that Arabs’ innate devotion to the hamula clan system accounts for their failure to modernize, that Bedouins are naturally nomadic and therefore movable, and that Ashkenazi Jews are best suited to European standards of living, and so on. These stereotypes are couched as ‘‘cultural traits’’ and therefore palatable to an Israeli liberal self-image. Most important for my argument, there is a powerful gendered component to this logic of cultural differences. Assumptions about Arab men and women as well as Jewish men and women are embedded in Israeli politics. This strong gendered narrative undergirds the soft occupation and serves as a filter that allows Jewish domination of Arabs in Israel to appear normal to many Israeli Jews. For example, it would be considered simply ‘‘unnatural’’ for al-Araqib residents to live in the nearby Jewish town of Gvoat Bar built in 2004 (and connected to the water, electrical, health care, and school systems). They would be ‘‘culturally incompatible’’ with their Jewish neighbors. And the men of el-Araqib in particular

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would be culturally incompatible with the Jewish women of Gvoat Bar. I argue that these gendered assumptions about inherent cultural differences allow the destruction of al-Araqib and a widespread preference given to Jews in Israel to seem like democracy rather than occupation.

History and Structures of Occupation The masked occupation of Palestinians in Israel today began with the settler colonial history of the creation of the state of Israel—and a not so masked occupation.7 Because the Zionist movement was committed to creating a mono-religious Jewish state, this necessitated the expulsion and dispersion of the majority of Palestinians, some 725,000 people, accomplished largely (but not exclusively) during the war of 1948. It also necessitated ‘‘the most active immigration policy in modern history,’’8 which settled Jews in Palestine against the explicit opposition of the indigenous community. The 150,000 Palestinians who were able to remain within the borders of the new state of Israel in 1948 were forcibly minoritized and eventually given Israeli citizenship. They did not leave their country but their country, instead, was made to leave them.9 For almost two decades after the establishment of the state, these citizens were governed by a military administration that imposed severe travel restrictions and attempted to control their movement and labor and repress their political organizing and expression. This direct military control and surveillance formally gave way in 1966 to the more masked occupation that remains in place to this day. During the 1960s, then-prime minister Levi Eshkol expressed his aspiration to turn the military government into one that ‘‘sees but is not seen,’’ that is, to continue to control Palestinians living in Israel while limiting direct contact between soldiers and the population.10 Today, the surveillance blimps hovering over Palestinian demonstrations inside Israel reflect the spirit of this policy. Shafir and Peled argue that due to changes in the global and national economic realities in the 1970s and 1980s, Israeli government controls relaxed and this liberalizing and democratizing trend benefited Arab citizens.11 However, these improvements did not alter the ethnocratic nature of the regime.12 Indeed, I would argue that Palestinian citizens, now about 20 percent of the population, remain stateless in some basic ways. They are daily reminded that the state belongs not to them but to the Jewish people.

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In fact, claiming it as a state of all its citizens is considered treasonous and may be punishable by law.13 Though formally included in the democratic electoral process, Palestinian citizens are regarded as a problem minority excluded from the state’s definition of the ‘‘common good.’’ As a collective, they have had limited influence in parliament, despite relatively high rates of participation in elections. Their political isolation is reflected in the fact that 78 percent of Israeli Jews oppose Arab political parties joining the government.14 As Robert Blecher points out, ‘‘Palestinians reside in Israel by Jewish sufferance, not inherent right . . . they were awarded the franchise in an act of Jewish magnanimity.’’15 Avigdor Lieberman, currently Israel’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, ran in the 2009 elections on the platform of requiring all Palestinian citizens to take an oath of loyalty to the Jewish state. Not to be outdone, the so-called centrist then-contender for government leadership, Tzipi Livni, said in December 2008 that the establishment of a Palestinian state would enable her to ‘‘approach the Palestinian residents of Israel . . . and tell them, ‘Your national solution lies elsewhere’.’’16 Lieberman openly calls for the transfer of Palestinian citizens to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This is not just political grandstanding in Israel. The Palestine Papers reveal that Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister, proposed during meetings with Palestinian negotiators that Palestinian villages in Israel be annexed to the future Palestinian state.17 In 2002, Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh from the Labor Party proposed ceding the Triangle area of Israel with its Palestinian population to the future Palestinian state.18 The idea of getting rid of the problem minority is not limited to particular political parties in Israel; in 2004 ‘‘63.7 percent of Israeli Jews said their government should encourage Palestinian citizens to emigrate.’’19 Many of the hallmarks of military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—land confiscation, building of Jewish settlements, home demolitions, destruction of crops—are also routinely practiced against Palestinian citizens inside Israel. Government authorities seek to maintain a Jewish majority, settle Jews in areas where Palestinians live, and transfer Arabclaimed lands to Jewish control.20 In fact, the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency intentionally does not distinguish between the West Bank and Gaza and Israel ‘‘proper,’’ but rather categorizes areas only according to the number of Jews living in them.21 Within Israel, the state has built

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more than six hundred new Jewish locales since 1948 and not a single Palestinian one, and has even destroyed a few.22 The state’s explicit Judaizing policy involves not only the expropriation of Palestinian land but also the bureaucratic control and limitation of the physical expansion of Palestinian communities.23 Some 70,000 Bedouins, including the residents of al-Arabqib who live in villages the state refuses to recognize because it wants to claim their land, are subject to repeated home demolitions and systematic crop destruction and are denied hookups to the clean water system, electricity, schools, and health services.24 Palestinian citizens are also subject to political arrests and administrative detention (where they are held incommunicado), tried with secret evidence, and their torture permitted by the High Court in cases of necessity.25 Other aspects of the military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, brutal practices that involve higher visibility of the military such as curfews, roadblocks, and military attacks on civilians, are much less common in the occupation of Palestinians inside Israel. The state does however, use such military practices at particular moments, such as during the Kufur Qassim Massacre in 1956, when forty-nine civilians, including six women and twenty-three children, were killed by border police. During the Land Day strikes of 1976, I remember tanks rolling down the street in our village and the curfew during which six Palestinians were killed. At the beginning of the Second Intifada in October 2000, another such moment when the mask of the soft occupation fell, Palestinian citizens demonstrated against the killing and oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and also out of frustration over their inferior treatment in the state. During these widespread protests, thirteen unarmed Palestinians were killed inside Israel by Israeli forces, twelve of them citizens. Despite the appointment of a commission of inquiry, none of those who carried out the killings were held accountable. While episodes where tanks roll into Palestinian towns inside Israel are far less common than the continuous military repression practiced in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since their occupation in 1967, the threat of military operations against Palestinians inside Israel is palpable. Palestinian citizens of Israel often voice fears that the state is waiting for a pretext to undertake such operations. What links the two occupations is a view of all Palestinians, regardless of their location, as potential terrorists and as security threats to the state. Honaida Ghanim argues that in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians are compressed ‘‘into one homogeneous total category of ‘otherness’ where

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every Palestinian is a potential terrorist . . . [leaving] no room for the category of civilian.’’26 This inherent ‘‘political deficiency’’27 makes Palestinians ineligible for inclusion in the polis and their very ability to stay alive becomes ‘‘a tremendous favor.’’28 While Palestinians inside Israel are not followed by the shadow of death as closely, they too are always potential terrorists. The state has acknowledged that Palestinian citizens are singled out because of their ethnic background for security checks at the airport,29 starting with a separate lane for Arabs at the entry barrier to the airport grounds. Beyond the airport, they are routinely asked for their IDs—which usually list their religion in the nationality slot—at Jewish areas and businesses, searched and sometimes denied access to Jewish-owned beaches, discos, and stores. This gatekeeping is a kind of invisible internal apartheid wall. As a security guard at a supermarket once told me: ‘‘We are just here to scare away the Arabs.’’ The state attempted to divide Palestinians in Israel into ‘‘good Arabs’’— those who collaborate and aquiesce—and by implication, the rest as bad ones. Yet my study of the treatment of Palestinians who serve in the Israeli military—very good Arabs—suggests that ‘‘good Arabs’’ and ‘‘bad Arabs’’ are not two separate categories. Even those considered the best Arabs are by definition always potentially bad in a Jewish state. If Palestinian soldiers can be described as individuals who are willing to accomodate the militaristic state by literally giving themselves a fighting chance, military authorities continue to define them, not as neutral soldiers, but as minority soldiers. They are defined by their otherness and the military appears unable to give up on associating even these Arabs in a basic way with the enemy.30 It may be argued that Israel requires and depends on the embodiment of Palestinians as a source of insecurity in order to justify the continued centrality of the security apparatus and to maintain the status quo. This attributation of insecurity to all Palestinians is an abiding framework for state management of all Palestinians. But Palestinian citizens, the enemy within and the potential fifth column, are to be handled differently than the enemy on the outside. They have been subject to more attempts at cooptation. Their citizenship was supposed to turn them into something other than Palestinians—into ‘‘Israel’s Arabs’’—acquiescent beings thankful to the state for improving their living conditions in relation to Arabs in other countries (though of course not in relation to neighboring Jewish fellow citizens). But these attempts were half-hearted at best. As citizens,

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they are given hope for equality and potential integration—the state is democratic after all. But it is also always Jewish. Some Palestinian citizens, perhaps many, seem willing to perform feats of historical amnesia and to jump through the hoops the state requires of them. But regardless of what an individual is willing to do and how she defines herself, the state seems unable to reconceptualize her as not linked to the enemy. The occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the occupation of Palestinians inside Israel are two not entirely separate systems governed by the same security rationale and necessarily produced by the same vision of a Jewish state. In the words of Palestinian thinker Azmi Bishara, Palestinians in Israel ‘‘are not treated as second- class citizens, or third-class citizens, but as enemies.’’31 Though they may have certain rights, they lack ‘‘the right to have rights’’ in Israel, putting them in the paradoxical position of citizens without sovereignty.32

Happy, Thankful, and Not Occupied As non-Jews living in a Jewish state, Palestinians are required to fully acquiesce to and even celebrate their structural marginalization—which must not be identified as such. In May 2009, an Israeli government ministerial committee approved a draft law that would make it illegal for Palestinian citizens to mark the state’s establishment as a day of mourning. Jamal Zahalka, a Palestinian legislator, commented on this attempt to ban Nakba or Catastrophe memorializations: ‘‘They expelled our people, destroyed our villages, robbed our lands, and now they say we cannot be sad about it.‘‘33 Though the proposal was altered when passed into law to target statefunded organizations, it dramatically illustrates the ongoing demand of the state that Palestinians forget their past and deny their oppression. Filmmaker Elie Suleiman captures this demand in his film The Time That Remains with a scene of Palestinian schoolgirls, surrounded by Israeli flags of blue stars of David, awkwardly celebrating Israeli Independence Day singing Jewish nationalist songs that exclude them. The symbols of the state are religious Jewish ones; stars of David and menorahs are ubiquitous on state documents, flags, buildings, and logos. The Israeli national anthem is ‘‘Ha-Tikvah’’ (The Hope): ‘‘Our hope is not yet lost, the hope of two thousand years, to be a free people in our land,

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the land of Zion and Jerusalem.’’ Even Palestinians like the mayor of Mashhad village, a loyal member of the Zionist Labor Party, admits that ‘‘HaTikvah’’ does not stir any feelings of belonging in him.34 The anthem describes a longing for Zion, at the heart of which lies the nefesh yehudi, Jewish soul. It excludes Palestinians, who must nonetheless sing it and somehow endeavor to be stirred by it, though clearly not on their own behalf. The legal administrative definition ‘‘present absentee’’—another one of the absurdities of colonialism—was used to designate tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their original homes in the war of 1948 but who continued to live inside the state of Israel. Their properties, along with those of other Palestinian refugees, were handed over to the Custodian of Absentee Property, which then gave the land to the Jewish National Fund that leases it to Jews, and more recently has been selling it on the private market.35 Gabriel Piterberg argues that ‘‘present absentee’’ is in fact a ‘‘chillingly accurate’’ description of the condition of all Palestinians in Israel as they are caught in the ‘‘interplay between [their] overt and formal inclusion . . . within the state and their tacit and structural exclusion from [it].’’ Palestinians are thus ‘‘formally present but in many crucial ways absent.’’36 Human rights lawyer Hassan Jabareen points out that often ‘‘Arabs are asked to prove their loyalty to the Jewish collective in Israel and not to the state as a neutral actor. It is thus a loyalty to another people.’’37 Amal Eqeiq describes a recent scene captured on video of Palestinians marching in Tel Aviv in solidarity with the Egyptian uprising. Eqeiq longs to own Rabin’s Square in downtown Tel-Aviv ‘‘like these Egyptians are owning Tahrir Square right now.’’38 On the video Israeli-Jews pass by the demonstrators with various reactions: Some are watching curiously, while others . . . [shout] at the protests: ‘‘Go to the Arab countries!’’ . . . An elderly Jewish woman expresses her intense anger against the sight of what she calls ‘‘PLO flags’’ being waved in downtown Tel-Aviv. In a commanding tone she concludes: ‘‘Let them scream for a while and then they can go home.’’ Two Palestinian women respond in assertive Hebrew: ‘‘This is our home.’’ They continue to raise their hands pushing back the words of a Russian woman who screams at them ‘‘be proud at home. This is not your home.39

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Cultural Differences, Not Racism Palestinians are considered culturally incompatible with Jews. Thus it supposedly makes sense that Palestinians and Jews live in segregated communities in Israel. Even the few so-called ‘‘mixed cities,’’ where some 10 percent of Palestinian citizens live, are characterized by separate neighborhoods, and according to geographer Ghazi Falah, high indices of segregation and neighbors without neighborly relations.40 Any change to this situation is considered highly threatening to the state. In Safad—today considered a Jewish city—many Arab students and young couples seek to rent or buy homes to study or work at nearby universities and hospitals. In upper Nazareth, a Jewish settlement built to contain the growth of the Arab city of Nazareth, many young Arab couples unable to find homes in their overcrowded city, seek them in Upper Nazareth. In both these locations religious and city officials urged Jewish residents not to rent or sell apartments to Palestinians.41 In December 2010, a religious edict was signed by several hundred rabbis, many of them state employees, forbidding Jews from leasing or selling homes or land to Palestinians.42 The edict was praised by the Science and Technology Minister for maintaining the Jewish nature of Israel.43 Even Israeli Jews who distance themselves from these edicts and consider themselves liberals have recently introduced bylaws into their towns that require new residents to pledge support for ‘‘Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land.’’44 Many Jews who would consider transfer proposals and the Rabbis’ call to ostracize Jews who rent to Palestinians as racist, nonetheless support and promote the law of admissions committees passed in March 2011 that allows Jewish settlement communities to reject applicants based on their ‘‘cultural compatibility.’’45 One of the sponsors of the admissions committee bill, Israel Hasson, argued that it is not discriminatory but rather reflects a commitment to preserve the ability to realize the Zionist dream . . . [these] small communities in the Negev and Galilee were meant to realize the government’s goal of population dispersal and to enable residents to lead a community-oriented, rural lifestyle based on social and cultural cohesiveness. Realization of these goals obliged us as legislators to ensure the existence of a screening mechanism for applicants to these communities.46

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As Issam Aburayya argues, the language of democracy and liberalism is used here to espouse a cultural racism that sees the desire to maintain the ‘‘special character’’ or ‘‘unique lifestyle’’ of their gated communities—code for ethnic purity of Jewish settlements—as only natural.47 Khalid Sawa’id, a Bedouin who volunteered to serve for seven years in the Israeli military, lived on his ancestral land in Kammanih in the Galilee with his wife and children. In the early 1980s, his house and land became engulfed by the establishment of the Jewish settlement of Makhmunim, which was trying to evict him and demolish his home. In 1988, Sawa’id applied to be admitted as a member of the settlement, promising to sell them his land in the process ‘‘so as not to harm the development of the settlement.’’48 He was rejected. The head of the committee of Makhmunim, a leftist by Israeli standards, asserted that ‘‘despite all our friendship with Khalid, it would not be a natural situation if he lives with us.’’49 In this language, Israeli Jewish government officials and town clerks do not assert the superiority of one group over another, but focus on the incompatibility of different traditions and lifestyles.50 Even the rabbis of the edict not to rent explained that renting to Palestinians is harmful because ‘‘their way of life is different than that of the Jews.’’51 Many Israeli Jews therefore claim that ‘‘harm is done when these boundaries are erased,’’ thus naturalizing the apartheid system inside Israel where Palestinians are not allowed to live in Jewish settlements built by the state and parastate organizations.52 Interestingly, Palestinians who have been fighting for admission to Jewish settlements sometimes follow this logic. For example, Fatenah and Ahmed Zbeidat were rejected as ‘‘socially unsuitable’’ by the Admissions Committee for Rakefet, a settlement overlooking their village of Sakhnin. The young couple waged a legal battle to overturn this decision. They and their advocates continuously emphasized that essentially they were in fact socially compatible. It was always repeated that they were both architects who graduated from the Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem with distinction.53 The photos of the young couple released to the media emphasized their stylish Westernized clothing, with Fatenah wearing a fashionable sleeveless short dress. The argument seems to be that their class, education, and Western orientation should make them eligible to live in the Jewish settlement.

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Gendered Narratives When Rona, a young professional Jewish woman in her early thirties, dated a Palestinian citizen, she did not tell some of her relatives because she expected them to react as if she had brought home ‘‘a mass murderer.‘‘54 She eventually told her parents who were ‘‘moving more left’’ politically that she was dating a nonpracticing Muslim. Rona says that ‘‘they sidestepped the issue of his race, focusing instead on ‘cultural differences.’ I was like, . . . ‘Do you know what the cultural differences are?’ ’’55 Like the admissions committee to the settlements, Rona’s parents see their concern for cultural differences as ‘‘natural’’ and not racist. Reading between the lines, these cultural differences often include assumptions about the chauvinism of Palestinian men and their oppressiveness to women. There is in fact a powerful gendered narrative that underlies this cultural racism and permeates public discourse. In 2004, a rise in the number of Paelstinian laborers in Ashkelon and Ashdod gave rise to some Jewish residents’ fears that their cities would become ‘‘mixed cities.’’ This concern was articulated around fears of ‘‘sexual harassment.’’ According to one resident ‘‘some of [the Arabs], just because they are Israelis in every respect have become a little bit too self-confident; they say to themselves: ‘I’ve got an israeli identity card, I can do whatever I want.’ And these people start up with our daughters’’ (emphasis added).56 The vice mayor of Lydd, Emil Haddad, proposed in 2004 that Jews leave a Lydd neighborhood where many Arabs have moved in. He articulated his call as a solution to ‘‘complaints from neighborhood residents’’ who claim that ‘‘a young Arab can come along and make friends with a young Jewish woman, and her mother won’t say a word. She won’t complain. She won’t talk. She’ll just be afraid.’’57 More recently, religious nationalists held a rally in Bat Yam under the banner of ‘‘Jewish girls for the Jewish people.’’ According to one leaflet, ‘‘The Arabs are taking control of Bat Yam, buying and renting apartments from Jews, taking and ruining girls from Bat Yam! Fifteen-thousand Jewish girls have been taken to Arab villages! Guard our city—we want a Jewish Bat Yam.’’58 A group of rabbis’ wives published a letter urging Jewish women not to date Arab men.59 Residents of Pisgat Ze’ev, a Jerusalem neighborhood, are fighting against Jewish-Arab couples.60 A new organization called Lehava awards certificates to businesses it inspects as ‘‘clean of Arabs’’ because according to the organizers, ‘‘most cases of marriages of

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young Jewish girls to Arabs take place following the employment of Arabs in businesses that are in Jewish areas.’’61 These calls for segregation in living and work conditions paint Palestinian men as menacing predators and exploiters of Jewish women. According to Ze’ev Shtigletz who runs the assimilation division of Lev L’Achim’s, an orthodox Jewish organization: ‘‘ ‘facts on the ground make evident that intermarriage between Jews and Arabs in Israel is a dangerous idea.’ He explains that physical abuse is rampant among the Arabs, and empowered Arab wives are few and far between.’’62 The organization responds in some cases by ‘‘launching military-like rescues from hostile Arab villages and setting the women up in safe houses around the country.’’63 The fluid switch between ‘‘sexual harassment,’’ ‘‘kidnapping,’’64 ‘‘ruining girls,’’ and ‘‘mixed marriage’’ as the same problem suggests that it is not Jewish women’s consent that is in fact in question, but the objectionable nature of their consent to such relationships. The municipality of Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv, established a team ‘‘to assist young girls in the habit of mingling with men from minorities’’ and ‘‘rescue them.’’65 This effort includes a task force that patrols the city at night to break up Arab-Jewish dates, as well as a team of psychologists to counsel the girls and their families.66 In 2008, Kiryat Gat, a town of 50,000 Jews in southern Israel, launched a program in schools to ‘‘prevent Jewish girls from becoming romantically involved with Israeli Bedouins.’’67 The program is supported by the municipality and the police, and is headed by Kiryat Gat’s welfare representative, who ‘‘goes to schools to warn girls of the ‘exploitative Arabs.’ ’’68 Students are made to watch a film titled Sleeping with the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an ‘‘unnatural phenomenon.’’ The Tel Aviv municipality, with the Ministry of Absorption, launched a ‘‘counseling program’’ to ‘‘help’’ Jewish girls who date or marry Arab men, and who are seen naturally victimized by these men.69 These rampant public, and often official, objections to Jewish-Arab dating seem disproportionate to the small number of actual so-called mixed couples or marriages. It is important to note here that intermarriage is technically not possible in Israel—there is no civilian marriage but only religious marriage, which necessitates the formal conversion of one of the parties, or a trip abroad to obtain a civilian marriage. Yet the prospect of such gendered mixing remains terribly disturbing to Israeli Jews on a large scale.

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Note that it is Jewish women, rather than men, who are the main subjects of these fears. Similarly, marriage of Palestinian women to Jewish men is considered a serious social offense by many Palestinians, whereas marriage of Palestinian men to Jewish women is more accepted. While intermarriage is considered objectionable in many social circles, prohibition or discouragement by state authorities gives enormous power to social prejudices. When Esther decided to convert to Islam and marry her coworker from Gaza (not a citizen) she faced not only social pressures, but intimidation and punishment from the Intelligence Services: ‘‘They said to me ‘You have to decide. If you become a Muslim, that’s it. You no longer have a life inside Israel. You must turn in your Israeli ID, otherwise you can’t get a Palestinian ID.’ ’’70 Intermarriage is considered a threat to the continuation of the Jews in general, and the Israeli state in particular. Golda Meir is famous for saying, ‘‘Whoever performs intermarriage joins the six million.’’ Intermarriage has always been a demographic concern for preserving Israel’s Jewish character and majority. However, Jewish fears of intermarriage in Israel seem to have intensified in the past few years. One explanation is that the once-firm taboo against interracial dating may have begun to erode among some young people in Israel.71 Haifa University sociologist Dr. Yuval Yonay, for example, argues that Russian Jewish women whose parents arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union ‘‘were less closed to the idea of relationships with Arab men because they ‘did not undergo the religious and Zionist education’ to which more established Israeli Jews were subject.’’72 However, this does not explain why Jewish women date Arab men in Pisgat Zeev, a conservative and strongly Zionist Jewish settlement. A member of the ‘‘Fire for Judiasm’’ group against mixed dating who identified himself as Moshe, reports that : ‘‘In the last 10 years, 60 girls from Pisgat Zeev have gone into [Palestinian] villages [in the West Bank].’’73 Another explanation for the rise in fear of intermarriage might parallel Raef Zreik’s explanation for the rise in the explicit assertion of the Jewishness of the state. Zreik argues that in earlier years the original apartheid assumptions of the state did not need to be declared since it did not occur to the founders that this would be challenged. He says, while the state’s Jewishness was for decades an assumption so basic as to be self-evident to the Jewish majority, the need to declare it became more urgent as the possibility of becoming ‘‘normalized’’

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(i.e., a state for all its citizens) became an option, however distant . . . in the 1990s . . . the idea that there could be something other than a Jewish state was on the table for the first time.74 In my view, at least part of the reason for the rise in the anxiety around intermarriage and the reemphasis on segregation has to do with the rise of the ‘‘too confident Arab’’—and the growth of a small but significant upwardly mobile educated class of Arabs who aspire for middle-class lives and who take Israel’s gestures of democracy seriously. It is not surprising given the physical strangulation of Palestinian villages and towns that are prevented from expanding by zoning laws and land expropriations and that suffer from overcrowding, poor services, and poverty, together with the ever-expanding Jewish settlements with ‘‘high quality of life,’’ that eventually some upwardly mobile Palestinians would try to live in the Jewish settlements. Yet this too did not seem to occur to the original planners, and mechanisms to prevent this just recently had to be explicitly legislated.

The Racialized Nature of Consent In some cases it is assumed that Arab men deceive Jewish women into thinking they are Jewish. According to one resident in the Ashkelon/Ashdod area, ‘‘What happens is that a young Arab fellow starts up with a girl and she naively thinks that he’s Jewish. After all, Israeli Arabs look like Israeli Jews. She is attracted and, in the end, she falls in love with him.‘‘75 It is the fact of the mixed relationship that makes this harassment, not the behavior and desires of the woman. In a now infamous court ruling, Palestinian Sabbar Kashur was convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who said he had posed as a Jewish bachelor.76 When the woman found Kashur was not a Jew but an Arab, she filed a police complaint that led to charges of rape and indecent assault. ‘‘If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated,’’ Judge Zvi Segal wrote in his verdict. Segal said the court had to protect the public from sophisticated criminals who could mislead innocent victims.77

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This new defintion of rape is part of a larger systemic view of Palestinian masculinity tied in with the need for Jewish purity and separation between Jews and Palestinians. The gender assumptions figure the need for Jewish purity as a ‘‘natural’’ one having nothing to do with racism. It is at the heart of the masked soft occupation of Palestinians in Israel. So-called honor killings function in a similar way in Israeli discourse. Palestinian women accused of sexual transgressions who appeal to the police for help are routinely returned by the police to their families, where they may face violent repercussions or even death.78 Such gender violence among Palestinians then functions as a kind of ‘‘colonial scandal’’79; it is fetishized by the Israeli media and used as proof of Palestinian backwardness—justifying the supposedly liberal state’s ‘‘salvation rhetoric’’80 and control. In her fascinating study of 375 policemen in Israel, Nadera ShalhoubKevorkian found ‘‘militaristic policing’’ practices where the policemen commonly identify ‘‘our side’’ (Jews) versus theirs (Palestinian citizens) and prioritized ‘‘internal security’’ over issues such as domestic violence within the Palestinian community.81 Significantly, the interviewees responded differently to ‘‘a vignette about a young woman who, weeping, addressed the police, explaining that her husband had torn up her books to prevent her from continuing her education.’’ Kevorkian found that ‘‘over three quarters of the respondents tended to indicate that the police should help if the victim was a Jewish woman, while the opposite was found when an Arab name was used.’’ One officer in charge of a detective unit explained that ‘‘dealing with crimes that are related to the political situation is our main role and has priority. Everything else can wait—less domestic violence, more battered women or more drugs . . . this is all irrelevant.’’82 Another policeman in Kevorkian’s study said, ‘‘Take for example the case of a woman from the Arab village who calls while crying and screaming for our help. When we reach her, she changes her mind, and refuses to cooperate. . . . Do you think I would leave an internal security problem, to deal with a primitive woman like that?’’83 According to Kevorkian, ‘‘the vast majority of the police officers used one or more racist concepts to characterize the victim, the offender or their community, ranging from calling them ‘primitive,’ ‘backward,’ or ‘stupid,’ to defining their actions as based on ‘their mentality,’ ‘their criminal culture,’ ‘their violent upbringing,’ ‘their primitive minds,’ ‘their backward women,’ and ‘their backward culture.’ ’’84 The

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police tended to view the abuse of women as an Arab cultural value exemplified by the statement, ‘‘It is better to give the abused woman to her father . . . they know how to deal with each other.’’85

Conclusion This chapter argues that Palestinian citizens of Israel are an indigenous population diasporized in their own land and occupied within a democracy. If an older generation uses the term ‘‘the occupation’’ somewhat anachronistically to refer to the government, younger generations often refer to the authorities as ‘‘the Jews’’—in keeping with how the state defines itself, as the state of and for the Jews.86 Linking the status of Palestinians and Bedouins inside Israel to that of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by seeing them as subjected to a soft or masked occupation, whose work is accomplished by racist ideologies of cultural difference, is important for understanding the complex situation they find themselves in. This is not meant to trivialize the suffering of Palestinians living under formal occupation. If Naifa al-Turi and her co-villagers have been unsuccessful in appealing the demolition orders of their homes, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have no such recourse. I argue for the importance of the concept of ‘‘soft’’ occupation to keep overarching power relationships in view while attending to nuances and complexities. The 1954 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Peoples defines a ‘‘stateless’’ person as one ‘‘who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law.’’ At a certain level, Palestinians are not nationals of Israel. The nationality entry on Israeli identity cards has historically listed religious affiliations such as Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze, and so on as nationalities, but there is no such thing as an Israeli nationality. Prime minister Ariel Sharon argued in a July 2002 parliamentary debate: ‘‘All the rights over the Land of Israel are Jewish rights. In the Land of Israel, all the rights must be given to the people who live here. That is the difference between rights over the land and rights in the Land.’’87 If Palestinians inside Israel have some rights in the land, those in West Bank and Gaza Strip have next to none. Yet the rights of Palestinian citizens do not include, for example, living in locales built by the government and designated as Jewish. Part of the reason that the undemocratic system inside

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Israel can masquerade as democracy is a powerful discourse about the natural incompatibility of Jews and Arabs, particularly Jewish women and Arab men. Widespread Israeli stereotypes about Arab men and women are not tangential to the politics of occupation—they powerfully animate them. AlTuri and her family would likely be considered ‘‘culturally incompatible’’ with Jewish neighbors—after all, Israeli Jews are told by government officials that Arab men, like al-Turi’s sons, might start up with their Jewish daughters. And if the women in al-Turi’s family are given trouble by their husbands, they might think twice about calling the police; they might find that the officers consider themselves too busy with more important security matters.

chapter five

Indigenous Women and Culture in the Colonized Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh Kabita Chakma and Glen Hill

In the early hours of June 12, 1996, the day of the Bangladesh national election, an indigenous woman political activist named Kalpana Chakma was abducted from her home at Lallyaghona Village in the Rangamati District of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). Kalpana was the Organising Secretary of the CHT Women’s Federation, an organization working for the human rights and security of the CHT’s indigenous people, who had been subject to decades of violent colonization by Bangladesh armed forces and transmigrants. Kalpana came from a landless, internally displaced refugee family that had been evicted from its original home in the 1960s when the creation of Kaptai hydroelectric dam inundated Rangamati, the largest town in the CHT, and many other villages, rendering one-third of the entire population of the CHT homeless. Her family did not own any cultivable land. Two of her six brothers worked on other people’s land as day laborers. Unlike her brothers and sisters, Kalpana was fortunate enough to receive the support of a local Buddhist monk to enable her to continue her studies. At the time of her abduction she was a BA student at Baghaichari Kachalong College and lived with her two brothers, her sister-in-law, and her elderly widowed mother. Kalpana was allegedly abducted at gunpoint by a group of security personnel led by lieutenant Ferdous Kaiser Khan, commander of the Kojochari military camp (17 East Bengal Regiment) situated near her village. She was

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abducted from her home along with her two brothers, and in front of her mother and sister-in-law. Kalpana and her two brothers’ hands were tied and they were blindfolded. One brother was taken knee-deep into the lake by one of the abductors, who had been ordered to shoot him. However, he managed to escape into the darkness. Hearing the gunfire, the other brother jumped into the water. The abductors shot at him but he too escaped. Kalpana was heard crying ‘‘dada, dada’’ (‘‘brother, brother’’). She has not been seen since. In 2005, Dulu Kumuri, the first motion picture to be produced, directed, and acted by indigenous people from the CHT, was released.1 It tells a customary tale of the abduction of a young woman, Dulu Kumuri, by a hawk (chil or chile) and the efforts of her seven brothers to find and return her to the family home. Films about the CHT are uncommon. A film by the indigenous people of the CHT, telling their own story, is unique. Between 2005 and 2006, the film was reported to have been viewed by one third of the indigenous population of the CHT. The film is set on traditional jum land in the CHT. Jum is the slash and burn farming method of the CHT around which the life-world of its indigenous peoples once revolved. It is very different from the plow farming practiced by Bengalis on the generally flat plains of Bangladesh. Recognizing this as a focal point of difference, Bengalis disparagingly referred to the eleven indigenous groups living in the CHT who practiced jum cultivation as ‘‘Jummas.’’ The term has been adopted with some pride as a signifier of unity between the otherwise culturally diverse indigenous groups living in the CHT. In the story, Dulu Kumuri, the youngest, most spoiled child in the family, lives in the jum house with her seven brothers and her sister-in-law, the wife of the eldest brother. The film portrays indigenous people enjoying life, engaging in traditional food gathering, hunting, and fishing along with leisure activities including playing customary games (ghile khaaraa and shaamuk khaaraa), composing songs (ubagiit), and playing traditional instruments (the khengarang, a form of mouth organ). The life evoked is idyllic—mixing fun, jokes, and teasing among the brothers, sister, and sister-in-law, with a sense of caring for each other—an inevitably stark contrast to the contemporary condition of fear and military oppression. Once, when the seven brothers were away on a traditional gathering expedition (kaartton, usually to collect bamboo or timber building materials, medicine, and other resources from the depths of the forest), Dulu

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Kumuri’s sister-in-law beseeches a high-flying hawk, who is carrying a piece of dry fish (aangar maach, a small shark, which is a delicacy for the Jummas particularly living in the high mountains far away from the sea), to exchange the fish for Dulu Kumuri, who is lazily playing ghile khaaraa (a game involving throwing a large seed) in the front yard of the jum house. The sister-in-law panics when she finds that Dulu Kumuri has actually disappeared. She searches for her throughout the village but without success. When the brothers return from the safari she sends them to look for Dulu Kumuri. After an exhaustive search deep in the forest, and consulting with a traditional clairvoyant (baidya), the brothers finally locate Dulu Kumuri in the hawk’s nest, atop a tall tree. The brothers build a ladder, joining bamboo upon bamboo, to reach the nest, and Dulu Kumuri is finally rescued. When the eldest brother learns about his wife’s bargain with the hawk he becomes furious. But Dulu Kumuri with her six other brothers help make peace between the couple. Dulu Kumuri and the brothers forgive the sister-in-law and the extended family move beyond the dreadful event, bringing a happy conclusion to the story. While countless abductions and other acts of sexual repression against CHT indigenous women go unnoticed, the abduction of Kalpana Chakma by a military officer attracted national and international attention from human rights organizations,2 foreign parliaments,3 and UN agencies.4 The national media of Bangladesh, which remained largely silent for decades on sexual oppression against CHT women, played an important role in publicizing Kalpana’s abduction. The abduction was held up as irrefutable evidence of military atrocities against the indigenous women of the CHT. When I interviewed the writer-director of Dulu Kumuri, Tarun Chakma, he stated that he had not intended the film to carry any contemporary political message.5 Yet indigenous viewers are struck by the contrast between the film’s joyful ending and the high-profile unresolved abduction of Kalpana Chakma. The appearance of the motion picture, far from being a cultural aberration, is the manifestation of a four-decade revitalization of indigenous culture that occurred as a mode of resistance to the violent colonization of the lands of the indigenous peoples of the CHT by Bangladesh armed forces and transmigrants. Indigenous women have been particularly targeted in the colonization. But in response, indigenous women and their cultural

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traditions have played a particularly prominent role in the cultural resurgence that has brought a sense of unity in adversity to the otherwise disparate indigenous groups in the CHT. In this chapter we look at both the ways in which indigenous women of the CHT come to symbolize the vulnerability of these communities and the role played by indigenous women in the cultural resurgence signified by a film like Dulu Kumari.

Transmigration and Colonization in Decolonized Bangladesh The CHT is the southeastern hilly region of present day Bangladesh, and conjoins South and Southeast Asia. The CHT is bordered by the Indian states of Tripura and Mizoram in the north and east, the Burmese states of Chin and Rakhine (or Arakan) in the east and south, and two districts of Bangladesh—Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar—in the west. The CHT itself is comprised of three districts: Khagrachari in the north, Rangamati at the center, and Bandarban in the south. The CHT is the traditional homeland of eleven ethnolinguistically and religiously diverse adibasi (adivasi, adibashi), or indigenous peoples,6 who collectively call themselves the Jumma. Listed alphabetically, they are the Bawm, Chak, Chakma, Khumi, Khyang, Lushai, Marma, Mro, Pangkhua, Tanchangya, and Tripura.7 The 2001 (2003 ‘‘provisional’’) census listed the indigenous population in the CHT as 736,682. Numerically Chakmas are the largest (about half the Jumma population), followed by Marmas, Tripuras, Mros, Tanchangyas, Bawms, Pangkhuas, Chaks, Khyangs, Khumis, and Lushais. The Chakma and Tanchangya languages are classified as IndoAryan languages; the other nine languages are Tibeto-Burmese.8 Chakmas, Marmas, Tanchangyas, Chaks, and Khyangs primarily follow Buddhism, Tripuras follow Hinduism, Lushais, Pangkhuas, and Bawms follow Christianity. Mros and Khumis are most diverse in their religious practices, following Buddhism, Christianity, and a new religion, Krama.9 All eleven Jumma groups have animist rituals, which give a unique inflection to their religions. Recently, there have been conversions within indigenous groups to Christianity and Islam, the major religion in Bangladesh.10 The CHT has a different precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial history from the rest of Bangladesh.11 British annexation occurred in 1860, one hundred years after the colonization of Bengal (the eastern part of which is now Bangladesh). There was resistance from the CHT against British

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aggression from 1772 to 1798, referred to by historians as chakma bidroha or the Chakma Resistance.12 It is the first recorded resistance against the British, occurring long before the famous sipahi bidroha (Sepoy Rebellion) in 1857, which is often erroneously referred to as the first uprising against the British in South Asia.13 At the departure of the British from India in 1947, the CHT was left under the control of a new ‘‘colonial’’ power, East Pakistan. Control moved to Bangladesh when it gained independence from Pakistan in 1971. Soon after the rejection of the demand by CHT leaders for retention of CHT’s autonomous status in the 1972 constitution of Bangladesh, the government began to suppress the early stages of a CHT autonomy struggle that eventually saw the emergence of an armed resistance guerrilla group, the Shanti Bahini (peace force). The CHT became fully militarized in August 1975 when Bangladesh was brought under military rule as a result of a coup in which President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated. Since 1975 Bangladesh has had both military and democratic governments, but the CHT has remained under military occupation. In 1991 an international human rights panel, the CHT Commission, estimated that there was one member of the security force for every ten hill people in the CHT.14 The high military presence did not change even after the signing of the ‘‘CHT Accord’’ in December 1997, which ended more than two decades of armed struggle for autonomy by the Parbattya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS or JSS).15 While the JSS demobilized the Shanti Bahini as part of the Accord, the Bangladesh government, in contravention of the Accord, maintained its heavy military presence in the CHT. UN Special Rapporteur Lars-Anders Baer, in his 2011 report to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), recorded that one-third of the Bangladesh military is stationed in the CHT, a tenth of the land area of the country,16 with about 1 percent of its population. Baer notes the occurrence of ‘‘arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings, harassment of rights activists and sexual harassment,’’17 and the retention of so-called ‘‘Operation Uttoron’’ (Upliftment), an executive order that allows the military to interfere in civil matters beyond its jurisdiction.18 Baer also points out that the most important provisions of the Accord—including settlement of land disputes, demilitarization, and the devolution of authority to CHT institutions—remain unimplemented or only partly implemented.19 The Bangladesh military now has 6 permanent cantonments (barracks) in the 3 districts of the CHT. This appears excessive considering there are only 14

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cantonments in the rest of the 61 districts of Bangladesh and that the CHT is not a war zone, nor is there now any counter-insurgency. Soon after the removal of the Pakistani colonizers in 1971, Bangladesh itself began active and systematic colonization of the CHT. This was carried out by two means: introducing a policy of transmigration involving mass settlement of Bengalis from the plains to the CHT; and adopting a policy of state acquisition of the lands of indigenous people. The policy of mass transmigration was conceived in 1978–1979, without public disclosure and without discussion with CHT leaders. The government implemented the policy by circulating secret memoranda and using its civil administration and military. Between 1979 and 1985, 400,000 Bengalis from the plains were settled in the CHT in three phases using government-financed transportation and transit accommodation. They were provided with land, cattle, cash, food rations, building materials, and military protection. Each settler family of the first phase of transmigration was promised five acres of land; each family of the second phase was promised 2.5 acres of plain land, or 4 acres of plain and bumpy mixed land, or 5 acres of hilly land; the third phase had similar incentives.20 Since 1979 the state has been distributing free food rations, and in 2006 it was reported that the government gave 38,000 metric tons of free food rations every year to the settlers.21 In contrast, a 2009 UNDP survey shows that indigenous people suffer widespread food poverty with 65 percent categorized as ‘‘absolute poor’’ and 44 percent as ‘‘hardcore poor.22 Lack of usable land in the CHT has meant that it has been impossible to allocate the promised amount of land to such a large number of settlers. The scarcity of usable land in the hilly terrain of the CHT and its limited carrying capacity was formally assessed by the British as early as 1918, when the predominantly indigenous population of the CHT was only about 200,000. A British government-commissioned report by F. D. Ascoli that year stated, ‘‘It is not possible to estimate the area still available for plough cultivation, but it is certain that it alone would not be sufficient to support the mass of the jumia [Jumma] population.’’23 At that time, the British colonial rulers felt it was necessary to restrict the migration of people from the plains to protect the agro-jum-forestry based economy of the CHT. The shortage of usable land in the CHT was exacerbated in the early 1960s when the Kaptai hydroelectric dam created the Kaptai Lake. The lake displaced 100,000 Jummas, nearly one-third of the CHT population,24 mostly Chakmas, submerging numerous homes, villages, and towns,

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including the Chakma Raja’s palace complex. The lake also inundated 54,000 acres of plow land, which was 40 percent of the CHT’s best agricultural land, and seventy square miles of reserve forest.25 As compensation, the government could only return the equivalent of one-third of the lost land. In the absence of cultivable land, over 40,000 displaced Jummas were forced to emigrate to India, where many still remain ‘‘stateless persons.’’ Because all available land in the CHT suitable for habitation and cultivation had been allocated by the end of the 1960s,26 there was no land suitable for plow agriculture available when the Bengali transmigrants started arriving in 1979. To settle the 400,000 transmigrants in the already land-scarce CHT, one ‘‘solution’’ involved appropriation of 20,000 acres of land from the southern portion of the Kassalong reserve forest.27 Another more violent ‘‘solution’’ involved ‘‘the government . . . ejecting the hill people from their traditional lands.’’28 This resulted in an escalation of retaliation attacks on settlers and the military by the Shanti Bahini. Reprisal attacks by the Bangladesh military on the Shanti Bahini, and indiscriminate attacks by the military and other security personnel on Jumma civilians, often used the transmigrants as human shields. The government’s acquisition of indigenous peoples’ common29 and private lands has been achieved by means that were often illegal, or by amending existing laws and enacting new laws without public discussion. Land acquisition has been facilitated through three state agencies: the Forest Department; military and paramilitary forces; and civil administration. Even though a quarter of the land in the CHT had since 1883 been classified ‘‘reserve forests,’’ from the 1980s the Forest Department actively attempted to seize more lands belonging to indigenous peoples in the name of creating additional ‘‘reserve forests.’’ By 2010, a total of 140,000 acres had been gazetted as ‘‘reserve forests’’ through notification.30 Rather than protect the forests, large parts of the existing ‘‘reserve forests’’ are being denuded by corrupt Forest Department officers and their powerful cronies.31 From the 1970s, sections of the military and paramilitary began acquiring the common and private land of indigenous peoples to expand their establishments. The Bangladesh army currently occupies 500 acres at its Ruma barracks and is attempting to occupy a further 9,560 acres.32 The Bangladesh air force is attempting to acquire thousands of acres in Bandarban. In June 2010, the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) initiated acquisition of more land for a new battalion headquarters at Ruma,33 potentially

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making large numbers of Jummas homeless. On May 3, 2011, as protest against possible eviction from their ancestral homes and lands, hundreds of Jummas marched along the tortuous 37km road from Ruma to Bandarban, the major town of the district.34 Since 1979, the civil administration of the CHT, through the deputy commissioners’ offices, has been leasing out lands on a long-term basis for the establishment of ‘‘industrial plants’’ and commercial plantations, including rubber and horticulture. The leased lands are mostly the common lands of the indigenous peoples from within the ‘‘unclassified forest,’’ traditionally used for jum agriculture, grazing, herding, hunting, gathering, and forest regeneration. The lands have mostly been leased to non-CHT residents who are high-ranking Bengali elites, including civil servants, military officials, political leaders, business entrepreneurs, professionals, and their relatives. From 1979 to 2010, over 40,000 acres were acquired by Bengali elites as plantation leases.35 These acquisitions are increasing, as many influential elites incrementally grab the land bordering their leased property.36 Ultimately, in implementing the policy of mass transmigration and land acquisition under military occupation, the state’s actions (and inactions) served to encourage transmigrants to violently take over lands belonging to the Jummas, evicting hundreds from their homes, using sexual violence against indigenous women,37 and committing massacres (examples of ‘‘creeping genocide’’).38 The outcome of the transmigration program is that. from the mid to late 1980s, 70,000 Jummas were forced to flee their homes to take shelter in India, a conservative estimate of 300,000 Jummas became internally displaced persons (IDPs),39 and the number of deaths remains unknown. The implementation of the policy, which increased the nonindigenous Bengali population by 150 percent between 1974 and 1991,40 has resulted in a drastic change in the demography of the CHT. The 1991 census disclosed that the Bengali population had reached nearly 50 percent of the population of the CHT.41 The 2011 census avoided providing separate figures for Bengalis and indigenous peoples, perhaps to intentionally conceal the demographic hegemony of Bengalis in the CHT. Contestation between Bengali settlers and Jummas over land, and the biased intervention of the occupying military and paramilitary by bypassing or obtaining support from the civil administration, has turned the postaccord CHT into an endemic conflict zone.42 The ongoing CHT conflict,

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primarily grounded in attempts to grab indigenous people’s land, is evident in mass attacks that have occurred in the post-accord CHT. These include violent incidents in Baghaihat (Sajek) on February 19–20, 2010, and Guimara (Ramgarh) on April 21, 2011, which were documented by many national and international news media and human rights organizations.43 Many organizations also asked the government to conduct impartial inquiries into the incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice. But as with previous attacks against Jummas, the government has not taken any steps toward an impartial inquiry into the recent incidents. Although the government transmigration program formally stopped in 1985, there has been continuing support from the civil administration for self-motivated Bengali migration to the CHT, including distribution of land under various names or projects.44 The government silence about the violent land-grabbing incidents during the pre- and post-Accord period, including consistent maintenance of a ‘‘culture of impunity’’ toward the alleged criminal settlers and security personnel, suggests covert continuation of the transmigration policy of 1979–1985. Political analyst Amena Mohsin points out that after 1975, ‘‘though Bengali nationalism became more territorial, it didn’t become less linguistic or cultural; rather religion added a new element to our nationalism.’’45 The 1975 inclusion by the state of the Islamic ideals soon materialized in the country’s legal system. By proclamation of order no. 1, 1977, the constitution incorporated ‘‘bismillah-ar-rahamn-ar-rahim’’ (In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful) at the top of its preamble, and under the same proclamation the principle of secularism in Article 8 was replaced with ‘‘The principles of absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah, nationalism, democracy and socialism meaning economic and social justice, together with the principles derived from them . . . shall constitute the fundamental principles of state policy’’ (Article 8(1). Finally, Islam was declared the state religion of Bangladesh by the 8th Amendment of the constitution on June 7, 1988. The Islamization of the CHT is evident in the rapid increase of Islamic institutions from the 1970s. In 1961 there were 40 mosques in the CHT; the number increased to 200 in 1974 and 592 in 1981. There were only 2 madrasas (Islamic schools) in 1961; the number jumped to 20 in 1974 and 35 in 1981.46 Extrapolating from the figures of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) demonstrates that from 1982 to 2001 the number of mosques in the CHT increased over four-fold and madrasas over forty-four fold.

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Incorporating the 2001 BBS data on the three districts of the CHT shows that there were 2,297 mosques compared to 1,471 Buddhist temples, 415 Hindu temples, and 366 churches. The 2011 census provides no updated statistics.47 For the historian Marc Ferro, ‘‘Colonization is associated with the occupation of a foreign land, with its being brought under cultivation, with the settlement of colonists.’’48 But in the case of the CHT, it is not a foreign land being occupied, but a land within the decolonized state that has a different political and administrative history and different ethnic demography, languages, cultures, and religions, being colonized in the name of Bengali-Islamic nationalism. This nationalist-motivated colonization of the CHT within a decolonized Bangladesh is the result of a colonial nationbuilding project by the post-colonial nation state of Bangladesh.49

Indigenous Women and Violence Under Colonization Indigenous women of the CHT, living in a colonized enclave of decolonized Bangladesh, inhabit a different political space from their nonindigenous Bengali sisters, a political space in which they are violently targeted on the basis of ethnicity and gender. While it has been argued that there is a strong strategic use of gender-based group identity in assaulting ‘‘women as women and men as men,’’50 it has also been illustrated that all wars do not involve indiscriminate rape.51 Unlike the Bangladesh war of independence when both Bengali women and non-Bengali Urdu-speaking Bihari women were sexually abused by men allegedly from the enemy side,52 sexual abuse during and after the CHT’s armed conflict appears to solely affect indigenous women. While there have been sexual attacks on Jumma women, initially by Bengali soldiers and later also by Bengali settlers, there have not been allegations of sexual violence against Bengali women by Jumma guerrillas or Jumma men, during or after the insurgency. During the armed conflict, institutional policies and strategies of the state selectively discriminated on the basis of indigenous women’s ethnicity and gender. One example is a secret memorandum circulated to army officers in 1983 encouraging them to marry indigenous women from the CHT.53 Through this memorandum, which continues to have far-reaching implications, the state singled out indigenous women from their own (Bengali) women and likewise singled out indigenous women from indigenous men. It would seem that the stationing of Bengali army officers in the CHT

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as part of the ongoing military occupation of the CHT was not enough, the policy was also to occupy women’s bodies, to colonize women through forced marriage. The policy memorandum of 1983 resulted in a violent turn, with marriages occurring after abduction or intimidation. In one such case in the Rangamati District of the CHT, it is reported that ‘‘[an army] Captain of the Division who was posted near the village, used to frequently visit the school with some of his friends. He ordered that two or three girls of class eight and nine should parade in front of him each day so he could pick one as his bride. He liked a girl called Shikha and harassed her continuously by going to her house. Shikha was not at all interested or inclined to marry the Captain. But the Captain and his friends harassed and threatened her parents and neighbours so often that they were coerced into making Shikha agree to marry. When the marriage took place. . . . They also physically forced the villagers to attend the wedding. After their marriage it was reported that the Captain used to make Shikha wear traditional Chakma attire thus showing everybody that he was respectful to her tradition!!’’54 The involvement of a ranked military officer in the case of the abduction of Kalpana Chakma is also significant, as the incident may be seen as an outcome of the attitude encouraged by the memorandum condoning forced marriage of military officers to Jumma women. Initially, there was an effort from the military to render the abduction ‘‘an elopement.’’ Unable to provide any evidence of the elopement, the military authority changed its position. On June 18, 1996, the twenty-fourth infantry division distributed leaflets in the CHT, including from a helicopter, announcing an award of Tk 50,000 for information on the whereabouts of Kalpana. Nobel Peace laureate and founder of the Grameen Bank, Mohammad Iunus, having been appointed as an adviser to the caretaker government, inquired about the alleged abduction. The military’s chief commanding officer told Iunus that it was ‘‘a matter of heart’’ (hridayghatita),55 implying that Kalpana had eloped with her alleged abductor. Kalpana is still listed as missing and the perpetrators have not yet been brought to justice. Sexual violence against indigenous women has been instrumental in the forced relocation of Jummas from their homes and lands. It has been observed that ‘‘mass rape and sexual violence on Pahari [Jumma] women in the attacks on their villages was a key factor in making their communities leave to seek shelter elsewhere, thereby providing occasion for their lands to be taken over.’’56 Many Jummas relocated themselves to India or other

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parts of the CHT for protection, particularly for protection of female members of their families. Some Jummas were forced by the military to move to cluster villages— variously referred to by names such as joutha khamar (cooperative farms), gucchagram (cluster villages), and adarshagram (model villages)—as a part of the government’s counter-insurgency measures.57 Relocation of Jummas to cluster villages began in 1979 with the pretext of providing livelihoods and establishing the rule of law in the CHT. The actual motivation, and the real effect, appears to be to eliminate the Jumma’s traditional dispersed pattern of settlement, to restrict their mobility, and seize their land. Cluster villages were built with funds from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and people from the cluster villages were used as workers for their associated rubber plantations and horticulture. The homes and lands of Jummas relocated to cluster villages were appropriated by the military, Bengali transmigrants, or at times government departments, which then leased out the lands. Women who were forced to live in cluster villages were particularly vulnerable to sexual violence. After visiting the CHT and five of the six refugee camps in the Tripura state of India, the CHT Commission recorded many accounts of relocated women who had been raped, gang raped, abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, or forcibly married. A woman interviewed at a refugee camp who had escaped a forced marriage, told the Commission that she was abducted while walking to the fields with her sixyear-old niece. She described being imprisoned for three months and forcibly converted to Islam.58 A man in a refugee camp stated, ‘‘I was forced to live in a cluster village. We had to come here [to India] because we have a teenage daughter and we were afraid that she would be raped by the army.’’59 A refugee woman who was kidnapped from a cluster village in 1986, but escaped to a refugee camp in 1988, narrated how she was forced to marry her kidnapper and had two children by him. After escaping she returned to the cluster village, but could not find her relatives as the village had been taken over by Bengalis. The Bangladesh military are involved in the sexual violence against indigenous women. In 1989, a woman working in a rubber plantation in the CHT told the Commission that ‘‘The army raped some of the women, especially college students and women working in offices. Many girls were taken to the army camp, raped repeatedly, then released after one week.’60 The Commission summarized the situation, stating that ‘‘Rape is used systematically as a weapon against women in the CHT.’’61

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There is no complete record of the number of sexual violence cases that have occurred in the CHT or their details. Among a limited number of partial records, Ume Mong, an indigenous woman leader, estimated that from December 1971 to 1994 a total of 2,500 indigenous women were raped.62 A pre-Accord report of 1995 documented that ‘‘Over 94% of the all alleged cases of rape of Jumma women between 1991–1993 in the CHT were by ‘security forces.’ ’’ Of these, over 40 percent of the victims were alleged to be children.63 Sexual violence did not cease in the post-Accord period. Records indicate that between 2003 and 2006, 27 percent of all rape cases were committed by security personnel and the rest by Bengali settlers.64 The most recent reports show that sexual abuse of Jumma women by Bengali men remains endemic.65 The state’s indifference to violence against Jumma women is in stark contrast to the state’s condemnation of the sexual abuse of Bengali women by West Pakistani soldiers during Bangladesh’s 1971 War for Independence. Although the 1971 wartime sexual violence against women had been treated with inaction by successive Bangladesh governments, social welfare organizations, and the families of the women,66 progressive civil society continued to seek justice for the women. From the early 1970s until recently, Bangladesh governments played perhaps a duplicitous role. The state occasionally used wartime rape stories strategically to attract international attention, particularly for financial and technical support in the rebuilding of the country during and after the conflict.67 After the 1971 war, the state recognized wartime rape victims through speeches, government documents, and the press,68 awarding them the status of war-heroines, birangana. But for thirty-eight years the state took no concrete action to seek justice for them. From 1975 to 1990, during the military autocracy, public movements for justice in relation to war violence were suppressed,69 but from the early 1990s when parliamentary democracy returned to the country robust public attempts were made to gain justice.70 In 2009, as a result of nearly two decades of public outcry, and to meet its 2008 preelection commitment, the Awami League government sought assistance from the UN to provide justice to the 1971 rape victims.71 The state set up the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICTB) in March 2010,72 and the ICTB commenced its first trial in August 2011.73 By contrast, the Bangladesh government appears blind to sexual violence against Jumma women in the CHT. The tenth session of the UNPFII recommended that ‘‘the Department of Peacekeeping Operations prevent

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human rights violators and alleged human rights violators within the security forces of Bangladesh from participating in international peacekeeping activities under the auspices of the United Nations.’’74 Although eventually adopted by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in July 2011, Bangladesh vigorously objected to the recommendation,75 going as far as to state at the UNPFII and the ECOSOC that it did not have an indigenous population (even though in 1982 the Bangladesh government had reported to the UN that it did).76 This denial compounds the state’s blindness to the existence of its indigenous peoples,77 including its indigenous women. From the perspective of the Bangladesh government, indigenous women not only seem to have disappeared from consideration in relation to justice, but have ceased to exist entirely. Not only are indigenous women disadvantaged relative to nonindigenous women in Bangladesh, but in a context of perpetual conflict, indigenous women have become disadvantaged at the hands of their own indigenous men. The CHT Commission confirms the social consequences of sexual violence, noting that ‘‘Women who have been raped may be rejected by their husbands or families, or may not be able to get married. If they become pregnant they have to conceal this fact and must try to have an abortion. If a child is born, it is impossible for the woman to stay in her community as the situation is not accepted and she is ostracized. For these reasons, women who have been raped hesitate to talk about it at all, because they are scared or worried about the social stigma.’’78 In some cases concealing the rape is not even an option as it may have been committed in front of relatives, children, and fellow villagers, adding to the degradation and dehumanization experienced by the victims. Indigenous women thus suffer a double burden. They are affected by state-imposed internal colonization, military occupation, oppression, and marginalization, and as women they experience the inequality of their own indigenous society’s masculine ethos. But, as discussed below, indigenous women also serve as powerful symbols of community, domesticity, and resistance. Constructing Gendered Identity and Difference in a Colonized Culture Anthropologist and historian Willem van Schendel suggests that starting from the British period, ‘‘Bengali mores gradually came to be the standard

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against which the cultural and social life of the people of the Chittagong hills was judged’’ and the ‘‘ ‘‘Bengalization’’ of the hills set in with such force that British officials began to worry about it.’’79 This Bengali-inflected identity remained more or less stable during the Pakistani period but became unstable and began to reverse direction in the 1970s as a response to the denial of hill people’s identity and rights in the 1972 Constitution of the newly formed Bangladesh, which falsely assumed a single Bengali national identity for all. From the early 1970s, the Jumma peoples of the CHT began to redeploy their cultural traditions to forge a more united identity. This identity is based to some extent on similarities they perceive among themselves, but also to a large extent on differences they perceive between themselves and the Bengali majority. In terms of similarities, the hill peoples share social and cultural forms that are linked to a life in the forested hills, particularly the jum or swidden agriculture that is practiced on the slope of the hills. Even though jum cultivation is becoming less common due to the long and deliberate campaigns of relocation and coercion to abandon the practice, jum culture has become a potent sign of unity. The differences the indigenous hill peoples perceive between themselves and the Bengali majority are manifold: the hill peoples practice shifting jum agriculture, and traditionally did not practice settled plains agriculture of the Bengalis; while the CHT indigenous inhabitants do not share a single culture, their culture is not Bengali; while the CHT indigenous inhabitants do not share a single language, their first language is not Bengali;80 and while the hill peoples do not share a single common religion, they are not followers of Islam. As a result of this shared bond of difference, the eleven ethnically, culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse indigenous peoples now collectively identify themselves as the Jumma people.81 The recently adopted Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Bill of 2011, again fails to give constitutional recognition to the CHT peoples’ separate identity, their rights, or the legitimacy of the CHT Accord. It restates that the national identity of the people of Bangladesh is Bengali. The amendment refuses the adibasi (indigenous) identity of the CHT peoples and many other adibasi communities on the plains.82 It uses a number of derogatory terms to indicate that the country’s indigenous peoples are either upa-jati (literally meaning a ‘‘sub-nation,’’ itself a misnomer for the word ‘‘tribal’’ in Bangla),83 khudra jatisvattva (small races/nations/peoples), khudra sampradai (small communities), or khudra nrigoshthi (small ethnic

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groups/sects),84 all of which are rejected by the indigenous peoples of Bangladesh. The 2011 constitutional amendment also maintains Bengali as the state language without protection for other non-Bengali languages.85 While the CHT has had a long experience of arbitrary bans on political, cultural, economic, and human rights activities, everyday traditional architecture, dress, and weaving inconspicuously worked to maintain a collective indigenous Jumma identity. In the decades after the 1970s these previously uncelebrated aspects of everyday life began to be deliberately deployed as signs of indigenous identity. The ordinary domestic image of a ‘‘platform house’’ on timber and bamboo stilts, located either on top of a hill or on the slope of a hill, came to serve as a symbol of collective identity of the CHT people.86 Although the traditional ‘‘platform houses’’ of the eleven indigenous groups are different to each other in their orientation, size, type, height of platform, and spatial layout, they nevertheless constitute a ‘‘family’’ of platform house typologies that remain immediately recognizable and significantly different to the traditional Bengali house, which sits on a raised earthen plateau in the plains. The platform house, although increasingly rare, is a particularly appropriate signifier of the shared indigenous identity of the hill people: all groups have some form of the platform house; its layout embodies the lifeworld of the traditional jum cultivator which is very different to the plainland Bengali life-world; it marks a particular relation to the land which is treated as a shared resource rather than the subject of individual ownership; and it is built from resources that are harvested from the forest and are unobtainable in other environments. It is thus a signifier of shared dependence on the forest and marks a history of cultural oppression that was particularly directed against jum cultivation practices.87 The backstrap loom, like the platform house, has also become a signifier of the shared indigenous identity of the hill people: all groups use the loom and its products; while there are differences in the weaving patterns and dress styles within the eleven indigenous groups, the backstrap-loomproduced textiles of the CHT are differentiable from both the products of the frame loom and mass-produced machine-made fabrics; as a living tradition, the backstrap loom embodies the life-world of the traditional jum cultivator where the lightness of the loom is ‘‘most compatible to their mode of production—shifting cultivation’’;88 and the backstrap loom has a close connection with the land as resources like cotton, natural colouring

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ingredients, and the materials for the loom apparatus89 (bamboo, timber, rope, and leather) are harvested from the jum and forest, and are rarely available in other environments. The backstrap loom is thus a signifier of shared dependence on the forest and jum cultivation practices. The English term ‘‘backstrap loom’’ comes from its form: while the top bar of the loom is attached with a fixed object, the bottom bar is attached to the weaver by means of a strap (made of the leather of the water buffalo) placed around the back of the waist. Unlike the traditional frame loom found in the plains of Bangladesh, which is used extensively by both genders, the backstrap loom is predominantly a craft of indigenous women and traditionally regarded as inappropriate for men. While the traditional weaving of the CHT women’s backstrap loom is a relatively marginalized craft in production and economic return compared to mass-produced machine or frame loom imitations of handcrafted indigenous textiles, Jumma women practice it not only to keep the skill alive by passing it down from generation to generation, but to signify ‘‘cultural resistance.’’90 In the 1970s there was a revival among indigenous urban women, particularly Chakma and Tripura cultural activists, of wearing traditional dress and ornaments, and away from the previously dominant culture of wearing either the Bengali shari91 or the Pakistani/Indian shalwar-kamiz. Wearing traditional dress and ornaments became not simply a fashion statement, but a statement of cultural identity. The maintenance of such practices helps us to understand why the appearance in 2005 of an indigenous motion picture that drew upon the folk legends of the CHT was not an aberration. Rather, it was the outcome of a reterritorialization of indigenous people’s own traditional culture that had been occurring as a mode of resistance to Bangladesh’s colonization of the CHT. Indigenous women’s traditions played a key role in this resurgence of indigenous culture, as did the signification of indigenous women themselves. The reterritorialization of indigenous people’s traditional cultural forms was reinforced in literature, particularly in poetry and songs. New cultural groups that emerged in the 1970s included Girisur Shilpi Goshthi (‘‘Music of the mountain cultural group’’); Jumia Bhasha Prachar Daptar (‘‘Organization of dissemination of Jumia languages’’); and Murolya Sahitya O Sanskritik Goshthi (‘‘Hill literature and cultural group’’). The growing trend toward publishing work in indigenous languages using Bangla script (in the absence of local orthographies) was often facilitated by small low-budget

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newsprint magazines released for the traditional April new year festival in the CHT. The magazines mostly included poems, but also contained songs, short stories, articles, plays, and folklore. They remain the major repository of cultural literature in the print media of the CHT. The Girisur Shilpi Goshthi’s productions and reproductions included modern songs in diverse indigenous languages,92 Bengali songs about the CHT,93 and dances like the jum dance of the Chakmas, the sangrai (new year) dance of the Marmas, the goraiya dance of the Tripuras, and the bamboo dance known as the cherukan to Lushais and Pankhuas, and the rokha to Bawms. There were also many cultural groups arising in townships and villages, often influenced by the Girisur Shilpi Goshthi, that practiced and performed indigenous songs, music, and dances. These cultural groups renewed the use of traditional musical instruments such as different types of flute, drum, khengarang (mouth organ), singa (horn), duduk, along with the harmonium, tabla, guitar, and mandolin. However, the activities of the Girisur Shilpi Goshthi and others were disrupted and thwarted by the Bangladesh government. By the late 1970s a campaign of terror and intimidation resulted in many cultural activists being forced to leave the CHT, go underground, or flee the country. In the 1980s and 1990s arbitrary bans were imposed on CHT magazines such as Radar, one of a number of periodicals published in Bengali by CHT youth, and there were well-published incidents of many ordinary citizens facing interrogation, court action, and jail for selling or simply possessing such magazines.94 A Chakma poem by Promode Bikash Karbari titled ‘‘Jummobi Parani Mar’’ (‘‘Jummobi, My Darling’’) is one of the most cherished cultural works of the 1970s. The poem was first published in Burgee (the Chakma name of a legendary bird once common in the forests of the CHT, now believed to be extinct), as the second publication of the Jumia Bhasha Prachar Daptar in 1973,95 under the author’s pen-name Phelazeiye.96 The poem captures the spirit of the time, highlighting the reterritorializing of gender in the frame of Jumma nationalism. Suhrid Chakma, a well-known CHT poet and literary critic, and Nandalal Sharma, a Bengali researcher on CHT literature, referred to the poem as ‘‘a milestone of modern Chakma poetry.’’97 Jummobi is the Chakma term for a maiden in the jum. The beauty and magic in the rhyme, stanzas, and words of the poem entice readers with the poet’s longing for a long-lost jum-based culture. The poet, Kabari, uses the

Figure 5.1. RADAR, Cover of Radar (Victory Day issue, December 16, 1991) by the artist ‘‘Rasad.’’ The caption of the cartoon reads: ‘‘Tathakathita Counter Insurgency: Parbatya Janaganer Durbhog (So-called Counter Insurgency: Suffering of the Hill Peoples).’’

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character of Jummobi to depict the CHT’s sociopolitico-cultural situation, articulating traditional images, codes, and symbols, and appropriating the role of gender to the demands of the time through poetic imagination. Karbari describes sites of domestic architecture and domesticity, but also reminds the reader of a past rich in the triumphs and tragedies of historical and legendry protagonists. Here is the English translation of the poem:98 Jummobi, My Darling I didn’t know That in your eyes There’s still a sea of tears So much yet to shed. . . . I didn’t know How you’ve lost Bodasogi’s amorous eyes, Her smiles so alluring, her look so charming, So tender, so bewitching . . . O, tell me, Jummobi, my darling, How you’ve changed so gradually, In dress and look, in talk and style, Exactly like a maiden Bengalee-fashioned? . . . O, my heart, my Champak beauty! Can you tell me How, when, and where you and I Have been lost, parted for such a long, long time? . . . Wandering over hills and dales, Over rivers and streams, Roaming about far and near, You’ve come back to me after a long long time, O, tell me, Jummobi, my darling, Where have you been for such a long, long time? . . . You’re back to me after a long time . . . Can you remember—

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Those days of yours and mine, The song and laughter, the talk and flirtation, The mirth and merriment of our happy days of yore? Perhaps, the sun was diving then, The crickets droning on . . . Perhaps, the burgees were on the wing Over the far off blue mountains . . . Perhaps, you were coming along the jum-path On the ridge all alone at dusk . . . Perhaps then I asked you, ‘‘What are you carrying, my darling, In the kallong at your back?’’ Then you blushed in shame, your head lowered . . . You’ve come back to me after a long time . . . Can you remember— The moonlit night on the eejore of the jum-house? The overflowing sounds of flutes, singas and flat duduks? The music of khengarongs, so endearing, so moving? Can you remember— The kabarok jum on the top of the mountains? Perhaps, then you were waiting for the dear one (me . . . ), Perhaps your eyes were sleepless, Looking over the path ahead . . . Can you remember The kabarok jum on the top of the mountains? . . . No, no, no, We’ve nothing now; Now those days are no more . . . No more are those romance, mirth and merriment. What’s use thinking of those days of romance, Mirth and merriment? . . .

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No, no, no, We’ve nothing now Now we’ve no Radhamon, So, we’ve no Dhanpudi, Only you and I have been parted for so long. What’s the use thinking of those days of romance, Mirth and merriment? So, I tell you, Don’t cry anymore like Tannyabi, the young girl; Don’t smile the depressed smile of Sandobi . . . So, I tell you, Be smart and tuck your pinon tight, that’s so new, so fine a jhigaphool pattern, And put on your red, red lovely khadi decently. And so, I tell you, You’ll be my Dhanpudi, And I’ll be your Radhamon . . . Then after the night has passed, When the day breaks, You’ll see the sun rising, . . . The white cotton flowers all over the jum dancing . . . Then it’ll seem to you The songs and laughter, the talk and flirtatiousness, The mirth and merriment of our happy days of yore Have come back; And then, the world will seem to you still smiling . . . The prelude of the poem focuses on the tearful eyes of the poet’s darling Jummobi. It laments how Bengali mores have come to be the standard for measuring Jummobi, leading her to forget her own uniqueness—the modest beauty of a sensibly clothed (‘‘tuck your pinon tight’’ and ‘‘put on your . . . khadi decently’’) industrious woman of the fields. The poet addresses Jummobi as the ‘‘Champak beauty,’’ reconnecting her with a forgotten past,

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the prosperous ancient legendary Chakma city named Champak Nagar. It appears that after wondering a long time and enduring the suffering arising from neglecting and forgetting her own identity, Jummobi has perhaps returned to her own, rightful self. The interlude of the poem portrays an atmospheric sunset in the deep forest where crickets/cicadas are droning, beautiful Burgees are flying toward the distant mountains, while Jummobi, at dusk, is walking the jum path along the mountain ridge carrying a work-basket called a kallong on her back. There is rejoicing in anticipation of Jummobi’s return, which marks the return of the idyllic communal life in the hills. There are memories of sloping jum field of kabarok, a delicious, fragrant rice variety grown only in abundance at the top of the mountain. There are memories of moonlit nights, listening to the flute, singa, duduk, and khengarong, on the eejore, the open bamboo deck at the front of the jum platform house. There is mourning for the absence of the legendary hero Radhamon, the brave senapati (general) of Champak Nagar, and beautiful Dhanpudi, the childhood friend, lover, and, later in life, partner of Radhamon.99 The climax of the poem, which is brazen with hope that there could be a resurrection of lost jum culture, portrays a sunrise with the jum covered in white sudophul (cotton flowers), and full of song and laughter. The poet, acknowledging the strength required for resistance, urges Jummobi not allow herself to be the victim of injustice like the tragic heroines Tannyabi100 and Sandobi,101 but to be the hardworking young woman wearing a pristine traditional pinon of jighaphul102 pattern, and a red khadi,103 who remains the faithful Dhanpudi of Radhamon. Jummobi, the protagonist in the poem, is identified here not only as a darling maiden but as the symbol of the land, the CHT itself. The poet’s depiction of the land as ‘‘partner’’ and ‘‘lover,’’ here deployed toward a new nationalism, contrasts with the usual depiction of the land in Bengali literature as ‘‘mother.’’ The poet presents regret, forgetfulness, and neglect with the metaphor of the sunset, and hope and aspiration with the sunrise over the jum. All the emotional elements in the piece are, in a way, also a reflection of the poet’s own experience, the poet’s literary journey, because this was Karbari’s first published poem in the Chakma language. This marks a general shift in the 1970s when indigenous CHT poets and writers, particularly Chakma, Marama, and Tripura, were attempting to write and publish in their own indigenous languages rather than in other hegemonic languages, particularly Bengali.104

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By the 1980s, with transmigrant arrivals to the CHT reaching invasion proportion, the perspective of indigenous cultural activists had dramatically altered. Just as the populace recognized the necessity of resisting the Bengali military and settlers by force and formed the Shanti Bahini guerrilla militia, so too literary tropes became more militant. Karbari’s later poetry reflects this more desperate mood. Where once he saw hope in the simple resurrection of a joyful, ‘‘feminine-gendered’’ jum culture, a later poem, ‘‘Arekbar Jagi Ut Bir Runu Khan’’ (‘‘Rise Once More, O Brave Runu Khan’’), presented below, calls for a ‘‘masculine-gendered’’ militarist solution. In contrast to the invocation of the legendary lovers Radhamon and Dhanpudi in his earlier poem, this poem invokes the power of the famous hero, General Runu Khan. Historically, General Khan was the general of two successive Chakma kings, Raja Sherdoulat Khan and Raja Jan Bux Khan, who led the eighteenth-century ‘‘Chakma Resistance’’ against the British.105 Jummobi, the beautiful but hardworking female figure of the land called forth in the first poem, has been replaced by an evocation to release the wrath of Khan on the ‘‘swine’’ and ‘‘monkeys’’ invading the hills. Only with the success of this masculine adventure, it seems, will the sunrise again reveal the beauty of the jum fields. Rise Once More, O Brave Runu Khan Rise up, Jumma hero, O brave Runu Khan! Look around and see The blue hill. . . . The seven-colored dream of yours! Again you see The cotton, paddy, teel . . . The harvest of blood, sweat and toil Of your simple industrious Hill Jummas Who once fought . . . .. Are plundered, grasped, snatched away, By the swine from the very nearby plains, And the monkeys from the far, far away lands. . . . . . . So, don’t sleep any more, Don’t make any delay,

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O, Runu Khan, The saviour of the Jummas. . . . . Breaking up your sleep of one hundred years, Rise up Once more from your sleep. . . . Swearing by fire, Absorbing the spirit of the sun, Taking the strength of thunder, O Runu Khan, the Jummas’ pride, The Jumma hero, Rise once, once more In every house Of this Jummaland! Come once more, String your great bow, Twanged with poisoned arrows . . . .. And let all the beasts cunning and shameless Die, cripple and flee! Come once more, Kindle the red fire of yours, And let the cursed beasts die, cripple and flee . . . . . . And let red land be redder . . . .. And then, Let ever-fresh yellow sunshine Come down On this blue mountain land Of your dream . . . . . . .106 The poem appears to recognize that the earlier hope of returning to a traditional jum-based culture has become naively romantic. In a sense, the twinning of the rape of the land and the sexual violence against women exposes the vulnerability of both the land and the culture, engendering a militant masculine response. To return to the tranquility of traditional life, the

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invader must first be killed or repelled. It is questionable, however, whether this masculine, militarist orientation actually perpetuates the culture of violence, sharpening the gender divisions that appeared to be less rigid in the more communal view of the earlier poem, leaving women again in the uncelebrated role of maintaining (domestic) cultural traditions.

chapter six

Death and Life Under Occupation: Space, Violence, and Memory in Kashmir Mohamad Junaid

There is an infinite spectrum of human reactions to forms of domination. Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy. To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system. —Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Two Moments of Mass Protest in Kashmir; Space as a Modality of Suppression In June 2008 protests broke out in Kashmir against a state government order to allot forty hectares of forestland to a semi-governmental body,1 with the intention of creating permanent camping facilities for Hindu pilgrims. The protests started in the old localities of downtown Srinagar where the lanes are narrow and labyrinthine, and thus never fully under the control of the Indian security agencies. In spite of the fact that state police and the paramilitary forces cracked down and shot dead a number of protestors, the protests spread rapidly across Kashmir. It was the spontaneity of the protests that made their proliferation possible. The state government soon yielded and partially revoked the order,2 as one of the coalition partners in

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the government threatened to withdraw support. Moreover, for the state government, the multiple political and legal complexities involved in the case, a lack of transparency, and the high risk of environmental damage as the result of the land transfer became hard to deny.3 Despite some of the obvious questions surrounding the issue, the mainstream Indian media labelled the protests ‘‘communal’’ and ‘‘Islamic fundamentalist-driven.’’4 In opposition to the state government’s revocation of the order, Hindu nationalist groups in India began an agitation, which culminated in the blocking of essential supplies to Kashmir through the only available land route, the national highway. This action, in turn, prompted Kashmiri proindependence groups5 to seek to open the alternative route for supplies via Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A protest march was called to open the road that once connected Srinagar and Muzaffarabad—the capitals of two Kashmirs—which since 1947 has been closed to Kashmiris as the highly militarized ceasefire line between Indian and Pakistan, portentously called the ‘‘Line of Control’’ (LoC), cuts through it. The march, full of risks, was symbolic for its organizers who well understood that the Indian government would prevent them from reaching the LoC. But it would nevertheless draw international attention, people argued, to the severe hardships caused by the economic blockade that was then about to enter its third week. They hoped to underscore how the Indian government, by cutting off all other possible avenues for trade and commerce other than with the Indian mainland, had made the Kashmiri economy vulnerable and dependent. The rally proved fatal. The government forces fired into the marchers in north Kashmir leading to deaths of more than a dozen, including a prominent profreedom leader, and leaving hundreds injured. After the events near the LoC, the nature of protests changed drastically in Kashmir. The land transfer controversy faded into the background while massive protest rallies were held across Kashmir in favor of independence from India. Watching with panic the enormous participation and the audacity of protestors (which, if rumors are to be believed, exceeded the expectations of even the pro-independence activists),6 the government, now directly under a New Delhi-appointed governor,7 imposed harsh curfews across Kashmir. These curfews lasted, with brief intermittent breaks, until November of that year. During this time no movement was permitted. Most major and small towns were sealed off and blockaded. Paramilitary patrols picked up young men and teenagers on the streets, beat them up, and left them maimed. They broke into houses, shattered windowpanes, harassed men, and molested

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women. No cases were registered. No deaths were investigated. No warrants were produced before making arrests. No assessments for compensation were made for the properties damaged. Given their long experience with state violence, Kashmiris expected no such gestures either. State violence was not new in Kashmir. In late 1989, when the popular uprising broke out against the Indian rule, similar methods of violent suppression were employed. The only difference between these two events (1990 and 2008) is that in the winter of 1989–1990 the state institutions in Kashmir, jolted by spontaneous insurrection, almost crumbled and were rendered ineffective, even if only for a short period.8 Kashmiri officers of the state police, for instance, went on strike. Those few among them who had been armed were violently disarmed by the central (Indian) forces. Some of the main internal intelligence agencies that the Indian government had been relying on to suppress dissent, like the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and other local intelligence gathering networks, became dysfunctional because of the migration of their largely Hindu functionaries outside of Kashmir. The military, already concentrated in Kashmir, was still confined to their barracks. It took some years before India could reestablish full dominance over Kashmir. In 2008, by contrast, control against the people’s movement was fairly quickly regained. Given the network of occupied spaces in urban and rural regions, Indian soldiers could relatively easily quarantine public spaces. The usual places of gathering were isolated, and the pro-freedom leaders were incarcerated or put under house arrest. In the summer of 2010, as protests gained momentum once again, the major objects of the protestors’ ire became the paramilitary bunkers and police posts, which the protestors had to dismantle amid massive state violence to reclaim even a space for protest.

Military Occupation: Spatial Strategies, Violent Practices I point to the two moments in the recent history of Kashmiri resistance, 1990 and 2008 (the protests of 2010, though more intense than ever, were a continuation of the kind of protests that began in 2008), separated by almost two decades, to argue that Indian rule in Kashmir qualitatively transformed during this period from a combination of largely nonmilitary processes before 1990—which involved a manipulation of elections to place selected loyalists in power, arresting political opponents, and creating a small wealthy clique with interests wedded to the Indian control over

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Kashmir—to a more militarized process after 1990, primarily aimed at controlling space and enforcing this control through violence. I refer to this post-1990 process as an instance of military occupation, and define it provisionally as an ensemble of spatial strategies and violent practices that the occupier state employs to dominate physical space in a region where its rule lacks, or has lost, popular legitimacy and thus faces an imminent challenge of being popularly supplanted. This mode of thinking about military occupation necessitates certain disclaimers. My brief ‘‘definition’’ of military occupation, instead of claiming to definitively represent the ‘‘essence’’ of occupation, or capturing within its semantic limits the varied and contradictory practices and discourses that occupation produces (and is a product of), must be seen only as a point of departure for one way of thinking about occupation. I propose neither to define occupation in general as being generated out of any single underlying organizing principle, nor to seek an overarching framework within which different ‘‘cases’’ (of military occupation) might find an explanation, but to understand what occupation has meant in Kashmir—a theory specific to the Kashmir situation,9 which may (or may not) find resonance elsewhere. By ‘‘resonance’’ I mean not applicability—the ability to use a system of ideas to explain varied phenomena—but the possibility of evoking images, memories, and emotions in other places, for instance, when stories from elsewhere touch us deeply, for others’ stories may also be suggestive of the ones we live. They might help us capture the ‘‘emergent’’ in that fleeting moment (instant fugitif), and illuminate the translucent threads that tie the human condition in one place to the human condition elsewhere. It would be inadequate just to describe what military occupation has meant in Kashmir, what it has done, and how it has been experienced. One needs the perceptual modality of the visual to remain alert while describing Occupation—because the Occupation makes itself invisible despite its visible effects everywhere; I thus aim to provoke seeing in the description the logic of the military occupation in Kashmir. By ‘‘logic’’ I don’t mean to imply the reasons or rationale behind the occupation (finding reasons to justify a pointless occupation might be hard, perhaps, even for the occupiers), but rather its general features that have marked its crushing presence all over Kashmir. My effort, then, is not to search for any underlying principles of military occupation (as there are none), but to make visible its elements, like the physical reorganization of space under it, its uses of violence,

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the discursive regime of ‘‘order and security’’ and its practical entailments, the emergency laws and ordinances on which it locates its exceptionalism, its tactics and strategies of its functionaries, its psychological-operations (expecting to manipulate ‘‘native psyche’’), and propaganda10 —all of which work systematically to produce violent spatial control that constitutes the occupation in Kashmir. A tautology lies at the heart of occupation: occupation can be nothing but occupation. One can begin speaking of this tautology by exploring the gaps that haunt the discourse the military occupation weaves around itself and the practices that form its actual life. The coercive maintenance of spatial control over the occupied is not just the means toward an end, like forcing the ‘‘integration’’ of different peoples under the sign of one ‘‘Indian’’ nation as its apologists claim, but the end in itself. The daily reminder that military occupation engenders among the occupied of their difference from the occupiers, is a difference shot through with acute inequalities of power, and starkly contradicts integrationist iterations. Spatial control, then, seeks no other end than its own perpetuation. It is in a state of permanent temporariness: the logic occupation presents to continue its operations is generated by those same operations, and the means/end dichotomy reproduces itself into an endless chain. Occupation has no logical end, or closure, in its sight. Occupation, in fact, doesn’t see itself as occupation. It falls victim to its own logic, like Ouroboros the dragon that keeps eating its own tail. The tautology that stalks its reason inscribes this two-facedness at its core. In Kashmir, the Indian state’s rule is ostensibly premised on the state being the guarantor of democracy. Yet democracy cannot be extended, and is indefinitely delayed. Democracy, even if its visage appears on the scene, is to be managed to the degree where it is drained of its substance and this counterfeit version turned into an empty signifier; or, as Baudrillard describing the ‘‘GARAP’’ sign on bare walls of the city denuded of all its signs calls it, a ‘‘pure signifier,’’ which is a signifier without a signified, signifying only itself and consumed as a sign11—that is consuming its meaning through its own self-reifying discourse. This ‘‘democracy’’ is then turned into a discursive weapon to be deployed against the occupied. An old Kashmiri man, who I talked to after the Assembly elections of December 2008, remarked wryly about his years of experience with elections: Democracy is reduced to elections, elections to the barren act of voting, and the meaning of voting is reduced, by the Indian leaders

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and the media, to ‘‘turnout percentages,’’ which are then bandied about internationally as public support for Indian rule in Kashmir. If they are so sure, why don’t they conduct a referendum? The self-blinding logic of occupation masks its contradictions from its proponents, who often state that the ‘‘benefit’’ for Kashmir in staying part of India is democracy,12 while elections (if democracy is reducible to that) conducted under curfews and high military control present no logical challenge to that notion of ‘‘benefit.’’ Nonetheless, similar objective contradictions, as we will see, bedevil claims of ‘‘security,’’ ‘‘order,’’ and ‘‘development’’—discourses upon which the Indian occupation Kashmir basis its legitimacy. For the occupier, then, there is no escape from occupation. The everyday management of occupation is a management of its contradictions. The agents of occupation, it must be said, are not passive functionaries enacting the cyclical drama of occupation. Occupation allows them a remarkable degree of freedom of action. Here, one must read ‘‘action’’ as ability (even fulfilling a desire) to use violence, and ‘‘freedom’’ as immunity socially adorned, in a perverse manner, with medals, rewards, and incentives for violent action. These agents’ dispositions13 lie behind the violent practices that drive occupation, but these agents also attempt to cover up the occupation’s violent tracks. Government officials and security agents come up with ingenious schemes to convince Kashmiris (and themselves) that Indian rule is benign, and not an occupation. Often army officials declare they will try new methods to ‘‘win the hearts and minds’’14 of Kashmiris, and sometimes cloyingly describe themselves and Kashmiri civilians (a few, not all) as ‘‘partners in peace.’’ Outside a major military cantonment in Srinagar, the army put up a large sign-board with a picture of an Indian soldier standing straight, pouring water from high into the waiting palms of an old Kashmiri man, who has bent forward to drink. Across the picture, in garish color, is a message that read in Urdu: jawan aur awam, aman hai muqam (‘‘soldier and civilians, peace is the destination’’). The image of an old Kashmiri man, often used to construct a benign image of occupation, sharply contrasts with that of younger Kashmiris, who are often vilified as ‘‘agitational terrorists,’’ drug addicts, or paid stone-pelters. In these schemes the government and military are even successful, but only until occupation lets out its next whimsical bout of violence, when all the masks come off. In one counterinsurgent paramilitary camp in Anantnag, I remember a statement painted

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garishly across the entrance of the main building, in the colors of the Indian flag: ‘‘Get them by their balls, hearts and minds will follow.’’ The Three Faces of ‘‘Democracy’’ Under Occupation I want to reflect farther on the question of ‘‘democracy’’ and its relationship to occupation. The question warrants a digression, but it is deeply connected to issues that this essay seeks to raise. The Indian occupation of Kashmir, as a progressively intensifying form of spatial dominance, is unmistakably illustrated by the way elections have been held in Kashmir since 1996. In the early 1990s it took India six years before it could hold an election after the previous government had fallen. Most people, despite severe state coercion, kept away from the polls. Although elections in 1996 were held in multiple phases, the infrastructure of military occupation didn’t have the capacity to hold large swathes of territory effectively. In contrast, the elections to the state assembly in 2008 created deep perplexity among pro-freedom Kashmiri activists. In contrast to shutdowns (and protest rallies—when the government isn’t successful in cracking down on them) that Kashmiri activists employ to demonstrate the popularity of the pro-independence movement, the Indian government uses elections as a showpiece of its legitimacy in the region. Between June and December 2008, the Kashmiri political scene shifted swiftly, at least on the surface, from months of long, excruciating curfews, which had been preceded by intensely popular pro-independence protests, to an election. The reason such a shift was possible, as I will later illustrate, was due to the fact that the infrastructure of militarization effectively controlled and dominated a majority of the populated areas of Kashmir. In spaces, like downtown Srinagar, or densely populated neighborhoods of other major towns, where occupation hasn’t been able to make such successful inroads, the voting was minimal. These regions with minimal voting have for long been spaces of resistance, and are mostly working class neighborhoods that are hit the most in terms of human and economic losses every time mass protests take place. More fundamental questions about democracy and occupation emerge, though. In so far as occupation is territorial control without popular legitimacy it obviously runs fundamentally counter to democratic political values. Occupation is, after all, based on the denial of the right to selfdetermination.15 What is intriguing, in my view, is how occupation—

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objectively a violent undemocratic phenomenon—is made morally acceptable among the citizens of the occupying countries that are purportedly democratic? Walter Benjamin, reflecting on the nature of police in the modern age, saw the relationship between violence and democratic regimes quite perceptively. Describing the formless power (‘‘nowhere tangible, allpervasive, ghostly presence’’) of police ‘‘in the life of civilized states,’’ Benjamin argued: And though the police may, in particulars, everywhere appear the same, it cannot finally be denied that their spirit is less devastating where they represent, in absolute monarchy, the power of the ruler in which legislative and executive supremacy are united, than in democracies where their existence, elevated by no such relation, bears witness to the greatest conceivable degeneration of violence.16 Can one say that the (undemocratic) occupation of Kashmir expresses the democratic will of the people of India? That would be impossible to determine, yet not too far-fetched an assumption. (Similar questions are raised by occupations in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, or Palestine, all of which remain occupied under institutionally democratic states). It is the elusive, amorphous will that Benjamin speaks of behind occupation by democratic states that makes these occupations both degenerate and obscure, while simultaneously allowing occupying states to exploit their self-cultured democratic image to mystify occupation even further. If there are, therefore, three faces of democracy in the context of occupation: democracy as an institutionalized process in the occupier state, the undemocratic nature of rule in the occupied regions, and the floating image of democracy (democracy as the ‘‘pure sign’’) as it hovers, without touching ground, in occupied regions, then how do these three faces reconcile with each other? How much does the mask of democracy, the third face, have to stretch to cover the immense ethical gap between the first two faces? Does this question again reduce itself ultimately to the function of democracy as sign—a sign that accrues symbolic capital of its own, without reference to democracy’s substance, within the present socio-historical formation? If so, what are the uses ‘‘democracy’’ is put to in the context of occupation by states with a recognized democratic image? That India is a ‘‘democratic’’ state not only lets it escape international (Western) censure for its conduct in Kashmir, but also creates among its

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own citizens an image of Kashmiri demands as principally undemocratic. ‘‘Democracy’’ is made to serve territorial nationalism, a discourse within which occupation, as an ongoing war on the frontiers of the state, plays the role of a kind of nationalistic glue that artificially binds the nation together. There is an enormous body of academic and nonacademic literature on Kashmir that invokes the Balkanization of India as a likely scenario if Kashmir were to ‘‘separate’’ from India.17 Indeed these mischievously constructed alarmist scenarios find their way into the mainstream discourse in India about Kashmir. Kashmir then, as an issue that is made to appear as the prime concern for India’s ‘‘national unity,’’ can be used to paper over the unfulfilled needs and demands of postcolonial India’s own disempowered people. In the din of the nationalist sentiments that Kashmir evokes within India, voices against state violence can be suppressed by designating them ‘‘seditious.’’ All possible means: nationalistic polemic, casuistic reasons of internal and external security, and mytho-historical narratives, and so on are then marshaled to justify occupation. Occupation is thus a double-edged sword: even as it inflicts direct violence on the occupied, it helps perpetuate structural violence within the occupiers’ own societies. As mentioned before, the discourse around ‘‘democracy’’ has been used to produce a false contrast between democracy and the Kashmiri movement for independence. It is a dichotomy in which the latter is cast as undemocratic compared to the Indian rule, which depicts itself as democratic because it allows conduct of elections.18 Keeping aside the question of whether regular mass demonstrations actually demonstrate the popular will of Kashmiris or not, what does it really mean to have elections under military occupation?

Elections Under Occupation: A Theater of the Absurd I must point here to the absurdity of elections under occupation in Kashmir. After the 2008 summer protests and the five-month harsh clampdowns, people were surprised that the government wanted to hold elections. These months had exacted a heavy toll, in terms of lives lost and people injured, but also the suffering of those whose livelihoods depend on uninterrupted daily activities: hawkers, shopkeepers, daily wage earners, laborers, and so forth. To many, the announcement of elections sounded like a cruel joke. But by late November and December, the months the

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elections were to be held, an unusually large number of people decided to contest. There was even a distinct buzz of election campaigning in the air. I was in Anantnag on the day of election, and took some notes on the day’s events: It is nine in the morning. Overnight drizzle has darkened the winter bare trees. The hill, around which the town is wrapped, has disappeared in the mist. I look out onto the road in the distance to see if anyone is moving. There was an explosion a couple of hours ago. It must have been somewhere close. A few police jeeps can be seen moving fast every few minutes. I am curious to see if people are going out to vote. My parents advise me to stay indoors. We have been without electricity since last evening. I use this fact as a pretext, and announce that I am going to go out to get it fixed. I see large boot prints in our mud-spattered kucha. Soldiers must have been moving about in the night. It is the day of election in Anantnag, and the bandobast is tight.19 A few meters ahead, after a bend in the kucha, two people from the colony, father and son, are looking dejectedly at the electric transformer that supplies our neighborhood. The father turns to me and says: ‘‘Every soldier in this cinema has a heater and a boiler of his own. They get two phases. And the rest of us get one. It can’t take this load.’’ He is talking about the cinema hall in our neighborhood, which was taken over by military almost 18 years ago, and turned into a camp. It houses more than three hundred soldiers. Our colony has around thirty houses. The electricity transformer was installed way back in the 80s for these thirty houses and the cinema. Each night of the winter the fuse blows. An elderly man has come out of his house with pieces of aluminum wire in his hand. ‘‘To hell with them, and if it wasn’t, why would they be here!’’ he blurts out in Kashmiri. We laugh. A military chopper comes out of nowhere, and flies low overhead. Our laughter is drowned in the sound. Both the laughter and the chopper disappear quickly. We can see the main road from where we are standing. Soldiers manning the road stop a car. They make gestures for the driver to come out. He is apparently showing some papers. One soldier flings his door open. As soon as the driver steps out, another soldier lands

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his heavy muddy boot on the driver’s belly. ‘‘Oh, no, they have just destroyed his perfectly clean pheran. How will he wash it now in this cold winter with no electricity?’’ quips the man standing next to me, and then giggles at his own dark sense of humor. One of his own relatives was beaten to pulp two months back. Soldiers had dug a hole in his arm with a screwdriver. The driver receives a rain of blows, and soon passes out. Soldiers drag him to the side. The man standing next to me ‘‘bets’’ the driver is pretending to be unconscious. He is right. One soldier kicks him hard in the belly, and the driver is up. He limps back to his car and drives away. Two trucks packed tightly with sullen and frozen Kashmiri men move down the main road. A young man, who has joined us, says wryly: ‘‘They are bringing people from outside to vote. They don’t need our vote.’’ A cab is moving toward us slowly. We are alert, and ready to dart back into our homes. It is a Kashmiri driver, therefore safe. He stops near us. A thin vein of blood is issuing from the corner of his mouth. ‘‘These xxxx20 pulled me out of my home in the night, and asked me to ferry troops to Kadipora. They gave me a paper telling me no one would ask me questions on my way back. But at every checkpoint they stop me and hit me, even after I show them this darned paper.’’ ‘‘Hatta haz, they have no sympathy, no humanity,’’ the elderly man says, trying to console him. I returned home to write. For the last two months elections have been taking place. Kashmir’s assembly elections are happening in six phases. Anantnag is the fifth one. Srinagar will be last. Today, like in all other phases, the rest of Kashmir is under curfew. It reminds me of Dr. Aziz in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children examining the body parts of his future wife through a perforated sheet, one by one. Beyond the regular election-day restrictions, people have been barred from going out on Fridays as well. No prayers have been offered in the largest mosque in Srinagar, Jama Masjid, for the last six Fridays. People are not allowed to assemble. The main preacher at Jama Masjid, and head of Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar, is under house arrest. Thousands of pro-freedom activists have been bundled into jails. Against many of them draconian black laws have been slapped, which means they will be put into prison for the next two years without trial.

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In Anantnag last month a hundred parents were picked up randomly by police and the paramilitary, and were told to warn their sons not to get involved in the pro-independence campaign. Many young men have already been beaten up, and warned to stay indoors. A friend who works with a local newspaper was threatened and his younger brother tortured, for reporting on police atrocities. He was told to do favorable stories about the election. He is following orders to the word, he tells me. He doesn’t want to give up his job, for they don’t come easily. Pro-government Ikhwani militias, which are funded and armed by the Indian state, and who wreaked havoc on Anantnag for a full decade, have been reactivated. Many of the militiamen who were integrated into the army wander about the town in civvies and harass people. A lot of people it seems want to vote, if not in Anantnag town, then in the villages. They need their representatives to relieve them of the tremendous pressure the Indian state puts on them. During the past few months thousands were arrested. They had no one to go to for redress. Governor’s rule meant one inaccessible Indian bureaucrat controlled everyone’s life in Kashmir. A legislative assembly would mean, at least, that they could go to people who might have some say. That is what the contestants are promising. People in jails shall be released. The level of military oppression will be brought down. Government militias will be reigned in. Major parties, like the People’s Democratic Party and the National Conference, are saying this vote is not a vote for India. And thrown in between are a number of others who have one or the other motivation to contest, and none of which is loyalty toward India. One contestant, who I’ve known since childhood, told me privately that he is contesting to get special papers and a residence in Jammu so that he can take his ailing mother away from Kashmir. In New Delhi, however, pundits are claiming victory over ‘‘Kashmiri separatists.’’ Indian newspapers and TV channels are gloating over the turnouts: sixty-eight percent, fifty-one percent, and fifty-seven percent.21 The numbers encouraged even India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh to come to a village in Anantnag a few days back to support his party’s candidate from there. The village he visited is surrounded by hills full of bombs. The Indian military has one of its largest ammunition depots in the region. Last

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year the hills in Khundru exploded into a huge ball of fire and consumed dozens of Kashmiri lives. The military asked villagers in fifteen villages surrounding the depot to vacate so that the depot could be expanded. No word was spoken about that. To the Kashmiris that Manmohan Singh was addressing he said India would defeat terrorism soon. He was talking about Mumbai. Across the stream that runs behind my home, young men from the neighborhood who were leading stone-pelting duels and protests against Indian soldiers over the summer and the autumn are playing cricket. The stream almost dries up in winter, leaving a little plain island behind. Soldiers can’t see it. It is almost three in the afternoon, and I haven’t seen anyone go to vote, yet. But there are two more hours to go, and who knows.

Making Sense of Occupation; Describing Its ‘‘Logic’’ Through Montage The field of occupation, if we may describe it as such, is an unstable one. It is marked by ambiguities, uncertainties, contradictions, mystification, and hypocrisy. Similarly, the binary of occupier and occupied often remains fluid and too broad, and needs to be complicated. That said, it is important to see value in keeping these terms in use, not only because they do produce strong fields of force and operate as agents in reality, but also for heuristic reasons. This binary helps to make visible, even in flashes, what seeks to make itself invisible. An archaeology of Kashmir’s occupation, an occupation that makes its presence felt intensely yet is repressed in the discourse, would require leaving some rough edges unexplained, at least at this starting point when a theoretical intervention can be expected to shine some light over occupation’s nebulous workings. Outlining the logic of occupation, and deploying it to describe the way daily life in Kashmir is experienced in its wake, would make coherent the account of the seemingly incongruent realities, chaotic life experiences, and social fragmentation occupation engenders. I am not suggesting fitting the description of lived experiences into the logic of occupation, but using that logic, which shapes, breaks, and transforms daily life, and also in resistance to which everyday life struggles, as a shifting wall against which different and disjointed experiences of life under occupation collide, and return

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meaning fleetingly. The outlined logic then is not a ‘‘reflection’’ of reality but a condensed, intuitively ordered montage of practices, phenomena, and experiences that constitute occupation and the life under it. The montage that emerges is not the whole image of occupation (nor are individual snapshots, images of practices, for instance, parts of that whole), but it gives a sense of occupation in Kashmir. In other words, it captures in its evocative form the effects of occupation. The coherence of the description of lived experiences this sort of thinking seeks is not of a seamless narrative, but of narratives superimposed in a way that make sense22 together, while keeping evident their distinctness. Thus, the element of sequence in such a montage of practices, phenomena, and experiences is perceived not next to but one on top of the other.23 Coherent descriptions allow alternative conceptualizations of phenomena through criticism and reconstruction, and at some level the process of thinking in itself produces seeds for a transformative conceptualization of the phenomena. In the same manner, thinking about occupation, and putting its processes under a spotlight (remember occupation tries its best to remove itself as the subject of thinking), carries within it the potential to unravel occupation. The occupying state’s power, for instance, depends on its capacity to impose its own visions of itself on the social world of the occupied, or as Fernando Coronil has suggested, ‘‘seize its subjects by inducing a condition or state of being receptive to its illusions—a magical state.’’24 As already stated, the occupier state in Kashmir seeks to position itself within the social imaginary as a guarantor of democracy, order, security, peace, and so on. Indian politicians keep bringing into the public discourse astronomical figures of money that the state is apparently spending on the ‘‘ungrateful Kashmiris,’’ and thereby signify the Indian state, in Coronil’s phrase, as a ‘‘magnanimous magician.’’ This self-image is, however, haunted by the specter of the state ‘‘behaving’’ like an occupying power.25 The task of thinking, then, is to demystify occupation’s self-image and capture its actual self, its state of nature, which is the specter that haunts it. Bearing the sense of occupation through montages of its practices and phenomena engenders fractures in its self-confidence. Description needs coherence, but at the same time it needs an appropriate vocabulary, especially if one is dealing with the processes of occupation in a specific region. Since my theoretical engagement with the question of (if not the experience of living under) occupation is recent, I face the challenge of having to create/find vocabulary that can adequately deal with

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the nature and scope of the problematic to which occupation, in its ‘‘Kashmiri instance,’’ gives rise. In my view, it is the peculiarity of the Kashmir question itself, more than occupation as a typical process that presents this challenge. On my part, I recognize the challenge, but for reasons of space would keep the question of language aside, if hauntingly close, to remind me not to be carried away by the frameworks of comparative analysis. And, at this preliminary stage of my thinking about occupation in Kashmir, I cannot but borrow language (as I have already done) for the purposes at hand, from reflections of others on ‘‘similar phenomena’’ elsewhere.

Occupation, Disorder, and Space; Resistance, Memory, and Place To return to my image of occupation in Kashmir, then, let me start afresh. There are at least two ways to begin thinking about ‘‘occupation.’’ First, is the sense of ‘‘to occupy,’’ ‘‘to take possession by conquest,’’ ‘‘to seize’’— pointing to the act at the moment of occupying, which can happen during war, or through a treaty (either between unequal entities—and usually imposed on the defeated/the weaker, or between great powers that hand over territory—not necessarily their own—to each other). In the second sense, occupation means maintaining control over and holding possession of what has been occupied, which indicates occupation to be a process, involving concomitant strategies and practices. From these two senses can emerge a third way of conceptualizing occupation: since occupation is ultimately the occupation of space, the strategies the occupying power uses to sustain occupation are primarily spatial in nature, and, given the fact that occupation originates in violence (of war or contract26), violence remains central to its maintenance. In a related manner, ‘‘to occupy’’ does not correspond with the sense in which we think of ‘‘to belong’’—the fundamental difference being the contested validity in the case of the former, and absence of even the question of such a requirement of validity in the case of the latter. Kashmiris often refer to India as neabar (outside/foreign) and people from India as neabrim (outsiders/foreigners), in contrast to Azad Kashmir (part under Pakistani control), which they see as ap’poar (across) and its people as ap’paerim (people from across). In constructing this vocabulary, Kashmiris imagine Kashmir as a house with rooms, and Azad Kashmir as one of its

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rooms, and India as outside, beyond the house. So when Kashmiri men crossed the Line of Control into Azad Kashmir for arms training in the 1990s, it would be seen as an in-house affair, if not an easy one, compared to when Kashmiris went ‘‘to India,’’ which was seen as a long way away from home. Azad Kashmir belonged in ways that India didn’t, and New Delhi’s rule was in effect always a foreign rule, its army always ‘‘Indian Army,’’ and its oppression ‘‘Indian oppression.’’ The word naebrim was even used to designate Indian goods, often contrasted unfavorably with Kashmiri products. The occupation of Kashmir becomes occupation, therefore, also because of this deep-seated belief that India is foreign. But there are other reasons Indian presence, military or otherwise, in Kashmir, can be regarded as occupation. The lack of validity of occupation in Kashmir is manifested in the recognition of its illegitimacy, and the unsettled claims of the occupying power, by main international organizations like the United Nations. More than a dozen UN Security Council resolutions call for the resolution of the Kashmir ‘‘dispute,’’ while some specifically call for a ‘‘free and fair plebiscite’’ under UN supervision.27 More important, the lack of validity of occupation is a result of the lack of popular legitimacy of the occupying power’s authority among the Kashmiris, not only symbolically as illustrated briefly above, but also in real political terms. In popular discourse in Kashmir one encounters a sharp understanding of the goal of occupation: ‘‘they want our land, not us.’’ Occupation is principally geared toward assimilation of territory and not people,28 a goal for which it is impossible to achieve full normative legitimacy under the present regime of international law. This fundamental absence of international legality and popular legitimacy lies at the heart of the occupation’s contraband sovereignty, a fact that also marks the ultimately provisional nature of occupation and is often very reluctantly acknowledged by the occupiers. The contested validity of occupation signifies that despite the ability to physically control, domination is not absolute. ‘‘The people,’’ especially when they organize themselves into a political community, stand between and frustrate the territorial desires of the occupiers. Occupation hangs tantalizingly above a full assimilation of territory, and by definition is never able to achieve it. Kashmiris represent a problem in the eyes of the state. The unruly masses need to be controlled and put under order. Kashmiri militancy and the demand for independence are ‘‘infestations,’’ ‘‘diseases’’ that need to be ‘‘rooted out.’’ Their protests ‘‘go viral,’’ and experts from India come to look for its symptoms to prevent

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another ‘‘outbreak.’’ Kashmir is a paradise but a sick one. These discourses accompany the dreams of sanitized territory that occupation sees as its future, but cannot utter. Violence forms the primary mode of interaction between the occupier and the occupied, for there is institutionally no other mode of interaction possible between the two. When the hegemony of power is challenged, power retracts to its dark coercive recesses to rearrange its hegemony. Under occupation, institutions are unmasked for what they are, and stark violence becomes institutionalized. Violence is not incidental but deliberate, and delivered gradually and systematically to shatter everyday life, to disintegrate some of the fundamental prerequisites of the social coexistence of the occupied, like mutual trust, belief, and empathy. As these norms of social life get crushed, the state of violence is made normal. Underneath the self-described goals and images of ‘‘winning hearts and minds’’ lies the actual wreckage of bodies and minds; in fact, in the first lies the implicit, if unremorseful acknowledgment of the second. Torture as the practice of inflicting sustained pain and suffering on the bodies and minds of the occupied captures the essence of the violence of occupation. The phrase ‘‘violence’’ tends to depersonalize the agency behind violence and obscures the actual body and mind of its victim, both of which are better captured by the phrase ‘‘torture.’’ Under torture, as Fanon wrote in the colonized Algerian context, ‘‘the body is broken in the hope that the national consciousness will disintegrate,’’29 indicating that the body is tortured to break not just the victim’s national consciousness but the consciousness of the entire colonized nation. Under occupation, in a similar manner, bodies are tortured and often let go, alive or dead, as carriers of political messages between the occupier and the occupied. In Kashmir, public beatings by Indian soldiers have remained a common practice. Bruised bodies and beatings as communicative strategies of the state saturate whatever remains of the Kashmiri public sphere. The torture of bodies is accompanied by psychological warfare, which includes inducing fear by keeping the specter of random death perpetually close to life, spreading rumors of imminent liquidation or arrest through unseen ‘‘hit lists,’’ brainwashing by ‘‘experts,’’ or forcing intellectuals to collaborate or become informers, and therefore, producing a population that is psychosomatically disabled and easy to be forced ‘‘out of circulation.’’ Within the occupied zone, therefore, considerations for the basic human rights of the occupied remain adjourned. Often, in response to

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constructed perceptions of threat to security and to maintain order, special legislation is handed down by the occupying power to produce an indefinite state of exception.30 Occupation is indeed a permanent (or rather a permanently temporary31) state of exception, which in practice translates into being a zone of nonresponsibility, a space for unencumbered action—of immunity for the occupiers from prosecution for their acts of violence. This immunity, along with the chronic violence it ensures, is the constitutive condition for carrying out the day-to-day business of occupation.32 It is relevant to mention here that, despite the occupier’s claims of its forces maintaining ‘‘law and order,’’ the actual spatial strategies and violent practices of occupation are only superficially connected to that discourse of order. In reality, occupation thrives on disorder, a condition it continuously produces. Disorder,33 or the ‘‘breakdown of ordered life,’’ may be generated, for example, by a variable and arbitrary application of law, by incentivizing petty crime, while coming down hard on political activism, and most important, by introducing among the occupied fear through shadowy actors—figures describable only by names that are meant not to describe: the ghostly presence of the ‘‘unidentified’’ gunmen (Urdu: namaloom). I emphasize the active production of disorder, and the management of chaos, to point out that the endemic disorder under occupation is not a result of resistance to occupation, as the occupier claims, but the very condition of possibility of occupation itself. In this sense, occupation circles around a self-referential discourse of order: it justifies violence to impose order on a disorder it itself has created—a tautology indeed. Thus the spatiality of occupation may be structured and its violence systematic, but in its everyday business it thrives on disorder. Disorder is introduced primarily into the economic life of the occupied, for it is relatively easy and most vulnerable. Occupation systematically destroys the modes of livelihood of the occupied and produces unequal economic dependencies between occupied and occupier. The economic dependence is created by stimulating a ‘‘black’’ economy through a free flow of unregulated cash (eal as well as fake) and goods into society, methodically overseeing the degradation of the existing infrastructure, restricting access to resources, and putting under curfew (thus truncating) the space and time for economic activities of the occupied. A number of people in Kashmir have described to me that the relative affluence of a small section of Kashmir society was due to the existence of Ropiyeh Machineh (the fake-note minting machines). The phenomenon was seen as

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so pervasive only a few years ago that another person described minting notes in Kashmir as a ‘‘cottage industry.’’ Other mundane technologies of producing disorder are employed as well: encouraging shadowy commercial deals, allowing tax evasions for some, tolerating bribery among higher- and lower-level government officials by practically removing any penalties and disincentives for offenders, and facilitating manipulation of the legal system by a wealthy few who are then cast as role models for success. As those among the occupied close to positions of power are allowed to flout rules, for the majority rules and laws become arbitrary, and one can find oneself on the wrong side of law based on the whims of the supervisors of the occupation’s internal lines of control. The disorder helps produce a system in which the occupying state seeks and assumes the role of patron, a patron singularly—and perversely— capable of providing means of livelihood to the occupied even while it destroys the already existing ones, and providing security even while being the most frequent source of insecurity. The occupied, while resisting, are caught in a peculiar dilemma, for instance, of seeking employment from the same oppressive system that inflicts violence on them—sometimes in the same apparatus, like the police and the military, the most visible purveyors of occupation’s violence. Pictures in newspapers of long lines of unemployed youth jostling for jobs in the police and army in the occupied zone spectacularly demonstrate the occupier’s paternalistic self-image.34 For all its control over space and power over violence, and its selfimage of being the provider, occupation still requires stereotyping the occupied, defining them through reductionist categories, and denying them history and humanity. Epistemic violence complements ontological violence here. Stereotyped and dehumanized thus, the occupied are turned into natural targets of violence, a violence that raises no or very few ethical questions among the occupiers. In occupying states that claim democratic legitimacy for their actions, this process is often more intense. In India, it has translated into official and popular descriptions of the Kashmiri movement for independence as ‘‘Muslim extremism,’’ ‘‘Islamic terrorism,’’ and ‘‘Pakistan-backed proxy war,’’ and consequently acts even of horrific violence against Kashmiris do not cause much moral outrage in the mainstream Indian public. It is not necessary to elaborate here how these characterizations play on the global discourse on ‘‘the Muslim problem’’ to accrue international credibility and acquire carte blanche for the occupation in Kashmir.

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What I seek to point to here is that crucially (and inevitably) occupation faces resistance, and it is during public acts of resistance (like mass protests or armed action) that the overall spatiality of occupation and the utter violence of it become fully operational, even though occupation is operational in its effects on a daily basis as well. Resistance against occupation, apart from its direct modes, like armed insurrection or mass protests, takes many other forms, which must be understood in conjunction with the processes of occupation. If, as Foucault suggests, power and resistance operate simultaneously: ‘‘where there is power, there is resistance,’’35 then occupation, in which power is exercised from innumerable points, faces resistance from innumerable points as well. Resistance produces its own spatial strategies to overcome ones put in place by the forces of occupation. Some of the uses of space for resistance activists became apparent to me in 2008 when I witnessed an intense stonepelting/tear-gassing duel between Kashmiri protestors and paramilitary troopers in Anantnag. The protestors used the narrow lanes of the town strategically to evade bullets and dodge empty teargas shells36 fired with the intention to injure. A local shrine became a retreat when paramilitary soldiers and state-sponsored militias advanced farther. Soldiers held the roads, the protestors held the lanes. Amid occupation’s deeply spatial character resistance recovers a sense of place,37 for instance, by continuing everyday life despite the difficulties and obstacles produced by occupation, or by adjusting social life instead of letting it fragment. If the security grid that models the occupation of space defamiliarizes ordinary places, like main roads, avenues, public squares, parks, and so on, intense sociopolitical activity takes place in the innercities, downtowns, narrow lanes, cramped crevices deep in mohallas, street corner shop fronts, and small nondescript tea stalls. The occupation of space is answered through the ‘‘occupation of places.’’38 For the occupier the occupied region is a territory, an absolutized,39 defamiliarized space, where people, their lives, and everything else is, in Fanon’s words, a ‘‘natural backdrop’’ of the occupier’s presence.40 For the occupied, places are reminiscent of life events, evocative of the senses, emotions, and feelings, and their lives are inextricably caught in the social imaginary surrounding the places, in their ‘‘here’’ and ‘‘there,’’ named and associated, belonged and familiar, lived and imagined. In the context of occupation, resistance reconstitutes places into spaces of resistance. It aligns the personal meanings of places into public meanings. An

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example in Kashmir is the shrine of the famous Sufi Shiekh Nurruddin in Chrar in central Kashmir, which has over the years become a rallying cry—a place to march to—for pro-independence activists. The personal meanings of the shrine are not lost, and remain visible in the innumerable threads of supplication believers tie to its latticework, each holding within its knot a unique and personal entreaty. Yet when hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris move from different places in a march toward it to plea for the Sufi saint’s intercession against the military occupation, the shrine illuminates as a space of resistance. Martyrs’ graveyards, which dot Kashmir’s physical (and social) landscape, represent another form of spatiality that resistance constructs to evoke memories and thus sustain itself. Martyrs’ graveyards freeze memories of violent social disruption.41 By ‘‘gathering’’ bodies from different places they unite these places into a singular space of resistance against occupation, and thus keep returning a sharp focus on occupation as the object against which to struggle.42 In July 2007, on a visit to the largest martyrs’ graveyard in Kashmir, Srinagar’s Mazar-e-Shuhada, moving through its concrete pathways, which allowed the visitors to read the names of the martyrs and the places and dates of their martyrdom, evoked memories of my childhood when deaths of pro-freedom activists were announced on state-run radio, deaths that became part of the chronicles of our everyday life, deaths one eventually lost count of. One of the most significant graves in that graveyard was the open grave of Maqbool Bhat, a prominent pro-freedom leader who was hanged by the Indian authorities in a jail in New Delhi in 1984, and whose remains were never returned to his family in Kashmir. The caretaker of the graveyard, who was walking alongside me, and who had on his own begun to narrate the life and the martyrdom stories of the people buried there, stopped at Bhat’s open grave, and said: ‘‘They want us to forget our dead, but this open grave is like an open wound for us Kashmiris, which can be healed only when these dead are honored and their sacrifices bear the fruit (independence) for which they fought.’’ As the caretaker named the places from which the martyrs’ graveyard had received bodies, a singular story of resistance and martyrdom wove these places into a common space of resistance against occupation. Hamlets and cities, border towns and downtowns, all melded into one another, leaving behind their different histories to become ‘‘events’’ in the history of the

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Kashmiri struggle, and in which occupation formed the object against which to struggle. Occupation as an object is not simply the collection of physical manifestations of occupation that populate its topography—the bunkers, camps, armored vehicles, figures of soldiers on patrol—the object is also the objective reality of occupation: its physics, effects, meanings, discourses; torture, beatings, humiliations, incarcerations, crackdowns. It is occupation as an objective reality, in Taussig’s phrase a veritable ‘‘space of death,’’43 a space where death stalks life at each corner, and is thus confronted by the space of resistance, which affirms life even after death.44 The spaces of resistance and the meanings people have produced and recovered for them and the coercively created spaces of state domination are, however, not absolute. Between the space of domination and resistance lies a vast, in-between region, a ‘‘gray zone’’ where no clear boundary exists between the dominant and the dominated, where in Primo Levi’s words ‘‘the two camps of masters and servants both diverge and converge.’’45 Writing about the nature of extermination camps, Levi pointed out that in the gray zone networks of the privileged exist—of collaborators, willing executioners, informers, agent provocateurs, and turncoats. Occupation is a large camp where the ‘‘decision to exterminate’’ is not officially verbalized but remains hidden just beneath the surface, or in the fine print of articulations that fantasize occupied territory as a ‘‘land without people,’’ or as an atoot ang, the integral body part—territorial space—of Bharat Mata, Mother India. The gray zone is a structural component of the occupation. Like disorder, the gray zone is often the most potent sphere through which occupation is able to impress its dominance. What can be a more significant demonstration of the power to dominate than to achieve it through the collaboration of the dominated? One must not overlook the infinite motivations that lie behind collaboration. In Levi’s words these could range from ‘‘Ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever, even though ridiculously circumscribed in space and time, cowardice, and, finally, lucid calculation aimed at eluding the imposed orders and order.’’46 In Kashmir, however, the gray zone is not just a sphere where the occupying state is able to smoothly work to produce domination but also one where its expectations of hegemony are belied. The tense lines between the occupier and the occupied get replicated within the gray zone. The

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assembly election contestant, whom I mentioned before, and who contested only to find a way to take his mother away from Kashmir,47 is a typical example. Not only did he state his intentions explicitly to his family and friends, but also during his election campaign he continued to ask for forgiveness if his actions were interpreted as a betrayal of the muhim (the Movement). A focus on this murky, gray zone of occupation, therefore, can tell us much about occupation, especially its desire to fragment the occupied, to confuse them, and thus to become the manager of chaos. But since occupation is mostly ‘‘domination without hegemony,’’ the binary of occupier/occupied retains its heuristic significance. After all, the collaborators are privileged, but they are from among the occupied, they cannot become the occupiers. The rise of Ikhwan ul Muslimeen (‘‘Muslim Brothers’’) as one of the deadliest counterinsurgent forces in Kashmir represents a stark crystallization of the way the gray zone operates in the occupied regions. Ikhwan: Dirty Operations in a Gray Zone By 1995, the armed movement had been almost completely crushed in South Kashmir’s Anantnag town, and had withdrawn to rural areas. Some former elements within the resistance switched sides and were recruited by the government in its counter-insurgency apparatus. Ikhwanis, as pointed out earlier, operated within a gray zone beyond the pale of law. Officially, they were still militants, but ones who did the dirty job of killing and torturing on behalf of the state. Still describing itself as Ikhwan, from its earlier days in the resistance, it went on a rampage and turned their camps into death cells, where sympathizers of the resistance movement were tortured or killed. Some fragments from an earlier piece I wrote might shed some light: Safely ensconced within the Indian security establishment, and with absolute impunity, Ikhwanis became monstrous villains who imposed their will with extreme violence. One Ikhwani, Setha Gujar, who was especially dreaded for his brutality, killed common people like people kill chicken. One day he beat up a doctor from another town so badly that some people who were watching fainted. The doctor who had returned to Kashmir after spending years in Saudi Arabia left Kashmir the moment he could walk again. It was only two years later that Gujar was shot dead by unknown people, most likely his own.48

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The Ikhwanis established camps in three separate places (in Anantnag). The one in Kadipora was the closest to my school. They would come to the school and harass schoolgirls. Some of my teachers were picked up for suspected Jammati49 links, and tortured. Thankfully none of my teachers was killed. Often our beleaguered Principal would ask the students and the teachers to assemble and go to the camp, and plead for the release of our teachers. The camp, housed in a huge Pandit house, would reek of blood and liquor. When Farooq Abdullah was made the chief minister of Kashmir (in 1996), the Ikhwanis grew even more brazen. They started building and occupying properties in the town. Many vacated Pandit properties were occupied, while some were bought at throwaway prices. A big Pandit house in Janglat Mandi was turned into a camp where poor villagers from far away were brought, tortured and killed, and their bodies left haphazardly strewn across on streets or in sewage drains. Setha Gujar built shopping complexes on public land, like the General Bus Stand. He built another in front of the district court, probably as a dare to the judges who might have thought of issuing stay orders on his illegal constructions. Townspeople while passing by the rows and rows of these ugly structures acted as if nothing existed there. No one dared look. The structures were pulled down only after his death. Another top Ikhwani joined pro-India politics. From the enormous sums of money he received from the Indian government, he built himself a palatial house in a posh area generally reserved for bureaucrats. He started his own political party, which till last year paid poor Kashmiris a hundred-rupee note each to join his election rallies. Also activated last year (in 2008 after the protests started) was the Mehndi Kadal camp of the Ikhwan. The Ikhwanis in that camp were the ones that had been integrated into India’s Territorial Army. It was the third Ikhwan camp in the town, also housed in a large Pandit house. Standing right in front of the main police station in Anantnag, the camp tortured people and dared them to go and register complaints with the police. Last year I passed the Mehndi Kadal camp every single working day, on my way to work and back. Over the run down fence I would see Kashmiris in Indian army fatigues roaming about with rifles slung down their shoulders.

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Growing Up Under, and Witnessing, Occupation Having preliminarily explored some of the questions that arise when thinking about military occupation, I want to situate and understand how these questions manifest in concrete contexts.50 I will investigate the ways the spatiality of military occupation and its accompanying everyday violence unfolded in Anantnag—a place where, after years of popular protests, armed insurgency began and developed through various phases till its nearcomplete suppression by the late 1990s. This suppression was followed by an uneasy, repressively maintained calm, which eventually broke when mass protests erupted in 2008. Anantnag not only has an illustrative value but, in my case, experiential significance as well. I grew up in Anantnag in a middle-class family, witnessing (rather too closely for my own comfort as I think about it now) the uprising of 1990 as a ten-year-old. I spent the most violent years of the armed resistance in Kashmir (till 1998), watching with despair, deaths among friends and neighbors, homes of people I knew getting destroyed, or places I used to frequent with friends and family being closed off by soldiers, transformed into military camps, or razed overnight down to rubble. Even though the perpetually deteriorating halaat (Urdu/Kashmiri: ‘‘condition,’’ ‘‘situation’’) left no one untouched, as a curious teenager I compounded my own exposure to these conditions by following the trail of violence. Despite my nervous family’s desperate pleas not to do so, I visited numerous villages and neighborhoods in Anantnag, often through networks of relatives, friends, journalists, and political activists, listening to stories of battered and harassed people, taking notes, or just committing them to memory. My own family was displaced a number of times from our home due to violence or the threat of it, especially during the early years of that decade. On top of it, the school I attended was close to the epicenter of the armed movement in Anantnag town, a bad choice as far as ever getting a full week of school, but matchless in terms of allowing one to grow up close to remarkably generous and courageous people, whose lives and deaths remain testimony to the unspeakable terror of occupation. In 1998 I was sent away to study, but I kept returning to Kashmir every year during summers and winters, until 2008, when I decided to come back for that whole year. My family didn’t resist my return because things looked calm on the surface. However, as soon as I returned, the halaat also returned to convulse Kashmir to the core. The land transfer issue erupted

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and led to a sustained period of state violence in which many dozens were killed and thousands injured or imprisoned. I finally left in June 2009, but not before a temporary lull in the halaat, achieved through sustained crackdowns and curfews, was shattered with the news of the rape and murder of two women in Shopian, around fifteen miles from my home.

Laying the Architecture of Military Occupation in Anantnag Anantnag is one of the bigger towns in Kashmir, but that is only the official name of the place; its popular name is ‘‘Islamabad.’’ The confusion in the name has had odd consequences for its residents. Bent on reinforcing the name of the town to the more Sanskritized ‘‘Anantnag’’ (after the Hindu god Ananta), Indian soldiers spent a considerable amount of time in the early 1990s coercing, threatening, and beating people up for even uttering the word ‘‘Islamabad.’’ In a matter of few months, thousands of little stores and shops had their addresses on signboards awkwardly painted over, leaving visible marks that screamed ‘‘Islamabad’’ from underneath.51 The town is situated off the national highway that connects Jammu with Kashmir. There were two major signs of India’s military presence in Anantnag before 1990. On the northwest side, where the highway touches the town, a large military camp existed as a transit point for Indian soldiers moving to and from the LoC. The second was a few miles southeast of the town, in the hills of Khundru, where the Indian army had established a vast ammunition dump, whose actual spatial limits perhaps no Kashmiri knew. For the people of the town, before 1990, contact with the military consisted of occasional serpentine convoys of army vehicles passing through the town’s narrow potholed roads carrying arms and equipment to Khundru. There had been moments of political unrest in the town before, with police arresting pro-independence activists and harassing residents, but the military generally didn’t get involved. The armed uprising that began in 1989, however, not only broke the political paralysis in Kashmir, but also unleashed forces that steadily concretized the architecture of military occupation. By mid-1990 hundreds of thousands of new Indian army and paramilitary personnel arrived in Kashmir, adding to the strength of the hundreds of thousands already present. Many were deployed in Anantnag, where they established sandbag bunkers, camps, and checkpoints all over. They were

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so close together that one could always see one military post from another. What was not physically covered, or capable of being covered, was patrolled continuously or open to continuous surveillance. The infrastructure of occupation that was laid out was a active process designed to control space, to constrict it for armed and unarmed activity of pro-independence groups as well as, in general, the movement of residents in the town. Bunkers were placed on all bridges that connected the town with adjoining regions—situated as the town was in a triangle formed between two major tributaries of the river Jhelum. On the low hill that protruded into the town to complete the third side of the triangle, the army established a large base and set up sniper nests that overlooked the main squares and streets. Walking on streets became a grave peril. A number of residents became casualties of sniper fire over the years. I wrote this in my notebook some years back as I was trying to remember: The army took over Anantnag’s hill and set up bunkers at our favorite spot. As kids, we would often climb the hill, and look at the town from there. We would try to figure where our homes were, who was walking on the streets, and pity the tiny figures of our schoolmates who couldn’t escape school. From there, now, they could virtually see everyone on the roads. It became really dangerous to move about for hours after shoot-outs. One day, after one such shoot out, we were trying to reach home from school, creeping from house to house and wall to wall, trying to avoid being seen by the men in the bunker on top of the hill. All of a sudden, an impatient young shopkeeper, whose face I couldn’t see, ran across a narrow street near Cheeni Chowk. No sooner had he moved a few yards than a hail of bullets hit him. He fell, but managed to slither across the street. He lay on the opposite side, and bled to death. Nobody could move from his or her place to help him.52 Another man, a villager in town perhaps to get supplies, lay dead one day in 1993 on the bridge near my house. Neighbors who saw the incident said the man was walking and all of a sudden fell dead. They discovered a bullet hole that ran through his head. The bridge was in direct view of a sniper nest on the hill. The terror of the incident was multiplied by the fact that it had happened on a ‘‘normal’’ day, ‘‘without any provocation whatsoever,’’ people exclaimed later. In the months that followed, crossing that bridge

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became a test in courage, so much so that I heard people refer to the bridge as pul-e-sirat, the flimsy bridge over hell one has to cross on the Judgment Day to enter paradise. The evenings arrived early, as staying out after six became a risk very few took. Paramilitary patrols picked up people for interrogation. Interrogation became synonymous with torture: when tortured bodies returned people would say he was interrogated. The transit camp on the national highway became a notorious torture center. Its name ‘‘JIC’’—which stood for Joint Interrogation Centre—struck terror. Its counterparts in Srinagar, PAPA-1, PAPA-2, and Air Cargo were already infamous. Another torture center was in the military camp on the hill. A brother of a prominent JKLF53 guerrilla had been tortured to death on the hill. His body had extensive burn marks. It became common knowledge that in JIC and on the hill they burned Kashmiris on stovetops. A number of people just disappeared, as if into thin air. Only some cases of disappearances and ‘‘fake encounters’’ in Anantnag got much public attention. In 2000, on the eve of U.S. president Bill Clinton’s visit to India, thirty-five Sikh men were massacred in a place a few miles out of town. No one took responsibility, but Kashmiris widely believed that the army had a hand in it. When a few days later the army claimed to have killed five people responsible for the massacre in an encounter, it was discovered, after a number of bloody protests and controversy (which involved the state government fudging the DNA samples), that the men had been locals abducted by security agencies days before the purported encounter.54 One of these men, Zahoor Dalal, lived less than a mile from my home. Over the years these killings in my neighborhood compounded the fear of leaving our homes, causing panic attacks if soldiers were sighted, or frequently leading residents to flee if rumor went around of an impending attack or a crackdown.

Spaces of Domination and Resistance in Anantnag ‘‘Crackdown’’ was a dreaded phenomenon. Prolonged crackdowns, which meant putting neighborhoods, or even the entire town, under siege for days on end, were regular. During these crackdowns all males, adults and children, would be forced to assemble in large playing fields or squares, where they would be paraded in front of masked informers, called ‘‘Cats.’’ Cats

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were either captured and tortured guerrillas desperate to end their own suffering or renegades who knew all about people who might have provided shelter or food to armed activists. In any case, a Cat’s nod was literally a death sentence. Crackdowns were occasions when mass public beatings, torture, and humiliation took place. My father and I were part of several crackdowns in our neighborhood in 1994. During one of the most horrific such crackdowns, a full day of terror was unleashed on our neighbors. Several young and old men were identified after a parade in a large fruit and vegetable market. One by one these men were taken into half-shuttered stores full of rotten bananas and beaten ruthlessly with bamboo sticks, iron rods, and chains. This was happening right in front of everyone’s eyes. Several men who were watching lost consciousness. At one point that day several stores simultaneously became open torture chambers, from which different kinds of screams of pain emanated. Throughout the day, several bursts of gunfire were heard from different parts of our neighborhood. During crackdowns women would be made to stay behind in homes, while soldiers went on house-to-house searches. There was, therefore, always a great anxiety about women’s safety. I never found courage (or perhaps I was still too young) to ask any woman about her experiences during crackdowns. The memory of the Kunan Poshpora incident55 of 1991, in which dozens of women became victims of mass rape at the hands of Indian soldiers during one such crackdown, was still fresh. House-tohouse searches generally meant throwing around and breaking things in the house or sometimes stealing valuables. At the end of that day, which seemed like it was never going to end, four local youths were found murdered in ditches, shot in their heads at close range. One of them was a guerrilla. On roads the rules changed: it was ‘‘soldiers first,’’ which meant frequent disruptions and delays. Paramilitary patrol cars or long army convoys had to be given way, and every other vehicle would come to a stop. An inadvertent mistake of not pulling over to the side in time for the soldiers to pass usually meant thrashings and abuse. Any occasion could become an excuse for violence—raising your voice while answering a soldier’s questions, keeping hands in pockets or folding your arms inside pherans (traditional long winter gowns), inability to open your door quickly enough if the soldiers knocked, being without identity papers, walking slowly or too quickly, glancing from the corner of your eye, ‘‘looking suspicious,’’ having

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a beard, sometimes even looking too well-dressed. Often public buses would be stopped and the passengers ordered to march for miles. To set up camps, bunkers, or roadblocks free labor would be extracted from young men. Along with the military transit camp, the vast camp on the hill (which had a three-sided view of the town), numerous bunkers on bridges and street corners, and the three Ikhwan camps in the midst of the town, paramilitary forces were stationed in the three hospitals that existed, in a large defunct cinema hall, in some vacated Pandit houses along a busier street, in the general post office, in the telegraph station, inside a temple complex, in a state-owned bank building, in a camp that jutted out into a college, in a fertilizer mill, and so on. Most of this military architecture is still in place, even though for a number of years there has been virtually no guerrilla activity in the region. Amid this all-encompassing military spatialization, Kashmiris continued to create their own spaces of resistance. As stated before, if the roads and major streets were under the control of the occupying forces, the narrow lanes belonged to guerrillas and pro-independence activists. Though evenings would begin early at six (even during summers), in Anantnag’s winding alleys stores kept open, and residents milled about till late. During crackdowns soldiers generally moved out of these dark, dicey places as quickly as they could. Also in town were three martyrs’ graveyards, maintained well through public donations. At several places, drinking water fountains, named after individual ‘‘martyrs,’’ were built, which lasted some time before the government dismantled them.

Violence and Impunity Under Occupation: AFSPA and Its Discontents In 1990, when the military forces began spreading out into towns and villages and new troops arrived, the Indian political authorities granted them wide-ranging powers to act. Originally redrafted from the colonial era legislation for India’s North Eastern states in 1958,56 the Armed Forces Special Powers Act or AFSPA (1990) was specially refurbished for the state of Jammu and Kashmir, to ‘‘enable certain special powers to be conferred upon members of the armed forces in the disturbed areas in J&K.’’ An area could be declared disturbed to prevent: (a) ‘‘terrorist acts’’ to ‘‘overawe

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the Government’’ or terrorize the people (or any section of the people),57 ‘‘affecting the harmony amongst different sections of the people’’; and (b) ‘‘activities directed towards disclaiming, questioning or disrupting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India,’’ ‘‘bringing about secession of a part of the territory of India,’’ or ‘‘causing insult to the National Flag, the Indian National Anthem and the Constitution of India.’’ The overarching nature of the acts AFSPA covered can be grasped by the fact that a failure to stand up while the Indian national anthem is sung or played can constitute a cognizable offence. Even more brazen was the extent of ‘‘special’’ powers that AFSPA granted to the Indian armed forces in Kashmir: Any commissioned officer, warrant officer, non-commissioned officer, or any other person of equivalent rank in the armed forces if he is of the opinion that it is necessary to do so for the maintenance of public order, and after giving such due warning as he may consider necessary, may fire upon and use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law or order for the time being in force in the disturbed area.58 AFSPA included in its language such orders and laws as the ban on the assembly of five or more persons, and carrying of weapons or ‘‘of things capable of being used as weapons.’’ Troops could, under AFSPA, arrest without warrant any person who ‘‘has committed a cognizable offence’’ or ‘‘against whom a reasonable suspicion exists that he has committed or is about to commit a cognizable offence.’’ Soldiers were legally permitted to break into houses, and search and destroy anything that they deemed likely to be used for subversive activities. They could demolish houses if they felt guerrillas could use them.59 The use of these special powers, as is obvious, depended on the judgement of the soldiers themselves. Kashmiris had seen and suffered the consequences of the dark content of AFSPA for years. But the full impact of the effect of this law’s dependence on soldiers’ good sense hit me in the spring of 2009, when I was teaching for a year at one of the local universities in Kashmir. A former top Indian military official had come to speak to students. This person had retired from the Indian army as director general of military training, and had years of experience training soldiers. In his speech he defended his soldiers’ actions, arguing that they were trained ‘‘to

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be tough,’’ ‘‘to kill,’’ ‘‘to kill ten if one of their fellow men was killed,’’ and ‘‘to act on instinct.’’ When a student asked him why soldiers raped women, the ex-director general’s response was an unabashed (if typical) ‘‘they have needs too.’’ There was no uproar in the auditorium, but the anger was palpable. Only a couple of months later two women were raped and murdered in Shopian by Indian paramilitary forces in South Kashmir, an event that led to months of protests, but which was buried by state instituted inquires and obfuscated by Indian mainstream media.60 The Shopian case illustrated how the occupier state, despite its attempt to mask its rule as benign by promising justice (creating inquiry committees), is fundamentally incapable of delivering it. Its own reality, as an occupying state, founded in the occupied zone on the architecture of a violent occupation, prevents it from being anything else. The feebly challenged consensus of self-righteous nationalism is the source on which the Indian state draws its power to apply black laws, like AFSPA, in Kashmir. The overall spatiality of occupation, while it shrinks space for life in Kashmir, produces a death-space where the soldier armed with the force of law, trained to kill, and backed by the tremendous confidence his nation vests in him, emerges simultaneously as the main operator of, and a mere cog in the machine of occupation. And this machine produces violence and disorder incessantly. Kashmir, on its part, turned into a zone of nonresponsibility and unencumbered action, and its people dehumanized, entered state discourse as a space to be controlled and managed.

Conclusion This chapter is no doubt an imprint of the way I experienced the transformation of space under, and the violence embedded in, the military occupation of Kashmir, in my daily life as a ‘‘civilian’’61—neither a citizen nor a combatant, but caught in a liminal zone where life is tenuous and death simply a statistic of protracted conflict. Agamben has described the word ‘‘witness’’ as having two meanings: first, that which signifies a person who, in a trial or lawsuit between two rival parties, is in a position of the third party; second, that which designates a person who has lived through something, who has experienced an event from beginning to end, and can therefore bear witness to it. In writing about Kashmir, which gradually became a landscape of loss, the act of witnessing is also a declaration of love and

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intimacy. Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali, in whose work one finds a record of Kashmir’s painful present and a poignant nostalgia for its calmer past, suggests this relationship when he says: They ask me to tell them what Shahid means— Listen: It means ‘‘The Beloved’’ in Persian, ‘‘witness’’ in Arabic62 To be a shahid is to witness and speak with familiarity of a place that has been turned strange, to remember a dismembered world, and to build—in the two Heideggerian senses of the word—cultivating and constructing—so as to dwell.63 In this endeavor, the principle of objectivity in describing social phenomena and events (even ones whose objective and normative structures animate our own understanding) is present not as a reified theoretical (and hence elusive) end in itself, but as an ethical imperative. As a Kashmiri and an anthropologist, then, my burden of witnessing is shaped by this ethical necessity to remain objective, even as I seek to write from within.

c h a p t e r se v e n

The Missing Grave of Sheikh Said: Kurdish Formations of Memory, Place, and Sovereignty in Turkey Hisyar Ozsoy

The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins. —Søren Kierkegaard

June 28, 1925, was the last day of Sheikh Said and his forty-six friends in the cells of Diyarbakır (Amed) prison.1 The armies of the new Turkish Republic heavily repressed the rebellion they had initiated in February. After an exhausting one-month trial period, the judge of the so-called Court of Independence was to announce the verdict in that morning. Yet, there were already telltale signs as to its nature. According to local stories, the timber and ropes to construct the gallows had already been bought and stored. There were also sounds of hammers and saws in the Dagˆkapı area, as court members and prisoners took their seats in the courtroom. The judge read the verdict in dull and mechanical voice. The construction of gallows was completed in the afternoon. A high tribunal was also constructed across the gallows for the Turkish authorities to watch the executions. After the verdict was read, the sheikh and his friends were chained and brought back to their cells. There they had their last prayers in the evening. Then the sheikh wrote his last will, in which he requested a grave for himself

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and the return of his seized assets to his children.2 Soon, the prison-guard squad took the prisoners out of their cells and chained them in single file. They walked through empty streets of the city as the echoing sound of their chains shattered the silence of midnight. When they reached the gallows, governor Mithat Bey, commander Mu¨rsel Pasha, members of the court, two deputies of the city, and other officials and their families were already sitting according to protocol at their places at the high tribunal. There the sheikh stopped and, with a painful smile on his face, addressed his last words to Ali Saib, a member of the court who himself was an ethnic Kurd: ‘‘I liked you, but we shall set up the balance of justice on the Day of Judgment.’’3 The executions started with joyful cries from the spectators and continued for hours in what is now known as the Dagˆkapı Square in contemporary Diyarbakır. The dead bodies remained hanging until noon the next day, when the soldiers took them down and carried them to a ditch not far away. There, the bodies were piled up, concrete poured on top, and the ditch was filled with dirt. The exact location of this grave has remained a mystery since then. On June 28, 2010, the eighty-fifth anniversary of the sheikh’s execution, thousands of Kurds and family members of the sheikh attempted to organize a memorial ceremony in Dagˆkapı Square and to ask the Turkish state about the location of the grave. Yet, the governor of the city banned the ceremony and ordered the police to disperse or detain anybody who tried to enter the square. That night a grandson of the sheikh harshly criticized the ban in a TV channel: ‘‘We will continue our struggle until we find that grave! After so many years, why are they still afraid of our dead? When will this punishment, this enmity end?’’4 Listening to this speech on TV that night, I recalled what Walter Benjamin once said in his theses on a materialist philosophy of history: ‘‘Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins’’ (original emphasis).5 ‘‘Even the dead . . . ’’6 This is the point that inspires this essay; that in Kurdish, Turkish, and Western histories of the rebellion written so far, this posthumous ‘‘enmity’’ toward Sheikh Said and his friends has gone unnoticed or unexplored. Focusing mainly on the social, ideological, and political context, causality and intentions of the actors, Kurdish historians and Western scholars have typically discussed the rebellion as the first Kurdish (proto)-nationalist response to cultural assimilation policies of the new Turkish Republic. The dominant version of

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Turkish historical discourse, however, has refused to see Kurdish nationalist aspirations as a factor, arguing instead that the rebellion was a ‘‘reactionaryfeudal’’ opposition to the ‘‘revolutionary’’ Republican project of bringing civilization to ‘‘the East’’ (the Kurdish region). Despite this interpretive rivalry, there are two crucially related issues that are equally missing in these historical narratives. First, this is the first massive Kurdish rebellion, all the leaders of which were executed and then denied a marked grave. There is no precedent for such a punishment in the past.7 Second, although these histories take the sheikh’s execution as the closure of an event of failed rebellion, the struggle and death of the sheikh does not find closure in local cultural memory and in the political memory of the Kurdish movement. Indeed, in sharp contrast, the sheikh, his missing grave and legendary legacy remain an unfinished story in Kurdistan today, vibrantly shaping ongoing Kurdish struggles for justice, recognition and sovereignty. Foregrounding this posthumous enmity toward the living legacy of Sheikh Said, this essay will discuss the ways in which this rebellion gets differently constructed in local memory and in Western, Turkish, and Kurdish historical discourses. To this end, I first trace the living memory and legacy of the sheikh in local oral traditions, focusing on Kurdish stories that are considered ‘‘inauthentic’’ sources by written histories—stories that take mythical forms and contents partly because they have been denied a place in history. Then, after briefly outlining how Turkish official and Western scholarly narratives have constructed the rebellion as a historical event, I discuss shifting versions of the event by the Kurdish movement amid political developments in the last three decades. I argue that while most written histories relegate the event to the past as a failed rebellion, Kurdish oral stories effectively bind the past with the ‘‘here and now’’ and articulate an often messianic story of struggle around the legacy and missing grave of the sheikh. And while written histories are preoccupied with ‘‘what really happened in the past,’’ oral stories reposition the past in appropriating the Dagˆkapı Square into a politically and symbolically meaningful place within which to recuperate a sovereign Kurdish identity and symbolically restore history’s scales of justice. Memory, Place, and the Politics of Space Recognizing graves to be simultaneously temporal traces and spatial markers, this essay relies on the literature intertwining memory and history on

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the one hand, and memory, place/space, and identity on the other. The obsessive invocations of cultural, public or popular ‘‘memory,’’ or ‘‘subaltern pasts’’8 in the last three decades point to a fundamental dissatisfaction with hegemonic or universalist histories that seek to control and discipline people’s sense and experience of the past—histories that are gendered, raced, ethnicized, and classed under the instrumentalities of nation, state, and capital. Thanks to such criticism, it is now commonsense to say that the production of history is a site of struggle between asymmetrically structured groups and voices situated in the landscape of power that seek to construct competing versions of the past. In such a context, the politics of memory is an appreciable site for reimagining the past and socio-cultural and political transformation. While endorsing this position, I still discern a not-sosalutary romanticization in this celebratory cast of memory in stark opposition to history as an essentially resisting category without recognition of the ways in which memories may entangle with the province of history. Marita Sturken’s argument is well to the point: Personal memory, cultural memory, and history do not exist within neatly defined boundaries. Rather, memories and memory objects can move from one realm to another, shifting meaning and context. Thus personal memories can sometimes be subsumed into history, and elements of cultural memory can exist in concert with historical narratives.9 Although I am critical of romantic reifications of the differences between the two, I still find the analytical distinction between memory and history useful, at least because there exist institutionally and discursively mediated hierarchies between them in favor of the latter. For example, as I detail later, Kurdish local memories on Sheikh Said and his legacy may or may not entangle with shifting historical discourses of the Kurdish movement depending on the contingencies of the political context. Yet, the hierarchy between oral memories and written histories shapes much of Kurdish historiography, which is highly suspicious of oral memories as factually inauthentic, excluding them from the scope of scrutiny. ‘‘Memory’’ and ‘‘history’’ differ from each other at least with respect to their relationships with time and space, which in turn structure their operations and effects. According to Pierre Nora, memory is ‘‘a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present,’’ while history is the

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always incomplete, secular and intellectual reconstruction of the past, ‘‘of what is no longer.’’10 While memory binds the past and the future in a ‘‘here and now’’ beyond the logic of chronology (akin to the structure of Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘‘messianic time’’), history, at least in its dominant historicist form, is based on clearly demarcated boundaries between the past and the present, isolating the latter and reconstructing the former by linearly tracing the progression of whatever is under scrutiny from a particular origin in time. John R. Gillis adds that if elite time (history) marches linearly, popular time ‘‘dances’’ and ‘‘leaps’’ in living memories and at the level of the ordinary: ‘‘Content to live in a present that [contains] both the past and the future,’’ ordinary people do not feel the need ‘‘to invest in archives, monuments, and other permanent sites of memory, but rather [rely] on living memory.’’11 A plethora of studies on the dialectics of memory and place/space has been compiled after the pioneering works on the production of space12 and on place-making and sites of memory.13 Be it on the spatial containment of mnemonic traces of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima,14 the contested meanings of Holocaust memorials and monuments,15 mnemonic and spatial power struggles in urban renewal projects in post-war Beirut,16 colonial destructions of sacred sites in Ghana,17 Arab and Jewish experiences and memories of a destroyed Palestinian village,18 or the spatial erasure of public pasts of different racial and ethnic groups, or women and workers in urban preservation policies of Los Angeles,19 many scholars have detailed the tensions and interactions between memory and place/space in the production of power, domination, subjectivity, and resistance. They have shown that those in power deploy every possible means of spatial production at their disposal to carefully sort out, erase, tame, or contain ‘‘undesirable’’ popular memories or subaltern pasts, preventing them from leaving any trace on place/space, from claiming and appropriating it. The spatial erasure of mnemonic traces of Kurds in Turkey exemplifies such a politics of space. But such a spatial erasure or containment is not always an easy task for those in power, at least due to the nature of the relationship between place and memory. Edward S. Casey suggests that living memory is ‘‘naturally place-oriented or at least place-supported,’’ connecting ‘‘spontaneously with place, finding in its features that favor and parallel its own activities.’’20 Pierre Nora similarly highlights how memory ‘‘takes root in the concrete’’ and attaches itself to spaces or sites, while history constructs and binds itself to specific events situated in temporal continuities.21 Building on the work

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of Edward S. Casey and Nelson Goodman,22 in his work on the Western Apache mnemonic narratives of landscapes, Keith Basso develops a nuanced understanding of place-making as a means of doing human history and constructing social traditions and identities: place-making is a way of constructing history itself, of inventing it, of fashioning novel versions of ‘‘what happened here.’’ . . . If placemaking is a way of constructing the past, a venerable means of doing human history, it is also a way of constructing social traditions and, in the process, personal and social identities. We are, in a sense, the place-worlds we imagine.23 (original emphasis) According to Basso, place-making practices belong to the field of down-toearth-ness, of everydayness, for ‘‘removed from scholastic reifications . . . [the] sense of place can be seen as a commonplace occurrence, as an ordinary way of engaging with one’s surroundings and finding them significant.’’24 I contend that it is such everyday interactions between memory and place that undermine the attempts of those in power to homogenize both time and space and empty them of heterogeneous or counterhegemonic mnemonic practices and imaginaries. However powerful the imposition of silencing regimes, cultural memories stubbornly and creatively find ways to attach to, claim or make places, while places keep invoking memories incessantly. Such a dialectics of memory and place particularly applies to the kinds of stories that the Kurds produce about the death and grave of Sheikh Said in Dagˆkapı Square. So far, very few studies have attempted a spatial analysis of the Kurdish conflict, engaging displacement and resettlement as spatial strategies of engineering the Turkish nation-state in Kurdistan,25 Kurdish struggles to decolonize and reappropriate urban space in Diyarbakır26 or the temporal and spatial strategies used by the Ottoman and Turkish states to incorporate the Kurdish region.27 In a coauthored article, Gambetti and Jongerden criticize most literature on the Kurdish question in Turkey for being ‘‘timecentered,’’ which represents the plight of the Kurds either through modernist categories of ‘‘backwardness’’ or ‘‘lack’’ or traces the trajectory of Kurdish struggle ‘‘from its origin to the present.’’28 Adding to the rare efforts to spatialize Kurdish studies, this essay situates Kurdish oral stories about the legacy and grave of Sheikh Said in Dagˆkapı Square as symbolic investments

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that culturally and politically cultivate ‘‘a sense of place’’—understood as an imaginative and practical ‘‘way of appropriating portions of the earth.’’29

The Sheikh and the Rebellion The sheikh was an old man, probably in his mid-sixties. He was one of the lead figures of the Naqshbendi tariqa (order)30 of Islam in Kurdistan. Until 1925, there is no recorded political activity of the sheikh.31 Hasan His¸yar Serdıˆ, however, argues that the sheikh had relations with Istanbul-based Kurdish nationalist organizations between 1908 and 1922.32 The sheikh lived in the Kolhisar village of Hınıs, where he taught at his madrasa. In addition, he was a rich merchant who traded sheep with merchants in Aleppo. He had significant religious authority and influence over a vast Kurdish inhabited geography including contemporary provinces of Erzurum, Mus¸, Bingo¨l, Elazıgˆ, and Diyarbakır. The beginning of the sheikh’s end started with his departure from his village in late December 1924. We know that Captain Yusuf Ziya and Khalid Beg, two founding leaders of the Azadi, were arrested in late 1924 and jailed in Bitlis for their role in a rebellion in Beytu¨s¸s¸ebap. The Sheikh was also asked to be a witness. He testified in Hınıs on December 22 and left his village in some ten days. Passing through Kaniya Res¸, C¸apakc¸ur, Dara Hini and Lice, he headed toward Piran. On his first day in Piran, a few Turkish gendarmes visited the sheikh, asking him to hand over some outlaws who had joined him on his way to Piran. The sheikh refused, saying that handing over those who take shelter in one’s house was disgraceful. The gendarmes insisted. A fight broke out. Two soldiers were wounded and one killed. Local Kurds in nearby towns misinterpreted the guns fired in Piran as the start of the rebellion. The sheikh later said that it turned into a rebellion without planning; he lost control and had to assume leadership.33 In the first three weeks, Kurdish forces won battle after battle, but this victorious period did not last long. In late February, the sheikh headed toward Diyarbakır; probably on March 2, the first attack on Diyarbakır was launched. Although on the night of March 7, some fighters entered through the holes in the city walls, all attempts to take Diyarbakır failed. In early April, more Turkish troops were transferred to the region. Even before this, Turkish forces started taking control in the towns under the control of Kurdish forces. The situation was grim. The sheikh decided to head toward

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Varto from whence to pass to Iran. But he was captured on the Abdurrahman Pas¸a Bridge close to Varto with the help of Captain Kasım—the imprisoned Azadi leader Khalid Beg’s cousin, the sheikh’s wife’s sister’s husband, and his military advisor. Kasim, however, had been informing upon the sheikh’s movements even before the rebellion. The sheikh and some of his friends were transferred to Diyarbakır. The rest is known. Only the body of Sheikh S¸emseddin of Farqin was later delivered for proper burial, perhaps because he had announced a fatwa against Sheikh Said at the beginning of the rebellion but later changed sides.

Between Myth and History: An Unfinished Story Benedict Anderson suggests that the constitutive relationship between nationalism and death is a unique one without any genuine precursors in the past,34 an argument that echoes the words of Jacques Derrida: ‘‘Between life and death, nationalism has as its own proper space the experience of haunting. There is no nationalism without some ghost.’’35 In fact, the mythologies of self-sacrifice, tombs of unknown soldiers, or memorial sites for war heroes play significant roles in the imaginative production of national identities.36 On a different register, Eva Domanska provocatively argues in her reflections on the relationship of Argentina’s so-called ‘‘disappeared’’ people to history: ‘‘Without death there would be no history. History feeds on death. History begins in the grave.’’37 If there is such a foundational relationship between national identity and death, and if history begins in the grave, how then, should we think of the missing grave of Sheikh Said as a lens onto power, identity and history? When asked why the Turkish state denied the sheikh and his friends a proper burial and marked graves, the Kurds offer a variety of answers today. Considering the secularist and nationalist character of the Turkish Republic, some suggest that it was a policy to prevent the sheikh’s grave from turning into a sacred site of pilgrimage conducive for promoting a nonsecular and Kurdish national community. Others argue that it was to teach a memorable lesson to secure obedience through intimidation and terror. Echoing Eva Domanska’s argument that history begins in the grave, one of my informants, however, explained it beyond the immediate context of Kurdish-Turkish state relations:

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Graves are what make a place one’s home. They are one’s past; one’s history. They did not allow the Sheikh to have a gravestone. Later they also destroyed Armenian and Jewish cemeteries and constructed hospitals and army buildings there. They bulldozed them to make sure that this city was and is Turkish, as if other peoples never lived here. The systematic erasure of the material traces of non-Muslim and nonTurkish communities from historical time and space has been a key technique of history and space-making in the formation of Turkish nation-state in Diyarbakır and beyond. But, contrary to the Turkish state’s expectations, the story of the sheikh and his friends did not end in that unmarked mass grave. Rather a new mythical history has begun there, shaping Kurdish relations with the Turkish state in the years to come. Below I discuss how the denial of the sheikh’s marked grave has obstructed the possibility of putting a closure on his story, which has fostered narrative elaborations on the event and made him all the more legendary. That is, preventing his bodily remains from physically existing in the modern space of the city with a marked grave has not erased or limited his memory, his symbolic and political legacy. Rather, it has allowed the sheikh to gain an even more sacred and spectral presence over the city, which keeps haunting the regime. Even eighty years after his execution, the Kurds still talk about the sheikh, his grave, his miracles, and suffering. In these stories, his rebellion turns into a messianic story of struggle and divine justice against a politically oppressive state, a narrative that is usually, if not always, situated as a building block of the historical memory of Kurdish national struggle in Turkey. Most Kurdish stories I gathered on the rebellion start with a personal connection to the time of the rebellion. Usually transmitted by elder family members, in these stories ‘‘then my mother was a young bride,’’ ‘‘my grandmother was pregnant with my father,’’ or ‘‘my grandfather was a fighter of the Sheikh’’ are typical introductory speech-acts that anchor the rebellion to family genealogies, taking both the storyteller and the listener back to the lived social time of the rebellion. As a great grandson of the sheikh, I naturally grew up listening to many such stories. Both the stories I grew up with and those I gathered during my fieldwork do not follow a chronological sequence. There are no dates, no numbers. There are also no detailed arguments on the larger historical context or the reasons underlying the rebellion. These stories are inhabited, performed, and transmitted

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through life experiences. The most repeated themes in the stories I gathered in Diyarbakır are those that do not find room in history books; the whereabouts of the sheikh’s grave, his miracles and divine retributive justice for those responsible for his death. Let me start with a representative story of a Kurdish woman that was later written by her son, who couched it in nationalist terms: I was a young boy. One day, my mother took me to a [deserted] spot in Dagˆkapı. . . . ‘‘Take note of this place, my son,’’ she said and continued: ‘‘Son, Sheikh Said Efendi, Sheikh S¸erif Efendi, and other Kurdish elders were hanged here. They were murdered. Look . . . (pointing to the empty area). They buried dead bodies of our grandfathers there. Don’t forget son, they are our ancestors, they died for us. They could not have hanged Sheikh Said Efendi. The rope to hang him broke three times. Efendi wanted to take some soil from the ground and throw it into the wind, but he did not. If he had thrown that soil into the wind, the whole Diyarbakır would have turned into ashes, all the living would have died that moment. But the Sheikh put the soil in his hand back on the ground, because if he had thrown it into the wind, besides the oppressors, his own people would have died, too. Only after he had put the soil back on the ground, could they hang him. Don’t forget son, they were your ancestors. They murdered them mercilessly. Pray for them. The day will come when things will change. Allah is just, and he shall never allow the oppressors to rest with the injustices they have done to the oppressed.’’ My mother finished her words . . . with tears coming down her cheeks. . . . Looking at that spot with eyes full of fear, I felt as if the dead buried there were watching us. . . . Later, my mother told me their rebellion, their heroism and bitter end. She was telling stories as if she had lived through them, taking us to the rebellion, making us a part of it. My mother was two years old at the time of rebellion. Her parents told her of the story of Kurdish heroes. She told us. I will tell my children. This story does not end until the statues and mausoleums of Sheikh Said Efendi and other Kurdish heroes are constructed in Dagˆkapı.38 To start with the closure of the story, the sheikh would not have thought of a statue being erected for him. Most probably, as a pious man, he would

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have found that sinful, for most Muslims view statues as idolatry. Mausoleums, too, would not have found a place in his imagination, as they too are secular forms to monumentalize and store memory. For the sheikh, as he stated in his will, a marked grave would have sufficed. But many Kurdish stories end with such a closure that expresses the desire for ‘‘the day’’ when the sheikh will tear apart the earth and reappear in some form in the very place he was hanged and buried. Only on the day he puts his mark on Dagˆkapı Square would his story end, I was repeatedly told. It is important to note that in such stories national and messianic imaginations feed each other. ‘‘The day will come’’ is a repeated emphasis; an expected messianic future on to which the desire to live in a liberated land is projected. Yet, the sheikh’s return on that day would not be in the religiously promised form of the Mahdi, the Islamic equivalent of Messiah, but in the form of a statue, a tomb, or just a name, as described to me by Ziya, a seventy-yearold Kurdish man. The name of the Sheikh’s right-hand man was Fehmi, a lawyer from Lice. The Sheikh liked and trusted him. Those who say the rebellion was just a religious event don’t know that Fehmi was an atheist. If it was all for religion, then how come Fehmi was his chief assistant? After the repression, Fehmi went in hiding. In the 1950s he came back to Diyarbakır. He always told us: ‘‘The Sheikh is a most important person for the Kurds. He lived and died for us. Whenever you pass through this area, you should button your jackets and show your respect. One day this Dagˆkapı will be named the ‘‘Sheikh Said Square.’’ When this happens, come and visit me in my grave to tell me that you did it. This is the last wish I ask of you.’’ Dagˆkapı is one of the gates of the historic walls that surround the old city of Diyarbakır. There is a wide square right outside Dagˆkapı. On one corner of the square is located the Army House, a white ten-storey building with an at least ten-meter-high mural of Atatu¨rk that faces toward the area where the sheikh is buried. The locals say that the state put this mural there to eternally surveil the sheikh’s grave, a story in which the mural of Atatu¨rk symbolically gains Panoptic qualities and extends the state’s reach of the fight against the sheikh into the afterlife. About one hundred meters down from the Army House is the Dagˆkapı bastion, with a portrait of Atatu¨rk and a constantly waving Turkish flag on

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top of it. Until 2001, I was told, there was a big statue of Atatu¨rk in the middle of the square, but that was later relocated. Two other Turkish flags also wave in the middle of the square. In most stories, the mural of Atatu¨rk, the flags, the statue and the portrait appear as elements of a deliberately devised politics of space to inscribe Turkish state power and domination over the main square of the city and the sheikh’s unknown grave. The two buildings in between the Army House and the bastion were recently constructed. The mirror-windowed building is the German Hospital and the half-circle shaped one is a shopping center, the Centroom. It is believed that the sheikh lies buried behind the German Hospital or somewhere between the hospital and the Army House. This is the spatial context in which to situate the last wish of Fehmi, the sheikh’s chief assistant. His wish to name Dagˆkapı Square after the sheikh is to reclaim a militarized and heavily dominated territory; again, a desire projected onto a messianic future. During my research several others expressed this wish mostly as a response to the aforementioned symbols and spatial techniques that inscribe state power and domination in Dagˆkapı. Such a recovery of Dagˆkapı by inscribing within it with some trace of the sheikh—a name, grave or statue—is usually indexed with the liberation of Diyarbakır and Kurdistan. This is so, because, as is often stated, ‘‘If Diyarbakır is the heart of Kurdistan, Dagˆkapı is the heart of Diyarbakır.’’ Hence, it implies, the unknown grave of the sheikh in Dagˆkapı is the heart of Kurdistan. Although it is forbidden to approach the area considered to be the sheikh’s burial site, which is now a military zone, people keep praying and reading verses from the Koran forty-fifty meters away from the site. These prayers are not collective. With anxious eyes often upon their surroundings, people spend only a few minutes because of the fear of being noticed by the soldiers on guard duty. These visits may have diverse reasons. Some just wonder about the place they heard about so many times. But mostly people come to the sheikh to ask for his help for the fulfillment of various wishes; as a nice match for marriage, a cure for the sick, or the safety of a planned trip—the practices people observe at holy sites throughout most parts of Kurdistan. In other stories, the sheikh’s grave functions as a sacred symbolic site wherein state domination and authority are contested. For example, Ziya and many others told me that first a wine factory and then a cinema was built on the grave. Alcohol and cinema are associated with sin and fun in

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local culture—impure things that should be kept away from graves. The story behind the wine factory is that the sheikh once insulted Atatu¨rk, literally the father of the Turks and the founder of Turkish Republic, by calling him a ‘‘drunk.’’ Atatu¨rk got very angry when he heard this and decided to mete out a punishment to the sheikh such that ‘‘even his bones would get drunk.’’ So Atatu¨rk took revenge not only by denying the sheikh a proper burial and a marked grave but also constructing a wine factory on top of his dead body to disgrace him. It is true that a wine factory was built in the area, but probably not on top of the grave. Later a cinema was built where the German hospital now stands. There are no remains of the factory or the cinema. But, wherever they were actually built, people carry them ‘‘on top’’ of the grave in their stories; depicting an image of the Turkish state so ‘‘immoral’’ and ‘‘vengeful’’ that does not even respect the sheikh’s dead body and extends the reach of its war with him to the Hereafter. The most popular story about the sheikh’s grave is, however, that of the broken excavation machine. It occurred in Dagˆkapı Square, it seems, during the summer of 1991. Nobody is sure about the details like the exact date or the name of the operator, even those who have shops in the area. But everybody is sure that the machine broke when digging the ground in the square. According to one story, the operator of the machine was badly injured. Others say he died in the accident. Still others say that not only the machine’s operator but also its owner died. In other versions, the owner’s brother or son or cousin is added to the list. The story and death toll may change, but the morale of the story remains the same: Those who dig the area around the sheikh’s grave would insult him and be cursed in return. Similar stories erupted during the construction of the German Hospital. I was also told that two workers had died during the construction of the hospital. One claim is that the brother or cousin of the owner died, too. When such debates over the grave peaked, the owner of the hospital, a wellknown businessman who is now a parliamentarian of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), felt the need to explain that the grave had to be away from the hospital, because they did not see any bones during the excavation. But the sheikh’s family members are still very angry with the owner of the hospital and the municipality, who authorized the construction, accusing them of not being respectful of their dead. The current Kurdish mayor defended himself by arguing that it was the previous mayor who gave the authorization, a binding decision that he could not repeal. The important point about these seemingly endless and endlessly changing

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stories is that regardless of their contents and claims, their constant circulation helps to reproduce and increase the sacred authority of the sheikh and his grave, making sure that Dagˆkapı Square belongs to the sheikh, and not only to the sheikh—to ‘‘our Sheikh,’’ to ‘‘us.’’ Stories about the sacred powers and miracles of the sheikh that contest state authority are not just about his grave, they also go back to the day of his execution. There were rumors in Diyarbakır the day before the executions that an earthquake would destroy the whole city, when they would hang the sheikh. The earthquake did not happen, but another miracle did, as it came through the stories above. Many believe that the rope the executioner used to hang the sheikh broke. Some say three times, others say once. Considering the rope as a master symbol of state power over life and death and sovereignty as the right to kill,39 one can interpret this as a story that not only grants the sheikh divine powers but also effectively denies the Turkish state the ability to be sovereign in Kurdistan. The sheikh’s execution was possible only when he ordered the rope to hang him, we are told. Through this the sheikh becomes the master of his own death, transforming from a simple victim of state oppression into an undefeatable and sacred sovereign authority. Similarly, in the first story I presented, we were told that when the sheikh was in front of the gallows, he could have destroyed the whole city with some soil in his hand. But he did not in order not to harm his own people, who also lived in the city. In this story the sheikh gains clearly godly qualities. He has the power to destroy the whole city with a single move of his hand and yet he practices limitless mercy as an index of his protective sovereignty. He has to make a choice, either destroy the whole city or save his people at the expense of his own life. Thus the sheikh becomes the master of his own death by defying state power and dramatizing it into a self-sacrificial act for his people. Here, it should also be noted that a similar refusal of state power occurs in the case of Seyyid Rıza in 1938, the leader of the Alevid-Kurdish uprising in Dersim. However, in his case, the refusal is not through a miracle like the broken rope, but an act that was documented by the person in charge of his execution.40 Seyyid pushed away the executioner, put the rope over his neck and hanged himself, dramatizing his execution as a refusal of state sovereignty. After the execution of Sheikh Said his followers still believed that he was alive, which inspired them to continue the resistance in the form of small bands. When it became clear that their sheikh had really died, stories about his revenge on his oppressors and traitors flourished. These stories

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are typically organized around the theme of divinely ordained retributive justice. Here, for example, is what happened to his executioner: ‘‘The executioner who hanged the sheikh died in shame and poverty. Nobody talked to him. He lost his mind and suffered great pains until he died crawling in the streets of Diyarbakır. Allah gave what that ignoble man deserved.’’ Although many people told me this story, nobody knew who the executioner was, or when exactly he died. Captain Kasım, who betrayed the sheikh and arrested him, also met a bitter end. When, where, how? Again, there are no clear answers. A person from the sheikh’s family said: He went to some town in the Aegean region [Western Anatolia]. He lived there for a long time. Maybe twenty years. I remember my father came home one day. Then we were in Elaziz. I have never seen him like that. He just could not talk. He told my mother that he saw Kaso [Captain Kasım]. Kaso usually stayed at home and did not come out in public. With what face could he do that? Nobody talked to him or his family until he died in pain and isolation. The story about the prosecutor of the sheikh is more striking: He earned lots of money by serving the state. But he did not have the opportunity to enjoy it. Allah has justice. He was sentenced to tens of years in prison and put in jail. There a scorpion bit him. He lost his mind and had a disgraceful death eating his own shit in his cell. The Kurdish landlords or communal leaders who fought against the sheikh also received their share from this form of divine justice. Several people told me that the state killed or imprisoned even those Kurdish collaborators who actively fought against the sheikh on the accusation that ‘‘those who betray their own kind will never be loyal to us.’’ One example is Cemileˆ C¸eto, which was also written about by Hasan His¸yar Serdıˆ in his memoir. In popular stories, Cemileˆ C¸eto and others who fought against the sheikh usually die, but no details are provided. Serdıˆ provides a detailed story . ¨ lu¨m’’ (Treacherous and Disgraceful under the subtitle ‘‘Ihanetc¸i ve Rezil O Death): That goddamn Cemileˆ C¸eto, the agha of Pencinar as¸iret (tribe), became brothers with Mustafa Kemal [Atatu¨rk] in 1919. When the

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Sheikh Said rebellion began for the Kurdish cause in 1925, Cemileˆ C¸eto, Emineˆ Perixaneˆ, Resuleˆ Mehemmed and Kamil Bey from Evani started battling against Kurdish fighters with their as¸irets. But when the Third Army Corps entered the battlefield and Sheikh Said was captured, those gangs turned into greyhound dogs with no hunt. Their enemy no longer needed them. Cemileˆ C¸eto himself was tried in his brother Mustafa Kemal’s court in Diyarbakır. He was sentenced to death. This was a good deed Mustafa Kemal did for us. When I was in Nigˆde prison, four sons of Cemileˆ C¸eto were imprisoned with me, while his exiled children and wives were having a life and death struggle in the streets of Nigˆde, trying to find work. Having understood the situation only at the last minute, Emineˆ Perixaneˆ and Resuleˆ Mehemmed fled to Syria and applied to the French for shelter and asylum. But, although he served [the state] by providing the Ninth Army Corps with food for a long time and joining the war with his more than his 15,000 gang fighters, their friend Kamil Bey of Eveˆni could not save himself and his family from exile to Istanbul. In the end he died crawling on the streets of Istanbul.41 Although in Serdıˆ’s depiction the story is more about intrigues of the Turkish state, which first used and then destroyed ‘‘Kurdish traitors,’’ in popular stories the bitter ends of all the ‘‘traitors’’ are told in the form of divine retributive justice: ‘‘Allah never allows the oppressors to rest with what they have done.’’ Many of these are quite fantastic stories and even an attempt to verify them factually is to miss the point regarding their symbolic and political operations and effects. I argue that ‘‘what really happened’’ to those ‘‘oppressors,’’ ‘‘traitors’’ and ‘‘collaborators’’ is not a significant question especially if/when that reality painfully does not match with people’s sense of justice. If anything, we know that the prosecutor of the sheikh’s case enjoyed a rich life and a successful political career as a minister. The point to highlight here is rather that such stories powerfully elaborate a moral and political universe in which to take the revenge of the sheikh and restore history’s scales of justice in narrative or symbolic form. Hence, by going mad, crawling on the streets, vomiting blood, or eating their own shit, those responsible for the sheikh’s death receive an even worse fate as a form of retributive justice.

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The Rebellion as Historical Event ‘‘What really happened in 1925’’ has been debated in political and historical discourses in controversial ways.42 Kurdish nationalists, Turkish official history and international scholars all have their own interpretations with differing points of emphasis. The main controversy that monopolizes these debates is concerned with the goal of the rebellion; whether it was a Kurdish nationalist or religious rebellion, or both. Despite the diversity of interpretations, it is through an assessment of the context, causality, and aims of the actors that the rebellion gets constructed as an event in chronologically based historical time. The Turkish state’s official discourse on the rebellion is not monolithic. The judge of the court concluded that the goal of rebels was an independent Islamic Kurdish government. According to the prosecutor,43 religion was only a means of propaganda and the true goal of the rebellion was ‘‘nothing other than the establishment of a Kurdish state and government’’ ‘‘when its internal dynamics, spirit and the aims and objectives of its organizers are considered.’’ The Turkish Army did not agree with this view, however. Considering ‘‘its reasons, preparations, timing and context,’’ a book published by the Turkish chief of the general staff argued: The Sheikh Said rebellion. . . was completely a case of counterrevolution. . . . The propaganda of Kurdishness (Ku¨rtlu¨k) started with the declaration of Tanzimat-ı Hayriye [1839], but this propaganda had never found a base among the people. This is because the primary change Tanzimat and Mes¸rutiyet [Constitutional Rule] brought about for Kurdish life was to break down the influence of aghas, begs, chiefs, sheikhs and hodjas over these primitive herds. But it was impossible to inculcate Kurdishness among this mass who even could not understand what humanity was. For this mass the meaning of human existence was not more than a handful of bulgur and barley; and neither did it want to know what the Republic was, nor what existed behind the mountain they lived. In order to provoke this ignorant mass, it was necessary to make religious propaganda. That was what happened in reality.44 This has been the most dominant official and public historical narrative in Turkey. According to this narrative, in enmity with the civilizing secular

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Kemalist revolutions, ‘‘reactionary’’ Kurdish nobles staged this rebellion to establish a fundamentalist Islamic order. Accordingly, Sheikh Said was such a noble whose power and privileges were destroyed as the Republic was bringing a ‘‘humane’’ life to the East, a place inhabited by ‘‘poor and ignorant masses’’ under bonds of hierarchy and oppression of the sheikhs. According to the army, this ‘‘counter-revolution’’ was to bring back the rule of the Caliphate and Islam, which would have helped the sheikhs to maintain their power over ‘‘ignorant masses.’’ The Turkish official discourse also emphasizes the role of the rebellion in the issue of oil politics, arguing that it was a British plot to gain the control of the oil rich Mosul and Kirkuk in 1926. However, other Turkish scholars disputed ‘‘the British finger.’’ According to Mete Tunc¸ay, who himself views the event as ‘‘a nationalist revolt in religious garb,’’ there was, however, no evidence and logical explanation about the British involvement. He adds that state officials devised multiple versions of the event for different audiences.45 The emphasis on the ‘‘counter-revolutionary’’ character of the rebellion helped the Kemalists to extend the repression to the Turkish opposition against the regime’s top-down secularizing reforms. These opponents, including many commanders of the War of Independence, were executed, imprisoned, or exiled on charges of encouraging the Sheikh Said rebellion. Addressing the West, again, the rebellion was represented as a reactionary event against modernization and civilizing reforms, denying the ethno-political dynamics of the event. This rebellion also attracted the attention of some Western scholars,46 who typically described it as a (proto)-nationalist response to the Turkish state, which started destroying non-Turkish and nonsecular cultural and political formations right after the proclamation of the Republic. Martin van Bruinessen argues that the explicit goal of the rebellion was to establish ‘‘an independent Kurdish state, where the Islamic principles, violated in modern Turkey, were to be respected’’: ‘‘The revolt has been prepared by a political organization [Azadi], exploiting the Sheikh’s charisma in order to mobilize a mass following that it itself lacked. The Sheikh was, nevertheless, much more than a mere figure-head; he assumed supreme leadership of the military operations’’ (original emphasis).47 Robert Olson also privileges the modern organizational aspects of the rebellion by emphasizing the role of the Azadi in its mobilization. According to him, it was ‘‘the first large-scale nationalist rebellion by the Kurds.’’48

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He adds that the Azadi deliberately promoted a sheikh type of leadership since its inception and this was ‘‘given force in the Azadi congresses of 1924. The fact that the rebellion had a religious character was the result of the Azadi’s assessment of the strategy and tactics necessary for carrying out a successful revolution. While the Sheikh Said rebellion was a nationalist rebellion, its mobilization, propaganda and symbols were those of a religious rebellion.’’ While Olson argues that the sheikh was simultaneously an ardent nationalist and a committed believer, for van Bruinessen the main factor in the Azadi’s decision to elect him as the leader was the sheikh’s religious influence over the locals, especially the Zaza-speaking Kurds. Both Olson and van Bruinessen also underline that religious and nationalist elements of the rebellion cannot be differentiated: ‘‘the primary aim of both Sheikh Said and Azadi leaders was the establishment of an independent Kurdistan. . . . For the mass of participants in Sheikh Said’s revolt, religious and nationalist loyalties cannot be separated: they coincided and were virtually identical’’49 (original emphasis). Whether nationalist or religious, progressive or reactionary, there is consensus that this rebellion was a historical turning point for Kurdish and Turkish peoples.50 The Lausanne Treaty arranged the status of minorities in Turkey in 1923, acknowledging the Ottoman millet system that gave minority status only to non-Muslims and incorporating Kurds into ‘‘the Turkish nation’’ by virtue of their Muslim heritage. However, the Turkish Republican reforms, especially the abolition of the Caliphate, the ban on religious organizations and the introduction of a unified secular Turkish education system in March 1924 crushed public vestiges of a separate Kurdish cultural ethno-political existence. The ban on madrasas eliminated the only educational institution where the Kurdish language was used. The Constitution of 1924 equated citizenship with Turkishness. The abolition of the Caliphate replaced the idiom of ‘‘Islamic brotherhood’’ with the ‘‘unity of Turkish nation’’ and destroyed the so-called ‘‘historical alliance’’ between Kurds and Turks. Through such policies the Kemalist regime tightened its grip over the Kurds in an effort to create a homogeneous and sovereign Turkish state and national identity. In such a context, the Sheikh Said rebellion appears as a last blow to the already ruined ‘‘historical bridge’’ between Kurds and Turks, creating a point of departure for Kurdish politics of independence. This rebellion has also served as a foundational event in-reverse for the Turkish regime, as it was against this rebellion that

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most Turkish legal and political institutions were established in strictly secularist and nationalist terms. Even today Kemalists view Kurdish nationalism and Islam, two tendencies embodied in the personality of Sheikh Said, as the main national security issues. In this sense, too, the sheikh’s specter continues to haunt the Turkish regime.

The Three Faces of the Sheikh Having briefly outlined the constructions of the rebellion in Turkish official and Western-academic historical discourses, I now turn to the historical discourse of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-led Kurdish movement51 and trace its three different versions of the rebellion and the image of the sheikh over the last three decades. In doing so, I rely on anti-empiricist approaches to history which privilege an analysis of the politics of production and interpretation of ‘‘facts’’ into historical truths.52 My aim here is not to fill in a gap in historical representation by providing more empirical data from the silenced Kurdish margins, but to understand how and why gaps and silences are produced and negotiated in the Kurdish movement’s historical discourse as intrinsic parts of discursively mediated power and political struggles.53 National independence is not just a political project that seeks exclusive territorial sovereignty; it also involves a particular reading and rendition of ¨ calan before a history. Until the defense of the PKK’s leader Abdullah O Turkish court in 1999, the Kurdish movement had an independenceoriented lens for interpreting Kurdish history and it created foundational national myths and symbols accordingly. Yet, although Sheikh Said became a national hero in the movement’s public discourse in the early 1990s, the Manifesto of the PKK interestingly did not have any single reference to his rebellion.54 The heir of both the Turkish Left and preceding Kurdish movements, the PKK referenced this rebellion only in another foundational document entitled ‘‘Ku¨rdistan’da Zorun Rolu¨’’ (The Role of Force in Kurdistan), appropriating it hesitantly and critically as ‘‘a primitive but righteous reaction’’ to Turkish policies of establishing political sovereignty in Kurdistan by means of military occupation: The uprisings in Kurdistan in this period (1925–1940) were the most senseless rebellions in the world. . . . Because there was no

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modern social development, there was no serious goal of political and national liberation and modern organization. On the contrary, they were imprisoned in the most reactionary medieval remnants of thought and organization, tribalism and religious sectarianism. In fact, these were not planned and organized rebellions but spontaneous reactions against very aggressive, savage, murderous practices of national oppression. . . . [However, these] primitive uprisings had a very righteous essence, as they were against national domination and oppression. But the dominant Kurdish classes have prevented this righteous essence from gaining a progressive content. . . . Although these forms of resistance were righteous and sacred; the reactionary position of the leadership obstructed their transformation into a revolutionary national liberationist struggle. . . . They prioritized economically their narrow family and tribal interests, ideologically the ‘‘Islamic brotherhood’’ and feudal ideology, and politically they aimed to bring back the Ottoman sultans. That is why we call these primitive rebellions. . . . Righteous but primitive! While this was the case of the rebellions, the policies of Kemalist dictatorship in Kurdistan were completely unjust and reactionary, examples of savagery and barbarism.55 This secular and ‘‘progressive’’ class analysis of Sheikh Said and other rebellions of the early Republican era should be located in its historical, ideological, and political contexts. The dominant version of the Turkish Left opposed Kurdish political mobilization as a threat to class solidarity until very recently and appealed to the Kemalist view that the rebellion was a primitive and reactionary enterprise of British-supported Kurdish feudal landlords, who had lost their privileges due to progressive Kemalist reforms. The PKK’s view of the rebellion as righteous can be considered as an ideological point of departure from the Turkish Left’s view, moving toward creating an autonomous Kurdish liberationist political tradition. However, like the Kemalists and Turkish Left, the PKK itself was very much committed to a modernist secular ideological and political orientation, promoting rigidly orthodox leftist politics of anti-religious and anti-tribal organization. It was this ‘‘progressive’’ approach that condemned the sheikh as ‘‘primitive’’ and ‘‘reactionary.’’ The PKK argued that the feudal nature of tribalism and religious loyalties to the Ottomans (and Turks) obstructed the emergence of a genuine Kurdish national consciousness, which was an

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impediment to the politics of independence. Accordingly, the movement defined its goal to be overcoming such ‘‘primitive’’ tribalism and religiosity toward creating a modern national liberation movement as the political heir of the ‘‘righteous essence’’ of Sheikh Said and other earlier rebellions. Starting with the early 1990s, the leader of Kurdish movement radically revised this ‘‘primitive’’ and ‘‘reactionary’’ character of the rebellion in his writings and interviews in the movement’s journal, Serxwebuˆn, some of which were later developed into a book titled So¨mu¨rgeci Cumhuriyet Kirli ve Suc¸ludur (The Colonialist Republic Is Dirty and Guilty).56 In this book, ¨ calan referred anew to the Sheikh Said rebellion as a Kurdish response to O the Republic’s invasion of Kurdistan, a rebellion that was national in its ¨ calan ascribed the failure of the rebelessence beneath its religious color. O lion to the disorganized state of Kurdish forces and the lack of necessary preparation. According to him, Atatu¨rk seized upon the rebellion as an ¨ calan particuopportunity to destroy any value regarding Kurdishness. O larly criticized how the Turkish regime stigmatized such a most ordinary popular uprising as reactionary. Criticizing the Republic itself as a most reactionary and fascist regime that labels anything other than itself reac¨ calan declared Sheikh Said to be a Kurdish national leader tionary, O incomparably more progressive and humane than Atatu¨rk. While in written discourse the sheikh was thus ascribed a clearly ‘‘national’’ and ‘‘progressive’’ character, he was elevated to the status of the quintessential symbol of anticolonial resistance in the movement’s public discourse. Particularly effective in this revision was the aggressive emergence of the Hizbullah; an underground organization formed by ‘‘religious Kurds,’’ who murdered many Kurdish activists and civilians under emergency rule conditions of the 1990s. There is much evidence that this group was supported and protected by Turkish state authorities. Within such a political context, the movement initiated a process of self-criticism and developed a critique of the orthodox Leftist position on religion, declaring that crude materialist interpretations of religion were wrong.57 Criticizing Kurdish Hizbullah as the triggermen of a dirty regime that had nothing to ¨ calan highlighted the need for a revolutionary approach to do with Islam, O religion and repeatedly stated that the PKK was the real fighter for Islam understood as a religion of justice against all kinds of oppression. Within such a shifting ideological and political context, Marxist Kurdish guerrillas were told to be as worthy and dignified as the first companions of Prophet Mohammed. The PKK’s frontal organization supported Kurdish

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imams (mele) to organize in the form of a political union in Europe, Turkey, and even Mecca. In the process, the PKK helped to establish mosques in Europe; those in Bremen and Paris were named after Sheikh Said. This appropriation of Islam as a religion of justice and struggle against oppression helped the movement to incorporate Sheikh Said and other past Kurdish leaders into the liberationist discourse as sacred anticolonial figures whose revenge should be taken and whose historical and political mission completed within the progressive teleology of Kurdish national liberation struggle. Concurrently, Kurdish guerrillas were resituated as the ‘‘real grandchildren’’ of Sheikh Said to complete his mission. A guerrilla fighter in Amed (Diyarbakır) between 1986 and 1995 explained these shifts in the approach to religion and past Kurdish leaders as follows: Before we said there was no God, no Prophet and tried to teach people socialism, Leninism and all that. Our people were illiterate and deeply pious, and they did not get it. But when we started talking about Sheikh Said, they all welcomed us as their own children. They started sharing their food with us. The fact was that they did not know or care who Lenin was, but they not only knew but also lived Sheikh Said. I mean they grew up listening to stories about his struggle, his death. They believed we would achieve their revenge for past and present oppressions. Pious Kurds started massively joining the movement’s activities in the early 1990s, working as militias or propagandists in and outside Kurdistan. The images of Sheikh Said and other past Kurdish leaders were repeatedly used in the opening and closing scenes of the movement’s Brussels based Med¨ calan’s photo, TV satellite station. These images typically ended with O ¨ calan completing the historical chain of Kurdish leadership and turning O into ‘‘the last Kurdish leader,’’ the political heir of all previous rebellions. Besides this, images of the guerrilla as companions of the Prophet symboli¨ calan to the Prophet himself. Some sympathizcally elevated the status of O ers even constructed him as a messianic figure. His last name helped much ¨ calan’’ literally means ‘‘avenger.’’ Stories in this regard. In Turkish ‘‘O flourished that such a last name could not be coincidence, but a divine ¨ calan as the much expected messianic avenger to arrangement, depicting O take the Kurds’ historical revenge.

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¨ calan in 1999, however, has radically interrupted this The arrest of O ¨ calan did not anticolonial reading of the rebellion. In his self-defense, O only renounce claims for anticolonial struggle, national independence, and territorial sovereignty, but also condemned these struggles to be past forms of ‘‘primitive nationalism’’ that harmed the Kurds throughout the twentieth century. Sheikh Said’s name was among those ‘‘primitive nationalists.’’ This radical shift in political discourse was accompanied by a rereading of Kurdish history, as previous independence-seeking historical narratives ¨ calan emphasized the need for a became politically unsustainable. In fact, O new history, a ‘‘realist reinterpretation’’ of the history of the Kurds, and Turkish-Kurdish relations to ease and buttress the peace process.58 The historiographical operation he initiated was critical of both the mistakes of past Kurdish leaders and Turkish state policies, departing from past anticolonial narratives that had valorized Kurdish heroisms against Turkish state atrocities. A few details of this shift are in order. Until 1999 the movement’s standard discourse on Kurdish-Turkish relations in the early Republican period was as follows: Kurds supported Turks in the fight against imperialists during the War of Independence (1919–1923). However, once independence was achieved, Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk, a disciple of the Jacobin Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), betrayed the Kurds, and denied their autonomy and cultural rights, which he had previously promised during the war. Several Kurdish rebellions were rightfully initiated in response to this betrayal, the first one being the Sheikh Said rebellion. The moral and political assumption of this narrative of betrayal was that Kurds did not have any choice other than rebellion in the face of a disloyal and increasingly despotic regime. This assumption served to justify claims for independence through armed struggle and the PKK declared itself as the heir of past rebellions against a ‘‘dirty’’ and ‘‘criminal’’ Republic that had betrayed Kurdish sovereignty at the outset. ¨ calan put forward in his defense in 1999 was radiThe narrative that O cally different: Kurds and Turks fought together against imperialists in the War of Independence. Then, Atatu¨rk was sincere in his democratic approach to Kurds and Kurdish autonomy, especially between 1921 and 1924. But, two things prevented him from achieving a democratic Republic and peaceful coexistence with the Kurds. First, the CUP members isolated and manipulated him in order to create a despotic regime, and Atatu¨rk either could not see or overcome this. Second, Kurds made the mistake and

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rebelled, leaving the state no other choice than repression to consolidate the emergent regime. This revision mostly ascribed the responsibility for the antidemocratic character of the Republic to the CUP and past Kurdish ¨ calan repeatedly emphasized the significance of ‘‘primitive nationalists.’’ O reanimating ‘‘the spirit of 1921–1924’’ to democratize the Republic and make a room for Kurdish cultural and political existence. According to him, the twenty-first century would be one of democracy and human rights ¨ calan also said that in which there was no place for violence or rebellion. O he gained maturity and learned from mistakes of past Kurdish leaders who chose rebellion over rational dialogue for the resolution of the conflict. In this narrative of coming to maturity and reason, the Sheikh Said rebellion was resituated as a case of ‘‘primitive nationalism’’ that might have been supported by the imperial British. Behind this revision is probably the reasoning that the broken bridges between Kurds and Turks should be repaired and those who had destroyed them should be decentered in order to set the discursive conditions of ‘‘living together’’ under the same sovereign state. Criticizing the ‘‘primitive nationalism’’ of the sheikh and ¨ calan distanced pointing to the ‘‘possible British finger’’ in the rebellion, O himself from the trio the Republic feels besieged by ‘‘Kurdish separatists,’’ ‘‘Islamic fundamentalists,’’ and ‘‘external enemies,’’ expecting as a result, to secure state recognition as a legitimate broker of formal negotiations for peace between the PKK and the Turkish state. This revision is grounded in three other key revisions of the independence-oriented anticolonial Kurdish historical discourse. The first is the initial encounter; that is, when ‘‘Kurds’’ and ‘‘Turks’’ first met in Anatolia in the eleventh century in the context of the expansion of the Seljukid rule. The past historical discourse of the movement situated the Malazgirt War in 1071 as the first Turkish colonial act. The second is the ‘‘alliance’’ of Kurdish nobles with the Ottomans against the Safavids of Iran in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The architect of this alliance—a . Kurd named Idris-i Bitlis—was condemned by the PKK as a ‘‘traitor’’ for not pursuing Kurdish interests. The third is the Kurdish-Turkish ‘‘alliance’’ during the First World War, especially during the War of Gallipoli (1915) and the War of Independence, which were also previously criticized as the inability of Kurdish leadership of the time to pursue a national liberationist agenda. Since 1999, the Kurdish leadership has repeatedly referred to the first two of these moments as ‘‘rational alliances’’ that should enable Turks

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and Kurds to make peace and ‘‘win together’’ in the present, and the War of Gallipoli and War of Independence as crucial historical moments when Kurds and Turks ‘‘sacrificed’’ their lives for their common homeland. These mnemonic operations to re-appropriate previously condemned historical moments are key to decentering the logic of national independence in the construction of Kurdish history and politics toward building a politically driven historical discourse capable of accommodating the histories of both Kurds and Turks simultaneously. To repair destroyed bridges between the two peoples, past moments of ‘‘colonialism’’ and ‘‘treason’’ are thus resituated as ‘‘rational alliances’’ that could and should be revived as models to inform the present. Concurrently, the peace-oriented Kurdish political discourse tends to decenter past moments of violence and rebellion in Kurdish-Turkish relations, which had previously been positioned as moments of heroic anticolonial resistance, as unfortunate cases of unreason that harmed both Kurds and Turks. It is within such a matrix of coming to historical ‘‘maturity’’ and political ‘‘reason’’ that ‘‘Sheikh Said the hero’’ . and ‘‘Idris the traitor’’ tend to reverse meanings. Such politically driven historical revisions have not gone uncontested, however. Kurdish political parties and organizations critical of the PKK’s concessions for a politics of peace have also criticized such revisions, typically ¨ calan of being a Kemalist and betraying the Kurdish national accusing O cause. Most sympathizers of the movement, however, are unwilling to talk about the issue, a form of political speech in which silence becomes a mode of noncompliance. Those who spoke to me, though, mostly pointed to the ¨ calan’s revisions: ‘‘He is just doing politics; he does not instrumentality of O really mean what he says.’’ An active cadre of the PKK was more critical: ‘‘It is not easy to erase the memories of people the way you re-format a computer. Memories always find ways to survive until justice is restored.’’ But the most common structure of thought and feeling about these revisions found its expression in the words of a neighborhood organizer in the Bagˆlar district of ¨ calan and Sheikh Said are the same for us; they both Diyarbakır: ‘‘Leader O fought and suffered for us. The rest is unimportant.’’ Although in articulating ¨ calan tried to distance himself from the legacy of the his peace project O sheikh in exchange for dialogue with the state, this is how many of his supporters stubbornly situate him next to the sheikh in their struggle against the ¨ calan into a confrontational political imaginary he no state, appropriating O longer seems to find useful. I consider this as a sign of the intactness of the movement’s historical discourse of the 1990s among many Kurds, a persistent

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¨ calan and the sheikh narrative space that has the capacity to host both O ¨ calan and the sheikh are more than what they simultaneously. After all, O have said or intended to do as rational actors; they are what the Kurds make of them—and for many Kurds they are both legendary leading figures in a dignified historical struggle for justice, recognition and political sovereignty.

Conclusion I have detailed some of the ways the rebellion of 1925 and its leader have entered local Kurdish memories and varied historical discourses. By way of a conclusion, let me briefly reflect on the vexed relationship of local memory to the shifting historical discourses of the Kurdish movement on the one hand, and to scholarly historiography on the other. I have shown that the Kurdish movement gained a hegemonic character in the 1990s, when it successfully articulated cultural memories and knowledges of past rebellions into a national-liberationist discourse. Yet, the recent revisions to Kurdish history in exchange for state recognition have increased the gap between the movement’s historical discourse and popular narratives. The shifting nature of these discourses points to an instrumental matrix of signification that constructs and reconstructs that past to make it compatible with the ‘‘realities’’ of the political present. This malleability of the past, however, does not mean that the past is simply a passive object that the present acts upon and manipulates the way it wishes, for the past is a ‘‘historical process,’’ which is also constituted by earlier but resilient narratives about itself, constraining the form and content of historical representations in the present.59 In other words, while the Kurdish leadership has been processing and reprocessing the legacy of Sheikh Said rebellion in line with ideological and political exigencies, the resilience of cultural memory and oral stories shows that the past may work autonomously and in venues of representation other than history to constrain and shape the workings of both politics and history in the present. It remains to be seen whether the Kurdish movement will take such local memories and stories seriously as crucial cultural forms of imagining the past and the political realm and will rearticulate them into its historical discourse beyond an instrumentalist and secularist imaginary, and toward a radical history of the present. Regarding the relationship between oral memories and written histories, I will confine my reflections to the work of Martin van Bruinessen,60 who

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is the authority in the anthropology of Sheikh Said rebellion. Before my discussion, though, I would like to state that in order not to do injustice to van Bruinessen’s methodology and analysis with a textual reading one has to bear in mind that his research and analyses were situated in the intellectual climate of the late 1970s and 1980s. This said, I want to focus on how van Bruinessen complains of the factual reliability of Kurdish sources: ‘‘The problem with these Kurdish sources, especially the oral ones, is that the rebellion has become a legendary event in Kurdish nationalist history. All of my informants had told their stories numerous times before, undoubtedly ever polishing and embellishing them, and bringing them more into line with what they thought should have happened.’’61 In order to have factual verification, he says, he carefully checked Kurdish accounts with whatever ‘‘independent information’’ he could find—Turkish newspapers, especially Cumhuriyet (The Republic) and British intelligence reports on Turkey and Iraq. The use of Cumhuriyet, then the official daily of the Turkish regime, as an ‘‘independent source’’ is obviously very problematic, but the problem in van Bruinessen’s approach is deeper. Constructing the rebellion as an historical event through what I view as an empiricistrationalist approach, he too readily discards the popular or ‘‘legendary’’ for the sake of ‘‘authentic truth.’’ He also finds that there is evidence that Kurdish rebels condemned ‘‘the sinful anti-religious reforms in Turkey,’’ giving the ‘‘impression that the revolt had the character of a messianic movement in the name of old-time religion,’’ but after the repression, ‘‘nothing of the messianic appearance of the movement remained.’’62 I think van Bruinessen is too hasty in dismissing the popular and messianic stories in order to give a ‘‘realist’’ description of the event. He is right in saying that most Kurdish stories on the issue are legendary or mythical, yet his argument that nothing of the messianic nature of the rebellion has remained is debatable. Part of the problem is that van Bruinessen tends to exclusively situate messianic thought in the field of religion, ignoring the interaction between messianic thought and nationalisms in general, and between such thought and Kurdish nationalism in particular. I have instead analyzed some of these mythical/messianic stories as crucial forms of cultural and political knowledge that continue to contest the rationalist histories from which they have been foundationally excluded. I have been interested not only in the content of these stories but also their form, especially in the ways they are ‘‘polished’’ and ‘‘embellished.’’ In this my aim was not to reconstruct the rebellion through popular stories as

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more authentic sources to unveil so far unmentioned truths, but to understand the living memory of the rebellion and the sheikh within popular cultural matrices of signification. After all, ‘‘the significance of [such] events and persons cannot be disembodied from the cultural forms through which they are interpreted in different historical traditions, whether oral or written.’’63 For the historicist histories that are driven by the Rilkean question of ‘‘the way [the past] really was,’’64 most of these are ‘‘just stories’’ without truth-value and are concurrently excluded from the field of history. I argue that such a narrowly secular and empiricist approach cannot tell us much about the symbolic and political presence of the rebellion in contemporary Kurdistan. These memories and stories may individually sound to the secular-scientific analyst as ‘‘irrational’’ wishes or fantasies. Yet, an analysis of them in their rich content and complexity reveals the way they are structured by a distinct politico-symbolic rationality that creatively articulates and appropriates the legacy of the sheikh and his grave into the present. Hence, I suggest taking up these memories and stories, especially the way they are polished and embellished, as elaborate symbolic efforts and investments that reverse a ‘‘failed rebellion’’ and an unmarked grave into a sacred political cosmology of the present. At the center of this lively cosmology the sheikh stands as a legendary figure of embodied sovereignty, while his unmarked grave becomes the object and site of a continuous and contentious struggle to restore justice and recover an occupied territory wherein to reclaim a sovereign Kurdish identity. For many Kurds, the sheikh’s missing grave is a collective pain without an object, a stubbornly present absence. This absence, created by a sovereign ban as a space outside the dominant symbolic order, is a tense symbolic and semantic void that the Kurds struggle to fill and inhabit through legendary or mythical stories that create a counter symbolic order marked by an often messianic political temporality. This is precisely how disqualified Kurdish oral knowledges of the past are made urgently relevant to the present in the service of an unfinished struggle. So far the Turkish state has prevented the Kurds from creating a ‘‘symbolic topology’’65 around the sheikh’s grave, from turning it into a ‘‘lieu de me´moire’’66 as a monument, tomb, or gravestone. But many Kurds still do experience the Dagˆkapı Square as an ‘‘environment of memory’’ (milieux de me´moire) wherein living memories and stories of the past resiliently struggle to enchant, sanctify and reclaim the sheikh’s grave, the Dagˆkapı Square and Diyarbakır into

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politico-symbolically meaningful places—places the Turkish state has tried to violently disenchant, homogenize, and empty of their cultural, historical, and political referents. As if in a gesture of reciprocity, Dagˆkapı Square emerges full force from within this struggle as a place that hosts and protects these mesmerizing popular stories of miraculous justice and legendary suffering, of the sacred and the sovereign, as ‘‘the weapons of the weak against the reality of the established order’’—stories that ‘‘reverse the relationships of power and . . . ensure the victory of the unfortunate in a fabulous, utopian space’’ and ‘‘offer their audience a repertory of tactics for future use.’’67 Epilogue Amid heightened violent confrontations with the state since 2008, there has been kind of a ‘‘return’’ to the Kurdish movement’s historical discourse of the 1990s. This first revealed itself when the Turkish Constitutional Court launched a case to shut down the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party ¨ calan himself (Demokratik Toplum Partisi- DTP). Upon the suggestion of O from prison, executives and parliamentarians of the DTP, the mayor of Diyarbakır, and thousands of local people protested by establishing a symbolic People’s Court in the Dagˆkapı Square, reinvoking the memory of the trial, execution, and unmarked grave of Sheikh Said and connecting it to the current state repression of Kurdish politics. Such reappropriations of the sheikh’s legacy became further pronounced when the governing AKP started propagating an electoral discourse of ‘‘Islamic brotherhood’’ in the Kurdish region, which the movement criticized as the continuation of assimilation policies by means of manipulating Islam to undermine Kurdish national demands. Islam thus became the ground for an electoral battle between the movement and the AKP in the local and general elections of 2009 and 2011. In March 2011, the movement initiated ‘‘civilian Friday prayers’’ as a form of civil disobedience, claiming that the AKP turned mosques into places for making government propaganda. Unsurprisingly, the largest civilian prayers have taken place in the Dagˆkapı Square. Finally, on June 28, 2011, a massive and pioneering commemoration ceremony was held in Dagˆkapı Square with Sheikh Said’s grandchildren and representatives of the Kurdish movement. Their faces turned to the area where the sheikh lies buried in an unmarked grave, the speakers emphasized one after the other that the struggle to find the grave would continue to the end.

Afterword: Refining the Optic of Occupation Richard Falk

Although engaged almost daily in the study of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, West Bank, and the Gaza Strip seized during the Six Day War in 1967, I found the chapters in this volume on occupation to be profoundly illuminating in relation to the tangled realities of the Palestinian experience. In my UN role as Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine I have focused, as consistent with the work of and expectations about the UN Human Rights Council, on the legal and human rights dimensions of the Israeli occupation, doing my best to document the violations of Palestinian rights and the commission of Israeli crimes associated with the territorial ordeal of Palestinians living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. This limitation of coverage leaves entirely out of account the Palestinian minority living as subjugated ‘‘citizens’’ within Israel and the 4–7 million Palestinians existing for decades in the many refugee camps in neighboring countries or enduring involuntary exile throughout the world. It is in taking account of what is generally erased from moral and political consciousness that imparts to this volume its qualities of startling originality, narrative comprehensiveness, and scholarly and ethical value. Perhaps its most important contribution is to expand the academic imagination about the nature of occupation well beyond the confines of the statist bias that underlies the conventional and somewhat technical understanding of international humanitarian law that also characterizes all UN undertakings. This UN conception of occupation is derived directly from the treatment and approach of international humanitarian law (IHL) to occupation set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, as supplemented in

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1977 by the two Additional Protocols. In these treaty instruments, occupation is exclusively associated with forms of foreign military administration arising from prior uses of force to obtain control over a spatially delimited territory and its resident population. The humane purpose of IHL as specified in its provisions is to regulate the relationship between occupying power and the occupied society with two overall objectives: (1) establishing as much normalcy as possible for the occupied civilian society consistent with the reasonable and essential security imperatives of the occupier; (2) prohibiting the occupier from taking advantage of occupation to appropriate the land and resources of territory under its temporary control or to change the character of the occupied territory by transferring its population. In practice, the meaning of normalcy is highly contested as is the degree of discretion given to the occupying power to determine its security needs, which are often put forward as a pretext for seizing land or resources from an occupied people. The Israeli occupation has been extremely abusive if assessed by these IHL criteria, appropriating the bulk of water resources, establishing an expanding archipelago of unlawful settlements, and failing miserably in its legally mandated fiduciary responsibilities toward the occupied population. Such well-documented facts provide the underpinning for the worldwide political, moral, and legal indictment of Israel’s behavior toward Palestinians who have lived for over forty-five years under direct Israeli military administration.1 Undoubtedly, this indictment has been important for mobilizing a global civil society movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people, but from the perspective of occupation and the spectrum of rights under international law such a spatially and juridically constrained conception of occupation is misleadingly narrow and incomplete as compared with the vivid presentations of a more expansive understanding of occupation that informs several chapters of this volume. From this perspective, what many of the contributing authors and the editor do so brilliantly is to redesign the optic by which the dynamics and totality of occupation are best perceived and interpreted with respect to deciphering the full range of assaults on the dignity of those subject to occupation, including its crude and subtle everyday defilements of what it means to be human. This greater comprehensiveness in analyzing ‘‘occupation’’ in a variety of national and historical settings has the inevitable effect of creatively problematizing the very nature of occupation. The volume also succeeds in discursively (re)configuring occupation as a subject for

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comparative studies by scrutinizing structures of occupation to identify similarities and dissimilarities. Among the most pronounced of these similarities across time and space, are deliberate efforts by the occupier to alter the demographic features of the occupied territory either by deportation and expulsion of those occupied or through population transfer from the ranks of the occupier. As well, particularly under conditions of prolonged occupation, resources are appropriated for the benefit of the occupier and to the detriment of the occupied. This work enables us to form both a keenly shared sense of the core oppressive reality of occupation and the relevance of historical, cultural, and political particularities. The title given to my UN mandate as Special Rapporteur reflects the view that occupation is to be identified in purely spatially and temporally delimited terms: ‘‘On the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.’’ Other concerns about the catastrophic dispossession and displacement of about 725,000 Palestinian people in 1948 (the nakba) and the destruction of several hundred Palestinian villages behind the green line are completely occluded from view unless they end up in the Palestinian territories subject to Israeli military administration. This occlusion encompasses both discrimination against the Palestinian minority entrapped within pre-1967 Israel and the refugees in camps located beyond Israeli control in neighboring countries. Such concerns are off the table when the goal of ‘‘ending the occupation’’ is discussed in prevailing modes of legal and diplomatic discourse that stress ‘‘land for peace.’’ Rhoda Kanaaneh’s chapter shows compellingly that for Palestinian families living since 1948 under Israeli governance in what is proclaimed symbolically and substantively as ‘‘a Jewish state’’ is to be existentially ‘‘occupied.’’ She labels this reality as one of ‘‘soft occupation,’’ with the word soft employed to acknowledge the greater harshness of what it means to live under occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, or presumably as refugees in neighboring countries. Her presentation insists that even soft occupation is often severe and cruel for those long victimized, and that this occupation has meant marginalization and acute vulnerability for those Palestinians who either managed to remain on their ancestral lands and in their villages during and after the ordeal of the nakba, or were displaced internally but decided for various reasons to remain in Israel.2 Kanaaneh is simultaneously extending the structural reality of occupation beyond its formal legal UN scope and explicating the differing intensities or levels of occupation imposed on the Palestinians since 1948. She also

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shows that even Palestinians who have the status of ‘‘Israeli citizens’’ in a self-proclaimed liberal democratic state endure many of the privations of occupation through the imposition of discriminatory practices with respect to land, residence, and marital rights as well as from constricting regulations associated with pervasive and intrusive racial profiling justified in the name of Israeli security. The subjugation of cultural identity beneath the hegemonic symbols, rituals, and language of the occupier also imposes a heavy burden on an occupied people even granting its ‘soft’ character. Such a soft occupation also creates acute feelings of vulnerability that can be aroused individually either in everyday encounters or more collectively at times of Israeli security crises. The deep structure of occupation across time and space, aside from the inevitability of resentment, is intimately tied to this common experience and feelings of inescapable vulnerability. That is, the flip side of occupation is vulnerability. Resistance tries to make vulnerability at least symbolically reciprocal, although the occupier has a far greater capability to insulate its civilian population and even its military personnel from exposure to high risk, making the vulnerability of the occupier very different than that of the occupied, that is, until their roles threaten to become transformed, or even reversed. This asymmetry of vulnerability under conditions of prolonged occupation is heightened by the statist bias of international humanitarian law that is often interpreted as excluding resistance altogether, or at least restricting the kinds of violence that the occupied can employ in the course of resistance while leaving the occupier free to decide on the type and intensity of violence that best serves its purposes. The language of ‘‘terrorism’’ has been useful to occupiers to delegitimize the violence (and even the nonviolence) of resistance while legitimizing their own violence under the heading of counter-terrorism and legitimate security operations. In the Palestinian setting even when Israel is criticized for using excessive violence in upholding its occupation of Palestine, it does not carry the stigma that is attached to Palestinian violence that is characterized in the media and elsewhere as terrorism even when Israeli military personnel are being targeted. In other words the legal authority of the occupier to use violence is effectively without limits, while the right of violent resistance, or even resistance in any form, to even the crudest unlawful dimensions of occupation is essentially zero. In this important sense, international humanitarian law operates more to rationalize the violence and abusive nature of occupation than it does to restrain it. Geopolitical factors

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are relevant to how the violence of the occupying power will be presented by the global media and at the United Nations. The United States stands ready to defend Israel whatever the realities, and condemn its adversaries; this may signal a difference in the dominant discourse on any particular occupation, distinguishing, say, the Kurdish or Palestinian plight from that of the Tibetans or Tamils. Broadening and deepening our understanding of occupation also has other policy implications that are obscured by relying on the spatial/legalistic UN framework, especially when thinking about peace and justice. The conventional approach to ending the conflict is to posit the establishment of a Palestinian state, that is, conflict resolution for Israel and Palestine is achieved by ‘‘ending the occupation’’ through negotiating an Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders with agreed minor territorial adjustments.3 Such a two-state consensus has prevailed since the iconic Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted shortly after the end of the Six Day War, and endorsed after debate by the Palestine National Council in 1988 and by the Palestinian Authority (PA). It was affirmed by President Obama’s May 2011 speech and supported shortly afterward by that politically irrelevant entity, ‘‘the Quartet,’’ really little more than a front for American unilateral domination of ‘‘the peace process.’’ It is this artificial entity that has been cynically entrusted for the last several years with formulating a roadmap that is supposed to guide the parties in their search for peace.4 A further implication of this territorializing of the conflict is to marginalize the refugee issue, which is trivialized by acting as if the solution to the challenge of living together peacefully can be found through ‘‘unlawfully’’ refusing any acknowledgement of a Palestinian right of return other than to the newly created state of Palestine or by way of compensatory damages. In these two-state scenarios, the human rights of the Palestinian minority in Israel falls outside of the peace process altogether. In the volume’s arresting formulation, such an outcome of negotiations would, at best, be only capable of producing ‘‘a violent peace.’’ By ignoring the fundamental rights of a significant portion of the Palestinian people this would also be an ‘‘unjust peace,’’ and in all probability, an ‘‘unsustainable peace.’’ What the broadening of our sense occupation enables, even necessitates, which the legalistic conception discourages, if not precludes, is a more credible understanding of the character of a genuine peace process that helps explains the failure of past negotiations, which were pathetic attempts to impose an armed truce and call it ‘‘a peaceful solution.’’ One sure way to identify a faux peace

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process is if unlawful population transfers decreed by the occupying power are allowed to continue, or even accelerate, during the period of negotiations. In this instance, the insistence by Israel on continuing settlement establishment and expansion throughout the period when the Oslo Peace Process was supposedly governing the behavior of the parties is a clear signal of bad intentions on Israel’s part. It also encourages us to realize that there is no end to occupation without establishing conditions respectful of the rights of all the Palestinian people who have suffered collateral damage associated with the establishment of a Jewish state in historic Palestine. These observations apply to other occupations as well, where coerced and state-subsidized shifts in demographic patterns, in addition to the continuous appropriation of resources, exhibit the bad faith of an occupying power that claims to be seeking a peaceful and just end to occupation. We should become more sensitive to the idea that the fundamental and inalienable Palestinian right of self-determination is conferred upon ‘‘a people,’’ and its content is not exhausted by a given piece of real estate that is delimited by international relations. Of course, the statist orientation of Westphalian conceptions of world order is obsessed with borders and territories, and tends to disregard the claims of persons and peoples. In this foundational sense, Westphalian thinking is a tacit collaborator of the occupier whenever a people or a fraction of a people are caught behind state boundaries, and described as a minority rather than as a captive nation. Such a reality haunts the struggle of Kashmiris, Kurds, Jummas, and Tamils whose integrity as peoples has been long subjected to the surgical knife of Westphalian hegemonic traditions. This tragic circumstance is particularly expressive of First Nation or indigenous peoples around the world who are almost always enduring a condition of being a ‘‘captive nation’’ whose claims to autonomy, land, resources, and dignity have long been manipulated to their genocidal disadvantage by Westphalian criteria of sovereign representation. Indeed, it is only the language and practice of sovereignty that keeps a captive nation from being regarded as a form of occupation. There are exceptions dictated by geopolitical rivalry, making it acceptable to describe China’s domination of the Tibetans as an ‘‘occupation,’’ while comparable conditions confronting Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran are seen, to the extent seen at all, as minorities victimized by discrimination, at most deserving of human rights conferred by the Westphalian sovereign.

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A construction of the conflict circumscribed by territorial boundaries happens also to serve the main interest of the Palestine Authority to sustain its formal role as representative of the Palestinian people in diplomatic settings, especially at the United Nations. The Palestine Authority’s failed effort in 2011 to have Palestinian statehood recognized at the United Nations was explicitly rationalized as the last chance to save the two-state solution, that is, to preserve a territorialized understanding of Palestinian grievances. This incomplete presentation of the full extent of the Palestinian ordeal is also uniformly embedded in Israeli governmental, and even NGO, ‘‘peace’’ proposals and initiatives, signified by the slogan ‘‘land for peace.’’ Peace Now, an influential mainstream Israeli NGO, also adopts this approach by insisting that the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements is the decisive obstacle to the achievement of peace for both peoples. In effect, Peace Now argues that peace is only attainable if a viable Palestinian state is established on the 22 percent remnant of historic Palestine, and this possibility is being continuously undermined and discredited by the settler movement. Israeli extremists in control of the Tel Aviv government in recent years for their own reasons also want to end this legalistic form of occupation, but not through its replacement by the establishment of a Palestinian state, but by completing the process of ‘‘internalizing’’ the Palestinian people. Their maximalist Israeli vision is facilitated by continued de facto annexation, strengthening apartheid administrative structures of dual legality, and eventually making available a weak form of Israeli citizenship for Palestinian residents of the ‘‘occupied territories’’ to sustain the credibility associated with being a nominally ‘‘democratic state’’(that is, citizenship even far more diluted than the second-class status bestowed in 1966 upon the Palestinians minority that had been living under emergency military administration in Israel proper since 1948, surely an onerous form of ‘‘occupation’’ that was never acknowledged as such). Already in 1967 Israel silently, and possibly unknowingly, but hardly innocently, initiated its version of a one state solution by annexing East Jerusalem in defiance of international law and in opposition to a space that continues to be treated as occupied Palestinian territory by the United Nations. In this regard, the defeat of Tamil resistance in Sri Lanka increasingly seems to be in line with what Israel is intent on achieving in Palestine, namely, extinguishing all Palestinian claims to any form of self-determination, internalizing the conflict via apartheid structures, and second or third class citizenship in an

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expanded Israeli state that formally absorbs the territory formerly treated as ‘‘occupied.’’ There are, then, two sets of struggles around the idea of occupation as it pertains to the Palestinian reality. The first, and generally understood struggle centers on the diminishing prospect of achieving a full Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. The second, far less widely understood, although much clarified by the chapters in this volume, including those not explicitly about Palestine, involves the degree to which any substantial encroachment on the rights of the Palestinian people, including systematic denials of ethnic, legal, religious, cultural, economic, social, and political equality, entail modalities of occupation that are harmful to mind, body, and spirit, although the resilience of people living under the harshest forms of occupation for generations reminds us of the extraordinary human capacity for struggle against oppression. Of course, all human societies possess practices and structures that embed inequality, but when this embedding becomes systemic, structural, and reflects an underlying relationship of alien domination, then it is clarifying to consider the multifaceted damage inflicted by occupation, which is acknowledged in international criminal law as a species of crimes against humanity. In illuminating contrast to the UN/PA approach based on ending territorial occupation, is the orientation toward peace and resistance adopted by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign (BDS). BDS is a Palestinian global initiative that originated in 2004 and has been led ever since by Palestinian civil society actors. The BDS campaign, the heart and soul of the growing worldwide Palestinian solidarity movement, insists that a sustainable peace can only emerge if the three struggles (for those in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza; for those living as a discriminated minority in Israel; for those living as refugees in neighboring countries or in exile throughout the world) for Palestinian self-determination and human rights are each humanely resolved, including participation and assent, in the shaping of a solution to the conflict.5 Such comprehensiveness implies ending the Israeli occupation, but in its (re)conceptualized understanding, involves overcoming the denial of fundamental Palestinian rights in various settings as suggested by the three sites of Palestinian struggle. This denial of rights can result from direct Israeli military administration, from Israeli domestic governance of its Palestinian minority, and from the failure to implement General Assembly Resolution 194 confirming in 1948 the right of return

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that belongs to all Palestinians with valid residential claims that can be traced back to the nakba. For BDS, then, ‘‘ending the occupation’’ means achieving self-determination, which is extended to encompass nonterritorial grievances of the Palestinians. Kamala Visweswaran raises in her introduction the taboo question of whether to conceive of the UN role in relation to prolonged occupations as complicit with the occupiers, ensuring and largely financing the bare survival of the occupied by their provision of humanitarian services (80 percent of Gazans are dependent on the UN Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA] for food and education) and imparting a sense of legitimacy to the occupation, however abusive in practice. It is probably crucial to distinguish the UN personnel on the ground who are eye witnesses of the suffering of the civilian population and the violent dispositions of the occupiers from the more diplomatically oriented and politically malleable UN bureaucrats back in Geneva and New York that operate at a great distance from the concreteness of occupation. In the context of the Israeli massive attacks on Gaza at the end of 2008, many UN workers in Gaza risked personal harm to do their best to protect Palestinians in situations of stress, while at UN headquarters a report detailing deliberate Israeli damage inflicted on UN facilities in Gaza was suppressed by the secretary general’s office. The report was believed to be provocatively critical of Israel’s behavior in deliberately targeting UN facilities, and accordingly recommended reparations for the damage sustained. The wider UN relationship to the conflict is complex, and contradictory, with certain sites of struggle favorable to the pursuit of emancipatory goals on behalf of those subjugated (e.g. Human Rights Council, General Assembly), while others oppose these goals being subject to geopolitical manipulation (e.g., Security Council, Secretary General, UN Secretariat). There are those whose mission is confined to humanitarian activities (e.g., UNRWA, UNICEF, WHO), and still others who behave more objectively, being more detached from political pressures (e.g., International Court of Justice). The UN can often progressively clarify the moral and legal high ground in a conflict as was achieved by the commissioning and issuance of the Goldstone Report on the Gaza War of 2008–2009, but the organization lacks the capability to implement recommendations if these run counter to geopolitical priorities. Again the Goldstone Report was definitely helpful to Palestinians waging a war of global legitimacy, but precisely because of this, it generated a geopolitical firestorm in reaction to its release that succeeded

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in preventing the implementation of recommendations relating to the accountability of Israeli leaders under international criminal law.6 Alongside the Palestinian experience, the prolonged occupations of Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Kurdistan, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Tibet, and First Nations traditional lands disclose similar patterns of abuse and exploitation: a constantly evolving dialectic between an oppressive occupation invariably reliant on threats and enactments of violence and intimidation interacting with shifting types of resistance that exhibit tactical and strategic ambivalence toward violence while seeking with greatly varying success to enlist support from social forces operating beyond the territorial confines of the geographic heartland of the dispute. The legal framework associated with ‘‘belligerent occupation’’ presupposes, or at least pretends to be establishing a temporary set of circumstances and claims to envision the restored sovereignty of the occupied territory. When as in the cases of Palestine, Kashmir, the Kurdish regions, or the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the occupier repudiates these premises over a long stretch of time, the rules of international humanitarian law and the oversight of the UN have been proven to be inadequate to uphold the rights, dignity, and security of those living under occupation. The occupier overtly and covertly uses an array of practices by projecting its own sovereignty claims or ambitions onto the territory, and can only be induced to withdraw by a major shift in the geopolitical winds in some combination with the challenges being posed by resistance politics and empathizing external societal and governmental forces. As discussed earlier, international humanitarian law is not, on balance, very humanitarian in relation to an occupied people, especially in situations where the occupier claims sovereign or quasi-sovereign rights with the intent of prolonging the occupation as long as possible, to some degree shifting the de facto reality in all or part of the occupation from the short-term horizons of the temporary to horizons of permanence. To some extent, Israel acknowledges this in relation to those fragments of the Palestinian people living in Israel or in the refugee and exilic communities of the Palestinian diaspora. When dealing with spatial dimensions of occupation, ‘‘annexation’’ is the legal metaphor for permanence; but if our concern is with the psycho-political dimensions of occupation, then discriminatory legislation or removal from the negotiating agenda (of a right of return) becomes the appropriate focus. The chapters in this volume help

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us understand this expanded, but socio-historically embedded conception of occupation, accentuating the realization that the occupation of the mind through the arousal of fear and feelings of inferiority may be the most damaging form of occupation. Acclaimed Gazan psychiatrist Dr. Eyad Sarraj years ago showed through an extensive set of interviews the high frequency of these attitudes among Palestinian boys age twelve, especially exhibiting an absence of a will to live, no sense of a positive future, and a preference to represent an ‘‘Israeli’’ rather than a ‘‘Palestinian’’ in playground war games. These manifestations of occupation were especially prevalent among those Palestinian boys who had physically witnessed their father being beaten or spat upon by Israeli soldiers. These psychological conditions help explain the receptivity of humiliated youth living under occupation to the lure of suicide bombing, and its promise of replacing the shame of humiliation with the glories of martyrdom. The statist governance patterns of world politics play into the hands of the occupier under most circumstances. It has been often pointed out that prior to the rise of notions of international human rights and international criminal law, there was complete discretion on the part of national governments to suppress those under their control, including a tolerance for crimes against humanity and genocidal extremes. Liberal democracies were unwilling to challenge even the undisguised criminality of Nazi antiSemitism during the period preceding World War II, and refrained from officially challenging Hitler so long as his aggressions were confined to minorities living within Germany. The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, and some more recent prosecutions of political leaders, disclose an emergent tradition of criminal accountability to global legal standards, but flawed to the extent that it embodies geopolitical structures of double standards. Victors in wars and geopolitical actors and their allies are not held to account, but enjoy impunity. Those subject to occupation have no rights, no legal protection within their political and psychological spaces, and possess little capacity to invoke international institutions on their behalf. International law continues to grant impunity to occupiers, however severe, and manifest their crimes against humanity. Tragically, the recent bloody massacres in northeast Sri Lanka, Kashmir, CHT, and Gaza are indicative of a pattern, including the ability of the perpetrators to avoid accountability or even apology, while defying authoritative global standards and deflecting external censure. International criminal tribunals that have addressed crimes

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against humanity in various settings have so far neglected to consider the crimes of the occupying power against those who are subject to prolonged occupation. The moral and political background of the West does vindicate resistance against persistent abusive occupation, including violent acts and defiance of an existing legal regime. Indeed, Locke and other political theorists supportive of established social orders warn leaders that such resistance is likely to assume revolutionary forms if legitimate grievances are persistently ignored. Unfortunately, world order continues to be shaped by the lethal interplay between absolutist notions of territorial sovereignty and pragmatic exceptions dictated by geopolitical priorities that have been recently given a normative edge by the ‘‘right to protect’’ doctrine invoked in 2011 to convince the Security Council to authorize a politically and legally dubious intervention in Libya. The people of Afghanistan and Libya are ‘‘protected’’ while indigenous peoples, those in northeast Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Gaza, Tibet, and countless other places are allowed to languish beneath intolerable burdens decade after decade. Those occupied, whether soft or hard, direct or indirect, are primary victims of these regimes of double standards that produce deference to criminality in certain settings and generate destructive interventions elsewhere.7 What these studies of occupation demonstrate above all else is that the reach of human rights politically and legally cannot effectively challenge abusive occupations that are geopolitically reinforced. But what is also illustrated is that violent oppression is rarely successful over long stretches of time in pacifying resistance unless it is prepared to adopt exterminist policies. What we learn from this volume is that the battlegrounds of the human mind, body, and spirit are what eventually decide the outcome of these epic struggles between occupier and occupied, although if the occupier is prepared to rely on genocidal forms of violence, as was the case in Sri Lanka, the living ordeal of occupation can end as a catastrophic setback for those occupied, which replicates the tragic experiences of the many indigenous peoples around the world that have been exterminated or dispossessed. Against this background many of us living ostensibly normal lives must confront the uncomfortable reality that this is possible only because we are beneficiaries of past unjust occupations. This volume helps makes the case that the entire planet is not just metaphorically occupied, but embodies the ‘‘violent peace’’ of occupations multilayered in time and space, which are interactive and as yet unfolding.

some day

Kabita Chakma translated by Sajed Kamal

Someday my heart will be lit by the Sun— light will spread across this cultivated land, this dense forest. A river of pain will be washed away— this land, this forest within my heart, let these be soaked in love, let these be soaked in love.

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notes

Introduction: Geographies of Everyday Occupation 1. Timothy Williams and Abeer Mohammed, ‘‘In Iraqi’s Shoe-Hurling Protest, Arabs Find a Hero (It’s Not Bush),’’ New York Times Middle East, December 15, 2008. 2. ‘‘Shock and Awe’’ was the name of the U.S. military campaign launched against Iraq in March 2003, part of ‘‘Operation Iraqi Freedom.’’ 3. The wordplay is lost in translation, as is the sense of camaraderie and affection in the English rendering, ‘‘My dear, your dear, Ahad Jan, Ahad Jan.’’ 4. A year later (August 2012) the original Bekaar Jamaath website seems to be back up, but there are now four different Facebook groups with the same name, two of them apparently founded in 2012. One (possibly compromised) site discloses no information as to its origin, but contains explicit political messages on its sole wall photo: ‘‘Bekaar Jamath is no more bekaar.We are not idle; We are Kashmir (in English and Devanagari script). INDIAN SECURITY FORCE IS AN INSECURITY FOR ME. INDIA IS KILLING MY CHILDREN. I HAVE A RIGHT TO PROTEST. I HAVE A RIGHT TO ASK FOR MY RIGHTS. The Largest Unbiased Community of Kashmir; Carrying Kashmir’s Message to the World.’’ There seem to be no members of this group, or active posts. Indian intelligence is also suspected of accessing Facebook accounts to post anti-India slogans as a means of framing charges against students. In the recent case of Pirzada Mohamed Iqbal, a post-graduate student at the Media Education Research Centre at the University of Kashmir, Facebook posts with such slogans were reportedly made from his account after he was taken into detention and had no access to the internet. See http://freepresskashmir.com/kashmir-student-detained-formilitant-links-friends-cry-foul/. 5. See Malik Sajad’s website, http://www.kashmirblackandwhite.com/HTMLL/ GN2.html. Several students had been falsely accused of being stone-throwers, and Amnesty International reports that several minors (children and teenagers) are among those detained for protest activity during summer 2010. See http://aalaw-kashmircalls .org/amnesty-international. 6. Carol Gluck and Anna Tsing, eds., Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009). 7. For examples of comparative work on Partition, see Ghislaine Glasson Deschaume and Rada Ivekovic, Divided Countries, Separated Cities: The Modern Legacy

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of Partition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), and Sumantra Bose, Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007). 8. See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 9. See Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010) 10. Kurdish history is intertwined with that of Armenian and Assyrian peoples: the massive deportations, massacres, and death marches in Ottoman and early Republican Turkey mean that Kurdish claims to territory cannot be understood apart from this larger history. See Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 11. See James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 10. 12. Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Colle`ge de France, 1975–76 (New York: Picador, 1997), 216. 13. See, for example, Hans Magnus Enzenberger, Civil Wars: From LA to Bosnia (New York: New Press, 1993) for the view that civil wars are the classic form of collective conflict, dating at least to the Peloponnesian Wars some 2,500 years ago. Mary Kaldor (and historians of war) argue that war was only institutionalized (in Europe) as a state activity by the eighteenth century, but focus on the state’s capacity to wage war against other states, in contrast to Foucault’s emphasis on war as a form of internal demarcation. 14. See Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). 15. See Eric D. Weitz, ‘‘From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions,’’ American Historical Review 113, 5 (December 2008): 1313. 16. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973). 17. The UN Partition Plan for Palestine affirmed by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947, called for the establishment of a Jewish state on 56.5 percent of British-mandated Palestine and an Arab state on 43.5 percent of those lands. Accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by Palestinians and Arabs, it was ultimately never carried out, as conflict between Zionist and Arab military forces began shortly after the adoption of the plan. 18. The international law on occupation was codified at the Hague peace conferences of 1899 and 1907, then reformulated at the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. See Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of Occupation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford

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University Press, 2012). For an analysis of the law of occupation in relation to Palestine, see also Richard Falk and Burns Weston, ‘‘The Israel-Occupied Territories, International Law, and the Boundaries of Scholarly Discourse,’’ Harvard International Law Review 33, 1 (1992): 191–204. 19. For an anthropological discussion of the U.S. occupation and its ‘‘export’’ of democracy to Iraq, see John Borneman, Political Crime and the Memory of Loss (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011). 20. For an account of settler colonialism as an ongoing historical process, see Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Perspective (New York: Palgrave, 2010). 21. By transitivity, I invoke both the linguistic sense of a grammar carrying actions from subjects to objects, and the mathematical sense of a set of relations linked by a set of equivalences. 22. Mary Layoun, ‘‘Fresh Lima Beans and Stories from Occupied Cyprus,’’ in Culture/Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Studies, ed. E. Valentine Daniel and Jeffrey Peck (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) and Mary Layoun, Wedded to the Land?: Gender, Boundaries, and Nationalism in Crisis (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001). 23. Smadar Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 24. See Jean Said Makdisi, Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir (New York: Persea, 1999). 25. See SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, Israel, http://milexdata.sipri.org/ result.php4, accessed December 6, 2011. 26. See P. A. Ghosh, Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Role of Indian Peace-Keeping Force (New Delhi: APH, 1999), 57; also Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms, and Why (London: Tauris, 1988), 34. For accounts of the ways Sinhalese settlements resulted in Tamil displacement and militarization of the Northeast, see University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) Special Report 5, ‘‘From Manal Aaru to Weli Oya: The Spirit of 1983,’’ September 15, 1993, and Special Report 26, ‘‘Can the East Be Won Through Ethnic Culling? Special Economic Zones: An Ideological Journey Back to 1983,’’ August 3, 2007, both http://www.uthr.org/special report.htm A similar claim has been made of the connection between the Mossad and the Indonesian army with respect to the military occupation of East Timor; see George Aditjondro, ‘‘Ninjas, Naggalas, Monuments and Mossad Manuals: An Anthropology of Indonesian State Terror in East Timor,’’ in Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror, ed. Jeffrey A. Sluka (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). 27. See SIPRI databases, accessed December 16, 2011. 28. See Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, United Nations, March 31, 2011, 15. 29. Ibid.

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30. See Report of the Eisenhower Research Project, Watson School of International Relations, ‘‘The Costs of War,’’ Brown University, June 2011, http://costsofwar .org/sites/default/files/Costspercent20ofpercent20Warpercent20Executivepercent20Sum mary.pdf, accessed July 6, 2011. 31. See Amy Belasco, ‘‘The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Global War on Terror Operations since 9/11,’’ Report for Members of Congress, March 29, 2011, Congressional Research Service, 7–5700, RL 33110, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/ RL33110.pdf, accessed July 6, 2011. 32. ‘‘The Ten Largest Military Powers in the World,’’ Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2011. 33. See http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0321_india_riedel.aspx. Indeed, the claim has been made that the United States instigated Israel’s relationship with Sri Lanka as well, with the U.S. even setting up an Israeli ‘‘interest’’ section at the American Embassy in Colombo staffed by a Mossad operative. See Beit-Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection, 35. 34. In March 2011 President Obama announced a plan to sell $5 billion worth of arms to India, http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2011/03_india_cohen_dasgupta.aspx. 35. In 2001, after 9/11, U.S.-sponsored UN Security Council Resolution 1373 obliged member states to ‘‘legislate separate criminal offenses proscribing terrorist’s acts under domestic law.’’ See Anil Kalhan, ‘‘Anti-Terrorism and Security Laws in India: A Report to the Association of the Bar of the City of New York on a Research Project for the Committee on International Human Rights,’’ September 25, 2006; reprinted as ‘‘Colonial Continuities: Human Rights, Terrorism, and Security Laws in India,’’ Columbia Journal of Asian Law 20 (2006): 93. For emerging ethnographies of securitization that begin to track these forms of convergences, see Kathleen Hall, ‘‘Security and the Neoliberal State: British Political Imaginaries After 7/7,’’ in Ethnographies of Neoliberalism, ed. Carol Greenhouse (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Joseba Zulaika, Terrorism: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Paul Amar, The Security Archipelago: ‘‘Human Security’’ States, Sexuality Politics and the End of Neoliberalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012). 36. See V. K. Shashikumar, ‘‘Lessons from the War in Sri Lanka,’’ Indian Defence Review 24, 3 (July–September 2009), www.indiandefencereview.com/2009/10/lessonsfrom-the-war-in-sri-l anka.html; a version is also on the official website of the government of Sri Lanka, as ‘‘Fundamentals of Victory Against Terror: Sri Lankan Example,’’ http://www.priu.gov.lk/ news_update/Current_Affairs/ca200908/20090825fundamentals_ of_victory.htm. See also V. K. Sashikumar, ‘‘The Rajapaksa Model of Combatting Terror,’’ Indian Defence Review 24, 4 (October–December 2009). 37. The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights expressed concern over China’s crackdown in the Tibet Autonomous Region in 2008, and the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Food released a report in 2010 highlighting the difficulties suffered by Tibetans as a result of Chinese policy imposed on them.

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38. UNCHR does also address the needs of Palestinian refugees excluded from the definition of ‘‘Palestine refugees’’; see See Lex Takkenberg, ‘‘UNWRA and the Palestinian Refugees After 60 Years: Some Reflections,’’ Refugee Survey Quarterly 28, 2/3 (2010): 253–59, 253. 39. Ibid.; see also Ilana Feldman, ‘‘Difficult Distinctions; Refugee Law, Humanitarian Practice, and Political Identification in Gaza,’’ Cultural Anthropology 22, 1 (2007): 129–69. 40. After a U.S.-aided coup d’e´tat, 10,000 UN troops have been stationed in Haiti since 2004 as part of a ‘‘Stabilization Mission.’’ See Justin Podur, Haiti’s New Dictatorship: The Coup, the Earthquake and the UN Occupation (London: Pluto Press, 2012). For international law with respect to ‘‘UN-led occupations,’’ see Benvenisti, International Law of Occupation. 41. See http://www.sais-jhu.edu/cmtoolkit/issues-in-practice/safe-havens/safehavens-practice.htm, accessed August 1, 2011. 42. The creation of a U.S.-led eleven-country ‘‘safe haven’’ in Northern Iraq after the 1991 invasion is often credited as a success story leading to the formation of a longstanding regional government. However, it also led to a reinscription of ‘‘traditional’’ forms of gender violence against women such as honor-killings. See Shahrzad Mojab, ‘‘No ‘Safe Haven’: Violence Against Women in Iraqi Kurdistan,’’ in Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones, ed. Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 108–33. 43. I first heard this story from one of the international observers, Geoffrey Robinson, a historian and political officer for UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), in 2000. See his ‘‘If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die’’: How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010). 44. The UN released aerial imagery of internally displaced persons (IDP) shelters in the CSZ dated February 26 and March 23, 2009, at the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) website, http://www.unitar.org/unosat/maps/86, but was heavily criticized for not releasing details of April 19, 2009, satellite imagery made available in a UNITAR Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) analysis, April 26, 2009. UNOSAT analysis released on May 13compared satellite images from April 19 to images from May 6, http://unosat-maps.web.cern.ch/unosatmaps/LK/2009/Mulattivu/UNOSAT_SriLanka_IDPSheltersLocatedWithinNSZ_6May 2009_lowres.pdf, but the April 19, 2009 satellite imagery was never made publicly available on the UNITAR website. Leaked April 26, 2009, UNOSAT report, http:// www.warwithoutwitness.com/images/stories/PDF/UNOSAT_Report_Damage_IDP_ analysis_19April2009_v6.pdf. Interestingly, the UN ‘‘Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka,’’ March 31, 2011, mentions the satellite analysis only once in the 196-page report (p. 37; sec. 127). The U.S. State Department appended its own satellite images (January–May 2009) to its ‘‘Report to Congress on Incidents During the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka,’’ http://www.state.gov/docu ments/organization/131025.pdf.

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45. http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/percent28Symbolpercent29/ E.CN.4.1999.37.En?Opendocument, accessed August 2, 2011. 46. See http://supportkurds.org/reports/un-special-rapporteur-stateless-krds-deniedthe-right-to-health-in-syria/. 47. Richard Falk, Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World (New York: Routledge, 2000). 48. This was a keyword for the Radcliffe Workshop authored by Bina D’Costa and Kabita Chakma. 49. See ‘‘Study on the Implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord of 1997,’’ submitted by Special Rapporteur, UN Social and Economic Council, February 18, 2011. 50. See Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2008). 51. For extensive enumeration of how Jumma lands have been appropriated, see Shapnan Adnan and Ranajit Dastidar, ‘‘Mechanisms of Land Alienation Among the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts,’’ study conducted under auspices of Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, February 2011. 52. See Stanley Tambiah, ‘‘Two Postindependence Ethnic Riots in Sri Lanka,’’ in Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 82–94. 53. See University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) Special Reports 5 and 26. 54. The numbers of Hindus and Muslims recorded in Jammu and Kashmir for the 2011 census have not yet been released. The 2001 census put Muslims at 68 percent of Kashmir’s population, but was based on estimated figures for 1991 since there was no census that year due to the emergence of Kashmiri militancy and the exodus of most Hindu Pandits from the Kashmir Valley in 1989–1990. In Sri Lanka, the militant LTTE was responsible in 1990 for the expulsion of Tamil Muslims from the Northeastern districts where they resided. 55. See Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, and Fuat Du¨ndar, ‘‘The Settlement Policy of the Committee of Union and Progress,’’ in Turkey Beyond Nationalism: Towards Post-Nationalist Identities, ed. Hans-Lukas Keiser (London: Tauris, 2006), 37– 42, and Joost Jongerden, The Settlement Issue in Turkey and the Kurds: An Analysis of Spatial Policies, Modernity and War (Leiden: Brill, 2007). I thank Ruken Sengul for these references, see also her ‘‘Broken Histories Inside Restored Walls: The Social Lives of Kurdishness in Urban Diyarbakir,’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin; expected 2013). 56. Martin van Bruinessen, ‘‘Genocide in Kurdistan? The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) and the Chemical War Against the Iraqi Kurds (1988),’’ in Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, ed. George J. Andreopoulos (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 141–70. 57. Van Bruinessen, ‘‘Genocide in Kurdistan?’’ 58. I thank Hisyar Ozsoy for these points.

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59. Achille Mbembe, ‘‘Necropolitics,’’ Public Culture 15 (1) (2003): 11–40, 26. 60. The ratio goes up or down depending on the exact territorial area or section of population measured. Estimates of Kashmir’s military to civilian ratio runs from 1:5 to a ‘‘low’’ of 1:20. 61. The economic embargo and ensuing poverty of the region during this period are also linked to the establishment of a parallel, occupied LTTE government with a Tamil Eelam Police and Tamil Eelam Judicial Service. See Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, ‘‘Economy of the Conflict Region in Sri Lanka: From Embargo to Repression,’’ Policy Studies 4 (Washington, D.C.: East-West Center, 2007). The situation is reminiscent of the economic blockades endured by Hamas in Gaza since it came to power in 2007. Although Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, it continues to maintain complete control of the area’s airspace and territorial waters, and most of the land crossings. Economic blockades have also periodically affected Indianoccupied Kashmir. 62. See Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation. 63. See Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (New York: Norton, 2008). 64. See Basharat Peer, Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist’s Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland (New York: Scribner, 2010), and Meghna Guhathakurta, ‘‘Women’s Narratives from the Chittagong Hill Tracts,’’ in Women, War and Peace and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency, ed. Rita Manchanda (New Delhi: Sage, 2001). 65. Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 3 vols. (London: Verso, 2002); Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life (Welcombe: Rebel Press, 2001); Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 66. Henri Lefebvre, Rythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life (New York: Continuum, 2004). 67. Ibid., 30. 68. Ibid., 68. 69. See Peer’s Curfewed Night. 70. Lefebvre, Rythymanalysis, 17–18. 71. Lavie, Poetics of Military Occupation; Veena Das and Deborah Poole, eds., Anthropology in the Margins of the State (Santa Fe: SAR Press, 2007). 72. Carol J. Greenhouse, Elizabeth Mertz, and Kay B. Warren, eds., Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002); Sandya Hewamanne, ‘‘Duty Bound? Militarization, Romances and New Spaces of Violence Among Sri Lanka’s Free Trade Zone Garment Factory Workers,’’ Cultural Dynamics 21, 2 (2009): 153–84; Pradeep Jeganathan, ‘‘Checkpoint: Anthropology, Identity and the State,‘‘ in Anthropology in the Margins of the State, ed. Das and Poole; Lori Allen, ‘‘Getting by the Occupation: How Violence Became Normal During the Second Palestinian Intifada,’’ Cultural Anthropology 23, 3 (2008): 453–87.

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73. Veena Das, ‘‘The Act of Witnessing: Violence, Poisonous Knowledge, and Subjectivity,’’ in Violence and Subjectivity, ed. Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 205. 74. Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 7. 75. Das (Life and Words), for example, concludes that in the 1984 violence against Sikhs following Indira Gandhi’s assassination, there was little rape of Sikh women. Yet in the decade following 1984 there was systematic rape and torture of suspected Khalistani militants and their family members that also led to the dispersal of this community as political asylees. See Ram Narayan Kumar et al., Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab, Final Report, Vol. 1 (Kathmandu: South Asia Forum for Human Rights, 2003); also Cynthia Mahmood, Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). 76. See Lavie, Poetics of Military Occupation; Julie Peteet, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Julie Peteet, Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Rhoda Kanaaneh, Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Rhoda Kanaaneh, Surrounded: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military (Stanford:, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009); Laleh Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Esmail Nashif, ‘‘Attempts at Liberation: Body Materialization and Community Building Among Palestinian Political Captives,’’ Journal of Arab Studies 7/8 (2005): 46–79; Esmail Nashif, Palestinian Political Prisoners: Identity and Community (London: Routledge, 2008); Nasser Abufarha, The Making of a Human Bomb: Ethnography of Palestinian Resistance (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009); Lori Allen, ‘‘The Polyvalent Politics of Martyr Commemoration in the Palestinian Second Intifada,’’ History and Memory 18, 2 (2006): 107–38. 77. Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Begonia Arextaga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Jeff Sluka, ‘‘Domination, Resistance and Political Culture in Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Nationalist Ghettos,’’ Critique of Anthropology 15, 1 (1995): 71–102. 78. E. Valentine Daniels, Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); Stanley Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Stanley Tambiah, Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Jeganathan, ‘‘Checkpoint’’; Wenona Giles, Malathi de Alwis, Edith Klein, and Neluka Silva, eds.,

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Feminists Under Fire: Exchanges Across War Zones (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2003); Malathi de Alwis, ‘‘The ’Purity’ of Displacement and the Re-Territorialization of Longing: Muslim Women Refugees in North-Western Sri Lanka,’’ in Sites of Violence: Feminist Politics in Conflict Zones, ed. Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Neloufer De Mel, Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory, and Narrative in the Armed Conflict (New York: Sage, 2007); Dennis McGilvray, Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008); Jonathon Spencer, Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict (New York: Routledge, 1990); Bruce Kapferer, Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988). Margaret Trawick’s ethnography of military occupation, Enemy Lines: Childhood, Warfare, and Play in Batticaloa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) is the exception in this literature. 79. For an emerging ethnographic literature on the Kashmir conflict see Ravina Aggarwal, Beyond Lines of Control: Performance and Politics on the Disputed Borders of Ladakh, India (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004); Halley Duchinsky, ‘‘Destiny Effects: Militarization, State Power, and Punitive Containment in Kashmir Valley,’’ Anthropological Quarterly 82, 3 (2009): 691–718; Cynthia Mahmood, ‘‘Trials by Fire: Dynamics of Terror in Punjab and Kashmir,’’ in Death Squad, ed. Sluka. 80. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Phillipe Bougois, Violence in War and Peace (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004); Hugh Gusterson, ‘‘Anthropology and Militarism,’’ Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (October 2007): 155–75. 81. Sluka, Death Squad; Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvannia Press, 2005); Orin Starn, Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999); Kay Warren, The Violence Within: Cultural and Political Opposition in Divided Nations (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993); Julie Taylor, Paper Tangos (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998); Diane Nelson, A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999). 82. Feldman, Formations of Violence; Sluka, ‘‘Domination, Resistance’’; Arextaga, Shattering Silence; Joseba Zulaika, Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables, and Faces of Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 1996); Ivana Macek, Sarajevo Under Siege: Anthropology in Wartime (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Anastasia Karaskidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870–1990 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Rebecca Bryant, Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus (London: Tauris, 2004). 83. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Marianne Ferme, The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Mahmood Mamdani, When

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Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); Lisa Malkii, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 84. Daniels, Charred Lullabies; Kapferer, Legends of People; McGilvray, Crucible of Conflict; Yasmin Sakia, Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011); Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006); Kalyani Menon, Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 2010). Patricia Lawrence and Monique Skidmore, Women and the Contested State: Religion, Violence, and Agency in South and Southeast Asia (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). 85. Aseel Sawalha, Reconstructing Beirut: Memory and Space in a Postwar Arab City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010); Laura Deeb, The Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton, N.J.: University Press, 2008). 86. See Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), and Michael Taussig, The Nervous System (New York: Routledge, 1992) 87. Caroline Nordstrom, Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 88. Greenhouse et al., Ethnography in Unstable Places. 89. Sluka, Death Squad. 90. Tambiah, Leveling Crowds. 91. See Scott, How Not to Be Governed. 92. See Robert Pape, Dying to Win: A Study on Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005), 265–56; App. II, ‘‘Occupation by Democratic States, 1980– 2003’’ shows 22 percent of these in South Asia, half of those in India alone; about 31 percent in South Asia and the Middle East. Pape’s index is mostly interesting for the work his expansive definition does, but there are several notable omissions from the index (Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico), and some regrettable factual errors (Arabic not Urdu listed as the main language of Pakistan). For recent work on Oaxaca in the context of occupation see Lynn Stephen, Testimony, Identities, and Rights: Oaxaca, Mexico and Beyond (forthcoming), for Chiapas see Vivian Newdick, ‘‘Ana’s Work: Testimony, Indigenous Struggle, and Women’s Rights in Chiapas,’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 2012. 93. Weizman, Hollow Land. 94. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars (Cambridge: Polity, 1997, 2007). 95. Indeed, in her preface to Seema Kazi’s Between Democracy and Nation: Gender and Militarization in Kashmir (Delhi: Women Unlimited Press, 2009), viii–x, Kaldor cites ongoing conflict in Kashmir as a typical example of a ‘‘new war’’ but does not mention the military occupation. 96. See Pape, Dying to Win, 3.

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97. See Partha Chatterjee, ‘‘Terrorism: State Sovereignty and Militant Politics in India,’’ in Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon, ed. Carol Gluck and Anna Tsing (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009). 98. See also Sluka, Death Squad. 99. Generalities often obscure more than they clarify: a significant number of Kashmiris are Hindu, Buddhist, or Shia Muslim; a significant number of Sri Lankan Tamils are Muslim or Christian; a significant number of Palestinians are Christian or Bedouin; a significant number of Jummas are Hindu, Christian, or animist; a significant number of Kurds are non-Sunni Alevis or Yezidis. 100. Again, the generalization risks obscuring the high degree of complexity and differentiation within these political movements. The point is that the ‘‘antiterrorism’’ literature is focused most exclusively on so-called Islamist groups like Hamas in Palestine, or the Pakistan-sponsored jihadi groups like LeT or JeM in Kashmir. 101. Greenhouse, Ethnographies of Neoliberalism. 102. Kaldor, Global Civil Society, 3. 103. See Catherine Lutz, Homefront: A Military City and the American Twentieth Century (Boston: Beacon, 2001) and Catherine Lutz, The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts (New York: New York University Press, 2009). 104. Jeganathan, ‘‘Checkpoint.’’ 105. See Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission, ‘‘Enquiry Report of Unmarked Graves in North Kashmir,’’ July 2, 2011, which verified 2,153 bodies in unmarked graves at 38 sites across Kashmir’s four districts. The International People’s Tribunal of Kashmir Report, ‘‘Buried Evidence: Unknown, Unmarked and Mass Graves in Indian Administered Kashmir,’’ December 2, 2009, http://www.kashmirprocess.org/reports/graves/toc.html, found evidence of 2,700 unmarked graves and 2,943 unidentified bodies. 106. See Bina D’Costa, Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2011); Sakia, Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh; Nayanika Mookherjee, ‘‘’Remembering to Forget’: Public Secrecy and Memory of Sexual Violence in Bangladesh,’’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12, 2 (2006): 433–50. 107. See also Hewamanne, ‘‘Duty Bound.’’ 108. Pakistan has sought to separate the Northern Areas from Azad Kashmir, deliberately maintaining its ambiguous constitutional status with the hope of integrating it into Pakistan in the event of a plebiscite in which Kashmiris might vote for self-determination or independence. A writ petition filed under the POK (PakistanOccupied Kashmir) Interim Constitution Act of 1974 with the Azad Kashmir high court in 1990 resulted in a 1993 verdict that the Northern Areas were part of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Shias and other ethnic groups of the area call the territory ‘‘Balwaristan’’ or ‘‘Bolor’’ (which also includes the districts of Kargil and Ladakh on the Indian side of the border). Until quite recently, residents of GilgitBaltistan were unable to vote in Pakistani elections, and although the name of the area has changed, its ambiguous constitutional status remains.

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109. Kanaaneh, Surrounded. 110. The low UN estimate of 7,000 was faulted by its own panel of experts, which arrived at a figure of 40,000–75,000 (40). 111. See Esmail Nashif, ‘‘Bodily Relief: Some Observations on Martyrdom Operations in Palestine,’’ manuscript. 112. See Huma Dar, ‘‘The Nudity of Resistance Versus Nakedness of Power: The Cashmere/Kashmir That Refuses to Cover the Empire,’’ manuscript. Chapter 1. Qırıx: An ‘‘Inverted Rhapsody’’ on Kurdish National Struggle, Gender, and Everyday Life in Diyarbakır Epigraph: G. C. Scaligero, in Giorgio Agamben, Profanations (New York: Zone Books, 2007), 38–39. All images are from the comic strip album Qırıx with kind permission of the author. All translations from Turkish and Kurdish are mine. I would like to thank Kamran A. Ali, the participants of two writing workshops at the University of Texas, Austin (2009) and Harvard University (2011), and an anonymous reviewer for the University of Pennsylvania Press for their vital comments and suggestions on former versions. I would especially like to thank Kamala Visweswaran for her invaluable encouragement and input throughout the thinking, writing, and editing phases of this chapter. 1. Dog˘an Gu¨zel, Qirix (Istanbul: Avesta Yayinlari, 1997). 2. I use process as the translation of Turkish word su¨rec¸. In the political parlance of the Kurdish struggle of the time, ‘‘process’’ denoted ‘‘the time of Kurdish national revolutionary struggle.’’ In this chapter, the process refers to this temporality of struggle. 3. See Michael Mulkay, On Humor: Its Nature and Its Place in Modern Society (New York: Blackwell, 1988); Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986); Mikita Hoy, ‘‘Bakhtin and Popular Culture,’’ New Literary History 23, 3 (1992): 765–82. See Candace Lang, Irony/Humor (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998) for a critical review of this literature. 4. See Bakhtin’s notion of ‘‘carnival.’’ Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington : Indiana University Press 1984) 5. Micheal Andre’ Bernstein, ‘‘When the Carnival Turns Bitter: Preliminary Reflections upon the Abject Hero, Critical Inquiry 10, 2 (1983): 283–305; Terry Eagleton, ‘‘Bakhtin, Schopenauer, Kundera,’’ in Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, ed. Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 229–40; Achille Mbembe, ‘‘The Banality of Power and Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony,’’ trans. Janet Roitman, Public Culture 1, 4 (1992): 1–30. 6. See Mbembe, ‘‘The Banality of Power.’’ 7. See Raoul Vanegeim, The Revolution of Everyday Life, trans. Donald Nicholson Smith (London: Rebel Press, 2003); Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Maurice Blanchot, ‘‘Everyday

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Speech,’’ trans. Susan Hanson, Yale French Studies 73 (1987), 12–20; Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, vol. 2, trans. John Moore (New York: Verso, 2002). 8. James C Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press); Donna M Goldstein, Laughter out of Place: Race, Class, Violence and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown (Stanford, Calif.: University of California Press, 2003); Ronald Scott Jenkins, Subversive Laughter: The Liberating Power of Comedy, New York: Free Press 1994). 9. See Achille Mbembe and Janet Roitman’s discussion on the ‘‘subject of crisis,’’ and Achille Mbembe and Janet Roitman, ‘‘Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis,’’ Public Culture 7, 2 (1995): 323–52. 10. Lang, Irony/Humor, 282. 11. Sherry Ortner, ‘‘Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, 1 (1995): 173–93, 187–88. . 12. Orhan Koc¸ak, ‘‘Qirix: ‘Ilginc¸ Bir Heval,’ ’’ Virgu¨l Dergisi 6 (1998): 5–6; emphases original. . . 13. Mesut Yeg˘en, ‘‘Qirix: Iki C¸ag˘ri, Iki Celp Arasinda Bir S¸ehir,’’ in C ¸ izgili Kenar . Notlari, ed. Levent Cantek (Istanbul: Iletis¸im, 2007), 89–99. 14. Ibid., 90, 94. 15. Ibid., 95, 98. 16. Kemal Varol, ‘‘Sakil ve Yerli,’’ Esmer Dergisi 12 (2006): 27–28. 17. Tony Bennett, ‘‘Texts in History: The Determinations of Readings and Their Texts,’’ Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 18, 1 (1985): 1–16, 8. 18. The overall logic of PKK’s national revolutionarism exemplified what David Scott calls ‘‘the Third World narrative of liberation’’: ‘‘A teleological mode of construal that progressively links (through such generative tropes as Repression, Alienation, Consciousness, Awakening, Resistance, Struggle and Realization) a past and a present of Domination to an anticipated future of Freedom.’’ David Scott, Refashioning Futures: Criticism After Postcoloniality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995). 19. Note in this sense the following manuscripts authored by the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan himself, as elementary political training material: Sosyalizm ve Devrim Sorunlari [The Problematic of Socialism and Revolution] (Istanbul: MELSA, 1992); Ku¨rdistan’da Kis¸ilik Sorunu [The Problem of Personal Character in Kurdistan] (Trollhattan: M. Kurdi, 1992); Din Sorununa Devrimci Yaklas¸im [Revolutionary Approach to the Question of Religion] (Istanbul: MELSA,1993); Ku¨rdistan’da Kadin ve Aile [Woman and Family in Kurdistan] (Koln: Ag˘ri, 1993); Halk Savas¸inda Militan Kis¸ilik [Militant Personality in the People’s War] (Koln: Wes¸aneˆn Serxwebun, 1994; Nasil Yas¸amali? [How Ought to Live?] (Koln: Wes¸aneˆn Serxwebun, 1995); Abdullah ¨ calan and Mahir Sayin, Erkeg˘i O ¨ ldu¨rmek [Killing the Man] (Istanbul: ZELAL, 1998). O 20. I borrow this phrase from Michael Herzfeld, who, in comparison to the notion of ‘‘being a good man,’’ defines it as ‘‘a stance that stresses performative excellence, the

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ability to foreground manhood by means of deeds that strikingly ‘speak for themselves.’ ’’ Michael Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 16, emphasis original. 21. See Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Saul, 1969, ‘‘Nationalism and Revolution in Subsaharan Africa,’’ Socialist Register (1969): 137–88, on the question of lumpen in these traditions. ¨ stu¨ne (Istanbul: Yo¨n Yayincilik, 22. Yilmaz Odabas¸i, Hu¨zu¨n mu¨, Bas¸im Go¨zu¨m U 1990), 63, 75, my emphasis. 23. Faysal Dag˘li, Ates¸ten Portreler (Istanbul: Belge, 1996). ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem’s readership in 24. The only other definable group to form part of O this period was limited numbers of leftist activist and intellectuals in metropolitan Turkey who kept in solidarity with the Kurdish movement at a close distance. 25. The Diyarbakirite dialect diverges from standard Turkish in syntax, phonology, and semantics. 26. Eniya Rizgariya Netewayi Kurdistan, National Liberation Front of Kurdistan. 27. ‘‘Patriotic’’ is the concept with which proper Kurdish national-revolutionary subjectivity was signified. This use had its base in PKK rejection of any idea of ‘‘nationalism’’ that based its claim to legitimacy on the primacy and inherent sovereignty of ethnie as ‘‘the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie.’’ That is why it also strictly avoided the term ‘‘nationalist.’’ For an intensive study of the PKK’s founding ideology in the English language, including a suggestion regarding its ‘‘nationalismless nationalism,’’ ¨ zcan, Turkey’s Kurds: A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah see Ali Kemal O ¨ calan (London: Routledge Curzon, 2006). O 28. ‘‘Siyasi’’ literally translates as ‘‘political.’’ I prefer following the original term because ‘‘siyasi’’ does not have any connotation of calculation or manipulation that comes with ‘‘political.’’ It univocally means ‘‘pertaining to politics.’’ 29. This is the translation of a Turkish proverb that reads: ‘‘Taraf olmayan bertaraftir.’’ 30. Military service is compulsory in Turkey for all men twenty years old and above. 31. I borrow this statement from an interview that I conducted with a ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u during my fieldwork, Diyarbakir, September 2007. 32. The Turkish word ‘‘operasyon,’’ unlike its English counterpart ‘‘operation,’’ is a heavily militarized term. 33. ‘‘Kontra’’ is a colloquial shortcut for counter-guerrilla. 34. Here is a quick background to what this episode references to: One of the most destructive counter-guerrilla organizations put in the service of fighting the PKK in the 1990s was the Turkish Hezbollah (no relation to the Lebanese organization with the same name). Bulent Aras and Gokhan Bacik, ‘‘The Mystery of Turkish Hizballah,’’ Middle East Policy 9, 2 (2002): 147–60. Hezbollah used sator in most of the hundreds of murders it carried out against PKK members or sympathizers. The PKK always

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opposed the symbolism and use of sator; yet it could not control its use in random acts of retaliation. 35. My discussion here presupposes an understanding of (political) agency as ‘‘end-effect’’ of embodied and situated practices rather ‘‘residing’’ in moral subjects. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). 36. In a way this failure to own the knowledge of its experience is a structural quality of discursive thought in general, especially in times of radical transformation. Michael Holquist remarks: ‘‘It is in the nature of revolutions that no one can be an experienced citizen of the new order they bring into being. Those who fought for change, as well as those who resisted it.’’ Michael Holquist, ‘‘Prologue,’’ in Rebelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), xiv. 37. I have in mind Micheal Taussig’s discussion of Walter Benjamin’s reading of Plato’s Symposium in formulating this suggestion. Taussig says: ‘‘Truth is not a matter of exposure which destroys the secret, but a revelation which does justice to it.’’ Michael T. Taussig, Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 2. 38. Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 165. 39. Taussig, Defacement, 2, 3. 40. The fond memory of my late grandfather accompanies these lines as I write. ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem During the 1990s, the younger members of my family were regular O readers and avid Qirix fans, to the dismay of our politically antagonistic ‘‘Muslim and hence Turkish’’-identified grandfather. In summer 1992, however, he, too, became an ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem ‘‘buyer’’ when an elderly distributor, an old friend of his, was murO dered by the counter-guerrilla across the street. For a couple of months after this incident, the poor old man took pains to get the daily paper the first thing after the morning prayer, and before anyone else in the house was up. ‘‘I know it,’’ he would say. The young ones, at least those ‘‘fools born of him,’’ would not have given up on their ‘‘damn paper’’ for the fear of persecution; to the contrary, they might have been ‘‘exhilarated’’ by the possibility. Chapter 2. The War Zone in My Heart: The Occupation of Southern Sri Lanka 1. I deliberated at length before using the term ‘‘civil war’’ in this chapter. FTZ workers typically used the common term yuddhe (war) to refer to the violence, and only occasionally used vargika aragalaya when trying to show off their knowledge of the political economy of the country. Civil war is a term often used by political scientists and was frequently used by English language media. However, neither the Sinhala language media nor Sinhala-speaking people used ‘‘civil war’’ to talk about the war. Although I chose to use the term to keep the chapter aligned with other works on similar situations, I acknowledge its alien and constructed character.

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2. To judge by their names, they all seem to be Sinhala. There is not enough information on the web yet to see whether the Tamil-medium students selected to North and East universities were also subjected to training in military camps. However, one YouTube clip by a news channel in Sri Lanka included comments by a female Muslim student. She and several other students spoke of the program’s benefits, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v⳱Nb1VAMWz0D4&feature⳱related. It would be interesting to see how they would respond in less threatening contexts, http://www.you tube.com/watch?v⳱kpK4hB0zqBQ&feature⳱related. 3. Some soldiers just threw their sweaty shirts on top of women’s washed clothes hanging from clotheslines. Although some civilian men also displayed these behavior patterns, at Saman’s boarding house, these actions, if committed by Saman or his friends, would never have passed without a protest. But when soldiers committed this very same act, women laughed indulgently or volunteered to wash their dirty clothes. 4. See Jeganathan Pradeep, ‘‘Walking Through Violence: Everyday Life and Anthropology,’’ in Everyday Life in South Asia, ed. Diane Mines and Sarah Lamb (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). 5. See Catherine Lutz, ‘‘The Wars Less Known,’’ South Atlantic Quarterly 101, 2 (2002): 288. 6. See Deborah Winslow and Michael Woost, ‘‘Introduction’’ in Economy, Culture and Civil War in Sri Lanka, ed. Deborah Winslow and Michael Woost (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Mats Utas, ‘‘Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering: Tactic Agency in a Young Woman’s Social Navigation of the Liberian War Zone,’’ Anthropological Quarterly 78, 2 (2005): 403–30; Lutz, ‘‘The Wars Less Known,’’ 288. 7. See Lamia Shehadeh, ed., Women and War in Lebanon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999); Susie Jacobs, Ruth Jacobson, and Jennifer Marchbank, States of Conflict: Gender, Violence and Resistance (London: Zed Books, 2000); Claudia Card, ‘‘Rape as a Weapon of War,’’ Hypatia 11, 4 (1996): 5–18; Jok Madut Jok, Militarization, Gender and Reproductive Health in South Sudan (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1998); Lutz, ‘‘Wars Less Known’’; Utas, ‘‘Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering.’’ 8. Miriam Cooke, ‘‘War, Gender and Military Studies: Review Essay,’’ NWSA Journal 13, 3 (2001): 181–88. 9. Cooke, 186. 10. See Sandya Hewamanne, Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone: Gender and Politics in Sri Lanka (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Sandya Hewamanne, ‘‘Duty Bound: Militarization, Romances and New Forms of Violence Among Sri Lanka’s Free Trade Zone Factory Workers,’’ Cultural Dynamics 21, 2 (2009): 153–84. 11. See Neil DeVotta, Blowback: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004); Jayadewa Uyangoda, ‘‘Militarization, Violent State, Violent Society: Sri Lanka,’’ in Internal Conflicts in South Asia, ed. Kumar Rupesinghe and Khawar Mumtaz (London: Sage, 1996).

Notes to Pages 66–85

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12. See Caitrin Lynch, ‘‘Economic Liberalization, Nationalism and Women’s Morality in Sri Lanka,’’ in Economy, Culture, and Civil War in Sri Lanka, ed. Winslow and Woost, 184. 13. Neloufer De Mel, Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory and Narrative in the Armed Conflict (New Delhi: Sage, 2007). 14. These magazines carry stories sent by readers describing their sexual escapades and encourage inclusion of lurid sexual details in the stories through several mechanisms. Neighbors, police, and mainstream society identified the magazines as asabya (obscene) and workers admitted they read them for juicy sexual stories. For a discussion of why I chose to call the magazines pornographic, see ‘‘Pornographic Voice: Critical Feminist Practices among Sri Lanka’s Female Garment Workers,’’ Feminist Studies 32, 1 (2006): 125–54. 15. See Priyadari, 09/12/2001: 5 (7): 5. 16. See Priyadari, 12/05/2001: 5 (1): 11 17. Bathing of the bodhi tree; ficus religiosa. 18. See Priyadari, 07/18/2001: 4 (5): 3 19. See Mats Berdahl and David Malone, eds., Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000): 1. 20. See Hewamanne, ‘‘Duty Bound,’’ 153–84. 21. See Utas ‘‘Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering,’’ 406. 22. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party is considered more socialist and leftist oriented than the capitalist oriented United National Party. After 1977 both parties became more or less capitalist oriented. However, in the 1970s Sri Lanka Freedom Party was the choice of many intellectuals. 23. Anonymous, Dabindu, April 1999, emphasis mine. 24. See Sandya Hewamanne, ‘‘Suicide Narratives and In-Between Identities Among Sri Lanka’s Global Factory Workers,’’ Ethnology 49, 1 (2010). 25. See Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 26. The plot was so unrealistic that until halfway through, I thought the woman following him was a manifestation of his guilty conscience. 27. This woman wrote how she was raped by seven army soldiers during the military crackdown on a youth insurrection in the late 1980s. Priyadari, 01/23/2002: 5(26): 16. 28. See Neloufer De Mel, ‘‘Staging Pain: Representation, the Disabled Soldier and the Butterflies Theatre of Sri Lanka,’’ Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities 29, 30 (1–2) (2003/4): 122. Chapter 3. Grounding Militarism: Structures of Feeling and Force in Gilgit-Baltistan 1. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free Press, 1964); Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: Verso, 1987).

252

Notes to Pages 85–89

2. See Mary-Jo Good and Byron J. Good, ‘‘Ritual, the State, and the Transformation of Emotional Discourse in Iranian Society,’’ Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 12, 1 (1988): 43–63; Mabel M. Berezin, ‘‘Political Belonging: Emotion, Nation and Identity in Fascist Italy,’’ in State/Culture: State-Formation After the Cultural Turn, ed. George Steinmetz (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 355–77; Ann Stoler, ‘‘Affective States,’’ in A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, ed. David Nugent and Joan Vincent (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 4–20; Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, eds., The Affect Theory Reader (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010). 3. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 4. See Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defence (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 1990). 5. Neloufer De Mel, Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory, and Narrative in the Armed Conflict (New Delhi: Sage, 2007). 6. For a detailed discussion of Dogra and British struggles over the northern frontier of the subcontinent, see Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan, and the Unending War (London: Tauris, 2000). 7. Mujtaba Razvi, The Frontiers of Pakistan: A Study of Frontier Problems in Pakistan’s Frontier Policy (Karachi: National Publishing House, 1971); Mridu Rai, Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights and the History of Kashmir (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004). 8. See Usman Ali, Gilgit ki Rog Kahani (Lahore: Maqbul Academy, 1990). 9. See Yaqoob Khan Bangash, ‘‘Three Forgotten Accessions: Gilgit, Hunza and Nagar,’’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38, 1 (2010): 117–43, for a detailed discussion of the revolt in Gilgit in 1947, and the accession of Hunza and Nagar states to Pakistan. 10. Robert Wirsing, Pakistan’s Security Under Zia 1977–1988: The Policy Imperatives of a Peripheral Asian State (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985). 11. See HRCP, Gilgit-Baltistan Elections 2009: Report of HRCP Observers’ Mission (Lahore: Qasim Press, 2010). 12. About 75 percent of the region’s population follow some form of Shia Islam, while the Shia population in the rest of Pakistan is estimated to be between 15 and 25 percent. See Andreas Rieck, ‘‘From Mountain Refuge to ‘Model Area’: Transformation of Shi‘i Communities in Northern Pakistan,’’ in Perspectives on History and Change in the Karakorum, Hindukush, and Himalaya, ed. I. Stellrecht and M. Winiger (Ko¨ln: Ru¨diger Ko¨ppe, 1997). 13. See Jalal, The State of Martial Rule; Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha, Pakistan’s Arms Procurement and Military Buildup, 1979–99: In Search of a Policy (London: Palgrave, 2001); Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha, Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2007); Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Notes to Pages 89–99

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14. De Mel, Militarizing Sri Lanka, 12. 15. See C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Harper, 1957); Catherine Lutz, ‘‘Militarization,’’ in A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, ed. David Nugent and Joan Vincent (London: Blackwell, 2004). 16. See De Mel, Militarizing Sri Lanka. 17. See Lutz, ‘‘Militarization.’’ 18. Ibid., 320. 19. Incompetent as well as co-opted politicians have lent credibility to this discourse, leading to a widespread tendency where people in Pakistan see the military as the lesser of the two evils. 20. See Nawaz, Crossed Swords. 21. This has been a contentious process, of course, facing fierce resistance especially in the province of Balochistan. Nationalist parties in the province have consistently opposed use of Balochi land as ‘‘state land’’ for expanding military cantonments as well as for nuclear testing. 22. See Siddiqa-Agha, Military Inc. 23. Hamza Alavi, ‘‘Authoritarianism and Legitimation of State Power in Pakistan,’’ in The Postcolonial State in South Asia, ed. Subrata Mitra (London: HarvesterWheatsheaf, 1990). 24. See Siddiqa-Agha, Military Inc. 25. See K. K. Kamal, Pakistan: The Garrison State (New Delhi: Intellectual Publishing House, 1982). 26. ‘‘Askari’’ is an Urdu word for ‘‘soldier.’’ 27. Mobile services were introduced for the first time in the region in August 2006, also by SCO. Private mobile companies were allowed to operate a few months later. 28. Human Rights Watch, Reform of Repression: Post-Coup Abuses in Pakistan (New York: HRW, 2000). 29. See Georg Sto¨ber, ‘‘Structural Change and Domestic Agriculture in Yasin,’’ in Mountain Societies in Transition: Contributions to the Cultural Geography of the Karakoram, ed. Andreas Dittman (Koln: Riidiger Koppe, 2000). 30. The NLI was formed in 1971, and is the key army regiment from GilgitBaltistan. 31. These rates are from 2007. 32. A ghazi is a war hero with a special religious status; a shaheed is a martyr with a special religious status. 33. Siachin is a glacier in disputed Kashmir, which Pakistan and India have fought over since 1984. It is considered the highest battleground in the world, where many soldiers from both sides have lost their lives due to the inhuman conditions in which they are forced to live. 34. See Tapan Bose, ‘‘Reporting from Gagangir, a Kargil War Refugee Camp,’’ South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), June 30, 1999.

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Notes to Pages 100–108

35. Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was a former chief minister of Balochistan and also an elected member of the National Assembly. 36. Wana is the central town of South Waziristan, a region in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. 37. An attack by the Pakistani army on the militantly Islamist Red Mosque in Islamabad. 38. See Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2005). 39. For insightful analyses of intelligence work and power during British Raj in India, see C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Mathew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 40. Oskar Verkaaik, ‘‘The Captive State: Corruption, Intelligence Agencies, and Ethnicity in Pakistan,’’ in States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, ed. Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 345–64. 41. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon, 1977), 201. 42. See David Harper, ‘‘The Politics of Paranoia: Paranoid Positioning and Conspiratorial Narratives in the Surveillance Society’’ Surveillance & Society 5, 1 (2008): 6. 43. See http://tribune.com.pk/story/17097/pigeon-held-in-india-for-spying-forpakistan / and http://tribune.com.pk/story/302548/pakistan-arrests-indian-monkeyfor-crossing-border/. 44. D. Murakami Wood, ed., A Report on the Surveillance Society (Wilmslow: Office of the Information Commissioner/Surveillance Studies Network, 2006). 45. Allen Feldman, ‘‘Animality and the Inhumanization of Sovereignty: A Visual Culture of Bared Life,’’ University Lecture for Workshop on Militarizing Everyday Life, Cornell University, October 3, 2008. 46. G. T. Marx, Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Dieter K. Buse, Gary Kinsman, and Mercedes Steedman, Whose National Security? Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies (Toronto: Between The Lines, 2000); David Lyon, ‘‘Surveillance After September 11, 2001,’’ in The Intensification of Surveillance: Crime, Terrorism and Warfare in the Information Age, ed. Kirstie Ball and Frank Webster (London: Pluto Press, 2003); Maria Los, ‘‘The Technologies of Total Domination,’’ Surveillance & Society 2, 1 (2004): 15–38; Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008). The extent of political manipulation and media control local and foreign intelligence agencies engage in can be gauged by archival documents that demonstrate the working of agencies in the Pakistan of the 1950s. See, e.g., http://www.icdc.com/⬃paulwolf/pakistan/anticommunist7aug1951.htm. 47. Anne McClintock, ‘‘Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guanta´namo and Abu Ghraib,’’ Small Axe 13, 1 (2009): 50–74.

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48. McClintock, Paranoid Empire, 53. 49. See Nosheen Ali, ‘‘The Terribly Sad State of Balochistan,’’ Express Tribune, May 23, 2011. 50. KANA stands for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas, now renamed the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan after the region’s name change in 2009. It is the Islamabad-based federal institution that oversees the administration of GilgitBaltistan. 51. Personal interviews. See also Muhammad Shehzad, ‘‘Textbook Controversy in Gilgit,’’ Friday Times (Lahore), July 4–10, 2003. 52. See Salim Qureshi, ‘‘The Politics of the Shia Minority in Pakistan: Context and Developments,’’ in Religious and Ethnic Minority Politics in South Asia, ed. Dhirendra Vajpeyi and Yogendra K. Malik (Delhi: Manohar, 1989). 53. Martin Sokefeld, ‘‘Selves and Others: Representing Multiplicities of Difference in Gilgit, Northern Areas of Pakistan,’’ in Ethnic Revival and Religious Turmoil: Identities and Representations in the Himalayas, ed. Marie Lecomte-Tilouine and Pascale Dollfus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 54. See Andreas Rieck, ‘‘Sectarianism as a Political Problem in Pakistan: The Case of Northern Areas,’’ Orient 36, 3 (1995); Tor H. Aase, ‘‘The Theological Construction of Conflict: Gilgit, Northern Areas,’’ in Muslim Diversity: Local Islam in Global Contexts ed. Leif Manger (Richmond, Va.: Curzon Press), 58–79. 55. Nosheen Ali, ‘‘Outrageous State: Sectarianized Citizens: Deconstructing the Textbook Controversy in the Northern Areas, Pakistan,’’ South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal 2 (2008), http://samaj.revues.org/document1172.html, accessed January 28, 2012. 56. Nosheen Ali, ‘‘Sectarian Imaginaries: The Micropolitics of Sectarianism and State-making in the Northern Areas, Pakistan,’’ Current Sociology 58, 5 (2010): 738–54. 57. See Shehzad, ‘‘Textbook Controversy in Gilgit.’’ 58. See Harry G. West and Todd Sanders, ‘‘Introduction: Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order,’’ in Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order, ed. Harry G. West and Todd Sanders (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003). 59. Ben Anderson, ‘‘Modulating the Excess of Affect: Morale in a State of ‘Total War,’ ’’ in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), 161–87. Chapter 4. Stateless Citizens and Menacing Men: Notes on the Occupation of Palestinians Inside Israel 1. Alternative Information Center (AIC), ‘‘Ethnic Cleansing in the Negev,’’ August 1, 2005, http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/publications/93ethnic-cleansing-in-the-negev, accessed January 12, 2012. 2. The Case of the Bedouin of the Naqab,’’ Adalah’s Newsletter 24 (April 2006), http://www.adalah.org/newsletter/eng/apr06/ar2.pdf.

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3. Elia Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1979); Ian Lustick. Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980); Nadim Rouhana and Nimer Sultany, ‘‘Redrawing the Boundaries of Citizenship: Israel’s New Hegemony,’’ Journal of Palestine Studies 33, 1 (2003): 5–22. 4. AIC, ‘‘Israel to Sue Bedouin Residents of Demolished Village for Demolition Costs,’’ March 3, 2011, http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/topics/jeru salem/3368-israel-to-sue-bedouin-residents-of-demolished-village-for-demolitioncosts, accessed March 13, 2011. 5. Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), By All Means Possible: A Report on the Destruction by the State of Crops of Bedouin Citizens in the Naqab (Negev) by Means of Aerial Spraying with Chemicals (Nazareth: HRA, 2004), http://www.caiaweb.org/oldsite/files/aahra-negev.pdf, accessed June 27, 2011. 6. Saree Makdisi, ‘‘Architecture of Erasure,’’ Critical Inquiry 36 (Spring 2010). 7. Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 8. Dov Friedlander and Calvin Goldscheider, The Population of Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), xviii. 9. Thomas Hill, ‘‘ ‘I Don’t Get So Close That . . . ’: Palestinian Story as Silence in Elia Suleiman’s The Time That Remains,’’ manuscript, 7. 10. Yair Bauml, ‘‘The Military Government and the Process of Its Abolishment, 1958–1968,’’ New East 23 (2002): 133–56 (Hebrew). The visual power of the military government was replaced over the years by the more sophisticated visual power of aerial photography of Palestinians during demonstrations and the establishment of surveillance police stations in Palestinian towns and villages, among others. Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, ‘‘Palestinian Predicaments: Jewish Immigration and Refugee Repatriation,’’ in Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender Among Palestinians in Israel, ed. Rhoda Kanaaneh and Isis Nusair (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 177. 11. Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, ‘‘Citizenship and Stratification in an Ethnic Democracy,’’ in Israeli and Palestinian Identities in History and Literature, ed. Kamal Abdel-Malek and David C. Jacobson (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 87–110. 12. As‘ad Ghanem, Nadim Rouhana, and Oren Yiftachel, ‘‘Questioning ‘Ethnic Democracy’: A Response to Sammy Smooha,’’ Israel Studies 3, 2 (1998): 265. 13. The 2011 Nakba law calls for the punishment of any state-funded institution that holds an activity that contradicts the definition of the State of Israel as a ‘‘Jewish and democratic’’ state. See Adalah, ‘‘Nakba Law Violates Rights of Arab Minority to Preserve Its History and Culture,’’ March 14, 2011, http://www.oldadalah.org/eng/ pressreleases/pr.php?file⳱14_03_11, accessed June 23, 2011. 14. Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), ‘‘Human Rights in Israel—An Overview 2007,’’ http://www.acri.org.il/pdf/tmunat2007.pdf, accessed June 27, 2011 (Hebrew).

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15. Robert Blecher, ‘‘Citizens Without Sovereignty: Transfer and Ethnic Cleansing in Israel,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 47 (2005): 725–54. 16. ‘‘Livni: National Aspirations of Israel’s Arabs Can Be Met by Palestinian Homeland,’’ Haaretz, December 11, 2008. 17. Greg Carlstrom, ‘‘Expelling Israel’s Arab Population,’’ Al-Jazeera, January 24, 2011. The Palestine Papers refer to over 1,600 confidential documents leaked to alJazeera relating to the last decade of negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Released in January 2011, they provide a window into how high-level American, Israeli, and Palestinian Authority officials negotiate behind closed doors. 18. Blecher, ‘‘Citizens Without Sovereignty,’’ 740. The Triangle area in central Israel and along the border with the West Bank is one of the three major regions in the country with a large concentration of Palestinian citizens. 19. Ibid., 738. 20. Gazi Falah, ‘‘Israeli ’Judaization’ Policy in Galilee and Its Impact on Local Arab Urbanization,’’ Political Geography Quarterly 8, 3 (1989): 229–53; Oren Yiftachel, ‘‘State Policies, Land Control and an Ethnic Minority: The Arabs in the Galilee Region, Israel,’’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 9 (1991): 329–62; Oren Yiftachel, ‘‘The Dark Side of Modernism: Planning as Control of an Ethnic Minority,’’ in Postmodern Cities and Spaces, ed. Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995), 216–42; HRA, By All Means Possible; Adalah, ‘‘Special Report: The Jewish National Fund, Challenging the Discriminatory Land Policies of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), n.d., http://www.adalah.org/eng/jnf/php, accessed April 2, 2008; Rasem Khamaisi, ‘‘Environmental Policies and Spatial Control: The Case of the Arab Localities Development in Israel,’’ Arab Studies Quarterly 28, 1 (2006): 33–54; ACRI, ‘‘Human Rights in Israel—An Overview 2007,’’ 2007, http://www.acri.org.il/pdf/tmu nat2007.pdf, accessed June 27, 2011 (Hebrew). 21. Reinhard Wiemer, ‘‘Zionism and the Arabs After the Establishment of the State of Israel,’’ in Palestinians over the Green Line, ed. Alexander Scholch (London: Ithaca Press, 1983), 51–52. 22. Technically the state has created 7 Bedouin Arab townships to concentrate ‘‘dispersed’’ Bedouins living in some 100 villages it refuses to recognize. 23. Falah, ‘‘Israeli ’Judaization’ Policy’’; Yiftachel, ‘‘The Dark Side of Modernism,’’ 230–34. 24. HRA and Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), ‘‘The Unrecognized Villages in the Negev Update: 2003,’’ http://www.arabhra.org/HraAd min/UserImages/Files/HRA-RCUVCESCRReport.pdf, accessed June 23, 2011; Thabet Abu Ras, ‘‘The Arab Bedouin in the Unrecognized Villages in the Naqab (Negev): Between the Hammer of Prawer and the Anvil of Goldberg,’’ Adalah’s Newsletter 81 (April 2011). 25. Walid Daka, ‘‘Security Prisoners or Political Prisoners?’’ Adalah’s Newsletter 24 (April 2006); Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), http://www.stop torture.org.il/en.

258

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26. Honaida Ghanim, ‘‘Thanatopolitics: The Case of the Colonial Occupation in Palestine,’’ in Thinking Palestine, ed. Ronit Lentin (New York: Zed Books, 2008), 67. 27. Ibid., 74. 28. Ibid., 67. 29. Jack Khoury, ‘‘Head to Head: Civil Rights Lawyer Auni Bana, Is There a Logic to the Security at Ben-Gurion?’’ Haaretz, March 9, 2011. 30. Rhoda Kanaaneh, Surrounded: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009). 31. Chris Toensing, ‘‘ ‘A Double Responsibility’: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Intifada,’’ interview with Azmi Bishara, Middle East Report 217 (2000). 32. Blecher, ‘‘Citizens Without Sovereignty,’’ 752. 33. Vita Bekker, ‘‘Israel Draft Law Would Bar Nakba Ceremonies,’’ The National, May 26, 2009. 34. Istiqlal, dir. Nizar Hassan, 1994. 35. Adalah, ‘‘Adalah: Nakba Law Violates Rights of Arab Minority.’’ 36. Gabriel Piterberg, ‘‘Can The Subaltern Remember? A Pessimistic View of the Victims of Zionism,’’ in Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North African, ed. Ussama Makdisi and Paul Silverstein (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 188; see also Blecher, ‘‘Citizens Without Sovereignty,’’ 753. 37. Hassan Jabareen. ‘‘On the Oppression of Identities in the Name of Civil Equality,’’ Adalah’s Review (Politics, Identity and Law) 1 (1999): 27. 38. Amal Eqeiq, ‘‘Tahrir Tel-Aviv,’’ February 17, 2011, http://www.jadaliyya.com/ pages/index/667/tahrir-tel-aviv, accessed February 18, 2011. 39. Ibid. 40. Ghazi Falah, ‘‘Living Together Apart: Residential Segregation in Mixed ArabJewish Cities in Israel,’’ Urban Studies 33, 6 (1996): 823–57. 41. Blecher, ‘‘Citizens Without Sovereignty,’’ 743. 42. Kobi Nahshoni, ‘‘50 Municipal Rabbis: Don’t Rent Flats to Arabs,’’ Ynet, December 7, 2010. 43. Eli Ashkenazi, ‘‘Safed Rabbi Boasts That Anti-Arab Edict Worked,’’ Haaretz, April 29, 2011. 44. Jack Khoury and Jonathan Lis, ‘‘Israel Towns Continue to Rewrite Bylaws to Keep Arabs Out,’’ Haaretz, December 16, 2010. 45. Issam Aburayya, ‘‘Idiotic and Cultured Racism,’’ Haaretz, January 7, 2011 (Hebrew). 46. Jonathan Lis, ‘‘Knesset to water down bill barring Arabs from Jewish towns,’’ Haaretz, December 21, 2010. 47. Aburayya, ‘‘Idiotic.’’ 48. Ja’afar Farah, ‘‘The Other Side of Judaizing the Galilee,’’ Zavonl-Karmiel¸ May 14, 1993, 16 (Hebrew). 49. Farah, ‘‘The Other Side of Judaizing.’’ A similar answer was given in the landmark Katzir case, in which the Jewish town rejected the request of the Arab Qa’dan family to build a home because it ‘‘would be difficult for them to integrate socially.’’

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ACRI, ‘‘Katzir Case,’’ www.acri.org.il/english-acri/engine/story.asp?id⳱177, accessed May 7, 2005. The Jewish residents of Makhmunim expressed the fear that the Sawa’id family would reproduce rapidly, become a larger minority, and take control of the settlement (Farah, ‘‘The Other Side of Judaizing’’). 50. Aburayya, ‘‘Idiotic.’’ 51. Kobi Nahshoni, ‘‘50 Municipal Rabbis: Don’t Rent Flats to Arabs,’’ Ynet, December 7, 2010, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3995724,00.html, accessed June 24, 2011. 52. Aburayya, ‘‘Idiotic.’’ 53. Adalah, ‘‘After Years of Legal Struggle, Israeli Supreme Court Orders Community Town in Northern Israel to Admit Arab Family,’’ Press Release, September 14, 2011. 54. Mya Guarnieri, ’’Don’t Take Our Girls . . . , ‘‘Al Jazeera, January 29, 2011, 1. 55. Ibid. 56. Ada Ushpiz, ‘‘Just Keep Them Away from Our Daughters!’’ Haaretz, July 9, 2004. 57. ‘‘Lod Vice Mayor Calls for Transfer of Jews from Arab Neighborhood,’’ Haaretz, December 1, 2004. 58. Mya Guarnieri, ‘‘Opinion: A Week of Racism in Israel,’’Al-Jazeera, January 8, 2011. 59. Yair Altman, ‘‘Rabbi’s Wife: Arabs Are the Enemy,’’Ynet, December 29, 2010. 60. Ilan Lior, ‘‘Bat Yam Residents, Rightists Rally to Protect City from Arab Suitors,’’ Haaretz, December 21, 2010. 61. Moti Levi, ‘‘Request for Certificates of ‘Clean of Arabs,’ ’’ Walla, February 1, 2011, http://news.walla.co.il/?w⳱/2/1785776, accessed March 16, 2011. This is even a concern near a West Bank settlement where a romance between a Palestinian male bagger at a Rami Levi supermarket and a Jewish cashier led the owner to remove all Palestinians from their bagging duties—except on the Wednesday and Thursday night shifts when ‘‘the checkout counters are so busy there is little opportunity for conversation.’’ Chaim Levinson, ‘‘Israeli Grocery Store Keeps Arab Baggers and Jewish Cashiers Apart,’’Haaretz, July 26, 2011. 62. Mayaan Javve, ‘‘When Israeli Women Marry Arab Men: Third in a Series,’’ Israel National News, November 30, 2004. 63. Ibid. 64. Al-Jazeera, ‘‘Opinion: A Week of Racism.’’ 65. Einav Yossef-Zada, ‘‘Municipality Will Locate Girls Going Out with Men from Minorities,’’ Ynet, September 14, 2009; Jonathan Cook, ‘‘Israeli Drive to Prevent Jewish Girls Dating Arabs,’’ The National, September 25, 2009. 66. Yossef-Zada, ‘‘Municipality Will Locate Girls.’’ 67. Haaretz, ‘‘Kiryat Gat Tells Its Schoolgirls: No Romancing with Bedouin,’’ July 1, 2008. 68. Ibid.

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69. Moria Ben Yossef, ‘‘Tel Aviv: City Launches Program to Prevent Relationships Between Jewish Girls and Minorities,’’ Moria Ben Yossef, Zman Tel-Aviv [Maariv TelAviv Weekly Magazine], February 23, 2010. 70. Forbidden Marriages in the Holy Land, dir. Michele Khleifi, 1995. 71. Cook, ‘‘Israeli Drive to Prevent.’’ 72. Ibid. 73. Abe Selig, ‘‘ ‘Protecting’ Jewish Girls from Arabs’’ Jerusalem Post, September 18, 2009. 74. Raef Zreik, ‘‘Why the Jewish State Now?’’ Journal of Palestine Studies 40, 3 (Spring 2011): 23, 32. 75. Ushpiz, ’’Just Keep Them Away.‘‘ 76. CNN, ‘‘Israeli Palestinian Man to Appeal Rape-by-Deception Conviction,’’ July 22, 2010. 77. Tomer Zarchin, ‘‘Jurists Say Arab’s Rape Conviction Sets Dangerous Precedent,’’ Haaretz, July 21, 2010. More recently a Bedouin from the Galilee was arrested on charges of rape and impersonating a Jewish pilot, though none of the four women in the case accused him of assaulting them. Jewish Telegraph Agency, ‘‘Israeli Bedouin Arrested for Rape by Deception,’’ January 11, 2011, http://www.jta.org/news/article/ 2011/01/11/2742514/israeli-bedouin-arrested-for-rape-by-deception, accessed June 23 2011. 78. Nahla Abdo, ‘‘Honour Killing, Patriarchy, and the State: Women in Israel,’’ in Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges, ed. Shahrzad Mojab and Nahla Abdo (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2004). 79. Nicholas Dirks, ‘‘The Policing of Tradition: Colonialism and Anthropology in Southern India,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 39, 1 (January 1997): 209. 80. Lila Abu-Lughod, ‘‘Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,’’ American Anthropologist 104, 3 (2002). 81. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘‘Racism, Militarisation and Policing: Police Reactions to Violence Against Palestinian Women in Israel,’’ Social Identities 10, 2 (2004): 171–93. 82. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘‘Racism, Militarisation and Policing,’’ 178. 83. Ibid., 179. 84. Ibid., 182. 85. Ibid., 180, 186 86. Joseph Massad, ‘‘Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?’’ Journal of Palestine Studies 30, 1 (Fall 2000): 58. 87. Blecher, ‘‘Citizens Without Sovereignty,’’ 754. Chapter 5. Indigenous Women and Culture in the Colonized Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh 1. For further discussion of Dulu Kumuri and Kalpana Chakma, see Glen Hill and Kabita Chakma, ‘‘Writing Post-Nationalist Histories Within the Walls of Nationalism:

Notes to Pages 133–135

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The Case of Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh,’’ Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia (JOSA) 39–40 (2007–2008): 250–63. 2. Amnesty International, AI Index: ASA 13/07/96, Bangladesh: Kalpana Chakma (f), aged 23, indigenous rights activist, July 1, 1996, and AI Index: ASA 13/09/96, further information on UA 162/96 (ASA 13/07/96, July 1, 1996), August 28, 1996; two leaflets by Ain O Salis Kendra (ASK) of Bangladesh: ASK Appeal June 24, 1996, and ASK Appeal for Action, Abduction of Hill Women’s Federation Leader—Recent Developments, July 18, 1996. 3. European Parliament, DOC_EN\RE\311\311501, G.1, October 23, 1996; Australian Hansard, October 2, 1997, 7434, http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/dailys/ ds021097.pdf. 4. Radhika Coomaraswamy, special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-Third Session, E/CN.4/1997/47/Add. 4, page 2, January 30, 1997; Australian Red Cross, letter No. TR/330/98 275 dated 26.5.98 and letter No. TR/330/99/ 2341/C dated 24.2.99. 5. Kabita Chakma interview with director Tarun Chakma, October 25, 29, 2006. 6. There are at least forty-six indigenous groups in Bangladesh, thirty-five of which live outside the CHT. The indigenous population constitutes 1.08 percent of the national population. ‘‘Indigenous and Tribal Peoples’ Rights in Practice, a guide to ILO Convention No. 169, Programme to promote ILO Convention No. 169 (Pro 169)’’ (International Labour Standards Department, 2009), 17. 7. Some research nominates a different number of indigenous groups in the CHT. For instance, Mro are erroneously listed as two groups, Mro and Murang, in the 1991 national census; and the two Tripura groups—Usui and Riang—are often treated as two different groups: Usui as Tripura, and Riang as a separate group. 8. Sugata Chakma, ‘‘Parbatya chattagramer bibhinna bhasha o upabhashar moulik shabda sangraha ebang bishleshan purbak tader prathamik shrenikarn’’ (Collection of basic vocabulary of different languages and dialects of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and their primary classification), Upajatiya Gabeshana Patrika (Research Journal of the Tribal Cultural Institute), 3 (Rangamati: Tribal Cultural Institute, 2004): 9–68. While all groups of necessity use Bangla script, some also have traditional scripts, some use Roman script, and some have recently developed their own scripts. 9. Manle Mro, who developed the Mro script, also founded the Krama religion in 1985–1986. 10. Ilira Dewan. ‘‘Panchadash Sangshodhani: Bangali Jatyabhiman O Upekhita Adibasi (15th Amendment: Bengali Nationalism and Neglected Indigenous Peoples),’’ Prothom Alo, July 3, 2011. 11. For precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial history of the CHT see Raja Devasish Roy, ‘‘Questions on Political & Constitutional Crises in the Chittagong Hill Tracts: Seeking Answers in History & Historiography,’’ paper presented at international seminar on Chittagong Hill Tracts: Enlightening Different Aspects, Bangladesh Itihas Society and the Department of History, University of Chittagong, March 31–April 1,

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2011); Willem van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 26, 213. For precolonial and colonial history of the CHT see Willem van Schendel, ed., Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798): His Journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1992). Willem van Schendel et al., The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Living in a Borderland (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2000). For precolonial history, A. M. Serajuddin, ‘‘The Chakma Tribe of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the 18th Century,’’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1 (1984): 90–98; Suniti Bhushan Qanungo, Chakma Resistance to British Domination, 1772–1798 (Chittagong: Shanti Press, 1998). 12. As the resistance was led by two successive Chakma rajas, historians referred it to as the ‘‘chakma bidroha’’ or ‘‘Chakma Resistance.’’ Qanungo, Chakma Resistance to British Domination; Ratan Lal Chakraborty, ‘‘Chakma Resistance to Early British Rule,’’ Journal of the Bangladesh Itihaas Samiti (Bangladesh Historical Studies) 2 (1977): 133–56. But there were other indigenous communities in the region that also joined the resistance. Most notably a famous Marma aristocrat and warrior named Kheju Roaza and other indigenous communities who were referred to as Kukis by the British. 13. Kabita Chakma, ‘‘Kalindi Rani: 19th Century Chakma Queen Regnant,’’ New Age, http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/op-ed/10677.html. 14. Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, Life Is Not Ours: Land and Human Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts Bangladesh (Copenhagen: IWGIA, May 1991), 42. 15. Parbattya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity means Chittagong Hill Tracts United Peoples Party. Jana Sanghati Samity or JSS is its popular name. 16. Lars-Anders Baer, Study on the Status of Implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord of 1997, Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Tenth session, New York, May 16–27, 2011, UN Economic and Social Council, E/C.19/2011/6. 17. Baer, The Status of Implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord, 16. 18. Ibid., 15–16. ‘‘Operation Uttoron’’ was a counter-insurgency measure that conferred military officers with concentrated powers. It remains in force despite there being no evidence of insurgency since the ceasefires of early 1990s. 19. Ibid., 5. 20. Shapan Adnan, Migration Land Alienation and Ethnic Conflict: Causes of Poverty in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh (Dhaka: Research and Advisory Services, 2004), 48–50. 21. Jumma Sambad Bulletin (Jumma News Bulletin) 6, 16th year (Rangamati: Parbatya Chattgram Jana Samhati Samiti, August 9, 2006), 15. 22. Abdul Barkat et al., Socio-economic Baseline Survey of Chittagong Hill Tracts (Dhaka: UNDP, Bangladesh, 2009), vi–vii. 23. Raja Devasish Roy, ‘‘Forests, Forestry and Indigenous Peoples in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh,’’ paper presented at Workshop on the Rights of Tribal and Indigenous Peoples, India International Centre, New Delhi, February 23–25, 1996), 5–6.

Notes to Pages 137–139

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24. Adnan, Migration Land Alienation, 57. 25. Bangladesh District Gazetteers: Chittagong Hill Tracts (Dacca: Establishment Division, Ministry of Cabinet Affairs, 1975), 100, 126. 26. Amena Mohsin, ‘‘State Hegemony,’’ in The Chittagong Hill Tract: Life and Nature at Risk, ed. Philip Gain (Dhaka: SEHD, 2000), 68. 27. Roy, ‘‘Forests, Forestry and Indigenous People,’’ 3. 28. Mohsin, ‘‘State Hegemony,’’ 68. 29. Prior to British colonization, most land in the CHT was treated as ‘‘commons.’’ Commons still exist in forms such as Village Common Forests (VCFs). For VCFs, see Hari Kishore Chakma, ‘‘The Village Common Forests Management of Indigenous Peoples,’’ in JAC’er 25 barsha purti sankalan (Collected edition celebrating JAC’s 25th anniversary, 2005), ed. Shishir Cakma (Rangamati: Jum Aesthetic Council, 2005), 25–32; Sing Yong Mro, ‘‘Adibasider oitihjhyagata grameen sadharan ban babasthapana o kaprupara sangrakhita ban (Traditional Village Forest Management of Indigenous Peoples and Kaprupara Reserve Forest),’’ Jangfa (‘‘Love’’ in Bawm language), ed. Litan Chakma Annada (Rangamati: Banjogichara Kishore Kishori Kalyan Samiti, 2011), 59–70. Shapan Adnan and Ranajit Dastidar, Alienation of the Lands of Indigenous Peoples in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh (Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission and IWGIA, 2011), 37. 30. Mro, ‘‘Traditional Village Forest Management,’’ 59. 31. Roy, ‘‘Forests, Forestry and Indigenous Peoples,’’ 9. 32. Adnan and Dastidar, Alienation of the Lands of Indigenous Peoples, 60, http:// indigenouspeoplesissues.com/index. 33. Ibid., 59. 34. Kapaeeng Foundation, ‘‘Bangladesh: Indigneous Peoples Demand Stop to Land Acquisition for Setting Up Military Garrison,’’ Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources, May 12, 2012. 35. Adnan and Dastidar, Alienation of the Lands of Indigenous Peoples, n 134, 79. 36. Ibid., 81–84; Adnan, Migration Land Alienation, 94. 37. Adnan and Dastidar, Alienation of the Lands of Indigenous People, 97; Amena Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism: The Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1997), 178. 38. There were thirteen massacres between 1979, the year of implementation of the transmigration program, and 1992, five years before the signing of the Accord. Mark Levene, ‘‘The Chittagong Hill Tracts: A Case Study in the Political Economy of ‘Creeping Genocide,’ ’’ Third World Quarterly 20, 2 (1999): 339–69; Bhumitra Chakma, ‘‘The Post-Colonial State and Minorities: Ethnocide in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh,’’ Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 48, 3 (July 2010): 291; A briefing on Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Bangladesh to Human Rights Sub-Committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Jumma Peoples Network of the Asia Pacific, September 8, 2005, Canberra. 39. The Government Task Force 2001 listed 90,208 indigenous families as internally displaced. The estimate in this chapter is based on a family size of 3.3, much less

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than the 5.1 given by the 2009 UNDP survey. Barkat et al., Socio-Economic Baseline Survey of Chittagong Hill Tracts, 32; Pinaki Roy and Shantimoy Chakma, ‘‘Hurt Not Healed at Hills: 13 Years of Peace Accord Gone, Land Not Returned to Most Families,’’ Daily Star, December 2, 2010. 40. The Bengali population in the CHT was 9.09 percent in 1951 (4 years after the British withdrawal), 19.41 percent in 1974, and 48.57 percent in 1991. Adnan, Migration Land Alienation, 57. 41. Ibid., 12. 42. Kabita Chakma and Bina D’Costa, ‘‘The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT): Diminishing Conflict or Violent Peace?’’ in Diminishing Conflicts in Asia and the Pacific, ed. Edward Aspinall, Robin Jeffrey, and Anthony Regan (London: Routledge, 2012). 43. Statement by spokesperson of HR Catherine Ashton on the acts of violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, European Union, Brussels, February 26, 2010, A 26/10; ‘‘Bangladesh: Investigate Army’s Alleged Involvement in Human Rights Abuses in Chittagong Hill Tracts,’’ February 26, 2010, Amnesty International, Index No: ASA 13/006/2010; ‘‘Calm Returns to Chittagong Hill Tracts, But Fear Remains,’’ Survival: The Movement for Tribal Peoples, March 2, 2010, http://www.survivalinterna tional.org/news/5608; Pinaki Roy, ‘‘Bangladesh Erupts in Ethnic Violence,’’ Open India: India and Beyond, http://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/pinaki-roy/bangladesherupts-in-ethnic-violence, March 5, 2010; ‘‘Indigenous Land Dispute Turns Deadly in Bangladesh,’’ Amnesty International Public Statement, April 20, 2011, AI Index: ASA 13/003/2011; Staff Correspondent, ‘‘Fear Grips Ramgarh, Manikchari,’’ New Age, April 18, 2011. 44. Adnan and Dastidar, Alienation of the Lands of Indigenous Peoples, 65. 45. Amena Mohsin, ‘‘Democracy and Minorities,’’ discussion at a forum, Dialogue on Democracy: Majorities and Minorities, Bangladesh, State of Democracy in South Asia Study, July 29–30, 2004, Chittagong, http://www.democracy-asia.org/ dialoguereports_bangladesh_chittagong.htm, accessed July 29, 2004; Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, 49–75. 46. Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism, 179. 47. 2001 data were presented as 2011 data by the BBS. Data in the 2011 census are contested by many organizations. 48. Marc Ferro, Colonization: A Global History (London: Routledge, 1997), 1. 49. Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism. 50. Bina D’Costa, Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2010), 4. 51. Conflicts of Israel-Palestine and El-Salvador are examples; ibid., 8. 52. van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh, 173; Afsan Chowdhury. ‘‘Is Reconciliation with Pakistan a Realistic Goal?’’ BdNews24.com, http://opinion.bdnews24.com/ 2011/03/26/is-reconciliation-with-pakistan-a-realistic-goal/, accessed March 26, 2011. 53. Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, Life Is Not Ours, 109.

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54. Meghna Guhathakurta, ‘‘Women’s Narratives from the Chittagong Hill Tracts,’’ in Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agencies, ed. Rita Manchanda (New Delhi: Sage, 2001), 12. 55. Kalpana Chakma O Ainer Shasan (Kalpana Chakma and the rule of law), Jai Jai Din, July 8, 1996. 56. Adnana and Dastidar, Alienation of the Lands of Indigenous Peoples, 68–69. 57. In December 1992, the Bangladesh government agreed to dismantle the Jumma cluster villages in order to continue peace talks with the JSS. Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, Life Is Not Ours, 6. 58. Ibid., 109. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid.,107. 62. Ainoon Nahar and Prashanta Tripura, ‘‘Violence Against Indigenous Women,’’ in Between Ashes and Hope: Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh Nationalism, ed. Naeem Mohaimeen (Dhaka: Drishtipat Writers’ Collective, 2010), 194. 63. ‘‘Autonomy for Peace in the CHT,’’ leaflet by CHT Women’s Federation, Bangladesh, at UN World Conference on Women, NGO Forum on Women, August 30– September 10, 1995, Beijing. 64. Jumma Net, Chittagong Hill Tracts White Paper: The Issues of Conflict, Human Rights, Development, and Land of the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh 2003–2006, February 10, 2009, Tokyo. 65. Hana Shams Ahmed, ‘‘Multiple Forms of Discrimination Experienced by Indigenous Women from Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Within Nationalist Framework,’’ paper presented at Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Consultation, Kuala Lumpur, January 11–12, 2011) 7; Jumma Net, Chittagong Hill Tracts White Paper; ‘‘A Brief Account of the Human Rights Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh,’’ in Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights Report in Asia 2008: Bangladesh Burma Lao (Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) Foundation), 32–33. 66. Bina D’Costa, ‘‘Marginalized Identity: New Frontiers of Research for IR?’’ in Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, ed. Brooke A. Ackerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui Ture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 129–52. 67. D’Costa, Nationbuilding, Gender and War, 79. 68. ‘‘There is a need to avoid appropriation and exacerbation of their sufferings,’’ Nayanika Mukherjee interview, New Age Xtra, December 10–12, 2010. 69. One exception was Ekattarer Dingulo (Days of ’71), published in 1986, a memoir by Jahanara Imam, an educationalist, author, and mother of Rumi, a freedom fighter and martyr. 70. In 1992, Ekattarer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee (Committee for the Uprooting of the Traitors and Collaborators of 1971), headed by Jahanara Imam, coorganized a people’s court (gana adalat) as a symbolic condemnation of the wartime

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criminals. Organizations that archived documents and testimonies of the wartime experience of biranganas include the Liberation War Museum, Prajanma Ekattur (Genre 71), Ain-O-Salish Kendra (Legal Aid Centre), Odhikar (Rights), and so on. Books published relating to biranganas generated awareness about the wartime atrocities nationally and internationally. They include Nilima Ibrahim, Ami Birangana Balchi (I Am the War Heroine Speaking) (Dhaka: Jagrati Prakashan, 1998); Shariar Kabir, ed., ‘‘Tormenting Seventy One’’ (Dhaka: Nirmul Committee, 1999); Narir Ekattor O Juddha Parabarti Katthya Kahini (Women’s ’71 and Postwar Narratives) (Dhaka: Ain O Salish Kendra, 2001); D’Costa, Nationbuilding, Gender and War. 71. ‘‘UN to Help Bangladesh Crimes Trial Planning,’’ AFP, April 7, 2009. 72. ‘‘War Crimes law ‘‘falls short,’’ bdnews24.com, March 15, 2010; ‘‘Bangladesh: Guarantee Fair Trials for Independence-Era Crimes, Amendments to Tribunal Rules Fall Short of International Standards,’’ Human Rights Watch, July 11, 2011. 73. ‘‘Bangladesh Court Begins First War Crimes Trial,’’ Jurist, August 10, 2011. 74. E/C.19/2011/6, para 58 (a); ‘‘UNPFII Ends with Call for Screening Military HR Record for Peacekeeping,’’ New Age, May 28, 2011. 75. The Bangladesh government urged deletion of para 58 (a) of E/C.19/2011/6, ‘‘UN ECOSOC Rejects Bangladesh Government’s Challenge to UNPFII’s Mandate to Deal with CHT Accord,’’ press release by the International Council for the Indigenous Peoples of CHT (ICIP-CHT), July 30, 2011; ‘‘CHT Commission Asks ECOSOC to Adhere to UNPFII Report,’’ New Age, July 30, 2011; ‘‘UN Gives Go-By to Bangladesh Worries,’’ Bdnews24.com, July 31, 2011. 76. ‘Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations,’’ submitted June 20, 1982, to UN Economic and Social Council by Special Rapporteur Mr. Jose´ Martı´nez Cobo, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1982/2/Add.6, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/ unpfii/en/spdaip.html. 77. Zafar Sobhan, ‘‘Missing the Point at the UN,’’ Sunday Guardian, October 23, 2011. 78. Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, Life Is Not Ours, 107–8. 79. van Schendel, ‘‘The Invention of the ‘‘ ‘Jummas’: State Formation and Ethnicity in Southeastern Bangladesh,’’ Modern Asian Studies 26, 1 (February 1992): 110. 80. Bengali was deemed by the 1972 Bangladesh Constitution to be the state language. 81. van Schendel, ‘‘The Invention of the ‘Jummas,’ ’’ 95–128; Glen Hill and Kabita Chakma, ‘‘Using Architectural History to Invent a Nation: The Case of the Indigenous Architecture of the Chittagong Hill Tracts,’’ Formulation Fabrication: The Architecture of History (Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, November 2000, 401–10. 82. ‘‘Indigenous Groups Reject Amendment: Say Their Identity Lost, Basic Rights Denied,’’ Daily Star, July 1, 2011. ‘‘Awami League Chooses to Be a Slave, Not Master, of History,’’ editorial, New Age, June 30, 2011. 83. The Bengali word ‘‘upajati’’ is a derogatory term meaning ‘‘sub-nation.’’

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84. The term ‘‘khudra nrigoshthi’’ was introduced with the Khudra Nri Goshthi Sangskritik Protisthan Ain (Small Ethnic Group Cultural Institutions Act), which was gazetted on April 12, 2010, replacing the word ‘‘upajati.’’ The three new terms ‘‘khudra nrigoshthi,’’ ‘‘khudra jatisvattva,’’ and ‘‘khudra sampradai,’’ however, are belittling. The Bangladesh government is recently reported to be considering complete removal of the word ‘‘indigenous’’ from all official documents. ‘‘Bangladesh: Battle Lines Drawn Over ‘Indigenous’ Label,’’ IRIN, accessed September 2, 2011, http://www.irinnews .org/report.aspx?reportid⳱93640 85. Devasish Roy Wangza, ‘‘Constitutional Reform and Adivasis,’’ New Age, August 11, 2011. 86. Hill and Chakma, ‘‘Using Architectural History to Invent a Nation.’’ 87. Ibid., 407. 88. Prabartana Enjoyment’s Blog, http://prabartanaenjoyment.wordpress.com/ most-striking-characteristics-of-indigenous-tribal/. 89. The apparatus of a common backstrap loom in the CHT consists of a front bar, a breast bar, a sword, a health bar, a circular bamboo bar, a lease rod, and a backstrap. 90. Arshi Dewan Roy, Indigenous Textiles of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Rangamati: Charathum, 2005), 39. 91. At least from the colonial period, Chakmas and Tripuras have been influenced by a Calcutta-oriented Bengali culture, including in their dress. Urban Lushai and Bawm women wore western style clothes. Unlike urban Chakma, Tripura, Lushai, and Bawm women, other indigenous women wore predominantly traditional dresses. 92. In 1974, the Girisur Shilpi Goshthi produced its first publication, Singa, a collection of modern Chakma, Marma, and Tripura songs. 93. It also included Bengali songs by Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, and others. 94. Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, Life Is Not Ours, 11. Radar (Dhaka: Radar Editing and Publication Committee, Hill Literature Forum, Victory Day issue, December 16, 1991), 8. 95. Sugata Chakma, ed., Burgee (Rangamati: Jumia Bhasha Prachar Daptar, 1973). The poem is included in two edited volumes: Hemal Dewan et al., eds., Ranyaphul: Changma Shreshtha Kabita (Ranyaphul: Chakma Best Poems) (Rangamati: Moniswapan Dewan, 2006), 55–56; and Sugata Chakma, ed., Parbatya Chattagramer Bingsha Shatabdir Nirbacita Kabita (Selected Poems of the Twentieth Century from the Chittagong Hill Tracts) (Rangamati: Tribal Cultural Institute, 2008), 160–61. 96. The literal meaning of the Chakma word ‘‘phelazeiye’’ is ‘‘fallen one’’ (in the sense of fallen leaves), which the poet coined to resemble Rabindranath Tagore’s penname and the title of one of his songs, ‘‘jhara-pata,’’ meaning ‘‘littered leaves.’’ Karbari is also a writer and playwright. The bulk of his work remains unpublished. 97. Suhrid Chakma, ‘‘Kabita O Adhunik Chakma Kabitar Patabhumi (Poetry and a Background to Modern Chakma Poetry),’’ in Girinirjhar (Rangamati: Tribal Cultural

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Institute, February 1987), 70; Nandalal Sharma, ed., Chakma Kabita (Chakma Poems), (Dhaka: Suchipatra, 2008), 13. 98. The English translation of the poem, by the poet himself, is published here for the first time. 99. Radahmon and Dhanpudi are central characters in ‘‘Radhamon-Dhanpudi Pala,’’ one of the most popular Chakma ballads (pala). According to the story, Radahmon was conscripted to go to war to protect Champak nagar from the attacks of Maghs, a derogatory name for Arakanese pirates. Radahmon later became the indomitable general of Jubaraj Bijoygiri, crown prince of the Chakmas. It is said that the complete ballad, 50 sections and subsections, takes genkhulis (bards) over seven days and seven nights to sing. Sugata Chakma et al., eds., Radhamon Dhanpudi (Rangamati: Tribal Cultural Institute, 2011). 100. Tanyabi, the beautiful but tragic heroine who was prevented from marrying her love Punagchan and forced to marry a widower, is said to have gone insane with sorrow and cried so much that her tears formed the oxbow lake, Tanyabir Firti, meaning ‘‘Tanyabi’s Return,’’ which is now submerged under Kaptai Lake. 101. Sandobi is the protagonist of a nineteenth-century epic poem, Sandobir baromach, by Pandit Dharmadhan Chakma. Trapped by the jealous raja into having an illegitimate child by another man and forced to live in shame, Sandobi is known for her sorrowful smile. 102. Pinon is the skirt worn by Chakma women; jighaphul is beautiful yellow flower from a vine producing a zucchini-like fruit called jhinge. 103. Khadi is the breast cloth worn with a pinon. While the Chakma ranga khadi (red khadi) was traditionally worn by young women, different colors and shades are now fashionable and also used as an orna, or scarf. 104. Biju (New Year Festival), the first publication of the Jumia Bhasha Prachar Daptar in 1972, published work in Chakma, Marma, and Tripura languages. Luro (Torch), the first publication of the Murolya Sahitya O Sanskritik Goshthi, also in 1972, was divided into two parts: work in Bengali and work in indigenous languages. There were, however, at least three published poets who wrote modern Chakma poetry before the 1970s resurgence. Probodh Chandra Chakma’s (Phiringchan) book of poetry, Alsi Kabita (Indolent Poetry), was published in 1926. Chunilal Dewan (1911– 1955), the first formally trained artist from the CHT, wrote Chakma poetry and songs, many published in the literary magazine Gairika, the first magazine of its kind, flourishing in the CHT under the royal patronage of Rani Benita Roy. Gairika was named by Tagore, and was published irregularly from 1933 to 1951. The third poet was Mukunda Talukdar, whose poem Puran Kadha (Narratives of the Past) was published in Gairika in 1947. Other poets in the 1950s and 1960s, including Salil Roy, wrote in their own languages but were not published until later. Sugata Chakma, Bangladesher Chakma Bhasha O Sahitya (Chakma Language and Literature of Bangladesh) (Rangamati: Tribal Cultural Centre, 2002), 112–13; Sugata Chakma, ed., Parbatya Chattagramer Bingsha Shatabdir Nirbacita Kabita (Selected Poems of the Twentieth Century

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from the Chittagong Hill Tracts) (Rangamati: Tribal Cultural Centre, 2008), bhumika (Preface) and 123–40; Chunilal Dewan, Ranyaphul: Changma Shreshtha Kabita (Ranyaphul: Best Chakma Poems), 13, 19, 22; Pavel Partha, ‘‘Nipirita Jatir Nipirita Sahitya’’ (Oppressed Literature of Oppressed Peoples), in Apeng, ed. Ripan Changma et al. (Rights in Kakborok language of the Tripuras) (Rangamati: Jum Aesthetic Council, 2010), 11–20. 105. Runu Khan is also referred to as Ramu Can and Ronu Cawn, a mountaineer, and the leader of a band of Kukis by the British. 106. ‘‘Rise Once More, O Brave Runu Khan’’ is the English translation of the Chakma poem ‘‘Ar Ekbar Jagi Udh O Bir Runu Khan’’ by P. B. Karbari himself, and is published here for the first time. The Chakma version, transliterated in Bengali, was first published in Anupam Chakma, ed., Ray, Biju sankalan (Biju Issue) 3 (Dhaka: Dhaka Tribal Students Union, 1984). Chapter 6. Death and Life Under Occupation: Space, Violence, and Memory in Kashmir Epigraph: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), 84. A continuous interchange with Kamala Visweswaran has greatly enriched this chapter. I would like to thank her and the other participants of the April 2011 seminar at the Radcliffe Institute for their very thoughtful suggestions. I am indebted to Melissa Zuroff, who went through several drafts of this essay—an effort that has gone a long way toward giving it its present form. 1. This body, Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB), was formed around 2001 to look after the management of the Amarnath pilgrimage in Kashmir. The state governor, the representative authority of the Indian state in Kashmir and directly appointed from New Delhi, is ex-officio chairperson of the body. 2. After the agitation in Kashmir, the government briefly returned the management of the pilgrimage to the state’s department of tourism. The land was later granted to SASB on lease, to create temporary shelters. 3. See Arjimund Hussain Talib ‘‘Beyond the ‘Triumph’,’’ Greater Kashmir, July 6, 2008, 6, on the numerous legal transgressions the issue was engulfed in and the resulting environmental concerns the land transfer evoked. 4. See Praveen Swami’s ‘‘Piety, Paranoia, and Kashmir’s Politics of Hate,’’ The Hindu, July 1, 2008, 8. 5. My choice of words to describe organizers of protests, and protestors, in Kashmir as ‘‘pro-independence activists’’ or ‘‘pro-freedom leaders,’’ instead of ‘‘separatists’’ is both logical and ethnographically necessary. To label pro-independence activists ‘‘separatist causes,’’ in one move, inscribes as well as naturalizes a supposed preexisting, consensual union between Kashmir and India. It is precisely this putative union that often remains unquestioned, at least within the mainstream discourse in India. This move is ethnographically important for two reasons. First, it is an acknowledgment of the popular Kashmiri self-description of the protestors as ‘‘pro-freedom’’ and,

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second, it draws attention to the positive content of the movement for independence in Kashmir, which in the lay discourse of the Indian public sphere is otherwise delegitimized as ‘‘extremist’’ or ‘‘militant,’’ even ‘‘mindless.’’ The convergence of lay discourse and ‘‘expert’’ discourse in this labeling is striking. 6. A number of people I spoke to told me they had witnessed such powerful protests only during the early years of the armed movement of the 1990s and not since then. Those events of the early 1990s, when I was a ten-year-old, are firmly etched in my memory as well. The Greater Kashmir daily had banner headlines reading ‘‘Back to the 90s’’ and ‘‘Kashmir Out on Roads’’ (Greater Kashmir, June 26, 28, 2008). 7. The state coalition government fell because one of the major constituents, the People’s Democratic Party, withdrew its support. 8. See Sumantra Bose, The Challenge in Kashmir: Democracy, Self-Determination, and a Just Peace (London: Sage, 1997), 22–45. 9. Theory must be ‘‘placed’’—it should delineate processes that are specific to a region. It should illuminate events as polyvalent phenomena, while putting them in a coherent perspective. Edward Casey has partly elaborated this understanding of theory as ‘‘concrete-cum-relational,’’ which must ‘‘operate laterally, across cases and not above or under them.’’ See Edward Casey, ‘‘How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena,’’ in Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996) 43. 10. In their own understanding of the ‘‘occupier’s psyche,’’ Kashmiris see the mainstream Indian discourse on Kashmir as forked-tongued, or double-faced: one face (real, violent) is turned toward Kashmiris, the other (fake, peaceful) one is turned toward the world. 11. See Jean Baudrillard, ‘‘The System of Objects,’’ in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001). 12. Such assertions by the Indian intelligentsia are often made to suggest that the alternative, joining Pakistan, is undesirable—it is a different matter that Pakistan has a similar political system to India’s but is not seen as democratic. Nevertheless, that most Kashmiris demand independence is considered delusional or dangerous, for Kashmiris are thought unfit to rule their own lives or country. For instance, see Vir Sanghvi, ‘‘Think the Unthinkable,’’ Hindustan Times, August 16, 2008. 13. I am thinking here loosely with Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of the mutually reinforcing role of objective structures or institutions (here institutions within the field of occupation), which reward and recognize certain dispositions, and how practices resulting from these dispositions reproduce those objective structures. 14. See Sheikh Mushtaq, ‘‘Will Indian Army’s Charm Offensive Work in Kashmir,’’ Reuters, February 24, 2011. 15. See a short account of the relevance of the right to self-determination around the Kashmir question in Mohamad Junaid, ‘‘Elephant in the Room,’’ Economic and Political Weekly 65, 50 (2010), 94–95.

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16. See Walter Benjamin ‘‘Critique of Violence,’’ in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken, 1986), 287. 17. See the writings like Sumit Ganguly, The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace, (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997); Navnita Chadha Behera, Demystifying Kashmir (Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2007); Sumit Ganguly and Kanti Bajpai, ‘‘India and the Crisis in Kashmir,’’ Asian Survey 34, 5 (1994). 18. Often the refrain used to delegitimize pro-independence activists is ‘‘Why don’t the separatists contest elections?’’ 19. Kucha: lane; bandobast: security arrangement; pheran: Kashmiri loose gown worn in winter. 20. The word he used is a typical vulgarism Kashmiri men use. I don’t print it here for two reasons: it is sexist like most vulgarisms, and is almost untranslatable and doesn’t lend itself easily to English. 21. In the most densely populated places like Srinagar city, Anantnag, Sopore, Baramulla, and other towns there was single-digit turnout. The first phases of polling were carefully conducted in places where people were more likely to vote. 22. I am using the phrase ‘‘making sense’’ in its more everyday usage, as when one remarks, at a sudden moment of illumination, ‘‘Oh, that makes sense!’’ instead of making sense, as in giving meaning, or discovering some essential meaning. It is the illumination of relations between images, not some essential quality of the images themselves. 23. See Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt, 1949), 72–83. 24. See Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 25. A prominent member of the Indian Parliament returning from a tour of Kashmir told the parliament that the government must stop ‘‘behaving as if it is an occupying power’’ in Kashmir. See ‘‘Outrage in Kashmir over Denial of Justice: CPI-M,’’ Outlook India, March 15, 2011. 26. Walter Benjamin has argued that the ‘‘the origin of every contract . . . points toward violence’’ (‘‘Critique of Violence,’’ 288). 27. See especially UNSC resolution 47 (1948). A voluminous literature already exists on the legal questions surrounding Kashmir. This chapter, without underestimating the value of international involvement concerning Kashmir, will keep those elements to the side for now. 28. Frantz Fanon saw this phenomenon in the case of colonialism. ‘‘In Algeria there is not simply domination but the decision, literally, to occupy nothing else but a territory.’’ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 1963), 182. 29. Ibid., 215–16. 30. See Giorgio Agamben, States of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

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31. It is permanently temporary because, even if present as an occasional sliver in the discourse among occupiers, the possibility of the removal of the emergency laws hovers all the time. It is like the proverbial ‘‘dangled carrot,’’ whose value the occupier believes is in its dangling but not in giving it away. The repeal of the AFSPA in Kashmir has gone though these back and forth motions for quite a while now. 32. Perhaps we should remember that the Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (August 12, 1949) clearly states that its conventions are applicable during peace-time, during periods of armed conflict, and also during a war ‘‘even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.’’ Article 2 mentions that the conventions are applicable to all cases of partial or total occupation, ‘‘even if the said occupation meets no resistance.’’ According to the convention, however, the ‘‘responsibility’’ the occupied may expect and demand is limited to the occupier’s international commitments, and not applicable to them as the subjects of occupation. 33. A passage from Michael Taussig’s essay, ‘‘Culture of Fear, Space of Death’’ is appropriate here—‘‘Timerman’s burden was double. He was not just a victim: he was victim of what he had himself prescribed—military dictatorship as the solution to the disorder afflicting the nation. And the result? A society shrouded in an order so orderly that its chaos was far more intense than anything that had preceded it—a death-space in the land of the living where torture’s certain uncertainty fed the great machinery of the arbitrariness of power, power on the rampage—that great steaming morass of chaos that lies on the underside of order and without which order could not exist.’’ Michael Taussig, ‘‘Culture of Terror—Space of Death. Roger Casement’s Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 26, 3 (1984): 4. 34. One way this paternalism manifests in discourse among proponents of Indian rule in Kashmir is the form of doubt raised about Kashmir: ‘‘Will it be able to survive as an independent country?’’ 35. See Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1990), 95. 36. Empty tear gas shells used by Indian paramilitary forces in Kashmir often injure or even cause death. 37. I am thinking here along the lines of Keith H. Basso’s essay, ‘‘Wisdom Sits in Places,’’ in Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996), 53–90. 38. The reference is to Kathleen Stewart’s essay, ‘‘An Occupied Place,’’ in Senses of Place, 137–66. 39. Mohamad Junaid, ‘‘Colonial Maps, Bharat Mata, and Modern Nationalism: The Production of Indian National Space and a View from Kashmir’’ (manuscript, 2010). 40. ‘‘The Algerians, the women dressed in haiks, the palm groves, and the camels form the landscape, the natural backdrop for the French presence,’’ Fanon, The

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Wretched of the Earth, 188. For a focused discussion of the discursive production of Kashmir as an object of natural beauty and fantasy, see Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 41. See Judith Scheele, ‘‘Algerian Graveyard Stories,’’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12 (2006), 859–79. 42. Mohamad Junaid, ‘‘Death, Memory, and Place: Martyr’s Graveyards in Kashmir,’’ manuscript (2011). 43. See note 33. 44. The martyr is said to be ‘‘alive’’ even after physical death, and according to sermons I heard during funeral prayers for those believed to be martyrs, the ‘‘real life’’ was said to begin only after death in the material world. 45. See Primo Levi, ‘‘The Gray Zone,’’ in The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Vintage, 1989), 36–69. 46. Ibid. 43. 47. Apparently the Indian government was providing housing facilities in Jammu to all the Kashmiri contestants, even if they lost. 48. I knew this doctor well, and used to meet him occasionally. In a conversation before the incident of his beating, he had told me he was making good money in Saudi Arabia but had returned to Kashmir to serve his own people. Apparently one of Gujar’s acquaintances had died in the hospital, and the doctor had explained to the Ikhwan leader that with limited facilities they had done whatever they could to save the person’s life, but failed. 49. Members of Jammat-e Islami, a right wing, pro-Pakistan political group, long had close ties to a radical outfit, Hizbul Mujahideen. 50. Foucault argued that power is ‘‘generated, and comes into play, only within local contexts.’’ See Foucault, History of Sexuality, 93. Following this understanding one might say that there is an overall architecture of occupation, but its effects appear, and act on the occupied, in specific sites and in heterogeneous ways. 51. I use Anantnag, however, as a nod to the ‘‘innumerable springs’’ in the region, another (incidental) meaning of ‘‘Anant Nag.’’ 52. I incorporated this passage in a small piece for an Indian magazine in 2007. The person who had died that day was a neighbor, a favorite local cricketer, Noor Muhammad, who everyone in my neighborhood hailed as a martyr but who all knew had died hanga mangeh (a random death). 53. The JKLF, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, one of the first and largest armed organizations in Kashmir, later split when its major faction advocated a nonarmed movement. 54. See also a report by Amnesty International: ‘‘A Trail of Unlawful Killings in Jammu and Kashmir: Chithisinghpora and Its Aftermath,’’ June 14, 2000, ASA 20/ 024/2000. 55. See Human Rights Watch, ‘‘Abdication of Responsibility: The Commonwealth and Human Rights’’ (New York, October 1991), 14–15. The Indian government,

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despite a plethora of evidence for the incident, actively sought to dismiss any claims of rape. 56. The British colonial authorities passed AFSPA to give wide powers to their armed forces to quell the Quit India Movement of 1942. 57. Most likely this group of people were Kashmir’s tiny but vocal Hindu minority, called Pandits, many of whom openly supported Indian rule in the region. 58. See ‘‘The Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act—1990,’’ Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, modified December 7, 2011, http:// mha.nic.in/pdfs/Armed%20forces%20_J&K_%20Spl.%20powers%20act,%201990.pdf. 59. For a longer discussion on AFSPA, and how it produces patterns of immunity in Kashmir, see Haley Duschinski, ‘‘Destiny Effects: Militarization, State Power, and Punitive Containment in Kashmir Valley,’’ Anthropological Quarterly 82, 3 (2009): 691–718. 60. For an extensive study of the Shopian events see ‘‘Shopian: Institutional Denial of Justice’’ (2009), produced by Majlis-e-Mashawarat (or Consultative Committee) Shopian, which was formed by local people to spearhead their demand for justice in the case. Another excellent report, ‘‘Shopian: Manufacturing a Suitable Story’’ (2009) was produced by Independent Women’s Initiative for Justice (IWIJ). 61. The Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (August 12, 1949) has a definition of ‘‘civilians’’ and how they ought to be treated under occupation. According to Article 3, in the case of armed conflict, civilians are ‘‘persons taking no active part in the hostilities . . . (and who) shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.’’ The following actions of parties to the conflict, or the occupying power ‘‘even if it meets no armed resistance’’ are prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. See International Committee of the Red Cross, ‘‘International Humanitarian Law: Treaties and Documents.’’ Under occupation, however, the occupying regime sees all civilians as potential combatants, as informers for insurgents, as those who provide food and shelter, act as guides, and generally sympathize with insurgency—which is mostly true, and shows why occupation cannot help but flout international conventions. 62. See Agha Shahid Ali, ‘‘Ghazal,’’ in The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems (New York: Norton, 2009), 226. 63. See Martin Heidegger, ‘‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking,’’ in Basic Writings, ed. David Ferrel Krell (London: HarperPerennial, 2008), 344–63.

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Chapter 7. The Missing Grave of Sheikh Said: Kurdish Formations of Memory, Place, and Sovereignty in Turkey Epigraph: Søren Kierkegaard, The Soul of Kierkegaard: Selections from His Journal, ed. Alexander Dru (New York: Dover, 2003), 151. The research and writing of this work have been generously supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and A. W. Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies. 1. The following introductory narrative on Sheikh Said’s execution is a composite story I constructed based on local stories and written sources. . . ¨ rgeevren, S¸eyh Sait Isyani ve S¸ark Istiklal Mahkemesi (Istanbul: 2. Ahmet Su¨reyya O Temel, 2007), 280. . 3. Behc¸et Cemal, S¸eyh Sait Isyani (Istanbul: Sel Yayinlari, 1955), 116. ¨ zdemir, 5NⳭ1K, CNNTu¨rk, June 29, 4. Diyadin Firat, interview by Cu¨neyt O 2010. 5. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken, 1968), 255. 6. Michael Taussig, Walter Benjamin’s Grave (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 6. 7. Unlike the Turkish Republic, and rather than executing them, the Ottomans exiled Kurdish rebel leaders of the nineteenth century such as Bedirkhan Beg of Botan and Sheikh Ubeydullah Nehri. Part of the reason for this ‘‘leniency’’ in punishment was that the Kurds were Muslims and neither Kurdish demands nor the empire’s conception of sovereignty were territorialized in a nationalist sense. Ottoman imperial sovereignty was more flexible and had more room to settle rebellions with graduated measures of punishment. In fact, executions of Kurdish rebels, at least the Sunni Muslim ones, and their burial in unmarked graves became systematic state practices only after the gradual nationalization of identity, territory, and state sovereignty roughly between the 1870s and 1920s. The end of the Ottoman Empire and rise of the Turkish nation-state led to the development of a new political episteme on the act of rebellion that equated it with ‘‘treason’’ and a new punitive framework to handle Kurdish rebels that also put their dead bodies under strict surveillance. In April and May 1925, right after the capture of Sheikh Said, Khalid Begeˆ Cibri and Captain Yusuf Ziya, leaders of the Kurdish Azadi (Freedom) organization, and Seyyid Abdulkadir and his friends were also executed and buried in unmarked graves. Seyyid Riza, leader of the Dersim uprising, and his friends shared the same fate in 1938. This policy of ‘‘posthumous punishment’’ has been applied to thousands of Kurdish guerrilla fighters since the start of Kurdish armed struggle in 1984. For a detailed analysis of the surveillance of dead bodies of Kurdish guerrillas and activists as a strategy of state sovereignty, see Hisyar Ozsoy, ‘‘Between Gift and Taboo: Death and the Negotiation of National Identity and Sovereignty in the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey,’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 2010.

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8. Dipesh Chakrabarty. ‘‘Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts,’’ in Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 97–113. 9. Maria Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 6. 10. Pierre Nora, ‘‘Between Memory and History: Les lieux de me´moire,’’ Representations 26 (1989): 8. 11. John Gillis, ‘‘Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship,’’ in Commemorations, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 6. 12. Micheal de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989). 13. Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Nora, ‘‘Between Memory and History.’’ 14. Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 15. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993). 16. Craig Larkin, ‘‘Reconstructing and Deconstructing Beirut: Space, Memory and Lebanese Youth.’’ Divided Cities/Contested States Working Paper Series 8, University of Exeter, 2009; Aseel Sawalha, Reconstructing Beirut: Memory and Space in a Postwar Arab City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010). 17. Sandra E. Greene, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). 18. Susan Slyomovics, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). 19. Hayden Dolores, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995). 20. Edward S. Casey, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 186–87. 21. Nora, ‘‘Between Memory and History,’’ 8. 22. Casey, Getting into Place; Casey, Remembering; Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1978). 23. Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 6–7. 24. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, 143. 25. Joost Jongerden, The Settlement Issue in Turkey and the Kurds: An Analysis of Spatial Policies, Modernity and War (Leiden: Brill Academic, 2007). 26. Zeynep Gambetti, ‘‘The Conflictual (Trans)formation of the Public Sphere in Urban Space: The Case of Diyarbakir,’’ New Perspectives on Turkey 32 (2005): 43–71;

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‘‘Decolonizing Diyarbakir: Culture, Identity and the Struggle to Appropriate Urban Space,’’ in Comparing Cities: The Middle East and North Africa, ed. Kamran Ali and Martina Rieker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 97–129. ¨ ktem, ‘‘Incorporating the Time and Space of the Ethnic ‘‘Other’’: 27. Kerem O Nationalism and Space in Southeast Turkey in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,’’ Nations and Nationalism 10, 4 (2004): 559–78. 28. Zeynep Gambetti and Joost Jongerden, ‘‘The Spatial (Re)production of the Kurdish Issue: Multiple and Contradicting Trajectories-Introduction,’’ Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 13, 4 (2011): 375. 29. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, 143. 30. For a detailed discussion on the origins and spread of the Naqshbendi tariqa and order, see Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh, and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (London: Zed Books, 1992). According to van Bruinessen, the Naqshbendi tariqa originated from central Asia, deriving its name from Baha ad-Din Naqshbendi (1318–1889, of Bukhara), who, however, was neither the inventor of the tariqa nor first organizer of the order. The tariqa traces its pedigree back to the Prophet through the first Caliph Abu Bakr. The Naqshbendi order has had a historical role in the spread of Islam across the vast area from Turkey to India and Indonesia. Its Kurdish version was developed by Ziyaeddin Khalid (or Mawlana Khalid), a Kurd of the Jaf tribe who went to Delhi in 1808, where he received his ijaza (authorization) from Sheikh Abdullah to transmit the Naqshbendi tariqa in Baghdad, Sulaymaniyah and later in Damascus. Khalid converted many influential Kurdish families into the tariqa. According to van Bruinessen, the religious influence these families acquired by entering this tariqa later assured them key roles in the development of Kurdish nationalism. ‘‘Sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri, Sheikh Said of Palu and Mulla Mustafa Barzani, the leaders of important nationalist movements, were the descendants of Sheikhs who received the Naqshbandi tariqa through Mawlana Khalid’’ (224). ¨ zsoy, 1925 Ku¨rt Direnis¸i: O ¨ ncesi ve Sonrasiyla (Istanbul: 31. Tahsin Eris¸ and Felat O Peri, 2007). . 32. Hasan His¸yar Serdıˆ, Go¨ru¨¸s ve Anilarim, 1907–1985 (Istanbul: Med Yayinlari, 1994). 33. The Kurds claim the fight in Piran was a Turkish plot that started the rebellion without enough preparation, earlier than it was planned by Azadi either on March 21 (the Newroz holiday) or in May 1925. 34. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 35. Jacques Derrida. ‘‘Onto-Theology of National Humanism (Prolegomena to a Hypothesis),’’ Oxford Literary Review 14 (1992): 15. 36. See, Danny Kaplan, ‘‘Commemorating a Suspended Death: Missing Soldiers and National Solidarity in Israel,’’ American Ethnologist 35, 3 (2008): 413–27; Leila Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

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37. Eva Domanska, ‘‘Toward the Archaeontology of the Dead Body,’’ Rethinking History 9, 4 (2005): 398. 38. Murat Dagˆdelen, The Grave of Sheikh Said and Tears of My Mother, 2006, http://www.rizgari.com/modules.php?name⳱Rizgari_Niviskar&cmd⳱read&id⳱825, accessed February 13, 2010. 39. For this conception of sovereignty, see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998); Michael Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Colle‘ge de France, 1975–76, ed. Mauro Bertani, Alessandro Fontana, and David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003); Achille Mbembe, ‘‘Necropolitics,’’ Public Culture 15, 1 (2003): 11–40. . . 40. Ihsan Sabri C¸agˆlayangil, Anilarim (Istanbul: Gu¨nes¸ Yayinlari, 1990). 41. Serdıˆ, Go¨ru¨¸s ve Anilarim, 285. 42. These controversies partly stem from the fact that constructions of the rebellion rely on different sources, mainly Turkish archives and newspapers, British and Russian archives, and intelligence reports. Most Turkish archives on the event are still inaccessible. Like all historical sources, these documents were produced with their inbuilt silences and ‘‘omissions.’’ As well, interpretations of these sources are always ideologically and politically mediated, and so they have their own silences. The Kurds, on the other hand, do not have their own archives or systematic resources other than some memoirs and popular stories, and the factual reliability of these for writing history is often questioned. . ¨ rgeevren, S¸eyh Sait Isyani, 40–41. 43. O 44. Genelkurmay Bas¸kanlig˘i, Tu¨rkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Ayaklanmalar (1924–1938) (Ankara: Genelkurmay Bas¸kanlig˘i Yayini, 1972), 78–79. 45. Mete Tunc¸ay, Tu¨rkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yo¨netiminin Kurulmasi (1923–1931) (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yayinlari, 1999), 136. 46. Here I confine my discussion to two canonical works on the rebellion, Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh, and State and Robert Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989). 47. van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh, and State, 265. 48. Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism, 153. 49. van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh, and State, 298–99. 50. See Hamit Bozarslan, Violence in the Middle East: From Political Struggle to Self-sacrifice (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 2004); Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish . Nationalism; Metin Toker, S¸eyh Sait ve Isyani (Ankara: Bilgi, 1994); Tunc¸ay, Tu¨rkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yo¨netiminin Kurulmasi. 51. The PKK was established in 1978 with the aim of creating an independent, unified, and socialist Kurdistan. In 1984, it started the guerrilla warfare that is still ongoing. Particularly since the early 1990s, it has been the leading edge of the Kurdish movement in Turkey. 52. I am particularly informed by Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922–1992 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Ted Swedenburg,

Notes to Pages 210–223

279

Memories of Revolt: The 1936–1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Trouillot, Silencing the Past. 53. This section title is inspired by Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s reading of ‘‘The Three Faces of Sans Souci,’’ Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 31–69. 54. Partiya Karkeˆreˆn Kurdistan, Ku¨rdistan Devriminin Yolu: Manifesto (1978). 55. Partiya Karkeˆreˆn Kurdistan, Ku¨rdistan’da Zorun Rolu¨ (Ko¨ln: Weˆs¸anen Serxwebun, 1982), 185–90. ¨ calan, So¨mu¨rgeci Cumhuriyet Kirli ve Suc¸ludur (Koln: Wes¸anen 56. Abdullah O Serxwebun, 1996). ¨ calan, Din Sorununa Devrimci Yaklas¸im (Istanbul: Melsa, 1991). 57. Abdullah O ¨ calan, Su¨mer Rahip Devletinden Halk Cumhuriyetine Dogˆru, 1–2 58. Abdullah O (Istanbul: Mem Yayinlari, 2001). 59. Trouillot, Silencing the Past. 60. van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh, and State. 61. Ibid., 266. 62. Ibid., 288–99. 63. Robin M. Wright and Jonathan D. Hill, ‘‘History, Ritual and Myth: Nineteenth Century Millenarian Movements in the Northwest Amazon,’’ Ethnohistory 33, 1 (1986): 32. 64. Benjamin, Illuminations, 255. 65. Slyomovics, The Object of Memory, 3. 66. Nora, ‘‘Between Memory and History,’’ 7. 67. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 23. Afterword: Refining the Optic of Occupation 1. And increasingly in circumstances characterized as instances of the international crime of apartheid, illustrated by the dual administration of settler communities given full rights of Israeli citizenship and Palestinian communities subject to military rule. Although the crime of apartheid was based on the racist regime in South Africa, the crime now is meant to apply to any structure of governance that is systematically and drastically discriminatory. In the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court apartheid is designated as one form of a crime against humanity in Article 7(j). Apartheid is also criminalized in Article 85(4–5), Protocol I of the Geneva Accords setting forth the legal framework of international humanitarian law in force for 163 parties to the treaty, but also binding on states such as Israel and the United States that are not signatories. 2. It would be possible to argue that the soft occupation of Palestine has far deeper roots even aside from Palestinian subordination to the Ottoman Empire and the successor British Mandate, taking the form of being unable to convert its intense opposition in the decades prior to World War II to the Zionist project of land acquisition

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Notes to Pages 223–232

and immigration into governing policy. This is a complex historical experience that has not to my knowledge been discussed as ‘‘creeping occupation’’ or ‘‘pre-occupation phase.’’ For useful historical interpretation of this period see Victor Kattan, From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1891–1949 (London: Pluto, 2009). 3. Even this idea of withdrawal does not necessarily produce a sovereign Palestinian state. Most two-state models impose a condition of permanent demilitarization on Palestine, and offer Israel a series of security guarantees that are not also bestowed on a future Palestine. As the supposed Israeli end of occupation in Gaza by way of ‘‘disengagement’’ in 2005 left Gaza as ‘‘occupied,’’ if not more so, than before Israeli ground forces were withdrawn and settlements dismantled. Israel retains control over entry and exit at the border crossings, as well as control over access from the sea and of air space, imposing a strict blockade in mid-2007 after Hamas took over governance of the territory. Since 2005, then, Gaza confirms that post-withdrawal occupation can exist in forms that cannot even be downgraded to ‘‘soft.’’ 4. The Quartet, established in 2002, consists of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, and set forth a roadmap to a two-state solution. The Quartet is seen as little more than a means to obscure the extent to which ‘‘the peace process’’ is essentially a vehicle of Israeli-American collaboration. But this reality is too strong to hide by such a diplomatic maneuver, so the Quartet has been sidelined in diplomatic interplay, and the basic interaction has been between Israel and the United States. By lending its prestige to such an artificial cover-up the UN discredits itself, assuming a role that is both demeaning and indicative of the extent to which the secretary general becomes a minor player in the geopolitical game, and thereby gives up any prospect that the UN might provide an independent voice to balance American partisanship. 5. Well articulated by Omar Bharghouti, BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011). 6. For a comprehensive assessment of the Goldstone Report see Adam Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner, and Philip Weiss, eds., The Goldstone Report (New York: Nation Books, 2011). 7. See Anne Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Richard Falk, ‘‘Can Humanitarian Intervention Ever be ‘Humanitarian’?’’ richardfalk .wordpress.com, August 4, 2011.

contributors

Nosheen Ali teaches in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research in social anthropology focuses on the cultural politics of religion, militarism, and development in Northern Pakistan and Kashmir. Her recent publications include ‘‘Books Versus Bombs? Humanitarian Development and the Narrative of Terror in Northern Pakistan’’ and ‘‘Sectarian Imaginaries: The Micropolitics of Sectarianism and State-Making in Northern Pakistan.’’ She is a founding member of the international network GRASP (Group for Research in the Anthropology, Sociology, and Politics of Pakistan) and serves on the editorial board of the South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. Kabita Chakma has a Master of Architecture from the University of Sydney. Her research interests include conflict and peace building, gender, history, art, architecture, and literature of indigenous peoples, particularly of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. She is a founding member of International Council of the Indigenous Peoples from CHT (ICIP-CHT), and has lectured at the School of Design, University of Technology, Sydney. Her publications include ‘‘The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT): Diminishing Conflict or Violent Peace?’’ with Bina D’Costa in Diminishing Conflicts in the Asia-Pacific; ‘‘Building a Bamboo Mountain: The Chakma House and the Cosmology of Mount Meru’’; ‘‘The Androgynous House: The Symbolism of Chakma Domestic Architecture’’; and ‘‘Of Other Universities: The Contested Space of the Ancient Viharas of Bangladesh.’’ Richard Falk is Albert Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus at Princeton University, where he was a member of the faculty for 40 years. Since 2002 he has been a research professor in Global Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has been Special Rapporteur for

282

Contributors

Occupied Palestine on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council since 2008, and serves as Chair, Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He directs a research project on global climate change and democracy. His recent books include The Collected Writings of Richard Falk and, with Andrew Strauss, A Global Parliament. Sandya Hewamanne teaches Anthropology at Wake Forest University and is a fellow at the National Humanities Center. She is author of Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone: Gender and Politics in Sri Lanka (University of Pennsylvania Press). She has published a number of articles on Sri Lanka dealing with reading practices, reproductive rights, internally displaced people, militarization and violence. Her research interests include globalization, identity, cultural politics, and feminist and postcolonial theory. Mohamad Junaid is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and teaches at Lehman College, New York. He is interested in the formation of the resistance movement in Kashmir, and how experiences under military occupation engender new forms of political thinking and mobilization. Rhoda Kanaaneh teaches Anthropology at Columbia University. She has held fellowships at Harvard, European University Institute, New York University, American University in Washington, D.C., and Columbia. She is author of Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel and Surrounded: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military and co-editor with Isis Nusair of Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender Among Palestinians in Israel. Hisyar Ozsoy teaches Anthropology at the University of Michigan-Flint. His work is broadly concerned with the Kurdish conflict in Turkey and the wider Middle East. His research interests include nationalism, state formation, anthropology of violence, death and sovereignty, and memories/histories of political struggle. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled, ‘‘Taboo Grief: Formations of Identity and Sovereignty in Turkish Kurdistan.’’ Cheran Rudhramoorthy is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Windsor, Canada. He is the

Contributors

283

editor of Pathways of Dissent: Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka, and has also published eight anthologies of poetry in Tamil. His plays in English have been performed in Canada and the U.S. His poems and other works have been translated into English, German, Malayalam, Kannada, Sinhala, and Swedish. His latest play in English, Not by Our Tears, premiered in Toronto and toured the U.S. in 2010. His new collections of poems in English translation are You Cannot Turn Away and The Second Sunrise. His poems in English translation have also been published in a collection, Waking Up Is a Dream, and Wilting Laughter: Three Tamil Poets. Serap Ruken Sengul is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Her research interests include the state, nationalism, gender, violence, and public culture in Turkey and the Middle East. She has widely published and presented on human rights in Turkish Kurdistan from the mid-1990s to early 2000s. Her dissertation is tentatively titled ‘‘Broken Histories Inside Restored Walls: The Social Lives of Kurdishness in Urban Diyarbakir.’’ Kamala Visweswaran is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author most recently of Un/Common Cultures: Racism and the Rearticulation of Cultural Difference, Modern South Asia, and forthcoming A Thousand Genocides Now: Gujarat in the Modern Imaginary of Violence.

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index

Abbas, Zameer, 101–4 Abdulkadir, Seyyid, 275n.7 Abdullah, Farooq, 181 Abdullah, Omar, 1–2 abortions, of Sri Lankan girlfriends of military men, 71–72 Abu Ghraib prison scandal, 109 Aburayya, Issam, 124 adarshagram (model villages), 143 adibasi (adivasi, adibashi) (indigenous peoples), 135–41, 146–47 advertisements, for Sri Lanka military recruiting campaigns, 67–72 Afghanistan, U.S. invasion of, 109 Agamben, Giorgio, 29 Ali, Jauhar, 110 Ali, Nosheen, 22, 23, 25, 85–113 al-Zaidi, Muntader, 1–2 Amarnath Shrine Board (Kashmir), 13, 269n.1 Amnesty International, political arrests monitored by, 235n.5 animism, in CHT, 135 Annual Development Programme (GilgitBaltistan), 93–95 Apache mnemonic narrative, 196 aparadhayak (criminalization of sexual relations) (Sri Lanka), 67–72 apartheid, Israeli treatment of Palestinians as, 279n.1 Arab identity, Israeli stereotyping of, 119–21 area studies, anthropology of violence and, 19–23 Arendt, Hannah, 6 Argentina, ‘‘disappeared’’ in, 198 Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) (Kashmir), 7, 187–90, 272n.31 Armenian minority, history of, 236n.10

arms trading, inter-regional economics and, 8–9 Army Public School (Gilgit-Baltistan), 96 ARY-World news channel, 102 Ascoli, F. D., 137 Asian Development Bank (ADB), 143 Assyrian minority, history of, 236n.10 Atatu¨rk, Mustafa Kemal, 202–6, 214–17 Azadi (Freedom) organization, 275n.7 Azad Kashmir, 87, 172–73, 245n.108; role in Turkish rebellion of, 208–9 backstrap loom, as cultural identifier, 147–48 Baer, Lars-Anders, 12, 136 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 31 Balawaristan National Front, 89, 253n.21 Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan operations in, 101–4 Balwari nationalists, in Pakistan, 13–14 Bangladesh: colonization of CHT by, 137–41; Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Bill of 2011 and, 146–47; independence and revolution in, 136, 141, 144–45; indigenous groups in, 5, 135–41, 261nn.6–7; population transfers in, 12–13; rape of Jumma women in, 24; transmigration and colonization in, 135–41; UN presence in, 12 Basso, Keith, 196 Baudrillard, Jean, 162 Bawm ethnic minority, 135–41, 267n.91 bazaari (Turkish opportunist), Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 43–54 Bedirkhan Beg, 275n.7 Bedouins: Israeli discrimination against, 115–19, 124, 130–31, 257n.22; linguistic politics of, 16 Beg, Khalid, 197

286

Index

Bekaar advertising, 3, 235n.4 Bekaar Jamaath, 2–3, 235n.4 Bengali elites: colonized culture of, 145–46; sexual violence against, 144–45; transmigration in CHT and, 133–34, 139–41, 264n.40 Benjamin, Walter, 192, 195 Bennett, Tony, 34 Beshara, Azmi, 22 Bhat, Maqbool, 22–23, 178 Bhutto, Benazir, 110–11 Biju (New Year Festival) magazine, 268n.104 biranganas (Juma war-heroines), 24 biranganas (war-heroines), 144–45 Blecher, Robert, 118 bodhi puja (religious ritual), 71 Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), 138–39 Bosnia, UN safe haven policies in, 10 Bourdieu, Pierre, 270n.13 Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign, 228–32 British Empire: in Chittagong Hill Tract, 135–37; Gilgit military established by, 86– 87, 95–96; Palestine Mandate and, 279n.2; in Turkey, 208–9, 211–12, 215–17 Bugti, Nawab Akbar, 101–2 Burgee (Chakma magazine), 149 Bush, George W., 1 capitalism: Pakistani militarization and role of, 91; social violence and, 17–19 captive nations, enclosure of, 20 Casey, Edward, 195–96, 270n.9 Certeau, Michel de, 17 C¸eto, Cemileˆ, 205–6 Chakma, Kabita, 5, 13, 16, 23–24, 132–57, 233 Chakma, Kalpana, 132–34, 142 Chakma, Suhrid, 149 Chakma, Tarun, 134 Chakma ethnic minority, 5, 135–41; cultural activism of, 148–49, 154, 267n.91 Chakma Resistance movement (chakma bidroha), 136, 155–57, 262n.12 cherukan (bamboo dance), 149 China: crackdown on Tibetan Autonomous Region and, 238n.37; UN vetoes by, 9 Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT): abduction and forced marriage in, 24, 132–34, 141–45; cultural resurgence in, 132–35;

genocide and occupation in, 28; militarization in, 136–41; occupation in, 230; settler violence in, 12–15; structural violence in, 20; transmigration and colonization in, 135–41; UN presence in, 9; violence against indigenous women in, 141–45 CHT. See Chittagong Hill Tracts ‘‘CHT Accord,’’ 136 CHT Commission, 143 CHT Women’s Federation, 132 Cibri, Khalid Begeˆ, 275n.7 citizenship: paranoia and militarization of, 108–9; sectarianization of, 112–13; stateless Palestinian citizens, 115–31; Turkish identity linked to, 209 Civilian Safety Zones (CSZ), 10–11 civil society: globalization as threat to, 21–22; paranoia’s impact on, 108–9 civil war, as collective conflict, 236n.13 clothing, cultural identity through, 148, 267n.91, 268nn.102–3 ‘‘Colonialist Republic is Dirty and Guilty’’ (So¨mu¨rgeci Cumhuriet Kirli ve Suc¸ludur), 212 colonization: in Bangladesh, 135–41; gendered identity and difference in culture of, 145–57; violence against indigenous women and, 141–45 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), 214–15 contextuality, of humor, 31–34 Cooke, Miriam, 64 Coomaraswami, Radhika, 11 Coronil, Fernando, 171 counter-hegemony, Qirix (comic strip) effects on, 55–59, 248nn.33–34 Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre), 17 culture: gendered identity and difference in colonized culture, 145–57; gendered narrative in Israel concerning, 125–28; humor as reflection of, 33–34; indigenous cultural resurgence in Bangladesh, 147–57; Israeli control of Palestinian citizens on grounds of, 116–31; linguistic politics of occupation and, 16–19; militarization and violence impact on, 64–66; Palestinian-Israeli differences in, 123–24 Cumhuriyet (The Republic) newspaper, 218–20 Custodian of Absentee Property, 122 Cyprus, Turkish occupation of, 7–8

Index Dabindu newspaper, 78 Dada cinema, 58–59 Dalal, Zahoor, 185 Dar, Huma, 28 Das, Veena, 79 ‘‘Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man, The’’ (Arendt), 6 De Mel, Neloufer, 69, 89 democracy: linguistics of occupation and, 160–66; postwar partitioning and, 6–7 Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi) (TDP), 220 Derrida, Jacques, 198 difference, colonized culture of, 145–57 disorder, in Kashmir, 173–80 District Monitoring Teams (DMTs) (GilgitBaltistan), 93–95 Diyarbakir, Turkey: comic strip reflections of everyday life in, 29–59; Kurdish space in, 194–97, 199–206; Qirix (comic strip) depiction of, 40–59; state-sponsored violence in, 34–39 Dogra ruling dynasty, 86–88 Domanska, Eva, 198 domination, space of, in Anantnag, Kashmir, 187–90 Dulu Kumuri (film), 133–35 Dying to Win (Pape), 21 East Timor, UN presence in, 10 economic embargos, politics of occupation and, 241n.61 economic mobility: military service as path to, 95–98; Pakistani intelligence service and, 105–9; for Palestinians, 128; resistance in Kashimir and, 174–80 electoral politics, Kashmiri occupation and, 162–64, 166–70, 271nn.21–22 emotional regulation, Gilgit-Baltistan state militarization and, 86–113 enclosure, anthropology of violence and tendency for, 20 Eqieq, Amal, 122 Erdogan, Tayyip, 14 ERNK (PKK political wing), Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 40–54 Eshkol, Levi, 117 ethnic purity, cultural racism in Israel and, 124

287

ethnographic objectivity: anthropology of occupation and, 19–23; linguistic politics of occupation and, 16–19 everyday life: humor in theory and context of, 31–34; linguistic politics of occupation in, 17–19; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 29–40, 55–59 Express Tribune (Pakistani newspaper), 108 Facebook: atrocity images on, 60; occupation of southern Sri Lanka on, 60 Facebooked (Sajad), 2 Falah, Ghazi, 123 Falk, Richard, 6, 14, 20, 221–32 Falklands, British occupation of, 8 families: impact of Gilgit-Baltistan military service on, 96–98; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 43–54; sexual violence in CHT in, 145 Fanon, Franz, 174, 271n.28 fauj ki hukomat (army rule), in Gilgit-Baltistan, 93–95 fear, social production of, 20 Ferro, Marc, 141 feudalism, abolishment of in Pakistan, 111–13 Field Monitoring Coordination Cell (FMCC), 93–95 ‘‘Fire for Judaism’’ group, 127–28 flag ceremonies in Turkish schools, Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 50 Fonseka, Sarath, 80 Force Command Northern Areas (FCNA) (Gilgit-Baltistan), 92–95 Foucault, Michel, 5; on panoptic surveillance, 107; on power, 273n.50; on war, 236n.13 ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem) (Kurdish Free Agenda (O newspaper), 26, 29, 38; political suppression of, 39–40; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 44–54; Qirix appearance in, 39–40; readership profile for, 248n.24, 249n.40 Free Trade Zone (FTZ) (Sri Lanka), 24–25; clothesline takeover in, 62, 250n.3; counter-discourses on Sri Lankan militarization in, 77–80; mass media in, 64–66; migrant workers in, 61; military wives in, 73–74; mothers of military men in, 75–76; postconflict environment in, 80–84; sexual

288

Index

Free Trade Zone (FTZ) (continued ) relations between military men and women workers in, 66–72; sisters of military men in, 76–77 friendly fire, everyday victims of, 62–64 Frontier Constabulary (FC) (Gilgit-Baltistan), 94–95, 111 Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) (Pakistan), 88, 110–11 Frontier Works Organization (FWO) (GilgitBaltistan), 92–95 Gambetti, Zeynep and Joost Jongerden, 196 garrison state, Gilgit-Baltistan as, 91–95 Gaza Strip: Israeli land claims in, 115; Palestinians statelessness in, 130–31, 280n.6; settler violence in, 12–13 Gaza War of 2008–2009, 229–30 gender: CHT indigenous cultural resurgence and, 149; clothesline takeover in Sri Lanka and role of, 62, 250n.3; colonialization and, 141–45; identity and difference in colonized culture and, 145–57; Israeli control of Palestinian citizens and issues of, 116–31; Kurdish national struggle and role of, 29–59; linguistic politics of occupation and, 17–19; militarization’s impact on, 63–66; military wives of Sri Lankan soldiers and role of, 73–74; narrative of Palestinian discrimination in context of, 125–28; PKK political discourse concerning, 35–39; politics of occupation and, 23–27; in postconflict Sri Lanka, changing attitudes toward, 81–82; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 41–54, 249n.35; sectarian tension in Gilit-Baltistan and, 110–13; violence among Palestinians and, 129–30 genealogy grid of occupation, 7–9 Geneva Convention: concept of occupation in, 221–32; Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War provision, 272n.32, 274n.61 genocide: in Chittagong Hill Tract, 139–41, 263n.38; occupation and, 27–28 geography of occupation: Gilgit-Baltistan state militarization and, 85–113; in Kashmir, 160–64, 172–80, 270n.9; Kashmiri militarization and, 183–86; militarization

and, 22–23; space as modality of suppression, 158–60; violence and, 63–64 GEO news channel, 102 Ghanim, Honaida, 119–20 Ghulamdin (General), 96 Gilgit Agency, 86–87, 95–96 Gilgit-Baltistan: culture of sacrifice, suffering and internal security in, 101–4; formation of, 86–89; as garrison state, 91–95; geographical demarcations in, 245n.108; Kargil conflict and, 97–101; militarization in, 25–26, 85–113; paranoia in, 104–9; prestige of military service in, 95–98; sectarian tension in, 109–13; textbook controversy in, 112–13 Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and SelfGovernance Order, 88 Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly, 106–7 Gilgit Scouts, 87, 95–96; disbanding of, 110–11 Gillis, John R., 195 Girisur Shilpi Goshthi cultural group, 148– 49, 267n.92 Global Civil Society (Kaldor), 22 globalization, military power reconsolidation and, 21–23 Gluck, Carol, 4 Golden Flower song, images of Sri Lankan militarization and, 66–72 Goldstone Report, 229–30 Goodman, Nelson, 196 goraiya (dance), 149 gravesites: Kurdish-Turkish political discourse and politics of, 193–97; mythology of, 198–206 Greater Kashmir newspaper, 270n.6 ‘‘Great Game’’ of Anglo-Russian Central Asian hegemony, 86–87 Grenada, U.S. occupation of, 8 Grover, Anand, 11 Guantanamo prison, 109 gucchagram (cluster villages), 143 Gujar, Setha, 181, 273n.48 Gu¨zel, Dog˘an, 29, 39–40 Haddad, Emil, 125 Haiti, UN occupation of, 9–10 Hasson, Israel, 123–24 hate crimes, in U.S. military towns, 63 ‘‘Ha-Tikvah’’ (The Hope) (song), 121–22

Index ‘‘Healing the Forest’’ (Rudhramoorthy), vii–viii Herzfeld, Michael, 247n.20 Hewamanne, Sandya, 3–4, 16, 22, 24–25, 60–84 High Security Zones (HSZ), in Sri Lanka, 15 Hill, Glenn, 132–57 history: archives on Kurdish nationalism and, 218–20, 278n.42; of Kurdish national movement, 210–17; Kurdish rebellion as, 207–9, 219–20; memory and, 193–97; mythology and, 198206; preoccupation and, 4–9 Hizbullah (Kurdish underground organization), 212 Holquist, Michael, 249n.36 honor killings, in Israel, 129 humor: critical intentionality of, 32–34; everyday life in occupation reflected in, 31–59; theory and context concerning, 31–34 Hussein, Saddam, 27 hypermasculinity: PKK political discourse concerning, 36–39, 247n.20; politics of occupation and, 24–25 ikhwani (resistance fighters), 26–27 Ikhwani militias (Kashmir), 169–70, 180–90 imperialist ideology, militarization and, 91 India: Facebook accounts and Indian intelligence and, 235n.4; Hindu nationalism in, 159–60; Jumma migration to, 139–41, 142–43; Kargil conflict and, 97–101; Kashmiri uprising against, 23, 160–64; military expenditures in, 8; occupation of Kashmir by, 26–27, 164–66, 169–70, 178–80, 269n.5, 270n.10, 271n.25; Pakistani militarization and role of, 90–91; population transfers in, 13; rape of Sikh women in, 242n.75; UN monitoring in, 9; U.S. military sales to, 8–9 indigenous groups: in Bangladesh, 5, 135–41, 261nn.6–7; colonial classifications of, 146–47; cultural resurgence of, in CHT, 132–34, 146–57; violence against women in, 141–45; Westphalian hegemony and, 226 infrastructural violence, anthropology of, 20–23

289

‘‘inside-out’’ paradigm, linguistic politics of occupation and, 17–19 intelligence agencies: Gilgit-Baltistan state militarization and role of, 86; paranoia in Pakistan and, 104–9; sectarian in tension Gilit-Baltistan and, 109–13 internal security, culture of, in Gilgit-Baltistan, 101–4 International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICTB), 144–45 international humanitarian law (IHL), concept of occupation in, 221–32 international law on occupation, 236n.18 international relations, occupational politics and, 20–23 ‘‘inverted rhapsody’’: of Kurdish national struggle, 29–59; linguistic politics of occupation and, 16 Iqbal, Pirzada Mohamed, 235n.4 Iraq: genocide and occupation in, 27–28; safe havens in, 239n.42; structural violence in, 20; UN presence in, 11; U.S. invasion of, 109 Islamization: Bengali nationalism and, 140–41; Kurdish national movement and, 212–20; in Pakistan, 88–89 Israel: economic blockades in, 241n.61; gendered narratives of Palestinian discrimination in, 125–28; history and structures of occupation in, 117–21; housing discrimination against Palestinians in, 123–24; Judaization of land policy in, 116–31; legal issues surrounding occupations by, 221–32; militarization in, 26; military expenditures in, 8; military occupation by, 7–8; mixed marriages in, 126–28, 259n.61; Palestinian marginalization by, 115–31, 226–32, 280n.6; ‘‘present absentee’’ status of Palestinians in, 121–22; racialized nature of consent and rape in, 128–30; segregated communities in, 123–24; soft occupation tactics in, 23–24; structural violence in, 20; U.S. military support for, 8 Israeli Land Authority, 115 Iunus, Mohammad, 142 Jabareen, Hassan, 122 Jamaat-e-Islami, 113, 181, 273n.49

290

Index

Jammu: British Empire and, 86–87; Hindu and Muslim population data for, 240n.54; population transfers in, 13–15; violence in, 187–90 Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, 273n.53 Jan, Abdul Ahad, 1–2 Jan, Barkat, 94 Jan, Lalak, 100 Jeganathan, Pradeep, 22, 62 Jewish Agency Settlement Department, 118 Jewish National Fund, 122 jihadist movement: Kargil conflict and, 98; sectarianism in Gilit-Baltistan and, 111–12 joutha khamar (cooperative farms), 143 jum culture, 133–34, 139–41, 146–48, 148–57; in Jumma poetry, 154–57 jum dance tradition, 149 Jumia Bhasha Prachar Daptar cultural group, 148–49 Jumia Bhasha Prahar Daptar (magazine), 149 Jumma ethnic minority, 5; in Chittagong Hill Tract, 135–41; cultural identity of, 146–57; forced relocation of, 143–45; rape and politics of occupation for, 24; religious affiliation in, 245n.99; sexual violence against women from, 142–45; in Tripura (Indian state), 13 Jummobi, My Darling (poem, 149–54 Junaid, Mohamad, 3–4, 7–8, 22–23, 26, 158–90 Justice and Development Party (AKP) (Turkey), 203–4 Kaadaatru (death ritual), vii–viii kaarton (gather expedition), 133–34 Kadin Sorunu Uzerine (On the Woman’s Question), 50 kaha ambaranawa ritual, 78 Kaldor, Mary, 20–22, 236n.13, 244n.95 Kanaaneh, Rhoda, 3, 7–8, 13, 23–24, 26, 115–31, 223–24 Kaptai hydroelectric dam, 137–38 Karakoram University, 101, 103 Karbari, Promode Bikash, 149–55, 267n.96 Kargil conflict, 97–101 Kashmir. Azad Kashmir region in, 245n.108; black economy in, 26–27; British Empire and, 86–87; democracy in, 162–66; electoral absurdities in, 166–70, 271nn.21–22; genocide and occupation in, 28; Hindu

and Muslim population data for, 240n.54; historical sovereignty and, 4–9; Ikhwan militia in, 180–82; Indian massacres in, 23; Indian occupation of, 164–66, 169–70, 178–80, 269n.5, 270n.10, 270n.12, 271n.25; Indian-Pakistani cease-fire agreement on, 12; logic of occupation in, 170–72; mass protest in, 158–60; militarization of, 25–27, 160–64, 183–86; occupation of, 230; population transfers in, 13–15; pro-independence activists in, 269n.5; religious affiliation in, 245n.99; resistance, memory, and place in, 172–80; social media in, 235n.4; UN resolutions on, 9. See also Gilgit-Baltistan Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas (KANA), 255n.50 Kashmiri Intifada, 1–2 Kashur, Sabbar, 128–30 Katzir case (Israel), 258n.49 Kayani, Asahfaq, 94 Kemalism in Turkey, Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 44 Khalid, Ziyaeddin, 277n.30 Khan, Ferdous Kaiser, 132–33 Khan, Jamil, 96 Khan, Mohhamad, 102–3 Khan, Runu (General), 155–57 Khan, Sarwat, 106 Khudra Nri Goshthi Sangskritic Protisthan Ain (Small Ethnic Group Cultural Institutions Act), 267n.84 Kierkegaard, Søren, 191 Koc¸ak, Orhan, 32–34 Krama (religion), 135 Kunan Poshpora incident, 186 Kurdish ethnic group: everyday life in Diyarbakir for, 29–59; genocide and occupation for, 27–28; history of, 236n.10; mythology and national ideology in, 198–206; national liberation movement of, 23, 26– 27, 34–39, 197–98, 207–9; Ottoman exile of, 275n.7; partitioning of, 6; religious affiliation in, 245n.99; spatial cultural analysis of, 196–97; in Turkey, 12, 14–15, 29–59, 191–220; UN monitoring of, 11 Kurdish New Year (Newroz), 40, 47 Kurdistan: nationalist struggle in, 4; occupation of, 230 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), 12, 278n.51; Kurdish national liberation movement

Index and, 34–39, 210–17, 247n.18; political discourse in, 35–39; Qirix (comic strip) depiction of, 40–54; Turkish national movement and, 210–17 Kurfur Qassim Massacre, 119 Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) operation, 103–4 land confiscation: in Chittagong Hill Tract, 137–41; in Israel, Palestians as victims of, 115–19, 116–31, 122–31, 279n.2; in Kashmir, 158–60, 269nn.2–3 Land Day strikes (Israel), 119 languages of occupation, everyday poetics and, 15–19 Lausanne Treaty, 209 Lavie, Smadar, 16 Lebanon, Israeli occupation of, 8 Lefebvre, Henri, 5–6, 17–19 Levi, Primo, 179–80 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 8–10, 12, 15, vii–viii; atrocities committed by, 60; counter-discourse concerning, 78–80; defeat of, 80–82; Sri Lankan civil war with, 65–68, 249n.1 Liberia, civil war in, 72 Lieberman, Avigdor, 13, 118 Line of Control (India-Pakistan border), 1–3, 25–26; Kargil conflict and, 98–101; Kashmir and, 159–60; resistance, memory, and space and, 173 linguistic politics of occupation, 15–19; cultural racism in Israel and, 123–24; cultural resurgence of CHT ethnic groups and, 146–57; humor and, 31–34; indigenous Bangladesh cultural resurgence and, 148–57; in Kashmir, 160–64; PKK political discourse and, 36–39; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 40–54; violence in Kashmir and, 187–90 literature, indigenous CHT cultural resurgence and, 148–57 Livni, Tzipi, 118 loyalty, Gilgit-Baltistan state militarization and role of, 86 Lushai ethnic minority, 135–41, 149, 267n.91 Lutz, Catherine, 62–63 Lynch, Caitrin, 67 madrasas, in Bangladesh, 140–41 majburi (economic helplessness), 106–9

291

Makdisi, Saree, 16–17 Ma’man Allah burial ground (Jerusalem), 116 Manal Aaru (Special Economic Zone) (Sri Lanka), 13 Marama ethnic minority, 135–41, 154 marriage: between CHT indigenous women and military, 141–45; Israeli-Palestinian mixed marriages, 126–28; military wives of Sri Lankan soldiers and, 73–74; in postconflict Sri Lanka, attitudes toward, 81–82; sexual relations between military men and FTZ women workers in hopes of, 67–72 martyrdom: Kargil conflict and, 98–101; in Kashmir, 178–80, 273n.44, 273n.52; politics of occupation and, 22–23 Marxism: Kurdish national movement and, 212–20; in Sri Lanka, 60 masculinity: PKK discourse concerning, 36– 39, 247n.20; politics of occupation and, 24–25; racialized view of Palestinian masculinity, 129–30 mass media: in Bangladesh, 134; coverage of Chittagong Hill Tract violence by, 140–41; in Gilgit-Baltistan, 94–95, 102–4, 254n.46; indigenous Bangladesh cultural resurgence and, 148–57; Kurdish nationalism and, 218–20, 278n.42; militarization and violence impact on, 64–66; programming changes in postconflict Sri Lanka and, 81–82; Sri Lanka military recruiting campaigns and, 67–72, 250n.2; Sri Lankan military wives depicted in, 74 Mazar-e-Shuhada graveyard (Kashmir), 178–80 Mbembe, Achille, 58 McClintock, Anne, 108–9 Mehndi Kadal camp (Kashmir), 181 Meir, Golda, 127 Me Mag Sanda (This Is My Moon) (film), 79 memory, Kurdish-Turkish political discourse and role of, 193–220 Middle East, anthropology of violence and, 19–23 militant movements: humor in context of, 31–34; secularism of, 21–23 militarization: in Bangladesh, 136–41; ethnic recruitment and, 25–26, 250n.2; globalization and reconsolidation of, 21–23; Israeli

292

Index

militarization (continued ) control of Palestinians and, 117–21, 256n.10; in Jummu poetry, 155–57; Kargil conflict impact on, 98–101; in Kashmir, 160–64, 173–80, 183–86; mass media depictions of, 64–66; of Pakistan, 22, 89–91; paranoia in Pakistan as result of, 104–9; in popular culture, 3–4; in postconflict Sri Lanka, 80–82; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 43–54, 248n.30; regional occupation and role of, 14–15; sexual violence and, 24–25, 141–45; in Sri Lanka, FTZ community experience with, 60–80; violence against CHT indigenous women and, 141–45 Mills, C. Wright, 89 Mohsin, Amena, 140–41 Mong, Ume, 144 monitoring activities of military, in GilgitBaltistan, 93–95 morality, in Sri Lankan Free Trade Zone, relations between women and military men and, 66–72 Mossad: Indonesian connections with, 237n.26; Sri Lankan forces trained by, 8 mothers of military men, Sri Lankan militarization and, 75–76 Muhammad, Noor, 273n.52 mujahideen, Kargil conflict and, 98–99 Murolya Sahitya O Sanskritik Goshthi cultural group, 148–49, 268n.101 Mu¨rsel Pasha, 192 Musharraf, Pervez (General), 93, 99, 101 music: indigenous CHT cultural resurgence and, 148–57, 268nn.99–101; Israeli hegemony and, 121–22; Sri Lankan militarization and, 66–72 Muslims, in Turkey, Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 52–54 mythology, in Kurdish nationalism, 198–206 Nakba Law, 121–22, 223, 229, 256n.13 na-maloom (Kashmiri gunmen), 26–27 Naqshbendi tariqa Islamic order, 197–98, 277n.30 Nashif, Esmail, 28 National Conference Party (Kashmir), 169 nationalism: Hindu nationalism, 159–60; historical sovereignty and, 4–9; Kurdish history of, 4–5; mythology and, 198, 206;

paranoia linked to, 108–9; precolonial identities and, 4–9 national security ideology: culture of, in Gilgit-Baltistan, 101–4; militarization and, 90 Nature Protection Society (Israel), 116 nefesh yehudi (Jewish soul), 122 Nehri, Sheikh Ubeydulla, 275n.7 neo-Marxist ideology, PKK political discourse and, 37–39, 248n.27 New and Old War (Kaldor), 20–21 Nishan-e-Haider honor, 100 No Fire Zones (NFZ), 10–11; genocide and occupation in, 28 Nora, Pierre, 194–96 Northern Areas Public Works Department (NWPWD) (Gilgit-Baltistan), 93–95 Northern Light Infantry (NLI): Kargil conflict and, 98–101; militarization of Pakistan and, 25–26; prestige of, 96–98 Nurruddin, Shiekh, 178 oath-taking ceremony in Turkish schools, Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 50 Obama, Barack, 225 ¨ calan, Abdullah, 210–17 O occupation: democracy under, 164–66; ethnographic realignment concerning, 19–23; gender and politics of, 23–27; genocide and, 27–28; history and structures in Israel of, 117–21; international law on, 236n.18; of Kashmir, 158–90, 182–83, 187–90; languages of, 15–19; logic of, in Kashmir, 170–72; of Palestinians in Israel, 115–31; in popular culture, 3–4; population transfers as result of, 14–15; of southern Sri Lanka, 60–84; tautology of, 160–164; UN conception of, 221–32 Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israeli land claims in, 115–31 Occupy Wall Street movement, 4 Odabas¸i, Yilmaz, 37–38 Olson, Robert, 208–9 Operation Uttoron (Upliftment), 136 Oslo Peace Process, 226 Ottoman Empire, Kurdish minority in, 275n.7 Ottoman millet system, 208–9 ¨ zgu¨r Gu¨ndem. See Free Agenda O Ozsoy, Hisyar, 5, 14, 16, 23, 191–220

Index pahan puja (religious ritual), 71 Pakistan: ‘‘calculated ambiguity’’ policy toward Kashmir, 87–88; democracy movement in, 94–95; formation of Gilkit-Baltistan and, 86–89; Islamization agenda of, 88–89; Kargil conflict and, 97–101; Kashmir presence of, 159–60; militarization of, 22, 89–91; military service as path to economic mobility in, 95–98; ‘‘Northern Areas’’ established by, 25–26, 88–89, 245n.108; paranoia in, 104–9; partition of, 87–89; population transfers in, 13–15; sectarian tension in, 109–13; ‘‘state subjects rule’’ in, 13–14; U.S. military aid to, 8; U.S. military support for, 8; wildlife management in, 108. See also Gilgit-Baltistan Pakistan Military Academy (PMA), 97 Pakistan People’s Party, 94–95 Pakistan Television (PTV), 102–4 Palestine National Council, 225 Palestine Papers, 257n.17 Palestinian Authority (PA), 13, 225–32 Palestinians: cultural differences with Israelis, 123–24; economic blockades and, 241n.61; gendered narratives of discrimination against, 125–28; genocide and occupation and, 27–28; geographic concentration of, 257n.18; history and structures of occupation for, 117–21; housing discrimination against, 123–24; Israeli marginalization of, 115–31; Israeli violence against, 119–21; legal and human rights of, 221–32; military supervision of, 22, 119–21, 256n.10; mixed marriages with Israelis and, 126–28, 259n.61; partition and establishment of state for, 4–7, 236n.17; population transfers of, 12–13; ‘‘present absentee’’ status of, 122; religious affiliation of, 245n.99; soft occupation and statelessness of, 23–24, 130–31, 221–32, 279n.2; sovereignty struggle of, 280n.3; structural violence against, 20; UN resolutions on, 9 Pankhuas ethnic minority, 135–41, 149 Pape, Robert, 20–21 paranoia: in Gilgit-Baltistan, 104–9; GilgitBaltistan state militarization and role of, 86; in U.S. law enforcement, 108–9 Parbattya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS), 136

293

parodic split, semiotics of Qirix (comic strip) and, 55–59 paternalism, Indian occupation of Kashmir and, 272n.34 patriotism: militarization and, 90–91; militarization and appropriation of, 65–66; PKK concept of, 248n.27 patronage, in Kashmir, 176–80 Peace Now, 227 Peloponnesian Wars, 236n.13 People’s Democratic Party (Kashmir), 169 permanent war economy principle, militarization and, 89–90 Piterberg, Gabriel, 122 platform houses, Jumma identity and, 147 poetics: counter-discourses on Sri Lankan militarization and, 77–80; indigenous CHT cultural resurgence and, 148–57, 268n.104, 268nn.99–101; languages of occupation and, 15–19; militarization and use of, 64–66 police state: in Kashmir, 160; militaristic Israeli policing and, 129–30; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 43–54 political agency, Kurdish political activism and, 249n.35 political discourse: counter-discourses on Sri Lankan militarization and, 77–80; humor’s role in, 31–34; on Kurdish minority in Turkey, 192–220; on Kurdish rebellion in Turkey, 207–9; militarization through, 89–91; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 54–59, 249n.36; Qirix (comic strip) effects on, 55–59, 249n.36 political economy of feelings, Gilgit-Baltistan state militarization and, 86 popular culture, occupation and, 3–4 population-based politics, emergence of, 6 population transfers, illegal status of, 12–15 pornographic magazines, in Free Trade Zone (Sri Lanka), 70–71, 251n.14 posthumous punishment of Kurdish resistance leaders, 204–5, 275n.7 poverty, friendly fire casualties and, 62–64 power structures: Gilgit-Baltistan military service and, 95–98; Israeli control of Palestinian citizens and, 115–31; paranoia in Pakistan and, 104–9; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 50–54 Practice of Everyday Life (de Certeau), 17

294

Index

pregnancy, of Sri Lankan girlfriends of military men, 71–72 preoccupation, cultural saturation from, 4 ‘‘present absentee’’ status of Palestinians, 122 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) (India), 8–9 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) (Sri Lanka), 8–9 ‘‘primitive nationalism,’’ Kurdish national movement and, 214–20 Priyadari (magazine), 70–71, 73, 251n.14 process of occupation: qirix and, 29–30; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 39–59; semiotics of Qirix (comic strip) and, 55–59; Turkish concept of su¨rec¸ and, 246n.2 Punjab Textbook Board, 113 Qaddafi, Muammar, 1 Qirix (comic strip), 26–27; everyday occupation depicted in, 29–59; evolution of, 39–40; humor’s context in, 32–34; Kurdish national liberation movement and, 34–39; story narrative of, 40–54; truth effects of, 55–59 qirix (masculinity): cultural remapping of, 37–39; political process and, 34–39; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 41–59 ‘‘Quartet’’ of nations, 280n.4 racism: gendered narrative in Israel concerning, 125–28; against Palestinians, 123–24; sexuality and, 128–30 Radar (CHT magazine), 149–50 ‘‘Radhamon-Dhanpudi Pala’’ (Chakma ballad), 268n.99 Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur, 136 Rajapaksa (President), 80–82 ranawiruman (Sri Lankan war heroes), 24–25; cultural incorporation of, 65–66; postconflict discourse concerning, 82–84 rape: of CHT indigenous women, 141–45; counter-discourse in FTZ about, 79–80, 251n.27; in Kashmir, 186; ostracization following, 144–45; politics of occupation and, 24–27, 242n.75; racialized context in Israel for, 128–30, 260n.77 refugees, marginalization of, 225–32 religion: Bengali nationalism and, 140–41; diversity in CHT of, 135–41; occupational politics and role of, 21–23

Report of the Committee of Gilgit-Baltistan, 111 resistance in Kashmir, occupation and, 172– 80, 187–90 Revolution of Everyday Life (Vanegim), 17 Rhythmanalysisi (Lefebvre), 17 ‘‘Rise Once More, O Brave Runu Khan’’ (Arekbar Jagi Ut Bir Runu Khan) (Kabari poem), 155–57 Riza, Seyyid, 204–5, 275n.7 ‘‘Role of Force in Kurdistan’’ (Ku¨rdistan’da Zorun Rolu¨), 210–11 romantic attachments: Israeli-Palestinian attachments, 125–28, 259n.61; Sri Lankan military and FTZ women workers and, 66–73 Rome Statute (International Criminal Court), 279n.1 Ropiyeh Machineh, 175–76 Rudhramoorthy, Cheran, 16, vii–viii Rwanda, UN safe haven policies in, 10 sacrifice: Gilgat-Baltistan military tradition and, 96–98; semiotics of, 24–25 safe haven policies of UN, 10 Said, Ali, 192 Said, Sheik, 14, 23; capture of, 198; execution and open burial of, 191–92, 198–206; historical images of, 210–17; Kurdish national rebellion and, 192–94, 197–98, 211–17 Sajad, Malik, 2 sangrai (new year dance), 149 Sarraj, Eyad (Dr.), 231 sator, Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 54– 55, 248n.34 Sawa’id, Khalid, 124, 258n.49 Scaligero, G. C., 29 Schendel, Willem van, 145–46 Scott, James, 5, 20 Second Intifada (2000), 119 ‘‘sectarian imaginary,’’ paranoia and suspicion and, 112–14 secularism: of militan movements, 21–23; sectarian tension in Gilgit-Baltistan and, 109–13 Seedhi Baat (Straight Talk) (Indian television program), 203 Segal, Zvi, 128–29

Index ¸sehir ¸cocug˘u (inner-city masculinity), PKK political discourse concerning, 36–39, 247n.20 S¸emseddin, Sheikh, 198 Sengul, Serap Ruken, 4, 16–17, 26–27, 29–59 Sepoy Rebellion (sipahi bidroha), 136 Serdıˆ, Hasan His¸yar, 197, 205–6 Serxwebuˆn (PKK journal), 212 settler violence, illegal status of, 12–15 sexual harassment, gendered narrative in Israel concerning, 125–28 sexuality: Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 51–54; racialized context in Israel for, 128–30, 260n.77; in Sri Lankan Free Trade Zone, relations between women and military men and, 66–72 sexual violence: in Chittagong Hill Tract, 132–34, 139–41; counter-discourse in FTZ about, 79–80; politics of occupation and, 24–27; violence against indigenous women in CHT, 141–45 Shafir, Gershon, and Yoav Peled, 117–18 Shah, Mehboob, 107 shahadat (military sacrifice): culture of, in Gilgit-Baltistan, 101–4; Gilgat-Baltistan tradition of, 96–100 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera, 129–30 shalwar-kamiz (Pakistani/Indian cultural dress), 148 Shanti Bahini (peace force) guerrilla group, 136, 138, 155 shari (Bengali traditional dress), 148 Sharif, Nawaz, 99 Sharma, Nandalal, 149 Sharon, Ariel, 130–31 Shia Muslims: in Gilgit-Baltistan, 88–89, 252n.12; military employment of, 26; in Pakistan, 13–14; sectarianism in Pakistan and, 111–13 shoe-throwing incidents, epidemic of, 1–3 Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB), 158– 59, 269nn.1–2 Shtigletz, Ze’ev, 126 Siachin glacier, 253n.33 Sikh minority in India, 242n.75 Singh, Hari (Maharaja), 87 Singh, Manmohan, 169–70 Sinhala minority: mass media outlets for, 64–66; military recruitment of, 65–66, 250n.2; in postconflict Sri Lanka, 80; Sri Lankan militarization and, 61

295

siyasi (political identity), Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 42–59, 248n.28 Sleeping with the Enemy (film), 126 social class: Kashmiri occupation and, 182–83; in postconflict Sri Lanka, 83; Sri Lankan military hierarchy as mimic of, 68–72; upward mobility of military service and, 9598 social media, politics of occupation and, 2–3, 235n.4 ‘‘Sock and Awe’’ video game, 1 soft occupation: gender and, 23–24; Israeli control of Palestinian citizens and, 23–24, 130–31, 221–32, 279n.2 ‘‘Some Day’’ (poem), 233 South Asia, anthropology of violence and, 19–23 Southern Sinai, military occupation of, 7 sovereignty, historical patterns of, 4–9 space: of domination and resistance, in Kashmir, 187–90; Kurdish-Turkish political discourse and politics of, 193–97; militarization of Kashmir and use of, 158–64; resistance, memory, and place in Kashmir and, 172–80; Turkish nation-state formation and role of, 199–206 Special Communication Organization (SCO) (Gilgit-Baltistan), 92–95, 253n.27 Special Task Force (STF) (Sri Lanka), 8 split subjectivity, Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 55–59, 248n.27 Sri Lanka: clothesline takeover in, 62, 250n.3; economic embargo in, 241n.61; Free Trade Zone in, 24–25; genocide and occupation in, 28; girlfriends of military men in, 66–72; High Security Zones in, 15; leadership training period in, 60; militarization of, 22; military expenditures in, 8; military occupation of, 4; military recruiting campaigns in, 67–72, 250n.; military wives of soldiers from, 73–74; mothers of military men in, 75–76; occupation of southern region of, 60–84; population transfers in, 13–15; postconflict environment in, 80–82; religious affiliation in, 245n.99; sisters of military men in, 76–77; structural violence in, 20; Tamil resistance tamed by, 227–28, 230–32; UN monitoring of, 9, 12 Sri Lanka Freedom Party, 73, 251n.22

296

Index

state institutions: Gilgit-Baltistan militarization of, 85–113; marginalization of Palestinian state, 121–22; militarization and globalization impact on, 21–23; occupation enabled by, 231–32; in Pakistan, militarization of, 22, 89–91; space as modality of suppression for, 158–60; in Sri Lanka, militarization of, 60–61 statelessness: of Chittagong Hill Tract indigenous groups, 138–41; of Palestinians, 115–31 state-sponsored violence, Turkish State of Emergency Rule and, 34–39 State Subject Rule, 88 street life, Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 43–54 structural violence, anthropology of, 20–23 Sturken, Marita, 194 suffering, culture of, in Gilgit-Baltistan, 101–4 suicide terrorism: occupational politics and, 21, 244n.92; in Sri Lanka, 63–64 Sulang Kirilli (Wind Bird) (film), 79–80 Suleiman, Elie, 121 Sunni Muslims: Kurdish minority as, 275n.7; in Pakistan, 13–14; sectarianism in Pakistan and, 111–13 su¨rec¸, Turkish concept of, 246n.2 Suwanda (magazine), 70–71, 251n.14 symbols of state, banning of Palestinian symbols, 121–22 Tagore, Rabindranath, 74 Tambia, Stanley, 19 Tamil state: genocide and occupation in, 28; historical sovereignty claims of, 6–9; history of, 4–9; Sinhalese settlements and, 237n.26; UN presence in, 9–11 Tanchangya ethnic minority, 135–41 Tanzeem-e-Millat, 110 Taussig, Michael, 58, 249n.37, 272n.33 terrorism: occupational politics and, 20–23; Palestinian violence as, 224–32; religious affiliation and, 245nn.99–100 textbook controversy in Gilgit-Baltistan, 112–13 textiles, Jumma cultural identity and, 147–48 Third World liberation narrative, PKK national movement and, 247n.18

Tibet: state structure in, 4; UN resolutions on, 9 Tibetan Autonomous Region, Chinese crackdown on, 238n.37 Time That Remains, The (film), 121 transitivity: genealogy of statehood and, 7–9; military forms of, 8–9; violence in everyday life and, 18–19 transmigration policies: in Bangladesh, 135– 41, 263n.39; illegal status of, 12–15 transnational production, Sri Lankan militarization in partnership with, 71–72 Treaty of Amritsar, 86 Treaty of Sevres, 6 Tripura ethnic minority, 135–41, 148–49, 154, 267n.91 trophy videos, of genocide and occupation, 28 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 158 Tsing, Anna, 4 Tunc¸ay, Mete, 208–9 Turi, Naifa al-, 115, 131 Turkey: Caliphate abolished in, 209; Dersim massacre in, 14; genocide against Kurds in, 27–28; Kurdish minority in, 12, 14–15, 29–59, 191–220; Law on Resettlement in, 15; militarization initiatives in, 27; military expenditures in, 8; occupation of Cyprus by, 7–8; state infrastructure in, Qirix (comic strip) depiction of, 40–54; State of Emergency Rule in, 34–39; War of Independence in, 214–16 Turkish Hezbollah, 248n.34 Turkish Republic Day, 40 ‘‘Udangu liyan gotha bandina’’ (wish of a flower) (song), 74 Umar, Mirwaiz, 168 UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), 11 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Peoples, 130–31 UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), 145 UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, 238n.37 UN Human Rights Council, 221 UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), 12 UN Partition Plan for Palestine, 236n.17

Index UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), 12, 136, 144–45 UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 9–10, 229–30 United National Party (Sri Lanka), 73, 251n.22 United Nations: Kashmir occupation and, 173–80, 271n.27; Palestinian statehood recognition and, 227–32; regional monitoring and administration activities, 9–13; safe haven policies of, 10–12 United States: law enforcement paranoia in, 108–9; military communities in, poverty in proximity of, 63–64; military dominance of, 8–9; Pakistani militarization and role of, 90–91 Utas, Mats, 72 Van Bruinessen, Martin, 217–18, 277n.30 Vanegeim, Raoul, 17 Verkaaik, Oscar, 106 viduthalai (liberation), 6 violence: anthropology of, 19–23; avoidance of accountability for, 231–32; in Chittagong Hill Tract, 139–41; against CHT indigenous women, 141–45; electoral process in Kashmir and, 166–70; everyday life in presence of, 17–19; girlfriends of military men in Sri Lanka as victims of, 66–72; in Kashmir, 158–64, 174–80, 183– 86, 187–90; militarization of Sri Lanka and, 62–64; against Palestinians, 119–21; paranoia and production of, 108–9; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 43–54; racialized nature of sexual consent in Israel and, 129–30 Visweswaran, Kamala, 61

297

War of Gallipoli, 215–16 weera kanthawak (Sri Lankan heroic woman), 82 Weits, Eric, 6 Weli Oya (Special Economic Zone) (Sri Lanka), 13 West Bank: Israeli land claims in, 115; Palestinians statelessness in, 130–31; settler violence in, 12–13 Westphalian world order, sovereignty and, 6, 226–32 Wijesinghe, Rathnasri, 73–74 women: in Chittagong Hill Tracts, violence against, 132–34, 141–45; clothesline takeover in Sri Lanka and, 62, 250n.3; counterdiscourse about militarization and, 78–80; indigenous CHT cultural resurgence and role of, 147–57; in Kashmir, violence against, 186; militarization in Sri Lanka and, 63–66; military wives of Sri Lankan soldiers, experiences of, 73–74; in postconflict Sri Lanka, 80–82; Qirix (comic strip) depictions of, 50–54, 249n.35; and Sri Lankan military, romantic involvement with, 66–73 ‘‘word in motion,’’ occupation in context of, 4 World War I, 215–16 Yeg˘en, Mesut, 33 Yonay, Yuval Dr., 127 Zahalka, Jamal, 121–22 Zbeidat, Fatenah and Ahmed, 124 Zionism, Palestine statelessness and, 5, 122– 24, 279n.2 Zionist Labor Party, 122 Ziya, Yusuf, 197, 275n.7 Zreik, Raef, 127–28

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acknowledgments

Small groups sometimes find ways to address large issues. For three years I was fortunate to be a part of the Subaltern-Popular Group, which met as an organized research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara between 2004 and 2009. The group consisted of literary scholars, historians, anthropologists, architects, and media scholars who were also area studies scholars of Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East. Richard Falk was a steady (and steadying) interlocutor at these meetings. In 2008, the group’s convenor, Swati Chattopadhyay, and her fellow architecture scholar Nuha Khoury organized the Third International Meeting of the SubalternPopular Group, in Cairo, March 24–28. Thanks to the efforts of Paul Amar, we met a number of the young organizers of Egypt’s (2008) April 6 movement who would later play a role in it’s ‘‘Arab Spring’’ of 2011. A year later, the Subaltern Popular Group held a workshop on ‘‘Occupation,’’ and the seeds of this volume and its larger project can doubtless be traced to some of the broad-ranging discussions that emerged then. In 2009, David Ludden and I convened a group of literature scholars, historians, anthropologists, and political scientists working in India, Kashmir, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as an ad hoc working group on South Asia at the NYU Institute for Public Knowledge. Our objective was to formulate some recommendations for an early and decisive demilitarization of the region by ending U.S. military presence there well in advance of the timetable for troop withdrawals finally announced by the Obama administration. Although we did manage to meet with an obliging Senate staffer in June 2009, and I spoke to a mildly curious State Department employee later that summer, it’s not clear anyone in Washington ever read our report. It’s still available as an artifact at the Institute for Public Knowledge website. Further reflection on the relationship of occupation to militarization led to the formation of another group. In April 2011, most of the contributors to this volume came together for a two-day exploratory seminar on ‘‘Gender, Militarization, and Endemic Conflict’’ hosted by the Radcliffe

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Acknowledgments

Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. Together we represented seven anthropologists, one architect, and two political scientists who work in South Asia and the Middle East; four of the members were also trained in International Relations. Each participant had in-depth knowledge of a particular place. Yet in our discussions we learned new things, understood things we already knew in a different light, and discovered unlikely resonances. For example, a discussion about childhood memories of occupation provoked a comparison between the cartoon figure Handala, the ragged Palestinian child who always appears with his back defiantly turned to the viewer, and the popular cartoon figure of the Bangladeshi street urchin Tokai, with whom the disenfranchised sectors of Bangladeshi society identify. In some ways, this volume represents only the beginning of a much longer conversation we hope to continue as part of a structured collaborative research project over the next few years, which will also include new people. I am grateful to the Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study and its supportive staff for providing us with the initial venue to launch this and future projects. Unfortunately, two of the original group members who had hoped to contribute papers, Bina D’Costa and Esmail Nashif, were unable to do so. However, I thank all the members of the original seminar who contributed to our mutual sense of elated discovery (and dismay) of the connectedness of colonialism, occupation, and militarization in the parts of the world where we work. I thank too, the seminar members for their feedback and fact-checking on the introduction to this volume; I am especially indebted to Ruken Sengul for her clarifying comments. Ruken, Hisyar Ozsoy, Rhoda Kanaaneh, and Nosheen Ali provided helpful references, as did Geoffrey Robinson of the History Department at UCLA. I thank also Jillian Schwedler for her invitation to present some of the material for the introduction at the University of Massachussets, Amherst, conference on ‘‘Will the Empire Strike Back: New Popular Uprisings Against Police States and Security Occupations’’ in May 2011. I am grateful to Nurjehan Aziz of TSAR Publications, Toronto, Chelva Kanaganayakam and Cheran Rudhramoorthy for permission to use the English translation of Cheran’s poem, ‘‘Healing the Forest.’’ Sajed Kamal graciously provided a translation of Kabita Chakma’s poem, ‘‘Some Day.’’ A final vote of thanks and appreciation is due to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, its Director of Fellowship Programs, Judith Vichiniac, and her supportive staff for providing us with the initial venue to launch this project.