Session 8: Contextual Conditions of Hostility

Session 8: Contextual Conditions of Hostility
Chair: Jeff Heydon

Spatial Factors Leading to Sectarian Violence in Iraq
John P. Vanzo
Political Science, Bainbridge College, Bainbridge, Georgia, USA

This paper will utilize traditional means of geopolitical analysis to explore various spatial factors leading to ethno-sectarian violence in post-invasion Iraq.  Variables such as the geographic location of various ethnic groups, the un-compact borderlines between ethnic areas (including the physical intermixing of groups and frequent existence of isolated enclaves of groups), and the distribution of arable land and natural resources within the country will be highlighted.  The paper will contribute to our understanding of conflict within Iraq, and conflict processes in general, by exploring the often-neglected spatial aspects of civil war.
Part One of the paper will have a brief summary of the creation of Iraq and its history of sectarian violence.  It will note that successive imperial and Iraqi governments have consciously utilized ethno-sectarian rivalries as a means of maintaining power.  Part Two of the paper will compare the geopolitical situation in Iraq to the national dissolutions of the national governments of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.  It will conclude that the Iraqi case most closely approximates the Yugoslavian example, leading one to conclude that any breakup of Iraq into separate ethnic states will be a violent one.  The third part of the paper asses the political, economic and military viability of the three ethnic states that could hypothetically be created from a fragmented Iraq.  The final section of the paper assesses the U.S. military “surge” of troops, which has been credited with reducing casualties in Iraq.  The paper concludes that the reduction of violence has less to do with the presence of additional troops as it does the strategic alliance the United States has arranged with Kurdish and Sunni paramilitary forces, a move which ironically makes the creation of a unified Iraq less likely.

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The Land of Oz: Child Soldiers & Youth Gangs
Melissa Zisler
Nova Southeastern University, USA

Hundreds of thousands of children around the globe are involved in violent armed conflict.  Children are often targeted for recruitment into gangs and paramilitary groups. These dangerous collectives have been liberated from the polarities that once existed.  Their organization and means of expansion irrespective of national or social boundaries, the universal possession of arms, and lack of adherence to legal norms  transcend social and national contexts.  This study examines the recruitment and abduction of children to serve in gangs and paramilitary operations around the world.
Children of gangs and child soldiers witness and participate in extreme forms of violence. Though these groups may emanate from different regions around the world, encompassing diverse cultures and backgrounds, they share many similar characteristics. An understanding of the commonalities between gangs and child soldiers may help us comprehend how and why children join or are abducted to serve in these dangerous collectives. This study first examines gangs and paramilitary operations that employ children, including membership, operational structure, and objectives.  Next, I present commonalities in the social structures that may be contributing factors to the participation of children in these violent collectives; and finally, I examine the environmental factors and persuasive instruments that encourage recruitment or abduction practices to develop. This childhood epidemic exposes the fissures that exist within societies where youth violence is prevalent.  A discovery of the similarities of at risk children around the world will aid in the prevention of child exploitation and indoctrination.

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Asian Women and Amerasian Children in Western Great Games
Kun Jong Lee
Korea University, Seoul, Korea

Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother (1996) is an autobiographical fiction on the lives of Korean women and Amerasian children in camptowns around U.S. military bases during the Vietnam War. While reconstructing the Amerasian experience and the legacy of the U.S. military presence in Korea, Fenkl skillfully juxtaposes his childhood life with Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. This paper aims to map the crucial space Kim occupies in Memories of My Ghost Brother in order to identify what the Korean American writer aptly calls “the remarkable coincidences” and “the ironic resonances” between the two texts. My discussion of the full spectrum of Fenkl’s allusions to Kipling and the layers of irony in those allusions will demonstrate that Fenkl not only repeats but twists key episodes and political contexts of Kim throughout his text to emphasize the continuity of the Great Game in Asia: he transforms the adventures of a white boy in colonial India into those of an Amerasian boy in postcolonial Korea and changes the Russo-British rivalry in the 19th-century Great Game into the Russo/Communist-American competition in the 20th-century Cold War. In so doing, Fenkl focuses less on the achievements of American Great Game players than on the predicaments of Asian women and their biracial children. While identifying and problematizing the U.S. Great Game in Korea and Vietnam, the Korean American novelist ultimately critiques the centuries-old Western imperialist projects in Asia in his rewriting of the British colonial text with a uniquely Amerasian perspective.

The Animal in the Arena: An Examination of Animal Fighting’s Historical Context
Richard Herbst
University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Michael Vick, an American professional athlete, was arrested in 2007 on charges he staged illegal dogfights.  Quickly thereafter, a media whirlwind brewed.  The resulting coverage of the case included a diverse array of topics; however, two significant topics emerged: the rights of animals and the undercurrents of race and class tied to animal righting.  Interestingly, pundits discussing the case seldom, if ever, raised the historical context of animal fighting, both in the United States and internationally, which offers phenomenal insight as to how those two topics merge.  This paper offers the context absent in those previous debates and aims to understand how both historically and currently the formation of animal rights was forwarded (and occasionally hindered) by individuals opposing animal fighting.  To that end, this paper utilizes historical animal fight records, magazines catering to the animal fight industry, and legislative debates regarding animal fighting to weave together a picture that both explains and confronts the etiological mythology surrounding animal fighting and describes how animals gained a voice in public policy.  That picture also illuminates several topics integral to current society, which are discussed in the paper, including: the reasons still successfully proffered to allow animal fighting, how the spectacle of the animal fight textures its violence, how cultural concepts of masculinity tie to animal fighting, and the associations or lack thereof made between human fighting (e.g. prize fighting) and animal fighting.