Insurgency and Counterinsurgency

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Betz
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Information Age ◽  
World War ◽  
Air Power ◽  
Cultural Understanding ◽  
The Third ◽  
Maoist Insurgency ◽  
The Mind

The evolution of conceptions of insurgency and counterinsurgency can be traced across three periods: pre-Maoist, Maoist, and post-Maoist insurgency. The first and, arguably, the most influential theorist of insurgency was T.E. Lawrence, whose insights stemmed from his almost certainly exaggerated exploits in the Middle East in World War I. Lawrence described insurgency as a moral contest and not a physical one. Presaging later theorists of insurgency, he spoke of the necessity of a cause to motivate the insurgents. When analysts speak of “classical” insurgency they are referring to Maoist insurgency, whose strategic essence was the substitution “of propaganda for guns, subversion for air power, men for machines, space for mechanization, political for industrial mobilization.” Post-Maoist insurgency focuses on the “War on Terror” and its major campaigns. Three themes have emerged in insurgency research, which have gained more theoretical prominence and empirical grounding. The first is the notion that sound counterinsurgency depends upon good cultural understanding of the society in conflict. The second is the issue of reconstruction and development which is increasingly seen as the sine qua non of counterinsurgency. The third is the evolution of insurgency into the “virtual territories of the mind” caused by the advent of humanity in general into the Information Age.

Press Propaganda and Subaltern Agents of Pan-Islamic Networks in the Muslim Mediterranean World prior to World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Press ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.

The Making of a Cause Lawyer

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Meierhenrich
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Early Years ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Nazi Era

This chapter provides the biographical and historical context necessary for understanding Fraenkel and his time. The analysis is organized into three sections: his early years, the Weimar Years, and the Nazi years. In the first section, I trace Fraenkel’s upbringing in a secular household influenced by the so-called Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah; explore the origins of his life-long predilection for social democracy; and recount the intellectual effects of his military service in World War I. In the second section, I reconstruct Fraenkel’s education and socialization as a young lawyer and interpret Fraenkel’s most important Weimar-era writings. I explicate the roles they played in preparing the ground for the writing of The Dual State. In the third section, finally, I commence my analysis of Fraenkel’s Nazi-era thought and conduct up until his escape to freedom in 1938.

The Government of War

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-793
Author(s):  
Dina Rizk Khoury
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
State System ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Security Services ◽  
Short Piece ◽  
The Government

I write this piece as Iraq, following Syria, descends into a civil war that is undermining the post–World War I state system and reconfiguring regional and transnational networks of mobilization and instrumentalizations of violence and identity formation. That the Middle East has come to this moment is not an inevitable product of the artificiality of national borders and the precariousness of the state system. It is important to avoid this linear narrative of inevitability, with its attendant formulations of the Middle East as a repository of a large number of absences, and instead to locate the current wars in a specific historical time: the late and post–Cold War eras, marked by the agendas of the Washington Consensus and the globalization of neoliberal discourses; the privatization of the developmental and welfare state; the institutional devolution and multiplication of security services; and the entrenchment of new forms of colonial violence and rule in Israel and Palestine and on a global scale. The conveners of this roundtable have asked us to reflect on the technopolitics of war in the context of this particular moment and in light of the pervasiveness of new governmentalities of war. What I will do in this short piece is reflect on the heuristic and methodological possibilities of the study of war as a form of governance, or what I call the “government of war,” in light of my own research and writing on Iraq.

The Great War of the Postcards

2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-568
Author(s):  
Johann Strauss
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Book Illustrations ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

This article examines the functions and the significance of picture postcards during World War I, with particular reference to the war in the Ottoman Lands and the Balkans, or involving the Turkish Army in Galicia. After the principal types of Kriegspostkarten – sentimental, humorous, propaganda, and artistic postcards (Künstlerpostkarten) – have been presented, the different theatres of war (Balkans, Galicia, Middle East) and their characteristic features as they are reflected on postcards are dealt with. The piece also includes aspects such as the influence of Orientalism, the problem of fake views, and the significance and the impact of photographic postcards, portraits, and photo cards. The role of postcards in book illustrations is demonstrated using a typical example (F. C. Endres, Die Türkei (1916)). The specific features of a collection of postcards left by a German soldier who served in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq during World War I will be presented at the end of this article.

Ukraine and the Challenges of Post-Totalitarian Transit (1990-2019)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Holovko ◽  
◽  
Larysa Yakubova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
State Building ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
World War ◽  
Successful Completion ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The key problems of nation- and state-building are revealed in the concept of the chronotope of the Ukrainian “long twentieth century,” which is a hybrid projection of the “long nineteenth century.” An essential feature of this stage in the history of Ukraine and Ukrainians is the realization of the intentions of socioeconomic, ethnocultural and political emancipation: in fact, the end of the Ukrainian revolution, which began in the context of World War I and the destruction of the colonial system. The third book tells about the contradictions of post-Soviet transit. The three modern revolutions, the development of “oligarchic republics,” the subjectivization of Ukraine in the world through self-awareness of the European choice are visible manifestations of the final stage of the century-old Ukrainian revolution and anti-colonial liberation war. The essential transformations of the Ukrainian project are understood in the broad optics of post-totalitarian transit, the successful completion of which now rules for the national idea of Ukraine. For a wide audience.

Making History to/as the Main Pillar of Identity: The Assyrian Paradigm

Belleten ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 76 (276) ◽  
pp. 631-646
Author(s):  
Bülent Özdemi̇r
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Segment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Conditions

In the 20th century Assyrians living in Diaspora have increased their search of identity because of the social and political conditions of their present countries. In doing so, they utilize the history by picking up certain events which are still kept fresh in the collective memory of the Assyrian society. World War I, which caused a large segment of the Assyrians to emigrate from the Middle East, has been considered as the milestone event of their history. They preferred to use and evaluate the circumstances during WW I in terms of a genocidal attack of the Ottomans against their nation. This political definition dwarfs the promises which were not kept given by their Western allies during the war for an independent Assyrian state. The aspects of Assyrian civilization existed thousands of years ago as one of the real pillars of their identity suffer from the artificially developed political unification around the aspects of their doom in WWI presented as a genocidal case. Additionally, this plays an efficient role in removal of existing religious and sectarian differences for centuries among Assyrians. This paper aims at showing in the framework of primary sources how Assyrian genocidal claims are being used pragmatically in the formation of national consciousness in a very effective way. Not the Assyrian civilization but their constructed history in WWI is used for the formation of their nation definition.

THE BRITISH MANDATE AND THE UPRISING OF 1920 IN IRAQ

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (73) (1) ◽  
pp. 140-153
Author(s):  
S. S. Shchevelev
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
British Mandate ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

The article examines the initial period of the mandate administration of Iraq by Great Britain, the anti-British uprising of 1920. The chronological framework covers the period from May 1916 to October 1921 and includes an analysis of events in the Middle East from May 1916, when the secret agreement on the division of the territories of the Ottoman Empire after the end of World War I (the Sykes-Picot agreement) was concluded before the proclamation of Faisal as king of Iraq and from the formation of the country՚s government. This period is a key one in the Iraqi-British relations at the turn of the 10-20s of the ХХ century. The author focuses on the Anglo-French negotiations during the First World War, on the eve and during the Paris Peace Conference on the division of the territory of the Ottoman Empire and the ownership of the territories in the Arab zone. During these negotiations, it was decided to transfer the mandates for Syria (with Lebanon) to the France, and Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq) to Great Britain. The British in Iraq immediately faced strong opposition from both Sunnis and Shiites, resulting in an anti-English uprising in 1920. The author describes the causes, course and consequences of this uprising.

Politics and Society in Upper Silesia Today: The German Minority Since 1945

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Cordell
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Third ◽  
German Minority

In 1919, Polish nationalist forces led by Josef Pilsudski succeeded in re-establishing an independent Polish state. Poland had disappeared from the map of Europe in 1794 following the third partition. It had been devoured by its traditional enemies; Prussia, Austria and Russia. Historically, Poland had been a state without fixed borders, and via a combination of changing dynastic alliances and a pattern of eastward migration, from the twelfth century formerly Slav areas east of the rivers Oder and Neisse became progressively germanicized. By 1921, following the end of World War I, several peace conferences, and after a series of referenda in disputed (former) German areas and a series of wars with all of its neighbors, including an especially successfully prosecuted war against the embryonic Soviet Union, the new state had managed to become a state which incorporated virtually all ethnic Poles. However, in addition to incorporating the overwhelming majority of ethnic Poles, the borders of the new Polish state also included huge numbers of other ethnic, religious and national groups.

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