This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project.

Traditional war practices, such as killing are not easily linked with sexual intimacies in war. The image of a soldier is that of a rough-ridding macho-man driven by the desire to kill characterised by bigotry. While this is somehow true, this is not the image presented in this text. The blog post is interested in an intimate and romantic soldier in the context of war in Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo war, fought between 1998 and 2002. The focus is on intervening forces, the Zimbabwean soldiers, whose stories of war were embedded with intimate sex with civilian Congolese women in war. This Democratic Republic of Congo war has been referred as the “Great War” in Africa and/or the “Africa World War” (Reyntjens, 1999; Rawlence, 2012). This is premised on the number of intervening countries and forces in the war: Rwanda and Uganda countries supporting the rebel forces fighting against the Democratic Republic of Congo government, supported by Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia. This was fought for five consecutive years, and millions of civilians lost their lives, including soldiers and rebels. 

The burgeoning scholarship interest on war continues to present war as always a social, economic and a politically destructive experience. This is real. However, war has intimate moments. Thus, while the dominant discourse on and about war is that it is about killing and decimating the perceived enemies, sex in war makes our understanding of war and being in combat as a pleasurable experience. Thus what makes sex pleasurable is not just the act of doing sex in war, but how an exciting experience is made possible in the face of adversity and the certainty of death. Soldiers are not just instruments of killing, rather they do establish long term and intimate relationships with civilians in the context of war. The strong academic and policy position is that sex in war is rape, yet soldiers do establish sexual romantic relationship with civilian women in the context of war. The social processes involved in the context of war is quite similar in the context of peace. Such practices help us to understand that even though soldiers’ intention in war is to fight and kill, killing in war is inextricably linked with moments of intimate sex. 

The idea here is not to refute the presence of rape in war by soldiers against civilians, and or civilian against civilians, but to have a discussion on a grey area about war, which even scholars skirt around, and the media included. The question on intimate sex in war, by soldiers, reveals to us issues about soldiering in its totality in the context of war. Oftentimes, soldiers, and men are presented as perpetrators of sexual violence, without an understanding that they are law abiding citizens even in spaces in which they can act otherwise. Infantry soldiers are often accompanied by the military police in war. The military police enforce discipline on soldiers fighting in the war. The military police do represent the arms of the state, which can arrest, detain, and ensures that the due process is followed in prosecution, even in war. Thus, apart from soldiers being moral agents, they abide by the laws which guide them in the context of war. It is not entirely true that soldiers are left rogue in war, instead, military commanders, and military police prepare ‘standing orders’, which guide and control soldiers to act within the specific confines of the law. Any soldier who goes against the ‘standing orders’, is heavily punished and corrected. 

War is a window of opportunity for soldiers to meet and establish intimate relationships which sometimes goes beyond the context of war. Soldiers do understand and make a distinction between rape, other forms of sexual violence and intimate sex. The ability to make a distinction between rape and intimate sex, is drawn from them being humane. Thus, having guns and carrying them does not easily cause men to lose the morality of sexual relations. Soldiers in war do go out and beyond the trenches, dressed in civilian clothing, meet civilian women and date. In turn, soldiers bring-in civilian women in the trenches of war, as part of wartime companionship. 

It is therefore important to understand that sex in war is a social practice in the context of war which is characterised by emotions of being humane. War does not completely eradicate the ways in which intimacies are understood both in theory and in practice. 

References

Rawlence, B. (2012) Radio Congo: Signals of hope from Africa’s deadliest war, One World, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

 Reyntjens, F. (1999) Briefing: The second Congo war: More than a remake, African Affairs, 98, 391: 241-250 

This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project.

There has been significant scholarly interest in the militarised and enclaved spaces of international intervention and war(Chandrasekaran, 2010; Fisher, 2017; Weigand and Andersson, 2019). Afghanistan’s “kabbuble”, Baghdad’s ‘Emerald City’, or Mogadishu’s airport ‘green zone’, are among the most well-known examples. Yet from Bamako to Juba, sprawling networks of fortified international compounds have proliferated, providing full-spectrum ‘life support’ facilities to international staff (Duffield, 2010; Autesserre, 2014). Indeed, the fortified enclave seems to be an integral facet of contemporary western intervention in war zones and post-conflict societies across the globe. 

The literature has importantly criticised this bunkerisation for undermining the stated aims of liberal intervention and/or humanitarian aid, the radical inequality it produces and sustains, the coloniality of these spaces, commodifying intervention, attributed it to remote warfare, or as a physical manifestation of the ‘forever war’. Less attention, however, has been given to the lived experience within these so-called green zones, to what the military personnel actually do within them. In particular, the overlooked yet – we argue – salient role that leisure, entertainment, and recreation play in how soldiers and military contractors negotiate the frustrations and boredom of life within the “bunker”, and thus, ultimately how the continuation of Western remote warfare and liberal interventionism are enabled.

Drawing on comparative insights from fieldwork in the green zones of Mogadishu and a week-long stay at the US operating base Union III in the heart of the Green Zone in Baghdad, as well as over 80 interviews with soldiers, security contractors, military advisors and trainers, this blog post will explore the tensions, pleasures and frustrations of contemporary life in the green zone. Whilst green zones tend to be thought of as sterile, austere featureless ‘non-places’ (Auge, 1996), we argue that they may rather be seen as distinctive, heterotopic social worlds (Foucault, 1986). They are alternate spaces both unreal and absolutely real, near utopias where palm trees, swimming pools and continuous electricity set them apart from the war-torn societies they are ostensibly part of, while the watchtowers, checkpoints, T-walls and container homes simultaneously create prison-like spaces of confinement. As heterotopias they uncannily combine incompatible spaces such as the exotic holiday destination and the prison camp. We argue that in these heterotopic sites significant energy and investment is expended on keeping up the excitement and routinize recreational activities to stave off the boredom and frustration that results from the bunker condition. Leisure facilities and activities have thus expanded to the extent that bunkerised spaces have, for some, become not just tolerable, but even fun or comforting to be in. 

Bunkerised life

Danger. Combat. Explosions. All things that do not typically happen in the green zone. Many soldiers and military contractors deployed to Baghdad and Mogadishu’s green zones, at first had strong expectations about life in a war zone and were disappointed to find themselves confined behind blast walls with minimal contact with the outside and limited opportunities to travel. At Union III in Baghdad’s Green Zone about 75 % of the military personnel are not even allowed to exit the military camp – i.e. entering the wider Green Zone – and the camp is generally referred to as “the open prison”. As the dreams of adventure recede, the frustration that they will not get to ‘experience’ Mogadishu or Baghdad or any form of ‘real’ warfare sets in. In Mogadishu, the blame often lands on risk-averse or inept bureaucracies in their home countries, or in the case of Baghdad the very conservative US intelligence evaluations that the Coalition forces are dependent on.   

Green zones are not only populated by soldiers and military contractors. They are crammed with people working for different organisations, under different mandates, bureaucratic responsibilities and risk thresholds. In Mogadishu, for example, security contractors enjoy far more freedom to move within the green zone and outside of it, relative to many military contingents who have stringent force protection protocols on mobility and security. In Baghdad any trip from the military base to the wider Green Zone requires four armoured vehicles and 12 men from the Force Protection Team. It is evidently extremely resource-demanding and very few -often the most senior commanders – are therefore allowed to enter the wider Green Zone. Life within Union III has become so bunkerised that even the Green Zone is considered going “outside”.

Negotiating the confinement 

For many, the gap created by the disjuncture between expectation and reality is filled by routine. You circulate from one compound to the next, eat in the same canteen, with the same people, stay in the same air-conditioned container. In Baghdad, cleaning is on Sundays and movie nights on Thursdays. In Mogadishu, ‘make your own pizza’ night is Friday evening’s entertainment. Hard physical training also offers a way to fill time. In Mogadishu, there are regular touch rugby games and on weekend afternoons, the beachfront is packed with runners, who jog up and down like hamsters in a cage. At Union III in Baghdad, most of the military personnel spend the evening jogging in circles along the outer walls of the small camp. There are competitions over who can run the most kilometers during their six months deployment. “You get your name on the board if you reach 500 kilometers”, explains a Croatian soldier from the Force Protection team, “I’ll get there, and maybe I’ll go for the next level of 840 kilometers, there is really nothing else to do”. Working out may also offer a substitute for ‘real action’ and a way to engage the hyper masculinity of the military. At the intermittent quarters of the force protection teams, young men were spending hours pumping iron in front of the mirror – and each other. Even the Lieutenant General commanding the Mission, despite being close to the age of retirement, was known to do heavy weightlifting every morning with his team.

Telling war stories from other conflict zones, or – if you can –  about journeys ‘outside of the wire’ can similarly act as substitutes for “action” and as meaning creating practices. At Union III every week the military advisors of the coalition forces would meet for an informal talk in the evening.  The Finns for instance would share a story of the famous sniper Simo Häyhä fighting the Russians, and the Danes would relate the notorious “Operation Bøllebank” a Danish led battle against Serbian forces in the Balkans in the 1990s. Their present rather uneventful deployment could thereby be linked to a continuous history of heroic war-making and humanitarian interventionism. Others had stories of the occasional missile attacks from Shia militias into the Green Zone, at times countered by exciting noise from the American C-Ram. 

Those dreaming of getting outside the walls would need to come up with creative exit plans. A flyer on a bulletin board in Union III ironically asked “Tired of life in the open prison? Come teach at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense”. Over time, the desire to transgress the boundaries of the green zone may diminish. One individual who had been circulating in and out of Mogadishu’s green zone, boasted of having been there for almost a year and having never spoken to a Somali. Many questioned why they were even here, sat in a container, when they could be doing exactly the same job in Nairobi. A Canadian lieutenant in Baghdad similarly revealed that he was offered a trip outside (i.e. the Green Zone) by his commander “but why should I” he shrugged. Yet many were longing for a bit of light and a glimpse of the outside. They were going to the rooftop of one of Saddam Hussein’s former government buildings in the heart of Union III to escape the darkness and confinement of the T walls. Here they would get a peek of Baghdad city, the clocktower and Saddam Hussein’s two famous crossing swords. This would be the closest most would ever be to Baghdad. 

Can camp life be entertaining?

The problem of frustration and boredom – and simply having too much time to spare in a confined space – is of course nothing new to the military. As Meredith Lair has observed in her book on consumerism and soldiering in Vietnam, the US war machine went to great lengths to provide entertainment and recreation in an effort to stave off dissent and trouble-making. 

In present Baghdad, the US military similarly provides mainstream American entertainment for the coalition forces, from a sneak premiere of a Star Wars movie to a concert with the country singer Toby Keith. In Mogadishu, entertainment is mainly provided by market forces. It has now become a business with strong parallels to (war) tourism (e.g. Lisle, 2016).In one securitised hotel, container homes are organised into carefully arranged ‘streets’ named after famous London roads, such as ‘Covent Garden’ and ‘Baker Street’, invoking a caricatured ‘Britishness’ reminiscent of colonial bourgeois cultures, or British tourist enclaves in Spain. The number of swimming pools, gastro-pubs and hotel bars has also proliferated in Mogadishu’s green zone. A common quip was that you could now do a pub crawl around the green zone, due to the proliferation of drinking establishments – in a Muslim country, where alcohol is strictly forbidden. One side of the green zone is a seafront that has become a private beach for the international community. A liminal space of leisure and escapism, the beach is where UN staff may be found barbecuing imported Italian meats, security contractors might go spear fishing, or peacekeepers paddle in the water. Outside the airport, one can buy shark jaws and other curios to take home as souvenirs. In Baghdad diplomats and government officials still meet at al Rasheed hotel overlooking the palm trees and the Tigris river, as they have ever since the US-led invasion in 2003.  

As bunkerisation has fortified, entertainment and routinization seem no less important than during the Vietnam War. As heterotopic spaces the green zones enfold multiple imaginaries of place into one compressed space, thereby juxtaposing seemingly incompatible lived experiences – close to both tourism and prison life – yet sufficiently tolerable to make the denizens remain. This shows how war – often seen as an exceptional and radically contingent event – is in fact a part of everyday life. Boredom and pleasure-seeking are as much aspects of contemporary war as the thrill of combat is. Many may have come for the war, but most stayed on for the swimming pools.

References

Augé, M. (1996). About non-places. Architectural Design, 66, 82-83.

Autesserre, S. (2014). Peaceland: Conflict resolution and the everyday politics of international intervention. Cambridge University Press.

Chandrasekaran, R. (2010). Green Zone: Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Duffield, M. (2010). The liberal way of development and the development—security impasse: Exploring the global life-chance divide. Security dialogue, 41(1), 53-76.

Fisher, L. D. (2017). “Why shall wee have peace to bee made slaves”: Indian Surrenderers During  and After King Philip’s War. Ethnohistory, 64(1), 91-114.

Foucault, M., & Dreyfus, H. (1986). Mental illness and psychology.

Lisle, D. (2016). Waiting for international political sociology: A field guide to living in-between. International Political Sociology, 10(4), 417-433.

Weigand, F., & Andersson, R. (2019). Institutionalized intervention: The ‘bunker politics’ of international aid in Afghanistan. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 13(4), 503-523.

This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project.

War and waring are extremely playful events. Warriors playfully lighten the burden of brutalities that either their anticipation hunts them or they are exposed to in combats. However, warriors’ playfulness is considered intensely transgressive fun by civilians and those disengaged from wars. For instance, brutal hazing among military personnel depicted in movies such as Full Metal Jacket (1987), G.I. Jane (1997), and Jarhead (2005) or documentaries such as Lohaamim (20121) has evoked moral judgment among civilians. They overlook these brutalities, and the hazing are funacts that pale away brutalities and inhumanities seen or expected to see in combat. In other words, one’s fun is brutality for another. Of course, this relative approach to brutality and inhumanities is not to approve or express sympathy but rather to highlight perspectivism in militancy. 

I never took the fun seriously enough while researching Shia militias and following the everyday lives of Shia men who volunteered and joined the so-called resistance groups across the Middle East. Fun was deeply obvious and integral into their everyday lives at the fronts, training, and deployments. I took fun for granted. Two different academic encounters turned fun into serious anthropological inquiries. The first instance was when a female Dutch-Moroccan Muslim student who was a practising Muslim furiously walked out of my class because of the video clips I showed. She complained they seemed ‘fun, and the resistance fighters were not seriously engaged with their ideologies during combat’. I showed real-life recorded clips of Sunni Lebanese militants fighting Shias in the street of the city of Saida. They laughed, joked and took turns in shooting at the other side. My student did not have fun watching them have fun. The second instance was when I collaborated with Lara Stall (a Dutch dramaturge) to organise an anti-conference which made fun of the Munich Security Conference, where high-level statesmen talk about global security issues. Professor Nandi Sundar, who spoke at our anti-conference, explained that activists should not lose their sense of humour and ‘fight the oppression while having fun.’ These two instances lingered in my head but sharpened my attention to the word fun and instances of fun during my fieldwork and investigating what it means to do and live with inhumanities.

            My research on inhumanities entails following the sociocultural acts that render people, persons, things, biotic and abiotic extractable, disposable, killable and unworthy of dignity (Saramifar 2017; 2019; 2021; van Liere and Meinema 2022). Therefore, I follow combatants and militants engaged in the resistance transnational networks among Shia communities in the Middle East and Central Asia to explain how socialisation in violence generates a waring ecology that imbibes everything and everyone in itself. My ethnographic interest in inhumanities took me to Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, among other places. I conducted fieldwork in Iraq, where the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) occupied large territories in 2013. The Iraqi Shia combatants resisting and fighting against ISIS were my interlocutors, and I explored their everyday lives while they volunteered to fight ISIS. These men (25 to 50 years old) volunteered and raised arms to join Hashd u Shaabi, Popular Mobilization Fronts (PMF), in response to a religious ordinance issued by Ayatollah Sistani, one of the highest religious authorities in Iraq. Sistani called on any abled-body men to volunteer and fight against ISIS since the Iraqi army collapsed and abandoned its post when facing ISIS’ overwhelming attacks. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a paramilitary group and integral component of the Islamic Republic of Iran contributed to the training, organisation and deployment of these volunteers. IRGC suggested that the Shia religious ideology is the common framework for Iranians and Iraqis who should collaborate and mobilise against ISIS, which had vowed to kill Shias and demolish their holy sites and shrines. Accordingly, the pervasive representational discourse among the militias suggested that Shia combatants from across regions, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, joined PMF to protect the holy shrines and resist extremists who threatened Iraqi national harmony. Although any anthropologist worthy of the adjective knows there is a large gap between what is said and what occurs on the ground. Human Rights Watch groups documented the inhumanities and violence inflicted on Sunni civilians by Shia militias. Shia militants tortured Sunni civilians after liberating areas occupied by ISIS, and Sunni civilians were arrested and tortured as ISIS collaborators without evidence.

            The cacophony of violence in the name of Islam and sectarian hatred was in the air of everyday life in Iraq. Although, Shia combatants who had become my research-friends were preoccupied with everything except Islam and sectarian differences. They were too busy staying alive, dealing with inflation and Iraq’s broken economy, and finding medicine for their elderly and their own injuries. They saw ISIS as the new threat to the stability of the fragile political economy. Initially, they referred to defending shrines during interviews and called it their primary motivation to join PMF in 2014. But they gradually became comfortable and familiar enough with me to tell their stories and reveal that joining PMF had nothing to do with God, shrines or sectarian differences.  The story of Abbas, a thirty years old shop keeper in the city of Karbala, is a good anthropological lesson in finding non-religious motivations in religiously framed political violence, why following fun is an unexpected clue which reveals different hues of subjectivities and how to trace spectre of inhumanities in waring ecologies.

Abbas’ story helps to understand how masculinity, love, things, sex, curiosities and war are entangled with the waring ecology. Hence, those such as Abbas should not be reduced to their religious affiliations. Abbas’ piety was exemplary among shopkeepers in the market beside the holy shrines in Karbala. Most shopkeepers referred to him whenever they had any disputes because they believed Abbas was pure of heart and his judgment was godly. Referring to pious and elderly savants to settle any dispute, ranging from disagreement about football or which music is Islamic enough to debt and marital disputes, is usual in Iraq. However, Abbas’ young age (31 years old) distinguished him from the crowd of savants, and it showed his piety brought him such credibility that it overshadowed his age. I met him while walking out of the hospital as he struggled to climb the stairs. I helped him, and it took us more than an hour to climb fifteen stairs and finally take a seat to wait for the doctors. He was embarrassed, and I assumed his pride was wounded because he needed help, so I said with a humble tone, ‘you have suffered for Iraq, so helping is an obligation.’ And he smirked, silently withdrew into his own head for ten minutes, then began laughing while touching his right inner thigh and blurted, ‘you never would say that if you knew where my injury is located.’ He squeezed his thigh and pointed between his legs. 

He was too high on painkillers to care for social etiquette. He explained how shrapnel had injured his right thigh and cut part of the pennis. He added with pride, ‘yes, it is that big.’ This introduction allowed me to know Abbas as a man preoccupied with things other than religion and politics. He believed his injury was due to the curse by his mother since he left home, closed his shop and volunteered for PMF after they fought over the woman he desired to marry. His mother refused to approve of the woman he loved. Abbas was in love with a young divorcee whom he befriended. They became sexually intimate whenever they could find a safe empty house, but his mother refused to reach out to the young woman’s family and ask for her hand. Abbas’s mother approved of his pleasure and sexual conquests but believed ‘his penis should not guide his marriage choice.’ Abbas found this expression insensitive and insulting to the woman he loved, so he left home and threatened his mother to kill himself. So he joined PMF that ISIS may do the job since he did not have the courage to commit suicide. He was injured in his first deployment.

 He said, ‘my mother’s anger at my pleasure-seeking choice caused my odd injury. She was right; I did not listen, but the shrapnel made me listen.’ Mother and son made peace as long as Abbas repented, and initially, Abbas told me that he remained in PMU to prove his pious commitment to holy sites. For a while, Abbas expressed more and more sectarian hatred and repeated typical religious phrasing about Islam and protecting Shiaism from ISIS. It seemed the gentle, pious Shia turned into a firebrand militant. I would sit in his shop and observe his discussion and behaviour change which brought more business and popularity for him. I could not talk to him as much since his booming business interrupted our conversations whenever I was in his shop. Finally, he hired an assistant for his shop to handle customers, and we suddenly spent more alone time than before. He could let loose in the absence of the public eye, joke, relax and laugh, and one day he mastered the courage to ask me a question.  He handed me his mobile phone and asked me to translate some information about Durex Vibrations Ring. I translated and explained nonchalantly and in the utmost clinical manner. I have learned to numb myself against frequent discussions about sex, women and various forms of vulgarity among militants. My clinical approach made him uncomfortable and silent. He seemed guilty; then he broke his silence by adding, ‘I am not all about God and PMF. I have fun too.’ He explained that he secretly continued his affairs with the divorcee, and the only reason he remained in PMF was that she found it sexy. His lover seemed to enjoy the appeal of the uniform, and Abbas entertained her interest to compensate for the erectile dysfunction he developed due to the injury. Although her interest has impacted Abbas in ways, he did not enjoy. He was annoyed by himself ‘I get hard whenever I see uniforms and think of what she would like. I see guns and rifles then I get hard because I think about her and how she likes them. I don’t want war-things in my bed, but this ring may change things for me. Would it help me to get an erection or hold it for a long while?’ 

            It was difficult to answer him, but I turned it around and said, ‘maybe you just have to try to have fun and don’t think too much?’ I returned to the Netherlands the next day, and he messaged me a few days later: ‘you deserve the title Doctor although you cannot administer an injection. I just had fun with it, and war-things became fun-things.’ I was relieved that my ambiguous and vague answer saved me from advising him, but it helped him, although our encounter clarified how fun is situated in the lives of those exposed to death. Abbas and many other combatants’ idea of fun was notnecessarily ‘an array of ad hoc, nonroutine and joyful conducts… where individuals break free temporarily from the disciplined constraints of everyday life, normative obligations and organised power’ (Bayat 2013). Fun was integral to their exercise of power, living with and by power; for instance, Abbas succeeded in having fun when he complied with the image of militants and stopped thinking about war-things such as guns and uniforms through the lens of violence. He had fun and was able to hold an erection when war-things were not objects of violence, but rather they were tools available to militants. He complied with the regime of militancy in which weaponry and war-things are mere tools and not memorabilia of inhumanities. In other words, he could have fun as long as he allowed the war machine to imbibe him, waring ecology shape him, and he would embrace unreason (Port 1998) by complying with the Shia militancy’s moral authority. Asef Bayat (2013) pointed out fun as an expression against organised power, but fun in waring ecology is an expression of compliance with power. It suspends thoughts and meaning and assigns thinking and reasoning to the organised power. In other words, some men cannot “perform” their masculinity and have fun in waring ecology as long as they think and attempt to make sense of inhumanities, so they assign thinking to the organised power (i.e. war machine, militancy including paramilitary command system, religious and ideological authorities), comply with it to become joyful militants.

References

Bayat, Asef. 2013. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Second edition. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Liere, Lucien van, and Erik Meinema. 2022. Material Perspectives on Religion, Conflict, and Violence: Things of Conflict. BRILL. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004523791.

Port, Mattijs van de. 1998. Gypsies, Wars, and Other Instances of the Wild: Civilisation and Its Discontents in a Serbian Town. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Saramifar, Younes. 2017. “The Pain of Others: Framing War Photography in Iran.” Ethnos, December, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2017.1415367.

Saramifar, Younes. 2019. “Tales of Pleasures of Violence and Combat Resilience among Iraqi Shi’i Combatants Fighting ISIS.”Ethnography 20 (4): 560–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138118781639.

Saramifar, Younes. 2021. “Mute-Ability of the Past and the Culture of Martyrdom in Iran: Remembering the Iran–Iraq War and Civic Piety amongst the Revolutionaries of Postwar Generations.” History and Anthropology, September, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2021.1983563.

This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project.

The experience of military violence during the German ISAF operation has not only been essentially new to German society and the armed forces but also and particularly to the Bundeswehr soldiers. For the first time since the end of World War II, German servicemembers actively used kinetic violence during combat. The question in focus here is how do soldiers deal with combat situations, the fear, the permanent tension and how do they cope with killing and death? Killing is still one of the best hidden phenomena of modern wars, because social scientists generally hesitate when it comes to discussing and investigating the act of killing. It is a challenging research undertaking to not per se classify violence as something evil (or something good) but, in defiance of the moral challenge, to examine how people can inflict violence upon others or even kill them and how they evaluate the significance of such an act. When ISAF soldiers returned to Germany, friends and relatives often tersely enquire: “Did you kill anyone?” instead of asking the usual question: “So what was it like?”. Due to certain spatial distances given in most combat situations, the soldiers most often than not do not know whether they have actually injured or killed someone. Having certain knowledge in this respect is very rare in military conflicts. This not-knowing can lead to equally irritating feelings of guilt and shame as being sure to have shot somebody. In most combat situations, soldiers do not face each other when they shoot; on the contrary, the view on the other soldier (who is moving and taking cover) can be blocked by (large) distances, the terrain, bushes, buildings etc. This is also called the “fog of combat”. A (fatal) hit on an opponent can only be noticed by the ceasing backfire – in most cases, the only ones who have a clear view on the enemy to be killed are the snipers (if at all) or movie heroes. Therefore, the experience of killing another person seems to remain rather abstract to most of the German soldiers with combat experience. Interestingly enough, even snipers are protected from a too direct confrontation with the act of killing by looking through their rifle scopes.

Therefore, the soldiers experience killing in highly contradictory ways (cf. Bar/Ben-Ari 2005: 133). This may lead to a range of (emotional) reactions between desire for combat and triumph on the one hand and seeking of sense, feelings of guilt, compassion and remorse on the other hand. Directly after a fight, the soldiers are happy to have survived and maybe to have even killed the enemy. In most cases, unsettling thoughts, questions of meaning and feelings of guilt only arise after some time has passed, because the soldiers also may see “an ominous component of hopelessness” in the bloodshed and killing.

Soldiers can be morally unsettled by these questions. Most studies in the context of social sciences are focused on the victims of violence rather than on the perpetrators. During ISAF’s mission in Afghanistan, however, the soldiers not only became victims but perpetrators as well. This perspective can be hard to bear for some soldiers and, apart from moral questions, can also lead to feelings of guilt, shame and aggressiveness as well as to speechlessness and helplessness. Additional consequences may include disturbed social behaviour as well as impulse control disorders. The majority of soldiers are nevertheless dealing quite well with the killing in battle – especially if the enemy has been identified unequivocally and if servicemembers can be sure to have successfully fought against insurgents. However, our natural biological scruples to kill another person have to be overcome again and again. People do not want to kill, and soldiers are no exception. Apparently, in World War II, 80 to 85 per cent of the American soldiers did not shoot at the enemy. This psychological barrier has been lowered considerably afterwards by better training during the wars in Korea and Vietnam. 

When soldiers kill another human being, this act can call our inherent humanity into question. The legitimization of the use of violence by society is thus of particular significance. If one’s own group approves of the collective killing (imperative to kill), the cultural concept of the prohibition of killing can be overcome and adequately processed. As indicated by German ISAF soldiers during personal interviews, they sometimes not only questioned the meaning and purpose of the mission, they were also aware of the poor legitimization of this robust operation on the part of German society. This awareness burdens soldiers. Additionally, war is not an endeavour of a few but, instead, “war is a state of society” and therefore affects everyone. 

With regard to the psychological wellbeing of soldiers from a combat mission, it is vital for the soldiers to be reaccepted and readmitted by society as ‘people like you and me’ and to not be perceived as ‘psychopathologized strangers’ or “marginal women/men” as often the case in Western societies.

In the German society, soldiers are often marked as being special so that their experiences may be excluded as particular ones. This way society does not have to integrate war experiences enter into a direct confrontation with the experienced violence. In other words, experiences of violence are not being integrated into society; instead, the affected soldiers are being repulsed by focusing on psychopathology. However, war and warlike conflicts cannot be individualized. Combat experiences cannot be excluded by so-called post-heroic societies, which send their soldiers into conflict or war scenarios. Experiences of violence are not only stored in narrations and archived in language. They are also incorporated into bodies, movements, gestures, (unofficial) rituals and objects. 

Personal interviews with Bundeswehr soldiers with combat experience have demonstrated that, even in the military context, violence is being interpreted in highly different ways. It can have both abominable and positive aspects. As unsettling as experiences of violence may be in that particular moment, for many soldiers the confrontation with violence is only part of a more complex experience during a mission as well as afterwards. Externally, the armed forces represent the state’s monopoly on the use of violence. As members of this organization of the state, the soldiers are trained in the use of violence and sent on sometimes robust missions mandated by parliament. During these operations they will have to make use of the learned violence in combat situations. For the soldiers, violence is the ‘gravitational centre’ which is not only the basis for core military training but also for the emergence of a soldierly identity. The training and performance of military violence is an essential part of a professional soldier’s view on his profession. Therefore, we need to understand that for many members of the military, violence is nothing that automatically traumatizes but it is part of their profession as well as of their professional self-perception. In most cases, soldiers are able to deal quite well with experiences of violence as an integral part of their soldierly assignment in the country of deployment. 

The experience of violence is not automatically traumatizing and is not taken as an opportunity to distance oneself from the values and norms of the native peaceful society. In many cases, soldiers with combat experiences who have been directly confronted with their own mortality often appreciate their home more than they did before. In many cases they also experience a strengthening of their value system – virtues such as honesty, politeness, reliability and taking care of each other now (once again) have a higher importance. Combat experiences can trigger a certain self-assurance which helps to regain one’s “own wholeness”. Suppressed or dormant facets of one’s own personality can be revived/lived out under the challenging conditions of a violent confrontation.

Reference

Bar, N., & Ben-Ari, E. (2005). Israeli snipers in the Al-Aqsa intifada: killing, humanity and lived experience. Third World Quarterly, 26(1), 133-152.

This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project.

Anything is better than to have nothing at all happen day after day. You know that I do not love war or want it to return. But at least it made me feel alive, as I have not felt alive before or since. 

—An unknown French woman in the Resistance after World War 2. 

It may sound like a dramatic thing to write but reading this quote actually changed my life. It really did. Let me tell you what happened.

It was 2012 and I was studying a Masters of International Relations at the University of New South Wales. Unsettled, restless, bored, I had thrown myself into my studies, a bit lost after working overseas with international organisations for a few years—two “missions” in Afghanistan, one in North Ossetia in Southern Russia and one in Pakistan. The serious and international nature of the Master was keeping me sane in Sydney, a peaceful city which felt so far away from the intensity of where I’d been. Let’s go to the beach! Good idea. It might stop me from feeling like I’m drowning on land.

As part of my degree, I was researching for a short paper on women on the frontline when I found the above line. An unknown Frenchwoman in the Resistance had made the statement to J. Glenn Gray after the war. I was startled. I hadn’t been in the Resistance, but I felt exactly like this woman did. Her words were my words; her voice through time articulated my dilemma. In Afghanistan, I had indeed felt very alive. Here in Sydney, I was partly dead. 

I emailed my lecturer, asking if she knew anyone who had written about the thrill of combat and women having positive experiences in war. My teacher replied that she didn’t know of any. A few months later, I wrote again, asking if she knew of any books or research into the emotional elements of war that may cover pleasures and highs of fighting?

As I put it: “It is a topic that interests me, and I can’t seem to find much on it.”

I was so curious about this woman who had been enlivened by war. Wasn’t war meant to be awful? I was yet to know I was at the beginning of an unstoppable intrigue.     

I tracked down Gray’s The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle and found he had an unusual back story. In 1941, on the day he got his paperwork to go to war, he was also awarded his PhD in philosophy from Columbia University. He spent the next four years in various theatres of World War 2 as an intelligence officer. He returned to university life in the US and became a professor, and a translator of Heidegger. The book was based on his diaries from the war and time spent back in Germany in the 1950s.

The Warriors threw open a door: here was a soldier focusing on the strange pleasures of war. One page after page after page. As Gray put it: “What are the secret attractions of war, the ones that have persisted in the West despite revolutionary changes in the methods of warfare? I believe that they are: the delight in seeing, the delight in comradeship, the delight in destruction.” (1959: 29) 

I began trying to find other voices examining positive experiences of war. Of course, there were ancient epic poems lauding the heroism to be gained in battle. There was an endless supply of Hollywood war movies starring pleasure, but they were about male soldiers. I intermittently found gold in the memoirs of war correspondents and aid workers.

But I needed more depth. I wanted to know what pleasure in war meant, what the politics of it were, how it played its part. 

Theorising experience and emotions in war is quite new to international relations. For too long, as Christine Sylvester suggests, the field has been “operating comfortably in a world of theoretical abstractions” (2012: 483). Swati Parashar, who has spent years conducting fieldwork studying political violence, has argued that the focus on causes and impacts of war — and the use of quantitative tools — neglects that people who “fight/suffer/live” in war have knowledge about it and insights into why they happen (2013: 618). So while scholars were exploring war in a myriad of ways: emotionally, as an affect, embodied or disembodied, the focus was largely negative. Any examination of emotions was usually in relation to PTSD, violence, trauma, and death experienced by soldiers. As one would expect really.

(It should be noted that the field of International Relations is not alone in being focused on the negative. The anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner documents how anthropology has been fixated on the “dark turn”, which is dominated by examining power, inequality and ethnographies of poverty and violence.)     

The fact that IR had ignored or not engaged with the pleasures of war felt like an incomplete portrait of this huge social phenomenon. So I wandered into psychology, history, sociology, anthropology and ethnomusicology and it was here that I found a range of pleasures: existential notions of freedom (Sartre 1944), love and vulnerability (Macleish 2013), beautiful sounds (Daughtry 2015), friendship (Harari 2008, Glenn Gray 1959), the joys of travel (Lisle 2016) and laughter (Brown and Penttinen 2013) to name a few. Again, it was largely soldiers, but it was something.

Piqued, I set out to deconstruct this somewhat controversial idea that war is solely a source of trauma. I also wanted to wrestle war away from the military; they were not the only ones at it were they?

Thus, as part of my PhD—which I’m half-way through— I have interviewed 32 non-combatants who were in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2019 and found a world of professional and personal positive experiences. Of course, there is pain: friends killed in suicide bombings, compounds attacked and high stress levels. But there are also reams of pages of extraordinary, poignant and mundane moments of pleasure: the satisfaction of changing the US military’s approach to airstrikes and night raids; the simple joys of warm Afghan bread; the adventure of facing risk and danger while embedded with troops; working alongside passionate Afghan colleagues and seeing them want more for their country; shoe shopping or eating a muffin at an embassy event while a bomb explodes; sitting down for a meal; visiting the spectacular pale blue lakes at Band-e Amir; the sense of importance at being in a country that was at the center of world affairs; going to Dubai for a break and having the money to be able to choose champagne over prosecco; enduring and deep friendships.

But what was also striking was how some of the respondents wondered if they were in war. Most of them hadn’t been on the frontline.  They hadn’t picked up a gun. And if they were having moments of pleasure—did that mean they were not in war? Could one only be in war if one were traumatised and terrified? I began to see that pleasure was a curious frame into looking at the ontology of war.

I too hadn’t been on the frontline getting shot at or lying terrified in a house as bombs rained down around me. Nor was I a male warrior. I was a female international organisation worker who worked in an office. Like some of the respondents, I also wasn’t sure if I was in a war. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a half war? Or as one respondent put it: “It was the right amount of war.”

It certainly felt war’ish. Security was central to everything. My home and my office were both surrounded by barbed wire and guards out the front with guns. When I got picked up to go to work every day, we took a different route to the office to avoid kidnapping; a security guard used a mirror to check for bombs under the vehicle when it stopped out the front. 

Explosions and the crackles of gunfire intermittently rang through the city at any time of day. Sometimes the boom was so loud my housemates and I would rush onto our front lawn, sleepy-eyed in our pyjamas, wondering what had happened. We were often put into “lock down” for a few days due to any number of security incidents— an explosion, a kidnapping, or a suicide attack. One of my flatmates was a former British soldier and kept a rifle under his bed. At night, we did radio checks with a walkie talkie that I took everywhere I went. 

If I wanted to visit a restaurant or an office, it had to be ‘MOSS’ compliant, which was short for Minimal Operation Security Standards. Certain restaurants were cleared. Visiting public places was limited and only “point shopping” was allowed, which was defined as direct from car to shop. Walking was not allowed. Every day, a security briefing landed in my inbox, giving an update of the various bombs, threats, thefts, and deaths that had taken place across the country. 

Kabul was certainly dressed for war: Hesco blocks, barbed wire draped across high walls, guards and soldiers in camo, large tanks sitting in traffic lights next to my bullet proof 4WD. This violent dressing undoubtedly masked something deeper though. Brett Ashley Kaplan has explored how the often gushing and peaceful depictions of Hitler’s holiday chalet on the Obersalzberg, in the hills of Bavaria in magazines of the time, for example, masked the violence of the Nazi regime (2007: 241). In a sense, was this “war” dressing that I saw daily helping to mask the pleasures? Perhaps we need to mask these pleasures. Or do we? Kaplan highlights how when it comes to depicting the Holocaust in literature, art and memorials, beauty has long been demonised. In response, he argues that the unwanted beauty of these depictions, “encourage us to see the complexity of the Shoah in ways that conventional works fail to achieve” (2006: 3).

Aside from beginning the journey of looking at human experiences, international relations are also going deeper into the ontology of war, which has for centuries put fighting at its core. “War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale,” wrote the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz on the opening page of On War. He asks us to imagine two wrestlers. “Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: each endeavours to throw his adversary, and thus render him incapable of further resistance. War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.”

But many scholars see this characterisation of war as being about soldiers fighting with guns, bombs, and an assortment of warcraft as not quite right. As Carolyn Nordstrom argues, war is not just about men doing battle nor is it set in a particular place (1997: 8). She writes of looking for the “warzone”, a marked battlefields with soldiers. “Finding it proved difficult” (1999: 21). She also speaks of it as being a “sprawling process” (1999:21).

To claim that war is solely about soldiers fighting also cruelly ignores the thousands of Afghan civilians who have been killed in their homes, offices, and cars, and to the international noncombatants who died doing their jobs. As the Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary said about the Afghanistan war in 2019: “Everywhere is a frontline. Where has not been attacked? Schools, clinics, mosques, restaurants,” he says. “Cities, villages, highways—nowhere is safe” (Dent 2019).

The pairing of pleasure and war is undoubtedly offensive, a jolt to our idea of what is right. But the connection has been known for thousands of years, dating back to the love affair between Mars, the God of War, and Venus, the Goddess of Love. The fact that their affair was illicit touches on how pleasure and war together —and apart — has always been touched by morality. Nonetheless, we need to keep digging through the darkness of war as getting to the light will help us better understand this social phenomenon. 

REFERENCES:

Brown, K. E., & Penttinen, E. (2013). ‘A ‘sucking chest wound’ is nature’s way of telling you to slow down….’: humour and laughter in war time. Critical Studies on Security, 1(1): 124–126

Clausewitz, C. (1984). On war. Princeton University Press.

Daughtry, J.M. (2015). Listening to war: sound, music, trauma and survival in wartime Iraq. Oxford University Press.

Dent, J. March 6, 2019 “Bilal’s War”. War Spot. https://warspot.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/bilals-war/

Gray, J.G. (1959). The warriors; reflections on men in battle. Harcourt.

Harari, Y.N. (2008). Combat Flow: Military, Political, and Ethical Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being in War. Review of General Psychology, 12 (3), 253-264.

Kaplan, B. A. (2007). Masking Nazi Violence in the Beautiful Landscape of the Obersalzberg. Comparative Literature, 59(3): 241–268. 

Kaplan, B. A. (2006). Unwanted beauty: aesthetic pleasure in Holocaust representation. University of Illinois Press.

Lisle, D. (2016). Holidays in the danger zone: entanglements of war and tourism. University of Minnesota Press.

MacLeish, K. (2013). Making War at Fort Hood. Princeton University Press.

Nordstrom, C. (1997). A Different Kind of War Story. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Nordstrom, C. (1999). Wars and Invisible Girls, Shadow Industries, and the Politics of Not-Knowing. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1(1): 14-33.

Ortner, S. B. (2016). Dark anthropology and its others: Theory since the eighties. HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6(1): 47–73. 

Parashar, S. (2013). What wars and ‘war bodies’ know about international relations. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 26 (4):615–630. 

Sartre, J. (1944).  ‘Paris alive: The Republic of Silence’. The Atlantic. 174 (6): 43, accessed https://www.scribd.com/doc/238556147/Paris-Alive#fullscreen&from_embed

Sylvester, C. (2012). War Experiences/War Practices/War Theory. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 40 (3):  483–503.

This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project.

    Yugoslav historiography counted seven major Axis military operations undertaken against the Yugoslav partisan forces during the Second World War. Each of the offensives had as its goal elimination of the partisan resistance and the pacification of the Yugoslav countries. By surviving and continuing to fight, the partisan forces won in each one. And by surviving, they had no other choice than to continue to fight. Part of the reason was the ideological irreconcilability of enemy groups. From the partisan perspective, all military activity was supplemented by cultural and educational activities organized by the partisans in their military units as well as by the representatives of communist institutions in the liberated territories. These activities colored the idea of postwar future into utopian tones of communism. “Their” as well as “our” dead paid the toll towards the realization of that ideal. Corresponding resolve of the enemy forces was the other part. The sources often mark the German Wehrmacht’s efficiency and ruthlessness as particularly formidable in the partisans’ eyes. Behind them, it seems, nothing but ruin remained. 

     And in order to survive and to continue to fight, a little magic was needed too. Magic, noun denoting the power of influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces, I am well aware, is a completely unwieldy concept. At this point of my research, however, it serves the purpose of sheltering a set of different occurrences which helped some of the participants of the Yugoslav partisan struggle to make it through one more day, and sometimes even made a difference between surviving and resisting. Such magic, prime quality emergency handmade hodgepodge, could come in the form of hope, empathy, love, or laughter. For many of these episodes, if they did not happen in such extreme circumstances, one would easily say that it was simply having fun. Whatever it was, it influenced moods, minds, and dispositions. Personal accounts about the war in Yugoslavia abound in randomly scattered moments of such commiseration and comfort, even in the most desperate of situations. In addition, because of the way some of the participants remembered the war, to a reader like me sometimes seems that it really was magic in the literal sense of the word.

     It seems pointless in the Sarajevo prison when, after returning from yet another all-night interrogation-cum-beating, Radojka Lakić’s friend and comrade combed blood and dirt out of her hair, braided it, pulled it up into a bun and secured it with hairpins. At the same time, other prisoners joined her in quiet singing of revolutionary songs, the only ones that Lakić sang (Beoković 1967, 158). It seems girlish and unencumbered when Drvar peasant girls, instead of elaborating the work strategy of the local branch of the women’s organization (on which the partisan army often depended), assigned priority to embroidering flowers on the skirts of their Party representatives, because, they fancied, it was not acceptable for young women to wear black. Carried away by cheerfulness, the girls started to sing, and some even started a circle dance (Beoković 1967, 420). It seems mystical when the actor Vjekoslav Afrić recited verses about sixteenth-century peasant rebel Matija Gubec into the ear of a partisan with whom he happened to be sharing a campfire between two long marches (1958, 486-487). It seems completely ridiculous and incredible when one vet refused to continue to walk and had himself tied on a mule as a piece of equipment, and even more so when, in the meal break in which everyone got to eat except for him (as a joke), he got so upset and shouted so much that he also upset the mule, which disappeared into some shrubbery amid the clatter of hooves and equipment and laughter of all present (Božović 1958, 411-412). 

     The war distorted things. The experiences it made possible were extreme, physically and emotionally strenuous and draining. Consequently, it made small things look and feel big, important, lifesaving. That is why the narrative of World War 2 in Yugoslavia, individual destinies as well as the biggest of battles, is entwined with stories of magic. Sometimes those were hairpins, quite often those were partisan variety shows, singing, and dancing, and over time partisan leader Josip Broz Tito became imbued in magic as well. In the context of my research so far, the battles of Neretva and Sutjeska have brought to the fore some of the most exquisite examples. 

     In January 1943, the battle of Neretva (locally also known as the Battle for the Wounded or the Fourth Enemy Offensive, January/March 1943) began. Its goal was to destroy the central command of the partisan movement and the units around it as well as the Central Committee of the Communist Party. To be as effective as possible, German and Italian deployed commanders did not punish soldiers’ excessive brutality. Participating Chetniks and Ustasha soldiers did not deal with such trivialities anyway. In March 1943, still in the midst of enemy encirclement and without a set plan of extraction, the members of the Cultural and Artistic Team of the Fourth Operative Zone (for Dalmatia) gave a theatrical performance – songs with accordion accompaniment, recitations, and two comic plays – for the members of (for the most part) Fourth and Fifth Montenegrin Brigades who had just arrived from fighting positions as well as the wounded and civilians who were present. The performance culminated in a familiar manner, with a circle dance. Reportedly, it was interrupted just before dawn when the soldiers had to return to the battle positions (Borozan 1983, 45; Rutić 1952, 331-332).

     Despite heavy losses, more than half of partisans within the encirclement killed and captured, and a clear tactical victory for the Axis, the partisan army managed to secure their command and the central hospital, retreat, and resume activity. Taking advantage of the partisan exhaustion, however, the Axis forces immediately set about executing another large-scale operation, the battle of Sutjeska (also known as the Fifth Enemy Offensive, May/June 1943). The goals of this offensive remained the same, as well as the methods employed by the Axis soldiers. Unlike the previous offensive, though, partisan leader Josip Broz Tito was wounded in this battle. In all-embracing carnage – this time around, most of the central hospital, particularly the immobile wounded, could not be transferred across Sutjeska as they were transferred across Neretva; along with some medical personnel, mostly partisan nurses, as well as local civilian population, they were killed in the clean-up operation that followed the closing of the encirclement – a number of personal memories reflect particularly on Tito’s wounding (ad es. Božović 1958, 395-396). His mortality astounded and frightened many. According to one exceptional testimony, after the news of the wounding, Tito’s safe exit from the closing enemy encirclement offered a glimpse of magic of almost biblical proportions. Exhausted groups who dropped to the ground only a few hundred meters from the place where the battle was still being fought and showed no intention of moving forward, upon seeing Tito passing by them just rose to their feet and continued their journey in silence (Skrigin 1968, 198). In academic language, using the conceptualization of Ernst Kantorowicz’s king’s two bodies, it can be said that with his natural body Tito already then stood for the body politic of (the future of) Yugoslavia (Brkljačić 2003). Following more on the emotion emanating from the sources, maybe such an occurrence should not come as a surprise. Maybe it is quite reasonable that people who were drawn into a war that all but guaranteed their destruction and exceeded the limits of what they thought possible on a daily basis, had to believe in a higher power, even if it was another man. They could be the heroes and heroines as long as he was willing to be their savior. Together, they survived on.

References

Afrić, Vjekoslav. 1958. “Pokret, vatra… i smrt” [“Advance, Fire… and Death”]. In Đurović, Milinko, ed. Sutjeska, zbornik radova 1 [Sutjeska, Collection of Works 1], pp. 483-494. Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački zavod JNA “Vojno delo.”

Beoković, Mila. 1967. Žene heroji [Heroines]. Sarajevo: Svjetlost.

Borozan, Braslav. 1983. “Avangardno i inovacije u kazalištu NOB-a” [“Avant-garde and Innovations in the NOB Theatre”]. Dani Hvarskoga kazališta: Građa i rasprave o hrvatskoj književnosti i kazalištu 10, no. 1, 41-52.

Božović, Saša. 1958. “U sanitetu Druge proleterske” [“In Second Proletarian’s Medical Corps”]. In Đurović, Milinko, ed. Sutjeska, zbornik radova 1[Sutjeska, Collection of Works 1], pp. 392-412. Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački zavod JNA “Vojno delo.”

Brkljačić, Maja. 2003. “Tito’s Bodies in Word and Image.” Narodna umjetnost 40, 99-128.

Rutić, Joža. 1952. “Sjećanje na Kazalište narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije” [“Remembering the Theatre of the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia”]. Kulturni radnik 7-8, 327-332.

Skrigin, Žorž. 1968. Rat i pozornica [War and Stage]. Belgrade: Turistička štampa.

This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project.

Soldiers participate in wars for various reasons, some of which are historically, politically and culturally contingent, and others shaped by individual circumstances and dispositions. While research on the U.S. and U.K. militaries has often highlighted soldiers’ desires for social mobility and economic security, the Israeli military sociologist Ben-Shalom (2012) emphasises soldiers’ need to feel a sense of purpose or meaning. From his perspective, meaning-making is an active creation and selection process, leaving room for individual agency and choice. However, soldiers’ motivations and narratives are also a matter of public and political concern. Moreover, public institutions like the government and the military are heavily invested in the “psychic and emotional lives of those whose job it is to fight, kill, be injured, and die on the nation’s behalf” (MacLeish 2019: 275). In other words, it matters not only what soldiers do but also what they say and feel.  

In this blog post, I begin by discussing what other scholars have identified as the “humanitarian soldier”, that is, a moral figure embodying both the humanitarian spirit and military ethos expressed in the post-9/11 “humanitarian wars” and counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan in particular (De Lauri 2019a; Kotilainen 2011; 2020). Drawing on my own research with Norwegian soldiers and veterans, I thereafter identify a new mode of soldiering: the “self-realising soldier” motivated primarily by a desire for adventure, thrill and growth. 

The contribution is based on my ongoing research with Norwegian soldiers and war veterans who have served in international operations during the last two decades. My primary data collection method is in-depth, semi-structured and occasionally repeated interviews with current and former soldiers in the Norwegian Armed Forces. These are supplemented with media analysis, archival research, expert interviews and research visits to military camps and academies, veteran centres, military museums and soldiers’ homes. My interviewees are mainly men (hitherto 18 men vs 4 women), but they have different class– and educational backgrounds and come from and live across the country. Moreover, they have different ranks, military specialities and careers, ranging from special forces operatives and intelligence officers to infantry soldiers and other enlisted personnel. Due to my interest in soldiers’ relationships to violence and enemy construction, I purposefully sought out people with combat experience. I have also focused on soldiers and veterans who have served in professionalised expeditionary forces in Afghanistan, sometimes referred to in Norway as “the new generation of soldiers and veterans”. However, several of my interlocutors have also experience from peacekeeping missions and military interventions in the Balkans, Africa, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. Since I have yet to complete my analysis, what I present below are only preliminary findings and reflections. Further discussions and ethnography will be shared in future articles and publications. 

The humanitarian soldier  

Writing specifically about the post-9/11 era, Kotilainen argues that “the co-optation and closer collaboration of humanitarianism and militarism have given birth to a figure who encapsulates and embodies the global politics of the politicized humanitarian system and the logics of the new wars: the humanitarian soldier” (2020: 100). As De Lauri elaborates, “the humanitarian soldier appears as a global moral agent who embodies both the ‘humanitarian spirit’ and the military ethos expressed in contemporary humanitarianism and the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan in particular” (2019a: 33). The figure frequently appears in political discourses and legitimising speeches where it “aspires to make Western warfare seem humane and conducted in accordance with the moral legitimizations for such interventions. The humanitarian soldier is therefore well suited to winning over the hearts and minds of the domestic populations of the warring states” (Kotilainen 2020: 100; see also Kotilainen 2011). 

However, the figure of the humanitarian soldier is more than a visual representation or tool to persuade civilians and non-combatants. In the context of the war in Afghanistan, scholars have shown that soldiers’ narratives and self-understandings are deeply influenced by humanitarian campaigns, justifications and imaginaries. For instance, one of the Italian soldiers De Lauri (2019b) interviewed, emphasised ISAF’s mission to “help Afghans to rebuild their country, to give hope to the Afghan population” (p. 49). Another interviewee spoke of soldiers’ “moral duty towards humanity at large” (ibid: 50). Likewise, Welland (2016) writes that, when asked about their personal motivations, British soldiers tended to “assume a more humanitarian explanation than the security of their home nation” (p. 140). In her understanding, “many soldiers appeared genuinely excited about getting involved with the local population, with doing something more than just war-fighting, and had an unselfconscious desire to ‘do good’” (ibid; see also Duncanson 2013). Put differently; they had come to embody the figure of the humanitarian soldier used to legitimise foreign interventions as a form of compassion and moral responsibility (De Lauri 2019a). 

The self-realising soldier 

Prior to starting my research, I had expected that at least some of the Norwegian soldiers I interviewed would talk about their motivations and experiences in similar ways. A major donor of aid and development assistance, Norway has a rather self-congratulatory public self-image as a “nation of peace and compassion” (fredsnasjon) or “humanitarian superpower” (humanitær stormakt) (Gullestad 2006; Tvedt 2017). In accordance with this self-definition, the country’s participation in foreign wars and military operations are typically framed as humanitarian or peacebuilding interventions (Heier et al 2017). Moreover, the Norwegian Army is known to be restrictive with the use of violence and decorate soldiers for their efforts to save civilian lives. Given the Armed Forces’ consistent efforts to make historical connections with Norway’s World War Two “resistance heroes” and positive nationalist sentiments in the population at large (Gullestad 2006), I had also expected several of my interlocutors to exhibit patriotic values and motivations. 

However, neither of the soldiers and veterans I interviewed conformed with these dominant cultural scripts. First, despite the ideological justifications for the war in Afghanistan (De Lauri 2019b) and the focus on counterinsurgency (Welland 2016), they rarely expressed strong positive or negative feelings about Afghan Others, whether enemy or civilian. In fact, nearly all interlocutors explicitly underscored that they were not in Afghanistan to help the civilian population or to serve humanity, nor did they express hatred of the enemy. Second, while generally proud and grateful to be Norwegian, the soldiers and ex-soldiers I interviewed rejected or downplayed patriotic commitments to “serve the king and fatherland” (tjene konge og fedreland). As one explained: “I have always felt proud to wear the Norwegian flag on my shoulder and serve in the Norwegian Army. But going to Afghanistan was never about that. I was about my own desires to experience war and test myself in combat.” It was an “ego-trip” or “form for self-realisation”, others admitted unapologetically.   

Notably, the soldiers emphasised that their exact motivation changed over time. Initially, many were motivated by a strong desire to experience a “real war” (see also Dyvik 2016; Pedersen 2017) or experience something “unique” and unparalleled to their friends and peers at home. They typically described themselves as “young, immature boys who had always enjoyed speed and thrill” (fart og spenning) and life outdoors in the wild. Largely without economic and familial responsibilities at home, they considered themselves free and immortal, though retrospectively, many said they were probably “a bit stupid and naïve”. However, after one or several tours in Afghanistan, most of my interlocutors said they had satisfied their lust for risky assignments and combat. At this point, they were not only “older and wiser”, but many had been promoted and were leaders for younger troops. “No longer in their carefree twenties”, the majority had further married and got young children who depended on them and worried about them when they were abroad. Both developments made them feel more responsible and less willing to take risks on behalf of themselves or others. 

At the same time, serving in international operations was still considered more than just their job and obligations as professional soldiers. Using words like “freedom”, “comradeship”, “simplicity”, “fun”, “mastery” and “bubble”, many described their tours in Afghanistan as an exciting and pleasurable break from their work and commitments at home. Moreover, nearly all the soldiers I interviewed described Afghanistan as a place to grow and develop themselves as soldiers and individuals. Most also said they had experienced such growth, typically telling me they returned from their tours in Afghanistan as better warriors, leaders, and even human beings. Together with a growing sense of duty to and comradery with their fellow soldiers and unit, this desire to grow professionally and personally was a key motivation to return to war despite being more risk-averse and having lost faith in the overall mission (Waaler et al 2019).

By way of conclusion  

Serving in war is often framed as a national duty and sacrifice, which we assume provides soldiers with a larger purpose and meaning. In the post-9/11 era, the blurring of militarism and humanitarianism has also given birth to the figure of the “humanitarian soldier”, which has influenced European soldiers’ narratives and self-understanding. 
However, as described above, my interlocutors’ decision to join –and in many cases return– to the war in Afghanistan had little to do with their moral or emotional commitments to Afghan civilians or an abstract humanity. Nor were they primarily motivated by military or national loyalty or a desire for economic security. Conversely, what emerges from my interviews is the figure of a self-realising soldier initially motivated by the promise of adventure, thrill and self-discovery (including a desire to experience combat first-hand) and later by a strong desire for personal growth and development. 

How should we interpret this figure of the self-realising soldier, and where does it come from? At first glance, it is easy to view my interlocutors’ emphasis on self-realisation as an expression of the disciplinary power of contemporary neoliberalism (Strand and Berdntsson 2015). Indeed, the figure of the self-realising soldier is closely associated with the neo-liberal ideal of the autonomous and entrepreneurial citizen always looking for a way to invest in himself (Gershon 2011; Strand 2022). However, the idea that war can be regenerative or transformative is not new (Mosse 1990; Pedersen 2017). Moreover, we should be careful not to portray soldiers as,

“somehow seduced into military and war, either by valorization of personal regeneration in the ‘Myth of War Experience’ (Mosse 1990) or by idealization of self-making in neoliberal recruitment discourses (Strand and Berndtsson 2015) – let alone by celebration of violence and warriorhood in military-industrial-media-entertainment networks (Der Derian 2009) or in political-military narratives and commemorative practices (Sørensen 2015; Sørensen and Pedersen 2012)” (Pedersen 2017: 8).

In my current work, I follow Pedersen’s (2017) example and take soldiers “seriously” as self-driven and reflective human beings with complex and shifting motivations. I also tackle what I initially believed was a big puzzle: How come Norwegian soldiers –publicly said to protect the nation, liberal democracy and humanitarian values– repeatedly and unashamedly describe their main motivation as self-realisation? Finally, I consider some of the questions my interlocutors did not ponder much about: What, if anything, are the problems with seeking self-realisation in war? Moreover, what are the moral and political implications of treating Afghanistan as an arena for adventure and growth?

References

Ben-Shalom, U., Y. Klar & I. Benbenisty. (2012) ‘Characteristics of Sense-Making during Combat’ in Handbook of military psychology. Eds. J.A Lawrence & M.D Mathews. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 218-230. 

De Lauri, A. (2019) The Taliban and the Humanitarian Soldier: Configuration of Freedom and Humanity in Afghanistan. Anuac, 8(1): 31–57.

De Lauri, A (2019b) Humanitarian Militarism and the Production of Humanity. Social Anthropology 27(1): 84-99.

Duncanson, C. (2013) Forces for Good? Military Masculinities and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Dyvik, S.L. (2016) Valhalla Rising: Gender, Embodiment and Experience in Military Memoirs. Security Dialogue 47(2): 133–150. 

Gershon, I. (2011) Neoliberal agency. Current Anthropology 52(4): 537-555.

Gullestad, M. (2006) Plausible prejudice. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Heier, T., R. Ottesen & T. Tvedt (2017). Libya: Krigens uutholdelige letthet [Libya: The unbearable lightness of the war]. Oslo: Cappelen Damm.

Kotilainen, N. (2020). ‘Humanitarian soldier’ in A. De Lauri (ed). Humanitarianism: Keywords. Leiden: Brill, pp. 99-101.

MacLeish. T. (2019) How to Feel about War: On Soldier Psyches, Military Biopolitics, and American Empire. BioSocieties14(2): 274–299. 

Mosse, G.L. (1990). Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. New York: Oxford University Press

Pedersen, T.R. (2017) Get real: Chasing Danish warrior dreams in the Afghan ‘sandbox’. Critical Military Studies3(1): 7-26.

Strand, S. and J. Berndtsson (2015). Recruiting the ‘Enterprise Soldier’: Military Recruitment discourses in Sweden and the United Kindom. Critical Military Studies 1(3): 233-48.

Sanna, S. (2022) The birth of the enterprising soldier: governing military recruitment and retention in post-Cold War Sweden. Scandinavian Journal of History 47(2): 225-247 

Tvedt, T. (2017) Det internasjonale gjennombruddet: fra “ettpartistat” til flerpartistat! [The international breakthrough: from one-party state to multi-party state!]. Oslo: Dreyer Forlag.

Waaler, G., S. Nilsson and G. Larsson. (2019) Voldsbruk og livsfare: Norske og svenske soldaters krigsefaringer fra Afghanistan [Violence and danger: Norwegian and Swedish soldiers war experiences from Afghanistan]. Oslo: Cappelen Dam 

Welland, J. (2016) ‘Gender and “population-centric” counterinsurgency in Afghanistan’ in Handbook on Gender and War.Eds. S. Sharoni, J. Welland, L. Steiner & J. Pedersen. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 127-145.

An exploration of soldier humor

This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project.

Are soldiers funny? On the face of it, military life does not appear to hold a lot of fun: soldiers relinquish civil liberties and accept the possibility of injury and death, hierarchy orders relations top-down, soldiers learn to control their body through drill exercises. 

For Michel Foucault, the military is an institution that produces disciplinary power (Foucault 1979). Disciplinary power governs through creating ‘docile bodies’ that have incorporated a certain form of conduct as normal. Modern institutions like the military achieve this by subjecting individuals to constant surveillance, isolation, punishment, exercises and a specific arrangement of time and space. Thanks to these techniques, discipline foregoes the excessive use of force or coercion because ‘docile bodies’ govern themselves. In a similar way, Erving Goffman (1961) characterizes “total institutions”. Total institutions are largely cut off from the outside world, remove the separation between work and private life and manage its members according to a fixed set of rules oriented towards an overarching institutional purpose. These conditions straitjacket individuals in a public role and prevent them from developing their own identity. In light of both theoretical conceptions, soldiers face a regime of total control. Thus stripped of agency, how could soldiers nourish a sense of humor?

But in contrast to these preconceptions, humor forms an integral part of military culture. Soldiers find reasons for amusement not despite but because of the particularities of military life. Humor is essential for upholding military practice because it makes people stay. Three sayings discussed in this blog post will demonstrate how the particularities of military life shape the humor of German soldiers.^[1]

Humor arises from social interaction (Podilchak 1991, 137). Therefore, the examples provided here are an entry point into soldier culture. I will explore the lifeworld of soldiers through situating the sayings in the social situation in which they occur and the universe of meaning in which they make sense. The examples include a ‘classic’ handed down from generation to generation and sayings that respond to specific situations in soldier life.

„Wer nichts kann, kann Anzug“ – „Who knows nothing, knows dress code“

„Wer nichts kann, kann Anzug” is a classic comment on the competence of superiors. However, when soldiers utter that a superior knows dress code, it is not meant as a compliment for fashion consciousness. Instead, the soldier says figuratively: ‘The guy has no idea what he^[2] is talking about.’ Typically, the saying occurs when soldiers grapple with a superior who belongs to another branch of service than their own. In this situation, the superior faces a dilemma. On the one hand, he has the task to supervise the subordinates and provide feedback on their performance. Thus, he is supposed to say something. On the other hand, he lacks the expertise to say something meaningful. According to one interlocutor, only few superiors solve this dilemma through honesty, proclaiming: ‘Well done, lads! Looks good! I have no clue about what you’ve done but I assume it’s correct.’ Most superiors would compensate their lack of expertise for evaluating proper handling of weapons or execution of bodily movements through focusing on something that everybody knows: Even a halfwit can assess whether soldiers observe the military dress code. Are the boots polished? Are pockets closed? Do straps hang loose? Are trousers seams turned up neatly? Are faces well-shaved? 

Although soldiers generally accept the rules that secure a uniform and well-groomed appearance, they sense when superiors misuse these rules for covering up own incompetence. Thus, by dropping ‘Wer nichts kann, kann Anzug’, soldiers express their disdain. Yet, they would not address the superior upfront but use the comment for “create[ing] a shared universe of meaning” (Ben-Ari and Sion 2005, 669) with their peers united in the experience of an incompetent, niggling superior.

With this saying, a soldier finds a humorous way to deal with the particularities of military life in lieu of anger or apathy: In the hierarchical order, soldiers are subject to the will of superiors and evaluations by superiors affect their future career. In addition, they learn to follow, not challenge given orders. Therefore, they abstain from open criticism. An interlocutor explained how humor provides room for agency in the hierarchical order:

“The human being needs an outlet to communicate his displeasure or ideas. Frank words – not allowed in the hierarchical system. Therefore, he seeks communication channels, such as irony. He says things that he dresses flowery, but where everybody comprehends what he wants to convey. But when put on trial, he could always claim: I have never said it that way. The soldier learns from the beginning how to express his position especially if he disagrees with the general mood or state of command. Thus, after thirty-five service years I am able to communicate to a general that I absolutely oppose his statements. Of course, I don’t tell that to his face. I smile at him and a classic statement I would utter is: ‘You can do it that way.’ This is the highest form of disapproval. Translated literally: ‘What you are doing is total nonsense.’ He knows exactly what I just told him, namely he is an ‘asshole’. But, of course, I could never call him ‘asshole’.”

As becomes clear, humor offers a safe mode for transmitting criticism to superiors that keeps the hierarchical order intact. The subordinate finds a way of expression that avoids the risk of sanctions. The superior saves face and could even – if warranted – take the subordinate’s suggestion into account.

“Schluss ist, wenn Schluss ist.” – “It’s not over till it’s over.”

The English translation “It’s not over till it’s over” conveys a different meaning than the use in German soldier life. The proverb points out that the final outcome cannot be assumed or determined before a given situation or activity like a football match or the vote count after an election is completely finished. Usually, the phrase is supposed to keep up hope that – in contrast to the current state – events will develop in the desired way. Instead, when my interlocutor used it for underlining that the present activity was unfinished, this was by no means a reason for hope. He replied “Schluss ist, wenn Schluss ist.” when subordinates moaned how long a strenuous exercise would take. 

With this, the instructor socializes recruits into military discipline: The civilian organization of time is replaced by the military organization of time. This means that the aspiring soldier can neither rely on a schedule that predetermines when working hours end nor a task description that allows for planning the steps until its completion. Instead, duty ends when the mission is completed, respectively when the superior says it is.^[3] For instance, a soldier remembered an instructor’s counting method: When the trainees were supposed to do 50 push-ups, he would not count ‘1-2-3-…-50’, but for example ‘1-2-2-2-3-1-…’. Thus, the instructor suspended the – civilian – common-sensical manner of counting in favor of his unpredictable counting style. Similarly, the saying conveys that superiors’ commands supersede one’s own judgement. 

Accordingly, the hierarchical order puts soldiers at the mercy of people who are higher up in the chain of command. Some superiors may enjoy exploiting their might and take sadistic pleasure from issuing arbitrary orders. However, a good superior instills in his subordinates that he can better assess a situation due to his experience. Thus, while soldiers lose familiar orientation frameworks, they learn to trust their superiors. 

In the case of my interlocutor, his subordinates appropriated the saying ‘Schluss ist, wenn Schluss ist’ that he had employed as an educational measure. It turned into a running gag that the soldiers of his platoon used among each other and towards other units as a motivation mantra for holding out. In particular, the running gag served as a source of power in arduous or thorny situations during deployment abroad. Thereby, the example illustrates again the productive effect of humor for military performance: Starting out as a disciplining method, the saying later promoted self-motivation. Furthermore, it reflected how the relationship between superior and subordinates matured.

„Nach links wird geschossen und nach rechts kannste^[4] Bonbons verteilen.“ – „Shooting to the left and handing out candies to the right.”

An interlocutor made this remark in passing to underscore that soldier life holds a mix of emotions. In one moment, soldiers feel confident about mastering their bodies or weapons and enjoy the camaraderie of their peers. All of a sudden, when they detect an improvised explosive device (IED) or – even worse – if it explodes, they can tumble from feeling over the moon to a serious mood filled with anxiety and tension. 

At first, the remark points out that the military profession generally distinguishes itself by the use of armed force. Apart from that, it captures a specific mission reality: the population-centric counterinsurgency approach that soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were supposed to adopt in Afghanistan. In conventional warfare, the military focuses on fighting the enemy – “shooting to the left”. However, counterinsurgency (COIN) strategies address tactical situations in which regular armed forces face irregular militant groups who use unconventional tactics like suicide attacks and improvised weapons (Mujahid 2016, 47–50). In addition, COIN strategy assumes that insurgents can count on the support of the civilian population. Accordingly, COIN practice in Afghanistan aimed at persuading civilians to defect from the insurgents commonly called Taliban. Therefore, foreign soldiers were instructed to promote the popularity of the international forces and loyalty towards the Afghan government. In other words, they had the task to win the hearts and minds of the people – “handing out candies to the right”.

With such remarks, soldiers prove their ability to put the complexity of a situation in a nutshell. In addition, the ironic tone with which this summary of ‘our daily life’ was delivered creates a “feeling of distance” to the experience (Beck and Spencer 2020, 70). Presumably, the emotional detachment helped soldiers deployed to Afghanistan cope with the contrasting roles they were tasked to carry out as both fighters and development aides (cf. Daxner 2018, 99). 

Conclusion

Do soldiers display a special sense of humor? Certainly, humor is equally important for organizations and group processes as in civilian domains. However, the examples presented here show that the particularities of military life shape how humor is used and what humor achieves. Among the specific conditions of military life is the hierarchical order that exposes soldiers to the will of superiors and prevents them from uttering criticism openly. Furthermore, the military structuring of time and space replaces the familiar civilian framework of orientation. Civilians become soldiers through disciplinary methods that entail interminable repetitions. At the same time, military life offers the safety of comradeship and trust in respected leaders. 

Humor provides a way to live with the conditions of military life. The humorous mode functions as a safe way for expressing criticism, an option for coping with ambivalent feelings, a didactical approach and a source for self-motivation. Although humor opens room for soldier agency, this ultimately stabilizes the military institution because it makes people stay. While possible, I suggest that it is less successful to run a military organization and discipline soldiers solely in the serious mode. Or, to put it simply: no laughter, no war.

References

Beck, Daniel, and Alexander Spencer. 2020. “Just a Bit of Fun: The Camouflaging and Defending Functions of Humour in Recruitment Videos of the British and Swedish Armed Forces.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 34 (1): 65–84.

Ben-Ari, Eyal, and Liora Sion. 2005. “‘Hungry, Weary and Horny’: Joking and Jesting Among Israel’s Combat Reserves.” Israel Affairs 11 (4): 655–71.

Daxner, Michael. 2018. “Competing with the Dead Hero: Ther German Particular Way.” In Conflict Veterans: Discourses and Living Contexts of an Emerging Social Group, edited by Michael Daxner, Marion Näser-Lather, and Silvia-Lucretia Nicola, 91–108. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, N.Y. Anchor Books.

Mujahid, Gulrukhsar. 2016. “Questioning the Counter-Insurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan.” Strategic Studies 36 (1): 46–58.

Podilchak, Walter. 1991. “Distinctions of Fun, Enjoyment and Leisure.” Leisure Studies 10 (2): 133–48.

^[1] I selected these sayings from in-depth interviews and group discussions with more than 30 current or former members of the German armed forces conducted in 2022.

^[2] I use the male pronoun throughout instead of a greater gender variety as that reflects that the military is still a male-dominated social sphere.

^[3] Military tactics differ in the degree to which they grant subordinates freedom in the execution of tasks. In mission-type tactics, the military commander defines a clear objective and orders which forces are supposed to accomplish the objective in a given time frame. Then, subordinate leaders decide themselves how to achieve the objective. In contrast to tactics focused on executing a set of orders, mission-type tactics require that subordinates understand the intent of the order and are trained to act independently. In the German armed forces, mission-type tactics are the predominant style of command.

^[4] ‘Kannste’ is a contraction of the words ‘kannst du’/‘you can’ that I kept for preserving the ironic tone of my interlocutor.