Special Feature "The Military Present" - Episode 4 (Feat. Omar Dewachi)

Anthropological Airwaves

In the fourth and final episode of the series, "The Military Present," anthropologist and physician Omar Dewachi (American University of Beirut) discusses war as a form of governance, drawing on years of ethnographic research on the breakdown of health care in Iraq as well as the travelling wounds of injured Iraqi patients forced to seek medical treatment in other Middle Eastern countries. Dewachi traces the historical formation and effects of global discourses casting Iraq as ungovernable and connects the construction of Iraq as ungovernable to the emergence of the multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Dewachi offers fascinating insights into how war is fueling antimicrobial resistance and generative suggestions about the kinds of ethnographic objects that can help anthropologists talk about war without reproducing the distinction between the direct and indirect effects of war. Hosted by Vasiliki Touhouliotis and Emily Sogn, this four-part series on the “military present” features interviews with scholars of war and militarism that explore how our present is shaped by the technologies, logics, histories, and economy of war. Full episode transcript.

Image Caption: Berm remains at Fao, Iraq, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Iran Iraq-war (1980-1988). Photograph taken by Omar Dewachi (2015).

Featured Audio:

P.J. Harvey - "The Glorious Land"