Reconstructing Life: Environment, Expertise, and Political Power in Iraq's Marshes 2003-2007.

Abstract

The restoration of the southern marshes became one of the most celebrated projects of the post-2003 Iraq reconstruction era. This dissertation examines how during this period environmentalism, as an altruistic movement, enabled foreign investors to both rationalize and mystify political power. Well before the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, Iraqi exiles met with the U.S. Department of State under the rubric of the Future of Iraq Project to plan an Iraq in Saddam’s aftermath. The country they envisioned aligned directly with the principles and values of a liberal polity: a certain degree of governmental transparency, shared decision-making by way of voting and community participation, individual rights, and the integration of Iraqi businesses and industries into the global market. This dissertation makes two central arguments: first, although the marsh project concerned the environment, the most powerful effects of this project lay not in environmental rehabilitation, but in the support for a new economy. Second, “post-conflict” Iraq established distance as a technology for foreign investment in Iraq. Internationals worked from afar to preserve their own safety, but hired Iraqi project staff to carry out their mandates on the ground. Technologies, like GIS and remote sensing, customized for this distanced approach gave rise to virtual spaces of the marsh which coalesced internationally. As marsh advocates brought a digitally rendered environment into focus to reflect a future they wished to see, they obfuscated human experience of the war and the violence of the present. In this way Iraq circa 2003 came to be defined by a future-oriented politics of life that, in the case of marsh restoration, privileged the ecological over the human.

Chapter One, “Recuperation,” analyzes the relationship of Iraqi exiles and the marsh. Chapter Two, “Conference,” argues that conferences were critical resources for distanced reconstruction. Chapter Three, “A Holographic Image,” demonstrates how the marshes were abstracted via remote sensing technologies. Chapter Four, “Wartime Birding,” evaluates Green Iraq birding expeditions. The final chapter, “The National Park,” examines wartime conservation. Each chapter contributes to the overall argument that the Iraqi marsh project instituted an economy of life.