The Second Wave. Camp Followers and Tourists in Iraq

May 29th, 2008 Posted in Second Wave, Iraq

The successful American military blitzkrieg invasion of Iraq was accompanied and followed by a second wave. Some journalists and photographers were accredited and contained within select military units. But an unanticipated and unregulated group of free lance journalists also entered the country without permission. And an unnumbered group of businessmen, adventurers, tourists, missionaries and ideologues flooded in as well. They came in mainly over the just opened borders with Syrian and Jordan using newly formed Iraqi taxi services.

Altogether we can think of them as similar to the traditional camp followers found around military camps and posts. The pattern: the military action establishes a social space that is filled by a different order of invaders whose existence is totally dependent on the military.

This second wave in Iraq was involved in four functions: (1) Information and propaganda (journalists and photographers), (2) Commerce and construction (salesmen, traders, business representatives), (3) Education and belief. (ideologues, missionaries, teachers), (4) Tourists. (adventurers, excitement-seekers. Those seeking a second chance.). From the other side another stream of visitors were the Jihadists and Suicide-nicks seeking to confront the Great Satan. These fed into the terrorist groups that emerged later.

The Iraqi people came out to greet this second wave. They sought jobs and contacts, were curious about the new ways, and invited these strangers into their homes and lives. On the fringe were the loud voiced nay sayers, they came up on every American TV screen as part of the street crowd. We thought of it as free speech but it was the start of systematic intimidation that later became terror explosions in markets and stores and restaurants and against American troops in transit or on patrol.

In commerce the local stores were full of merchandise from around the work. The street markets were busy. Auto traffic and extensive travel based on cheap petrol and a developed road system was very active. Students were back at school at all levels.

This second wave was extended and enhanced by the extreme capitalist ideology of the American political regime. Military supply and food service and engineering services and even guard functions were contracted out to connected corporations and companies who sent in a whole layer of civilian mercenaries. Repairs that should have been temporary until a viable peace was in place were contracted out and at great cost either never completed or proved shoddy. Accountants now complain that they can’t trace the money spent.

This second wave process was stopped by a sustained Iraqi counter-offensive that went on for several years. It was a three sided conflict. Sunni and Shia activists each attacking the ordinary civilian population of the other and each separately attacking the occupying American Army. Americans struck back episodically at the militants in both groups.

Within the past year what we might call the Sunni and Shia centers each turned on its own crazies and supported by the new American resolve to deny these same crazies any secure base seem to be approaching a resolution of the conflict.

^^^^^

The sociological interest in any form and process is in the possibility of finding a discovered form in one setting repeated in another. I hope that some of you will join me in thinking this through by considering other historical cases.

I would suggest a similar pattern in

(1) The American Civil War. The invasion and occupation of the U.S. South involved different orders of second wave.

(2) Gold Rushes. For an American audience the California and the Alaska Rushes are most familiar. The prospector/miner mass occupation of the presumed gold fields disrupt the local social patterns and set the space for the second wave.

(3) Natural and man-made catastrophes. The rescue and intervention groups following could be thought of as the second wave.

There was a third wave in Iraq which I have been thinking of as the rump. I’ll share a few notes on it in my next post.