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<font size=3>The Militarization of the World's Urban Peripheries <br>
Written by Raúl Zibechi <br>
Wednesday, 13 February 2008 <br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=3>Source:
<a href="http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4954">Americas
Program</a><br>
<a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1127/1/" eudora="autourl">
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1127/1/<br><br>
</a>Urban peripheries in Third World countries have become war zones
where states attempt to maintain order based on the establishment of a
sort of "sanitary cordon" to keep the poor isolated from
"normal" society. <br><br>
"Army sources confirmed that techniques employed in the occupation
of the Morro da Providéncia <i>favela</i> [slum] are the ones Brazilian
soldiers use in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in
Haiti."<a name="_ednref1"></a>1<br><br>
This admission by Brazilian armed forces largely explains the interest of
Lula da Silva's government in keeping that country's troops on the
Caribbean island: to test, in the poor neighborhoods of Haiti's capital,
Port-au-Prince, containment strategies designed for application in the
slums of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and other large cities. <br><br>
But the news published by the daily <i>Estadão de São Paulo</i> goes
farther in revealing the military's <i>modus operandi</i>. The commander
of the 9th Motorized Infantry Brigade in Haiti, William Soares, directed
the occupation of Morro da Providéncia by 200 soldiers, who installed
machineguns on "the community's only plaza, transformed into a
military base," which were later withdrawn in order to facilitate a
dialogue with the population. In the meeting with the Residents
Association [Asociación de Pobladores], General Soares "promised
projects, a Christmas party with gifts for the children, a vacation camp,
film screenings, medical, and sanitation assistance." <br><br>
According to the newspaper, "in exchange, the Army is gathering
information on the slum and its inhabitants. Soldiers filmed and
photographed the meeting and the entire troop deployment." General
Soares made all those promises in order to "diffuse the revolt by
community leaders against the social project programmed for the
slum." <br><br>
</font><h3><b>Urban Poor as a Threat
</b></h3><font face="georgia" size=3>Urban theorist Mike Davis analyzes
urban peripheral areas in terms of a commitment to social change. A
single sentence synthesizes his analysis: "It's the slum peripheries
of poor Third World cities that have become a decisive geopolitical
space."<a name="_ednref2"></a>2 He asserts that Pentagon strategists
are lending great importance to urban planning theory and architecture,
since the peripheries are "one of the most challenging terrains for
future wars and other imperialist projects." <br><br>
In fact, a study by the United Nations estimates that one billion people
live in peripheral neighborhoods outside Third World cities and that the
poor in the largest cities in the world number some two billion, that is,
a third of all human beings. These statistics will double within the next
15 or 20 years, and "all future growth of the world's population
will occur in cities, 95% of it in cities of the Global South and the
majority in slums."<a name="_ednref3"></a>3<br><br>
The situation is much more serious than the numbers indicate:
urbanization, as Davis explains, has become disconnected and autonomous
from industrialization as well as from economic development, which
implies the "structural and permanent disconnection of so many city
dwellers from the formal world economy." On the other hand, he notes
that, "over the last decade ... the poorand not just the poor in
classical urban neighborhoods [with high levels of organization]but ...
this new poor, on the fringes of the city, have begun organizing
themselves massively ... whether that's Sadr, in Iraq, or an equivalent
slum-based social movement in Buenos
Aires."<a name="_ednref4"></a>4<br><br>
In Latin America the main challenges to elite domination have arisen in
the heart of poor urban areasfrom the 1989 "Caracazo" riots to
the Oaxaca Commune in 2006. Proof of this are the popular uprisings in
Asunción in March 1999, Quito in February 1997 and January 2000, Lima and
Cochabamba in April 2000, Buenos Aires in February 2003, and El Alto in
October 2003, just to name the most relevant cases. <br><br>
Even more, urban peripheries are spaces from which subaltern groups have
launched the most formidable challenges to the system, becoming a sort of
popular counter-powers. Davis is right: control of the urban poor is the
most important objective planned by governments, global financial
organisms, and the armed forces of the most important countries.
<br><br>
Many large Latin American cities seem to border at times on social
explosion, and several have erupted over the past two decades for various
reasons. Fear among the powerful appears to point in two directions:
postpone or make unviable the explosion or insurrection, and, also, avoid
the consolidation of those "black holes" outside state control,
where the main challenges to the elites occur. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>New Military Strategies
</b></h3><font face="georgia" size=3>In recent years, publications on
military thought as well as analyses by financial organisms have
dedicated ample space to challenges presented by gangs and to debates on
new problems arising from urban war. The concepts of "asymmetrical
war" and "fourth generation war" are responses to problems
identical to those created by Third World urban peripheries: the birth of
a new type of warfare against non-state enemies, in which military
superiority does not play a decisive role. <br><br>
William S. Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism of the
Free Congress Foundation, asserts that the state has lost its monopoly on
war and elites feel that "dangers" are multiplying.
"Almost everywhere, the state is
losing."<a name="_ednref5"></a>5 Despite supporting pull-out from
Iraq as soon as possible, Lind defends "total war," which
engages enemies on all fronts: economic, cultural, social, political,
communications, and also military. <br><br>
A good example of this full-spectrum war is his belief that the dangers
for United States hegemony lie in all aspects of daily life, or, if you
prefer, in life itself. For example, he believes that "in Fourth
Generation War, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as
invasion by a state army." New problems rooted in the
"universal crisis of the legitimacy of the state" have
"non-state enemies" at the center. This leads him to conclude
with a double warning to military leaders: no state military has
succeeded against a non-state enemy. <br><br>
This problem is at the heart of new military modalities of thinking,
which must be completely reformulated to face challenges that used to
correspond to "civilian" areas of the state apparatus.
Militarization of society in order to regain control of urban peripheries
is not enough, as revealed in recent military experience in the Third
World. <br><br>
Military commanders deployed in Iraq seem to be clearly aware of the
problems they must face. Cavalry Division Commander General Peter W.
Chiarelli, based on his recent experience on the outskirts of Baghdad in
Sadr City, maintains that security is the long-term objective, but it
will not be achieved through military action alone. "Executing
traditionally focused combat operations ... works, but only for the short
term. In the long term, doing so hinders true progress and, in reality,
promotes the growth of insurgent forces working against campaign
objectives."<a name="_ednref6"></a>6<br><br>
This implies that the two traditional armed forces lines of
operationcombat and the training of local security forcesare
insufficient. Therefore, three "nontraditional" lines of
operation should be undertaken; ones that previously corresponded to the
government and civil society: essential services provided to the
population, building a legitimate government, and empowering
"economic pluralism," that is, a market economy. <br><br>
With infrastructure repair projects they attempt to improve the situation
of the poorest sector of the population and, at the same time, create
employment opportunities to send visible signs of progress. In the second
place, creating a "democratic" regime is considered an
essential point for legitimizing the whole process. For United States
commanders in Iraq, the "point of penetration" of their troops
occurred with the Jan. 30, 2005 elections. In strategic thought democracy
was reduced to producing a vote. <br><br>
Finally, the recruitment ability of the insurgents can be reduced through
the expansion of market logic, "by 'gentrifying' city centers and
creating business parks," that become a dynamic sector stimulating
the rest of society.<a name="_ednref7"></a>7 From then on, the poor
population in urban peripheries becomes, in military jargon, "the
strategic and operational center of gravity." <br><br>
This combination of mechanisms is what the major global powers' armed
forces today consider the means to achieve "true long-term
security." In this way, "democracy," expansion of
services, and a market economy will cease being citizens' rights or
morally desirable objectives and become gears in a strategy of military
control over a population or a region of the world and, of course, its
resources. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>Security and Cooperation: Two Faces of a Strategy
</b></h3><font face="georgia" size=3>Since the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
"has played an increasingly prominent role in the War on
Terrorism."<a name="_ednref8"></a>8 U.S. development programs are
not directed toward the population that most needs them, but rather to
the most "at-risk populations and regions," according to
Pentagon strategy. <br><br>
For military strategists like U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) Thomas Baltazar,
USAID programs "can play a crucial role in denying terrorists
sanctuary and financing by diminishing the underlying conditions that
cause local populations to become vulnerable to terrorist recruitment.
Moreover, USAID programs directed at strengthening effective and
legitimate governance are recognized as key tools with which to address
counterinsurgency." <br><br>
The Pentagon's strategy is to assure security for the United States, and
to this end, it uses "democracy" and "development
assistance" as complements to military operations. The U.S. National
Security Strategy maintains that "development reinforces diplomacy
and defense, reducing long-term threats to our national security by
helping to build stable, prosperous, and peaceful
societies."<a name="_ednref9"></a>9<br><br>
It seems necessary to emphasize that international cooperation,
development aid, and the war against povertysome of the favorite slogans
of the World Bank and other financial agenciesare merely strategies to
control and subordinate the population that is "potentially"
rebellious or resistant to the objectives of U.S. multinationals. The
Pentagon's analysis of African reality, according to Colonel Baltazar,
identified "the causes of extremism," highlighting among others
the existence of "large marginalized and/or disenfranchised
populations, and exclusion from political processes, as key causes of
instability in the region." <br><br>
Electoral democracy and development are necessary to prevent terrorism,
but they are not objectives in and of themselves. In countries with weak
states and high concentrations of urban poor, the armed forces move to
take the place of the sovereign government, reconstruct the state, and in
a totally vertical and authoritarian manner, initiate mechanisms to
assure the continuation of domination. <br><br>
In Iraq, these policies have their obverse and complement in the building
of large walls to separate neighborhoods in Baghdad. According to writer
and Arab expert Santiago Alba Rico, the construction of walls in 10
neighborhoods in the Iraq capital is intended to turn each into "an
armored closet whose inhabitants are filed away or abandoned in locked
drawers and sealed enclosures."<a name="_ednref10"></a>10<br><br>
The logic is simple: "Neighborhoods that have not been crushed
militarily are walled, enclosed, and abandoned to their luck. Complete
areas of the city have been demarcated and segregated with inhabitants
confined inside, subjected to entry and exit controls so ironclad that we
can speak without hesitation of a ghetto policy." <br><br>
Other parts of the world are not lacking in cement walls to isolate and
separate peripheral neighborhoods. Symbolic walls are fabricated
according to differences in color, dress, and ways of occupying space.
But the results and objectives are identical. Control mechanismswhether
dressed in military garb, or as NGOs for development, or promoting market
economy and electoral democracyare interlaced and, in extreme cases like
the suburbs of Baghdad, the slums of Rio de Janeiro, or the shanty towns
of Port-au-Prince, they are subordinated to military planning. <br><br>
In Brazil, to give just one example, different forms of control are
simultaneously applied: the "Zero Hunger" government plan is
compatible with the militarization of the slums. <br><br>
In his reflection on Nazism in "On the Concept of History,"
German writer Walter Benjamin declared that "the tradition of the
oppressed teaches us that the state of exception in which we live is the
rule." United States policy since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
fits the concept of a "state of permanent exception." The
"state of exception," which suspends civil rights and
militarizes areas and complete nations, is applied in an indiscriminate
way to different situations and for different reasons, from internal
political problems to external threats, from an economic emergency to a
natural disaster. <br><br>
In effect, the state of exception was applied in situations such as the
Argentine economic-financial crisis that burst into a broad social
movement in December 2001, the response to Hurricane Katrina in New
Orleans, and the containment of the rebellion by poor immigrants in the
peripheries of French cities in 2005. The common thread, beyond
circumstances and countries, is that in every case it is applied in order
to contain the urban poor. <br><br>
</font><h3><b>End Notes</b></h3>
<ol>
<li><font face="georgia" size=3><a name="_edn1"></a>Dantas, in
<i>Estadão</i><a name="_edn1"></a> (São Paulo).
<li><a name="_edn2"></a>Davis, interview.
<li><a name="_edn3"></a>Davis, "Mike Davis on a Planet of
Slums."
<li><a name="_edn4"></a>Davis, interview.
<li><a name="_edn5"></a>Lind, 13.
<li><a name="_edn6"></a>Chiarelli and Michaelis, 15.
<li><a name="_edn7"></a>Chiarelli and Michaelis, 13.
<li><a name="_edn8"></a>Baltazar and Kvitashvili, 38.
<li><a name="_edn9"></a>Cited in Baltazar and Kvitashvili, 38.
<li><a name="_edn10"></a>Alba Rico. </font>
</ol><br>
<font face="georgia" size=3> <br><br>
<i>Translated for the Americas Program by Maria Roof.<br><br>
Raúl Zibechi is an international analyst for </i>Brecha<i>, a weekly
journal in Montevideo, Uruguay, professor and researcher on social
movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser
to social groups. He is a monthly contributor to the Americas Policy
Program
(<a href="http://www.americaspolicy.org/">www.americaspolicy.org</a>).<br>
<br>
</i> <br><br>
</font><h3><b>For More Information
</b></h3><font face="georgia" size=3>Santiago Alba Rico, "Emparedar
a la resistencia," <i>Diagonal</i>, Madrid, 16 May 2007,
<a href="http://www.diagonalperiodico.net/article3854.html">
www.diagonalperiodico.net/article3854.html</a>. <br><br>
Thomas Baltazar (Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired) and Elisabeth Kvitashvili,
"The Role of USAID and Development Assistance in Combating
Terrorism," <i>Military Review</i>, Mar.-Apr. 2007, pp. 38-40.
<br><br>
Peter W. Chiarelli (Major General, U.S. Army) and Patrick R. Michaelis
(Major, U.S. Army), "Winning the Peace: The Requirement for
Full-Spectrum Operations," <i>Military Review</i>, July-Aug. 2005,
pp. 4-17. <br><br>
Pedro Dantas, "Exército admite uso de tática do Haiti em favela do
Rio," <i>Estadão de Hoje</i> (São Paulo), 15 Dec. 2007,
<a href="http://www.estado.com.br/">www.estado.com.br</a>. <br><br>
Mike Davis, interview with Geoff Manaugh, posted May 22, 2006,
<a href="http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-mike-davis-part-1.html">
bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-mike-davis-part-1.html</a>.
"Los suburbios de las ciudades del tercer mundo son el nuevo
escenario geopolítico decisivo," posted 2 Mar. 2007,
<a href="http://www.rebelion.org/">www.rebelion.org</a>. <br><br>
Mike Davis, "Mike Davis on a Planet of Slums," interview posted
24 June 2006,
<a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9073">
www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9073</a>. "La
pobreza urbana y la lucha contra el capitalismo," trans. Camila
Vollenweider, posted 25 June 2006,
<a href="http://www.sinpermiso.info/">www.sinpermiso.info</a>. <br><br>
William S. Lind, "Understanding Fourth Generation War,"
<i>Military Review</i>, Sept.-Oct. 2004, pp.
12-16.</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2> <br><br>
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