Deferral and dispersal: The military violence of post-war clean-up

People engaged in post-war clean-up activities endure a protracted encounter with war: air, soils, and water are toxified, and human health is depleted by effects such as congenital anomalies and chronic disease. In this article, we ask three questions: How are we to conceptualize “clean-up” in the context of war’s toxicity? How does war appear from the perspective of clean-up? And thus, how are we led to more critical understandings of war’s violence in a “post-war” period? We address these questions via examples from fieldwork on post-war clean-up in Iraq, arguing that clean-up does not reduce harm but instead defers and disperses military violence. We further argue that this prompts critical intervention around three key themes: the bodies of war, the materials of war, and the time-spaces of war. In conclusion, we emphasize the urgency of understanding clean-up as a harmful and constitutive aspect of war.