Contribution short abstract:

My ethnographies in the Middle East warscapes are stories other-than-humans entangled in wars to spotlight the larger question of who and what is human. Other-than-humans are trigger moments for combatants who make sense of life in the heat of combat when they see animals killed or used for warfare.

Contribution long abstract:

Middle East warscapes are full of surprises such as other-than-humans like dogs, felines, birds, mosquitos, lost domesticated animals, flowers, and weeds. The other-than-humans can be a nuisance, induce fleeting moments of laughter, endanger combatants, or even be used against each other or the enemy for a successful mission. Based on my ethnographies in the Middle East warscapes (Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon), I explain how other-than-humans are entangled in wars and spotlight the larger question of who and what is human. I discuss other-than-humans as the nodal point and trigger moments for combatants who make sense of life in the heat of combat when they see animals killed or used for warfare and ask themselves whose life must be disposed of to save others. This question does not emerge as much when combatants see the fall of their peers or comrades but encounters with dead, dying, suffering, or killed other-than-human evoke an affective communion with life in combatants, and they question whose life is disposable. Through the encounters with other-than-humans and what they do for and to combatants, I argue wars are not mere theatres of conflicts but wars are affective textures of humanity exposing inhumanities and the irreparability of life because wars are the bottom line and the hard truth of whose life is disposable and living with the fact that Middle East warscapes are scenes of expelling Muslims from the category of human.