Paper Short Abstract:

War and cancer are intertwined across the Middle East, with international military interventions generating toxic landscapes as well as cross-border pathways of medical care. How are these overlapping geographies of cancer negotiated in the experience of illness?

Paper Abstract:

War has transformed geographies of cancer across the Middle East. International military interventions, counter-terrorism campaigns and state violence have unleashed carcinogenic toxins while also destroying oncology infrastructure. Cancer patients and families have responded to these changing environmental and therapeutic conditions in part through strategies of mobility, journeying within and across international borders in pursuit of cancer care. These non-linear trajectories have transformed cities with high-tech oncology infrastructure (e.g., Beirut, Amman, Ankara) into hubs for war-affected cancer patients arriving from across the region. Toxic landscapes and cross-border therapeutic pathways endure long after formal hostilities cease, calling into question ‘health systems’ approaches to cancer control planning that fail to take seriously war-related environmental conditions and the rise of cross-border trajectories of care. While the emergence of these cancer geographies has been established in previous studies, little is understood about the lived experiences of cancer patients and families. The aim of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the experiences and mobilities of cancer patients navigating the toxic landscapes and changing therapeutic geographies of cancer care in the Middle East region. The paper focuses on the case of Iraq drawing from ethnographic fieldwork as well as hospital-based interviews with Iraqi cancer patients between 2014 and 2022.