Violence By Nelida Fuccaro

Urban Violence in the Middle East In “Urban Life and Questions of Violence” Nelida Fuccaro writes “Writing about violence with an awareness of its embeddedness in a specific historical place purges it of the priomordialist and primitive aura that has surrounded it—an aura that has long tarnished our understanding of the Middle East” . Fuccaro argues that violence is not innate to a region. This assumption has tainted people’s perception of the modern Middle East. Through the book Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East, Fuccaro attempts to bring awareness to the different struggles of each city and the different factors that make violence emerge. In this essay, my objective is to examine the violence in the cities of Jeddah, Basra, and Cairo and relate their importance to the overall theme of the book.
The mizmar was a traditional celebration dance in Jeddah . The regular meeting places of citizens, city squares, were the spaces young mean performed …show more content…
The Ba`th party displayed detachment and apathy for Basra’s citizens as it pursued regime control over the city. The government displaced more than twelve thousand people to the southern borders of Iraq in order to create a defense against the Iranians. The government’s reasoning for this displacement centered around the protection of oil and electricity generators. Once the government displaced these citizens, they devastated the marshes and groves surrounding the towns. The government not only destroyed the environment, they also crumbled the local administrations in those areas. The Ba`th party believed security measures like the search for deserters, the control of illegitimate trade, and suppression of the population, were most important. The Ba’th never made decisions based on the good of the people. Basra became a battlefront with heavy military mobilization due to the regime’s continuous fear of losing