"Concrete Soldiers": T-walls and Coercive Landscaping in Iraq. (May 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rubaii, Kali
• Is Part Of: International journal of Middle East studies. Volume 54:Number 2(2022)
• Page Start: 357
• Page End: 362
• Publication Date: 2022-05
• Subjects: Middle East -- Periodicals; 915.603305
• DOI: 10.1017/S0020743822000435
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0020-7438

Abstract

Abstract : Standing inside a t-wall factory in Erbil in the summer of 2021, I was struck by the fact that, nearly twenty years after the US invasion of Iraq, these military walls were still in production. T-walls are six-ton steel-reinforced, blast-proof concrete wall segments named for their upside-down t-shape (Fig. 1). They were introduced to Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s. Derivative of the Berlin wall's design, they are recognizable to those who have witnessed the Israeli separation wall, which is composed of thousands of t-walls lined up.