The Militarization of Peace: Absence of Terror or Terror ... · PDF file53 COLLAPSE I The...

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The Militarization of Peace:Absence of Terror or Terror of Absence?

Reza Negarestani

INTRODUCTION

This essay explores the rise of a new wave of terrorism whichexploits its own dissolution, making a weapon of the doctrine ofTaqiyya or strategic (dis)simulation, dismantling the theatricalaspect of the battlefield and selecting civilians as primary targetsand ‘molecular battlefields’. This tendency threatens not only global civilian survival but the very horizon of survival or living (inits most basic, abstract sense) in general. It makes survival itself afield of exploitation for extremist terrorism.

When militarization ceases to be an exclusivelywartime process and to belong only on the battlefield,then even peace—the temporary gap, the blank space ofunfriction between war machines and collective survival—can be militarized. This does not mean taking

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robin

Typewritten Text

COLLAPSE I, ed. R. Mackay (Oxford: Urbanomic, September 2007) ISBN 978-0-9553087-0-4 http://www.urbanomic.com

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advantage of peace as a temporary suspension which canbe exploited, or as a depository in preparation for themilitarization processes of future wars (who gathers themost forces when everyone else is resting?) Rather, andfar more significantly, it means the endo-militarization ofpeace itself, wherein peace is directly used as a weapon,exploited as a new plane for invasion and insurgency, andfor offensive strikes against enemy bases and/or theirsupportive lattices.

New modes of disseminating terror threaten the basicnotions of survival in general, creating a generalized stateof terror where death hangs over, regulates, everymoment that is lived. Such necrocracy is the goal of hereti-cal Islamic agencies of Terror such as Jama’at-e Takfir1 andits Takfiri agents – a militant Jihadi movement believing inthe absolute excommunication of infidels (Takfir original-ly means excommunication). These agencies haveinspired a new wave of militant religious extremists andother obscure terrorist groups who are exploiting theendo-militarization of peace as a new mode of warfare.This new mode of warfare is one whose tactical lines arenot aligned with (or configured by) the plane of conflictand visible military friction (battlefields, terrains forguerilla warfare, street-wars, etc.); Its tactical lines do not1. Jama’at-e Takfir (The Society of Excommunication) influenced by Qutb’s MuslimBrotherhood emerged in Egypt as a fundamentalist group in the 1960s withIslamic fundamentalist and militant inclinations (the former being similar toextremist Salafism) enmeshed through decentralized and stealth operation net-works. The group advocates any military course of action (whether armed battlesor not) against Jews, Christians, apostate or moderate Muslims, in order to restore(or return to) the primal unity of the Islamic world order.


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have the localizability which is a prerequisite for directconflict and military formation; They are not positionedto cut, block or replace each other depending upon theirdifferent tendencies, transorientations and alignments;Their operations have a wholly oblique relation to thedynamic incompatibility which provides the basis for, andthe matrix of, militarized conflictual engagement.

A Takfiri engages as a shadow terrorist in White War –the endo-militarization of peace, a state of hypercamou-flage (best defined as complete and consequentlysymmetrical overlap between two entities on amereotopological2 plane). In this war, the cover ofcamouflage can never be penetrated or disrupted, and thedefensive employment of camouflage (best mapped aspartial overlap between two or more entities on a logicalplane) is replaced by a wholly novel, highly offensivedeployment, the space of hypercamouflage. The Takfiri’sfavoured mode of warfare is to program a new type oftactical line which totally blends with the enemy’s lines insuch a configuration that it introduces radical instabilityand eventually violent fissions into the system fromwithin. This happens in such a way that not only doesrecovery become impossible, but in addition any correc-tive or restorative initiative is ineluctably turned into amilitary subversion: like a chemotherapy gone awry oran excessive scarring in which healing and the process of

2. Mereotopology is a theory of topological relationships between parts andboundaries. See Barry Smith, “Mereotopology: a theory of parts and boundaries”,in Data & Knowledge Engineering, Volume 20, Issue 3 (November 1996), ElsevierScience Publishers, pp. 287 - 303.


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epithalization, in the absence of a wound, corrode theorgan in the form of fibroproliferation (a scarring processwhich transforms the local injury of the wound into apervasive metastatic scarring), resulting in eventual lysisand decomposition. In attempting defence, the enemycan only necrotize and dissolve itself.

DEEP TERROR: THE DECLINE OF THE ENEMY AND THE

RISE OF OBSCURE ALLIES.Abdu-Salam Faraj’s manifesto Jihad: The Absent

Obligation – in which malevolent political pragmatics andtactical perversion are planted carefully in a context ofevangelistic justification and theo-tyrannical apologetics –is a case study of this mode of warfare: White War orthe militarization of peace, comprising aggressive hyper-camouflage as its primary engine.

Hypercamouflage aims to pursue to even the mostattenuated extreme, a fighting and a surviving alongsidethe enemy. It invariably indicates a total withdrawalfrom the perception of friends and a dissolution into theenemy: the rebirth of a new foe.

In his book, Takfiri cultist and terrorist Faraj crafts afetishized form of Jihad, suggesting that the incineratinghead of Jihad must be introduced to everyone, to anyentity, regardless of their position, geographic location,ethnicity, regardless of the relevance or otherwise of thatentity to Jihad, Islam or infidelity – Jihad as a universalsweeping movement. The original title of the book,


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which in translation has become simplified into Jihad:The Absent Obligation, is Jahad: Fariezato Ghaebata (or Jihad:Fariezeh Ghaeb). Fariezeh means holy duty, but not a subjec-tively authoritarian duty as is demanded by Huda (Allah’sguidance), the ‘utter submission’ (Islam) to Allah. Ghaebmeans absent, but in Islamic texts and especially Shiabooks, it encompasses a huge hermeneutic potentialitywhich ‘absence’ cannot hope to translate; in fact, ratherthan mere absence Ghaeb indicates latent potentiality, inthe sense, for instance, of the latent period of inactivity ofa virus. This latency is to be distinguished from theactualized and visible, which is liable to distortion andchange: Imam Mahdi (the 12th Imam and the harbingerof Qiyamah, the Islamic Apocalypse) is absent (Ghaeb) butaffects Islam and its followers more than anythingactually present; Mahdi represents a potentiality that neverceases to affect. In Faraj’s book, however, this definition,which is a fundamental theological and eschatologicalplatform for his argument, becomes eclipsed by amessage at once more accessible and more divergentfrom this original meaning: Jihad becomes a holy respon-sibility which is not present.

Faraj’s book adds a new twist to the tactics of hereti-cal religious extremists such as the cult of Takfiri: thedistortion and alteration of ‘Taqiyya’ (Taghieh) from its orig-inal defensive and devout function in the dawn of Islam.Rather than a strategic (dis)simulation – a justifiedconcealment of true beliefs in situations where harm ordeath will definitely be encountered if the true beliefs are

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declared3 (the wider meaning of Taqiyya being “to avoidor shun any kind of danger.”) it is reinterpreted as a silentand fluid military infiltration, a course of action whichforms one of the elemental components of fetishizedJihadism.

Faraj’s take on Taqiyya departs entirely from what inthe dawn of Islam originated as a defensive or protectiveinclination, an evasive tactic. In The Absent Obligation,Taqiyya is reconstituted as a type of strategic simulation ordissimulation, in the name of a hostile politics of offence.However, both in its traditional form and in this newweaponized form, Taqiyya is strongly bound to the notionof survival. In the traditional sense this is so simplybecause by taking Taqiyya the believer survives in difficultcircumstances. But in militarized Taqiyya, survival istransformed into a sort of highly-charged parasiticalendurance which inherently threatens the catalysis of allthose whose survival is afforded more easily. Survivalbecomes as risky as a contagious terminal illness. Farajinsists that Jihad cannot be separated from Taqiyya.Whereas crusades transgress boundaries in order toretake the holy lands, in Islamic tradition Jihad intrinsi-cally cannot be transgressive; it must merely defend theholy lands, and Islamic properties (which are notnecessarily associated with geopolitical agencies). But as

3. “The believers never ally themselves with the disbelievers, instead of the believ-ers. Whoever does this is exiled from GOD. Exempted are those who are forcedto do this to avoid persecution. GOD alerts you that you shall revere Him alone.To GOD is the ultimate destiny.” (The Quran 3:28)


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revivalist figures like Sayyid Qutb4 and Shukri AhmadMustafa have twisted the entire panorama of Islamicthought, heretical Islam’s defence of its ‘properties’ hasbecome a universal ‘defence’ encompassing massive wavesof acentric assault and a military subversion pervaded bya complex tendency towards the exclusion of all beingsexcept for the monopolistic wasteland of the Divine (theDesert). “The earth itself moves towards Allah bysubmitting itself to the ‘exterior’ Will of Allah; or in otherwords, is not Earth a part and property of Islam (uttersubmission to Allah) which must be defended?”: Qutbturns the issue inside out, all of theological thoughtbecoming ravaged by monopolistic dictatorship andmonomania. The Earth itself becomes a part of thedefensive politics of Jihad5. Ahmad Mustafa, one of thetheorists of the original Takfiri cult, also suggests that “Weare returning to Islam”, and that this Grand Return

4. Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), one of the central theorists of Islamic Revivalism andan inspiration for later extremists such as Faraj; his Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq (Milestones)is perhaps the first theoretical work of modern extremist Islamism, integratingpragmatic exhortations with self-centered politico-religious doctrines. On Qutb,see Paul Berman’s analysis of terrorism inspired by the caliph’s militarism andheretical Islamic revivalism: Berman, P. (2004) Terror and Liberalism, W. W. Norton& Company.

5. “The Islamic civilization can take various forms in its material and organization-al structure, but the principles and values on which it is based are eternal andunchangeable. These are: the worship of God alone, the foundation of humanrelationships on the belief in the Unity of God, the supremacy of the humanity ofman over material things, the development of human values and the control ofanimalistic desires, respect for the family, the assumption of the vice-regency of God onearth according to His guidance and instruction, and in all affairs of this vice-regency, the ruleof God's law (Shari'a) and the way of life prescribed by Him ...” (Sayyid Qutb, Milestones);see Qutb (1991) Milestones, American Trust Publications, p. 286.


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involves surrendering to the Desert of the Divine: this isnot a reactionary response to the infidels, he insists, butmerely the path to Islam, which is condemned and metwith overreaction by the rest of the world – a worldwhose entire horizon, moreover, is in fact already a partof Islam. Mustafa’s discussion takes a twisted monothe-ism and heretically embeds it within the foundations ofIslam – creating a retrograde movement back to a self-deluding, romantically-imagined phantasy of the originalIslam. To this notion of Jihad which seeks to retake theEarth as a part of Islam (Earth as a part of the universe ison the route of utter submission – Islam – to Allah) Farajcunningly adds the politics of Taqiyya. As Faraj himselfconfesses, this (re)taking of the Earth is not an easy task;hence the necessity of being armed with Taqiyya and itspotential for insinuation and diffusion within the systemsand peoples of non-Islamic countries.

According to Faraj the new doctrines of weaponizedTaqiyya can be enumerated as follows:

(1) TAQIYYA AS THE DISSOLUTION OF YOURSELF AND

THE OTHER: Taqiyya becomes a politics aimed at drawingthe war out of the battlefield (In this extremist Jihad, warmust be put to work everywhere but the battlefield; waris external to the conventional battlefield. ‘War is not atheater, you infidels’, Faraj shouts). This is to be achievedby introducing the Jihadi entities to civilians and all otherseemingly militarily irrelevant political economic orcultural entities, by blending with the crowd which existsfar from the front lines. ‘Towards the real omnipresence


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of war which progressively effaces the theatrical platitudeof the battlefield’, the doctrine of Terror voluntarilytransforms itself into a sinister movement of utter self-dissolution. The use of Taqiyya as a (para)offensivepolitics, however, is not the invention of Faraj, or theTakfiri cult, or even of Wahhabi extremists. It can betraced back to Hassan i-Sabah but it is not the inventionof Hassan either (although he improved and strictlymilitarized it). The sole credit for Taqiyya as a (para)offen-sive polytics aimed at blending with the crowd (as opposedto Taqiyya as a dissimulating tool for evading harm, asdevised in the early days of Islam) belongs to Abdullahibn Maimun or Maymun (and his Batiniyya cult, one ofthe underground heretical Islamic societies andsubversive movements which he founded and which laterturned into Isma’ilie sects directed by Hassan i-Sabah):Maimun, the Persian occultist, political saboteur andconspiracist who undermined the reign of caliphs inEgypt (where the Takfiri cult also originated together withsuch influential figures such as Qutb, Mustafa, et al.) witha sudden debacle, and prepared the region for hisambiguous and mysterious allies Al Fatemids (Fatemion)who later became the most enthusiastic enemies of thecaliphs and their conventional modes of militarism.Faraj, following closely Ibn Maymun’s politics, suggeststhat Taqiyya should not be merely a deception, a hidingtactic; it should consist of seeking the highest degree ofparticipation with infidels, with their civilians: “if theytake drugs we must do the same, if they take part in every


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type of sexual activity we must drive those activities tothe point of excess”, etc. The Jihadi extremist mustbecome as one with the civilians of what are called‘hardcore infidels’.

(2) TAQIYYA AS A (PARA)OFFENSIVE MILITARIZATION OF

CIVILIANS: In reference to Faraj’s politics of Taqiyya as aninseparable element of Jihad, the French counter-terroristexpert and President of the Paris-based WorldObservatory of Terrorism, Ronald Jacquard, brilliantlypoints out that a ‘Takfiri under Taqiyya’ is himself a primedbomb, whether or not he ever sees action (is involved ina mission). When a Takfiri becomes as one with ordinarycivilians – no longer dissimulating but moving andbehaving like a true, unfaithful civilian in every aspect ofhis or her public and private life – then the weaponbegins autonomously to be activated from the other side;the government (of a foreign non-Islamic country, forexample) itself begins to filter, purge and hunt down itsown civilians, curtailing their rights, confining them toeconomic, social and political quarantine to isolate oreven purge the disease and its potential hosts at the sametime. Each individual is potentially a Takfiri cell or niche,a site of infestation, a primary military target. So that themost offensive, active phase of a Takfiri’s life is not whenhe or she is on a high-profile mission like 9/11, but ratherwhen he or she becomes a mere civilian, totally unarmedand dissociated from any line of command. A Takfirilevels himself with everyone and consequently levelseveryone with himself; when it comes to hunting a Takfiri,


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one ineluctably ends up exterminating non-militaryentities, far away from the battlefield, in the heart of one’sown land.

(3) TAQIYYA AS A TRIGGER FOR WHITE WAR: Taqiyyaunbalances the entire conventional dynamics betweenwar machines, a dynamics which sees them clash with,hunt, and consume each other. This process of unbalanc-ing does not serve to shift the battle along the diametricaxis of ‘victory or defeat’, but rather to unbalance thecommunicative links between two tactical modes: activemilitary lines at one pole and virally latent (un)tactical lines atthe other. The Takfiri shuts down all his military potential,tactically ‘dies’ (not even being camouflaged anymore),and later is resurrected again in ‘his’ true form. TheTakfiri war machines of extremist Jihad operate ontransient and divergent tactical lines. As a result, theycannot be reached or communicated with: communica-tion which is the prerequisite for the clash between warmachines and entropically-based military conflicts, mech-anisms considered by Deleuze and Guattari as theprocesses which fabricate the very machinery and spaceof War.

(4) TAQIYYA AS A DESERTIFICATION TOOL: Givingfetishized Jihad an epidemically omnipresent machinery,Taqiyya allows Faraj to open a new era in the imagining ofmechanisms of extinction, sabotage and eradicationfueled by the pyromaniac aspects of heresy and danger-ously romantic theo-tyranny. Faraj discusses the fact that‘their’ (he rarely even names his so-called enemies: the


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US) military war machine relies heavily on the megadeathprinciple or as they put it DEATH FROM ABOVE(Overkill, Killing drones, High-tech airplanes, smartbombs, “Shock and Awe”, MOAB (Mother of AllBombs), invisible missiles descending from nowhere).Faraj presents a Takfiri alternative to this megadeathmachinery6: He discusses a new doctrine of hypercamou-flaged terror which he calls ‘Dieback machinery’, a termborrowed from botany and agriculture7. What he definesas ‘Dieback’ can be applied to an entire ‘civilization justas well as a Tree or any arborescent mode of collectivity’:in order to introduce a Tree to extinction, a Takfiriterrorist never interferes with the roots, attempting touproot the whole tree, as this would merely remove thetaproot, leaving rootlets and other root parts in the soilthat would eventually grow and give rise to many newtrees. The terrorist or Jihadi extremist launches a dieback6. Questions of escalation and diffusion of conflict in time and space are of mas-sive significance for both the western military campaign and Jihadism’s terror-skir-mishes. While Jihadism works with diffusion in its off-battlefield conflicts (throughits petropolitical contamination of the global politico-economic systems, its recklessuse of weaponized Taqiyya, working with strategy rather than tactics and conta-gious communication rather than transgression), the western techno-capitalismmaintains a escalating position in the battlefield, a position connected to thepropulsive body of techno-capitalism, its tactical precision and suprmacy.However, both of them share a common tendency in conflict: turning humanagencies into molecular battlefields / warmachines; for Jihadism this moleculariza-tion of warriors takes an epidemically dispersive form: mainly through Taqiyya’spara-offensive plane and for the western front, it turns into re-nomadization (in theDeleuze-Guattarian sense of nomadic warmachines) of the State’s army and minia-turization of an entire army and its specifications on and through the body of eachsoldier.

7. A disease of plants characterized by the gradual dying of the young shoots start-ing at the tips and progressing to the larger branches.


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disease against the tree: to be precise, he starts toextinguish the most expendable and smallest leaves grow-ing at the top of the tree and its branchlets, and continueshis work to the rest of leaves, without damaging the maintrunk or roots. By destroying leaves from top to bottomand by marring branchlets, the tree will wither: excom-municated and dejected, the tree will eventually be entire-ly incapacitated and will start to (over)react autophagicallyand allergically to the artificial dereliction effected by thedieback disease. Taqiyya provides Takfiris with ampleopportunity to use this dieback machinery, starting fromthe leaves (civilians or what they call ‘expendableentities’) and branchlets (small organizations, etc.),ultimately rendering the tree obsolete without everhaving launched any direct attack against its mainorgans.

When a tree is infected by dieback disease, only leavesand branches are destroyed; however, lacking leaves andbranchlets, the tree gradually becomes prone (overex-posed) to environmental factors and all of its systemsbecome locked into malfunctioning programs, loweringits immune system and consuming the tree from within.Various stages in the dieback of a civilization would be:paranoia; lack of investment; civilians as primary targetsfor both fronts; dereliction. All of which result in areactionary response from the infected tree which, ratherthan aiding recovery, is self-destructive. In a system thisself-destruction (or malfunctioning self-recovery) can bedefined as breakdown of the mechanisms responsible for


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self-tolerance, and the induction of an immune responseagainst components of the self. Such a cataclysm leads tothe reprogramming of the (immune) system to damagethe self.

A ‘Takfiri under Taqiyya’, then, is nothing but a civilian.By destroying himself and civilians he can apply thedieback mechanism to a system. Weaponized Taqiyya isnot directly connected to the dieback mechanism; but itis a way in which a Takfiri can shift the role of Taqiyya frommere camouflage to a powerful logistical plane on which(para)offensive tactics and strategies can be convergedand amplified. When a Takfiri extremist goes underTaqiyya he embeds his sabotaging mechanisms withincivilians, uses civilians as back-doors. A Takfiri under Taqiyyais transposed from being a key operational figure in hisown army to being a civilian; at this point, Taqiyyaactually gains access not to important targets but toordinary civilians (the primary tactic of the dieback mech-anism), allowing the Takfiri an opportunity to effectivelyconfound and twist all diagrams and maps which allow acivilian to be distinguished from a terrorist. Through thisback-door, a Takfiri can both damage civilians (or expend-able entities of the tree, as they are regarded) moreeffectively on a massive scale, and turn their protectionsystems against them by assimilating them within itselfand by being assimilated by them.

The original doctrines of the Takfiri cult originate fromthe teachings of Qutb and Shukri Ahmad Mustafa. Faraj,under the influence of the doctrine of ‘Takfir wal’Hijra’


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(Excommunication and Exodus) – imitation of theprophet who left Mecca and the House of Allah to live ina purified desert purged from any manifestation of idolatry– enunciates a new vision of desert and desertificationalien to the conventional image of the Desert familiar tosocio-political dynamics, and western social dynamics inparticular. On several different levels, this desert encom-passes all radical trends of Islam, from the ceaselessexteriority of Allah to Man, to desert as the merefunctional plane of submission to this radical exteriority(Allah who will be never disclosed), to the original desert-nomadic ingredients of Jihad. A desert nomad does notmigrate, as it is minimally under the influence of climaticfactors; it burrows tunnels of its own, making its ownniches within the desert, crossing the dimensions of holeyand smooth spaces, exploiting and betraying themequally. Scorpions are burrowers not architects, they donot build upon compositions of solid and void, nor dothey move restlessly, they devour volumes and snatchspaces; for them the holey space is not merely a dwellingplace, a place to reside (a niche for occupation) but morethan that, it is the Abode of War (dâr al-harb), the holeyspace of unselective hunting. Mustafa hystericallyintroduced the machinery and the notion of the desertinto all threads of his thought to such a degree that hiscult was mockingly called ‘The desert flogging society’. Itis rather ironic to reveal Mustafa’s real profession: he wasa very talented agronomist.

Take a Russian forest bordering the tundra, whose


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trees are emptied of life because they have been hit byblack-rot and winter dieback; In a Takfiri sense, desertedtrees are no different from a desert without trees: diebackpurifies, desertifies, the infidel organism, bringing theEarth within the compass of the utter desolation of theDesert of the Divine.

In the wake of militarized Taqiyya, the Takfiri is nolonger the problem; it is the original civilians of thecountry, rather than immigrants, who pose a terminalsecurity threat. There is no more radical act of war thanfighting in molecularized and expendable battlefieldswhose potentiality for conducting conflict has alreadybeen incapacitated.

LOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF HYPERCAMOUFLAGE VS.NOMADIC CONFLICT.

“In the past one took a more defensive attitude,” wroteKoch, referring to miasma theory. “We have now movedaway from this defensive point of view and have seizedthe offensive ... We must be prepared, first, to detect theinfectious material easily and with certainty, and second,to destroy it” (Koch 1903, 8, 10). For Koch, taking theoffensive meant actively seeking the parasites not only inthose obviously ill but also those “suspected” of carryingthem (die Verdächtigen) and in “the apparently healthy.”8

Every warmachine or tactical line occupies a niche(whether in wartime or peace), a space through which it8. Otis, L. (1999) Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature,Science and Politics, The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 34-35


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can move, feed and function; it is not only defined by thedistinctive properties of a tactical line or warmachine butalso by its enemies, the incompatible dynamism of othertactical lines, types of predators, the exposure to environ-mental factors, its threshold for receiving data from theenvironment, the types of data it receives and its propin-quity to what it pursues or probes (there is a commonmisunderstanding that attributes solid or crisp bound-aries to niches; but niches are assembled wherever anentity economizes a portion of its environment andsurvives / functions in that economized space9). At agiven time t, the entity r occupies a unique10 address (orset of addresses) as rt(x); its movement can be simplistical-ly expressed in terms of the niches it occupies at succes-sive intervals of time. This address is encoded and setapart by the niche which the warmachine or tactical lineoccupies.

The functions of a niche are not merely disjunctiveand exclusive (for example, directing competitions i.e.selective movements which result in exclusion of otherportions of the environment or lines of movement) but

9. In fact, some monitoring systems basically concentrate on niches with fiat andvague boundaries to screen and guide their occupants (tenants). Air traffic controlsystems constantly analyze the volume of protected or restricted airspace – defin-ing a circumspace or the volume enclosing a flying object – for collision avoidance,alert systems and translocations of aircrafts. The volume of protected airspace is amodified term for niche in traffic management, a simulation of the niche that existsin flying or migrating birds.

10. This uniqueness is characterized by the definitive properties / qualities that theaddress attributes to an entity in space-time but to have an address does not meanto be the exclusive owner of it.


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also connective/conjunctive. In fact niches mobilize theiroccupant entities with their characteristic types ofdynamism, associating them with other niches based onthe affordance necessary for following a tendency or aplane as well as sharing it with other niches and theirinhabitants. The programming of its niche is the firstbasic operation of engineering or recomposing an entity.Therefore the significance of investigating niches or nichetypes (rather than token niches or occupants) progres-sively increases with the development and emergence ofnew dynamic lines, power formations, traffic spaces andplanes of communicative conjunctions. The State and itsgrid of dominance identify the movements of an entity (r)in a niche (whether quantitative – metron-based [measur-able, scalable] – or qualitative) by the series of addressesit authenticates and registers as it travels:

r (x1,x2,x3,...,xn)

For the State, the dynamism geared by warmachines,the way that each warmachine perpetuates its itinerantline, can only be traced and numerically tagged throughthe logic of boundaries, the programming of dwelling/accommodating systems and (dis)locations that the Stateis able to monitor by monitoring niches and their dynam-ic addresses. By means of overseeing boundaries throughwhich entities pass, investigating the temporal effects on(or alteration of) the forces of territoriality that movingentities leave behind, their types of localization, and theirbehaviors towards mereologic economy (the economy ofthe whole), the State can fabricate a cogito (a non-human


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cognition) not only to realize but also to classify themovement of entities and the dynamism of warmachineswhose immoderate nomadic itineracy means that theycannot be directly apprehended or sensed by the State.This is the cogito required for appropriation of warma-chines under the State’s military protocols and forms.Bound to (semi-)rigid segmentarity, dynamic boundaries,affordance-based connections and static or dynamic local-izations (or more accurately, in-place and outside-placelocalizations), the State examines the dynamic space ofeach entity and its activities – those activities correspon-ding to its functional, territorial and mereologic regions –not only to read the characteristics of an entity but also tolocate it on (or according to the proximity of the entity to)its grid of dominance. The State and all configurations ofSurvival Economy track entities through the niche(s) thatthey inhabit or populate. For the State’s militaryOverwatch, investigating and tracing the niche is theprimary and central task; the itinerant line of an entity ora warmachine, its communications and functional traitsare all deciphered by scanning the niche the warmachineoccupies and its type. The advanced reading-machines ofthe State are even capable of extracting the quiddity of awarmachine or an entity by analyzing the specificationsof the niche which is intrinsically bound to affordance,dynamic forces of boundaries, and eco-logical principles.

However, as niches are connective entities (entity-as-event in a Deleuzian sense); they do not exclusivelybelong to one entity or one tenant. Multiple entities can


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share one niche and niches can form nested niches (terri-torial forces diminish – but never disappear – in groupingbonds) linking to each other, being connected in variousmodes. Modes of connection between niches are dividedfor the most part into two asymmetrical correlations:

a. Abutment (A)b. Overlap (O)In the Deleuze-Guattari model of the nomadic war-

machine, the warmachines are external to the State’seffective boundary, restlessly eroding it, gnawing at theconsolidated borders of the State. Logical modeling of theinteractions between the exterior nomadic warmachinesand the State is complicated mainly by the followingproblems:

(a) Both the State and the warmachine retain a relative

11. Affordance is an economical network (in the sense that it is connective andreciprocal) by which openness can be exploited as a groundwork for survival,accommodation, dwelling and regulating communication. The term affordance as used here diverges in certain respects from the originalterm coined by James Jerome Gibson (based on the works of Ingarden, Brentano,et al.) in his eco-cognitive studies. The regulations by which an entity can maintainits dynamic position (in a whole, i.e. mereologic address) and survive in its envi-roning horizon originate from a deeply meshed economic-based network of inter-actions, connections and regulative participations, all knitted on mutual affordabil-ity between the entity and its environment. Whole can only survive when entitiescan afford each other, every type of openness on mereologic levels is demarcatedby mutual affordability ‘between’ entities. Affordance does not exclusively belongto one pole of the economical communication but is distributed between at leasttwo mereologic entities. ‘I am open to you as long as I can afford you’ otherwise:(a) you must be repulsed (b) attracted by being regulated and appropriated (c) part-ly filtered (d) I should appropriate myself to ‘accommodate’ you. Therefore, theplane of being open to is intrinsically constructed on affordance or economicalaffordability/communication. Through affordance, openness cannot escape


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movement to each other (each dynamic on its own planeof tacticity) which makes the State’s militarized machinesand nomadic warmachines slippery entities with aprogressive displaceability increasing as attacks andcounter-attacks are escalated at the borders of the State.

(b) The rise of the clandestine State, that opens itselfto the nomadic warmachines to either absorb themwithin its military formations by continuous contactswith nomadic warmachines (such contacts are essentiallybound to contaminative potentials for both the State andthe nomads) or reinvents nomadic warmachines as itsmercenaries, dynamic lines for extending the Statebeyond its border, a new dynamic boundary providingthe State with the opportunity of accommodating (colo-nizing?) or economically affording (affordance11) theOutside instead of being cracked open by the Outside.

survivalist and economical regulations; it mainly works as the dynamic capacita-tor of Whole. Possibly the most elucidating (yet simplified) ‘model’ of affordanceis Aristotle’s Tetrasomia (Rotation of the Elements).

The rotational movement between elements sustains a refining dynamism for thewhole. Each phase of rotation is based on dynamic metrons (measures, scales) andaffordance (here, economical openness or mutual affordability) between elements.Elements are open to each other either diametrically or diagonally, but they can


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COLLAPSE I

Focusing on the spatiogeographic aspect of the war-machine (necessarily interconnected with its affectiveaspect) – or, more precisely, investigating a mereotopo-logical model of the nomadic warmachine and the Statethrough their distinctive but general mode of connectionwhich can be grasped as abutment or external connection– might be the primary task for diagramming the affect-space and the lines of movement generated between con-crete nomadism and the State. This modelling, bothspatiogeographic and mereotopological (and thus neces-sarily indicating an immanent affect space) of thenomadic warmachine and its positioning relative to theState’s boundary elucidates the processes at work in theemergence of anomalous nomadic states (as in the case ofthe ‘guerilla-state’ and its connection with ethnonational-ism in Iran or the Bedouin nomad-tribes and their strongbut ambiguous bonds with the Saudi government innever entirely overlap or radically communicate with each other; they need a mid-state to form rotational nexuses and maintain their Wholeness. These mid-statesare valid only in a particular location of the whole rotational panorama; althoughthey provide the system with a propulsive polemikos or cyclic dynamism, they func-tion locally (as a result of the elements’ affordability to each other and, at the sametime, to the whole system of Tetrasomia). For example, Earth and Water needMenstruum (living mud) to communicate. This living mud is a communicationalentity but also a dynamic boundary which transforms/appropriates the earth andwater before opening them to each other; it can only work locally between earthand water and not at any other location in the model of Tetrasomia. The Wholeuses these economical communications to consolidate itself and to afford Life (tosurvive). “I assume that affordances are not simply phenomenal qualities of subjective expe-rience (tertiary qualities, dynamic and physiognomic properties, exc.). I alsoassume that they are not simply the physical properties of things as now conceivedby physical science. Instead, they are ecological, in the sense that they are proper-ties of the environment relative to an animal. These assumptions are novel, andneed to be discussed.” (J. J. Gibson)


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Fig. 1

yx

yx

yx

Abutment

Partial Overlap

Disjunction

Saudi Arabia) as well as the increasing risk for nomadicwarmachines engaging clandestine states or states with anobscure boundary.

POSITIONING OF THE NOMADIC WARMACHINE ON A

MEREOTOPOLOGICAL PLANE.Abutment (fig. 1) is an external connection, with

minimum trade between niches or entities (the leastcontagious connection, given its tendency towards disso-ciation). It is demarcated by its intermediacy before par-tial overlapping and after disjunction, by its tangentialcontact and boundary overlap.


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COLLAPSE I

What was once the frontier of the State’s defence iscontinuously eroded by the reckless tidal or updrift move-ments of nomadic warmachines. The operational signif-icance of this mode of connection (Abutment) has beensignificantly decreased with the emergence of symbioticand manipulative warmachines and covert militarizationprocesses on the one hand, and advanced reformations ofthe State towards the accommodation (or colonizing) ofthe Outside on the other. The latter are rooted both inthe introduction of territorial climatologic factors12 to thedynamism of nomad-packs and in the development newmodes of survival. Now, the state knows well how tosave its foundations, even if it means assembling spacessusceptible to the erosion of nomadic warmachines,attracting or diverting the incoming nomadic incursions

12. On Climate and Nomadology: Following the so-called Hydraulic andAgricultural Revolution in Iran (similar to that which Wittfogel associated with theChinese Empire, as well as Homer-Dixon’s more recent theories onHydropolitics), during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Shah), an hydraulicplan – highly recommended by American consultants – was developed and pro-posed as a catalyst for economic development in Iran; one of multiple objectivesof this plan was to solve the problem of nomads in Iran. Apart from putting intoeffect a program of hydraulic restructuring of the diverse geography of Iran (ageography with innate potential for the forging of diversifying lines of nomadicmovement), one of the stratagems of this hydropolitical program of reform was tooriginate a system for monitoring and domesticating Iranian nomads who playedkey roles in resistance against the centre or induced geopolitical disintegration ofthe State’s territory via their ethnonationalistic movements. The plan was neithera method for drawing the eastern and central nomads to the governing center nora project for forcibly accommodating them in a sedentary sphere through themonopolization of water-networks and direct military impositions. Rather, it sug-gested accompanying them, interlocking with them and replacing their dynamismwith the State’s fluxional lines of tactics, its dynamic boundary and territorialforces. The project’s objective was to construct a soft climate (klima: zone) or a


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to specified and preprogrammed regions to protect itscritical terrains and vulnerable mechanisms, or trans-forming its macropolitics into a viable micropolitics whichare open at one end and grounded at the other end.

In a typified connection Cτ, abutment can be mappedon the Euclidean plane R as:

Aτ(x,y) = df Cτ(x, y) ∧¬Οτ(x,y) (x abuts y) (Where Οτ is a typified boundary overlap.)

Or let T = {X, cl} be a topological space, where X isthe set of points and cl is the closure operator. Let I beany index set that includes 0. The domain, D, of aLayered Model is a nonempty set of ordered pairsxi=<x,i> where ∅ ≠ x ⊆ X and i ∈ Ι . (xi will be usedfor <x,i>).

A(xi,yi)=:x∩y=∅&(cl(x)∩y≠∅ or x∩cl(y)≠∅) (abuts)Since Abutment links entities on a tangential plane

(confinium), the state can effectively resist any arrivingonrush of nomadic warmachines on this mode of connec-tion with minimum attrition damage on its critical interi-or (the plane of logistics and lines of command). In fact,clandestine states seek to channel all the cumulativedamage induced by nomadic warmachines (as thepostulate of the obtrusive danger) on this mode ofconnection. This is achieved by deflecting any funda-mentally contagious, manipulating and underminingthreat towards distributive and recoverable erodingprocesses; these latter can even be programmed totransport the State out of its rigid segmentarity anddespotic bond with territoriality, prolonging the survival


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COLLAPSE I

of the state in a fluxional mode in a manner of anabrasive machine of the fluvius (river) that erodes solidityin order to transport it by the dynamic conservative vec-tor fields of sedimentary processes – capturing fecundityand irrigation in detrition. With warmachines tirelesslygnawing at the State’s textum, incising and liquidating itscrisp boundaries, the State begins to leak out, but thisdoes not only express the collapse of the State but also thedangerous exposure of the nomadic warmachine to theunderlying grid on which the State is assembled andwhich holds its interwoven space, a network of ground-ing processes, mechanisms of territorial regulation andeconomic repression.

The Installation of the operational cutting-edge ofnomadic warmachines on the State in the absence of anyungrounding machineries (which incapacitate the domi-nant grounding, territorializing and moderating functionsof the State) is a similar case to that of the premature lineof deterritorialization which facilitates either the uncon-ventional establishment of new immunologically-enhanced States or a suicidal flight. Persian history, overa long period of time (from the Achaemenians to theQajar dynasty (1779-1925), more than two thousandyears), narrates such a continuous conversion of nomadicforces into State forces, before being again replaced byanother nomadic population (cyclic nomadic uprisingsagainst the ruling regime with a nomadic germ-cell stillactive but privatized as the State’s elite, versatile militaryinstitution). Such premature nomadic detritions of the


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State have progressively given rise to more powerful (interms of gravity, immunity and parasitic resistance) yetmore unstable States, causing politico-economic poverty;inclination towards being colonized by other States; lackof an autonomous nervous system and polarization of dif-ferent populations without the possibility of positivediversity; constant vulnerability to schisms, civil-wars,and ethnonationalistic fault lines deleterious to an entirecountry or geopolitical sphere.

When abrasion processes of nomadic warmachinescontinue to hold their eroding positions – essentiallycharacterized by transporting dynamism of friction(tactionis) and the process of mass-wastage – over a longduration on the borders of the state, hyper-active territo-rial nexuses between the State and nomadic warmachinesemerge, increase and expand. Once such nexuses areestablished (boundary overlap), the underlying groundeconomy of the State (or its territorial forces), its entitiesand even the State’s internal machineries directly leak outinto the space traversed by nomadic warmachines, tosuch a degree that they pervade the nomadic space and

the State N

Fig. 2. Boundary Overlap with the State (diagrammed as a square) and NomadicDomestication (left), Tangential Contact (diagramed as a circle) and Nomadic

Effectivity (right)

the State N


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COLLAPSE I

turn it into a dynamic extension of the State13. In thiscase, the State’s functional or territorial entities cannot beeffectively enveloped and carried away by nomadic war-machines (as in the case of tangential contact) anymore.They cannot be cut from the State’s grid of dominance,liberated and radically dispersed to the Outside (fig. 2).

The hazardous contact of nomadic warmachines withthe State, exposing them to the state’s regulating function-al/territorial spheres, can eventually lead to the emer-gence of a nomadic-state on the one hand and anethnonationalistic nomadism (identical to the State’spatriotic policies) on the other. Probably one of the mostsignificant examples of such anomalies triggered by theover-exposure of nomadic warmachines to the State isthat found throughout Persian history.(b) Overlap:If, in a simplified approach, P stands for parthood and Ofor overlap:

Οτ(x,y) = df ∃z(P(z,x) ∧ P(z,y))And

Oxy=:∃z(Pzx & Pzy) (x and y overlap)Then the following Axioms apply:

AP1 P(x,y)↔∀z(O(z,x)→Ο(z,y))AP2 ∃x(φ(x))→∃x∀y(O(x,y)↔∃z(φ(z) ∧ O(z,y)))Any participation (either methexis as survival-based

participation or base-participation) happens throughoverlapping connections. Therefore, the majority of 13. A cache for the later movement of the State’s macropolitics towards its micropolitical reformation



Fig. 3. Modes of Connection(Abutment and Overlap)


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COLLAPSE I

combined connections (Tangential, Parthood, Interior,etc.) are effectuated by different possibilities educed byoverlap between entities. Overlap draws lines of coinci-dence between two events or entities by specifying anaddress that two entities partly or completely share in aspatio-temporal or a functional region. Both the State’sappropriations and counter-state insurgencies happenthrough this mode of connection. Whilst it is exploitableby the State and by affordance, this does not mean that‘overlap’ cannot also be the main source of insurgency –it is the connection-domain through which warmachinesleave their border-eroding externality and directly arriveat the State’s grid, either to be specialized by the Stateapparatus and turn into military formations or to be reinvented as contagious, endo-symbiotic and parasiticentities coinciding with the State and its machineries andconsequently discovering a wide array of clandestine

Not overlapped:The zone of evacuation and withdrawal from the

camouflaged position or the escape-route.

Fig. 4. Partial overlap and its interval relations in Camouflage:(1) Between two entities; (2) Between two entities and the third entity

xy

xz

y{


83


and manipulative functions. On a more technical plane, all camouflage exploita-

tions are essentially consistent because they all involvethe use of ‘overlap’ (or, more accurately, coincidence, asthe question of overlap between entities here is thequestion of overlapping niches which these entitiesoccupy14). Furthermore, they turn it from a mode ofconnection into a politically-operational positioning thatviolates both the symmetry of a niche with the address itwrites (programs) for an entity and the divisors (events,entities, etc.) which separate and discriminate the address-es or niches of two entities in space-time coordinates.However, this violation (that necessitates the activation ofcamouflage) cannot remain durable and unchanged,because predatory/military camouflages always employpartial overlap, with a part constantly accessible as ‘notcamouflaged’ (either belonging to the camouflaged entityx or the entity which it should be overlapping i.e. y15 [See14. Two entities will be said to overlap when they share parts in common: two enti-ties coincide when they occupy overlapping regions of space.

15. An example of the not camouflaged part (not overlapped) solely belonging to xor y: When the ‘not camouflaged’ part merely belongs to y (in a typified connection):

x internally overlaps y. When:IOτ(x,y) = df∃z (IPτ(z,x) ∧ IPτ(z,y))x is an interior part of y, and whenIPτ(x,y) = dfPτ(x,y) ∧ ¬ TPτ(x,y) andTPτ(x,y) = dfPτ(x,y) ∧ ∃z (Aτ(z,x) ∧ Aτ(z,y)), x is a tangential part of y

yx


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COLLAPSE I

fig. 4]). This not only makes tracing and handling of thecamouflaged entity possible on a tactical level but alsoprovides the camouflaged entity with an escape-route ora space for instant evacuation and withdrawal from thecamouflaged position. (An escape-route can also beunlocked when an entity z – a third party – connects toboth x and y with different overlapping positions for eachone (See fig. 4); here, the escape is channeled throughanother camouflage, a new camouflaged participationextracted neither from x nor from y.) This ‘not camou-flaged’ or ‘not overlapped’ part inhibits the camouflagefrom being durable or constantly undetected, but alsomakes camouflage controllable; the camouflaged entitycan move out of the camouflage at any moment.

All types of camouflage draw a disruptive functionfrom the overlapped part (which mainly occurs on a frag-mented level) by conducting the address or niche ofanother entity (for example, the prey) to the camouflagedentity (hunter) and consequently disrupting the mereo-logic (part-whole) correlations at work with regard towhat should be camouflaged, making it temporally andpartly untraceable, camouflaged. Such disruptions(which generally target a reference-point or a reference-link by which an entity is detected) can produce cogni-tive-glitches as well as the subversion of some specificenvironing bonds that pass through both thecamouflaged entity and its object (its prey). Motioncamouflage uses a particular type of tactical dynamism(in cases where the prey is also in motion, the movement


85


of the shadower or the camouflaged predator moves onthe path of a chaotic pursuit; the movement can be mod-eled by projecting its pursuit curves onto the Rösslerattractor) or dynamic overlap to disrupt (i.e. shadow) itsdistance and displacements from the prey (the shadowed)by moving on a path that connects it to a fixed point(used by the shadowed as a reference-point – a constantunit vector) while the motion by the target is met by themotion from the aggressor. In motion camouflage, then,the shadower remains stationary for the target. In themost common military camouflage – disguise by coveringobjects (soldiers, vehicles, artilleries, launch pads, etc.) –with Disruptive Pattern Materials, disruption happensthrough surface modifications of a camouflaged object onwhich the visual sensory organ focuses as a reference-linkbetween different types of surface patterns in itssurrounding space, resulting in the ignoring of the objectas a part of the safe environment. Invisibility (as a retreat

Fig. 5. If Coin stands for coincidence, O for overlap, P for part, Cov forcover and CCoin for complete coincidence.


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COLLAPSE I

from visual sensors), too, employs and modifies partialoverlap as an occlusion by obscuring surfaces, interioriz-ing, positioning the camouflaged (cloaked) entity whereboundaries intersect (obscuring boundaries), etc. Theprimary drawback of the invisible warmachine is thedanger of being traced by semiotic regimes of the Statewhich are more obsessed with what is missed than withwhat exists.

As the result of partial overlap, all disruptions andsubversions of mereologic bonds are subjected to eventu-al disclosure; and each time a camouflage is spotted, itprogressively loses its potential; any entity using such acamouflage will be more prone to detection andforestalling counter-measures than it usually is; this is asymptom of the holistic connections between partial over-lap and ‘localization’ which has not been functionallyincapacitated and spatially effaced yet. This is whycamouflage is rarely implemented as a primary action oran offensive tactic but mostly as a logistic process or amis-ordering transitional space between different tacticaland operational lines. Transient characteristics andstringent operational restrictions obstruct radicalweaponization of camouflage.

A Takfiri under Taqiyya (Islamic hypercamouflage)does not occupy a niche to replace another entity, ordwell as a hidden agent; he pushes the connection withhis environment toward a complete overlap, an unbrokenfield of connection and correspondence, a completecoincidence with its target, i.e. a complete overlapping of


87


its niche with the niche of its target. He entirely overlapshis prey and its niche and thus remains silent.

Coin(x,y)↔∃z(Cov(z,x) & Cov(z,y))(x and y coincide if and only if there is some z that iscovered by both x and y; z standing here for niche. WhileCov is a transitive and reflexive relation, Coin is symmet-rical and reflexive. The relation of coincidence is ofcourse broader than that of overlap, since there are pairsof coincident objects or even processes that do not shareparts. The same question of relation arises for a Takfiriunder Taqiyya and a civilian.)

For a Takfiri under Taqiyya, occupation is neither amilitary goal nor a tactic; since occupation is exclusive local-ization tethered to the mappings of co-localization andparts-whole connectedness – that is to say, the despotismof Whole – the occupier is vulnerable to environmentalforces; it can be easily distinguished, located, isolated andfinally terminated i.e. undone at the minimum attritioncost of its environment and surroundings. Where occupa-tion is bound to visibly militant and escalating modes ofwarfare and exclusion, weaponized Taqiyya is maliciouslydiffusive. In mereologics (the discourse of part-wholemodes of connectedness) we would call the positioning ofTaqiyya complete overlap: the Takfiri constitutes a sinistersurvivalism whose basic function is to extinguish survivalitself. In complete overlap (see Fig. 6), every region,function or part of the hypercamouflaged entity orpredator, the ‘Takfiri under Taqiyya’ (X) can correspondwith its identical region, function or part of the


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COLLAPSE I

prey/host/civilian (Y). Therefore if every x (part or func-tion of X) homologizes its corresponding y (part or func-tion of Y) or more precisely, if every x corresponds withits y ‘on all levels’ then every function of X (the tacticalmovement of the Takfiri under Taqiyya, or hypercamou-flaged predator) can be transferred to Y and they mutu-ally fulfill each other.

x=y↔∀z(Oxz↔Oyz)(Any two members of the domain that overlap the same

Fig. 6. Complete overlap and symmetric fulfillment(Symmetry: Let S be the symbol for symmetry where n is an integer, d is the

class descriptor and compd is the complement of d:S = {n(d) ∧ compd} )

entities are identical.)But the most horrific dimension of this arrangement

is revealed when the process is reversed: if every x fulfillsits corresponding y, then by way of the ‘exact connecting-corresponding’ space that complete overlap and completecoincidence (CCoin(xi,yi)=:x=y)16 provides, every y (i.e.16. Complete coincidence can be expressed in terms of covering (Cov):Ccoin(x,y)↔Cov(x,y) & Cov(y,x)(x and y completely coincide if and only if y covers x and x covers y)


89


every function or positioning of the prey Y, which wouldcomprise for the most part normal survival functions andordinary individual or social activities) can be transferredto its corresponding x and eventually fulfill it too. Byseizing any y, a corresponding x is triggered and covertlyunleashed; and since we are dealing with complete over-lap, the very survival and communication of Y deploys,activates and fulfills the menacing body of X, the Takfiriunder taqiyya. On the one hand, the survival of the prey/host/civilian thoroughly agrees with the sinister enthusi-asm of the terrorist; and on the other hand, peace isgenerally conceived as the state of collective survival. Sothat the survival of both the terrorist and the civilianyields nothing but the (interminable?) endo-militarizationof peace, a global threat against civilians, the rise ofWhite War and the threat that, fuelled by the infinitethirst of heretical Jihadism, the contagion of war mightexpand unchecked, even to fill the immensely significanthorizon of survival and living in general.

Now that the survival of Y or the host/civilian(together with its communication and modes of connec-tion through and with its environment) fulfills the politicaland military body of the ‘Takfiri under Taqiyya’, the mereexistence of the civilian is weaponized against both itselfand the immune system of the system that accommodatesand protects it to such a degree that auto-phagic overre-action looms as the only logical solution for the system.It is the military culmination of Taqiyya to deduce irrev-ocable insanity from the minimum essential logic


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COLLAPSE I

required for basic survival.

EXEGETICAL CONCLUSION. “The trends explored here will obviously be decided

‘on the battlefield’ - but that increasingly means every-where. The centrality of hypercamouflage to Jihadi strat-egy is already having immense consequences, inducing awave of ‘retro-militarization’ in State war machines,where ‘teeth’ flow back down the ‘tail’ in a process with-out obvious terminus (short of the fanging-up of theentire social body).

Saddam Hussein’s auto-disassembly of his own warmachine in the interests of a latent insurgency exemplifiesthis trend from one side, whilst the moves to harden upUS logistics formations through armoring of vehicles andcombat training for all personnel complements it from theother.

Human rights concerns about killings of civilianscould relevantly be extended from the empirical level tothat of the transcendental, where the eradication in prin-ciple of all civilian populations is taking place. The veryconcept of ‘the civilian’ is becoming distinctly dated.(Virilio’s analysis – despite betraying a somewhat anti-quated perspective through terms such as ‘endocoloniza-tion’ – seems to have anticipated this trend).

The US is especially interesting because it remains a‘peripheral’ (even ‘third world’) society in certainrespects, marked by a low domestic index of State


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monopolization of violence, thus allowing retro-milita-rization from the State pole to connect with an endoge-nous paramilitarism already rooted in the ‘civilian’ popu-lation (armed vigilantism and militia movements). As faras militias are concerned, the world ain’t seen nothingyet.”17

17. This exegetical conclusion to the current essay was contributed by Nick Land.


robin

Typewritten Text

COLLAPSE VOLUME I Erratum . p76 Note 12 should continue as follows: …The project’s objective was to construct a soft climate (klima: zone) or a zone of hydraulic conductivity (corresponding to the State’s Hydropolitics) which would autonomously accommodate nomads, making them move through itself, and thereby ease the whole process of monitoring, domesticating and tracking nomads. This climate being finally transformed into a tremendously dynamic network of anti-nomadic movements, would employ its hydraulic head to configure nomadic dynamism according to the State’s geo-politics, economic convergence and military dynamism (an accessible space for the State’s military entities especially during insurgencies); the State was seeking to breed its own territorializing (rather than territorialized) nomadologic lines. This climate was actually to consist of ‘artificial rivers’ which were supposed to be distributed over the country. The work of construction of these rivers was to be undertaken over a period of years, in a country that has always suffered from a lack of water in its central and eastern regions. Such fluid, rich and dynamic zones or hydraulic lines (for instance rivers and their tributaries) spread over the country would gradually attract (on the pattern of gravity) nomads, rendering a preferable but precisely mapped climate for their migration; a climate which would actually be an autarkic monitoring machine rendering its inhabitants predictable and expanding a fluid domesticating sphere for the Iranian nomads.

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