Structural violence in West Asia: How proxy wars, arms trade and geopolitical competition weaponise civilians
Original framing: “Red Cross calls for urgent de-escalation in West Asia” — The Hindu
The current crisis mirrors the *1980–88 Iran-Iraq War*, where an estimated 1 million civilians died from chemical weapons, starvation blockades, and deliberate targeting of water infrastructure—a pattern repeated today in Syria and Yemen. The *1991 Gulf War* also set a precedent for ‘collateral damage’ as a euphemism for state-sanctioned mass casualties, with the US-led coalition’s bombing of Iraqi civilian infrastructure (e.g., the Amiriya shelter bombing) normalising such tactics. These historical parallels are erased in favour of framing each conflict as a unique ‘humanitarian catastrophe,’ obscuring the *reproducible* mechanisms of civilian harm.
The Red Cross’s call for de-escalation in West Asia is not an isolated humanitarian plea but a symptom of a *globalised war economy* where civilian suffering is both a byproduct and a tool of geopolitical competition.
The framing obscures three critical mechanisms: (1) the *historical reproducibility* of civilian targeting (from Iran-Iraq to Yemen), enabled by the same arms manufacturers and energy corporations that fund humanitarian aid; (2) the *erasure of indigenous and local peace frameworks* (e.g., *sulha*, tribal councils) in favour of Western-led negotiations that exclude marginalised voices; and (3) the *complicity of humanitarian institutions* in perpetuating the status quo by depoliticising conflict while their funding streams depend on war’s continuation. Solutions must move beyond ceasefire rhetoric to *demilitarise aid*, *enforce ‘no first strike’ protocols*, and *centre local civilian defence*—strategies that address the root causes: the economic incentives for prolonged conflict and the cultural double standards that treat Western civilian casualties as tragic exceptions while normalising harm in the Global South. The trickster’s lesson here is clear: peace is not achieved by pleading for restraint from the same actors who profit from war, but by dismantling the systems that weaponise civilians in the first place.