internal empire

Let’s say you’re an Iraqi who for some reason connected to the preservation of life and limb wants to get out of Iraq. Then a contact in the occupation forces gives you a call one day with news of the perfect job: be yourself in a facsimile of your own ruined country.

If you’re not familiar with it, the National Training Center (NTC) is a base out in the middle of the Mojave Desert where military units go to train before deploying. Back in the Cold War days it was devoted to training for large scale tank warfare. Now the Army has created a miniature Iraq/Afghanistan in the desert and does a remarkable job at simulating conditions in those countries. The Army has built fake cities, hires Iraqis to come and live in those cities and roleplay as business owners, mayors, sheikhs, and insurgents. Amputees are hired to play roles as well, both Iraqi and U.S. Military, in order to better simulate battlefield injuries. Hollywood special effects companies lend their hand to make explosions more realistic. Attempts are also made to give the pseudo-insurgency a life of its own.

Via. So maybe there’s even a job for former AQI cadre. This was alawys the weakness with Baudrillard’s reasoning: something has to be real before it can become an imitation of itself. I suppose one day it will be licensed to some lively entrepreneur in the military re-enactment business. This kind of thing has a history going back beyond the cold war: during World War 2 replicas of German and Japanese villages and urban estates were built at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, destroyed by various combinations of high explosives and incendiary bombs, rebuilt, destroyed again and so on. British mock-mietskasernen were built out by Heathrow.

Comments

[Ex-PFC Wintergreen]

The only difference is that while in the past they were recreating those towns and cities in order to practice destroying them, the whole reason they are hiring actual Iraqis at NTC is so that young Soldiers and officers can practice interacting with Iraqis, learning about culture, using translators, and experiencing what meetings and engagements will be like with government officials and sheikhs. During my rotation there we had very few kinetic engagements, it was absolutely not the primary focus.

[ajay]

British mock-mietskasernen were built out by Heathrow.

There are still a fair number of (fairly accurate) simulated North German villages and Ulster high streets scattered around the country...

[ejh]

Are there? Where? (I'm not denying it, I'm just interested.)

[ajay]

Salisbury Plain, for one.

[David Gillies]

Also, any largeish British Army base that is home to infantry (at least, this used to be the case, and I can't see any reason why the concept would have been abandoned). I remember as a young cadet seeing a perfect replica of a terraced street on the periphery of a camp twenty odd years ago. The military calls this FIBUA (Fighting in Built-Up Areas). I think the US term is MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain). Remember during the Troubles essentially every unit in the Army did a tour in Northern Ireland at some point.

[ajay]

Now OBUA - Operations in Built Up Areas. (unofficially it's FISH - Fighting In Someone's House)