Nationalities of Nomads and Locusts in the Jazira, 1920–40

This paper explores the question of nationality in the post-Ottoman Middle East both for nomads, and the creatures to which they were often compared, locusts. It does so by following these human and non-human actors during the 1920s and the 1930s in the Jazira region, which stretched across the northwest Iraq, northeast Syria, and southeast Turkey.

Both left disputes over national provenance in their wake. For nomads, new national borders were at odds with migratory patterns they followed in search of pasture for their sheep and camels. As state authorities were eager to solidify their power in this arid environment, they attempted to woo tribes to an allegiance with their respective state. French officials, for examples, worked to give Syrian citizenship to nomads who had, in some cases, been in Iraq for years with their flocks. In other cases, it was actually the nomads who determined national identity, as shaykhs were charged with issuing passes certifying that the carriers were affiliated with a certain branch of tribe and were thus Syrian. Locusts moved along much the same circuits, consuming pasture and cultivation alike. But while officials of the Jazira’s nation-states worked to incorporate nomads, they sought to blame the swarms of locusts on their negligent neighbors.

By bringing together the motion of humans and non-humans, the paper revises the literature on the modern Middle East in several ways. First, in presenting national identity a question of material practices and technologies, the paper questions accounts of history that present it as a matter of discourse and sentiment. Second, by bringing these questions to bear on both humans and non-humans, the paper opens broader questions about how much could be considered national in an age of increasing human control of the environment.