Kali Rubaii - Toxic Hazards of War along the Chain of Supply

Toxic Hazards of War along the Chain of Supply
Taking war as a toxic structure, this talk begins at the belly of war, Rubaii's ethnographic fieldwork between 2014 and 2023 traces weaponized metals from the sand and bodies of children in Fallujah back to their origins at war's jaws: mineral mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where such metals are extracted by artisanal miners for use by tech and weapons companies. The talk also follows the post-battle life of weaponized metals to its tail, where these metals are recycled by Indian labourers in steel factories in Iraqi Kurdistan as a central part of the concrete industry; or where they are destroyed in burn pits in Colfax, Louisiana; and where they are detonated along Guam’s coral reef. At each site, people are trapped in biochemically and socially toxic relations with components of weaponized earth. By tracing the toxic exposures people face at multiple sites of metal extraction, weaponization, reuse, and disposal, this talk identifies two key points in war's long chain of supply: 1) it identifies the many bodies and people whose lives are ravaged by warfare far from the site and dates of documented battles, and 2) it pinpoints locations in which further research may identify forensic sites of intervention (disruption) in an increasingly diffuse network of corporate and contracted war-making.
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