Violence as Counter- Terrorism in Yasmina Khadra’s The Sirens of Baghdad

Abstract

Yasmina Khadra’s novel, The Sirens of Baghdad, which is set in a post-colonial context, attempts to explain the heinous violence in Iraq after the American invasion. The novel vindicates that Iraqis’ resistance, which often resort to violent suicide bombings, is an inevitable act of counterterrorism, because the US committed horrendous terroristic crimes against civilians. Thus, Khadra’s novel debunks the Western myth that terrorism in the Arabo-Islamic world is the result of poverty and Islamic fundamentalism. Of utmost importance, the paper evinces that violence is the result of the clash of civilization, which is one of the main motives of America’s occupation of Iraq.