1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 9 Out beyond Occupy Fallujah and the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham, there is a field . . . Victoria Fontan In early 2014, Fallujah made it back to the world headlines for having allegedly fallen to al-Qaeda. Commentators in the United States were quick to make this story theirs, lamenting the idea that the city that had been liberated by its brave marines in 2004 was captured once again by terrorists (Sly 2014). The media frame according to which Fallujah had been taken was nurtured by the Iraqi government, which had adopted its own war on terror narrative in an attempt to root out anti-government protests that had been initiated in December 2012 (BBC 2014). While Prime Minister Maliki sought to defend his actions according to a counter- terrorism narrative, the situation escalated to such an extent that the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) lent its efforts to defend Fallujah and its residents, making its presence in the city at the core of the renewed US media frenzy over Fallujah. The fact that ISIS is currently fighting al- Qaeda in neighbouring Syria escaped numerous observers. The biopolitics of a terrorism narrative had to prevail. After looking into the nexus between terrorism and peace, the chapter will seek to explore the morphing of al-Qaeda in Iraq from a pyramidal structure into a network of nodes that greatly differ in their political expression and tactics, this informing a dialogue on the current nature of terrorism in the country amidst social justice vindications and a call for further radicalisation as a response to a liberal peace that fostered sec- tarian divisions. While Occupy Fallujah was created in December 2012 as a loosely al-Qaeda affiliated non-violent movement for social change, eman- ating from the Anbar province and beyond, the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham evolved as a transnational state contender whose goal is to engage in an all-out war against Shi’ite Islam in Iraq and Syria, both incarnated by a strongly contested religiously based state apparatus. Are Occupy Fallujah and ISIS two potential responses to peacebuilding as state formation? Can one assume that Peace Studies and Critical Terrorism Studies cannot intersect when those branded as ‘terrorists’ employ non-violent tactics? Is peace-as-social-justice not a right for all, even an al-Qaeda associated group? This chapter will seek to address the political nexus between Crit- ical Terrorism and Peace Studies by replacing both within a narrative of 09 289 Researching ch09.indd 165 30/10/14 15:30:28