The Containment Zone

Tahir, Madiha

doi:10.1215/9780822372813-010

Cited by 47 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…With few exceptions, the histories, politics, and security infrastructures of Global South partner states are often overlooked in these analyses. As a consequence, we lose sight of the ways in which Global South states sustain the apparatus of global warfare, particularly as new technologies and training regimens augment their coercive capacities (Beckett 2010; Chalfin 2010; Hoffman 2019; Schrader 2019; Tahir 2017). 14 Grasping how colonial logics continue to inform the current moment is critical to our understanding of how transnational policing as an imperial power formation “refracts, transforms, and organizes itself” today (Tahir 2017, 235).…”

Section: The Urban Gray Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Very few cases against terror suspects in Kenya make it to court, primarily due to insufficient evidence; those that do typically do not result in convictions. The reality on the ground demands that my interlocutors look beyond the rhetoric of human rights and remain alert to the “multiple, fluid jurisdictions” (Tahir 2017, 229) that animate the war on terror. I understand activism in this context to mean the concerted effort to make legible the amorphous assemblages that characterize transnational policing.…”

Section: (Dis)orientationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Citizen‐Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya

Al-Bulushi

2021

American Anthropologist

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This article privileges the grounded geographies of the war on terror, focusing on those who grapple with its everyday policing powers. Informed by ethnographic research in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, I explore how Kenyan Muslim activists experience and make sense of the networked assemblages of police power that transform urban spaces into “gray zones” that fall within the ambiguous spectrum between war and peace. As US‐trained Kenyan police employ military tactics of tracking and targeting potential terror suspects in quotidian urban spaces, they rely on “pop‐up” interventions such as abductions, house raids, and makeshift checkpoints—flexible maneuvers designed to match the amorphousness of the so‐called enemy. I introduce the term citizen‐suspect to shed light on actually existing citizenship in the urban gray zone. Citizen‐suspects contend not simply with the fear and paranoia that come with subjection to surveillance and suspicion but with the knowledge that is needed to navigate the shape‐shifting geographies of transnational policing.

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Section: The Urban Gray Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (Dis)orientationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen‐Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya

Al-Bulushi

2021

American Anthropologist

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“…Here, the work of postcolonial geography has, to some extent, pushed the critiques of historical geography engagement with military phenomena. For example, Tahir () examines the ways in which the juridical institutionalisation of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) as exceptional enables drone operations in the region. She argues that this is facilitated through a discourse, which draws on explicitly racist tropes with roots in early 20th century British colonial air policing, and thus, the present configuration of the region is a historical legacy of an imperial frontier imagination.…”

Section: Legacies: Historical Geography and A Military Genealogymentioning

confidence: 99%

A genealogy of military geographies: Complicities, entanglements, and legacies

Forsyth

2019

Geography Compass

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This paper argues that historical geography is particularly well positioned to make insightful contributions to military geographies and critical military studies more broadly because of its commitment to critically exploring the genealogies and consequences of military violence, which are too often seen as a given or historically non‐contingent. This is demonstrated by a review of existing literature which variously acknowledges the emergence of disciplinary geography in concert with the modern military, traces the contributions of geographers to and their entanglements with the military, and accounts for the complicities, consequences, and legacies of military activities and violence through a historical lens. The paper reveals how historical geography exposes the knowledges, technologies, and lives that produce and are shaped by military activities as being spatially and temporally specific. Further, it suggests future directions for historical geography that would extend and expand the discipline's attempts to more fully acknowledge the place of military geographies in our histories, politics, spatialities, cultures, and everyday lives.

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“…Tribal legal codes, such as Pashtunwali continue to transcend national borders and, in so doing, reject hegemonic understandings of space. Past and contemporary domestic law plays a significant role in creating many of the conditions that enable international powers to label this region as “lawless/dangerous,” and to attack it (Tahir, 2017). 9 Local legal institutions are oftentimes ignored or short-circuited, even the ones whose interests and actions align with the United States’ counterterrorism goals.…”

Section: International Law and Violence In Frontier Territoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 9. Madiha Tahir (2017) examines how the Pakistani state might construct FATA as one of these spaces of exception, and how this is perpetuated by bureaucratic and spatial organization. Indeed, Tahir argues that “fluid jurisdiction” causes precarity for FATA residents, rather than an innate “lawlessness” (228–230).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontier justice: international law and ‘lawless’ spaces in the “War on Terror”

Nylen

2019

European Journal of International Relations

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How does the discourse of international law facilitate extraterritorial state violence? This paper synthesizes insights from International Relations, comparative politics, and legal studies in order to explore how the sovereign foundations of international law may render “frontier territories” exceptionally vulnerable to external military intervention. I argue that international law’s focus on sovereignty constitutes frontier territories as “ambiguous,” which leads to discursive conflicts over how to define these spaces, what is considered “legal” and “illegal” action within them, and who gets to define their status. All of this creates a conducive environment for powerful international governments to denigrate frontier territories as “lawless,” by rhetorically constructing them as exceptional legal spaces that do not deserve the same protections as areas ordered by sovereign ideals. To illuminate this empirically, I conduct a discourse analysis of 16 distinct legal documents from the Obama White House, including internal memorandums and public speeches on the legal standing of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

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The Containment Zone

Cited by 47 publications

References 0 publications

Citizen‐Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya

Citizen‐Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya

A genealogy of military geographies: Complicities, entanglements, and legacies

Frontier justice: international law and ‘lawless’ spaces in the “War on Terror”

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