Tag: Terrorism

Come Fly with Me: Airports and Geographies of Rendition

C-130 Hercules prepares for landing during KEEN SWORD 2015 at Yokota Air Base, Japan. Image: US Air Force/Flickr.

This article was originally published by E-International Relations on 18 December 2014.

A recent Senate intelligence committee report on the use of torture concluded that the CIA has mislead the American public and by implication the wider world. Although fiercely contested by former members of the George W Bush administration, the report served as a reminder about the extensiveness of torture – or specifically the geographies of torture. The process of finding, transporting, imprisoning, questioning, torturing and archiving the treatment of suspects/illegal combatants/terrorists involved a great deal of labor.

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Terrorism

The New Face of French Jihad

Fighters of the Islamic State (IS). Image: Day Donaldson/Flickr

This article was originally published by the World Policy Blog on 8 December, 2014.

On Sunday, November 16, the Islamic State posted a video featuring the beheading of one American aid worker and 14 Syrian soldiers. While this macabre ritual has become somewhat routine, this beheading caught the attention of French authorities, who recognized the face of Maxime Hauchard, a 22-year-old man raised in a quiet, rural village of Normandy. He embodies a new generation of fighters recruited from an unexpected landscape and motivated by an entirely different set of reasons than his militant counterparts.

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Terrorism

The Sovereign Nation-State as a Contributor to Terrorism

Terrorist attack in Baghdad. Image: Jim Gordon/Wikimedia

This article was originally published by E-International Relations on 25 October 2014.

The current crises associated with terrorism notwithstanding, in particular the shocking acts by individuals in the beheading of civilians as acts of revenge, there are issues with regard to the nation-state and its role in the ‘shaping’ of terrorism that have remained undisclosed. The active participation of individuals and/or groups and their forming of a reaction to the nation-state is what has remained at the forefront of the commentary. By its very nature, the focus on the reaction implies a dyad: the perpetual reinforcement of the nation-state as being just and reasonable, and that those who react against the nation-state and its laws/wisdoms are criminals. Hence, there has been no comment with regard to the ‘process’ – such as the systemic brutalisation of a populace as encountered by the ‘Marsh Peoples’ of southern Iraq under the Saddam Hussein regime, which caused them to rise up after the First Gulf War. To wit, governments need not acknowledge their role in creating terrorists, and terrorism. However, placing terrorism in perspective with regard to the nation-state provides a useful template and guide to what it consists ‘of.’

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Terrorism

Killing of al-Shabaab Leader Throws Future of Militant Group into Question

Al Shabaab War Flag. Image: Ingoman/Wikimedia

This article was originally published by IPI Global Observatory on 19 September, 2014.

On September 1, the leader of the Somalia-based extremist group al-Shabaab, Ahmed Abdi Godane, was killed in a US-led drone strike in an al-Shabaab stronghold in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region. The drone strike coincided with an ongoing military offensive launched August 25 by the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali government forces in southern and central Somalia, dubbed Operation Indian Ocean.

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Humanitarian Issues Terrorism

Pakistan’s IDP Crisis

Image: Al Jazeera English/Wikimedia

Pakistan’s armed forces recently launched another major offensive against foreign and local Islamist militants based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Operation Zarb-e-Azb represents a break from Islamabad’s recent strategy of negotiating peace with the Taliban, a move that baffled many Pakistanis. It’s also resulted in an upsurge of internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing the conflict zones.

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