Legacies of the Global War on Terror
Li, D. 2019. The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity, Stanford University Press
“Darryl Li reconceptualizes jihad as armed transnational solidarity under conditions of American empire, revisiting a pivotal moment after the Cold War when ethnic cleansing in the Balkans dominated global headlines. Muslim volunteers came from distant lands to fight in Bosnia-Herzegovina alongside their co-religionists, offering themselves as an alternative to the US-led international community. Li highlights the parallels and overlaps between transnational jihads and other universalisms such as the War on Terror, United Nations peacekeeping, and socialist Non-Alignment. Developed from more than a decade of research with former fighters in a half-dozen countries, The Universal Enemy explores the relationship between jihad and American empire to shed critical light on both.” - Stanford University Press
Khalili, L. 2012 Time in the Shadows: confinement in counterinsurgencies, Stanford University Press
“Time in the Shadows investigates the two major liberal counterinsurgencies of our day: Israeli occupation of Palestine and the U.S. War on Terror. In rich detail, the book investigates Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, CIA black sites, the Khiam Prison, and Gaza, among others, and links them to a history of colonial counterinsurgencies… Khalili deftly demonstrates that whatever the form of incarceration, liberal states have consistently acted illiberally in their counterinsurgency confinements. As our tactics of war have shifted beyond slaughter to elaborate systems of detention, liberal states have warmed to the pursuit of asymmetric wars. Ultimately, Khalili confirms that as tactics of counterinsurgency have been rendered more "humane," they have also increasingly encouraged policymakers to willingly choose to wage wars.” - Stanford University Press
Lisa Hajjar
- 2018 How Government Secrecy on Torture Has Stymied the 9/11 Terror Prosecution
- 2018 Why Gina Haspel, the Queen of Torture, Was Able to Rise to the Top of the CIA
- 2015 How the World’s Largest Psychological Association Aided the CIA’s Torture Program
- 2015 The CIA Didn't Just Torture, it Experimented on Human Beings
The Syrian wars of words: international and local instrumentalisations of the war on terror
Alice Martini, Third World Quarterly, 41:4, 725-743, 2020
Martini argues that the label of terrorism in the context of the War on Terror should be understood as a discursive, political tool. Using the context of Syria (post-2011), Martini explores how terrorism is utilised as a discursive tool by different parties to delegitimise enemies and legitimise violence within the liberal international framework of the UNSC. All parties have “have instrumentalized the powerful narrative of the WOT and somewhat discursively inscribed their violent actions within the international enterprise of counterterrorism” (Martini, 2020: 737).
Dirty Wars | Jeremy Scahill | Talks at Google
Jeremy Scahill, 2013
Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that "the world is a battlefield," as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America's global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of America's covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate.
Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CTSWG-BISA)
The Critical Studies on Terrorism working group was established in 2006 to provide an international network for scholars working on terrorism-related research. We are genuinely global in reach and have organised numerous successful research workshops, conferences, and panels. A range of outputs has resulted from these events, including edited collections and special issues in Critical Studies on Terrorism.
