Welcome to the debut edition of the new Security in Context Monthly Roundup! The Security in Context Monthly Roundup highlights the work of our experts and features some of the most exciting events from our research network partner organizations. The goal is to shed light on knowledge production on security-related issues of public interest from critical perspectives and from global south readings. Entries may include academic journal articles, think tank reports, non-governmental organizations releases, official documents or government-commissioned research, and regular news items. The material included covers SiC’s key security issues: Climate Change, Security and International Relations, Migration and Displacement, Covid-19 and Capitalism, Technologies of Surveillance, Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality, Arms and the Military-industrial Complex, and Censorship.
Articles
Trump inherits the Guantánamo prison, complete with 4 ‘forever prisoners’
By Lisa Hajjar
January 28, 2025
As of January 2025, the Guantánamo Bay detention facility holds 15 prisoners, including four “forever prisoners” who remain in indefinite detention without charges or trials. The military commissions system continues to face challenges, with key cases like the 9/11 trial remaining unresolved.
Francesca Albanese: ‘This is what a settler-colonial genocide looks like’
By Mandy Turner and Sonia Boulos
January 12, 2025
There are few UN positions that provoke as much scrutiny and criticism as the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. It plays an important role: it catalogues Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights, provides factual information for advocates and activists, and helps to keep Palestine firmly on the agenda at the UN.
Rebuilding Syria’s economy: Can stability return after the war?
By Alexander Kozul-Wright (including quotations by Omar Dahi)
January 8, 2025
Syria has a relatively strong literary rate, and used to boast a modest but growing and diversified economy, but with the civil war and Assad’s incredibly violent crackdowns on protests and destruction of basic infrastructure, GDP decreased by over 50% and even after the fall of the regime there are estimated to be 13 million Syrians who currently do not have enough to eat. Sanctions crippled the tax base and corporate activity, and while promoting local sectors like agriculture may benefit the economy in the short term, access to wealth and technology from other countries is likely the only way to ensure future growth.
Syria Looks to Pick Up the Pieces of Its Shattered Economy
By Omar Abdel-Baqui (including quotations by Omar Dahi)
December 30, 2024
With billions lost in oil exports largely due to the EU sanctions and impact of the civil war, and roughly a third of civilians in extreme poverty, the new government is aiming to regain control of oil reserves largely located in the Kurdish-controlled northeast. Prices are falling and foreign currencies are flowing, with the government aiming to establish a free-market system devoid of the mass corruption of the Assad regime. Turkey has managed to have a very strong influence on the country which will likely increase with time.
What to Expect With Trump’s Future China Policy
By Michael Klare
December 23, 2024
The challenges President Donald Trump may face in his second term regarding U.S.-China relations highlights the internal conflict between pursuing aggressive policies to counter China’s rise and the risks of potential military confrontation, suggesting that Trump’s administration will need to carefully navigate this complex dynamic.
Syrians cautious about return due to uncertain future and crippled economy
By Oliver Mizzi (including quotations by Omar Dahi)
December 20, 2024
The mass return of millions of Syrian refugees would require a strong and legitimized government and legal system, and efforts to forcefully return refugees would very likely cause unnecessary harm and make any changes less sustainable.
The Dangers of Trump’s Foreign Policy
By Michael Klare
December 9, 2024
The incoming administration’s plan to prioritize national interests over global leadership this approach may lead to strategic incoherence and increased global instability. While the administration aims to avoid foreign entanglements, its contradictory policies and aggressive posturing could inadvertently entangle the U.S. in new conflicts.
No Escape The Weaponization of Gender for the Purposes of Digital Transnational Repression
By Dr. Katty Alhayek
December 2, 2024
Dr. Katty Alhayek served as an External Peer Reviewer for the upcoming report No Escape The Weaponization of Gender for the Purposes of Digital Transnational Repression by the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The report analyzes 85 interviews on gender-based digital transnational repression as well as its impact on one’s health, social life, and professional work.
Climate Change Is the Real National Security Threat
By Michael Klare
November 25, 2024
Recent hurricanes, Helene and Milton, highlight the United States' underestimation of climate change as a significant threat to national security. While traditional security assessments focus on nations like China and Russia, the immediate dangers posed by climate-induced natural disasters—such as infrastructure damage, military resource strain, and leadership distraction—are profound and demand a reevaluation of national priorities.
By Omnia Khalil
October 21, 2024
Cairo has experienced unprecedented mass destruction and construction in the past decade, with many inhabitants living in informal neighborhoods. These communities face the threat of being destroyed for new developments or large highways, some of which link the new capital to the old one.
Cairo’s Incarcerated Geographies
By Omnia Khalil
Fall 2024
In 2015, the Egyptian government announced a series of urban development plans, with the intent to clear the city of slums, effectively legalizing urban destruction and mass evictions in the name of security. People’s freedom of movement has been limited and residents of Cairo face imprisonment for objecting to the drastic changes to their city.
Decolonizing Displacement Research: Betweener Ethnography as a Method of Resistance
By Dr. Katty Alhayek and Dr. Basileus Zeno
October 19, 2023
Government suppression displaces many scholars out of their home countries leading to instability and exploitation under neoliberal academia. Displaced scholars deal with discriminatory policies from the United States Government and must navigate a job market in competition with scholars with privileged citizenship status.
Conferences
What Good is the National Interest? Rethinking the Roots of Peace, Democracy, and War
Presented by Dr. Van Jackson
February 4, 2025
The concept of the “national interest” has become an under-appreciated source of global insecurity. The “national interest” obscures whose interests are served (and harmed) by the efforts of policy elites to secure the state. This lecture will argue that addressing the contradictions in the national interest—as well as some of international security studies’ most cherished strategic constructs—is a start point for constructing more durable forms of security.
The echo chamber carousel: How the top three Western think tanks disseminated bias on Israel and Palestine after October 7
Presented by Mandy Turner
January 25-27, 2025
Mandy is presenting a paper at the Annual Palestine Forum organised by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) in Doha.
Intersectionality and Solidarity in Syrian feminist media activism
By Dr. Katty Alhayek
November 14, 2024
On the panel titled Framing Gender, Feminism, and Terrorism at the Middle East Studies Association 58th annual meeting, Dr. Alhayek presented on the increased feminist media initiatives following the Syrian uprising of 2011 and the subsequent limitation on feminist activism around 2018. Dr. Alhayek used a community-engaged participatory approach including conducting 20 interviews with Syrian women activists and journalists.
Interviews
Against the Grain: ounterterrorism in Context
January 27, 2025
How is the War on Terror playing out in a country like Kenya? What are its security forces doing at the U.S.’s behest, and how are ordinary Kenyans responding? Samar Al-Bulushi discusses the emergence of supranational forms of police power and their impact on human rights activism at KPFA radio station.
OU Researcher Leads Investigation of Global Power Dynamics
By Josh DeLozier
January 16, 2025
In this article, founding member of Security in Context Firat Demir explains how the project studies multipolarity and international power competition. This includes studies on global capitalism and transnational war economics, with Demir speaking to the difficult yet important research and data that can be gleaned from SiC.
Global Business: Syria’s Economy - Rebuilding After War
CGTN America (interview with Omar Dahi)
January 9, 2025
In the wake of the civil war, Syria dropped to a low-income country and particularly saw a plummet in education and health. The immediate impact of EU sanctions and the peripheral impact of the United States punishing countries for trading with Syria via the recent Caesar Act has been an under-appreciated primary factor behind the large majority of Syrians being unable to meet basic needs.
Webinars
Challenges of Knowledge Production in Diaspora: A Syrian Case Study
By Dr. Basileus Zeno
November 12, 2024
Dr. Basileus Zeno (Trent University) presented his research on the challenges of knowledge production in diaspora by Syrian scholars and researchers at a panel titled Conflict, Power, and Knowledge: Studies from the Middle East and Diaspora at the Middle East Studies Association 58th annual meeting. He also presented his research on Responsibility to Protect and Politics of Desperation at a panel titled Methods and Approaches for Studying Conflict at the Canadian Political Science Association conference.
Syria after Assad: opportunities and challenges
Dr. Katty Alhayek and Dr. Basileus Zeno
December 11, 2024
The two scholars participated in this webinar organized for Syrian Studies by The University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Scholars spoke on the massive displacement and devastation of the bloody conflict in Syria and the future of Syria following the fall of Assad.
Book
By Dr. Katty Alhayek
June 28, 2024
Dr. Katty Alhayek published a book chapter titled AGAINST “DOUBLE ERASURE” Women’s filmmaking in the aftermath of the uprisings in Yemen, Libya, and Saudi Arabia in the Routledge Handbook on Arab Cinema. This book chapter is co-authored by Eva Oseen, who was Alhayek’s former research assistant and student at Toronto Metropolitan University.
War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror
By Samar Al-Bulushi
November 2024
War-Making as Worldmaking explores the entanglement of militarism, imperialism, and liberal-democratic governance in East Africa today. Samar Al-Bulushi argues that Kenya’s emergence as a key player in the "War on Terror" is closely linked—but not reducible to—the U.S. military’s growing proclivity to outsource the labor of war.
