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British Muslim volunteers in Syria have been variously cast as humanitarians, activists, and—under the suspicious gaze of the war on terror—disguised militants. Yet many volunteers frame their efforts as attempts at iṣlāḥ (reform, repair, rectification). What is the ethicopolitical life of iṣlāḥ, a multivalent concept in the Islamic tradition, in a landscape marked by war and international relief efforts? Considered ethnographically, iṣlāḥ organizes heterogeneous practices, including charitable giving, political defiance, and ethical contestation. It is thus irreducible to either (religious) charity or to its oft‐purported opposite, (political) solidarity. Further, it reveals the embedded secularity of such oppositions, which shapes the reasoning of both the British security state and social scientific commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background & Objective: Police officials who participated in war on terror were exposed to high frequency of traumatic exposures. Previous research suggests that exposure of war trauma can results in negative changes like stress and positive changes like growth. Our objective was to study the role of post-traumatic stress in relationship between war trauma and post traumatic growth among police officials. Methods: In this cross-sectional study conducted from January 2019 to December 2022. The sample consisted of 400 police officials (having direct and indirect exposure of war trauma) who participated in war on terror in FATA Pakistan. Non probability purposive sampling technique was used for sample selection. Relationship among trauma, PTS (Post traumatic stress) and PTG (Post traumatic growth) was assessed. Results: Findings from the present study indicated that stress played vital role in paving pathway from trauma to growth (β =0.08). Study results also confirmed that moderate level of stress is linked with positive changes like posttraumatic growth. R-square change in linear relationship among stress and posttraumatic growth was 0.59 but in curvilinear relationship among stress and posttraumatic growth R-square change was 0.77 which is higher than linear relationship which confirmed the curvilinear relationship between stress and growth and these findings proved that moderate level of stress after war trauma exposure produced higher levels of post traumatic growth. Conditional indirect effect of exposure to trauma on growth is highly significant (***p < .001) so the role of stress as mediator has been confirmed. Conclusion: The study provided initial evidence that after trauma exposure levels of posttraumatic stress which is experienced play a significant role in the promotion of PTG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This proposal aims to analyze the militarization of US-Latin America foreign relations by discussing the role played by the U.S. Southern Command in the implementation of U.S. foreign policy for the region in the aftermath of the September 11th 2001 attacks. Since the last decades of Cold War, civilian and diplomatic agencies stationed in the region, notably the State Department and the USAID, suffered budgetary constraints that were aggravated at the beginning of the Global War on Terror. For instance, in Latin America, the Southcom has been adapted to perform the so called "military missions other than war," including non-military functions such as the provision of humanitarian assistance, law enforcement, and the management of security assistance programs aimed to dismantle drug trafficking networks. As we intend to argue, the overreliance on security and military means reflects the militarized character of U.S. influence in the region and has impacts on how the local coercive systems are organized and deployed by the domestic political elites. By analyzing the annual posture statements and the initiatives conducted in the field by the Southcom, between 2001 and 2021, we hope to clarify how the violence structures from abroad are connected to those from within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Changing values and the writing of history" article reviews the United States Foreign Policy History & Resource Guide, a website offering a comprehensive history of US foreign policy from the War of 1812 to the "War on Terror." The Guide features essays by multiple authors, is ad-free, and provides downloadable PDFs for offline use. While the Guide is praised for its accessibility, accuracy, and rich content, some critiques include potential bias in its recommendations and a lack of in-depth exploration of concepts like imperialism. The article also highlights the Guide's detailed analysis of the "war on terror" section, which provides a thorough and balanced account of conflicts from 2001 to 2022, incorporating diverse perspectives and voices. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the influence of Henry David Thoreau on Paul Auster's novel "Sunset Park," focusing on the intellectual community depicted in the text. Auster engages with Thoreauvian ideas such as solitude and anti-war stances to reflect on the socio-political climate of America during the financial crisis. The characters in the novel practice a form of Thoreauvian resistance to reality, embodying a sense of helplessness in the face of societal issues. Auster's critique extends to the post-9/11 context and the impact of the Vietnam War, highlighting themes of disillusionment and resistance in the novel. [Extracted from the article]

This study analyzes the perspectives of journalists on the reporting of a civil rights movement known as Pashtun Tahafuz Movement in the Pakistani media. The movement was started by the people of tribal areas to demand an end to the existing state policies on the US-led "war on terror" amidst calls for institutional reforms in the region. The study borrows from the existing scholarship on the media representation of social movements and utilizes the protest paradigm as its theoretical framework. Through content analysis and detailed interviews with journalists, the study found the civil rights movement is mainly reported in unfavorable terms in the leading media outlets. While sharing their perspectives on this particular treatment, the journalists believed that the media was tightly controlled by the government to blackout the movement from the mainstream media. Moreover, the organizational and personal opinions of journalists also influenced the negative portrayal. Though the social media has provided alternative avenues to the movement's activists to speak out against the state's policies, the journalists feared that even this limited freedom would not last longer in the face of some upcoming legislation aimed at controlling the country's social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the long-standing debate over the social impact of military politics and recent discussions of food-induced famine resulting from military activities, a cross-sectional study was conducted to ascertain the association between military politics in the purview of household food security from a sociological perspective. A structured interview schedule was used for taking primary data from 379 household heads in Torghar, Northern Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Pakistan through stratified sampling method. Further, Chi-square test statistics and correlation were used at bivariate level, while three background variables namely household budget allocation, monthly income and household composition were controlled to ascertain the association between military politics and food security at multivariate analysis. The study found that war on terror had threatened the efforts of establishing food secure environment, as militant tendencies and food security did not have any reinforcing effects rather paradoxical in nature. The existence of such environments were exploring toward imposing of the decision without the consent of the local population, which eroded the chances of greater public inclusion in the development initiatives. Moreover, such dynamics forced the locals to migrate internally as well. In addition, the local youth recruitment in such armed groups gave impetus to the rise of greater deviance, challenging the established social and cultural patterns of life while challenging the writ of the state as well. The rise of militant tendencies during the war on terror had the most significant impact on access to food in the study area. The government need to focus on addressing the social and economic aspects of these rising tendencies; provide a smooth access of the local youth to the job market by implementing specific quotas; and establish a strong surveillance system to address and control these tendencies was recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The association between hypothermia, coagulopathy, and acidosis in trauma is well described. Hypothermia mitigation starts in the prehospital setting; however, it is often a secondary focus after other life-saving interventions. The deployed environment further compounds the problem due to prolonged evacuation times in rotary wing aircraft, resource limitations, and competing priorities. This analysis evaluates hypothermia in combat casualties and the relationship to resuscitation strategy with blood products. Methods Using the data from the Department of Defense Joint Trauma Registry from 2003 to 2021, a retrospective analysis was conducted on adult trauma patients. Inclusion criteria was arrival at the first military treatment facility (MTF) hypothermic (<95ºF). Study variables included: mortality, year, demographics, battle vs non-battle injury, mechanism, theater of operation, vitals, and labs. Subgroup analysis was performed on severely injured (15 < ISS < 75) hypothermic trauma patients resuscitated with whole blood (WB) vs only component therapy. Results Of the 69,364 patients included, 908 (1.3%) arrived hypothermic; the vast majority of whom (N  = 847, 93.3%) arrived mildly hypothermic (90–94.9°F). Overall mortality rate was 14.8%. Rates of hypothermia varied by year from 0.7% in 2003 to 3.9% in 2014 (P <0.005). On subgroup analysis, mortality rates were similar between patients resuscitated with WB vs only component therapy; though base deficit values were higher in the WB cohort (−10 vs −6, P  < 0.001). Conclusion Despite nearly 20 years of combat operations, hypothermia continues to be a challenge in military trauma and is associated with a high mortality rate. Mortality was similar between hypothermic trauma patients resuscitated with WB vs component therapy, despite greater physiologic derangements on arrival in patients who received WB. As the military has the potential to conduct missions in environments where the risk of hypothermia is high, further research into hypothermia mitigation techniques and resuscitation strategies in the deployed setting is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the use of historical commissions in addressing the legacies of the past, particularly in contexts of social and political unrest. It focuses on the Historical Memory Group (GMH) in Colombia, which used a combination of archival research and oral testimonies to investigate the reasons for the emergence and evolution of illegal armed groups in the country. The article emphasizes the importance of considering the functions and objectives of a commission, as well as the social and political context, in shaping its approach. It also cautions against attributing too much to the capacities of historical commissions and highlights the complexities of historical clarification and memory in the context of ongoing conflicts. The article concludes by highlighting the potential of historical commissions to contribute to critical reflection and transformation of public perceptions about the past. [Extracted from the article]

This article focuses on female bodies co‐laboring across the racial lines and academic‐activist divides to explore both the potentials and constraints of feminist solidarity in the hyper‐masculine and ultra‐nationalist normative order of the global war on terror. Anthropological studies have deconstructed phantasmatic narratives of the global war on terror by disclosing its racialized and classed structure. However, what remains understudied is how racialized female bodies are subjected to the biopower and necropower of this war. This ethnography concentrates on the feminist solidarity between Özlem Yasak and Serra Hakyemez, the coauthors of this article, which stretches over 13 years and moves between the colony and the metropole and the Global South and Global North. It examines how a Turkish academic and a Kurdish activist (both lower middle‐class women) forge, cultivate, and repair their comradeship as they move from an immigration office to their family house to neoliberal universities. Based on what we call the Other‐graphy as a new feminist method, this article argues that the global war on terror expands its reach as the humanitarian and neoliberal regimes of power recruit activists and academics to the fantasy of autonomous subjectivity posited against their possible political solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropologists need to grapple politically with the ways in which security, war and militarization shape our fields of study. This special section of American Anthropologist, "Forever War: Anthropology and the Global War on Terror," brings together scholars studying, writing and enacting their politics amidst the immense socio‐political impacts of the Global War on Terror. In this introductory article, I offer the concept of "the security encounter" to describe the complex and inherently political conditions of doing anthropology within the current conjuncture, as well as a provocation for anthropologists to adopt an abolitionist approach to security, militarization, and permanent war which increasingly structure our lives and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does violent military coercion work alongside liberal democratic values in contemporary iterations of imperialism? This article shows how the less‐than‐lethal paradigm occludes death and perpetuates extreme forms of both deadly and not‐deadly military coercion in Iraq. Key to the 2003 invasion and subsequent counterinsurgency in Iraq, the less‐than‐lethal paradigm extends across military doctrine and US popular discourse. Based on the idea that killing is an undesirable way to dominate, the less‐than‐lethal paradigm is not necessarily benevolent or less deadly; instead, it is a legal, discursive, and logistical maneuver to minimize the political power of death and dying on the global stage. Decentering death, the less‐than‐lethal paradigm rebrands violence by reframing war as a precondition for peace, minimizing killing and death, disseminating nonkilling forms of coercion, and assigning responsibility to others for violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the War on Terror, the US conducted at least 378 air and drone strikes in Yemen from 2002 to 2023. While primarily targeting members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), these strikes have killed over 1,000 people, including more than 125 civilians. This research aims to understand the broader societal impact of US military action as shown on Twitter, now known as 'X'. The authors take a mixed-methods approach, using both qualitative and quantitative data to investigate this impact. They perform word- and tweet-level analyses on the content and sentiment of a subset of Yemeni Twitter users and contrast the content of Yemeni users' tweets about US drone strikes with that of US users' tweets. Finally, the article quantifies the temporal relationship between the frequency and severity of US drone strikes and Twitter activity levels in Yemen, considering the prevalence of Twitter bots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the way in which two major Spanish newspapers, El País and El Diario Vasco, framed the 11 March 2004 (11-M) Madrid train bombings through peace journalism or war journalism, based on Peace Studies theorist Johan Galtung's classification. An analysis of the news articles in the immediate aftermath of the bombings finds both frames present. The incumbent Spanish government initially tried to use the news media as a vehicle to present a premature interpretation that the Basque separatist group ETA perpetrated the attacks, even trying to pass a United Nations resolution. However, some journalistic coverage of the events in the week after the 11-M attacks portrayed the Spanish people's sentiments regarding Spain's support of the US in the Iraq war, Spaniards' engagement with their democracy, including massive street protests, and parallels between the Iraqi people's suffering and the Spanish train bombing victims. Other journalistic coverage focused on the perspectives of high-level Spanish government officials, emphasized the importance of prevailing in 'the war on terror', and provided an 'us–them' orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boundaries of partnership between states and civil society organisations (CSOs), as well as who is counted and who gets to set them, have been the subject of ongoing debate. This discussion has gained particular significance in light of the growing securitisation and tactical engagement of CSOs in conflict, violence, and security. The discussion has led to the development of a theoretical framework known as "strategic exclusion, co-option, and containment" (SECC). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, the importance of normative inquiries notwithstanding, there exists a dearth of contextual and empirical understanding regarding the dynamics of state-CSO interactions. To address this gap, this study examines the interactions between states and Muslim community-based CSOs in the implementation of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE). The research draws from an ethnographic study involving various actors, including policymakers, security agents, non-state P/CVE practitioners, civil society group members, P/CVE donor-agency programme managers, and P/CVE coalition networks and steering committee members. The study argues that in the context of P/CVE, where a "whole-of-society" approach is promoted, the state utilises Muslim community-based CSOs primarily as intelligence producers to advance its interests, thereby undermining their agency in P/CVE practices. Despite its framing as a human security perspective on violent extremism, the whole-of-society approach in P/CVE remains deeply rooted in state-security logic and the continuation of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) practices. This ultimately constricts the spaces of engagement between the state and civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorism and counterterrorism are often described as "ironic", but conceptual engagement with irony has been very limited. Building on the lifework of cultural anthropologist Joseba Zulaika, this article considers irony as an analytical meta-perspective in the critical study of (counter)terrorism. It draws on the life and work of German-American Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) to argue that the ironies of (counter)terrorism under U.S. president Barack Obama, who admired Niebuhr, point to an unconscious failure of collective self-understanding. Dissolving these ironies requires new narratives of American identity that cut across foreign and domestic politics, state and non-state actors, the "war on terror" and white supremacy in a long view of history. Facilitating this multidirectional process of self-reflection and -transcendence is a key task for critical scholars of (counter)terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial powers have long used islands and island forms for imperial projects, including military bases, weapons testing, resource mining and migrant detention. In order to pursue these interests, colonial powers have often sought geographically remote sites, but they further rely on the construction of remoteness. This article reflects on the colonial construction of remoteness by analysing the case study of Diego Garcia. The militarised atoll of Diego Garcia is one in a chain of islands that make up the British Indian Ocean Territory, the last colony created by the British government. While Diego Garcia is now under British sovereign control, the island was brutally cleared of its Indigenous inhabitants to make way for a joint British‐American military base. By detailing the ways in which 'remoteness' has affected the Indigenous Chagossians, 'war on terror' detainees, asylum‐seekers and migrant workers, this article demonstrates how colonial powers deploy remoteness as a way of distancing groups deemed 'other' from rights. Additionally, colonial powers use 'remoteness' to paradoxically protect their own proximity to colonial interests, including geopolitically significant sites for military installations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protracted war against violent extremism provides plausible evidence about the ineffectiveness of purely militaristic approaches. The G-5 Sahel region witnessed an overall trend of mounting insecurity (2001–2017) despite a plethora of programs by multiple actors to defeat terrorism. Deterring rather than defeating terrorism gained momentum in the fourth wave of deterrence research. Contemporary Deterrence Theory (CDT) suggests a toolkit of punishment, denial and delegitimization to face asymmetric threats posed by violent non-state actors. The present article analyzes the US policy instruments and the upward pattern of terrorist attacks in the G5 Sahel states based on the data of global terrorism database (GTD). It also examines the concepts of ungoverned space and state fragility, which represent the bedrock of US intervention in the region. The study argues for a shift of US policy instruments in the Sahel from defeating to deterring terrorism based on the tenets of CDT. Much more attention should be diverted towards a nuanced approach that distinguishes between domestic and transnational extremist groups, and prioritizes robust homegrown delegitimization initiatives in conjunction with more inclusive political processes and socio-economic resilience programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how the discourse of terror has adapted to the rise of the far-right nationalist movement, which itself has turned to terroristic methods, is necessary to combatting anti-Muslim racism within contemporary England. In this paper, we examine a curious trial in which a far-right nationalist, convicted under a domestic counter-terrorism statute in England in 2021, was punished with reading canonical English literature. Through analysing this odd choice for a punishment, we introduce the concept of White educability. We argue that the racial knowledge that is circulating in and through this courtroom, and indeed, in and through the discourse of the War on Terror, is that whiteness is educable and Muslimness is not, and therefore that White life is deserving of state protection and Muslim life is, in fact, killable life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses two books edited by Ryan Shaffer that focus on the intelligence services in Africa. The first book examines the history and challenges faced by African intelligence services, while the second book provides a comprehensive overview of intelligence cultures in all 55 African states. The books highlight the politicization of intelligence and the need for reforms to improve oversight and reduce susceptibility to political influence. The article also mentions specific chapters that delve into the intelligence services of Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Sudan, and South Africa. It discusses the role of intelligence agencies in South Africa's history, particularly during the apartheid era and the post-apartheid period, and suggests that intelligence agencies have been influenced by rival factions within the ruling party in recent years. The text also briefly mentions the role of intelligence agencies in assassinations during apartheid and the intelligence operations outside of Africa. Overall, the text provides insights into the complex and often controversial role of intelligence agencies in African countries. [Extracted from the article]

What influence does the digital diplomacy of the post 9/11 world have on our understanding of counter-terrorism (CT) diplomacy during the Cold War? This article explores this question and the intersection between intelligence, counterterrorism diplomacy and the digital transformation long overlooked by scholars of Israeli–Turkish relations, Cold War history and terrorism studies. Diplomacy in crisis situations usually operates in an uncertain reality triggered by conflict. Turkey's domestic crises, specifically its energy crisis between 1978 and 1980, served to shift the country's foreign policy toward the more anti-Israeli stance of the Arab nations and their demands that Turkey boycott Israel in return for supplying Turkey's energy needs. This came in the context of a regional wave of contentious politics in the Middle East after the 1979 Iranian revolution, when Israel had just lost three decades of massive investment in Iran under the Shah. I argue that knowing the Turkish military junta's primary goals centered on the fight against the far left and right political violence at home and on Armenian terror attacks against Turkish diplomats abroad, Israeli diplomats employed a very selective CT policy focusing on the cooperation between Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Public diplomacy was key to conveying this message, and attempts to plant information about the Armenian-Palestinian cooperation in Turkish news outlets and national television were made. Israel's goal was to influence Turkey's public emotions and convey to Turkey's military junta that Jerusalem was a true ally, working to confront the mutual regional threat of Armenian-Palestinian terrorists arising from Lebanese training camps. This case study highlights the paradox that Ministries of Foreign Affairs and diplomats enjoyed an unparalleled monopoly of power during the Cold War over the use of means of public diplomacy, while at the time having very limited capacity, and a frequent need for third party mediators to engage with foreign public audiences. It is thus unlikely that the conveyed messages would have been as visible and disseminated as easily as they could be in the post 9/11 via means of digital diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump have all used the language of "victory" and "defeat" in the War on Terror despite its ambiguous outcomes. This paper develops the concept of a "victory trap" to explain this phenomenon and its political consequences. On the one hand, the electoral consequences of "losing" wars lead presidents to make claims about "winning" and eventual "victory." On the other hand, strategic realities and public reluctance to bear the costs of total victory result in policymakers facing criticism for being unable to produce results proportionate to their rhetoric. As such, whilst scholarship is clear on the effects of both "losing" and "winning" wars, this paper provides the first exploration of how these dual dynamics play out in practice. In arguing that policymakers are oftentimes politically "trapped," this paper suggests the limits of a range of scholarship on effective (foreign) policy-related messaging that points toward ambiguity or accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researching contemporary warfare requires attention to digital connectivity in contexts of crisis and conflict. This article traces the evolution of information warfare with a focus on the digitization, democratization and polarization of conflict-related communication and discourse. We argue that information warfare amplifies with the advent of social media—multiplying the scales for the conduct of hostilities, reducing distance and duration, and democratizing participation—notably in Africa, a continent often considered a trailblazer of digital innovation. Orthodox scholarship, however, tends to focus disproportionately on cases relevant to the global North. Examples include the global 'war on terror' or the Russian war against Ukraine. Investigating protracted violent conflict in the global South instead, our analysis fills an important gap in this literature. Through the prism of the African Great Lakes region, the world's deadliest contemporary war zone, we leverage a counterintuitive perspective of a conflict considered backwards in mainstream analysis. Drawing from long-term field research and digital ethnography, we propose the notion of 'reciprocal warscapes', where not only do battlefield events influence the underlying politics of conflict but where, reciprocally, digital warfare increasingly shapes the conduct of war itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the rapidly growing importance of the Arctic in economic, defense, and environmental sectors, the United States, though an Arctic nation, lacks meaningful defense capacity in the Arctic region. This article provides a brief history of the critical role that Alaska Natives played in the Arctic during World War II, first as the Alaska Territorial Guard and later as formally incorporated units of the Alaska Army National Guard, and how these units addressed in their time the same capability gaps facing the United States today. However, Army reorganization during the Global War on Terror has had the unintended effect of making National Guard service nearly impossible for this critical population. The article further proposes that the Canadian Ranger program could serve as a model for restoring military service as a possibility for Alaska Natives while providing a cost-effective means of addressing domain awareness and other shortfalls confronting the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between the sense of power and foreign policy hawkishness among mass publics. The author argues that the sense of state power activates hawkishness, while the sense of weakness leads to dovishness. The author draws on psychological research on power to show that this sense of power explains foreign policy hawkishness in the US, China, and Russia. The article also explores the role of elite persuasion, anger, morality, and national attachment in shaping public hawkishness. The findings have implications for power transition theory and US-China relations. [Extracted from the article]

This article draws on regime newspaper archives and the Arabic-language speeches of and interviews with Syrian president Bashar al-Asad over the last two decades to track how Syrian governmental rhetoric on the question of "terrorism" has changed over time. Engaging with the literature on how ideas, technologies, and contentious repertoires diffuse and spread and how regimes learn from each other, I show how the Asad regime has moved from a discourse that saw "terrorism" as a Western and/or Israeli concept used to delegitimize primarily Palestinian and Lebanese resistance sponsored by Damascus to a discourse that embraces the rhetoric of the "war on terror" in order to legitimize the regime's counterinsurgency policies during the current conflict. I argue that this rhetorical shift is dependent on the ethno-sectarian identity of the population in question through a comparison of regime rhetoric on three separate uprisings in recent Syrian history: the current uprising (2011–present); the Kurdish uprising of 2004; and the Druze uprising in 2000. Since the current uprising is seen as a predominantly Sunni Arab affair, the Syrian regime has used "war on terror" rhetoric in ways that it did not during the Kurdish and Druze uprisings. I then situate this rhetorical move in time as a post-9/11 development by comparing current regime rhetoric with that of the Hafez al-Asad regime's rhetoric during the uprising centered in Hama in the late 1970s and early 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The war on terror as a discourse assumes that terrorism is an essential threat of global proportions, is mostly perpetuated by Islamist networks, and requires a strong international response. This discourse had tremendous impacts on both domestic and international politics. Consequentially, a large number of studies analyse the assumptions underlying and the policies legitimised by the war on terror discourse. However, existing work mostly focusses on one or a few cases, predominantly in the global north. This article introduces a novel dataset containing information on the war on terror discourse in the school textbooks of 36 countries, representing around 64% of the world's population, for the period 2003–2014. Based on this dataset, I present the first comprehensive analysis of the global diffusion of the war on terror discourse. The study finds that the discourse has by no means globalised but is mostly limited to wealthy countries in Europe and North America. There are hence clear limits to the USA's soft power and the hyper-globalisation of terrorism discourses. Factors like terrorism intensity, armed conflict and authoritarian regime have little predictive power. This is despite clear incentives for challenged (authoritarian) regimes to adapt the war on terror discourse. Contrary to common assumptions in critical security and terrorism studies, the war on terror discourse is hardly associated with an emphasis on terrorists' irrationality and hatred or with the marginalisation of socio-political grievances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of eliciting partner country cooperation and interests alignment, U.S. presidents and their administrations have a wide array of policy tools at their disposal to mitigate terrorist threats emanating from other countries. Yet, the factors that account for variation in American presidents' and their administrations' specific counterterrorism policy choices to influence target states' behavior remain underexplored. To understand the underlying factors that influence the adoption of different U.S. counterterrorism tools within a given country, and their variation across administrations in the post‐9/11 era, we examine the case of Pakistan—a challenging yet enduring partner in the U.S.‐led Global War on Terror. Categorizing the counterterrorism policies and tools adopted by Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump as punitive or nonpunitive policy decisions, we explore the extent to which each president's policy choices during the Global War on Terror were largely a continuation of predecessors or responded to specific shifting patterns of terrorism within Pakistan. Our study yields important insights regarding the extent to which path dependency or evolving security environments shape choices of counterterrorism tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the practice of counterinsurgency within the context of the war on terror. It explores the historical development of counterinsurgency and its connection to state formation and warfare. The article also examines how Western powers, such as the United States and the Soviet Union, utilized counterinsurgency during the Cold War. It argues that the war on terror can be viewed as a colonial endeavor and analyzes the failures and consequences of counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. The article concludes by discussing ongoing debates and issues surrounding counterinsurgency, including violence, military adaptation, political tensions, and cultural differences. Additionally, the text explores the historical roots and intellectual foundations of counterinsurgency, emphasizing that counterinsurgency manuals reflect broader beliefs about sociopolitical order and ethical life. It examines the transmission of ideas in Western counterinsurgency practice and identifies shared aspirations among counterinsurgents, such as the desire to establish a society based on scientific principles and Western liberal democratic ideals. The text also delves into the role of culture in counterinsurgency, highlighting the limitations of using cultural understanding as a means to achieve military objectives. Furthermore, the text evaluates the effectiveness of anthropology in counterinsurgency efforts and challenges the Western concept of modernity and its imposition on non-Western societies. The author, Jacqueline Hazelton, argues that successful counterinsurgency relies on securing agreement among local elites and employing force to dismantle the insurgency's capability and will to [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the recent proliferation of gendered narratives underpinning and shaping counter‐terrorism laws, policies, and practices. Looking specifically at the United Kingdom, there has been shift in the place of women and gender within international and national security discourses and practices, from historic absence to contemporary presence and influence. The article identifies and critiques some of the gendered and racialized tropes through which Muslim women involved in or associated with Islamist terrorism have been represented since the advent of the 'War on Terror'. Gendered narratives that oscillate between infantilizing and demonizing Muslim women underline, and are manifested in, two particularly important shifts in the global counter‐terrorism landscape: the familialization of (Islamist) terrorism and the securitization of the (Muslim) family. These changes – which foreground the importance of the private realm in understanding and countering terrorism, and have turned the attention of the security state to the relationship between private intimacies and public threats – rest on gendered assumptions and have gendered implications. Their power is most clearly seen in the rhetoric of the family judiciary in cases that have recently emerged in the English family courts dealing with the radicalization of children and their construction of three discursive figures: the radicalized girl, the radicalized woman/wife, and the radicalized mother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a notable shift in the subject matter of Pakistani Literary Writers after the 9/11 attacks and subsequent War-on-Terror in many areas of Pakistan. In the aftermath of these incidents, majority areas of the country were severely affected. Like some other parts of the country, many regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA turned into active battlegrounds where many people lost their properties and livelihood while compelled others on migration to alien regions. It also cost them great physical, economic, and mental losses. During this era of absurdity, mental depression, and chaos writers felt the urge to express the new experiences and realities in new ways and thus war became a dominant theme in the writings of many writers. The war driven landscape was reflected in a grim, nostalgic, and fragmented language. Although, these themes and approaches were adopted by a variety of writers in different genres of literature, the current study investigates the reflection of these traumatic and chaotic events in Pashto poetry popular on social media. The sample of this study consists of various poems and stanzas from poets such as Israr Atal, Rahmat Shah Sayel, and some young poets who are known as social media poets. The current study is conducted through the theoretical perspective adopted from multiple theorists such as Cathy Caruth, Melvin Seeman, Fritz Pappenheim, Jean Paul Sarte and Albert Camus by mainly focusing on different aspects of disrupting memories of war, alienation, and absurdity. The main objective of this study is to highlight that how war and conflict affected people mentally and is still remembered in unpleasant memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is the most prolific pillar of humanitarian response in emergency situations. During and after emergencies, education affords opportunities for the children, their families and communities to move towards the rehabilitation process and learn the required skills for leading a standard life. The paper is based on review of available literature and for this purpose, an extensive review of research articles, newspapers, books, and online material was carried out regarding need and importance of education during and after conflict. As the conflict between Swat, Malakand and FATA Merged Districts (MDs) started in 2007 and continued until 2010, the main focus of this study is on educational problems during the mentioned period. The study aims to explore the hurdles in the provision of education during the conflict in the study area. In addition, the study aims to learn about the problems faced by teachers during the conflict. The study concludes that conflict in the study area has badly affected the education sector by depriving children of education. The schools were closed and the teachers were issued threats, due to which the teachers left their houses and got shifted to safer areas. Girl schools and female teachers suffered the most as girls education was declared un-Islamic. The study recommends that education ought to be the top priority of both the government and private sectors during times of conflict and temporary schools should be established for continuous education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Damien Lewis' book, "SAS brothers in arms: Churchill’s Desperadoes: Blood-and-guts defiance at Britain’s darkest hour," provides insight into the establishment and operations of the Special Air Service (SAS) during World War II. Lewis draws from personal wartime documentation belonging to Blair 'Paddy' Mayne, a legendary member of the SAS, including mission reports, orders, maps, photographs, and Mayne's diary and letters. The book focuses on Mayne's leadership and the physical and emotional challenges faced by the SAS in the Western Desert between 1941 and 1943. While there is some disagreement among authors about the relationship between Mayne and SAS founder David Stirling, Lewis presents Mayne as a successful commander and the driving force behind the SAS's survival and achievements. The book is an easy read and includes previously unseen photographs, making it a valuable resource for history enthusiasts. [Extracted from the article]

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Whenever revolutionaries in Nigeria challenge the powers that divest them of their space, rights, and security, state-actors label them terrorists. It is puzzling how terrorism is often defined as a paroxysm perpetrated by groups seeking their unassailable rights in their societies while the combustible actions of the state are ignored. Using the reader-response criticism, this study defines terrorism as an act of intimidation and oppression from the upper place of power to the lower place of marginalization. Charles Akinsete's Dance of a Savage Kingdom poem and Ndubuisi Martins' Answers through the Bramble poem aptly portray the monstrosity of the state in calibrating what is termed terrorism and picturing same in the oppressed. The poems portray the failure of the Nigerian State to provide an enabling environment for its teeming population to strive and grow. The structures of the poems indict state-actors for terrorism and depict the oppressed masses and activists as reactors to the inimical actions of the state. Rather than being sober, the oppressive state continually clamps down on aggrieved revolutionaries whose rights have been contravened, and cynically projects their oppressive actions as war against indiscipline and terrorism. Ironically, the masses strongly believe that the war against terrorism which the state-actors flaunt as an alibi for their wrongdoing is devious and self-serving. Leaning on the remonstrations of the poets, this study advocates that terrorism be situated properly within the context of its progenitors and stopped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post 9/11 global proliferation of counterterrorism legislation is increasingly being interpreted as part of a longer story of colonialism. Scholars have shown how expansive counterterrorism can be interpreted not merely as an exceptional state of violence in situations where the rule of law and guarantees of ordinary civil liberties are suspended, but as a form of law-making that draws upon colonial logics and frameworks of governance. However, a major lacuna in this scholarship is the lack of attention to counterterrorism laws in postcolonial states and their negotiations with colonial logics of law-making. This article makes a postcolonial contribution to Critical Terrorism Studies and International Politics by showing how colonial logics of counterterrorism are repurposed by postcolonial states in comparable ways. By comparing counterterror laws in two postcolonial states, India and Egypt, this article shows how colonial logics intersect with nationalist ideologies, postcolonial anxieties, as well as an attempt by postcolonial states to seek international legitimacy post 9/11 vis-a-vis the War on Terror. In both states, counterterror laws are weaponised to target civil society activists, journalists, and religious, ethnic and other minorities in comparable ways. This article, therefore, challenges the centrality of 9/11 and state of exception/emergency in the framing of counterterror laws. In so doing, it advances knowledge of counterterrorism vis-à-vis postcolonial engagements with colonial epistemes and "normal" practices of security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) commenced in October 2001, the U.S. Special Forces (SF) were the first U.S. military unit on the ground in Afghanistan, utilising their Unconventional Warfare (UW) capabilities. Despite their significant role at the initial stage of the military campaign, SF began to encounter numerous challenges from as early as 2002 and throughout OEF. Based on an analysis of forty-five master's theses authored by SF officers, this paper discusses the structural-organisational and cultural-conceptual challenges. These obstacles led to the marginalisation of SF's UW efforts. Scholarship on special operations forces (SOF) often regards the period of the so-called global war on terrorism (GWOT) as U.S. SOF's golden age focusing predominantly on the activities of SOF units linked to the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command rather than on SF. By examining the challenges faced by SF, this article aims to contribute to a more nuanced discussion of SOF efforts during GWOT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and Intrusion" by Iván Chaar López explores the evolution and purpose of the border as a techno-political machine for surveillance and management of subjects in the U.S. empire-nation. The text delves into the use of drones, sensors, and information systems to control and classify "intruders," primarily focusing on unauthorized Mexican immigrants. It also discusses the intersection of technology, politics, and racial formations in border enforcement, shedding light on the complexities of border management. The book is praised for its research and analysis, although some readers may find it overly reliant on buzzwords and wish for more concrete examples of how the cybernetic border operates. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the book "Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups" by Alexander Thurston. The book provides a detailed understanding of how jihadi insurgents in North Africa and the Sahel region navigate local politics. It challenges the notion that the Sahel is an "ungoverned space" and highlights the complex relationships between the insurgents and various local stakeholders. The book also analyzes the internal dynamics of the insurgencies and their participation in local, national, and regional politics. Overall, the book offers valuable insights into the nature of jihadi insurgencies in the region and their impact on local communities. [Extracted from the article]

The role that inhaled particulate matter plays in the development of post-deployment lung disease among US service members deployed to Southwest Asia during the Global War on Terrorism has been difficult to define. There is a persistent gap in data addressing the relationship between relatively short-term (months to a few years) exposures to high levels of particulate matter during deployment and the subsequent development of adverse pulmonary outcomes. Surgical lung biopsies from deployed service members and veterans (DSMs) and non-deployed service members and veterans (NDSMs) who develop lung diseases can be analyzed to potentially identify residual deployment-specific particles and develop associations with pulmonary pathological diagnoses. We examined 52 surgical lung biopsies from 25 DSMs and 27 NDSMs using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) to identify any between-group differences in the number and composition of retained inorganic particles, then compared the particle analysis results with the original histopathologic diagnoses. We recorded a higher number of total particles in biopsies from DSMs than from NDSMs, and this difference was mainly accounted for by geologic clays (illite, kaolinite), feldspars, quartz/silica, and titanium-rich silicate mixtures. Biopsies from DSMs deployed to other Southwest Asia regions (SWA-Other) had higher particle counts than those from DSMs primarily deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, due mainly to illite. Distinct deployment-specific particles were not identified. Particles did not qualitatively associate with country of deployment. The individual diagnoses of the DSMs and NDSMs were not associated with elevated levels of total particles, metals, cerium oxide, or titanium dioxide particles. These results support the examination of particle-related lung disease in DSMs in the context of comparison groups, such as NDSMs, to assist in determining the strength of associations between specific pulmonary pathology diagnoses and deployment-specific inorganic particulate matter exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]