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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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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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]

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]

Fringe political actors' Qur'an desecrations in Scandinavia have over the past few years resulted in international media attention, diplomatic crises, calls for boycotts and pressures from Muslim states and organisations to criminalize such acts. This article explores the historical genealogies of Qur'an desecration – a transnational phenomenon – that emerged in the wake of the post-9/11 'Global War on Terror'. In Norway, public Qur'an burnings have been integral to the strategies of the far-right organization Stop the Islamisation of Norway (SIAN) since 2019. Inspired by Titley's notion of far-right "free speech capture", we demonstrate that Qur'an burning functions as a powerful symbolic means to incite hatred against Islam and Muslims in the name of "free speech". We contend that Qur'an burning in the Norwegian context lies at the intersection between transnational and national flows and modalities of Islamophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of the revisionist state has been central to IR, and the literature demonstrates that they initiate international conflicts. As a subset of the revisionist state, revolutionary states in particular have been shown to foment international conflicts. Moreover, ideology has come to explain international conflicts, especially the Second World War, Cold War, and "War on Terror." Nevertheless, the literature on revolutionary states discounts the role of ideology and that on ideology often discounts the role of revisionist or revolutionary states. This paper develops the concept of a distinct type of revisionist state—the revolutionary actor—that explains the outbreak of the Second World War, the Cold War, and War on Terror, three of the greatest global conflicts of the last century. It first develops a model of the revolutionary actor, linking the ideologies of Marxism-Leninism, Nazism, and jihadism that led to the Second World War, the Cold War, and War on Terror. It then offers a theory based on ideology as to why the revolutionary actors initiated these three global conflicts. Lastly, it offers a research design to test the theory and highlights the three cases with recent literature on them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses two books: "Contextualizing Sectarianism in the Middle East and South Asia: Identity, Competition and Conflict" edited by Satgin S. Hamrah, and "Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine" by Lisa Bhungalia. "Contextualizing Sectarianism" challenges the common focus on the Sunni-Shia binary and explores the political, social, and cultural factors contributing to sectarian conflict in the region. "Elastic Empire" examines the collaboration between the US and Israel in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, highlighting the role of American aid in shaping the conflict. Both books provide valuable insights for scholars and students studying the Middle East and international security. The first text discusses the Anti-Terrorist Certification (ATC) that aid workers and groups must sign to ensure they do not support terrorism or organizations designated as terrorist by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The author argues that the use of modern technologies and databases by ATC and OFAC links Palestine and the US, contributing to American empire. The second text challenges the assumption that evangelical Christians in America universally support Israel over Palestine. The authors conducted surveys over five years and found that younger evangelicals are driven by sociopolitical and justice rationales, leading to more critical views of Israeli policies. The third text is an autobiography by Avi Shlaim, an Arab Jew, that explores his identity and the complex historical context of the Arab Middle East. [Extracted from the article]

Militarized policing strategies aiming to identify and nullify risks to national security in Western nations have become central to the biopolitical regulation of racialized populations. While the disproportionate impact of pre-emptive counter-terrorism policing on 'Muslim' populations has been highlighted, the post-racial techno-politics of predictive policing as a mode of securitization remain overlooked. This article argues that the 'war on terror' is governed by a state of crisis that conditions a pre-emptive biopolitics of containment against (unknown) future threats. We examine how predictive policing is progressively dependent on the computational production of risk to avert impending terror. As such, extant forms of counter-terrorism algorithmic profiling are shown to mobilize post-racial calculative logics that renew racial oppression while appearing race-neutral. These predictive systems and pre-emptive actions, while seeking to securitize the future by identifying and nullifying suspects, evasively remake race as risky, thus rendering security indistinguishable from insecurity. Hence, we assert that state securitization is haunted by a profound sense of racialized dread over terrorism, for it can only resort to containing, rather than resolving, the perceived threat of race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1997, the Chinese Party-state has engaged in a campaign of transnational repression against the Uyghur diaspora. This campaign has grown in severity since the 2014 declaration of the People's War on Terror and Strike Hard campaigns, which, taken together, involved a program of mass incarceration for the Turkic peoples of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). This article examines the everyday impacts of extraterritorial persecution on the Uyghur diaspora and their ability to successfully integrate into their new host societies and exercise their political and cultural agency. The article draws from nineteen in-depth interviews with Uyghurs living around the world and a dataset of over 7,000 incidents of China's targeting of Uyghurs globally since 1997. We examine how Chinese practices and the everyday effects of transnational repression vary between different regime types. We argue that Uyghurs experience both marginalization in their host country and the threat of transnational repression from China, a particularly precarious situation that we term double precarity. This double precarity is felt most acutely in more authoritarian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The systematic disappearance of individuals is very much a global phenomenon. In Pakistan, this phenomenon re-emerged after Pakistan decided to get involved in the U.S.-led 'war on terror' in the wake of 9/11. This paper exposes the politics of necropolitics in Pakistan through art, as death plays a significant role in setting up a political change. I contend that Ramla Fatima's artworks put a human face to death and speak truth to power, to draw on Foucault, interlinking death with politics to expose the hiding and camouflaging of death in Pakistan. Fatima's artworks represent another episode of the genocide continuum in Pakistan – the unending enforced disappearances and the sufferings of the families of the laapata – the disappeared. By painting necropolitics, she transgresses the silencing culture, a legacy of enforced disappearances. Through art, she illustrates how victims and their families are condemned to a state of subalternity and ambiguity – ambiguous loss, slow violence and torture, and psychological scars. Her artworks also draw attention to the role of expressive art in evoking awareness of human rights violations and establishing the fact that the laapata's lives matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Call of Duty is a popular firs t-person shooter (FPS) game. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007) was the firs t game in the franchise which did not focus on the World Wars' his tory. It was also the firs t Call of Duty which had a continuous interactive digital narrative (IDN). This article attempts to take a comparative approach to the game. As a cultural product, the game is susceptible to pos tcolonial and orientalis t discourses. This article attempts to apply Edward Said's theories to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in order to prove that the game's IDN was shaped by pos tcolonialism and orientalism. The game functioned as a cultural medium which disseminated orientalis t discourses amongs t its player base. As such, this article tries to not only shed light upon a lesser-known aspect of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare but also to demons trate that computer games are not exempt from external cultural forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have previously underscored the importance of understanding how people from different backgrounds engage in sport. This recognition, coupled with a variety of socio-political factors (e.g. Muslim population immigration to the West, the war against terrorism, Muslim women athletes' growing sport participation, and mega-events hosted by Muslim majority countries), have spurred an increased interest in exploring Muslim community's sport participation. Nevertheless, a review and integration of this scholarship are missing. The purpose of this paper was to conduct a scoping review of the extant research focusing on the Muslim community in sport. The authors examined n = 157 articles from four databases and reference lists by employing Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review methodological approach. Results showed that most of the research about the Muslim community is conducted in Western countries (62.4%), and researchers mostly employ qualitative research methods (78.9%). Additionally, scholars have mainly focused on sociological issues Muslim women face in the Western context by employing theoretical frameworks, such as the concept of 'habitus,' intersectionality, and the theory of planned behavior. Findings suggest epistemological Eurocentric bias in the scholarship, which the authors contextualize in the framework of Orientalism. Overall, this scoping review implies scholars should look for new avenues of research in the future concerning the Muslim community within the sporting realm. Further, researchers need to unveil and dismantle Eurocentric biases in the extant sport scholarship related to the Muslim community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on intellectual universe of political theory and political philosophy. Topics include chastised the tradition for its supposed solipsism, its nit picking, its tendency to distance itself from the kinds of moral frameworks and utopian visions necessary for social transformation; and tools of criticism have not only been turned inward, they've been weaponized by wily champions of a militarized ‘war on terror'.

Nicole Nguyen's book, "Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures," explores how US courts both support and challenge the global war on terror. The book examines how the concept of terrorism pathologizes Muslims as inherently prone to violence while ignoring the underlying causes of violent resistance. Nguyen argues that terrorism trials should be understood within the broader context of legal race-making and highlights the interconnectedness of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous suppression with structural Islamophobia. The book calls for an anti-imperialist and transnational approach to abolitionism and challenges the depoliticized understanding of terrorism. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the concept of society-based resistance as a means for Sweden to enhance its defense capabilities against potential military threats. It explores the challenges Sweden faces due to limited military resources and the need to upgrade its armed forces. The article emphasizes the importance of engaging the whole society in defense efforts and highlights the relevance of the situation in Ukraine to Sweden. It suggests that paramilitary organizations could be beneficial for Sweden's defense strategy, particularly in remote border areas, and can provide early warning and shape the conflict environment. The article concludes by highlighting the benefits of resistance and its potential to tie down and wear down enemy forces. It argues that creating paramilitary units can greatly benefit Sweden in both the short and long term by improving its defense posture and harnessing the power of society as a whole in times of national emergency. [Extracted from the article]

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Terrorism has been often considered to be a subjective label rather than a distinct form of violence. Discourse has played an important role in creating the threat of terrorism, as well as in the legitimisation of counterterrorism level. The importance of studying discourse can thus no longer be denied. This article analysed the character of official discourse on terrorism delivered by Australian prime ministers between 9/11 and the end of 2019, since Australia is one of the countries involved in the War on Terror. The author used the NVivo software to analyse speeches delivered by John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, and Malcolm Turnbull. She applies Norman Fairclough’s three-level Critical Discourse Analysis to study the character of the speeches, positive and negative emotions which were invoked by the speeches and the connections that were drawn to other discourses. She also analyses the context in which the speeches were delivered as well as the adopted counterterrorism measures that were legitimized in the speeches. The results of the analysis demonstrated that all Australian prime ministers used the terrorism label to some extent, however each of them delivered speeches on terrorism that had a different character. All of the analysed prime ministers, with the exception of Kevin Rudd, also presented emotional discourse on terrorism. The article demonstrates how is the terrorism label portrayed differently by each speaker, and that not all discourse on terrorism has to necessarily be emotional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Handbook of African Intelligence Cultures" is a comprehensive survey of the intelligence community in Africa, covering fifty-four countries. The book addresses a significant gap in the literature, as intelligence organizations in Africa are not widely studied. The chapters provide insights into the diverse intelligence cultures across the continent, highlighting variations in definitions of intelligence, politicization of intelligence, and the role of intelligence in preserving government stability. The volume emphasizes the importance of understanding the unique historical, economic, and cultural factors that shape intelligence operations in each country. It is a valuable resource for scholars, intelligence professionals, and those interested in doing business in Africa. [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]