Beyond the “War on Terror”: Mobilities and Regimes of Inequality; An Epistemological and Ethical Reflection

At the intersection of multipolar, multi-scalar sites of mutual exchange and tension, Afghanistan and Iraq conjure imaginaries of shadowy and risky geographies wired up to dispersed terrorist cells around the globe. These spaces constitute the sites where the “civilizing process” of the “War on Terror” takes place, “laboratories of globalization” where global hegemonic neoliberal projects of free market democratization and development get stranded. At the same time, they are spaces where global interconnections are accelerated, and where multiple mobilities, often contingent upon expectations about the successes and failures of reconstruction, are interwoven, producing networks that extend well beyond national borders.