Seven Questions for Samar al-Bulushi on Kenya and the War on Terror
"It is the US military rather than the White House that has spearheaded militarized operations on the continent."
Samar Al-Bulushi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. Her book War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror appeared with Stanford University Press in November 2024. She kindly agreed to answer a few questions.
AT: It seems to me that a kind of critical "War on Terror studies" has really started to thrive over approximately the past decade, with the publication of books by Nikhil Pal Singh, Darryl Li, Richard Beck, you, and others. Do you agree? What is the state of the field with regard to understanding, documenting, and analyzing the War on Terror?
SA: Absolutely! I think there is now consensus that critical understandings of the so-called “war on terror” require addressing coloniality, race, and the question of empire. Some recent work takes the imperial, settler-colonial United States as its starting point. While there is much to be gained from this perspective, I think we also need to think more deeply about the role of Global South partner states like Kenya and the continued relevance of their own histories of colonialism for theorizations of global counterinsurgency in the twenty-first century. There is also growing recognition of the importance of feminist methodologies that help shift the focus away from large-scale spectacular forms of violence, which comes with the risk of reinforcing the idea that certain geographies are singularly characterized by violence. My book joins other recent work (e.g. A Landscape of War by Munira Khayyat) in attempting to shed light on everyday strategies of survival and solidarity (in other words, of a will to life) in the face of war—and in doing so, the hope is to make these sites (Lebanon, Kenya) more relatable to the reader.
AT: How did the 2013 Westgate Mall attack affect life and politics in Kenya?
SA: It is worth noting at the outset that the Westgate Mall attack garnered far more media attention and global concern than other Al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya, largely because it is located in the upscale neighborhood of Westlands and frequented by middle and upper class shoppers. With that said, this particular attack (partly because of the global attention it received) was instrumental in prompting critical questions among Kenyans about why its military was active in Somalia. Many wondered whether Kenya had opened itself up to attacks because of its invasion of Somalia in October 2011. The government was not receptive to this and pushed back against those who suggested that the military should withdraw from Somalia –in many cases conflating their opposition to the war in Somalia with support for Al-Shabaab. This has made it very difficult for critics of the war on terror to speak out, and chapter 3 of my book captures the challenges faced by human rights activists confronting a range of police abuses that have unfolded in the name of “security.”
AT: The idea of the "laboratory" is woven throughout the book - the United States treating Kenya and Africa as a laboratory, and ultimately Kenya "intend[ing] to use Haiti as a laboratory for its own future pacification efforts, whether at home or abroad" (p. 159). How have U.S. policymakers and top military officers conceived of Africa's place in the War on Terror? What do U.S. military planners and U.S. Africa Command mean when they talk about "gray zones" in Africa and elsewhere (p. 87)?
SA: The concept of the ‘gray zone’ gained traction in US military circles in the 2010s. Much like other concepts (irregular warfare, low intensity conflict, asymmetric warfare) it refers to territories that are violent and unstable but that have not been formally declared war zones. All of these terms are technical terms that obfuscate the fact that the military is applying counterinsurgent thinking to non-war spaces, with dire consequences for everyday people who inhabit these places. As the International Crisis Group outlined in a 2021 report called “Overkill,” it is the US military rather than the White House that has spearheaded militarized operations on the continent. The White House has afforded the military and the CIA immense discretionary authority to act as they see fit, and typically this has taken the form of arming and training partner forces that act with impunity.
AT: You write, "[The] resignification of the war on terror as one that Africans have a responsibility to fight is at the heart of the cultural politics of security in the region" (p. 40). I take this to be a key sentence in the book - could you unpack this for us?
SA: When discussing the role of Global South states in the war on terror, there is a tendency among scholars and analysts to focus primarily on political economy - namely how Global South states benefit from or seek out security-related foreign assistance. That is a very important part of the story, including in the Kenyan context. I suggest that we need to expand our frame to also consider the importance of building popular consent for war. There has been considerable scholarly attention to this dimension in the U.S. domestic context, but less attention to the domestic politics of Global South partner states. The United States can supply Kenya with high levels of security assistance, but ultimately it also needs the Kenyan population to buy into the logic of the war on terror. This is why I devote Chapter 1 to exploring how the Kenyan state has invested so much time and energy on building consent, whether this takes the form of a Hollywood style film, military parades, or the President appearing in public clad in military attire. The goal of all of these initiatives is to create a sense of responsibility and national pride around Kenya’s role in the war on terror.
AT: What are the colonial inheritances shaping Kenya's military and police, Kenyan tourism, and notions of whiteness and race in Kenya?
SA: As Kenyan historian E.S. Atieno Odhiambo has illustrated, the political elite in Kenya inherited the British colonial fetishization of law and order. Kenya was a settler colony, meaning that the colonial government engaged in large scale land dispossession to facilitate white settlement. British leaders framed challenges to their rule through the lens of criminality in order to justify punitive measures and the policing of dissent. Alongside the police, the British relied on a series of spatial management techniques that reified distinctions along racial lines. There is therefore a longer history of governing strategies informed by racialized notions of suspicion, and that have blurred the boundaries between civilian and military power — from the British colonial crackdown on the anti-colonial Land and Freedom Army (popularly referred to as “Mau Mau”) to the newly independent Kenyan state’s attempts to quell a secessionist movement led by ethnic Somalis in northeastern Kenya. The Kenyan government’s framing of the “Shifta War” in the 1960s as a conflict between the purportedly lawful state on the one hand, and ‘lawless’ rebels on the other, allowed it to justify the collective punishment of ethnic Somalis. In many ways, this marked the beginnings of popular anxiety around borders and the cultivation of suspicion towards Somalis as internal strangers. This history is integral to our ability to appreciate how Somalis have long been racialized as threatening — making them an obvious enemy against which the Kenyan state, decades later, has constituted itself once again.
AT: How have Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programs affected life and what you call "suspect citizenship" in Mombasa and along the Kenyan coast? You write that Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) gatherings you attended in the mid-2010s "became sites for the naturalization and circulation of ideas about policing one's colleagues, friends, family members, and neighbors" (p. 77). Where do things stand with these dynamics today - has "asphyxiatory violence" deepened in Kenya and particularly in Mombasa, or have there been any forms of opening?
SA: In Kenya, the rise of “countering violent extremism” (CVE) as a form of soft power has coincided with the championing of pluralism and inclusion – wherein Kenyan Muslims under the revised 2010 Constitution now (in theory) have more human rights protections and therefore experience a greater sense of belonging. But NGOs in Kenya have learned that it is only by embracing the CVE agenda set by donor governments like the United States that they can gain access to much needed funding. It is in this context that the domain of civil society has become a sphere of heightened surveillance, because Kenyan citizens – under the banner of CVE – are encouraged to monitor and surveil one another for signs of ‘extremism.’ In effect, equal citizenship is now conditioned on a willingness to participate in the project of security and the war on terror. To raise questions or to challenge the very premise of the war on terror is to invite suspicion and scrutiny, which means there is rapidly shrinking space for discussion and debate in a country that claims to be a democracy. The mass protests that unfolded across Kenya last summer suggest that Kenyans are pushing back and refusing to be silenced in the face of wide-ranging inequalities and injustices, but the police crackdown also serves as a sobering reminder that the state will not hesitate to employ force to retain power.
AT: I was struck by your analysis, in the book, of two films: Mission to Rescue and Eye in the Sky. What insights did these films give you about Kenyan and American representations of violence, gender, and the military?
SA: Both of these films are examples of the entanglement between the domain of entertainment and the military industrial complex. Mission to Rescue is a Kenyan film directed by Gilbert Lukalia; Eye in the Sky is a British action thriller directed by Gavin Hood. While the stories are quite different, the objective is similar: to legitimize the ongoing war against Al-Shabaab. Both attempt to present a form of militarized masculinity that is softer, smarter, and more well-rounded than the stereotype. Eye in the Sky has the added dimension of showcasing what some scholars would refer to as a security feminist, in the character played by Helen Mirren. Both films are intended to make the viewer sympathize with the work of security and military officials in the context of the war on terror. Neither offer any reason to think about the root causes of violence, or about the complicity of certain states (Kenya, the UK, the US) in fomenting violence. The focus is not on the big picture but on a small group of brave figures who are ostensibly determined to bring an end to violence. As I explain in the book, these investments in culture and the imagination are integral to legitimizing the war on terror in East Africa.
You can find more of Dr. Al-Bulushi’s work here.