International law and international relations collection

This chapter explores the colonial characteristics of counter-terrorism in Britain and Egypt. It argues that counter-terrorism laws and policies in both Global North and Global South states should be understood as fragmented authoritarian tools that have developed through power struggles between colonial and postcolonial states, manifesting through the securitisation of racialised, gendered, and classed communities. Theoretically, this approach hinges upon viewing authoritarianism not as exceptional in liberal democracies, nor as a corrosion of liberal values such as the rule of law, but instead upon viewing violence and the law as co-constitutive. This chapter utilises feminist, postcolonial, and critical legal theories to present a conceptualisation of counter-terrorism that has been built upon hierarchical colonial law. Using archival research from British-occupied Egypt, the chapter analyses legal moments where hierarchical thinking was enacted and institutionalised through the law. This chapter thereby shows the continuities between contemporary Egyptian law-making and colonial notions of pre-emption. Through an exploration of everyday forms of violence in law-making, the author shows how contemporary counter-terrorism is dependent upon the production of categories of difference and classifications of suspicion.

This chapter argues that the traditional Western-centric focus on counter-terrorism impedes our ability to systematically study and access counter-terrorism in the Global South. The Comparative Counter-Terrorism Project (CCTP) uses a cross-national database with data from 2016 – 2019 to explore the counter-terrorism-related legislative, investigative, and detention practices of national governments around the world. Understanding these differences and developing recommendations for stakeholders is inhibited by traditional theorising, modelling, and cross-national analyses of counter-terrorism institutional design, coordination, structure, and performance focusing on Western countries. CCTP allows us to develop non-Eurocentric or non-Global North perspectives, models, and implementations of counter-terrorism that provide a roadmap for how to approach, organise, and coordinate counter-terrorism responses among highly heterogeneous countries. As a result, CCTP provides the foundation to conduct cross-national and country-specific analyses and comparisons of the practices, connections, divergences, trends, and effectiveness of counter-terrorism in the Global North and Global South. This helps overcome the limitations of primarily Western, Global North, or Eurocentric studies of local, regional, and transnational counter-terrorism cooperation, practices, and policies or how foreign powers (primarily Global North countries) coordinate or implement their counterterrorism policies in terrorism hotspots or the Global South.

This chapter explores the relationship between the right-wing Q-Anon movement in the United States, conspiracy theories, and threat perceptions from particular communities or groups using a social identity model of collective violence. The chapter also provides a social psychological account of conspiracy theories, in particular the relationship between conspiratorial thinking and threat perception. The authors argue that the Q-Anon conspiracy belief set is a useful case-study to explore recent work on the psychology of conspiracy theories. Through content analysis of material associated with the Q-Anon movement, the study found a positive relationship between endorsement of the Q-Anon conspiracy theory and view of a dangerous and competitive (strongly hierarchically organised) world. This supports previous research on conspiracy theories more generally that emphasises the role of existential uncertainty as a motivating factor. These results also provide support for the social identity model of collective hate, by showing that perception of outgroup threat and immorality potentially acts as a motivating factor towards acts of political violence. Finally, the chapter supports the call for research to be broadened to explore issues around conspiracy theories specific to other cultural contexts.

This chapter proposes a decolonial approach to understanding French counter-terrorism (CT). It aims to delineate how colonialities animate the practice of counter-terrorism in contemporary France. Using a critical discourse analysis of the French response to terrorism in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks in 2015, the author demonstrates how the utilisation of emergency legislation following the terror attacks has its origins in colonial history. The legislation is deeply rooted in the practice of French colonialism during the Algerian war. The author illustrates how French counter-terrorism practices depart from the predominant post-9/11 discourses on counter-terrorism, particularly in their portrayal of the ‘enemy within’ as an internal threat to national security. This chapter offers a perspective on colonial influences, colonial conceptualisations of race, and civilisational hierarchies entrenched in the French CT context. It starts by examining how decision-makers construct the image of the ‘Islamic radical terrorist’ as an orientalist narrative. It then scrutinises French CT measures which advance an ‘internal other’ political construction and promote the logic of ‘suspect community’, thereby (re)establishing a ‘postcolonial enemy within’ and perpetuating divisions within the ‘self category’. The chapter thus illustrates the historical colonial settings and colonial power dynamics (i.e., colonialities of being/non-being) inherent in contemporary French counter-terrorism approaches.

This chapter challenges predominant paradigms of understanding Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) policies which often focus on the migration of policies from the international to the domestic sphere. The author shows how international and domestic security logics converge at the grassroots level. Drawing on experiences of ordinary citizens conducting counter-terrorism surveillance under the Prevent Duty in England, this chapter explores how the body of the individual becomes the terrain where international and domestic logics of counter-terrorism converge. As a result, ordinary interactions turn into (in)security-making opportunities and spaces that turn into domestic outposts of the global war on terror. Domestic counter-extremism technologies feed into the international by constructing the securitisation of civic life as preventative rationality that can be replicated elsewhere. These technologies are also refracted through the categories of race, gender, religion, and class. The chapter contends that there is a symbiotic exchange of technologies between the domestic and the international instantiated in the micro-level interactions of individuals.

This introduction outlines a novel framework for researching counter-terrorism from a decolonial, postcolonial, and comparative perspective. The editors argue for moving beyond binaries in existing scholarship between liberal democratic and emergency politics, West/non-West, past/present, and domestic/international spheres. Instead, a decolonial approach is proposed that reveals the colonial genealogies and continuities underlying contemporary counter-terrorism globally. Comparative analyses of different cases from the Global North and South show how colonial legacies, nationalist discourses, and transnational dynamics all affect how counter-terrorism is practiced around the world. The introduction delineates how the collection’s empirical chapters challenge Eurocentric, epochal, and state-centric tendencies in critical terrorism studies. Overall, the chapter makes a persuasive case for decolonising and deparochialising scholarship on counter-terrorism.

This chapter shows how member states and European Union (EU) institutions participate in a collective securitisation process of preventive counter-terrorism policies in Europe. The chapter outlines the composite nature of agency in the EU as it implements counter-terrorism measures. It examines the securitising move and audience response dynamics between EU institutions and member states. This chapter combines secondary literature, policy analysis, and novel interview materials to outline the roles and phases in the collective securitisation process of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) policies, which constitute a relatively new counter-terrorism approach in the EU. This chapter takes into consideration both the priorities of the member states as well as external discursive conditions that facilitate a process of securitisation. It therefore delineates the various scales – transnational, national, institutional – at which preventive counter-terrorism functions, and brings out the various agents involved in the functioning of counter-terrorism.

This chapter shows how the colonial and postcolonial representations of the Pashtun community in Pakistan are weaponised in Pakistan’s war on terror and enable the consolidation of power by the country’s military establishment. It illustrates how Pashtuns, especially those based in the former FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) region of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, have been portrayed as ‘violent’ and ‘warrior-like’ by colonial writers during the British military expeditions against Pashtun insurgencies. Even after the independence of Pakistan, these perceptions about Pashtuns have persisted and are weaponised by the Pakistani state. Consequently, Pashtun nationalist non-violent movements demanding equal rights have been branded as being against Pakistan’s interests. The Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement (PTM), a non-violent indigenous peace and human rights movement in the former-FATA region, has been blacklisted by Pakistan’s military. This shows how Pashtun’s demanding peace, justice, and accountability from the state are termed a ‘security threat’ by the military.

The emergence of ‘gentleman terrorists’ in Bengal during the early twentieth century led to the region becoming a significant centre for the British counter-terrorism network. Within Bengal, the colonial intelligence organisations were integrated within the Police establishment, specifically the Special Branch (SB) of the Calcutta Police and the Intelligence Branch (IB) of the Bengal Police. The latter was a component of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Bengal Police, which was established in 1904. In a relatively short span of time, the Bengal CID and SB experienced consistent growth in their ranks and capabilities, evolving into two crucial hubs for counter-terrorism operations within Bengal. Revolutionary propaganda started in 1908 and continued to grow until the end of the First World War. This propaganda mainly consisted of pamphlets and leaflets and caused much anxiety among the ranks of European officials in the intelligence Branch in this period. One of the striking features of this propaganda was the threat of murder of the police and IB officers. This chapter aims to contextualise the growth of the counter-terrorism machinery in Bengal as a response to the growing ‘terrorist’ attacks in the province. It describes how the British counter-terrorism machinery used its extensive intelligence apparatus for tracing the propagandists, employing agents and digging out secret presses located in the dark, dingy lanes of Central Calcutta. This chapter seeks to interrogate the novel counter-propaganda strategies adopted by the imperial government to influence public opinion and lessen the efficacy of ‘terrorist’ propaganda.