Clio Fregoli - Entry no. 6 (Khalili)

In the fourth chapter of Time in the Shadows:Confinement in Counterinsurgiences,  Laleh Khalili examines the use of proxy-run prisons as mechanisms to mask illegal, illiberal actions to maintain the image of liberal state actors. These proxies are used to reinforce certain civilization hierarchies by the powerful actors, demonstrating a current form of imperialism. Khalili advances the creation of regimes and zones of invisibility - in terms of prisons, detainees, and treatment of detainees - that are purposely and strategically hidden and unobservable.

Khalili begins by examining the proxy-held prisons of Khiyam and Salt Pit. Khiyam began as an interrogation centre and expanded into a detention centre, with particularly Lebanese and Palestinian militant detainees. It was mainly run by the SLA, functioning as an Israeli proxy, with their orders and salaries coming from Israel. The prison was invisible to outside monitoring, with the detainees being kept in horrendous and inhuman conditions, and subject to violent interrogation methods including severe torture techniques. Contradictorily, a central aspect to Israel’s military operations in Khiyam were the insistence that Israel was working within the boundaries of international law.

This method was employed to an even greater extent by the United States. The US used other countries to employ techniques and procedures that would not be considered legal in their own country; it “depended on the existence of amenable proxies to provide plausible deniability when necessary” (Khalili, 115). An extreme example of the use of proxies was during the War on Terror, in which the US relied on mercenaries, both foreign and domestic, and private military corporations (116).  The US employed an asymmetric warfare, and enforced a hierarchical detention in which the most important people were detained by the US. In addition, by blaming the proxies for the brutal treatment of the detainees, the US and other state actors “reinforced the humane superiority of their patrons” (119); this demonstrates the form of imperialism that is present through the use of these proxies, and seen within the regimes of invisibility. 

Khalili uses numerous examples to demonstrate the disappearance of detainee files, creating ‘ghost detainees’. She examines secret prisons and black sites, in which there is a production of a panopticon-like space, with constant surveillance, constant light and white noise. These techniques were later justified by the CIA and Department of Justice of the US. She is thus exposing the contradictory, hypocritical policies of the US, that create and sustain regimes of invisibility and deniability. This is partly due to informal cooperation, in which no national body can investigate or control these regimes. In conclusion, she argues that for powerful states and institutions to maintain their legal innocence, they employ proxies to conceal and deny their illegal and inhumane actions.

Through this chapter, Khalili makes an extremely insightful analysis of those individuals and spaces who are strategically made invisible to benefit powerful state interests. I would argue that this is another method to look at power relations. We have analysed micro-mechanics of power through Foucault, who is rejecting centralized approaches of power. Next, through Taussig and Kosmatopoulos, we have examined the idea of the “middle-man”; those who are engaged in different layering power relations. Khalili offers a new method, which is looking at those who are in a space where they are powerless, invisible, for the use and benefit of the powerful.