Georgina Kilborn- Entry no. 6 (Khalili)

In the context of the war on terror and the continuing counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, Laleh Khalili in her book “Time in the Shadows”, examines the illiberal actions of liberal states in the spaces of confinement and detention. As predicted from the title, Khalili investigates the secret nature of counterterrorism processes by the US in the war on terror and Israel in its occupation of Palestine. She insists that the invisibility required to secretively detain prisoners must be impenetrable, and this is achieved through “legal compartmentalization, spatial emplacement and active secrecy” (p. 128). By investigating these facets, Khalili demonstrates how liberal states are increasingly pursuing wars, which are asymmetric nature.

The War on Terror can be characterised as a war about space in which language has been resourcefully spatialised to ensure that practices including detention without trial and direct or delegated torture are within the legal parameters. As such, Khalili contests the notion that the processes involved in the capture; rendition, detention and interrogation of suspects are “beyond the law”. Instead, she contends that an extremely rationalised and regimented legal framework is what permits these counterinsurgency operations to take place. So rather than being lawless, the war on terror operates by overlaying excesses of law onto spaces, bodies and sites.

Proxies constitute the bodies, which afford the sovereign deniability for their actions. There are parallels in the history of colonial counterinsurgencies to the modern day, where indirect and violent control through a client or colonial army provides a cloak from legal accountability. By contracting proxies in sites of detention, the sovereign can disavow legal obligations flowing from territorial occupation. The proxies pose a further advantage to sovereign states in their fight against terrorism- their purchased loyalty or rather disloyalty has resulted in their detainment and subsequent value in hostage exchanges. They have also reinforced civilizational hierarchies, in which the humane hegemony of the patron is a direct result of the proxy’s brutality. And the irony is, the sovereign state breeds this brutality by training and sponsoring proxies while concurrently blaming them, the lesser people, for the diffusion of violence. Thus, Khalili demonstrates that the state’s use of proxies as scape-goats for brutality and legal liability is without doubt, illiberal. Further, the extraction of information through processes that are illegal in the US, is made possible through third country rendition. Nevertheless, while this extraordinary rendition is “within a lawful procedure” (p. 124), it is without doubt illiberal.

Active secrecy is central to counterinsurgency and is present in all its processes. For instance, the US government files on detainees, clinically detail all aspects of the suspects life except information, which may be self-incriminating. Despite all the recorded information, the US is in no way transparent in their operations; numerous files on detainees are missing and the media and activists have no access to sites of intelligence. These sites constitute demarcated spaces, “zones of invisibility” which are dominant in the notion of detention and which cannot be penetrated by outer surveillance and are thus void of jurisdiction. For instance, Lebanese territory occupied by Israel in 1985 and termed a “security zone”, is demonstrative of the ambiguous language and therefore indistinct legal obligations of the sovereign state in governing this site of shadows.

These jurisdictionally complex territories resemble Agamben’s ‘state of exception’. In the context of post 9/11 and the indefinite confinement of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities, Agamben declares this extraordinary extension of power, a “state of emergency”. It involves a dominant strategy whereby the law is suspended or extended to protect itself, thereby potentially transforming democratic states into totalitarian states. This legal zone of exclusion was evident in the affidavit from the Israeli military, which employed surgically precise language to reinterpret judicial responsibility and deny accountability. So here, the law is not being circumvented but carefully worded in order to renounce responsibility. These processes of interrogation, involving deniability and secrecy, which would otherwise be deemed illegal, demonstrate the uncertain future of democracy, as well as the hidden relationship tying violence to law. As Khalili asserts, “law is not the equitable instrument of justice but the basis of legitimation of power” (p. 128).  

Consequently, as tactics of counterinsurgency have been rendered more "humane," they have also increasingly encouraged policymakers to willingly choose to wage wars. This parallels Agamben’s contention that the state of exception was intended to be a provisional measure, yet has become a natural paradigm of government.

As such, Khalili adroitly argues that in the framework of counterinsurgency, incarceration, in all its manifests is a shroud of invisibility in which state autonomy is authorised by the law through illiberal means.