Tag: security

Marielle Franco and the Brazilian Necropolis: Assassination and After Lives

By Xavier Durham

On March 14, 2018, news of the murder of Rio de Janeiro Councilor Marielle Franco rocked Brazil. A queer black woman, mother, feminist, and champion of Rio’s favela residents, Franco was an outspoken critic of police brutality. Her ascension as a human rights activist and elected representative gave hope for favela residents, especially Afro-Brazilian women vying for a voice in politics [1]. However, less than two years after her election, Marielle Franco was the victim of a coordinated assassination, along with her driver Anderson Pedro Gomes [2].

On March 12, 2019, the eve of the first anniversary of Franco’s murder, federal investigators in Brazil arrested two former police officers—Ronnie Lessa and Elcio Vieira de Queiróz—for their involvement in the killings. Both suspects were members of the Escritório do Crime (Crime Office), a criminal organization run by former and current law enforcement officials in the Rio das Pedras neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro [3]. Franco’s allies have long suspected that such groups, known in Brazil as militias, ordered her assassination. Their concerns held weight for four reasons: 1) Franco openly denounced former President Michel Temer’s order to militarize the city of Rio de Janeiro in February 2018 [4]; 2) the recovered bullet casings belong to ammunition purchased by the Federal Police in 2006 (the bullets used to kill Franco were reportedly stolen from a post office) [5]; 3) five cameras (that belong to Rio’s Security Department) along the route where Franco was assassinated were shut off anywhere between 24 and 48 hours prior to the killing [6]; and 4) extrajudicial killings and cover-ups involving police officers in Brazil rarely undergo investigation and point to a macabre, cyclical impunity [7]. Despite the arrests of Lessa and Vieira, Afro-Brazilians and the poor harbor serious doubts about obtaining justice, either for Marielle Franco and Anderson Gomes or the countless other black Brazilians killed by police every day.

Barbara Harlow’s work on assassinations provides a useful frame for addressing the structural underpinnings of these killings. Instead of relying on the state to play “detective” and investigate crimes, we must understand how the state determines the nature of crime and those it criminalizes [8]. Afro-Brazilians take little solace in the Brazilian government’s promise to prosecute those who pulled the trigger in Franco’s case, given how the state continues to perpetuate an unwavering politics of death. As Harlow might ask, what hope for justice is there for any and all black victims given that the circumstances of Franco’s death have been replicated time and time again [9]? Indeed, the very state that they uphold as an arbiter for justice is actually the conduit through which the most structural, anti-black sentiments proliferate and remain entrenched.

Franco’s assassination reflects the violent, banal reality of police anti-blackness in Brazil. But it is also part of the quotidian nature of white supremacy and the attendant everyday experiences of anti-blackness that the spectacle of police violence obscures [10]. The spectacle of violence does not stop with the state as death squads [11]; indeed, private security also takes center stage [12]. After violent death has occurred, mourning friends and family remain vulnerable to threats and harassment from police to encourage absolute silence and deter investigation [13]. Thus, the emotional and psychological impact of anti-black state violence transcends the victims’ families and bleeds out into their communities, corrupting the health and vitality of those stuck in a shadow of death (i.e., Afro-Brazilian mothers). Black execution is nothing short of genocide.

The violent cycle feeds into what anthropologist Jaime Alves calls the “Black Necropolis,” whereby the interpellation of blackness excludes Afro-Brazilians from the rights of citizenship and, ultimately, their own lives [14]. Fatal interpellation and the direct connection to the Brazilian state is best summarized by the popular truism, “if you want to know who is black and who is not in Brazil, just ask the police” [15]. This axiom affirms that blackness is defined by its proximity to state violence and coercion. Alongside this sobering reality, Marielle Franco’s assassination illuminates how the Brazilian state maintains control through a violent politics of death, and how state-centered justice is virtually unattainable, especially in the face of dissent.

By examining the assassinations of political dissidents and writers speaking out against state oppression, Harlow illuminated those who lived by the pen and died by the sword, all of whom were in the pursuit of radical justice. Her critical analysis of the complexity of assassinations, exposing the violent innerworkings of the state, translates to the circumstances surrounding Marielle Franco and anti-black violence in Brazil. Like dissidents before her, Franco was a threat to an established order that upheld the status quo and praised a neoliberal bent of progress. Her opposition is exemplified in her denouncement of former President Michel Temer’s order to deploy federal troops to favelas under the guise of crime reduction and security [16]. For that, her silence was paramount within the particularities of a macabre, death-driven logic all too common to the Brazilian state’s repertoire [17]. Indeed, to rely on the state to confront the pervasiveness of one of its foundational components through criminal investigation is to reinforce this component and uphold the state’s legitimacy as it stands. Harlow understood the fraught nature of political dissent and how justice cannot come from the propagator of injustice lest we remain satisfied with cosmetic solutions to deeply-entrenched structural issues.

The Brazilian state cannot and will not provide the avenues necessary for justice, and until the Necropolis crumbles, convictions for the murders of Marielle Franco and Anderson Gomes are mere parodies. Therefore, activists carrying on the struggle today must reimagine the future of Brazilian governance through a radical and intersectional political agenda that honors Franco’s legacy. Among the necessary components to this radical reimagining of Brazil, black life must be affirmed and elevated beyond mere survival; Afro-Brazilians must thrive. For now, the struggle continues as activists across Brazil rally against police brutality in a state where they were otherwise never meant to survive. Through these campaigns, Marielle Franco lives on.

#MariellePresente

#AndersonPresente

Bibliography

  1. Theresa Williamson, “Marielle Franco’s Legacy the the fight for Rio’s, and Brazil’s, Future,” RIOONWATCH, March 21st, 2018, http://www.rioonwatch.org/?p=42394.
  2. Dom Phillips, “Marielle Franco: Brazil’s favelas mourn the death of a champion,” The Guardian, March 17, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/18/marielle-franco-brazil-favelas-mourn-death-champion.
  3. Redação RBA, “’Escritório do Crime’ está por trás do assassinato de Marielle,” Rede Brasil Atual, March 12, 2019, https://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/politica/2019/03/escritorio-do-crime-esta-por-tras-do-assassinato-de-marielle.
  4. Dom Phillips, “Brazilian army to take control of security in Rio as violence rises,” The Guardian, February 16, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/16/brazilian-army-rio-de-janeiro-michel-temer.
  5. Leonardo Demori, Carolina Moura, Juliana Gonçalves, Yuri Eiras, and Bruna de Lara, “Who Killed Eduardo, Matheus, and Reginaldo?,” The Intercept, March 21, 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/marielle-franco-death-brazil-violence-police/.
  6. teleSUR, “Brazil: Public Security Cameras En Route to Marielle Franco’s Home Were Turned Off Before Assassination,” May 4, 2018, https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazil-Public-Security-Cameras-En-Route-to-Marielle-Francos-Home-Were-Turned-Off-Before-Assassination-20180504-0002.html.
  7. Human Rights Watch, Good Cops Are Afraid: The Toll of Unchecked Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro. São Paulo: Human Rights Watch, 2016: 5.
  8. Barbara Harlow, After Lives: Legacies of Revolutionary Writing. New York: Verso, 1996: 22.
  9. This question is a paraphrased re-wording of the next dilemma Harlow sees in the aftermath of assassination (See: After Lives, pg. 21).
  10. Christen Smith, “Strange Fruit: Brazil, “Necropolitics, and the Transnational Resonance of Torture and Death.” Souls 15, no. 3 (2013): 177–198.
  11. Death squads are usually groups of vigilantes, current officers, and ex-military personnel that abduct and/or kill primarily Afro-Brazilians under the cover of night. The state’s lack of investigation into cases involving alleged death squad participation highlights their complicity in the practice and reinforces its anti-black logic.
  12. Martha K. Huggins, “Urban Violence and Police Privatization in Brazil: Blended Invisibility.” Social Justice 27, no. 2 (2000): 113–134.
  13. Christen Smith, “The Dangerous Game of Mourning the Dead: Police Violence and the Black Community in Brazil,” Truthout, March 3, 2016, http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/35078-the-dangerous-game-of-mourning-the-dead-police-violence-and-the-black-community-in-brazil.
  14. Jaime Alves, The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
  15. Jaime Alves, “From Necropolis to Blackpolis: Necropolitical Governance and Black Spatial Praxis in São Paulo, Brazil.” Antipode46, no. 2 (2014): 328 – 329.
  16. Dom Phillips, “Brazilian army to take control of security in Rio as violence rises,” The Guardian, February 16, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/16/brazilian-army-rio-de-janeiro-michel-temer.
  17. Ernesto Londoño and Lis Moriconi, “Ex-Officers Arrested in Killing of Marielle Franco, Brazilian Politician and Activist, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/world/americas/marielle-arrest-rio.html.

Xavier Durham was the inaugural Barbara Harlow Intern in Human Rights and Social Justice at the Rapoport Center, in Spring 2018. He will soon begin the second year of his PhD program in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. After studying Black Feminist activism in Rio de Janeiro in the Summer of 2016, Xavier hopes to return in the Summer of 2020 to resume his work on private policing, surveillance, and anti-black violence.

Child Labor Among Syrian Refugees: A Closer Look at the Coercive Effects of Lebanon’s Refugee Policies

By Aaron Burroughs

Child labor among Syrian refugees in Lebanon is exceedingly present and, unfortunately, ordinary. An estimated 180,000 children are working in Lebanon, 3 out of 4 of which are from Syria [1]. The conditions faced by children forced into child labor in Lebanon are harrowing, even by adult labor standards. In a survey conducted by the International Rescue Committee [2], over two thirds of Syrian children engaged in child labor are forced to work six days a week, over half of them work up to ten hours a day, and one in four work between 11 and 15 hours each day. These children, as young as six years old, typically work under dangerous conditions, with 60% of the children surveyed saying they have faced some form of violence in the course of their labor. Child labor that falls below certain minimum age requirements is a violation of fundamental human rights inscribed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child [3] and the International Labor Organization’s Minimum Age Convention [4]. At the domestic level, labor under the age of 16 that “harms the health, safety or morals of children” or prevents the child from pursuing an education is illegal in Lebanon [4], but the prohibition is largely unenforced [5]. While a formal prohibition on child labor is a crucial first step, to fully confront the issue, there must be a reckoning with the complex set of legal and social exclusions that create the conditions under which child labor among refugee populations occurs. To truly protect the rights of Syrian refugee children, Lebanon must ensure employment opportunities for Syrian refugees of working age and fair access to resources and services, easing the coercive economic conditions that necessitate child labor within refugee households.

The harsh reality is that many families in Lebanon, especially refugee families, are forced to rely on the income of their children to sustain even a minimally acceptable livelihood. In many cases, children are the main or sole source of income for households, due to restricted job opportunities and exclusionary legal statuses for adult refugees [6]. While child labor is harmful to a child’s development and a violation of human rights, it may be a family’s last lifeline.

It should go without saying that life for Syrian refugees in Lebanon is extraordinarily difficult. An estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees reside in Lebanon, a country with a population of only 4.4 million people [6]. 76 percent of refugee households are living below the poverty line and 58 percent are living in extreme poverty [7]. Receiving a work permit outside the sectors of agriculture, cleaning, and construction is virtually impossible [15], leading 92% of economically active Syrian refugees to work in informal sectors where they are paid less than minimum wage and deprived of social protections [14]. The economic precarity of refugee livelihood in Lebanon produces and sustains an epidemic of refugee child labor.

The international human rights regime has worked to eradicate violations of the rights of children and refugees. Lebanon’s refugee policy, however, is vague and insufficient. The state is not a party to any international refugee conventions[9], leaving absent a national framework for refugee rights [10]. Domestic legislation regarding Syrian refugees does exist and is instituted on an ad hoc basis. However, the Lebanese government avoids the term ‘refugee’ as this entails binding legal actions, and, instead, refers to Syrian refugees as ‘displaced’ [14]. We should understand these actions as tactics by the Lebanese government to evade any obligation to provide refugees permanent residence or tailored services. Aside from the stress mass inflows of people into the country would place on the economy and the country’s resources, Lebanon’s fragile sectarian balance is threatened by foreigners, refugees or otherwise. The inflow of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon after the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, for example, is often cited as a prominent cause of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) [16]. Overt anti-refugee sentiment is held by the government and many Lebanese citizens, making any issue regarding refugees both highly politicized and provocative. Lebanon’s vague policies act as a barrier to refugee integration and protection, working (unsuccessfully) to deter migrant flows and to avoid checks on the government’s treatment of refugees.

In May of 2015, Lebanon suspended the registration of Syrian refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), effectively abolishing the right to asylum as a legitimate reason for entry. The UNHCR registered about one million refugees since the start of the Syrian Civil War, but an estimated 500,000 more Syrians were not able to register [11]. Subsequently, the government established a sponsorship system for unregistered individuals to obtain legal residency status. The sponsor may be a friend or family member, but oftentimes, sponsors exploit the dire circumstances of Syrian refugees, selling sponsorships at a steep price or sponsoring them for employment purposes, creating highly coercive sponsor-refugee relations akin to indentured servitude. The phenomenon of Syrian refugees facing mistreatment and abuse from their employers who extort their labor with threats to cancel their sponsorship is well documented [12]. Additionally, many refugees cannot afford the $200 residency fee also imposed on them by the government, however, and continue to reside in the country illegally [12]. Evidently, the Lebanese government has prioritized erecting obstacles for Syrian refugees to maintain their livelihood over abiding by international law.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon without legal status remain vulnerable to deportation [13], which is why many adult Syrian refugees have resorted to sending their children to work and limiting their own movement and visibility [12]. Employers prefer to hire Syrian children because they are forced to accept far less pay than an adult and will complete more strenuous labor than any “Lebanese boy who wants to do this work” [5]. While unauthorized work by a refugee adult can result in deportation due to heavy policing and constraints enforced upon them [8], refugee children engaged in labor are much less likely to attract retaliatory penalties from the state.

It bears mentioning that the contribution of refugee child labor serves to benefits Lebanon’s economy, and consequently the government has no true incentive to stop it. Refugee child labor avoids the political uproar of refugees competing for jobs with citizens. It helps local Lebanese businesses, both formal and informal, function at a low cost. At the same time, refugee families are able to scrape by instead of being forced to resort to petty crime or violence to sustain themselves. The rights of the children, of course, are subordinate to these concerns, and the best interests of the child fall by the wayside. For Lebanon to genuinely eradicate refugee child labor, it would have to stop treating adult Syrian refugees as a security concern and, instead, as human beings with rights, skills, and dignity, as well as recognize their productive potential to bolster the Lebanese economy. It must create opportunities for adult refugees to participate lawfully and equally as legitimate participants in the labor force. The formalization of the economy and refugee integration of the workforce have the potential to stabilize host economies and improve conditions for all workers [14]. Additionally, the government should offer financial support and services to families whose primary wage earner is unable to work due to injury or illness. Alternative development strategies must also be implemented. The creation of special economic zones that grant work permits to refugees can foster refugee business and sustainable livelihoods, although they must be highly regulated to avoid labor exploitation and must be carefully framed so as not to legitimate and foment nationalistic and anti-refugee sentiment. Greater financial support from the international community is crucial to providing these opportunities through grants and loans and investment, as well as greater resettlement of refugees by countries like the United States. Once employment opportunities are made for refugees to earn a living wage, only then can children graduate from working in the streets to working in the classroom.

Bibliography

  1. UNHCR, Child Labor in Lebanon, unhcr.org, accessed November 6, 2018, https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/.
  2. International Rescue Committee Europe, “New survey reveals extent of hardship and abuse experienced by Syrian children working on streets of Lebanon,” rescue-uk.org, accessed June 20, 2018, https://www.rescue-uk.org/press-release/new-survey-reveals-extent-hardship-and-abuse-experienced-syrian-children-working#Fullsurvey.
  3. UNICEF, “FACT SHEET: A summary of the rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, unicef.org, accessed Jun21, 2018, https://www.unicef.org/crc/files/Rights_overview.pdf.
  4. Republic of Lebanon Ministry of Labor, “Guide of Decree 8987 on Worst Forms of Child Labour,” ilo.org, accessed November 3, 2018, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—arabstates/—ro-beirut/documents/publication/wcms_443273.pdf.
  5. Lisa Khoury, “Special report: 180,000 young Syrian refugees are being forced into child labor in Lebanon,” vox.com, accessed June 20, 2018, https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/24/15991466/syria-refugees-child-labor-lebanon.
  6. Human Rights Watch, “Growing Up Without an Education,” hrw.org, accessed June 25, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/19/growing-without-education/barriers-education-syrian-refugee-children-lebanon.
  7. UNHCR, “Survey finds Syrian refugees in Lebanon became poorer, more vulnerable in 2017, unhcr.org, accessed June 24, 2018, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2018/1/5a548d174/survey-finds-syrian-refugees-lebanon-poorer-vulnerable-2017.html.
  8. Sima Ghaddar, “Lebanon Treats Refugees as a Security Problem – and It Doesn’t Work,” tcf.org, April 4, 2017, accessed August 15, 2018, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/lebanon-treats-refugees-security-problem-doesnt-work/?session=1. .
  9. Library of Congress, “Refugee Law and Policy: Lebanon,” loc.gov, accessed June    21, 2018, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/refugee-law/lebanon.php
  10. United Nations General Assembly, Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, (G.A. Res. 429 (V), 1951).
  11. Human Rights Watch, “Lebanon: New Refugee Policy a Step Forward,” hrw.org, February 14, 2017, accessed June 27, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/14/lebanon-new-refugee-policy-step-forward
  12. Human Rights Watch, “Lebanon: Residency Rules Put Syrians at Risk,” hrw.org, January 12, 2016, accessed June 27, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/01/12/lebanon-residency-rules-put-syrians-risk
  13. Human Rights Watch, “Lebanon: Events of 2016,” hrw.org, accessed June 27, 2018,  https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/lebanon.
  14. Diana Essex-Lettieri et al., Refugee Work Rights Report: The Syrian Crisis and Refugee Access to Lawful Work in Greece, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. (Oakland: Asylum Access, 2017), http://asylumaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Middle-East-Refugee-Work-Rights-Syrian-Crisis.pdf.
  15. Rasha Faek, “Little Hope of Jobs for Syrians in Lebanon and Jordan,” al-fanarmedia.org, February 25, 2017, accessed August 15, 2018, https://www.al-fanarmedia.org/2017/02/lebanon-jordan-syrians-face-bleak-employment-future/.
  16. Maja Janmyr, “No Country of Asylum: ‘Legitimizing’ Lebanon’s Rejection of the 1951 Refugee Convention,” International Journal of Refugee Law 29, no. 3 (2017), https://academic.oup.com/ijrl/article/29/3/438/4345649

Aaron Burroughs served as an undergraduate intern with the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice in Spring and Summer 2018. He now resides in Amman, Jordan.

Violence Committed by Americans against (Foreign) Americans

by Dr. Barbara Harlow

10 DEC 2015

Mark Danner’s portrayal of the muted denunciation of human rights abuses during the now more than decade-long U.S.-led global “War on Terror” and the remission of the once honorable paradigm of the exposure of injustice leading to redress were especially poignant reminders of the current crisis in humanitarian thought and activism. In her post, Natalie Davidson speculates that the lack of public protest and political accountability derives from the fact that the abuses “mainly affect foreigners living outside U.S. territory.” That explanation, however, is complicated, if not obviated, by the death-by-drone of Anwar al-Awlaki (also al-Aulaqi) in Yemen on 30 September 2011. Awlaki, a U.S.-born and U.S.-educated radical Muslim preacher, had been the target of a protracted mission to eliminate him, in an operation code-named “Objective Troy.” In his recent book, which takes its title from that code-name, prize-winning journalist Scott Shane reads that assassination mission to “eliminate” the compatriot as a near-epic mortal combat between the “president” and the “terrorist,” assisted by none other than the “drone.” Barely two weeks after his own violent demise, Awlaki’s teenaged son Abdulrahman was also killed while eating at an outdoor café in Yemen (some say accidentally, others aver the teenager’s alleged own “radicalization” as the rationale), again in a lethal drone strike. He, too, was a U.S. citizen.

In April 2014, the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. granted the defendants’ “motion to dismiss” in the case of Nasser al-Aulaqi v Leon Panetta et al. (2012). Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Nasser al-Awlaqi, father of Anwar and grandfather of Abdulrahman, had charged the named U.S. officials with the unlawful deaths and extrajudicial executions without “charge, trial, or conviction” of his near relatives. The senior al-Awlaki had brought a similar charge in an earlier case against Barack Obama, Leon Panetta (director of the CIA), and Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense) for violations of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibiting “unreasonable seizure.” His claim in Al-Aulaqi v. Obama (2010) that “targeted killing” of U.S. citizens violated the Constitution had likewise been dismissed, with the Court noting in a lengthy opinion that the plaintiff’s claims raised “non-justiciable political questions.”

The District Court’s repeated, if predictable, dismissals have so far failed to galvanize concerted rejoinders from a larger U.S. citizenry. Yet, the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the death by drone of the imam and his son, and their elder’s enduring insistence on the rule of law and the integrity of the U.S. Constitution have not been dismissed from either the political annals of contemporary history or their popular cultural re-enactments. In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill’s 2013 monumental account of the construction of “the world as a battlefield” and George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s nefarious waging of the “global war on terror,” Scahill interweaves Nasser al-Awlaki’s personal struggle for justice for his son and grandson with what Scahill calls the “story of how the United States came to embrace assassination as a central part of its security policy” and the “story of the expansion of covert U.S. wars.” The latter includes imbroglios that feature “stories of insiders who have spent their lives in the shadows,” or, in the words of Dick Cheney, “on the dark side.” This storied history of Anwar al-Aulaki’s political odyssey and ensuing family saga is also featured in Shane’s Objective Troy (2015). The book narrates the parallel lives of Barack Obama and Anwar al-Aulaki, although, as Shane tellingly if cynically admits in his Prologue, the two “men would never meet, except virtually, clashing in the battleground of ideas, where the cleric’s mastery of the internet would serve his jihadist cause, and violently, when Obama dispatched the drones that carried out Awlaki’s execution.”

Scahill is adamant, even against the opinionated rulings of the U.S. District Court and the apparent lack of interest on the part of Awlaki’s “fellow Americans,” that “Awlaki’s case would cut to the heart of one of the key questions raised by the increasing role targeted assassinations were playing in U.S. foreign policy. Could the American government assassinate its own citizens without due process?” And Shane predicts that Awlaki would become a “bigger brand,” a veritable living legend, given that, as the investigative journalist describes the phenomenon, “One factor in the dark portrayal of drones [is] that stories trump facts in the human imagination, and drone strikes produced compelling stories.”

If the story has not compelled the political or legal change that some might have anticipated, Anwar al-Awlaki’s biographically tragic fate has served, whether in sinister martyrdom or with heroic mien, as legal – and cultural – precedent, as drones themselves are set to become the very stuff of the contemporary international thriller. Indeed, in Drone (2013), the first of political scientist Mike Maden’s fictional Troy Pearce trilogy, the protagonist – a former U.S. government employee and current CEO of a “private security firm specializing in drone technologies” – explains that “a considerable plurality of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum were still troubled by the use of lethal force against American citizens without benefit of trial, whether or not drones were used, even if the threat was imminent and catastrophic.” The same issue, however paraphrased, will haunt Maden’s two subsequent Troy Pearce novels, Blue Warrior (2014) and Drone Command (2015). It also underwrites former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism Richard A. Clarke’s Sting of the Drone (2014) and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’s Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage (2012).

It would seem after all, as Natalie Davidson has noted, that if “Danner asks how we can return to legality,” it is all the more the case that “the story he tells can also be understood as one in which law, with its indeterminacy and malleability, its sometimes absurd fictions and bureaucratic vocabulary, plays a key role in reassuring government officials that even acts such as torture and execution are acceptable” (emphasis added). In a world where legal and political discourse are imbued with fictions that enable violence, might fiction ironically be the most promising arena in which to challenge targeted killing?

Perhaps not. Jeremy Corbyn might not write international thrillers but the newly elected British Labour leader did protest strenuously – to the thrill of some of his constituents and the indignant ire of others – the death-by-U.S.-drone of one of his compatriots. Mohammed Emwazi, also known as “Jihadi John,” was slain in November 2015 in the targeted killing of a British citizen, a deed that the nation’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, had condoned as committed in “self-defense.” Cameron’s reference to self-defense echoed the rationalizations of his U.S. counterparts in their rendition of ratiocination in the waging of the “forever war” executed by UAVs (“unmanned aerial vehicles”) or, as some weapons analysts and “whodunnit” fans might prefer, RPAs (remotely piloted aircraft). Whether disarticulated in legal language or spellbound through generic whodunnit intrigues, the questions persist, “loiter” in drone-speak. Might the still muted decibels of denunciation yet become a mobilized chorus of dissent and resistance? What would such a raucous uproar require? And will the culprits at last be brought to justice?

Barbara Harlow is the Louann and Larry Temple Centennial Professor of English Literatures at the University of Texas at Austin and is on the WPS Editorial Committee. She is the author of Resistance Literature, Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention, After Lives: Legacies of Revolutionary Writing, and co-editor of Imperialism and Orientalism: A Documentary Sourcebook and Archives of Empire: Vol I and Vol II.