Zoltán Glück

This project is a study of the war on terror in Kenya, examining how security practices and counterterrorism are transforming urban space, state power, and political identity. Since the bombing of the US embassy in 1998, Kenya has experienced a number of terrorist attacks that have had a profound impact on the country. Issues around security have assumed a place at the center of national politics, transforming the institutions of state security. The dissertation’s historical and ethnographic chapters examine the colonial origins of counterterrorism and trace how police, activists, elites and NGOs navigate the social and spatial processes of the war on terror. Using archival research, participant observation, and in-depth interviews, this project studies the broader security-led transformation of Kenyan society over the past two decades.

Since the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Kenya has experienced a number of “terrorist” attacks that have pushed counterterrorism into the center of the country’s politics. The Kenyan military’s invasion of Somalia in 2011 inaugurated its own “forever war” against Al-Shabaab and cemented its role as a key regional ally in the US-led Global War on Terror. As state violence and disappearances are legitimated in the name of fighting terrorism, development programs in turn often tacitly become local anti-terror spying operations in which non-governmental organizations are complicit. Yet, far from fostering security and stability, such counterterrorism operations have created increased political instability and a reliance on militarized coercion in response to social unrest and dissent. This book project reckons with the longue durée of colonial formations which deeply structure present day articulations of counterterrorism on the one hand, and the “newness” of the War on Terror on the other. In doing so, the project examines the social, cultural and political impacts of the Global War on Terror in East Africa, placing them within a broader history of decolonization and recolonization on the African continent.