Donald Trump’s boast of striking a “drug boat” off Venezuela exposes how America’s border has become a theatre of lethal sovereignty, where the state redefines law through violence and turns open seas into instruments of exclusion and death.
Trump’s border wars at sea: how the US is turning the Caribbean into a killing zone
Gaza MoH’s redaction of thousands of deaths fuelled doubt, but the data suggests something darker
AOAV’s review finds over 80% of the 1,079 removed child names in Gaza’s death toll are confirmed or likely killed, disproving claims of fabrication.
Night raids and targeted killings: a SOAS panel discusses the UK inquiry into SAS killings in Afghanistan
At a May 20205 panel at SOAS, experts exposed the brutal realities of UK special forces’ targeted killings in Afghanistan, demanding accountability, reparations, and a departure from a culture of impunity.
The philosophy of violence: Slavoj Žižek and the obscene logic of power
Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy of violence compels us to look beyond the spectacle of bloodshed to the quiet, systemic and symbolic forces that normalise cruelty and uphold the ideological myths of power, peace, and humanitarianism.
Rules for others: selective outrage, silent complicity, and an alarming lack of principled leadership
The selective application of humanitarian norms by democratic states exposes the erosion of international law, as principles meant to protect civilians are increasingly abandoned when they constrain allies or strategic interests.
‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes
“It’s not about me. It’s about every civilian who has been killed in Waziristan.” These are the words of Faheem Qureshi, speaking to The Guardian in 2016. Faheem was one of the first casualties in President Obama’s drone campaign when, seven years before, on 23 January, 2009, his family home in North Waziristan was hit […]
Drone Warfare, Heroism, and Masculinity: Examining the Pilots’ Perspectives
‘I wanted to be a hero, but I don’t feel like a hero.’ These were the words of Brandon Bryant, a former staff sergeant in the US Air Force who worked as a sensory operator and imagery analyst for Predator drones between 2005 to 2011. It is a sentence filled with the pathos of war, […]
Two UN reports urge for more transparency in the use of drones
Two major UN expert reports published earlier this week address the controversy of drone strikes and call for an increase in transparency in the treatment of civilian casualties. In the first of the set of reports, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Christof Heyns, calls for end of the international secrecy surrounding who owns armed drones, how […]
Sami Zubeiri
Sami Zubeiri is a Pakistani journalist who worked at AFP for 35 years. In 1979, he broke the news of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Since then, he has covered many of the major events in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in 1986, […]