The Utility of Proxy Detentions in Counterinsurgencies

Khalili, Laleh

Abstract

The construction of a regime of invisibility in the age of liberal empire requires the assemblage of law, military procedures, pliant allies and proxies, lubricating discourses and concrete technologies. This chapter shows this assemblage of legal instruments, military procedures, useful technologies, more or less pliable proxies and allies, legitimating discourses and metropolitan power resources that make possible the process by which a person is made invisible, subject to disappearance and 'torture by proxy' in liberal counterinsurgencies. The most striking characteristic of proxy detention as a device is the extent to which it is constituted of a series of modular components that can and are transmitted across time and space in processes of international 'policing' from the War on Drugs to the War on Terror and beyond. An online news service following the War on Drugs has claimed that its DEA sources have identified the plane as part of an Immigration and Naturalisation Services operation called 'The Mayan Express'.

Citation

Khalili, L. (2015). The Utility of Proxy Detentions in Counterinsurgencies. In J. Bachmann, C. Bell, & C. Holmqvist (Eds.), War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315742946-6

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Nov 26, 2014
• Publisher: Routledge
• Series Title: Interventions
• Book Title: War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention
• ISBN: 9781138239845
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315742946-6