Fatemah Alzubairi - Colonialism, Neo-Colonialism, and Anti-Terrorism Law in the Arab World

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Fatemah Alzubairi 2019

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ISBN 978-1-108-47692-8 Hardback

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To Toronto

I would like to start off by thanking Kent Roach, whom I consider my mentor in law and human rights. It is owing to his support as well as expert guidance that this book came into existence. His knowledge, wisdom, and love of humanity as a whole both inspired and enriched this book and my view of life. Special gratitude goes to Anna Ezekiel, who read and generously commented on the entire book, and whose useful feedback saved me from many errors. I would also like to thank Veit Hillside for all her insightful views and reassuring support, and Liora Salter, who through challenging me, enabled me to clearly build my ideas. I greatly benefitted from the Middle East expertise of Sabal Alnasseri and from Jenny Hockings criticism of counter-terrorism as counter-insurgency, which inspired this book. A number of colleagues and friends have influenced and made valuable comments on countless issues in this book. I thank Ghanim Al-Najjar, Rashid Al-Anezi, Domingo Lovera Parmo, and Stefanie Crispino. John Berger at Cambridge University Press has enthusiastically supported me in completing this book and has shown great competence in seeing it through the press. Discussions with my students have mirrored a mixture of disappointments on regional and global security and a desire for a brighter future. Their sense of hope highlights the importance of studying the roots and developments of counter-terrorism laws in order to make a difference. Last, but surely not least, I am grateful to my parents, Fakhriya Alharbi and Hussian Alzubairi, for their ongoing encouragement and love.

This book investigates the link between colonialism, neo-colonialism, and counter-terrorism, particularly in the Arab world. The book focuses on the colonial rationale for crime control in the arena of national security, and the development of this logic within Egypt and Tunisia during and after colonialism. The unique contribution of this book is its attention to the connections between colonialism, neo-colonialism, and counter-terrorism. These connections have implications for global security in general, because they reveal the colonial roots of the use of coercion and extra-legal measures to protect the ruling order, which are currently justified in both the West and the Arab world in the name of counter-terrorism. Using case studies of Egypt and Tunisia, the book argues that colonialism has had a crucial impact on shaping postcolonial legal and penal systems, which include counter-terrorism laws and policy. In addition, colonialism affected the neo-colonial distribution of power, in which the West as well as Russia dominates the global war on terror, in particular through the United Nations Security Council. States have responded to the United Nations (UN) promotion of anti-terror laws by broadening their laws regardless of their usefulness in crime control. As a result, global anti-terrorism approaches focus primarily on security at the expense of the progress of democracy or human rights, especially within the postcolonial world.

The recent executive orders by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, which ban people of particular nationalities from entering the United States, reveal that the use of arbitrary measures is not exclusive to authoritarian countries like those in the Arab world. The global tendency to normalize this kind of exceptionalism in anti-terrorism practices suggests a meeting point between the West and the Arab world in terms of using counter-terrorism legislation to cement power. This book studies the roots of these practices in colonialism, and the way colonialism continues to play out in counter-terrorism legislation in the Arab world, with lessons for the West as well.