Som ett resultat av attackerna mot USA den 11 september 2001 förklarade dåvarande president George W Bush krig mot terrorismen den 20 september samma år. Sex dagar senare undertecknade Bush ett direktiv vilket auktoriserade den civila amerikanska underrättelsetjänsten Central Intelligence Agency att utföra riktat dödande mot fördefinierade individer i syftet att förhindra nya attacker från terroristnätverket Al Qaeda, talibanerna och associerade styrkor. Bush initierade det amerikanska bruket av så kallade ”drone strikes” i anslutning till krigsförklaringen med intentionen att eliminera misstänkta terrorister utan möjlighet till en rättvis rättegång, Obama-administrationen har valt att fortsätta utöva policyn. Syftet med studien är att fastställa huruvida USA:s juridiska rättfärdigande och bruk av folkrätt i relation till genomförandet av riktat dödande och användandet av obemannade luftfarkoster i kriget mot terrorismen kan betraktas vara förenligt med doktrinen för just war theory och gällande internationell rätt. Vidare undersöker studien effekterna av det amerikanska bruket av folkrätten i relation till civilbefolkningen och den internationella humanitära rätten. Relevant lagtext och krigsetikens sedvanerättsliga principer jämförs med USA:s bruk av folkrätt för att fastställa agerandets legalitet. Vidare påvisar studien att programmet för riktat dödande inte kan anses vara förenligt med just war theory och gällande internationell lag och att bruket av drönare hamnar i konflikt med gällande internationell rätt i relation till hur de används under kriget mot terrorismen. / As a result of the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 then President George W Bush declared a war on terror. Six days later, Bush signed a directive which authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out targeted killings against predefined individuals with the purpose to prevent any future attacks from the terrorist network Al Qaeda, as well as the Taliban and associated forces. In conjunction with the declaration of war president Bush initiated the American practice of so-called "drone strikes" with the intention to eliminate suspected terrorists without access to a fair trial, the practice has continued under the mandate of the Obama-administration. The aim of this study is to examine whether the US legal justification for the use of targeted killings and unmanned aerial vehicles in the war against terrorism can be regarded as compatible with the doctrine of just war theory and applicable international law. Furthermore, the study examines the effects of the US practice on international humanitarian customary law in relation to the civilian population. The U.S. justification of targeted killing is compared with international law to determine the lawfulness from a legal perspective. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the practice is not compatible with the doctrine of just war theory and applicable international law. The use of drones violates international customary law in relation to how they are used under the current conflict.

The aim of this thesis is to answer the question whether the U.S. policy on targeted killings with combat drones is compatible with the legal doctrine of just war theory, applicable international law, and human rights law. Moreover, this paper intends to examine the legal issues arising from the U.S. practice of international law in relation to the justification of targeted killings. The purpose of this thesis is to determine whether the practice of targeted killings can be considered lawful and, if not, to provide knowledge about how the method violates applicable international law and the ethics of war. The focus is placed on relevant treaties and customary international law, and just war theory is used as a theoretical complement to explain the meaning and purpose of selected laws in order to determine their applicability to the research problem. Furthermore, this procedure has been conducted by using a legal method to identify the legal problem and interpret relevant sources of law in order to determine their applicability to the research problem. The thesis has determined that the U.S. policy on targeted killings with combat drones is not consistent with applicable international law and fundamental human rights law. In particular, the practice of targeted killings violates the principle of distinction.

[ES] La presente investigación aborda la noción de terrorismo en relación con sus formas de representación. Así, partimos del supuesto de que, en cuanto a terrorismo se refiere, lenguaje e imagen, realidad y representación, no funcionan como esferas separadas, sino como terrenos sólo aparentemente fronterizos que se solapan, interaccionan y se condicionan entre sí. Aquí nos servimos del 11-S como acontecimiento singular a través del cual desentrañar el relato que circunda la idea de terrorismo; un relato que ha hecho de la imagen su principal herramienta discursiva y de la ficción su estrategia propagandística más eficaz. En otras palabras, podríamos decir que la narración post-11-S del terrorismo se ha basado en la explotación sin paliativos de su representación simplificada, atribuyendo a sus imágenes unos significados previamente estipulados e imponiendo un modelo explicativo que abandona por completo el empirismo y el estudio racional de los hechos. Si tradicionalmente el concepto de terrorismo se había definido, tanto histórica como jurídicamente, a través de una pretendida ambigüedad, tras el 11-S se extremó su indeterminación, ampliándolo sustancialmente e incidiendo en su característica carga emotiva. Por todo ello, en esta tesis doctoral ofrecemos tres aproximaciones diferentes al concepto de terrorismo, enunciadas desde el intrincado nexo que su violencia establece con las técnicas de representación. En la primera parte, mediante un análisis comparativo del 11-S, definimos el terrorismo como una estrategia de violencia política con intenciones comunicativas y simbólicas. En la segunda parte, reflexionamos en torno a la confluencia de distintos estilos de relato, creados todos ellos con afán de desactivación del contrarrelato que la acción terrorista introduce, describiendo el terrorismo como constructo mediático y como concepto narrativo. Finalmente, en la tercera parte, tratamos la noción de terrorismo como un relato de exterioridad, generado para expulsar la violencia inherente al propio Estado fuera del orden político. Cabe mencionar que, aunque tomemos el 11-S como punto de partida y caso de estudio, esta investigación no se circunscribe exclusivamente a este acontecimiento, sino que aborda la especificidad de la violencia terrorista a través del análisis de sus formas de representación con vistas a la extracción de unas conclusiones generales. La metodología de esta investigación es, por lo tanto, inductiva y su perspectiva es de carácter transdisciplinar, combinando la investigación teórico-práctica en artes, con la indagación filosófica o jurídica. De ello se deriva que las conclusiones extraídas a lo largo de esta tesis doctoral vengan determinadas tanto por la reflexión teórica como por la propia práctica artística. / [CA] La present investigació adreça la noció de terrorisme en relació amb les seues formes de representació. Així, partim del suposat que, pel que fa a terrorisme, llenguatge i imatge, realitat i representació, no funcionen com esferes separades, sinó com terrenys sols aparentment fronterers que no deixen de superposar-se, interaccionar o condicionar-se entre si. Ací ens fem servir de l'11-S com esdeveniment singular a través del qual desentranyar el relat que circumda la idea de terrorisme; un relat que ha fet de la imatge la seua principal ferramenta discursiva i de la ficció la seua estratègia propagandística més eficaç. En altres paraules, podríem dir que la narració post-11-S del terrorisme s'ha basat en l'explotació sense pal·liatius de la seua representació simplificada, atribuint a les seues imatges uns significats prèviament estipulats i imposant un model explicatiu que abandona per complet l'empirisme i l'estudi racional dels fets. Si tradicionalment el concepte de terrorisme s'havia definit, tant històrica com jurídicament, a través d'una pretesa ambigüitat, després de l'11-S es va extremar la seua indeterminació, ampliant-lo substancialment i incidint en la seua característica càrrega emotiva. Per tot això, en aquesta tesi doctoral oferim tres aproximacions diferents del concepte de terrorisme, enunciades des de l'intrincat nexe que la seua violència estableix amb les tècniques de representació. En la primera part, mitjançant una anàlisi comparativa de l'11-S, definim el terrorisme com una estratègia de violència política amb intencions comunicatives i simbòliques. En la segona part, reflexionem al voltant de la confluència de diferents estils de relat, creats tots ells amb l'afany de desactivació del contrarrelat que l'acció terrorista introdueix, descrivint el terrorisme com constructe mediàtic i com concepte narratiu. Finalment, en la tercera part, tractem la noció de terrorisme com un relat d'exterioritat, generat per expulsar la violència inherent al mateix Estat fora de l'ordre polític. Cal fer menció que, tot i que prenem l'11-S com un punt de partida i cas d'estudi, aquesta investigació no se circumscriu exclusivament a aquest esdeveniment, sinó que adreça l'especificitat de la violència terrorista a través de l'anàlisi de les seues formes de representació amb vista a l'extracció d'unes conclusions generals. La metodologia d'aquesta investigació és, per tant, inductiva i la seua perspectiva és de caràcter transdisciplinari, combinant la investigació teòric-pràctica en arts, amb la indagació filosòfica i jurídica. D'això es deriva que les conclusions extretes al llarg d'aquesta tesi doctoral vinguen determinades tant per la reflexió teòrica com per la pròpia pràctica artística. / [EN] This research addresses the notion of terrorism in relation to its forms of representation. Thus, we start from the assumption that, as far as terrorism is concerned, language and image, as well as reality and representation do not function as separate spheres, but as only seemingly borderline terrains that overlap, interact, and condition each other. In this thesis we use 9/11 as a singular event through which to unravel the narrative that surrounds the concept of terrorism; a narrative that has transformed image into its main discursive tool and fiction into its most effective propaganda strategy. In other words, one might say that the post 9/11 narrative of terrorism has been based on the unmitigated exploitation of its simplified representation, attributing previously stipulated meanings to its images and imposing an explanatory model that completely abandons empiricism and the rational study of the facts. The concept of terrorism had traditionally already been defined, both historically and legally, through a pretended ambiguity; however, its indeterminacy became even more extreme after 9/11, expanding substantially and stressing its characteristic emotional charge. For all these reasons, in this doctoral thesis I offer three different approaches to the concept of terrorism, articulated on the basis of the intricate nexus that its violence establishes with representation techniques. In the first part, through a comparative analysis of 9/11, I define terrorism as a strategy of political violence with communicative and symbolic intentions. In the second part, I reflect on the confluence of different narrative styles, all created with the aim of deactivating the counter-narrative that terrorist action introduces, describing terrorism as a media construct and a narrative concept. Finally, in the third part, I deal with the notion of terrorism as a narrative of exteriority, generated to dissociate the violence inherent to the State itself from the political order. It is worth noting that, although we take 9/11 as a starting point and case study, this research is not limited exclusively to this event, as it also addresses the specificity of terrorist violence through the analysis of its forms of representation with a view to drawing general conclusions. Thus, the methodology of this research is inductive and its perspective is transdisciplinary in nature, combining theoretical-practical research in the arts with philosophical or even legal investigations. The conclusions drawn throughout this doctoral thesis are consequently determined both by theoretical reflection and by the artistic practice itself. / Rial Zamudio, S. (2022). Terrorismo: relato y contrarrelato. Un estudio teórico-práctico a partir del imaginario surgido tras el 11-S [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/181577

Al Qaeda killings, posttraumatic stress, and the Gothic together triangulate a sizable space in recent American fiction that is still largely uncharted by critics. This thesis maps that shared territory in four novels written between 2005 and 2007 by writers who were born in America, and whose protagonists are the survivors in New York City after the World Trade Center falls. Published in the city of their tragedy and reviewed in its media, the novels surveyed here include Don DeLillo’s _Falling Man_ (2007), Jonathan Safran Foer’s _Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close_ (2005), Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s _The Writing on the Wall_ (2005), and Jess Walter’s _The Zero_ (2006). The thesis issues a challenge to the large number of negative and dismissive reviews of the novels under consideration, making a case that under different criteria, shaped by trauma theory and psychoanalysis, the novels succeed after all in making readers feel what it was to be alive in September 2001, enduring the posttraumatic stress for months and years later. The thesis asserts that 9/11 fiction is too commonly presented in popular journals and scholarly studies as an undifferentiated mass. In the same critical piece a journalist or an academic may evaluate narratives in which unfold a terrorist's point of view, a surviving or a dying New York City victim's perspective, and an outsider's reaction set thousands of miles away from Ground Zero. What this thesis argues for is a separation in study of the fictive strands that meditate on the burning towers, treating the New York City survivor story as a discrete body. Despite their being set in one of the most known cities of the Western world, and the terrorist attack that they depict being the most- watched catastrophe ever experienced in real-time before, these fictions have not yet been critically ordered. Charting the salient reappearing conflicts, unsettling descriptions, protagonist decay, and potent techniques for registering horror that resurface in this New York City 9/11 fiction, this thesis proposes and demonstrates how the peculiar and affecting Gothic tensions in the works can be further understood by trauma theory, a term coined by Cathy Caruth in Unclaimed Experience (1996: 72). Though the thesis concentrates on developments in trauma theory from the mid 1990s to 2015, it also addresses its theoretical antecedents: from the earliest voices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that linked mental illness to a trauma (Charcot, Janet, Breuer, Freud), to researchers from mid-twentieth century (Adler, Lindemann) who studied how catastrophe affects civilian minds not previously trained to either fight war or withstand cataclysm. Always keeping at the fore the ancient Greek double-meaning of trauma as both unhealing “wound” and “defeat,” the thesis surveys tenets of the trauma theorists from the very first of those who studied the effects on civilian survivors of disaster (of what is still the largest nightclub fire in U.S. history, which replaced front page coverage of World War II for a few days: the Cocoanut Grove blaze in Boston, 1942) up to those theorists writing in 2015. The concepts evolving behind trauma theory, this thesis demonstrates, provide a useful mechanism to discuss the surprising yearnings hiding behind the appearance of doppelgängers, possession ghosts, terrorists as monsters, empty coffins, and visitants that appear to feed on characters’ sorrow, guilt, and loneliness within the novels under discussion. This thesis reappraises the dominant idea in trauma studies of the mid-1990s, namely that trauma victims often cannot fully remember and articulate their physical and psychic wounds. The argument here is that, true to the theories of the Caruthian school, the victims in these novels may not remember and express their trauma completely and in a linear fashion. However, the victims figured in these novels do relate the horrors of their memory to a degree by letting their narration erupt with the unexpectedly Gothic images, tropes, visions, language, and typical contradictions, aporias, lacunae, and paradoxes. The Gothic, one might say, becomes the language in which trauma speaks and articulates itself, albeit not always in the most cogent of signs. One might easily dismiss these fleeting Gothic presences that characters conjure in the fictions under consideration as anomalous apparitions signalling nothing. However, this thesis interrogates these ghostly traces of Gothicism to find what secrets they hold. Working from the insights of psychoanalysis and its post-Freudian re-inventers and challengers, it aims to puzzle out the dimensions of characters’ mourning in its “traumagothic” reading of the texts. Characters’ use of the Gothic becomes their way of remembering, a coded language to the curious. This thesis holds that unexpressed grief and guilt are the large constant in this grouping of novels. Characters’ grief articulation and guilt release, or the desire for symbolic amnesia, take paths that the figures often were suspicious of before 9/11: a return to organized religion, a belief in spirits, a call for vengeance, psychotherapy, substance abuse, splitting with a partner, rampant sex with nearby strangers, torture of suspects, and killing. All the earnest attempts through the above means by the characters to express grief, vent rage, and alleviate survivor guilt do so without noticeable success. True closure towards their trauma is largely a myth. No reliable evidence surfaces from the close reading of the texts that those affected by trauma ever fully recover. However, as this thesis demonstrates, other forms of recompense come from these searches for elusive peace and the nostalgic longing for the America that has been lost to them.

During the UN World Summit 2005 all Member States of the United Nations unanimously accepted the Responsibility to protect- principle (R2P- principle), that each member state shall protect its own population from ethnic cleansing, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. During the set-up of the United Nations and the Security Council’s veto system in the San Francisco Conference 1945, the five permanent members of the Security Council promised that their right to veto would be used “sparingly” and in the “interest” of the world organization, to safeguard “the International peace and security”. Despite the united acceptance of the R2P- principle to avoid mass atrocities since 2005, China have been detaining up to one million Uyghur, including Kazakhs in detainment camps, in former East Turkestan since the beginning of 2018. Since the passage to invoke the R2P- principle is by the Security Council, the question arises if- the veto would serve as a deadlock on the R2P- principle if China could veto such decision. The purpose of the thesis have therefore been to analyze if the R2P- principle is inefficient against the Security Council’s veto system, by targeting China’s opportunity of vetoing the R2P- principle. The conclusion have been that the R2P- principle is inefficient against the Security Council’s veto system. This is because a permanent member can block the R2P- principle by either vetoing or double vetoing a draft resolution, which have been demonstrated by illustrating how China could veto the R2P- principle. Since the decisions of the Security Council cannot be appealed or dissent in terms of the veto card and UN Charter, it leaves the R2P- principle inefficient with a weak operational legitimacy against the Security Council’s powerful veto system, on the cost of human lives.

The main purpose of this work is to investigate if the US ́s killing of Osama bin Laden on 2 May 2011 in Abbottabad in Pakistan was lawful. The background to the killing is what happened on 11 September 2001 when four US airplanes were hijacked and crashed into World Trade Center and Pentagon. Al Qaeda, a terrorist organisation led by Osama bin Laden, was immediately suspected for the attacks, which led to the starting point of the US ́s ‘global war on terror’. This work tries to give a short brief on ‘global war on terror’ and answer if there is a global war on terror and/or if a new category of war is needed. In order to get an answer to the main question of this work I had to investigate if US is in an international armed conflict or in a non-international armed conflict with Al Qaida. Another important question to investigate is if an armed conflict in one State can spill over to another State and still be consider as an armed conflict. Other important questions to answer are, if Osama bin Laden was a legitimate target under international humanitarian law, if he was a civilian or if he had a continuous combat function and what level of participation in hostilities he had? Not less important is also to investigate if human rights law is applicable when Osama bin Laden was killed, especially the fundamental right to life. Lastly I end my investigation with a quick review of the laws of jus ad bellum in order to get an answer if US had a right to resort to force in Pakistan. My conclusion is that the US was not involved in an armed conflict with al Qaeda in Pakistan where the killing took place. The conflict between the US and al Qaeda in Afghanistan is to be categorised as a non-international conflict. This conflict cannot be described as a conflict that has spilled over to Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden was killed. All people, including Osama bin Laden, has a right to life. Because of lack of information on what happened in Abbottabad when Osama bin Laden was killed it is impossible to give a clear legal answer if the US had the right to kill him. It could be lawful, but it could also be considered as a crime against international human rights law.

Exploring Puritanical cultural habits in the 21st century American military, the following study focuses on U.S. Army courts-martial in the Global War on Terrorism. The study uses Emile Durkheim's original sociological interpretation of crime and deviance. That interpretation is linked with responsibility as described by Durkheim's follower Paul Fauconnet in Responsibility: A Study in Sociology ([1928] 1978) and with a new cultural reading of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ([1905] 1976). The study is an inductive, descriptive examination of the Puritanical aspects of American military culture based on its treatment of acts labeled as deviant and criminal in the Global War on Terrorism. Four sets of war crimes are included in the study: Abu Ghraib (which occurred in Iraq in 2004), Operation Iron Triangle (which occurred in Iraq in 2006), the Baghdad canal killings (which occurred in Iraq in 2007), and the Maywand District killings (which occurred in Afghanistan in 2010). My data include primary data collected through participation and observation as a consultant for courts-martial related to all the cases except Abu Ghraib. Records of trial, investigation reports, charge sheets, sworn statements, and other documentation are also included in the study as secondary data sources. The study illuminates how unconscious, Puritan cultural habits color and shape both military actions and their perceptions. I explore Puritanism and its influence on military law, responsibility, revenge, "magic" (in its sociological sense), and narcissism. The study concludes with observations and recommendations for changes in U.S. military law.

Taking as its starting point Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s theses on liberalism and war, and Dillon and Reid’s extensive engagement thereof, this thesis offers a critical conceptualization of drones and drone warfare. I argue that deployment of drones specifically over and against bodies and communities in conflict zones in and between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and until recently, Libya, is the material practice of a legal and political doctrine and precedent that has been established and policed most prominently by the United States and its military and intelligence apparatuses since the end of the Cold War. This novel precedent, however - due to its necessarily mutually constitutive relationship with a perceived danger said to be emerging from specific spaces, bodies, and communities in the decolonized and still-colonized worlds - locates its ontological and thus political genealogy in the anthropological knowledge that legally justified the (in)humanity of peoples and communities in these spaces during the era of high imperialism that lasted roughly from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. I theorize this as a mode of political, tragic nihilism through a reading of some key theories of Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, and Nietzsche and specifically, their import to the field of critical security and international relations theory. I demonstrate that the semiotic image of the drone is a highly pertinent point of departure through which we can understand these political stakes of strategic discourses enunciating the imperatives of both the Revolution in Military Affairs as well as recent global counterinsurgency/counterterrorism operations, specifically as they relate to claims about what it is drones are said to productively offer such militaristic projects. Ultimately, I argue that it is through the semiotic image of the drone as a clean, precise tactic that furthers the strategic goals of counterterrorism to target specific bodies that we can begin to politically theorize a particularly malignant political nihilism symptomatic of contemporary liberal societies. However, I also suggest that it is through Nietzsche’s politics of nihilism that we can begin to think about radical critical interventions that resist such a dangerous mode of politics. / Graduate

Security and race have historically been entangled in the politics of nation-building, whereby national security discourses have constructed the ‘public’ whom it should protect as ‘white’ while demonizing persons of colour as a threat to that public. In the current war against terrorism, these racialized discourses, underwritten by a colonial logic, have materialized through the symbolic and literal displacement of Muslim persons. Under this imperative of national security, both existing and novel legislations have either been suspended, contorted, or implemented to be used against Muslims, or anyone who visibly appears Muslim. Security certificates are one of such judicial tools. This thesis seeks to explore the experiences of securitization, analyzing how this legislation strips the subjects of the security certificate program of their legal rights and social connectedness. To explore this, I interviewed three of the five men from the ‘Secret Trial Five’ cases and some of their family members. I investigate how securitization manifests in the lives of those who have been securitized, exploring the practices that are used to maintain and reinforce the othering and the displacement of Muslim populations.

No description available.