This book places the present day Global War on Terror within a broader historical analysis of colonization and counterinsurgency. The social transformations of counterterrorism have deeply influenced both the state and society on a planetary scale over the past 25 years, and in the longue durée colonialism deeply structures its forms of violence and politics. Nowhere is this more starkly evident than in postcolonial Kenya, which has become a key ally in the US-led Global War on Terror, and a central node of foreign security assistance and military funding.
Based on extensive ethnographic and archival research focused on the social, cultural and political transformations wrought by counterterrorism in East Africa, Zoltán Glück puts forward a theory of "recolonization" as the perennial partner of decolonization. In this theoretical framework, The Global War on Terror can be understood as the most recent iteration of a century-and-a-half long project of undermining movements for land, freedom, sovereignty, and self-determination in the so-called Global South. From biometric technologies and drone warfare to the remaking of urban space through militarized policing operations, The Long War on Terror is a crucial inquiry into the sprawling counterterrorism apparatuses that are extending colonial domination into the present.