Fighting silence covert warfare and the uphill battle against the unsaid

Elisabeth Schweiger

doi:10.1177/13540661211053830

Abstract

Silences around drone warfare and similar covert state practices have often been encountered as a hurdle that hinders us from understanding and interrogating government acts. Scholars as well as human rights actors have opposed silences in a struggle for greater transparency and have called on governments to speak. Through the case study of drone warfare, this paper analyses the productive role of silences and the political struggle to oppose it. Analysing 125 non-governmental organisation (NGO) reports, UN documents and policy papers, this article investigates how silences are encountered, interpreted and opposed by Western human rights actors. This shows that silence is not encountered as a discrete unit but as interdependent layers of denial, partial withholding of information, redactions, delays, lack of oversight and so on. Situated within unequal power relations, I show how the battle against the unsaid is itself based on what has (not) been heard in Western constructions of drone warfare and risks further enabling violent practices. Discussing ways of subverting the workings of silence, the paper not only contributes to academic literature on covert warfare and silence but also speaks to the practical dilemmas faced by non-state actors who are advocating for more transparency.

Highlights

The War on Terror is permeated with silences
Trying to break the silence from within this logic can end up reproducing relations of power. This is further compounded by speech expectations being focused on violent state actors whose silence is interpreted as secrecy, creating a subject position of exclusion which reaffirms the status of the powerful as those who are expected to speak and undermines the vast amount of information which local actors and non-governmental organisation (NGO) possess
Rather than interpreting the silence of actors on drone warfare and the controversial ‘targeted killing’ policies as secrecy which hinders our understanding on the practice and further increases normative and legal leeway for powerful actors, some human rights actors have instead interpreted it as an admission of guilt: There is a stigma attached to targeted killing – especially given its controversial use by the US during the war on terror

Summary

Introduction

The War on Terror is permeated with silences. We often encounter practices, such as armed drone attacks, through classified reports, redactions and denials. Given the political effects of silences, it is not surprising that human rights actors have tried to break the silence and have called on governments to speak (Amnesty International, 2013; Open Society Foundations, 2019).

Results

Conclusion