National (in)security and the shifting affective fields of terror in the case of Omar Khadr

Abstract

ABSTRACTOmar Khadr, the Canadian teen accused of war crimes in Afghanistan in 2002, was the only minor held in Guantanamo Bay until his repatriation to Canada in 2012. Throughout his 13 years in U.S. detention and Canadian prison, Khadr remained a highly debated and contentious figure in the Canadian public, depicted as both a victim and villain through the circulation of his dual image as an adolescent boy alongside his photograph as a bearded adult. Although evidence was never presented to the Canadian public that Khadr was a threat to Canada’s national security, his treatment by the federal government and his framing in Canadian news media depicted Khadr as a terrorist. Looking at the relationship between the circulation of Khadr’s dual image and representations of him as a victim/villain, this paper argues that discourses of national security, the construction of dangerous masculinity in the racialization of Arabs and Muslims, and the affects of fear and anxiety circulating in the perceived threat of terror and terrorism shaped a contradictory representation of Khadr as a terrorist threat to the nation, and conversely, as a victim whose innocence relied on his status as a child.