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

ABSTRACT

Omar 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.

KEYWORDS:

• National security
• affect
• terror
• masculinity
• Omar Khadr
• Canada
• Guantanamo Bay

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Natalie Kouri-Towe is an Assistant Professor and Program Director for the Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality Program at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University in Montreal. She has worked previously as a Lecturer in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and as a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Thorneloe University at Laurentian in Sudbury. Her research examines concepts of solidarity, attachment, social movements, gender, and queer activism in transnational networks across the Middle East, Europe and North America. Her current research project, tentatively titled ‘Neoliberalism and Humanitarianism in the War on Terror,’ examines competing narratives of survival in times of war. In June 2017, she co-launched the Critical Feminist Network on Migration and Refugees, an international network of scholars that aims to build research and activist partnerships in the ‘refugee crisis.’

Notes

1. For Ott and Aoki (2002), frame analysis uses discursive techniques to examine ‘how a story is framed in the news affects … how the public assigns responsibility for a traumatic event’ (485).