Reflections on Rafia Zakaria’s talk, the war at home, and the war abroad
by Jasmin Maurer, PEP Director
Last week, Pakistani-American journalist Rafia Zakaria came to St. Louis, sharing some of her insights into the US-led drone war abroad following a screening of the documentary Dirty Wars (which I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it).
A comment she made has stuck with me since her talk. She described how US drones targeted the poorest, most powerless communities in Pakistan, making the people there invisible. She went on to connect this with plans for domestic drones on US soil by local law enforcement, warning that the same scenario is likely to happen here.
In an article she wrote for Jacobin, “Black, Brown, and Invisible,” Zakaria details this point in much further detail, connecting the racism towards brown people in wars abroad to racism against black people here that fuels the war at home.
She writes: “The millions of men duly incarcerated with such methodical diligence by a criminal justice system functioning as a proxy for perpetuating prejudice can be ignored away because they are black. The millions cowering in fear as American drones watch from the sky, as American missiles rain into cities and American tanks roll into towns, are all brown. So successful is the cumulative propaganda of ‘justice’ and ‘precision,’ of ‘redemption’ and ‘humanitarianism,’ that the misery of their bodies, the colors of their faces, the particularities of their perspectives are all erased before the power of whiteness to define what is worthy, right, just, and deserved.”
As PEP moves to take part in anti-drone work at home through Drone Free St. Louis, a coalition that opposes drone use by the St. Louis Police, this connection stands out to me. We’ve discussed and educated the community on the impact of foreign drones, the numerous civilian lives lost in the name of fighting terrorism, but we’ve done so little to protect those unfairly targeted here at home.
Too many times in my work have I heard someone say, that is not my issue. And yet all work for social justice is interconnected. The racism that fuels mass incarceration of black people in the US isn’t far off from the racism that allows numerous civilian causalities abroad to go un-prosecuted in the war on terror.
A study out of Stanford University found an unsettling link between children in violent urban neighborhoods and soldiers returning from war zones: symptoms of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Nearly one-third of all children had PTSD, nearly twice as much as soldiers.
These high crime neighborhoods are the kind that Police Chief Sam Dotson would fly a drone over in connection with his move towards hot-spot policing. They are also neighborhoods that are largely black, under-funded, and lacking resources. If the conversation was truly about solving crime, many of us already know that over-policing doesn’t solve the problem. Investing resources into these communities does.
Racism is what allows us to solve crime by flying in a drone or sending police, just as it allows us to fight terrorism with numerous drone strikes in North Waziristan, Pakistan without questioning the number of casualties. And even if the drones in our neighborhoods aren’t weaponized, the anxiety that comes from constant surveillance is still a reason for concern, as Zakaria pointed out in her visit.
In Zakaria’s words: “The common connections between the dehumanization that allows for the incarceration of millions of African-American men and the new vocabulary of precision and humanitarianism that has been attached to imperial war are indeed many.”
If we wait for the drones to come here, we may learn more of these connections first-hand as we make invisible our most powerless communities in the same way we did to numerous countries in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond.
To find out more about Drones and Policing, check out Drone Free St. Louis‘s four-part panel series, Drones and Donuts as part of the Spring Days of Action Against Drones.
Militarization of the Police – Wed. April 9
True Costs and Safety – Wed. April 23
Impacts on Communities of Color – Wed. May 7
Mass Surveillance – Wed. May 21
