Surviving Society Productions
Surviving Society Productions
Recent Episodes
During a deadly dawn raid by a Kenyan paramilitary squad, an innocent Muslim man, Omar Faraj, was brutally murdered. In the final episode of the series, Namir Shabibi sets out to find those responsible for this extrajudicial killing. The paramilitary squad is, we discover, part of America’s post-9/11 covert War on Terror infrastructure. Following the death squad from Mombasa’s muslim neighbourhoods to the ‘secret’ Recce military complex miles away in rural Ruiru all the way to the CIA’s headquarters in Virginia, we hear how it was developed, funded, equipped and supported by the United States. Across conversations with former Kenyan parliamentarians, ex-American security forces personnel, academic experts and local activists, including the Chair of ‘Muslims for Human Rights,’ Khelef Khalifa, Shabibi exposes the global War on Terror’s brutal underbelly: a project designed to evade accountability, while terrorising Muslim populations in Kenya and beyond.
Useful Links
Center for Constitutional Rights (USA): https://ccrjustice.org/
Muslims for Human Rights (Kenya): https://www.facebook.com/UTETEZI/
UNREDACTED (UK): https://unredacted.uk/
Further Reading
William Daugherty. Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency (Lexington: Kentucky UP, 2004).
Loch K. Johnson. The Third Option: Covert Action and American Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2022).
Namir Shabibi. “Revealed: The CIA and MI6’s secret war in Kenya,” Declassified UK, 28 August 2020, https://declassifieduk.org/revealed-the-cia-and-mi6s-secret-war-in-kenya/.
Namir Shabibi & Jack Watling. “Britain’s Covert War in Yemen: A VICE News Investigation,” 7 April 2016, https://www.vice.com/en/article/8x3enb/britains-covert-war-in-yemen-a-vice-news-investigation.
Bio
Namir Shabibi is a visiting lecturer and doctoral candidate at Westminster University, researching covert paramilitary action in the “War on Terror.” He also leads the University’s Working Group on Telecoms, Spyware and Surveillance. As an investigative journalist, Namir has published reports for the BBC, the Bureau and VICE, among others, and now regularly contributes to Declassified UK. He previously worked for Reprieve, and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Darfur and Guantánamo Bay.
This episode was co-developed with Claire Lauterbach, whose support with additional research into music, sounds and archival materials were integral to its production.
Voiceovers: Claire Lauterbach and Chris Alger
Sitting at the edge of the notorious ‘Western Balkan Route,’ Bihac’s Borici Temporary Reception Centre is witness to some of Europe’s worst border violence. Only a few kilometres from the Bosnian-Croatian border that separates the Western Balkans from the European Union, migrants find themselves stuck; arrested, tortured and pushed back over and over again by Croatian police. But within Borici, they also find themselves part of this building’s 75-year history. Borici is a place where communities have always found shelter: against fascism, against civil war and siege, against post-war abandonment, and now against fortress Europe. Benedetta Zocchi is guided through Borici’s many incarnations by local historians, Asmir Piralic and Almir Kurtovic, human rights activist, Silvia Maraone, and local volunteer, artist and activist, Adem Hajdarevic.
Useful Links
Border Violence Monitoring Network: https://borderviolence.eu/
IPSIA (Institute for Peace, Development and Innovation ACLI) Bihac: https://www.ipsia-acli.it/notizie/itemlist/tag/bihac.html
Radio Elsewhere: https://www.radioelsewheres.net/
Further Reading
Barbara Beznec & Andrej Kurnik. “Old Routes, New Perspectives: A Postcolonial Reading of the Balkan Route,” movements 5:1 (2020), pp. 34-54.
Marta Mitrovic et al. (eds). The Dark Sides of Europeanisation. Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EUropean Border Regime (Belgrade: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2020).
Bene Zocchi. “The Game: Ritualized Exhaustion and Subversion on the Western Balkan Route,” Journal of Borderlands Studies (2023), pp. 1-21.
Bene Zocchi. “Contesting the EU Border: :Lessons and Challenges from the Bosnian Frontier,” Postcolonial Studies 26:1 (2023), pp. 165-182.
Bio
Benedetta Zocchi is a border and migration researcher and a humanitarian development consultant. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Queen Mary University, where she wrote about border struggles and resistances in Bihac. Her work sits at the intersection of decolonial thinking and activist scholarship and she has contributed to several academic and advocacy projects across and beyond the Balkans.
When a dam on the Tigris burst in 2018, waters rushed towards Amed, Turkey’s largest predominantly Kurdish city. In its aftermath, the Turkish state claimed there were no casualties. Speaking with environmental justice campaigners and farmers (Samed Uçaman, Doğan Hatun and Zeki Kanay), Eray Çaylı reveals how this claim was based on dodgy accounting. Delving into the depths of this case, he explores Turkey’s long history of using water as a tool of war and treating Kurdistan as a laboratory for resource extraction. But, as we’ll hear from conversations with Amed residents like Berivan Arslan, these riverbanks are also fertile sites of struggle against the tide of Turkish state violence.
Useful Links
Amed Ecology Association:
https://x.com/Ekolojidernek?t=Epz5LkL0-yvwYUmUH5kbzQ&s=09
Coordination Council of Amed-based Professional Organizations:
https://x.com/Amedikk?t=UwLb2R72f0soPzMpJntY8g&s=09
Turkey’s State of Emergency (Documentary on the "commune field"):
https://youtu.be/v11PuSvpaUY?si=vWYSphqOfTb6_o9A
Further Reading
Zeynep S. Akıncı, Arda Bilgen, Antònia Casellas, & Joost Jongerden. “Development Through Design: Knowledge, Power, and Absences in the Making of Southeastern Turkey,” Geoforum 114 (2020), pp. 181–188.
Eray Çaylı. “The Aesthetics of Extractivism: Violence, Ecology, and Sensibility in Turkey’s Kurdistan,” Antipode 53:5 (2021), pp. 1377–1399.
Eray Çaylı. “Contemporary art and the geopolitics of extractivism in Turkey's Kurdistan,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 46:4 (2021), pp. 929–943.
Anıl Olcan & Zozan Pehlivan. “Wildfires in Mount Cudi and the Ecological, Ideological, Political, and Historical Dimensions of Forest Fires: Turkey's Destruction of the Kurdish Environment,” Jadaliyya, 30 September 2020 https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41791/Turkey’s-destruction-of-the-Kurdish-Environment-WILDFIRES-IN-MOUNT-CUDI-AND-THE-ECOLOGICAL,-IDEOLOGICAL,-POLITICAL-AND-HISTORICAL-DIMENSIONS-OF-FOREST-FIRES
Bio
Eray Çaylı is a researcher and teacher of spatial politics and culture in Istanbul, London, Hamburg, and Amed. He regularly collaborates with Amed-based independent organisations such as the Architects' Chamber and the artist-run space Loading. His books include Victims of Commemoration: The Architecture and Violence of Confronting the Past (2022), Architectures of Emergency in Turkey: Heritage, Displacement, Catastrophe (2021), and Climate Aesthetics: Essays on Anthropocene Art and Architecture (2020).
Voiceovers: Maia Holtermann Entwistle
In 2005 blowouts occurred at Bangladesh’s Tengratila gas field operated by Canada’s Niko Resources Ltd. Toxins leached into the surrounding environment, devastating local habitats. Niko pled guilty to bribery charges related to Tengratila in 2011, but it had already sued Bangladesh’s government for losses at an international arbitration tribunal. What the hell is international corporate arbitration? The opaque legal wranglings of this case reveal the invisible infrastructure of international investment law, its colonial inheritances, and how companies shirk criminal liability for corporate negligence and corruption. Paul Gilbert, this episode’s host, speaks to leading Global South arbitrator and academic Muthucumuraswamy Sornarajah, legal scholar Gus van Harten and Catherine Coumans from Mining Watch Canada.
Useful Links
Bangladesh Working Group on Ecology and Development: https://bwged.blogspot.com/
ISDS Platform: Resources for Movements: https://isds.bilaterals.org/
National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports: https://ncbd.org/
Website : https//materialcrimes.com/
Further Reading
Paul Robert Gilbert. ‘National Resources, Resistance, and the Afterlives of the New International Economic Order in Bangladesh,” International Development Policy, 12 June 2023.
Kamal Hossain. “Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources,” in Legal Aspects of the New International Economic Order, pp. 33-43 (London: Bloomsbury Academic Collections, 1980).
Frederico Ortino. “The Public Interest as Part of Legitimate Expectations in Investment Arbitration: Missing in Action?” in Charles Brower et al. (eds), By Peaceful Means: International Adjudication And Arbitration (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2022).
Muthucumuraswamy Sornarajah. “On Fighting for Global Justice: The role of a Third World International Lawyer,” Third World Quarterly 37:11 (2016), pp. 1972–1989.
Bio
Paul Robert Gilbert is a Senior Lecturer in International Development at the University of Sussex. This episode was made possible by those whose voices can be heard in this episode, as well as conversations with members of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, Bangladesh Working Group on Ecology and Development, and the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power & Ports.