Abstract: In 2023, the Kenyan state announced that it was prepared to lead a US-backed multinational police intervention in Haiti, justifying its role in the language of Pan-African solidarity. This announcement came in the midst of the Kenyan military’s ongoing operations against the militant group Al-Shabaab in neighboring Somalia. What explains Kenya’s emergence as a Global South power with growing international visibility on questions of security? How are contemporary invocations of Pan-Africanism—particularly when wielded by state officials—imbricated in the politics of empire and militarized interventionism? This talk explores the rise of ‘entangled pacifications,’ wherein seemingly marginal Global South states play increasingly critical roles in the topography of global policing, counter-insurgency, and war —with dire consequences for everyday people caught in the crosshairs.


Bio: Samar Al-Bulushi is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. Her book, War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in November 2024. Samar is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and has published in a variety of public outlets on topics ranging from the International Criminal Court to the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa.

Research Interests
Geopolitics; imperialism; militarism; policing; race; Kenya, East Africa, elites, diplomacy; transnationalism & South-South solidarities.

Current Research
My book War-Making as World-Making: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (forthcoming in November 2024 from Stanford University Press), argues that Kenya has emerged as a key player in the post 9/11 era of endless war. Since the Kenyan military invaded Somalia in 2011, Kenya has been engaged in direct combat with the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab, conducting airstrikes in southern Somalia, and deploying heavy-handed police tactics at home. Yet Kenya is often dismissed as a proxy force in what many conceive of as an American-led theatre of operations. My book argues that it is only by accounting for the increasingly assertive role of African states— made possible by U.S. security assistance— that we can trace the extension of the war on terror into ever-expansive domains across the continent. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Kenyan cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, the book brings into focus a landscape of everyday life that remains largely overlooked by those documenting the costs of post 9/11 imperial warfare in Africa.

My next project, The Afterlives of Non-Alignment, explores how African politicians, activists, and intellectuals re-engage with the concept of non-alignment in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While contemporary invocations of non-alignment are not necessarily grounded in a commitment to anti-imperialism, memories of European colonialism loom large, as do memories of the Soviet Union’s support for African independence struggles. This project aims to shed ethnographic light on how asymmetrical yet shifting global power relations are interpreted and contested, shaped simultaneously by colonial legacies of exploitation and inequality, by affective discourses that invoke memories of these legacies, and by everyday forms of geopolitical knowledge.

Professional Background
I joined the Department of Anthropology in 2019. Between 2017-2019, I was a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCI.

Prior to pursuing my PhD, I worked for a number of international human rights organizations, including the Center for Economic and Social Rights, Parliamentarians for Global Action, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. I was also a co-producer and co-host of Afrobeat Radio and Global Movements, Urban Struggles at WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York City.

I am a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and previously served as a contributing editor at Africa is a Country. I have published in a variety of public outlets on topics ranging from the International Criminal Court to the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa.