Operationalization of Necropolitics in the United States' migration policies

FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION FOR HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Area Studies Department of Political Science and International Affairs Borna Ardehi Operationalization of Necropolitics in the United States’ migration policies Thesis Academic Supervisor PhD In History Dr. Oleg Korneev Professor Reviewer PhD In Political Science Dr. Dmitry Goncharov Professor PhD In Sociology Dr. Evgeny Varshaver Senior Researcher Saint Petersburg 2022 i Abstract In Necropolitics, fear of death as a unifying human experience is used as an instrument of sovereign obedience and social control – whence the agency’s sheer existence is dependent on the sovereign. This existential dread yields great political authority to sovereign offering protection in a form of refuge. Yet, the process of refuge and immigration masks a violent institutional reality that remains safe behind a humanitarian narrative of rescuing refugees. Through the exploration of the hidden institutional violence, this paper sought to find the meaning behind policies -as political artifactswhich constitute legislation. Who created the policies? Why they were created? Who do they benefit? Applied to the U.S.’s response to the migration of Afghans, this research utilizes interpretive policy analysis tools, this paper creates a framework for detecting possible bureaucratic entrapments in migration policies for Afghans, which are then used as technologies of control. This coalesces with the phenomenological ethnography of Afghan migrants, whose experience of undergoing migration and resettlement can bolster the realization of how Necropolitics is operationalized in the U.S.’s migration policies. Аннотация В Некрополитике страх смерти как объединяющий человеческий опыт используется как инструмент повиновения суверену и социального контроля - таким образом, само существование агентства зависит от суверена. Этот экзистенциальный страх дает большую политическую власть суверену, предлагающему защиту в форме убежища. Однако процесс предоставления убежища и иммиграции маскирует жестокую институциональную реальность, которая остается в безопасности за гуманитарным нарративом спасения беженцев. Исследуя скрытое институциональное насилие, в данной работе мы попытались найти смысл политики - как политического артефакта - которая представляет собой законодательство. Кто создал эти политики? Почему они были созданы? Кому они выгодны? Применительно к реакции США на миграцию афганцев, данное исследование использует инструменты интерпретативного анализа политики, создавая основу для выявления возможных бюрократических ловушек в миграционной политике для афганцев, которые затем используются как технологии контроля. Это сочетается с феноменологической этнографией афганских мигрантов, чей опыт миграции и переселения может способствовать осознанию того, как некрополитика реализуется в миграционной политике США. ii 1. Introduction 2 2. Necropolitical Discourse 6 2.1 The Migrant 8 2.2.1 Outdated Regime 8 2.2.2 State Fragilities 9 2.2.2 Survival Migration 10 2.2.3 Necropeon 11 2.2 The Sovereign 13 2.3.1 English School International Relations 13 2.3.2 Territorial Sovereignty 14 2.3.3 International Society 15 2.3 The Bureaucracy 17 2.4.1 Remote Contol 17 2.4.2 Externalizing Borders 18 2.4.3 Panopticon Camps 18 2.4.4 Hippocratic Bubble and Civil Society 19 2.4.6 Legal Accountability 20 2.4.7 Necropeonage 21 2.4 Kabul in Calais 23 2.5.1 Defining Necropolitics 24 2.5.2 Bureaucratic Bind 24 2.5.3 Necropeon Ethnography 25 3. Methodology 27 3.1 Posthuman Blackbox 28 3.2 Studying Operationalization 29 3.3 Theory 30 3.4 Methodology Roadmap 31 3.4.1 Comparative policy analysis 31 3.4.2 Interpretive Policy analysis 31 3.4.3 Posthuman Performativity 32 3.4.3 Phenomenological Ethnography 33 3.5 Sourcing 34 4. The Oracle and The Odyssey 36 4.1 Exodus 37 4.1.1 The Four Sovereigns of Migration 37 4.1.2 The Fifth Sovereign 41 4.1.3 The Doha Agreement 44 4.1.3 Leave To Live 46 4.2 Entrapment 48 4.2.1 The Second Saigon 48 iii 4.2.2 The Rite of passage 49 4.2.3 Policy In Practice 53 4.2.4 Marketing On Misery 54 4.3. Katabasis 57 4.3.1 Domestic Decay 57 4.3.2 Operation Allies Refuge 59 4.3.3 Militarized Migration 61 4.3.4 Caged In Living Hell 62 4.3.5 Settlement 64 5. Conclusion 66 References 68 2 1. Introduction The heart-wrenching footage of Afghan stowaways tumbling from the sky as they let go of the landing gears of the soaring C-17 will remain imprinted in the collective memory of scholars studying the politics of migration. Watching the footage from Afghanistan, provoked a cognitive dissonance in my mind: Having worked with Afghan migration centers in Malaysia, I understood the emotions, the rage, and the desperation of the Afghans praying for help. As a political scientist, I attempted to rationalize the U.S.’s evacuation process. The chase of hundreds of Afghans on the tarmac of the runway and the footage of men and women being stacked for evacuation from Afghanistan draws a familiar narrative to the older generations who reminisce the fall of Saigon – the footage of the Helicopters evacuating migrants from the U.S. Embassy. Both scenes symbolize the chaotic end to the American occupation of a foreign territory. Yet, the facade of what they portray, is a humanitarian effort by a former invader/occupier, rescuing a swarm of pleading refugees. The transition of invader-to-saviour is an outrageously perplexing phenomenon, one which begs further scrutiny into the crux of migration. The intent of this research stems from my inability to rationalize the evacuation. What I observed and understood, is the clandestine violence behind the spurious humanitarian narrative of the evacuation. My journey from being an ardent humanitarian to a critic of the U.S.’s rescue mission begins with the works of Achilles Mbembe, the Necropolitics, whose critique of colonial institutions has been a backbone of my anthropological studies of institutional violence. The narrative Mbembe draws on, asserts that Necropolitics exists as a phantom behind every humanitarian or dehumanizing decision in world politics. Its empirical exploration will utilize decision-makers with greater accountability and stronger consideration of dignified human sovereignty. Sprouting from the works of Mbembe, this research aims to find the parallels of how Necropolitical frameworks, exercised through legislations and policies, culminate in a humanitarian crisis within the migration. Paradoxically, there is no formal written policy that legislates the enforcement of violence in a migration process for the benefit of the state. Ergo, the examination of a theory that reinforces this impression, requires an interpretive approach that scrutinizes the entrenched violence, and the intrinsic essences of policies. The essences constitute the broader context surrounding the policies – What do they mean? Why they were drafted? Who introduced them? Who benefits from them? An empirical study supplements the examination of the policies, by incorporating the factual and tangible outcomes of the policies from the field they’re exerted in. To what extent the meaning presented by the policy conforms to its meaning in practice? If a policy enforces violence, how do we measure the violence? 3 This research deconstructs the operationalization of institutional violence –the necropolitics– within the U.S.’s migration policy. It builds a new paradigm to examine a broader spectrum of U.S.’s foreign policies, which with little mention of migration, contributes to a grand scheme of reinforcing the U.S.’s hegemonic status as the suzerain of the free world. The tracing of how necropolitical policies are operationalized to bolster “hegemonic” contentions, begins with conceptualizing the relation between the U.S. government as the sovereign, and the refugee immigrants as the subjects of the sovereign. Given the limited scholarly consensus on what should be defined as a “refugee”, my work uses the conceptualization of “Survival Migrants” proposed by Betts.1Given the term’s lack of compatibility to fully capture the scope of this research, I incorporate its fundamental features in creating a convenient neologism that specifically suits the individuals subjected to necropolitical policies – the necropeon. Next, with strong reference to the works of Fitzgerald2and Haddad3, we establish the codependent nature between the Sovereign and the Subjects, and the cluster of policies the sovereign uses to modulate its territories and consolidate its control within its internal and external territories. This section also strongly draws on the various policies used by the global North to contain and stall migration from the developing countries – policies which will echo strongly in the empirical section. By drawing reference to the works of Davies4on institutional violence of inaction and ineffective policies in the context of refugees in Calais, this paper explores the recent scholarly works within the necropolitical frameworks. We further discuss the gaps my research is ought to fill by taking a lead from Davies’ existing research. This theory-driven research which contends to explore the unwritten meanings and institutions within migration policies, strongly utilizes the interpretive methods. The key theory of this research posits that Necropolitical frameworks in migration policy are operationalized through laboring the Necropeons for the sovereign’s consolidation. Chapter 3. Methodology deconstructs this theory, and justifies the employment of interpretative policy analysis, posthuman performativity, and phenomenological ethnography, as mediums to explore the unwritten institutional violence of migration policies. The premise of the research is designed to inquire about the “How” and the “Why” a sovereign constitutes legislation resulting in Necropolitical foundations. The methodology chapter further describes the roadmap of the research and the sourcing process. 4Violent Inaction, 2017 3The Refugee in International Society between Sovereigns, 2008 2Refuge beyond Reach, 2019 1Survival Migration, 2013 4 The empirical chapter, the Oracle and the Odyssey, incorporates the findings on policy analysis and ethnographic research into a narrative that describes how the U.S. created the conditions for the necropolitical frameworks to take effect, and how this framework was operationalized during the Afghan migration crisis. The findings daringly suggest that the U.S.facilitated the migration to occur by deliberately mutilating the sovereignty of the Afghan government, and hampering the prospect of the formation of a unitary and recognized Afghan sovereign after the U.S.’s withdrawal. The U.S. had further divided the population through its Special Immigration Visa program (SIV), which built a separate identity narrative for the group Afghans, whose de facto sovereign protectorate would be the U.S. government. The policy analysis then suggests the U.S. government deliberately created a labyrinthic network of bureaucratic entrapment, which prolonged the migration process for the SIV applicants. This temporal dimension was complemented by the U.S.’s utilization of remote migration policies and caging, which spatially confined the migrants to the U.S. government’s sheer escapades. Despite the horrendous situation the migrants described during the caging period, the policies enacted by the policymakers are interpreted to deliberately produce minimal improvements, preserve the status quo, and make use of the involuntary labor of the migrants – a necropeonage. Most grotesque, the study found how U.S. policymakers would essentially use policy introduction as a method to capitalize on the misery of the migrants in promoting their electoral base, thereby acting under domestic mechanisms of sovereign consolidation. Examining the settlement policies and the use of caging yielded the most concentrated results on how the migration policies for refugees consolidate the U.S’s sovereignty both externally and internally. Externally, sovereignty is consolidated through the militarization of the migration process. The third-country that hosts the refugees before their departure to the U.S., acts as U.S.’s buffer – the external dumping ground for unwanted refugees. The militarized nature of the evacuations reconstructs the image of the U.S. military from an invader to a savior – contributing to the axiom that necessitates the presence of the U.S. military beyond its sovereign territories. Internally, the caging of the migrants serves two means of consolidating the government’s sovereignty within the U.S.: Firstly, policies regarding the caging are framed around American security and protecting Americans against “others”. By caging “others” the sovereign enjoys the domestic support on the impression that it is fulfilling its responsibility of protecting and homogenizing the subjects against the “others”. Secondly, cages are used as spaces to re-educate the migrants and introduce them to the American way of life. This is interpreted as indoctrinating them to the way of being an expectedly homogenized subject of the sovereign. 5 Through this research and positing the central question “cui bono?” we explore the avenues through which the necropolitical frameworks are operationalized to serve the interest of the sovereign – even under a humanitarian facade. The extrication of the clandestine violence of migration from migration policies embraces future policy analysts and relevant scholars to look beyond the numbers and positivist presuppositions. The utilization of a necropolitical framework, although daunting, is a requisite to scrutinizing the violent institution of migration policies, which has left a gap in academia. 6 2. Necropolitical Discourse The concept at the crux of this research, leveraging the liveability of individuals, coalesces with Foucault’s principle of Biopolitics – sets of mechanisms through which human lives and processes are controlled by dominant actors, the state(s), through the enactment of power. This concept was further explored in the context of colonialism by Mbembe, who dubbed the practice of deciding over an individual’s life, as Necropolitics – “the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not.”5 Necropolitics illuminates how different humans are assigned quantifiable values which differentiate the level of importance and attention they can receive from the states. Yet, the calculus of liveability is an incredibly complex subject with a myriad of axes, varying for different sovereigns with their own prioritized subjects. In an oblique conceptualization, the further an individual is situated from the ends of the axes, the more precarious their life is estimated through Necropolitics. The sovereign in this pretext, could be the body or the agency which holds “the right to kill”6, Mbembe says, through active violence, or, as I argue, the inaction to deter violence. Mbembe cites the words of Foucault, on “the sovereign right to kill (Droit de glaive) and the mechanisms of biopower”7as a constitutive element of every modern state. Foucault interprets the Nazi regime as the most sophisticated case of exercising the right to kill – wherein the government had cultivated the essential social structures and infrastructures in a formidable consolidation of their final solution.8In parallel, creating a fallible infrastructure, with strong dependencies on an exogenous sovereign, with a limited capacity of circumvention from the structure in case of failure, is what I interpret as necropolitical conditions for the subjects within this structure The condition Afghanistan was left with, rendered a segment of the population as dependent subjects of the U.S. In terms, Afghans were left with a fallible defense and economic infrastructure, with a limited capacity for circumvention – given the natural geography of the country and its distrusting relations with its neighboring countries. In Mbembe’s terms, this is the death-world– “new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead.”9In the death-world laws are suspended to exert pure control through biopower – or Necropower in the context of this research. 9Ibid. p.92 8Ibid. p.67 7Ibid. p.71 6Ibid. p.60 5Achille Mbembe and Steven Corcoran, Necropolitics (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2019). p.80 13 2.2 The Sovereign The previous chapter discussed the importance of sovereignty in determining the identity of the migrants in the framework of the English School of International Relations. Consequently, further exploration of this perplexing concept maintains consistent adherence to this theoretical framework. By determining who and what is the sovereign, we identify the agents and institutions that reserved the capacity to exercise Necropower. This identification of the Sovereign will further enable this research's capacity to examine the operationalization framework of Necropolitics. In this section, we will explore: Is it truly possible that an Afghan could be simultaneously subjected to two separate sovereigns? What makes and legitimizes a sovereign? Is a sovereign's reach to its subjects bound to the territorial boundaries? 2.3.1 English School International Relations The English school interprets the international system to be uniform and static with each sovereign having the reciprocal responsibilities of adhering to certain universal principles. This axiom, to Emma Haddad, is overestimated and debatable. She believes sovereigns in International Relations posits a more dynamic and fluid system with plenty of blurred lines, even within the constituted territorial system.26 This understanding is further challenged by the role of the refugee, as an anomaly, for the phenomenon that the refugee can cross the territorial systems, challenge the static concept of sovereignty, and citizenship as a natural pre-given feature.27 While the English school interprets legal order based on the coexistence of sovereigns, the role of independent actors is also accounted for – enabling grounds to assess the sovereign and subject relations with greater scrutiny. The refugee’s position vis-a`-vis individual states has been studied by Haddad to a great extent to narrate the dynamics of the sovereignty and provide a critical understanding of the “contradictions states face in both understanding the refugee as a concept and offering protection to the refugee as an individual.”28 By studying the response of an external sovereign to migration phenomena, Haddad accentuates the relationship between the sovereign and the migrating subjects’ country of origin. In this sense, referencing Haddad’s assessment of sovereign relations with one another and the migrants indulges us in better understanding the relationship between Afghan necropeon and the Taliban state, Afghan necropeons and the U.S. government, and the sovereign recognition between the Taliban state and the U.S. government. 28 Ibid. p.11 27 Ibid. p.14 26 Emma Haddad, The Refugee in International Society between Sovereigns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). p.11 14 2.3.2 Territorial Sovereignty The birth of a sovereign within the confines of a territory is consolidated through the construction of a single sovereign government, to which the population of the territory owes their final allegiance to.29 Thus, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the capitulation of the previous regime established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the de facto sovereign of the Afghan people, whether or not they were protected by any external sovereign through the previous government. Those who lack fidelity and allegiance to the state, are as much under the necropower of the sovereign as those who have fulfilled their oath of allegiance. Consolidation over a sovereign dominion entails the duty to “represent and protect all those who fall within the sovereign jurisdiction of the state: a failure of the sovereign to fulfill these duties has the potential to produce refugees.”30 Thus, sovereignty also carries the responsibility to ensure the well-being of all citizens, with respect to their human rights. Reiterating Betts’ argument from the previous section, then the failure to provide a system of substantive sovereignty to protect the fundamental needs of the subjects results in the subjects seeking protection from an external sovereignty – an evident case with Afghanistan. To answer what creates a migrant and the migration phenomena, Haddad traces the migration movements to the failing reciprocal relations between the sovereign and subjects. She posits, that when the relationships between the two fail, the subjects are coerced to leave the country. Yet, as the result of failing relations with the sovereign, and the sovereign’s relation with the international community of sovereigns, nothing externally guarantees the acceptance of the migrant by an external sovereign.31 The exception to this, as the previous chapter discussed, is if the migrant falls within the limited framework of “Refugee” based on the 1951 convention. In the same frame, if an individual within the state makes all criteria of categorization as a “refugee” but yet hasn’t left the country, then, this individual is merely the “internally displaced person”, which remains an internal issue for her state of origin.32 The chapter 4, the Oracle and the Odyssey explores the limitations of this principle for the Afghans within Afghanistan who were granted protection by the U.S. through the latter’s special migration policies. This defining condition, to leave the territories, was also embedded in Betts’ Survival Migrant typology under the pretense that the access of the international society to the individual is necessary to extricate the subject from the necropower of its sovereign. An Afghan who hasn’t been able to leave the country is not ought to accept the support of the international society, as they still lay within the 32 Ibid. p.61 31 Ibid. p.60 30 Ibid. p.85 29 Ibid. 15 sovereignty of the Taliban Afghanistan – where the state maintains a monopoly of necropower over the necropeon. For the necropeon, the escape from necropower doesn’t end with leaving the territories of their malevolent sovereign. Upon leaving the territories of one sovereign, the subject has entered the territories of another sovereign within the international society. The power to deny settlement, or restrict liveability to bare-life, extends the necropower of one sovereign to the other. Arguably, the necropower over the migrant isn’t intrinsic to the sovereigns but is rather transmitted through the movements of the necropeon in a metaphorical formication of insects around a sugar cube. 2.3.3 International Society From the prism of international society, the global order is divided into sovereign states, wherein the sovereigns have authority over internal control and external autonomy.33 Haddad compares sovereign states to Janus-faced figures, which simultaneously maintain an inward gaze towards their domestic subjects while keeping an outward contact with the other states. The combination of this inward and outward look is what grants the sovereign its expected authority. A sovereign entity is considered a sovereign if it is treated as a sovereign by other sovereign states.34 This principle, as Haddad points out, demands outward equal and reciprocal recognition from other members of the international society, and “that a sovereign state must refrain from interfering in the domestic affairs of other sovereigns, and that territory will be the ultimate object of political life.”35 Haddad further argues how the causal relations between negative and positive sovereignty could allude to the creation of refugees. In the changing nature of sovereignty, Bolt describes Positive Sovereignty as an attribute of a government “which has the capacity to provide political goods for those it claims to represent”36, where a government is essentially its own master. Conversely, negative sovereignty is where a government is void of external interference, while lacking the capacity to provide rudimentary fundamental needs for its subjects.37 The international society’s fundamental assumption is that states “possess positive sovereignty and are therefore good for their citizens, yet these obligations are far from always met.”38 However, when a gap is cleavaged between negative sovereignty of the states in the international society and positive sovereignty of the individual states, or vice versa, the discrepancy results in the creation of refugees.39 39 Ibid. 38 Ibid. p.4 37 Ibid. 36 Michael Bolt, “The Changing Nature of Sovereignty,” E-International Relations, 2013, https://doi.org/https://www.e-ir.info/2013/10/17/the-changing-nature-of-sovereignty/. 35 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 33 Ibid. p.48 16 The case of Afghanistan in either argument stands to be a global anomaly that undermines much of our conventional understanding of sovereigns. While the Taliban government has been on a charming offensive to establish itself internationally, it has achieved minimal de facto success. Although government representatives join diplomatic missions with Ankara and Doha in foreign missions, the state lacks de jure recognition. Even before the state capitulation in 2001, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognized the regime’s sovereignty. In this virtue, it is rather easy to explain how the Afghan migrants situated within Afghanistan seek protection from an external sovereign. Not only the Taliban regime’s failure to provide fundamental needs of its subject is a glorified example of negative sovereignty, it devoids the Afghans from the capacity of recognized statehood beyond the territories of Afghanistan. Even without considering how the Afghan government has failed domestically, the matter of lacking sovereign recognition internationally sets the country tantamount to prison for its inhabitants with maximal restriction of cross-border movement. Haddad further traces the creation of refugees to the failures of the international society, by arguing in a sovereign’s effort to homogenize its territorial space, some subjects are inevitably forcibly moved between borders and sovereigns – wherein the state’s need to homogenize in the first place, was a measure to deter the international society’s domestic interference. States, then retain the right “to decide who may enter their territory and hence whom they will protect.”40 While this is a relevant argument to describe the Afghan exodus, Haddad’s daring assertion is fatalistic and lacks clarity and relevance even in the British school’s interpretation of sovereignty. Migration and movement have been a human phenomenon even prior to the creation of the first sovereign territories. The attributes Haddad yields as Sovereign behavior –to homogenize and control– are essentially intrinsic human behaviors. 40 Ibid. p.69 17 2.3 The Bureaucracy The two previous chapters emphasized the importance of a migrant’s access to the international society as the first rite of passage. Yet, the trails to access the international society are far more convoluted than merely crossing the border. A byzantine conundrum of legal pathways and confusingly opaque humanitarian corridors greatly complicate the movements of the prospecting migrants. The devastating results of this are vivid in the horrific video of Afghans clutching the landing gear of U.S. Airforce C-17 during its takeoff, just to fall to their demise. In the event of such an incident, the international society must contemplate how and why this was deemed preferred to a legal migration? What drives Afghans to seek refuge on an active airport’s tarmac? David S.Fitzgerald’s "Refuge Beyond Reach" provides an excellent insight into the precarious passways Liberal Democracies have created in an effort to repel migrants. Fitzgerald begins is his book with the drowning of Alan Kurdi, the two years old Kurdish boy who was washed up to the Turkish shores, after the rubber lifeboat of migrant smugglers was drowned. In an investigation of what constitutes the creation of similar irregular migration passages, Fitzgerald explores myriads of bureaucratic, humanitarian, and security entrapment, designed to deter migration – at least through legal means. Studying the work of Fitzgerald gives readers the fundamental precursors to understanding how policies are operationalized. Within this frame of operationalization, we may debate whether the execution of Necropower is an unpremeditated byproduct of the entrapment policies or a deliberate necropolitical technology of controlling the individuals. 2.4.1 Remote Contol The first legal barriers for the Afghab migrants to access International Society are the remote control policies imposed by the U.S. These policies entail the U.S. government to extend its authority beyond its territorial boundries “in extensive, routine collaboration to track and deter [migrants] and particular groups trying to cross borders.”41 Fitzgerald further argues this system of territorialized asylum is primarily designed to keep away undesired Asylum Seekers by confining them to third “safe” countries in externalized territories.42 Remote control policies are at the crux of operationalizing Necropolitics within migration policies. Although Fitzgerald provides an extensive list of remote control policies adopted by the governments 42 Ibid. 41 David Fitzgerald, Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019). p.12 18 of the Global North, I will primarily focus on tools of Externalizing borders, Caging, and the Hippocratic bubble – as the case is most relevant to the Afghan migration. 2.4.2 Externalizing Borders Externalizing borders entails to intercepting the entry of the migrant to the host country, and the migrant's departure from the country of origin. For instance, by not recognizing the passports issued by the Taliban government, the regiemes that do not recognize the sovereignty of the Taliban, have engaged in an extreme form of externalized borders, where the departure of Afghans is denied through any dignified legal avenue. Survival migrants are coerced to cross borders without any possible legal pathway. Fitzgerald applies the same practice to the U.S. Coast Guard when they intercept the people on boats sailing from the Caribbean islands. By controlling and intercepting the refugee boats coming from the Haiti and Cuba, the U.S. has inadvertently made cages out of the island countries.43 By manipulating territoriality, governments establish sovereign territories outside their country, where the function of borders is extended “hundreds or even thousands of kilometers beyond the state’s territory”44Externalizing borders circumvents holding the governments accountable to the international asylum regime – enforced by the international society. As Fitzgerald points out, by placing the migrants in a third safe country or an extra-territorial destination, the host country is able to deport the migrants back to the country of origin, without violating non-refoulement – the law which forbids returning asylum seekers to a country where they’d be endangered.45 The remote policies then grant an absolute position of necropower, where the receiving country holds the right to return the migrants. In extension, this corresponds to the right to the right to let them live, or leave them to die. 2.4.3 Panopticon Camps Another form of externalizing the borders is where the government designs fortifications at the entrance to their territory. A classic example of this would be the Ellice Islands, which later became the foundation rock under the statue of Lady Liberty. Although this may have a positive connotation of “Hope” and the “Home before Home” in the the government’s narration, the special rules that apply to these areas are more in parallel with archaic medieval barricades built outside the castles. Fitzgerald points to these barricades as means of creating the “fiction that asylum seekers are not physically present in the state’s territory, or at least not fully within its walls, where they would have greater rights like access to lawyers and independent review of their appeals”46 46 Ibid. p.9 45 Ibid. 44 Ibid. p.171 43 Ibid. p.9 19 This method is also accompanied by Caging, which keeps the refugees in an enclosed area either within their country of origin, in a third-country, or in the receiving country. In either case, the confinement of refugees within cages bars their access to international society. If the cages are located in the country of origin, then the migrants are merely internally displaced people – another fallacy that restricted this research from using Survival Migrant label proposed by Betts. International Organization for Migration (IOM) has been notoriously criticized for enabling caging, by receiving funds from the Global North to “fund refugee camps and centers for asylum seekers, usually in countries neighboring conflict zones, and to repatriate refugees who are willing or can be made to return home”47 By enabling bare-life, and provision of the most basic and fundamental needs for asylum seekers, IOM camps are hardly differentiated from a Panopticon prison architecture: they provide food, shelter, logistics, and mass surveillance – primarily to prevent further movement of the refugees towards the global North.48 This practice is oddly in parallel with Mbembe’s original proposition on Necropolitics: To keep the subjects alive, but not living. 2.4.4 Hippocratic Bubble and Civil Society By refrencing the works of psychologists, Fitzgerald posits that “people are more likely to mobilize around saving the lives of identifiable individuals in close proximity”, and thus remote control policies are deliberately created to thwart this humanitarian impulse.49 This peculiar practice of necropolitics is however seemingly entrenched even within the U.S.’s domestic policies. Fitzgerald references the work of Sociologist, Alejandro Portes, who describes “U.S. hospitals often deliberately create obstacles between sick people seeking health care and the doctors who have taken the Hippocratic Oath to render aid”50 to institutionally restrict the access of patience without sufficient resources and insurance to receive medical attention. In a literal close proximation to the case with remote policies, patients must pass “hospital’s clerical gatekeepers and physical barriers surrounding the examination room” before they reach the space the doctors Hippocratic is constituted.51 A major deterrence to Fitzgerald’s Hippocratic Bubble is the role of domestic and international civil societies. According to the author, advocacy of civil societies, combined with legal action built up over the last decades have won more victories for the Asylum seekers in the courts, than the policymakers in the congress52 Where the governments use externalized borders and cages to deter migrants, they must engage in policies that do not enforce any ruthless and harsh treatment for the migrants. Else, the 52 Ibid. 255 51 Ibid. p.254 50 Ibid. p.254 49 Ibid. p.253 48 Ibid. 47 Ibid. p.40 20 segment of civil society responsible for investigating and publicizing these policies will trigger a domino effect for other segments of civil society to engage in protesting and delegitimizing the government.53 An infamous case of this exact incident is how the Australian government was scrutinized for using the Christmas island as a detention camp for the unwanted migrants –– leading to the camp’s temporary closure in 2018. 2.4.6 Legal Accountability Through either caging or hyper-externalizing borders, governments in the global north evade refugee protection laws. Despite what Fitzgerald dubs as a “Hyper-legal” logic of policies, many asylum seekers have managed to bypass every deadly barrier to reach sanctuaries one way or another.54 From then on, the refugees are not yet guaranteed protection, as they must still carry the thirteenth labor of Hercules: the Bureaucratic Entrapment. The shortcomings of the English school of International Relations could be explored from the prism of American Realism, as the subsequent sections intend to follow. By accounting for how American realism rationalizes the decions of policymakers, we’ll develop an analytical understanding of how deliberate beurocratic entrampment serve the government. Fitzgerald's explores the phenomena of legal entrapment by first exploring how migration policies are created within different International Relations schools. By the virtue of the embedded liberalism in the global north, the government's avoid adopting restrictive policies that could restrain the market economies.55 Liberal policymakers, thus, primarily focus on generation of demand for trade, tourism, and Labour migration drives the economy. Through this prioritization, the most punitive policies on migration are tossed from one end of the table to the realist’s side. In the realist theorical frame, the states primarily act in their own interest and prioritize security, by dismissing the “relevance of international human rights law such as the refugee regime.”56 However, beyond apathy for humanitarian interest and benevolence of the policymakers, the realists also have an interest in drafting incentifying migration policies – which coincide with stronger domestic security and unity. The work of Haddad, although based on the English School, examined the relationship between a sovereign and a migrant, and how the latter’s provision of the “Otherness” gives domestic validity and recognition to the sovereign – homogenizing the subjects. Haddad describes the phenomena of human displacement as a needed side-effect of state-building, where it provided a distinction between insiders and outsiders, “to consolidate the concept of citizenship and the sovereign role of the state.”57 Haddad adds, “people need ‘others’ to be able to invent for themselves a ‘we’ as 57 Haddad, p.55 56 Ibid. 50 55 Ibid. 65 54 Ibid. 253 53 Ibid. 21 distinct from a ‘they’.”58 To this end, per the American realism, we may argue, Realist policymakers also have a beef to pick from the carcass of Necropolitical policies – where the sovereign rule is strengthened through the perils of migration, the advent of the “Others”. Even per Morgenthau’s classical realism, the survival of the sovereign state within an anarchic international system is dependent on the anarchist/migrants. Ergo, by constructing policies that seemingly restrain legal migration and create illegal corridors for irregular migrants, the realist policymaker achieves two milestones: Restricts total migration of the “others”, and strengthens the government sovereignty for domestic subjects, who rely on the former to prevent illegal migration. 2.4.7 Necropeonage Through a closer inspection of the works of Alexander Whyte, we may also entertain the idea of Necropeon being far more appealing to the neoliberal and neorealist institutionalists who share “similar methodology, epistemology, and ontology. The methods by which neorealists and neoliberals study the world are analogous”59 with them being “complementary as opposed competitive approaches to International Relations.”60 The compatible synthesis of the two is additionally strengthened by their similar position on the international system as a whole, where the states are the main rational actors, shaped by means of gaining advantages from the global anarchy.61 The suffix of Necro– for the neologism of Necropeon is used to emphasize the practice of Peonage within the framework of Necropolitics. Peonage is defined by Webster's dictionary as “the use of laborers bound in servitude because of debt.” A survival migrant, an irregular migrant, or an asylum seeker, are bound to follow limited corridors of liveability to avoid deportation to their country of origin. The owed debt in this context is the life of the peon; the peonage is what they do to be let lived or to be not left to die. Any labour served by the migrants –through existing as a survival migrant– is involuntary, and any means of producing tangible outcomes from it is necropeonage. In theory, the impression that an irregular migrant’s arrival to a host country serves to strengthen the government’s sovereignty –particularly if the migrant has used illegal corridors– creates an incentive to maintain the illegal status of the migrant, and create deliberately defective policies for future migrants bypass legal migration. 61 Ibid. p.6 60 Ibid. 59 Alexander Whyte, “Neorealism and Neoliberal Institutionalism: Born of the Same Approach?,” E-International Relations, 2012, https://doi.org/ISSN: ISSN 2053-8626. p.3 58 Ibid. 22 If an Afghan migrant is willing to climb the landing gears of C-17 during a takeoff, it’s not improbable for a “Neo-neo thinker” to consider what else would he have done. With this thought, the practice of (necro)peonage, is any utility of the peon’s condition – a line in policy whitepapers written in invisible ink. The next following section operationalizes the neologism of Necropeon and Necropeonage, with reference to the studies of Davies, whose research is the foundation-stone of mine as the first empirical research on the operationalization of Necropolitics in refugee migration policies. 29 3.2 Studying Operationalization Per the works of Davies and Mbembe, the study of Necropolitics is constituted as the study of institutional and structural violence. Following Davies’s approach, violence is defined by the damage or injury inflicted on the individual through action or inaction. Even policies of humanitarian appeasement, such as caging and housing in undignified conditions are posited by Davies to act as slow violence – delayed destruction.80 Referencing the works of Betts, Haddad, and Fitzgerald now provides a new institutional understanding as to Why and which policies are implemented for the refugees by the sovereigns. The “How” and the “Why” a sovereign constitutes legislation resulting in delayed or immediate destruction of the subject is the objective of this research. Establishing the Sovereign in this context as the U.S. government, and the subjects as the Necropeons, the central question of this research reads: How is Necropolitics operationalized in the United States’ migration policy? Investigating the answer to this question will serve to provide scholarly knowledge on what policies are primarily implemented within the Necropolitical framework, and secondly how these policies are experienced by the subjects. The matter of operationalization is amalgamated between the two layers of policy implementation and policy execution. Thus, as the subsequent sections will further explore, the research is equipped with two general research methods: 1. Policy Analysis – to understand how and why policies are constructed within Necropolitical frames 2. Ethnography – to understand how policies are operationalized in the field of migration from the migrants’ perspective 80 Thom Davies, et al. Violent Inaction, 1270 30 3.3 Theory Given the foundation of this research is based on examining the presence of an observed theory in an empirical phenomenon, it is safe to categorize this paper as a theory-driven scientific inquiry. Furthermore, given the intrinsic structure of this research is about studying processes and extrapolating their future outcomes, we can entangle abductive reasoning to yield greater extrapolations based on the findings. Using variables and hypotheses is not quintessential in a theory-driven approach – and thus neither is the anticipation of generalized results. On the contrary, they’re quite detrimental to the processes of studying phenomena. Instead of using variables, phenomenology in this research studies the essence of phenomena by interpreting the experiences of people who’ve been engaged with it. The theoretical foundation of this research takes lead from Davies’ conclusion and incorporates the neologism of Necropeon within the conceptual frameworks of sovereign subject relations. The theory reads: Necropolitical frameworks in migration policy are operationalized through laboring the Necropeons for the sovereign’s consolidation. The deconstruction of the theory follows this 3-step logic: 1. The U.S. government consolidates its sovereignty over residents of an invaded country. This is accomplished through creating policies of survivability dependence. Then, the subjects who were aligned with the U.S. government will remain dependent on the U.S.’s sovereign protection within internal and hyper-externalized territories of the U.S.; 2. The policies implemented by the U.S. government within these territories, then entrap the subjects in legal conundrums, which further restrains the subjects’ individual freedom on the sovereign’s will; 3. The subjects’ survivability dependence on the sovereign, is conceptualized as Necropeon, where the Necropeon unconditionally serves and strengthens the sovereign’s consolidation within internal and externalized territories. 31 3.4 Methodology Roadmap Exploring the 4 stages of theory deploys 3 empirical research methods: 3.4.1 Comparative policy analysis The first stage, studying policies of survivability utilizes cross-case analysis and comparative policy analysis. During the first stage, this research examines the policies the U.S. constructed in Indochina, during its foreign military expeditions. Given U.S.’s policy outcome in Afghanistan has led to the country retaining the name “Graveyard of Empires'' and the “Second Vietnam”, studying the case of Indochina, the U.S.-Vietnam war, opens a peripheral knowledge on what migration policies were constituted for the Vietnamese seeking American refuge. This segment serves as an introductory section for the subsequent components of the empirical research, by briefly identifying unifying features of the policies, their drawbacks, and the extent to which they could be interpreted within Necropolitical frameworks. 3.4.2 Interpretive Policy analysis The interpretive policy analysis method provides the most sophisticated toolbox for studying policies and outcomes. Through employing the performative and discursive approaches, interpretive policy analysis scrutinizes the language of the policies, the intent of the policymakers, and the intended outcome the policy was out to produce over those on its receiving end. Chapter 2.4.6 Legal Accountabiliuty articulated how the necropolitical framework and bureaucratic entrapment could serve the interests of the Neo-neo policymakers, through restricting migration and consolidating sovereignty. Studying the third stage of the theory pertains to this exact assumption and requires deploying a policy analysis method which studies a greater spectrum of how policies are constituted. Dvora Yanow’s extensive work on conducting interpretive policy analysis describes the interpretive approach to “focus on the meanings that policies have for a broad range of policy-relevant publics, including but not limited to clients and potential clients, legislators, cognate agencies [...], implementers [...], and potential voters”81 Interpretive methods are constructed on the presupposition that laws, as ambiguous as they ought to be, are characterized by possibilities of multiple interpretation and intention. No migration policy explicitly demands snaring migrants into a byzantine legal procedure where they suffer to the point of repulsion. Thus, the interpretive method provides peripheries to enable examining these impressions, if this is how they’re experienced by the subjects of the policies. 81 Dvora Yanow. ,Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis, 2000, p.9 32 Interpretive methods also help with examining the framing of policies, where we explore the “truth” constituted by the policy, rather than what it “says” in explicit language.82 Analysis of the “truth” in policies doesn’t pertain to a fatalistic view of what the real intent of the policy is, but rather how its “truth” is interpreted by the policy’s stakeholders. Did the Neo-neo policymakers deliberately hamper migration through obstructionist policies? Do the seemingly humanitarian policies construct entrapments? Identification of frame is primarily deployed through identifying symbolic artifacts of a policy – who has sculpted it, why it was sculpted, what symbol the policy served for its stonemason, and what symbol it serves for its subjects, the interpretive community.83 Symbols are meanings interpreted from policies; the abstraction that constructs the relationship between the sovereign and the subjects. Complementary to the ethnographic chapter, the interpretive method deploys phenomenology to identify the policy artifacts and the frame. According to Yanow, “Interpretive philosophies, such as phenomenology and hermeneutics, contend that human meanings, values, beliefs, and feelings are embodied in and transmitted through artifacts of human creation, such as language [...] In the context of policy analysis, this means focusing on policy or agency artifacts as the concrete symbols representing more abstract policy and organizational meanings.”84 In the explicit implementation, this paper studies the policies as cognitive artifacts. We examine their frame, by what do they mean and represent for the policymakers? What objectives are they ought to accomplish? How do the discrepancies and other related policies relate to it? Most importantly, we interpret whether the policies are constructed to deliberately entrap migrants through bureaucratic work. 3.4.3 Posthuman Performativity In the first breakaway from academic conventions, I will incorporate theories of posthuman performativity and agential-realism into the exegesis of interpretive policy analysis. Adopted from my own previous research and the works of scholars, Barad85This method acknowledges the dynamism of sovereigns and subjects. Posthuman performativity does not examine the role of policies as a means of interaction between the subject and the sovereign: Instead of assuming the U.S. government constructs a static frame for the migrants to adhere to, we also process how the policy frame changes with the dynamics of the migration. Thus, the deployed 85 Posthumanist Performativity, 2003 84 Ibid., p.16 83 Ibid., p.23 82 Ibid., p.16 33 methodology accounts for the ontological entanglement of intra-acting agencies, which reciprocally transform each other on their contact. Migrant contact with established policy frames change the policies, which then changes the dynamics of migration – a dynamic loop. For the third stage, to determine whether the sovereign’s consolidation of authority is valid insofar as the necropeon is subjected to its necropower, extend the aforementioned posthuman performativity to our ethnographic methods. 3.4.3 Phenomenological Ethnography Phenomenological ethnography is an umbrella term adopted for a myriad of methodologies with key unifying elements. Firstly, in Heideggerian terms, the method interprets participants as Dasein within Ontics. Ontic is the phenomenon that is real and occurring – such as migration, and social movement. Dasein is the decoupling of an essence of experiences from their agents, and studying them within the context of the Ontic – such as sense of entrapment, suffering, surviving, etc. In this approach “meanings exist only insofar as they are experienced by a specific and concrete consciousness.”86 Secondly, the researcher is immersed in the spatial and temporal condition of the participants, through semi-structured interviews and minimal engagement where the participants and ethnographer create rapport for free and open expression of emotions, interpretations, and awareness of their spatiotemporal condition. Thirdly, the approach studies essences as “how” they come into constructing the phenomena, rather than abstractions and “what” they are. We accomplish this through maximum depth and minimum research structure principles. Given phenomenological ethnography largely uses a small participant population from different backgrounds and different experiences, I will also strongly rely on establishing epistemological holism. This embryonic ethnographic method applies individual pieces of knowledge to construct a holistic structure of phenomena experienced by participants. This entails finding unifying elements and features in individual experiences with the migration policies to reconstruct how the operationalization of policies is interpreted and experienced by the migrants. The studied phenomenon in this context is Necropolitics. The ethnographic component pertains to studying the relevant essences and experiences where one, the necropeon, senses closer proximity to death, suffering, and survival dependency. In this virtue, and the second breakaway from academic conventions, if this research is ought to create a paradigm for further inquiry of the Necropolitical and Necropeon, the adopted methodology could arguably be Necrography: Study of individuals under institutional and operationalized violence. 86 Barry Cooper, Phenomenology and Political Science (Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/Revue canadienne de theorie politique et sociale, Vol. V, No. 3 , 1981). p.101 34 3.5 Sourcing Sourcing of policies for the comparative policy analysis and interpretive policy analysis was primarily done through official U.S. government portals, such as the Whitehouse Press (whitehouse.gov), the National Archives (archives.gov), the U.S. Department of State (state.gov), and the Refugee Processing Centre (wrapsnet) website. Through advanced search options in the U.S. Congress websites (congress.gov), I sourced the particular and relevant bills concerning Afghan migration. Open Secrets organization (opensecrets.org) was used to trace the lobbying behind the shortlisted bills. Other official sources include publications of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (uscis.gov), Homeland Security (dhs.gov), Refugee Council of U.S.A, Sponsor Circle; policy analysis institutions, such as RAND, Stanford SLS, The Conversation Journal, and reputable tabloids providing an assessment of implemented policies. Sourcing for the Ethnographic component of the research was dominantly restricted by primary accessibility and ethical barriers. With the internet and landline services being either inaccessible or infrequently accessible, the communication with the participants lacked consistency. While I hoped to construct a chronology of their experiences through the processes, this option was not possible. To access the Afghans situated in the migration camps, I used the hashtag filters in social media to access the posts submitted by refugees from these camps. For instance by searching for #AlUdaid, #RamsteinCamp, #Afghanrefugees, etc. After building rapport through consistent communication and explaining the objective of this research, a number of them agreed to share their experiences from the camps. Through my prior experience with an Afghan refugee center based in Malaysia, Pandawas academy, I was able to find contacts and participants who were able and willing to share their experiences. Direct communications were done through chats, sending voicemails, video logs, and phone calls, where the option was possible. Given my personal proximity to Iran, and the presence of over 3 million Afghan refugees in the country, I established rapport with both refugee centers as well as individual Afghans, whose relatives were undergoing the migration process. Individual Afghans incorporated into this research were irregular migrants in Iran, some of whom had been employed in an acquaintance’s factory in Tehran. The latter process pertained to outsourcing my participant observation to a third person, who shared the experiences of known relatives and friends who were undergoing the migration process. The authenticity of their experiences was only verified through screenshots and shared voice memos. 35 I also established communication with several migrants outside Afghanistan and within the camps, through their previous participation in press and journals, and mutual acquaintances. These participants verified their migration status during video blogs by sharing footage of the camps and facilities. Due to a lack of available resources, there was a limited option of choosing participants from many diverse demographic and social backgrounds. As such, the majority of the participants were Persian speakers originating from Kabul and Herat. They include military personnel, bankers, interpreters, contractors, and relatives of those who had already migrated to the U.S. For obvious ethical and security means, the participants will remain anonymous. In total, the findings are based on 53 hours of interviews with 38 participants, 4 of whom were engaged in greater depth. The communications were in Persian and English, for the case of the interpreters. Given both languages are my native tongues, the discursive phenomenology and assessment of experiences were void of language barriers. 36 4. The Oracle and The Odyssey Pythia, the oracle of Delphi, baned many Greek heroes and heroines through the prophecies to reveal the divine truth and pathways of endeavors journeys. Yet, unknown to the Heroes, many of Oracle’s vaticinations were poised by the intervention of the Olympian gods. The twelve labors of Heracles were entertainment for Hera, the sister-wife of Zeus. Many odysseys in Greek mythology present the same ethos – the struggle of subjects for the entertainment of the sovereign. Yet, while the oracles were determined and set by the sovereigns, the subjects, through Promethean spirit, rebelled or invented routes to bypass the most dreading obstacles of the Odyssey. When the gods tempered with the oracles to indurate the journey, the protagonists responded in kind and adjusted to the challenges. This chapter explores the dynamics of sovereign and subject relations from the vistas of the Oracles and Odyssey. The policies, precedents, and bureaucracy determine the migration routes, presenting the determined oracle – medium of Sovereign’s entertainment. The Odyssey is the migration route undertaken by the migrating subjects. Chapter four begins with exploring the historical context of the Afghan odyssey, and the extent to which it could be used to extrapolate the most recent wave of Afghan migration. The first section delves into the journey of Afghan migrants prior to the U.S. withdrawal from the country The subsequent sections digest the crux of the original oracle – policies, and legal avenues of migration set by the U.S. government prior to the withdrawal. The rite of passage examines the initial plan for granting refuge and resettling asylum seekers. This section further addresses the historical precedents of similar policies implemented during the country’s withdrawal from Indochina. Exploration of the historical context of these policies determines the premise of whether the Necropolitical frame has been a recurring tool for the U.S.’s migration policies. The final section, Katabasis, provides extensive empirical work on ethnography and policy analysis, by examining the evacuation process, the intermezzo, and the settlement process from the perspectives of both migrants and policy commentators. 37 4.1 Exodus The contemporary memory of Afghanistan shrouds the nation under the fog of a perpetual state of conflict – a nation displaced. Understanding the exodus of the Afghans and the historical contingent of migration, gives readers an analytical understanding of the dynamic nature of the country’s sovereignty, and provides a logical prelude to conceptualizing the Afghans as a nation with more than a single sovereign. This understanding also creates further groundings to understand migration as an institutionalized normative component of the Afghan realities. Prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, migratory movements between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan were recurring phenomena. Safri’s study of migration transformation of Afghans, traces the mass scale migration to 1850s, “when 5,000 Hazara families settled in Jam and Bakharz in Iran and another 168,000 from 1880-1903”87 With the oil boom of the 1950s, and the opportunity to receive higher wages in mass urbanization construction projects in Iran, many male Afghans migrated westward.88 This process remained an organic phenomena of international migration, until 1979, when the first cases of mass refuge appeared following the Soviet invasion. 4.1.1 The Four Sovereigns of Migration The Afghan survival migration from 1979 onwards can be divided in four phases, each traced to an unconsolidated Sovereign. The first wave began during the Soviet invasion. Although many Afghans left the country for their own safety, the conflict between Afghan Soldiers, the Soviet soldiers, and the newly-established Mujahideen greatly destabilized the country.89 While the ensued disabilities and inaccessibility of livability conditions created incentives of survival migration, the establishment of the Soviet puppet regime in Afghanistan gave religious incentives for the others. The “Hijra” is an Arabic word for “migration”. A spiritual decree to embark on a Hijra is evoked when the country of the muslim has been taken over by the Kufars, or non-followers of Islam. The Soviet puppet government separation of church and state and establishment of secular policies, provoked the dominantly Muslim and conservative population of Afghanistan.9091 The first Hijra in Islam took place by Prophet Muhammed, when he migrated from Mecca to Medina, in an objection to submitting to the sovereignty of a non-Islamic authority. Thus, the phenomena of migration for the Afghans in 1979 was 91 M. Nazif Shahrani, “Ten. Afghanistan’s Muhajirin (Muslim ‘Refugee-Warriors’): Politics of Mistrust and Distrust of Politics,” Mistrusting Refugees, 1995, pp. 187-206, https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520341234-013. 90 Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration and the Religious Imagination (Routledge, 2013). p.40 89 Francis Fukuyama, “Pakistan since the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan,” 1982, https://doi.org/10.21236/ada111442. 88 Ibid. 87 Maliha Safri, “The Transformation of the Afghan Refugee: 1979–2009,” The Middle East Journal 65, no. 4 (2011): pp. 587-601, https://doi.org/10.3751/65.4.14. P. 596 38 a normative institution and objective refusal to submit to the territorial sovereign. The desitnation of migration during Hijra is towards another territory governed by a Muslim sovereign – namely Iran and Pakistan. This single precedent sets an example of how dynamic the nature of sovereignty presented itself even in the first wave of Afghan survival migration. In the process of Hijra, both Iran and Pakistan were welcoming of the Afghans, on the precedent of religious customs.92 During the same period, the first case of Necropeonage was incorporated in the Iranian migration policies, when the surge of petrodollars created a demand for low-wage necropeons in construction, mining, brick-burning and other survival jobs.93 Afghan refugees were quickly incorporated in the country’s labor pool and restricted to manual labor. With the exacerbated labor shortage as the result of the Iraq-Iran war, many Labour laws were alleviated to reduce bureaucratic burden of granting Afghans with work permits.9495 The second wave of Afghan migration involved primarily those who collaborated with the Soviet Unions. This included the government officials, military personnel, translators, and those who expressed support for the communist ideology. The deposed president and this category of migrants were categorically denied to use the Hijra privileges, and so the majority migrated towards Russia and India.969798 The power vacuum following the soviet withdrawal, resulted in the 1989 Afghan civil war. The devastating results of power grab by various regional warlords, exacerbated to a refugee crisis – internally and externally.99 This case would have provided an excellent opportunity to assess the parallels it posits with the migration occurring after the U.S. withdrawal from the county. However, insufficiency of resources and language barrier restrict further investigation into analyzing historical conformity of collaborators survival migration. The third wave of migration began in 1994 with the takeover of the Mujahideen’s successor state, the Taliban. The end of the civil war began with the consolidation of the Afghan Islamic emirate and a bottom-up process of state building. Consolidation of sovereignty was accelerated with the popular 99 Kathleen Newland and Erin Patrick, “A Nation Displaced: The World’s Largest Refugee Population.,” Migration Policy Institute, 2001, https://doi.org/http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/displaced.php. 98 Nithya Rajan, “‘No Afghan Refugees in India’: Refugees and Cold War Politics in the 1980s,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 44, no. 5 (2021): pp. 851-867, https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2021.1964048. 97 Anne-Sophie Bentz, “Afghan Refugees in Indo-Afghan Relations,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 26, no. 2 (2013): pp. 374-391, https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2013.785094. 96 Kathleen Newland and Erin Patrick, “A Nation Displaced: The World’s Largest Refugee Population.,” Migration Policy Institute, 2001, https://doi.org/http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/displaced.php. 95 Farhad Darvishi and Mehdi Rahmati, “ ﯽﺳرﺮﺑﻂﺑاورناﺮﯾاویورﻮﺷردهرودﮓﻨﺟﯽﻠﯿﻤﺤﺗﺎﺑ)ﺪﯿﮐﺎﺗﺮﺑﮫﻠﺌﺴﻣنﺎﺘﺴﻧﺎﻐﻓا ) [Examining the Soviet-Iranian Relations during the Iran-Iraq War (with Attention to Afghanistan)],” Holy Defense Studies 2, no. 1 (2015): pp. 35-55, https://doi.org/https://hds.sndu.ac.ir/article_1665.html. 94 Ibid. 93 Ibid. p. 590 92 Ibid. 45 the Afghan government then rejected the prison releases, stating “The government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners”137 followed by “It is not in the authority of the United States to decide, they are only a facilitator.”138 The Afghan government had recognized its lack of sovereign authority, and its late-stage attempt to consolidate the role by undermining the U.S.’s authority, inadvertently doomed the prospects of intra-Afghan relations. To the Taliban, the terms were also clear the agreement was binding until the U.S.’s withdrawal from the region Here the old adage, ‘You have the watches, we have the time was credited to the Taliban. Upon U.S.’s withdrawal, it wouldn’t matter if the Afghan government had released the prisoners – the Taliban would consolidate itself as the government. The first part of the agreement determined two key initiations from the U.S.: Along with the withdrawal of the troops, the start of the intra-Afghan dialogues would also embark on U.S.’s initiation to review the current U.S. sanctions over the Taliban with the goal of relief by August 2020. Secondly, this initiation would be extended to the Security Council by May 2020.139 The second part of the agreement primarily focused on the responsibilities of the Taliban in creating the security perimeters for the U.S.’s withdrawal, along with the securitization of internal migrants.140 The treaty committed the Taliban to adhere to the International Migration Law, by “dealing with those seeking asylum or residence in Afghanistan.”141 Per classical Weberian terms, the state has the monopoly on violence. Thus, by trusting Afghanistan with security peripheries across the regions including the capital, the U.S. had granted the monopoly of statehood to the Taliban. Additionally, citing the works of Haddad, the migrants are dependent on Sovereigns, as Sovereigns on the migrants for recognition. By employing the Taliban to “deal with those seeking asylum” the treaty made no inclusion of the Afghan government, and created a deliberate linkage of subject-sovereign between the Afghans and the Taliban. Outrageously, the agreement also urged the Taliban to impede from issuing passports to certain individuals. A Passport is a sovereign artifact, which extends the sovereign protection for subjects beyond the territories of the sovereign nation. The loose language in the agreement could be interpreted to imply the inevitability of the Taliban issuing sovereign passports for 141 Ibid. 140 Ibid. 139 “With the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, the United States will initiate an administrative review of current U.S. sanctions and the rewards list against members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban with the goal of removing these sanctions by August 27, 2020 [...] With the start of intra-Afghan negotiations, the United States will start diplomatic engagement with other members of the United Nations Security Council and Afghanistan to remove members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban from the sanctions list with the aim of achieving this objective by May 29, 2020” Ibid. 138 Ibid 137 Al Jazeera, “Afghan President Rejects Prisoner Swap with the Taliban,” Taliban News | Al Jazeera (Al Jazeera, March 1, 2020), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/3/1/president-ghani-rejects-peace-deals-prisoner-swap-with-taliban. 46 the Afghan subjects. With the authority granted to the Taliban by the U.S., they’d also be the hurdle for the Afghans to access the international society – the embodied Hippocratic bubble. We may ponder whether the fifth Sovereign is then a reference to the second emirate of the Taliban. To that end, I reluctantly argue that it isn’t: the fifth state is the U.S. government which created the conditions of survival dependence. If the intra-Afghans never proceeded –which was expected– the sanctions over the Taliban would not have been lifted. Worse, if the Afghan government was to capitulate, the U.S. would extend the sanctions and freeze Afghan assets at large. As discussed in the previous section, the Taliban are well aware of their fragility and inability to function in the country without U.S.’s foreign aid. Thus liveability of the Afghans under the Taliban sovereignty is bound to the de facto externalized sovereignty of the U.S. – which I will daringly posit to be the territories of Afghanistan. The Taliban will not be a recognized sovereign, without the framework of sovereign recognition determined by the U.S.. 4.1.3 Leave To Live Having realized the temporal limits of the binding Doha agreement, and the reluctance of the Afghan government to comply with the agreement, the Taliban began its southern offensive to violently consolidate its position across Afghanistan.142 The attacks were escalated in the coming months143 in a brutalization of hundreds of Afghan military personnel wounded and killed.144 This transitioned the national mood of the coming changes from that of desperate hope of peace and settlement governance, to another violent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. Every participant in this research carried a cognitive scar, a memory of the Taliban’s mass executions and hanging across the streets in Kabul and Herat. The Hazaras recalled losing relatives to bombings of mosques. Young women recalled the paranoia of their families in protecting them during their grown-ups. The rampant takeover of Afghanistan was also followed by an inconsolable fear of targeted killings of military personnel, journalists, activists, government officials, and interpreters. The Haqqani Network, which operated as the intelligent arm of the Taliban insurgencies –responsible for numerous high profile assassinations–145 was rumored to have compiled a list of targeted individuals. A participant was extorted by a Taliban member to pay a ransom for having his name and 145 Mujib Mashal, “At Afghan Peace Talks, Hoping to End Their Fathers' War,” The New York Times (The New York Times, October 5, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/world/asia/afghan-peace-talks-children.html. 144 Ibid. 143 Reuters. “Over 150 Afghan Troops Killed or Injured in Last 24 Hours as Violence Mounts Ahead of Foreign Troops' Withdrawal.” DAWN.COM, June 7, 2021. https://www.dawn.com/news/1628067/over-150-afghan-troops-killed-or-injured-in-last-24-hours-as-violence-mounts-ahead -of-foreign-troops-withdrawal. 142 Reuters Person, “Taliban Launches Major Afghan Offensive after Deadline for U.S. Pullout,” Reuters (Thomson Reuters, May 4, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-launches-huge-afghan-offensive-after-deadline-us-pullout-2021-05-04/. 47 his immediate family removed from the list. The fear of this threat was exacerbated to a frenzy building up to August, with the news of abductions and targeted killing sweeping the country. In the same time, New York Times reported these targeted killings146 extended to family members or acquaintances of suspected collaborators. In the same report, the brother of a victim commenting on the targeted killing stated, “there was never any such thing as amnesty [...] Everyone knew he worked with the Americans.” He further added, “[U.S.] didn’t help my brother [...] they betrayed him.” given his brother had a pending special immigrant visa application.147 The sense of resentment and betrayal towards the U.S. was a dominant theme, accompanied by a sense of dissonance to appeal to the U.S. to expand its special visa program. Many, fearing for their lives, migrated to Kabul. Those who were qualified for the special U.S. programs to grant visas were in an open plea to speed the process. Others moved to Oman, Iran and Pakistan. The onslaught sent a clear message: Leave to live. Those within the security forces, military personnel, and government official, had expected the Taliban to arrive in Kabul. Participants describe a lack of general command and coordination during this period. Even those who were equipped and enabled to resist, were recommended to refrain from violent engagement with the Taliban – perhaps with the means of de-escalation, avoiding provocation, and preventative retaliation. Afghan forces were aware of their incapability to resist the Taliban without the support of the U.S.. The most dominantly capable unit, the 03 CIA-trained “Death squad”, was tasked with protecting the airport corridors for evacuees – not fending the Taliban. Before the fall of Kabul, one of the most evident signs that the liveability of certain individuals depended on them leaving the country, was the matter of financial citizenry. To live and to survive, an individual is required to be financially maintained. Before the U.S. froze Afghan assets, Taliban members targeted the banks and other financial facilities in a hostile takeover. For those who had reserved their assets in Afghan banks, the process of them losing their accounts was absurdly simple. A banker described the process as follows: The Taliban members accessed the occupational data of individuals and filtered every member employed by the U.S. and NATO allies, or in the military and Afghan government. Just as a simple command in an excel sheet, a number of these individuals had their accounts terminated. In the blink of an eye, former military personnel described, the entire life savings vanished. Given most Afghans have large families, the financial confiscation extended the existential crisis to the family members – an act of slow targeted killing. Those who were financially paralyzed were unable to provide proof of financial assets – a requirement for obtaining any visa as an Afghan citizen. These individuals were coerced into the survival migration. 147 Ibid. 146 Susannah George and Sudarsan Raghavan, “Taliban Wages Campaign of Targeted Killings against Former Members of Afghan Security Forces,” The Washington Post (WP Company, December 3, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/30/taliban-killings-security/. 48 4.2 Entrapment A common phrase used by the participants to describe their state of being, was “Belataklif.” While the phrase doesn’t have a direct English translation, it corresponds to the state of being without purpose due to the inability to respond to the change of circumstances or being dependent on a critical juncture to then be able to escape an indeterminate decision. The most common case of belataklif was being unable to “do anything” until it was decided whether a migrant could receive the special visa waiver. Until a decision was to be made on the visa status, the migrant behaves and operates in the abstract to maintain its basic survival functions. The state of bare-life, is described by both Davies and Mbembe. All the participants anticipated ways of survival for their families and themselves. Situated in the state of being belataklif, the survival migrants describe being trapped. Some echoed that a quick death would’ve been more merciful than undergoing this process of individual indeterminism. Per the second theory, The policies implemented by the U.S. government within externalized territories, entrap the subjects in legal conundrums, which further restrains the subjects’ individual freedom on the sovereign’s will. Having a bird-eye view of this phenomenon, I argue the situation has been deliberately determined to be determined for the migrants. Through the sense of indeterminism, the migrant is subjected to Necropeonage, which is reserved to serve the consolidation of the sovereign. This chapter discusses the operationalization of Necropeonage through the enforced policies of the sovereign. 4.2.1 The Second Saigon During the same July press conference of President Biden, one of the questions from the press was “Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam.”148 to which President Biden responded with “None whatsoever [...] The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army [...] There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy.”149 The fall of Kabul rings many parallels and familiarities to the political consciousness of the American public and policymakers. In many ways, Afghanistan has been dubbed the second Vietnam, with the fall of Kabul echoing the fall of Saigon after the American withdrawal. South Vietnamese stormed the U.S. embassy in Saigon hoping to be evacuated. With the fall of South Vietnam being eminent, the U.S. launched Operation Frequent Wind to evacuate Americans and the Vietnamese at risk.150 150 Dave Roos, “How the End of the Vietnam War Led to a Refugee Crisis,” History.com (A&E Television Networks, September 1, 2021), https://www.history.com/news/vietnam-war-refugees#:~:text=Over%20the%20next%20two%20decades,pirates%20or%20 overcrowded%2C%20makeshift%20boats. 149 Ibid. 148 The White House Press 49 What ensued afterward, was two decades and three million people fleeing Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Countless died in what came to be known as the “Boat people” crisis.151 When Saigon was captured by the North Vietnamese army, the U.S. had to undertake the most dramatic evacuation in its history, resulting in the arrival of 127,000 Vietnamese families.152 Militarized Refuge(es) (2014) by Yen Le Espiritu153 entrenches the Vietnam evacuation and resettlement efforts by the U.S. precisely within Necropolitical frameworks. The author hints at the clear militarized nature of the evaluations and the rescues, in an attempt to transform the U.S. military “from violent aggressor in Vietnam to benevolent rescuer of its people”154, and the protector of Vietnamese peace. Espiritu uses “Militarized refugees” to expose the violence behind the humanitarian narrative of the U.S. military and U.S. government – a narrative which has also been challenged in this research.155 Unsurprisingly, the author describes the evacuation efforts to have been hasty, unplanned and violent, with few restrictions. This was done, per the author’s claim, as a last-ditch televised stunt for the U.S. military. Although the evacuation phase posed little legal entrapment, the subsequent stages of evacuation and resettlement were, evidently, the instructional itinerary for Necropolitics. This paper will further explore the Afghan migration process regarding the work of Le Espiritu. 4.2.2 The Rite of passage The Rite of passage is the ceremonial institution of celebrating an individual’s transformation. For an Afghan migrant, the transformation is the process of migration, and the rite of passage is the legal framework that constitutes their departure from Afghanistan – the rights of livability. These legal frameworks were drafted and passed by the U.S. Congress in 2008, in the form of a Special Immigration Visa (SIV) to protect Iraqi collaborators who had aided the U.S. armed forces and official personnel. The following year, the SIV program was extended to also cover the Afghans who were considered under threat danger due to their cooperation with the U.S.. In the first iteration of the SIV program, an applicant must have served “for at least one year as translators or interpreters, or who were employed by, or on behalf of, the U.S. government in Afghanistan, and whose lives were threatened because of their work in support of the U.S. mission.”156 While the SIV was ought to protect “U.S. allies”, the vagueness of what defined an ally created a void 156 Human Rights First, “Fact Sheet: The Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program,” 2019, https://doi.org/https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/Afghan-SIV-Fact-Sheet_2.pdf. 155 Ibid. 154 Ibid. 153 Yen Le Espiritu, Body Counts the Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(Es) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 152 Laura Harjanto and Jeanne Batalova, “Vietnamese Immigrants in the United States,” migrationpolicy.org, October 15, 2021, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vietnamese-immigrants-united-states. 151 Ibid. 50 for the military personnel and those employed by U.S. military contractors. Per the experience of the informants, those who were employed by the likes of Textron and their subsidiaries were expected to undergo a different visa acquisition process. Per the legislative history of the SIV, every fiscal year a certain quota of visas was allocated to the SIV, regardless of the number of individuals employed by the U.S. forces. In 2018, when the major withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan began157 more Afghans began applying for the SIV program. According to a joint report by the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security,158 In the same period, 14,500 visas were allocated for the program, while 33,727 eligible Afghans had applied for the program. Establishing outweighed quotas construed to be the first entrapment of the SIV program. The second entrapment, which prolonged the state of limbo for the applicant, was the absurdly long processing time. To obtain the visa, an applicant must have undergone 14 steps and a minimal processing time of 692 days, roughly 1 year and 11 months. The process includes reviews by the Chief of Mission (COM) department, which would confirm the initial application to the National Visa Center (NVC). After 240 processing days, if all documents are presented correctly, the applicants must individually apply to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) using the I-360 form, consisting of 19 pages that amalgamate 15 different visa categories. Informants were warned that at any stage of filling in wrong information, the candidates must have resubmitted the application from the first processing stage. Upon the application approval by NVC and DHS, the applicant would receive another series of applications to fill in the classified information regarding their operational work and their endangered status in Afghanistan. After 3 days of document reviews, the applicant was given an interview appointment at the U.S. embassy’s consular in Kabul after 243 days. Following the interview, the application would undergo an administrative process for another 113 days. If the applicant’s passport expires within this timeframe, they’re required to renew their passport. In principle, had an applicant began the SIV application after the first phase of major U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in December 2018, they’d be able to receive their SIV by November 2020. Any Afghan hired within this period would be unable to receive the SIV by the time of the U.S.’s withdrawal in 2021, regardless of their scale of operation. 158 U.S. Department of State, “Joint Department of State/Department of Homeland Security Report: Status of the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program,” 2019, https://doi.org/https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/SIVs/Q3-Afghan_SIV_Report_July_2018.pdf. 157 Dan Lamothe et al., “Trump Orders Major Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan as Mattis Departs,” The Washington Post (WP Company, December 21, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-agitating-for-major-military-withdrawal-from-afghanistanadvisers-say/2018/12/20/0c35f874-04a3-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html. 51 During the July press conference when President Biden was asked “Why can’t the U.S. evacuate these Afghan translators to the United States to await their visa processing as some immigrants at the southern border have been allowed to do?”,159 to which he responded: “Because the law doesn’t allow that to happen. And that’s why we’re asking the Congress to consider changing the law. But in the meantime, we can guarantee their safety, if they wish to leave, by taking them to third countries and/or, while the wait is taking place, to come to — to — and hopefully, while they’re waiting there, to be able to bring them back to the United States, if that’s what they choose to do. We’re conducting thorough security screening in the intermediate stops they’re making for anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident of the United States. Anyone arriving in the United States will have undergone a background check. And — and we must all work together to resettle thousands of Afghans who ultimately qualify for refugee status. The United States will do our part. And we are already working closely with refugee organizations to rebuild a system that was purposefully destroyed by my predecessor.”160 In deconstructing the response of President Biden, the congressional change occurred under the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2019 of the 116th Congress. The amendments to this act will be examined in the subsequent section. The third countries refer to Qatar, and Germany, where U.S.’s military bases would act as externalized territories and cages to contain the Afghans during their immigration processing. The Afghans were also encouraged to move to any other third country to reach the U.S. embassy to process their SIV – with the only option being Pakistan. Moving refugees to the military bases echoes what Le Espiritu denoted as Militarized Refuge referring to the evacuation of the Vietnamese. She believed this revealed a hidden “colonial and militarized nature of these evacuations"161 with the pattern being the airlift of refugees from Saigon to the Philippines, Guam, Thailand, Wake Island, Hawai, and further distributions across military bases across the U.S..162 Le Espiritu concluded the militarization of refuge was the construct the narrative of “Good Refuge”, the U.S. turning the Vietnam War into a “Good War” – “an ultimately necessary and moral war.”163 163 Ibid. 162 Ibid. 161 Espiritu. p.25 160 Ibid. 159 The White House Press 52 Espiritu further touched on the topic of sovereignty, with that the nature of the evacuations and their selected destinations, was a colonial pattern to reinforce American presence and control over its historical pacific dominions – Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii. Following Espiritu’s position, we can draw a parallel to the third theory which stated the subjects’ survivability dependence on the sovereign, is conceptualized as Necropeon, where the Necropeon unconditionally serves and strengthens the sovereign’s consolidation within internal and externalized territories. In the same pretense, we may interpret the Vietnamese migrants to embody the concept of Necropeon, if their mobility and movement, bound to the U.S.'s coordination, was a reimagination of colonial consolidation of a sovereign. President Biden’s mention of giving refuge to those qualified as refugees is another repetition of the Vietnam evacuations. The U.S. processes applicants in multiple interview and profile examinations, and only resettles those who have been qualified for refugee status. Although I was not able to reach informants who had the migration process rejected while being caged in a third country, we may extrapolate the potential outcome for those individuals by reflecting on the Vietnam evacuations. According to Espiritu’s research, “Those who could establish past persecution were entitled to resettlement in third countries; those who could not be deemed “economic migrants'' and repatriated to Vietnam.``164 By 1996, of the 120,000 screened Vietnamese candidates, 27% were ultimately qualified for refugee status –as uttered by President Biden– and 63%, about 75,000 were repatriated.165 A similar process follows the militarized refugees and survival migrants who have already been brought to the U.S. military. In the case of the Vietnamese evacuees, those who were accepted as refugees were granted resettlement. For the “Leftover” refugees rejected from the program, as Espiritu dubs them, “ [they] became stateless peoples who languished in closed camps or detention centers for extended periods without the juridical protection of citizenship.”166 Ultimately, as my third theory constituted, relinquishing individual freedom –and per Haddad’s understanding of reciprocal relations of subject and sovereign– consolidates the U.S. sovereignty domestically, by being presented as the “other”. Conveniently for the U.S. Neo-neo policymakers of the 116th congress, President Trump had previously hampered the SIV program and reduced the number of SIV quotas drastically under the “Muslim Ban”, which was framed under protecting Americans.167 Under the Biden administration, the quota didn’t change until the 117th congress was pressured to do so to speed up the evacuation process, 167 Mark C. Storella, “How Trump Broke the System That Offers Protection to Afghan Allies,” The Hill (The Hill, August 31, 2021), https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/570076-how-trump-broke-the-system-that-offers-protection-to-afghan-allies/. 166 Ibid. p.59 165 Ibid. 164 Ibid. p.54 53 given the processing time –bureaucratic entrapment– was 731 days in early 2021.168 The Necropolitical framework of refugee treatment in the caging process is analyzed in greater depth in the next section. 4.2.3 Policy In Practice Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009 (AAPA) represents an umbrella body of laws and policies the US congress has been using to constitute what we’ve argued as Necropolitical. This section studies this protection act along with its evolution through related bills, to further strengthen the claims for the second and the third theories. The 115th congress, under President Trump’s administration, set the prelude to the bureaucratic entrapments and a dead-end policy for the SIV program, by introducing a key deadline for eligible Afghans. The Afghan Allies Protection Amendments Act of 2018169 set December 31, 2021, as the deadline for the employment period of Afghan collaborators, referred to as aliens in the bill's body. The same date would be the deadline of final eligible applications for the SIV program. Although it’s vaguely hinted at, we may interpret this key date as the determining means to reduce the capacities of the SIV program for future applicants. The bill set a deadline for eligible individuals and for the employability period – ergo, anyone employed after January 1st, 2021 would be dubbed ineligible, given they’d have less than a year of employment. An informant employed in logistics, described experiencing “a jolt of paralyzing shock” when she learned of her ineligibility in April 2021, having worked for 9 months in the U.S. Military. She described, that applying for a visa was a prolonged process of navigating the website for Citizenship and Immigration services with a labyrinth of links and forms. She was employed in the military at the age of 21, with “the single hope to leave the country with her parents.” She and another participant who described the same essence of betrayal by the visa program were assured by their contractor months prior, that they were eligible for the SIV through the completion of their contract in December 2021. There was no change in the visa policy until August 2nd, 2021, mere two weeks before the fall of Kabul, when the P-2 visa program was introduced to include those whose working terms didn’t qualify them for the SIV.170 As of the time of writing this, certain individuals who applied for the P-2 program in September 2021, have not yet obtained their visa – being in a state of limbo within U.S.’s hyper-externalized territories. 170 U.S. Department of State, “U.S. Refugee Admissions Program Priority 2 Designation for Afghan Nationals - United States Department of State,” U.S. Department of State (U.S. Department of State, January 28, 2022), https://www.state.gov/u-s-refugee-admissions-program-priority-2-designation-for-afghan-nationals/. 169 Congress.gov. "S.2793 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Afghan Allies Protection Amendments Act of 2018." May 7, 2018. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2793. 168 Ibid. 54 The first bill introduced to the senate by the 116th congress in the frame of Afghanistan –following the withdrawal agreement with Taliban– was on April 15th.171 The bill provided minor amendments to the AAPA, by allocating a mere 4,000 additional visa allocations for the SIV program, in addition to the unused allotments from 2015 through 2017 - 0. This extended the visa allotments from 18,500 to 22,500. During the same period, Congressional Research Service reports172 18,314 foreigners and host nationals were employed in Afghanistan, the second highest record since 2016.173 With discrepant numbers, the SIV program barely provided additional quota for immediate families of contractors. 4.2.4 Marketing On Misery Another form of sovereign consolidation through necropeonage is the use of policy making efforts as a medium to garner entrenched democratic support. A repeated theme noted during the policy analysis, was the use of gregarious names for policies to enrich marketing and promotional efforts, ultimately taking advantage of the electoral values. The following bills were among the only bills introduced during the period of evacuation and withdrawal which posited minimal practicality, while fully serving the policymakers –sovereigns– as marketing tools. I posit this is a form of necropeonage, under two observations: Firstly, the policies do not challenge the neuropolitical framework or contribute to the relief of the migrants from the “slow-death”. Secondly, the maintenance of the migrants under necropolitical conditions –through inaction– positively serves the policy makers to consolidate their democratic support. This was evident given the press associated with the introduced bills, and my interpretation that more effort was invested in creating marketable acronyms, than producing pragmatic resolutions. The bill, Emergency Security Supplemental Appropriations Act , passed on July 31, 2021174 provided additional amendments to the AAPA in an unexpected turn – to add a bureaucratic layer and restrictions for the SIV program, by requiring the candidates to undergo medical examination, prior to obtaining the SIV. A curiously-named bill, “HOPE for Afghan SIVs act of 2021”,175 or “Honoring Our Promises through Expedition for Afghan'', amended the previously introduced bil, not by extending the SIV quotas, but by rather removing the medical examination step, for until after the applicants had arrived in the U.S.. Essentially the bill named as HOPE, grounded no additional provisions for the 175 Congress.gov. "H.R.3385 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): HOPE for Afghan SIVs Act of 2021." November 9, 2021. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3385. 174 Congress.gov. "H.R.3237 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): Emergency Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2021." July 30, 2021. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3237. 173 Ibid. 172 Congressional Research Services, “Department of Defense Contractor and Troop Levels in Afghanistan and Iraq: 2007-20202021,” February 2021, https://doi.org/https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R44116.pdf. 171 Congress.gov. "S.1474 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2019." May 15, 2019. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1474. 61 Concentration camps to “Assembly Centres” for refugees in postwar Europe.190 Seeing the precedent of this phenomenon, I argue this process of reconstructing the image of the U.S. military bases as necessary establishments for assisting refugees, reinforces the importance of their presence in the third country territories – thus, embodying another form of consolidating externalized sovereignty. The migration route for the Afghan evacuees connected two critically important U.S. airbases in the Middle East and Europe – Al Udeid and Ramstein airbase. Tracing the migration route concerning the work of Espiritu reveals probable intentions to reconstruct the image of these bases from a military launching pad against U.S. adversaries to an indispensable humanitarian corridor. An operationalization of which entails controlling the movement of migrants – laboring their necro peonage. The Saigon evacuation analog to Al Udeid and Ramstein air bases is Clark AFB, which was the “backbone of logistical support for U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia,”191 which was the headquarters for the U.S. forces active in the entire Asia-Pacific.192 Linking Clark AFB with other U.S. bases during the evacuation, was a reaffirmation of militarism in the pacific territories under the facade of a refugee corridor.193 Examining the operational history of the Al Udeid and Ramstein Airbases reveals the importance of the two sites to the U.S. 's militarism and reinforced externalized territories. The Al Udeid airbase was the launching pad of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 which expelled Iraq from Kuwait and crippled its army from posing a threat against the Persian Gulf oil & gas reservoirs, tankers and facilities. Nowadays, the facility being the host to the largest American base,194 enacts as a repellent against Iran, which contends to challenge the arguably de facto militaristic hegemony of the U.S. over the region. With every stroke of tension, the base is used by the U.S. military to counter any Iranian intent of jeopardizing the U.S.’s position in the region.195 Similarly, the Ramstein Airbase was deliberately designed as a NATO command center, while today acting as a multinational headquarter to the Allied Air Forces Central Europe.196 Most recently, the Airbase hosted the International Advisory Group on 196 Allied Air Command Public Affairs Office, “NATO Air Chiefs Meet in Ramstein ‘Our Job Is to Ensure We Maintain Alliance Sovereignty,’” ac.nato.int, accessed May 15, 2022, https://ac.nato.int/archive/2022/NACS_22_1. 195 Oriana Pawlyk, “F-22s Deploy to Qatar for the First Time amid Iran Tensions,” Military.com, June 28, 2019, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/06/28/f-22s-deploy-qatar-first-time-amid-iran-tensions.html. 194 Adam Taylor, “As Trump Tries to End 'Endless Wars,' America's Biggest Mideast Base Is Getting Bigger,” The Washington Post (WP Company, August 23, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as-trump-tries-to-end-endless-wars-americas-biggest-mideast-base-is-getting-bigge r/2019/08/20/47ac5854-bab4-11e9-8e83-4e6687e99814_story.html. 193 Ibid. p.37 192 Ibid. 191 Ibid. 190 Ibid. p.36 62 Ukraine’s counteraction to Russia and a point of command for coordinated military assistance and reinforcement for the country.197 By reinforcing Espiritu’s militarized refuge to the case of Afghan migration, we find a recurring pattern of coordinating the movement of migrants between military bases with regional significance to arguably consolidate the U.S.’s presence within its hyper-externalized territories – the third country. This process of laboring the existence of the migrants to consolidate sovereignty fulfills the rationale of the third theory – Necropeons being unconditionally employed to serve and strengthen the sovereign’s consolidation within internal and externalized territories. 4.3.4 Caged In Living Hell Nearly the entirety of Operation Allies Refuge relied on remote control policies to contain the majority of the Afghan migrants. Only after the Al Udeid and Ramstein bases over capacitated the evacuation engaged U.S.-based military bases to host SIV applicants and other evacuated refugees. The leaked memo accessed by Axios, described the living conditions in Al Udeid as a “Living hell.”198 This correlated with how the participants who spent weeks there described the situation. The over capacitated cage provided the minimum hospitality apparatus. After holding an in-depth interview with a resident who shared a controversial Facebook post about the camp, it was evident that the facility’s primary concern was to act as a containment. Lack of Air Conditioning, toilers, showers, poor hygiene, and infestation of rats and pests infuriated the residents. The informant described many were regretful about leaving Afghanistan, believing in all sincerity they would’ve received better treatment by the Taliban. When asked when they were expecting to be transferred to the U.S. bases and Ramstein, the informant confirmed it depended on the stage application process. The informant further added they “don’t know yet” whether they’d be repatriated back to Afghanistan if the SIV application fails, while “[they] expect it.” The case of repatriation would have acted as a relief measure in the inhuman conditions which constrained the expectedly biopolitical institution tantamount to “living hell”. The condition of confining refugees to this state of bare-life was also echoed by Espiritu, describing the livability conditions as “crammed together behind chain link fences topped with barbed wire and patrolled by prison authorities, refugees in closed camps were not allowed to go beyond the boundaries set by the wired fences.”199 199 Espiritu, p.63 198 Hans Nichols and Jonathan Swan, “‘A Living Hell’: Leaked Email Describes Squalid Afghan Refugee Conditions,” Axios, August 24, 2021, https://www.axios.com/2021/08/24/afghan-refugees-conditions-qatar. 197 John A. Tirpak, “Long-Term Ukraine Aid to Be Discussed at Ramstein Meeting,” Air Force Magazine, April 24, 2022, https://www.airforcemag.com/long-term-ukraine-security-to-be-discussed-at-ramstein-meeting/. 63 The process of caging as a remote control also provided authority to the U.S. to repatriate evacuated Afghans with failed SIV applications, without invoking the Non-refoulement principle of International Human Rights law concerning refugees – regardless of the cage is an externalized territory. Most changes and improvements in the camp were credited to the initiative of the U.S. Military. After assessing every proposed and passed policy during this period of evacuation, the only consistent theme was a form of inaction which reduced the liveability of the refugees to the state of “living hell.” The policies enacted during this period by the U.S. failed to address the horrid situation in the Al Udaid camp, living conditions, or the SIV processing time. Although I intended to use posthuman performativity to assess the dynamic of policy-practice relations, the observations confirmed little policy dynamics in response to the field circumstances. While none of the participants was aware of any case of repatriation, Axios reported the first case on March 1, 22, where an Afghan with an unclear criminal record was set to return to Afghanistan.200 This sets a precedent to flag unwanted individuals for future deportations. Per the original agreement signed between the U.S. and the Taliban in February, the Taliban –and not the Afghan government– were to be fully responsible for the resettlement of the repatriated individuals, otherwise the deportees. Thus, the U.S. 's agreement had created the anticipated infrastructure of deportations. For the SIV applicants who were cleared to move to the U.S., the settlement process posed a different set of challenges, which still kept the individuals at the risk of deportation or transfer to a detention center. For the Vietnamese migrants, this was the case for those who had failed the screening and the interview processes. Espiritu describes the screening process as a mystery for the refugees, “they debated at great length over what to say and how to behave, offering and soliciting advice from each other on the “magic words'' that would gain them a resettlement offer”201 By virtue of the internet and modern telecommunications, Afghans used various Whatsapp groups, Facebook pages and telegram channels to provide support on the SIV application, including sharing interview questions. Some described using assistance from the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) to prepare for the interviews. The interview process would often take about an hour if it included the family members, and did not pose considerable constraint over the Afghan applicants. 4.3.5 Settlement The experience of those who were transported to the U.S. varied depending on the proximity of their closeness to their U.S. contractor. For instance, interpreters who worked directly with the U.S. forces in the field and had received the SIV, were quickly introduced to settlement organizations to 201 Espiritu. p.54 200 Stef W. Kight, “U.S. Deports First Afghan Back to Afghanistan,” Axios, March 1, 2022, https://www.axios.com/2022/03/01/afghan-deportation-afghanistan-ice-immigration-taliban. 64 incorporate them into their communities. Others who had received the SIV, and those with pending SIV who lacked linguistic fluency, were kept in the cages across various U.S. Military and Air bases. For those who had received the SIV, they would be kept until they had been indoctrinated to the American way of living. Special educational classes included subjects such as credit score system, daylight savings, democracy, elections, and the history of the United States. Espiritu described this process of indoctrination as a mean to train refugees for asylum in the West, while also persuading them to “internalize the values and hierarchies of the United States and to transform them into particular kinds of modern human beings (bound for Western liberal democracies).”202 To a number of assessed U.S. media outlets, this process was broadcasted with positive connotation and driving a particular narrative: That the migrants were being trained to be Americans, no longer being the “others”, per Haddad’s categorization. The narrative enforced the impression that the Afghans were finally settling in their new home, thankful to the Americans and the U.S. military.203204205 The dehumanizing and desensitizing experience of the migrants was translated into the compassion and benevolence of the sovereign. For those who also had pending SIV applications, they would undergo the same classes with less intensity. To the latter group of people, their status and future hanged in the balance of their SIV application results. Participants expressed unsure of where they’d go to had the applications been rejected. If the U.S. government chooses to act on the precedent of the processes Vietnamese refugees followed, the fate of rejected Afghan migrants is the migrationdetention centers, which were first and foremost were constructed to reinforce the policies introduced under the framing of American security. Despite the diversity in demographics and professional background the migrant community possesses, they’re united by having moved to the U.S. in rags and with little substantial assets. The process of morphing from the “others” identity to the identity of the subjects homogenized by the sovereign, indebted to those who’ve been granted settlement permissions. Rather than having the liberty to choose the profession they’d wish to engage in, the participants described being constrained to having “survival jobs” – working in warehouses, janitorial positions, delivery services, and other labors substantiating the survival. Reiterating the Foucauldian term, to live at the mercy of a sovereign state is to be bare-life, ripe for extermination or escapades of the states –– the phenomenon of such extent of dependence is another medium of compounding the sovereign authority over the individuals. 205 ABC News. "Afghan refugees work to start a new life in the US". 2021. YouTube, 8:11, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAviXjrI9lU 204 VOA News. "Afghan Refugee Family Is Adjusting to Life in the US". 2021. YouTube, 4:16, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg63O59mh9Y 203 Washington Post. "Newly arrived Afghan family settles in, but worries about those left behind ". 2021. YouTube, 3:23, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfDOG6ZhcS8. 202 Ibid. p.60 65 In summary, my research contends the caging and settlement of the migrants facilitates five key services for the deliberate entrenchment of U.S. government’s sovereignty within its internal and external territories: 1. Caging fosters the presence of the U.S. government in the third country, and reaffirms the necessity of the military bases as externalized sovereign territories; 2. Caging creates the spatiotemporal requisite for the U.S. government to use policy introduction and policy enactment as means to domestically consolidate its sovereignty; 3. Caging reduces the livability of the migrants to bare-life, thereby increasing their livability dependence on the U.S. 4. Caging conforms the policy frameworks based on protecting the U.S. and the securitization of the screening processes – to filter out the “others” and consolidate domestic sovereignty; 5. Caging provides the space to further homogenized the subjects in conformity with the sovereign None of these four services function without the involuntary service of the necropeon – a survival migrant whose state of conditional existence has been condemned to the operationalization of necropolitics. 66 5. Conclusion Through incorporating interpretive policy analysis, performativity, and ethnography, this research examined the clandestine necropolitical realities of the biopolitical policies of the U.S.. In answering “How Necropolitics is operationalized in the United States’ migration policy?”, we first had to theorize the “why?” – how the U.S. government could benefit from intrinsically necropolitical migration policies? We established the premise that necropolitical policies are those which curtail individuals’ freedom to bare-life, create spatiotemporal conditions of (un)survivability, and cultivate the phenomena of Necropeonage. Necropeonage is the mode of existence for a Necropeon, an individual who has been subjected to involuntary labor for the matter of survival. By referencing the works of other migration scholars, Haddad and Fitzgerald, the study bases the “why” on a close multiplicative codependent relation between the migrants and the sovereign. Where the sovereign needs to be needed to consolidate itself, the migrant reinforces the need. The empirical section yielded a number of key findings. Chronologically, the U.S.'s agreement with the Taliban creates a paradoxical state of sovereign-subject relations between the Afghan, the Afghan government, and the Taliban. By analyzing the domineering of the U.S. over the Afghan government, the paper concluded it to represent the de facto suzerain, and by extension, sovereign over the Afghans. The U.S.’s February agreement with the Taliban would de jure recognize Taliban sovereignty only within the intra-Afghan dialogue and a co-existing government, while paradoxically granting the Taliban responsibilities only anointed to the sovereign – such as issuing passports, providing security, and handling the impending migration and displacement crisis within Afghanistan. The subsequent result was a mishap in the formation of a stable and consolidated government within Afghanistan, which would only result in internal conflict and an impending migration crisis. This conundrum of sovereign-subject relation set the prelude to the operationalization of necropolitics. By following the odyssey of the migrants, we realized how the existential dread was weaponized/utilized to snare the migrant into the bureaucratic entrapment. This existential threat constructed the phenomenological foundation of necropolitics – the requisite essence to labor the migrants’ sense of survival. The temporal dimension was established through protracting the SIV application process, which was only exacerbated by the influx of applicants following the U.S.'s withdrawal announcement. The spatial infrastructure of necropolitics was constructed through Caging and remote policies within externalized territories. The architecture of this spatiotemporal necropolitical framework provided the U.S. with a variety of means to utilize the migrants and their movements to foster its sovereignty within the internal and external territories. 67 The first explored means of operationalizing necropolitics was through policy construction. A set of legislated policies before the migration had created a byzantine entrapment for the Afghan survival migrants. Policies that were introduced during and following the migration, contributed little change to the situation in the field. Instead, they acted as promotional tools for policymakers to strengthen their support, or for lobbyists to promote their brand of work. This laboring of the limbo state of migrants was interpreted as the first form of necropeonage – where the migrants exist insofar as to reinforce the sovereignty of the government. The research further traced the route of evacuations and posited the interpretation that the routes were deliberately chosen to create a humanized narrative for the U.S. Military bases outside the U.S. The bases formerly recognized as launching pads of devastating invasions were instantly transformed into evacuation checkpoints and humanitarian corridors. In this virtue, the U.S. could reinforce its sovereignty over its externalized territories by pointing to substantial necessity and service U.S. bases provide in the third countries – besides invasions. The remote policies and the policies of screening legislation for the caged immigrants would be used as a means to galvanize domestic support by framing these policies under “American Security”. In the separation of migrants, as the “Others' ', from the Americans –the bonafide subjects– the U.S. government creates a homogenized space that would require the integration of the refugees. The caging process was used as a medium to indoctrinate the migrants into the American way of life – what we can interpret as the way of being subjected to the sovereign. In the undertaking of this research, we’ve narrated a myriad of ways in which the U.S. operationalizes the necropolitical framework. Externalization of territories, policy marketing, and domestic homogenization can all be interpreted as the key processes of the U.S.’s consolidation of sovereignty through migration policies. 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