1 - Colonial encounters, militarism and affect in global security

Summary

Vignette One

I was sitting across a coffee table from Jitendra in Kabul, having a cup of tea in the security compound where he worked and lived in the district of Wazir Akbar Khan. Jitendra was a former Singaporean Police Gurkha officer who currently worked in Afghanistan as a line manager for a team of Gurkhas. Since retiring from the Singaporean Police, Jitendra had worked as a security contractor, first in Iraq and now in Afghanistan.

Jitendra told me about a close encounter he had in a convoy protection detail while working in Iraq a few years ago. During this convoy, his vehicle broke down and he had to wait for military support, having no idea when they’d arrive.

Jitendra: I was in the middle of a remote and very open area that was known for attacks on convoys.

Amanda: Were you afraid?

Jitendra: Of course, I was afraid. But I also knew I was a Gurkha and Gurkhas do not run. I had to be strong. It’s in my blood. (Kabul, Afghanistan, 2010)

Vignette Two

Rabindra sat there quietly as his wife Sunika explained how she forced him to become a Gurkha. I felt surprised as she told me this. An atmosphere of tension filled the room. This tension sat at odds with the general excitement that only moments earlier had filled the room as people buzzed in and out of the living room, preparing for Sunika and Rabindra’s daughter’s wedding to be held the next day.

In the over ten years of researching Gurkhas, I’d never encountered this experience before. Perhaps it was because I had failed to ask. I never had asked Gurkha men what it was like to be fathers, husbands, sons. I, like all the other military commentaries about these men, had focussed on their military service.

Sunika: Rabindra never wanted to be a Gurkha, he missed seeing his children grow up, he missed me.

We all sat there, in quiet pause. (Fieldnotes, Dharan, Nepal, 2017)

Introduction

I approach my research by understanding global security as a ‘sociopolitical’ set of regimes that ‘begins and ends with bodies’ (Värynen and Puumala 2015).