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UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Askar: Militarism, Policing

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UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Askar: Militarism, Policing UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Askar: Militarism, Policing and Somali Refugees A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies by Mohamed Abumaye Committee in charge: Professor Yen Le Espiritu, Chair Professor Kirstie Dorr Professor Ivan Evans Professor Dayo Gore Professor Daphne Taylor-Garcia 2017 Copyright, Mohamed Abumaye, 2017 All Rights Reserved The dissertation of Mohamed Abumaye is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2017 iii DEDICATION For Baba and Hoyo, Waxaca ku samasa. Ani waku jacelka. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS SIGNATURE PAGE………………………………………………………………..iii DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………....iv TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………….v LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………...vii VITA……………………………………………………………………………….viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION………………………………………….. ix INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………....1 CHAPTER ONE Colonialism: Origin of U.S. Militarism in Somalia……………...16 CHAPTER TWO From the Refugee Camp to City Heights: The Continuity of State Violence.....………………………………………………………………………….50 CHAPTER THREE The War on Drugs, Militarized Police, and Blackness……….89 CHAPTER FOUR Anti-Blackness, Islamophobia and The War on Terror.………120 EPILOGUE The Return of The U.S. Military: The Never-Ending War in Somalia………………………………………………………………………….....158 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………170 v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Chart from California Department of Social Service………………….......63 Figure 1: 1906 Newspaper Article………………………………………………….72 Figure 2: Office of Multicultural Community Relations…………………………....78 Table 2: Vehicle Stops by Race/Ethnicity …………………………………………...80 Figure 3: Photograph of police officer (left) being shadowed by Marine (right).....100 Figure 4: Map of Crime in City Heights …………………………………………102 Figure 5: Radicalization as Stairs..………………………………………………...132 Figure 6: Chart of Suspected Al-Shabab Members.……………………………….134 Figure 7: Chart of Islam …………………………………………………………..146 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee for their support and encouragement in the research and writing of this project. I am especially grateful to my Chair Yen Le Espiritu, I would not have made it through graduate school without her. I would also like to thank my partner Crystal Perez who has been there for me every step of the way. vii VITA 2010 B.A., Sociology, University of Illinois 2011 M.A., African Studies, University of Illinois 2014 M.A., Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego 2016 UCHRI Fellowship, University of California Irvine 2017 Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego FIELDS OF STUDY Sociology, Critical Refugee Studies; U.S. Imperialism, Black Studies, Somali Studies viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Askar: Militarism, Policing and Somali Refugees by Mohamed Abumaye Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies University of California, San Diego, 2017 Professor Yen Le Espiritu, Chair My dissertation examines the intersections between policing and militarism through centering Somali refugee experience with state violence. I argue that the intersections between the police and military are made visible through the Somali experience with police violence in San Diego. As a theoretical rubric for this project, I draw from the fields of Black Studies, Critical Refugee Studies and Critical Muslim Studies. While the police and military are depicted as separate in the fields of Political Science and Criminology, my project spotlights the convergence between the ix police and military. During my research, I discovered that the SDPD received a tank from the U.S. military. I traced the trajectory of this tank through the database “Detroit Free Press” and uncovered that it had been deployed in Afghanistan in 2012, then transferred to Camp Pendleton in 2014, and finally given to the SDPD in 2015. I utilize this dramatic piece of evidence to show the rate and scale of police militarization in San Diego. My investigation builds off a critical reading of police archives and an ethnography of the people most effected by police violence in San Diego, namely Somali refugees. This project, the first of its kind, exposes the links between U.S. military violence abroad and domestic police violence by centering refugee narratives that detail militarized violence. In closing, I illuminate the increasingly intimate relationship between the police and military in our contemporary security state. x INTRODUCTION I chose the Somali word Askar as the title for this dissertation, because of its dual meaning. Askar translates into police and soldier, because in Somali linguistic epistemology there is no distinction made between the two. A major theme of this dissertation is investigating the intersection between militarism and policing, by centering Somali refugee experiences. Therefore, I wanted to use a Somali word that fully captures the increasing intimacy between the military and police in our contemporary security state. To analyze the emergence of militarism in Somalia, I begin with recent data about the Somali diaspora. There are more Somalis living in the diaspora than in the country of Somalia. 1 How did this happen? What caused a significant portion of the population to leave the country? I grapple with these questions throughout this dissertation. In doing so, I hope to find an unconventional answer to these questions, one that does not reduce Somali refugee migration to the after effects of tribal warfare. In order to accomplish this task, I will put into conversation three seemingly unrelated fields of study: Black Studies, Immigration/refugee Studies, and Post-Colonial Studies. These fields will be interwoven by a guiding question: Why are Somali refugees in the U.S. of all places? I answer this question through an analysis of U.S. imperialism. My central thesis is that U.S. imperialism is the condition of possibility for Somali refugee migration. Unlike other immigration scholarship that is concerned with immigrant experiences or the bureaucratic 1 Data is from the book The Path of Somali Refugees into Exile 1 2 process of refugee resettlement, I interrogate the migration of Somali refugees by situating the longue duree of U.S. imperialism in Somalia. This project is significant because no other work on Somali refugees critically engages the central role that U.S. militarism plays in Somali refugee life. This epistemological blindness can be explained in part by the separation of academic disciplines. The Somali Civil War is studied primarily by political scientists, while the Somali refugee migration is examined largely by anthropologists and sociologists. I address the gap in these literatures by situating Somali refugee migration within the context of the 1993 U.S. military invasion of Somalia. I aim to show that wherever the U.S. military goes, refugees follow in the wake of American imperial violence. I trace this imperial violence because U.S. imperialism is still a dominant force in Somalia today. Because of the historical and contemporary relevance of U.S. imperialism to the Somali refugee condition, I hope to reveal that the U.S. crossed the borders of Somalia long before Somalis crossed the U.S. border. The intertwined nature of U.S. militarism and refugee migration is pronounced if you looked at the relationship between refugees in San Diego and U.S. militarism. Three of the largest refugee groups in San Diego—Iraqi, Somali, and Vietnamese—found themselves in San Diego precisely because of U.S. military interventions abroad. 2 Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees were the first group of refugees to arrive to San Diego after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. 3 According to the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement Data System, 2 See “Total Refugee Arrivals to California By Country of Origin Federal Fiscal Years 1983 through 2015” by California Department of Social Services, Refugee Programs Bureau 3 KPBS article by Megan Burks titled “How The Fall Of Saigon Made San Diego A Refugee Hub” examines the routes that Vietnamese refugees took from Camp Pendleton to settling in San Diego. http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/apr/24/how-fall-saigon-made-san-diego-refugee-hub/ 3 163,344 Vietnamese refugees have been resettled to California since 1982. 4 The second group to arrive in San Diego were Somali refugees, whose presence has been precipitated by the 1993 U.S. military invasion of Somalia. 5 The U.S. lost the war in 1994 and was heavily criticized, both domestically and internationally, for its failed humanitarian intervention in Somalia. 6 To resuscitate its image as a world leader, the U.S. began accepting Somali refugees en masse. 7 This shift in policy, from a military invasion of Somalia in 1993 to the resettlement of Somali refugees in the aftermath, highlights the relationship between domestic and foreign U.S. policies, where the punitive arm of the state—the military and the police—and the welfare arm of the state— the social services—reinforce and legitimize state power. 8 The violent military arm of the state and the welfare arm of the state merged in the 1993 humanitarian-military operation in Somalia named the “Operation Restore Hope”. 9 As critical refugee studies scholars have established, refugees are not simply passive recipients of aid; they perform the ideological labor of reinforcing the narrative of U.S.
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